[PaulDavisThe1st]

> We never solved it for the other material that we dug up and burned (coal).

Oh yes. Having fucked up this badly with long chain hydrocarbon combustion, lets do it all over again with fission, because ... well, we did it once already, right?

[lesuorac]

> lets do it all over again with fission

You can look at it this way.

Or you could can look at it as we reduced radioactive emissions by switching to nuclear from coal.

Everything has trade-offs. It's not like solar has no side-effects.

[tnecio]

The orders of magnitude are different here. Replacing something that becomes a huge problem within two hundred years with something that (potentially) becomes a problem in a few thousand years -- really is better than spending valuable time on developing an "ideal" solution

[Krssst]

Nuclear waste is a local problem. They're solid not gaseous. GHGs are a worldwide problem.

Years don't matter if climate change puts an end to human civilization.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

Climate change will not end human civilization, unless by "human civilization" you mean the very specific configuration that habitation patterns, agriculture, national boundaries and numbers of living humans all have at this very moment.

Likely hundreds of millions to a few billion will die that need not have died, wars will be fought, relocation and migration will be of unprecedented scope and scale, there will be hunger and disease ... but "human civilization" will persist through all of that. Thats not a reason to celebrate, it's just a reason to describe the risks and outcomes accurately.

[throwaway173738]

Whose locality bears the brunt of this? Do you mind if we put some where you live?

[PaulDavisThe1st]

Neither you, nor I, nor anyone else has any truly authoritative knowledge on when (or if) fissile waste will become a problem, and if it does, just how large (time, space, populations, ecosystems) of a problem it will be.

[defrost]

Fissile waste has been a health problem even before first mining uranium in the DRC well before WWII.

Hanford has a standing legacy problem of fissile waste from both weapons and energy work.

* https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-c...

* https://www.icanw.org/hanford_s_dirty_secret_and_it_s_not_56...

Human activity aside, every valley with a substantial amount of granite rock about the planet pools with radon gas on a daily basis until the wind clears it out.

While this is just one of those things that's a risk on the order of a pack a day smoking habit to those who live there, radon is a fission by product from the breakdown of the uranium within the granite.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

I read this as just an attempt to rationalize fissile waste issues as "more of the same". Maybe you truly feel comfortable doing that, maybe you see it as something else.

I, in contrast, view the development of fission-based nuclear mechanisms (whether for explosives or for power generation) as a distinct break with the past, and a point in human history where an entirely new problem was brought into being. And not just a new problem, but one that would last longer than any human civilization has ever lasted.

So, to me, you comparison of envionmental radon issues with the problems posed by storing and managing the waste produced by fission reactors is ... well, I scarely have words for it.

[AnthonyMouse]

> I, in contrast, view the development of fission-based nuclear mechanisms (whether for explosives or for power generation) as a distinct break with the past, and a point in human history where an entirely new problem was brought into being.

Radiological material that decays after tens of thousands of years is not a unique new problem, for three reasons.

First, half life is inverse to radioactivity. The longer the half life, the less radioactive it is. There are isotopes with a half life of a billion years. Human biology requires potassium and natural potassium is radioactive, but it doesn't kill you because the half life is so long.

Second, the material with ten thousand year half lives doesn't actually have to be stored for ten thousand years. Nuclear reactors convert elements into other elements. You put it back into a reactor and it turns it into something with a shorter half life. Meanwhile that process produces energy with which to generate electricity. It's absurd that we're not already doing this.

And third, the half life is a red herring. Traditional long-standing toxic waste from industrial processes doesn't have a half life because it persists forever. Plutonium is toxic for thousands of years; heavy metals are toxic until the sun burns out. The fact that it eventually decays is an advantage that propaganda has turned into a problem.

[defrost]

I spent a few years in exploration geophysics.

You stated "[No one] has any truly authoritative knowledge on when (or if) fissile waste will become a problem".

I informed you that fissile waste is already a big problem at multiple sites across the planet, several US sites and Russian sites more so than anywhere else, and has been a problem for > 50 years.

You're welcome.

> you comparison of envionmental radon issues with the problems posed by storing and managing the waste produced by fission reactors is ... well, I scarely have words for it.

That's clearly a minor aside .. you ignored the 70+ tonnes of plutonium waste at Hanford.

Billions have been spent dealing with it to date and there's much left to do and spend to clean up that one site.

Don't strawman the issue, it's a large problem and there are tomes on the subject filling shelves.

Humans do need to deal with radioactive waste, this includes the large dams of radioactive waste created as a by product of rare earth and lithium processing.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

"Problem" in this context did not mean "a challenging engineering issue to be solved by cleverness and skill and determination". It means "shit dying, ecosystems being destroyed, earth and air and water being polluted, bounds not under human control".

[kulahan]

This certainly is incorrect. Used up fuel can be re-enriched. This isn’t a problem we ever need to solve, because by the time it’s an issue, the waste will have become a viable market product again.