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Comment by Moldoteck | Hacker News Reader

Pls read abt how france is reprocessing waste or how breeding reactors work

Some of it, the French nuclear waste, goes to Germany for "storage". Not all goes to breeding reactos. Regarding treaent, feel free to move next to Sellafield or similar sites. You might want to google the environmental impact of those first.

yes, France should build more reprocessing, but it's not like they don't know what to do with the waste. They know and they've done this for decades. Can you specify exactly about what impact you are talking about? The CO2 emissions or what?

What kind of emissions and polution could come from a nuclear reprossesing site? Hmm... Radiation, maybe?

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/inside-sellafield-nuclear-wa...

Sellafield is infamous for radioactive polution, reprocessingnof nuclear waste is dangerous, dirty and not always economically feasible. Or do you thonk anybody would buy new fuel rods if reprocessed ones were cheaper?

so you say that something that is done like shit have shit consequences? Somehow La Hague is doing much better so maybe reprocessing/storage is not that a big problem and humanity should just get their sh* together?

You know what else could be done, if we got our shit together and cooperated? A proper energy transition away from fossil fuels to clean alternatives.

One thing so: France, or rather all French goverents, are as pro-nuclear as it gets. And even they only built one reprocessing plant. Should tell you something.

AFAIK there is no recycling (re-enrichment) in France since 2013 (costs, technical problems...). Source: https://www.rtl.fr/actu/debats-societe/nucleaire-que-devienn... It may restart in 2029.

Some is done in Russia, of all 'partners'...

reprocessing & breeding are not that popular bc with these it's easy to make bombs. I agree with energy transition, this should imply all: hydro/solar/wind/nuclear/geo. Hydro is pretty much already exploited, maybe we could replace old generators with new ones to get more juice, solar+wind are a good combo but not reliable, so we need both more batteries for short term stabilization and hydro storage for longer term stabilization, all together are expensive, esp considering that solar&batteries should be periodically replaced. Geo is nice but not feasible in all regions, nuclear is nice but again - less feasible in earthquake areas/tsunami areas. I just hate that so many ppl want to go with solar/wind only. It's not the solution, it's a part of it, together with other technologies, including nuclear

Please do so yourself. Reprocessing is a good thing, but it does not resolve the need for long term storage.

And btw. you also didn't answer my question who pays for the 10 to 100k years of storage. The current answer typically is "the state", all while energy companies get to keep the money earned.

if reprocessed or used in a breeding reactor, it should be stored for just ~300 years, if solidified/vitrified - no more risks of spills, just store containers underground and forget. Sweden does already have one big storage build, so again, not a problem And yes, the state will pay for disposal, I don't see any problem with it. Even better, I would want the state to own the reactors, like in France

Please name a single model of breeder reactor ready for industrial deployment.

There is none, therefore this is not a solution.

I fail to grasp what you want. We already have such reactors and these are functional, some are no longer functional but were built in the past. There are also plans to build more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor

They were built in the past as part of nuclear-weapons-oriented industry of the Cold War. Like many things about nuclear, taking away the need to build weapons changes a lot of the economics around them.

This (need for military-grade plutonium) is only part of the benefits of breeder reactors.

They lift most of the dependency towards uranium providers (needing way less of it), and considerably helps tackling the nuclear waste challenge (producing way less of waste, and less hot).

The challenge is technical: obtaining a satisfying industrial (big, predictable, not too expensive...) breeder isn't a solved problem.

This seems pretty simple to me: please name a single model of breeder reactor ready for industrial deployment.

It is not about failed attempts (there were numerous, for sure) not vague plans. This is about an existing solution, and therefore an existing model of breeder reactor ready for deployment. If you cannot name one, well, there is no solution here.

You know what also have, a proven technology that gets cheaper every year? That is easy and fast to deploy, in massive volume? One that actually is deployed, as we speak, in GW scale month after month after month? Solar.

Instead of building new nuclear reactorsy taking decades, we couod use the same money and research better storage tech, better gris tech, make industrail demand more flexible and sponsor heat pumps for domestic heating. Just a thought.

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