4 ms·

Why is this surprising to anyone? Did someone think the plutonium was going to disappear? This is why ALL nuclear power is a disaster. Even after this materia

by johnea 4y ago

Why is this surprising to anyone? Did someone think the plutonium was going to disappear? This is why ALL nuclear power is a disaster. Even after this material is used to boil water for a few years, it's still highly radioactive for millennia.

pinewurst 4y ago
That’s why we should be using reprocessed MOX fuel not once through and bury.
- PaulHoule 4y ago
  Exactly. The plutonium in nuclear waste is not waste, it's a fuel at least as valuable as ²³⁵U. Reprocessing not only reuses the Pu, with fast reactors it can be used to convert almost all ²³⁸U to ²³⁹Pu which is a valuable fuel. This allows us to get 60x more energy out of natural uranium -- we can stop enriching uranium and fuel our civilization for hundreds of years based on the "waste" that is already above. The waste that remains after reprocessing in a fast cycle are fission products that will decay so much in 1000 years that the waste is less radioactive than the original uranium ore.
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    What's the concentration of Pu in the output of a modern high burnup reactor? What is the ratio of that to the concentration of fissile products needed for fuel? Cs137 and Sr90 lasting 'mere' centuries isn't helping your case any. Especially when existing MOX programs spill more than Fukushima and TMI combined as standard operating procedure.
    - FredPret 4y ago
      When working on a timescale of 10E2 or 10E3 years, it seems practical to me to bury it in a sealed drum in a concrete cube inside a stable mountain. With larger timescales, my understanding is that the mountain itself might disrupt the cube + drums, opening Pandora’s box. Perhaps an actual geologist can weigh in and correct me.
      - PaulHoule 4y ago
        People have built structures on Earth that have lasted 1000 years so that is in our experience. It seems likely that people will still be able to read English in the next 1000 years. It is in our realm of experience. 100,000 not so much. All kinds of things can go wrong. It is expected for instance that as Yucca Mountain cools down water will infiltrate. Uranium is water soluble so some will migrate in the direction of Death Valley. Uranium is toxic the same way lead and mercury are and that is more dangerous than the radiotoxicity of uranium. A "once through" repository will contain valuable plutonium and uranium. People might want to drill into it 10,000 years from now because they want to use it as a power source or to make nuclear explosives. For that matter we could change our minds and decide we want to recycle the waste in Yucca Mountain after all so we have to be able to retrieve the waste in the first 100 years. A waste repository used for fission products can use highly secure but difficult to reverse approaches such as encapsulation in a salt dome or burial in areas at sea where sedimentation is taking place where waste would get deeper and deeper year after year and be blocked from migration by the tendency of ions to get trapped in clay.
        FredPret 4y ago
        I like the sedimentation plan. After sedimentation it’ll get pushed down below the crust right?
- philipkglass 4y ago
  That was originally the plan for surplus weapons plutonium. In 2007 the United States started building a MOX facility at Savannah River for turning the old weapons plutonium into power reactor fuel. Its cost and time to completion ballooned far beyond original estimates and it was ultimately canceled. "Cost estimate for MOX facility at Savannah River Site swells to $47.5 billion" https://www.augustachronicle.com/story/news/2015/04/22/cost-estimate-mox-facility-savannah-river-site-swells-475-billion/14371088007/ https://www.augustachronicle.com/story/news/2015/04/22/cost-... "US MOX facility contract terminated" https://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/US-MOX-facility-contract-terminated https://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/US-MOX-facility-cont... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savannah_River_Site#MOX_Fuel_Fabrication_Facility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savannah_River_Site#MOX_Fuel_F...
shamskazi 4y ago
Do we have a better alternative than nuclear power right now?
- _8j50 4y ago
  What is better? Hydrogen and Hydroelectric might be cheaper in the short term, nuke plants are very expensive. Most countries can't get nuke plants either even if they can afford them, you can't sell it to them like you can with hydrogen.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  Yes. Renewables with no storage can cover 30-50% of world energy (not just electricity). Nuclear tops out at around 5% if we go all in now at around the same total cost. Storage technologies exist for the rest at about the cost of nuclear (but with actual ability to scale), but are not necessary en masse yet and are likely to drop in price by the time they are.
- rgmerk 4y ago
  Going to rehash debates that we've been having for many years, but the short answer is yes. Existing renewable tech + storage will do the job just fine in most of the world, and at lower cost than nuclear.
kyleyeats 4y ago
Can we ban smug feigned incredulity posts already?
- i386 4y ago
fuoqi 4y ago
Footprint of spent nuclear fuel is laughably small when compared to other industrial processes and it can be reduced even further by using fast-neutron "burner" reactors. Why do you complain about nuclear and not about "immortal" heavy metals, which have several orders of magnitude bigger impact on ecology and human health?
- moffkalast 4y ago
  Meanwhile microplastics have gotten into just about every drop of water on the planet and will take hundreds of years to disintegrate.
canadianfella 4y ago
simondotau 4y ago
> highly radioactive for millennia Something can be highly radioactive for a short time, moderately radioactive for a long time, or slightly radioactive for a very long time. If something is “radioactive for millenia” then it’s probably so mild that you could store in your underpants without I’ll effects.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  https://www.world-nuclear.org/getmedia/cdcb8173-3843-4e4a-9d62-955e1d068bb7/activity-of-high-level-waste-from-one-tonne-of-used-fuel.png.aspx https://www.world-nuclear.org/getmedia/cdcb8173-3843-4e4a-9d... Have a little snack consisting of 1 gram of americium and 7 grams of neptunium 237, or store an equivalently active gamma emitter in your underpants.
- a1369209993 4y ago
  To be fair, something can be highly radioactive for a short time, moderately radioactive for a long time, AND slightly radioactive for a very long time, assuming there are at least three different radioisotopes involved. Also, it's a exponential decay curve, so something that's slightly radioactive a very long time from now is probably still fairly dangerous right now.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
ProAm 4y ago
> it's still highly radioactive for millennia So it space and were actively trying to send people up there to live and colonize.
- pencilguin 4y ago
  Literally no one is actively trying to colonize anywhere off Earth. Some people lie about it when not too busy lying about other things.
chasil 4y ago
The Banqiao Dam hydropower failure killed 145,000 people. No nuclear accident has caused this level of damage. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam Coal is far, far worse than this.
- FredPret 4y ago
  Not to mention the disruption on the river ecosystem. The size of our generation capacity is as important as its emissions.

