Nuclear Waste Disposal
The cluster centers on debates about whether nuclear waste from power plants is a solvable technical problem, a political issue, or an insurmountable challenge, with discussions on reprocessing, breeder reactors, geologic storage like Onkalo or Yucca Mountain, and comparisons to other wastes.
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why cant we dispose our nuclear waste in this way?
Because it’s not a problem:> https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-...It’s the best waste we have due to being solid and extremely compact and it can be recycled by 95%:> https:/&#x
Nuclear energy sounds great to me except for the disposal of nuclear waste. I cannot seem to find any convincing references that we can do it safely over the long-term. Can someone help me with that?
Disposing of nuclear waste is not trivial.
You don't need to store nuclear waste, since you can burn it up in some fuel cycles. Essentially all the problems of nuclear power on the ground are political issues -- entrenched interests, weapons proliferation, and so forth -- not technological ones like safer reactors and nuclear waste.
It's not paranoia. There are legitimate concerns about storing nuclear waste. It's not perfect and it is expensive. Wouldn't it be better to be able to skip past these problems onto something without those drawbacks?
This might interest you :https://old.reddit.com/r/NuclearPower/comments/hh6mm6/but_wh...
Nuclear waste is already an effectively solved problem. Breeder reactors can recycle waste, since roughly 98% of the energy remains in the depleted fuel from light water reactors. This also reduces the volume of waste by a factor of 20X. Long term storage sites already exist for the remainder, e.g. Yucca Mountain.
Regarding nuclear waste: first off, the amount of nuclear waste generated today is drastically less than in the past. During WWII and the Cold War era the methods for processing nukes was extremely crude, resulting in an embarrassing amount of waste, which we are still dealing with today. Today, the amount of waste is small fraction of that. Second, the waste problem has been solved by vitrification. Vitrification takes nuclear waste (in liquid or solid form) and blends it with molten glass in a
Are you confusing the products of a meltdown and spent nuclear fuel? Spent nuclear fuel can be handled very safely, and moved relatively easily. The problem is just that everyone says “not in my backyard” when it comes to long term storage. Nuclear is, in terms of waste and logistics, a solved problem. In truth, off-site storage may not even be necessary, as reactors can many times handle storage on site.