It never cases to amaze me how much blatant misinformation circulates around this topic.
Just a few years ago, nobody sane would have predicted Trump. How can anybody seriously predict what would happen to this waste in a few years? I'm not even talking about generations here.
It's all about risk management.
A dam damming water at a hill is obvious.
Some warm stuff set up like something really special, is not.
How many nuclear actually killed is unknown because it's not as easy as: something happens, people drown.
It's more like: something happens, a few die fast, the rest dies earlier, their children live shorter or have disabilities, their children also, and so on. Meanwhile collecting waste which will do the same for later generations who might not remember what nuclear energy even is.
Did you even bother to read about how we estimate the casualties of nuclear incidents? It really sounds like you didn't, and just shared your first thought about it not being trivial.
> They have been around a bit longer don't you think?
How in the world does that make them less risky? If a dam collapses, it's generally very bad, even if it is an old dam.
The numbers are highly speculative and are either those you get pushed in your face by the nuclear astroturf (killed on site) or are scientific and the range is very wide since it's so hard to calculate. It's cancer and it happened in the Soviet Era.
Your whole comment didn't add anything to the discussion. What's your point?
If you’re worried about some kind of societal collapse leading to it being abandoned, well in that case there are much bigger problems that are more immediately dangerous.
What about 1000?
How would you know if there are even people left who know what it is??
May be societal collapse isn't a problem. Maybe we're having a nice new beginning but someone finds some nice, warm stuff?
Unless we have civilizational collapse in which case a bit of nuclear waste will be the least of our problems.
It won't have to be monitored for a 1000 years. First, by that time the level of radioactivity is very low, and when it's in a deep-geological repository (like the ones we already use for vastly greater amounts of highly toxic chemicals that never decay) it is gone. We know enough about how geology works.
We also know how a BLU-122 works. Can you be sure the US wouldn't use one on its allies in yet another moment of irrational tantrum? What about Russia?
The fuel and related will have to be monitored for 1000 years and more.
Yes, we know how geology works, which is why we have found a single place where it might be safe. ONE.
No it won't.
That isn't true. There are lots of suitable places. The problems are purely political, not geological.
For example: "The Government Accountability Office stated that the closure was for political, not technical or safety reasons" -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_r...
How does this even help your argument?
Yeah, we have a nuclear winter. 80% of the civilisation is dead. "Hey look, we've found warm stuff". A few years later: 10% of the population died of cancer.
Are you kidding?
> No it won't.
Spent nuclear fuel stays a radiation hazard for extended periods of time with half-lifes as high as 24,000 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spent_nuclear_fuel
> That isn't true. There are lots of suitable places. The problems are purely political, not geological.
The fact that your single example is Yucca mountain and even the US wasn't able to come up with another place and is still discussing this one, shows that there is not an abundance of places you can put it. Even in such a huge country like the USA.
Other countries have the same issues and they are geological.
Germany had a spot a few decades ago. Everybody thought it would be safe. It has to be evacuated now. An evacuation which will cost the taxpayer millions of Euros.
We should REDUCE the danger to those generations and not make it larger for no sane reason.
Because the alternatives are much more dangerous.
Though it has to be said that solar/wind and nuclear are all extremely safe, meaning it doesn't really matter that much which of these you use, the overall risk is always going to be very low, and the relative numbers are going to be very sensitive to small changes or variations in analyses.
Hydro is significantly more dangerous, and all the fossil fuels are tremendously more dangerous.
Due to the fact that intermittent renewables usually require fossil backup for that majority of countries that don't have abundant hydro, you have to take that into account.
A 2013 paper by NASA showed that nuclear power had saved around 1.84 million lives by 2011.
https://www.giss.nasa.gov/pubs/abs/kh05000e.html
A 2019 study shows that reduced use of nuclear energy post-Fukushima cost hundreds of thousands of lives.
https://columbia.edu/~mhs119/Kharecha.Sato_Jpn.Ger_post.Fuku...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030142151...
Whereas the WHO predicts that there will be no measurable health effects on the general Japanese public from Fukushima, and the majority of negative health consequences were from the unnecessary evacuations.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095758201...
Radiophobia kills!
Who said that?
What are you talking about? How is a solar panel even on the same safety-shelf with nuclear material??
What are you talking about??
> A 2013 paper by NASA showed that nuclear power had saved around 1.84 million lives by 2011.
Which is again related to the Astroturf tactic of playing nuclear vs. coal and is not related to today's calculations where it is renewables vs. nuclear.
