A New Specialized Train Is Ready to Haul Nuclear Waste
spectrum.ieee.org
spectrum.ieee.org
His response was that if you put the waste far enough underground, like a km or more, then if an asteroid actually disturbs it, the dispersion of the waste won't actually be your biggest problem.
Look up the PPM for uranium in ocean water, then multiply that out by how much ocean water there is. The amount of uranium naturally dissolved into the oceans is staggering. Nothing humanity can do will ever come close. Even when you throw the nasty transuranics into the consideration, it's nothing. Dump nuclear reactors straight into the oceans and stop worrying about it.
Dumping nuclear waste into the ocean will, mathematically, result in a globally acceptable concentration of nuclear waste in ocean water - but it will be locally problematic for wherever we put it, and that's assuming it stays put.
This is a question that would need to be extensively researched, before committing to something that's irreversible on a geological timescale. Handwaving arguments aren't enough, for something this important, this consequential.
(There's actually rather a lot of spent nuclear reactors littering the ocean floor, so opportunities to research this question are available right now—if any scientists could be bothered).
One of the problems associated with this option includes the difficulty of recovering the waste, if necessary, once it is emplaced deep in the ocean.
In the form of U-238? Perhaps too, but look near enrichment plants and you will see yards full of steel cylinders filled with depleted Uranium hexafluoride.
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@53.2635448,-2.9592278,327m/da...
So the spent fuel does not contain valuable energy. Better off removing the requirement to be able to retrieve it and just get on with disposing of it.
You could leave the world's nuclear waste and weapons on the surface and not have it be an extinction-level concern in the event of an asteroid impact.
Depleted uranium is not explosive: You will not have an explosion like a nuclear bomb.
A nuclear engineer can probably explain this better.
My understanding is that depleted uranium is a highly toxic substance, so we wouldn't want it to leech into soil / groundwater. I also doubt meltdowns are a substantial risk because the fuel pellets would have to fall / land in a way that they are concentrated together.
Funny anecdote: Two years ago I took my family on vacation, and I happened to be near a pumped hydro storage plant that was built to balance an early reactor. I couldn't find it, and when I turned around, I looked out the windshield, and across the river was a bunch of nuclear waste in dry storage: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Yankee+Atomic+Electric+Co/...
I wouldn't have even known what it was if I hadn't gone looking for it on Google Maps a few years prior.
Getting back to the point, if an asteroid hit the dry storage that I mapped above, I doubt there would be an explosion. The Deerfield river would probably become very toxic, but I wouldn't call it an extension event.
Depleted uranium is very highly toxic. "In a three-week period of conflict in Iraq during 2003, it was estimated that between 1,000 and 2,000 tonnes of depleted uranium munitions were used."
The Germans did not get a bomb because they did not concentrate their fissonable material. ( look it up )
This was similar to the confusion in Chernobyl. Engineers were saying "The reactor has exploded", while the Chief Engineers were retorting, "Tell me how it explodes. There's graphite rods and uranium rods". Tangential to the waste byproducts, absolutely.
Then, this is accurate, right?
Even a non-depleted uranium is not explosive until the pile reaches the critical mass.
In the laymen terms that reactor design would, under a very, very specific conditions, sharply increase the energy generation on the shutdown procedure (instead of decreasing), which would overheat the core, increase the fuel elements temperature and, consequently, increase the amount of steam from the water which is used as a coolant.
After the temperature and pressure rose too much the parts of the coolant and fuel systems started to break, which provided the reactor with a lot more fuel to work on, increasing the output 60 times (from 500MW to 30000MW), which insta-converted the all remaining coolant to the steam (and further raised the temperature and pressure in the reactor) and that steam pressure just ripped off the top cover of the reactor and send it flying.
There was another explosion (about two or three seconds after the first), but it's a mere consequence of the first one, happened in an already destroyed reactor and it is still not clear if that was just a plain chemical one (hydrogen) or the thermal one (ie what you would call a 'nuclear').
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Test_execut...
