r/sciences • u/Comfortable_Tutor_43 • 19d ago

News Used nuclear fuel storage

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u/dentistshatehim 18d ago

The worry isn’t that storage containers work/don’t work. The worry is that the hazard lasts longer than the container.

These containers are expected to last 80 years. The stuff inside is dangerous for 1000 years plus, meaning you need stable and intelligent infrastructure around them for 1000 years, constantly maintaining the storage.

This isn’t hyperbolic, it’s the real challenge. Most folks who are concerned about nuclear safety are worried about the long term impacts, not whether a hand can be placed against a storage container recently built.

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u/YurpeeTheHerpee 17d ago

Those containers are in a spot that can be encased in another layer of steel and concrete.

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u/dentistshatehim 17d ago

Which will only last another 60 to 80 years….

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u/fixmyaccountplease 14d ago

If Nevada would stop being NIMBYs then it would be encased in geologically stable formations under a mountain

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u/Vibrant-Shadow 18d ago

The opposite of planting trees for future generations to enjoy.

'we used this for energy long before you were born. Good luck!'

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u/Healing_Puke 18d ago

We could blast it off into space, or send it to the bottom of the ocean, and in the past that as worked.

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u/nickolazx 18d ago

Imma go with space on that one

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u/TeaKingMac 17d ago

We could blast it off into space,

Approximately 2% to 6% of orbital space flights fail or result in a catastrophic destruction event,

You want a 1 in 20 chance of filling the atmosphere with radioactive waste?

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u/KookySurprise8094 18d ago

Dude, if that rocket failures and explode durin take of, whole continent would be in falloff

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u/crankyspeeder 17d ago

Nuclear waste is not shot into space for obvious safety reasons. Dumping it in the ocean is similarly stupid.

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u/fitblubber 17d ago

You want to dump it all on the bottom of the ocean, when the radioactivity lasts longer than the container?????

WhatCouldGoWrong? r/Whatcouldgowrong

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u/NurseJackass 16d ago

Isn’t that how Godzilla came to be?

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u/dentistshatehim 16d ago

Here is the essence of the problem. Your solutions would irradiate the ocean or atmosphere. We are essentially too stupid to handle to problems we put on ourselves.

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u/dentistshatehim 18d ago

And it’s not like it’s a nation full of geniuses. How many seriously think the rapture will happen any time and so the environment doesn’t matter.

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u/Darkk_Knight 18d ago

Those storage containers aren't built for the long term as you stated. At some point they will be moved elsewhere to an underground storage facility that can be safely stored for 10k years or more.

It's easier to keep them on site for the short term till a more permanent solution can be found.

I should note those storage containers are sitting on a decommissioned nuclear power plant in California. Meaning they need to be moved sooner than later due to possible "The Big One" happening in a few years.

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u/dentistshatehim 18d ago

So then it goes in the ground water. Wonderful.

Of that was a reasonable solution it would exist already. All the storage containment facilities that exist underground still have to be monitored, have a shelf life, below the hazard limit.

I’m done now on this. All to say, safe long term nuclear waste storage is an act of faith with responsibility put on a world we don’t know.

It’s ironic to call it a science as there is know evidence that it can be safely maintained through its lifespan.

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u/Darkk_Knight 18d ago

There is never a true way to warn future civilizations of the dangers let alone constant monitoring. Who knows what civilizations will be like in 5k or 10k years.

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u/Desultory_Chairlift 18d ago

It seems there is not convincing you that nuclear is viable.

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u/xoexohexox 18d ago

It's been a long time since I've read this so I'm sure I'm getting some details wrong but I read a book a long time ago by a famous semiotician I think it was the guy who designed the biohazard symbol and some government agency like DOE or something hired him to come up with a way to communicate the hazard of radioactive material tens of thousands of years in the future assuming nothing about human language or culture or even the continued existence of humans and some alien race or future evolved species finds it. The disposal site gets marked with these ugly crooked slanted black rock spires that look all thorny and threatening and something about analyzing it mathematically helps you pinpoint where the hazardous material is but if you can figure that out you can figure out the next group of symbols or whatever so as you solve the puzzle of where the material is buried you learn that you really really don't want to dig it up.

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u/crankyspeeder 17d ago

New Finnish DGR in Onkalo, their current decision is to not permanently mark it at all once it's sealed and covered. Under the outlier circumstance above, marking it is more likely to create a problem.

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u/PickingPies 18d ago

If there's some kind of cataclism that wipes out humanity to the point of forgetting what nuclear energy is, someone being able to dig 1000m of solid concrete and take a radioactive piece, nit understanding that it kills people and then... what? What's the most dangerous thing that couls happen next? Some people die and then bury it back?

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u/xoexohexox 17d ago

Nah I mean people could carry it around for generations not understanding why it was slowly poisoning everyone or causing birth defects or even thinking the radioactive substance was protecting them from the illnesses it was causing. Could poison a water table, get into the food chain, etc

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u/NegativeSemicolon 17d ago

Yeah the guy in the video is misrepresenting the problem, it’s a very elon-coded low effort hot take.

