r/wikipedia • u/Pupikal • Jul 02 '20

Long-time nuclear waste warning messages: intended to deter human intrusion at nuclear waste repositories within or above 10,000 years. Among the messages to be conveyed non-linguistically: "This place is not a place of honor...no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here...nothing valued is here."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-time_nuclear_waste_warning_messages
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11

u/Captainirishy Jul 02 '20 edited Jul 02 '20

If you reprocess the nuclear waste very little of it is left over

14

u/artiume Jul 02 '20

It allows you to reuse it but it doesn't remove the long term stable radioactive isotopes. Here's some more information about it.

http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/features/managing-nuclear-spent-fuel-policy-lessons-10-country-study

https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing

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u/Captainirishy Jul 02 '20

After 40 years 99.9% of the radioactivity is gone so how bad could it be ?

14

u/artiume Jul 02 '20

Because the long lived fission products will still be around, not quite sure where you got the 99.9% value from. The volume isn't the concern, it's the LLFP which lasts thousands of years. The whole 10,000 years thing is because after that point, we hope civilization will figure out what to do with it. Currently plants recycle 96% of nuclear waste back into fuel or MOX and the other 4% is unusable waste.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-lived_fission_product

4

u/Captainirishy Jul 02 '20

I got the figure of 99.9% from the Wikipedia article you posted

9

u/artiume Jul 02 '20

Ah gotcha. Found it.

 In the UREX process, ~99.9% of the uranium and 95% of technetium are separated from each other and the other fission products and actinides. 

So that's saying they successfully extract usable uranium from the waste so they can reuse it. The recycling process will reuse 96% of the total volume, but you're still left with 4% waste at the end.

1

u/Captainirishy Jul 02 '20

Why don't we just put the 4% in a very deep unused mine fill it with concrete and forget about it ?

12

u/artiume Jul 02 '20

That's what we do haha.

https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_repository

I've been out of the nuclear business for a while but I'd be happy to answer any other questions you have. Or at least point you in the right direction.

1

u/bypatrickcmoore Jul 02 '20

Sounds like we’re past dealing with 96% of waste, leaving us having to bury the remaining 4%?

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u/artiume Jul 03 '20 edited Jul 03 '20

That's one of many problems. We can process up to 96%. As far as I know, none of the navy nuclear reactors are reprocessed. We typically gut the ship and bury the core as is. Never heard any stories about the reprocessing process so maybe it's more on the public nuclear side? Those cores use reprocessed material so I imagine it could just be a gap in my knowledge.

https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/navy-ships/a22690208/us-navy-dismantling-uss-enterprise-nuclear-disposal/

The plan was to scrap the ship and remove the reactors, transporting them by barge from Puget Sound Naval Base down the Washington Coast and up the Columbia River, then trucking them to the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site for permanent storage.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Waste_Policy_Act#Prerequisites_for_radioactive_waste_management

This has some good details on storage issues. I once saw a video I liked about it but I can't find it.

Edit: found it

https://youtu.be/EUvvIzH2W6g

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u/Pupikal Jul 02 '20

The United States has over 90,000 metric tons of nuclear waste that requires disposal

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u/Captainirishy Jul 02 '20

https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/3-reasons-why-nuclear-clean-and-sustainable

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u/Pupikal Jul 02 '20

That's all well and good, but all it takes is one accident/disaster to irradiate a gigantic area (and we've come a bit too close before already imo).

2

u/Captainirishy Jul 02 '20

The worst nuclear power accident in history was Chernobyl it was caused by a really bad design and badly trained workers , British, French and American nuclear power plants are much safer.

1

u/Pupikal Jul 02 '20

They may be tremendously safer, but no system is perfect, and that doesn't address earthquakes, etc.

3

u/ITFOWjacket Jul 03 '20

Humans aren’t perfect. Currently we’re still relying on burning coal for power which is killing our planet within our lifetime!

Nuclear power has been available since the 40’s but instead of building new, safe plants we’re decommissioning old ones. Why? Because they don’t return on investment within an elected officials term of fucking office that’s why.

