[hvidgaard]

Let's put some numbers to the initiation of this. The entire fleet of reactors in France will after 50 year of operation have produced 5300m3 of high-level waste (the kind you need to store long term). That amounts to less than 400 boxes able to contain a Tesla Model S. 50 years of operation generating 300-400 TWh yearly.

I'm not saying it's not problematic, but it's minuscule compared to all forms of power. Even wind power have a serious waste problem when the blades need to be decommissioned. It's not radioactive, but it needs to be stored, and there is a lot of it.

[cf498]

Sure sounds great, what are the best and worst case costs of storing that stuff for how long? And yes i know dry cask storage is much less problematic, but i would still want a realistic plan of what is happening to that stuff and what this is going to cost. What irks me so much is that i am not simply told, look here it what it currently costs, how it would scale and what the realistic liabilities are. If you were a nuclear lobbyist and those numbers would make sense, all you would have to do is to argue with them. I, and i think most reasonable people, would likely agree with you. But the problem seems to be that the devil is in the detail, and while nuclear makes sense with the best case, we dont seem to be at the best case most of the time. We regularly have major fuckups when it comes to long term storage that are incredibly pricey and just accepted as the cost of doing nuclear. All the while nuclear is sold and profited on on a highly subsidized price.

So the question whether we should go full nuclear is, what is the real price on nuclear per kwh with what liabilities? How does it scale? I think the post i responded to first was on an excellent path if it hadnt ignored the waste management problematic. I think research into bringing down cost of power plants is a field worth researching, as well as how to drive down the price of long term storage. But first we have to actually decide on the basis of realistic data and not just hope the future will figure it out for us.

edit: My comment is coming across a bit to hostile, just so there are no misunderstandings, i dont think this societal discussion can be approached by convincing individuals on the internet who are to lazy to google themselves(meaning me), but in parliament. I wasnt really trying to start a discussion but giving my 2cents of where i think the problem in the discourse we currently have lie. And thats more the lacking factual basis in arguments on the topic then the actual costs.

[travisoneill1]

> We regularly have major fuckups when it comes to long term storage that are incredibly pricey and just accepted as the cost of doing nuclear

When a nuclear plant releases radiation into the atmosphere we call it a major fuck up. When a coal plant releases dangerous pollutants (including radiation) into the atmosphere we call it normal operation.

[hvidgaard]

From this https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.2968/065005003

> A typical dry-storage cask holds 10 tons of spent fuel and costs about $1 million–$2 million each. (The CASTOR is at the upper end of that range.) This translates to a cost of less than one-twentieth of a penny per kilowatt-hour—about 1 percent of the cost of generating nuclear power.

They last for anywhere between 30-100 years and I assume to be be processed and put into new casks after that. So "less than one-twentieth of a penny per kilowatt-hour" every 30-100 year.

Note this is for the worst of the waste. There is still low level waste and long lived waste that need not be stored in dry casks. It still doesn't sound as problematic. I think the main issue is finding a site and protecting the casks/waste.

[danbruc]

But it is of course not only the price of buying a couple of those containers, you also need a facility to store them, you may have to move them around, you probably have to guard them, you have to monitor them, ...

[hvidgaard]

Of course it isn't, but at least the CASTORS can be safely transported by train, and a processing facility is not orders of magnitude more expensive than the power plants themselves. If we could forgo the nimbyism, we already have a technical solution and a reasonable estimate of the cost now and in the next 100 years. It could easily be factored in the cost of electricity from nuclear and put in a fund for when it's needed.

[chawco]

I think one additional factor here is that storage isn't the only option. Once a larger amount of waste needs to be managed the attractiveness of fast breeder reactors starts to increase. These reactors can then extract more energy from this high level "waste" (really fuel for fast breeder reactors). These reactors would then reduce the volume of this waste by a factor of about 100. So in the end, those 400 car-sized containers of waste per 50 years becomes 4. One hundred years worth of energy for an entire country producing about a house's volume of waste, total.

[hvidgaard]

That is still theoretical so for any reasonable waste model, we cannot factor that in. If it turns out to be the case, we might be able to channel a lot of the money set a side for waste management, into other things such as better energy options.

[acidburnNSA]

Are we all aware that nuclear power plants pay for waste disposal as part of their electricity sales cost in a trust fund called the Nuclear Waste Fund that has a balance around $50B in the US at the moment?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Waste_Policy_Act#Nucle...

As far as I know, nuclear is the only energy source that pre-pays for waste disposal.

[cf498]

I am not familiar with the US system. The problem in Germany is they pay a lot less then what it actually costs to "dispose" of the waste, since we dont have a method to dispose it. Hence the subsidizing, allowing it to buy out of the waste they created and which will likely have running costs for a very long time. The same could be witnessed on a larger scale when it came to the decommissioning of nuclear power plants in Germany due to the exit from nuclear energy. It was immediately clear that the to be collected funds would not suffice.

And we are far from just storing that stuff cheaply in a safe and secure storehouse we have moronic ideas like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asse_II_mine where we have to dig out old longterm storage.

[dsfyu404ed]

I ran the numbers on nuclear waste generation awhile back and 7-billion people's worth of power needs (assuming western lifestyle) came out to like 1.x times the capacity of the worlds largest container ship worth of waste. That's nothing compared to the waste generated by literally every other method of power generation (except maybe hydroelectric but that has its own environmental trade-offs). We could just dump that in a hole somewhere geologically boring and concrete over it but nobody wants to own the hole.

[StillBored]

The other part is some of that "waste" has industrial uses. Think medical isotopes, RTG's, clocks, etc.