The Problem of Nuclear Waste Disposal - and How Finland Solved It (arstechnica.com) 146
"Even if all nuclear power plants were shut down today, there's a mountain of radioactive waste waiting to be disposed of," reports Ars Technica. "Yet only Finland has an approved solution for nuclear waste disposal, while projects in the US, UK, and Germany have failed for decades, and progress is also slow in other countries."
So how did Finland construct a safe nuclear waste repository? Ars Technica asked Antti Mustonen, who's a research manager with Posiva, the organization in charge of the Finnish repository: Finland has a lot of hard crystalline bedrock and many places that are potentially suitable for a repository. The country eventually chose an island on the Baltic coast for its Onkalo repository, and it hopes to seal off the first tunnel of nuclear waste sometime around 2025....
Even after it has cooled in ponds for decades, spent nuclear fuel gives out heat by radioactive decay, raising the temperature near the waste canisters. This heat could potentially corrode the canisters, compromise the bentonite, or even crack the rock face. Therefore, the Finnish and Swedish designs separate individual waste canisters in their own disposal shafts to avoid excessive heat buildup.... Posiva is currently conducting a long-term, full-sized demonstration using heaters in dummy canisters surrounded by bentonite and temperature probes. After three years, the temperature at the canister boundary is about 70Â C, Mustonen said. A similar test in Switzerland lasted 18 years and found that bentonite "remains suitable as a sealing material" up to at least 100 degrees C....
But to project how the rock and groundwater will affect humans living near the site in future millennia, the scientists must model that numerically using the tests and data as the starting point. "We have modeled to that million years... with different scenarios and what the likely releases [are], and it seems that the releases are acceptable," Mustonen told me.... Scientists then project what will happen to the waste over the next million years, assuming everything works as planned. They also model for several "what if" scenarios. This projection includes looking at the stresses and groundwater pressures caused by possibilities like being buried deep under a future ice sheet and then having that ice sheet melt away, sea level changes, changes in groundwater chemistry, and failures of canisters. At Onkalo, even in the worst case, scientists calculate that the maximum dose released to humans would be one-tenth of the regulatory limit, which itself is about a hundredth of the normal dose that Finns receive every year.
But the article also asks what Finland's experience can teach other countries. One person who worked on America's unsuccessful Yucca Mountain project was Dr. Jane Long, former associate director for energy and environment at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Long tells the site that "They should have set requirements for an inherently safe site and then investigated whether the site met the requirements instead of choosing the site for political reasons and then trying to show the site was suitable."
And they seem to agree in Finland: "More than the geology, I think it's socio-economic aspects" that determine if a project can go ahead, Mustonen told me. A key lesson is that the top-down designation of sites for nuclear waste disposal has generally failed. The UK failed in 1987, 1997, and 2013. In the US, politicians campaigned against the Yucca Mountain project, characterizing its authorization as the "Screw Nevada Bill...."
Yucca Mountain's wasted $15 billion pales in comparison to the roughly $50 billion in damages that American taxpayers have had to pay to nuclear utilities because the government was unable to honor its commitment to receive nuclear waste by 1998. Meanwhile, more waste is piling up.
Thanks to Slashdot reader atcclears for submitting the story.
So how did Finland construct a safe nuclear waste repository? Ars Technica asked Antti Mustonen, who's a research manager with Posiva, the organization in charge of the Finnish repository: Finland has a lot of hard crystalline bedrock and many places that are potentially suitable for a repository. The country eventually chose an island on the Baltic coast for its Onkalo repository, and it hopes to seal off the first tunnel of nuclear waste sometime around 2025....
