[HN Gopher] Small Modular Reactors Exacerbate Challenges of Nucl...
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Small Modular Reactors Exacerbate Challenges of Nuclear Waste
Author : dtagames
Score : 73 points
Date : 2022-06-06 12:03 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (news.stanford.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.stanford.edu)
| ethagknight wrote:
| This is not on the topic of the article, but could nuclear waste
| be the ultimate storage of value for a cryptocurrency-type
| "coin"?? Very expensive and energy intensive to produce, very
| limited supply, must be closely guarded but not really all that
| dangerous in small amounts??
|
| What if the US government agreed to purchase "coined" waste after
| 30 years in circulation for a set, relatively high price, making
| it, in effect, a treasury or bond?
|
| At the end of the day, this would incentivize production of
| nuclear power, kick the can down the road, incentivizes the US
| government to research storage or processing techniques or simply
| resell back into the market.
| ethagknight wrote:
| This comment got downvoted but I still think its an interesting
| and substantive idea to solve and worthy of discussion. Nuclear
| waste is very difficult to produce but is manufactured as a
| byproduct of a very valuable process, and is produced in such
| limited quantities that it creates a very interesting "Spent
| Nuclear Fuel Standard" in lieu of gold or USD. The source of a
| given piece of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) can presumably be
| verified for authenticity, and while its not a necessity, a
| blockchain can assist with market making and transactions so
| that the actual SNF itself can remain in secured locations.
|
| If the whole effort is backstopped by the potential to find a
| process 30 years out that can squeeze more energy out of old
| SNF or further refine it, then there's an interesting potential
| value store as well.
| karaterobot wrote:
| > At present, the U.S. has no program to develop a geologic
| repository, after spending decades and billions of dollars on the
| Yucca Mountain site in Nevada. As a result, spent nuclear fuel is
| currently stored in pools or in dry casks at reactor sites,
| accumulating at a rate of about 2,000 metric tonnes per year.
|
| Yucca Mountain would have been the solution, but it was blocked
| and then defunded. Then, the absence of a permanent storage
| facility got used as an argument against expanding nuclear, in
| some cases by the same people.
| dv_dt wrote:
| Commercial nuclear utilities could build their own private
| facility - but one of the fundamental problems with nuclear
| technology is that it would not be cost effective.
|
| Renewables are much better in this respect - through there is
| still a lifetime material cycle to think of, it's much simpler
| a problem to address.
| ryathal wrote:
| It's really not, they just get a pass on disposal because
| it's not scary enough. Used windmill blades are going to be
| an actual problem in the near future, but no renewable
| company has to buy land to hold 100 years of turbine blades
| or solar panels.
|
| Nuclear waste only exists as a problem to kill investment.
| We'd just dump it deep in the ocean, but it's too valuable
| for future use (unlike renewable waste).
| jhgb wrote:
| > Used windmill blades are going to be an actual problem in
| the near future, but no renewable company has to buy land
| to hold 100 years of turbine blades or solar panels.
|
| This makes no sense. Silicon-based solar panels are almost
| entirely recyclable (so if they leave any waste, you're
| doing something horribly wrong), and even if you couldn't
| use the somewhat problematic aged wind turbine blades in
| construction materials (which to my understanding you
| actually can), the weight of the global turbine blade waste
| mass is a tiny fraction of the global mass of other
| comparable waste (plastics, etc.) that our civilization is
| already generating. So "[holding] 100 years of turbine
| blades or solar panels" is an extremely unlikely thing to
| happen.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| They're not a problem. It's simply that in countries which
| still allow landfills it's the most cost efficient method
| since fiberglass itself is very low value. You also have
| the trouble of that wind turbines designed 20-30 years ago
| didn't have recycling in mind so they.
|
| It is a completely made up issue to allow the nuclear
| industry to say "what about wind turbine blades?!" trying
| to draw an equivalency between nuclear waste and inert
| fiber glass.
|
| > The catch here is that while wind turbine blade recycling
| is technically possible, landfill disposal remains the most
| cost-efficient and accessible option in many cases.
|
| > "Physical and material scientists can recycle blades
| now," Eric Lantz, wind analysis manager at National
| Renewable Energy Laboratory told USA TODAY in an email.
| "But, broadly speaking, scaling up recycling technologies
| will require more research and development to maximize the
| value of the recycled materials and improve the economics
| of the processes."
|
| https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/11/30/fa
| c...
| petre wrote:
| One of the autors of this study was chairwoman of the NRC
| during the Obama Administration and has criticized the Yucca
| Mountain solution in favour of storing waste on site.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allison_Macfarlane
|
| The authors if this study are chemists, geologists and
| mineralogists. Two of the three companies who's reactors were
| investigated already published rebutals, claiming the authors
| used incorrect inputs for the study.
| cameldrv wrote:
| We already have a geologic repository. It's called the Waste
| Isolation Pilot Plant, and has been receiving military waste
| for 23 years. All that needs to be done is for Congress to
| authorize it for civilian waste as well.
| p1mrx wrote:
| Cunningham's Law: "the best way to get the right answer on the
| internet is not to ask a question; it's to post the wrong
| answer."
|
| This paper seems to have rustled a lot of feathers:
|
| - NuScale's rebuttal: https://s24.q4cdn.com/104943030/files/PNAS-
| Letter-Reyes-NuSc...
|
| - Terrestrial Energy's rebuttal:
| https://www.terrestrialenergy.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06...
| kkfx wrote:
| Reasons behind them are not efficiency nor safety but
| flexibility: in a changing world we need flexible infra, that's
| while while most denied it we really push air and sea research
| for logistic because they do not need roads or rails, or they do
| not needs thing that demand years, decades to be built and can't
| change much in quick terms.
|
| For nuclear the target is being able to deploy many small plants
| where we need them quickly vs create in a decade or more one big
| + adapt the electricity grid to that. Let's say a powerful
| landslide crush a main high-voltage line: how many people are
| affected? How many cascading effects? How much time and cost to
| restore? Vs how quick and economic is just deliver by air few
| diesel generators? The issue with them is the hyper-big amount of
| fuel they need, but if we ever been able to create really small
| nuclear generator we can imagine future small cities with local-
| only infra for their electricity needs. That allow for hyper-big
| flexibility.
|
| I suspect such push is done because of climate change and wars
| that probably, inevitably follow, so we want to be able to keep a
| kind of civil society in the storm... There will be a rush for
| the arctic but with melting permafrost is next to impossible
| developing infra there beside a very small scale. There will be a
| vast set of mass relocation due to floods and wildfires so again
| we need to be able to respond in emergency mode quickly. Probably
| no one is really sure what will happen, at what scale, in how
| many years and anyway planning for space exploration expansion we
| need something small enough to fit satellites and ships to Mars
| and Moon so, for earth we will need them to de-carbonize
| shipping... They are not something we can build for tomorrow
| morning so research on them is useful for many reasons.
|
| I can't be sure, but IMVHO that's the most significant reasons
| behind this push.
| pavlov wrote:
| Finland is nearing completion on a permanent repository dug 420 m
| below sea level and meant to last 100,000 years:
|
| https://www.science.org/content/article/finland-built-tomb-s...
