6 ms·

> "Put it in a can and bury it under a mountain" is a sufficient waste disposal strategy for a pretty long time It's simple in theory, not so much in practice:

by walls 3y ago

> "Put it in a can and bury it under a mountain" is a sufficient waste disposal strategy for a pretty long time It's simple in theory, not so much in practice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_repository https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_r...

lo_zamoyski 3y ago
I wonder if hurling it into the sun could be made cost effective.
- stephenr 3y ago
  The problem is you need to get it into space first, which means putting it on top of a rocket. Rockets have this nasty habit where sometimes they blow up, and whatever they're carrying gets vaporised into the atmosphere.
- ericbarrett 3y ago
  It actually takes much less energy to throw something out of the solar system than into the sun: 17 km/s deltaV versus 28 km/s.
- midoridensha 3y ago
  No. Kurzgesagt has a good video about this on YouTube. Launching nuclear waste into space is not even remotely cost effective (and launching it to the Sun is even worse).
- smileysteve 3y ago
  Why the sun? It came from the earth; the core can process it back to a future mine.
- AndrewPGameDev 3y ago
  Just some napkin math: (Suppose, as it hasn't been tested that the) SpaceX Starship can carry up to 100 tons of material to LEO. It costs 100 million USD per launch. (11,000 tons / 100 tons) * 100 million USD = 11 billion dollars. The US Department of Energy (DOE) has a budget of 149 billion, so under these pessimistic conditions it would cost around 7% of the budget. That's not good, but its not crazy either. Elon Musk has stated that he thinks the cost of launching Starship will go down to 10 million per launch in the next 2-3 years (not sure if thats realistic). On the other hand, we probably don't want to unload a bunch of nuclear material in LEO, but much further away from Earth. Just watched the Kurzgesagt video. They make the point that more radioactive material is put into the world by burning coal, which I think is a valid point. They use the Falcon 9 exclusively to calculate the cost of launching, and they never indicate in the video that the cost of putting 1 kg of material into space might go down. Falcon Heavy can already launch (reusable) 63.8 tons to LEO at a cost of 97 million, which is around 1500USD/kg instead of the 4000 they cite. They also strangely compare it to the cost of the fissile material, which doesn't make any sense as the majority of the cost for a nuclear reactor is in safety precautions, not in the actual production of nuclear fuel. In their sources they're a little less forward: Electricity from nuclear reactors is produced for about $70 per MWh, which is 7 cents per kWh. The fuel costs represent just 0.46 cents per kWh or 6.5% of the total cost. If we had to get rid of nuclear waste by putting it on rockets, causing fuel costs to rise 3.4 times to 1.57 cents per kWh, the total cost would be increased to 8.1 cents per kWh. This means the total cost becomes 16% higher. In the video they state "In 2021, we saw a record 135 launches into space. If we repurposed each of those rockets and filled them all with nuclear waste, the total amount that could be lifted into a Low Earth Orbit, which is the closest orbit above the atmosphere, is nearly 800 tonnes. " And then they extrapolate this out to... forever, I guess? Either way there were 178 successful launches in 2022. There have already been 123 (successful) launches in 2023. Regardless it seems reasonable to expect this number to go up and the average tonnage per rocket to go up. It just seems strange to make this video that is very explicitly only about 2021 and to have the economics change so much even in 2 years. I would've preferred if they stated in the video that it doesn't make sense today, but it could in 5 or 50 years, and made more arguments in favor of storing it deep underground. --- The biggest risk (as another commenter mentioned) is the massive risk to the environment by trying to shoot it into space. If we really needed to get rid of it, we could bury it under a mountain for 100 years, dig it back up, and shoot it into space when the cost is much lower, and its much safer to launch. Or just never launch it at all. I don't really buy the idea that burying nuclear waste in remote areas is dangerous. Critics say that the problem is that you have to keep waste contained continuously (say for the next 10,000 years) but I'm near certain we will have some way of truly getting rid of it in the next 500 years. Whether that's blasting it into space or reprocessing or something else entirely.
- preisschild 3y ago
  That would be a waste, because we could reuse most of it.
arcticbull 3y ago
There's absolutely no reason you can't put it into Yucca mountain other than anti-nuclear 'nimbys' (in quotes because Yucca is nobody's backyard) -- but worst of all, it's an asinine point. Yucca Mountain is directly adjacent to the Nevada Test Site where the US has detonated 928 nuclear weapons, most of them underground. [1] The Nevada Test Site is the most radiologically contaminated land on the face of the earth already. Honestly if any spent fuel leaked out it might reduce the average radioactivity at the NTS. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevada_Test_Site https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevada_Test_Site
- asynchronous 3y ago
  Excellent point, also I’d like to point out it buys us quite a bit of time to figure out how to create reactors that eat spent fuel and turn them into nothing, something the DOE has been researching for the last few years.
paulddraper 3y ago
> It's simple in theory, not so much in practice In practice, there's so little waste that nuclear plants are burying it on-site. Not the ideal solution, but that's just how little waste there actually is.

