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I just don't like this, a huge amount of money spent for nothing. This fuel can be managed just fine above ground. Yes maybe ever couple 100 years you might hav

I just don't like this, a huge amount of money spent for nothing. This fuel can be managed just fine above ground. Yes maybe ever couple 100 years you might have to move it, who cares. If your society isn't capable managing nuclear waste then nobody will care anymore anyway. Also, this is not 'waste' there are interesting and unique materials there that might be relevant in the next 100+ years. Not to mention that there is still lots of energy that can be extracted. These projects are all huge waste of money and the nuclear waste buggyman is mostly just the biggest anti-nuclear marketing project. And a sadly successful one. In the US nuclear companies have spent money for waste disposal for 50 years, with lots of money hanging out in an account. But instead of doing things to actually process this waste, like advanced GenIV reactors they instead just stalemate politically over the idiotic Yucca Mountain and don't do anything. Billions blocked from making progress on technology. Canada, the only western country with half way non insane nuclear policies is finally actually slowly moving. Together with a company called Moltex Energy they are working on reprocessing CANDU fuel to be used in the SSR Reactor. If countries just worked together on this stuff instead of each country being tricked into digging a big unnecessary hole we could actually make clean energy, reduce the actual nuclear 'waste' to a incredibly tiny amount that can be easily managed.

