
The race is on to develop new strategies for storing nuclear waste - alex_young
https://ensia.com/features/radioactive-nuclear-waste-disposal/
======
shaunrussell
Our nuclear reactors are essentially the beta product. There are alternative
reactor designs that create much less waste like LFTR
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reacto...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reactor))
and others like TWR that cab consume our existing spent fuel
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveling_wave_reactor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveling_wave_reactor)).

There are a lot of reasons we predominantly use solid fuel light water
reactors, most of them being the decades of sunk costs + commitment inertia
that was created by the government investment in the technology... because it
was good for the military (submarines, maybe bombs).

[https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/03/the-s...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/03/the-
search-for-a-better-safer-nuclear-power/72765/)

There are some companies trying to address this like Flibe Energy, who is
working on LFTR designs ([https://flibe-energy.com/](https://flibe-
energy.com/)) and Terrapower with TWR
([http://terrapower.com](http://terrapower.com)), of which Bill Gates is
Chairman of the board.

Nuclear could be great. We need massive investment in these alternative
technologies.

~~~
someguydave
Molten salt designs have somewhat unsolved waste and proliferation issues, but
you are correct in general.

~~~
pjc50
Isn't there also a corrosion issue, that hot salt tends to corrode normal
stainless steel? The usual Achilles heel of these things is welding issues.

It seems research is ongoing:
[http://www.electrochemsci.org/papers/vol13/130504891.pdf](http://www.electrochemsci.org/papers/vol13/130504891.pdf)

~~~
jabl
You think hot salt is bad? Now let's add 1/3 of the periodic table to the
salt.. But yeah, people are working on it. The Americans had something in the
60ies (hastalloy), the Chinese are working on it today. In the short term,
many o the MSR startups are planning to replace the reactor vessel every few
years to get around corrosion issues, as well as the graphite moderator going
bad.

------
reacharavindh
Nuclear power is almost always brought up as a low carbon alternative to
fossil fuels to power our civilization. Some even quote how cheap nuclear
power is compared to fossil fuel based power. But, those advocating for
nuclear power almost always discount the cost involved in dealing with this
radioactive trash. To put it in another way, by switching on nuclear power,
instead of handing out next generation a warmed/messed up planet with
dangerous levels of green house gases, we would be giving them a pile of
dangerous radioactive waste several miles under the ground. Not sure whether
it can be argued if it is really a better alternative.

Even if not supplying all of our energy from Wind and solar, it is crime of
our irresponsible generation to not invest in solar panels in sunny places
like Florida, Texas, Middle East, southern India, Southeast Asia etc. Use the
safe option first, and wait for nuclear option to mature until we get a better
grip on what to do with its dangerous trash.

Florida even actively prevents businesses from engaging in roof top solar
panels. If that is not a facepalm moment of stupidity, I don’t know what is.

~~~
roenxi
They talk about 'great stockpiles' then quote a figure of 22,000 m3 of high-
level waste. 22,000 m3 of material is a tiny volume. Speaking from a bulk
material moving perspective, that is maybe 12 hours work with a big excavator.

Speaking as a mining engineer, in an active mine site you'd need to take
special precautions to make sure a 22,000 m3 stockpile didn't get lost. If you
don't put it in a designated spot, you're not going to be able to find it
again. We aren't talking a big pile of dirt here.

At volumes that small, if someone irresponsibly dumped it in the middle of the
Sahara with a thick layer of rubble over the top it would be _unlikely_ to be
found and cause anyone any measurable harm.

Literally the only reason anyone cares is because the volumes are so small we
could reasonably achieve 0 net impact. You try achieving that with lead
mining, coal mining, rare earth mining for renewables, etc, etc. The volumes
of material involved would overwhelm any attempt. So people don't bother
talking about it. Only for nuclear fuel does it start to matter. We already
churn out larger volumes of nastier substances as part of our industrial
supply chain.

 _postscript_ the other good reason to talk about it the volumes are so small
that if it doesn't get attention the aforementioned oops-we-lost-it problem
will crop up. I mean, wow. 22 kcm of material. Going to need special markings
just to distinguish it from a roll in the turf.

~~~
antpls
Sure 22 000m3 isn't that big, but the rate could increase sharply (currently
new 34 000m3 of high and intermediate waste produced _per year_ according to
the article). The question is : should we invest and build 10 times more
nuclear reactors for future energy needs ?

Build 10 times more reactors in the world, multiply per 50 years of operation
and now you have _17 000 000 cube meters_ of high level waste.

Renewable energies introduced long-term thinking about impacts. The nuclear
waste story only tells us we cannot scale the current nuclear technology, but
we can still moderately use this tech for the next century to transition to
more renewable methods.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _Build 10 times more reactors in the world, multiply per 50 years of
> operation and now you have 17 000 000 cube meters of high level waste._

So now you have 17 000 10x10x10m cubes to stuff somewhere. Still very little,
and completely manageable. And that's assuming we'd build up old-school
nuclear reactors. If you allow for using the new reactor designs, a lot of
that would be reused as fuel.

