[zxcdw]

Is this a real world problem with real world consequences?

It is my understanding that the nuclear waste can be stored safely without too much cost. It is also my understanding that there are ways to re-use the already used fuel rods, effectively 1) making them radiate less 2) getting "leftover" power from already consumed fuel.

Psychological footprint fueled by ignorance however... Well, that borders religiousness. Maybe education and awareness helps.

[_delirium]

It can be stored safely, but so far a good waste solution hasn't been implemented, at least in the US. With the cancellation of Yucca Mountain, the current "interim" long-term storage plan is basically on-site dry cask storage scattered everywhere. The spent-fuel pools are an even bigger mess. Many of them are filling up, and fuel isn't being transferred from them to longer-term storage even when it could/should be, because operators want to reduce costs.

I don't think many experts are that happy with the current spent-fuel story. They vary in why they're unhappy, ranging from environmental worries (more common on the left) to theft/terrorism worries (more common on the right). But overall there is just way too much nuclear waste hanging out in suboptimal interim storage.

[zxcdw]

A non-US citizen here, so I have practically no understanding of the politics related to US nuclear power.

However, the Wikipedia article for Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository seems to mention that the cancellation was for political rather than for technical reasons. Wouldn't this imply, that the opposing forces aren't technological, but rather political? As in, if there's will, the problem can be at least partially solved?

[_delirium]

Oh, no disagreement there. I don't think there is in principle a problem with safely storing nuclear waste, in the sense that it would be technically impossible to do it or anything. The problem is that in practice the current solution is to have a bunch of it hanging out in "interim" storage that is not really well planned or designed as permanent storage. That's mostly a political problem, and secondarily an economic incentives problem.

[sliverstorm]

It's yet another example of the brilliance of the American public when it comes to power. Shut down the nuclear plants! (spin up coal plants instead). Block Yucca Mountain! (pile up spent fuel in short-term storage instead). So on and so forth.

[BrandonMarc]

It's yet another example of the brilliance of the American politicians when it comes to power.

Fixed that for you. Coal plants aren't doing so well, either. President Obama has stated many times a major policy goal is to destroy the coal industry - lack of viable alternative not mattering.

Regarding storing spent fuel only in temporary ways, that's just a sad artifact of neither side being able to agree on any long term solution, so no real long term solution gets implemented, and the can gets kicked down the road. It's lunacy not to face reality.

[joe_the_user]

Coal, oil and gas kill quite a number of people today, invisibly and at-semi-random. Say X people die.

If you had a power source that killed X/100 people. But to implement that power source, congress would have to introduce a bill in which every single person who had to die was named.

Could that power source be implemented in any democracy?

(not to say nuclear is exactly like this, just to say nuclear has a bit of this kind of problem and this kind of problem is very hard to solve)

[Daniel_Newby]

The trouble is that $4/gal fuel and an endless series of petro wars barely moves the needle on solving the political problems. Be afraid of any force that makes nuclear power look sensible to Americans.

[coldtea]

>Is this a real world problem with real world consequences?

Might not be where you live, but there's a real world evacuated zone in Chernobyl, with a 20 mile radius were "even today radiation levels are so high that the workers responsible for rebuilding the sarcophagus are only allowed to work five hours a day for one month before taking 15 days of rest. Ukrainian officials estimate the area will not be safe for human life again for another 20,000 years.".

Oh, and: in the United States alone, the Department of Energy states there are "millions of gallons of radioactive waste" as well as "thousands of tons of spent nuclear fuel and material" and also "huge quantities of contaminated soil and water."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste

>It is my understanding that the nuclear waste can be stored safely without too much cost.

That'd be what we call a misunderstanding.

[downer91]

But let's get creative about the realities of hazardous radioactive waste storage. It's not an impossible problem to solve, when you think about it pragmatically. It's difficult, expensive, requires material resources, expertise and dedication, but it's not impossible.

The typical and most reliable procedure for managing radioactive waste is vitrification: creating a purified mixture of molten glass and then introducing an evenly distributed non-critical ratio of hot waste material into the glass, and allowing it to harden into a solid glass object. The radioactive glass object is then carted off to a repository, for permanent storage, in accordance with the half life of the waste, which might be centuries or more. Vitrification is a safe way to prevent accidental criticality, so that all the waste stays cool and is easier to shield.

Generally underground storage sites are the most desirable locations for the final resting place of vitrified waste. This provides a simple barrier to the penetrating radiation that the waste may emit.

Security is essential to the storage of radioactive waste, since unaccounted waste means there's some nasty stuff floating around. This adds effort to maintaining a site.

Ventilation is necessary, since ionizing radiation produces an accumulation of fee oxygen and hydrogen by catalyzing moisture in the air. This means offgassing equipment is needed to ventilate the natural accumulation to prevent explosion hazards. This adds complexity to storage.

Degradation of construction is a long term pest, in that the site must be constructed of high quality, durable architectual members, equipped to last centuries, and not collapse within decades. This adds expertise and expense requirements.

Site selection should be a no brainer though. Consider that Ukraine can make some decent income off the tragedy of Chernobyl, given that they have an unusable sector of their territory relegated to the reactor sarcophagus. Yeah, the sarcophagus is impossible to manage above ground, but what about digging underneath it and excavating a massive permanent waste repository, and charging money for depositing waste there? Nobody wants anything to do with Chernobyl. It's a ghost town. Seems like a chance to employ the site as a massive underground waste repository.

Same goes for Fukushima. Take a geological survey of the site, design durable, earthquake-proof architecture for an underground repository, and charge money to dumpwaste there.