If anything, water is a neutron moderator ie it inhibits the reaction:
>> In the light-water-cooled, graphite-moderated RBMK, a reactor type originally envisioned to allow both production of weapons grade plutonium and large amounts of usable heat while using natural uranium and foregoing the use of heavy water, the light water coolant acts primarily as a neutron absorber and thus its removal in a loss-of-coolant accident or by conversion of water into steam will increase the amount of thermal neutrons available for fission
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_moderator#Form_and_loc...
But in the context of the comment that sparked this,
>(A big reservoir of spent nuclear fuel consisting mainly of) depleted uranium is not explosive.
Is an accurate argument, right?
Depleted uranium is just a heavy metal, spent fuel is a heavy metal with a higher radioactivity (not suitable to handle with a bare hands) but not enough to go critical or even be close to go critical.
You can pour any amount of water on it, at best you would get a slightly radioactive water.
Just to be clear - you need something else, with a high yield, eg a chemical bomb with a high TNT equiv., to make a dirty bomb - still it wouldn't provide a self sufficient critical reaction.
Not sure I buy "Murphy predicts" but large asteroid impacts carry far more energy than any terrestrial explosion. The nuclear materials don't need to add any energy to that for the risk to be present.
People far overestimate the destructive power of nuclear weapons and nuclear fallout. This fear of them is of course greatly encouraged by states that hold nuclear weapons, but they're far from humanity's most destructive tendencies.
No doubt at great cost, none of which is being factored into current nuclear projects or energy pricing. So, this is as unlikely to happen as it has been in the past 8 decades. The size of the problem just keeps on growing every year while we don't lift a finger to address the issues.
Long term storage is more of an aspirational thing at this point than a concretely actionable thing. Only a small minority of all nuclear waste ever produced actually sits in long term storage. E.g. the Fins have taken into use an underground facility recently. But most nuclear waste elsewhere sits in temporary storage waiting to eventually be moved. Nobody wants to pay for that. Nobody wants this stuff in their backyard. Nobody really wants to even talk about the cost. Which is of course substantial. Especially people in favor of building more nuclear capacity to add to this problem.
Somebody (i.e. future generations of tax payers, for millennia to come) will pay for it. Eventually. Which is convenient because we can pretend things are cheap short term.
Especially, also, those in favour of an electric future filled with PV panels and batteries.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not simping for the pro-nuclear lobby and I want to see an electric future.
But very few people ever mention the radioactive waste that comes with Rare Earth processing.
eg:
The Lynas plant in Gebeng, Kuantan, 264 km. (164 miles) from Kuala Lumpur, had faced scrutiny over a lack of a safe disposal solution for its radioactive and toxic wastes. Chang said Lynas's permanent disposal facility, which has a capacity of 1.6 million metric tons, holds 1.2 million metric tons of waste.
~ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKJnbvtjjfQ
I think it's a good thing that people give a damn about radioactive waste, it's not so good when they only focus on a single source.
https://www.epa.gov/radiation/technologically-enhanced-natur...
And if solar and batteries keep falling in price, they might drop below what nuclear can provide.
(OK, batteries can mostly move energy from day to night; they have more of a problem with moving energy from summer to winter. But we can solve that particular problem with eg very long cables; and lots of other ingenuity.)
There will be no electronics, controllers, et al as part of battery grids, electric cars, etc?
The simple point being made is that millions of tonnes of radioactive waste arises from one single rare earth processing plant. There are many and the demand for more is rising.
Solar isn't waste free either:
https://hbr.org/2021/06/the-dark-side-of-solar-power
https://www.power-technology.com/features/recycling-renewabl...
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/mar/30/solar...
Arguments made on the line of raioactive waste is unique to nuclear power are poor arguments made in bad faith or ignorance.
Where did I say that? You just gave examples of two things that don’t typically use rare earths.
The cost to develop these railcars was 33 million, per the article. A rounding error in the cost of any energy source.
Long term storage costs should be much lower than they are, but the DGR has been stymied since I was a child. Not to mention how most of this waste is actually a resource
How much of current carbon emissions are being factored into the cost of electricity (for any of the various sources)?
