Post Aw1MlMfqKibityNGwC by rubinjoni@mastodon.social
 (DIR) More posts by rubinjoni@mastodon.social
 (DIR) Post #Aw1MlLT2oom99zNXLk by collectifission@greennuclear.online
       2025-07-11T07:00:26Z
       
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       "The United States’ 90,000-ton stockpile of radioactive nuclear waste has long been a liability, but researchers are increasingly eyeing it as a resource."https://spectrum.ieee.org/nuclear-waste-reprocessing-transmutation
       
 (DIR) Post #Aw1MlMfqKibityNGwC by rubinjoni@mastodon.social
       2025-07-11T07:36:23Z
       
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       @collectifission On one hand, it would be great if the US actually took a reprocessing/closed cycle fuel route. On the other hand, I fear this would turn out into another "take the money and run" scheme, without proper consideration for human health and the environment, doing more damage than the current open cycle approach.
       
 (DIR) Post #Aw1MlNthmfI2hFrrBQ by collectifission@greennuclear.online
       2025-07-11T08:02:26Z
       
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       @rubinjoni I'm not *that* afraid that this will happen, as the sector has pretty strict regulation and France's Orano (mentioned in the article) has had decades of experience with this process.There is however a sloppy piece in the article: "The other five percent of nuclear waste, which is composed of long-lived radioactive material, cannot be reused as fuel and has traditionally been set aside to decay over hundreds of thousands of years."These 5% are the fission products which are *short lived*, with cesium-137 being the longest lived of this group, with a halftime of around 30 years. So, after around 300 years, 99.9+% of the radioactivity is gone from this group, incidentally the same group that actually makes spent nuclear fuel dangerous.This article mentions recycling via molten salt reactors, something I've written about before. This route actually offers a way to (almost) completely recycle all the separate isotopes for use in other sectors, like healthcare. The result is negligible amounts of waste amounts of waste left, that decays over at most a few years.
       
 (DIR) Post #Aw1MlOsg7y3xkMOYDo by publius@mastodon.sdf.org
       2025-07-11T10:34:14Z
       
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       @collectifission @rubinjoni I have done some calculations based on the US spent fuel stocks, which lead me to the conclusion that they might well be adequate to support a complete transition away from fossil fuels in a remarkably short time.https://blast.man-and-atom.info/pages/2023-12.html#calMy suspicion is that some kind of non-aqueous reprocessing is favorable, but I expect that a really practical molten-salt reactor can be developed only after some years of operation of a salt-based reprocessing plant.