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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

#161

Post by nonethewiser »

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…

Above ground? Terrorism/war seems like a problem. Imagine if Russia was motivated to invade Finland or something.

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

#163

Post by jrflowers »

panick21_ wrote: post #147
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 !”

Again, this is just delusional. Nuclear waste can not be society ending. Did you read to much Greenpeace propaganda or maybe was it some cheap action movie? And I'm not against spending money. I'm pro-spending money. I want them to spend money on next generation nuclear technology that actually uses the 'waste' to produce energy and other things, like medical isotopes and nuclear batteries. This waste that would be p…

> Again, this is just delusional. Nuclear waste can not be society ending.

What does this sentence mean?

>If your society isn't capable managing nuclear waste then nobody will care anymore anyway.

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

#164

Post by loeg »

penteract wrote: post #50
chrisbrandow wrote: post #31

“ The digital emissions from this story are an estimated 1.2g to 3.6g CO2 per page view” I’m a little surprised that the emissions are so high per page view. I’ve never looked at co2 emission calculations for web pages before, but this seems a little high.

It's including the amount used by your machine while viewing the page, so if you're using a desktop with a 500W PSU (and you're using all 500W, which is probably an overestimate) and you spend a minute reading the article, that's 30kJ, which is roughly 1/2 a gram of methane[1], so roughly a gram of CO2 (more if it's coal, more if you take into account the fact that generators don't capture all the energy as electrici…

It's insane to estimate 500W average load for reading a webpage.

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

#165

Post by pyuser583 »

pavlov wrote: post #117
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…

> “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…

The right way to plan centuries ahead is to trust future generations.

We don’t beed to treat the grownups on 2200 like children.

They will probably have better science than we do, and will have had centuries of experience.

If there’s a benefit to the nuclear waste, let them have it.

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

#166

Post by mongol »

tedunangst wrote: post #99
mongol wrote: post #75

Since 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.

So a few copper thieves get radiation poisoning? How bad is that, really? It seems like all nuclear waste doomerism is based on the same assumption that at some point in the future all of humanity is reduced to 100 individuals and all of them decide to dig into the same mine shaft.

It is not an argument to not do it. But it is an argument that it is not only geological forces the storage must contend with.

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

#167

Post by mongol »

credit_guy wrote: post #88
mongol wrote: post #75

Since 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?

It may not be hard at all. Knowledge may be preserved because civilization has preserved it in books and/or memory.

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

#168

Post by Moldoteck »

roughly wrote: post #81

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 t…

We know how to use it... France already had(has) a reprocessing plant and according to wiki about 32k tonnes were processed during operation

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

#169

Post by Moldoteck »

mongol wrote: post #75

Since 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.

You are looking too far, we just need more reprocessing plants like France have so we could recycle the waste and reuse about 95% of material back as fuel

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

#170

Post by Krasnol »

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…

This sheer ignorance around nuclear energy is the main reason I'm happy it already peaked in the Western World and is replaced by safe and clean renewable energies.

I mean, you don't even have to look far these days. It's Finland. You know...the country just around the corner of our old and new arch enemy, Russia. And you want to create an additional target for sabotage?

Also, you're talking about wasting money? Reprocessing is hilariously expensive, and they don't even have a facility. No country in the Western World will ever build one again because it's not worth it. You're still producing a bit less radioactive material in this expensive process, which has to be stored. The end product is more expensive than new fuel. It's a completely useless circle. Especially for Finland, which has a hole dug up already.

The whole nuclear energy project is a waste of money. Especially taxpayer money. The technology is overdue. New ones are here already. They are cheaper, faster to build, and they are actually getting better all the time. Unlike nuclear, which Finland had to shut down recently because it just wasn't worth the money to keep it running...

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