Would you please stop derailing the discussion with this?
Nuclear peaked in the 90 and is being overtaken by renewables in certain countries as well as probably worldwide this year: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-production-by...
It is actually renewables which lead to coal being removed from the mix. Not nuclear:
Not "who". "What". And the answer is "the data". The data say that.
Empirically. Completely independent of whether you understand how.
And nuclear did not peak in the 90s. 2024 was a record production year, 2025 was another record production year, the number of states adopting nuclear power is rising, the number of reactors is rising, the number of builds is rising, the rate of the increase in number of builds is rising.
Empirically.
And intermittent renewables are ... intermittent ... and therefore cannot actually completely replace fossil fuels. Which is why almost all industrialized nations are doing nuclear AND renewables.
Only in the renewbro-bubble are nuclear and renewables mutually exclusive.
In the real world they are complementary. Here's the Finnish environment minister:
"If we consider the [consumption] growth figures, the question isn't whether it's wind or nuclear power. We need both," Mykkänen said at a press conference on Tuesday morning.
He added that Finland's newest nuclear reactor, Olkiluoto 3, enabled the expansion of the country's wind power infrastructure. Nuclear power, he said, is needed to counterbalance output fluctuations of wind turbines.
Why don't you link to "the data" then?
> And nuclear did not peak in the 90s. 2024 was a record production year,
I just gave you a source which proves my statement and shows that yours is a lie. Just like everything else you added to it.
> And intermittent renewables are ... intermittent ... and therefore cannot actually completely replace fossil fuels.
Weird how they can't but already do. Must be some kind of magic eh?
> Only in the renewbro-bubble are nuclear and renewables mutually exclusive.
Nope. This is a lie also :)
Nuclear clogs up transmission ways when it's not necessary. This is a fact and happens today.
> Here's the Finnish environment minister:
Why not add the French environment minister also? You can add as many ministers as you want, the world doesn't care. The money goes into renewables and they're the future.
Here is the source again: https://ourworldindata.org/electricity-mix
Your source shows exactly that what I said is the truth, and that you are lying.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-production-by...
The highest number for nuclear electricity production are 2024 and 2025, with 2025 being slightly higher than 2024.
1965 25.539724
1966 34.43329
1967 41.006016
1968 52.113163
1969 61.783413
1970 78.87466
1971 109.70418
1972 152.17516
1973 203.90158
1974 266.6001
1975 369.8482
1976 432.67142
1977 538.5478
1978 625.7944
1979 650.8599
1980 711.9242
1981 840.75073
1982 912.17755
1983 1033.8127
1984 1254.5685
1985 1488.9216
1986 1594.7357
1987 1734.7332
1988 1891.2493
1989 1945.0106
1990 2000.596
1991 2096.3098
1992 2112.223
1993 2184.9646
1994 2225.9788
1995 2322.5298
1996 2406.615
1997 2390.0642
1998 2431.1948
1999 2523.7056
2000 2540.46
2001 2613.17
2002 2654.78
2003 2601.05
2004 2719.41
2005 2726.97
2006 2761.59
2007 2703.49
2008 2694.72
2009 2656.76
2010 2725.91
2011 2610.34
2012 2432.22
2013 2448.52
2014 2498.73
2015 2532.93
2016 2571.05
2017 2594.23
2018 2658.7
2019 2754.08
2020 2648.33
2021 2762.44
2022 2639.64
2023 2697.74
2024 2777.11
2025 2811.57
> Nuclear clogs up transmission ways when it's not necessary.
Haven't heard that joke in a long time. Good one!
> Haven't heard that joke in a long time. Good one!
It's not a joke.
It's reality.
It has nothing to do with reality.
It ain't me.
As one example of many see previous post on nuclear production records.
What I wrote is and has been an actual topic of real world politics here.
There is nothing speculative or questionable about it.
Nuclear reactors are not flexible. To keep them in any way financially sane, you have to keep them running as long as possible. Even when the energy they produce is much much more expensive then the one from renewables. This is why they block the grid an renewables had to be turned off.
it happened before we turned off the crap.
So you are lying.
Yeah, small amounts of solid waste sitting somewhere is as much of a non issue as can be.
It is no argument or discussion happening in real life now.
It is nuclear vs. renewables and nuclear is losing.
...also those are not small amounts. The fuel may be a small amount but there is much much more that needs to disappear in holes we don't have.