|
| The amount of fuel waste is small enough that burying it
| underground in places like Finland with suitable geology seems
| like a workable solution. The long-term risk doesn't compare with
| the immediate threat from climate change, IMO.
| 7373737373 wrote:
| Question: Why aren't nuclear reactors built underground?
| api wrote:
| Cost and cooling would be my guess.
|
| I've always thought deep underwater would make sense,
| provided the containment was very good. You would never have
| to worry about a meltdown really since there's an unlimited
| heat sink readily available and the reactor could be
| constructed to passively cool itself through convection in a
| total failure / walk away scenario.
|
| Problem is that if you break containment water will carry all
| that nasty radioactive material everywhere. I'd look at
| ceramic fuel packaging such as pebble beds or sealed fuel
| rods that are highly water insoluble, then waste
| vitrification or encasement in highly water insoluble glass
| or ceramic materials.
| aliswe wrote:
| > _I 've always thought deep underwater would make sense,
| provided the containment was very good. You would never
| have to worry about a meltdown_
|
| Until you have to. ;)
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| Salt water is awful and underwater construction is really
| expensive.
| api wrote:
| We know how to build nuclear submarines and run them
| quite well, and salt water is not worse than hot nuclear
| fuel. Nuclear power will never be easy on the materials
| side.
| babypuncher wrote:
| Nuclear submarines are not expected to turn a profit over
| 30 years of operation
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| Nuclear submarines work well, but they're far from cheap
| (roughly 5 billion each). lots of that is for stealth and
| weapons, but it's rather naive to think that underwater
| nuclear reactors will ever be cost competitive with
| solar/wind + a battery.
| blue1 wrote:
| Cooling?
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| Well, you could put the containment completely underground,
| but you'd need to run your coolant of choice up to the
| surface (and you'd need air intakes for humans etc). You
| wouldn't need to with once-through water cooling using a
| large body of water, a river, or the ocean, but that's not
| allowed anymore.
|
| Note that reactor vessels themselves are sometimes at least
| partially underground in a reinforced concrete pit in the
| containment.
| m4rtink wrote:
| Also if you have any kind of groundwater a melted down
| reactor core might contaminate it.
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| Finland may be the only country being close to solving this
| issue. And no, it's not possible to ship all the nuclear waste
| to Finland.
|
| Not every country even has candidate sites. And there's a lot
| of issues from "I think we have a solution" to actually having
| implemented it.
| concordDance wrote:
| Nuclear waste is really not an issue. You can literally glass
| it and dump it on the abyssal plain and it'll do much less
| damage there than the fossil fuels leaked from ships does.
|
| (Yes, this is unintuitive. It's also true. The ocean is huge,
| the abyss not very active and water is great at blocking
| radiation.)
| chinathrow wrote:
| Wow really? Why hasn't noone asked you to guide their waste
| disposal program the way you think it would work?
|
| Have you ever seen what oceans do to glass over time?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| There is a big erosion difference between glass dumped at
| beach with wave action and 10,000 feet down. Parts of the
| ocean floor are 200 million years old.
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| Ah yes, and when scientists from the nuclear power
| company say "this will never be a problem", the general
| public is totally on board, right?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| You post is a non-sequitur.
|
| I don't care what your imaginary nuclear scientist says
| or what the general public thinks.
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| It does sound a lot like a solution Homer Simpson would
| endorse...
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >And no, it's not possible to ship all the nuclear waste to
| Finland.
|
| Only in the political sense. Waste volumes are small enough
| that we easily could if they were willing to dig a big enough
| hole.
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| You are neglecting the transport issue. It's hard enough to
| transport the waste over land, with all the security
| precautions. Crossing country borders is a huge political
| and diplomatic mess.
|
| Putting the waste on a ship with the potential of the ship
| sinking or having an accident elicits a big "nope" from me.
| varajelle wrote:
| Probability of the ship sinking: quite low. Damages
| caused (by the nuclear waste) if the ship sinks: quite
| low. Multiply the two number, then it's very low.
|
| (a ship sinking is usually an environment desaster, but
| the nuclear waste sinking should be a very small concern
| because the waste are fixed in glass, and water absorb
| radiation)
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| Handwavy assumptions about potential environmental
| disasters. Good job.
|
| Scaling nuclear power up by factor of 10 to 100 means
| scaling transport of nuclear waste up by the same factor
| at least. Including all the risks associated with it.
| People are not going to take these vague assurances after
| so much has gone wrong in the past.
| ryathal wrote:
| The US navy has hundreds of reactors doing just that
| now...
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| And they didn't ask any environmentalists how they feel
| about it.
| johndevor wrote:
| > Not every country even has candidate sites.
|
| Can't they just dig down? Are you saying some countries don't
| have bedrock?
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| They need to be geologically stable. Where could Japan dig
| such that they could be sure the site wouldn't be disturbed
| by a volcano or earthquake?
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Not every country has 800m Euros, geologically stable areas
| and big chunks of land with no one living near by...
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| Maybe some of those sites would flood given enough time? (I
| am not a geologist)
| criddell wrote:
| Would the waste be useful to those who would like to make a
| dirty bomb? Maybe some countries can't provide security
| guarantees?
| jpollock wrote:
| There are much, much, much more accessible sources for
| the radioactive materials for a dirty bomb.
|
| https://thebulletin.org/2014/01/mexicos-stolen-radiation-
| sou...
| ch4s3 wrote:
| To quote from the article
|
| > Thus the consequences of this incident appeared to be
| less grave than in two earlier cases--in Brazil in 1987,
| and in Thailand in 2000--when unsuspecting scavengers who
| dismantled old radiotherapy machines exposed themselves
| and their families to very high doses of radiation. Four
| of the exposed people died in Brazil, and three in
| Thailand, and more were seriously injured. The cost of
| cleanup and recovery for their communities was
| substantial.
|
| > Officials, especially in the United States, were
| relieved that the stolen Mexican capsule did not end up
| with terrorists, who could have used it to build a "dirty
| bomb." Even though many planning scenarios predict that
| such a bomb would probably cause few radiation-related
| deaths, its economic impact could be disastrous.
|
| Two previous incidents of material disappearing killed
| the thieves, and even still a dirty bomb isn't any more
| dangerous than a regular bomb to the intended victims.
| They're essentially not really a thing as I posted
| earlier. You'd probably just bake yourself trying to
| build one.
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| The actual danger to humans pales in comparison to stupid
| humans being irrationally afraid of a tiny statistical
| increase in the likelihood of cancer. Detonate a dirty
| bomb and you've created a zone that is difficult to
| remediate to the point where nobody would have any issues
| with living and working there.
|
| Do it in a place like Manhattan and the cost to remediate
| would be potentially huge. We're not talking about
| turning an isolated former nuclear or chemical weapon
| production/storage facility into a nature preserve, but
| returning a 'slimed' dense urban area into one suitable
| for long-term human habitation. That's the real power of
| a radiological dispersal device.
