With waste with a half-life of 10,000 years for example, each 2 atoms will on average emit one particle or photon in that time. Many generations of people could eat or drink those atoms safely. You could live your life next to a pile of it, and get very little radiation over your lifetime from long half-life radioactive atoms.
The long term storage of this waste is a concern, for sure. But it is a concern for the far future, and we can delay addressing it for decades with impunity (which we have been doing, actually). But we are facing a climate emergency that must be addressed right now. Nuclear waste is the least of our worries at the moment.
There's an extra Avogadro factor of around 23 orders of magnitude when going between atoms and grams, so those atoms really add up -- if they are highly pure and concentrated, at least.
Secondly, regarding waste, I share your view, and I think there’s an additional travesty that we’ve had breeder reactor technology for decades. That can significantly shorten the volume and half life of waste while also producing new nuclear fuel. Non proliferation concerns are cited for why it’s not used, but I don’t see why America can’t operate them within its own borders.
Yes, its insane to suggest the US in its own boarders can't handle it. They do a lot of things much more dangerous in every way to build nukes.
The US is, instead, handing back all the money that was collected to the remaining nuke operators.
Not, notably, to the ratepayers it was collected from.
This is fallout from a court case where nuke operators argued that disposal was flimflam, so the money was collected fraudulently. The court agreed, and ordered the money returned. Not to those it came from, but just to whoever was still operating.
https://flarecord.com/stories/511480139-appeals-court-rules-...
""" NextEra is still not entitled to a refund because federal law requires the DoE, not NextEra, to actually dispose of the spent nuclear fuel. """
Its truly sad that these resources were not used to actually develop the advanced reactors and technologies needed to solved the problem.
Actually they do. The US has been collecting money from nuclear plants for disposal for literally 50 years.
In fact, they have an absurd amount of money since this money has been collecting interest. It it political deadlock and systematic incompetence that prevents the solving of this problem.
And in addition, long term storage is an incredibly dumb solution for most of this 'waste' and is a fundamentally flawed policy that again, is simply systematic incompetence.
> I still have not met anyone who is prepared to have nuclear waste stored in their "neighborhood"
Disagree, put it in my garden. I don't care. You can leave it there for the next 100 years. Seriously, its not hard to store, it just stands there and does nothing and is 100% harmless unless you come up with some plot of Armageddon style logic.
> So it accumulates on-site, where there was no real planned long-term storage accommodation.
Its accumulates on-site because of systematic incompetence in the federal government.
> and the cost of nuclear accidents
The likely hood of such accidents is incredibly small, even if you assume 100 years of nuclear power for 100% of the population the chance of really series accidents is very low. And even lower if we consider next generation nuclear.