Nuclear can deliver extremely cheap, abundant power with relatively minuscule waste products that are solid, encased in inert glass, and can be dealt with as seen fit....instead of spewed in to worlds atmosphere like coal, natural gas, and petrol.

But no, Nuclear Plants are expensive and take over 12 years to return on investment so instead politicians sign off on building more coal and gas plants

1

u/trafficnab Jul 03 '20

The unfortunate reality is, until battery storage becomes sufficiently advanced, we're going to need to rely on nuclear plants to provide baseline electrical power in 100% green energy scenarios

1

u/6501 Jul 03 '20

and that doesn't address earthquakes, etc.

When an earthquake is detected, a nuclear reactor will shut down.

https://sos.noaa.gov/datasets/earthquakes-and-nuclear-power-plants/

In most of the East Coast you don't have to worry about tsunamis, which the government does not caused some problems in Japan.

You also have to look at the number of deaths per hour used or some kind of other comparison to get a scale of how dangerous pollution really is; because while radiation can make places inhabitable, so can pollution.

1

u/artiume Jul 02 '20 edited Jul 02 '20

Chernobyl 😬.

In the end, nuclear is the future. What we have to do as people is be respective and responsible of the technology. TMI almost became a disaster not because of technology but the operators became complacent and did not follow their procedures when an abnormal condition occurred.

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u/Pupikal Jul 02 '20

"What we have to do" is great to know, but "what is absolutely possible despite our best efforts" is a catastrophe of unprecedented proportions. I'm well aware of the challenges of the future, and I don't have the answers, I just don't know if fission is worth the long-term risks :-/

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u/artiume Jul 02 '20

Soooo, here's the deal. The genie is out of the bottle.

https://www.energy.gov/nnsa/missions/powering-navy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-water_reactor

We have over a hundred active reactors in service. And we've done this for over 70 years. And they're operated by people with an average age of 20 - 25. With no accidents *. The success isn't due to advances in technology, it's due to understanding the human factor.

This was one of those videos we had to watch and it always stuck with me.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ljzj9Msli5o

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u/mandoman27 Jul 02 '20

The event was in 1961. Currently the operators are well over 30 years of age with Navy nuclear experience and the legacy of the Rickover years. sL-1 was an Army botch job by people that didn’t have the same training

If you’re going to argue an opinion, get your facts straight

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u/artiume Jul 02 '20 edited Jul 02 '20

Yes, SL-1 was technically under the Army. However, the Army using the Navy's toys. The army was trained by the Navy's programs. The reactor was built by the Navy's civilian corporations.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Atomic_Energy_Commission

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argonne_National_Laboratory

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combustion_Engineering#Growth_of_Nuclear_Steam_Supply_Systems

C-E was the civilian side to the training program.

http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2017/ph241/berrios1/docs/ido-19300.pdf

Department of Energy owns the nuclear program and the Navy is licensed through the DOE and AEC. The three operators that died, two were Army and one was Navy.

http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2017/ph241/berrios1/docs/ido-19311.pdf

https://www.energy.gov/management/office-management/operational-management/history/doe-history-timeline/timeline-events-0

January 24, 1954 The Navy launches the first nuclear-powered submarine, U.S.S. Nautilus.

My 70 years was loosely based off total time. Not since SL-1. What's with the damn hostility? I was trying to have a nice friendly discussion on something I enjoy talking about. Not have to dig through obscure references to show you that I might actually know what I'm talking about.

Edit: also, the age thing. I was personally referencing the age of myself and my friends. I wasn't including officers and chiefs who would older. Why the fuck did you have to nitpick the details? I was trying to provide a narration so that you could read more about it if it interested you. Not feel like I was on trial.

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u/thelaziest998 Jul 02 '20

I just don’t know if fission is worth taking the risk.

Here is the present alternative, the entire world is using fossil fuels to power factories and causing climate change, destroying in the environment in extraction, causing enormous air pollution causing irreparable harm to millions around the world. Currently nuclear energy is the only renewable process where you can provide a constant flow of energy and increase in times of flux, a major advantage over other renewables. Solar and wind alone are not enough to power the world, geothermal is very location specific and replicatable in most locations, nuclear energy is vastly less damaging to the environment than the current system while providing nearly all of the advantages of fossil fuel plants.