4 ms·

Also, nuclear waste is a very small problem, compared to other wastes. Yes, it stays active for 10k+ years, but it's actually not that expensive to store them a

Also, nuclear waste is a very small problem, compared to other wastes. Yes, it stays active for 10k+ years, but it's actually not that expensive to store them at specialized storages forever. Because it's a very small amount on a grand scale. In comparison, managing steel production waste is way more expensive.

potato3732842 1y ago
10k years isn't that long. Some concentrated chemical stuff with heavy metals or mercury or whatever in it will be toxic forever.
- cycomanic 1y ago
  The nuclear waste even without the radiation is going to be toxic. Anything with even trace amount of plutonium left (which has a half life time > 200,000 years), will be toxic (much more than e.g. mercury).
  - mlyle 1y ago
    Eh, I don't think I agree. Let's talk about the long-lived isotopes: Pu-239 and Pu-242. Significant inhaled Pu-239 has a fair risk of causing cancer even after a long time. However mercury is volatile and it's a lot easier to end up inhaling fumes. And mercury is absorbed well through ingestion and Pu isn't, and most of the risk after ingestion would be chemical, not radiological. From that standpoint, it's looking a lot better than other heavy metals.
    - lazide 1y ago
      Huh? The reason we don’t have more solid non-radiological toxicity data on Plutonium (compared to other toxic heavy metals) is because any amount significant enough to count kills people radiologically super quick. That doesn’t mean it’s non-toxic if we ignore the radiological effects.
      - mlyle 1y ago
        We know: * Plutonium is not well absorbed by ingestion compared to other heavy metals and know ballpark ingestion toxicities * We also know that pretty much all the plutonium except the long-lived isotopes are gone on a timescale of tens of thousands of years-- leaving behind mostly uranium isotopes. * There's no real reason to believe this mixture of uranium and a small fraction of long-lived plutonium isotopes is significantly worse than ingesting uranium. It might be worse to inhale fine dust, though. * Mercury is way worse than uranium because it is so readily absorbed.
        lazide 1y ago
        Elemental mercury is not absorbed at all. You’re probably thinking of methyl mercury and various mercury salts (which, by the way, are not very common). We have nearly zero experience with weathered or bio modified plutonium. And the experience we do have with plutonium compounds, is limited by the fact people die awfully fast when they’re anywhere near them. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Especially not when the evidence is absent because we can’t get there because everyone dies first from the more obvious bad things happening.
        philipkglass 1y ago
        And the experience we do have with plutonium compounds, is limited by the fact people die awfully fast when they’re anywhere near them. The US nuclear weapons program had several hundred people who were accidentally exposed to measurable doses of plutonium. Those workers did not die at the time. The government set up The United States Transuranium and Uranium Registries (USTUR) to track long term health outcomes for such exposed workers. https://wpcdn.web.wsu.edu/wp-spokane/uploads/sites/1058/2024/06/USTUR-0225-06.pdf https://wpcdn.web.wsu.edu/wp-spokane/uploads/sites/1058/2024... When I worked with the USTUR, they had also acquired some data from former workers in the Soviet nuclear weapons complex. The most exposed workers there received higher doses than any American workers. Even then health impacts were not immediately fatal. Here's the NIH summary on plutonium toxicology: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK599402/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK599402/ It's a lot to read, but there has yet to be a human plutonium exposure accident so severe that the exposed individual died quickly. Or at least no published accident of that sort. There is however a dose-dependent risk of lung cancer from inhaling aerosolized plutonium.
- jjk166 1y ago
  Admittedly, a lot of spent nuclear fuel waste is also toxic heavy metals and will remain so long after it stops being a radiation hazard.
  - nandomrumber 1y ago
    Metals can be vitrified, rending them chemically inert. You can read more about vitrification of nuclear waste here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste
- kibwen 1y ago
  In addition to what the sibling commenter said, at the scale of human civilization, 10,000 years is forever.
  - lesuorac 1y ago
    10,000 years may be forever but it's a rounding error compared to the "half-life" of lead that other power plants produce.
    - kibwen 1y ago
      No, forever isn't a rounding error compared to forever. No human civilization has any reason whatsoever to make any distinction between "this field over here will be safe for farming in 10,000 years" and "this field over here will never be safe for farming". In addition, nuclear isn't competing against coal, it's competing against solar.
      - nandomrumber 1y ago
        If anything is competing against solar, it's solar + batteries + high cost semiconductor switch yards + massive amounts of new transmission lines + replacing the panels every 20 - 30 years + being dependent on China for solar panels.
  - natmaka 1y ago
