In comparison, managing steel production waste is way more expensive.
For some definition of "active".
The first 6-10 years are quite dangerous, which is why stuff is in cooling pools. After about 200-300 years the most dangerous type of radiation (gamma) has mostly burned stopped, and you're left with alpha and beta, which can be stopped with tinfoil and even paper.
I've heard the remark that after ~300 years the main way for nuclear waste to cause bad health effects is if you eat it or grind it up and snort it.
People often focus on "radiation" part forgetting the "contamination" part. You can literally walk into the Chernobyl reactor active zone today for up to 2 minutes. But you cannot produce any food in soils around it for thousand years. And there's dozens of dangerous isotopes, each one accumulating and affecting human tissues differently.
Public generally only knows about Geiger counter. Yes, it will scream if everything is FUBAR, but it's useless for estimating safety of a food product.
Geraldine Thomas, the co-founder of the Chernobyl Tissue Bank, says there are more worrisome things than radiation:
* https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/apr/26/obesity-...
Is that actually based on some sort of science though, or is it the same woolly thinking as the linear-no-threshold modelling that was popular around the time of Chernobyl? What are the actual risks here and how does it compare to low exercise or the typical amount of air pollution in a large city?
https://www.epa.gov/radiation/blue-book-epa-radiogenic-cance...
* https://www.nwmo.ca/canadas-used-nuclear-fuel/how-is-it-stor...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_flask
Are you telling me it's unsafe? Someone better tell Madison Hill:
* https://www.newsweek.com/pregnant-woman-poses-nuclear-waste-...
* https://twitter.com/MadiHilly/status/1550148385931513856
* https://twitter.com/MadiHilly/status/1671491294831493120
Or Paris Ortiz-Wines:
* https://twitter.com/ParisOrtizWines/status/11951849706139361...
(The context here is not walking down some road and getting bombarded with particles: but about the storage of industrial material and the risks it involves. Yes, stuff gets shot out at >300 years: but it's not just lying around randomly.)
Sorry, I don't have a Twitter account to read the posts, but they look like my point exactly.
Neither to I:
which it will do eventually, if it's left out in the open
it needs to be buried
reducing the volume via reprocessing helps
assuming you can do something with the 97% of "useful" stuff extracted (which the UK has mostly failed at, and now stores it in a warehouse)
https://www.bge.de/en/asse/short-information/history-of-the-...
It might be true that nuclear power produces less waste but we have to consider the scales of global energy demand, multiply it by the time scales of nuclear waste to reach what threshold exactly? When and how would nuclear waste become a problem. Would it take ~200 years like the industrial revolution with CO2? Would it be okay if it where 300 years? or 500? What do we do, when background radiation is rising from ground water and soil? Switch back to natural instead of green energy, hoping the next millenias will be fine?
I dont think nuclear power is a solution. It can be step in an energy transition strategy, but no solution.
Not if it's below non-porous rock…
* https://www.nwmo.ca/who-we-are/how-were-governed/peer-review...
* https://www.nwmo.ca/Site-selection/Steps-in-the-site-selecti...
…below the water table…
* https://www.nwmo.ca/canadas-plan/canadas-deep-geological-rep...
…packed in non-porous soil/clay:
* https://www.nwmo.ca/-/media/Reports-MASTER/Technical-reports...
* https://www.nwmo.ca/Canadas-plan/Multiple-barrier-system
> When and how would nuclear waste become a problem.
Never. If there is ever "too much" of it we reprocess it as per OP article to remove the "non-usable" stuff and burn up the rest. It seems that there's an order of magnitude reduce by recycling (96% is usable fuel, so 4% is left over):
* https://www.orano.group/en/unpacking-nuclear/all-about-radio...
Plate tectonic and sismotectonic are also sources of concern: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10706-005-1148-4 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004896971...
This endless list of nit picky objections that go on and on and on and on and on, that are brought up no matter how low the probability, is why we can't have nice things (like cheap, reliable, zero-emission electricity available 24/7).
More people will die from plane crashes—which is amongst the safest ways to travel—than from nuclear waste radiation in the next few hundred years.
