alt Hacker NewsWhat nuclear waste? Where is it?
Somebody must be able to point to the nuclear waste by now. There it is, waving frantically in panic, the nuclear waste! It’s coming right for us!
Something is either highly radioactive for a short amount of time, or not very radioactive for a long amount of time.
But never both highly radioactive and for a long time.
In reality, there is so little nuclear waste that most of it has mostly been stored on site where it was generated, taking up less space than any grid scale solar or wind.
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I know where the nuclear waste is stored here. Its storage is funded by the government for now (not included in electricity prices) and nobody can actually prove it will be safe for the centuries it will be dangerous.
> What nuclear waste? Where is it?
Good question! Since you asked: it is largely in cooling pools and piling up in empty lots around nuclear power plants, waiting for safe, secure storage to appear.
> Something is either highly radioactive for a short amount of time, or not very radioactive for a long amount of time.
This is not true at all, unless you consider "short amount of time" to include decades to centuries to millenia.
I don’t think nuclear waste is a huge deal, but it does increase fuel costs in a very meaningful way. The classic uranium is cheap therefore nuclear’s fuel is cheap is a tiny fraction of the story. Refueling generally means weeks of downtime, you can’t safely operate at extreme temperatures for maximum efficiency, you need enrichment, and fuel rods, and even with multiple trips through the reactor core a significant amount of fuel isn’t burned or economically useful, and when your done you also need processes do deal with highly radioactive material + the costs of dry casks, and then transport them offsite and then down into some tunnels.
Add all that stuff up and fuel is a major expense. Granted that downtime depends on the design, and is also used to do other maintenance tasks but without refueling you’d end up with different tradeoffs.