5 ms·

And solar is rapidly out-competing and out-innovating both.

ars 13y ago
Maybe. Photovoltaic solar produces lots of waste, more than nuclear. And it requires lots of land. Solar thermal is much more efficient but it's expensive and no one seems to be doing it in scale. And it too requires lots of land. And don't say we have lots of land, we do, but it's remote, so you need a lot of infrastructure to make use of it. We can do that (we did for hydrocarbons), but it's not a slam dunk. Because of that, nuclear produces less waste and is better for the environment.
- techdmn 13y ago
  I continue to be confused about how nuclear can be considered better / cheaper / cleaner without factoring the cost of storing the waste for 10,000 years. We seem to struggle with unintended consequences of waste management on the decade scale, let alone several millennia.
  - saulrh 13y ago
    Plastic bags last longer in landfills than nuclear waste will last in a repository; plastic photodegrades in about 500 years, multiply by a two-hundred-meter-deep landfill and that plastic will finish going away in about a million years [1]. Nuclear waste is fundamentally static; unlike tailings, it pretty much stays where you put it. Coal plants actually produce titanic amounts of radiation, vastly more than nuke plants, thanks to impurities in coal, and that radioactivity is going straight into the atmosphere [2]. Nuke plants don't produce that much waste in the first place; thirty tons a year, compared to millions of tons of radioactive, caustic fly ash [3, 4]. And, finally, the kinds of nuclear reactors we can build these days simply don't produce waste that lasts that long; a good breeder reactor eats anything that's immediately dangerous (short half-life -> lots of radiation) or long-term dangerous (long half-life -> not much radiation) [5]. [1] http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2007/06/will_my_plastic_bag_still_be_here_in_2507.html http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/20... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_plant#Radioactive_trace_elements http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_plant#Radioactive_trace_el... [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_waste#High-level_waste http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_waste#High-level_waste [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fly_ash#Environmental_problems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fly_ash#Environmental_problems [5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor#Waste_reduction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor#Waste_reduction
    - vacri 13y ago
      multiply by a two-hundred-meter-deep landfill and that plastic will finish going away in about a million years You can take a landfill, put dirt over the top, and now you have parkland for people to use. It's happened to two intracity landfills within a couple of kilometers of where I live. The same can't be done with nuclear waste.
      - ars 13y ago
        > The same can't be done with nuclear waste. Why not? Just bury it a bit deeper. But it doesn't matter - you don't need to. Unlike bags, there is so little nuclear waste we can afford to dedicate one tiny area to it. The entire nuclear waste of the US in the past 40 years can fit in a room 350 feet on each side. (Basically 1 city block.) That's it. That's all the space you need for the entire united states!
        jessaustin 13y ago
        Why don't they do that then? Why do I keep seeing news of waste languishing in temporary storage, being "secretly" moved to different temporary storage, drifting in dust form over entire communities, leaking out into groundwater, etc.? Maybe DOE should hire some HN experts so they'll learn how the job ought to be done? As much money as the nuclear industry has stolen from taxpayers, I think they can afford you.
        unabridged 13y ago
        They tried to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_repository https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_r... But "environmentalists" stepped in and ended funding. Now we are stuck with the current situation of pretty much every power plant for themselves and storage all over the country.
        webmaven 13y ago
        The main problems with Yucca Mountain were that the site wasn't really suitable (permeable geology, nearby water table, seismic activity). Unfortunately, the best sites for such a long term storage facility would be in the northeast under a geologically stable mountain made of impermeable granite, but those sites were removed from consideration by congressional fiat a while back.
  - ars 13y ago
    Aside from the excellent reply by saulrh the waste not a problem because there is just so little of it. (Plus with a bit of confidence and engineering we can burn all the waste to energy, leaving nothing at all.)
  - scotty79 13y ago
    You can factor in cost of storing. It should get exponentially cheaper as we store more and more. And single decent nuclear conflict and the cost of storing nuclear waste drops to zero.
  - Squarel 13y ago
    This is usually because proponents of nuclear energy are not pushing for "traditional" reactors, but for Breeder reactors. These were the direction we were headed in the 60s, unfortunately, we then discovered that Uranium was not as rare as we thought it was, and in our usual manner, decided to go for the conventional ones we have today. Whilst breeder reactors produce waste, they can also reuse it, as well as being more efficient. Some proponents say they would allow us to reuse today's nuclear waste. Additionally, the waste produced has a shorter half life than the waste produced from conventional reactors.
- cbr 13y ago
  Solar thermal is much more efficient but it's expensive and no one seems to be doing it in scale. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Energy_Generating_Systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Energy_Generating_System... or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PS10_solar_power_plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PS10_solar_power_plant
- moocowduckquack 13y ago
  Photovoltaic solar produces lots of waste, more than nuclear. It produces treatable wastes, ones that can be allowed to enter the normal economy and processed, rather than wastes we are so scared of that we can't let anybody touch them and so inject them into deep water aquifers instead. Also, all waste comparisons I have seen people make with nuclear generally seem to only include volume of spent fuel, and not the wastes from the process of making the fuel in the first place, which are several orders of magnitude greater.

