The personal attacks start as soon as you start asking the hard questions. Like how much actual permanent storage is required for the most toxic substance humans have ever tried to store, who pays for it, the perpetual risks.
Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here. They ask you not to post flamebait and specifically not to post insinuations of organized manipulation/astroturfing, unless you have evidence, in which case you should be emailing hn@ycombinator.com so we can look into it. Other people having different views about nuclear power doesn't count as evidence of anything, other than that the topic is controversial, which we all know.
I wrote a whole thing about this yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26414518 - it's not about nuclear, but you can swap in any topic that people feel strongly about. The mechanism is exactly the same.
Just pointing out that nuclear power is a _non-renewable_ power source gets downvotes on this site. (100% true fact)
I re-read the rules and it looks like the #1 comment on this thread appears to also violate the HN rules. c'est la vie
This is a real problem. Three ways to address.
1. One I don't like, but that's widely deployed: create remote storage facilities and just store it there. This is what's done now, it works, but the costs are pretty high. What's worse, store a tonne once, pay for it forever.
2. One I like a lot and it's getting adoption in Russia: they built light-water reactors that work on nuclear waste ([1]). So, same fuel is used twice and the results are much less dangerous. What's good is that these reactors can run on anyones waste and Russia already imports nuclear waste from Europe.
3. The third option is funny: it might become viable in the next decade. Ship it to the Moon. The math is simple: 1 kg of fuel generates about $5000. If Starship makes the cost of shipping <$500, it would be a no-brainer to ship it all to the Moon. Theoretically, it can also be used as fuel there (see point 2) to generate power for moon bases.
In the short term, option 2 looks pretty reasonable to me.
1. https://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Russia-proposes-new-...
For the little actual high-level waste that is produced it's a pretty viable medium-term solution just to leave it onsite at the power plant.
The long-term solution is obvious: you bury it in a deep unmarked hole, duh.
This has been done [1].
Say it with me, there is no nuclear waste problem.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo...
In 300 years, the fission products are mostly gone (except for 7 "long lived fission products" with halflives in the 10^5 years or longer), so the waste is much easier to reprocess or otherwise dispose of. The problem then is that the radioactivity has dropped so much that amateur diversion of plutonium becomes a concern.
I imagine my neighbors would be less welcoming, but they'll complain about anything (heart of NIMBYville here)
Oh and you don't mark it. It's in a deep hole, no one's going own there.
I suspect, geology is not suitable.
This is a question that's been looked into, and with an interesting past: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-time_nuclear_waste_warnin...
What's wrong with this? This is literally what we do for every other type of waste.
> One I like a lot and it's getting adoption in Russia
You may be interested in what France has been doing for quite some time[0]. The reason America doesn't do it is because fuel is cheap. A small benefit of option 1 is that when fuel is no longer cheap you have an easy point of access. But at the end of the day you still have to put waste somewhere.
> To the moon!
This option likely won't happen as it is exceedingly dangerous. If a rocket blows up then radiation goes spraying everywhere. This also makes it a big target. Though see below for why this could be an option.
Something you haven't mentioned is using waste for other things. This isn't uncommon actually. But given your comment I'm under the impression that you think waste refers to a byproduct from the fuel (forgive me if I am misinterpreting). This is actually an extremely small part of the of the waste. About 3% of nuclear waste is high level waste. People talk about the 60k tons of total waste for all of nuclear power being able to fit on a football field, well only 3% of that is high level waste (which also should change how you think about option 2 because you'll realize that it doesn't solve the waste problem because that's not what the waste is). Low level waste is 90% of the waste, accounts for 1% of the radiation, and is things like tools, clothing, etc[1].
Actually that last part is why the conversations about waste are often seen as quite silly by those who are more familiar with the subject. Because it appears one group is talking about spent uranium as waste and another is talking about bunny suits. Again, 90% of the waste contains 1% of the radiation. Let that sink in.
[0] https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pr...
[1] https://www.world-nuclear.org/nuclear-essentials/what-is-nuc...