RobotToaster 3y ago
It reminds me of how "useless" gasoline used to be burnt off at oil wells to extract parrafin oil.
- otherme123 3y ago
  We are still unable to properly recycle plastic. Nuclear fuel is a very well known product carefully crafted, nuclear waste is a corrosive mix of very different things, mainly everything near the reactor that isn't fuel (pipes, concrete, clothes, machinery...) that gets contaminated and you can't do anything with it except store away in a radioactive landfill. The used nuclear fuel is already being processed and reused. But we can't do much with a contaminated piece of steel except turn it to small pieces and store the more contaminated in a concrete brick, no "gasoline" to extract there.
pavlov 3y ago
> “Yes maybe ever couple 100 years you might have to move it, who cares. If your society isn't capable managing nuclear waste then nobody will care anymore anyway.” This isn’t the right way to plan centuries ahead. You can’t just say “well if the dummies can’t do this one more thing we imposed on them, they deserve what they get.” With generational risks we should aim to reduce them now as much as possible and take the most dangerous contingencies off the table.
- Manuel_D 3y ago
  What, really, is the impact of a compromised nuclear casket in a remote, unpopulated area above ground? What is the impact buried just 100 feet deep in an unpopulated area? Someone would have to excavate the uranium and either spend loads of time around it or move it to a populated area. Water contamination from naturally occurring uranium is a bigger risk than nuclear waste (uranium, like lead, can cause heavy metal poisoning independent of radioactivity). Chemical waste from non-nuclear industries are far more hazardous than nuclear waste, yet the latter is for some reason an enormously larger concern. If you're worried about generational risk, there are plenty of things an order of magnitude more concerning than nuclear waste.
  - w-ll 3y ago
    Yea, isn't coal ash way worst regardless of how "green" they capture the emissions. They always seem to leek into other water sources and do way more. How did we get this way?
    - KennyBlanken 3y ago
      It's so tiresome that nuclear proponents pretend the only alternative to nuclear is coal.
      - panick21_ 3y ago
        His point is that other technologies are not held to the same standard. And that is still true. Even above ground nuclear storage is far better waste management then virtually anything else, including wind and solar. The likely hood of people dying from old wind and solar projects is quite a bit higher then people dying from nuclear waste.
nevi-me 3y ago
In the extreme, the have been politicians and other leaders who came in and decided to undo decisions of their predecessors for petty reasons. A memorable example being the US' 45th President. If this high cost is in the long run cheaper than relying on 10+ generations to do the right thing, it's probably a worthwhile cost.
- HPsquared 3y ago
  Generations 1 through 9 don't really need to do anything. Generation 10 will have a bit of work to do, but much less work than it takes to deal with it now. The really radioactive components of the waste (the fission products) decay away after a few hundred years.
  - j16sdiz 3y ago
    by the time we get to generation 10....all documents are lost, technology is obsoleted, no living engineer know how this works.
    - panick21_ 3y ago
      And now you are proving my original argument. If society collapses to a point where engineers can't handle some well contained radioactive waste then you have far bigger problems then nuclear waste. The idea that our primary worry should be that maybe in 300 years countries will be unable to handle this simple technical task that the US figured out in 1960s is bananas. We are not talking about active nuclear weapons that detonate if you touch them wrong. We are talking about dry casks that might maybe start to leak a little in a few 100 years. Even in the worst of bad cases you have to come up with quite a story to figure out how anybody actually dies from this, let alone many people. Spending billions of $ now so in 300 years maybe somebody might be saved is laughable when we know that we can save people by putting up 100$ concrete railing for bike lanes right now. Let alone the 100s of other things that could be done with billions.
      - smaudet 3y ago
jrflowers 3y ago
> I just don't like this, a huge amount of money spent for nothing. This fuel can be managed just fine above ground. Yes maybe ever couple 100 years you might have to move it, who cares. If your society isn't capable managing nuclear waste then nobody will care anymore anyway. I love this sentiment. “Yeah nuclear mismanagement could be society-ending if done poorly, but avoiding it costs money!”
- Nathanba 3y ago
  Yes, finally the politicians do something properly and immediately they get criticised for spending money.. on long term, sustainable solutions that will help generations to come.
  - panick21_ 3y ago
    I have not criticized them for spending money, but spending money inefficiently and on the wrong things. What would actually help generations to come is innovating in terms of GenIV nuclear reactors that can reduce the total amount of waste. That could potentially reduce the global waste, rather then this solution that only works for Finland and has to be replicated many more times to actually solve the waste solution. Burning up the waste and turning it into 300 year waste is the actual long term sustainable solution.
- panick21_ 3y ago
  Again, this is just delusional. Nuclear waste can not be society ending. Did you read to much Greenpeace propaganda or maybe was it some cheap action movie? And I'm not against spending money. I'm pro-spending money. I want them to spend money on next generation nuclear technology that actually uses the 'waste' to produce energy and other things, like medical isotopes and nuclear batteries. This waste that would be produced from advanced reactors could be reduced to only need 300 years of storage, and for that you don't need geopolitical storage. So how about instead of spending billions digging a hole, spend billions actually improving the situation.
