this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2024
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clean... so many storage pools full of spent fuel, no home for them in sight... hundreds of pools, spread all over the US....
clean?
I mean cleaner than coal, sure. but it's enormous infrastructure and regulatory hurdles aren't worth it.
Nuclear waste is a solved problem, it is contained to a tiny physical object, all we gotta do is dig a hole, put the object into the hole, and cover it up.
We pretend that it is way harder than it is.
I live in a suburb north of Stockholm in Sweden, and I'd support the government building a large underground permanent storage of nuclear waste from all over the world (for a fee) in my suburb, we have the best ground for permanent storage in Scandinavia, we would earn money, create jobs and make the world safer.
Also it's only a problem if we let it be, there's literally centuries for us to figure out a way to make those waste useful for us. Not working towards that would be the only way for the problem to come back to us in the future.
An idea I have thought about, nuclear boosted geothermal power.
Geothermal power normally just use a simple borehole with a hose going down and then up again, coolant goes in the hole, gets heated up a few degrees and the can then be processed to heat a house.
What if we could run tubes near the nuclear waste that will keep producing heat for thousands of years?
yes, I'm sure we'll hop on fixing this enormous issue with all the same urgency we've treated it with so far...