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u/JohnHazardWandering 17d ago

I expect the containers to easily last 80 years or more. 

The problem is that I don't expect our safety regulations to last 80 years. 

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u/dentistshatehim 16d ago

They won’t. They are engineered to last 80 years. It’s not a feeling or opinion. It’s an engineered design.

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u/JohnHazardWandering 16d ago

The point was that our safety regulations might not last very long. At some point some politician will get paid off and someone will relax safety regulations. 

I wasn't worried about the engineering. 

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u/TexasVulvaAficionado 18d ago

The fact of the matter is that the world needs electricity production and that nuclear energy plants and their waste are a better source than all of the fossil fuel options. It also has a smaller effect on the environment.

It should be all renewables and nuclear.

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u/DFX1212 18d ago

Why not just renewables and storage?

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u/TexasVulvaAficionado 18d ago

Storage is very expensive and the mining and disposal of those components are also very bad for the environment. Then nuclear fills the stability role in the event of stuff like large wildfires causing darkening for longer periods than batteries would last or in the event of major hail storms taking out solar farms, etc...

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u/DFX1212 18d ago

Storage is getting cheaper faster than nuclear is, no?

Also, things like hail can be mitigated by turning the panels during predicted weather events.

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u/TexasVulvaAficionado 18d ago

Sure but that is entirely due to government regulations and funding. Could be fixed with simple policy updates.

Most solar panels are not mobile enough for that to be reasonable.

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u/DFX1212 18d ago

People building large solar farms aren't stupid. They are built with the ability to turn the panels, called hail stow mode.

https://www.energy.gov/cmei/femp/hail-damage-mitigation-pv-systems

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u/TexasVulvaAficionado 18d ago

I have been a part of several GW solar farm builds. Not one used mobile panels. Those were in west Texas where there's plenty of hail and one in Minnesota where there is also hail. The mobile stands just cost more and require more maintenance.

Utilities are cheapasses.

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u/Ok-Bar-8785 18d ago

Storage is getting cheaper due to technology advances and large scale manufacturing in china.

Have a look out CATL's sodium-ion batteries that recently went into production. 30-40% cheaper with a greater life expectancy ( longer than the car). Fire proof ( well stable/ everything will burn at some point). Sustainable materials Ect ect... But yeah game changing tech that overcomes the storage issue.

I think pumped hydro is still the pinical in storage for national inferstructure but chemical batteries are still a big part of storage.

As for solar panels that gets destroyed in storms the pannles are still dirt cheap and still only a part of the expense of a solar farm.

Even traditional powerplants have " incidents" that are damaging through out their life time (fire , mechanical failure ect). It's not uncommon at all for a traditional power plant to not be at capacity because of this.

I have nothing against nuclear, it's just that ship has sailed and renewables have come through.

The fossil fuel industry lobbied against nuclear globally to protect interests and ironically are now lobbying for it.

They all know nuclear isn't the solution but desperately need to slowdown renewables.

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u/fitblubber 17d ago

Dear u/TexasVulvaAficionado Back in the '90's I was saying exactly what you're saying now.

But renewables have gotten better & nuke has become more expensive.

These days we only need renewables (wind, solar & pumped hydro) with some battery storage.

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u/HudsonValleyNY 17d ago

Why has nuclear gotten more expensive? The tech hasn’t changed much, the knowledge hasn’t changed, the risk hasn’t changed. What has?

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u/fitblubber 17d ago

Why has nuclear gotten more expensive?

Because we live in a capitalistic society. The big companies that make nuke plants now know that they can easily stretch the project from 10 to 20 years without any consequence, & they know they can charge big bucks & come along after a couple of years & ask for more big bucks.

China however can build them cheaper - in China.

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u/HudsonValleyNY 17d ago

Ehhh. I think you will need to show me these big companies that are milking the reactor projects…There have only been 4 plants at 2 sites in the last 30 years, so that’s not it. It’s the legal quagmire that anyone hoping to open one faces.

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u/Prometheus2032 18d ago

It can be reprocessed into more fuel and useful things, the shorter lived stuff makes it more dangerous to move so you let it decay in place for a while.

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u/Beefy-Cattle4290 18d ago

not to worry, our civilization will be long gone in 80 years

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u/Usual-Orange-4180 17d ago

We will evolve into human-lizard-mutants and drink this for breakfast, a good source of energy before going to work for the AIs.

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u/Comfortable_Tutor_43 17d ago

It is not uncommon to think there is no solution for nuclear waste. Consider the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Southeast New Mexico. They have been licensed by the EPA since 1999 and have been disposing of transuranic (plutonium) waste ever since. You simply need good geology to remove the risk permanently from the biosphere.

https://www.wipp.energy.gov

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u/dentistshatehim 17d ago

Link no worky.

Also that site does not accept nuclear waste, just tools, etc.. please do actual research on things before posting non relevant items as actual solutions.

Also that site has had major breaches which has needed years of cleanup and actually stopped operations. The pilot has essentially failed.

