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Comment by hairytrog | Hacker News Reader

Spent nuclear fuel, sometimes called waste, is actually a resource that next generation reactors will be able to tap - both for energy and uncommon element feedstock. Just like shale used to be "garbage" until the tech to make it useful was developed, spent fuel will be seen as waste until we can make it useful. Letting this very manageable amount of waste sit in repositories until we get our shit together is utterly reasonable. In the US, it would take just one facility to deal with all 99 reactor waste streams.

I don't think we need to spend money and energy to transmute it by theses questionable laser schemes. Accelerator driven transmutation of waste was shown the dustbin a few decades ago, hopefully this will have the same fate. Please don't ruin our valuable trash.

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And no one ever talks about how we’ll handle solar waste. Has it changed and is no longer a problem going forward? Last I looked into it a few years back it was shaping up to be a very serious and toxic problem. They were very difficult to recycle, and full of lead, cadmium, and other nasty things. Something needs to be done with them but everyone was pretending they’re completely clean and safe.

I get 27.300 results for "solar waste" on google. 88.000.000 for "solar waste management". Literally "no one ever"...

I don't think the implication was that there is no data out there. I think it's more about the popular conversation. I have this same problem all the time when I discuss this topic with people. It's very common for people to respond quickly about nuclear with "but what about the waste". To which I typically respond "what about the solar waste". The problem is, the question is generally only applied to one side while the other side gets a pass.

We both know what was intended by that. Dramatization in an already emotion filled discussion.

I mention this all the time to coworkers who blindly believe solar is a perfect technology. It is really, really bad - especially the old stuff with all these REE's and extremely low efficiency. I am pretty upset that California now REQUIRES solar for new construction. It really feels we should have waited for the efficiency/cleanliness/recycling to mature a lot before that.

solar panels actively reduce CO2 emissions every day they are in use. They only pollute if they are dumped irresponsibly after their ~15 year service life. why would it be good to forego something that reduces emissions now, in order to develop recycling for something that won't be discarded until 15 years?

My introduction to this was when I went to work for a solar manufacturer and had to take blood tests to measure cadmium levels.

Spent fuel is only a part of it though. There is also tubes, piping, tools... Basically, components that are used for maintenance and are now effectively useless.

And sand from sandblasting of painted metal to remove contaminants. There are tons and tons of very slightly radioactive sand that needs a place to live.

The beach would probably be fine. Safety by dilution.

cyclotron exhaust stacks already do this, they also have activity monitors

> Spent nuclear fuel, sometimes called waste, is actually a resource that next generation reactors will be able to tap

That's just hope. How convenient not having to deal with the mess! To me, it sounds like a religion.

The same argument could be applied to rising CO2 levels. Just let future generations figure it out. What could go wrong?

Rising co2 levels create problems now. Spent fuel, stored safely, doesn't.

The "safely" caveat is controversial, maybe even dubious, certainly politically charged, but there's a fundamental difference here nonetheless.

co2 is not contained. Nuclear waste is.

I think there are important differences. We know that wastes has energy (otherwise they would not radiate), there are stored in a well specified area.

Unfortunately nuclear energy had a very bad PR for past 50 years, as a result nobody wanted to do any searcher in areas related to it).

It seems that it is slightly better now, environmental organizations at least are not trying to occupy nuclear reactors, unfortunately still they are pushing wind farms and solar farms, even though they cannot be usable on a massive scale without efficient way to store energy surplus.

> nuclear energy had a very bad PR for past 50 years

There is not a positive way to tell people that will be forced to quit their homes, workplaces and properties when nuclear problems eventually arose but hide information or lie systematically about it does not help, neither does the "see no evil/ what could happen?/ but nobody died / your cancer is not my fault" permanent defensive stance deployed again and again.

Nuclear energy sector worked hard to earn the current mistrust

> There is not a positive way to tell people that will be forced to quit their homes, workplaces and properties when nuclear problems eventually arose ...

That is an enormous problem, but the problem there is that governments aren't being held accountable for forcing people out of their homes.

The Fukashima evacuation debatabley caused ~3 orders of magnitude more deaths than the Fukushima nuclear disaster ([0] see the sidebar for 2,000:1 figure and the opening paragraphs for the debatable part).

