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> nuclear waste will last forever Nuclear 'waste' is just waiting to become new nuclear 'fuel' in a fast neutron or 'breeder' reactor. Treated this way the vol

> nuclear waste will last forever Nuclear 'waste' is just waiting to become new nuclear 'fuel' in a fast neutron or 'breeder' reactor. Treated this way the volume of nuclear waste can be reduced by 90% while the remaining highly radioactive waste only needs to be stored for some hundreds of years instead of thousands due to its much shorter half life. It also extends the viability of nuclear fission (as opposed to fusion) by a factor of 10 by producing new fissionable material.

pfdietz 11mo ago
Recycled plutonium has negative value. It costs more to fabricate fuel elements out of it than it saves in uranium mining and enrichment costs. There is no great financial windfall waiting here.
- hagbard_c 10mo ago
  There is, however, a marked reduction in the amount of nuclear waste in need of storage as well as a marked increase in the amount of available fissionable material. Given that one of the arguments against nuclear fission is the amount of waste which needs to be stored for a very long period this in itself is worth the effort of reprocessing spent fuel pellets. Do this at a large enough scale and the price of reprocessing will come down as well. As long as nuclear fusion is still 10 to 30 years away nuclear fission is one of the few reliable day-and-night hell-or-high-water power sources which doesn't (or, let's rephrase it, shouldn't) scare those who believe in the CO₂ scare nor does it (or, also rephrased, should it) rely on resources from politically volatile regions.
  - pfdietz 10mo ago
    Waste handling is also a bad argument for reprocessing. It turns out it's cheaper to just procrastinate. If you want to reprocess to reduce waste, you spend less money (incorporating the time value of money) if you wait 10 years. And then you spend less if you wait another 10 years. And so on, indefinitely.
    - hagbard_c 10mo ago
      You keep on returning to the argument that it costs less to do X instead of Y while I point out that one of the arguments against nuclear power has been the problems with nuclear 'waste' as well as the fact that reprocessing this 'waste' increases the amount of fissionable 'fuel' by a large factor. It may cost less money to ignore the 'waste' problem but doing so only adds fuel to the fire stoked by those who want to stop nuclear power no matter what. If access to enough fissionable material is guaranteed - in other words if that material is found within national borders and can be mined without hindrance by 'green' activists (which is not the case in e.g. Sweden where Uranium is available but not mined) and there is a stable storage facility for the resulting nuclear 'waste' and the same 'green' activists are kept at bay it may a good solution to 'procrastinate'. You'll notice there's a lot of 'ifs' in that sentence. s long as nuclear fusion is not available it makes sense to further develop nuclear fission, including the 'waste' problem.
      - pfdietz 10mo ago
        I keep returning to cost because it's the only issue that matters. Nuclear power is in trouble because it costs too much. The other issues -- safety, waste, proliferation -- they don't make any difference. Make nuclear much cheaper and we'd build much more of it. Improve any of those other metrics without making it cheaper and it will go nowhere. Cost also matters because in any situation where choices have to be made between alternatives, you need a way to evaluate the tradeoffs. This can only be done by reducing the alternatives to a metric that can be compared, and that metric is in units of some currency. Even human life is reduced to a dollar value when evaluating choices, the so-called "statistical value of a human life".
        hagbard_c 10mo ago
        Nuclear power is expensive partly because it is bound and tied in endless bundles of regulation and legislation even though going by the statistics it is one of the most safe power sources available. Take away the regulatory burden - which does not mean 'let them do whatever they want', it means 'make sure it is safe and no more than that' - and it will get less expensive rather quickly. Stop treating every single nuclear power plant as a on-off project which needs its own decade-long regulatory approval, replace it with type approved reactor systems and most of those issues disappear. Nuclear power is expensive because it is supposed to so expensive not to be viable, not because of inherent problems with nuclear power. If the same regulatory burden had been placed on e.g. wind and solar - treat every turbine as a one-off project in need of approval, use land use approval procedures to stall construction, put a turbine blade recycle burden on the turbine owner, etc - those power sources would be just as expensive and unviable. The same goes for coal, oil and gas plants, hydropower installations - which are starting to be treated similarly where I live (Sweden) since the 'green' politicos decided they don't like small-scale power hydro plants - and any other power source. Regulations can make or break a power source, in case of nuclear it seems to be hell-bent on breaking it.