You can relatively easily do those calculations. The results are about what you'd expect: hydro, wind and solar don't get much more expensive; coal gets a lot more expensive, etc. Of course, details depend on what carbon pricing you use.
Funny enough, to go off on a tangent: if solar keeps getting cheaper and cheaper, that could make coal viable even with carbon costs fully priced in.
What I mean is: assume solar panels keep dropping in price so that electricity is approximately free when the sun is shining. But still has a very positive cost when the sun ain't shining. You can do some carry-over into the night with batteries, but seasonal storage all the way from summer to winter is much harder.
Now here's something that becomes feasible: when you have excess electricity from your solar panels, capture carbon from the atmosphere to build up a deficit. Then, when you need power but no sun, you can burn coal and use up your carbon deficit.
(I'm not suggesting this is in any way optimal, just that it might be feasible under certain circumstances; even if you fully account for carbon pricing.)
Direct air capture of carbon has, as I understand, extremely low efficiency. What would be the benefit of capturing carbon over making hydrogen?
Instead of doing direct carbon capture, you could also spend some energy to grind olivine rocks fine enough for something called 'enhanced weathering' to indirectly capture carbon.
Addendum: it's hard to store hydrogen for a long time. That stuff is so volatile, and even 'seeps' through steel. What I sketched would work for seasonal 'storage'.
But you are right, that it's very likely far from the optimal thing to do.
As for CO2, you are right. The fossil fuel industry has the same kind of blind spots.
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0UJSlKIy8g
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Hague_site
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sellafield
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing
Though given current uranium prices (i.e. not relatively high), it may not actually be worth it—economically speaking—to actually do it commercially.
>No doubt at great cost, none of which is being factored into current nuclear projects or energy pricing.
This is not correct:
>...Moreover, every commercial nuclear power plant was required to help finance the construction of the federal waste repository. The plants raised funds for this by charging their customers a fee of one one-tenth of a cent per kilowatt hour. Every quarter, money has been transferred from the plant operators into the federal government’s Nuclear Waste Fund (Kacich, 2021). Including interest, electricity consumers have contributed more than $56 billion into that fund, which now generates over $1.5 billion in interest every year (NEI, 2021a; DOE-OIG, 2021).
https://crownschool.uchicago.edu/student-life/advocates-foru...).
In reality, burying fuel without reprocessing it would be incredibly wasteful. Really it seems like it would make more sense to store it until the fuel can be reprocessed and some of the more dangerous remaining material burned in a 4th gen reactor. But there is so much fear-mongering about nuclear power I doubt there will ever be a rational discussion of it by politicians in this country.
>> The decision to halt commercial nuclear recycling sends a clear message that the United States is committed to nuclear non-proliferation. Such decisions, together with diplomacy such as that taking place in Russia, are deliberate and encouraging first steps towards building an international consensus on reducing the threat from nuclear weapons.
https://thebulletin.org/2020/04/britain-has-139-tons-of-plut...
Meanwhile in the UK we've got 139 tons of the stuff from the Magnox program. It was disappointing to see in the Civil Nuclear roadmap to 2050 (from earlier this year) decided against making use of this tremendous resource (although the precise wording does not rule out use in MOX which is presumably an existing and so not an "Advanced Technology").
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/civil-nuclear-roa...
We are providing clarity to vendors by committing not to support the use of plutonium stored at Sellafield by Advanced Nuclear Technologies whilst high hazard reduction activities are prioritised at Sellafield.
Wouldn't a thin piece of steel do this better? Isn't the SNF container made of a thick piece of steel?
ie we know nothing much about that area... who's to say it wont suddenly turn up on a beach or in fish or plant life after 50 years of being down there...?
erm, the literal 10 kilometers of water above them?
Also Mariana Trench is called a trench because is a trench. A trench 10 km deep.
We dont know what we dont know... what else do we not know?
Furthermore, plate subduction zones are associated with very large megathrust earthquakes, the effects of which are unpredictable for the safety of long-term disposal of nuclear wastes within the hadopelagic ecosystem.[53]
(Premise of The Meg ***SPOILER*** is megalodon sharks survived in the Mariana Trench)
Why isn't this farmed out to an appropriate regulatory entity with deep expertise? Akin to the FAA for aeronautical.
