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The Big Lie About Nuclear Waste [video]

15 points by josephcsible 3y ago

josephcsible 3y ago
tl;dw: The material that we consider nuclear waste today still has a lot of useful energy in it. The only reasons we're treating it as waste instead of harvesting that energy are political.
mikece 3y ago
The big lie is calling it waste; "partially spent fuel" is more accurate. As pointed out in the video re-processing the fuel gets all of the usable fissile material out; what's not mentioned in the video is that further chemical processing can neutralize the remaining radioactivity and leave the final waste product as inert glass pellets. We're barely tapping the potential of uranium-based nuclear power and have yet to begin with thorium. Zero-emission, cheap, and super-abundant electricity via nuclear has been possible for decades... but politics.
- magic_hamster 3y ago
  "Possible" in this context is tricky. Scientifically possible, maybe so. But the effort and time required to build the facilities including treatment of "partially spent fuel" makes it realistically very hard. If memory serves, Germany just powered down a significant portion of their nuclear power plants, and those already had the sunken cost put into them, they were built and operating. We might eventually see a widespread use of nuclear power but climate change will have to kick our ass a little first.
  - Manuel_D 3y ago
    It's not only possible, it has been actually carried out in dozens of facilities across the world: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing As nuclear has been neglected in recent decades it's cheaper to mine uranium than reprocess, but it's by no means an experimental or prototype technology. Climate change will probably spur growth in intermittent sources in the short term, since politicians are usually optimizing for the next election cycle, but eventually peak production times will become saturated and the infeasibility of energy storage in regions within the hydroelectric power will become clear. Effectively all countries that have decarbonized their electricity sector have done so through a mix of hydroelectric power and nuclear power.
    - Schroedingersat 3y ago
      Why are nukebros incapable of comprehending the difference between fissile and fertile?
      - Manuel_D 3y ago
        A fissile isotope can readily undergo fission reaction, and a fertile isotope can be converted into a fertile isotope via neutron capture (this is how plutonium is made for nuclear bombs). Neutron capture is not part of the main waste reprocessing method [1], the neutron capture already happened in the reactor. Reprocessing separates the plutonium and other byproducts from the remaining uranium 235 fuel before the latter is re-used, no fertile material is being converted to fissile material. So now I ask you: what relevance, at all, does the distinction between fissile and fertile material have with respect to magic_hamster's claims about the feasibility of waste reprocessing? That commenter claimed reprocessing was not feasible, I responded with dozens of examples of reprocessing being carried out. What does fertile vs. fissile have to do with this? 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PUREX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PUREX
        Schroedingersat 3y ago
        The relevance is that fertile material is not "partially spent fuel" in any extant fuel cycle. First it does nothing to the fission products (which are the bulk of the radioactive waste by mass). Second turning U238, Pu240, Am241, and transuranics other than Pu239 into usable fuel has never happened without being a minor side-product of neutrons from a fissile source, and using the dregs of Pu239 that is <1% of the spemt fuel and <20% ofntue waste does not reduce the radioactivity of the waste, rather it makes it more dangerous because Pu239 is significantly less harmful than the result of putting MOX in a nuclear reactor, as is regular spent uranium fuel. Pretending otherwise is knowingly disonhest.
        Manuel_D 3y ago
        > The relevance is that fertile material is not "partially spent fuel" in any extant fuel cycle. Nobody was ever talking about fertile material until you brought it up. Let's re-read the relevant part in the root comment shall we? > As pointed out in the video re-processing the fuel gets all of the usable fissile material out. We were always talking about recovering fissile material. "Partially spent fuel" refers to fuel rods that still contain some fissile material. I have no idea where you got the idea that "partially spent material" referred to fertile material, especially when the comment you're referring to explicitly mentioned recovering fissile material.
- ianburrell 3y ago
  There is nothing chemical that can change the radioactivity of the waste. The remaining waste is more radioactive after reprocessing since the fissile material is less radioactive. What vitrification can do is put waste in safer form that don't have to worry about escaping or polluting. It ends up as safe, very radioactive, glass.
credit_guy 3y ago
I think the picture painted here is a bit on the rosy side. For example, at 4:22 a lady from Oklo says "we just don't have the commercial facility to do so [burn nuclear waste]. But the technology is there". What she fails to mention is that a technology that is not approved by the NRC is as good as not existing. We don't want another Chernobyl, do we? Well, the NRC has looked at their (Oklo's) technology, and said "no, thank you" [1]. So, what the lady should have said at 4:22 is "The technology is almost there, if we work hard we might iron out all the issues in 10 years. But more realistically in 20." Once they iron out those issues, they will have a fast reactor that could burn "nuclear waste". In reality, it will turn out that it will be orders of magnitude cheaper to burn freshly mined uranium, and they'll do just that. Why? Because nuclear waste contains all sorts of transuranic elements, like Neptunium, Plutonium, Americium, Curium, and each of them with several isotopes. Some of these isotopes are friendly to being burned in a reactor, but some not. Some are highly radioactive, while regular nuclear fuel is not. Getting reasonably "clean" fuel out of this is expensive. But even if expense is not an issue, getting the NRC to approve the fuel will be another one. The NRC does not approve only reactor designs, but also everything that has to do with reactor operations, including nuclear fuel. There are currently several applications to approve uranium fuel where U-235 is enriched to a bit higher than 5%. Six weeks ago the NRC gave an approval to Framatome [2] that will allow Framatome to eventually enrich fuel to 8%, however, I think they will need a few more approvals until that fuel will burn in reactors. It takes many years for the NRC to give an approval to even such a simple thing as increasing enrichment from 5% to 8%, but otherwise keeping everything the same. Imagine how long it would take them to allow someone to burn a fuel that is essentially a random mix of a bunch of radioisotopes. [1] https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/large-lwr/col/aurora-oklo.html https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/large-lwr/col/auro... [2] https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/NRC-approves-use-of-Framatome-codes-in-advanced-nu https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/NRC-approves-use...
- hoobwhitty 3y ago
  Pump the brakes on a "Chernobyl" comparison here. No NRC reactor would ever get to that - part of the reason it takes so long to approve. The technology discussed here was invented by the US in 60s. None of this is new. The US pioneered reprocessing, separation and everything. This technology is still used in the government space - but the government lost its appetite for the risk of the commercial industry producing potential weapons materials. This Pyro solution may be the ticket for allowing commercial reprocessing without producing potential weapons materials. And yes Uranium is/was cheap because we bought it from Russia - now it's maybe not so cheap. We have one domestic mine and it's not that cheap. And regardless - it may be cheap but USA HAS NO PATH for dispositioning all this fuel. So you can't say it's cheaper if it's no storage solution or anything. The cost for housing this spent fuel for forever practically in a Yucca or whatever is WAY more expensive over centuries than any cost to do this work. I'm not a fan of the economics argument when every spent fuel bundle is just sitting in a dry cask outside every reactor in the country and no one has a solution where to store it. Every commercial company only has plans for 50 years - not how to store it for 200,000 years.
ecaradec 3y ago
What matter is not whether nuclear energy produce wastes, but how much waste and how manageable it is relatively to other sources of energy. If you look at nuclear only, then obviously nuclear waste is bad. If you look at oil, coal, and the fact that they are producing tons of carbon dioxid (for what would be grams of nuclear) which is gazeous and that we don't even know how to handle it. We need energy, but people as dismissing every source of energy because they are looking at each source one at a time. We should have taught people years ago that there is no perfect choice.