by johnea 4y ago

pinewurst 4y ago

That’s why we should be using reprocessed MOX fuel not once through and bury.

PaulHoule 4y ago
Exactly. The plutonium in nuclear waste is not waste, it's a fuel at least as valuable as ²³⁵U. Reprocessing not only reuses the Pu, with fast reactors it can be used to convert almost all ²³⁸U to ²³⁹Pu which is a valuable fuel. This allows us to get 60x more energy out of natural uranium -- we can stop enriching uranium and fuel our civilization for hundreds of years based on the "waste" that is already above. The waste that remains after reprocessing in a fast cycle are fission products that will decay so much in 1000 years that the waste is less radioactive than the original uranium ore.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  What's the concentration of Pu in the output of a modern high burnup reactor? What is the ratio of that to the concentration of fissile products needed for fuel? Cs137 and Sr90 lasting 'mere' centuries isn't helping your case any. Especially when existing MOX programs spill more than Fukushima and TMI combined as standard operating procedure.
  - FredPret 4y ago
    When working on a timescale of 10E2 or 10E3 years, it seems practical to me to bury it in a sealed drum in a concrete cube inside a stable mountain. With larger timescales, my understanding is that the mountain itself might disrupt the cube + drums, opening Pandora’s box. Perhaps an actual geologist can weigh in and correct me.
    - PaulHoule 4y ago
      People have built structures on Earth that have lasted 1000 years so that is in our experience. It seems likely that people will still be able to read English in the next 1000 years. It is in our realm of experience. 100,000 not so much. All kinds of things can go wrong. It is expected for instance that as Yucca Mountain cools down water will infiltrate. Uranium is water soluble so some will migrate in the direction of Death Valley. Uranium is toxic the same way lead and mercury are and that is more dangerous than the radiotoxicity of uranium. A "once through" repository will contain valuable plutonium and uranium. People might want to drill into it 10,000 years from now because they want to use it as a power source or to make nuclear explosives. For that matter we could change our minds and decide we want to recycle the waste in Yucca Mountain after all so we have to be able to retrieve the waste in the first 100 years. A waste repository used for fission products can use highly secure but difficult to reverse approaches such as encapsulation in a salt dome or burial in areas at sea where sedimentation is taking place where waste would get deeper and deeper year after year and be blocked from migration by the tendency of ions to get trapped in clay.
      - FredPret 4y ago
        I like the sedimentation plan. After sedimentation it’ll get pushed down below the crust right?
philipkglass 4y ago
That was originally the plan for surplus weapons plutonium. In 2007 the United States started building a MOX facility at Savannah River for turning the old weapons plutonium into power reactor fuel. Its cost and time to completion ballooned far beyond original estimates and it was ultimately canceled. "Cost estimate for MOX facility at Savannah River Site swells to $47.5 billion" https://www.augustachronicle.com/story/news/2015/04/22/cost-estimate-mox-facility-savannah-river-site-swells-475-billion/14371088007/ https://www.augustachronicle.com/story/news/2015/04/22/cost-... "US MOX facility contract terminated" https://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/US-MOX-facility-contract-terminated https://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/US-MOX-facility-cont... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savannah_River_Site#MOX_Fuel_Fabrication_Facility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savannah_River_Site#MOX_Fuel_F...

