Once upon a time, a new nuclear plant was being built near me and there was a fair bit of opposition to it. Late opposition, since construction was already well underway and the plant was close to being commisioned.
A local radio station took some of their FCC mandated public outreach time and invited a panel of nuclear experts on to have a discussion and Q&A call ins to allay public concerns. It was facinating to listen to, to hear experts in their field discuss at length and answer the public's questions.
Then there was one caller who frankly sounded a little bit like a hippie with a bit of California dudebro in his voice. He went on to complain about carbon emmisions and how nuke power was bad for the enviroment. The panel was silent for a noticable moment, as if to say, "wait, what?"
They remimded the caller that nuclear plants are zero carbon emmision.
Now corrected, with cognative dissonance surely setting in, he doubled down and started to waffle and spew a gross scientific missinformation and ignorance, much the same way that anti-vaxxers do now.
Nearing an emotional raised voice, he hung up in a fit.
Before moving on, the panel simply said something to the effect of, "well, that just goes to show that some people just don't know what they are talking about."
I lost a lot of respect for those kinds of "enviromentalists" that day.
I get how the nuclear power plants themselves are cleaner than most things. But the waste is a real issue. You have to find a place to store it for A MILLION YEARS. You can't burn it because that would release the radiation. You can't fire it into space because you'd need thousands of rockets, that's hella expensive and if one rocket were to fail, the radioactive waste would distribute in the atmosphere which would be devastating. You can't store it deep in the ocean (it has been done already) because it has been observed that the radiation doesn't disperse equally, polluting certain areas quite severely.
Finding sediments where we can be sure that no earth quake will take place, no erosion, no disturbance of the stored waste whatsoever and that the containers last for such a long time would be difficult too ofc.
Apparently there are ways to break down the atomic waste and make it less radioactive, which would result in it having to be stored safely for "only" 500 - 1000yrs, so I guess that's the only real option here. You'd still have to store it nevertheless.
And at that point, I’d think our power and tech advancement could possibly allow us better structure to house it. And 500-1000 years is significantly more manageable, and in that time frame maybe we’ll learn another way to manage or reduce waste.
Well, reduction to 500-1000 years is a big step in the right direction, but there's something else I'd like to add, hinted at above, that takes it a step further.
4th Generation reactor designs aren't just more efficient and produce less waste. They are capable of using the "waste" from older reactors as fuel. I seem to recall that the 4th Gen byproducts have a similar hazard as above.
That's right. What used to be pants wettingly radioactive waste, is now viable fuel for the next generation of reactors.
Now imagine what may be possible with future 5th Gen and Thorium.
A local radio station took some of their FCC mandated public outreach time and invited a panel of nuclear experts on to have a discussion and Q&A call ins to allay public concerns. It was facinating to listen to, to hear experts in their field discuss at length and answer the public's questions.
Then there was one caller who frankly sounded a little bit like a hippie with a bit of California dudebro in his voice. He went on to complain about carbon emmisions and how nuke power was bad for the enviroment. The panel was silent for a noticable moment, as if to say, "wait, what?"
They remimded the caller that nuclear plants are zero carbon emmision.
Nearing an emotional raised voice, he hung up in a fit.
Before moving on, the panel simply said something to the effect of, "well, that just goes to show that some people just don't know what they are talking about."
I lost a lot of respect for those kinds of "enviromentalists" that day.
Finding sediments where we can be sure that no earth quake will take place, no erosion, no disturbance of the stored waste whatsoever and that the containers last for such a long time would be difficult too ofc.
4th Generation reactor designs aren't just more efficient and produce less waste. They are capable of using the "waste" from older reactors as fuel. I seem to recall that the 4th Gen byproducts have a similar hazard as above.
That's right. What used to be pants wettingly radioactive waste, is now viable fuel for the next generation of reactors.
Now imagine what may be possible with future 5th Gen and Thorium.