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Comment by Cockbrand | Hacker News Reader

> there is no good safe long-term storage solution for nuclear waste in the United States, to name a few.

This is the killer argument. There is frankly no storage or recycling solution for nuclear waste anywhere in the world, which IMHO entirely dismisses nuclear energy as a viable option.

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The amount of nuclear waste (spent rods) produced in the US since the first reactor could be fit into ONE football field about 7 yards deep. We can surely store it somewhere safely. In the mean time we have produced probably thousand times more toxic heavy metals which will also last millions of years and they are leaking into the earth all over the world.

It looks neat until a natural disaster comes in and we have another Fukushima (not that we've dealt with the first one yet).

The Japanese are very smart and organized people, and their nuclear tech is top notch. If they couldn't contain it, we shoudl at least take into consideration other nations won't be able, too. And, sadly, we can't predict everything.

Waste from nuclear is miniscular per unit of energy, just 40 grams per person per year, all energy included [transportation, electricity, heating - all]. 40 grams. [1]

It was quite eye-opening to know that 1GW nuclear plant, working for decades, can keep _all_ of it's waste on site.

As for no recycling in the world - I believe France begs to differ. They do recycle their and even other's nuclear waste into nuclear fuel. And what minimal part that can't be recycled further can be melted into glass [2].

Given that no soul was ever harmed by industrial nuclear waste (it is mostly on site), existing baseload capabilities and _history_ of decarbonizing whole industrialized economies (France/Korea again), I feel it is harmful to completely discount this method of poower generation.

[1] https://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html#howmuch

[2] https://www.livescience.com/62623-radioactive-waste-trapped-...

While I agree with a lot of what you say, the line about noone ever having been harmed by industrial nuclear waste is not entirely true. Have a look into the Kyshtym disaster and - more recently - September 12, 2011 incident at Marcoule, France.

But why doesn't it matter how many and how badly people have gotten hurt. With Chernobyl, which is by far the worst possible case, we're talking 50 seriously hurt people, 500 with seriously shortened lifespan, and let's say 100000 to 1000000 with slightly shortened lifespan.

Absolutely no other energy source comes even close to such low numbers, certainly not solar power, oil and especially not everyone's de-facto alternative: coal, which has actually killed millions, and shortened lifespans of certainly a billion people ...

How does this compare?

Note that it specifically talks about the US, e.g. Finland develops its deep geological repository [0] just fine, while other countries (Russia and France) focus on fuel recycling.

Also this is why it's important to invest into development of breeder reactors. Not only they improve uranium utilization and may allow for thorium to be used as a nuclear fuel, but also they can "burn" the nastiest parts of nuclear waste [1]. Unfortunately, AFAIK only Russia currently seriously invests into this branch of nuclear reactors (see BN [2] and BREST [3]).

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

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor#Waste_reductio...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BN-800_reactor

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BREST_(reactor)

IMHO no, it doesn't. Funding and research for Nuclear dried up ages ago, and given the impending doom most scientists think we are facing, it would be rational to be spending gazillions on developing new tech, processes etc. including storage. What we take out of the ground is radioactive - it's rational to think we can find a way to put it back with slightly less radioactivity. Obviously that's a crude way to put it to the point of metaphor, but it's not irrational either.

If Greenpeace had not killed nuclear, I suggest we might be in a considerably better situation vis-a-vis climate change. Possibly a couple of Fukishimas worse off, but that's not hugely bad either, given the upside.

> If Greenpeace had not killed nuclear, I suggest we might be in a considerably better situation vis-a-vis climate change.

Ironic, isn't it.

They did save the whales so, so 1 for 2 on the big items.

They're tied with the invention of kerosene.

There is no long-term solution to getting murdered in your sleep either, but we manage to live with that.

In fact, at the risk levels that we are accustomed to dealing with on a day-to-day basis, there are plenty of adequate solutions to disposal and storage of nuclear waste.

Dump it in the seam where one tectonic plate dives under another.

Finnish POSIVA is considered by IAEA and local regulator to have solved the storage, at least for local scale: https://www.posiva.fi/en/index/finaldisposal/geologicalfinal...

Nor is there any good safe long-term storage solution for CO2, or heavy metal pollutants. But while those are technological problems unlikely to be solved for decades, the lack of nuclear storage is simply political.

Remember - nuclear waste is dangerous for centuries, but chemical waste is dangerous forever.

Send them to the space? Last time I heard there are plenty of space over there, might also be a cheaper than maintaining a toxic waste facility essentially forever.

Where to store in space is a different question although. You can't just leave them in orbit around Earth, because of Kesler syndrome, any ideas?

Fire them into the sun?

EDIT: someone else did the math and it turns out this is impractical, plus there are risks of rocket failures https://www.universetoday.com/133317/can-we-launch-nuclear-w...

This might interest you :

https://old.reddit.com/r/NuclearPower/comments/hh6mm6/but_wh...

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