The total cost for storing and securing shit for 100.000 years is also 'externalized.'
Both costs are more or less impossible to establish upfront.
Both costs are more or less impossible to establish upfront.
Soon it will be possible to use most of the waste as fuel:
"...Fast reactors can "burn" long lasting nuclear transuranic waste (TRU) waste components (actinides: reactor-grade plutonium and minor actinides), turning liabilities into assets. Another major waste component, fission products (FP), would stabilize at a lower level of radioactivity than the original natural uranium ore it was attained from in two to four centuries, rather than tens of thousands of years"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_fast_reactor
How does coal waste compare to that?
"Coal ash – the waste material left after coal is burned – contains arsenic, mercury, lead, and over a dozen other heavy metals, many of them toxic."
http://www.psr.org/environment-and-health/code-black/coal-as...
"The study found that levels of radioactivity in the ash were up to five times higher than in normal soil,"
https://phys.org/news/2015-09-radioactive-contaminants-coal-...
How much coal waste is produced per year?
"According to the American Coal Ash Association's Coal Combustion Product Production & Use Survey Report, nearly 130 million tons of coal ash was generated in 2014."
There will be literal mountains of moderately to highly dangerous rubble.
"...Nearly every major river in the Southeast has one or more unlined, leaking pits on its banks filled with water and holding coal ash from power plants. Containing millions of tons of toxin-laden waste, these pits are unlined and have leaked arsenic, mercury, thallium, selenium, and other contaminants into the rivers and the underlying groundwater for decades. "
https://www.southernenvironment.org/cases-and-projects/coal-...
Fine, it'll be an underground mountain :-)
> [...]compared to coal waste[...]Containing millions of tons of toxin-laden waste[...]
Holy shit, I had never even considered ash. It just never crossed my mind somehow. Thanks for bringing this to my attention.
It doesn't make me any less opposed to nuclear energy, but you've given me one more reason to be against coal plants (as if there weren't enough already).
But I agree; Coal is not the future. Either.
>...I am not an expert but many seem to consider the increased handling risk related to the toxicity and activity of plutonium and other products,
I agree that nuclear waste needs to be handled carefully.
>...especially considering terrorism, and also the risk for weaponizing the enriched plutonium.
There is very little terrorism risk from nuclear waste. The weight, size and danger of high level waste means it would be beyond the capability of terrorist group to take advantage of it. Other sources of power have much, much more of a risk from terrorism.
>....also the risk for weaponizing the enriched plutonium.
None of the nuclear states got their start by using nuclear waste from a commercial reactor. This wasn't a coincidence - it is much easier to get nuclear fuel by using a special purpose reactor or enriching uranium.
Plus, as you suggest, no-one wants to buy the MOX fuel product because it's more expensive than enriched uranium.
The U.S. effectively estimates zero cost (without looking into the details); that certainly is a bad estimate.
The biggest externality of coal in particular is not carbon emissions but the massive health costs and human suffering.
If fossil fuels were subjected to the same safety requirements as nuclear in terms of preventing public health effects, the cost would increase substantially.
The carbon emissions cause climate change, which causes human suffering at a scale, as I understand it, far beyond that of the pollution you describe (which is also substantial).
While the dust and radioactivity released by coal plants kills hundreds of thousands of people now, and we can't meaningfully offset it by trading quotas - it's not like having more kids makes up for killing other people.
But as we all know, replacing coal powered plants with safer things (nuclear, solar, wind, tidal) would cost nothing compared to healthcare costs.
Given that the shutdown of nuclear is extremely expensive, and that decommissioning before the planned lifespan also involves massive payouts to the owners and reduced time to amortise cleanup costs etc., the economics also vastly favour keeping them running.
It also ignores the vast healthcare costs involved in dealing with respiratory illnesses - including for children - as a result of coal. Few people fall over dead with no cost of care for respiratory illnesses.
So if your concern in healthcare spending, that's another reason to at a minimum not shut down nuclear plants until all of the coal plants are gone.