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Oh man. This brings back memories. I spent a few weeks every summer for 20 years about a mile south of the plant. Before 9/11 you could go down by the warm wate
by dismalpedigree 4y ago
Oh man. This brings back memories. I spent a few weeks every summer for 20 years about a mile south of the plant. Before 9/11 you could go down by the warm water discharge, plop down a beach chair and hang out in the 100 degree water. The guards would give you dirty looks but they never bothered anybody.
I don’t know that this plant should be restarted though. They were trying to bury the spent fuel in the sand dunes next door at one point because they were out of space.
Even more recently (10 years ago?) I could see outdoor cement casks for storing the spent fuel.
Nuclear could be great, bit the spent fuel issue, NIMBY problems and insane costs will probably close the door on nuclear energy unfortunately.
- adev_ 4y ago> Nuclear could be great, bit the spent fuel issue, NIMBY problems and insane costs will probably close the door on nuclear energy unfortunately. 1- Select a not-so-random place in middle of the desert with stable geological ground 2- Make a tunnel 600m underground. 3- Put the dumps here 4- Congratulations: your nuclear waste problem is not a problem anymore. You solved it in the scientifically recommended way. And the same way than France, Sweden, Finland and China did it.
- daemoens 4y agoWe did do that. The Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository was constructed but no nuclear waste was actually transported there because of once again, NIMBYs.
- andromeduck 4y agoThanks Obama
- morsch 4y agoNone of the European countries "did it" w.r.t. spent fuel, none of those sites are in operation yet. Though Finland is planning to start operation soon, after 7 years of construction and 3.5 billion EUR in construction costs. Searching for what they now consider a suitable site took decades.
- adev_ 4y agoFrance already does it in a place named Bure in the Meuse department. But they do store mainly long term radioactive waste there not fuel. Up to my knowledge, spent Fuel and plutonium are first sent for recycling in France and not burry as such.
- morsch 4y agoBure is a research project, a model for a real, large-scale, long-term storage site. Which France intends to build there. I'm not sure if they have started? They plan to be finished around 2035-2040, and apparently expect construction to cost between 25 and 30 billion EUR. Initial operation (pilot phase) is expected to occur 2040-2050, if that goes well, regular operation can start.[1] Plans and expectations of huge public projects being what they are. Spent fuel is currently sent to La Hague, where afaik they store almost all of it in warehouses surrounded by barbed wire, just like everybody else. It'll take decades to move all of it to Bure, or wherever else they decide to put it. [1] https://www.base.bund.de/DE/themen/soa/endlager-weltweit/frankreich/frankreich_node.html https://www.base.bund.de/DE/themen/soa/endlager-weltweit/fra...
- adev_ 4y ago> Which France intends to build there. I'm not sure if they have started? To my understanding, the tag "research project" has been mainly used to avoid a crowd of NIMBYs from day one. There is already nuclear waste in the tunnels and not in small quantities. It does work and is used for what it has been designed. Budget is hardly surprising when we talk about a facility supposed to store the garbage of a country that has been running full nuclear for 40 years. > Spent fuel is currently sent to La Hague, where afaik they store almost all of it in warehouses Part of it is there are to be recycle in Mox. An other part is to be re-enriched. The rest will very likely be buried underground since the Fast Neutron reactor plans are unlikely to happen any time soon due to short term politics.
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- dismalpedigree 4y agoOh I agree. The US tried it at Yucca Mountain. This is where point number 2 about NIMBY attitudes comes in.