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This is definitely being taken into account. For a quick summary see: https://www.thenakedscientists.com/articles/questions/how-mu...
I really don't think north American nuclear waste costs can be estimated with any fixed ceiling to cost overruns, considering the expensive Fiascos that were WIPP and yucca mountain.
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Please note though that the "forever" timescale becomes harmless for all intents and purposes relatively quickly. So IMHO and I don't really know the cause, this conception we have of nuclear is a really uninformed one. See: https://www.quora.com/How-long-does-nuclear-fallout-last
Maybe it is uninformed, but the media certainly doesn't help in it's coverage of nuclear disasters. Speaking as someone with very little understanding of nuclear physics and energy, how it seems like nuclear power plants are amazing right up until they don't work (see Fukashima, 3 Mile Island, Chernobyl) or the fuel rods are spent. We still don't have long-term nuclear waste storage plans other than cordoning off cer…
The water keeps it from melting as the spent fuel becomes a little more inert each day (it transfers heat to the water, and as we know radioactive stuff has half lives). After a few years, we can move it to dry storage (incased by concrete and steel).
What many people is this thread don't realize is that nuclear is by far the cleanest form of energy for the environment. It has no intermittancy problems like Wind and Solar. The process of building nuclear is extremely clean compared to building wind turbines and solar panels which devastate the environment due to the rare metals needed and production process. Its also vastly friendlier for humans and animals. The n…
Photovoltaic cells can be made with thin film technologies based on rare elements such as gallium, indium, and tellurium. The vast majority are made with crystalline silicon wafers.
Wind turbines can be made with permanent magnet generators incorporating neodymium and dysprosium or terbium. The majority are made with electromagnets, which require no rare metals.
Nuclear, wind, and PV all have drastically lower full-lifecycle GHG emissions and deathprints per terawatt hour than any combustion-based electricity sources. It grieves me that so much "pro-nuclear" advocacy is just renewables-bashing -- and that so much "pro-renewable" advocacy is just nuclear-bashing. (Yes, I agree that nuclear really is safer and much cleaner than fossils.)
What many people is this thread don't realize is that nuclear is by far the cleanest form of energy for the environment. It has no intermittancy problems like Wind and Solar. The process of building nuclear is extremely clean compared to building wind turbines and solar panels which devastate the environment due to the rare metals needed and production process. Its also vastly friendlier for humans and animals. The n…
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Not really a catch-22: The chicken was supposedly declared safe before it laid those radioactive eggs. And if the designs and siting were subsequently found to be unsafe, why are those reactors re-certified as safe? The nuclear power industry has only itself to blame for costs and safety.
Because the identified issues have been rectified - but the fixes add to the complexity and you are always relying on a fix to make it safe - while newer designs(pebble bed reactors) are inherently safe.
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As I said, new technologies might change that assessment, but these technologies are not even on the horizon yet. The problem with nuclear waste, however, very much exists already. And there is no mention that these SMR create less nuclear waste or that they can't be turned into weapons grade material. Certainly even the fissile material in an SMR would be enough for a dirty bomb out of hell. Let alone the material y…
Again you are trying to broad brush the argument as the parent comment has already stated. How do we get better nuclear technology? we iterate on it. SMR are an iteration to solve flaws in the previous versions. A quick wiki search indicates that they are designed to create less waste because of their higher burn-up rates. So yes, technology is on the horizon. Consider changing your assessment. Nuclear waste? Some SM…
I don't care about iteration and the promise of eventually getting to something safer, if the intermediate result is accumulating more nuclear waste and poses serious security risks.
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As I said, new technologies might change that assessment, but these technologies are not even on the horizon yet. The problem with nuclear waste, however, very much exists already. And there is no mention that these SMR create less nuclear waste or that they can't be turned into weapons grade material. Certainly even the fissile material in an SMR would be enough for a dirty bomb out of hell. Let alone the material y…
The ammount of effort required to steal fissile material from multiple reactors, without anyone figuring it out long enough to detonate and being caught, just to make a dirty bomb ? With what estimated impact ?
Estimated impact varies on how much material is in an SMR and how easy it is to take out.
And a raid isn't even technically necessary if an SMR gets into the wrong hands in the first place.
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Nuclear accidents happen, yes... at power plants with designs which were outlawed on safety grounds 40 years ago. If you want to prevent nuclear accidents, you should be supporting attempts to build new reactors, because that's the fastest route to getting the old ones decommissioned.
Exactly. It's an almost catch-22 situation: old reactors are unsafe, so people protest building new ones, which would make the old ones obsolete and make the whole technology safer.
Again: Solve nuclear waste problem first, before creating ever more nuclear waste.
At least with the current technology there are too many downsides to nuclear power. The nuclear waste issue still hasn't been solved, and nuclear accidents do happen, apparently despite all the security measures. Small reactors, maybe even mobile, can only make this worse.
AFAIK nuclear has a better track record than fossil fuels or even hydro, as far as accidents go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents
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Yes, I actually prefer to keep the nuclear stuff in a limited number of places. That makes supervision a lot easier, and stealing nuclear material a lot harder. Much more, I prefer not adding to the nuclear waste we already don't know how to deal with. Fossil energy is preferable to nuclear, and the volatility of wind or solar energy is much less of a problem than people think. Especially with newer technologies to e…
"we already don't know how to deal with" Yes we do. We store it, until we can use it. And even if we can never use it, which is very unlikely, in the core of the earth is already much, much more radioactive material, so adding a tiny bit to that, is not a big problem "as people think". And as far as I know, there is a great deal of work to be done to upgrade the power grid, for 100% wind/solar. And much more needed s…
The radioactive earth core isn't in my backyard, luckily. With nuclear waste, however, it is often stored close to the reactors, with obvious problems, of which limited space isn't the only one.
Somehow a large number of scientists do believe that nuclear waste storage is a really tough problem, and I haven't yet heard from a reliable source that it isn't. Storage facilities have been leaking and collapsing all the time.