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Magmaster12 t1_iu72ia6 wrote

Reply to comment by EphraimJenkins in Poland picks U.S. offer for its first nuclear power plant -PM by SunfireGaren

We have a big issue about where to store nuclear waste, getting it transported to the Nevada dessert incredibly expensive.

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fredo3579 t1_iu7d06k wrote

This is an absolute non issue.

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Rumpullpus t1_iu7sb9r wrote

Well not exactly. It is an issue, but it's purely a political one. No one wants a waste site in their state.

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fredo3579 t1_iu80wb5 wrote

We don't actually need (almost) any waste sites. We have the technology to transform and reuse a large amount of the "waste" as fuel in breeder reactors, or bombard it in particle accelerators to turn it into much less problematic elements. Lastly, we have been storing the waste onsite for decades already, there is no reason we couldn't do it for "eternity".

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3_14159td t1_iu7gjfx wrote

The US doesn't do that... Yucca mountain, the best solution, was killed decades ago by nimbys and greedy politicians. There isn't any commercial nuclear waste being stored in NV.

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porncrank t1_iu7tozw wrote

Yucca mountain was cancelled, but I toured a nuclear waste storage facility at the Nevada Atomic Test Site. It's this place:

https://www.nnss.gov/pages/programs/RWM/wastemanagement.html

I'm not sure what qualifies as "low level nuclear waste" that is stored there.

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3_14159td t1_iu7uog6 wrote

As far as I've had answered, that's mostly ancillary articles from the various experiments that took place on the site. Think like Curie's radioactive notebooks and such. There's still a number of "abandoned" areas on the NNSS awaiting evaluation and cleanup.

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Rjlv6 t1_iu7egmw wrote

Idk at least we're able to capture all the waste vs fossil fuels where we just release it into the atmosphere. I think there's some ok arguments for reprocessing the fuel and getting something like 70% of the uranium back. Switching to thorium also would help as it has a much shorter half life and doesn't have the same saftey/proliferation concerns. (Hasnt been done because traditional thorium fuel rods are supposadly very expensive to make) also storing it onsite kinda seems like a viable solution. As I understand it not all of the waste is fule either alot of it is just gloves and equipment used by operators that they store out of an abundance of caution

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Doggydog123579 t1_iu7jqag wrote

By volume, its a few cubic feet a year per reactor. 97% of nuclear waste isn't the spent fuel, its low to mid radioactive things, like worn out components of a reactor, or clothing worn inside the reactor building.

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Commercial_Soft6833 t1_iu75cwv wrote

SpaceX and launch it into the sun.

Probably not the cheapest option, but better than storing it in the desert hoping nothing leaks.

Of course, if something were to happen during a launch.. that would be pretty fucking disastrous too lol.

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Magmaster12 t1_iu75nrk wrote

This was the first question I asked when brought in my high school chemistry class a decade ago. Apparently there is too high of risk for a dirty bomb going off.

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lollypatrolly t1_iu7sm28 wrote

Also doesn't make any sense in terms of economy or energy expenditure.

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Xveers t1_iu7kjzo wrote

The delta-v for a solar intercept is also really high. You're better off launching on an interstellar course; that's actually cheaper

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lollypatrolly t1_iu7sfym wrote

Storing it in the desert (or on site) is many orders of magnitude safer than shooting it into space. Not to mention the massive energy requirements for launching items into the sun. In fact it takes far more energy to reach the sun than it takes to escape the solar system entirely.

The simple fact here is that storage of nuclear waste is not a practical or safety issue at all, it's a political issue. If we can shut down the NIMBYS and irrational anti-nuclear activists this issue will be solved forever.

We don't need innovative solutions on handling the waste (that's already a solved issue), we need innovate solutions on getting political support for it.

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porncrank t1_iu7ui5a wrote

People are way overly scared of nuclear waste. Though not as concentrated, radioactive materials exists in nature already. There are natural beaches you can sit on that will get a geiger counter going. If nuclear waste is stored reasonably it is not particularly dangerous. Especially when compared to all the other waste we dump into our air, water. I'd much rather have nuclear waste stored in my state than have the equivalent amount of coal smoke dumped into the air.

It's like how people are worried about windmills killing birds, even though glass buildings, cars, and house cats kill more and nobody ever cared about that.

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