[theshrike79]

How much money and time would it take to research battery technology that could put coal and nuclear plants out of business?

We know how to build nuclear NOW. Let's do it. We can turn all the plants of the second someone finds out to store terawatts of power produced by renewable means in a cost-effective manner that doesn't rely on some geological anomalies.

[v_lisivka]

I bet, we will develop that technology in much much shorter time than we need to store nuclear waste.

[jki275]

There’s little need to store nuclear waste. Reprocess it and use the remaining fuel.

[pfdietz]

This does nothing to the fission products. And reprocessing only lets you destroy the actinides if you burn them in a fast reactor. Fast reactors have, so far, been even more expensive than thermal reactors.

[jki275]

That's only because the US stopped all R&D on them under Carter.

Again, the only reason we're not all nuclear today is because of politics.

[pfdietz]

Fast reactors have been disappointing all over the world. The harder neutron spectrum is more damaging to materials, and liquid sodium has serious drawbacks. Fabrication of fuel elements with mixed actinides is also difficult. Fast reactors also require a higher density of fuel (due to the lower fission cross section at high neutron energy), which presents safety issues.

[jki275]

The French reprocess all their fuel as I understand it. We could do the same, we choose not to.

That's probably the wrong choice.