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From what I understand the waste problem is tremendously overblown. Move it to some storage facility somewhere, that's fine. Just keep it on site, that's fine t
by indoordin0saur 4mo ago
From what I understand the waste problem is tremendously overblown. Move it to some storage facility somewhere, that's fine. Just keep it on site, that's fine too. A typical gigawatt reactor produces about 20 tons of waste annually, which sounds like a lot but remember this stuff is quite dense, so it would actually take 4 years to fill up a standard shipping container.
The storage units for this stuff is incredibly robust and safe. Radioactive stuff is also incredibly easy to detect. No company or reactor could ever leak into the community in a covert way. People would know right away. IMO, this is much less scary than being next to a chemical plant.
- koolba 4mo agoPlanning on storing it locally solves the problem of transport. Nobody wants an 18-wheeler hauling a couple tons of nuclear waste driving by their neighborhood. That’s regardless of how far away it’s going.
- crote 4mo ago[dead]
- Krasnol 4mo agoWaste which will be here for many generations of humans and can seriously harm them is overblown? It never cases to amaze me how much blatant misinformation circulates around this topic. Just a few years ago, nobody sane would have predicted Trump. How can anybody seriously predict what would happen to this waste in a few years? I'm not even talking about generations here.
- throwthrowuknow 4mo agoLike they said, if it’s properly stored and monitored it’s not going to harm anyone. If you’re worried about some kind of societal collapse leading to it being abandoned, well in that case there are much bigger problems that are more immediately dangerous.
- Krasnol 4mo agoDo you know it will still be properly monitored in 100 years? What about 1000? How would you know if there are even people left who know what it is?? May be societal collapse isn't a problem. Maybe we're having a nice new beginning but someone finds some nice, warm stuff?
- mpweiher 4mo agoIn 100 years: sure. Unless we have civilizational collapse in which case a bit of nuclear waste will be the least of our problems. It won't have to be monitored for a 1000 years. First, by that time the level of radioactivity is very low, and when it's in a deep-geological repository (like the ones we already use for vastly greater amounts of highly toxic chemicals that never decay) it is gone. We know enough about how geology works.
- frm88 4mo agoWe know enough about how geology works. We also know how a BLU-122 works. Can you be sure the US wouldn't use one on its allies in yet another moment of irrational tantrum? What about Russia?
- mpweiher 4mo agoHow does the BLU-122 relate to a deep geological repository, in your esteemed opinion? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_geological_repository https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_geological_repository
- Krasnol 4mo agoIt won't be "the least of our problems", it would be an additional problem. The fuel and related will have to be monitored for 1000 years and more. Yes, we know how geology works, which is why we have found a single place where it might be safe. ONE.
- mpweiher 4mo ago
- palata 4mo agoAgain, destroy a dam and you get a catastrophe. Don't do anything in particular and watch how many people die in the mid-term due to climate change. It's all about risk management.
- leonidasrup 4mo agoThe most deadly industrial accident was the 1975 Banqiao Dam failure, with estimates of the death toll ranging from 26,000 to 240,000. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure
- oneshtein 4mo agoThe dam is built to protect from floods.
- DANmode 4mo agoIs this a Katrina reference?
- Krasnol 4mo agoYeah but the risk management of a dam is ridiculously small compared to waste which will be dangerous so far into future that we might not know if people will even know what it is. A dam damming water at a hill is obvious. Some warm stuff set up like something really special, is not.
- palata 4mo agoYet dams have killed more people than nuclear plants.
- Krasnol 4mo agoThey have been around a bit longer don't you think? How many nuclear actually killed is unknown because it's not as easy as: something happens, people drown. It's more like: something happens, a few die fast, the rest dies earlier, their children live shorter or have disabilities, their children also, and so on. Meanwhile collecting waste which will do the same for later generations who might not remember what nuclear energy even is.
- Mawr 4mo agoYou realize we're literally dispersing coal, gas & gasoline fumes into the atmosphere that we all breathe, right? 24/7? Yeah, small amounts of solid waste sitting somewhere is as much of a non issue as can be.
- Krasnol 4mo agoYeah I know this Shillenberger tactic of playing "you love coal because you hate nuclear". It is no argument or discussion happening in real life now. It is nuclear vs. renewables and nuclear is losing. ...also those are not small amounts. The fuel may be a small amount but there is much much more that needs to disappear in holes we don't have.
- bethekidyouwant 4mo agoCorrect as long as we still have Geiger counters.. I’m not sure what kind of apocalypse you’re planning for. Maybe get a radon detection kit for your basement.
- Krasnol 4mo agoI'm not planning for anything because you can't plan for the next decade atm. How would you plan for 100s and 1000s of years? We should REDUCE the danger to those generations and not make it larger for no sane reason.
- mpweiher 4mo agoNuclear is REDUCING the overall danger. Because the alternatives are much more dangerous.
- Krasnol 4mo agoHow are renewables more dangerous?
