5 ms·

> Fission radioactivity is the bad stuff that will be radioactive for millions of years and we don't know how deal with that. We also don't know how to deal wi

by roenxi 2y ago

> Fission radioactivity is the bad stuff that will be radioactive for millions of years and we don't know how deal with that. We also don't know how to deal with lead and it will be poisonous until we figure out how to biologically re-engineer the human species. So far so good, we still use lead, you can buy the stuff by the kilo. This is a minor problem to the point where the people bringing it up aren't taking the situation seriously. The volumes are tiny and we can just dump it somewhere.

alex_young 2y ago
Around 2000 metric tons of nuclear waste are produced every year in the US. And that represents under 20% of electricity production. I do think there are ways to manage the problem, but tiny isn’t the word I’d use.
- roenxi 2y ago
  2000 metric tons! Wow! Look out, we're dealing with the big numbers there! Nearly up to 5 figures assuming we round it wrong. That is around 3 shipping containers. There is literally a risk of losing it in transit because the volume is so small. If you see 3 shipping containers in a field somewhere that might be a year's worth of nuclear waste. It is hard to get across how small that number is compared to 20% of the US's annual electricity production. The reason the problem hasn't been "solved" in the last however long reactors have been a thing is it is too small a problem to devote time to.
  - texuf 2y ago
    Except you can’t transport it. We built a giant cave for it in the desert and everybody agreed that the material was too dangerous to drive past people’s homes so we just leave it sitting around on site hoping a natural disaster doesn’t wash it away. I’m pro nuclear but we need to be honest with ourselves.
    - roenxi 2y ago
      I mean yeah. They do leave it sitting around on site. Because it takes up no space, they can build a bunker to store it without adding all that much to the cost and there are idiots hyperventilating at the thought of transporting dangerous goods around. I'd imagine the nuclear people decided it wasn't worth the hassle. I feel ridiculous having to argue that volumes of material this small represent a real threat. If you wanted to move it we could. Split it up into little loads and put it in a stupidly over-engineered shielded truck. Goodness me this is not a real problem. They've been ignoring it for decades and the consequences are somewhere between nil and nothing interesting. There is nothing here to be honest about, there is no reasonable threat to debate. We transport explosives, we transport poison, we sometimes get massive port explosions that can level a district. Then we've got old mate claiming 2,000 metric tonnes of a relatively dangerous material represents a serious national problem. The absurdity of that is frustrating to deal with.
      - ok_dad 2y ago
        Yes, the powers that be have ignored the issue of nuclear materials sitting on site at power plants for decades, I’m not sure it’s a good idea to make 5 or 10 times more of the stuff at other sites and trust that the actual knowledgeable experts, who haven’t done shit for decades, will figure out a solution by the time it’s bigger issue. We should decrease our power usage as a whole planet, and reduce dependence on technology that has outsized biological risks, like nuclear and plastics, rather than rushing into some future that will only enrich the already wealthy.
        alwa 2y ago
        Why? Using power meaningfully improves people’s lives, and many billions of people are still on the end of the spectrum where “improving lives” involves improvements like “not starving” and “having safe water”. The benefits of making power available are extremely (!) robust and well-understood, as are the health and safety benefits of switching from combustion-based power to non-combustion-based power. I have yet to hear skeptics raise specific nuclear concerns that are real, consequential, and also unmanaged. For all its cost and red tape, the past 60 years’ regulatory posture of “you must identify and mitigate every risk to the absolute maximum degree physically possible, damn the cost” seems to have resulted in a system where, well… they have.
