This is IMO a positive for nuclear, not a negative. You're forced to confront the cleanup as opposed to fossil fuels, where you just blow your waste out into the atmosphere and make it the commons' problem.
We don't have a good track record of confronting the cleanup of nuclear waste. The US federal government recently shipped a secret load of waste into Nevada. Nevada was very unhappy about that and claimed it was done in secrecy because it was illegal. After a bit of a fight, the feds caved and have agreed to remove the waste.
There is no plan for this stuff. The repository that was built in Nevada was never actually approved and it is not legal to use. So everyone that was planning on sending stuff there has just been piling it in the side yard waiting for something. New Mexico is now trying to open up a waste site.
But if you operate a reactor in Tennessee, right now you have no idea where to store the waste so you just keep piling it higher and deeper on site.
DOE and NRC have requested something approaching $200 million over the last two years for Yucca Mountain even though it has been killed and revived and killed again. It's been dead for years, but it never really dies. They continue to pour money into it. But, as previously stated, they aren't allowed to use it.
Nevada has fought hard against it. But people outside Nevada (and some inside Nevada) keep trying to jam it down Nevada's throat. The illegal midnight run was just one example.
There had been some $10 billion sunk into the project 10 years ago. You can guess who has the incentive to keep pouring 100s of millions more into a supposedly cancelled project. If the whole point is to funnel giant money into somebodies' pockets, the legal status of the facility has nothing to do with the money allocated for it.
The world is filled with naturally occurring phenomena far more dangerous than a big pile of low-grade nuclear waste. The really dangerous stuff ceases to exist after a few decades of sitting in a cooling pond, and then what’s left has such a long half life that it’s not particularly threatening. Water is an incredible radiation dampener, and the ocean is already chock full of dissolved uranium. The only reason we don’t just toss our low-grade fission waste into an oceanic trench somewhere is that it’s valuable and wherever we put it we know we’ll probably change our minds and want it back for reprocessing at some point.
You're underplaying the danger and overplaying the value. Who exactly is investing in this "green gold"? If it's so valuable why does no one actually want it, and why is the DoE stuck with half a trillion liability?
> If it's so valuable why does no one actually want it,
I mean France does... we actually gave them the tech. The reason we stopped is more political. But more people do this than just France, but they are the biggest example since 17% of their entire grid is powered from recycled nuclear. The other reason we don't do it is that it is just cheaper to buy more Uranium than setup reprocessing plants. France doesn't have as easy of a supply chain so it makes sense for them to recycle. Obviously the US's supply chain could change, so access to that waste is a potential benefit.
> The other reason we don't do it is that it is just cheaper to buy more Uranium than setup reprocessing plants
Is it cheaper to buy more Uranium and deal with the so-far-and-growing half-trillion dollar cleanup liability than to set up and operate reprocessing plants? Of course I wouldn't be surprised if that liability is considered "tomorrow's problem", so no one in power cares about it.
> I wouldn't be surprised if that liability is considered "tomorrow's problem", so no one in power cares about it.
I was talking to an environmental scientist that other day who was lamenting that the liability for solar panel waste was being treated as "tomorrow's problem", and no one in power cares about it.
If we factor in the tomorrow problem nuclear looks even better, because we have a chance of being able to deal with it. Nobody attempts to solve the decommissioning problems of most waste, there is too much of it so we just dump it in landfill and hope there isn't anything too nasty in it. There is no plan at all to deal with it beyond 100 years or so, and it doesn't get less toxic over time.
You should inform that environmental scientist that Veolia in France has a pilot facility that can recycle 95% of the materials recovered from retired solar panels. The other 5% can be used as feedstock for asphalt aggregate.
Keep in mind, panel longevity is upwards of 25-30 years, at which point they'll still be producing 80-90% of their rated output. Inverters (single or micro) can be recycled in traditional electronics recycling processes.
Solar does not have the special handling and proliferation issues that nuclear waste does. Disposing of or recycling broken solar panels is significantly less complicated than spent nuclear fuel and waste byproducts.
Recycling and disposal does need consideration for renewables, as well as nuclear. You cannot just say "Well no one is looking into it for solar, so nuclear should get a free pass too!", especially when nuclear waste is so much more hazardous. Also when considering the infrastructure costs associated with setting up proper reprocessing facilities, no it does not obviously come out ahead. It's incredibly expensive upfront.
> Solar does not have the special handling and proliferation issues that nuclear waste does.
That is also what I'd expect to see if people aren't taking the issues seriously, so it isn't really evidence of anything.
> You cannot just say "Well no one is looking into it for solar, so nuclear should get a free pass too!"
Sure I can. The evidence to me suggests that, for equivalent amounts of effort and adjusting for the energy produced, nuclear waste dumps will do far less damage than solar waste dumps after adjusting for the energy produced. The amounts of waste are tiny to the point where it is unclear to me why anyone cares. If proliferation is a problem, bury it 2km underground in a desert and don't tell anyone where it is. Good luck recovering that on the sly.
