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Political 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

Political 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.

jfim 4y ago
Keep in mind that the US is generating about 20x the amount of high level nuclear waste than if it were to recycle spent fuel. The French do it, but Americans won't.
- panick21_ 4y ago
  And the French use a very expensive wasteful method. There are much better ways to reprocess fuel if you can target modern advanced reactor designs.
- pfdietz 4y ago
  The US doesn't recycle waste because it's economically pointless to do it right now. The separated plutonium has negative value.
Brybry 4y ago
I think nuclear is already scaled to the size of coal. Electricity generation by source in the US in 2021: Coal - 21.8% Nuclear - 18.9% [1] https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3
panick21_ 4y ago
> You'd be trading one climate catastrophe for another. No you actually don't. Even under the most absurdly bombastic delusional fantasy of nuclear-haters the amount of damage nuclear waste deep in a cave in a desert can do is about a billion times less then climate change. And even based on the pessimistic assumptions, it would be save for 1000s of years. Are you seriously gone tell me that we should worry about 1000+ years into the future. If we do not have massive technological decay, the people in the next 1000+ years will have the technology to reprocess the fuel if they feel like it. And if you do assume massive technological decay then the nuclear fuel is in a cave in a desert that will be essentially uninhabited and will most likely never seriously impact humans. Even further this whole debate is incredibly dumb since putting into a deep cave is terrible idea anyway. As a human society we can just store it above ground in a save location and in case some danger is identified, we just move it to another location. Moving a few tons of nuclear fuel around ever couple 100 years is really no big deal. And again, if society collapses to a point where this isn't possible, that nuclear fuel is the least thing to worry about. And even all of that is totally irrelevant, because the real actual solution is to simply ut it into advanced reactors, burn it up to a point where it is only 300 years away from matching natural uranium and you simple put it back into the mine where it came from. If you do it correctly, we can get every person in the world using US like energy and we can store the complete output of world nuclear waste on a single abandoned Walmark parking lot in Gary Indiana. If we used basic rationality this would be a non issue. This is a cultural political issue, not really a technical one. > What does waste transport look like then? Mhhh well it would be an occasional train going along the train network that would never hurt anybody. And nuclear isn't that far away from coal level of production. > Maybe this waste belongs precisely in the back yards of those of us who create it. Then we'd be truly careful. I'm totally fine with storing all nuclear waste around the Whitehouse if that gets people to stop bringing it up as a problem.

jfim 4y ago

Keep in mind that the US is generating about 20x the amount of high level nuclear waste than if it were to recycle spent fuel. The French do it, but Americans won't.

panick21_ 4y ago
And the French use a very expensive wasteful method. There are much better ways to reprocess fuel if you can target modern advanced reactor designs.
pfdietz 4y ago
The US doesn't recycle waste because it's economically pointless to do it right now. The separated plutonium has negative value.

Brybry 4y ago

I think nuclear is already scaled to the size of coal. Electricity generation by source in the US in 2021: Coal - 21.8% Nuclear - 18.9% [1] https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3

panick21_ 4y ago

> You'd be trading one climate catastrophe for another. No you actually don't. Even under the most absurdly bombastic delusional fantasy of nuclear-haters the amount of damage nuclear waste deep in a cave in a desert can do is about a billion times less then climate change. And even based on the pessimistic assumptions, it would be save for 1000s of years. Are you seriously gone tell me that we should worry about 1000+ years into the future. If we do not have massive technological decay, the people in the next 1000+ years will have the technology to reprocess the fuel if they feel like it. And if you do assume massive technological decay then the nuclear fuel is in a cave in a desert that will be essentially uninhabited and will most likely never seriously impact humans. Even further this whole debate is incredibly dumb since putting into a deep cave is terrible idea anyway. As a human society we can just store it above ground in a save location and in case some danger is identified, we just move it to another location. Moving a few tons of nuclear fuel around ever couple 100 years is really no big deal. And again, if society collapses to a point where this isn't possible, that nuclear fuel is the least thing to worry about. And even all of that is totally irrelevant, because the real actual solution is to simply ut it into advanced reactors, burn it up to a point where it is only 300 years away from matching natural uranium and you simple put it back into the mine where it came from. If you do it correctly, we can get every person in the world using US like energy and we can store the complete output of world nuclear waste on a single abandoned Walmark parking lot in Gary Indiana. If we used basic rationality this would be a non issue. This is a cultural political issue, not really a technical one. > What does waste transport look like then? Mhhh well it would be an occasional train going along the train network that would never hurt anybody. And nuclear isn't that far away from coal level of production. > Maybe this waste belongs precisely in the back yards of those of us who create it. Then we'd be truly careful. I'm totally fine with storing all nuclear waste around the Whitehouse if that gets people to stop bringing it up as a problem.