Comment by AngryData
9 hours ago
Because of anti-nuclear sentiments we are right now currently storing used nuclear waste in its most dangerous form in the most open and uncontained and open storage lots. Worrying about expanding nuclear and ending up putting the waste in a hole deep in the ground is such a nonissue to me. If humans blast themselves back to the neolithic era and 5,000 years from now some dudes die from walking into some old facility die, who cares? There are masses of people dieing right now because we are still relying on fossil fuels, many of them from cancer from breathing the radioactive fallout that is downstream of every coal plant.
Seems to me that pro-nuclear sentiments have at least as much to do with ongoing accumulation of nuclear waste as anti-nuclear sentiments.
> Worrying about expanding nuclear and ending up putting the waste in a hole deep in the ground is such a nonissue to me.
Blithe minimization of the problem of storing nuclear waste over millenia feels like "Peak HN". :)
("Peak HN" jabs are a cheap shot, though — so let me engage more seriously...)
First, "coal vs nuclear" is a false dichotomy. Everybody I see advocating for nuclear power in this thread is advocating for it as a permanent solution rather than an interim solution — in which case there are other competitors.
Second, if nuclear waste is too dangerous for less-than-ideal storage conditions, that speaks negatively to the viability of nuclear power — because over the long term less-than-ideal storage is guaranteed by our inability to design incentive structures for responsible stewardship that persist over centuries.
> by our inability to design incentive structures for responsible stewardship that persist over centuries.
Simply untrue. Finland‘s Onkalo is exactly that-a storage solution engineered to require zero stewardship. It is possible and now we know we can do it right. Storage is the weakest argument against nuclear.
By the way, Solar panels and wind turbines contain heavy metals with no decay path, e.g. Cadmium. Nuclear waste at least decays after apprx. 1000 years with spent fuel roughly as radioactive as the uranium ore originally mined for it.
The fearmongering against nuclear was always crazy to me. Especially since nuclear and renewables actually complement each other really well. We can use nuclear for baseload and renewables filling in on top when sun and wind are available.
Onkalo is the best approximation so far of of a memory hole for nuclear waste — but Finland has not agreed to accept all the world’s nuclear waste, similar sites are not available for all countries, and in practice storage remains a major point of contention as a wander through this discussion will show.
> The fearmongering against nuclear was always crazy to me.
I sometimes feel similarly about pro-nuclear cheer mongering.