5 ms·

From what I have read waste storage is a non-problem from any practical view. It’s a really big planet. Just no one wants it in their little corner.

AtlasBarfed 4y ago
The waste storage (Yucca mountain, find some geological scale safe place) would seem to, but again we run into the "old nuclear" view of things. Fukushima showed the flawed thinking that underpins "old nuclear": well, we have fixed the risks for everyday conditions ... that is, we put the minimum amount of required thought into safety from a political but not a fundamental design aspect. Waste TRANSPORT falls into this. Are we pretending that this isn't the transport of nuclear dirty bomb material? That's the fundamental issue. Sure it can be safe when it gets there, but the security of the waste in transport and the other dangers is just too high. I mean, a deer crossing the road could cause a crash and spill. Tire blowouts. etc. And there are just too many examples of corporations not giving a shit about truly dealing with environmental/waste/pollution procedures. Look at the fracking industry, they likely poisoned a great deal of water tables and other widespread effects, but didn't care in the least. They could get away with it. For waste storage, we can have some regulatory rubberstamp that "it is compliant" but all we need is some spill or something similar and you have nuclear waste in the water table. Great. Power generation and nuclear generation companies are full of conservative and environmental-hostile people. I don't know why this is, but it is, and it is another big issue with "old nuclear". I suspect it is a combination of the military origin of nuclear technology, regulatory fatigue, and the contempt of the Greenpeace antinuke types. But it is a fundamental organizational and culture problem of the nuclear industry. These organizations are hostile to the safety regulations and environmental concerns to the point that they will do the absolute minimum or backburner the risk mitigations. So that's why I view the LFTR's near-100% fuel use as a critical aspect of a next gen nuclear approach. It eliminates the problem of waste, and instead changes it to an efficiency challenge. There is no waste issue to deal with so it won't be down-prioritized on contemptuously viewed. No NIMBY issues on transport and storage.
- formerly_proven 4y ago
  > we put the minimum amount of required thought into safety from a political but not a fundamental design aspect. This viewpoint is not corroborated by any of the design and development summaries I've seen.
- ch4s3 4y ago
  > Are we pretending that this isn't the transport of nuclear dirty bomb material How are you proposing that someone could even open a cask with nefarious purposes and build a bomb without receiving a fatal dose of radiation? Dirty bombs basically aren’t a thing anyway. They would require a lot of material since the heavy and dangerous isotopes wouldn’t hang in the air for long or go very far. To get all of that in the air you need a very large bomb. Essentially your looking T something like a truck bomb that would be hot enough to cook the driver. Totally impractical.
pfdietz 4y ago
Indeed. It's not costly to just put spent fuel in dry casks. At least, if one has solid fuel elements. I'm not sure how the molten salt people propose to do it.

AtlasBarfed 4y ago

The waste storage (Yucca mountain, find some geological scale safe place) would seem to, but again we run into the "old nuclear" view of things. Fukushima showed the flawed thinking that underpins "old nuclear": well, we have fixed the risks for everyday conditions ... that is, we put the minimum amount of required thought into safety from a political but not a fundamental design aspect. Waste TRANSPORT falls into this. Are we pretending that this isn't the transport of nuclear dirty bomb material? That's the fundamental issue. Sure it can be safe when it gets there, but the security of the waste in transport and the other dangers is just too high. I mean, a deer crossing the road could cause a crash and spill. Tire blowouts. etc. And there are just too many examples of corporations not giving a shit about truly dealing with environmental/waste/pollution procedures. Look at the fracking industry, they likely poisoned a great deal of water tables and other widespread effects, but didn't care in the least. They could get away with it. For waste storage, we can have some regulatory rubberstamp that "it is compliant" but all we need is some spill or something similar and you have nuclear waste in the water table. Great. Power generation and nuclear generation companies are full of conservative and environmental-hostile people. I don't know why this is, but it is, and it is another big issue with "old nuclear". I suspect it is a combination of the military origin of nuclear technology, regulatory fatigue, and the contempt of the Greenpeace antinuke types. But it is a fundamental organizational and culture problem of the nuclear industry. These organizations are hostile to the safety regulations and environmental concerns to the point that they will do the absolute minimum or backburner the risk mitigations. So that's why I view the LFTR's near-100% fuel use as a critical aspect of a next gen nuclear approach. It eliminates the problem of waste, and instead changes it to an efficiency challenge. There is no waste issue to deal with so it won't be down-prioritized on contemptuously viewed. No NIMBY issues on transport and storage.

formerly_proven 4y ago
> we put the minimum amount of required thought into safety from a political but not a fundamental design aspect. This viewpoint is not corroborated by any of the design and development summaries I've seen.
ch4s3 4y ago
> Are we pretending that this isn't the transport of nuclear dirty bomb material How are you proposing that someone could even open a cask with nefarious purposes and build a bomb without receiving a fatal dose of radiation? Dirty bombs basically aren’t a thing anyway. They would require a lot of material since the heavy and dangerous isotopes wouldn’t hang in the air for long or go very far. To get all of that in the air you need a very large bomb. Essentially your looking T something like a truck bomb that would be hot enough to cook the driver. Totally impractical.

pfdietz 4y ago

Indeed. It's not costly to just put spent fuel in dry casks. At least, if one has solid fuel elements. I'm not sure how the molten salt people propose to do it.