this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2024
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[–] echodot@feddit.uk 9 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

It's not that difficult to store it's just a rock. You just pop it in a sealed casket, put it underground, mark the location as do not enter and then forget about it. Hardly the greatest of economic challenges.

Anyway you're assuming that we won't have a way of recycling it in the future and there's increasing evidence that we will be able to pretty soon.

[–] frezik@midwest.social 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

That is a horribly naive underselling of what's involved in storing nuclear waste. How do you transport it? What do you do in the event of an accident during transport? Where is it stored now? Is it somewhere we can get good transport in? How do you mark something "do not enter" for tens of thousands of years? Think of what languages existed during the Roman Empire, and then realize that we'll have to store it for orders of magnitude longer than that.

Logistics, logistics, logistics. They are not easy for even the simplest projects.

We do have the recycling technology. It's not a far off thing; been developed for decades. If there's a good reason for a nuclear renaissance, it's in using the waste we already have, and recycling it down to something that's only dangerous for centuries, not millennia.

[–] echodot@feddit.uk 8 points 5 months ago (1 children)

All of the infrastructure for transporting nuclear waste already exists for transporting the existing nuclear waste.

Realistically it's the only viable long-term option it's infinitely better than fossil fuels and Fusion power would be nice but doesn't exist yet at least not outside of a lab and I don't think even in the lab particularly efficient.

[–] frezik@midwest.social -1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Realistically it’s the only viable long-term option

No, it isn't. Solar+wind+storage will do fine.

Fusion power would be nice but doesn’t exist yet at least not outside of a lab and I don’t think even in the lab particularly efficient.

And the fact that you word things this way makes it pretty clear to me you have no idea what you're talking about and haven't actually researched anything about it.

[–] FordBeeblebrox@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago

Solar and wind are just different ways of capturing energy from a fusion reaction (Sol), but down the line after much of the energy is diffused. If we can replicate that reaction here, every cent and second spent on solar panels is the equivalent of buying watered down drinks at a bar instead of drinking straight from the still. Until we can replicate fusion, fission is still far better than any fossil fuel and more stable than water/wind. The problems are people, not the rocks that heat up