by walls 3y ago

lo_zamoyski 3y ago

I wonder if hurling it into the sun could be made cost effective.

stephenr 3y ago
The problem is you need to get it into space first, which means putting it on top of a rocket. Rockets have this nasty habit where sometimes they blow up, and whatever they're carrying gets vaporised into the atmosphere.
ericbarrett 3y ago
It actually takes much less energy to throw something out of the solar system than into the sun: 17 km/s deltaV versus 28 km/s.
midoridensha 3y ago
No. Kurzgesagt has a good video about this on YouTube. Launching nuclear waste into space is not even remotely cost effective (and launching it to the Sun is even worse).
smileysteve 3y ago
Why the sun? It came from the earth; the core can process it back to a future mine.
AndrewPGameDev 3y ago
Just some napkin math: (Suppose, as it hasn't been tested that the) SpaceX Starship can carry up to 100 tons of material to LEO. It costs 100 million USD per launch. (11,000 tons / 100 tons) * 100 million USD = 11 billion dollars. The US Department of Energy (DOE) has a budget of 149 billion, so under these pessimistic conditions it would cost around 7% of the budget. That's not good, but its not crazy either. Elon Musk has stated that he thinks the cost of launching Starship will go down to 10 million per launch in the next 2-3 years (not sure if thats realistic). On the other hand, we probably don't want to unload a bunch of nuclear material in LEO, but much further away from Earth. Just watched the Kurzgesagt video. They make the point that more radioactive material is put into the world by burning coal, which I think is a valid point. They use the Falcon 9 exclusively to calculate the cost of launching, and they never indicate in the video that the cost of putting 1 kg of material into space might go down. Falcon Heavy can already launch (reusable) 63.8 tons to LEO at a cost of 97 million, which is around 1500USD/kg instead of the 4000 they cite. They also strangely compare it to the cost of the fissile material, which doesn't make any sense as the majority of the cost for a nuclear reactor is in safety precautions, not in the actual production of nuclear fuel. In their sources they're a little less forward: Electricity from nuclear reactors is produced for about $70 per MWh, which is 7 cents per kWh. The fuel costs represent just 0.46 cents per kWh or 6.5% of the total cost. If we had to get rid of nuclear waste by putting it on rockets, causing fuel costs to rise 3.4 times to 1.57 cents per kWh, the total cost would be increased to 8.1 cents per kWh. This means the total cost becomes 16% higher. In the video they state "In 2021, we saw a record 135 launches into space. If we repurposed each of those rockets and filled them all with nuclear waste, the total amount that could be lifted into a Low Earth Orbit, which is the closest orbit above the atmosphere, is nearly 800 tonnes. " And then they extrapolate this out to... forever, I guess? Either way there were 178 successful launches in 2022. There have already been 123 (successful) launches in 2023. Regardless it seems reasonable to expect this number to go up and the average tonnage per rocket to go up. It just seems strange to make this video that is very explicitly only about 2021 and to have the economics change so much even in 2 years. I would've preferred if they stated in the video that it doesn't make sense today, but it could in 5 or 50 years, and made more arguments in favor of storing it deep underground. --- The biggest risk (as another commenter mentioned) is the massive risk to the environment by trying to shoot it into space. If we really needed to get rid of it, we could bury it under a mountain for 100 years, dig it back up, and shoot it into space when the cost is much lower, and its much safer to launch. Or just never launch it at all. I don't really buy the idea that burying nuclear waste in remote areas is dangerous. Critics say that the problem is that you have to keep waste contained continuously (say for the next 10,000 years) but I'm near certain we will have some way of truly getting rid of it in the next 500 years. Whether that's blasting it into space or reprocessing or something else entirely.
preisschild 3y ago
That would be a waste, because we could reuse most of it.

arcticbull 3y ago

There's absolutely no reason you can't put it into Yucca mountain other than anti-nuclear 'nimbys' (in quotes because Yucca is nobody's backyard) -- but worst of all, it's an asinine point. Yucca Mountain is directly adjacent to the Nevada Test Site where the US has detonated 928 nuclear weapons, most of them underground. [1] The Nevada Test Site is the most radiologically contaminated land on the face of the earth already. Honestly if any spent fuel leaked out it might reduce the average radioactivity at the NTS. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevada_Test_Site https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevada_Test_Site

asynchronous 3y ago
Excellent point, also I’d like to point out it buys us quite a bit of time to figure out how to create reactors that eat spent fuel and turn them into nothing, something the DOE has been researching for the last few years.

paulddraper 3y ago

> It's simple in theory, not so much in practice In practice, there's so little waste that nuclear plants are burying it on-site. Not the ideal solution, but that's just how little waste there actually is.