[benzofuran]

It's like the US doesn't already have a number of remote areas like Hanford, Oak Ridge, Idaho Falls, the Savannah River Site, Rocky Flats, etc. that are already set up (and somewhat contaminated already) for handling this sort of material and process. In reality it's a political nightmare, not a pollution one.

[Tepix]

That's the Russian approach. Just put it in a remote place. Problem solved.

[mimixco]

Hanford and Rocky Flats are two of the most polluted places on Earth. Hanford has polluted the Columbia River, a tragedy in itself.

Nuclear is like the insolent child who refuses to clean up his room. There isn't any cleanup, really. The waste keeps piling up (usually in something that looks like a swimming pool). It must be attended to by humans for decades or centuries. And the uranium cycle leaves its dirty underwear all over our planet.

There is nothing eco about nuclear.

[benzofuran]

Thus reprocessing - if Hanford's government contractors could get over the hump and get the vitrification plant online, it'd be a lot easier to clean up the waste that's interred in the solid dump and tank farms. And if we didn't have state governors screaming about "No atoms and radiation in my state!" and not allowing passage of waste through their state in properly designed containment and transfer casks, we'd be able to get that waste to a facility where it can be made safer.

The radiation plume under Hanford is not as terrible as certain sources make it to be, the same with the contamination of the river. The area around the reservation itself has led to a recovered and strong population of many endangered indigenous animals in the area as well.

Regarding Rocky Flats, again, not as terrible as many make it out to be. Once you factor in living at high elevation there's not a huge increase in overall exposure.

An important consideration that comes into this is that most of these were weapons production facilities (dealing with purifying and handling some of the nastiest material around).

The waste from properly designed and operated power reactors is a much cleaner and much easier to contain process. Condemning an entire avenue of clean energy (most of the fuel needs for a century+ which have already been extracted and refined) because the work done on the technology in the 40's-60's (when we were still figuring out how awful some of the waste is), is not conducive to progress.

Source: Field engineering on projects at Hanford, Rocky Flats, and Yucca Mountain

[Krasnol]

Not every nuclear waste producing country has so much space.

Actually most don't.

[gambiting]

I just don't get the problem, like at all. Dig a 5-6km deep shaft(we already have the technology for that depth, no issues), put the waste at the bottom. Keep drilling shafts until all waste is burried. That's far below the depth of any water sources, and unless you bury it near a tectonic fault, it's not making its way back through geological processes for eons. Like, can someone explain to me why we're not already doing that?

[dmurray]

The deepest mine in the world is 4km deep. There are only a dozen or so more than 2km deep. Going down 5-6km may be possible, but definitely not with "no issues".

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deepest_mines

[gambiting]

You don't need to drill tunnels for people to walk in - just a borehole wide enough to fit a cylinder filled with nuclear waste.

In fact, this very idea was already researched and test holes drilled - but of course was cancelled due to public opposition, even though we could get rid of our nuclear waste almost overnight using this method. Typical.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_borehole_disposal

[magicalhippo]

Just running the numbers here.

As per your Wikipedia article, current technology limits the borehole to 50 cm. That gets us 500 to 1000 m^3 worth of storage per borehole, assuming the lower 1km to 2km is used for storage.

From this[1] page, as far as I understand, on a global scale the current amount of nuclear waste in need of such storage is 482000 m^3. So roughly 500-1000 boreholes to store the current waste inventory.

Anyone got any ideas on how much it costs to drill a 5-6km 50cm hole?

[1]: http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fue...

[Krasnol]

It costs something around 1000€ for a 6m well. Without the paperwork.

But this is your usually drilling equipment for those depths.

[Krasnol]

I can't explain you that but just the fact that nobody is doing it might give you the idea that this is probably something you shouldn't do.

[gambiting]

As others have pointed out, most issues are political, not technical. There are already places which would be perfect(deep mine shafts surrounded by salt deposits, so they are literally impenetrable as salt is self-sealing) but the countries/states they are in object to keeping the waste as some sort of ideological issue.

What I want to know is whether there is a technical issue with what I am suggesting.

[Krasnol]

You just literally proposed to dig a 5-6m deep hole and assumed that would be enough...not even salt mines are enough. See Germany where there is suddenly groundwater seeking into a salt mine full of radioactive waste. A salt mine that was considered safe once. Now they are looking for years now to find a new safe spot and Germany stopped producing new waste. Still they have those problems. Tax payers are paying for this search. They'll also pay for the retrieval and they are paying for pumping out of the water.

There are many issues there obviously. This is not some easy thing you try to dig in there. It'll be there for a very long time.

[magicalhippo]

To be fair, he said 5-6 kilometers, and the Asse II mine is less than 800m deep.