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> Can.. CAN??? Yes. > Who pays to clean all this up? Who is going to foot the bill for the hole? The people who use the electricity that is generated. Just
by throw0101d 3y ago
> Can.. CAN???
Yes.
> Who pays to clean all this up? Who is going to foot the bill for the hole?
The people who use the electricity that is generated.
Just like they'll pay for solar panel recycling (if such a thing exists) and for burying wind turbine blades (which are not, AFAIK, recyclable) that were also used in creating electricity for the grid, as well as for dealing with the end-of-life batteries that are used for energy storage when it comes to renewables.
Which is why I'm also pro-carbon pricing: the people polluting need to cost-in externalities. (Which, if you have wind and solar you'll also be paying, since backup gas/coal/oil plants are needed for windless nights.)
> SEE: Every project in the world that was going to do it, France, USA, USSR, Japan, Canada... and one working hole in Finland that will fill up in half the expected time.
If you don't want to bury it in a central location, then let the casks sit in situ where they are.
> Dig it up, and then leave a mess for someone else to clean is no different than the economics of coal, it's just on a smaller scale. And thank god cause uranium has a half life.
What is there to "deal with"? It's an inert object: just let it sit there. The various forms of radiation are a known quantity, as is how to deal with them. Again, see "What About the Waste?":
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2t2tYQsK94 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2t2tYQsK94
> There is no amount of "safe" nuclear material. Full stop.
Better ban bananas then. And smoke alarms.
> You mean this reactor that Canada shut down: https://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Canadian-isotope-reactor-enters-retirement https://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Canadian-isotope-rea...
Nope, the one at Darlington that just signed a deal a few weeks ago to provide isotopes for medical treatments (which I linked to already, but you failed to notice):
> The deal to produce the isotope at Darlington will ease concerns about access to the raw material for TheraSphere, which has been provided to more than 100,000 liver cancer patients worldwide, said Peter Pattison, president of Boston Scientific's interventional oncology franchise in Ottawa.
* https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-darlington-nuclear-isotope-yttrium-90-therasphere-1.7135480 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-darlington-nu...
See also press release from 2023:
* https://www.bwxt.com/bwxt-medical/news/2023/02/01/BWXT-Medical-and-Laurentis-Complete-Key-Tc-99m-Generator-Program-Milestone https://www.bwxt.com/bwxt-medical/news/2023/02/01/BWXT-Medic...
Half of the world's Cobalt-60 is produced by Ontario nuclear power generation:
> Ontario Power Generation (OPG) and Nordion (Canada) Inc. have signed an agreement to expand production of Cobalt-60 to the Darlington Nuclear Station. Currently, approximately 50% of the world’s Cobalt-60 is produced in Ontario.
> Cobalt-60 is a life-saving isotope responsible for sterilizing approximately 40% of the world’s single-use medical devices, including syringes, gloves, implants and surgical instruments. It is also used to treat a variety of food and consumer products for the reduction of harmful pathogens.
* https://www.nordion.com/darlington-to-become-new-source-of-life-saving-medical-isotope/ https://www.nordion.com/darlington-to-become-new-source-of-l...
- zer00eyz 3y ago>> Can.. CAN??? > Yes. There is no hole to put it in. And talking about the hole to put it in that does not exist is magical thinking. >> What is there to "deal with"? It's an inert object: just let it sit there. The various forms of radiation are a known quantity, as is how to deal with them. Again, see "What About the Waste?": https://www.propublica.org/article/uranium-mills-pollution-cleanup-us https://www.propublica.org/article/uranium-mills-pollution-c... Again, see the actual harm already done... >> If you don't want to bury it in a central location, then let the casks sit in situ where they are. How's that working for Fukushima, and Chernobyl. How is that working when we close plants now. Again magical thinking that keeps kicking the ball down the field. >>> Just like they'll pay for solar panel recycling (if such a thing exists) I will happily put a whole bunch of 20 year old solar panels on my roof. Are you willing to put a cooling pool in your back yard? This is very simple: where are we going to store the nuclear waste for 100k years and where is the money that covers its expenses going forward. Show me that facility BUILT, show me the bank account FUNDED, show me the insurance contract for when your wrong and I will get behind nuclear. Till then lets stop pretending that were gonna solve it later. We aren't.