shamskazi 4y ago

Do we have a better alternative than nuclear power right now?

_8j50 4y ago
What is better? Hydrogen and Hydroelectric might be cheaper in the short term, nuke plants are very expensive. Most countries can't get nuke plants either even if they can afford them, you can't sell it to them like you can with hydrogen.
Schroedingersat 4y ago
Yes. Renewables with no storage can cover 30-50% of world energy (not just electricity). Nuclear tops out at around 5% if we go all in now at around the same total cost. Storage technologies exist for the rest at about the cost of nuclear (but with actual ability to scale), but are not necessary en masse yet and are likely to drop in price by the time they are.
rgmerk 4y ago
Going to rehash debates that we've been having for many years, but the short answer is yes. Existing renewable tech + storage will do the job just fine in most of the world, and at lower cost than nuclear.

kyleyeats 4y ago

Can we ban smug feigned incredulity posts already?

i386 4y ago

fuoqi 4y ago

Footprint of spent nuclear fuel is laughably small when compared to other industrial processes and it can be reduced even further by using fast-neutron "burner" reactors. Why do you complain about nuclear and not about "immortal" heavy metals, which have several orders of magnitude bigger impact on ecology and human health?

moffkalast 4y ago
Meanwhile microplastics have gotten into just about every drop of water on the planet and will take hundreds of years to disintegrate.

canadianfella 4y ago

simondotau 4y ago

> highly radioactive for millennia Something can be highly radioactive for a short time, moderately radioactive for a long time, or slightly radioactive for a very long time. If something is “radioactive for millenia” then it’s probably so mild that you could store in your underpants without I’ll effects.

Schroedingersat 4y ago
https://www.world-nuclear.org/getmedia/cdcb8173-3843-4e4a-9d62-955e1d068bb7/activity-of-high-level-waste-from-one-tonne-of-used-fuel.png.aspx https://www.world-nuclear.org/getmedia/cdcb8173-3843-4e4a-9d... Have a little snack consisting of 1 gram of americium and 7 grams of neptunium 237, or store an equivalently active gamma emitter in your underpants.
a1369209993 4y ago
To be fair, something can be highly radioactive for a short time, moderately radioactive for a long time, AND slightly radioactive for a very long time, assuming there are at least three different radioisotopes involved. Also, it's a exponential decay curve, so something that's slightly radioactive a very long time from now is probably still fairly dangerous right now.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

ProAm 4y ago

> it's still highly radioactive for millennia So it space and were actively trying to send people up there to live and colonize.

pencilguin 4y ago
Literally no one is actively trying to colonize anywhere off Earth. Some people lie about it when not too busy lying about other things.

chasil 4y ago

The Banqiao Dam hydropower failure killed 145,000 people. No nuclear accident has caused this level of damage. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam Coal is far, far worse than this.

FredPret 4y ago
Not to mention the disruption on the river ecosystem. The size of our generation capacity is as important as its emissions.