15 points by josephcsible 3y ago

tl;dw: The material that we consider nuclear waste today still has a lot of useful energy in it. The only reasons we're treating it as waste instead of harvesting that energy are political.

mikece 3y ago

The big lie is calling it waste; "partially spent fuel" is more accurate. As pointed out in the video re-processing the fuel gets all of the usable fissile material out; what's not mentioned in the video is that further chemical processing can neutralize the remaining radioactivity and leave the final waste product as inert glass pellets. We're barely tapping the potential of uranium-based nuclear power and have yet to begin with thorium. Zero-emission, cheap, and super-abundant electricity via nuclear has been possible for decades... but politics.

magic_hamster 3y ago
"Possible" in this context is tricky. Scientifically possible, maybe so. But the effort and time required to build the facilities including treatment of "partially spent fuel" makes it realistically very hard. If memory serves, Germany just powered down a significant portion of their nuclear power plants, and those already had the sunken cost put into them, they were built and operating. We might eventually see a widespread use of nuclear power but climate change will have to kick our ass a little first.
- Manuel_D 3y ago
  It's not only possible, it has been actually carried out in dozens of facilities across the world: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing As nuclear has been neglected in recent decades it's cheaper to mine uranium than reprocess, but it's by no means an experimental or prototype technology. Climate change will probably spur growth in intermittent sources in the short term, since politicians are usually optimizing for the next election cycle, but eventually peak production times will become saturated and the infeasibility of energy storage in regions within the hydroelectric power will become clear. Effectively all countries that have decarbonized their electricity sector have done so through a mix of hydroelectric power and nuclear power.
  - Schroedingersat 3y ago
    Why are nukebros incapable of comprehending the difference between fissile and fertile?
    - Manuel_D 3y ago
      A fissile isotope can readily undergo fission reaction, and a fertile isotope can be converted into a fertile isotope via neutron capture (this is how plutonium is made for nuclear bombs). Neutron capture is not part of the main waste reprocessing method [1], the neutron capture already happened in the reactor. Reprocessing separates the plutonium and other byproducts from the remaining uranium 235 fuel before the latter is re-used, no fertile material is being converted to fissile material. So now I ask you: what relevance, at all, does the distinction between fissile and fertile material have with respect to magic_hamster's claims about the feasibility of waste reprocessing? That commenter claimed reprocessing was not feasible, I responded with dozens of examples of reprocessing being carried out. What does fertile vs. fissile have to do with this? 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PUREX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PUREX
      - Schroedingersat 3y ago
        The relevance is that fertile material is not "partially spent fuel" in any extant fuel cycle. First it does nothing to the fission products (which are the bulk of the radioactive waste by mass). Second turning U238, Pu240, Am241, and transuranics other than Pu239 into usable fuel has never happened without being a minor side-product of neutrons from a fissile source, and using the dregs of Pu239 that is <1% of the spemt fuel and <20% ofntue waste does not reduce the radioactivity of the waste, rather it makes it more dangerous because Pu239 is significantly less harmful than the result of putting MOX in a nuclear reactor, as is regular spent uranium fuel. Pretending otherwise is knowingly disonhest.
        Manuel_D 3y ago
        > The relevance is that fertile material is not "partially spent fuel" in any extant fuel cycle. Nobody was ever talking about fertile material until you brought it up. Let's re-read the relevant part in the root comment shall we? > As pointed out in the video re-processing the fuel gets all of the usable fissile material out. We were always talking about recovering fissile material. "Partially spent fuel" refers to fuel rods that still contain some fissile material. I have no idea where you got the idea that "partially spent material" referred to fertile material, especially when the comment you're referring to explicitly mentioned recovering fissile material.
ianburrell 3y ago
There is nothing chemical that can change the radioactivity of the waste. The remaining waste is more radioactive after reprocessing since the fissile material is less radioactive. What vitrification can do is put waste in safer form that don't have to worry about escaping or polluting. It ends up as safe, very radioactive, glass.