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BN-800_reactor
You should not mix returning spent fuel rods back to Russia and Uranium tails which Russia processes since it has a more efficient enrichment technology. Often when you hear about "Russia imports radioactive waste" in news it's about the latter and it's a blatant fearmongering. As for the former it's good deal for Russia (since with a right technology such as fast-neutron reactors you can produce new fuel rods from them with a minuscule amount of long-term waste) and for the world (since it contribute to non-proliferation, you don't want storage facilities of highly radioactive stuff which can be easily used for production of "dirty" bombs in every country which has a nuclear reactor).
Strapping it on a bomb to push it to the moon is obviously never going to happen, no matter how many successful launches SpaceX has.
You know what that mean? That means they enriched spent fuels. That means “high level waste” = “crude Uranium ore”.
Why would you want means of unrecoverable storage for “high level waste” yet not actually carry out that plan? Because those are precious nuclear material.
That also means Option 3 is politically improbable: means Russians and Chinese might refine it into nukes up there and away from the world to see.
Addressing the nuclear waste storage issue has value. Credible science I've seen suggests current approaches are poor relative to almost all other options.
I also like repossessing, and other countries do this (most spent US fuel has actually a huge amount of remaining life). US fuel is generally a solid that is more controllable, repossessing can create some high level by products that require vitrification as I understand it and the US doesn't have that as well established.
There are folks looking at ultra deep burial, below water tables in rock stable for millions of years. That's also interesting.
We are arguably facing a relatively pressing current issue with global warming. Nuclear does not have a lot of GHG emissions relatively. It seems we should be spending reasonable sums at least on research and perhaps very small scale demonstrator plants and waste options to see if anything can be proven out.
Huh really? Didn't know nuclear waste contains botox!
Sorry for the glib answer, but this is the biggest problem with anti-nuclear sentiments. Phrases like "most toxic substance" or "perpetual risks" doesn't mean much unless you quantify exactly how much of this toxic substance we're talking about. Botox is 320,000 times more toxic than plutonium (according to Wikipedia), and we inject it under our skin.
This is classic someone-else’s-problem thinking: if you create waste that will exist in a highly toxic form for thousands of years, where radioactive containment is necessary...
Then the cost of that waste is effort to store * life time.
Botox is an organic compound that can be disposed of after treating with simple chemicals, and decomposes naturally after a trivial amount of time.
You know what the recommended cleaning instructions for a Botox spill are? Spray the surface with sodium hypochlorite and then spray it down after 30 minutes.
So.
Tell me again how Botox is worse than nuclear waste?
Remind me how “Phrases like "most toxic substance" or "perpetual risks" doesn't mean much...?”
This is complete BS, and it is the problem with the pro-nuclear sentiment: waving your hands and talking BS doesn’t make the problems disappear.
Wanting nuclear waste and nuclear accidents not to be a thing doesn’t make them not be a thing.
Wanting something to be true and it actually being true.
Are. Not. The. Same. Thing.
So... there’s plenty of good stuff about nuclear, but taking about it like this isn’t helping.
The long term cost of nuclear has to be weighed against the long term cost of not using it. That cost will be significantly more carbon emissions. Quantifying the magnitude of the problem created by those emissions is hard. Then trying to estimate at what point do affordable renewables backed with good affordable storage options come online. As it would only be in that in between time that nuclear would have a significant impact on carbon emissions.
It's not about picking a harmless option, it's about finding the least harmful.
I'm not trying to call conspiracy but I was a bit surprised that this is the third nuclear post on the front page in the last two weeks. Usually we do like once every few months. I came to this thread wondering why there's so much nuclear talk lately.
Obviously the President can't just wave his hand a cause a few dozen new reactors to spring up in the US, and four years may not be enough time to make a committed push that can't be quickly reversed by the next administration, but that's what's got everyone who's interested in nuclear so excited.
Heck, the URA ETF is up 70% since the election, from the low it had been hanging around since Fukushima.
Especially when the questions include language such as "the most toxic substances" and "perpetual" risks.
Even more especially when "what about storage" only seems to get asked regarding a small amount of nuclear waste but the _10s of millions_ of annually generated tons of highly toxic coal ash being stored in hilariously unsafe open ponds or landfills seems to be the baseline we are happy with as a society.
