This is IMO a positive for nuclear, not a negative. You're forced to confront the cleanup as opposed to fossil fuels, where you just blow your waste out into the atmosphere and make it the commons' problem.
There is no plan for this stuff. The repository that was built in Nevada was never actually approved and it is not legal to use. So everyone that was planning on sending stuff there has just been piling it in the side yard waiting for something. New Mexico is now trying to open up a waste site.
But if you operate a reactor in Tennessee, right now you have no idea where to store the waste so you just keep piling it higher and deeper on site.
Source: rumour and gossip
Nevada has fought hard against it. But people outside Nevada (and some inside Nevada) keep trying to jam it down Nevada's throat. The illegal midnight run was just one example.
There had been some $10 billion sunk into the project 10 years ago. You can guess who has the incentive to keep pouring 100s of millions more into a supposedly cancelled project. If the whole point is to funnel giant money into somebodies' pockets, the legal status of the facility has nothing to do with the money allocated for it.
People use "what about the waste" as a reason to not use nuclear. Yet, fossil and renewable biofuel waste is (as mentioned) just dumped into the biosphere where it ends and estimated 8 million lives early per year, according to the WHO.
Nuclear waste is radioactive, but not so radioactive that it's unsafe to stand next to a container. Most waste is stored on site.
It actually doesn't make sense to move nuclear waste to permanent storage because some reactor designs can use this waste as fuel.
We have no permanent disposal facilities, not even in the planning stage.
https://www.gao.gov/key_issues/disposal_of_highlevel_nuclear...
It's a matter of political will at this point.
"Ensuring access to dedicated funding – Current federal budget rules and laws make it impossible for the nuclear waste program to have assured access to the fees being collected from nuclear utilities and ratepayers to finance the commercial share of the waste program’s expenses.
We have recommended a partial remedy that should be implemented promptly by the Administration, working with the relevant congressional committees and the Congressional Budget Office. A long-term remedy requires legislation to provide access to the Nuclear Waste Fund and fees independent of the annual appropriations process but subject to rigorous independent financial and managerial oversight."
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20120807061024/http://brc.gov/si...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste...
The anti-waste-disposal crowd in the environmental movement feels exceedingly disingenuous.
The amount of goal post moving they've engaged in over the decades makes it clear that their actual goals are to prevent any waste disposal site from being constructed, rather than specific, actionable complaints.
Which is insane, from a net-benefit perspective, as the alternative is to leave nuclear waste dispersed around the country, closer to population centers.
I would also encourage other's to click on acidburnNSA's profile as this is where their expertise lies and they have written extensively (with plenty of links) on the subject.[0]
Are you sure? Wiki says:
"On 7 April 1977, President Jimmy Carter banned the reprocessing of commercial reactor spent nuclear fuel. The key issue driving this policy was the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation [...] President Reagan lifted the ban in 1981, but did not provide the substantial subsidy that would have been necessary to start up commercial reprocessing." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing#History
France[0]
> If it's so valuable why does no one actually want it,
I mean France does... we actually gave them the tech. The reason we stopped is more political. But more people do this than just France, but they are the biggest example since 17% of their entire grid is powered from recycled nuclear. The other reason we don't do it is that it is just cheaper to buy more Uranium than setup reprocessing plants. France doesn't have as easy of a supply chain so it makes sense for them to recycle. Obviously the US's supply chain could change, so access to that waste is a potential benefit.
[0] https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pr...
In France nuke-power is backed by gas (which produced 10,3% of gridpower in 2017).
The sole reactor currently planned (Flamanville-3) is a complete disaster, more than 10 years behind schedule and 4x overbudget.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plan...
No one is saying that we should _only_ use nuclear. Not diversifying your energy portfolio is a terrible idea. France is trying to reduce its dependence upon nuclear (which is a good idea) and replace its fossil fuel infrastructure first. This is because renewables are becoming cheaper. The plan is to have a diversification of nuclear + renewables (which is what pro-nuclear advocates are fighting for). Nuclear serves as a baseload and backbone and is supported by renewables to fill the gap.
