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Finland's plan to bury spent nuclear fuel for 100k years

bbc.com

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Re: Finland's plan to bury spent nuclear fuel for 100k years

#151

Post by j16sdiz »

oatmeal1 wrote: post #144
pavlov wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “Yes maybe ever couple 100 years you might have to move it, who cares. If your society isn't capable managing nuclear waste then nobody will care anymore anyway.” This isn’t the right way to plan centuries ahead. You can’t just say “well if the dummies can’t do this one more thing we imposed on them, they deserve what they get.” With generational risks we should aim to reduce them now as much as possible and take t…

What do the 'dummies' have to do exactly? Just not touch containers marked as "nuclear waste?" And can you imagine the good outcomes that can be produced with 1 billion Euros today? Why spend money on something that will maybe prevent a problem centuries from now when we have such great available investments we can make today?

Have thief/wild life/earthquakes/floods/some rare natural disasters, and forget to go back and check if the container is intact.

Re: Finland's plan to bury spent nuclear fuel for 100k years

#152

Post by j16sdiz »

HPsquared wrote: post #134
nevi-me wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the extreme, the have been politicians and other leaders who came in and decided to undo decisions of their predecessors for petty reasons. A memorable example being the US' 45th President. If this high cost is in the long run cheaper than relying on 10+ generations to do the right thing, it's probably a worthwhile cost.

Generations 1 through 9 don't really need to do anything. Generation 10 will have a bit of work to do, but much less work than it takes to deal with it now. The really radioactive components of the waste (the fission products) decay away after a few hundred years.

by the time we get to generation 10....all documents are lost, technology is obsoleted, no living engineer know how this works.

Re: Finland's plan to bury spent nuclear fuel for 100k years

#153

Post by panick21_ »

chmod775 wrote: post #145
panick21_ wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually it is the right way to plan centuries ahead. Taking a reasonable look at the risk and making an assessment. The actual risk of nuclear waste is incredibly small. You point would make sense if it was a nuclear weapon that could just randomly go off or something like that. However with civilian nuclear waste you really have to come up with pretty unlikely stuff for it to ever harm anybody. And you a tinfoil ha…

> However with civilian nuclear waste you really have to come up with pretty unlikely stuff for it to ever harm anybody. Germany will be glad to hear that. They can continue using Asse II instead of needlessly spending billions clearing it out.

Germany did exactly the stupid thing they shouldn't have done. Instead of easily managing the waste above ground they threw it into a mine. You are literally making my point for me.

Burring low level nuclear waste in Asse II would have been fine. Managing the high level nuclear waste above ground would have been preferable. Germany would have saved a lot of money and trouble if they had simply managed their high level nuclear waste above ground.

PS: I'm sick of the argument that 'somebody did something stupid with nuclear waste 50 years ago therefore it disproves everything'. The reality is in terms of safety there were 1000s of things happening in the 70s that damaged far more people then some nuclear waste management. Even totally unattended Asse II death count would likely be 0 or very close to 0.

In all of nuclear history a almost vanishingly small amount of people have died from civilian nuclear waste, maybe its actually 0. And more people will actually die from building these big hole to dump nuclear waste in then would actually have died if this was was managed above ground.

Re: Finland's plan to bury spent nuclear fuel for 100k years

#154

Post by cyberax »

chmod775 wrote: post #145
panick21_ wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually it is the right way to plan centuries ahead. Taking a reasonable look at the risk and making an assessment. The actual risk of nuclear waste is incredibly small. You point would make sense if it was a nuclear weapon that could just randomly go off or something like that. However with civilian nuclear waste you really have to come up with pretty unlikely stuff for it to ever harm anybody. And you a tinfoil ha…

> However with civilian nuclear waste you really have to come up with pretty unlikely stuff for it to ever harm anybody. Germany will be glad to hear that. They can continue using Asse II instead of needlessly spending billions clearing it out.

> Just walk away, turn off the pumps, it'll be fine.

Pretty much, yeah. "Contamination" there is at trace levels, some places on Earth have naturally more radioactive water.

Re: Finland's plan to bury spent nuclear fuel for 100k years

#155

Post by panick21_ »

j16sdiz wrote: post #151
oatmeal1 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do the 'dummies' have to do exactly? Just not touch containers marked as "nuclear waste?" And can you imagine the good outcomes that can be produced with 1 billion Euros today? Why spend money on something that will maybe prevent a problem centuries from now when we have such great available investments we can make today?

Have thief/wild life/earthquakes/floods/some rare natural disasters, and forget to go back and check if the container is intact.

A thief is mostly just scifi nonsense.

Most Earthquakes would damage the casks. Unless its right on the fault line this at best causes some damages that would have to be repaired. This is incredibly unlikely to ever happen in most of the world. Also burring the casks is more likely to cause issues in case of a major unexpected earth quake. This is one of those maybe ever few 100 years somebody has to move the casks.

Floods are pretty predictable in where they happen, don't put the nuclear waste there. And if somebody put them there in error, somebody at some point might have to slightly move them. If countries figure out to not put something away from a flood prawn area, why do you think they can build a major geologically save location that can hold up for 100k years?

> some rare natural disasters

I guess if a vulcano happens and damages cask people might have bigger issues. And again, simply not really relevant for the waste majority of places.

Once you are at maybe some unknown super disaster might happen then the whole logic with the deep geostorage also doesn't hold up anymore.

Finding a location above ground that is reasonably safe for 100 years is far, far, far, far, far easier and cheaper then building a geological storage that can last 100k years.

> forget to go back and check if the container is intact

Ok, then some light radiation might leak in a area that is likely far away from human population. Maybe not fantastic but also not some major problem that is worth spending billions of $ fixing.

And again, if a government can't manage to get a guy every year to do a quick check, then your country has far bigger problems. Also this monitoring can be done by a private person with a Geiger counter even if a country has collapse into anarchy, and people would avoid that location.

Re: Finland's plan to bury spent nuclear fuel for 100k years

#156

Post by panick21_ »

Nathanba wrote: post #140
jrflowers wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I just don't like this, a huge amount of money spent for nothing. This fuel can be managed just fine above ground. Yes maybe ever couple 100 years you might have to move it, who cares. If your society isn't capable managing nuclear waste then nobody will care anymore anyway. I love this sentiment. “Yeah nuclear mismanagement could be society-ending if done poorly, but avoiding it costs money !”

Yes, finally the politicians do something properly and immediately they get criticised for spending money.. on long term, sustainable solutions that will help generations to come.

I have not criticized them for spending money, but spending money inefficiently and on the wrong things.

What would actually help generations to come is innovating in terms of GenIV nuclear reactors that can reduce the total amount of waste. That could potentially reduce the global waste, rather then this solution that only works for Finland and has to be replicated many more times to actually solve the waste solution.

Burning up the waste and turning it into 300 year waste is the actual long term sustainable solution.

Re: Finland's plan to bury spent nuclear fuel for 100k years

#157

Post by panick21_ »

culopatin wrote: post #141
Manuel_D wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What, really, is the impact of a compromised nuclear casket in a remote, unpopulated area above ground? What is the impact buried just 100 feet deep in an unpopulated area? Someone would have to excavate the uranium and either spend loads of time around it or move it to a populated area. Water contamination from naturally occurring uranium is a bigger risk than nuclear waste (uranium, like lead, can cause heavy metal…

Thing is that maybe in 300 years someone wants to develop that land and the documents that say to not do that there are in an old version of .docx in an obsolete storage form buried under layers of bureaucracy. That’s how someone ends up living on the casket growing a massive thyroid. Same reason that makes us not write code that only the author can understand (when working in a team), we need to plan ahead in the sa…

Or somebody spends 100$ on a Geiger counter ...

Nuclear waste will not simply be lost. The only way it gets lost if society literally collapses.

And if that happens the small amount of nuclear waste is the least important problem anybody will have.

Re: Finland's plan to bury spent nuclear fuel for 100k years

#158

Post by cyberax »

culopatin wrote: post #141
Manuel_D wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What, really, is the impact of a compromised nuclear casket in a remote, unpopulated area above ground? What is the impact buried just 100 feet deep in an unpopulated area? Someone would have to excavate the uranium and either spend loads of time around it or move it to a populated area. Water contamination from naturally occurring uranium is a bigger risk than nuclear waste (uranium, like lead, can cause heavy metal…

Thing is that maybe in 300 years someone wants to develop that land and the documents that say to not do that there are in an old version of .docx in an obsolete storage form buried under layers of bureaucracy. That’s how someone ends up living on the casket growing a massive thyroid. Same reason that makes us not write code that only the author can understand (when working in a team), we need to plan ahead in the sa…

Options:

1. So you start digging and find huge concrete cylinders with clearly marked "radioactive" warning signs. Hilarity ensues, people sue each other, and cylinders get moved somewhere else.

2. You just build a house on the ground (without digging). Nothing bad happens.

3. Civilization collapses, nobody cares about the abandoned casks.

Re: Finland's plan to bury spent nuclear fuel for 100k years

#159

Post by panick21_ »

j16sdiz wrote: post #152
HPsquared wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generations 1 through 9 don't really need to do anything. Generation 10 will have a bit of work to do, but much less work than it takes to deal with it now. The really radioactive components of the waste (the fission products) decay away after a few hundred years.

by the time we get to generation 10....all documents are lost, technology is obsoleted, no living engineer know how this works.

And now you are proving my original argument. If society collapses to a point where engineers can't handle some well contained radioactive waste then you have far bigger problems then nuclear waste.

The idea that our primary worry should be that maybe in 300 years countries will be unable to handle this simple technical task that the US figured out in 1960s is bananas.

We are not talking about active nuclear weapons that detonate if you touch them wrong. We are talking about dry casks that might maybe start to leak a little in a few 100 years.

Even in the worst of bad cases you have to come up with quite a story to figure out how anybody actually dies from this, let alone many people.

Spending billions of $ now so in 300 years maybe somebody might be saved is laughable when we know that we can save people by putting up 100$ concrete railing for bike lanes right now. Let alone the 100s of other things that could be done with billions.

Re: Finland's plan to bury spent nuclear fuel for 100k years

#160

Post by cyberax »

jltsiren wrote: post #129
panick21_ wrote: post #101

I just don't like this, a huge amount of money spent for nothing. This fuel can be managed just fine above ground. Yes maybe ever couple 100 years you might have to move it, who cares. If your society isn't capable managing nuclear waste then nobody will care anymore anyway. Also, this is not 'waste' there are interesting and unique materials there that might be relevant in the next 100+ years. Not to mention that th…

Most of the costs are for managing the waste above ground. The overall cost of the project is estimated to be €5-6 billion, out of which construction is €1-2 billion. I believe the actual underground facility cost ~€1 billion, while the rest is for various above-ground processing facilities. There has been a lot of speculative bullshitting on what to do with nuclear waste since the Onkalo project started in the late…

Fusion reactors will produce enough fast neutrons to transmute the waste into something less long-lived.

This can be done with fast neutron fission reactors, albeit it's going to take a lot of time.

Meanwhile, just keeping it in dry casks aboveground is perfectly fine.

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