4 ms·

And yet still no good (or even decent) solution for how to handle the waste?

amalgamated_inc 4y ago
There's also no need. Just leave it in the plant. Or put it in a cave if that makes you feel good. It's not an actual problem.
- coldpie 4y ago
  Even if it is a problem, it is a teeny tiny pebble dropped in a pond compared to the massive tidal wave of climate change.
- miguelazo 4y ago
  Oh, really? Care to explain? Seems pretty toxic from everything I have seen. I also don't find paying (currently) over half a billion dollars a year in storage costs efficient. Usually not even factored into the costs of this "clean" energy. https://earth.stanford.edu/news/steep-costs-nuclear-waste-us https://earth.stanford.edu/news/steep-costs-nuclear-waste-us
  - amalgamated_inc 4y ago
    Seal it in metal and concrete -> done. You can now store it in any old warehouse. If you're really paranoid, put a sign "Warning: Dangerous Alligator!" on the door. Half a billion per year is nothing compared to the damage we're preventing with climate change, is it?
    - 93po 4y ago
      They tend to bury the waste extremely far underground, and even than that isn't very expensive. It's a hell of a lot cheaper the the real world impacts we're seeing from carbon emissions today (over a million deaths a year).
      - Schroedingersat 4y ago
        The waste burial part alone costs about as much as onshore wind. It's only inexpensive compared to the reactor.
        93po 4y ago
        The real costs are nothing. The broken bureaucratic costs are high.
        miguelazo 4y ago
        Your neighbors not wanting nuclear waste leaking into their water system is not a bureaucratic cost.
        93po 4y ago
        There is literally zero risk of this for the sites that are chosen for storage, and the method of storage, even if it was directly below your home, is also at zero risk of causing this to happen. It isn't stored in leaking metal drums with green ooze falling down the side, and Jimbo doesn't occasionally knock one over when he sits on one for a lunch break.
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > seems pretty toxic We don't have a totally nontoxic power source. We do have ones which offer better options for containment. Coal ash is radioactive and toxic [1]. Solar panels are also toxic [2]. But we don't grind them into a fine powder before sprinkling them over communities. On this scale, nuclear is toxic, but in small, contained and manageable masses. > paying (currently) over half a billion dollars a year in storage costs Your link fingers "the United States' failure to implement a permanent solution for nuclear waste storage" as the cause for the "half-a-billion dollars a year [paid] to the utilities for their simply keeping the fuel" [3]. The current solution passably inefficient. The efficient solutions are blocked by activists. [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-... [2] https://scdhec.gov/sites/default/files/Library/OR-1695.pdf https://scdhec.gov/sites/default/files/Library/OR-1695.pdf [3] https://earth.stanford.edu/news/steep-costs-nuclear-waste-us https://earth.stanford.edu/news/steep-costs-nuclear-waste-us
legitster 4y ago
I dunno, there's lots of decent solutions when countries actually explore them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo... Keep in mind, most of the reactors we are used to are basically 1960s designs. Part of the appeal of building new reactors is that they are so much more efficient that they can actually burn up more of the spent fuel than they themselves create.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  > Part of the appeal of building new reactors is that they are so much more efficient that they can actually burn up more of the spent fuel than they themselves create. This is an outright lie with regard to Gen III+ reactors. MOX is filthy. It's just turning almost-inert U238 and relatively low activity Pu239 into Pu240, Pu241 and Cs-137. This is after a reprocessing step that vastly increases the volumne of contaminated material and leaks a bunch of it into the environment. The volume of inert material in the spent fuel is a red herring.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

There's also no need. Just leave it in the plant. Or put it in a cave if that makes you feel good. It's not an actual problem.

coldpie 4y ago
Even if it is a problem, it is a teeny tiny pebble dropped in a pond compared to the massive tidal wave of climate change.
miguelazo 4y ago
Oh, really? Care to explain? Seems pretty toxic from everything I have seen. I also don't find paying (currently) over half a billion dollars a year in storage costs efficient. Usually not even factored into the costs of this "clean" energy. https://earth.stanford.edu/news/steep-costs-nuclear-waste-us https://earth.stanford.edu/news/steep-costs-nuclear-waste-us
- amalgamated_inc 4y ago
  Seal it in metal and concrete -> done. You can now store it in any old warehouse. If you're really paranoid, put a sign "Warning: Dangerous Alligator!" on the door. Half a billion per year is nothing compared to the damage we're preventing with climate change, is it?
  - 93po 4y ago
    They tend to bury the waste extremely far underground, and even than that isn't very expensive. It's a hell of a lot cheaper the the real world impacts we're seeing from carbon emissions today (over a million deaths a year).
    - Schroedingersat 4y ago
      The waste burial part alone costs about as much as onshore wind. It's only inexpensive compared to the reactor.
      - 93po 4y ago
        The real costs are nothing. The broken bureaucratic costs are high.
        miguelazo 4y ago
        Your neighbors not wanting nuclear waste leaking into their water system is not a bureaucratic cost.
        93po 4y ago
        There is literally zero risk of this for the sites that are chosen for storage, and the method of storage, even if it was directly below your home, is also at zero risk of causing this to happen. It isn't stored in leaking metal drums with green ooze falling down the side, and Jimbo doesn't occasionally knock one over when he sits on one for a lunch break.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > seems pretty toxic We don't have a totally nontoxic power source. We do have ones which offer better options for containment. Coal ash is radioactive and toxic [1]. Solar panels are also toxic [2]. But we don't grind them into a fine powder before sprinkling them over communities. On this scale, nuclear is toxic, but in small, contained and manageable masses. > paying (currently) over half a billion dollars a year in storage costs Your link fingers "the United States' failure to implement a permanent solution for nuclear waste storage" as the cause for the "half-a-billion dollars a year [paid] to the utilities for their simply keeping the fuel" [3]. The current solution passably inefficient. The efficient solutions are blocked by activists. [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-... [2] https://scdhec.gov/sites/default/files/Library/OR-1695.pdf https://scdhec.gov/sites/default/files/Library/OR-1695.pdf [3] https://earth.stanford.edu/news/steep-costs-nuclear-waste-us https://earth.stanford.edu/news/steep-costs-nuclear-waste-us

legitster 4y ago

I dunno, there's lots of decent solutions when countries actually explore them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo... Keep in mind, most of the reactors we are used to are basically 1960s designs. Part of the appeal of building new reactors is that they are so much more efficient that they can actually burn up more of the spent fuel than they themselves create.

Schroedingersat 4y ago
> Part of the appeal of building new reactors is that they are so much more efficient that they can actually burn up more of the spent fuel than they themselves create. This is an outright lie with regard to Gen III+ reactors. MOX is filthy. It's just turning almost-inert U238 and relatively low activity Pu239 into Pu240, Pu241 and Cs-137. This is after a reprocessing step that vastly increases the volumne of contaminated material and leaks a bunch of it into the environment. The volume of inert material in the spent fuel is a red herring.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]