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Comment by ethereal-haze | Hacker News Reader

Do we have a long term solution for nuclear waste? Or are we just going from one bad output to another?

Do we have a long term solution for all the toxic waste that coal power plants are blowing into the air and the radioactive ashes that remain? Nuclear waste seems like a tiny problem to me in comparison.

Also, people seem to be more interested in nuclear waste than in coal waste, so I expect more sophisticated solutions.

Stop burning coal is the long term solution.

Short term solution is similar to nuclear, just gather it in random places and hope you've gone bankrupt before anyone asks you to pay for dealing with it because if you pay up front then you are obviously economic self-harm and people would move straight to the long term solution.

Nuclear waste is a tiny problem. You just stick it somewhere that people aren't, preferably underground.

Nuclear waste disposal is normally outsourced to specialist companies. It turns out that many of those companies have been illegally dumping it in the ocean near Africa. In the last decade or so it's been washing ashore and causing huge harm.

https://www.expertsure.com/2011/03/27/more-illegally-dumped-...

Any time you outsource disposal of such a dangerous substance you're pretty much guaranteeing that it'll all be dumped improperly. That's why it's not a tiny problem at all.

That's blogspam; it's quoting reporting it claims to be from Boing Boing, but actually came from a poorly sourced editorial in the Independent from back in 2009, which in turn is just retelling the allegations from here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_waste_dumping_by_the_%27...

Allegedly, back in the 80s and 90s, organised crime in Italy was involved in the improper disposal of toxic and radioactive waste. Much of it was dumped around Italy, but some was said to have been dumped in Somalian waters. Attempts to verify this have proven difficult; the main informant hasn't proven reliable, and a UN mission to Somalia in 2005 wasn't able to find anything.

Still, it does seem like some toxic waste was dumped in or around Somalia back in the 1980s or early 1990s, and that's certainly terrible.

That being said, it seems to have happened thirty years ago, and although there was concern the 2005 tsunami could have stirred it up, that doesn't seem to be happening, and there's no evidence it's causing any harm at all. (And remember, most of the waste was in the Med off the coast of Italy, where it would be much easier to detect any impact than in Somalia.)

> Any time you outsource disposal of such a dangerous substance you're pretty much guaranteeing that it'll all be dumped improperly.

That seems to be the opposite of what your link is suggesting?

> Project Censored and Boing Boing have been reporting on this horrific situation that is unfolding in the African country:

Uh, Project Censored and Boing Boing? I'm not finding any reporting on this purported nuclear waste dumping in Somalia. I'm seeing reports of toxic waste, but not nuclear waste.

Furthermore, The USSR and United Kingdom both dumped massive amounts of nuclear waste into the Arctic and Atlantic oceans respectively [1]. There are no observed adverse effects of this.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_disposal_of_radioactive_...

And hope that in 1000 years it is still being managed properly, the water table hasn't changed and caused it to poison the groundwater, no one has used it to make a dirty bomb... etc.

I don't think we can be so cavalier about nuclear waste, it's a heavy responsibility to push off to the future.

I take issue with this kind of argument, because it implies that because we don't know everything that can happen in the future, we should not use nuclear power. We already know the costs of producing energy with coal and oil: thousands of deaths every year, potentially billion of deaths in the medium-term.

Like most things, this decision is about trade-offs. No, we have not figured out how to process nuclear waste in 1000 years. But if that's our major problem in 1000 years, we have succeeded in our most important challenge right now.

Coal waste kills about 1 million people a year, thats like a genocide right there, how many people does nuclear waste kill?

Sure. It's called "put it over there in the corner". That's really all the long term solution you need.

I mean, okay, I guess pick a corner that's fairly geologically stable. But the volume is (compared to other energy sources) tiny, and it's just not that dangerous.

Bury it underground, in bedrock. But there's no sense in doing that until the waste has been reprocessed, since non-reprocessed nuclear waste is a valuable fuel source.

But, waste is not reprocessed, because it is expensive. As is every single thing about nukes.

Israel, Pakistan, and France reprocess their nuclear waste [1]. And it's not particularly expensive, it's just less expensive than enriching new uranium.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing#List_of_s...

I.e., expensive.

US got 15,000 tons of massively subsidized fuel processed from Soviet bombs.

I don't think we have a long term solution for nuclear waste, but I have always held that we don't have a long term plan for the wastes from fossil fuels either and they seem much harder to manage so I think it is a win.

I would much rather live downstream from a nuclear waste "temporary" storage area that has an indeterminate lifespan than downstream from an oilsands tailings retention pond!

There is no nuclear waste, just fuel for breeder reactors.

Compared to the extinction of the human race? I think nuclear definitely has a place even with its problems.

Wait, do you think climate change will cause the extinction of humanity? How so?

Not in practice. Many plausible options, but none have been applied at a relevant scale.

The amount of differing opinions you got on this fundamental question is remarkable.

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