You don’t want to have completely unaccountable bodies ruling society (called the deep state by its enemies) and you don’t want to have zero governing capacity either (what would liberals call this, Galt’s Gulch?)
There’s a balance to be struck.
It is, they just also happen to be a major impediment to new Nuclear power in the US.
I'm very pro-nuclear, but I'm glad we have the NRC, and I think they are doing a good job.
I'm currently reading the book "The Curve of Binding Energy" [1], about the physicist Ted Taylor. It was written in 1973 and the focus was the possibility, even likelihood, that one day a terrorist organization could build a nuclear bomb. This was before the split of the Atomic Energy Commission into the NRC and the Department of Energy.
Reading the book is a bit like time travel. You move from today's industry-hostile NRC to the absolute opposite: the AEC was completely industry-captured. The laxity of the controls was terrifying. Of course, the author had no idea that in 6 years we'd have the Three Mile Island incident, but for someone in 2024, TMI now makes perfect sense.
Did the NRC become too much of a break for the nuclear expansion. You bet. But I prefer 100 times more to live in a world like we have now than in a world like it was in 1973. We are very lucky that things worse than TMI, Chernobyl and Fukushima didn't happen.
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54968.The_Curve_Of_Bindi...
Why would you only look at the death toll outside the USSR? That doesn't seem like the right way to go about risk analysis and management.
The point is the externalities of nuclear power are localised. Emissions are not.
This is one of those cases where fear blinds people to not accept reality.
First, we need to define what "safe" means. And a safety threshold that is a fair trade-off between public acceptance and the industrial feasibility of the sector.
One might think, sure, increasing safety is always necessary. But we must accept the fact that zero risk does not exist in any technology and will never be completely eliminated in any way. And we already accept the risks of dams and renewables, so it means that a threshold of what is accepted as safe exists, and we can define it.
It seems universally accepted that renewables are "safe." So why not take the deaths per GWh produced and use this value to define a nuclear power plant as safe?
On page 175 (chapter 3.5) of this report compiled by the European Union research center, it shows how third-generation EPRs (modern european reactors) are already several orders of magnitude safer than renewables, per GWh produced. Demonstrating how they are infinitely safer than any other energy source. https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC1...
Therefore, if we decide to define renewables as safe, we can deduce that modern nuclear power plants are very safe. Yet why is this not perceived?
Obviously, the answer is very simple, the death from installing a panel is an isolated case often limited to a single individual, and often does not make the news. Nuclear, however, even if it causes one death (like Fukushima), is discussed for decades. Besides, the dangers related to the dispersal of radioactive material often cause even more fear than the deaths from the plants themselves, despite rarely having caused tangible damage.
With this said, it's important to note that this fear does not find reflection in the numbers, which remain the reading closest to the reality of the facts.
Finally, from my point of view, even if nuclear were less safe than this, it would still help fight climate change, which should lead to millions of millions of deaths, if not billions. It would be a very logical intellectual step to accept the risks even of a less safe nuclear (and cheaper), because the long-term benefits would definitely be beneficial.
"Thousands of years" is a long time to put something away and ensure nothing bad happens.
Of course there is no evidence for this is ever going to happen but given technological progress, rise of AI's exponential capabilities and bright future of robotics one can say it is very likely.
If we used breeder reactors, we could cut down on the amount of nuclear waste per Joule drastically, if we wanted to.
Those look like pretty normal diesel-electric locomotives.
https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2022-01/Rail%20Es... says
As required for operational security, further specifications for REVs are not publicly releasable.
So it's "security by obscurity"
The problem arises when its your only layer of security.
Yes. Here's UP 8359 hauling a trainload of grain.[1] It's a common locomotive type, SD70ACe, with thousands in use. Dull, boring, and reliable. Way too many pictures of UP 8359 doing ordinary locomotive things.[2]
The armored caboose, VWXX-800, is a custom build designed for the Navy.[3]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FX9vgSOAdA
[2] http://www.rcbsd45.rrpicturearchives.net/Locopicture.aspx?id...