    Even simply finding some adequate way to warn is a challenge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_nuclear_waste_warning_messages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_nuclear_waste_warnin...
  - nandomrumber 1y ago
    The Great Pyramid of Giza is about half that years old. Pop all the waste in stainless steel casts huge pile in a geologically stable desert.
- Synaesthesia 1y ago
  10000 years is long. It's twice the length of the entire recorded history. I don't even know if mankind will survive another 100 years.
  - echelon 1y ago
    > I don't even know if mankind will survive another 100 years. Then it reasons that we should absolutely use this fuel.
    - maxbond 1y ago
      If all else is held equal, then yes, that follows. But the debate is more or less that some think it will hasten that timeline (through nuclear warfare and accidents) and some think it will delay it (by reducing pollution/climate change).
      - M95D 1y ago
        Using nuclear fuel leaves less for weapons and more demand increases cost for weapons too. Accidents happen, but they won't be the end of our species.
        maxbond 1y ago
        I think we should use more nuclear energy, I think nuclear powered container ships are under explored for instance. But it's not so simple. Nuclear energy programs can become nuclear weapons programs. A larger uranium mining and processing industry lowers the barriers of entry for building a weapons program. We're not going to exhaust our uranium reserves anytime soon. We're not going to be wiped out by a nuclear accidents, but we're heading into a future of stronger storms and more frequent wildfires, and nuclear power has a way of making disasters even worse.
        Synaesthesia 1y ago
        I've been thinking about nuclear powered container ships for a while. Ships burn the worst fuel, bunker fuel or heavy fuel oil. Nuclear is a lot more clean. And yes there's the risk of greater nuclear proliferation but we already have colossal stockpiles of nuclear weapons that pose a massive threat to mankind. That's been the reality for 70 years.
throw0101d 1y ago
> Yes, it stays active for 10k+ years, but it's actually not that expensive to store them at specialized storages forever. Because it's a very small amount on a grand scale. For some definition of "active". The first 6-10 years are quite dangerous, which is why stuff is in cooling pools. After about 200-300 years the most dangerous type of radiation (gamma) has mostly burned stopped, and you're left with alpha and beta, which can be stopped with tinfoil and even paper. I've heard the remark that after ~300 years the main way for nuclear waste to cause bad health effects is if you eat it or grind it up and snort it.
- deepsun 1y ago
  Sorry, but you're wrong. I took some radiation safety classes, and the main point I got from that is that "it depends". For example, alpha- and beta-radiation are often more dangerous than gamma, because gamma is easier to detect and measure. People often focus on "radiation" part forgetting the "contamination" part. You can literally walk into the Chernobyl reactor active zone today for up to 2 minutes. But you cannot produce any food in soils around it for thousand years. And there's dozens of dangerous isotopes, each one accumulating and affecting human tissues differently. Public generally only knows about Geiger counter. Yes, it will scream if everything is FUBAR, but it's useless for estimating safety of a food product.
  - throw0101d 1y ago
    So nuclear waste is stored in casks: * https://www.nwmo.ca/canadas-used-nuclear-fuel/how-is-it-stored-today https://www.nwmo.ca/canadas-used-nuclear-fuel/how-is-it-stor... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_flask https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_flask Are you telling me it's unsafe? Someone better tell Madison Hill: * https://www.newsweek.com/pregnant-woman-poses-nuclear-waste-prove-point-about-radiation-idaho-1809500 https://www.newsweek.com/pregnant-woman-poses-nuclear-waste-... * https://twitter.com/MadiHilly/status/1550148385931513856 https://twitter.com/MadiHilly/status/1550148385931513856 * https://twitter.com/MadiHilly/status/1671491294831493120 https://twitter.com/MadiHilly/status/1671491294831493120 Or Paris Ortiz-Wines: * https://twitter.com/ParisOrtizWines/status/1195184970613936129 https://twitter.com/ParisOrtizWines/status/11951849706139361... (The context here is not walking down some road and getting bombarded with particles: but about the storage of industrial material and the risks it involves. Yes, stuff gets shot out at >300 years: but it's not just lying around randomly.)
cameldrv 1y ago
The strange part psychologically is that saying it lasts 10,000 years somehow seems worse and more unmanageable than say cadmium or arsenic which last forever.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- natmaka 1y ago
  Other threats cannot compensate: defects and turpitudes of some (for example of certain waste of chemistry) do not form attenuating circumstance for others (nuclear waste). An accused defends himself badly by declaring to the judge "I am not the only culprit of homicide!".
benlivengood 1y ago
We can't even agree to keep under 2°C warming in 100 years, so I am also confused about why people are worried about waste that lasts 10K years. My guess is that they actually worry it will be leaked during their lifetime, whereas they know X° warming is beyond their lifetime.

