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Is nuclear waste still an issue now that we can recycle the waste back into the power plant for more energy? Asking as a total novice on the topic. I want to a
by jimbob45 5y ago
Is nuclear waste still an issue now that we can recycle the waste back into the power plant for more energy?
Asking as a total novice on the topic. I want to act as a proponent for nuclear energy but it’s difficult to know what’s propaganda and what’s legitimate.
- Turing_Machine 5y agoOne good rule: anything that uses "long half-life" as a scare term is propaganda.
- ykevinator2 5y agoI don't know anything about this but are you saying there's nothing to worry about here?
- Scarblac 5y agoIt's _short_ half life that can be scary, because that means a lot of radiation.
- BenjiWiebe 5y agoI'm not an expert either, but just to explain a little bit- long half life means there's not much activity going on, and not much radiation emitted. Short half life means there's lots going on, and lots being emitted. So an article equating long half life with danger isn't trying really hard to be accurate and precise.
- Turing_Machine 5y agoI'm saying that, all other factors being equal, that stuff with a long half-life is less dangerous than stuff with a short half-life. To put it another way, "half-life of infinity" = "not radioactive at all". Now, there are other factors involved (type of radiation emitted, what fission products appear further down the decay chain, etc.), but none of them are made worse by a long half-life per se. It's a scare term, pure and simple.
- GuB-42 5y agoLong half-life (thousands of years) products are usually not too worrisome because they are not very radioactive. That's the reason why they are long half-life. Short half-life (days) products are very radioactive and dangerous, but because they are quickly depleted, they are manageable. The worst are medium half-life (decades) products. Short enough to be dangerously radioactive, and long enough to be a long term problem. These are the ones that make Chernobyl inhospitable.
- cinntaile 5y agoWe have been able to reprocess nuclear fuel since the 40s or something. So if anything it's gen IV "propaganda/marketing". Gen IV is not just one reactor type so some of the advantages that one reactor type has are not valid for another type. They tend to be thrown onto one big pile of advantages so you have to be on your guard when reading about this.
- bell-cot 5y agoRough answer - processes which are good for recycling the "spent" fuel back into "fresh" reactor fuel...those processes are also good for recycling "spent" fuel into nuclear bomb material. The latter aspect is rather damaging to their popularity. (In either case, the recycling process also separates out all sorts of really nasty, short-half-life fission daughter isotopes & such. Which could make it pretty unpopular, even if the mere chemical aspects of the process were non-toxic. Which they aren't...)