My reason for not seeing how this could be the case is that there is no reasonable entity that would be funding this conspiracy. Nuclear has been smeared since Chernobyl, and the nuclear industry barely breaks even. They certainly don't have enough money for something like this. Also, why would this mysterious entity be funding bad faith arguers on internet forums, instead of lobbyists, which would probably be a much more effective way of promoting nuclear.
Back in the 70, 80, 90, it was incredibly common for insiders to the energy industry talk of the power pronuclear segments had when it came to dictating policy and how they would use dirty tactics to launder their own image such as with astroturfing or just old media blitz charm campaigns in order to desorient the public when it came to things such as miss management of nuclear plants, or miss management of nuclear waste which continues to this day with rusting tanks holding dangerous waste, and all of this setting aside things like sea dumping of nuclear waste that has wrecked the public face of nuclear energy for the last 50 years
Think of it as akin to anti-maskers. Of course you're going to get a lot of push back. Not only is it wrong, it's an ideology that kills people.
Oh, and to answer your question:
"The U.S. generates about 2,000 metric tons of used fuel each year
This number may sound like a lot, but it’s actually quite small. In fact, the U.S. has produced roughly 83,000 metrics tons of used fuel since the 1950s—and all of it could fit on a single football field at a depth of less than 10 yards." [1]
[1] https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-...
The problem of acceptance that nuclear power has is home-made.
It started with introducing the broad public to "The Power of the Atom" by wiping out tens of thousands of people in an instant (or rather two). Sure, cheers were great at that time because it meant that thousands of young men would not be gunned down on Japanese beaches while trying to land there. A year later already, regrets set in, also because Japan had basically been willing to end the war even before these events.
Then: nuclear tests, inadvertently irradiating fishermen in one incident. Opposing public concerns instead of trying to find solutions together - sure it was a time when obedience to authority was widespread and it might have seemed like a viable way to deal with the protests.
You only have to read the history of the anti-nuclear movement to see that nuclear "public relations activities" (let's just call it that) were one screw-up after the other and that the movement was a natural reaction to that.
Let's not forget the fact that the thousands of people that were wiped out in an instant were not males of military age. They were civils, women and children alike.
I don't know how anybody can believe the resistance to nuclear is purely out of ignorance. That's crossing the line into industry propaganda, not to mention the whole line about nuclear energy being our only hope towards solving climate change...
Edit: Might as well mention another huge issue with nuclear power. Why is the waste being buried on Native American reservations, where it's not subject to the same health and safety regulations?
this is nothing but FUD designed to evoke a connection to death. technology isn't responsible for what its used for, and any negative past uses in no way preclude future beneficial uses.
even if you don't like nuclear you should be ashamed of saying things like this.
> I don't know how anybody can believe the resistance to nuclear is purely out of ignorance
because antinuclear arguments look like yours.
And we're still making nuclear weapons. That is a connection to death, they're used to kill people. I'm against that personally.
And I'm not even anti nuclear power, I'm certainly support it more than petroleum. I just realize why people are skeptical of nuclear too.
Nuclear power and a general surplus of energy might have prevented WWII altogether. The era of nuclear and fossil fuels has been remarkably peaceful and prosperous. It is prudent to preserve as much of that as possible.
My computer isn't doing that at the moment, these are such bad analogies...
And I'm skeptical of gasoline-powered vehicles "in all their uses" for the same reason. It's sane to be skeptical of things that could potentially poison you. Why do I have to explain this?
Kidney beans can potentially poison you. Salad can potentially poison you. Nutmeg can potentially poison you.
It's fine to be skeptical, yes. But if they have strong merits, abstaining solely based on their potential downsides is irrational.
Taking a stance of weighing the upsides and downsides and deciding that the upsides aren't worth it is fine. Saying "there are downsides" and using that as a basis for rejection is just silly, as that's true of basically everything you'll ever interact with.
It's like there's a conscious tactic to compare nuclear power to things people consider harmless.
You're also lecturing me about properly weighing in on upsides and downsides, but you just compared it to salad!
