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Comment by joe_the_user | Hacker News Reader

I don't disagree that nuclear waste can be disposed of safely under good conditions[1].

But I think a fallacy to claim that natural phenomena should inherently be considered "environmentally safe" in human terms. There are coal seam fires that have been going on for centuries and the pollution of these is just as bad as the pollution generated by human created coal mine fires (and that's truly awful, a significant source of carbon pollution).

[1] The problem with nuclear reactors isn't that their pollution couldn't disposed of with ideal methods but that when they run by for-profit corporations, you will always have the company skirting the edge of what's safe 'cause corporations just go bankrupt with catastrophic events and so their risk-reward behavior isn't the risk-reward optima for humanity.

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No one is saying that it's "inherently" safe but there are a lot of people who claim it is inherently unsafe which is clearly untrue.

> There are coal seam fires that have been going on for centuries and the pollution of these is just as bad as the pollution generated by human created coal mine fires (and that's truly awful, a significant source of carbon pollution).

Has CO2 fire suppression been unsuccessfully attempted in these seams? Since nobody is underground and we know how to inject CO2 into underground deposits at various pressures, it seems like it would be a good candidate. Plus, with rotary steerable drilling, we could come in laterally (from a safe location above ground) to as many depths of injection as necessary.

These are large coal seams with significant exposure to the atmosphere. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jharia_coalfield for an example. That excavator in the picture is not trying to put out the fire, it is just mining coal that happens to be burning. Spray some water, put out the fire and ship it off to customers.

Apparently in mines they are sometimes extinguished with nitrogen. For less contained ones, injecting water or mud, while trying to seal off the ground with impermeable clay to halt oxygen and hopefully choke the fumes. Their scope can be huge though, and they generate a lot of energy which can cause subsidence to open up new passages. The Centralia fire in the US is apparently 15km².

I have a question on rotary steerable drilling. I gather we're only talking about a degree or less of deflection on the steering head. But how does the km's long rest of the stack behind the head snake through the curves? Is it like rail cars, with a little bit of angular bend allowed at the connection of each segment?

What are the conditions under which nuclear waste buried a mile deep in bedrock will post a risk to society?

Burying it in a cheaper place that happens to flood occasionally?

Insisting on only worst case scenarios is such a bad faith argument. OP specifically asked about deep repositories.

It would be like having a discussion about green energy and insisting that people should assume dams will fail or that blades are going to fly off of turbines.

1) the assumption that because something can be done safely it will be done safely

2) transportation to the site: https://static.ewg.org/files/nuclearwaste/plumes/national.pd...

3) exploding waste barrels due to corner cutting in kitty litter selection exposing surface workers and contaminating the work area - only 1/2 mile down but this type of accident is depth independent https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-new-mexico-nuclear-dump...

4) fires

5) lack of a safety culture

6) communicating to future peoples not to mine here

7) long term structural stability and management (ex: Morsleben radioactive waste repository and Schacht Asse II)

Just to call it explicitly, because I think this is one of the big points of misunderstanding between pro- and anti-nuclear people (take that as a very rough categorization and not an accusation) -

There is a difference between “something can be done correctly” and “something is likely to be done correctly.” Nuclear advocates I’ve read tend to argue the former - it’s possible to have safe reactors, it’s possible to keep the waste sequestered safely, there’s not a technical reason why nuclear is inherently unsafe. Skeptics tend to be making a different argument - not that it’s not possible to do things safely and correctly, but that in our current late-capitalist milieu, it’s almost impossible that we _will_. It’s not an argument about capability, it’s an argument about will and what happens in bureaucracies, both public and private.

Yeah, if waste management was as viable as proponents claim, places like Hanford [0] would already be an inactive site with a memorial park on top.

Whether it's technology, economics, or politics, clearly the state of the art is deficient because we currently have persistent deficiencies.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site

It's politics. The US already built a waste site in Yucca Mountain, but never bothered to actually use it for political reasons.

Digging a shaft half a kilometer into bedrock and sealing it is not state of the art.

2) I asked about waste buried in the ground, not in transit.

3) if a waste barrel explodes, somehow, underground how does the waste make it's way through a mile of bedrock?

4) Again, how does a fire bring the wast up through a mile of bedrock?

5) This is just a vague statement.

6) So the concern is that future society will forget that this is a waste site, mine a mile deep and retrieve waste, and never figure out that the waste is bad for them? This is rather specific hypothetical that IMO demonstrates just how hard it is for a nuclear waste site to result in contamination.

I look forward to your revolutionary nuclear waste teleportation device.

Teleportation? You dig a tunnel underground, put the waste there, and fill the tunnel. It's been done before, it's not revolutionary engineering: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_re...

The point was, you cannot ignore the risks of transportation, if you only have some safe spots to burry it.

And what you linked is still under construction. We don't know yet, if it really works safe long term, or if there will be future costs.

Finland has two other disposal sites in operation since the 90s: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_geological_repository

Yes, but when we want to store something in the range of million years, it is a bit early to say that 30 years are sufficient as a ultimate proof that nothing leaks.

