[HN Gopher] Sweden approves plan to bury spent nuclear fuel for ...
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Sweden approves plan to bury spent nuclear fuel for 100k years
Author : Saint_Genet
Score : 133 points
Date : 2022-01-27 18:51 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nasdaq.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nasdaq.com)
| movedx wrote:
| This could be a stupid question, but could we not literally fire
| this stuff into the sun? My science be bad, forgive me.
| [deleted]
| pydry wrote:
| Because sometimes rockets explode.
|
| Not a stupid question, though.
| movedx wrote:
| All or nothing though, eh? :P
|
| But seriously I see your point, but would the cost (economic,
| social, environmental) of developing a launch tech that could
| get the mass out of the atmosphere without rockets, heading
| towards the sun, not be be worth it? The amount of
| applications for that would be insane.
| pydry wrote:
| I'm not sure I'd trust a slingshot either :)
| fimdomeio wrote:
| what if the launch goes wrong and suddently you have a nuclear
| waste going all over the place. Anyway I think the resources
| and overall cost to put this amount of material in space would
| be... astronomical.
| movedx wrote:
| > ... astronomical.
|
| Ha!
| PaulHoule wrote:
| ... and then they'll dig it up and reprocess it when they really
| need the energy contained in it.
| datavirtue wrote:
| We need it.
| a9h74j wrote:
| Could be. My unpopular prediction is that within 100 years,
| well-engineered deep-ocean burial will be considered good
| enough, given all else which is likely to become clear by then.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| You don't need to predict anything. It's already been done: h
| ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_disposal_of_radioactive_..
| .
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Most of the talk about deep-ocean burial has assumed that
| we're burying (worthless) fission products.
|
| Leftover uranium and plutonium in the fuel contains more than
| 95% of the energy from the original uranium so it is madness
| to bury it in a place we can't get it.
|
| I was thinking about writing a science fiction story about
| the Mormons and Scientologists fighting over Yucca Mountain
| 2000 years from now but now I don't think the Scientologists
| are going to last that long.
| a9h74j wrote:
| Yes, in terms of eventual ocean burial, as one option, I
| was assuming _after_ reprocessing, burning in a fast
| breeder or Moltex, etc.
|
| This thought might be more for additional existence proof
| right now.
| godelski wrote:
| To be fair, most people don't understand the storage
| problem. They think we have to store it for hundreds of
| thousands of years (ironically we don't think about this
| with plastics, heavy metals, or other products that don't
| decay). But it's storing for hundreds of thousands of years
| and assuming that the future civilizations don't know our
| language, we lost maps of these sites, and there's no
| reason to dig them up. This is left over cold war era
| thinking where WW3 brings us back to the stone age. But in
| reality it's fine to sit on the material, in place, and
| hope we figure out better things in the next few hundred
| years that we can safely do that. I've heard a complaint
| that this is passing the buck, like we did with climate,
| but I think that's only true if we assume no technological
| advancements. Or in other words, we stop researching. But
| also nuclear waste is a slowly building problem with a
| positive feedback loop so I think the comparison is bad
| anyways. In a few hundred years we'll probably pretty
| easily be able to extract the 95% of the energy that's left
| in our waste material and put it to good use. After all,
| France can already do a bit. It's just not cost effective
| for most because it's cheaper to mine than recycle.
| dpark wrote:
| > _But in reality it 's fine to sit on the material, in
| place, and hope we figure out better things in the next
| few hundred years that we can safely do that._
|
| This is a very optimistic view. There are 56 nuclear
| power plants in the US alone. It is entirely believable
| that one or more of them will be shut down and then
| outright abandoned at some point in the next few hundred
| years, leaving nuclear waste with no long term
| containment story. Over the course of history,
| abandonment of once-important areas has been pretty
| common. I see no reason to believe it cannot happen to a
| nuclear plant.
|
| I can easily imagine a plant being turned off and a
| future government deciding that it's just not worth
| dealing with a proper decommissioning, so they just walk
| away. It's easy to imagine this because it's exactly the
| same stance you are proposing. "It's good enough for now,
| someone else can deal with it later when magic (technical
| advancements) shows up."
|
| I'm also quite concerned about what happens if one of
| these "just store it on site" facilities gets bombed at
| some point.
|
| > _I 've heard a complaint that this is passing the buck,
| like we did with climate, but I think that's only true if
| we assume no technological advancements._
|
| Of course you've heard that complaint, because it _is_
| passing the buck. Betting on future technological
| advancements without actually investing in those
| technological advancements is 100% passing the buck.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Over the course of history, abandonment of once-
| important areas has been pretty common. I see no reason
| to believe it cannot happen to a nuclear plant.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident
|
| Of course, that wasn't waste.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| It's a reason why we need to implement a solution for
| nuclear waste. With the carbon crisis the fear of
| proliferation is more dangerous than proliferation.
| poteznykrolik wrote:
| praying irrationally for shipping the junk to the moon.
|
| that'll show em.
| artful-hacker wrote:
| If you can get it to the moon isn't it almost as easy to
| just shoot it into the Sun?
| arcticbull wrote:
| There's a few major issues with disposing of nuclear
| waste into the sun. First and foremost is that if the
| rocket explodes you'll contaminate a huge radius with
| dirty bomb like material. Probably not great.
|
| Further, if you do decide to launch it, it takes
| significantly more energy to shoot it out of the solar
| system than towards the sun. [1]
|
| [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2019/09/
| 20/this...
| whoisburbansky wrote:
| Did you mean to word that the other way around? It takes
| less energy to shoot it out of the solar system than
| towards the sun.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Ooof, good catch. Thank you, yes, that's what I intended
| to say. Too late to edit.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| No. Getting to the Sun requires scrubbing off nearly all
| the orbital speed of the Earth (30km/s), or the payload
| just orbits at a smaller radius.
|
| The delta v to the Moon is something like 7 times less
| than to the Sun (3 vs 20ish).
|
| The delta v need of the Parker Space Probe, which still
| "only" gets to 8.5 solar radii is so high it will use 7
| Venus assists to get it close enough (it can't do big
| Jupiter assists because the solar panels it would need at
| Jupiter wouldn't be able to fit behind the sun shield at
| perihelion, and they didn't want to give it an RTG
| because they're saving plutonium for future missions).
|
| You _can_ eventually hit the Sun with enough Venus
| assists and Earth assists, for a total delta v of under 4
| km /s, but it'll take a very, very long time, and your
| nuclear waste will be doing Earth flybys until finally it
| hits the Sun. Also it might be tricky to get the ball of
| sun-melted radioactive slag to do accurate assists after
| the sun melts it on the last few close encounters.
| chasd00 wrote:
| why not mars? didn't falcon heavy do that with a car?
| whoisburbansky wrote:
| Actually nope. It takes more energy to slow yourself down
| enough to crash into the sun, starting from the earth,
| than it does to hop on over to the moon.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| Definitely a stupid question, because I actually have no
| idea how they work: can a solar sail be "tacked" so as to
| decelerate towards the sun, like a sailboat sailing into
| the wind?
|
| (Setting aside the risky problem of getting this waste
| off earth and into space to begin with)
| hutzlibu wrote:
| I have not done any calculations now, but given how small
| the solar wind is in drag, it would have to be a very,
| very big sail.
| blackboxlogic wrote:
| Tacking works because boats have a second "sail"
| interacting with a second fluid moving differently than
| the wind (the keel is in the water). There's no second
| thing to push against in space.
|
| If you "tack" your solar sail, you'll spin.
| chomp wrote:
| It's a misconception that shooting things to the Sun is
| easy, it's actually extremely difficult due to the fact
| that when you launch off of the Earth, after escaping
| Earth's gravity you're left with ~30km/s of leftover
| momentum that you have to do something with in order to
| not wind up in an orbit around the Sun.
| gregw134 wrote:
| Why can't you just aim for a direct hit at 30km/s?
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| The exact same reason why planets don't immediately fall
| into the sun
| Denvercoder9 wrote:
| The momentum you inherit from Earth isn't in the
| direction of the sun, but roughly perpendicular to that
| direction.
|
| It's similar to a car going down the freeway at high
| speed that needs to make an immediate 90 degree right
| turn. It can't do that without slowing down first, if it
| did, it would slide sideways off the sideroad. It's
| harder in space because the car is going 30 km/s and
| there's no friction that slows you down.
| djupblue wrote:
| Imagine sitting on a huge carousel spinning fast, like
| 100 times the speed of sound fast. Now imagine jumping
| off and trying to get to the center of it.
|
| Yes, gravity is holding us back from yeeting of into
| space but to get closer to the sun you need to slow down.
| A lot. It takes way less rocket fuel to speed up enough
| to leave the solar system than to get to the sun.
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| That's not how orbital mechanics works. Objects move in
| elliptical orbits around the sun, not in straight lines.
|
| https://space.stackexchange.com/a/45619
| [deleted]
| comrh wrote:
| I think it would be a pretty big difference in delta-v.
|
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/93/Solar
| _sy...
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Yeah, water is a very good radiation shield, and seafloor
| gunk doesn't hurt. The concrete casks probably sink pretty
| easily too.
| KarlKemp wrote:
| Also, salty seawater will eat through any metal at about
| the rate of a Windows 95 install process indicator. At that
| point, the nuclear gunk will disperse in the water, enter
| the food chain, and soon be part of your romantic lobster
| dinner. Enjoy!
| ch4s3 wrote:
| The casks aren't metal on the outside, they're a
| specialized concrete. These casks have been dropped from
| building, exploded, struck by speeding trains, and burned
| at incredibly high temp all without losing integrity.
| Even still, uranium and similar waste products aren't
| water soluble and being more dense than any surrounding
| material so they would sink through the sediment and
| become locked in place. Here's a really old survey on the
| topic[1]. Here's another study [2]. Basically most of the
| waste would be short-lived beta and gamma emitters that
| are no longer dangerous after a few years. The longer
| lived alpha emitters aren't dangerous because alpha
| particles are easily stopped. You can safely hold a small
| amount of uranium in you hand.
|
| With respect to ocean life, there is also very little
| life in these trenches, and what life there is doesn't
| mix with food chains at higher levels. All of the food
| comes from biological material sinking, and nothing
| really goes the other direction.
|
| [1]
| https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/31404684750.pdf
| [2] https://www.swr.de/-/id=13132940/property=download/ni
| d=23345...
| a9h74j wrote:
| Also, last time I estimated Bequerels (aka decays) in the
| ocean already, compared to what extremely dilute waste
| would add, well as I recall it was "a drop in the ocean."
|
| Need to recheck this sometime.
| ShockedUnicorn wrote:
| If it's anything like the Finnish facility there would be no
| digging, the facility has tunnels leading to the different
| storing locations. It will be continually used for centuries to
| place new spent fuel. They different rooms with spent fuel
| could easily be opened again.
| Maxion wrote:
| Planned lifespan of ONKALO is around a hundred years, not
| multiple centuries.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| A hundred years should be enough time to make enough
| renewable energy to replace nuclear.
|
| ...or have Covid 2055 that wipes out 90% of the population.
| tephra wrote:
| The Finnish site is based on the Swedish method (KBS-3 if you
| want to read more) so not only is it anything like it, they
| are the same :)
| kzrdude wrote:
| Sweden could have uranium mines themselves but don't want that
| dirty stuff happening in their own backyard, so buy fuel needed
| from other places (Canada, I think?)
| polack wrote:
| Sweden used to have their own uranium mine, but since it was
| cheaper to buy it than to mine it they shut it down. Pretty
| sure most of it is purchased from Russia.
| redwood_ wrote:
| Yes, they just did start buying from Russia. It is a
| security concern these days and was discussed as recently
| as yesterday in Swedish media.
| ricw wrote:
| Good luck to them. In Germany the national storage facility had
| nuclear waste stored in it for a decade or so and it
| "unexpectedly" started leaking and resurfacing. The project was
| subsequently abandoned about a decade ago and all existing waste
| had to be dug out again.
|
| Mark me as skeptic as to whether this is feasible. 100k years is
| all marketing in any case and can't realistically be designed
| for.
| layer8 wrote:
| The notion of a _permanent_ repository for nuclear waste always
| seemed misguided to me. There are too many uncertainties and
| unknown unknowns even in the relative short term. It's like
| assuming a piece of software is "finished", no new bugs will
| ever be found and no new requirements will ever come up. I
| believe it would make more sense to treat the waste as
| something that will have to be _maintained_ over its lifetime,
| and changes to the storage will have to be expected,
| anticipated and accommodated over time.
| germandiago wrote:
| I wonder who thinks that in 100,000 years Sweden will exist or
| even if Swedish in 1,000 or 10,000 years would respect this
| decision, haha. Looks like an impossible for me: nothing is
| forever, and 100,000 years is a long time.
| Hamuko wrote:
| I'm wondering more if humanity will exist.
| germandiago wrote:
| I think it will, still. But it is just a belief.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| Yeah, that's a massive timescale in human history. As far as we
| know we've only had intentional agriculture for around 10,000
| years.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| What is the likelihood that some future civilization is going
| to just _happen_ to dig up a nuclear waste repository stored
| deep underground? Furthermore, why does nuclear waste get so
| much attention when there 's plenty of other hazardous waste
| sites [1]. Why aren't we concerned about a future civilization
| breaching a salt mine that's been pumped full of toxic
| chemicals?
|
| 1. https://www.epa.gov/hwpermitting/hazardous-waste-
| management-...
| alkonaut wrote:
| No one, obviously. Its an open question in the project how to
| e.g. communicate to a future civilization that the area is
| dangerous.
| hectormalot wrote:
| Indeed, most pyramids are less than 5k years old. A 100k years
| means making the step from the first Egyptian dynasty to today
| 20 times. That's an incredible timespan. I don't think we can
| design rules and agreements around this type of storage and
| expect them to last that long. Statistically it's unlikely the
| country you are living in still exists in just 10k years, let
| alone in a 100k years.
| egorfine wrote:
| !remindme 99y
| jeffrallen wrote:
| The sites in Switzerland that are under consideration for the
| same thing: https://s.geo.admin.ch/7caba0d5c9
| xemoka wrote:
| A couple good Canadian podcasts about this (in Canada, related to
| our search for a Deep Geological Repository) have recently aired:
| on Canadaland [ https://www.canadaland.com/nuclear-waste-ignace-
| ontario/ ] (also an article) and "Open to Debate" on how nuclear
| energy is important for decarbonization [
| https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/open-to-debate-with-david...
| ];
| streamofdigits wrote:
| I propose we periodically check, e.g. every 1K years or so, to
| make sure the facility is working as designed. If it doesn't,
| whoever approved the plan should be shamed and reprimanded very
| publicly.
| bhelkey wrote:
| > I propose we periodically check, e.g. every 1K years or
| so...If it doesn't, whoever approved the plan should be shamed
| and reprimanded very publicly.
|
| I reckon that the possibility of public shame in 3022 is not
| much of a deterrent.
| streamofdigits wrote:
| it seems HN has lost the ability to detect sarcasm :-(
| barbazoo wrote:
| I couldn't tell. Maybe be more explicit next time, try "/s"
| for instance.
| ravenstine wrote:
| Aren't there now ways of renewing (for lack of a better word)
| spent nuclear fuel?
| pyrale wrote:
| Never completely. Spent material is also casing for the actual
| fuel, for instance, which can't be reused. In the fuel itself,
| there is some uranium and plutonium which can be reused, but
| there are also atoms produced by the fission which are not
| useful.
|
| For instance, a possible output of an uranium atom splitting
| could be one Krypton atom and one Baryum atom. Both are
| radioactive, and the path for krypton to a non-radioactive atom
| includes one step with a half-life of ~10^6 years.
|
| There is also waste from the plant itself. When you decomission
| a plant, the vessel steel is going to be radioactive and needs
| to be stored safely.
|
| There are plenty or other waste types that can be stored more
| or less safely. Some can be reused, some not.
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| Anti nuclear sentiment has made it very difficult to
| build/research ways of processing currently "spent"fuel
| alkonaut wrote:
| They are in the research state, no production facilities as far
| as I know. I hope the tech is ready soon so at least some waste
| can be disposed that way.
| bananabreakfast wrote:
| This is very outdated.
|
| "Nuclear fuel reprocessing is performed routinely in Europe,
| Russia and Japan"
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing
| alkonaut wrote:
| Oh I meant specifically in power generation, i.e. using the
| spent as fuel in "next gen" plants, thereby reprocessing
| it. The idea of course being that if it produces energy
| then some of the cost can be offset _and_ that the end
| result has a much shorter half life.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_IV_reactor
| bananabreakfast wrote:
| yes, nuclear reprocessing is actually a fairly old technology
| and it closes the nuclear fuel cycle, leaving only short lived
| byproducts.
|
| It is currently illegal in America because reprocessing spent
| nuclear fuel produces weapons grade plutonium which is a
| proliferation risk. The economics are not great either since
| it's cheaper to just mine more uranium and pay to store the (5%
| used) fuel.
|
| France and Russia have a few plants that do it though.
| petermcneeley wrote:
| Artistic documentary on the project in Finland
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayLxB9fV2y4
| zeotroph wrote:
| In Finland they are already filling up a 100k year long term
| storage mine [1]. Will every country with nuclear power have to
| find and dig (and counter-NIMBY) their own mines or could those
| with more favorable geological features offer theirs to others?
|
| Earthquake-prone Japan might have a hard time finding an
| appropriate location.
|
| 1: 6m Tom Scott video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoy_WJ3mE50
| doikor wrote:
| Not really much NIMBY arguments in Finland as the storage site
| is right next to the Olkiluoto nuclear power plant.
| Archelaos wrote:
| I am curious to see what countries like the Netherlands will
| do. It is easy to build new nuclear power plants when you are
| going to shift the real problem onto others.
|
| In the long run, I expect the same thing will happen with the
| majority of nuclear waste as with a lot of other problematic
| waste: It is going to be exported to a poor country were the
| elites make money from it while the population has to bear the
| consquences.
| admax88qqq wrote:
| If you have a storage facility I don't see why you wouldn't
| sell/rent it to other countries.
| Baeocystin wrote:
| The logistics and political aspects of long-distance, cross-
| border transport of that kind of material probably remove
| that option from the table.
| Maxion wrote:
| It's not operational yet, maybe in 2023 or 2025.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo...
| dekhn wrote:
| The US already identified a plausible site but for mostly
| political reasons, it was rejected and now most waste is stored
| in several pre-existing locations in the country and the rest
| is stored onsite at existing reactors. Both of those options
| are fairly risky compared to the planned repository but are
| more politically expedient.
|
| It seems not unreasonable to expect many countries will follow
| Sweden and Finland and actually proceed with burial, and
| eventually some catastrophe in the US (pig farm manure pit wall
| breaks, sweeps plant's storage tanks into a major river) will
| make Yucca a possibility again. Or, we coiuld just give Nevada
| $50B and ask them to take on the risk for the next 100kyears.
| surfsvammel wrote:
| The US plan, if I'm not mistaken, is for 10k years, not 100k.
| godelski wrote:
| I wouldn't call it risky. We can safely sit in top of the
| material for a few hundred years. Assuming we have no
| technological advancements in that time then yeah we should
| move to a collective long term storage. But the storage
| problem isn't nearly as difficult if you only plan for a
| hundred years and only concern yourself with the waste of a
| single plant (or a few).
| polishdude20 wrote:
| Storing above ground has benefits of being visible. You can
| inspect for damage, you can see that it's there every year.
| It never leaves society's kno ledge because it's out there.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| It's entirely possible that Finland and other countries are
| positioning themselves to become the biggest "exporter" of
| nuclear waste disposal.
|
| There are plenty of countries around the world with no actual
| plan for waste disposal, including the US. If Finland is
| willing to accept the risk in exchange for a certain amount
| of financial compensation, then it seems likely wealthy
| countries would make that choice.
| dekhn wrote:
| That's a fascinating concept. Do the people of Finland get
| a direct vote on that, and can they change it in the
| future? I'd be wary of taking on such an enormous risk
| [edit: see terminology correction below] even if the
| probability of catastrophe is very low.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| How is spent fuel buried deep into bedrock "enormous
| risk"? I've read your thread and I still fail to see how
| this is anything but hyperbole. Even in the event of a
| container breach, the waste is buried under hundreds of
| meters of bedrock. What is the threat model for how this
| waste results in harm to society?
|
| Even if this uranium were somehow brought to the surface
| and dumped it into drinking water supplies, it would be
| detected. Drinking water is monitored for uranium,
| because naturally occurring uranium in grounder is
| sometimes above safe limits.
| admax88qqq wrote:
| > enormous risk even if the probability of catastrophe is
| very low.
|
| That's not really how probability works. If the
| probability of catastrophie is low then it's not an
| enormous risk.
|
| Honestly I think the risk of nuclear storage is really
| low. Most challenges are focused om how to keep it safe
| for thousands of years. The next several hundred years
| are no problem.
| mirekrusin wrote:
| Are we sure? What about terrorist acts?
| Arnt wrote:
| Try to think of one. It's not simple. For example,
| someone who has a bomb big enough to blast their way in
| surely has better targets.
| JauntTrooper wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if nuclear waste actually became
| a resource in a few hundred years as we discover new ways
| to utilize it.
| dekhn wrote:
| as long as you're cool with breeder reactors, the waste
| is already a resource, I think.
| lkbm wrote:
| The idea that we have to solve the problem for 100,000
| years has always seemed crazy to me. If we can store it
| for 100 years, we can be fairly confident that technology
| will have advanced to the point where _then_ dealing with
| it for the remaining 99,900 years will be relatively
| trivial. If not, we hold on for 200 more years. 1700-
| >2000 was quite a leap, and if 2000->2300 isn't enough
| that we can handle some nuclear waste by then, we've got
| bigger problems.
|
| We're merely hedging against the risk of catastrophic
| societal collapse causing us to lose track of the waste
| and lose our understanding of radiation. But this is the
| _only_ area where we seem to give a hoot about the far
| future, which truly makes me think it 's just a
| rationalization of "I don't like nuclear power", not a
| serious concern.
| Arnt wrote:
| I think there's a point you may have overlooked: The
| outside of any container holding radioactive materials
| becomes more difficult and dangerous as time passes. Even
| a sealed container.
|
| Storing containers accessibly but yet securely and
| designing them such that they remain safely sealed for
| 100 or 200 or 300 years, yet can be handled then, is a
| very big problem. AIUI a more difficult problem than
| finding stable rock that's been undisturbed for a long
| time.
| dekhn wrote:
| Sorry- in yourt terminology, not "enormous risk", but
| "enormous consequence". So: low probability of problem,
| but prolem has large consequences -> small risk in your
| terminology. Fair enough.
| KMnO4 wrote:
| Risk = probability * loss
|
| So even though the probability is very very low, the loss
| (consequence) is extremely high (say an order of
| magnitude) which makes this a high risk.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| What are the risks here more exactly? Yes, there is
| nuclear waste buried... sooooooo... what can happen?
| dekhn wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-
| time_nuclear_waste_warnin...
|
| More seriously, there are a wide range of problems
| associated with long term waste storage, from known
| knowns to unknown unknowns. Some of the risks can't even
| be reasonably anticipated.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Even they were storing large volumes of waste, then I
| assume they'd be non-trivial risk during the transport
| _before_ the waste was buried.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| The potential loss here is not extremely high.
|
| Crack open a physics textbook. Waste can either be highly
| energetic or long lived. You can't pick both. And I think
| it's fair to say that unless they dump it down an active
| volcano it won't get spewed airborne Chernobyl style.
|
| Nuclear waste isn't particularly noteworthy compared to
| all sorts of other nasty chemicals that humanity stores
| in large volume.
| dekhn wrote:
| I think the failure mode that's more likely (although I
| am not an expert, I've had to take extensive nuclear
| safety training for biology, and more exponential decay
| calculations than I care to admit) is that the water
| table would rise or there is a large seismic event and a
| population would be exposed to moderate-level radioactive
| waste for an extended period of time (leading to higher
| rates of cancer and other diseases). However, there is
| not a lot of solid data on moderate-level radioactive
| waste with long exposures.
|
| Sort of like the cross product of Fukushima reactor and
| Flint Michigan.
|
| I agree with the point about nuclear waste often not
| being as bad as other chemical waste (or even
| storage/processing of nonwaste chemical materials). The
| issue is that in people minds, the term nuclear triggers
| an innate dread best described as "contamination of our
| precious bodily fluid".
| Maxion wrote:
| There's been no talk publicly about accepting nuclear
| waste from other countries. ONKALO is financed through
| fees gathered from electricity generated by nuclear
| energy in Finland. This facility is meant to hold Finnish
| spent nuclear fuel. I highly doubt Finland would accept
| fuel from other countries.
| pm90 wrote:
| Nevada became politically important due to its Senator being
| the Majority Leader (Ie the leader of the US upper house, the
| Senate). With him gone (retired and recently, rip) I think it
| might be much easier to convince them.
|
| It's such (excuse my language) bullshit. The facility is
| incredibly safe. It would be so much safer than leaving spent
| nuclear fuel on site all across the country. It's
| unbelievable that there is resistance to it.
| datavirtue wrote:
| People resist everything. Just ask for forgiveness.
| egeozcan wrote:
| > People resist everything
|
| Perhaps it causes a positive bias in the natural
| selection or is the side effect of something that causes
| a positive bias?
| reedjosh wrote:
| I'd generally agree with this mentality when individuals
| are trying to get something done, but definitely not when
| it's my government doing it.
| parineum wrote:
| A major thing to consider when talking about nuclear waste
| is the difference between waste and spent fuel. Spent fuel
| is relatively low quantity (but more dangerous and short
| lived) whereas "waste" is any material contaminated by the
| reactor. The waste is typically much safer but is
| radioactive for much longer.
|
| The perception of nuclear waste seems to be that it will
| melt your hand off if you touch it for the next 10,000
| years but the reality is that the things that are that
| radioactive don't have that long of a half life. The waste,
| which has a much longer half life, is, by definition, much
| less radioactive. The longer it takes to decay, the less
| radioactive it is. I think this is a very big factor is the
| public perception of nuclear waste disposal.
|
| I found this[1] article that has a pretty solid breakdown
| of it.
|
| [1] https://www.kitco.com/commentaries/2021-11-30/Key-
| facts-abou...
| dylan604 wrote:
| Your post seems to imply logical decisions can be made if
| people were better informed. Boy, I sure wish that were
| true. Society seems to have moved well past logic and
| reason for pretty much any topic. The FUD around nuclear
| power was one of the first social issue that has sound
| scientific data that was totally ignored because of the
| fearmongering.
| __turbobrew__ wrote:
| When I toured the Hanford nuclear site I got the
| impression that the nuclear waste is much harder to
| handle in the short term (much higher reactivity, much of
| it is in a liquid state, much of it contains very
| reactive solvents used in the purification process) but
| as you say it will be inert in a much shorter time frame.
| They were talking about encasing this waste in a
| silica/glass blob for easier handling.
| MrYellowP wrote:
| > The facility is incredibly safe.
|
| That's such a ridiculous claim.
|
| One hundred thousand years, mate.
|
| Absolutely ridiculous!
| ch4s3 wrote:
| That's how long it would take for all of the material to
| fall below a very low threshold. Most of the actually
| dangerous stuff decays on the order of a few decades. The
| site is super remote, gets almost no rain, and is
| geologically stable. The casks are designed to be leak
| free for greater than 10k years, and even then they'd
| just drop some material onto a cement surface in the
| center of a mountain in a room sealed behind steel and
| concrete. The standards in place ensure that no
| detectable radiation from the site could possible ever
| enter water int he valley for more than 10k years and
| probably longer. At which point anything that leaked
| would be noise against the background radiation, and
| would be harmless even if you consumed it. You'd get more
| radiation standing in Denver than drinking that water.
| rurp wrote:
| Nevada is a swing state though, so it's going to have
| disproportionate national influence until that changes,
| which could be a long time.
|
| I'm not sure why the approach of giving the state piles of
| money in exchange for hosting the storage wasn't tried
| initially. Or maybe it was, but was downplayed enough that
| it never comes up. Nevada isn't a very populous state so
| billions of extra dollars would go pretty far. It has also
| been trying to diversify its economy for a while now, with
| pretty mediocre results.
| panzagl wrote:
| Nevada could pay a dividend like Alaska or New Mexico.
| rmbyrro wrote:
| It might be, but, honestly: would you happily agree to
| store it under your house for nothing?
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Isn't most of Nevada federal land anyway? Do we technically
| need Nevada's legislative permission?
| jfengel wrote:
| Correct. But you do need to pass legislation to do it,
| and passing any nontrivial legislation is next to
| impossible. The Senate is balanced 50-50, and since the
| people of Nevada don't want nuclear waste in their back
| yard, they will always vote against it.
| downrightmike wrote:
| Nevada isn't largely populated outside of vegas, and then
| there's the fact that it has already been heavily
| irradiated from testing. No one is really going to want to
| build near there. That and it doesn't have sustainable
| water availability to build outside of vegas. It makes
| perfect sense to build the mine there.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| I'm a Nevadan and would be totally fine with this
| (actually I'm an advocate) but it's politically more
| toxic than the waste for anyone of either party. You say
| it's already been irradiated like it's a pro, but for the
| locals there who feel lied to about the risks and that
| they didn't have a voice in whether nuke tests were done
| in the state, they'd say they've already done enough in
| service of the technology.
| bxparks wrote:
| As long as Nevada is a 50/50 purple state, I don't think
| things will change much. The nuclear waste site is very
| unpopular there. Neither party wants to be blamed for
| imposing such an unpopular plan, and cause 2 Senate seats
| to become out of reach for them.
|
| With regards to them being "incredibly safe", how do we
| know? There are countless examples of chemical waste sites
| around the country which were promised to be leak proof and
| safe, but the chemical industry was totally lying. Many of
| those sites are leaching poisons and carcinogens into the
| environment and we are spending billions of dollars to
| clean up those super fund sites, and will be spending
| billions of dollars into the foreseeable future. Does the
| nuclear industry have more credibility than the chemical
| industry? I don't trust people who are so sure of
| themselves when they forecast 100's or 1000's of years into
| the future.
|
| Lastly, it's not clear to me that spreading nuclear fuel
| across multiples sites across the country is actually
| _less_ safe. It does increase the chance of something going
| wrong among all those sites, but the impact of one of those
| incidents will be far smaller than concentrating all the
| spent fuel in one place. After all, it 's the concentration
| of nuclear material that makes them dangerous, since all
| that material originally came from various mines on earth.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| > There are countless examples of chemical waste sites
| around the country which were promised to be leak proof
| and safe, but the chemical industry was totally lying
|
| The CSB has only been around since like 1998 vs the much
| older NRC. The NRC is also much more safety oriented.
| There's only been 1 civilian nuclear death in the US and
| it was in 1964. The nuclear navy has never had a serious
| incident. I think in total there have been 7 total
| civilian nuclear incidents in the US, ever, and most have
| been minor, hurt no one, and were a long time ago.
|
| > After all, it's the concentration of nuclear material
| that makes them dangerous
|
| That's not exactly true. Exposure to high does of
| ionizing radiation makes it dangerous. That can be
| mitigated by securing material, which can be done by
| keeping it in one place. The NRC is very much in favor of
| long term storage solutions, as are all nuclear safety
| experts. Most favor deep underground salt formations vs.
| the Nevada site though.
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| Agreed, and to add to that, Nevada is quite seismically
| active. Of course, most locations with mountains usually
| are (or were).
| newsclues wrote:
| Nuclear safety ought to be a bipartisan issue!
| animal_spirits wrote:
| It is bipartisan; both parties agree they do not want to
| be responsible for failures in the storage of nuclear
| waste
| pm90 wrote:
| So should protecting the public from a virus...
| mlyle wrote:
| > After all, it's the concentration of nuclear material
| that makes them dangerous, since all that material
| originally came from various mines on earth.
|
| Spent fuel is a lot hotter than what came out of mines on
| earth-- for a few decades.
|
| All the other waste isn't very concentrated in absolute
| terms, but putting it in one place can make sense.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > Or, we could just give Nevada $50B and ask them to take on
| the risk for the next 100kyears.
|
| I wonder what the reasonable risk-adjusted cost of burying
| this waste in Nevada would be. The odds of a failure are
| probably pretty low, and the odds of a failure that leeches
| into the water system in some significant dosage seems super
| low (how much of Nevada's water comes from deep reservoirs
| versus surface supplies and how integrated are these
| systems?). Also, how does that stack up against the death
| toll due to fossil fuels ("well we want to switch to
| renewables eventually" <- meanwhile people are still dying at
| a rate of tens or hundreds of thousands per year).
| pydry wrote:
| >Also, how does that stack up against the death toll due to
| fossil fuels ("well we want to switch to renewables
| eventually"
|
| Took about ~4 years to build hornsea. Will end up being
| about ~20 to build hinkley point. For 2-3x the cost you get
| 80% load capacity factor rather than 60%.
|
| If you're in a hurry... that huge pile of money used to
| ~~keep nuclear skills and industry accessible to countries
| with nuclear arsenals~~ save the planet _might_ be put to
| better use elsewhere.
| cameldrv wrote:
| The U.S. already operates a disposal site -- the Waste
| Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. This is where all of
| those markers that say things like "This is not a place of
| honor" come from. It's just not accepting waste from
| commercial reactors for political reasons.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Earthquake-prone japan is in a perfect position for deep
| disposal. Japan is atop a subduction fault. Drill a deep enough
| hole into that subducting plate and any waste will eventually
| be pulled into the mantel. If we are really serious about
| getting rid of things permanently, ie not having access to them
| for thousands of years, then miles-deep wells backfilled with
| concrete are very practical. Any future civilization who is
| building something that many miles underground, miles under the
| sea floor, probably has the tech to deal with whatever we have
| put down there far better than we.
|
| Most disposal ideas these days are premised on the idea that
| one day, maybe, we might want to get access to the material
| again. They should really call it storage.
| itake wrote:
| If the waste is pulled into the mantle near a volcano,
| wouldn't that be a problem? Maybe no new volcanoes will form
| in 100k years.
| varenc wrote:
| My understanding is that there's such a vast amount of
| mantle and it's generally a liquid so that after the waste
| "dissolves" in the mantle only a very tiny fraction of it
| would be brought back to the surface in future eruptions.
| laurent92 wrote:
| When containers get breached, they diffuse through rock and
| soil and reach the surface. French govt estimated that it
| would reach the surface 400 years after burial (so, 100 years
| for a breach and 300 years to swim down and up), diffused
| enough not to cause harm.
|
| So nuclear waste in a subduction zone would require a zone
| which dives faster than diffusion goes.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Sweden is storing the stuff in a _room_ 500 meters (.25
| miles) inside a hill. That isn 't deep disposal. Deep is
| perhaps 5000 meters down, even 10000 meters, maybe also
| below the sea floor. Down there the rock is warm and
| flexible. And not in a room but just in the drilled hole.
| Diffusion back to the surface won't be a problem.
| pyrale wrote:
| > French govt estimated that it would reach the surface 400
| years after burial (so, 100 years for a breach and 300
| years to swim down and up), diffused enough not to cause
| harm.
|
| What kind of waste are you talking about? Long-term stored
| high-activity radioactive waste is certainly not going to
| leak its way to the surface in 400 years.
| godelski wrote:
| High activity materials decay much faster than low
| activity materials. There's only so many protons and
| electrons you can shed.
| pyrale wrote:
| Regardless of their activity, long-term stored waste is
| expected to be vitrified and stored in rock formations
| that are water-tight (in France's case a specific type of
| clay) and have not moved for millions of years.
|
| It's hard to imagine anything that would lead to
| radioactive material leeching to the surface or an
| aquifer in hundreds of years.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| > When containers get breached, they diffuse through rock
| and soil and reach the surface.
|
| No? Unless there's some force pulling the waste up the
| contents of a container, breached or not - will move with
| the surrounding rock. And in a subduction zone, that rock
| is getting pulled down deeper into the crust.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| I mean that's a start, but I would vitrify the waste first,
| then put it in a subduction zone. Of course, they were
| talking about vitrification when I was briefly a Nuke E.
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| From your username, you might be biased and might know
| someone who wants the job. ;)
| chinathrow wrote:
| I simply do not believe that mankind is capable of keeping
| track of certain items for that long.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Correct, in the event of a collapse of civilization record
| might be lost.
|
| But under such a scenario, how would some future civilization
| get contaminated? What are the chances that they'd dig
| hundreds of meters deep in an area with no valuable
| resources? The proposed scenarios in which nuclear waste may
| harm humans far into the future are exceptionally unlikely.
| Contrast the remote possibility of this form of harm with the
| millions that die each year due to fossil fuel pollution (and
| many more that may be harmed by climate change).
| chasd00 wrote:
| if we can get transport reliable and cheap enough, i say put
| it in space.
| throwaway744678 wrote:
| Let's hope the rocket does not blow up on launch, though.
| londons_explore wrote:
| When you have managed to build a storage site, it seems like a
| no-brainer to offer it to others (for a fee).
|
| Obviously there is the difficulty of transporting the nuclear
| materials, but there already exist containers which are
| designed to survive train crashes to store this stuff in. One
| of those on a boat should be fine, as long as some insurance
| will pay the cost to recover the container from the seabed if
| the boat were to sink.
| polack wrote:
| Are they really filling it up in Finland? I read the other day
| that they still wait for a government decision if they're
| allowed to use it or not.
| jabl wrote:
| IIRC they have recently gotten all the (major) approvals, but
| they haven't started to bury anything there yet.
| doikor wrote:
| Not yet. The trials should start next year with actual
| usage planned for 2025 currently.
|
| https://www.posiva.fi/en/index/news/pressreleasesstockexcha
| n...
| StreamBright wrote:
| There are countries with negligible risk of serious earthquakes
| and there are reactor type where we could split the long half
| time isotopes to much smaller halftime elements.
|
| https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-countries-have-the-...
|
| https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080922100148.h...
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| Chernobyl should be turned into a storage repository. It's
| already got monitoring equipment and NIMBY simply doesn't
| apply.
| ftth_finland wrote:
| As things stand now, each country will have to do their own
| storage.
|
| For example, it is illegal to import nuclear waste to Finland.
| friendlydog wrote:
| Judging from the current historical record is this feasible? Most
| civilizations don't have enough time behind them to prove this
| out.
| gerikson wrote:
| That's the source of the "This is not a place of honor" meme -
| it's a study about designing a site that is foreboding across
| vast time scales, so our remote ancestors^Wdescendants won't be
| tempted to dig it up.
|
| Sweden is going to rely on good old record-keeping though...
| jfk13 wrote:
| > so our remote ancestors won't be tempted
|
| To nit-pick, I think you mean descendants.
| gerikson wrote:
| D'oh, thanks. Fixed.
| sparcpile wrote:
| The No Place of Honor came from the Waste Isolation Pilot
| Plant report out of Sandia National Lab back in 1993. It is
| good read about long time and how to deal with communicating
| messages through the ages.
| https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1279277/
|
| https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1279277/m2/.
| ..
| Permit wrote:
| There's a documentary that explores this idea:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_Eternity_(film)
|
| They deal with exactly the problems you're imagining. How do
| you convey danger to a civilization 100,000 years in the
| future? How do you get them to take your warnings seriously?
| (We'd ignore any warning in the Egyptian pyramids created only
| ~5,000 years ago) How do you handle earthquakes and other
| natural disasters?
|
| I found it interesting and you might too.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| We'd ignore any warnings in the Egyptian pyramids, because
| they'd warn us that the gods would get us, and we don't
| believe in the gods. We warn future people that the radiation
| will get them, and if they're more advanced than us, they
| still believe in radiation. (And if they're _not_ more
| advanced than us, maybe they think that radiation is a spell
| from the gods?)
|
| The problem is to communicate "radiation danger" to someone
| 10,000 years from now who doesn't use our language, alphabet,
| or iconography. That's not easy. Not impossible, but not
| easy.
|
| The other problem is devising warning signs that will survive
| 100,000 years...
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| Unlike Egyptian Gods, which I'm pretty sure have never had
| any supernatural effects on grave robbers/archeologists who
| have studied tombs, I'm pretty sure at some point, radiation
| poisoning will become somewhat obvious.
|
| In the same way that the dangers of radiation were found
| fairly quickly from usage of radium in paints, anyone in the
| future will probably figure out pretty quickly something is
| wrong.
| Hamuko wrote:
| > _How do you convey danger to a civilization 100,000 years
| in the future?_
|
| Hopefully the skin of the first group of people to dig up our
| waste sliding right off their bodies will send a strong
| message.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| What sort of time interval between attempts are you
| presuming.
|
| At 100k years, there could be generations between such
| attempts, and accounts could likely themselves take on the
| form of incredible (in the literal sense of "non-credible")
| legends.
|
| Effects from lower-level contamination might be less
| pronounced, e.g.:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident
| new_guy wrote:
| > We'd ignore any warning in the Egyptian pyramids created
| only ~5,000 years ago
|
| Worse, the 'mummys curse' became a part of popular culture!
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| Here are my thoughts: If we assume civilization doesn't
| collapse, the concept of radiation is likely to remain
| poignant enough to keep people from futzing around in a
| radioactive waste repository.
|
| However, if we do assume civilization collapses and people
| forget about what radiation is, we can also safely assume
| that the future civilization will not be industrialized. If
| the waste is stored in some place extremely remote,
| inhospitable, or miles underground, the sheer cost of trying
| to reach the material would bankrupt any future civilization.
| We do have some precedence for this, one of the Great
| Pyramids was meant to be dismantled but it just proved too
| expensive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_of_Menkaure
| PinkMilkshake wrote:
| Don't change color, kitty. Keep your color, kitty. Stay that
| pretty gray.
| kzrdude wrote:
| The key is probably do explain honestly what the warning is
| about. Then the grave robbers can make their own decisions.
| Aardwolf wrote:
| In addition, if our civilization lasts that long and
| technological advancement continues, there's a good chance some
| use will be found for the nuclear waste and it'll be mined out
| again
| karaterobot wrote:
| Look at it this way: so far, our ability to communicate to the
| future and understand evidence from the past has only increased
| over time. So, while we have no precedent, we also have no
| reason to doubt the humans of future.
| im3w1l wrote:
| I think it's unreasonable to expect any solution to work for 100k
| years. Too many unknown unknowns. But hopefully if it does fail
| in say a few hundred years the radioactivity will already be less
| and they will be better equipped to clean it up.
| willis936 wrote:
| 100k is still on the order of engineerable problems if you do
| proper risk assessment.
|
| I don't think any reasonable solution expects avoiding
| failures, but rather is fail-safe. I'm not even sure if you
| call them failures if they are part of the expected lifecycle.
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| The bedrock at the Finnish nuclear waste storage site was
| estimated by geologists to have not moved an inch in four and a
| half billion years. I'd bet every penny on it standing for
| another hundred thousand.
| worik wrote:
| In one thousand years, when there are still ninety nine thousand
| years to go, what will the people in Europe think of us?
|
| We left toxic waste dumps, of waste that is silently toxic, a
| stealthy killer, all over the place. Some will be leaking. Some
| won't.
|
| And why did we do it? To pay for our current consumption.
|
| What will they think of us?
| officehero wrote:
| What do you think about people who lived 1000 years ago? Do you
| care about the pollution and deforestation around some mining
| areas in use during their time? Probably not. These issues,
| although serious, get swallowed by the progress of
| civilization.
| alkonaut wrote:
| Likely the same as I feel about the PCB/DDT emissions from just
| the last century. How on _earth_ could you be that stupid and
| selfish?
|
| The idea that random stuff sunk into oceans was "gone" lived
| into the 60's even in progressive places like Sweden. It's
| insane to think that this wasn't one generation ago.
| baseballdork wrote:
| Likely as unsophisticated people that were unable to harness
| the remaining energy in that waste.
| asymmetric wrote:
| The documentary Into Eternity is a very fascinating look into the
| kind of longtermist questions that must be answered for a project
| like this, like: how do you write warning signs that are supposed
| to be read 50k years from now, warning not to open the storage
| vault? What kind of language do you use?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_Eternity_(film)
| T-A wrote:
| There won't be a vault.
|
| _After about 70 years, when the tunnels are full, they will be
| packed with bentonite clay to keep out water and the facility
| sealed up._
| agency wrote:
| I remember reading about this a long time ago at [1]. They had
| a panel come up with the essential message they want to
| communicate which I found really interesting and chilling:
|
| > This place is a message... and part of a system of
| messages... pay attention to it! Sending this message was
| important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful
| culture.
|
| > This place is not a place of honor...no highly esteemed deed
| is commemorated here... nothing valued is here.
|
| > What is here is dangerous and repulsive to us. This message
| is a warning about danger.
|
| > The danger is in a particular location... it increases toward
| a center... the center of danger is here... of a particular
| size and shape, and below us.
|
| > The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours.
|
| > The danger is to the body, and it can kill.
|
| > The form of the danger is an emanation of energy.
|
| > The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb
| this place physically. This place is best shunned and left
| uninhabited.
|
| [1]: https://www.damninteresting.com/this-place-is-not-a-place-
| of...
| reedjosh wrote:
| How could I ever sleep again if I was investigating a ruin
| and read that message.
|
| I'd have to dig into it.
|
| It'd be like `Well, we warned you...` but that message is too
| intriguing.
| periheli0n wrote:
| This sounds like the beginning of an Indiana Jones knockoff!
| He will dig after reading this, for sure!
| pjot wrote:
| Surely, it'd be written in a .txt file!
| Manuel_D wrote:
| You bury the storage deep underground in an area with no
| natural resources, and put no sign over it. Security through
| obscurity: why would some future civilization dig hundreds of
| meters deep, for no conceivable reason?
|
| I'll concede that _if_ there 's some sort of civilization
| collapse and records of waste repositories are lost, and _if_
| some future civilization decides to dig in the area of a waste
| repository, and _if_ said civilization lacks knowledge of
| radiation poisoning, then unfortunately yes said future
| civilization will be harmed.
|
| But how does the extremely remote _possibility_ of all these
| hypotheticals occurring stack up against the certain harm
| caused by fossil fuel pollution and climate change?
| periheli0n wrote:
| The risk is not through digging, it's through geological
| processes happening over 100 k years that break up the
| storage site.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| And in the event of a container breach, how does uranium
| make it through hundreds of meters of rock to get back onto
| the surface? And if the waste is in a subduction zone,
| those geological processes are brining the waste deeper
| into the ground.
|
| People seem to be under the impression that even one gram
| of waste escaping is going to cause irreparable harm. Do
| people not realize that we've detonated hundreds of nuclear
| warheads in the atmosphere (and many more underground)? Do
| people not realize that the UK and Soviet Union simply
| dumped their nuclear waste into the ocean [1]? Yet we're
| worried about waste buried deep into bedrock?
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_disposal_of_radioact
| ive_...
| mongol wrote:
| The waste will be encapsulated in huge copper cylinders, and then
| embedded in bentonite clay.
|
| I fear the price of copper may be a problem in the future. Some
| dumb tomb raiders that don't know better will dig it up like a
| treasure.
| questiondev wrote:
| 100k years! wow, can we reuse this stuff if we are able to
| stabilize it enough to send into space?
| unboxingelf wrote:
| ELI5: why don't we eject it to space or send it into the sun?
| alkonaut wrote:
| The cost is between the same and many times higher, and the
| risk of explosion in one rocket approaches 100% very quickly
| when you launch hundreds.
| SCUSKU wrote:
| Say 1 in 1,000 rockets fails like the challenger and explodes.
| Now you have spent nuclear waste all over the Earth!
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| At the volumes and surface area we're talking about, is it
| any more than a blip? Say one rocket explodes. What's the
| worst result of that fallout? Is it worse than peeling a
| banana or flying in a jumbo jet?
| danbruc wrote:
| Some fraction of rockets explodes during launch. Also dropping
| things into the sun costs a lot of energy because you have do
| decelerate it from earths orbital speed (30 km/s) or whatever
| you are trying to drop will just orbit around the sun.
| 00N8 wrote:
| It's not cost effective. (Same reason we don't encase it in
| giant synthetic diamonds or bury it in the earth's mantle)
|
| Plus the material is valuable & space launches are dangerous.
| Launching to space probably introduces more contamination risk
| than any other option short of intentionally making dirty bombs
| out of it
| catears wrote:
| It's amazing to me how long 100K years are
|
| ~1-2 million years ago humans "invented" fire. ~12'000 years ago
| we invented agriculture. ~4'500 years ago the pyramids were
| built.
|
| Will human civilization even exist in 100'000 years, or will
| humans consider moving to the solar system next door because it
| has become so advanced of a civilization?
|
| All the while since 2022 some reactor fuel has been degrading in
| a some random hole in the country then named Sweden.
| nabla9 wrote:
| Finland, Sweden and Canada have areas of very stable granite
| that is 3 billion years old with few cracks. The granite is
| older than multicellular life, atmospheric oxygen event, or
| multicellular life.
|
| Those are good places to store nuclear waste.
| pojzon wrote:
| The two most possible outcomes are:
|
| - Our civilisation collapses and there will be not much future
| without advanced technology
|
| - We create AI that takes over the world trying to save humans
| from our own stupidity (we become pets)
|
| Ofcourse we can also:
|
| - Miraculously move further in evolution, put aside our
| differences, start working as a collective (but I highly doubt
| that)
| johanneskanybal wrote:
| We're already working together for all practical purposes. I
| get it's often unchallenged when people are overly negative
| about the future especially in a younger crowd but you're not
| doing yourself or us any favors and your options seem
| ludicrous.
| animal_spirits wrote:
| Right. Humans are working together more than they have ever
| in our history
| pojzon wrote:
| I wouldn't call that being negative. It's being realistic
| looking at what our "leaders" are focusing on.
|
| Climate change or world pollution or population
| disproporties are three topics that need immediate action
| under rigor and force. Most estimations I'm aware of
| predict we will miss all of our deadlines.
|
| Young people don't have to be the most intelligent ppl on
| the planet to be able to read what scientists that are
| experts in the field with tens of years of experience have
| to say. And they pretty much have consensus. Few scientists
| can be wrong, but if vast majority of them agrees on
| something -> there is a pretty high chance they are right.
|
| The situation we are in right now with information about it
| being at hand causes young ppl to be constantly depressed.
| The sole result of that will be devastating for the future.
| Even if our predictions prove themselves to be wrong and
| all will be dandy.
|
| I'm not gonna even talk about geopolitical issues we are
| currently struggling with.
| chendii wrote:
| I'd love to know what cost they have put for 100k of storage of
| nuclear waste. Talk about intergenerational debt. Surely once
| storage costs are factored into nuclear energy, renewables are
| much much more cost effective, without all the risks of nuclear
| waste spilling out at some point in the next 100k years?!?!
| lm28469 wrote:
| > renewables are much much more cost effective
|
| It's not a cost issue, it's an "intermittent and non storable"
| issue.
|
| We don't need theories just look at Germany right now... Their
| last two nuclear reactors (max output 4GW) often produce more
| than their entire sun+wind system (max output 122GW)
|
| https://mobile.twitter.com/fmbreon/status/148058947971495936...
| pydry wrote:
| They also have 6 GW of pumped water storage and interconnects
| to countries with 20GW more, with 8TWh of storage in total.
|
| https://www.hydropower.org/country-profiles/germany
| dzink wrote:
| There are multiple teams and projects using spent nuclear fuel to
| power new types of much smaller power plants, and even portable
| power boxes and space tech. Those storage facilities may start
| being a lucrative resource soon.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Exactly. I have room in my back yard.
| tephra wrote:
| The medium term storage might but the long term storage
| sections will be sealed and I don't think it would be cost
| effective (or super possible) to actually unseal it.
|
| The copper capsules will be buried 500m in the bedrock, the
| capsules will then be placed inside a hole which will later be
| covered by bentonite clay. As the sections fill up that will
| also be filled with clay.
| [deleted]
| echelon wrote:
| I don't understand why Europe is being so bearish on nuclear.
| It'll solve all of their energy woes without becoming dependent
| on Russia.
|
| Europe doesn't have significant earthquake or tornado risks
| either. It's about the best place for nuclear you could imagine.
|
| Germany shut their plants down and is now buying LNG. That's a
| downgrade.
|
| Nuclear is the quickest path to green, and it's staring us right
| in our faces.
| temp-dude-87844 wrote:
| The situation is complicated. Some EU member states are pro-
| nuclear, and some are anti-nuclear. In each state, the
| predominant popular sentiment may not actually match the
| current government's policy, but it usually does.
|
| France is the most significant player in the pro-nuclear bloc,
| operating a huge number of nuclear power plants and exporting
| its technology. France is joined by less populous countries in
| the eastern half of the EU that operate nuclear power plants to
| great benefit (Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Czech
| Republic, Finland), supplying large proportions of their
| states' electricity needs [1] from a small number of
| facilities, and makes them less reliant on import of natural
| gas from Russia. And, it's joined by bigger countries in the
| eastern half that want to diversify their generation mix away
| from coal and not towards Russian-sourced natural gas (Romania,
| Poland).
|
| Opposing nuclear power is Austria, who is a fierce opponent of
| nuclear power on principle, but has generous hydro capacity to
| not have to worry about it, and also operates the biggest
| natural gas interconnection point in the eastern EU [2].
| Austria is joined by Luxembourg: anti-nuclear sentiment is very
| high, it has one the lowest share of renewables in Europe, and
| probably imports [3] most of its electricity from the coal
| plants outside Cologne in Germany. They're joined by Germany,
| where the anti-nuclear Greens party are in the governing
| coalition, anti-nuclear sentiment is high, plentiful coal
| exists, natural gas is imported from Russia, Norway, and the
| Netherlands, and wind and solar have been rising rapidly. They
| convinced wind-dominated Denmark to support them, along with
| Portugal, which gets most of its energy from Algerian or
| Nigerian natural gas, but has significant hydro and wind
| generation as well.
|
| The common link between anti-nuclear countries is that they're
| well ahead on wind and/or hydro vs. your typical pro-nuclear
| country, and they have fewer geopolitical concerns about
| natural gas imports to tide them over until alternative
| generation replaces most gas. The common link between pro-
| nuclear countries is that they like the benefits nuclear brings
| to them, and some of them want more of that.
|
| [1] http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-
| pro... [2] https://www.gasconnect.at/en/network-information/at-
| a-glance... [3] https://www.klyme.online/post/where-does-
| luxembourg-s-electr...
| kitkat_new wrote:
| Nuclear is neither cheap, sustainable (limited resources and
| storage problem) nor is it quick (takes at least a decade to
| add it to the grid)
| mantas wrote:
| I bet Russia would pay through the roof to keep West Europe
| hooked... wonder which German politician will get a sweet
| Gazprom seat this time.
| yborg wrote:
| Former Chancellor Gerhard Schroder is chairman of the
| Nordstream shareholders group.
| odiroot wrote:
| I bet on Manuela Schwesig. She's a big supporter of NS2 and
| coincidently from the same party as Gerhard Schroder.
| pedrocr wrote:
| > Nuclear is the quickest path to green, and it's staring us
| right in our faces.
|
| This is held as self-evident in all these discussions on HN and
| yet all the simulations I've seen have nuclear as way too
| expensive compared to the alternatives. After someone points
| that out the discussion shifts to how it's also evident that
| nuclear is only expensive because of red tape but no one can
| explain how. We're stuck there as far as I can tell.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > nuclear as way too expensive compared to the alternatives
|
| Yet German electricity is two times more expensive than
| France's one. One is nuclear the other is """green"""
|
| And the worst part is that it doesn't work: their last two
| nuclear reactors (max output 4GW) often produce more than
| their entire sun+wind system (max output 122GW) so they end
| up buying electricity from nuclear powered countries and gas
| from Russia
|
| https://mobile.twitter.com/fmbreon/status/148058947971495936.
| ..
| hunterb123 wrote:
| > ... nuclear is only expensive because of red tape but no
| one can explain how.
|
| Noone ever or you haven't seen it? The over regulation by the
| NRC and EPA is well documented.
|
| https://www.americanactionforum.org/research/costs-
| benefits-...
| pedrocr wrote:
| I was trying to synthesize the discussion I've seen here.
| Your link is interesting but still in line with the
| discussion I've seen so far. People can point out examples
| of excessive red-tape in some countries. But no one agrees
| how much can be removed, because everyone agrees the
| downside to failing nuclear is grave and needs to be
| regulated. And since nuclear needs something like a 5 to
| 10x improvement in cost to be competitive it doesn't seem
| feasible that just deregulation is the answer.
|
| My hypothesis is that nuclear was our best bet to
| decarbonize the grid 20 or 30 years ago but meanwhile wind
| and solar have improved so much and are still on such a
| steep improvement curve that nothing else makes sense. But
| I'm happy to be convinced otherwise. It would be cool to
| have a fourth good source of energy in the clean mix and
| SMRs do sound better than traditional plants.
| fsflover wrote:
| > yet all the simulations I've seen have nuclear as way too
| expensive compared to the alternatives
|
| Links? There is evidence that it's expensive because nuclear
| has to compete with cheap, environment-damaging gas:
| https://whatisnuclear.com/economics.html#conclusions.
| pedrocr wrote:
| The comparison is with solar and wind, and there seem to be
| enough solutions between interconnects, overcapacity,
| batteries, demand modulations and others for nuclear to not
| be valuable even to solve intermittency. Here's a
| simulation for how an 100% solar+wind+battery grid would
| work and be cheap:
|
| https://www.rethinkx.com/energy
|
| And here's the same reasoning used to argue that even the
| already built gas, coal, nuclear and hydro assets are
| overvalued:
|
| https://www.rethinkx.com/energy-lcoe
|
| I've seen other simulations that weren't as extreme and
| ended up keeping the hydro we have as generation as well as
| grid scale batteries and even some gas to fill a few
| moments in time. What I haven't seen is any simulation that
| makes new nuclear build make sense.
| lispm wrote:
| I'm not sure if I would think densely populated western
| democracies are 'about the best place for nuclear you could
| imagine'.
|
| Currently the best place for nuclear are centrally run
| countries (China, ...) with a state-owned electricity sector
| (like France). Bonus points for a nuclear weapons industry or
| plans for those.
|
| > Germany shut their plants down
|
| Three nuclear powerplants are currently online in Germany.
| Their shutdown is planned for the end of the year.
|
| > Nuclear is the quickest path to green, and it's staring us
| right in our faces.
|
| That would surprise me. France builds a single nuclear reactor
| (the EPR at Flamanville) and is late 11 years (start now
| planned for 2023, instead of 2012). The reactor costs then
| around 20 billion Euros.
|
| Nuclear is slow to build-up and extremely expensive.
| leecarraher wrote:
| i've been saying this for some time in the US and think it is
| similar to the reasons we cannot build high speed rail here.
| Too many points of opposition for a not immediate and obvious
| benefit (namely lower energy prices, and fewer negative
| environmental effects). Individual and municipal solar with
| expensive batteries seems to just fit better with our
| individualistic and consumer mindsets.
| mediaman wrote:
| Does anyone have a good political explanation for Europe's
| hostility to nuclear power?
|
| Is it really just post-Fukushima nuclear concern?
|
| There are so many pressing issues at stake - CO2 production,
| dependency on an increasingly aggressive foreign adversary for
| fuel - that it seems like there must be some logic, but I can't
| figure it out.
|
| Even if wind/solar are cheaper than nuclear, it doesn't seem
| that they can become the only type of of energy supplied in
| Europe due to variability issues.
| fsflover wrote:
| > Does anyone have a good political explanation for Europe's
| hostility to nuclear power?
|
| Perhaps because of oil funding of anti-nuclear FUD:
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/kensilverstein/2016/07/13/are-f.
| ..
|
| https://thebreakthrough.org/blog/the-true-face-of-the-
| anti-n...
| pfortuny wrote:
| Oh, no, it started in the seventies, around that.
|
| It is a mixture of "look what happens if we let everybody
| have nuclear power: now Pakistan and India have it, and there
| is a great chance of a nuclear conflict" (simplifying). And
| _at the same time_ the ecologists, saying "NO to nuclear
| power" (I remember this in my childhood in Spain, it was
| huge).
|
| Fuckushima has turned it into what seems a non-negotiable
| idea at any costs.
|
| But notice that some weeks ago the European Commission
| decided to push for calling nuclear "green" (I agree with
| this) but also liquified gas (!!).
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| LNG _is_ green(er), compared to coal.
|
| People want to not freeze in winter. They're going to try
| to heat with something. If they don't burn coal, and they
| don't heat with nuclear- or renewable-created electricity,
| then what's left? LNG in a power plant or NG in their home
| is greener than the alternative.
|
| You want to go still greener? Great. But this winter,
| people still want to be warm, and if your answer is "create
| more renewable energy in five years", that's not going to
| cut it.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "You want to go still greener? Great. But this winter,
| people still want to be warm, and if your answer is
| "create more renewable energy in five years", that's not
| going to cut it. "
|
| It looks like you are fighting straw men. No one here
| pledged for abolishment of gas or coal as of today. It is
| a general discussion of where we are heading.
|
| So yes, how could we still be warm in 5 years. 10. 20.
|
| Oh and the general question of whether our choices today
| will lead too much warmth in general.
| chess_buster wrote:
| Electrolyze the massive overproduction in the summer into
| gas, store it for the winter.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| One possible solution, even though you need really
| massive overproduction in summer, due to the big losses
| in transformation.
| jfk13 wrote:
| Yes, it was pretty big. I remember the slogan as "Nuclear
| power? No thanks!" in the UK.
| ciabattabread wrote:
| So how did France end up being a giant producer of nuclear
| energy?
| ArnoVW wrote:
| The UK, Germany and the Netherlands had respectively oil,
| coal and gas reserves. France only had uranium reserves
| in Africa.
|
| Also, de Gaul figured out quickly that without nukes,
| France would cease to count geopolitically. To build
| nukes you need a nuclear industry.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| Chernobyl scare is probably more top of mind still given the
| prevailing wind at the time spread it over european territory
| fatcat500 wrote:
| Yes. Nuclear Is a threat to socialists/environmentalists
| because it would deprive them of an excellent source of
| political capital. Namely, the justifications required to
| artificially increase the price of energy, to pass regulation
| which controls the manufacture of goods, and to regulate
| lifestyles and culture.
|
| All sectors of the economy depend on the energy sector.
| Control the energy sector means control of the entire
| economy.
|
| I'm not saying that climate change isn't a real threat, nor
| that scientists are wrong in their predictions, nor that we
| don't have to make a change in how we produce energy.
| However, what makes environmentalism useful to the political
| class has nothing to do with the hard science behind energy,
| civilization, and the health of our planet. What the
| political class sees in this movement is the perfect set of
| excuses to increase the size of the central government.
| bpizzi wrote:
| Not really Fukushima, more likely Chernobyl and the
| disastrous handling of governments trying to hide things
| instead of taking action, explaining complexities and
| planning further education. That let a wide open hole for
| every naysayer for spraying and preaching political and
| scientific non-sense. Let it rot 20y without addressing the
| issue and you'll pick anyone on our streets today and be
| virtually assured that one's either totally afraid or fully
| ignorant of nuclear power.
| eliaspro wrote:
| Furthermore, Chernobyl isn't something for Europeans that
| was far far away or a long time ago.
|
| Germany spends (and will continue to do so in the
| foreseeable future) millions each year to compensate for
| losses of hunters and farmers due to radioactive
| contamination which accumulates in wild boars and mushrooms
| which have to undergo inspection before being sold.
| Everything above 600Bq needs to be discarded as
| contaminated waste.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Yes, and it's worth bearing in mind that Chernobyl was
| far from the worst case scenario. We were very lucky that
| Chernobyl was located in an isolated area and that the
| wind didn't blow the radioactive material towards Kyiv or
| another densely populated area. A Chernobyl-like event
| that ended up making a major city uninhabitable would be
| a crisis on another level.
| kitkat_new wrote:
| "Even if wind/solar are cheaper than nuclear, it doesn't seem
| that they can become the only type of of energy supplied in
| Europe due to variability issues."
|
| They can with storage systems, e.g. hydrogen
| lm28469 wrote:
| > Is it really just post-Fukushima nuclear concern?
|
| It's mostly German ideology being forced down every other
| countries. France had one of the the cleanest and cheapest
| energy and is bullied into selling it to the European market
| at loss...
|
| Germany is shutting down its nuclear sources while buying
| from other nuclear powered countries (France, Finland) and
| gas from russia. They just don't want it to happen on their
| land, but as long as they can keep the "we produce green
| energy" lie they'll be happy.
| theptip wrote:
| I have two general reasons that I think are salient:
|
| The public is terrified of nuclear and governments are
| responding to that.
|
| The electorate is structurally incapable of asking for
| slightly more people to die in order to avert huge numbers of
| people dying. Therefore "more nuclear" is not a valid option
| even for many that think there is existential risk from
| climate change.
| pgalvin wrote:
| Germany has a strong cultural and political opposition to
| nuclear power, particularly in their Green Party, for many
| different reasons that I'm not qualified to discuss. I suspect
| the initial cost is also a barrier to much of Europe, if only
| for political reasons.
| derriz wrote:
| The whole world is on aggregate bearish on nuclear electricity
| - its share of global electricity generation has fallen from
| about 18% in the mid 1990s to about 10% today. The reason is
| simply economics/cost.
|
| In the late 1980s in most of the world, the focus of new
| generation capacity switched to coal and natural gas as it
| became obvious that the price of nuclear on a per-MWh basis is
| multiples of times that of NG in particular. Nuclear is not and
| never was cheap.
|
| The second issue with nuclear is project risk - the industry
| has a disastrous record for delivering late and way over
| budget. For example, since 1990 only three new reactors have
| started operations in the USA. Watts Bar 2 went live in 2016
| having originally started construction in 1974 [2]. The other
| two: Watts Bar 1 and Comanche Peak 2 took nearly 20 years each
| to go live.
|
| These aren't outliers - in Europe, two projects based on the
| newest 3rd generation reactor design - Flamanville and
| Olkiluoko - started construction in 2007 and 2005 respectively
| and both are years over schedule and are now expected to cost 6
| and 3 times their budgets respectively. Work on this particular
| reactor design started in 1990 - which gives you an idea of
| what's involved in bringing new reactor designs to the
| commercial reality.
|
| A coal or gas plant can be up and running in 2-5 years with no
| long tails. A solar PV plant or on-shore wind farm can be
| constructed in a year or two with little or no risk of massive
| delays and budget overruns. And both options deliver cheaper
| electricity.
|
| It's just too expensive and niche in the modern world. In the
| age of mass-production where wind turbines and solar PV panels
| are rolling off assembly lines, the idea of spending $12B
| (Olkiluoto) or $25B (Flamanville) for a single 1.6GW reactor
| seems nuts.
|
| [1] https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/world-
| electri...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watts_Bar_Nuclear_Plant
| merb wrote:
| > I don't understand why Europe is being so bearish on nuclear.
| It'll solve all of their energy woes without becoming dependent
| on Russia.
|
| you are just clueless.
|
| > Germany shut their plants down and is now buying LNG. That's
| a downgrade. > Nuclear is the quickest path to green, and it's
| staring us right in our faces.
|
| you would need both anyway?
|
| nuclear does not change the fact that you need LNG.
|
| I often hear so many stupid arguments like yours, I wonder
| where do people think that nuclear means solving energy
| problems and reducing coal and gas? in fact nuclear solves the
| base load problem when there is low wind, BUT it's not the
| reason why germany uses so much coal. germany was always strong
| on coal and it was political that we neither reduced it as much
| as we should have.
|
| btw. even frances uses tons of lng besides a heavy nuclear user
| (60% at the moment I'm writing can serve up to 80% of it's
| energy with nuclear), in fact it's second highest energy is
| gas.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Many people including me have changed their stance over the
| years. But unfortunately the Green party in Germany has their
| roots in de-nuclearization and that alone is probably enough to
| deter them from changing their policy worrying it would cost
| them votes.
| futharkshill wrote:
| > It'll solve all of their energy woes without becoming
| dependent on Russia.
|
| Could you stop being so xenophobic?
| alkonaut wrote:
| "Without being dependent on countries that dont share the
| same view on the european security order, integrity of
| borders, sovereignty of countries and so on"
|
| There are many such countries, but there is only one near
| Europe and its easier to just say "Russia" tbf.
| fsflover wrote:
| > Nuclear is the quickest path to green
|
| Some related links:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26603464 and
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26673987.
| [deleted]
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