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| It would be _very_ useful. However, there are processes
| where waste can be vitrified or otherwise made less
| useful for terrorists.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Dirty bombs aren't really a thing one needs to worry
| about. Getting enough material to make one would require
| industrial nuclear material handling processes, otherwise
| you the bomb maker would die. Nuclear material heavy so
| it's hard to get it up into the air, you'll need a large
| bomb probably truck sized. So at this point you need to
| drive the thing around. Remember this thing is very
| radioactive, so you'll need to shield the driver or
| they'll be cooked before getting to their destination.
| You also need to avoid detection, and you won't so you'll
| need to work fast. Then once you blow up most of the
| material will fall out of the air really quickly, so
| you'll want it somewhere populated like a city.
| Unfortunately all of the buildings keep the material from
| hitting many people, and anyone so unfortunate can just
| shower and take some iodine tablets. The explosion itself
| will cause most of the damage.
|
| Once you've done this to little effect, the wrath of the
| whole world will fall on you for breaking this taboo. So
| it's really not worth the trouble.
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| All of this assumes a state actor and a relatively
| "ambitious" dirty bomb. Relax those assumptions and it's
| less crazy.
| scrlk wrote:
| >The most highly radioactive waste, mainly spent fuel, will have
| to be isolated in deep-mined geologic repositories for hundreds
| of thousands of years. At present, the U.S. has no program to
| develop a geologic repository, after spending decades and
| billions of dollars on the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada. As a
| result, spent nuclear fuel is currently stored in pools or in dry
| casks at reactor sites, accumulating at a rate of about 2,000
| metric tonnes per year.
|
| No mention of fuel reprocessing, or using it in a fast breeder
| reactor?
| bell-cot wrote:
| IIR, three problems with reprocessing and fast breeders:
|
| - Reprocessing generally involves plenty of kinda-horrific
| chemicals, and radioactive waste sludge stuff which is also
| (chemically) pretty horrific. With the (long, bad) track record
| of such facilities...yeah. Pretty hard to fault anyone who's a
| NIMBY about 'em.
|
| - Reprocessing technology is a critical piece of having a nice,
| efficient modern nuclear weapons program. That gets into non-
| proliferation efforts, politics, and how well most national
| leaders react to "we can have & use that handy technology, but
| you can't".
|
| - Fast breeder reactors are another really-important part of
| having a nice, efficient modern nuclear weapons program.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| 2 and 3 doesn't really matter when talking about countries
| that already have nuclear weapons. If they would get serious
| about climate change, they could provide those facilities to
| other countries at cost.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Ah... "Government program" and "at cost" have a rather long
| record of spiraling-out-of-control costs. And recent events
| in Europe may had lessened the appeal of the "we'll trust
| our friends, $Other_Country, to faithfully meet our energy
| needs for the next few decades" strategy.
| hannob wrote:
| No, because a technology once seen as promising that completely
| failed to deliver its promises and is only used in very small
| scales today is irrelevant for the debate.
| Victerius wrote:
| Also, 2000 metric tons per year is nothing.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| For context, a large container ship can carry 250,000 metric
| tons.
| Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote:
| Zero is nothing. 2000 metric tons of highly radioactive waste
| is not nothing.
| viraptor wrote:
| Not literally, but 2000 metric tonnes is half the weight of
| an Olympic pool. That's very insignificant and tiny
| compared to what gets extracted in coal mines every hour.
| Finding space for it is not an issue.
| Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote:
| This isn't coal. It's highly radioactive. Everything
| related to highly radioactive waste from handling to
| transport to storage is an issue.
| julienfr112 wrote:
| when you burn coal, the residual is also quite
| radioactive, and the amount is not nothing either.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| That's why the alternative isn't coal or other fossil
| fuels - it is renewables.
| fsh wrote:
| No, coal ash is not particularly radioactive. The amount
| of radiation released by burning coal is completely
| insignificant compared to the toxicity of the ash.
| ryathal wrote:
| It's basically nothing. Using weight for nuclear waste is
| largely for FUD. The volume is really small for the weight
| we are talking an American football field 10ft deep for the
| lifetime of US waste. There's no solution because there
| isn't a meaningful amount of waste to bother with yet.
| supertrope wrote:
| Reprocessing blurs the line between nuclear fuel for
| electricity and bomb grade material. It's also more expensive
| than the one through nuclear fuel cycle.
| https://www.npr.org/2010/04/09/125740818/nuclear-waste-may-g...
| bluGill wrote:
| > The most highly radioactive waste, mainly spent fuel, will
| have to be isolated in deep-mined geologic repositories for
| hundreds of thousands of years
|
| that is false. High radioactivity means a very short half life.
| You only need to store such things for a few seconds before
| they degrade into something else - normally something with a
| much longer half life.
|
| The really bad stuff is only somewhat radioactive: enough to be
| dangerous, but degrades over a few ten thousand years. There
| are a lot of atoms in even a small thing, and so even with half
| life in the tousands of years range odds are still high that
| several atoms in a bunch will degrade at anytime, enough to
| push radiation above background levels. Of course things go
| through many cycles of decay before they become safe.
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| Which hasn't been implemented on the required scale ever.
|
| At best, those technologies could scale down the waste problem
| by a certain factor. It's not like you put in radioactive waste
| and something completely harmless comes out... There's still
| some radioactive waste left.
| vimy wrote:
| > As a result, spent nuclear fuel is currently stored in pools or
| in dry casks at reactor sites, accumulating at a rate of about
| 2,000 metric tonnes per year.
|
| Seems to me we already have a working solution. We have been
| storing nuclear "waste" for more than 60 years like this and
| nothing ever happened. Problem solved.
| coryrc wrote:
| Here's 1500x more radioactive, toxic waste from a _single_ coal
| plant: https://www.southernenvironment.org/news/court-ruling-
| domini...
|
| Anyone complaining about nuclear waste is a troll or ignorant.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| That's why we should build renewables right? Then there's
| pretty much no waste.
| ratdragon wrote:
| Rare-earth extraction is pretty nasty
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/aug/07/china-
| ra...
|
| And e.g. neodymium extraction for wind turbine magnets
| produces waste with radioactive thorium https://inis.iaea.o
| rg/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/...
| dv_dt wrote:
| Rare earth is also not a necessary component for wind
| turbines.
|
| https://www.evwind.es/2017/05/31/rare-earths-and-wind-
| turbin...
| rockemsockem wrote:
| But you need batteries to store energy for non-windy
| times, right? And those batteries will require rare earth
| materials.
| dv_dt wrote:
| For some chemistries, but there are multiple grid battery
| contenders which do not involve rare-earths. Even in
| chemistries that use it, Rare earth materials are being
| minimized or designed out.
|
| https://rmi.org/rmi-reality-check-greener-friendlier-
| alterna...
| Gwypaas wrote:
| Now dig up all metals and other construction material
| used for the steam side and generators in fossil plants
| and make a comparison if that question is even worth to
| ask yourself.
|
| Also consider that we will be able to recycle the
| materials used so the extraction should level off to only
| supplying potential market expansion and loss.
| ratdragon wrote:
| I believe these types of arguments should start with
| "What about..." sir. Also not sure how we got to fossil
| plants...
| Gwypaas wrote:
| Coal and nuclear have equivalent steam sides. Well,
| nuclear often has even more complexity with separate
| loops with heat exchangers to minimize contact between
| the reactor water and rest of the plant.
|
| CCGT turbines are a bit different in that they have
| turbine first, and then the same steam boiler to turbine
| setup.
