[hungie]

How much nuclear waste would be generated, across 100 years of American levels of energy use, per person?

I'll save you the effort, it's about one chicken egg, maybe as large as a tea cup.

For your whole life, all the energy you'll use across all sectors. Over 100 years you don't think we capable of finding a space to safely fritter away a chicken egg? Or even 300 million chicken eggs?

And even more amazingly, that "waste"? It's still fuel, we could reprocess it.

Coal, you'd need 50-60,000 kilograms to create the same energy. The waste disposal for 60k kg of coal's ash is non trivial (and much harder to prevent from spreading). To say nothing of the 150-180,000 kg of CO2 emitted.

Solar panels would need to be replaced 2-5 times in that timeframe. They are a whole lot less wasteful than coal, but that'd still be a significant volume of difficult to reprocess material.

So, before wringing your hands about waste from nuclear, make sure you understand just how small the amount of waste is and think about the waste of alternatives. There's not a free lunch here, but waste just isn't a material concern compared against other power sources.

[ViewTrick1002]

The problem is not how small the waste is, it is the effects.

High level radioactive waste can cause Goiânia like outcomes, or leach into the groundwater.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident

It is quite intellectually dishonest to try frame it as pixie dust rather than the true problem it poses.

[davidu]

That ranks as one of the worst nuclear disasters in history, and it was really not bad on a human or planetary scale. Carbon-based power plants kill far more on an annual basis.

[ViewTrick1002]

No need to compare against fossil fuels, compare with renewables. That is the alternative today.

[hungie]

If, and only if, you store it stupidly. There's plenty of ways to safely store it for millennia. It's not a truly difficult problem.

And I'm just doing my best to present the facts as they are -- no fud.

[ViewTrick1002]

“Hand waving” we can store it easily for millennia.

The US was founded ~250 years ago as a perspective.

[OutOfHere]

Nuclear waste slowly leaks into the groundwater and river water. Also, waste is only one of the two major concerns I noted.

Comparing it with coal is 100% disingenuous. Coal is never an option going forward.

[lucb1e]

> waste slowly leaks into the groundwater

You say that as if it's a given that it will always leak slowly. What % of the spent fuel actually ended up being leaked across the couple decades of storage we have had now? What effects did it have? How does the human cost stack up against mining activities we would need for the massive amounts of wind turbines and solar panels when we cut out nuclear's base load function completely?

(Recently saw this documentary about mine tailings aka chat; didn't know those existed tbh as someone not from a country with much mining activity https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soGOu5NZ5S0 - or in text form https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picher,_Oklahoma)

Obviously we'll need both energy sources to reach net zero, but it's not that one is inherently clean and the other inherently dirty

[hungie]

Nuclear waste leaking into the groundwater? Sure, if someone is being absurdly callous. But if we're going to invent a villain with no morals as just dumps the stuff then we might as well do the same for any other form of energy.

I prefer to assume we're comparing competent operators of any energy type in our portfolio. Saying it leaches into the groundwater is like saying "dams break and destroy towns". Yeah, it does happen I guess, but not often. And we've got lots of systems to prevent it.

[OutOfHere]

> Sure, if someone is being absurdly callous.

Firstly, the containers are known to develop leaks over decades. Secondly, there are accidents on site every year, causing tritium leaks if not also uranium. There is also a baseline level of tritium leakage that's considered normal, but it isn't actually normal for the fishes in the river.

> I prefer to assume we're comparing competent operators

Please see the list of leakage incidents at each nuclear power plant. There is one almost every year at almost every site. The local environment pays the price for it. If they were competent, these events wouldn't happen.

None of this is an issue with solar, for example. The radius of the possible damage is minuscule.

[outofpaper]

Nuclear waste only slowly leaks if its stored improperly. The better option is to use it, reacted fuel is still super useful stuff. N breeder reactors have been developed to decrease fuel requirements by a factor of 100. Instead of one egg of "spent fuel per person... one egg per 100!