Even after it has cooled in ponds for decades, spent nuclear fuel gives out heat by radioactive decay, raising the temperature near the waste canisters. This heat could potentially corrode the canisters, compromise the bentonite, or even crack the rock face. Therefore, the Finnish and Swedish designs separate individual waste canisters in their own disposal shafts to avoid excessive heat buildup.... Posiva is currently conducting a long-term, full-sized demonstration using heaters in dummy canisters surrounded by bentonite and temperature probes. After three years, the temperature at the canister boundary is about 70Â C, Mustonen said. A similar test in Switzerland lasted 18 years and found that bentonite "remains suitable as a sealing material" up to at least 100 degrees C....
But to project how the rock and groundwater will affect humans living near the site in future millennia, the scientists must model that numerically using the tests and data as the starting point. "We have modeled to that million years... with different scenarios and what the likely releases [are], and it seems that the releases are acceptable," Mustonen told me.... Scientists then project what will happen to the waste over the next million years, assuming everything works as planned. They also model for several "what if" scenarios. This projection includes looking at the stresses and groundwater pressures caused by possibilities like being buried deep under a future ice sheet and then having that ice sheet melt away, sea level changes, changes in groundwater chemistry, and failures of canisters. At Onkalo, even in the worst case, scientists calculate that the maximum dose released to humans would be one-tenth of the regulatory limit, which itself is about a hundredth of the normal dose that Finns receive every year.
But the article also asks what Finland's experience can teach other countries. One person who worked on America's unsuccessful Yucca Mountain project was Dr. Jane Long, former associate director for energy and environment at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Long tells the site that "They should have set requirements for an inherently safe site and then investigated whether the site met the requirements instead of choosing the site for political reasons and then trying to show the site was suitable."
And they seem to agree in Finland: "More than the geology, I think it's socio-economic aspects" that determine if a project can go ahead, Mustonen told me. A key lesson is that the top-down designation of sites for nuclear waste disposal has generally failed. The UK failed in 1987, 1997, and 2013. In the US, politicians campaigned against the Yucca Mountain project, characterizing its authorization as the "Screw Nevada Bill...."
Yucca Mountain's wasted $15 billion pales in comparison to the roughly $50 billion in damages that American taxpayers have had to pay to nuclear utilities because the government was unable to honor its commitment to receive nuclear waste by 1998. Meanwhile, more waste is piling up.
Thanks to Slashdot reader atcclears for submitting the story.
subduction zones (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Just drop it in subduction zones in the ocean, let the planet eat it.
Well we did that for a time. We did just dumping it into the ocean, then tried dumping in the really deep parts of the ocean, etc, etc, etc... Went incredibly smashing. UNCLOS drew up some resolution in 1957 about the matter. After everyone got to have front row seats to how awesome an idea nuclear waste in the ocean was, in 1975 pretty much every country agreed to the resolution (I give this world credit, it at least didn't take them a full twenty years to figure this one out, just close to it). This
Uninformative post [Re:subduction zones] (Score:5, Insightful)
Just drop it in subduction zones in the ocean, let the planet eat it.
Well we did that for a time. We did just dumping it into the ocean, then tried dumping in the really deep parts of the ocean, etc, etc, etc... Went incredibly smashing.
I don't know what this phrase means, "went incredibly smashing". Went smashingly well? Smashingly poorly? Just smashed because of pressure?
What happened?
UNCLOS drew up some resolution in 1957 about the matter.
And whaat was that resolution? A resolution to dispose of waste in the ocean? A resolution not to dispose of waste in the ocean? A resolution to study the matter and write a report?
(Knowing UN committees, I assume probably the third is correct.)
After everyone got to have front row seats to how awesome an idea nuclear waste in the ocean was,
But you're not going to tell us,
in 1975 pretty much every country agreed to the resolution
WHAT resolution?
(I give this world credit, it at least didn't take them a full twenty years to figure this one out, just close to it). This made high level waste prohibited from ocean dumping anywhere.
You know, you could have told me this right from the start, rather than relying on innuendo and statements which may or may not be irony. In newspaper parlance, this is called "burying the lede".
