Hacker News Reader

Comment by acidburnNSA | Hacker News Reader

I'm excited that Onkalo will be coming onine soon, so we don't have to hear the myth that there's no solution for spent nuclear fuel anymore. The solution that enjoys a solid scientific consensus is the deep geologic repository.

Another thing that is weird to me is that everyone says nuclear waste is hazardous for a uniquely long time, but it become less hazardous over time. Many non-radioactive materials, like arsenic and mercury, are toxic forever.

In the US we have WIPP operating, but it stores weapons-related radioactive material rather than commercial spent fuel, so I guess it doesn't count.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_Isolation_Pilot_Plant

View on HN

What is even more interesting: At a given power rating, coal plants produce up to 3 times more radioactivity than nuclear power plants directly in leftover ash because coal contains large numbers of radioactive isotopes. It might not seem like much, but when you consider that a 1TWe coal plant burns 3.2Mt of coal a year compared to 27t of uranium for an equivalent nuclear power plant, this might become more apparent.

Most of that waste is captured in ash via particle filters and has to be treated like any highly toxic and radioactive waste, but as far as I know this waste it not destined for secured long term nuclear disposal where it would be kept safe from interacting with the environment. We don’t seem to have a problem with that…

Further, some low percentage (literature tends to point at .5%) of it is in gaseous form or cannot be filtered, so it gets vented into the atmosphere. That’s assuming modern and intact particle filters. And we aren’t even talking about CO2 here.

It’s somewhat absurd we have to have discussions about nuclear power plant waste in this reality.

Nuclear power plants produce many many orders of magnitude more radioactivity than coal power plants for a given amount of energy produced. You are probably misinterpreting the famous 1978 study [1] where the radioactive emissions of nuclear and coal power plants were estimated to be roughly the same. This does not include the solid and liquid nuclear waste, only the radioactive gases that are inadvertently leaked from nuclear reactors. Coal ash is barely radioactive at all, and the radioactivity is completely negligible compared to the chemical toxicity.

[1] https://doi.org/10.1126/science.202.4372.1045

Arsenic and mercury came out of the ground, originally. It's not like we can make those elements from scratch. Diluting them and putting them back where we got them is probably fine.

Nuclear waste is something new we are creating, but I'd rather have it deep underground in a geologically stable place, than sitting in casks on the surface.

Mining is not exactly a natural process. We can't dilute the toxic byproducts and putting them back where we got them, since that would require rebuilding the mountain. In cases of open mines, all that is left is a lake size hole where solid land once where.

What the mining industry do is to fence it up (including pools used for waste), put up a sign to warn people, and then let nature fill it up with water. The best we can hope for is that they did their research properly and made sure that it doesn't leak into the groundwater.

In the past there were people who tried diluting stuff like this by dumping it into the ocean, but that isn't the best idea.

Uranium came out of the ground as well, and there were natural reactors.

Nuclear waste does not consist of Uranium, but of the much more radioactive fission products. The Okla natural reactor went critical for the last time around 2 billion years ago. Indeed, nuclear waste is not a problem if you can wait for 2 billion years.

There were some discussions about the safety of the encasing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KBS-3#Criticism

Burying things in the ground is not a solution. It's more an Ostrich policy.

Better in the ground that the air.

Lots of scientists disagree strongly with your statement.

"The conclusion that disposal is needed and that deep geologic disposal is the scientifically preferred approach has been reached by every expert panel that has looked at the issue and by every other country that is pursuing a nuclear waste management program."

https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/blue-ribbon-commission-am...

One thing that drives me craziest of all is when people simultaneously claim that nuclear waste is among the most hazardous things out there while also blocking any progress to get it safely out of the biosphere.

The thing is, that to human knowledge it is currently the only viable way to handle the situation. But still it is not a solution.

A solution would be to make it non-hazardous. But there is no viable way to do it right now.

> to human knowledge it is currently the only viable way to handle the situation.

No, it's not. See comments elsewhere in the thread about reprocessing.

highly recommended to watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aUODXeAM-k

How about we reprocess it and use it as nuclear fuel. IIRC France is the only country that does this. We just don't like the kind of reactor needed.

> IIRC France is the only country that does this

No, many countries do:

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

I think the people you're referring to want us to stop producing nuclear waste in the first place.