Are you suggesting I am not taking it seriously, while also saying "Sure I can" when it comes to ignoring nuclear waste storage issues? Waste amounts are "tiny", and "bury it in a hole somewhere", ignoring time and cost components. Hard to take you seriously.
> Are you suggesting I am not taking it seriously[?] .... [it is h]ard to take you seriously.
I was sorely tempted towards sarcasm by that combination.
But I'm suggesting exactly that, and that we should standardise to not taking the waste of either solar panels or nuclear particularly seriously, given they are both very minor problems that can be handled by the people involved.
Given how we've so far failed to deal with our nuclear waste in a reasonable way, after decades of opportunity to figure it out, I think it's a mistake to call that a "minor problem".
I don't know much about solar waste handling, though someone upthread suggests there's a French company that can recycle 95% of the components of retired solar panels with the remaining 5% going to other uses. Of course, no idea how much that process costs, but I'd bet it's nowhere near as hazardous to deal with as nuclear, and doesn't have any of the nuclear security requirements since I don't expect people can make nuclear bombs out of retired solar panels.
In France this 'success story' led to a state law (2015-992, from 2015, the "loi relative à la transition énergétique pour la croissance verte") stating that the part of nuke-produced electricity must fall to less than 50% in 2025, from 72% then, and that renewables must replace it.
In France nuke-power is backed by gas (which produced 10,3% of gridpower in 2017).
The sole reactor currently planned (Flamanville-3) is a complete disaster, more than 10 years behind schedule and 4x overbudget.
I'm unsure what you are suggesting here, so I want to be extra clear about the French policy and current state of affairs. As in stands, France has one of the lowest CO2 emissions per capita[0][1].
No one is saying that we should _only_ use nuclear. Not diversifying your energy portfolio is a terrible idea. France is trying to reduce its dependence upon nuclear (which is a good idea) and replace its fossil fuel infrastructure first. This is because renewables are becoming cheaper. The plan is to have a diversification of nuclear + renewables (which is what pro-nuclear advocates are fighting for). Nuclear serves as a baseload and backbone and is supported by renewables to fill the gap.
You will not find pro-nuclear supporters upset with France's decision to reduce their dependence on nuclear. In fact you will often find support. As battery technology gets better and cheaper and as price of renewables continue to fall you will also find that pro-nuclear advocates will cheer this on.
There is a big misconception that many believe people are arguing nuclear vs renewables or arguing that the grid should be _only_ nuclear. What we are arguing for is nuclear + renewables vs renewables + coal + oil + gas. The reason being that _today_ we have the technology to dramatically reduce our carbon emissions with _current_ technologies. We are looking at countries that already have successful models for emissions and saying "hey, we should do something similar to that, since it clearly works." It would be insane to not look at what models are already successful and try to say that the technologies they use are counter productive. The proof is sitting right there, all you have to do is look. We are arguing for models closer to Sweden (since we, the US, have lots of access to hydro) than were are for France's current system (though their goals would also be a good model to consider).
Not in France, the nuclear plants here can do some load following (to some extent).
>You will not find pro-nuclear supporters upset with France's decision to reduce their dependence on nuclear. In fact you will often find support.
I cannot agree here, there is a growing movement mainly lead by Jean-Marc Jancovici deploring the shutdown of safe and profitable nuclear power plant.
The main argument being when you already have a low carbon energy production, the money invested in the construction of new renewables power plant will better used in home insulation subsidies or subsidies for a heat pump.
> Not in France, the nuclear plants here can do some load following (to some extent).
They can in do but the economics makes more sense to run high for long periods. The nuclear output of France doesn't typically vary much throughout the day, but yes they do have the capacity to.
But yeah, all we are fighting for is that nuclear is __part__ of the solution (not __the__ solution. Big difference).
> all we are fighting for is that nuclear is __part__ of the solution (not __the__ solution. Big difference).
It seems to me that all this is about the balance between the relative importance of nuclear in the solution and its costs, along with the risks it induces.
Having nuclear as part of the solution implies mass-production of plants parts (building a few plants is much more expensive and projects are nearly always way behind schedule), risk and waste, decommission costs... If nuclear power could solve the challenge (that is to say let us live as we do now while reaching the GIEC's objectives) it could be justified, but it fails far from it.
Well it isn't like there is any other technology that can d it. The idea that renewables can do 100% is still theoretical. Likely, but theoretical. I'd rather not put all my eggs in one basket. Rather I'd look at Sweden and France which have some of the lowest CO2eq/capita (for energy). We should look to the future, but we should also follow what is already working. We can figure out how to burry a few dozen six packs worth of radioactive material after we solve the much larger problem. Besides, if you've been paying attention to this thread, that's a solved problem (just costly and needs will).