Re: (Score:2)
Wow, this is an incredibly uninformative post
Did you all not study the various UN conventions in High School? I mean it's not that they teach some deep level understanding of the various events of the UN, but are you literally telling me that you've not heard of the Law of the Sea conventions by the UN? I've literally seen people talk about the various Geneva conventions on here, so I assumed that everyone had that chapter in World History in 11th grade.
Re: (Score:2)
Did you all not study the various UN conventions in High School?
ooh, I know the answer to this one. And you're not gonna like it.
are you literally telling me that you've not heard of the Law of the Sea conventions by the UN?
Most people have not one tenth of one clue about any of that jazz. Most don't even understand that signed treaties become law.
I've literally seen people talk about the various Geneva conventions on here, so I assumed that everyone had that chapter in World History in 11th grade.
Speaking for myself, my public world civics education is notional at best. Most of what I've learned about it since has been from looking up stuff to try to keep up in discussions here on Slashdot. Education by Google is the American way, because we don't get educated any other way.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
I'll wager that 99.99% of people on this planet do not learn about UN conventions in highschool much less specifically the law of the seas.
Irony [Re:Uninformative post [Re:subduction zones] (Score:2)
Did you all not study the various UN conventions in High School?
I assume this is more of your irony?
No, of course not.
And we certainly didn't study the application of the law to nuclear waste.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
lol k
Re: (Score:2)
Also there are natural fission reactors in africa:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: subduction zones (Score:5, Informative)
Subduction is a slow process that takes millions of years. Meanwhile the stresses on the rock make it unstable. Itâ(TM)s an earthquake zone.
Of course, you canâ(TM)t just âoedrop itâ there because the upper layers of the plate get scraped off and donâ(TM)t go down in a process know as âoeaccretionâ: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]. Can you imagine how expensive and unsafe it would be to create a mine deep enough at that depth underwater and close to a subduction zone (unstable earthquake zone) just to avoid accretion?
Re: (Score:2)
Subduction is a slow process that takes millions of years.
Not always. You could dump the stuff in an active volcano.
Of course that might backfire, literally.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: subduction zones (Score:2)
Remix/Dilute and return (Score:3)
Over time, it can't sum more overall radioactive energy than it was before dug out of ore. What's the math on it? Factoring in the half-life of byproducts etc. Would it even add to the background in any noticeable amount if it were mixed back with the ore it came from and put back?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Pretty much all of the fuel bearing ore we dug up was in a low energy state, and then we excited it to a very high energy state, and we now want to dispose of it while its still in a high energy state, yes it would be very different in terms of radiation levels.
Re: (Score:2)
Math and actual numbers, please, instead of speculation.
Re: (Score:3)
You first, you are the one who came up with a “cant be hard” solution without seemingly any research into it.
Re:Remix/Dilute and return (Score:5, Informative)
The typical fuel pellet in a nuclear reactor is about 3/8" x 5/8" or about 3 cc. Each cc of U235 would have to be mixed homogeneously back into 857 tonnes of ore, and each tonne averages about the volume of 5 shipping containers. So each pellet would need to be ground into sub-micron dust and mixed with 2,571 tonnes of ore material to get it back to the naturally occurring density of U235 in uranium ore. Wiping tissue paper on the exposed surface of the pellet and burying that tissue in a separate shipping container of granite ore might get the right density. Math source [wise-uranium.org]
A typical nuclear reactor may contain up to 10 million pellets, stacked in the fuel rods that form fuel assemblies. https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm... [nrc.gov]
Re:Remix/Dilute and return (Score:5, Informative)
Your math sucks. 3 cc of uraninite (as used in fuel for nuclear reactors) has a mass of almost 33 g. Diluting that to 1% purity, on the low end of commercially viable ore, would need 3.3 kg of other rock.
And rock is typically denser than water, which has a density of one tonne per cubic meter, which suggests you have a really tiny "shipping container" in mind if you need five to carry one tonne. The smallest standard ISO container (roughly 6m by 2.5m by 2.5m) holds just over 30 tonnes.
