Stewart Brand has an interesting take on this in Whole Earth Discipline (which is quite a read) - this is energy we don't know how to use yet. In 100 years, we'll be digging this stuff right up again, because there's energy in there. I'm not typically as utopian - techno or otherwise - as Brand, but I agree with him here - the nuclear industry is less than a century old, and we've already got a pretty good idea how to get enough energy from this fuel to not have a 100k year problem to begin with. Kicking the can down the road a couple decades might actually be the right thing to do here.
Finland's plan to bury spent nuclear fuel for 100k years
81–90 of 473 posts
Re: Finland's plan to bury spent nuclear fuel for 100k years
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
As Ostrich policy is ignoring the problem -- specifically not looking at the problem. Burying the Geiger counters would be an Ostrich policy
It is exactly that. We are putting it deep into the ground and ignoring the problem.
If it doesn’t cause any problems when it’s underground then that’s just called solving the problem
Re: Finland's plan to bury spent nuclear fuel for 100k years
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That list includes the US, which hasn't had commercial reprocessing in many decades. But it also includes many countries that reprocess currently. The US has not reprocessed fuel in many decades, and never on any significant scale, because the Carter Administration outlawed it based on mistaken concerns about proliferation, and it's been a political pariah ever since. It has nothing to do with any rational technica…
Pakistan and India do it for their nuclear weapons programs. You don't want to be making that argument. The UK, France, Japan, and Italy don't reprocess anymore (I'm not sure Italy ever did on any substantial scale). Carter stopped reprocessing by executive order, but Reagan quickly reversed that order. No reprocessing then occurred, because reprocessing made no economic sense. It turned out Carter's order isn't what…
> Carter's order isn't what killed reprocessing in the US; cold hard economics did.
No, "cold, hard economics" would say, if you are correct that it's not even cost effective to do any reprocessing now, that the spent fuel should be stored for 100 years or so and then reprocessed, when it's economically cost effective.
But US policy has been that spent fuel has to be stored in a facility that's good for 100,000 years. That makes no sense if the waste is going to be reprocessed 100 years from now. It makes sense only as part of a political scheme to kill nuclear power altogether. Which is exactly what it was, even if on paper reprocessing was "allowed" after the Reagan administration.
Re: Finland's plan to bury spent nuclear fuel for 100k years
#84Personally I'm rooting for the future where a fleet of falcon 9's launch escape velocity stage 2's that head straight for the sun. Underground is nice until you get radioactive groundwater. The time cost of 100k years of maintaining safety seems more than the financial cost of maintaining a F9 fleet and disposing of second stages.
"...it's surprisingly hard to actually go to the Sun: It takes 55 times more energy to go to the Sun than it does to go to Mars. Why is it so difficult? The answer lies in the same fact that keeps Earth from plunging into the Sun: Our planet is traveling very fast — about 67,000 miles per hour — almost entirely sideways relative to the Sun. The only way to get to the Sun is to cancel that sideways motion." https://ww…
I dunno about 55 times more...
Earth escape velocity is 11.2 km/s or 25,000 mph in your preferred units.
And you don't have to go backwards relative to earths orbit and cancel it out, you can maintain earths' solar orbit and degrade it.
You only need enough energy to reach L1 and since human time scales are irrelevant you can do that as efficiently as you like. After you reach slightly past L1, the sun will do the rest of the work.
At closest approach, Mars is 54 million km away. L1 is typically 1.5 million km away. Even ignoring the fact that human timescales are irrelevant, it is a significantly easier journey.
You are probably thinking of speeds required to orbitally maneuver near the sun, as we typically do with instruments...
A trip straight into the sun is substantially easier than mars.
Re: Finland's plan to bury spent nuclear fuel for 100k years
#85I'm excited that Onkalo will be coming onine soon, so we don't have to hear the myth that there's no solution for spent nuclear fuel anymore. The solution that enjoys a solid scientific consensus is the deep geologic repository. Another thing that is weird to me is that everyone says nuclear waste is hazardous for a uniquely long time, but it become less hazardous over time. Many non-radioactive materials, like arsen…
Arsenic and mercury came out of the ground, originally. It's not like we can make those elements from scratch. Diluting them and putting them back where we got them is probably fine. Nuclear waste is something new we are creating, but I'd rather have it deep underground in a geologically stable place, than sitting in casks on the surface.
Mining is not exactly a natural process. We can't dilute the toxic byproducts and putting them back where we got them, since that would require rebuilding the mountain. In cases of open mines, all that is left is a lake size hole where solid land once where.
What the mining industry do is to fence it up (including pools used for waste), put up a sign to warn people, and then let nature fill it up with water. The best we can hope for is that they did their research properly and made sure that it doesn't leak into the groundwater.
In the past there were people who tried diluting stuff like this by dumping it into the ocean, but that isn't the best idea.
Re: Finland's plan to bury spent nuclear fuel for 100k years
#86I'm excited that Onkalo will be coming onine soon, so we don't have to hear the myth that there's no solution for spent nuclear fuel anymore. The solution that enjoys a solid scientific consensus is the deep geologic repository. Another thing that is weird to me is that everyone says nuclear waste is hazardous for a uniquely long time, but it become less hazardous over time. Many non-radioactive materials, like arsen…
Burying things in the ground is not a solution. It's more an Ostrich policy.
Do you prefer venting it to the atmosphere? That's the alternative for producing substantial amounts of energy reliably.
Re: Finland's plan to bury spent nuclear fuel for 100k years
#87Stewart Brand has an interesting take on this in Whole Earth Discipline (which is quite a read) - this is energy we don't know how to use yet. In 100 years, we'll be digging this stuff right up again, because there's energy in there. I'm not typically as utopian - techno or otherwise - as Brand, but I agree with him here - the nuclear industry is less than a century old, and we've already got a pretty good idea how t…
Less common side of the argument a friend presented to me. We shouldn't use nuclear in mainstream use cases now because we don't harness enough of its power. We're basically depleting a future fuel supply before we even know how to use it properly. It has more value to us in the future when utilization is at higher %.
Personally not sure which side of the fence I sit on. It definitely has benefits now, but we also have capacity to make do with other shit. If we make do with other stuff will we forget about it and never get to that higher utilization point?
I found it an interesting point. Wouldn't be the first time humans have made something extinct/disappear/rare before the true value of the thing is understood.
Use now with low efficacy for mild gains. Save for future with bet on higher efficiency and increased gains.
Re: Finland's plan to bury spent nuclear fuel for 100k years
#88Since the fuel will be encased in copper, and copper is quite valuable, I see a future, some centuries or millenia from now, where people will try to steal it, without realizing the dangers associated. With bad side effects as consequence.
And how exactly will they know where to steal it from? Are they going to start digging random holes through bedrock just because they might hit treasure?
Re: Finland's plan to bury spent nuclear fuel for 100k years
#89Since the fuel will be encased in copper, and copper is quite valuable, I see a future, some centuries or millenia from now, where people will try to steal it, without realizing the dangers associated. With bad side effects as consequence.
Eh, assumes copper will be valuable in that time frame. Unknowable.
Re: Finland's plan to bury spent nuclear fuel for 100k years
#90Stewart Brand has an interesting take on this in Whole Earth Discipline (which is quite a read) - this is energy we don't know how to use yet. In 100 years, we'll be digging this stuff right up again, because there's energy in there. I'm not typically as utopian - techno or otherwise - as Brand, but I agree with him here - the nuclear industry is less than a century old, and we've already got a pretty good idea how t…
Less common side of the argument a friend presented to me. We shouldn't use nuclear in mainstream use cases now because we don't harness enough of its power. We're basically depleting a future fuel supply before we even know how to use it properly. It has more value to us in the future when utilization is at higher %. Personally not sure which side of the fence I sit on. It definitely has benefits now, but we also ha…
the problem that argument is that we learn how to increase efficiency as a result of using it and building a supply chain around that resource. Just look at gas engines. a modern gas engine uses a fraction of the fuel of a model T to transport more weight faster to their destinations. What you're suggestion would be akin to saying we should avoid the model T and wait till the prius is available. without a car industry, we wouldn't have ever gotten the R&D to have a prius in the first place.