Geraldine Thomas, the co-founder of the Chernobyl Tissue Bank, says there are more worrisome things than radiation:
* https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/apr/26/obesity-...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geraldine_Thomas
I personally live about 50km nuclear reactor and don't think about it at all.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickering_Nuclear_Generating_S...
There is nothing we can do about it, therefore comparing this risk the the risk induced by nuclear reactors seems moot to me as we can decide to prefer renewables upon nuclear.
> cheap
Nuclear-generated electricity is way more expensive than renewables', and the gap is widening. Source: LCOE (the gold standard) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#...
> reliable
A continental fleet of a renewables's mix is at least as reliable.
> zero-emission
No, the total lifecycle emissions of nuclear (industrial PWR) is low (10-15 g eqCO2/KWH) but not zero.
> electricity available 24/7
A continental fleet of a renewables's mix with storage (vehicle batteries thru V2Gn, green hydrogen, hydro...).
In order to generate electricity even France burns non-negligible amounts of fossil fuel since the inception of its nuclear fleet: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/energy?Metric=Share+of+...
> More people will die from plane crashes
One can decide whether he will (or not) hop on a plane. A nuclear reactor and its waste threatens everyone, even very remotely and in a distant future.
Note: my own brother was killed during a jetliner crash (Swissair SR111, 1998).
> There is nothing we can do about it, therefore comparing this risk the the risk induced by nuclear reactors seems moot to me as we can decide to prefer renewables upon nuclear.
Sure there is (with enough warning); it's just physics:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Asteroid_Redirection_Te...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_Redirect_Mission
> Nuclear-generated electricity is way more expensive than renewables', and the gap is widening. Source: LCOE (the gold standard)
I live in Ontario, Canada, and renewables are much more expensive than nuclear (Table 2):
* https://www.oeb.ca/sites/default/files/rpp-price-report-2024...
In previous years nuclear was cheaper than (natural/methane) gas:
* https://www.oeb.ca/sites/default/files/rpp-price-report-2023...
* https://www.oeb.ca/sites/default/files/rpp-price-report-2022...
* https://www.oeb.ca/sites/default/files/rpp-price-report-2021...
* https://www.oeb.ca/sites/default/files/rpp-price-report-2020...
* https://www.oeb.ca/sites/default/files/rpp-price-report-2019...
To date, nuclear energy has cost the province $58B and has generated 3300 TWh, while our renewable experiment with the Green Energy Act will cost several billion per year over the life of the twenty year contacts and generate 200 TWh.
> In order to generate electricity even France burns non-negligible amounts of fossil fuel since the inception of its nuclear fleet:
Perhaps they should get more nuclear so they burn less fossil fuels. Ontario's mix:
* https://www.ieso.ca/power-data § Supply
There are currently plans to expand the nuclear fleet.
> One can decide whether he will (or not) hop on a plane. A nuclear reactor and its waste threatens everyone, even very remotely and in a distant future.
It threatens the people who live >500m underneath the ground once it is buried.
We cannot cancel this risk, and we can cancel the risk of nuclear accident by not exploiting nuclear reactor (this is now possible thanks to renewables).
> To date, nuclear energy has > while our renewable experiment
The LCOE is the gold standard.
Comparing an existing fleet of reactors with many hidden costs (indirectly paid for by the taxpayer or the consumer) with the full cost of renewables, and neglecting the cost of any nuclear mishap (accident, waste, decommission...) is a classic trick. In France some even compare the official production cost of the amortized fleet (w/o the investment) to the complete cost of renewables. Yay!
> once it is buried
Who will bury an industrial nuclear reactor during a major accident, and how will they do it? Where is this even only a plan?
Or is it about building it underground, and what about skyrocketing inspection and maintenance costs? Where is this even only a plan? Do your really believe that a broken nuclear reactor vessel vomiting corium will be safe underground, and in such a case why are waste long-term repositories (way less 'active') so difficult and expensive to design and build (as already stated: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44517316 )?
> I dont think nuclear power is a solution. It can be step in an energy transition strategy, but no solution.