I would rather reduce the energy I consume than tolerate all burden induced by nuclear power (risk, waste for our descendants, overcentralization...).
I repeat: after 70+ years of nuclear power exploitation there is no active and sufficient long-term waste repository. This doesn't seem to be a trivial problem. It is "solved in this thread", but not IRL.
I'm not "suggesting" anything, I just let us remember that France plans to considerably reduce its nuclear power capacity. If my assertions aren't clear or if a proof is missing please feel free to ask.
FYI I'm French.
> France has one of the lowest CO2 emissions per capita
Apples and oranges...
France has wayyyy less factories than Germany, however it imports goods produced elsewhere. CO2 emitted in order to produce those goods is to be accounted for!
Real CO2 emission:
France: 6.92t/year/capita in 2017
Germany: 10.83t/year/capita in 2017
Moreover Germany is richer than France (=> more equipment => more CO2 emitted).
GDP per capita (PPP): 52.4k€/capita versus 47.6
At this point from your data 9.13/5.2 (1.75) ratio we are back to 9.74/6.92 (1.4)
Germany's climate is much colder (=> more heating => more CO2 emitted). Heaters in Germany are massively oil-based systems because there was an historic low taxation on heating oil. Sadly I can't find solid data.
Food for thought.
> Not diversifying your energy portfolio is a terrible idea.
Yes, indeed. However it doesn't imply that we must use each and every energy source, without any consideration for all its characteristics. Nuclear plants and their waste are dangerous, and contrary to a common belief they cannot solve the climate challenge while letting us avoid changing our habits.
> You will not find pro-nuclear supporters upset with France's decision to reduce their dependence on nuclear
That is to say in order to only 'decarbonate' the energy sector (there are other sectors to decarbonate!) thanks to nuclear power the US should deploy ~11 times more nuclear power capacity than it already has, and adapt or retrofit all energy-consuming equipment in order to have it use gridpower (or to embark some nano-reactor). This seems completely unrealistic, from many perspectives. Even a mix (nuclear + renewables) with 3 to 5 times more nuclear seems unrealistic.
'CO2-clean' energy production as a whole isn't possible.
Electricity production accounts for 27% of CO2 emissions, and 63% (of the electricity) is produced by fossil fuel, and 20% by nukeplants). Source: https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis...
=> quickly reducing CO2 emission by 27% by producing all gridpower does not imply any adaption/retrofit of any existing stuff, however it implies a 5-fold increase of nuclear capacity or a balance with renewables (taking into account the baseload) and would not be a decisive progress as the GIEC invites us to "fall by about 45 percent from 2010 levels by 2030, reaching 'net zero' around 2050".
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Report_on_Global_Warmi...
Therefore, indeed, "the proof is sitting right there, all you have to do is look": in order to reduce emissions we have to consume wayyyyy less energy and stuff.
> What we are arguing for
IMHO the sole realistic option is "let's drastically reduce our energy & stuff needs", or even "degrowth". Even an "all-nuclear gripower" plan, which is completely out-of-reach, cannot fix the climate problem: gridpower offers only about 25% of the consumed energy in advanced countries, and beyond energy-production many human activities emit huge amounts of CO2 in ways we cannot modify, or at best cannot modify quickly (agriculture comes to mind, as in the US it produces ~10% of the emitted CO2, and feeding cows with gridpower may prove to be difficult).
> _today_ we have the technology
We don't know, _today_, how to make a fool-proof nuclear plant nor how to effectively dispose of its waste. We don't know how to solve the NIMBY challenge. Financing a nuclear plant becomes more and more difficult. Even building it is a major ordeal (see the EPR projects). And even if we fix all this there is no all-nuclear approach able to tackle the challenge (dividing CO2 emissions by 3).
I can change that to CO2eq/capita/kWhr and it is still true ([1] above shows that).
> Nuclear plants and their waste are dangerous,
I'm not trying to dismiss that. But you also shouldn't dismiss the impacts of other resources. There is no free lunch here. For example, heavy metal contaminants are stable and stay toxic forever. We likely have to deal with these contaminants similarly to nuclear (put them in giant sealed holes in the ground that won't ever have access to the groundwater).
> Some, in France, think that we should go full nuclear, and they fight for it.
I am happy to explicitly call them dumb (as opposed to my previous implicitness). They are clearly uninformed on the matter.
> Other think that we may have to chose a "100% renewables" option.