  - jrflowers 3y ago
jltsiren 3y ago
Most of the costs are for managing the waste above ground. The overall cost of the project is estimated to be €5-6 billion, out of which construction is €1-2 billion. I believe the actual underground facility cost ~€1 billion, while the rest is for various above-ground processing facilities. There has been a lot of speculative bullshitting on what to do with nuclear waste since the Onkalo project started in the late 80s. So far, nobody has come up with any concrete alternatives. Given the high costs of managing nuclear waste above ground, it's cheaper to bury it underground than to wait for new breakthroughs.
- panick21_ 3y ago
  For 5-6 billion they could have helped to develop and built new GenIV reactors and reduce the waste and also manage all the waste for the next 100 years. > Given the high costs of managing nuclear waste above ground Can you show me some concrete evidence that the cost is as high as you claim. In the US nuclear reactors have been storing the waste on parking lots for many decades and it doesn't seem to bankrupt them. In many places above ground nuclear waste is just standing around in casket with literally 0 people attending them. In Switzerland a single warehouse contains all nuclear waste for the last 50 years and there are not many people working there. Unless you can show me otherwise I'm gone go with 'its not gone cost billion+ $ to let nuclear waste sit around above ground for a century'.
  - jltsiren 3y ago
    That's 5-6 billion over ~140 years. The operating costs of the Swiss Zwilag facility are similar. Storing the waste on site is cheap as long as the reactor is operational. The facilities and the staff are there anyway. It gets more expensive once the reactor stops operating. You can't just leave the high-level waste there for anyone to steal, and you should also work proactively to prevent leaks.
- cyberax 3y ago
  Fusion reactors will produce enough fast neutrons to transmute the waste into something less long-lived. This can be done with fast neutron fission reactors, albeit it's going to take a lot of time. Meanwhile, just keeping it in dry casks aboveground is perfectly fine.
nonethewiser 3y ago
Above ground? Terrorism/war seems like a problem. Imagine if Russia was motivated to invade Finland or something.
Krasnol 3y ago
This sheer ignorance around nuclear energy is the main reason I'm happy it already peaked in the Western World and is replaced by safe and clean renewable energies. I mean, you don't even have to look far these days. It's Finland. You know...the country just around the corner of our old and new arch enemy, Russia. And you want to create an additional target for sabotage? Also, you're talking about wasting money? Reprocessing is hilariously expensive, and they don't even have a facility. No country in the Western World will ever build one again because it's not worth it. You're still producing a bit less radioactive material in this expensive process, which has to be stored. The end product is more expensive than new fuel. It's a completely useless circle. Especially for Finland, which has a hole dug up already. The whole nuclear energy project is a waste of money. Especially taxpayer money. The technology is overdue. New ones are here already. They are cheaper, faster to build, and they are actually getting better all the time. Unlike nuclear, which Finland had to shut down recently because it just wasn't worth the money to keep it running...
- paavope 3y ago
  > Unlike nuclear, which Finland had to shut down recently because it just wasn't worth the money to keep it running... What are you referring to here? Nuclear power has not been shut down here in Finland to my knowledge. There have been times when production has been scaled down because there is temporarily excess energy available, when it is windy (turbines produce more) and warm (warming uses less), but that is a temporary situation.
  - Krasnol 3y ago
    > There have been times when production has been scaled down because there is temporarily excess energy available, when it is windy (turbines produce more) and warm (warming uses less), but that is a temporary situation. This is what I meant, excuse my wrong wording, implying that you could shut down a reactor just like that only because the prices for energy doesn't justify to keep it running at all. Something which is quite nice to have these days with all those cheap renewable energies producing that "excess" energy.
- panick21_ 3y ago
throwbadubadu 3y ago
> This fuel can be managed just fine above ground. Yes maybe ever couple 100 years you might have to move it, who cares. The cost is quite high, and turns out that all the temporal or attempted permanent storages have undesired rottening containers or leakages much earlier.. is there a good reference for that claim?
oxfordmale 3y ago
We have very poor understanding of Stonehenge, only build 5000 years ago. Throughout history many advanced civilisations have been wiped out for one reason or the other, with only anedectotal stories left. It is not unlikely the context around nuclear waste storage on the surface is lost within generations.
natmaka 3y ago
In the team managing the Fukushima plant there probably was someone absolutely sure of what we can manage, and of his ability to predict and therefore dislike spending money for some useless higher wall... Yanosuke Hirai's ways seem more adequate to me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onagawa_Nuclear_Power_Plant#2011_T%C5%8Dhoku_earthquake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onagawa_Nuclear_Power_Plant#20...
alexvoda 3y ago
This is a natural solution for Finland because the country is full of bunkers of all shapes and sizes. They do bunkers at scale. It also has the benefit that in case of war with a nearby historically aggressive neighbour, the enemy can not bomb the repository to create a radiological disaster.