Re: (Score:2)
There is no uranium ore anywhere in this solar system with anything like 1% U235 content. And it's not the U235 that's the main problem. It's the daughter transactinides that cause long term spontaneous fission/neutron risk. It's highly bio-available daughter isotopes with human lifetime scale half-lives that pose the short term risk, like Po210, C137, Co60, & Sr90. This makes high level nuclear waste really dangerous for a century but also continuously dangerous for tens of millennia afterwards.
Nuclea
Re:Remix/Dilute and return (Score:4, Informative)
That is a very naive view on the subject. Even for chemical reactions, it isn't that easy. But for nuclear fuel, you would have to change the actual elements in the used fuel to return them back to a natural state. To give you an idea how dilution works: Steel produced since the 1940s is contaminated with radioactive elements from above-ground nuclear bomb testing. This has created a market for low-background steel [wikipedia.org] that was made before the tests. We've produced far more radioactive material than can be diluted far enough to not matter at all.
Re: (Score:2)
It's just as well that we run reactors on raw ore then and don't concentrate, and purify the radioactive components. /s
Phosphonates naturally occur in nature too, that doesn't mean it's a good idea to pour Roundup all over your plants.
Re: (Score:2)
Only CANDU heavy water reactors can use natural uranium. No other reactor design currently being built is a heavy water reactors. This is because heavy water reactors are huge proliferation risks and Canada has been criticized for years for selling the technology around the world because it can use Canadian uranium ore.
There are only three choices with nuclear power: high proliferation risk, large high level waste generation stream, or so technologically challenging it makes more since to just do fusion. W
Re: (Score:2)
If you don't do it that way, you'll find that the completely harmless sandwich wrappers get mixed with not so harmless actually radioactive waste, like protective equipment that has been contaminated. That's because the people running nuclear power plants are greedy bastards, like everybody else, and even though the government literally guarantees their revenue, they cut corners when nobody's looking. So everything that comes from there is deemed radioactive until proven otherwise. It is unfortunately the o
Re:Remix/Dilute and return (Score:5, Informative)
Reactor fuel is quite mild on the radioactivity scale. It's handled with minimal protections, like you can see on pictures here [wikipedia.org]. Reactor waste is orders of magnitude more radioactive, it's a glow-in-the-dark, will-kill-you stuff. So, no, you can't just put it back where you dug the uranium out of and get net zero radiation change.
Correct. Fuel rods are inspected with no concerns over exposure; once tehy get in teh spent fuel pool and give off that pretty blueish glow, it's a different story.
Still, the amount of really nasty waste is very small.
Most waste is really produced by insane regulations enforced by green idiots with the goal of killing nuclear power. Example: you work at nuke plant administration, and you bring a sandwich wrapped in paper for lunch. As long as the administration building is on-site, that paper, yes the one YOU JUST ATE A SANDWICH OUT OF, becomes radioactive waste the moment you toss it in the bin.
Not quite. Just because It is on site does not mean it is considered radioactive waste. If that were the case, nothing could leave the site once it is brought on site unless it was treated as radioactive.
And that's by volume 94% of "radioactive" waste. All just as radioactive as any other waste coming from any non-nuclear industry. All created only because green assholes want to make a show of how "polluting" the nuclear plants are. Read that paragraph [wikipedia.org] if you don't believe me.
You are misinterpreting the Wiki paragraph. While it is true much of the waste is low level waste, that is because if it is generated in specific areas of the plant. As the paragraph points out:
Materials that originate from any region of an Active Area are commonly designated as LLW as a precautionary measure even if there is only a remote possibility of being contaminated with radioactive materials.
Wear Tyvec suit doing an inspection inside containment - LLW; painter wearing one painting a wall in the admin building - not LLW.
Re:Remix/Dilute and return (Score:5, Insightful)
As long as the administration building is on-site, that paper, yes the one YOU JUST ATE A SANDWICH OUT OF, becomes radioactive waste the moment you toss it in the bin. And that's by volume 94% of "radioactive" waste.