- throw0101d 3y ago> There is no hole to put it in. And talking about the hole to put it in that does not exist is magical thinking. Very hard to build a hole. All that digging and stuff. > https://www.propublica.org/article/uranium-mills-pollution-cleanup-us https://www.propublica.org/article/uranium-mills-pollution-c... This is about nuclear weapons, and nothing to do with nuclear power and the storage of spent nuclear fuel. Countries can have nuclear power without nuclear weapons: see Canada, Japan, Brazil, Finland. Please stop moving the goal posts. > How's that working for Fukushima, and Chernobyl. How is that working when we close plants now. Again magical thinking that keeps kicking the ball down the field. The effects Chernobyl are overblown: * https://archive.today/hYZls https://archive.today/hYZls / http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/apr/05/anti-nuclear-lobby-misled-world http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/apr/05/anti-nu... So says the co-founder of Chernobyl Tissue Bank, Geraldine ("Gerry") Thomas: * https://blogs.imperial.ac.uk/imperial-medicine/2019/12/09/radiation-and-human-health-separating-scientific-facts-from-urban-myths/ https://blogs.imperial.ac.uk/imperial-medicine/2019/12/09/ra... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geraldine_Thomas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geraldine_Thomas Fukushima is generally the same: * https://archive.is/mpCeG https://archive.is/mpCeG / https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/apr/26/obesity-smoking-more-dangerous-radiation https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/apr/26/obesity-... * https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-35761136 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-35761136 More people died in the earthquake-caused tsunami (and tsunamis in general) than the Fukushima nuclear incident and yet people still live by the coasts. More lives would probably be saved in Japan by heeding the historical warnings of Japanese 'tsunami stones' than by closing nuclear (especially since closures would increase fossil-fuel generating plants): * https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/century-old-warnings-against-tsunamis-dot-japans-coastline-180956448/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/century-old-warnin... More people have died from the evacuation than from the nuclear incident, see [3][4][5][6][7][8] in: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster_casualties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa... > This is very simple: where are we going to store the nuclear waste for 100k years and where is the money that covers its expenses going forward. Cooling ponds are needed for a ~decade or two. After that casks work just fine. All that "100k years" is just non-sense: at those time scales all that's left is alpha radiation (which can be stopped by pieces of paper) and maybe beta radiation (stopped by aluminium foil). The only way that the "100k years" (or even 10k years) stuff can harm you is if you eat it or grind it into a powder and snort it like cocaine. Stop being so over-dramatic. We need to deal with climate change in the short term, and renewables will not provide a complete solution (I have no problem with them generally, just with treating them as a sort of panacea): they are intermittent and need fossil fuel backup capacity ((natural/methane) gas, coal, oil) as there is not enough battery capacity on the planet to keep things running over longer time durations. Ontario was able to shutdown all of its coal plants because of the capacity that nuclear provides, and even though it built out lots of (e.g.) wind infrastructure, there are often times that it drops to zero (this week, 2024-04-08, it's been pretty good so far). * https://www.ieso.ca/power-data https://www.ieso.ca/power-data § Supply > Show me that facility BUILT, show me the bank account FUNDED, show me the insurance contract for when your wrong and I will get behind nuclear. Till then lets stop pretending that were gonna solve it later. We aren't. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickering_Nuclear_Generating_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickering_Nuclear_Generating_S... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darlington_Nuclear_Generating_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darlington_Nuclear_Generating_... I live a few dozen kilometres from Pickering. It's fine. Again, see "What About the Waste?": * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2t2tYQsK94 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2t2tYQsK94