~~~
fuzz4lyfe
"But energy from the sun man!"

At this point most of the arguments about nuclear power are philosophical in
nature. They watched the Simpsons with the three eyed fish and evil Mr. Burns
and took that as fact. It's the future, it's the way things will ultimately
have to go, and future generations will be mad at modern day environmentalists
holding up progress in the way that they are currently. Solar and wind is nice
but it does not provide consistent enough generation for our purposes. Nuclear
power is a drop in replacement for things that are much worse. Solar and wind
require a new grid and new devices across the board to even get started. You
want to wait a few decades for everyone to replace all of their appliances,
heating and cooling mechanisms and for society to shift to this new model or
do you want to make progress today?

One of the leading politicians of this generation once said "It's more
important to be morally right than factually correct". Anti-nuclear folks
really took that to heart.

------
DennisP
The article briefly mentions fast reactors, but I think dismisses them a
little too quickly. Waste from fast reactors would be short-lived.

Most of our waste is uranium, mainly U238 plus a little leftover U235. This is
barely radioactive.

There's also a fair amount of plutonium and other transuranics, made when
uranium and heavier atoms absorb a neutron without fissioning. This is the
really long-lived waste that needs to be stored for thousands of years.

About one percent of our waste is fission products, the smaller atoms left
after breaking apart uranium and plutonium. This is highly radioactive, but
only for a couple centuries.

Fast reactors can fission the transuranics, and both isotopes of uranium.
Their waste is almost entirely fission products. Encase them in glass, bury
them, and in three centuries it'll be back to the radioactivity of the
original uranium ore.

------
Ensorceled
This discussion always drives me crazy.

What would you rather have inherited from the Victoria Era:

1) complete ecological disaster in the form of a 5-degree average temperature
increase and 10 metre sea level increase; causing widespread food insecurity,
human displacement, and mass extinctions due to habitat loss

2) a modicum of nasty nuclear waste, some of which can be refined for
interesting isotopes

Also, we already leave a ludicrous amount of nasty industrial waste in the
form of mining tailings, plastics fill our oceans, we constantly create
electronic devices that can't be properly recycled and contain hazardous
materials. Nuclear waste isn't even close to the top of the list of hazardous
waste problems.

If nuclear power is one of the solutions to climate change, THE existential
threat to human survival, then hamstringing ourselves because of handwringing
about waste is just setting us up to continue to delay doing anything about
this impending threat.

~~~
pjc50
Well, from the 1950s we inherited a thin spread of radioisotopes contaminating
the entire atmosphere: [https://qz.com/1163140/us-nuclear-tests-killed-
american-civi...](https://qz.com/1163140/us-nuclear-tests-killed-american-
civilians-on-a-scale-comparable-to-hiroshima-and-nagasaki/)

The problem of nuclear waste management is fundamentally one of public trust.
People spent much of the 20th century going from "X is ubiquitous and
perfectly safe" to "actually X has been poisoning you and the biosphere for
decades". Cigarettes, leaded petrol, CFCs, pesticides, coal power, bisphenol
A, and so on. People who object to the "perfectly safe" waste plans do so
because they believe you are lying about the safety.

(Personally I believe it's now _too late_ for nuclear, it simply takes too
long to build individual reactors, and a big bang plan would involve building
thousands of them in parallel. Not to mention that the #8 and #10 global CO2
emitting countries are fundamentalist Islamic petro-states which aren't
trusted with nuclear material.)

There is also a complicated motte-and-bailey distinction between high-level
waste (spent fuel itself, etc.) and low-level. High-level waste can often be
reprocessed and is comparatively small volume. The low-level waste is
everything that's deemed too dangerous to landfill, and there's a _lot_ more
of it. From used rubber gloves to the entire volume of decomissioned reactors.

On the history of greens against nuclear reactors, mostly dating from the
weapons issue:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17774347](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17774347)
; excellent rant on the public trust issue:
[https://blog.danieldavies.com/2006/05/nukes-and-nukemen-
blai...](https://blog.danieldavies.com/2006/05/nukes-and-nukemen-blair-has-
lost-it.html) (rather prescient about Hinkley Point C, which is still not
built thirteen years later)

~~~
someguydave
Fallout from nuclear bomb testing has nothing to do with waste from nuclear
power plants - why would you confuse the two?

~~~
pjc50
One of the few things that Greenpeace and the US military agree on is that
civilian and military nuclear programs are very difficult to tell apart from
the outside. That's why everyone watches Iran so closely.

Opposition to nuclear weapons fed back through nuclear testing into opposing
the construction of the reactors themselves, because without the reactors
there is no weapons programme.

~~~
someguydave
The fact that nuclear reactors are used in one step of the long process of
manufacturing some nuclear bomb components does not give anyone license to
confuse nuclear bomb test fallout with nuclear reactor waste.

------
cjslep
To get our bachelor's degree in Nuclear Engineering at NCSU a bunch of us
looked at a continuous pyroprocess involving molten salt, molten cadmnium, EM
pumps, and electroplating. The idea is to plate out the Uranium -- and only
the uranium, satisfying nonproliferation concerns -- and precipitate out the
minor actinides and plutonium together for HLW long term storage, or a
different further recycling process.

This would close the loop and recycle uranium while still keeping the weapons
grade plutonium out of people's hands. It doesn't transmute so it wouldn't
solve the waste problem. It only solves the Uranium recycling problem.

The US Government is far more concerned about non-proliferation than it is
about waste. Hence the lack of political will in fixing the long-known uranium
recycling problem with methods like UREX/PUREX, which is not proliferation-
resistant.

Was really fun, the tech looked promising, the maintenance looks awful, and
the political will isn't there.

Edit to add: once we are able to recycle the Uranium, the theory is that the
rest of the HLW can be used in a different kind of reactor (not a light water
one) that would burn the waste as fuel, fully dealing with the waste problem.
So there's multiple degrees with which we could recycle spent nuclear fuel.

~~~
petschge
It is not just the political will that is lacking. The is no economic reason
to do it. The maintenance can not be done by humans and if -- after a lot of
investment -- you are able to develop robots that can do it, you get a better
ROI by becoming worlds leading robotics company and replace Kuka, ABB and Co.

------
jsmcgd
The best option for dealing with nuclear 'waste' is to use the use up the
energy contained within it.

Moltex Energy is one such proposal to do just that:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ju59gcdmdvI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ju59gcdmdvI)

------
caspper69
This might be a stupid suggestion/question, but maybe it'll become cheap
enough to just toss the spent fuel rods into space?

~~~
theBobBob
This option is brought up alot and while cost is probably one consideration I
think that the main problem is for when (not if) one of the launches has a
rapid unscheduled disassembly as they call it, and basically become becomes a
large dirty bomb.

~~~
bipson
Also, what happens to the stuff we toss into space? People still seem to make
the same mistake our ancestors did regarding tossing stuff into the ocean.

To be more precise: achieving a velocity high enough to e.g. detonate on the
surface of the sun (in particular carrying tons of nuclear waste) won't be
cheap for a long time. [1]

Stuff we "toss out there" would probably just keep floating in an uncontrolled
(in the long run) earth bound orbit and might come back at some point.

[1] [https://youtu.be/uNS6VKNXY6s](https://youtu.be/uNS6VKNXY6s)

~~~
TeMPOraL
Trying to toss radioactive waste into the Sun would be a ridiculous waste of
fuel. To do that, you have to cancel out Earth's orbital velocty; that's 30
km/s of ∆v (or execute some very clever gravity assists).

What you'd want to do is to shoot it out into an orbit around the Sun that's
slightly lower or higher than Earth's. The chance of it somehow returning to
Earth is so low that the Sun will go out before it happens.

Still, the whole concept is wasteful and dangerous anyway. For one, as others
mentioned, a launch failure would mean large-scale contamination on the
planet. Two, you can safely store this waste on Earth for many orders of
magnitude less money and work.

> _People still seem to make the same mistake our ancestors did regarding
> tossing stuff into the ocean._

“Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big
it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's,
but that's just peanuts to space.” Throwing something out into orbit around
the Sun isn't going to be a problem, like, _ever_.

------
gambiting
I feel like the solution is literally staring us in the face and we're not
seeing it:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_borehole_disposal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_borehole_disposal)

100% safe storage for literally all of our waste, forever. Why are we not
doing that? I can only assume that it's because the spent waste is still
"valuable" so it's worth keeping around in case someone figures out more and
more efficient ways of processing it to recover useful material from it.
Putting it 5km in the ground makes is completely unrecoverable by anyone.

~~~
raptorraver
There is one such site in Finland:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository)

~~~
gambiting
That's not quite the same - it's more like a mine than a borehole. The whole
idea of a borehole is that stuff sealed 5km under the surface isn't coming
back in any way, and is nearly impossible to recover unless you drill another
borehole in the same place. There is no known geological process that would
bring it back up naturally. The site you quoted is pretty deep(500m) but it's
not "stable and permanent for millennia" kind of deep.

------
tiku
Why can't we just use the waste to heat homes? Is there a magic ratio of
isolation that allows enough heat but not enough radiation to use at home?

~~~
gnode
This doesn't solve any part of the waste management problem; it only
frustrates safety for a small benefit. High-level nuclear waste generates
heat, but is not kept hot; it's stored in cool pools. Allowing it to reach a
high temperature and using it for district heating is not sensible.

------
bleaknet
reuse the energy, create mini nuclear power plant/reactor that can be sent
into space to mine bitcoin.

------
peter_retief
Make diamond batteries

~~~
peter_retief
[https://futurism.com/diamond-batteries-made-of-nuclear-
waste...](https://futurism.com/diamond-batteries-made-of-nuclear-waste-can-
generate-power-for-thousands-of-years)

------
blamestross
Make RTGs out of it! [https://xkcd.com/2115/](https://xkcd.com/2115/)

Even with all of these issues nuclear is the least deadly energy source! More
people fall off roofs putting it solar panels then have been effected by
nuclear disasters.

~~~
lizknope
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_ge...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator)

Most RTGs use 238Pu

Unlike the other three isotopes discussed in this section, 238Pu must be
specifically synthesized and is not abundant as a nuclear waste product.

At present only Russia has maintained consistent 238Pu production[dubious –
discuss], while in the US, no more than 50 g (1.8 oz) were produced in total
between 2013 and 2018.[15] The US agencies involved desire to begin the
production of the material at a rate of 300 to 400 grams (11 to 14 oz) per
year. If this plan is funded, the goal would be to set up automation and
scale-up processes in order to produce an average of 1.5 kg (3.3 lb) per year
by 2025.

~~~
08-15
The USSR manufactured a number of RTGs using Sr-90. Sr-90 is roughly as
energetic as Pu-238, but requires more shielding. It has the advantage that it
doesn't need to be manufactured, because it is one of the more abundant
fission products.

------
ZeroGravitas
I feel like support for nuclear energy is the acceptable face of climate
denial these days.

It's like states rights and racism. Who can be against states rights? That's
totally noble sounding. Yet quite a few people who took up that banner were
actually trying to achieve racist ends, and when forced to choose between
states rights and racism, would choose racism, exposing them to anyone paying
attention.

Similarly, it's a weird that nuclear (which is possibly the most state
supported energy source) gets so much support from libertarians[1], rather
than decentralised wind and solar with carbon taxes to internalize
externalities.

Of course if you genuinely believe in states rights, or nuclear power, you now
need some kind of introductory proviso to seperate yourself from the people
stealing your topic as cover for their own ends.

My litmus test is: do you strongly believe in nuclear only because you think
renewables are useless? If so, where did you get this information from? Second
hand fossil fuel propaganda probably.

[1] this gets meta for libertarians as I'd say the same thing has occured
there. Corporate fascists like a lot of the libertarian ideals and push them
hard, while ignoring/fighting the logically coherent principles that don't
suit them. Climate change denial being an obvious one were paychecks override
principle, when the libertarian idea of carbon fees is probably the single
best way to solve the problem.

~~~
TeMPOraL
What's there about climate denial in support for nuclear energy? Everyone I've
seen who push for nuclear, myself included, do so _because of_ climate change.

Supporting decentralized wind and solar is good too, but it's really
ridiculous how the discourse turned into nuclear _vs_ wind and solar, where it
should be about nuclear _and_ wind and solar vs fossil fuels. We're sitting on
a magical fuel of incredible energy density and zero carbon footprint,
suitable for use in base-load power generation - and we're not doing anything
with it, because it's too magical for people's taste.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
As pointed out in one of my other comments, it's not zero carbon, it's
slightly more carbon intensive than wind or solar (actually I misread that
graph, they're basically tied but all ahead of fossil fuels), both of which
are getting better on that scale as they expand.

So it's more expensive and it therefore does less to solve the problem. And
every discussion about it devolves into "aren't those silly hippies stupid
unlike us rational types, we'd have solved climate change already if the damn
hippies hadn't been so irrational" which seems like a great way to hijack
people's emotions to drive them towards bad decisions, and basically echos
climate change denial strategy.

If your argument for nuclear sound like something a Fox host would say then
that's a bad sign, right?

That's why I associate it with climate denial.

