Hacker News Reader

Comment by johnea | Hacker News Reader

Then they could have giant piles of nuclear waste, that they have no idea how to dispose of, just like france...

Germany also has giant piles of nuclear waste and doesn't even know yet where to store it permanently. Recently an assessment concluded that the process to select such a storage facility might take at least until 2074! [1]

[1]: https://www.base.bund.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/BASE/DE/fachin...

There is exactly one country on earth that has found a permanent storage for its nuclear waste. For all we know Germany might still be amoung the first countries to find one.

At this point we better find a way to slingshot it into space (SpinLaunch?)

People wouldnt like it because it sounds stupid, but sending radioactive waste deep at the bottom of oceans would work pretty well

Those "giant piles" are abysmal compared to the damage done by coal plants which they keep running.

Coal even releases nuclear isotopes into the air.

Or the long term ecological damage of solar panels.

https://www.ecowatch.com/solar-environmental-impacts.html

"create solar panels is still nowhere near that of traditional energy facilities, and it is quite small when compared to oil drilling, fracking or coal mining"

Did you post it to indicate that solar is bad or that it is also not 100% perfect?

That solar is not perfect and not as effective as nuclear, which actually easily produces energy surpluses whenever needed and can provide the energy that is required to mine it. As opposed to solar, which still relies on fossil fuels due to the minimal adoption of nuclear, while also introducing its own environmental impacts.

You should take a look at how they dumped the earlier waste. It’s not something I’ve seen mentioned in these discussions: https://amp.dw.com/en/germanys-leaking-nuclear-waste-dump/vi...

After learning about Asse I totally understand why the Germans are so negative to nuclear energy. It’s not just Chernobyl that scarred them.

Good thing no one is doing that anymore?

"If all the electricity use of the USA was distributed evenly among its population, and all of it came from nuclear power, then the amount of nuclear waste each person would generate per year would be 34 grams"

https://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html#howmuch

Is that a lot or very little?

In any case, nuclear is a technology of the XX Century. The future is wind and solar.

> Is that a lot or very little?

Read on my link. It's very little.

Would you be able to store a few kg (after decades) somewhere in your flat/house?

I would say yes easily.

"Hey we're is your nuclear waste?" "It's under my bed"

I’d rather not have nuclear waste under my bed.

Do you mind keeping my share as well?

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

The future needs to first invent cheaper, more available, and more efficient energy storage before we can replace the old power plants.

That fusion is the technology of the future does not mean we should dismantle what functions today.

How so? As far as I can see, wind and solar are both inefficient, requiring fossil fuels to set up, and particularly with solar panels have long term environmental impacts that we have yet to solve. The panels are difficult to recycle and are not being recycled, and the method to create them leaves incredibly toxic compounds that are difficult to dispose of. While nuclear is incredibly energy dense, far safer than the many coal plant we need to supplement poor “green” energy production, and is comparatively easy to deal with the waste of.

34 grams per person times 3.4e8 people is a bit over 1e10 grams, or ten thousand tons a year? That’s back to sounding like a lot.

World gold production is three thousand tons a year, for one comparison.

The link compares with the waste from coal, which is still used instead.

That article makes to common error to only define spent fuel as nuclear waste - fuel is just a subset of that.

So what are the numbers?

It does seem like renewables are taking over. But I do wish nuclear had had more fuel cycle ambitions.

America's Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) used on-site pyro processing, and was able to process & burn a colossal amount of the waste (where-as breeders typically pull out & refine only plutonium, also a proliferation risk). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_fast_reactor#Onsite_r... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing#Pyroproce...

We had so many interesting options for how to do nuclear in a responsible long term way. But so much of the world has seemingly been uninterested in funding the r&d.

Isn't it possible to engineer plants which use this waste for fuel?

Yes, breeder reactors can feed on waste: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor

China has the plan to achieve closed nuclear fuel cycle, and there are new breeder reactors being put online to move the country closer to that goal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CFR-600

Why is anybody troubled by the waste then? Why won't they just build some reactors of this kind?

> Why is anybody troubled by the waste then?

Greenpeace had a point back in 1970-ies, but the message got into a myth and subsequent advancements in technology have not been popularized enough to change the public perception.

Generally a lots of misunderstandings regarding radioactive waste, but also breeder reactors are still fairly experimental.

I've read about breeder reactors in a German kids book in the nineties. How long do they have to be "experimental"? No surprise the nuclear industry is so weak when the progress is kept so slow (I used the word "kept" because the thing we are discussing can hardly be considered a bleeding edge advance).

The Wikipedia article covers the development pretty well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor

In short:

> Breeders were at first found attractive because they made more complete use of uranium fuel than light-water reactors, but interest declined after the 1960s as more uranium reserves were found[2] and new methods of uranium enrichment reduced fuel costs.

Because nuclear waste is not just spent nuclear fuel: intermediate-level waste and some forms of high-level waste (reprocessing spent nuclear fuel seems to generate new waste) still need storage solutions. The Asse II scandal concerned the unsuitable storage of intermediate waste.

For some reason some people only speak about the fuel when discussing waste, not the rest of it. I don't know why.

No need to downvote. At least France is developing a disposal site in Bure. But they will need a second site for the highly active waste of the 50+ NNPs.

EDIT: changed 80+ to 50+

Reply on news.ycombinator.com