this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2024
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Honestly, despite all of nuclears many benefits, there's still no good action plan for the significant amounts of substantially dangerous waste it leaves around. Hard to figure out a storage plan for an invisible poison seeping from a rock for the next 50,000 years.
Does it actually seep? my understanding of chemical waste is: that it doesn't generate a lot (the US has about a foot ball fields worth from all of our nuclear power plants in our total history, so nearly 70 years), and that they placed is secure, not leaking containers. You're right that it will eventually be a problem, but probably a problem that we will have to deal with later than our current climate crisis. An argument could be made that maybe new nuclear plants shouldn't be made, but if we have some up and running, that's cheap energy that generates little carbon.
That is the great misunderstanding of nuclear. It isn’t cheap. It’s supported massively by tax money. In France with all its big nuclear plants for example, the power company went bankrupt. Nuclear is too expensive to run. The government took over the operations.
In Germany, the power companies refused to prolong the operations of nuclear at the beginning of Russian invasion. It was too expensive for them.
The only advantage that nuclear has, is that it’s independent of weather and doesn’t emit carbon. The drawback is the costs, inflexibility (always on), and reliance on cool water (which was an issue in France). That’s why MS, Amazon and all put there eggs into this basket for AI power - they shit money.
Nuclear is too expensive to run in the short term. Nuclear plants only start being profitable after like 10 years. But then they're really fucking profitable. So it makes sense a company could go bankrupt when you're 10 years in the red.
Also, on the topic of flexibility, this is only true for, like, 70s era nuclear. France has had load-following nuclear for some time now. Does it follow second-to-second variations? No, but it can load follow on the scale of the daily variations in demand.
I pasted some links, but the DoE says groundwater will most likely be contaminated. Depends on who you trust and how willing you are to suffer radioactive contamination. Granted, it's probably a better risk profile than say... Coal... But that doesn't change the fact we have no good longterm plan to store any amount of radioactive waste, and if history is your teacher, a plan will most likely not come to fruition.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_repository
http://fbaum.unc.edu/lobby/066_Nuclear_Repository/Organizational_Statements/PC/PC_Get_the_Facts_About_Yucca_Mountain.pdf
https://www.kunr.org/energy-and-environment/2020-07-12/yucca-mountain-faster-water-flow-undermines-project-safety-unr-geologist-says?_amp=true
https://ag.nv.gov/Hot_Topics/Issue/Yucca/
What do you mean? We just outsource the waste management to private companies who assure us they will dispose of it in a safe and secure manner. (This is legitimately what America does with nuclear waste, with limited oversight -- fuck you Regan -- and it is fucking bananas).