Do you mean nuclear fission specifically? Because I can't imagine anything being a long term solution except nuclear power (fusion).
An accused defends himself badly by declaring to the judge "I am not the only culprit of homicide!".
Significant inhaled Pu-239 has a fair risk of causing cancer even after a long time. However mercury is volatile and it's a lot easier to end up inhaling fumes.
And mercury is absorbed well through ingestion and Pu isn't, and most of the risk after ingestion would be chemical, not radiological. From that standpoint, it's looking a lot better than other heavy metals.
The reason we don’t have more solid non-radiological toxicity data on Plutonium (compared to other toxic heavy metals) is because any amount significant enough to count kills people radiologically super quick.
That doesn’t mean it’s non-toxic if we ignore the radiological effects.
* Plutonium is not well absorbed by ingestion compared to other heavy metals and know ballpark ingestion toxicities
* We also know that pretty much all the plutonium except the long-lived isotopes are gone on a timescale of tens of thousands of years-- leaving behind mostly uranium isotopes.
* There's no real reason to believe this mixture of uranium and a small fraction of long-lived plutonium isotopes is significantly worse than ingesting uranium. It might be worse to inhale fine dust, though.
* Mercury is way worse than uranium because it is so readily absorbed.
We have nearly zero experience with weathered or bio modified plutonium. And the experience we do have with plutonium compounds, is limited by the fact people die awfully fast when they’re anywhere near them.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Especially not when the evidence is absent because we can’t get there because everyone dies first from the more obvious bad things happening.
The US nuclear weapons program had several hundred people who were accidentally exposed to measurable doses of plutonium. Those workers did not die at the time. The government set up The United States Transuranium and Uranium Registries (USTUR) to track long term health outcomes for such exposed workers.
https://wpcdn.web.wsu.edu/wp-spokane/uploads/sites/1058/2024...
When I worked with the USTUR, they had also acquired some data from former workers in the Soviet nuclear weapons complex. The most exposed workers there received higher doses than any American workers. Even then health impacts were not immediately fatal.
Here's the NIH summary on plutonium toxicology:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK599402/
It's a lot to read, but there has yet to be a human plutonium exposure accident so severe that the exposed individual died quickly. Or at least no published accident of that sort. There is however a dose-dependent risk of lung cancer from inhaling aerosolized plutonium.
Basically any mercury that I'm going to ingest accidentally is likely to be a salt. Because elemental mercury is going to evaporate.
> Especially not when the evidence is absent because we can’t get there because everyone dies first from the more obvious bad things happening.
Rats given Pu-239 show LD-50's of hundreds of milligrams per kilogram. Versus something like 20 mg/kg for inorganic mercury.
We have human studies where people were injected with several micrograms of plutonium and went to live on normal lives; and we have human studies where adults absorb less than 1/1000th of the plutonium ingested.
Who do you think will be fine, and who not?
Why do you dodge the question?
When we talk about mercury in the environment, we talk about the forms that it exists in-- just like we'd be talking about plutonium oxide.
> Why do you dodge the question?
I'm sorry-- I assumed we were talking about something useful or that made sense-- not to say, it's more dangerous than mercury (when choosing the form of mercury that's not implicated in toxicity events too often).
Why are you moving the goalposts? We have animal and, unfortunately, a lot of human data on plutonium exposure.
Just like arguing that the only common form of mercury people would run across in daily life (elemental!) isn’t applicable, since it isn’t implicated in toxicity events (duh! Because it’s not particular toxic and requires massive exposures over time!) - when we’re talking about relative toxicity of elemental plutonium and mercury compounds, eh?
Or do you want to try to guess if we can make a plutonium equivalent of methyl mercury - which we haven’t really tried to make, because it’s insane.
Then it reasons that we should absolutely use this fuel.
And yes there's the risk of greater nuclear proliferation but we already have colossal stockpiles of nuclear weapons that pose a massive threat to mankind. That's been the reality for 70 years.
In addition, nuclear isn't competing against coal, it's competing against solar.
Pop all the waste in stainless steel casts huge pile in a geologically stable desert.
You can read more about vitrification of nuclear waste here: