Re:Nuclear power looks to regain its footing 10 years after ...
by fuoqi on Thursday March 11, 2021 @04:54AM
(#26422252)
Well, France is a bit different in this regard, they indeed have a great expertise in fuel recycling, but the parent comment was talking about fast-neutron reactors such as BN [0] and BREST [1]. Reactors like this not only can "breed" fuel, but also can "burn" the waste as well, thus drastically reducing amount of waste which has to be buried and it makes the waste safer as well, since it will not contain those annoying minor actinides with half-lives in the range of 1k-100k years. France had the Superphenix project [2], but unfortunately it got shut down without a successor...
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BN-800_reactor
Re:Nuclear power looks to regain its footing 10 years after ...
by godelski on Thursday March 11, 2021 @04:10PM
(#26429035)
So the main part of my comment was really at the end, discussing what is fuel waste and what is auxiliary waste. This is often a difficult conversation with nuclear. Most people don't realize how little the waste is. They then don't realize that only 3% of that tiny amount of waste is the concerning high level radioactive waste. The honest reason we don't invest more into breeder reactors or re-enrichment plants is because the fuel is cheap and we don't create enough waste to worry about it. America had and used the same technology as France, but gave it up because it was too expensive. But this tiny amount of waste is generally why many think you can just bury the waste from the plant on site and move on. Place the high level lowest, medium, then light waste (which is 90% of the material and 1% of the radiation) on top (or we could make a container this way). We're not talking about much physical material from a single plant. We're talking a coke can per person per year (total nuclear, not a single plant) where 3% of that coke can is concerning. Nuclear is already extremely expensive, why increase the cost? Cost is the only real argument against nuclear.
What's wrong with this? This is literally what we do for every other type of waste.
> One I like a lot and it's getting adoption in Russia
You may be interested in what France has been doing for quite some time[0]. The reason America doesn't do it is because fuel is cheap. A small benefit of option 1 is that when fuel is no longer cheap you have an easy point of access. But at the end of the day you still have to put waste somewhere.
> To the moon!
This option likely won't happen as it is exceedingly dangerous. If a rocket blows up then radiation goes spraying everywhere. This also makes it a big target. Though see below for why this could be an option.
Something you haven't mentioned is using waste for other things. This isn't uncommon actually. But given your comment I'm under the impression that you think waste refers to a byproduct from the fuel (forgive me if I am misinterpreting). This is actually an extremely small part of the of the waste. About 3% of nuclear waste is high level waste. People talk about the 60k tons of total waste for all of nuclear power being able to fit on a football field, well only 3% of that is high level waste (which also should change how you think about option 2 because you'll realize that it doesn't solve the waste problem because that's not what the waste is). Low level waste is 90% of the waste, accounts for 1% of the radiation, and is things like tools, clothing, etc[1].
Actually that last part is why the conversations about waste are often seen as quite silly by those who are more familiar with the subject. Because it appears one group is talking about spent uranium as waste and another is talking about bunny suits. Again, 90% of the waste contains 1% of the radiation. Let that sink in.
[0] https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pr...
[1] https://www.world-nuclear.org/nuclear-essentials/what-is-nuc...