I don't see any accounting for the cost of storing nuclear waste, long-term. (Nobody wants to do it; how do you even estimate that?)

That's true, but it's important to remember that the amount of waste produced by nuclear power generation is many, many orders of magnitude smaller than fossil fuels.

Let's say you want to generate 1 megawatt-hour of electricity (roughly enough to power an average American household for a month). With coal power, you get roughly 2,000 pounds of carbon dioxide dumped into the atmosphere. [1] To generate the same amount at a nuclear plant, the waste primarily consists of about 3 grams of spent fuel. [2][3]

(And before anyone jumps on me, I'm not trying to dismiss other renewable options... just trying to put nuclear power in perspective.)

[1]: https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=74&t=11 [2]: http://www.nei.org/Knowledge-Center/Nuclear-Statistics/US-Nu... [3]: http://www.nei.org/Knowledge-Center/Nuclear-Statistics/On-Si...

> about 3 grams of spent fuel.

Now multiply that by the number of households, and again by twelve to see the amount you'd need to permanently store each year.

That's probably based upon older reactor designs like everything in the nuclear industry, since regulation had made progress slow-going.

Newer designs, and some others, burn spent fuel. Out of the 3 major nuclear reactor incidents, all were old reactor designs. There are new ones that also cannot meltdown in the common understanding of the term.

Don't forget coal mining releases nuclear radiation, since you are unearthing radioactive minerals. So much so, that you are exposed to more radiation in the vicinity of a coal plant than a nuclear reactor.

Here in South Australia, the government, royal commission and a citizens' jury are looking very seriously at establishing a long-term, highly secure nuclear waste dump. We have a lot of very remote areas in this state, and I believe they're looking at a spot with clay very deep down that can be used to insulate against geological movement. The facility is being planned to survive for thousands of years.

Here's some info from the royal commission: http://nuclearrc.sa.gov.au/

And from the Citizens' Jury: http://nuclear.yoursay.sa.gov.au/

As I understand it, being paid to store nuclear waste is being viewed as an income stream for the state to backup or replace income from mining operations.

I'm always suspicious of things "planned to survive thousands of years". I'll bet politicians in Rome and Sparta big-noted themselves with "projects which'll last thousands of years!" (which they then contracted out to their brother-in-law). So far as I can tell there's not much other than Pyramids which humanity has designed/built that could plausibly claim to have "survived thousands of years", and even those didn't come close to being impregnable enough to be considered "safe" for keeping curious humans away from long half life radioactive trash...

The Romans probably aren't the best example to use to make your point considering how many structures they've built that are still standing.

Though compare the numbers standing to the many, many more which have fallen.

By "still standing" do you include ruins where, say, only part of a wall remains?

There are Roman structures that remained intact for millennia. I think the main threat to them was people re-using the masonry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pont_du_Gard

Agreed. And Hammam Essalihine/Aquae Flavianae is a Roman bath which is still in use.

Regarding the Pont du Gard, it's intact "due to the importance of its secondary function, as a toll bridge. For centuries the local lords and bishops were responsible for its upkeep, in exchange for the right to levy tolls on travellers using it to cross the river."

I believe bigiain's point is that the structures needed active upkeep to last thousands of years.

Your point is true about people robbing the masonry, but that's closely related to bigiain's comment about "keeping curious humans away from long half life radioactive trash".

So one solution for active upkeep, is to build radioactive waste repositories into toll bridges...

LOL! Yes, that could work. The tricky part would be to keep it from being blown up during some battle, like the Mostar Bridge.

These things are going to be buried very very deeply in a particular way. I think people would need to be a lot more than just curious.

I should add that I believe the plan is to do significant work in sealing compartments so anyone looking to wreak havoc would need to breach the facility, get down a significant distance and then work through a huge amount of concrete or clay or whatever it would be.

I think the supply line from port to the facility would be a softer target and is something the jury and stakeholders would be considering in serious detail.

It's easy, you take the cost of Yucca mountain depository (which is already sunk, btw), and amortize that over 10,000 years or so.

So easy!

Watch how it's done: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeVPMzJOFrQ

You burn it as fuel[1]. More kilowatts for small (relatively) additional dollars.

[1] http://terrapower.com/pages/technology

Oh, great point, I hadn't even considered that. I'm sure creating all those steel/concrete containers isn't the most CO2 friendly activity. AFAIK most plants store onsite so there's no transportation cost at least.

The same goes for Hydro. Both Nuclear and Hydro have signifiant up front green costs.

I found 1.2lbs, so this process is able to remove about 10% of the production cost.