|
| That is why I ask. All generation from mechanical sources
| needs generators, they need control circuitry. Steam
| plants need boilers, cooling towers and what not.
|
| Just wanted to point out that singularly focusing on
| "hurr durr renewables need to dig stuff out from the
| ground and not made using pixie-dust" is quite the
| irrelevant take since the entire energy generation
| industry shares so much complexity, no matter the source
| of energy.
| concordDance wrote:
| > Now dig up all metals and other construction material
| used for the steam side and generators in fossil plants
| and make a comparison if that question is even worth to
| ask yourself.
|
| Is iron mining and refining as toxic as, say, lithium?
| Particularly when adjusted for how much extra mining you
| have to do for a particular amount of end product?
|
| Just throwing out factors to consider like you are doing
| (and I just did) is not very useful unless you also
| include some numbers for scale. Do some research and
| share.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Coal ash is radioactive compared to rocks generally?
| jeffbee wrote:
| Yes, but it is less radioactive than some rock. Burning
| coal concentrates the uranium into the ash, so at a basic
| level you can say that coal ash is more radioactive than
| coal itself.
| connicpu wrote:
| Coal ash tends to have a high volume of Carbon-14 which, in
| the volumes used to burn coal for electricity, releases
| significantly more radioactivity than any normally
| operating nuclear plant. Even just a large pile of unburnt
| coal is much more radioactive than your average pile of
| rocks
| duskwuff wrote:
| No, that's incorrect. Coal is mostly carbon, but almost
| all of that carbon burns with the coal -- what's left
| over in the ash is whatever didn't burn, which is mostly
| minerals like silicon/aluminium oxides. Even the source
| coal has relatively low levels of C14 (since it's been
| buried for millions of years), and nothing about the
| combustion process would be likely to concentrate that in
| the ash.
|
| Radioactivity in coal ash is primarily due to small
| quantities of uranium in the coal. It's not significantly
| radioactive, though; the hazards it poses are more due to
| other heavy metals which are often present in the ash
| (lead, mercury, etc).
| raphaelj wrote:
| While it might work and be actually safe, that does not mean it
| does not cost a lot to keep it safe for hundred of years (or
| more).
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Safe from what? What do you think will happen to the nuclear
| waste?
| taf2 wrote:
| Pretty sure the big risk is leaking into the water table.
| See: http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2015/ph241/khalaf2/
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| For example it could get dispersed an irradiate people,
| maybe to an immediately fatal degree or contribute to
| cancer etc. That's the main problem. Seeping into the
| ground water, worst case getting blown up in an explosion.
| The latter may also happen intentionally, as a dirty bomb.
| Because betting big on SMRs means they are going to be
| everywhere...
|
| You normally don't hear about these kind of problems
| because of course the people responsible don't let the
| simple and stupid stuff happen. But this has to be
| prevented forever for all practical purposes, for all waste
| ever generated.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I think ground water contamination is not an issue for a
| properly chosen site. I think the terrorist issue is an
| overblown boogeyman. More reactors would give bad actors
| more access to nuclear material though but I don't think
| that's an issue with the end of life storage part of the
| chain.
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| Erm, "I think the terrorist issue is an overblown
| boogeyman" is cold comfort. ISIS already comtemplated
| building dirty bombs in Mossul.
|
| And so far most of the nuclear waste has been stored
| right were it was used. SMRs are supposed to be
| everywhere. So nuclear waste will be everywhere, ready to
| get stolen, or shot at or blown up.
| robonerd wrote:
| By the numbers, _any_ kind of terrorism is an overblown
| boogeyman. Nuclear terrorism particularly so, and
| _doubly_ overblown is nuclear terrorism that isn 't state
| sponsored.
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| You'd hope so. But in the case of ISIS you could argue
| that it was a near-state actor. And we just can't predict
| the trajectory of state actors. Pakistan is troublesome.
| So is Iran, even with its "civilian" nuclear program.
| North-Korea. Those are just examples from the present.
| There are lots of other countries that would need nuclear
| power but whom I wouldn't count on surviving the next few
| decades. And many are too corrupt to regulate a nuclear
| industry well enough.
|
| Just hand-waving away future risks like that does sound
| intellectually dishonest and careless to me.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Terrorists have contemplated everything. Pulling it off
| is different.
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| They didn't know that they had Cobalt-60 on the college
| campus, which would have made a superb dirty bomb. They
| did get their hands on some Uranium, though.
|
| So it is a relatively close call. To close to hand-wave
| away the possibility of terrorists or failed states
| abusing nuclear material.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Actually there are small leaks, releases and spills at these
| places quite regularly. Just because it doesn't make front page
| news doesn't mean it's a solution.
|
| Plus now you have to maintain and staff those facilities for
| millennia...
| ethagknight wrote:
| This works until that nuclear station is decommissioned. 40 to
| 80 years is a typical design lifespan. Then what?
|
| The answer is "kick the can down the road and hope we find a
| better solution." That's not a bad plan, but we do need a
| better plan so that local governments are not stuck holding the
| bag for power companies that are long gone, having left their
| nuclear waste behind. I would like to avoid an "EPA nuclear
| super fund" To deal with messes after the fact like we have
| from industries in the last century.
|
| EDIT- it does sort of seem like treating nuclear waste the same
| as other industrial waste and sending it off to approved Class
| III landfills should be acceptable. So then, kicking the can
| down the road leads to the public being forced to accept
| nuclear waste at a Class III landfill.
| mgfist wrote:
| What's wrong with that? There are many things that would go
| to shit without active maintenance. I'd also prefer to be
| around in 40-80 years, which is harder if we're burning
| fossil fuels than clean energy like nuclear.
| ethagknight wrote:
| What's wrong with not having a long term plan for a
| relatively dangerous and expensive-to-handle hot potato?
| I'm only arguing that while there are plenty of good plans
| out there that the public are not yet willing to accept, if
| we don't begin to implement better long-term strategies,
| local governments will be the ones left dealing with
| radioactive materials abandoned by their operators Long
| after the revenue generator has been decommissioned.
| NeutronStar wrote:
| espadrine wrote:
| We dug hot rocks out of the ground, used them to heat
| water for a while, and now we're storing them and asking
| where to put them next.
|
| It's not like the rocks were not dangerous before we dug
| them out.
| _ph_ wrote:
| Nuclear waste is many magnitudes worse than natural
| uranium. It is not only way more concentrated, but
| contains a lot of radioactive isotopes, uranium doesn't
| contain, as a consequence of the nuclear reactions.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| Less concentrated, perhaps, but natural uranium in rocks
| is full of fission products.
| robonerd wrote:
| > _but natural uranium in rocks is full of fission
| products._
|
| They're dangerous too. Natural Uranium decay creates
| radon gas, which seeps up through the ground an
| accumulates inside buildings. That radon then decays, and
| the products of that cause lung cancers that kill more
| than 20 thousand people in America every year, and
| contribute to 2% of cancer deaths in Europe.
|
| The problem is concentrated in a few areas: https://en.wi
| kipedia.org/wiki/Radium_and_radon_in_the_enviro...
|
| I grew up in one of those areas; in public school they
| taught us about the importance of radon testing and
| making sure your house, basement particularly, is well
| ventilated.
