3 ms·

> is trying to loosen regulations around nuclear waste disposal And here lies the problem that ever one wants to burry their head in the sand about. Can one,

> is trying to loosen regulations around nuclear waste disposal And here lies the problem that ever one wants to burry their head in the sand about. Can one, in theory, make safe nuclear reactors. You bet you can. The thing is that you cant leave a bunch of "we will deal with that later" problems laying around. In the case of the US thats spent fuel rods. Should one worry about these, no, but you also don't want them as the slats on your kids mattress frame. They are fine where they are. The French, because of fuel constraints, built fuel reprocessing into their nuclear "system" (and it is that, a whole system). We just leave spent fuel sitting around as a "later problem", because for us, its just much cheaper to mine and refine more uranium than it is to clean up the "spent" fuel we have. The moment that you need to build in reprocessing (and solve that pesky later problem) the economics of nuclear stop making sense.

fc417fc802 4mo ago
Whether or not waste is reprocessed there will be high level waste that needs to be disposed of. It's merely a matter of volume produced per unit of energy. Either approach is entirely reasonable. The inability of the US to formally approve a permanent disposal site is purely political. Still, at this point enough other countries have managed to do so that we might eventually be able to pay to export our waste to one of them instead of solving our own dysfunction.
- chickenbig 4mo ago
  > there will be high level waste that needs to be disposed of Fortunately it is self disposing, decaying away. Unlikely plain old mercury or arsenic.
  - zer00eyz 4mo ago
    The "high level waste" is the stuff that takes 10k years to decay. The big things that you get out of reprocessing nuclear fuel (other than usable uranium) are plutonium, Strontium, cesium ... the rest of the material left over (4%) gets embedded in glass and dumped in a deep pit and forgotten about. The things we might use (plutonium, strontium) have some rather "questionable" applications: https://thedefensepost.com/2026/07/08/darpa-nuclear-waste-drone-battery/ https://thedefensepost.com/2026/07/08/darpa-nuclear-waste-dr... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India–United_States_espionage_on_Nanda_Devi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India–United_States_espionage_...
    - chickenbig 3mo ago
      > The "high level waste" is the stuff that takes 10k years to decay. Well, there are many definitions, for instance https://ukinventory.nda.gov.uk/information-hub/factsheets/what-are-the-main-waste-categories/ https://ukinventory.nda.gov.uk/information-hub/factsheets/wh... is from the UK. > The big things that you get out of reprocessing nuclear fuel You generally extract the trans-uranics from fission products. The former needs more specific treatment to deal with their longer half lives (or turning into MOX, which ends up more expensive than using normal uranium). The latter get vitrified (who needs the Sr or Cs, really). > The things we might use (plutonium, strontium) have some rather "questionable" applications: The Pu-238 for the RTG is generally produced in trace quantities in reactors, with reactor grade plutonium containing mostly Pu-239 and Pu-240. I'm not a huge fan of these tiny RTG sources either. Spacecraft yes, otherwise ... proven to be somewhat dangerous when they become orphaned.
__float 4mo ago
What are the fuel constraints the French have that we don't? Is it geographic (we have a lot more unused/undesirable than France, for example), regulatory, etc?
- iamnothere 4mo ago
  They had access to uranium sourced cheaply from former North African colonies, but now they no longer have that access. We have ample deposits and (for now) easy access to Canadian deposits. I imagine that there are deals in place to secure that access at an efficient price given the national security angle at play.
  - __float 3mo ago
    Ah, you meant differences in access to fuel, not differences in storing the waste.
consensus1 4mo ago
Why can't you? All other forms of power generation do that.

fc417fc802 4mo ago

Whether or not waste is reprocessed there will be high level waste that needs to be disposed of. It's merely a matter of volume produced per unit of energy. Either approach is entirely reasonable. The inability of the US to formally approve a permanent disposal site is purely political. Still, at this point enough other countries have managed to do so that we might eventually be able to pay to export our waste to one of them instead of solving our own dysfunction.

chickenbig 4mo ago
> there will be high level waste that needs to be disposed of Fortunately it is self disposing, decaying away. Unlikely plain old mercury or arsenic.
- zer00eyz 4mo ago
  The "high level waste" is the stuff that takes 10k years to decay. The big things that you get out of reprocessing nuclear fuel (other than usable uranium) are plutonium, Strontium, cesium ... the rest of the material left over (4%) gets embedded in glass and dumped in a deep pit and forgotten about. The things we might use (plutonium, strontium) have some rather "questionable" applications: https://thedefensepost.com/2026/07/08/darpa-nuclear-waste-drone-battery/ https://thedefensepost.com/2026/07/08/darpa-nuclear-waste-dr... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India–United_States_espionage_on_Nanda_Devi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India–United_States_espionage_...
  - chickenbig 3mo ago
    > The "high level waste" is the stuff that takes 10k years to decay. Well, there are many definitions, for instance https://ukinventory.nda.gov.uk/information-hub/factsheets/what-are-the-main-waste-categories/ https://ukinventory.nda.gov.uk/information-hub/factsheets/wh... is from the UK. > The big things that you get out of reprocessing nuclear fuel You generally extract the trans-uranics from fission products. The former needs more specific treatment to deal with their longer half lives (or turning into MOX, which ends up more expensive than using normal uranium). The latter get vitrified (who needs the Sr or Cs, really). > The things we might use (plutonium, strontium) have some rather "questionable" applications: The Pu-238 for the RTG is generally produced in trace quantities in reactors, with reactor grade plutonium containing mostly Pu-239 and Pu-240. I'm not a huge fan of these tiny RTG sources either. Spacecraft yes, otherwise ... proven to be somewhat dangerous when they become orphaned.

__float 4mo ago

What are the fuel constraints the French have that we don't? Is it geographic (we have a lot more unused/undesirable than France, for example), regulatory, etc?

iamnothere 4mo ago
They had access to uranium sourced cheaply from former North African colonies, but now they no longer have that access. We have ample deposits and (for now) easy access to Canadian deposits. I imagine that there are deals in place to secure that access at an efficient price given the national security angle at play.
- __float 3mo ago
  Ah, you meant differences in access to fuel, not differences in storing the waste.

consensus1 4mo ago

Why can't you? All other forms of power generation do that.