Now I believe it can be done safely, but only if monitored all the time with good care. But that is expensive and humans tend to skimp.

Again, when you bury uranium half a kilometer deep in an area with no aquifer, how will it ever result in contamination?

The only real scenarios are deliberate excavation, and a meteor impact directly on the waste repository. Neither of which are particularly likely scenarios.

Because the ground is not static. And we are just starting to understand what is going on down there. So yes, there are sites that remained quite unchanged (like with the natural fission reactor), but personally I remain sceptical with such statements.

Half a kilometer isn't particularly deep. There are dozens of mines over 2 KM deep: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deepest_mines

Are we supposed to hold off on developing the only geographically independent and non-intermittent form of clean energy because of some vague nebulous fear that waste buried half a kilometer deep in bedrock will come back up to the surface and harm people... somehow?

No, but maybe we should not pretend all is super safe and always will be, when we cannot know currently.

Or rather we do know that the initial promises of reactor safety were also quite overconfident. So people assume the same of permanent storage of the waste.

You don't need nuclear waste to be stored for millions of years, after a hundred or so anything of exceptional danger has decayed and what is left will be such a low level of radiation that common clay bricks are just as much of a risk. The "hotter" a nuclear material is, the faster it decays, and materials that remain radioactive for thousands of years are not especially radioactive.

Depends how much we store of it, but yes, our timeframe of hundreds of years is the relevant here.

> It's been done before, it's not revolutionary engineering: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_re...

It's not even open yet.

Finland has been operating two other sites for decades: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44332413

Those aren't for reactor waste.

The primary transportation risk is that spent fuel contains cesium metal, which is reactive with air and water, so if you expose it to air you get a fire.

It seems like a pretty obvious solution to this would be to purposely do the reaction under controlled conditions before transporting it, so then you're transporting stable cesium compounds instead of elemental cesium metal.

The cesium in spent fuel is not in the form of cesium metal. The cesium there is already oxidized to the +1 oxidation state, as it is in cesium salts.

This is what I get for giving people the benefit of the doubt. Here's some text from that PDF the GP linked:

> Cesium will be the primary radionuclide released in a nuclear waste accident because it is present in what is called the fuel-clad gap. This gap is the space between the fuel pellets and the inside wall of the metal tube that contains the fuel. This “gap cesium” can be released in any event where the cladding is breached. Cesium is a highly reactive metal and even a small break in the seal will release significant amounts of it. Cesium burns spontaneously in air, and will explode when exposed to water.

Obviously the "highly reactive" applies to elemental cesium and is meant to imply that a collision would be a serious problem because exposing it to air would cause a big fire and release a plume of radioactive material. If that isn't the case then it seems like the thesis of the paper is rubbish?

The idea that cesium is present in metallic form is chemically very dubious.

Cesium is extremely reactive, as is noted. In particular, it will readily reduce U(+4) to U(+3). Nuclear reactor fuel is primarily uranium dioxide, so there is ample material there for this putative metallic cesium to react with. Cesium is the most electropositive element, so it will give electrons to (reduce) almost anything.

The state of cesium in the vapor gap will be relatively volatile cesium compounds, like cesium iodide. The core temperature of a uranium dioxide fuel pellet greatly exceeds the normal boiling point of this salt.

If nuclear waste disposal were what is holding back nuclear energy, it would be in great shape. It's not a primary blocking problem.

Regarding 3) and 4): Ground water contamination.

You can dig in bedrock that has no groundwater.

Furthermore, naturally occurring uranium exists in groundwater and needs to be filtered out in places where levels exceed safe limits. So it's not like burying waste is creating a new problem: https://www.kqed.org/stateofhealth/120396/uranium-contaminat...

Heavy metal and radiological exposure is not a boolean safe/unsafe.

Sure, but the important point is that we already have infrastructure deployed to detect and remove uranium from the water supply on account of naturally occurring uranium.

That's...not a very good point.

It is. Presumably your fear is that uranium from spent fuel might somehow contaminate water supplies, and cause illness. But we already monitor water for contamination from naturally occurring uranium, and have the infrastructure to remove it.

So what happens if uranium from nuclear waste somehow works its way into the water supply? We'll detect it and remove it in water treatment, just like how we remove contamination from naturally occurring uranium.

It's a terrible argument because it burdens someone else with the risk of cleaning up the mess.

2/3/4) Please see historical data above regarding three burial sites. Practically today, these sites are built by mining.

5) Industry term. Operationalizing any significant system will involve human beings, and with it their workplace culture. You can read about it here: https://mshasafetyservices.com/fostering-a-culture-of-safety.... Many mining hese were written in blood.

6) No, the concern is that people may be harmed. You see we've lost track of radioactive waste in the past. And humans are remarkably curious. Often we've figured it out before anyone was harmed. Sometimes sadly not. But the harm is the concern, not the lack of knowledge of harm.

The example you linked above is disposal of nuclear weapons waste, not nuclear power generation. This isn't even the same material (plutonium vs uranium). Sure, there were plenty of bad nuclear waste disposal programs in the early cold war, but this has quite limited relevance to nuclear power generation.

