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Comment by Raed667 | Hacker News Reader

I'm still to hear a convincing argument about long-term nuclear waste storage.

My usual comment, bury it deep with signs as we already do.

If we've lost the ability to read signs, we've lost the ability to dig deep and will never encounter it.

The risk of death from any form of nuclear waste is insignificant compared to fact we've already killed tens if not hundreds of thousands of people killed mining for fossil fuels through to those killed by extreme weather caused by climate change right now.

> to those killed by extreme weather caused by climate change right now.

FYI, the number of deaths attributed to climate over the 50-year period from 1970 to 2019 dropped to a third[0], even as the world population more than doubled and atmospheric CO2 went from 325ppm to 410ppm at the same time. That's one-third of the absolute number of deaths, not one-third the rate.

This can be attributed to the increasing capacity of those in developing countries to deal with the vagaries of their natural environment, enabled by cheap energy from fossil fuels.

[0]: https://library.wmo.int/idurl/4/57564

> by cheap energy from fossil fuels.

Obviously the issue at hand is that use of those fossil fuels has led to a huge unpaid debt (negative externality) in the form of compounding climate change.

But even without that, the number of deaths attributed to air pollution is estimated at 7 million annually. Air pollution pretty much all comes from burning fossil fuels. So you aren't counting right.

I'm interested in what the parent doesn't find convincing about this. Seems pretty straightforward to me. There's tons of isolated places we could put nuclear waste in the US.

https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-...

> THE U.S. GENERATES ABOUT 2,000 METRIC TONS OF SPENT FUEL EACH YEAR This number may sound like a lot, but the volume of the spent fuel assemblies is actually quite small considering the amount of energy they produce.

> The amount is roughly equivalent to less than half the volume of an Olympic-sized swimming pool.

> And, the clean energy generated from this fuel would be enough to power more than 70 million homes—avoiding more than 400 million metrics tons of carbon dioxide emissions.

You say that you have yet to hear a convincing argument but have you been listening?

I don't know about you, but even a quarter the volume of an Olympic-sized swimming pool emitting radiation for hundreds of years is still a bit too much no?

Why? There are tons of no-go danger zones all over the world already. Creating some more for nuclear waste is a minimal tradeoff. It sounds like you simply don't want to be convinced. You've fallen for the propaganda.

Is it? Stick it in an abandoned mine where it doesn't bother anyone.

"Breeder reactors could, in principle, extract almost all of the energy contained in uranium or thorium, decreasing fuel requirements by a factor of 100 compared to widely used once-through light water reactors, which extract less than 1% of the energy in the uranium mined from the earth.[3] The high fuel-efficiency of breeder reactors could greatly reduce concerns about fuel supply, energy used in mining, and storage of radioactive waste. "

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

China, India and Russia are operating these with Russia having the biggest one that produces 800 MW.

In the US, spent fuel sits on site in cooling ponds, and has for decades. Spent fuel isn't much, about three cubic meters per year for a big plant. The larger volumes of nuclear waste are from contamination, like accidents, or just things that come into contact with radioactive substances. Low-level waste is more voluminous and generally less dangerous. It mostly does not come from nuclear plants, which are designed to not produce much waste other than the spent fuel.

This issue is pretty much a red herring. A coal-fired power plant produces thousands of times more radiation--in the form of radioactive fly ash--than nuclear plants do. Where is that stored? The air. In your lungs. People die from cancer by the hundreds of thousands because of it.

Switching to nuclear would reduce the amount of radioactive waste humanity produces, by a lot, and concentrate it in liquid and solid forms, that actually can be managed.

So there's your answer. Nuclear waste is solid, and it's not much. We can manage it. Is there an answer for the radiation from coal? Nope.

A coal plant makes as much waste in one hour as a nuclear power plant does over its entire lifetime.

If your entire lifetime was fueled 100% by nuclear energy, at the end of your life, the waste would be the size of a hockey puck.

The amount of waste is very manageable, because the volume is so small. Right now, all of the plants in the US just keep the waste on-site... for the entire lifetime of the plant.

Also, because of the natural uranium and thorium in coal, "the fly ash emitted by a power plant — a by-product from burning coal for electricity — carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy." and "As a general clarification, ounce for ounce, coal ash released from a power plant delivers more radiation than nuclear waste shielded via water or dry cask storage.", both quotes from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-... .

>a hockey puck

Does that count your food production you think?

Obviously the non-recyclable solids would be counted separately, and considerable. The average American uses more than their weight in plastic every year, and that is about 80% not recycled.

Not of use or waste; but energy required

Yes, I am assuming the OP considered that in their energy calculations. Solid waste recycling is another issue we desperately need to address to be sustainable.

Ok, take some: France and some other countries are already reprocessing the waste into new fuel, abt 90%. Real waste is solidified to avoid spills with vitrification, easy to store, should be stored for just about 300 years instead of thousands bc of reprocessing. Similar thing can be done with breeding reactors. There are some operational. These basically can eat big variation of fuel including waste, the end product/waste is just like what France does with reprocessing. And at last, combine this with the new nuclear storage that Sweden has built. As result, you get a way to store safely nuclear waste that is solid, stable and will become more or less 'normal' in 300 years. And all of this with an extremely small footprint bc nuclear is so energy intense

Here’s a video which takes a visit to a nuclear waste storage facility: https://youtu.be/lhHHbgIy9jU?si=CFBqha3wOO8BiQY4

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230613-onkalo-has-finla...

Good for Finland, now does that scale to the rest of the world? What if there is a coup? What if there is war? what if we stop maintaining these places because of a government collapse?

Would you trust (as a random example) Egypt with the fate of the Mediterranean for all the future ?

The Ocean

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