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Comment by Manuel_D | Hacker News Reader

It's not only possible, it has been actually carried out in dozens of facilities across the world: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing

As nuclear has been neglected in recent decades it's cheaper to mine uranium than reprocess, but it's by no means an experimental or prototype technology.

Climate change will probably spur growth in intermittent sources in the short term, since politicians are usually optimizing for the next election cycle, but eventually peak production times will become saturated and the infeasibility of energy storage in regions within the hydroelectric power will become clear. Effectively all countries that have decarbonized their electricity sector have done so through a mix of hydroelectric power and nuclear power.

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Why are nukebros incapable of comprehending the difference between fissile and fertile?

A fissile isotope can readily undergo fission reaction, and a fertile isotope can be converted into a fertile isotope via neutron capture (this is how plutonium is made for nuclear bombs). Neutron capture is not part of the main waste reprocessing method [1], the neutron capture already happened in the reactor. Reprocessing separates the plutonium and other byproducts from the remaining uranium 235 fuel before the latter is re-used, no fertile material is being converted to fissile material.

So now I ask you: what relevance, at all, does the distinction between fissile and fertile material have with respect to magic_hamster's claims about the feasibility of waste reprocessing? That commenter claimed reprocessing was not feasible, I responded with dozens of examples of reprocessing being carried out. What does fertile vs. fissile have to do with this?

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

The relevance is that fertile material is not "partially spent fuel" in any extant fuel cycle.

First it does nothing to the fission products (which are the bulk of the radioactive waste by mass). Second turning U238, Pu240, Am241, and transuranics other than Pu239 into usable fuel has never happened without being a minor side-product of neutrons from a fissile source, and using the dregs of Pu239 that is <1% of the spemt fuel and <20% ofntue waste does not reduce the radioactivity of the waste, rather it makes it more dangerous because Pu239 is significantly less harmful than the result of putting MOX in a nuclear reactor, as is regular spent uranium fuel.

Pretending otherwise is knowingly disonhest.

> The relevance is that fertile material is not "partially spent fuel" in any extant fuel cycle.

Nobody was ever talking about fertile material until you brought it up. Let's re-read the relevant part in the root comment shall we?

> As pointed out in the video re-processing the fuel gets all of the usable fissile material out.

We were always talking about recovering fissile material. "Partially spent fuel" refers to fuel rods that still contain some fissile material. I have no idea where you got the idea that "partially spent material" referred to fertile material, especially when the comment you're referring to explicitly mentioned recovering fissile material.

You are attempting to insinuate that reprocessing will eliminate the nuclear waste and obviate mining new U235.

It does neither.

Stupid semantic games and motte and bailey rhetorical techniques do not change this.

It will recover U235 from spent fuel and reduce the need to mine and enrich new uranium. Nobody ever suggested reprocessing somehow cheats entropy and creates unlimited energy. Can you point to where in the comment chain you feel like someone made the claim that reprocessing entirely eliminated the need to mine new uranium? It recovers a portion of otherwise wasted U235, and I don't see anyone claiming that it makes infinite energy. There's no motte and baily, your interjection about fertile vs fissile material was totally irrelevant.

> The big lie is calling it waste; "partially spent fuel" is more accurate

Which you doubled down on twice, before backpedalling and claiming you never meant that the *other* 99% of the waste wasn't waste and "partially spent" actually means "has a few leftover dregs that don't make a meaningful difference".

Where did anyone in this comment chain claim that 99% of the material in spent nuclear fuel is reclaimed and reused? Recovering the "few leftover dregs that don't make a meaningful difference" are economically viable when uranium prices are high.

I'm not sure what the point is in continuing to engage with someone responding to what seems to be an entirely imaginary set of comments. Nobody in the thread is making the wild claims you seem to be trying to refute.

Very nice attempt at gaslighting, but claiming it's "partially spent fuel" and that calling it waste is a lie is like claiming shit is "partially eaten food" because you can still see a couple of corn kernels.

It's a very obvious attempt to spread the myth that reprocessing somehow magically makes the entire mass of SNF fissile and will magically make all the fission products go away.

> It's a very obvious attempt to spread the myth that reprocessing somehow magically makes the entire mass of SNF fissile and will magically make all the fission products go away.

I'm truly baffled as to how you reached this interpretation. Nobody, ever, suggested that reprocessing somehow made the entire mass of spent nuclear fuel fissile. The comment that called it "partially spent fuel" specifically mentioned getting the usable fissile material out (thus implying that there's other material that's not usable). I seriously doubt a significant portion of people reading this are reaching the conclusion that nuclear waste becomes a source of infinite energy.

There's no gaslighting here. I'm not going to assume it's bad faith, but here and in other comments you've shown a remarkable tendency vastly misinterpret comments and then accuse other contributors of being ignorant or acting in bad faith. So in the future, when you read something that appears to you to make an outlandish or blatantly false claim, I'd suggest you ask the commenters to clarify what they mean instead of calling them stupid and trying to refute claims that nobody ever made.

You actually think this is convincing.

Wild.

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