ars 13y ago

Maybe. Photovoltaic solar produces lots of waste, more than nuclear. And it requires lots of land. Solar thermal is much more efficient but it's expensive and no one seems to be doing it in scale. And it too requires lots of land. And don't say we have lots of land, we do, but it's remote, so you need a lot of infrastructure to make use of it. We can do that (we did for hydrocarbons), but it's not a slam dunk. Because of that, nuclear produces less waste and is better for the environment.

techdmn 13y ago
I continue to be confused about how nuclear can be considered better / cheaper / cleaner without factoring the cost of storing the waste for 10,000 years. We seem to struggle with unintended consequences of waste management on the decade scale, let alone several millennia.
- saulrh 13y ago
  Plastic bags last longer in landfills than nuclear waste will last in a repository; plastic photodegrades in about 500 years, multiply by a two-hundred-meter-deep landfill and that plastic will finish going away in about a million years [1]. Nuclear waste is fundamentally static; unlike tailings, it pretty much stays where you put it. Coal plants actually produce titanic amounts of radiation, vastly more than nuke plants, thanks to impurities in coal, and that radioactivity is going straight into the atmosphere [2]. Nuke plants don't produce that much waste in the first place; thirty tons a year, compared to millions of tons of radioactive, caustic fly ash [3, 4]. And, finally, the kinds of nuclear reactors we can build these days simply don't produce waste that lasts that long; a good breeder reactor eats anything that's immediately dangerous (short half-life -> lots of radiation) or long-term dangerous (long half-life -> not much radiation) [5]. [1] http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2007/06/will_my_plastic_bag_still_be_here_in_2507.html http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/20... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_plant#Radioactive_trace_elements http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_plant#Radioactive_trace_el... [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_waste#High-level_waste http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_waste#High-level_waste [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fly_ash#Environmental_problems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fly_ash#Environmental_problems [5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor#Waste_reduction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor#Waste_reduction
  - vacri 13y ago
    multiply by a two-hundred-meter-deep landfill and that plastic will finish going away in about a million years You can take a landfill, put dirt over the top, and now you have parkland for people to use. It's happened to two intracity landfills within a couple of kilometers of where I live. The same can't be done with nuclear waste.
    - ars 13y ago
      > The same can't be done with nuclear waste. Why not? Just bury it a bit deeper. But it doesn't matter - you don't need to. Unlike bags, there is so little nuclear waste we can afford to dedicate one tiny area to it. The entire nuclear waste of the US in the past 40 years can fit in a room 350 feet on each side. (Basically 1 city block.) That's it. That's all the space you need for the entire united states!
      - jessaustin 13y ago
        Why don't they do that then? Why do I keep seeing news of waste languishing in temporary storage, being "secretly" moved to different temporary storage, drifting in dust form over entire communities, leaking out into groundwater, etc.? Maybe DOE should hire some HN experts so they'll learn how the job ought to be done? As much money as the nuclear industry has stolen from taxpayers, I think they can afford you.
        unabridged 13y ago
        They tried to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_repository https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_r... But "environmentalists" stepped in and ended funding. Now we are stuck with the current situation of pretty much every power plant for themselves and storage all over the country.
        webmaven 13y ago
        The main problems with Yucca Mountain were that the site wasn't really suitable (permeable geology, nearby water table, seismic activity). Unfortunately, the best sites for such a long term storage facility would be in the northeast under a geologically stable mountain made of impermeable granite, but those sites were removed from consideration by congressional fiat a while back.
- ars 13y ago
  Aside from the excellent reply by saulrh the waste not a problem because there is just so little of it. (Plus with a bit of confidence and engineering we can burn all the waste to energy, leaving nothing at all.)
- scotty79 13y ago
  You can factor in cost of storing. It should get exponentially cheaper as we store more and more. And single decent nuclear conflict and the cost of storing nuclear waste drops to zero.
- Squarel 13y ago
  This is usually because proponents of nuclear energy are not pushing for "traditional" reactors, but for Breeder reactors. These were the direction we were headed in the 60s, unfortunately, we then discovered that Uranium was not as rare as we thought it was, and in our usual manner, decided to go for the conventional ones we have today. Whilst breeder reactors produce waste, they can also reuse it, as well as being more efficient. Some proponents say they would allow us to reuse today's nuclear waste. Additionally, the waste produced has a shorter half life than the waste produced from conventional reactors.
cbr 13y ago
Solar thermal is much more efficient but it's expensive and no one seems to be doing it in scale. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Energy_Generating_Systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Energy_Generating_System... or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PS10_solar_power_plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PS10_solar_power_plant
moocowduckquack 13y ago
Photovoltaic solar produces lots of waste, more than nuclear. It produces treatable wastes, ones that can be allowed to enter the normal economy and processed, rather than wastes we are so scared of that we can't let anybody touch them and so inject them into deep water aquifers instead. Also, all waste comparisons I have seen people make with nuclear generally seem to only include volume of spent fuel, and not the wastes from the process of making the fuel in the first place, which are several orders of magnitude greater.