RobotToaster 3y ago

It reminds me of how "useless" gasoline used to be burnt off at oil wells to extract parrafin oil.

otherme123 3y ago
We are still unable to properly recycle plastic. Nuclear fuel is a very well known product carefully crafted, nuclear waste is a corrosive mix of very different things, mainly everything near the reactor that isn't fuel (pipes, concrete, clothes, machinery...) that gets contaminated and you can't do anything with it except store away in a radioactive landfill. The used nuclear fuel is already being processed and reused. But we can't do much with a contaminated piece of steel except turn it to small pieces and store the more contaminated in a concrete brick, no "gasoline" to extract there.

pavlov 3y ago

> “Yes maybe ever couple 100 years you might have to move it, who cares. If your society isn't capable managing nuclear waste then nobody will care anymore anyway.” This isn’t the right way to plan centuries ahead. You can’t just say “well if the dummies can’t do this one more thing we imposed on them, they deserve what they get.” With generational risks we should aim to reduce them now as much as possible and take the most dangerous contingencies off the table.

Manuel_D 3y ago
What, really, is the impact of a compromised nuclear casket in a remote, unpopulated area above ground? What is the impact buried just 100 feet deep in an unpopulated area? Someone would have to excavate the uranium and either spend loads of time around it or move it to a populated area. Water contamination from naturally occurring uranium is a bigger risk than nuclear waste (uranium, like lead, can cause heavy metal poisoning independent of radioactivity). Chemical waste from non-nuclear industries are far more hazardous than nuclear waste, yet the latter is for some reason an enormously larger concern. If you're worried about generational risk, there are plenty of things an order of magnitude more concerning than nuclear waste.
- w-ll 3y ago
  Yea, isn't coal ash way worst regardless of how "green" they capture the emissions. They always seem to leek into other water sources and do way more. How did we get this way?
  - KennyBlanken 3y ago
    It's so tiresome that nuclear proponents pretend the only alternative to nuclear is coal.
    - panick21_ 3y ago
      His point is that other technologies are not held to the same standard. And that is still true. Even above ground nuclear storage is far better waste management then virtually anything else, including wind and solar. The likely hood of people dying from old wind and solar projects is quite a bit higher then people dying from nuclear waste.

nevi-me 3y ago

In the extreme, the have been politicians and other leaders who came in and decided to undo decisions of their predecessors for petty reasons. A memorable example being the US' 45th President. If this high cost is in the long run cheaper than relying on 10+ generations to do the right thing, it's probably a worthwhile cost.

HPsquared 3y ago
Generations 1 through 9 don't really need to do anything. Generation 10 will have a bit of work to do, but much less work than it takes to deal with it now. The really radioactive components of the waste (the fission products) decay away after a few hundred years.
- j16sdiz 3y ago
  by the time we get to generation 10....all documents are lost, technology is obsoleted, no living engineer know how this works.
  - panick21_ 3y ago
    And now you are proving my original argument. If society collapses to a point where engineers can't handle some well contained radioactive waste then you have far bigger problems then nuclear waste. The idea that our primary worry should be that maybe in 300 years countries will be unable to handle this simple technical task that the US figured out in 1960s is bananas. We are not talking about active nuclear weapons that detonate if you touch them wrong. We are talking about dry casks that might maybe start to leak a little in a few 100 years. Even in the worst of bad cases you have to come up with quite a story to figure out how anybody actually dies from this, let alone many people. Spending billions of $ now so in 300 years maybe somebody might be saved is laughable when we know that we can save people by putting up 100$ concrete railing for bike lanes right now. Let alone the 100s of other things that could be done with billions.
    - smaudet 3y ago

jrflowers 3y ago

> I just don't like this, a huge amount of money spent for nothing. This fuel can be managed just fine above ground. Yes maybe ever couple 100 years you might have to move it, who cares. If your society isn't capable managing nuclear waste then nobody will care anymore anyway. I love this sentiment. “Yeah nuclear mismanagement could be society-ending if done poorly, but avoiding it costs money!”

Nathanba 3y ago
Yes, finally the politicians do something properly and immediately they get criticised for spending money.. on long term, sustainable solutions that will help generations to come.
- panick21_ 3y ago
  I have not criticized them for spending money, but spending money inefficiently and on the wrong things. What would actually help generations to come is innovating in terms of GenIV nuclear reactors that can reduce the total amount of waste. That could potentially reduce the global waste, rather then this solution that only works for Finland and has to be replicated many more times to actually solve the waste solution. Burning up the waste and turning it into 300 year waste is the actual long term sustainable solution.
panick21_ 3y ago
Again, this is just delusional. Nuclear waste can not be society ending. Did you read to much Greenpeace propaganda or maybe was it some cheap action movie? And I'm not against spending money. I'm pro-spending money. I want them to spend money on next generation nuclear technology that actually uses the 'waste' to produce energy and other things, like medical isotopes and nuclear batteries. This waste that would be produced from advanced reactors could be reduced to only need 300 years of storage, and for that you don't need geopolitical storage. So how about instead of spending billions digging a hole, spend billions actually improving the situation.
- jrflowers 3y ago

jltsiren 3y ago

Most of the costs are for managing the waste above ground. The overall cost of the project is estimated to be €5-6 billion, out of which construction is €1-2 billion. I believe the actual underground facility cost ~€1 billion, while the rest is for various above-ground processing facilities. There has been a lot of speculative bullshitting on what to do with nuclear waste since the Onkalo project started in the late 80s. So far, nobody has come up with any concrete alternatives. Given the high costs of managing nuclear waste above ground, it's cheaper to bury it underground than to wait for new breakthroughs.

