this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2024
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This is an interesting documentary about the topic: Into eternity. The documentary has a depressing and ephemeral feeling, but I find it extremely amusing that we are taking steps to protect people that will live thousands of years from now.
Taking decisions like "nuclear or not nuclear", "how to dispose the waste", etc. is hard, but doing so ignoring the people that invest their whole life studying the topics is just dumb.
I do think we should protect coming generations from our nuclear waste and I do not think this is ridiculous at all. In the same way we should leave our children with a world with a livable climate we should not leave them with a heritage of tons of highly radioactive material stored on the surface because we have no long term storage facility.
Completely agree with you on the first part. My point is that:
I would like to add that I did not try to call you dumb, I'm sorry if that's the way it ended up sounding like. The dumb part was directed to the people in charge of the decisions, not you.
Yes I agree. It is possible to build long term storage facilities and there is one operating in Finland for example. And the finnish people in the region actually welcomed the facility. But the situation is very much different in Germany. Whenever plans for a such a facility became public massive protests ensued and the projects became politically unfeasable.
Of course we should listen to the experts in the field, but even they had no success in convincing the populace of a possible site. I'm convinced that we need such a facility and that it should be a scientific emotionless process. But this is currently not possible in Germany. And as long as there is no such consensus and we don't have such a facility, I think it's irresponsible to produce more nuclear waste and leave it on the surface for the coming generations to take care of.
The German plan for the "Energiewende" (Energy Transition) is to phase out coal until 2038 and become 100% climate neutral by 2045. The current plan is to do that using a mix of renewables and hydrogen power plants which will substitute the current coal power plants.
https://www.bmwk.de/Redaktion/DE/Dossier/energiewende.html
Google translate: https://www-bmwk-de.translate.goog/Redaktion/DE/Dossier/energiewende.html?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp
Why would you bury fuel that you've only harvested 1% of the energy from? If you're not gonna build reprocessing facilities, sell it to France or Russia.
I don't think exporting waste to different countries were only 10% of the fuel is recycled is a responsible way to manage nuclear waste.
Also there are nuclear proliferation concerns when reprocessing nuclear fuel. I for one would not want to supply Russia with possible raw materials for nuclear weapons.
Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing
As for reprocessing, storage is in competition with newly mined fuel. As mining becomes more expensive or nuclear demand increases, there's greater impetus to recycle more fuel. Conversely, if there's fewer plants consuming the fuel or more mines opening, recycling projects die.
The more plants close, the less waste you're gonna get reprocessed.
Russia already has 40,000 nukes, they're not a proliferation risk.
That's true.
In response to your mining argument:
"The known uranium resources represent a higher level of assured resources than is normal for most minerals. Further exploration and higher prices will certainly, on the basis of present geological knowledge, yield further resources as present ones are used up. There was very little uranium exploration between 1985 and 2005, so the significant increase in exploration effort that we are now seeing could readily double the known economic resources. On the basis of analogies with other metal minerals, a doubling of price from price levels in 2007 could be expected to create about a tenfold increase in measured resources, over time."
So there's enough cheap enough utanium to go around and no need for the industry to recycle spent fuel.
That is where the supply and demand equation is right now. When the supply was lower before the 90s, the equation favored recycling, and if we build more plants to drive up price, it will favor it again.
How much nuclear waste do you think is being created?
There was a research out of the US that said the US could run entirely off nuclear for the next century using just nuclear waste that already exists.
If you read that and were like "EXACTLY. It's so much waste" just know that waste is virtually all from nuclear weapons.
Sorry but I do not understand what you are trying to say there. Can you elaborate please?
The waste already exists. Might as well use it.
We currently have no real way to recycle spent fuel. Only a small percentage of nuclear waste can be recycled and it's very expensive to do so, that's why there are only two countries currently recycling fuel: France and Russia. Sellafield I'm the UK has been closed in the Fukushima aftermath. In France only 10% of nuclear fuel is recycled material using the purex process, which also produces weapons-grade plutonium and therefore also raises different concerns.
https://www.goodenergycollective.org/policy/faq-recycling-nuclear-waste
Nuclear weapons are not spent fuel.
No but during nuclear waste recycling weapons-grade material can be produced, that's why it's a nuclear proliferation concern.
Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing
These are literal nuclear weapons and waste from refining to make them. It literally sits in a parking lot in Tennessee
I don't think that's right. The page clearly states "Nuclear reprocessing is the chemical separation of fission products and actinides from spent nuclear fuel."
There's both, there was a plant in Savanah Ga that was supposed to process nuclear weapons into fuel, but after they got the weapons, they stalled on building the plant.
There were other plans to build reprocessing facilities for old fuel in the US (or breeder reactors that can use them as is) that all died off after the fall of the USSR opened up kazakstan, tanking the price of Uranium.
I'm glad you followed what I was trying to say. I'm not sure why they're so hard stuck on the spent fuel and not the perfectly viable fuel that is considered waste because it's too enriched.
You're still missing the point but I'm not going to try to convince you that plutonium isn't a spent fuel if you believe that.
But yes please try to convince me and the readers. That's how discussion work.
"3% of the mass consists of fission products of 235U and 239Pu (also indirect products in the decay chain); these are considered radioactive waste or may be separated further for various industrial and medical uses."
Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spent_nuclear_fuel