4 ms·
>the still unsolved long term storage problem (it's been >70 years of nuclear power and there still does not exist a long term storage facility in the world) S
by cthalupa 4y ago
>the still unsolved long term storage problem (it's been >70 years of nuclear power and there still does not exist a long term storage facility in the world)
Storage has /been solved/ for decades.
High Level Waste is only a tiny fraction of total waste. As it stands, all of the HLW created by all the nuclear plants in the world could be kept in a football field sized area. The vast majority of the rest of the generated waste will decay to to harmlessness during the lifetime of a plant.
HLW regulations around transport are so high in most countries that the standards for transport casks has made them practically indestructible. They can literally be hit by trains and no be breached. Solutions like those developed by Deep Isolation also effectively solve any long term storage problem for the HLW.
- cycomanic 4y agoHere [1] is a picture of the temporary storage at the Yankee nuclear power plant temporary storage (sorry I could not find better pictures from above to give more accurate size). There are ~90 commercial nuclear reactor in the US. I can immediately see that this would not fit into a football field sized area. And this is for a single country and ignores waste that was already transported away. And no things will not decay to harmlessness during the lifetime of a plant. They decay to a level where the containers are not very warm anymore so they can be more easily transported. Also low level waste is not harmless either, and there's going to be a lot of it when decommissioning a plant.
- cycomanic 4y agoSorry here's the link: https://vtdigger.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Aerial-from-NE.jpg https://vtdigger.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Aerial-from-...