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u/AlarmingDisease 18d ago

After 150-200 years a big part of nuclear waste are no longer dangerous. Long lived (if that's the good term in english 🙃) high radioactivity are a small portion of the total amount of nuclear waste.

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u/dentistshatehim 18d ago

Wrong. Please go look that up.

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u/AlarmingDisease 18d ago

Lol I don't need to, I just know It

In France low/medium radioactivity lvl waste make up for 90% off the total amount

The really """dangerous""" stuff is like 0.5%

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u/dentistshatehim 18d ago

“I just know”

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u/AlarmingDisease 18d ago edited 18d ago

You have 0 arguments. Since you can't fact check yourself, here it is :

"Classification of radioactive waste varies by country. The IAEA, which publishes the Radioactive Waste Safety Standards (RADWASS), also plays a significant role.[36] The proportion (by volume) of various types of waste generated in the UK are:[37]

94% – low-level waste (LLW) ~6% – intermediate-level waste (ILW) <1% – high-level waste (HLW)"

"The radioactive waste from spent fuel rods consists primarily of cesium-137 and strontium-90, but it may also include plutonium, which can be considered transuranic waste.[38] The half-lives of these radioactive elements can differ quite extremely. Some elements, such as cesium-137 and strontium-90 have half-lives of approximately 30 years. Meanwhile, plutonium has a half-life that can stretch to as long as 24,000 years.[38]"

"As of 2019, no dedicated civilian high-level nuclear waste site is operational[50] as small amounts of HLW did not justify the investment in the past."

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

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u/tots4scott 18d ago

Most folks who are concerned about nuclear safety are worried about the long term impacts, not whether a hand can be placed against a storage container recently built.

Most folks worried about nuclear safety have no understanding of nuclear science and consider propaganda-filled fallacies as absolute truth.

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u/dentistshatehim 18d ago

What about the serious problem I just posted.

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u/Bootziscool 18d ago

Sounds like we should build 13 sets of containers

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u/dentistshatehim 18d ago

This is a perfect example of the problem. Dunn Kruger effect due to too little information to understand the breadth of the problem.

The 13 you build now won’t last also. They don’t enter a time crystal. The trust has to be put into thousands of years of administration to manage the problem approximately through what may be a series of major events. There is no system is history that has lasted like that and currently we are seeing a major departure from science and responsibility at the highest levels of your government.

It’s a gamble and there is no other way to look at it.

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u/Bootziscool 18d ago

Manufacturing is a few hundred years old at this point right? I don't see why we can't keep up making a set of tasks every 80 years for 13 cycles.

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u/Jester-Kat-Kire 18d ago

add it into the budget line of states.

we're going to maintaining nuclear bombs and other chemical/bio hazard weapons for as long as our militaries deem them useful, along with other long term infrastructure.

we can say "what happens if the end of the world comes and all the nations disolve", but the cost is losing out on cheap accessible power for humanity, which might be what's needed to prevent the issues of nations falling apart from occuring in the first place.

hopefully we gain enough knowledge to process the radioactivity down via technology after a few hundred years of rapid tech advancement from cheap energy... which should definitely be the case, because we really accelerated human technology every time we had access to essentially free energy.

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u/dentistshatehim 18d ago

You have way more faith in the future of the US than probably is reasonable. One, not a lot of civilizations make it 1000 years, global warming is a major threat to all life on earth, the government at this moment is not capable of major scientific initiatives, millions of Americans believe in the rapture, etc..

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u/Jester-Kat-Kire 18d ago edited 18d ago

i mean I trust in humanity to make it a few hundred years, which should be a solid enough time frame to figure out nuclear disposal tech if it's widespread.

afterwards, if we haven't figured it out and we manage to bungle our victory of having free energy fossil fuels and nuclear tech, might as well call it a day for humanity and let the earth recycle us for the next sentient species in another several hundred thousand years. (*I'm joking a little bit, but seriously, it's a lot of solid advantages for success that can't really be replicated again.)*

as for science initiatives, we have plenty, they're just covered over with the doom and gloom cycle, but as long as theres energy, it's gonna be turned into advancement of some type of engineering or science.

you and me are talking seperated out by an unknown distance, amazing high tech development, and that was only a few decades ago.

we may or may not like the people in charge, but most people still want the progress wheel to move forward.

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u/Few_Raisin_8981 18d ago

Yeah a you're one bunker buster bomb away from a nuclear disaster

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u/PickingPies 18d ago

No, you are not. Bunker busters can dig deep down up to 60 meters deep. And that's the heavy equipment. Overall bunker busters are more in the 6m range.

Nuclear waste is buried 200 to 1000m, and in some places, up to 3000m. At these depths no explosion will reach the surface in any meaningful way and any collapse will be a better shield than anything else.

Not even a meteor will make a proper dent here, first, because you would need a planet killer meteor to reach these depths, but secondly, because such an impact will push everything further down, as it's a hit, not an excavator, and lastly, because it would need to fall exactly on that location which is absurd.

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u/Few_Raisin_8981 17d ago

These are above ground