And again, the question remains how people may be harmed by nuclear waste buried in bedrock half a kilometer underground? A even if a buried waste canister spontaneously combusts, how does the waste make it through half a kilometer of rock? In order for an unknown harm to occur, harm first has to actually occur.

This kind of appeal to an unknown harm can be used to arbitrarily object to anything.

"We need to stop building solar panels and wind turbines because they have the potential to cause an unknown harm. You disagree that these systems have the potential to cause harm? Well of course you can't know this, because it's an unknown harm that we're trying to prevent. How can you possibly disprove the existence of an unknown harm?"

> This isn't even the same material (plutonium vs uranium).

Please note that these are both chemically and radioactively harmful to people.

> Sure, there were plenty of bad nuclear waste disposal programs in the early cold war, but this has quite limited relevance to nuclear power generation.

That's what they said in the 00s, 90s, 80s, 70s...

> In order for an unknown harm to occur, harm first has to actually occur.

Nuclear power is an incredible technology, but understand that the nuclear industry has done little to earn trust. Just feels like an abusive ex plastered on the porch shouting "it'll be difficult this time I've changed" and doesn't inspire confidence.

> Please note that these are both chemically and radioactively harmful to people.

Again, the point is that your link is about disposal of plutonium from nuclear weapons productions. Not spent uranium fuel from power generation.

> Nuclear power is an incredible technology, but understand that the nuclear industry has done little to earn trust. Just feels like an abusive ex plastered on the porch shouting "it'll be difficult this time I've changed" and doesn't inspire confidence.

Care to elaborate on what you mean by this? Because even if you include Chernobyl, nuclear power is one of the safest form of energy generation: https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy. It's 100x safer than dams. Include only western plants and it's the safest form of energy generation.

It's not like an abusive ex promising to have changed. It's a lot more like a very respectful partner that your hippie friends hate for incoherent reasons.

>> Nuclear power is an incredible technology, but understand that the nuclear industry has done little to earn trust. Just feels like an abusive ex plastered on the porch shouting "it'll be different this time I've changed" and doesn't inspire confidence.

> Care to elaborate on what you mean by this? Because even if you include Chernobyl, nuclear power is one of the safest form of energy generation: https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy. It's 100x safer than dams. Include only western plants and it's the safest form of energy generation.

I should also add that on average nuclear power releases less radioactivity than coal.

I grew up in a place and time where nuclear waste was routinely dumped, records lost, EPA government consultants lied, and people got sick. Nobody was held accountable other than token fines.

> I grew up in a place and time where nuclear waste was routinely dumped, records lost, EPA government consultants lied, and people got sick. Nobody was held accountable other than token fines.

Can you provide even one example where nuclear waste from power generation - not nuclear weapons production - got people sick in the United States?

The people here primarily got sick because their machining waste wasn't recognized as dangerous, it wasn't appropriately collected, spread through the site, and hury people that didn't even work in those areas.

https://www.ncronline.org/earthbeat/government-workers-were-...

https://www.kansas.com/news/local/article49479255.html

The local uranium mills were primarily weapons related -fuel for breeder reactors.

For the power industry we have to drive to the other side of the state, over to Hematite, where each time a former employee comes down with any rare cancer from a long list, it's assumed to from working at the plant.

What about mining waste causing increased cancer and largely poisoning a river? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Rock_uranium_mill_spi...

"Pre-burnup doesn't count" is exactly what an abusive ex would say.

Yet again, none of the examples you've posted are contamination from nuclear waste from power generation. Pre-burnup radiation exposure is not nuclear waste. This isn't a pedantic distinction, someone getting contaminated while manufacturing fuel rods is a totally different failure mode than what we're discussing about waste buried deep underground.

> What about mining waste causing increased cancer and largely poisoning a river?

What about it? Mining copper and rare earth minerals for magnets is polluting too. Producing aluminum to build transmission lines is also polluting. Mining, in general, is a pretty dirty industry. But surely nobody is suggesting we stop building electric motors or transmission lines? Uranium mining is not an exception in this regard.

You've given 3 examples, none of them are contamination from spent nuclear waste from power generation.

> none of them are contamination from spent nuclear waste from power generation.

I have no more energy to give people who cannot be precise with their requirements. I get enough of that at work.

It's kind of the nature of a heavily regulated safety industry. The industry comes to resent the safety regulations. And therefore they will fail.

It's not even a a matter of mundane human error when executing procedures over and over again.

It's that the entire managerial pyramid gradually and slowly erodes

It's not a mile deep, but I think the depth isn't the problem here:

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

This is the one I was referring to, though I guess it's just over half a kilometer deep: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_re...

The Asse II site used an existing mine to avoid having to excavate a new tunnel, which subsequently flooded.

>> The problem with nuclear reactors isn't that their pollution couldn't disposed of with ideal methods but that when they run by for-profit corporations, you will always have the company skirting the edge of what's safe 'cause corporations just go bankrupt with catastrophic events and so their risk-reward behavior isn't the risk-reward optima for humanity.

Chernobyl was state run.

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