This relies on two things happening (one of, or a combination). 1) The grid is massively overbuilt, 2) battery storage massively improves. These things are possible. The argument for nuclear is, again, based on what we have right now and saying that we shouldn't bet too much on future technologies. It is too risky of a bet. This isn't a big problem for France because you are starting at a very good emission rate, but in other countries it is important because every day we continue to argue we use more coal and oil. Unlike France, we are a much larger nation that is much less population dense and that massively eats into our efficiency of our grid. As for France, I hope you can get to 100% renewable. Like I said in the previous comment, we will be cheering you on. France is what many of us envy. Where we wish we could have started from. Following that path 50 years ago the situation today would be much different. I hope we can get to 100% renewable. I do. I'm just not willing to put all my eggs in one basket.
> That is to say in order to only 'decarbonate' the energy sector (there are other sectors to decarbonate!) thanks to nuclear power the US should deploy ~11 times more nuclear power capacity than it already has
I'm really frustrated at how many times I've said "nuclear __+__ renewables" and you ignore the "+" and assume a "-". I'm sure there are those out there that believe it. I have implicitly and explicitly called them dumb. But if you believe that I am one of those people I would ask you to read my comments again or stop responding if you will not discuss in good faith. I have been extremely clear on the issue. The issue was the thesis of my previous comment.
> Electricity production accounts for 27% of CO2 emissions,
Even though this isn't where you were going with it, this is a topic I'm __majorly__ concerned about. In the public discourse we only discuss electricity and transportation. As per your source, that accounts for a little under 60% of the total problem. Worse, the US is only 15% of the problem (I remember a presidential candidate this year getting booed for saying that we need to do more because of this). 25% of this is land use and agriculture. Another 25% is electricity and heat. And 21% is industry. We can do a lot in many of these sectors, but we still need new technologies. Gates wrote a good article about the subject matter[0] (actually if you dig there are a few). I actually also heavily advocate for CC and sequestration, again because I don't want to bet too much on things going just perfect. And in fact we need negative emissions, not 0. If you listen to many of the climate scientists, you will hear this from them when they feel like they can speak freely. This is why they often talk gloom and doom, because what they can say without pissing a ton of people off is far from where we need to be.
> in order to reduce emissions we have to consume wayyyyy less energy and stuff.
The genie is out of the bottle. You can't put the toothpaste back in the tube. So maybe CC&S. Costly, but it can work.
Indeed, however the risk induced at run-time and by its waste seems higher with nuclear than with renewables.
>> Other think that we may have to chose a "100% renewables" option.
>This relies on two things happening (one of, or a combination). 1) The grid is massively overbuilt, 2) battery storage massively improves.
A third quest is local production (solar roof panels and the like).
A 4th quest is energy and matter savings (less production => less nefarious emissions).
Also let's not neglect that "renewables" is a mix (solar, wind, hydro...).
As for the 1) (grid) we also have many subpathes, continental-level interconnections and smartgrid being the most prominent, all useful for all "sources" (even nuclear) and all already actively explored.
> The argument for nuclear is, again, based on what we have right now
What we have now is ageing nuclear powerplants (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_reactors#Franc... , this is also true in the US ) needing huge maintenance-and-security-related retrofits, and running projects of plant-building which fail or run massively over-schedule and over-budget (see Flamanville and Olkiluoto). Fukushima bumped up the NIMBY effect. Massive and expensive R&D done for 10's of years delivered no quantum leap (breeders, for example, albeit benefiting for huge R&D budgets, are in the mud since the 1950's... but some nuclear advocates consider them today as a promising path!).
Financing a nuclear powerplant becomes more and more difficult because it is very capital intensive and only realistic along with the aforementioned mass-production challenge, and the fact that the cost of renewable energy production falls sharply.
In other words one nuclear powerplant costs way too much, we lost the capacity to build it on budget and schedule, there are less and less sites willing to host a plant... and we need to build many (10x the existing capacity, for an all-nuke gridpower, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_generation#Methods... , given that it is vastly insufficient when it comes to our climate-related goal ) in a short timeframe.
Moreover, after 70 years of nuclear plant activity, we don't have waste long-term repositories, hence we will offer dubtious gifts to our children, and their children, and so on...
Is it really a realistic path or a dead-end?
Are we willing to bet on this or (XOR) on deploying on the 3 major leads summarized above? Each egg in the nuclear basket isn't used for the main 4 quests, and therefore isn't IMHO wisely used.
In France the nuclear sector maintains approximately 220000 jobs, and this is a huge factor for politicians (in order to be elected you better avoid to condemn those jobs).
> In the public discourse we only discuss electricity and transportation
Sadly this is true and I'm also concerned. We do "still need new technologies", however "I'm just not willing to put all my eggs in one basket" nor do we "want to bet too much on things going just perfect", and giving the urgency (we indeed need to quickly reach a "negative emissions" status) I'm convinced that the quest 4 cannot be avoided: we need to reduce the amount of energy and stuff we "use". This is the only sure method readily available. Most politicians and citizen hate it because this is a dark promise.
> Germany spearheaded the decline in emissions in the European Union.