You will not find pro-nuclear supporters upset with France's decision to reduce their dependence on nuclear. In fact you will often find support. As battery technology gets better and cheaper and as price of renewables continue to fall you will also find that pro-nuclear advocates will cheer this on.
There is a big misconception that many believe people are arguing nuclear vs renewables or arguing that the grid should be _only_ nuclear. What we are arguing for is nuclear + renewables vs renewables + coal + oil + gas. The reason being that _today_ we have the technology to dramatically reduce our carbon emissions with _current_ technologies. We are looking at countries that already have successful models for emissions and saying "hey, we should do something similar to that, since it clearly works." It would be insane to not look at what models are already successful and try to say that the technologies they use are counter productive. The proof is sitting right there, all you have to do is look. We are arguing for models closer to Sweden (since we, the US, have lots of access to hydro) than were are for France's current system (though their goals would also be a good model to consider).
[0] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?t...
[1] https://www.electricitymap.org/zone/FR?wind=false&solar=fals...
[1.5] Note that Sweden also uses a significant amount of nuclear
FYI I'm French.
> France has one of the lowest CO2 emissions per capita
Apples and oranges...
France has wayyyy less factories than Germany, however it imports goods produced elsewhere. CO2 emitted in order to produce those goods is to be accounted for!
Real CO2 emission: France: 6.92t/year/capita in 2017 Germany: 10.83t/year/capita in 2017
Source: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/prod-cons-co2-per-capita?...
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/prod-cons-co2-per-capita?...
Moreover Germany is richer than France (=> more equipment => more CO2 emitted).
GDP per capita (PPP): 52.4k€/capita versus 47.6
At this point from your data 9.13/5.2 (1.75) ratio we are back to 9.74/6.92 (1.4)
Germany's climate is much colder (=> more heating => more CO2 emitted). Heaters in Germany are massively oil-based systems because there was an historic low taxation on heating oil. Sadly I can't find solid data.
Food for thought.
> Not diversifying your energy portfolio is a terrible idea.
Yes, indeed. However it doesn't imply that we must use each and every energy source, without any consideration for all its characteristics. Nuclear plants and their waste are dangerous, and contrary to a common belief they cannot solve the climate challenge while letting us avoid changing our habits.
> You will not find pro-nuclear supporters upset with France's decision to reduce their dependence on nuclear
Some, in France, think that we should go full nuclear, and they fight for it. Example: https://www.enviscope.com/lassociation-des-ecologistes-pour-...
Other think that we may have to chose a "100% renewables" option. Example: https://www.ouest-france.fr/environnement/nucleaire/nucleair...
In 2010 in the US 8.4% of the energy comes from nuclear plants, and renewables (hydro included) produce approx 6% Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_States#En...
That is to say in order to only 'decarbonate' the energy sector (there are other sectors to decarbonate!) thanks to nuclear power the US should deploy ~11 times more nuclear power capacity than it already has, and adapt or retrofit all energy-consuming equipment in order to have it use gridpower (or to embark some nano-reactor). This seems completely unrealistic, from many perspectives. Even a mix (nuclear + renewables) with 3 to 5 times more nuclear seems unrealistic.
'CO2-clean' energy production as a whole isn't possible.
Electricity production accounts for 27% of CO2 emissions, and 63% (of the electricity) is produced by fossil fuel, and 20% by nukeplants). Source: https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis... => quickly reducing CO2 emission by 27% by producing all gridpower does not imply any adaption/retrofit of any existing stuff, however it implies a 5-fold increase of nuclear capacity or a balance with renewables (taking into account the baseload) and would not be a decisive progress as the GIEC invites us to "fall by about 45 percent from 2010 levels by 2030, reaching 'net zero' around 2050". Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Report_on_Global_Warmi...
Therefore, indeed, "the proof is sitting right there, all you have to do is look": in order to reduce emissions we have to consume wayyyyy less energy and stuff.