This approach of geological sequestration, while being the scientifically preferred solution, still has potential very negative consequences for some future generation many years in the future. By some people calling this safe, it enables the nuclear proponents to leverage that to say there is no issue with the waste so it's fine to create more.

> By some people calling this safe, it enables the nuclear proponents to leverage that to say there is no issue with the waste so it's fine to create more.

Unfortunately those who believe nuclear energy generation is necessary often refuse to acknowledge the very real risks and costs associated with it. The fact is that there is no panacea when it comes to energy generation. All known methods come with risks, rewards and downside. It is fine to argue that nuclear energy is the cleanest and safest way to generate energy, but not that it is completely safe or without risk.

> by every other country that is pursuing a nuclear waste management program.

This claim is simply false. Many countries reprocess nuclear waste:

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

Countries that reprocess nuclear waste still need a deep geologic repository for the fission products and minor actinides due to process losses. Reprocessing reduces the number of repositories you need for a given fleet size, but you still need a repository.

> Countries that reprocess nuclear waste still need a deep geologic repository

That's possible, but even if it's done, it's only necessary for hundreds of years (because the radioactive isotopes left over have much shorter half-lives), not 100,000 years. Big difference.

Radiotoxicity does indeed drop to ore levels in 300-500 years but even then there are a few problem actors. Partitioning and transmutation can help with these, probably.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-lived_fission_product

I consider the elements containing those isotopes to be prime candidates for space disposal, not burial.

That list includes the US, which hasn't had commercial reprocessing in many decades.

The truth is that reprocessing is an economic loser at this point; even France admits it. Separated plutonium literally has negative value; you lose money trying to fabricate fuel elements from it instead of using freshly enriched natural uranium. France still does reprocessing because whatever is done with spent fuel is not that expensive compared to the cost of just building and operating nuclear reactors, so the boondoggle is not that big.

> reprocessing is an economic loser at this point

Not on a time scale of 100 years or so, let alone the 100,000 years that are being imposed as a requirement on geologic storage. On that time scale recovering unburned fuel from reprocessing will be cheaper than mining and refining fuel.

> France still does reprocessing because whatever is done with spent fuel is not that expensive

Yes, particularly when you factor in that reprocessing gives you a source of additional fuel (most of the "spent" fuel removed from reactors is actually not spent, and reprocessing recovers it for future use) that, as noted above, is expected to be cheaper than mining it in the not too distant future.

> the boondoggle

It's not a boondoggle at all, it's a rational way of anticipating future nuclear fuel requirements, as above. It's certainly much more rational than requiring spent fuel to be stored for 100,000 years as if that was the only possible thing that could be done with it.

> Not on a time scale of 100 years or so

AT THIS MOMENT it's an economic loser. If you need reprocessed fuel in 100 years, by the miracle of nonzero interest rates you save money by doing it closer to then instead of right now. The cost of storing the fuel until then is low enough that this works out.

> It's not a boondoggle at all, it's a rational way of anticipating future nuclear fuel requirements, as above.

No, it's a waste of money to do it right now.

> it's a waste of money to do it right now

If you're allowed to store the current waste in a facility that's only good for 100 years or so, then yes. But not if you're required to store any waste you don't reprocess for 100,000 years.

Where does that requirement come from, though? If society is going to collapse in 100 years, I suggest the money be better spent preparing for the consequences of that, not worrying about whether the documentation on dry casks will satisfy some licensing requirement.

> Where does that requirement come from, though?

I've answered that already in another subthread we're having.

> If society is going to collapse in 100 years

Where was that kind of thinking involved in this at all?

> That list includes the US, which hasn't had commercial reprocessing in many decades.

But it also includes many countries that reprocess currently.

The US has not reprocessed fuel in many decades, and never on any significant scale, because the Carter Administration outlawed it based on mistaken concerns about proliferation, and it's been a political pariah ever since. It has nothing to do with any rational technical assessment.

Pakistan and India do it for their nuclear weapons programs. You don't want to be making that argument.

The UK, France, Japan, and Italy don't reprocess anymore (I'm not sure Italy ever did on any substantial scale).