I'm not sure why this is relevant. France has constantly been one of the best in Europe and Germany has been one of the worst (revisiting my link[0]). I'm not sure what you're trying to argue here. That everyone can improve? Of course. That Germany cares more than France? Well probably. It is a much larger problem then them for France. France left their hose and all their faucets on over night. Germany busted a water main and their house is sinking. Makes sense that they are more concerned. Or maybe you're suggesting that German had a larger reduction in emissions? Congrats, they are almost at the peak of France's output. Either way, I don't get what you are suggesting here.
More importantly, why are you still thinking I'm anti-renewables? Have I not been clear on this matter? I'm also not convinced you're reading what I write anyways because we've addressed several of your concerns already and you're pushing claims on me that I don't hold and have already reiterated that I do not hold. I might as well quote the Jabberwocky.
The Germany/France ratio of emissions is relevant because the real difference of emissions if much lower than your graph shows (at worse 1.4 instead of 1.7), and I described (above) why: France has less industry (<=> emissions for stuff is done elsewhere), is less rich (less stuff) and its climate is less cold. It is pertinent because it shows that nuclear power isn't a major factor there. But we both already agree on this (nuclear cannot solve the climate challenge) because you wrote other CO2-emitting sectors "land use and agriculture, heat, industry".
I don't think you are anti-renewables, please quote any sentence of mine letting you believe it. I don't think that nuclear is part of a solution, that's my point here, and my arguments are in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24381421
Your sentence was "France has one of the lowest CO2 emissions per capita" (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24371196 ), and in our context I understood that you presented it at a result mostly due to the use of nuclear power, however it absolutely isn't (nuclear power only offers a tiny fraction of this achievement, at the price of many new difficult problems).
> "Germany spearheaded the decline in emissions in the European Union."
Yes, but this is possible because Germany's emissions are amongst the highest in the EU to begin with.
Although Germany is making progress and can be commended for it's investment in renewables, more than 30% of it's electricity is still produced from coal (hard coal and worse, lignite), which results in one of the highest grid carbon intensities amongst it's European peers.
Building new nuclear is one thing (there are valid economic and environmental arguments against this), but Germany's decision to close existing nuclear plants, some with many years of life remaining, was a political and emotional one rather than rational and scientific.
Keeping existing nuclear plants operating would have allowed more time to develop and expand renewables, enabling coal plants to be closed earlier and reducing CO2 emissions faster.
> to close existing nuclear plants, some with many years of life remaining, was a political and emotional one rather than rational and scientific.
Seems debatable because it seems that, in Germany, most/many (?) citizens are not willing to see nuclear plants running nearby.
It may not be rational. I think it is. There are counter-arguments, and counter-counter-arguments, and so on... up to the point of the debate confining to ethics/metaphysics: do we have the right to create long-lived dangerous waste? Or even the simple "do those who accept have the right to expose those who don't, given that nobody can behave in order to escape the effects of a disaster?" All this leads to much more generic debates (politically dangerous), moreover no politician wants to remain in history as the one who maintained some nuclear plant which, afterwards, caused a disaster.
> Keeping existing nuclear plants operating would have
... induced risks. Even field experts warn us about it.
France's program is effectively government run, and heavily in debt. I cannot find indication that reprocessing is profitable in the short term, but obviously it has advantages in the long term by reducing waste. That said it does not eliminate the waste issue, nor is France buying up spent waste from neighbors to cash in, nor are they dumping it in the ocean or children's playgrounds (it is still extremely harmful).
I think it would take the deep pockets and standardization of a government-run program to truly see nuclear be done properly, but I doubt there is appetite for a similarly run program in the USA.
A nuclear waste reprocessing program should be 100% government run, or at least government controlled, because part of the process involves refining the plutonium that could then be used to make nuclear weapons. This is why most countries don't reprocess their spent fuel, it's considered a nuclear weapon proliferation risk to reprocess, and the downside of accumulating spent fuel waste is considered minor in comparison to the risk. Buying spent waste from neighbors would be unexpected, because (a) waste reprocessing is more than self-sufficient, and (b) there's not much in the way of transportation infrastructure because countries are extremely cautious not to lose track of spent reactor fuel due to proliferation concerns.
The reason for not dumping it in the ocean is exactly as stated above. It's extremely valuable, in large part because of the plutonium content, and it's senseless to throw away something so valuable that the nation may eventually have a need for.
They are stuck with the liability, because President Carter Banned reprocessing of Uranium in 1977, and nobody has changed it. If we reprocessed Uranium, we would end up with much less low level waste, and some very, very small amounts of more radioactive materials (that can be burned in some other types of reactors)
> President Carter Banned reprocessing of Uranium in 1977, and nobody has changed it
Are you sure? Wiki says:
"On 7 April 1977, President Jimmy Carter banned the reprocessing of commercial reactor spent nuclear fuel. The key issue driving this policy was the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation [...] President Reagan lifted the ban in 1981, but did not provide the substantial subsidy that would have been necessary to start up commercial reprocessing." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing#History
So we can just put it all in your house and you'll be cool with that? After all, there are more dangerous things out there, and we won't be putting any of those in your house, so that makes it okay right?
