[AnthonyMouse]

"Storage of waste" is also a farce. All of the components of "nuclear waste" are commercially valuable, especially the exotic and hazardous ones. The issue is that we don't reprocess most of the spent fuel for political reasons.

[Lutzb]

That is not true, stop perpetuating that myth. Most of the nuclear waste by volume is of low level waste (90%) or intermediate level (7%) and only 3% is high level waste i.e. spent fuel. We still have to store the 97% of waste that cannot be reused.

https://world-nuclear.org/nuclear-essentials/what-is-nuclear...

[defrost]

If we're getting real and addressing "myths" then here's a good often ignored hard truth;

Most radioactive waste, by weight and volume, is low to mid level raioactive waste and most of that is 'NORM' and outside the nuclear power industry.

    The mining industry also produces large volumes of waste containing naturally occurring radioactive material (NORM)

 ~ https://www.arpansa.gov.au/sites/default/files/legacy/pubs/radwaste/Issues92_woollett.pdf

Two examples of large volumes of non nuclear industry radioactive waste are:

* Asia Rare Earth Sdn Bhd (ARE) in Bukit Merah, Perak ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_Bukit_Merah_radioactive_p... ),

* Lynas Advanced Materials Plant (LAMP), Gebeng, Kuantan.

both as a by product of processing to refine rare earth metals for electronics.

[Lutzb]

Don't change the topic. We are talking about nuclear power, not rare earth.

[defrost]

When did dang die and who elected you the moderator?

The topic I replied to was nuclear waste (check your very own comment) and it's relevant to nuclear power that dealing with radioactive waste is a persistent issue regardless of whether nuclear power exists or not.

[Lutzb]

The thread was about nuclear power and the accompanying issue with nuclear waste types. You brought up mining for rare earth and naturally occurring radioactive waste in the process.

I don't see how this relates to nuclear power and it's waste issue.

[defrost]

I'm not responsible for your inability to see a connection, FWiW I do have a few decades in global scale geophysics and environmental background radiation maping, but what would I know.

WRT your self annointed command and control of thread comments, have you read:

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ?

Best read cephalic sans rectum.

[AnthonyMouse]

Low-level waste is basically just ordinary rubbish. You don't have to store it in a mountain for a million years, it will be indistinguishable from background before anybody finishes arguing about what to do with it. A lot of it is indistinguishable from background to begin with but is legally required to be treated differently because of where it came from.

The people who think this is a problem haven't internalized a fact about radioactivity: Half life is the inverse of radioactivity. The more radioactive something is, the less time before it's gone. Anything with a short half life is not a problem because it will be gone soon; anything with a long half life is not a problem because it's about as radioactive as a banana.

[Lutzb]

> Low-level waste is basically just ordinary rubbish.

Untrue. You are just making nuclear proponents look bad with your broad strokes statements.

Edit: I am sorry if this came out angry. We need to have a good discussion about nuclear power and it's place in the energy mix. It's clearly losing at this point due to the immense costs associated with it (construction, insurance, decommission, etc.), the risks and the long investment horizon. Handwaving away issues or derailing arguments does not help the discussion.

Look we tried to find a solution for LLWs in Germany with cavern style storage repositories in Asse 2 and Morsleben. Due to many reasons, the costs spiraled out of control and we basically had to switch to overground storage and are in the process of repatriation. The reality is that currently storage of LLWs is expensive (see https://www.oecd-nea.org/jcms/pl_13212/low-level-radioactive...). The cost of treatment of LLW is difficult to specify. So far I have seen no reports that would compare treatment to long term storage repositories. Even with incineration the ashes still need to be stored for some time until they can be disposed.

[Lutzb]

You said

  *All* of the components of "nuclear waste" are commercially valuable, especially the exotic and hazardous ones.

Which is untrue. Most of it is waste that needs to be dealt with and has no value.

[AnthonyMouse]

This is just using a different definition of "nuclear waste". What most people mean by this (and are concerned by) is something that is radiologically dangerous and has to be stored for thousands of years, but no such thing exists. There are things that are radiologically dangerous, but they have short half lives and are commercially valuable. Then there are things that "last for thousands of years" (e.g. Pu-239), but Pu-239 is only mildly radioactive and has commercial and government uses as fissile material. In fact, building new reactors is the best way we know of to get rid of it.

What you're referring to ("low-level waste") is this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste#Low-level_wa...

> Low-level wastes include paper, rags, tools, clothing, filters, and other materials which contain small amounts of mostly short-lived radioactivity. Materials that originate from any region of an Active Area are commonly designated as LLW as a precautionary measure even if there is only a remote possibility of being contaminated with radioactive materials. Such LLW typically exhibits no higher radioactivity than one would expect from the same material disposed of in a non-active area, such as a normal office block.

This isn't really "nuclear waste", it's ordinary rubbish that was near radioactive material so people are paranoid about it out of an abundance of caution. And any radioisotopes that are present in it will follow the same rule -- anything with high radioactivity decays quickly. It's no great mystery how to deal with that sort of thing; you store it for a short number of years to let anything with a short half life decay and then you treat it as any other trash.