Carter stopped reprocessing by executive order, but Reagan quickly reversed that order. No reprocessing then occurred, because reprocessing made no economic sense. It turned out Carter's order isn't what killed reprocessing in the US; cold hard economics did. It did provide a convenient excuse for those who wish to ignore that reality.

> Carter's order isn't what killed reprocessing in the US; cold hard economics did.

No, "cold, hard economics" would say, if you are correct that it's not even cost effective to do any reprocessing now, that the spent fuel should be stored for 100 years or so and then reprocessed, when it's economically cost effective.

But US policy has been that spent fuel has to be stored in a facility that's good for 100,000 years. That makes no sense if the waste is going to be reprocessed 100 years from now. It makes sense only as part of a political scheme to kill nuclear power altogether. Which is exactly what it was, even if on paper reprocessing was "allowed" after the Reagan administration.

You do raise a good question: why was there this idea that burying waste now was a good idea? I can think of two reasons:

First, it may have been thought that opposition to nuclear energy is due to waste, and that burying it would remove the opposition. I consider this ill-founded, both because those predisposed to oppose nuclear use waste only as one of many arguments, and because the actual objective argument (economics) as nothing to do with waste.

Second, it may have been thought in the height of the Cold War that spent fuel at the surface would be a tempting target for ground burst H-bombs, where it would then contribute to long term fallout (each 1 GW(e)-year of spent fuel has about the same long lived fission products as a 20 MT bomb.) This is not an argument the government would have been pushing publicly, of course.

> why was there this idea that burying waste now was a good idea?

I've already answered that: nobody actually thought it was a good idea. It was imposed as a policy because the actual (though of course not publicly admitted) purpose of the policy was to kill nuclear power by imposing unreasonable requirements on it. (It's possible, I suppose, that the Cold War rationale you give played a role, but I don't think it's very likely; that objective could have been met without requiring anything like 100,000 year storage.)

>The conclusion that disposal is needed and that deep geologic disposal is the scientifically preferred approach

The parent post didn't say that burying the waste wasn't the scientifically preferred approach. Disposal is only needed if you create it in the first place.

I mean we could treat it like a coal power plant and just dilute the radioactive material into the air instead.

Burying things securely until a better solution can be found is a better than letting them sit onsite in storage pools...

But may not be better than shutting it all down.

Sorry, I like reliable electricity, I don't live near a hydro plant, and I'd prefer not to burn coal. Nuclear does what I want, and if the desire for a perfect solution for waste handling gets in the way of a good method for keeping the lights on while we work towards improving the isolation and transmutation of waste-that desire needs to be set aside.

I agree to in way that this is currently the only viable way to handle the situation. But it is not a solution.

"Live in Idaho" isn't THE solution to deaths from tropical diseases; but let's not pretend that it isn't A solution...

"Securely" being the key term here. Something that is buried securely today may not be buried securely tomorrow, or in 100 or a 1000 years, because the geology of the planet is not static. This can become even more of a problem if the knowledge should be lost what was buried where.

The subterranean geology of granitic shield provinces doesn't change much over the course of ...human-accessible timescales.

As Ostrich policy is ignoring the problem -- specifically not looking at the problem. Burying the Geiger counters would be an Ostrich policy

Exactly.

It is exactly that. We are putting it deep into the ground and ignoring the problem.

My guniea pigs hide from predators by burying themselves in hay. It's fairly effective.

That's not what as Ostrich does. An Ostrich leaves itself exposed and just closes its eyes.

Mankinds attitude to all sorts of threats is an ostrich policy, but burying nuclear waste is not one of those. Leaving it in a barrel and saying "nothing to see here" would be.

If it doesn’t cause any problems when it’s underground then that’s just called solving the problem

Yeah exactly like us not worrying about all the CO2 30 years ago "because the atmosphere is so big mankind couldn't possibly make a change"

We should balance ourselves with nature now instead of dumping it on the future.

This way we're solving the CO2 problem the way a gambler solves their debt by borrowing more money to pay off loans.

burying is absolutely a solution, especially when nuclear fuel is so dense you can store all the waste of humanity's power needs in a relatively small area

Why not? What specific problems does it not solve?

Do you prefer venting it to the atmosphere? That's the alternative for producing substantial amounts of energy reliably.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com