This question is asked in incredibly bad faith. No one anywhere has suggested storing waste (nuclear, coal ash, solar manufacturing, or any other kind of waste) in anyone's home. Or even their neighborhood.
Absolutely, why not? As long as the waste dealer is offering a deal that is satisfactory for me as the landowner/waste site, I would happily store said waste. Your question is a bit absurd; nobody is suggesting to keep it inside of someone's home. Should an individual not be allowed to make rational decisions about their land and property? If I owned 20 square miles in the desert, why shouldn't I be allowed to lease my land to waste storage companies? The waste storage people are already regulated to death, for a good reason, and as long as the waste on site is stored safely why should I or anyone else mind?
Your neighbors and county can certainly challenge the use of "your" land. I think you're assuming that ownership means you can "do whatever the hell you want". Ordinances, zoning, right of way, eminent domain, and federal regulations often restrict what you can do and may require ceding control of parts/all of your land, and if your neighbors are really pissed, they could certainly raise hell and make it very difficult.
Of course, this, I believe, the person I was responding to was somewhat implying and what I was hoping to hint upon in my comment. The discussion around nuclear, and really most politics, is around ownership and the limits to what you can do with what we call 'yours'. Just because I want to personally dump a bunch of waste, unprotected from my neighbors, doesn't mean I should be allowed to potentially pollute their land or contaminate their water. I find it far easier to have discussions like these when you remember that land 'ownership' (in the US anyway) is really a lease agreement to the government and your neighbors, our country may use the word ownership, but it really isn't in the most literal sense.
In my personal philosophy, as a landowner you are responsible not only for yourself and your neighbors, but also for the next 7 generations of people who will be using that space after you. So to me, no you have no right. But that's just my own opinion.
Personally, I would agree that it's your responsibility for your own land, but I also don't believe in forcing owners to do what I personally want them to do. If you can own a farm without polluting across the street, say,to my house, I really can't care what you do. If you want to sell the farm and throw up a bunch of houses, again, as not as you don't screw with my land and my ability to pass it on to future generations.
I do NOT agree that I an responsible for my neighbors or their land and this is part of the issue. If my farm dumps a bunch of crap or ejects a ton of pollutants into the air, this harms my neighbor and should be limited. If instead, I build my farm and is net 0 pollutants to your land, why exactly should you be able to do on 'my' land, or put another way, who is the victim?
To frame this another way that I think is fairly similar to nuclear, I think large scale organic farming is extremely taxing to the land in the long run and is a fairly terrible agricultural practice at our current scale. Does this mean we should enact laws and regulations to stop organic farming? I'm really not so sure, I can understand both sides and I don't think this type of legislation will ever be so cut and dry.
I suppose you don't have any right to put solar panels on your home, then, given that they're full of chemical waste that remains dangerous indefinitely.
"Would you be willing to have your house turned into a waste dump?" is a challenge that would seem to strike down virtually every industrial process dating back to the Stone Age.
I don't think anyone would say that a lot of industrial processes aren't extremely toxic and dangerous. The question was asked due to the downplaying of the dangers of nuclear waste. Just because something like dimethylmercury is possibly more toxic than radioactive waste, doesn't mean radioactive waste is safe, or that you want to be near it.
We could dump it into the ocean and not worry about it. There's so much cooling capacity and radiation shielding in the oceans alone that we'd never run out of space, so all of the current disposal strategies are way above and beyond what's needed. Containment is solved problem.
It's important to note that other energy types also produce waste. For example, coal ash is incredibly toxic and hard to dispose of, and we create much more of it every year.
Another option which is completely safe and permanent* is drilling a borehole few km down and dumping the waste there. It's not coming back no matter what. The research done into it shows that "only" 800 boreholes would be required to store literally all nuclear waste ever produced.
*to a point where it was actually brought up as a negative, because if we ever wanted to recycle that waste into something else, it's literally impossible this way.
I think the difference is that the one in Finland can still be entered like a normal tunnel. The deep borehole is literally just a vertical shaft that goes 5-6km down, you put the waste on the bottom and fill it back up. No geological process is bringing the waste back up in any conceivable timescale, and even if the entire civilization collapsed no primitive society can dig to 5km depth, so there's no need for much long lasting signage, no one is going to stumble upon it by accident.
The idea that civilisation collapses and then recovers to the specific extent, where it is advanced enough to have coal-mines or similar, but not to know about radiation. Then it must find this particular repository and start digging, and die. Thousands of years must pass but they must dig up this sight withing a particular 100-year period of their development.