Canned kidney beans (and other canned foods) are linked with botulism, which is literally one of the most toxic substances to humans. The absurdity of the argument is exactly the point, though. You aren't against canned food (despite botulism killing roughly the same number of people as nuclear accidents in the same timeframe), because it has obvious upsides. The same reasoning should be afforded to other areas too, including nuclear power.
> It's like there's a conscious tactic to compare nuclear power to things people consider harmless.
This is literally my exact tactic, yes. Not to convince you that nuclear is harmless, but to point out that the same criteria should be used. You already consider the aforementioned items harmless, despite their obvious upsides and everyday use and their potentially harmful downsides. The same line of reasoning should be used in both cases.
It's absolutely fine if you say "Kidney beans downsides don't outweigh their upsides, nuclear power's downsides do outweigh its upsides." That's applying the same reasoning to both. However, the logic of "Nuclear power is linked to death, so it is bad" is just as rational as "Canned food is linked to death, so it is bad". Which is, as you say, a bit absurd.
> You're also lecturing me about properly weighing in on upsides and downsides, but you just compared it to salad!
To be totally clear, the point of the analogy is not to convince you that nuclear waste and salad are the same. It is to convince you that the cost-benefit analysis is the same between everyday things like beans and salad, all the way to totally different areas like nuclear power or skydiving or using a computer.
e.g. for salad the risk is very low of death, and the benefits are super high. Salad gets the green light.
Internal-combustion engines allow for a great deal of commerce and personal travel, but they also cause a lot of pollution. Should we ban them, and only let people with EVs or bikes drive? (The same thought process should apply here)
Nuclear power has downsides (nuclear waste), but it also has upsides (Small-footprint, CO2-free energy). I don't care if people weigh those sides and disagree that it's a good option. I care if they look at the downsides and determine that it's bad based solely on those (just as I would in every other decision/policy-making process).
Simply because botulism and nuclear accidents kill roughly the same number of people (depending on the time period chosen) does not address the issue of nuclear waste. It's a good way of distracting from it though...
My argument: Support for a choice or policy should be made by one's evaluations of both its upsides and downsides. Something with big downsides could still be okay if its upsides are substantially bigger. It is irrational to make a choice based only on either the upsides or downsides of a choice. This approach should be applicable to all kinds of situations, from boring everyday ones to global policy ones.
My understanding of your argument: Support for a choice or policy can be rational based on only its upside or its downside, so long as its upside or downside is sufficient enough in magnitude. While comparing upsides and downsides might work in some scenarios (e.g. everyday scenarios, foods), it might not work in bigger-scale scenarios, such as the situation of what to do with highly toxic nuclear waste.
If that's where our disagreement does lie, I'm happy to chock it up to a difference in opinion. If I'm misunderstanding your position, that's definitely not my intent.
Your computer was produced using all green energy, using eco-friendly manufacturing with resources that are mined in sustainable ways? Wow, it must have cost a fortune.
This argument makes it seem like you're fine with people being poisoned as long as it's somewhere else.
> It's sane to be skeptical of things that could potentially poison you. Why do I have to explain this?
Would you say we are poisoning ourselves by blasting carbon into the air? I would. And by that metric, it obviously makes sense to look at the alternatives, and it seems to me that nuclear is currently the least-poisonous way to power our collective needs. Solar just cannot do it. Maybe on a bright sunny day it can! But it's not always bright and sunny, sometimes it's night or it's cloudy. So you need to overproduce, and store the energy somewhere. Where is it stored? According to 90% of the solar advocates here, in batteries filled with poison, that are produced using poisonous manufacturing.
Solar and other renewables are not as "clean" as we'd like to think, and they also are just not up to the task yet. Nuclear is.
I get that you're not anti-nuclear, but maybe this is some ammo you can use when you're arguing for it.
I'd be dead if my computer was producing anything comparable to nuclear fission at the moment.
Also, I've lived off grid on solar power for over a year, I'm well aware of what it's like.
Unlike fire, which of course has never been used to kill anybody.
(FWIW it isn't hard to argue that fertilizer has saved more lives than any other technology. But nitrates are also how you make bombs...)