[3] https://www.twz.com/39654/wait-this-mysterious-heavily-armor...
Idea: Fabricate a bunch of semi-hollow (50% by volume), telephone-pole-sized iron arrows (pointy noses, feathered tails), fill them with radwaste, and dump them in some segment of the Aleutian Trench ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleutian_Trench ) where the ocean floor sediments are deep & soft - to maximize penetration when the arrows hit bottom. With some attention to corrosion & leakage issues, the stuff will be down the for lot o' millennia. And whether or not civilization collapses, nobody's going to be accessing it without a deliberate, massive, and difficult-to-conceal effort.
The longer that you store it without issues, the more acceptable it becomes for the rest of society.
Fission facilities are just another 1950's loss-leader technology. Nonrenewable fuels should be saved for space/remote missions.
The film was ridiculous, but fun:
"Broken Arrow" (John Woo, 1996)
=)
I'm not sure I follow you.
There is also the folly of assuming centralized distribution grids are economically sustainable in times of scarcity.
I remain unconvinced that Goat-carts are not the future for our civilization. =3
There's no "20 meters of horse poo on the streets" for nuclear. It was always the way to go. If Chernobyl didn't happen, KGB would have it to secure the eternal demand for gas, oil and coal.
I used to believe this too, but comparing Sydney/AU to Texas/US over the past decade has changed my perspective on distributed grid viability.
The end users may simply have no better options available. =/
Presumably, sometime in that 30k years, a method of reprocessing the stored nuclear waste will have been developed.
The panemone windmills have survived several empire ages, and continue to operate. =)
Increasing the number of facilities poses a very real liability, as most peoples current "short term waste disposal" solution is a glorified concrete rusting shed in the back of the generation sites. I have yet to see a real long term solution that hasn't proven to be utter PR BS.
I may be wrong, but I've heavily invested in Goat cart futures. =3
"How more dangerous?"
Generally, the spent pellet structure and hot decay products are problematic to handle as they become a strong gamma emitter. Additionally, there are several risks from decay product dust, non-solid gases, and reactive chemistry.
It would be nice if everything could be stabilized into an insoluble oxide ceramic, but this is not how many decay-products behave.
I am sure there is someone around that can model the exact probabilistic details on how much and when the most risky products are significantly present.
My concern is more with long run outcomes, and if it may still seriously harm some family 157 years from now. =3
Where do you think current long-term nuclear waste is stored, and for how long?
There is also the 5" thick stainless-steel tanks filled with low-grade UF6 slowly decaying in the hot sun, in one of the many facilities now blurred out on google maps.
There is also one of several concrete disposal facilities that leaks into the local river every time it rains. One can still find it with a kayak and a cheap Geiger counter in about 3 hours. The billions for repair mitigation have never seemed to take priority for several decades.
How about you find 3 filled disposal facilities that haven't leaked within 20 years. Note, trace exposure to tritiated and heavy water isn't so bad anyway, as far as we currently know. =)
"Explanations exist; they have existed for all time; there is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong." ('The Divine Afflatus', The New York Evening Mail, November 16, 1917)
became
> How about you find 3 filled disposal facilities
After you yourself apparently found one. Curious.
Meanwhile "As of April 2024, there are 416 operable power reactors in the world" [1] Something tells me it won't be hard to find one, or three, or ten.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_nuclear_rea...
Minimally 3 points show a trend, and should be trivial to find right... the key added detail was "filled" i.e. used for awhile... as an empty facility would also be considered leak free as long as it remained unused.
Goat carts for the win... =3
It's not "goat carts for the win", it's "moving goal posts for the win".