> What we are arguing for
IMHO the sole realistic option is "let's drastically reduce our energy & stuff needs", or even "degrowth". Even an "all-nuclear gripower" plan, which is completely out-of-reach, cannot fix the climate problem: gridpower offers only about 25% of the consumed energy in advanced countries, and beyond energy-production many human activities emit huge amounts of CO2 in ways we cannot modify, or at best cannot modify quickly (agriculture comes to mind, as in the US it produces ~10% of the emitted CO2, and feeding cows with gridpower may prove to be difficult).
> _today_ we have the technology
We don't know, _today_, how to make a fool-proof nuclear plant nor how to effectively dispose of its waste. We don't know how to solve the NIMBY challenge. Financing a nuclear plant becomes more and more difficult. Even building it is a major ordeal (see the EPR projects). And even if we fix all this there is no all-nuclear approach able to tackle the challenge (dividing CO2 emissions by 3).
I can change that to CO2eq/capita/kWhr and it is still true ([1] above shows that).
> Nuclear plants and their waste are dangerous,
I'm not trying to dismiss that. But you also shouldn't dismiss the impacts of other resources. There is no free lunch here. For example, heavy metal contaminants are stable and stay toxic forever. We likely have to deal with these contaminants similarly to nuclear (put them in giant sealed holes in the ground that won't ever have access to the groundwater).
> Some, in France, think that we should go full nuclear, and they fight for it.
I am happy to explicitly call them dumb (as opposed to my previous implicitness). They are clearly uninformed on the matter.
> Other think that we may have to chose a "100% renewables" option.
This relies on two things happening (one of, or a combination). 1) The grid is massively overbuilt, 2) battery storage massively improves. These things are possible. The argument for nuclear is, again, based on what we have right now and saying that we shouldn't bet too much on future technologies. It is too risky of a bet. This isn't a big problem for France because you are starting at a very good emission rate, but in other countries it is important because every day we continue to argue we use more coal and oil. Unlike France, we are a much larger nation that is much less population dense and that massively eats into our efficiency of our grid. As for France, I hope you can get to 100% renewable. Like I said in the previous comment, we will be cheering you on. France is what many of us envy. Where we wish we could have started from. Following that path 50 years ago the situation today would be much different. I hope we can get to 100% renewable. I do. I'm just not willing to put all my eggs in one basket.
> That is to say in order to only 'decarbonate' the energy sector (there are other sectors to decarbonate!) thanks to nuclear power the US should deploy ~11 times more nuclear power capacity than it already has
I'm really frustrated at how many times I've said "nuclear __+__ renewables" and you ignore the "+" and assume a "-". I'm sure there are those out there that believe it. I have implicitly and explicitly called them dumb. But if you believe that I am one of those people I would ask you to read my comments again or stop responding if you will not discuss in good faith. I have been extremely clear on the issue. The issue was the thesis of my previous comment.
> Electricity production accounts for 27% of CO2 emissions,
Even though this isn't where you were going with it, this is a topic I'm __majorly__ concerned about. In the public discourse we only discuss electricity and transportation. As per your source, that accounts for a little under 60% of the total problem. Worse, the US is only 15% of the problem (I remember a presidential candidate this year getting booed for saying that we need to do more because of this). 25% of this is land use and agriculture. Another 25% is electricity and heat. And 21% is industry. We can do a lot in many of these sectors, but we still need new technologies. Gates wrote a good article about the subject matter[0] (actually if you dig there are a few). I actually also heavily advocate for CC and sequestration, again because I don't want to bet too much on things going just perfect. And in fact we need negative emissions, not 0. If you listen to many of the climate scientists, you will hear this from them when they feel like they can speak freely. This is why they often talk gloom and doom, because what they can say without pissing a ton of people off is far from where we need to be.
> in order to reduce emissions we have to consume wayyyyy less energy and stuff.
The genie is out of the bottle. You can't put the toothpaste back in the tube. So maybe CC&S. Costly, but it can work.
[0] https://www.gatesnotes.com/energy/my-plan-for-fighting-clima...
