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> All the high-level nuclear waste produced in the world would fit in a single football field to a height of approximately ten yards. > The amount of high-leve

> All the high-level nuclear waste produced in the world would fit in a single football field to a height of approximately ten yards. > The amount of high-level waste produced during nuclear energy production is also small: a typical large reactor produces about 25-30 tonnes of used fuel per year. That's such a propaganda way of phrasing it, because it considers the waste is essentially pure uranium you would never be able to store it like this. It is actually quite a lot. Incidentally this is about the same amount of coal we burn per year. > Worldwide, 97% of the waste produced by the nuclear power industry is classified as low- or medium-level waste. So essentially the actual amount of nuclear waste is 30 times as high. It's also funny considering the later part of the argument is how highly radioactive waste is not such a problem because it decays quickly. Well guess what mid and low level wast has often much longer lifetimes and it's still as dangerous as much hazardous chemical waste. The whole piece reads like a giant fluff piece, sprinkled with lots of nuclear industry talking points.

vidarh 4y ago
> Incidentally this is about the same amount of coal we burn per year. Who are "we"? The US alone consumed about 545 million short ton of coal in 2021 [1]. From what I can tell, that's in the range of 400 million m^3. Did I get the numbers wrong? (I just semi-randomly picked a converter online as I have no reference point to how heavy a cubic meter of coal is). Because that does not seem at all like about the same amount. [1] https://www.eia.gov/coal/annual/ https://www.eia.gov/coal/annual/
- cycomanic 4y ago
  That's the whole point about my criticism. Uranium is incredibly dense so phrasing it in terms of volume of the uranium is just misleading. Regarding the calculation https://www.worldometers.info/coal/ https://www.worldometers.info/coal/ says we are burning 1,147,083 cubic feet of coal which is about 30000 cubic meters which is about the same as a football field up to 10 yards (~50mx90mx10m).
  - vidarh 4y ago
    It says: > The world consumes 1,147,083 cubic feet of coal per capita every year (based on the 2016 world population of 7,464,022,049 people) or 3,143 cubic feet per capita per day. (My emphasis). So closer to a football field per person according to this. That sounds excessive to me, so I'm not sure I trust those numbers. This [1] says "1 ton of coal is approximately 40 cubic feet per ton, might be a little less, might be a little more....". Using my earlier numbers from DOE, that gives 545 million short tons * 40 = ca. 21,800 million cubic feet, or ~ 600 million m^3, or ca. 1.67m^3 per capita in the US. That sounds low, but as a global average, maybe not. [1] https://coalpail.com/coal-forum/viewtopic.php?f=57&t=2591#:~:text=1%20ton%20of%20coal%20is,a%20little%20more https://coalpail.com/coal-forum/viewtopic.php?f=57&t=2591#:~.......
    - halletr 4y ago
      You're right that the worldometer number is excessive and not to be trusted. They properly calculated 1.147083 tons of coal per capita per year, but then incorrectly multiplied by it 1,000,000 cubic feet per ton. The actual conversion factor for coal seems to be 20-60 cubic feet per ton, depending on whether you use bulk density or particle density. Their per capita calculation is too high by a factor of about 15,000-50,000. You're right that the amount of coal consumed is not similar to the amount of uranium byproduct generated. The original commenter's intuition was misled, not by uranium's density, but by its energy density. Of course there is an xkcd for this. https://xkcd.com/1162/ https://xkcd.com/1162/

vidarh 4y ago

> Incidentally this is about the same amount of coal we burn per year. Who are "we"? The US alone consumed about 545 million short ton of coal in 2021 [1]. From what I can tell, that's in the range of 400 million m^3. Did I get the numbers wrong? (I just semi-randomly picked a converter online as I have no reference point to how heavy a cubic meter of coal is). Because that does not seem at all like about the same amount. [1] https://www.eia.gov/coal/annual/ https://www.eia.gov/coal/annual/

cycomanic 4y ago
That's the whole point about my criticism. Uranium is incredibly dense so phrasing it in terms of volume of the uranium is just misleading. Regarding the calculation https://www.worldometers.info/coal/ https://www.worldometers.info/coal/ says we are burning 1,147,083 cubic feet of coal which is about 30000 cubic meters which is about the same as a football field up to 10 yards (~50mx90mx10m).
- vidarh 4y ago
  It says: > The world consumes 1,147,083 cubic feet of coal per capita every year (based on the 2016 world population of 7,464,022,049 people) or 3,143 cubic feet per capita per day. (My emphasis). So closer to a football field per person according to this. That sounds excessive to me, so I'm not sure I trust those numbers. This [1] says "1 ton of coal is approximately 40 cubic feet per ton, might be a little less, might be a little more....". Using my earlier numbers from DOE, that gives 545 million short tons * 40 = ca. 21,800 million cubic feet, or ~ 600 million m^3, or ca. 1.67m^3 per capita in the US. That sounds low, but as a global average, maybe not. [1] https://coalpail.com/coal-forum/viewtopic.php?f=57&t=2591#:~:text=1%20ton%20of%20coal%20is,a%20little%20more https://coalpail.com/coal-forum/viewtopic.php?f=57&t=2591#:~.......
  - halletr 4y ago
    You're right that the worldometer number is excessive and not to be trusted. They properly calculated 1.147083 tons of coal per capita per year, but then incorrectly multiplied by it 1,000,000 cubic feet per ton. The actual conversion factor for coal seems to be 20-60 cubic feet per ton, depending on whether you use bulk density or particle density. Their per capita calculation is too high by a factor of about 15,000-50,000. You're right that the amount of coal consumed is not similar to the amount of uranium byproduct generated. The original commenter's intuition was misled, not by uranium's density, but by its energy density. Of course there is an xkcd for this. https://xkcd.com/1162/ https://xkcd.com/1162/