- mpweiher 4mo ago"How" is not really a relevant question in this context. They are, empirically. Though it has to be said that solar/wind and nuclear are all extremely safe, meaning it doesn't really matter that much which of these you use, the overall risk is always going to be very low, and the relative numbers are going to be very sensitive to small changes or variations in analyses. Hydro is significantly more dangerous, and all the fossil fuels are tremendously more dangerous. Due to the fact that intermittent renewables usually require fossil backup for that majority of countries that don't have abundant hydro, you have to take that into account. A 2013 paper by NASA showed that nuclear power had saved around 1.84 million lives by 2011. https://www.giss.nasa.gov/pubs/abs/kh05000e.html https://www.giss.nasa.gov/pubs/abs/kh05000e.html A 2019 study shows that reduced use of nuclear energy post-Fukushima cost hundreds of thousands of lives. https://columbia.edu/~mhs119/Kharecha.Sato_Jpn.Ger_post.Fukushima_EI.CSAS.pop.sci_FINAL_6.15.19.pdf https://columbia.edu/~mhs119/Kharecha.Sato_Jpn.Ger_post.Fuku... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421519303611 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030142151... Whereas the WHO predicts that there will be no measurable health effects on the general Japanese public from Fukushima, and the majority of negative health consequences were from the unnecessary evacuations. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0957582017300782 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095758201... Radiophobia kills! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiophobia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiophobia
- aeturnum 4mo agoI find this to be the most frustrating aspect of the nuclear discourse. The "waste problem" is technically solved (we believe, gotta wait ~10k years to know) in a way that depends on a social solution that doesn't seem to exist. Pro-nuke people will handwave it away, ignoring the total failure to secure storage sites in most places, and the anti-nuclear people treat it as a fatal flaw in the technology (which it isn't). That said waste storage is, arguably, the only problem that matters for nuclear power today. Every stage is expensive and controversial: on site storage, transport to long term storage, long term storage. As for "[n]o company or reactor could ever leak into the community in a covert way" you're right in the sense that, if you're testing your water daily for tritium you'll catch it, but how often does that happen? You can refer to the official list of US leaks[1] to see how many of them have months attached to the dates - often with high values! The point is that all industrial processes are easy to safeguard with sufficient testing and oversight. But the challenge of communicating that (and then actually implementing such a system) are substantial and historically unsolved. Consider, if you will, the discourse around the JCPOA with people insisting the Iranians would cheat. "How!?" you, an informed reader, might ask - but again we are back to convincing people of the sufficiency of technical solutions they do not have the background to solve. It is a very hard problem that is arguably harder than nuclear engineering (a problem we've made considerably more progress on in the last 70 years). [1] https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML2432/ML24320A014.pdf https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML2432/ML24320A014.pdf
- leonidasrup 4mo agoIf you are looking in tritium leaks, I would encourage to look into leaks from coal power plants, which are gigantic in comparison to nuclear power plants. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston_Fossil_Plant_coal_fly_ash_slurry_spill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston_Fossil_Plant_coal_fly... https://publicinterestnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Factsheet-CoalAsh.pdf https://publicinterestnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10...
- aeturnum 4mo agoThis is a perfect example of what I am talking about. Yes coal power is worse! I know that and clearly you know that. What are we even talking about? So far, in the over half-century of efforts, the fact that coal is unsafe has never convinced anyone that nuclear power is safe. Those are two separate situations. I merely cited the tritium leaks as a counterexample of the hubris of the post I was replying to suggesting they would be immediately detected. I do not think the approach you are taking has shown promise in convincing people to cite plants or house waste. If anything I think it's damaged it.
- pocksuppet 4mo agoIf you assume a continuous chain of custody for the next 10000 years, it's pretty trivial, but how do you make that happen? It's beyond all known technology. So you can't. When Russia bombs that facility, how big will the exclusion zone be? At some point in the next 10000 years, it's not unlikely, it's not likely, it's guaranteed that there will be a war, and the facility will be bombed, or the custodians will be drafted or will just move to the city looking for work, and the nuclear post will be left abandoned (remember Russia's RTGs?), or the descendants will pass the wrong care instructions on to their descendants, and then the containers will rust and start leaching into the water supply. As long as you have a country with operating nuclear reactors you probably have all the infrastructure to keep waste safe. What when you don't? Imagine that literally, not metaphorically, the devil came to earth in the time of the Neanderthals, destroyed almost everything, and some heroic Neanderthals managed to seal him in a box. If the box isn't taken care of the devil can break out again. Do we still have those care instructions? Is anyone executing them? There are religions from hundreds of years ago (not as long as needed!) which say you must do something or the world ends. We consider them all fairy stories, and they probably are. What if one wasn't? Then we'd be fucked because we wouldn't be following the instructions, right? Nuclear waste storage would be in that bucket. At least the fallout will be localized. You're not destroying the world with careless handling of nuclear waste. You may make a limited region uninhabitable for thousands of years, and detectably reduce global lifespans by a few years and increase cancer rates by a few percent.
- Moldoteck 4mo agoThe purpose of deep geo facility is to be deep. Bombing something 500m deep underground makes little sense when russia can use dirty bombs directly. Besides - humanity already has such facilities for vast of toxic waste, prime example being Herfa Neurode. It's not like we ban all electronics due to arsenic waste from copper mining