potato3732842 1y ago

10k years isn't that long. Some concentrated chemical stuff with heavy metals or mercury or whatever in it will be toxic forever.

cycomanic 1y ago
The nuclear waste even without the radiation is going to be toxic. Anything with even trace amount of plutonium left (which has a half life time > 200,000 years), will be toxic (much more than e.g. mercury).
- mlyle 1y ago
  Eh, I don't think I agree. Let's talk about the long-lived isotopes: Pu-239 and Pu-242. Significant inhaled Pu-239 has a fair risk of causing cancer even after a long time. However mercury is volatile and it's a lot easier to end up inhaling fumes. And mercury is absorbed well through ingestion and Pu isn't, and most of the risk after ingestion would be chemical, not radiological. From that standpoint, it's looking a lot better than other heavy metals.
  - lazide 1y ago
    Huh? The reason we don’t have more solid non-radiological toxicity data on Plutonium (compared to other toxic heavy metals) is because any amount significant enough to count kills people radiologically super quick. That doesn’t mean it’s non-toxic if we ignore the radiological effects.
    - mlyle 1y ago
      We know: * Plutonium is not well absorbed by ingestion compared to other heavy metals and know ballpark ingestion toxicities * We also know that pretty much all the plutonium except the long-lived isotopes are gone on a timescale of tens of thousands of years-- leaving behind mostly uranium isotopes. * There's no real reason to believe this mixture of uranium and a small fraction of long-lived plutonium isotopes is significantly worse than ingesting uranium. It might be worse to inhale fine dust, though. * Mercury is way worse than uranium because it is so readily absorbed.
      - lazide 1y ago
        Elemental mercury is not absorbed at all. You’re probably thinking of methyl mercury and various mercury salts (which, by the way, are not very common). We have nearly zero experience with weathered or bio modified plutonium. And the experience we do have with plutonium compounds, is limited by the fact people die awfully fast when they’re anywhere near them. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Especially not when the evidence is absent because we can’t get there because everyone dies first from the more obvious bad things happening.
        philipkglass 1y ago
        And the experience we do have with plutonium compounds, is limited by the fact people die awfully fast when they’re anywhere near them. The US nuclear weapons program had several hundred people who were accidentally exposed to measurable doses of plutonium. Those workers did not die at the time. The government set up The United States Transuranium and Uranium Registries (USTUR) to track long term health outcomes for such exposed workers. https://wpcdn.web.wsu.edu/wp-spokane/uploads/sites/1058/2024/06/USTUR-0225-06.pdf https://wpcdn.web.wsu.edu/wp-spokane/uploads/sites/1058/2024... When I worked with the USTUR, they had also acquired some data from former workers in the Soviet nuclear weapons complex. The most exposed workers there received higher doses than any American workers. Even then health impacts were not immediately fatal. Here's the NIH summary on plutonium toxicology: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK599402/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK599402/ It's a lot to read, but there has yet to be a human plutonium exposure accident so severe that the exposed individual died quickly. Or at least no published accident of that sort. There is however a dose-dependent risk of lung cancer from inhaling aerosolized plutonium.
jjk166 1y ago
Admittedly, a lot of spent nuclear fuel waste is also toxic heavy metals and will remain so long after it stops being a radiation hazard.
- nandomrumber 1y ago
  Metals can be vitrified, rending them chemically inert. You can read more about vitrification of nuclear waste here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste
kibwen 1y ago
In addition to what the sibling commenter said, at the scale of human civilization, 10,000 years is forever.
- lesuorac 1y ago
  10,000 years may be forever but it's a rounding error compared to the "half-life" of lead that other power plants produce.
  - kibwen 1y ago
    No, forever isn't a rounding error compared to forever. No human civilization has any reason whatsoever to make any distinction between "this field over here will be safe for farming in 10,000 years" and "this field over here will never be safe for farming". In addition, nuclear isn't competing against coal, it's competing against solar.
    - nandomrumber 1y ago
      If anything is competing against solar, it's solar + batteries + high cost semiconductor switch yards + massive amounts of new transmission lines + replacing the panels every 20 - 30 years + being dependent on China for solar panels.
- natmaka 1y ago
  Even simply finding some adequate way to warn is a challenge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_nuclear_waste_warning_messages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_nuclear_waste_warnin...
- nandomrumber 1y ago
  The Great Pyramid of Giza is about half that years old. Pop all the waste in stainless steel casts huge pile in a geologically stable desert.
Synaesthesia 1y ago
10000 years is long. It's twice the length of the entire recorded history. I don't even know if mankind will survive another 100 years.
- echelon 1y ago
  > I don't even know if mankind will survive another 100 years. Then it reasons that we should absolutely use this fuel.
  - maxbond 1y ago
    If all else is held equal, then yes, that follows. But the debate is more or less that some think it will hasten that timeline (through nuclear warfare and accidents) and some think it will delay it (by reducing pollution/climate change).
    - M95D 1y ago
      Using nuclear fuel leaves less for weapons and more demand increases cost for weapons too. Accidents happen, but they won't be the end of our species.
      - maxbond 1y ago
        I think we should use more nuclear energy, I think nuclear powered container ships are under explored for instance. But it's not so simple. Nuclear energy programs can become nuclear weapons programs. A larger uranium mining and processing industry lowers the barriers of entry for building a weapons program. We're not going to exhaust our uranium reserves anytime soon. We're not going to be wiped out by a nuclear accidents, but we're heading into a future of stronger storms and more frequent wildfires, and nuclear power has a way of making disasters even worse.
        Synaesthesia 1y ago
        I've been thinking about nuclear powered container ships for a while. Ships burn the worst fuel, bunker fuel or heavy fuel oil. Nuclear is a lot more clean. And yes there's the risk of greater nuclear proliferation but we already have colossal stockpiles of nuclear weapons that pose a massive threat to mankind. That's been the reality for 70 years.