|
| An frightening anecdote from wikipedia:
|
| > _The danger of radon exposure in dwellings received
| more widespread public awareness after 1984, as a result
| of a case of Stanley Watras, an employee at the Limerick
| nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania. Mr. Watras set off
| the radiation alarms (see Geiger counter) on his way into
| work for two weeks straight while authorities searched
| for the source of the contamination. They were shocked to
| find that the source was astonishingly high levels of
| radon in his basement and it was not related to the
| nuclear plant. The risks associated with living in his
| house were estimated to be equivalent to smoking 135
| packs of cigarettes every day._
| espadrine wrote:
| The target should be the initial risk.
|
| One day, we can dilute it; for now, it seems fair to
| store it in case it comes in handy later.
| _ph_ wrote:
| Well, lacking any reasonable technology to process it, we
| have to store the wast. The problem is: safe storage is
| difficult to realize and extremely expensive. It needs to
| be kept safe for many millenia.
| mlyle wrote:
| > Well, lacking any reasonable technology to process it,
| we have to store the wast.
|
| Wellll.. we have really good technology to reprocess the
| worst and reuse it as fuel. The problem is, we don't do
| it, because this is a whole lot like what you'd do to
| make nuclear weapons and there are proliferation and
| security concerns.
|
| > It needs to be kept safe for many millenia.
|
| The vast majority of the risk disappears in a few hundred
| years. Very radioactive also means "decaying quickly".
|
| Compare to other industrial byproducts that stay
| equivalently nasty for tens of thousands of years and
| more readily dissolve in groundwater.
| _ph_ wrote:
| No, we don't have a "good technology". Yes, breeder
| reactors exist, but e.g. France has given up the
| technology, the UK has one? The problem is, that this
| technology is no where economic and breeder reactors are
| really challenging technology.
| mlyle wrote:
| I didn't say anything about breeder reactors.
|
| In many jurisdictions, PUREX is routinely used to extract
| remaining fuel and chemically segregate the worst
| daughter products. A lot of the actinides can be burnt up
| in a normal reactor, like 239Pu.
|
| Of course, in the long term, transmutation of LLFPs into
| precious metals is interesting, as is burning up _more_
| of the waste in e.g. fast reactors.
| concordDance wrote:
| How safe do you actually need it to be? Glass it and
| chuck it onto the abyssal plain. Watch as the ecological
| damage is less than a millionth (literally, not
| hyperbolicly) as damaging as ocean acidification caused
| by CO2.
|
| It really isn't hard, just unintuitive thanks to movies
| like Godzilla and shouted against by environmentalists
| who refuse to quantify the damage.
| ethagknight wrote:
| You left out a few steps of the enrichment process that
| made those hot rocks into very very hot rods. No need to
| be disingenuous about it.
| mlyle wrote:
| Enrichment doesn't make them into very very hot rods.
| U-235 is boring and can be safely handled by hand. Use of
| them in a reactor is what makes them very very hot.
| DoughnutHole wrote:
| The rocks weren't dangerous until we centrifuged out the
| most radioactive fraction of them and concentrated them
| together in nuclear fuel rods.
|
| There's a reason you don't see very many natural
| concentrations of dangerous fission products in the wild.
| Symmetry wrote:
| Even when centrifuged and concentrated uranium isn't
| particularly dangerous compared to other heavy metals.
| it's when you add moderators and activate the reactor
| that you start to transmute the uranium into really
| dangerous stuff.
|
| There have been a few naturally occurring nuclear
| reactors but that was when the Earth was younger and the
| natural level of uranium enrichment was different.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_rea
| cto...
| mlyle wrote:
| > EDIT- it does sort of seem like treating nuclear waste the
| same as other industrial waste and sending it off to approved
| Class III landfills should be acceptable. So then, kicking
| the can down the road leads to the public being forced to
| accept nuclear waste at a Class III landfill.
|
| I think you mean a class I landfill/disposal wells, unless
| there's another scale I don't know.
|
| Something like a Yucca Mountain isn't perfect, but it's
| better than that.
|
| The nice thing about nuclear waste is the hazard disappears
| over time.
|
| The worst of it is spent fuel. Spent fuel does needs cooling
| for 40+ years. Then after 300-400 years, the vast majority of
| the hazard is gone. Yes, it does take tens of thousands of
| years to completely vanish to baseline.
|
| Compare to various kinds of nasty toxic-to-life things that
| more readily dissolve in groundwater and are equivalently
| nasty for tens of thousands of years.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| To me, nuclear fission has to be part of any serious plan
| to reduce carbon emissions. Yes, there is some low hanging
| fruit that solar/wind generation can address, and we should
| do that, but we need electricity at night, and when the
| wind isn't blowing, and when the seasonal position of the
| sun isn't advantageous. Battery storage technology is not
| anywhere close to the scale that would be needed. As
| transportation is shifting away from fossil fuels, and
| world population expands, demand for electricity will only
| increase. Fusion energy may be something that becomes
| practical in another hundred years time, but it's not
| close.
|
| Yes, nuclear waste is dangerous and needs careful, well
| planned management. OK. Are we serious about addressing
| carbon emissions, or not? If we are, it's something we have
| to figure out. It's not beyond our capability, and any
| risks need to be considered in light of the alternative of
| continuing to dump carbon into the atmosphere.
| cinntaile wrote:
| > The nice thing about nuclear waste is the hazard
| disappears over time.
|
| The radiation hazard disappears over time but how do you
| know this stuff isn't poisonous for example?
| mlyle wrote:
| > The radiation hazard disappears over time but how do
| you know this stuff isn't poisonous for example?
|
| Oh, it is -- it's mostly heavy metals. But:
|
| - We're not going to stop using heavy metals.
|
| - We produce a lot less of it than other heavy metals--
| so we're talking about a tiny portion of this hazard.
|
| - We can reasonably expect it'll be a lot better disposed
| than what we typically do with heavy metals.
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| Also sometimes local governments disappear or change their
| "nature" significantly. Or people start shooting big guns and
| missiles in the vicinity of reactors or storage facilities.
|
| ISIS in Mossul contemplated building dirty bombs, for
| example.
| MagnumOpus wrote:
| And sometimes people shoot guns and missiles at hydro dams
| to make them fail and kill tens of thousands of people. For
| both of these there needs to be cautious assessment of the
| amount of risks that can be mitigated:
|
| - nuclear reactor containment domes, like hydro dams, are
| built to withstand a few bombs or the impact of a fighter
| jet, or maybe even a tsunami or once-a-millenium major
| quake
|
| - neither of the two are built to withstand nuclear weapons
| or continued bunker busters - that's the job of the
| military...