This is such a stupidly contrives scenario that you might as well plan for an alien incasion or zombie apocalypse. Lime prerequisite for that theory is civilisation collapsing, our investment in making sirebcovilisation does not xollapse is zero. You deal with it by making sure civilisation does not collapse.
That level of stupid theatrics really annoys me. If society has regressed then it will be a godsend to rediscover nuclear power. If society has advanced this is like the Romans trying to anticipate modern problems.
The time frame is too long. It's too long for natural causes and far too long for human civilisation. The earlier we stop producing this crap, the better.
Sure, but that's why I suggested deep borehole storage - there is no known geological process that can bring up material stored at 5km+ depth into the surface on any sort of human timescale. A mine, even at 700m depth, is just too shallow for long term storage.
....and? If you wanted highly dangerous materials to use for some evil purposes it's 1000x easier to just manufacture some poison rather than dig 5km deep. I'd argue that making radioactive isotopes in an accelerator is still easier than digging. Not sure what your concern is here.
Well, yes, technically. I meant more that the waste won't come back on its own, through tectonic movements, earthquakes, meteor strikes or pretty much any other natural process known to man. You could drill down to retrieve it, but then it's a very specific thing serving one specific purpose. It's not like mine repositories, where they are at a much shallower depth and could be entered "easily" from the surface.
What do you mean by this time? Nuclear waste has already been dumped in the oceans before (prior to new regulations). 8 nuclear submarines have been lost and there's no environmental impact detected.
This has been well studied by several groups including the US Navy, which is one of the biggest nuclear operators with over 80 reactors currently in warships. In the event of catastrophic loss, the plan is to just leave it because the oceans already have billions of tons of radioactive material and infinite capacity to absorb more.
Also nuclear reactors have occurred naturally [1] and without any serious fallout or contamination risks, showing that containment is really not that challenging. Most people think nuclear is scary because of popular science and culture, and they lack the knowledge and understanding to know any different. It's similar to people not trusting vaccines because they don't understand medical science.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Deep sea ecosystems are extremely fragile and we need to leave them as is if we want to feed people
Time to just get rid of the mess hiding it under the rug and saying that "There is not our fault, it was yet like that when we arrived and now is somebody else's problem" has passed.
We deserve better, much more honest and much more smart people this time.
There is plenty of evidence - of no impact. As I said this has been extensively studied and there's so much radioactive material in the ocean that it makes no difference.
Also maybe you misunderstood the post because dumping in the ocean wasn't a real proposal. The point is that containment is solved, and indeed solved by very smart people. It's politics and general ignorance that has hampered nuclear power, not technology.
There is plenty of evidence of the opposite in fact and is not difficult to find at all. We can choose to close the eyes to not see it, but the truth is stubborn:
Techa river (Russia): Used as dumpster from dismantled nuclear submarines until 2004. 25 times more probable than normal of having limb and organ malformation in newborn babies from people living there, plus a bonus 40% increase of probability of having cancer. This is the harvest of just 50 years of activity. What would you call that?
You don't? The volume of water in oceans is so big that this won't be a problem as long as you don't dump it in coastal waters. Keep in mind that there's plenty of reactors from sunken nuclear submarines in oceans right now.
The kind of nuclear submarines governments are trying to raise and properly dispose of, because they're worried bioaccumulation will taint their fish stocks? [1]
Don't fool yourselves, we are talking about one of the richest extant fisheries of Atlantic cod. This is pretty serious stuff for Maine, Newfoundland or Massachusets, for example.
We are talking about trying to keep your "fish and chips" safe to eat, or maybe not.
Last time the fisheries collapsed in 90's 37.000 people lost their job only in Newfoundland and the social impact was massive. It has not recovered still after almost 30 years with a record of lowest captures registered in 2016.
Yes, waste reduction through sustained reuse through different reactors is a good process. Eventually there will always be some waste to deal with though.
Every time I read something like this, my hubris alarm goes off. We couldn't even get trans-fats right, so I don't see how we're going to cover all the contingencies for something like this.
I always have the feeling many people greatly overestimate the amount of nuclear waste that was actually produced. So far we have produced an estimated 370000 tonnes of nuclear waste globally, which can be stored in about 22.000m³. [1]
This would fit in a 5m high storage facility the size of an American football field (which is even smaller than a European football field). As an additional comparison, the small Amazon fulfillment centers have about 40000m² of area [2] . Assuming the same 5m height, a small fullfillment center is nearly 10 times bigger than necessary to store all globally produced high-level nuclear waste.
Sure, the waste is hard to dispose and dangerous. But it really isn't much.
There are good permanent disposal methods available. The deep geologic repository under construction in Finland is probably the best example. More info here: https://whataboutthewaste.com
People use "what about the waste" as a reason to not use nuclear. Yet, fossil and renewable biofuel waste is (as mentioned) just dumped into the biosphere where it ends and estimated 8 million lives early per year, according to the WHO.