credit_guy 3y ago

I think the picture painted here is a bit on the rosy side. For example, at 4:22 a lady from Oklo says "we just don't have the commercial facility to do so [burn nuclear waste]. But the technology is there". What she fails to mention is that a technology that is not approved by the NRC is as good as not existing. We don't want another Chernobyl, do we? Well, the NRC has looked at their (Oklo's) technology, and said "no, thank you" [1]. So, what the lady should have said at 4:22 is "The technology is almost there, if we work hard we might iron out all the issues in 10 years. But more realistically in 20." Once they iron out those issues, they will have a fast reactor that could burn "nuclear waste". In reality, it will turn out that it will be orders of magnitude cheaper to burn freshly mined uranium, and they'll do just that. Why? Because nuclear waste contains all sorts of transuranic elements, like Neptunium, Plutonium, Americium, Curium, and each of them with several isotopes. Some of these isotopes are friendly to being burned in a reactor, but some not. Some are highly radioactive, while regular nuclear fuel is not. Getting reasonably "clean" fuel out of this is expensive. But even if expense is not an issue, getting the NRC to approve the fuel will be another one. The NRC does not approve only reactor designs, but also everything that has to do with reactor operations, including nuclear fuel. There are currently several applications to approve uranium fuel where U-235 is enriched to a bit higher than 5%. Six weeks ago the NRC gave an approval to Framatome [2] that will allow Framatome to eventually enrich fuel to 8%, however, I think they will need a few more approvals until that fuel will burn in reactors. It takes many years for the NRC to give an approval to even such a simple thing as increasing enrichment from 5% to 8%, but otherwise keeping everything the same. Imagine how long it would take them to allow someone to burn a fuel that is essentially a random mix of a bunch of radioisotopes. [1] https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/large-lwr/col/aurora-oklo.html https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/large-lwr/col/auro... [2] https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/NRC-approves-use-of-Framatome-codes-in-advanced-nu https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/NRC-approves-use...

hoobwhitty 3y ago
Pump the brakes on a "Chernobyl" comparison here. No NRC reactor would ever get to that - part of the reason it takes so long to approve. The technology discussed here was invented by the US in 60s. None of this is new. The US pioneered reprocessing, separation and everything. This technology is still used in the government space - but the government lost its appetite for the risk of the commercial industry producing potential weapons materials. This Pyro solution may be the ticket for allowing commercial reprocessing without producing potential weapons materials. And yes Uranium is/was cheap because we bought it from Russia - now it's maybe not so cheap. We have one domestic mine and it's not that cheap. And regardless - it may be cheap but USA HAS NO PATH for dispositioning all this fuel. So you can't say it's cheaper if it's no storage solution or anything. The cost for housing this spent fuel for forever practically in a Yucca or whatever is WAY more expensive over centuries than any cost to do this work. I'm not a fan of the economics argument when every spent fuel bundle is just sitting in a dry cask outside every reactor in the country and no one has a solution where to store it. Every commercial company only has plans for 50 years - not how to store it for 200,000 years.

ecaradec 3y ago

What matter is not whether nuclear energy produce wastes, but how much waste and how manageable it is relatively to other sources of energy. If you look at nuclear only, then obviously nuclear waste is bad. If you look at oil, coal, and the fact that they are producing tons of carbon dioxid (for what would be grams of nuclear) which is gazeous and that we don't even know how to handle it. We need energy, but people as dismissing every source of energy because they are looking at each source one at a time. We should have taught people years ago that there is no perfect choice.