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| Dams often aren't built for power generation, but to
| better control the river. Energy generation is only a
| side benefit. Also: A burst dam has predictable and
| limited consequences. There's still no final assessment
| for the cost of the Fukushima cleanup or when it will be
| finished or what they are even gonna do with all the
| radioactive earth and such.
|
| No, apparently not all reactors are built that sturdily.
| Certainly the proposed SMRs and micro reactors have no
| such ambitions. Fukushima was built to withstand Tsunamis
| and earth quakes. The topic of "impossible accidents"
| actually happening makes the public a little uneasy about
| predictions by pro-nuclear salespeople.
|
| The whole argument about dams vs nuclear plants is
| pointless.
| tiku wrote:
| I still don't get why we can't use the waste, it gives off heat
| and radiation, so why can't we turn that into electricity? Is it
| not potable enough? What is the problem?
| _ph_ wrote:
| By far, not enough heat and radiation. With some luck you could
| drive the lights around the storage depots.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| low efficiency and high cost.
| ratdragon wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveling_wave_reactor is
| supposed to be the solution.
|
| A company called TerraPower is planning to build a test reactor
| soon.
| tlb wrote:
| Most waste doesn't give off very much heat unless you get
| enough of it close together to get a chain reaction going. A
| lump of stuff radioactive enough to kill you in minutes barely
| produces enough heat to get warm. So you have to get a chain
| reaction going if you want to drive a steam turbine with it.
|
| But if you get it a little too close together, it goes boom. So
| for all the reasons that nuclear reactors are expensive, a
| waste heat generator would be larger and at least as complex.
| diamondlovesyou wrote:
| > But if you get it a little too close together, it goes
| boom.
|
| It won't go boom. One of the difficulties (of many) of the
| Manhattan project was that it was _really really_ difficult
| to get fissile material together _fast enough_ to cause a
| significant explosion. Those conditions are impossible in
| reactors. What does happen is that gaseous hydrogen is
| generated and that subsequently explodes.
| Victerius wrote:
| Better some nuclear waste than more greenhouse gases.
|
| Having an advanced civilization means we're going to exploit the
| environment and generate waste products. It doesn't mean we can't
| exploit the environment sustainably or let our waste products
| harm the environment, but it does mean that a choice has to be
| made. We have almost 8 billion humans to house, clothe, and feed.
| Windmills aren't going to cut it. Unless you want us to return to
| a hunter-gatherer lifestyle.
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| False choice. And hardly anyone is buying this argument.
| elsonrodriguez wrote:
| Seems like a fair argument. What are the other options? Every
| counterargument I come across is either trying to solve
| today's problems with tomorrow's technology or pays no regard
| to preserving or improving current quality of life.
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| Safe, affordable and scaleable nuclear power is much more
| "tomorrow's technology" than renewable energy. The waste
| storage problem has not been solved. SMRs have issues and
| are still under development. Building plants usually takes
| decades. Specialized labor is in short supply. Nobody wants
| a reactor in their neighborhood. Putting reactors were
| governments could evaporate or are already riddled with
| corruption is ... unwise.
|
| Renewable energy is actually more on track to solve the
| carbon emissions problem than nuclear energy.
| elsonrodriguez wrote:
| > Renewable energy is actually more on track to solve the
| carbon emissions problem than nuclear energy.
|
| "On track to solve" sounds like a forward looking
| statement, which goes back to my issue of people
| insisting on solving today's problem with tomorrow's
| technology. You simply can't put shovel in the ground
| today and build out a green solution to power manhattan,
| but you can start constructing a nuclear reactor with a
| proven design.
| ratdragon wrote:
| I think this argument has been here for millennia. Move forward
| or back to the roots... In this case I look forward, but thanks
| to some really good PR (and possibly well paid) it seems
| natural-gas backed renewables are winning at the moment.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| I'm serious when I say we should dump it all into a pit in the
| middle of Antarctica. Why can't we do this?
| namlem wrote:
| Antarctica is protected by various international treaties. Plus
| it's not necessary, there are plenty of good places to store
| nuclear waste. Political opposition is the real problem. Yucca
| mountain should never have been scrapped.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Kinda seems like we should revisit Yucca Mountain, and just
| raise the financial incentives until the NIMBYs are drowned
| out.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| You don't want North Korea to send a boat to Antarctica and
| grab a bunch of enriched uranium.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| If NK and other evil civilizations out-live our navies, I say
| they're welcome to whatever they can haul.
| tsol wrote:
| They don't have to outlive us, they just have to wait until
| our navy is occupied with a different engagement. Why open
| the world up to such a risk?
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| Waste is pretty much not going to be enriched uranium, by
| definition. No one would be dumping enriched uranium in the
| first place... it's expensive, yo.
|
| Low-enriched uranium (suitable for burning in standard power
| reactors) is 3-5% U-235
|
| Highly-enriched uranium (suitable for building bombs) is >=
| 20% U-235.
|
| Spent fuel is typically < 1% U-235.
| _ph_ wrote:
| We could... but is it a good idea?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Easier to just dump it at the bottom of the ocean. There aren't
| any significant technical problems to this, just political
| ones.
| throw827474737 wrote:
| because this location is so accessible and not already melting
| fast enough?!
| nickbauman wrote:
| Our nuclear storage problem will not change whether or not we
| build more nuclear power plants or shutter them. The problem will
| remain "forever" regardless.
|
| So I am for new nuclear power projects because we will need
| generations of people that can steward the waste regardless. And
| it's important to keep the ability and technical expertise with
| these materials for centuries. If the industry is abandoned the
| risk of a mishandling the waste will increase every year.
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| This isn't going to go over well with the crowd here, I predict.
| sklargh wrote:
| I wonder what would occur if a climate-change driven wildfire
| reached a dry cask waste storage site (probably nothing tbh). The
| reasonable possibility of this represents the ultimate irony of
| the anti-nuke movement.
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| The pro-nuke fanboys want to establish climate change as the
| only alternative to nuclear power.
|
| It's a false choice. Nuclear power has proven so unwieldy and
| hard to scale that renewable energy is going to be the faster
| solution, even if it is not fast enough.
|
| And with renewable energy, the technology might advance faster
| than anticipated. With nuclear energy, the risk might turn out
| more catastrophic than anticipated.
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| Nothing. They are designed to survive fire among many other
| contingencies. People who moan and groan about dry cask storage
| generally have no idea what they are talking about.
| _ph_ wrote:
| If the containmaint fails, it means widespread contamination.
| This is basically the reason, Chernobyl was so bad: the
| graphite in the nuclear core caught fire and the fire launched
| a lot of radioactive material high into the air. So beyond the
| impact on the immediate region around the reactor, there were
| nuclear clouds moving across Europe. In consequence, a lot of
| forests in Bavaria are still contaminated. Even today, one
| needs to be a bit carefull eating mushrooms and especially wild
| boar (who ate a lot of mushrooms...) from the local forests.
|
| Also, that was the reason everyone was so thrilled by the news
| that Russian troups camped and lit fires in the contaminated
| forests around the reactor, both endangering themselves and
| spreading more radioactivity. Of course there is much less
| material involved than with the original accident, but still
| one wants to avoid any of this.
| clarionbell wrote:
| I find it interesting that just when SMRs are getting a bit, and
| just a bit in a grand scheme of things, of traction, the old
| nuclear waster argument is revived.
|
| Weren't the real reasons why we can't use nuclear power the long
| time needed to finish a plant and unreasonable economics?
| dane-pgp wrote:
| To be fair, the time needed to build the necessary production
| lines and then hundreds of SMRs is even less certain than the
| time needed for building Large Old-fashioned Reactors (which
| can take 3x longer than planned[0]), and the economics are
| similarly unproven.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plan...
| hrgiger wrote:
| Few years ago I asked ESA via email the possibility of sending
| waste to space via micro satellites, i.e. to the sun, they didnt
| answer probably question was too stupid, maybe someone here
| knowledgeable can throw 2 cents about why its not good solution?
| hollasch wrote:
| Everything on Earth is currently moving at about 30km per
| second (over 100,000 km/h). So first you need to boost it out
| of the Earth's gravity well, then you need to decelerate it to
| near zero from 30km/s. It's easier to send things to other
| planets than to the sun.
| gravypod wrote:
| I'm not experienced in this but if there was a launch failure
| isn't that basically a dirty bomb?
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| Not if it's built correctly. The problem is that would be
| weight-prohibitive (vs. putting a small nuclear
| thermoelectric generator into a very tough housing, which has
| been done for years).
| hrgiger wrote:
| yes, I can take that as an answer:)
| vihren wrote:
| That's the issue exactly. Many things can go wrong if you
| place a lot of radioactive material on top of liquid hydrogen
| and liquid oxygen tanks.
| danpalmer wrote:
| There are a few reasons why this is a bad idea:
|
| 1) Launch failure could scatter nuclear waste over a large area
|
| 2) It takes a LOT of delta-V to fire something into the sun. It
| took the world's most powerful rocket to put the Parker Solar
| Probe even close to the sun and that was only 700kg.
|
| 3) If it doesn't get to the sun it could easily return to Earth
| accidentally.
| Symmetry wrote:
| 2) It's actually a lot easier to speed something up enough to
| eject it from the solar system than it is to slow it down
| enough to let it fall into the Sun. the first is only 18 km/s
| but the later is 30 and with the tyranny of the rocket
| equation every bit of delta-v is harder than the last.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Orbits are very non-intuitive until you've had a chance to
| play around with them, KSP did wonders for my understanding
| of orbits. Lots of people make the mistake that once you're
| in orbit you can just freely move in 3D to wherever you
| want a perception not helped by the number of times movies
| show it working that way.
| cwkoss wrote:
| For anyone curious in gaining a more intuitive understanding
| of this good answer, I highly recommend playing a few hours
| of Kerbal Space Program. Hitting the sun is both hard and
| expensive: things in orbit want to stay in orbit, so it takes
| a lot of energy to change orbits. (And you're likely to have
| a few rockets explode within the atmosphere as you attempt)
| renarl wrote:
| The first thing that comes to mind is the risk of wide-area
| contamination if a rocket explodes.
| 5436436347 wrote:
| 1. There's extra danger every time nuclear material is launched
| on a satellite, be it for a thermal generator like on the
| Curiosity rover, or some failed tests the USA did on Pacific
| islands in the 60s as part of Operation Fishbowl that resulted
| in a large amount of waste spread downwind. 2. No satellites
| can actually reach the sun - to do so, anything launched from
| Eart would need to cancel the forward velocity to force its
| orbit to "fall" into the Sun. This is such a high number that
| it'd be cost prohibitive for the amount of fuel and size of
| launch vehicle required.
| orangepurple wrote:
| Ever heard of a gravitational slingshot?
|
| We aren't exploding the nuclear waste in the form of a bomb
| when we launch it via satellite. It could also just fall into
| the ocean in case of a failed launch, where it probably won't
| be a problem.
| tomp wrote:
| Because rocket launches are politically problematic as is.
|
| That's why the US launches from Cape Canaveral (avoids all
| land), and Russia launches from Baikonur in Kazakhstan (avoids
| Chinese airspace).
|
| Now imagine not only launching _rockets_ , but _nuclear
| rockets_. _"Hello Mr Putin, yeah the rocket we've launched, it
| only contains nuclear waste, not nuclear weapons, we promise!"_
| baybal2 wrote:
| petre wrote:
| Previous discussion:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31595699
| throw0101a wrote:
| Meanwhile, "The energy in nuclear waste could power the U.S. for
| 100 years, but the technology was never commercialized":
|
| > _There is enough energy in the nuclear waste in the United
| States to power the entire country for 100 years, and doing so
| could help solve the thorny and politically fraught problem of
| managing spent nuclear waste._
|
| > _That's according to Jess C. Gehin, an associate laboratory
| director at Idaho National Laboratory, one of the government's
| premier energy research labs._
|
| * https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/02/nuclear-waste-us-could-power...
| _ph_ wrote:
| Yes. Fast breeders are not new. But they are even more
| difficult than plain nuclear reactors. France built some, but
| gave up on the technology.
| pmyteh wrote:
| Yeah. The UK tried too, with a prototype reactor at Dounreay.
| We had all kinds of operational problems and gave up when it
| became apparent that the falling level of new nuclear
| installations meant that we weren't going to be short of
| uranium as a primary fuel. The economics, without a fuel
| shortage, were awful.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| >But it was never economical enough to develop at scale.
|
| Come on, please read things before citing them...
| Symmetry wrote:
| It's really hard to evaluate risks when people talk about
| "nuclear waste". Spent fuel rods are ferociously dangerous and
| their disposal as nuclear waste needs to be treated with utter
| seriousness. But "nuclear waste" also includes material less
| radioactive that granite which we only treat differently than
| other industrial waste because electricity providers on cost plus
| contracts teamed up with environmentalists to lobby for absurd
| rules around how nuclear plants are run.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| > Spent fuel rods are ferociously dangerous
|
| No, they're not. While they're definitely not good for you
| they're not anything special when it comes to toxic materials.
| You're just unaware of all the other equally poisonous stuff
| humanity deals in at "industrial scales", most of which doesn't
| get safer by ignoring it.
|
| At least we can detect radiation with simple equipment.
| Detecting most other types of contamination with some type of
| molecule that's no good for organic life even at low doses is
| far more involved. Until people start keeling over you
| generally have no idea whether there's bad stuff in your dirt
| or water.
|
| The factories that make all sorts of things that make your
| modern life possible necessarily handle some stuff that's
| really, really, nasty in the concentrations in which they
| handle it.
| wumpus wrote:
| > they're not anything special when it comes to toxic
| materials
|
| You have to actively cool them for 5 years before putting
| them in a dry cask.
|
| If you fail to keep them cool, they will release a lot of bad
| stuff.
|
| One big potential disaster which was narrowly averted at
| Fukashima Daiichi was related to a leaking spent rod cooling
| pool.
| implements wrote:
| > No, they're not.
|
| Yes, they are - an unshielded used fuel road will give anyone
| within feet of it a lethal dose of ionising radiation
| literally in seconds. They're over 10,000 rem/h, and exposure
| to 100+ causes acute radiation sickness and death.
| chrischen wrote:
| By that logic my oven, or gas stove, is ferociously
| dangerous--especially if I stick my head in it while it's
| turned on.
| Kon5ole wrote:
| But you will be aware that you are being hurt. And only
| you will be hurt.
|
| A single fuel rod can kill millions without them even
| knowing why they are dying.
|
| Your daughter will not die from playing with a burning
| stove, she will burn her fingers and stop. In Brazil, a
| little girl ate an egg with radioactive dust on it. [0]
|
| Your stove will not slowly kill people living on the
| other side of the wall.[Happened in russia].
|
| The water supply will not be ruined if you drop your
| stove into it. If someone puts your oven in a truck full
| of fertilizer and detonates it in a large city, it will
| not kill millions of people and make a large area
| unsuitable for human life for thousands of years.