After construction completes, your budget mostly comes from staffing qualified nuclear engineers and security personnel. Little else is necessary. A nuclear reactor and research lab can provide power to the site and provide an intellectual basis to attract new staff. Doesn't this sound like a sustainable plan?

In America there has been this massive battle over Yuka Mountain. It's politically hazardous to store waste underneath otherwise uncontaminated land. The protest generally stems from the not-in-my-backyard philosophy. There are tons of superfund sites, that are doomed to contamination for decades because of simple bureacratic laziness. Most of them are pretty close to cities. I think America could probably find sites, but they usually get locked up in legal messiness that blows any deal. I think there are probably places that could accept waste, and there's no rational reason to care, but people fight it anyway, because everyone seems to enjoy irrational litigation as political sport as a sort of clerical version of new-deal make-work contruction projects. But I digress.

There are reasonable ways to confront the challenges of radioactive waste storage. Obstinate people use this objection as an example of an insurmountable challenge simply because they're stubborn.

[wycx]

There are superior solutions to vitrification. Synroc [1] is technically far superior as it puts the long lived isotopes into mineral phases in which they are stable, as opposed to metastable glass.

Once stablised as synroc it is simply a matter of storing the waste. Storing above ground (i.e. in a shed) seems to me to be a better solution than pursuing geologic disposal, given the waste is now stable, and can be easily monitored.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synroc

[ChuckMcM]

That is pretty cool stuff.

[purringmeow]

You can't dig below the reactor, because there is a high chance of the whole structure collapsing and getting in contact with water.

However, I share your opinion on dealing with radioactive waste. It's not a technical challenge, but a political one.

[downer91]

Good point! Water table contamination is yet another hazard.

Fukushima is situated on the coast line, and already leaks into the ocean, but Chernobyl is near the Pripyat river, and is a tributary to the Dnieper River, which empties into the Black Sea. The Pripyat is contaminated within the exclusion zone, but it would be bad news to disturb and agitate any contamination, and make things worse.

Given that it's already a bad situation, and that natural leeching is already taking place by doing nothing, any engineering project would have to approach the site carefully so that leeching is not accelerated.

Yucca mountain is located in the southwest desert, so that mitigates water seepage, but Yucca mountain isn't a disaster site (yet), so that technical challenge can be tackled before it arises.

[BrandonMarc]

Comments like this make me wish I could +2

[notahacker]

This looks like a pretty big real world consequence to me: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=chernobyl&safe=off&espv=21...

Say what you like about the strength of the evidence linking burning of hydrocarbons and climate change, but it doesn't carry the risk of a meltdown leaving a footprint so big and dangerous that cities have to be abandoned. I don't think it's "ignorance... that borders religiousness" that keeps the field of nuclear research heavily constrained and very expensive.

[zxcdw]

What relevance does Chernobyl have with modern nuclear power plants?

A honest question, because I am under an impression that with modern regulations and reactor designs the chance of a meltdown or less severe nuclear disaster are infitesimally small, granted that 1) regulations are being followed(which they weren't in Chernobyl) 2) safety of operation is being maintained and that the plant itself isn't faulty(which again wasn't case with Chernobyl).

[coldtea]

>What relevance does Chernobyl have with modern nuclear power plants?

The relevance that Chernobyl was too promoted as safe, like "modern power plants" are.

Plus the relevance that power plant contractors and governments STILL bullshit people all the way to the bank, with friendly experts paid to downplay the dangers.

Just watch the misinformation and lies told by the Japanese officials on the Fukushima distaster in order to cover up their failings.

I trust in science as much as everyone else.

Building a nuclear reactor is not science alone.

It's business (e.g contractors cutting corners whenever they can make money), it's politics, it's marketing, it's trust on certain things not happening (e.g a huge earthquake or a tsunami as in Japan's case, or maybe an attack), it's faith in the human operators and the software used, and tons of other factors.

I'd rather not put faith in all those coinciding happily when the outcome can be potentially lethal.

[downer91]

  e.g a huge earthquake or a tsunami as 
  in Japan's case, or maybe an attack
  ...
  faith in the human operators

To enumerate some regretably normal human factors:

1. deliberate procedural over-complication in the name of job security (political hazard)

2. disgruntled operator sabotage (political, but maybe that qualifies as an attack?)

3. operator error

4. operator laziness

5. operator incompetance

6. operator experimentation (experimentation was the cause of Chernobyl, after all)

[sliverstorm]

What relevance does Chernobyl have with modern nuclear power plants?

In line with this notion, I am reminded of automobiles. Automobiles of yesteryear were more dangerous and significantly more polluting (causing serious health problems for the residents of Los Angeles). But of course we clearly cannot point to a '57 Chevy with no seatbelts or catalytic converter and say, "Clearly cars are too dangerous and noxious to allow".

[snom380]

Agreed, I think many people don't realize the enormous cost of an accident like Chernobyl, and that wasn't even the worst case scenario even though it was pretty bad.

[snom380]

I think the biggest problem is to guarantee that some future civilization will not dig up the waste believing it to be valuable, like we did with the old Egyptian graves. We could make it very difficult to do so, but it's not a "solved problem". http://vimeo.com/55736976 is an interesting watch (although perhaps a bit biased).

[Daniel_Newby]

It's a solved problem. Dilute it with sand until it is about as radioactive as the original ore, melt the sand, and dump the chunks of glass someplace out of the way. Yes, future generations will need to protect themselves from it, but they already need to in huge areas where the ground emits radon.

[snom380]

If that's truly cost effective and feasible, why isn't it being done on a wider scale?

[Daniel_Newby]

Democracy. The environmental movement uses anti-nuclear propaganda to get votes.