No it does not.
And for all practical purpose, if we talk about the problem of radioactive waste, we talk about spent fuel and/or the fission products of a reactor.
Everything else you can simply toss into a landfill.
No idea why you pro nuclear idiots make up stupid stories.
Reprocessing also reduces nuke waste (Score:2)
The un-usable stuff is actually less radioactive, and processed into a safer compound for disposal.
Re: (Score:2)
Yucca is a good place (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Build a fast nuclear fission reactor, breed the waste to fuel, burn it and store the ~100-300 year nuclear waste in a disposal site. Fission waste is the same as fusion in a breeder reactor. Fusion is 100% radiation free? Bzzt! Tritium and Deuterium are byproducts. Fast fission has byproducts that decay in a similar timespan. That said, reprocessing is part of the equation. On site reprocessing burns 99.5% of the fuel. Offsite reprocessing burns about 75% of the fuel (based on Soviet numbers from Beloyarsk
Re: (Score:2)
Your post is random gibberitch.
Nothing really makes any sense.
On site reprocessing burns 99.5% of the fuel.
Reprocessing does not burn fuel. How should that work?
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
Better doesn't mean good, and this is one of those cases where anything less than perfect is unacceptable — which is why we shouldn't be generating the waste in the first place when there is no benefit to doing so. We can get more power (or do it cheaper, same thing) cleaner with other forms of technology where we simply don't have to deal with this problem. We still need to deal with the waste that's here now, but since there is no genuinely good solution to the problem, we should stop exacerbating i
Fake News (Score:3, Insightful)
The Yucca mountain failure is a simple result of our democracy and free market. The money was simply insufficient for voter buy in. China does not need voter buy in and Finland found a piece of dirt no one cares about. This again shows why in the US nuclear might be technically feasible but politically impractical.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Finland's "solution" that involves digging a massively expensive storage facility, and doing extensive work to make sure that it is secure and that the waste doesn't leak out for millennia, doesn't make nuclear power any more attractive.
It's expensive. It requires particular geology and political conditions that don't exist elsewhere. There are much better options for generating power. This "solution" is really just fixing a legacy problem, not opening up a future for nuclear power.
Re: (Score:2)
They have ideas that may be implemented in the future. Just like everyone else. The only country that is close to processing and storing nuclear waste is China.
Ideas? At least take a look at the pretty pictures in TFA if you won't bother to read enough to know this is well and truly past the "idea" stage. It's scheduled to open soon and likely already would have been were it not for COVID.
Construction started in 2004. The tunnels are already at final depth. The Chinese government is powerfull enough, it doesn't need you shilling for it.
Re: (Score:3)
https://weburbanist.com/2013/0... [weburbanist.com]
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
It gives off heat. (Score:2)
Reprocess and use it in slightly higher grade ones...
Didn't Solve Anything-Will Be Here Humans Aren't (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Supposedly not true, now that Gen4 experimental reactors exist. If they can prove their claim that they can burn off this waste, then there's no issue.
Re: (Score:2)
So far nuclear power doesn't have a good record of keeping its promises, so I have a very wait and see attitude. I'm not against the research, I am only skeptical.
Re: (Score:2)
You can not burn off fission products. And the fission products is the waste we are talking about.
What if's..? (Score:2)
What if...a meteor hits the site and the impact disperses the contents of the site into the atmosphere?
Have they really gone over enough what if's?
Re: What if's..? (Score:3)
A meteor that can do that much damage will be an extinction event anyway.
Re: (Score:3)
smh this story is bringing out the rocket scientists
Zero Deaths Ever (Score:2, Insightful)
Used fuel(aka nuclear waste) has resulted in zero deaths ever. It decays exponentially so the argument that it is dangerous for 10,000 years is a complete lie.