Not to mention the waste associated with semi-conductors. Long term waste is not just a problem associated with nuclear. It is also worth mentioning that the major waste issues are associated with DoE weapon sites and not as much power sites.
I would also encourage other's to click on acidburnNSA's profile as this is where their expertise lies and they have written extensively (with plenty of links) on the subject.[0]
We do have a permanent disposal facility built, but congress chose to forbid its operation. This is a self inflicted problem: we don't have a permanent disposal facility because we refuse to use the permanent disposal facility we built.
FYI, to the ready point, as Wikipedia notes: "The DOE was to begin accepting spent fuel at the Yucca Mountain Repository by January 31, 1998 but did not do so because of a series of delays due to legal challenges, concerns over how to transport nuclear waste to the facility, and political pressures resulting in underfunding of the construction."
The anti-waste-disposal crowd in the environmental movement feels exceedingly disingenuous.
The amount of goal post moving they've engaged in over the decades makes it clear that their actual goals are to prevent any waste disposal site from being constructed, rather than specific, actionable complaints.
Which is insane, from a net-benefit perspective, as the alternative is to leave nuclear waste dispersed around the country, closer to population centers.
The 2012 Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future report [1] literally said that:
"Ensuring access to dedicated funding – Current federal budget rules and laws make it impossible for the nuclear waste program to have assured access to the fees being collected from nuclear utilities and ratepayers to finance the commercial share of the waste program’s expenses.
We have recommended a partial remedy that should be implemented promptly by the Administration, working with the relevant congressional committees and the Congressional Budget Office. A long-term remedy requires legislation
to provide access to the Nuclear Waste Fund and fees independent of the annual appropriations process but subject to rigorous independent financial and managerial oversight."
It’s not really much of a problem. You leave the waste in a cooling pond at the plant for a couple of decades while you wait for all the really threatening stuff to decay, and then drive it where it needs to go in a truck. It’s a bunch of big metal rods in canisters. It can’t really “spill” and if it does you just pick it up and put it back in the truck. Uranium and plutonium are really not very threatening to human life.
What happens if the power goes out? Use a UPS.
What happens if the PSU goes out? Use dual PSUs.
What happens if the network goes out? Use dual NICs.
I'm stuck on the 4th&5th. You're right. Only nuclear has 5 questions asked.
You can get rid of almost all of the really dangerous stuff by putting it in a breeder reactor and turning it into electricity and short-lived nucleotides.
I think the modern (3rd generation?) Reactors have been designed to use much more of the fuel, leaving considerably less as waste, and actually potentially using preciously used spent fuel as fuel, which of course would be cleanup. The problem is approval and building of anything new.
Because it's a really really bad idea, for several reasons.
1. If your rocket has a failure during launch, you're likely to spread the nuclear waste over a large land area.
2. Even though we really haven't generated that much nuclear waste, it's still many many rocket-launches-worth. That gets expensive. Much more expensive than sticking it in a hole in the side of a mountain.
3. Launching something into the sun takes a huge amount of rocket fuel. It takes a Falcon-9 with a mass of ~550Mg to get a payload of ~22.8Mg into low earth orbit with a velocity of ~8km/s. The Earth is moving around the Sun at ~30km/s, so to launch into the Sun, you need to depart from the Earth at (at distance) ~30km/s. Earth's escape velocity is ~11km/s, which means that from low earth orbit, you need to get up to ~32km/s (sqrt(30^2 + 11^2)). So your ~22.8Mg payload in low earth orbit needs to include a rocket that can add ~24km/s to its velocity. If we assume a rocket with a fairly decent engine, with an Isp of 4km/s, then we can plug that into the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation. The remaining payload that can be flung into the Sun is a grand total of 57kg. All the rest of that ~22.8Mg is rocket fuel. Per SpaceX Falcon-9 launch. This is not an effective way to get rid of nuclear waste. (Note, it may be possible to increase efficiency by making use of gravity assists from other planets, but you still need to actually get to other planets first, so a pretty hard limit on the payload-into-the-Sun is the payload-to-Mars, which is ~4Mg. Still not very much.)
Based on a Google search, we produce 10,000 tons of 'High Level' nuclear waste every year. This is far more than the total annual lift capacity of all launch providers combined.
For context, it would require 71 Saturn V launches every year just to get that tonnage up to Low Earth Orbit!
Thank you. I did consider 1st point, but I dismissed it (maybe wrongly) with higher success rate of launches in the future, crashproofing payload etc. But the 3rd did escape my mind (no pun intended)
I'm all for renewables becoming the standard, but I really doubt that nuclear as a concept is "outdated technology". There's a lot of room for improvement, and they can help a lot in the short-term for reducing the ever-growing threat of climate change.