panick21_ 3y ago
For 5-6 billion they could have helped to develop and built new GenIV reactors and reduce the waste and also manage all the waste for the next 100 years. > Given the high costs of managing nuclear waste above ground Can you show me some concrete evidence that the cost is as high as you claim. In the US nuclear reactors have been storing the waste on parking lots for many decades and it doesn't seem to bankrupt them. In many places above ground nuclear waste is just standing around in casket with literally 0 people attending them. In Switzerland a single warehouse contains all nuclear waste for the last 50 years and there are not many people working there. Unless you can show me otherwise I'm gone go with 'its not gone cost billion+ $ to let nuclear waste sit around above ground for a century'.
- jltsiren 3y ago
  That's 5-6 billion over ~140 years. The operating costs of the Swiss Zwilag facility are similar. Storing the waste on site is cheap as long as the reactor is operational. The facilities and the staff are there anyway. It gets more expensive once the reactor stops operating. You can't just leave the high-level waste there for anyone to steal, and you should also work proactively to prevent leaks.
cyberax 3y ago
Fusion reactors will produce enough fast neutrons to transmute the waste into something less long-lived. This can be done with fast neutron fission reactors, albeit it's going to take a lot of time. Meanwhile, just keeping it in dry casks aboveground is perfectly fine.

nonethewiser 3y ago

Above ground? Terrorism/war seems like a problem. Imagine if Russia was motivated to invade Finland or something.

Krasnol 3y ago

This sheer ignorance around nuclear energy is the main reason I'm happy it already peaked in the Western World and is replaced by safe and clean renewable energies. I mean, you don't even have to look far these days. It's Finland. You know...the country just around the corner of our old and new arch enemy, Russia. And you want to create an additional target for sabotage? Also, you're talking about wasting money? Reprocessing is hilariously expensive, and they don't even have a facility. No country in the Western World will ever build one again because it's not worth it. You're still producing a bit less radioactive material in this expensive process, which has to be stored. The end product is more expensive than new fuel. It's a completely useless circle. Especially for Finland, which has a hole dug up already. The whole nuclear energy project is a waste of money. Especially taxpayer money. The technology is overdue. New ones are here already. They are cheaper, faster to build, and they are actually getting better all the time. Unlike nuclear, which Finland had to shut down recently because it just wasn't worth the money to keep it running...

paavope 3y ago
> Unlike nuclear, which Finland had to shut down recently because it just wasn't worth the money to keep it running... What are you referring to here? Nuclear power has not been shut down here in Finland to my knowledge. There have been times when production has been scaled down because there is temporarily excess energy available, when it is windy (turbines produce more) and warm (warming uses less), but that is a temporary situation.
- Krasnol 3y ago
  > There have been times when production has been scaled down because there is temporarily excess energy available, when it is windy (turbines produce more) and warm (warming uses less), but that is a temporary situation. This is what I meant, excuse my wrong wording, implying that you could shut down a reactor just like that only because the prices for energy doesn't justify to keep it running at all. Something which is quite nice to have these days with all those cheap renewable energies producing that "excess" energy.
panick21_ 3y ago

throwbadubadu 3y ago

> This fuel can be managed just fine above ground. Yes maybe ever couple 100 years you might have to move it, who cares. The cost is quite high, and turns out that all the temporal or attempted permanent storages have undesired rottening containers or leakages much earlier.. is there a good reference for that claim?

oxfordmale 3y ago

We have very poor understanding of Stonehenge, only build 5000 years ago. Throughout history many advanced civilisations have been wiped out for one reason or the other, with only anedectotal stories left. It is not unlikely the context around nuclear waste storage on the surface is lost within generations.

natmaka 3y ago

In the team managing the Fukushima plant there probably was someone absolutely sure of what we can manage, and of his ability to predict and therefore dislike spending money for some useless higher wall... Yanosuke Hirai's ways seem more adequate to me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onagawa_Nuclear_Power_Plant#2011_T%C5%8Dhoku_earthquake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onagawa_Nuclear_Power_Plant#20...

alexvoda 3y ago

This is a natural solution for Finland because the country is full of bunkers of all shapes and sizes. They do bunkers at scale. It also has the benefit that in case of war with a nearby historically aggressive neighbour, the enemy can not bomb the repository to create a radiological disaster.