> There is no free lunch here
Indeed, however the risk induced at run-time and by its waste seems higher with nuclear than with renewables.
>> Other think that we may have to chose a "100% renewables" option.
>This relies on two things happening (one of, or a combination). 1) The grid is massively overbuilt, 2) battery storage massively improves.
A third quest is local production (solar roof panels and the like).
A 4th quest is energy and matter savings (less production => less nefarious emissions).
Also let's not neglect that "renewables" is a mix (solar, wind, hydro...).
As for the 1) (grid) we also have many subpathes, continental-level interconnections and smartgrid being the most prominent, all useful for all "sources" (even nuclear) and all already actively explored.
> The argument for nuclear is, again, based on what we have right now
What we have now is ageing nuclear powerplants (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_reactors#Franc... , this is also true in the US ) needing huge maintenance-and-security-related retrofits, and running projects of plant-building which fail or run massively over-schedule and over-budget (see Flamanville and Olkiluoto). Fukushima bumped up the NIMBY effect. Massive and expensive R&D done for 10's of years delivered no quantum leap (breeders, for example, albeit benefiting for huge R&D budgets, are in the mud since the 1950's... but some nuclear advocates consider them today as a promising path!).
Financing a nuclear powerplant becomes more and more difficult because it is very capital intensive and only realistic along with the aforementioned mass-production challenge, and the fact that the cost of renewable energy production falls sharply.
In other words one nuclear powerplant costs way too much, we lost the capacity to build it on budget and schedule, there are less and less sites willing to host a plant... and we need to build many (10x the existing capacity, for an all-nuke gridpower, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_generation#Methods... , given that it is vastly insufficient when it comes to our climate-related goal ) in a short timeframe.
Moreover, after 70 years of nuclear plant activity, we don't have waste long-term repositories, hence we will offer dubtious gifts to our children, and their children, and so on...
Is it really a realistic path or a dead-end?
Are we willing to bet on this or (XOR) on deploying on the 3 major leads summarized above? Each egg in the nuclear basket isn't used for the main 4 quests, and therefore isn't IMHO wisely used.
In France the nuclear sector maintains approximately 220000 jobs, and this is a huge factor for politicians (in order to be elected you better avoid to condemn those jobs).
> In the public discourse we only discuss electricity and transportation
Sadly this is true and I'm also concerned. We do "still need new technologies", however "I'm just not willing to put all my eggs in one basket" nor do we "want to bet too much on things going just perfect", and giving the urgency (we indeed need to quickly reach a "negative emissions" status) I'm convinced that the quest 4 cannot be avoided: we need to reduce the amount of energy and stuff we "use". This is the only sure method readily available. Most politicians and citizen hate it because this is a dark promise.
The potential for CC&S is limited in Europe. About this and some "100% renewables" approaches: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/wene.128
There are even more ambitious plans, some not from crackpots: https://www.cell.com/one-earth/fulltext/S2590-3322(19)30225-...
I'm not sure why this is relevant. France has constantly been one of the best in Europe and Germany has been one of the worst (revisiting my link[0]). I'm not sure what you're trying to argue here. That everyone can improve? Of course. That Germany cares more than France? Well probably. It is a much larger problem then them for France. France left their hose and all their faucets on over night. Germany busted a water main and their house is sinking. Makes sense that they are more concerned. Or maybe you're suggesting that German had a larger reduction in emissions? Congrats, they are almost at the peak of France's output. Either way, I don't get what you are suggesting here.
More importantly, why are you still thinking I'm anti-renewables? Have I not been clear on this matter? I'm also not convinced you're reading what I write anyways because we've addressed several of your concerns already and you're pushing claims on me that I don't hold and have already reiterated that I do not hold. I might as well quote the Jabberwocky.
[0] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?t...
I don't think you are anti-renewables, please quote any sentence of mine letting you believe it. I don't think that nuclear is part of a solution, that's my point here, and my arguments are in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24381421
Yes, but this is possible because Germany's emissions are amongst the highest in the EU to begin with.
Although Germany is making progress and can be commended for it's investment in renewables, more than 30% of it's electricity is still produced from coal (hard coal and worse, lignite), which results in one of the highest grid carbon intensities amongst it's European peers.
Building new nuclear is one thing (there are valid economic and environmental arguments against this), but Germany's decision to close existing nuclear plants, some with many years of life remaining, was a political and emotional one rather than rational and scientific.
Keeping existing nuclear plants operating would have allowed more time to develop and expand renewables, enabling coal plants to be closed earlier and reducing CO2 emissions faster.
Seems debatable because it seems that, in Germany, most/many (?) citizens are not willing to see nuclear plants running nearby.
It may not be rational. I think it is. There are counter-arguments, and counter-counter-arguments, and so on... up to the point of the debate confining to ethics/metaphysics: do we have the right to create long-lived dangerous waste? Or even the simple "do those who accept have the right to expose those who don't, given that nobody can behave in order to escape the effects of a disaster?" All this leads to much more generic debates (politically dangerous), moreover no politician wants to remain in history as the one who maintained some nuclear plant which, afterwards, caused a disaster.
> Keeping existing nuclear plants operating would have
... induced risks. Even field experts warn us about it.
In France: https://www.liberation.fr/futurs/2016/03/03/il-faut-imaginer...
In the US: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/i-oversaw-the-us-nucl...
Not in France, the nuclear plants here can do some load following (to some extent).
>You will not find pro-nuclear supporters upset with France's decision to reduce their dependence on nuclear. In fact you will often find support.
I cannot agree here, there is a growing movement mainly lead by Jean-Marc Jancovici deploring the shutdown of safe and profitable nuclear power plant.
The main argument being when you already have a low carbon energy production, the money invested in the construction of new renewables power plant will better used in home insulation subsidies or subsidies for a heat pump.
They can in do but the economics makes more sense to run high for long periods. The nuclear output of France doesn't typically vary much throughout the day, but yes they do have the capacity to.
But yeah, all we are fighting for is that nuclear is __part__ of the solution (not __the__ solution. Big difference).
It seems to me that all this is about the balance between the relative importance of nuclear in the solution and its costs, along with the risks it induces.
Having nuclear as part of the solution implies mass-production of plants parts (building a few plants is much more expensive and projects are nearly always way behind schedule), risk and waste, decommission costs... If nuclear power could solve the challenge (that is to say let us live as we do now while reaching the GIEC's objectives) it could be justified, but it fails far from it.
I repeat: after 70+ years of nuclear power exploitation there is no active and sufficient long-term waste repository. This doesn't seem to be a trivial problem. It is "solved in this thread", but not IRL.
I think it would take the deep pockets and standardization of a government-run program to truly see nuclear be done properly, but I doubt there is appetite for a similarly run program in the USA.
The reason for not dumping it in the ocean is exactly as stated above. It's extremely valuable, in large part because of the plutonium content, and it's senseless to throw away something so valuable that the nation may eventually have a need for.
Still, there are risks, and I agree it makes sense for reprocessing facilities to be government controlled.
That being said, without also deploying breeder reactors at scale there's not a lot of benefit from reprocessing.
Is it cheaper to buy more Uranium and deal with the so-far-and-growing half-trillion dollar cleanup liability than to set up and operate reprocessing plants? Of course I wouldn't be surprised if that liability is considered "tomorrow's problem", so no one in power cares about it.
I was talking to an environmental scientist that other day who was lamenting that the liability for solar panel waste was being treated as "tomorrow's problem", and no one in power cares about it.
If we factor in the tomorrow problem nuclear looks even better, because we have a chance of being able to deal with it. Nobody attempts to solve the decommissioning problems of most waste, there is too much of it so we just dump it in landfill and hope there isn't anything too nasty in it. There is no plan at all to deal with it beyond 100 years or so, and it doesn't get less toxic over time.