|
| So fuel rods really are ferociously dangerous, in a way
| that very little else on this earth is.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident
| chrischen wrote:
| Radiation is easily detectable, compared to say, carbon
| pollution and its effect on health. If it were actually
| released into the environment, _we 'd know about it_.
| Kon5ole wrote:
| No that's not true, radiation is not easily detectable it
| requires advanced instruments. Humans can't detect it at
| all. Instantly lethal doses will cause you to vomit, but
| you're a already a walking corpse by then.
|
| Carbon pollution you can smell and feel long before it's
| lethal.
| chrischen wrote:
| What type of radiation does spent fuel emit that isn't
| easily detectable? Geiger counters are pretty cheap:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geiger_counter
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| The same farcical logic can be applied to any substance
| in a hazardous concentration. PFAS, heavy metals, the
| list is long. Sure they won't instantly fry you but it's
| basically guaranteed terminal illness if you have enough
| expose.
|
| As we've seen from the industrial hazards of the 20th
| century, once people start dropping dead the living start
| asking questions. It's impossible to really kill that
| many people with a spill of any type. Poison a watershed,
| render land uninhabitable, sure, but killing millions is
| childish fantasy.
| kvdveer wrote:
| If your oven can give you a fatal dose of anything in
| seconds, I recommend replacing it ASAP.
|
| Sticking your hand in a food-grade oven will not give you
| burns. When you touch the insides, you will receive
| second degree burns, but those burns are not going to be
| fatal. On top of that, the oven can be turned off, and is
| completely safe to handle in that state. and the oven
| will need to be state.
|
| Comparing your oven with spent fuel rods is ridiculous
| (assuming you are referring to a food-grade oven operated
| on gas or electricity).
| chrischen wrote:
| Yea it can definitely give me fatal burns, especially if
| I remove the shielding thing on the front of it.
| RobertRoberts wrote:
| Only when it's turned on, or hot for a short time after
| it's been turned off.
|
| Neither apply to nuclear waste.
| chrischen wrote:
| Yes but my point is that the nuclear waste exhibits those
| characteristics of danger only when it's unsheathed.
| dtagames wrote:
| Plutonium-239 [0] is the byproduct of the fission process in
| Uranium-235 [1], of which the fuel pellets are composed.
|
| The modern, large scale nuclear reactor was designed for
| making plutonium, not energy [2].
|
| PU-239 has a half life (meaning it will be emit half as many
| radioactive particles per second) of 24,000 years. PU-239 is
| a gamma emitter [3], meaning its radioactive particles can
| slice through DNA, causing chromosomal and heritable damage.
|
| So... it's not quite accurate to say they're "not dangerous."
| BTW, there is no way to "dilute" radiation, it doesn't work
| that way. Radiation comes from subatomic particles, not the
| matter they're contained in. Moving the matter (container)
| around doesn't "dilute" the particles, it only exposes more
| people to them!
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium-239
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium-235
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_ray
| fsh wrote:
| The graphite piles in Hanford have literally nothing in
| common with PWRs or BWRs that are used for power
| generation.
| dtagames wrote:
| The only part they have in common is the idea of
| fissioning uranium, which results in plutonium. I was
| merely pointing out that, even at the origin, plutonium
| creation and contamination was a big problem. The Hanford
| Site still isn't cleaned up today!
| _Microft wrote:
| German perspective: this material is measured for radioactivity
| and released from being subject to nuclear material rules if
| the levels are low enough. It's then treated like any other
| waste material. The German Wikipedia article on that [0] states
| that 97% of the material of a nuclear reactor are eventually
| cleared like this.
|
| [0](de) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freimessen
| tlb wrote:
| The cool thing about nuclear waste is that you can measure
| how radioactive it is with a handheld device. Very convenient
| compared to biohazard waste.
| dv_dt wrote:
| I think this is only partially true. Yes you can measure
| it, but you also do not want even low radioactivity dust
| inhaled into ones body for example.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| This is a separate fact that does not negate the one
| above. You can measure it and if it can or can't make
| harmful dust you know it empirically
| dv_dt wrote:
| The fact is separate but it's just one hint that maybe it
| really isn't a simple matter to store and contain nuclear
| waste for long periods of time.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| But they didn't claim it was simple to store or contain
| waste either(not that I agree with your conclusion .
| vorpalhex wrote:
| yes but "bury very low radiation waste in a big pit with
| a no digging sign" seems very sensible compared to
| longterm spent fuel rod storage.
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| To a pretty good first approximation, _everything_ is
| radioactive to some degree.
|
| Mother's milk. "Organic" vegetables. Air. Any random rock you
| pick up. Glacier water that's been frozen for 100,000 years.
| All slightly radioactive.
|
| "Everything that COULD be radioactive" is not a useful
| metric.
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| There is a difference between mother's milk and
| concrete/steel that has been activated by neutrons in a
| reactor core.
| nevinera wrote:
| Sure is! And he's pointing out that understanding what
| that _difference is_ is pretty important. "everything
| that COULD be radioactive or contaminated" is a worthless
| and meaningless phrase, and in fact represents a
| _worthless and meaningless idea_.
|
| Describing what constitutes a meaningful and worrisome
| amount of radiation is fundamentally critical to the
| topic, and pretending there's some kind of 'just to be
| safe' level of assumption we can make is silly.
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| There are pretty good regulations around what could be
| radioactive or contaminated in relation to a reactor
| core. Mother's milk is certainly not mentioned.
|
| I'm writing Hacker News comments. I don't care to specify
| with verbose and overly anal details exactly what is
| included and excluded in such statements. Luckily,
| scientists and regulators don't agree with your opinion
| how ridiculous the risks are. If stuff comes close to a
| reactor, it has to be tested for contamination. And
| overall, there is a lot more waste which needs special
| disposal, than just the fuel.
| gh02t wrote:
| Fortunately radiation detectors are very sensitive and it's
| easy to determine if something is significantly contaminated
| or not... heck with gamma spectroscopy you can even tell
| exactly what the contamination is and get an idea of how much
| is there (with some caveats-- e.g. gamma sources aren't the
| only type of radiation you have to look out for but detecting
| other types is not much harder). More specialized systems can
| even localize exactly where contamination is within a
| container if you wanna get fancy.
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| Yes, and those methods result in exactly the problem the
| nuclear industry faces: Nuclear waste, without a final
| storage solution.
| gh02t wrote:
| Low-level waste storage is not really a problem and it
| can be disposed of safely, plus screening for
| contamination _reduces_ waste volumes. Waste is
| designated by _potential_ for contamination and the
| designation is applied automatically based on a variety
| of factors, so screening can (and in practice, does) only
| reduce.
|
| But you're not wrong about the final storage issue for
| the really spicy stuff. It's a frustrating problem that
| has been ignored, at least in the US, mostly for
| politically complex reasons that are difficult to
| resolve. There are a variety of technical solutions that
| have largely been ignored while we continue to sit on it;
| you can legitimately debate the safety and viability of
| those solutions but they do at least exist and are
| probably better than what we do presently.
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| Those solutions don't "exist". Not in the sense of
| practical, proven and implemented technology...
|
| You can say those solutions exist in a similar way warp
| engines exist.
| [deleted]
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