  - laurencerowe 2y ago
    Shipping containers seem to have a maximum weight of about 20 tonnes so surely around 100 containers?
    - oefrha 2y ago
      Nuclear waste has a density of ~10g/cm^3, so 2000t is about 200m^3. Standard 40’ container has a volume of 59.3m^3, so it’s indeed about 3 to 4 by volume. Of course you shouldn’t pack a container full of something so dense when shipping. Anyway it’s a pretty tiny amount of storage space; single family homes are usually larger by volume.
      - carlmr 2y ago
        The more important consideration is we're wasting the waste. It still contains 90% of the fissile energy and we're calling it waste: https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-nuclear-fuel#:~:text=The%20U.S.%20generates%20about%202%2C000,an%20Olympic%2Dsized%20swimming%20pool https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-....
        laurencerowe 2y ago
        The problem with nuclear reprocessing is that it creates more nuclear waste as a byproduct so it only really makes sense when you want to make nuclear weapons.
        pfdietz 2y ago
        That figure is correct only if you consider the energy content of the U-238 in the fuel. But reprocessing fuel to recover U-238 is idiotic: we have loads of U-238 in enrichment plant waste streams, and the material is so cheap they use it as ballast weights in sailboats.
      - laurencerowe 2y ago
        That is just the high level nuclear waste (the spent control rods) which needs to be kept in cooling pools for about a decade before being transferred to dry cask storage. That definitely takes up a lot more space. > Dry cask storage is a method of storing high-level radioactive waste, such as spent nuclear fuel that has already been cooled in a spent fuel pool for at least one year and often as much as ten years. Casks are typically steel cylinders that are either welded or bolted closed. The fuel rods inside are surrounded by inert gas. Ideally, the steel cylinder provides leak-tight containment of the spent fuel. Each cylinder is surrounded by additional steel, concrete, or other material to provide radiation shielding to workers and members of the public. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_cask_storage https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_cask_storage There’s also a lot of low level nuclear waste which is a pain to deal with (make sure you pick the right brand of kitty litter…) https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/03/26/395615637/official-report-nuclear-waste-accident-caused-by-wrong-kitty-litter https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/03/26/395615637...
adrianN 2y ago
You don't have to protect lead from terrorists trying to build a dirty bomb. The radio nuclides you find in nuclear waste are also a lot more poisonous than lead, even if you ignore the radiation.
- littlestymaar 2y ago
  You can build a dirty bomb from the activated wastes of a fusion plant though so the original point stand still. Also, there are many things much more poisonous than radionuclide you can use to make terror weapons that are easy to get (take ricin, for instance)
  - chickenbig 2y ago
    > there are many things much more poisonous than radionuclide you can use to make terror weapons I guess that the effectiveness of terror weapons has nothing to do with how many people are directly harmed. > You can build a dirty bomb from the activated wastes of a fusion plant though so the original point stand still. Even simpler would be to find a radioactive source (medical, irradiation, industrial radiography). Small quantities, in a portable package, but geiger detectors would definitely be able to detect the fallout.
  - adrianN 2y ago
    That is of course true, but I don’t think fusion will ever be economical.