Keep in mind, panel longevity is upwards of 25-30 years, at which point they'll still be producing 80-90% of their rated output. Inverters (single or micro) can be recycled in traditional electronics recycling processes.
https://www.veolia.com/en/newsroom/news/recycling-photovolta...
Recycling and disposal does need consideration for renewables, as well as nuclear. You cannot just say "Well no one is looking into it for solar, so nuclear should get a free pass too!", especially when nuclear waste is so much more hazardous. Also when considering the infrastructure costs associated with setting up proper reprocessing facilities, no it does not obviously come out ahead. It's incredibly expensive upfront.
That is also what I'd expect to see if people aren't taking the issues seriously, so it isn't really evidence of anything.
> You cannot just say "Well no one is looking into it for solar, so nuclear should get a free pass too!"
Sure I can. The evidence to me suggests that, for equivalent amounts of effort and adjusting for the energy produced, nuclear waste dumps will do far less damage than solar waste dumps after adjusting for the energy produced. The amounts of waste are tiny to the point where it is unclear to me why anyone cares. If proliferation is a problem, bury it 2km underground in a desert and don't tell anyone where it is. Good luck recovering that on the sly.
I was sorely tempted towards sarcasm by that combination.
But I'm suggesting exactly that, and that we should standardise to not taking the waste of either solar panels or nuclear particularly seriously, given they are both very minor problems that can be handled by the people involved.
I don't know much about solar waste handling, though someone upthread suggests there's a French company that can recycle 95% of the components of retired solar panels with the remaining 5% going to other uses. Of course, no idea how much that process costs, but I'd bet it's nowhere near as hazardous to deal with as nuclear, and doesn't have any of the nuclear security requirements since I don't expect people can make nuclear bombs out of retired solar panels.
I do NOT agree that I an responsible for my neighbors or their land and this is part of the issue. If my farm dumps a bunch of crap or ejects a ton of pollutants into the air, this harms my neighbor and should be limited. If instead, I build my farm and is net 0 pollutants to your land, why exactly should you be able to do on 'my' land, or put another way, who is the victim?
To frame this another way that I think is fairly similar to nuclear, I think large scale organic farming is extremely taxing to the land in the long run and is a fairly terrible agricultural practice at our current scale. Does this mean we should enact laws and regulations to stop organic farming? I'm really not so sure, I can understand both sides and I don't think this type of legislation will ever be so cut and dry.
It's important to note that other energy types also produce waste. For example, coal ash is incredibly toxic and hard to dispose of, and we create much more of it every year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_borehole_disposal
*to a point where it was actually brought up as a negative, because if we ever wanted to recycle that waste into something else, it's literally impossible this way.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_re...
They have thought thousands of years ahead and set up many different types of warning signs and symbols in case a future civilization discovers it.
This is such a stupidly contrives scenario that you might as well plan for an alien incasion or zombie apocalypse. Lime prerequisite for that theory is civilisation collapsing, our investment in making sirebcovilisation does not xollapse is zero. You deal with it by making sure civilisation does not collapse.
You just don't know.
The time frame is too long. It's too long for natural causes and far too long for human civilisation. The earlier we stop producing this crap, the better.
That level of stupid theatrics really annoys me. If society has regressed then it will be a godsend to rediscover nuclear power. If society has advanced this is like the Romans trying to anticipate modern problems.
If you can drill down to put it in, can't you also drill down (or use the same hole) to get it out?
This is the things that make me cringe when I see this people saying again "This time will be different, we promise".
Look mum, radioactive tornadoes coming from the ocean...
This has been well studied by several groups including the US Navy, which is one of the biggest nuclear operators with over 80 reactors currently in warships. In the event of catastrophic loss, the plan is to just leave it because the oceans already have billions of tons of radioactive material and infinite capacity to absorb more.
Also nuclear reactors have occurred naturally [1] and without any serious fallout or contamination risks, showing that containment is really not that challenging. Most people think nuclear is scary because of popular science and culture, and they lack the knowledge and understanding to know any different. It's similar to people not trusting vaccines because they don't understand medical science.
1. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/natures-nucl...
Time to just get rid of the mess hiding it under the rug and saying that "There is not our fault, it was yet like that when we arrived and now is somebody else's problem" has passed.
We deserve better, much more honest and much more smart people this time.
Also maybe you misunderstood the post because dumping in the ocean wasn't a real proposal. The point is that containment is solved, and indeed solved by very smart people. It's politics and general ignorance that has hampered nuclear power, not technology.
There is plenty of evidence of the opposite in fact and is not difficult to find at all. We can choose to close the eyes to not see it, but the truth is stubborn:
Techa river (Russia): Used as dumpster from dismantled nuclear submarines until 2004. 25 times more probable than normal of having limb and organ malformation in newborn babies from people living there, plus a bonus 40% increase of probability of having cancer. This is the harvest of just 50 years of activity. What would you call that?
[1] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200901-the-radioactive-...
We are talking about trying to keep your "fish and chips" safe to eat, or maybe not.
Last time the fisheries collapsed in 90's 37.000 people lost their job only in Newfoundland and the social impact was massive. It has not recovered still after almost 30 years with a record of lowest captures registered in 2016.
Dumping in the oceans isn't a serious proposal. I was pointing out that waste is not a huge problem.
Then this technology has been, for all practical purposes, abandoned by nearly all countries that were researching and developing it. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor#Future_plants
One of the most (if not the most) ambitious project was Superphénix, costed billions and failed flat. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superph%C3%A9nix
The sole officially actively pursued pertinent design, BREST-OD-300 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BREST_(reactor) ), was planned to be built in 2020 ( https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN_Fast_moves_for_nuclear... ) and real work didn't even began ( https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Russia-awards-co... ). Moreover it will only (when built, if ever, but not before 2026) be a demonstrator (low power).
Alternatively, maybe we can railgun it into space.
There are no methods that have 100% answers for every "what if 5 things go wrong at once?" question.
That's true for everything, but those questions only get asked for nuclear energy.
1. If your rocket has a failure during launch, you're likely to spread the nuclear waste over a large land area.
2. Even though we really haven't generated that much nuclear waste, it's still many many rocket-launches-worth. That gets expensive. Much more expensive than sticking it in a hole in the side of a mountain.
3. Launching something into the sun takes a huge amount of rocket fuel. It takes a Falcon-9 with a mass of ~550Mg to get a payload of ~22.8Mg into low earth orbit with a velocity of ~8km/s. The Earth is moving around the Sun at ~30km/s, so to launch into the Sun, you need to depart from the Earth at (at distance) ~30km/s. Earth's escape velocity is ~11km/s, which means that from low earth orbit, you need to get up to ~32km/s (sqrt(30^2 + 11^2)). So your ~22.8Mg payload in low earth orbit needs to include a rocket that can add ~24km/s to its velocity. If we assume a rocket with a fairly decent engine, with an Isp of 4km/s, then we can plug that into the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation. The remaining payload that can be flung into the Sun is a grand total of 57kg. All the rest of that ~22.8Mg is rocket fuel. Per SpaceX Falcon-9 launch. This is not an effective way to get rid of nuclear waste. (Note, it may be possible to increase efficiency by making use of gravity assists from other planets, but you still need to actually get to other planets first, so a pretty hard limit on the payload-into-the-Sun is the payload-to-Mars, which is ~4Mg. Still not very much.)
For context, it would require 71 Saturn V launches every year just to get that tonnage up to Low Earth Orbit!
This would fit in a 5m high storage facility the size of an American football field (which is even smaller than a European football field). As an additional comparison, the small Amazon fulfillment centers have about 40000m² of area [2] . Assuming the same 5m height, a small fullfillment center is nearly 10 times bigger than necessary to store all globally produced high-level nuclear waste.
Sure, the waste is hard to dispose and dangerous. But it really isn't much.
[1] https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fu...
[2] https://www.aboutamazon.com/amazon-fulfillment#how-big-are-f...
Or just use wind and solar?