Just remember fossil fuels and biofuels kill 8.7 million people a year. Used fuel has killed people zero ever. If you think it is a problem your priorities are fucked,
Deep geological storage is unnecessary. Cask storage is fine. Deep geological is only meant to placate antinuclear scumbags, except those people cannot be placated.
Re: (Score:2)
The really nasty shit is stuff left over from nuclear weapons processing.
Re: (Score:2)
The really nasty shit is why they have the spent fuel rods in cooling pools, AKA "high level waste". That's the thing most people just don't understand, the lower level wastes that go into cask because they don't need active cooling anymore are LESS radioactive. Maybe not something you would want to cuddle with, but it pretty much, at that point, isn't going to kill you just because you stood next to it for a couple of seconds to minutes.
The longer the halflife the less radioactive overall it is. If the hal
Re:Sabine Hossenfelder's video is Nuclear Green? (Score:3, Informative)
Sabine Hossenfelder is a physicist who does a lot of youtube videos. One of them titled "Is Nuclear Power Green?" made what I thought was a very astute comment. Nuclear waste is easy to detect, unlike a lot of other pollutants, such as various chemicals. Here's a link to the video for the curious:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kahih8RT1k/ [youtube.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Used fuel(aka nuclear waste) has resulted in zero deaths ever.
[citation needed]
Re: (Score:2)
List of nuclear and radiation accidents by death toll [wikipedia.org]. Not one of them is from used fuel (aka nuclear waste).
I have been saying this for years and no one has been able to counter my statement. All you need is a single name to counter my statement.
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is that nuclear waste gets in the drinking water and twenty years later a bunch of people die from cancer, it is hard to say that one of those deaths was caused by the nuclear waste leak.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Of course, it is hard to attribute the cause of a cancer. While I doubt there has been a meaningful number of deaths from the waste, it is likely more then zero.
The important thing is whether it is safer then various other stuff such as coal ash, which the evidence points to .
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Your criteria are rather narrow & short term. Is there any reason for that?
I literally cited every single accidental nuclear and radiation death. Every single one.
It is hard to prove a negative. A single counter example of someone dying from used fuel would make my statement false. A single example. There is not a single example though.
It turns out my criteria is quite broad. There is just not a single example. Making the nuclear waste argument mute.
Re: (Score:2)
I literally cited every single accidental nuclear and radiation death. Every single one.
No you did not. You cited 2 hand full of cases.
How many already have died is not the point anyway.
The point is to find a safe storage, as in place and "how to do", that no one in future dies from it.
Simple to grasp or not?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
A single example. ...
I gave you one above in an other answer
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Then obviously the list is not complete, idiot.
Out of my mind: mid 1980s, stupid idiots carried around water buckets containing plutonium fuel waste amoung other things. Buckets boiled over, one worker died to the burning wounds, the others got heavy plutonium poisoning. That happened in Japan.
If you actually were interested in waste related accidents: you would do your own research. Dumbass.
Re: (Score:2)
It's Wikipedia. You are welcome to change it. All you need to do is cite a scientific study.
And I did my own research. I am the only one who cited anything on this thread.
Re: (Score:2)
Can you please stop lying about how harmless all this nuclear crap is?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That is a lie. A direct lie. In the typical fashion of a nuclear asshole, you omit cancer deaths because they cannot reliably be attributed. It is also a lie by misdirection, because most deaths from used fuel will lie in the future. The very extremely long-term future. Like 99.9999% or more of all deaths.
Well, lies, lies and more lies. As usual with all assholes advocating for nuclear energy.
Re: (Score:2)
When someone has been conned they will defend the con until the very end. Evidence to the contrary will just make them more resistance and more rigid in their position. Evidence that used fuel has killed zero people(or in this case lack of a single example of used fuel killing someone) has made you more rigid in your belief. Your mind is unwholly capable of processing the information. In order to defend the con(in this case nuclear is bad) you have to make up bullshit like cancer, ignoring the fact that
Re: (Score:2)
Remember fossil fuels and biofuels kill 8.7 million people a year. Or is that a lie too?
