[gambiting]

>>Especially Germany has issues with it due to having stored tons of nuclear waste in old salt mines in barrels that start to leak.

Isn't highly radioactive waste vitrified(turned into glass)? How is it leaking, exactly?

And isn't the entire point of storing it inside salt that it's self sealing - even if there is a leak it won't go anywhere.

[Mashimo]

German scientist had a list with possible locations for the "endlager" final location. But politicians did not listen and on purpose chose a location not on the list, but one that was close too east Germany to mess with them. They overruled the scientist.

Until we clean it up and find a new endlager I think Germany should not build new nuclear reactor. Just not a good track record. Oh and before that we just dumped it into the north see.

[sevenzero]

Leakage due to water infiltration. Its about 120.000 barrels stored in "Asse II" that were produced between 1967 and 1978. The contaminated water is reaching ground water which already got positively tested for caesium-137 and plutonium.

[cess11]

2008: https://bellona.org/news/nuclear-issues/2008-09-20-year-long...

2024: https://www.neimagazine.com/decommissioning-waste-management...

2026: https://interestingengineering.com/ai-robotics/robotic-arms-...

Here's a timeline as PDF: https://www.folkkampanjen.se/pdf_asse.pdf

Pricing in these things into nuclear energy production makes it quite unpalatable compared to simpler engineering, in my opinion.

Who knows what will come of chinese fusion research, perhaps they'll figure it out and change my mind.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/01/260101160855.h...

[Gud]

Nobody is arguing we should store nuclear waste haphazardly in barrels.

[cess11]

Right, nobody is arguing for the negative consequences we've had from nuclear reactors, except perhaps atom bombs, but they happened anyway.

I know of exactly zero leading politicians that I'd entrust with nuclear waste. Can you name some that you find trustworthy enough?

[gambiting]

>>I know of exactly zero leading politicians that I'd entrust with nuclear waste

I know zero politicians I'd trust with deciding where to build wind farms either, it says more about politicians than the type of energy generation. These kinds of things should be decided following comprehensive research on several locations, which you know - is generally how it's done, example given by OP notwithstanding.