When the cure is that much worse than the disease, we have to ask why we are forcing people to evacuate.

Whenever the government enacts a policy there are the potential for statistical deaths. Approve a coal plant? Statistical deaths. Change safety standards? Statistical deaths. Drop speed limits? Statistical deaths. We can cope with some unidentifiable people being worse off. It happens all the time. The responses to nuclear risks are not only irrational, they are out of line with how we treat all other physical and chemical hazards.

Statistical illness and deaths from nuclear are not worse than any other health issue. This is a fantastic time to use the science to make decisions, and it isn't at all obvious to what standard the exclusion zones are being managed. When the gap in damage done by the response and the crisis is that large there is a lot of room for questions to be asked (I wish I spoke Japanese so I could look up some primary reports on the subject).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa...

> Drop speed limits? Statistical deaths

In that case, is there an increase or decrease in statistical deaths? We had a recent change here and I'm interested on how it might change things

> We have to ask why we are forcing people to evacuate

I guess that maybe is for things like that:

http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/2915/2004/1600/belarus.jp...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_the_Chernobyl_disas...

It's more than hope, it's engineering. Future generations don't need to figure anything out, because the last two generations already did.

The Integral Fast Reactor was a reality in 1994, including a reprocessing scheme and inherent safety, when congress cut its funding. It's not my favorite reactor. My favorite, the molten chloride fast reactor, was theoretically investigated in 1972, including its potential for transmutation of actinides (excellent), I-129, Tc-99 (both good) and even Sr-90 and Cs-137 (both rather pointless).

What could go wrong and in fact did go wrong is politics. That's what prevents the practical investigations.

It's not politics that is preventing nuclear. It's cost.

Renewable is simply a cheaper, easier form of energy. And it gets cheaper every single day.

In your analysis, have you included the required base-load generation systems required when renewables aren't generating (night time, no wind) or the required storage systems (which actually don't exist) to time shift the energy supply?

Actually the storage systems do exist. There are batteries, hydro etc.

And many of the bids for power projects are including batteries as well.

It depends on what period of time you are trying to cover for. Yes there are solutions today that work for short periods of time, but as renewables increase as a percentage of generation capacity, the more storage you need. Grid-level battery storage for large periods of time is unproven and crazy expensive if you just extrapolate from smaller solutions.

I would add that as renewables get cheaper, there will also come a point at which that will also lower the price of fossil fuels. At present, demand for fossil fuels exceeds supply. If/when renewables cover that demand, the demand portion of the price will fall.

I agree that cost is likely a factor; but not so much renewable cost as cheaply available natural gas due to fracking which changes the economics of every other energy source; including nuclear and renewables.

It's politics that prevents research into improved nuclear, and it's politics that prevents the waste problem from being solved. Politics, namely the structure of licensing fees, is also the reason why NPPs come in one size only, which is "hyuge", and why everything used in an NPP is much more expensive than the same part used in a gas fired plant.

Meanwhile, my home country is phasing out "expensive" nuclear and building up "cheap, easy" renewables, and electricity gets more expensive every year.

> cheaper

Renewable here are propped by subsidies even to get at the same price of nuclear-produced electricity, so I don't know how you get that.

I believe that isn’t true if you include the externalized nuclear insurance costs

> That's just hope. How convenient not having to deal with the mess! To me, it sounds like a religion.

Er, no this is demonstrably false. France recycles >98% of its spent nuclear fuel in breeder reactors. This isn't fantasy, this is already existing technology. It's not as profitable at the moment which is why few countries recycle waste but it is absolutely something that could be done in the future.

It's not like rising CO2 levels, and this comparison is intellectually dishonest in the extreme. Rising CO2 in the atmosphere levels impact the environment, spent nuclear fuel buried underground does not. The possibility of contamination is either nullified by storing waste in areas already contaminated by nuclear testing, or by burying it miles underground.

Don't even centralize it all in one facility, just store it on-site.

That's how most of the power plant waste in the US is "handled" right now, because it's so far been politically impossible to agree on long-term storage and transportation. It's an inferior solution, though. There are security issues, and many points of failure for environmental damage. It's particularly problematic when plants are decommissioned and the waste is still stuck there requiring indefinite security and storage facilities for an otherwise-defunct plant. We'd be better off with all of it in one secure and safe facility, pending a better solution in the future.