~~~
detritus
One obvious benefit of nuclear over wind & solar is that it provides a
baseload that doesn't require an as-yet unavailable mass storage solution.
This is a common concern on HN, so I'm simply regurgitating what people far
more knowledgable than I frequently point out.

\- ed

Actually, is storage included in the CO2 calculation when it comes to wind and
solar?

If we want to evolve a non-hydrocarbon based energy economy, we need to shift
industry and transport to electric too - how much wind and solar would THAT
require?

~~~
ZeroGravitas
"Baseload" is an amazing rebranding of nuclear's biggest weakness.

It's so expensive that it only makes sense if you run it full out, which means
it's terrible for anything but your minimum load.

I'm going to rebrand solar as really good for "peak load" and totally ignore
the bits it's less good at. Then when I have a conversation with a nuclear fan
I can just say "peak load" and walk away in triumph.

~~~
detritus
A problem here is that you seem to be viewing the equation as zero sum - as
Temporal above and a glance at my comment history might suggest, many nucular
proponents on HN are cognizant of potential drawbacks yet keen on the
distribution of the industry alongside wind and solar and other renewables.

Legacy III generation's nuclear's a worst case scenario, but still worthwhile
as a transition to full electric, never mind the developments in IV, V,
travelling wave or fusion beyond.

Frankly, the idea of using fission to somewhat stupidly boil water to drive
turbines seems a bit daft to me, but dafter still is the fear of pushing it
forward into better technologies.

\- ed

We're going to need a LOT of electrical energy in future. It's got to come
from somewhere.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Well, to a degree it is zero sum.

I think the answer is a portfolio (an almost infinitely complex one mediated
by markets with externalities internalized via carbon fees ideally) but each
part of that portfolio will exclude other tech that fills the same niche. One
type of insulation will be slightly better than another for a certain purpose

And I have no real philosophical objection to nuclear.

I just despair at people who use nuclear support as a shield for climate
change denial. A passive aggressive "well, we tried to save civilization but
you weren't grateful for the way we did it so we're just going to let humanity
die to spite you. But you can't blame us for _still_ voting for climate change
deniers even now because you don't like nuclear which is a perfect solution
with no drawbacks whatsoever. Ha, in your face hippie".

Which is where I came in, saying people vocally supporting nuclear often don't
seem to care about nuclear at all. Its just a rhetorical club to give them the
illusion of the moral high ground.

~~~
TeMPOraL
You and I must live in a different universes; in the one I inhabit, people
pushing for nuclear are the opposite of climate deniers.

I thought you might have a point when you said pro-nuclear discourse is _like_
climate denial - to quote, "seems like a great way to hijack people's emotions
to drive them towards bad decisions, and basically echos climate change denial
strategy". But here, you seem to actually believe that pro-nuclear is
positively correlated with climate change denialism, which is an absurd
proposition in the universe I come from.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
In the US, nuclear support is correlated with voting Republican, so yes I do
think that.

------
sunkenvicar
Fake solutions for an imagined problem. The unused uranium from a reactor fits
neatly into a few parking stalls. Security, transport, and storage of this
valuable resource are already solved. Let’s put this material to use!

------
nickik
Nuclear waste is not really waste. WE should not dispose of it at all. It is
literally ZERO problem to keep nuclear waste around easly accessable with no
danger for the next couple 100 years.

By then we should really have the technology to consume most of that waste.
The tiny rest of it can be stored, we know that this is geologically possilbe
and facilities have already been built in Finland.

This is really not a technology problem, but rather a political problem where
any progress towards a solution is systematically stopped. So that the 'you
can't manage the waste' argument can be used against the nuclear industry.

The US even has a huge pile of money already collected to handle disposle and
for decades US sientiests have found the best place to put that stuff. Guess
what, its not where the governmnet currently wants to store it. But they can't
move it to another place because of politics, and they can't actually store in
the place they have selected because politics has greated essentially
impossible properties that they need to insure.

This is a political problem, not a technical or financial one.

