[zdragnar]

For one thing, nuclear power plants produce much less waste than most people imagine.

Waste can also be reprocessed into new fuel, further reducing it.

In the US, we have a suitable site that has been authorized and cancelled for 20 some years now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_r...

The reasons it keeps being cancelled, and the waste is stored on-site at nuclear plants instead, is purely political and nothing to do with the technological or safety aspects, according to the GAO.

[awesome_dude]

I've never understood how people think "less" solves the issue, it's not negligible and asking to increase the number of plants surely increases the waste.

Reprocessing, isn't infinite. There's going to be waste to deal with.

You've not presented any technical solutions, instead you made it political by claiming that's the only problem.

Do you have an actual understanding of the problems or are you just pushing nuclear because it's aligning with you politically

Edit: it's clear from the down votes i am getting that this is political, not technical.

If you're down voting with no technical understanding you're political.

[zdragnar]

I actually did produce a technical solution: stick it deep in yucca mountain and forget about it. It's safe, and there's more than enough room for the little waste that can't be turned back into fuel.

[fc417fc802]

I think it is you who hasn't bothered to do basic research before forming an opinion. I suggest at least skimming the wikipedia page on radioactive waste. [0] There's also a page documenting the various national management plans. [1]

> I've never understood how people think "less" solves the issue, it's not negligible ...

It just needs to be little enough that the cost of constructing long term storage space isn't cost prohibitive.

The amount produced is something like 25 to 30 tons per GW per year before reprocessing; after reprocessing it's something like ~5% of that. Unfortunately I couldn't readily find numbers for the dilution rate when vitrifying the waste for geological disposal. Regardless, that amount is almost nothing when considered in terms of volume. A full size shipping container is somewhere between 75 and 108 cubic meters depending on which standard you prefer. To give a rough idea that equates to ~180 (US) tons of borosilicate glass (one of the materials commonly used to vitrify high level waste) on the low end (assuming I got the math right).

There are also alternative disposal methods to consider such as breeder reactors (rather expensive at present) or horizontal drillholes.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-level_radioactive_waste_m...