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Truth says:
November 26, 2022 at 1:50 am
there is zero plans for dealing with the fantastic amount radioactive waste
Watch a 2010 documentary film called “Into Eternity” about the Onkalo waste repository at the Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant on the island of Olkiluoto, Finland. It should have enough storage space for one hundred years of waste. The “hot” waste after it has been allowed to “cool” for 30 years stored under water will be stored using the Swedish KBS-3 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KBS-3 ). The facility should start to store waste starting in 2023.
Or read “Deep Time Reckoning” (How Future Thinking Can Help Earth Now) by Vincent Ialenti which uses Onkalo waste repository as a case study.
I’m not even pro-nuclear, but you have to admire when something is done right. And if you can’t admire that then you can at least admire the engineering and actual long-term thinking. //
Rybec Arethdar says:
November 26, 2022 at 6:46 pm
The big elephant in the room everyone seems to ignore though, is that pretty much all active nuclear power plants have sufficient space built into them to handle centuries of their own waste. The reason we don’t see much effort going into nuclear waste management technology is that it is a problem that is over 100 years out. And thus far every reactor commissioned has been decommissioned before running out of space for nuclear waste storage, so it’s just as far out as it was 50 years ago. Until and unless we start taking nuclear power seriously as a long term solution to our energy needs, nuclear waste disposal never will be a real problem. And countries that are taking long term nuclear energy seriously are already starting to work on solutions, despite the fact that they have at least a century to do it in. //
BrendaEM says:
November 26, 2022 at 8:40 am
SL-1/ Argonne Low Power Reactor Nuclear Accident, was a small reactor, that killed 3 people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SL-1
One person was missing for days before they found him pinned to the ceiling. Here’s another rod: https://radiationworks.com/photos/sl1reactor2.htm
They used a C-clamp on a round control rod: https://www.osti.gov/sciencecinema/biblio/1122857
The entire building had to be dismantled: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0zT9ARfsT4
I believe that the area is still radioactive. “The primary remedy for SL-1 was to be containment by capping with an engineered barrier constructed primarily of native materials.”
Where in your neighborhood do you want the reactor?
https://radiationworks.com/photos/slreactor9.jpg
As far as small reactors being green, here an Indian video which shows tailings ponds from yellow-cake production, which is used to make the green-sand, which makes the nuclear metal for reactors.
Steven Naslund says:
November 29, 2022 at 8:10 am
Also fail to note that SL-1 was a research reactor which was built on a test range. The SL-1 was not really a failure of hardware as much as the incompetence of personnel (there is also rumor of a murderous love triangle underlying the story). The nuclear industry could be much safer but not if we keep using 50s-70s technology. Anyone who is really upset about the nuclear waste issue needs to go see a decommisioned reactor with fuel casks stored on site. It is amazing how little space is taken up. I am not sure about the desirability of burying encased waste, it seems much safer to me to have them stored in casks on pads above ground where they are easy to monitor and maintain. The reprocessing of this waste could reduce it tremendously.