throw0101d 1y ago

> Yes, it stays active for 10k+ years, but it's actually not that expensive to store them at specialized storages forever. Because it's a very small amount on a grand scale. For some definition of "active". The first 6-10 years are quite dangerous, which is why stuff is in cooling pools. After about 200-300 years the most dangerous type of radiation (gamma) has mostly burned stopped, and you're left with alpha and beta, which can be stopped with tinfoil and even paper. I've heard the remark that after ~300 years the main way for nuclear waste to cause bad health effects is if you eat it or grind it up and snort it.

deepsun 1y ago
Sorry, but you're wrong. I took some radiation safety classes, and the main point I got from that is that "it depends". For example, alpha- and beta-radiation are often more dangerous than gamma, because gamma is easier to detect and measure. People often focus on "radiation" part forgetting the "contamination" part. You can literally walk into the Chernobyl reactor active zone today for up to 2 minutes. But you cannot produce any food in soils around it for thousand years. And there's dozens of dangerous isotopes, each one accumulating and affecting human tissues differently. Public generally only knows about Geiger counter. Yes, it will scream if everything is FUBAR, but it's useless for estimating safety of a food product.
- throw0101d 1y ago
  So nuclear waste is stored in casks: * https://www.nwmo.ca/canadas-used-nuclear-fuel/how-is-it-stored-today https://www.nwmo.ca/canadas-used-nuclear-fuel/how-is-it-stor... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_flask https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_flask Are you telling me it's unsafe? Someone better tell Madison Hill: * https://www.newsweek.com/pregnant-woman-poses-nuclear-waste-prove-point-about-radiation-idaho-1809500 https://www.newsweek.com/pregnant-woman-poses-nuclear-waste-... * https://twitter.com/MadiHilly/status/1550148385931513856 https://twitter.com/MadiHilly/status/1550148385931513856 * https://twitter.com/MadiHilly/status/1671491294831493120 https://twitter.com/MadiHilly/status/1671491294831493120 Or Paris Ortiz-Wines: * https://twitter.com/ParisOrtizWines/status/1195184970613936129 https://twitter.com/ParisOrtizWines/status/11951849706139361... (The context here is not walking down some road and getting bombarded with particles: but about the storage of industrial material and the risks it involves. Yes, stuff gets shot out at >300 years: but it's not just lying around randomly.)

cameldrv 1y ago

The strange part psychologically is that saying it lasts 10,000 years somehow seems worse and more unmanageable than say cadmium or arsenic which last forever.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
natmaka 1y ago
Other threats cannot compensate: defects and turpitudes of some (for example of certain waste of chemistry) do not form attenuating circumstance for others (nuclear waste). An accused defends himself badly by declaring to the judge "I am not the only culprit of homicide!".

benlivengood 1y ago

We can't even agree to keep under 2°C warming in 100 years, so I am also confused about why people are worried about waste that lasts 10K years. My guess is that they actually worry it will be leaked during their lifetime, whereas they know X° warming is beyond their lifetime.