From that blog post, some comments on nuclear waste -
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Anthony says:
Sara: As I understand it, apart from being ‘scary’ to the unthinking, what is really problematic with nuclear is the waste issue (eg where to put it).Is that addressed?
Not by this technology. However, people have always been scared of nuclear waste far out of proportion to its actual deadliness, vastly more people have been killed by smog than by nuclear waste.
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noahp says:
Yep. Vitrify into cylinders. They’ll be going fairly fast by the time they reach the bottom in the subduction zone and will bury themselves in the sediment awaiting recycling thru the mantle. Neato!
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IcePilot says:
The answer to nuclear waste is simple, yet politically difficult:
1. Breeder reactors that transform “spent” fuel (after reprocessing) to create more fuel. Saves lots of $$.
2. Reprocessing and storing in the facility that taxpayers have already spent billions for in Nevada.
Part of the problem is that the wrong question is asked — Can you provide 99.999% certainty that the stored nuclear waste will be safe for 100,000 years? A more realistic time frame, say 100 years, being the proper approach, certainties spanning millennia being non-existent.
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cboldt says:
– Waste that remains dangerous for 125K years is too problematic to be down-scalable. –
If it’s the radiation you’re talking about, isotopes with a half life of thousands of years aren’t a powerful emitter of radiation. The emit a little bit of particles and energy each day, for thousands of years. The “hot/energetic” stuff has a short half-life.
If you are concerned about the chemical hazard (that is, this stuff is poison), note that non-radioactive isotopes have the same chemical properties as the radioactive ones.
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Dan Weber says:
Many communities don’t want nuclear power, but many communities do. They already have it and haven’t seen any reason to run away from it.
Burying waste is burying money, at least in America’s fuel cycle. Just store it in a warehouse designed to last for a hundred years, such that we can get it back out when we decide that we are willing to do reprocessing or burn it in something like an Integral Fast Reactor.
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