1. find 1 example that isn't hiding a well known problem
2. meets the secondary requirement of showing long term use at capacity
3. I cheated more than you know for #2, as I already know modern concrete tends to fail in less than 65 years. And even if you use the premium long-term stuff, it still generally becomes permeable to liquids even surrounded by mostly solid rock
4. a three data-point trend would prove your point better if my knowledge is antiquated, and my opinion is out of date (more data is not changing requirements)
5. Goats can survive radiation levels several times higher than primates, and are still used for transportation in many primitive cultures
6. Radon poisoning is a thing too...
Goat carts are likely our future, as they are self-replicating and do not require sophisticated agriculture. =3
Nuclear fuel is usually stored in dry casks on-site at running or decommissioned power plants. "Decommissioned" doesn't mean abandoned, there is still ferocious security present. No dry casks have ever been found to leak, or have been damaged intentionally or accidentally since they came into use in 1986. [1]
> ...tanks filled with UF6...
UF6 is a gas that reacts with water to form a corrosive acid. The fact that it's mildly radioactive is gilding the lily, as exposure to it would be pretty similar to any reactive fluorine compound and/or heavy metal (think mine waste). It's a problem, but UF6, a gas, is the polar opposite of dry cask storage, where even if the contents of a cask were sat in the open, they'd just sit there because they're vitrified (mixed into a glass).
> ...concrete disposal facilities...
Is this something related to nuclear energy? I don't know what this is referring to.
> ...3 filled disposal facilities
Here are 81: [2]
[1]: https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/d... [2]: https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML2316/ML23165A245.pdf
No known container is resilient enough to retain 100% structural containment in that time frame. Most thick-walled structures including stainless tanks undergo degradation from decaying materials, and will slowly form leaks over time. Hydrogen embrittlement from water-sources/cleaning-acids/anaerobic-bacteria in particular will slowly tear small fissures in most alloys. Note for dry casks the water presence is necessarily kept under tight control.
My point was the existing solutions people were sure would work still leaked in relatively short time frames. Until a real long term solution is found, no one should accept the liability of long term waste stewardship.
The best short-term solution, is mandating fuel recovery like Frances program. At least there would be better utility in that decision.
I expect people on goat carts will be unconcerned about decaying plastics, concrete degradation, and alloy specific issues. After all, neither were you...
Have a great day, =3
What are you referring to? The aforementioned UF6 canisters were a) NOT designed for long-term holding, more adapted from existing HF storage canisters (you can read some of the fun of storing fluorine compounds in the book "Ignition!" about liquid-fueled rockets), and as mentioned b) high level nuclear waste is vitrified to turn it into a non-volatile, non-dissolving, ceramic material that is largely stable by itself.
> ... 30000 years of facility maintenance costs ...
There are a variety of unused mines that could house high-level waste; the excavation is already done, thus fairly cheap. We are already factoring in storage of the fuel in casks, because it already is being stored in casks. The missing part is transport (hence the article, which is still kinda silly as the casks were designed to be trucked).
If a nuclear waste cask gets hit by planes, trains, or automobiles, not much will happen. [1] If an ordinary tanker car falls off the tracks, it's like an improvised chemical warfare attack. [2]
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bu1YFshFuI4
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Palestine,_Ohio,_train_de...
For the first 7-10 years.
> and or moved to decommissioned facilities because no one wants it in there back yard.
It's generally stored on-site, at least Canada:
> Canada’s used nuclear fuel is currently safely managed in facilities licensed for interim storage. These facilities are located at nuclear reactor sites in Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick, and at Atomic Energy of Canada Limited's sites in Manitoba and Chalk River Laboratories in Ontario.
* https://www.nwmo.ca/canadas-used-nuclear-fuel/how-is-it-stor...
* https://www.opg.com/power-generation/our-power/nuclear/nucle...
Ontario already has a natural Radon contamination risk in many places, so maybe no one will notice the increasing lung cancer stats.
Best regards, =)
The hydraulic conductivity of both considered sites (Revell, South Bruce) is quite low:
* https://www.nwmo.ca/-/media/Reports-MASTER/Technical-reports...
* https://www.nwmo.ca/-/media/Reports-MASTER/Technical-reports...