pfdietz 11mo ago

Recycled plutonium has negative value. It costs more to fabricate fuel elements out of it than it saves in uranium mining and enrichment costs. There is no great financial windfall waiting here.

hagbard_c 10mo ago
There is, however, a marked reduction in the amount of nuclear waste in need of storage as well as a marked increase in the amount of available fissionable material. Given that one of the arguments against nuclear fission is the amount of waste which needs to be stored for a very long period this in itself is worth the effort of reprocessing spent fuel pellets. Do this at a large enough scale and the price of reprocessing will come down as well. As long as nuclear fusion is still 10 to 30 years away nuclear fission is one of the few reliable day-and-night hell-or-high-water power sources which doesn't (or, let's rephrase it, shouldn't) scare those who believe in the CO₂ scare nor does it (or, also rephrased, should it) rely on resources from politically volatile regions.
- pfdietz 10mo ago
  Waste handling is also a bad argument for reprocessing. It turns out it's cheaper to just procrastinate. If you want to reprocess to reduce waste, you spend less money (incorporating the time value of money) if you wait 10 years. And then you spend less if you wait another 10 years. And so on, indefinitely.
  - hagbard_c 10mo ago
    You keep on returning to the argument that it costs less to do X instead of Y while I point out that one of the arguments against nuclear power has been the problems with nuclear 'waste' as well as the fact that reprocessing this 'waste' increases the amount of fissionable 'fuel' by a large factor. It may cost less money to ignore the 'waste' problem but doing so only adds fuel to the fire stoked by those who want to stop nuclear power no matter what. If access to enough fissionable material is guaranteed - in other words if that material is found within national borders and can be mined without hindrance by 'green' activists (which is not the case in e.g. Sweden where Uranium is available but not mined) and there is a stable storage facility for the resulting nuclear 'waste' and the same 'green' activists are kept at bay it may a good solution to 'procrastinate'. You'll notice there's a lot of 'ifs' in that sentence. s long as nuclear fusion is not available it makes sense to further develop nuclear fission, including the 'waste' problem.
    - pfdietz 10mo ago
      I keep returning to cost because it's the only issue that matters. Nuclear power is in trouble because it costs too much. The other issues -- safety, waste, proliferation -- they don't make any difference. Make nuclear much cheaper and we'd build much more of it. Improve any of those other metrics without making it cheaper and it will go nowhere. Cost also matters because in any situation where choices have to be made between alternatives, you need a way to evaluate the tradeoffs. This can only be done by reducing the alternatives to a metric that can be compared, and that metric is in units of some currency. Even human life is reduced to a dollar value when evaluating choices, the so-called "statistical value of a human life".
      - hagbard_c 10mo ago
        Nuclear power is expensive partly because it is bound and tied in endless bundles of regulation and legislation even though going by the statistics it is one of the most safe power sources available. Take away the regulatory burden - which does not mean 'let them do whatever they want', it means 'make sure it is safe and no more than that' - and it will get less expensive rather quickly. Stop treating every single nuclear power plant as a on-off project which needs its own decade-long regulatory approval, replace it with type approved reactor systems and most of those issues disappear. Nuclear power is expensive because it is supposed to so expensive not to be viable, not because of inherent problems with nuclear power. If the same regulatory burden had been placed on e.g. wind and solar - treat every turbine as a one-off project in need of approval, use land use approval procedures to stall construction, put a turbine blade recycle burden on the turbine owner, etc - those power sources would be just as expensive and unviable. The same goes for coal, oil and gas plants, hydropower installations - which are starting to be treated similarly where I live (Sweden) since the 'green' politicos decided they don't like small-scale power hydro plants - and any other power source. Regulations can make or break a power source, in case of nuclear it seems to be hell-bent on breaking it.