If they didn't mean that, they accidentally made an excellent comparison. Humans will attempt to weaponise everything and generally succeed. List of technologies deployed in war to kill people include:
* Architecture * Physics * Maths * Positive emotions * Fertiliser * Horses * GPS * Drones
The key point here is just because people make bombs using nuclear tech really doesn't set it very far apart from everything else. Solar power will be used to support war and atrocities, somehow. Military men are inventive.
I'm glad Fritz was brought up though because it really shows how complicated science is and why when doing it we have to think hard about the ethics. As I said before, it isn't hard to argue that Fritz saved more human lives than any other single person in the entire history, even if we make it a percentage. But he is also known as the father of chemical warfare (he developed and weaponized chlorine gas). It is easy to call him a hero. It is easy to call him a villain. Truth is much more complicated. And while we're talking about nuclear I think this conversation is extremely important. Cheap nuclear power plants (which would require significant research and funding, and a modification of bureaucracy) could change the world but the same technology has created some of the most destructive weapons we've ever seen.
> Solar power will be used to support war and atrocities, somehow.
Without these a lot of satellites wouldn't operate. The reason we have a Space Force isn't because Trump, it is because our space assets are so valuable that it was necessary to break them out of the Air Force (as has happened with other branches). This is where a significant amount of the intelligence comes from. Information is arguably one of the most valuable components in warfare, arguably more important than actual man power.
> unlike fertilizers
Yes, we all know that there are lots of things that can kill lots of humans, we could add cars, or fast food to the list. The difference is that hamburguers only explode in your arteries, not wipe an entire city burning everybody alive, and don't create billionary debt in the process for everybody and for decades.
So, can we forget whataboutism and keep moving on?
Banning all fire or all fertilizers is out of the discussion (we could make exceptions for arsonists or bomb makers, but this is not a problem). We can't do it without killing half of the human population by hunger or freezing and would not solve anything.
Like chlorine gas? Land mines? Phosphorous weapons? Sarin?
And this is why everybody thinks that planning to build a net of small containers of chlorine gas or sarin in every neighborhood, or having phosphorus weapons and land mines at our backyards and in our children's room, would be an incredibly stupid idea.
Not sure why this is down voted, it's only true. Uncomfortable truth I guess?
And don't mind nuclear waste or nuclear weapons...
That is actually wrong. We have stores far more deadly stuff such as chemical and biological weapons. In addition, the waste gets less deadly with time. So after a few decades or so, the most deadly waste has decayed.
You can actually swim at the top of a nuclear containment pool without much adverse effects.
Yes. "Long half-life" = "less radioactive". By definition.
Then they hear, "Nuclear waste from nuclear plants will be radioactive for thousands of years."
They then assume, "Nuclear waste from nuclear plants is highly deadly and could kill you within minutes for thousands of years."
I have an eye for it as a Chernobyl affected.
Every other day there is an article downplaying the risks.
However it's easy to imagine groups that would be willing to pay troll farms to bump up support.
1. There are a bunch of companies developing new reactors.
2. There are a lot of people who think fossil fuels are dangerous and see nuclear as the only path forward.
3. Maybe someone just wants to drum up controversy.
The thing is buying trolls isn't that expensive. I once got 500 twitter followers for $5. I bet for $500 you could get thousands of fake comments across the web.
Every time the topic comes up here different accounts repeat many similar strawman talking points.
Nuclear is their attempt at creating something, which I might mention is expressly opposite the vision of something that Tesla with its batteries represent.
It might surprise you how much ego there is in investing.
Something really doesn't make sense here, but there aren't enough details in your post to tell if fund managers are really being that irrational, or if the post itself just doesn't make sense.
The push for nuclear, with the goal of becoming the base load instead, is meant to subvert and supplant that narrative.
I'm willing to believe the players on the stage are marionettes, but I need to be told where to look for the strings so I can see them for myself. Exactly how are these sour Tesla shorts pushing nuclear?
To everyone else, hedge funds don’t give a shit about what actually happens except that they can make money on it. And if you’re curious about how salty hedge funds can get when they lose on a trade, I recommend looking up the Herbalife saga. Tesla and GameStop are still currently ongoing examples as well.
Without any verifiable examples of things Tesla shorts are doing to promote nuclear power, your statement comes across as a conspiracy theory.