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Comment by freetime2 | Hacker News Reader

They already tried this in Nevada and failed for political reasons [1]. Dumping nuclear waste in the desert may be a non issue to you (and to me as well), but to a lot of people - particularly people who actually live in Nevada - it is a very serious issue.

The question of how to dispose of nuclear waste - in a manner that is satisfying to the residents of the state where it is being disposed - remains an unsolved issue in the US. And the current policy is to basically just ignore the waste. It’s being stored for the time being at reactor sites in steel and concrete casks - which I don’t think anyone would argue is a sufficient solution.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste...

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All you're saying here is, "people object to it." Or is there something more substantive?

> in a manner that is satisfying to the residents of the state where it is being disposed

No, that is basically NIMBY. Of course some residents won't like nuclear waste buried underground, 100 miles from them in a place they'll never go and where no one lives. I don't know how to not sound callous about that.

The oil business deals with NIMBYs by making it worth their while. If oils is found on your land, you get lots of cash. “Beverly Hillbilly’s”.

Treat nuclear the same way. Don’t ask towns to host nuclear facilities out of the goodness of their hearts. Make it worth their while.

If nuclear power starts raising real estate value, the NIMBYs shut up.

> Treat nuclear the same way. Don’t ask towns to host nuclear facilities out of the goodness of their hearts. Make it worth their while.

The nuclear industry doesn't generate the money for that kind of lubrication; they demand more subsidies and immunities than they already have to build anything as it is.

The Department of Defense doesn’t generate cash, but people love having those bases nearby.

Thousands of salaries is cash.

That's a cost to the DoD. The point was that government can easily subsidize nuclear waste storage, just as it subsidizes the military.

While you may think it unfair to compare, the 3 coal slurry spills (from power plants) which happened in the US to date had ranges of impact on the order of hundreds of miles and included impacts to drinking water.

I have little doubt the NIMBY's are recalling one or more of these incidents.

And this is just limiting the scope to power plant related waste. If you talk about industry in general you have many decades of weird cancers and nonpotable tap water in various parts of the country. The lack of trust comes from precedent.

Yes I am basically saying people object to it. And in a democracy that’s a fairly important detail that you can’t just write off as a “non issue”.

> Yes I am basically saying people object to it. And in a democracy that’s a fairly important detail that you can’t just write off as a “non issue”.

We do this all the time.

People object to living next to the airport. They object to new roads. They object to schools being built, rail lines, bus stops, even hospitals.

Yet, we weigh the pros for society against the cons for specific people. That's why we have a country with any infrastructure. If we simply gave in whenever someone said no, we would all be dead in an empty field.

Many people also hate renewable energy for ideological reasons. People can be persuaded, or, in a democracy, simply outvoted by a critical mass of supporters. Nuclear power has been losing the propaganda war for decades in the United States, but that’s not a reason to give up on it forever.

So France isn't a democracy? In a democracy, minorities have rights, but they don't have an infinite veto.

As someone else says, "People object to living next to the airport. They object to new roads. They object to schools being built, rail lines, bus stops, even hospitals."

Where I live, the old Orchard Supply store is being turned into a Costco. There are people objecting to that, too.

It failed for more than political reasons. Long term repositories are pretty complex and have extremely unique problems to resolve (such as communicating with intelligent lifeforms that may not recognize our danger symbols). Just see all that went into the long term seed storage buildings. But really, we've learned enough in the last (almost) century to learn that we probably don't need long term repositories.

> political problem

But that was the problem with Yucca - it was chosen exclusively for its “scientific” value - remoteness. They didn’t event take transportation costs into account.

If you start with the political aspects, it becomes really, really easy to solve.

How many towns and cities are there with plants shutting down? How many with a history of military and nuclear facilities?

I know one town in particular that is trying to specialize in nuclear work. They have consultants, training programs, etc. Why not call them?

The reason Yucca Mountain sputtered out was that it wasn't really needed. It's cheaper to just put the spent fuel in dry casks for a few centuries, even if the stuff is then buried (or reprocessed, or shot into space). Given there was no $$ incentive to make YM work, any amount of opposition could stop it.

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