The repository will be >500m deep, and the geology at those depths is such that water penetrates it at a rate of a few centimetres per century. And then it would hit the human constructed structure, and then it'd have to penetrate storage flasks, and then it'd have to get through the metal bundles that hold the pellets. And only then it could it start dissolving/absorbing the nuclear stuff.
And then it would have to go through all those layers again to escape the facility.
> […] so maybe no one will notice the increasing lung cancer stats.
From Geraldine Thomas, co-founder of the Chernobyl Tissue Bank, "Look at the science – smoking and obesity are more harmful than radiation"
* https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/apr/26/obesity-...
If it was such a great safe idea, why not install it in downtown New York or Washington? Good jobs program right... ;)
Off topic: Chernobyl could have been a lot worse, and it was pure luck it could be somewhat contained. Note it was leaking due to water damage again.
Given that the storage will be several hundred metres below the surface and the water table of (e.g.) the Bruce area is at ~35m:
* http://home.waterprotection.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Mi...
Not sure what such an incident would really do. Especially since the Bruce nuclear plant is already storaging spent fuel on-site for about forty years, so it's not much different if that location is picked.
> If it was such a great safe idea, why not install it in downtown New York or Washington? Good jobs program right... ;)
Sure. Things are currently held on-site at nuclear plants, and they can continue to do so indefinitely IMHO. I'm in Toronto, ~50km from the Pickering plant, and I'd be fine with that. I good friend of mine has lived in Pickering all his life and doesn't give it a second thought.
Heck, if OPG wants to build a spent fuel pool in my backyard I'd be happy to accept it: free year-round "ground-source" heating/cooling for me.
1. For the first 200 years water soluble radioactive salts can permeate into ground water over time
2. For most of the life cycle higher levels of Radon will be seeping up into peoples work areas, underground basements and parking structures.
3. Most storage facilities start falling apart even before they are finished being built
>Heck, if OPG wants to build a spent fuel pool in my backyard I'd be happy to accept it
Sounds about right, but like most people that deal with the industry they only think in terms of their own lifespan, and Simpsons paradox keeps those that die of cancer from participating in conversations. Every long term disposal facility has leaked radioactive waste, and that is very different from the irradiated pristine water from a maintained hermetic cooling system.
I think we'll have to agree to disagree on that policy decision.
https://youtu.be/HHAD9rMvr8g?si=7kfvRa11BGsFEvE7&t=36
Have a great day, lol =3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yo22l4wJdx8
Are there other pressing problems with derailing that need to be dealt with?
texas wont take it and no other state is willing to accept the political fallout for agreeing to it.
this is the biggest impediment facing the nuclear power proposal that shows up on HN every other month, and nobody talks about it. plants basically idle nuclear waste on-site. we have no comprehensive recycling or storage policy that isnt routinely usurped or derailed by serious environmental issues. we just run these plants until theyre 60 years over usable life and wait until they turn into a superfund site taxpayers have to clean up.
Now that the prices of solar, wind and batteries have dropped so much the need for nuclear is becoming less and less. Most of the world's population currently lives in the perfect area where charging batteries in the day and using at night can meet all the demand for electricity with solar, wind and batteries alone in summer or winter.
It produces very little long term nuclear waste whose overall impact is invisible compared to impact of other industries and landfills
Something can’t be used 60 years over usable life. Think about it.
What happened is that nuclear plants were given 40 year licenses in the US. After 40 years they applied for extensions. They were studied and it was found they had a lot more life in them. So extensions were granted. Why prematurely turn off a great carbon free generating asset that’s already been paid for. (That’d be peak German brain.)
It is crazy that massive amounts of taxpayer money is spent on subsidizing nuclear power.
If you are generating waste, you can't get rid of them then stop producing it.
Will factories soon get huge subsidies if they refuse to handle toxic and dangerous waste that is expensive to dispose of?
The federal gourmet should create huge places to store all toxic and dangerous waste.
The Wheatridge solar/wind/battery facility in Oregon produces the same amount of power as a small nuclear reactor. $10 billion buys you a dozen of them.
Given how dense nuclear "waste" (mostly unburnt fuel) is, how much volume is this? (Either in metric or Freedom Units.)