Most likely it is.
10 years: all of Germany dead. 100 Years, all of Europe dead, 2 times over.
Obviously the number makes no sense.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Used fuel(aka nuclear waste) has resulted in zero deaths ever.
Either you are an complete idiot, or you are lying.
Up to you to pick.
Re: (Score:2)
So, Bury it It In Cat Litter? (Score:2)
Re: So, Bury it It In Cat Litter? (Score:2)
Bentonite forms an impermeable layer once wetted. It's commonly used underneath pool liners for this purpose.
Several layers with sand between would be inexpensive and effective at preventing water infiltration (and thus exfiltration).
I personally lean toward the 'use it as an industrial heatsource' direction though. If it produces useful levels of heat, and you are earmarking large areas to keep humans out of anyway, wrap the containment with thermoelectric materials, and get some power out at the same time
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Well, you must live in an interesting country, that layers of sand are water tight there. ... just FYI.
In my country they are not
Re: (Score:2)
You just have to be really, really careful when selecting that kitty litter.
https://cen.acs.org/articles/9... [acs.org]
After 3 years the temperature is about 70C (Score:2)
Gen4 (Score:3)
Gen4 nuclear power plants supposedly burn the waste. Try out the prototypes and, if they succeed, build and use those.
Re: (Score:3)
No they don't. Gen4 is a large catch all for a technology level. There are *some* designs that reuse spent fuel. The majority of Gen4 designs don't.
Should be used for district heating (Score:2)
Documentary (Score:2)
Railgun it into the sun (Score:2, Interesting)
They haven't "solved" it. (Score:3)
Does not sound very "solved" to me (Score:2)
70C obseerved after 3 years and 100C as upper limit for things to stay safe for hundreds of thousands of years sounds more like a disaster waiting to happen. Good old nuclear assholes with absolutely no respect for human life. And, as usual with nuclear tech, lies, lies and more lies.
"Safe" Storage For The Ages? (Score:2)
I remember all the effort that has been put into making "signs" that will be understood in the future, so people can know that the stuff buried here is deadly and/or dangerous. There's even a Wikipedia article about it. [wikipedia.org]
Just kill the intruders.
When they seal up the repository, place high-level waste in the seal itself. Anyone who gets too close dies.
One thing that humans will always understand, and will never ignore, is IMMEDIATE consequences.
Nobody walks through a minefield more than once.
Stupid, meet Lazy (Score:2)
Nuclear energy is the cleanest form of energy that exists. You essentially have a material that is radioactive at some level and then gradually decays over many years until it is no longer radioactive... and radiation, at any level, is ENERGY.
To take something that is radioactive and bury it in a dump until it stops emitting energy is simply moronic, but it's easier for lazy policy makers and people so scared of radiation that they refuse to consider any method of using such materials that does not involve
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Gen4 reactors supposedly burn nuclear waste. The problem is, therefore, allegedly solved. Let the prototypes prove that they can do this and, if they succeed, build full-scale Gen4 reactors and use them to dispose of all of the waste accumulated so far.
Re: (Score:2)
The thing is people have been trying to build waste eating reactors since the 50, and none of them have worked well enough to be commercially viable.
Now we have a climate emergency and need to focus on solutions that we can deploy right now.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Used fuel(aka nuclear waste) has a total kill count of zero. Fossil fuels and biofuels kill 8.7 million people a year. Your priorities are fucked.
The entire point of nuclear is that it is clean. So shut the fuck up scumbag. And yes your opposition to nuclear energy means you support 8.7 million annual deaths.
Re: (Score:2)
You still have to store the vitrified waste for many ages. It's still dangerous, so you don't want people getting their hands on it. And it's very expensive to do safely, so it just makes the most expensive form of power generation even more expensive.
Re: (Score:2)
Do you have any objective evidence to back that up, or are you just being negative because you're anti-nuke? Or, to put it bluntly, [citation needed].