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Is disposal of nuclear reactor waste products a solved problem yet? Last I heard, the big "solution" was to stick it in sacred Native American mountains in Nev
by reaperducer 4y ago
Is disposal of nuclear reactor waste products a solved problem yet?
Last I heard, the big "solution" was to stick it in sacred Native American mountains in Nevada and New Mexico and let future generations worry about it.
If that's all we can do, people in 100, 200, 300 years may not be thinking what you're thinking they will think.
- RealityVoid 4y agoWhy would they not be thinking that? It's inaccessible and geologically stable. Besides, if we don't tackle the global warming problem, there might not _be_ generations 300 years down the line to judge our actions.
- gcanyon 4y agoOne thing to remember is that while the half-life of a very small portion of the waste from nuclear reactors is measured in thousands of years, so it's important not to release it into the environment, the half-life of the mercury that is absolutely released by coal mining is...infinite.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y ago> “ solution" was to stick it in sacred Native American mountains in Nevada Is your objection due to the sanctity of the mountain or another reason?
- antupis 4y agoHere Finland Onkalo https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_re... is going opetational 23 and it will basically solve it for us.
- panick21_ 4y agoTo be honest, I think this is mostly a bad idea. Like to be 1 billion $, for that price you could have developed a brand new advanced reactor and the required reprocessing facilities to create a circular fuel stream that could have changed the world. Yet instead of advanced technology to the next stage, we spent that money to dig a bit hole. And even worse, every country spends billions digging holes. Even a fraction of that money could have been used advanced humanity into the next nuclear age, rather then dumping the output of the last one into a hole.
- hn_throwaway_99 4y ago> Last I heard, the big "solution" was to stick it in sacred Native American mountains in Nevada and New Mexico and let future generations worry about it. Sorry, but given that the climate catastrophe is the most pressing concern for humanity, I think that gives more weight that religious superstition over the "sanctity" of a mountain in the middle of the desert miles from any humans. Securing nuclear waste to decay at the bottom of a mountain is a pretty good solution, the only thing against it really is political nimbyism.
- reaperducer 4y agothe only thing against it really is political nimbyism Actually, from what I've read in the local newspapers in the areas affected, the politicians are all for it, so you're making assumptions there. The people who are against it are the people who actually have to live with the stuff for the next thousand years. If it's so safe, so stable, so easily rendered harmless, why not bury it in the bedrock beneath Manhattan, or Boston, or Virginia? All places that are far more geologically stable than, for example, Yucca Mountain.
- TulliusCicero 4y agoAbundance of caution, defense in depth. If nobody lives there, nobody has to live with it.
- c1ccccc1 4y agoI haven't checked the geological suitability, but assuming you're right about that, putting the waste in those places seems perfectly fine to me.
- josephcsible 4y agoBecause in major cities, it's more likely that you'll need to dig that area up again for something else.
- troyvit 4y agoPolitical nimbyism is what put the waste where it is. It ended up in the back yard of the least powerful political force in America. Curating nuclear waste for longer than any human can actually comprehend isn't something to just brush off. You'd be trading one climate catastrophe for another. And that doesn't even account for securely transporting the waste across the country. Imagine scaling nuclear to the size of coal. What does waste transport look like then? Maybe this waste belongs precisely in the back yards of those of us who create it. Then we'd be truly careful.
- omginternets 4y agoIs the disposal of coal, gas and oil emissions a solved problem yet? At least nuclear waste is contained.
- ncmncm 4y agoCoal, gas, and oil are being phased out in favor of renewables, just as fast as capital is allowed to be applied. They just cost too much to operate. (This is why the feds massively subsidize them.) Nukes are not in competition with them. Nukes are in competition with renewables, where they lose badly.
- ch4s3 4y agoNo nuclear power competes with base load power like coal, natural gas, and eventually battery storage.
- omginternets 4y agoRenewables literally require us to redesign the grid, and require supplementary sources of power for when they are unable to produce. I truly wonder what your assertion is based on.
- ncmncm 4y agoI doubt you do. Renewables + storage + more transmission lines will require construction projects of magnitude much smaller than would be required for enough nukes.
- p1mrx 4y agohttps://www.deepisolation.com/ https://www.deepisolation.com/ looks like a reasonable solution, assuming we don't use the waste as fuel. Why would future generations have to worry about something buried deep underground? Just don't drill there.
- AareyBaba 4y agoDispelling the Myths of Nuclear Energy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1QmB5bW_WQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1QmB5bW_WQ
- otikik 4y agoAll of the used fuel ever produced by the commercial nuclear industry since the late 1950s would cover a whole football field to a height of approximately 10 yards Solar and Wind require a backup for when there's no wind or it's cloudy. Their current default backup is burning fossil fuels. Of those, coal plans are particularly salient because they do generate radioactive waste. Continuously. And pour it over the atmosphere. They contribute far more radiation to the environment than nuclear power stations. > let future generations worry about it. I think they will appreciate having to worry about that in exchange of not having to deal with not existing because of climate change.
- lttlrck 4y agoWhereas the emissions from fossil fuels are spread uncontained for everyone to enjoy?
- ch4s3 4y agoIt’s pretty solved. There is very little of the dangerous stuff, and it is far less dangerous after a few decades. It can safely sit in casks for more than a thousand years. At which point there’s a negligible amount of anything really nasty left. At any point we can basically just stick it all in a salt mine and call it a day. Future people will be fine. Shit we discovered uranium because some guys wandered into a cave and it burned their skin. Locals avoided it afterwards and eventually it was studied by people who knew what radiation was. Any actual storage though would be deep underground, in casks, and behind concrete with lots of warning signs.
- josephcsible 4y agoNuclear reprocessing and breeder reactors would entirely solve the nuclear waste problem. The only reason we're not using them yet is that people think we'd use the output to make nuclear weapons with (even though we can already do that without them).