4 ms·

> By "poisoning the earth" you mean burying extremely small amounts of uranium half a kilometer under the ground. The entirety of the USA's nuclear waste from p

> By "poisoning the earth" you mean burying extremely small amounts of uranium half a kilometer under the ground. The entirety of the USA's nuclear waste from power generation fits in a volume the footprint of a football field and 10 yards high. That's 70 years of nuclear waste. Citation needed, just looking and the temporal storage facilities of a single nuclear power plant is bigger than a football field.

Manuel_D 4y ago
https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-nuclear-fuel https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-... > 5. Nuclear fuel is extremely dense >Because of this, the amount of used nuclear fuel is not as big as you think. > All of the used nuclear fuel produced by the U.S. nuclear energy industry over the last 60 years could fit on a football field at a depth of less than 10 yards.
- bob29 4y ago
  nice disengenous quote used out of context, used nuclear fuel is a subset of waste from a nuclear power plant. btw, in case a football field at a depth of 10 yards sounds small: http://www.ccnr.org/max_plute_aecb.html#1 http://www.ccnr.org/max_plute_aecb.html#1
  - Manuel_D 4y ago
    > nice disengenous quote used out of context, used nuclear fuel is a subset of waste from a nuclear power plant. What's disingenuous about it? I guess there's used concrete that needs to be cleaned up, but used concrete is hardly unique to nuclear plants. Also, your link about plutonium overdoses seems like a non-sequitur. Most spent fuel is uranium, not plutonium. Furthermore, chances of it contaminating people when that waste is buried 400 meters underground beneath impermeable rock is zero. The only things that would make it get into the ecosystem is deliberate excavation, or maybe a meteor strike kicking.
    - bob29 4y ago
      The comment was about all nuclear waste from a power plant. You responded with figures for quantity of spent nuclear fuel, which is volumetrically a mere fraction of the total waste from a nuclear reactor. Low level rad waste still has cumulative health exposure risks, subject to many requirements for proper handling and disposal. there are lots of materials "not unique to nuclear plants" which do become irradiated once used in a nuclear plant. BTW in hanford washington each year 10% of the DoE's budget goes to preventing plutonium leaking into a river, a lot of hubris to trivialize the geoengineering involved in designing a "zero risk" containment

Manuel_D 4y ago

https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-nuclear-fuel https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-... > 5. Nuclear fuel is extremely dense >Because of this, the amount of used nuclear fuel is not as big as you think. > All of the used nuclear fuel produced by the U.S. nuclear energy industry over the last 60 years could fit on a football field at a depth of less than 10 yards.

bob29 4y ago
nice disengenous quote used out of context, used nuclear fuel is a subset of waste from a nuclear power plant. btw, in case a football field at a depth of 10 yards sounds small: http://www.ccnr.org/max_plute_aecb.html#1 http://www.ccnr.org/max_plute_aecb.html#1
- Manuel_D 4y ago
  > nice disengenous quote used out of context, used nuclear fuel is a subset of waste from a nuclear power plant. What's disingenuous about it? I guess there's used concrete that needs to be cleaned up, but used concrete is hardly unique to nuclear plants. Also, your link about plutonium overdoses seems like a non-sequitur. Most spent fuel is uranium, not plutonium. Furthermore, chances of it contaminating people when that waste is buried 400 meters underground beneath impermeable rock is zero. The only things that would make it get into the ecosystem is deliberate excavation, or maybe a meteor strike kicking.
  - bob29 4y ago
    The comment was about all nuclear waste from a power plant. You responded with figures for quantity of spent nuclear fuel, which is volumetrically a mere fraction of the total waste from a nuclear reactor. Low level rad waste still has cumulative health exposure risks, subject to many requirements for proper handling and disposal. there are lots of materials "not unique to nuclear plants" which do become irradiated once used in a nuclear plant. BTW in hanford washington each year 10% of the DoE's budget goes to preventing plutonium leaking into a river, a lot of hubris to trivialize the geoengineering involved in designing a "zero risk" containment