How would one transport the waste across the country? I imagine there are some security issues with that too.

Very easily these days [1]

Its been done since days of nuclear plants. And no - there are no security issues, since as the name indicates, its a “waste”; you can’t make a bomb out of it and spreading it would not be as efficient as some type of gas that you would have easier access to. I imagine actually officials would love just to give away that nuclear waste to ISIS, preferrably deliver it to them for further handling by their peers, without gloves of course ;)

http://nuclearconnect.org/know-nuclear/technology/nuclear-wa...

I wasn't afraid of terrorists or people making bombs, I'm not American. I was worried about a truck or train crashing and showering an area in nuclear waste.

> The cask systems are designed to handle a wide range of severe environmental conditions, including earthquakes, flooding, extreme temperatures, and tornadoes. This includes objects that may impact the cask at high speed, such as during a tornado.

I suppose that means they withstand a car crash too.

Yes, and even being crashed into by another train: https://youtu.be/ZY446h4pZdc

In the U.K., a nuclear cask was tested in a train crash and came out fine. I’m sure a car crash would be alright too. :)

The US also did some testing with their flasks:

https://youtu.be/1mHtOW-OBO4?t=80

It's a pretty awful source (dubbed impact sounds), and very much in UK dialect, but it has some footage of the US testing I've not seen elsewhere.

You're ignoring the legitimate safety concerns over nuclear waste. It's not about an explosive nuclear device. It's about the risk of contamination, particularly of water supplies, and the psychological impact that radiation has (rational or not). There are both security concerns (preventing intentional misuse) and safety concerns (transportation accidents, leaky permanent storage). If it were harmless, we wouldn't even be having this conversation.

But in that respect it’s not very different from the hundreds of hazardous chemicals that are transported around the country every day.

I agree, and objectively there are pollutants that are far worse than nuclear waste, both in actual harm potential and in ubiquity, but there's a strong fear factor about radiation that drives all the NIMBYism. It's rational to be concerned, but not rational to be concerned to the level people are. Alas, irrational people still vote. Maybe they can be distracted with a train full of vaccines.

> there are no security issues, since as the name indicates its a “waste”; you can’t make a bomb out of it

Without applying a lot of imagination, I can think out about some non trivial security issues in the idea of adding deplected uranium waste to a bomb as shrapnel. Definitely a bomb can be made with this stuff.

Depleted uranium is uranium that isn’t as radioactive as naturally occurring uranium. That’s what the depleted means. It’s so dangerous that they use it in hospitals as X-ray shielding.

Paper, your clothing, or even your dead skin cells is enough to block what little radioactivity is present in DU. What is dangerous about DU is that it’s a heavy metal (and pretty toxic). It’s not easy to work, so even forming it into bomb parts would kill more ISIS members than using it would kill the general public.

Obvioysly the GP does not literally mean depleted uranium, but spent uranium, i.e. containing whole decay chains of radioactive isotopes...

Depleted uranium is used in artillery munitions by the US since the early '90s. It is, allegedly, a cause of increased cancer rates in NATO personnel and others involved in conflicts were the US deployed heavy artillery.

If you cannot think of security issues around nuclear waste, you have no business discussing nuclear waste and you are doing your "cause" a disservice.

It's at least enough of an issue that the VA addresses it directly: https://www.publichealth.va.gov/exposures/depleted_uranium/

Uranium is also toxic. The personnel that used DU ammo has mainly lung diseases due to Uranium dust. Metal toxicity has nothing to do with radioactivity.

Probably the same way that the nuclear fuel is transported in the first place?

> Please don't ruin our valuable trash.

How valuable could it possibly be? I challenge you to calculate the net present value on all of that nuclear waste.

All modeling fails, because it's worthless until proven otherwise. It's future breakthroughs - JFK speech at Rice, just replace space with nuclear: " Space expenditures will soon rise some more, from 40 cents per person per week to more than 50 cents a week for every man, woman and child in the United Stated, for we have given this program a high national priority--even though I realize that this is in some measure an act of faith and vision, for we do not now know what benefits await us."

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