by roenxi 2y ago

alex_young 2y ago

Around 2000 metric tons of nuclear waste are produced every year in the US. And that represents under 20% of electricity production. I do think there are ways to manage the problem, but tiny isn’t the word I’d use.

roenxi 2y ago
2000 metric tons! Wow! Look out, we're dealing with the big numbers there! Nearly up to 5 figures assuming we round it wrong. That is around 3 shipping containers. There is literally a risk of losing it in transit because the volume is so small. If you see 3 shipping containers in a field somewhere that might be a year's worth of nuclear waste. It is hard to get across how small that number is compared to 20% of the US's annual electricity production. The reason the problem hasn't been "solved" in the last however long reactors have been a thing is it is too small a problem to devote time to.
- texuf 2y ago
  Except you can’t transport it. We built a giant cave for it in the desert and everybody agreed that the material was too dangerous to drive past people’s homes so we just leave it sitting around on site hoping a natural disaster doesn’t wash it away. I’m pro nuclear but we need to be honest with ourselves.
  - roenxi 2y ago
    I mean yeah. They do leave it sitting around on site. Because it takes up no space, they can build a bunker to store it without adding all that much to the cost and there are idiots hyperventilating at the thought of transporting dangerous goods around. I'd imagine the nuclear people decided it wasn't worth the hassle. I feel ridiculous having to argue that volumes of material this small represent a real threat. If you wanted to move it we could. Split it up into little loads and put it in a stupidly over-engineered shielded truck. Goodness me this is not a real problem. They've been ignoring it for decades and the consequences are somewhere between nil and nothing interesting. There is nothing here to be honest about, there is no reasonable threat to debate. We transport explosives, we transport poison, we sometimes get massive port explosions that can level a district. Then we've got old mate claiming 2,000 metric tonnes of a relatively dangerous material represents a serious national problem. The absurdity of that is frustrating to deal with.
    - ok_dad 2y ago
      Yes, the powers that be have ignored the issue of nuclear materials sitting on site at power plants for decades, I’m not sure it’s a good idea to make 5 or 10 times more of the stuff at other sites and trust that the actual knowledgeable experts, who haven’t done shit for decades, will figure out a solution by the time it’s bigger issue. We should decrease our power usage as a whole planet, and reduce dependence on technology that has outsized biological risks, like nuclear and plastics, rather than rushing into some future that will only enrich the already wealthy.
      - alwa 2y ago
        Why? Using power meaningfully improves people’s lives, and many billions of people are still on the end of the spectrum where “improving lives” involves improvements like “not starving” and “having safe water”. The benefits of making power available are extremely (!) robust and well-understood, as are the health and safety benefits of switching from combustion-based power to non-combustion-based power. I have yet to hear skeptics raise specific nuclear concerns that are real, consequential, and also unmanaged. For all its cost and red tape, the past 60 years’ regulatory posture of “you must identify and mitigate every risk to the absolute maximum degree physically possible, damn the cost” seems to have resulted in a system where, well… they have.
- laurencerowe 2y ago
  Shipping containers seem to have a maximum weight of about 20 tonnes so surely around 100 containers?
  - oefrha 2y ago
    Nuclear waste has a density of ~10g/cm^3, so 2000t is about 200m^3. Standard 40’ container has a volume of 59.3m^3, so it’s indeed about 3 to 4 by volume. Of course you shouldn’t pack a container full of something so dense when shipping. Anyway it’s a pretty tiny amount of storage space; single family homes are usually larger by volume.
    - carlmr 2y ago
      The more important consideration is we're wasting the waste. It still contains 90% of the fissile energy and we're calling it waste: https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-nuclear-fuel#:~:text=The%20U.S.%20generates%20about%202%2C000,an%20Olympic%2Dsized%20swimming%20pool https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-....
      - laurencerowe 2y ago
        The problem with nuclear reprocessing is that it creates more nuclear waste as a byproduct so it only really makes sense when you want to make nuclear weapons.
      - pfdietz 2y ago
        That figure is correct only if you consider the energy content of the U-238 in the fuel. But reprocessing fuel to recover U-238 is idiotic: we have loads of U-238 in enrichment plant waste streams, and the material is so cheap they use it as ballast weights in sailboats.
    - laurencerowe 2y ago
      That is just the high level nuclear waste (the spent control rods) which needs to be kept in cooling pools for about a decade before being transferred to dry cask storage. That definitely takes up a lot more space. > Dry cask storage is a method of storing high-level radioactive waste, such as spent nuclear fuel that has already been cooled in a spent fuel pool for at least one year and often as much as ten years. Casks are typically steel cylinders that are either welded or bolted closed. The fuel rods inside are surrounded by inert gas. Ideally, the steel cylinder provides leak-tight containment of the spent fuel. Each cylinder is surrounded by additional steel, concrete, or other material to provide radiation shielding to workers and members of the public. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_cask_storage https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_cask_storage There’s also a lot of low level nuclear waste which is a pain to deal with (make sure you pick the right brand of kitty litter…) https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/03/26/395615637/official-report-nuclear-waste-accident-caused-by-wrong-kitty-litter https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/03/26/395615637...

adrianN 2y ago

You don't have to protect lead from terrorists trying to build a dirty bomb. The radio nuclides you find in nuclear waste are also a lot more poisonous than lead, even if you ignore the radiation.

littlestymaar 2y ago
You can build a dirty bomb from the activated wastes of a fusion plant though so the original point stand still. Also, there are many things much more poisonous than radionuclide you can use to make terror weapons that are easy to get (take ricin, for instance)
- chickenbig 2y ago
  > there are many things much more poisonous than radionuclide you can use to make terror weapons I guess that the effectiveness of terror weapons has nothing to do with how many people are directly harmed. > You can build a dirty bomb from the activated wastes of a fusion plant though so the original point stand still. Even simpler would be to find a radioactive source (medical, irradiation, industrial radiography). Small quantities, in a portable package, but geiger detectors would definitely be able to detect the fallout.
- adrianN 2y ago
  That is of course true, but I don’t think fusion will ever be economical.