All the nuclear waste we've ever made in the USA stacks about 3 barrels high on a single football field, about .002 square miles.
One of USA's deserts is around 190,000 square miles.
I'm sure we can find someplace to store it all.
One of USA's deserts is around 190,000 square miles.
I'm sure we can find someplace to store it all.
https://www.gao.gov/mobile/key_issues/disposal_of_highlevel_...
Once you look at waste, most of nuclear waste is not 'waste', and some countries like france and Russia use chemical reprocessing to separate long lives waste from unburnt fuel. That gives a further >90% reduction.
What you are left with is a small amount of High level waste, that can be stored in deep repositories like sweeden is doing. That's a permanent solution, because we know that bedrock has not moved for 10s of millions of years.
Is there something in the tone of my comment you are unhappy about?
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_VyTCyizqrHs/TCWrO7OFt4I/AAAAAAAAIF...
Don't forget that there are already nuclear waste sites that are managed by the government. It's just a small operational cost for today's governments.
There doesn't seem to be a believe that governments will be around for 10000 years to keep this managed securely. But honestly, if society deteriorates to the point it can no longer organize a government, a few highly radioactive spots on earth are not going to be a huge deal.
Nuclear waste facilities also have nice economies of scale in the sense that a single site's incremental cost of storing an additional ton of nuclear waste is negligible. So unlike global warming, you're not saddling the future generations up with a massive bill.
If it were actually a problem, someone would have to do something about it. The volumes are so small they can simply be stored in an ad-hoc matter.
It is a mystery why people get so fixated on the waste. It is very hard to articulate a problem apart from the fact that it goes away eventually (unlike most waste which sits there pretty much forever). We produce a lot of dangerous substances; nuclear waste isn't the worst of them.
Had we voted republican across the board in the 1960s we could have solved climate change without ever talking about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atoms_for_Peace
Many Australian farmers who lease their land to electricity companies for use as solar farms run sheep on those same solar farms.
Since the solar panels track the sun, grass grows under them and sheep being small enough to fit under the panels are perfect at keeping that grass under control.
So the farmer actually gets two incomes from the one field.
Really? Such tracking systems do exist, but outside of CSP they are generally not economic. I would be surprised if many PV solar plants in Australia use tracking motors.
Not to say grass won't grow under static panels. I have no idea about that.