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Comment by nickik | Hacker News Reader

Or we could just use that valuable fuel and put it into nuclear reactors to make energy and other useful stuff. But that seem to be a totally crazy idea.

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Reprocessing is its own nightmare and, I think, only France tries to do it. All of these processes (the "uranium cycle") are terribly polluting in their waste outputs and dangerous places for the people who have to work there and live near them.

What nightmare? Reprocessing is a net cleanup compared with letting the waste sit. I have some nuclear engineering background and honestly I don’t know what you’re referring to.

Reprocessing isn't clean. It creates its own waste which is worse than the spent fuel you started out with. Reprocessing plants (like every part of the uranium cycle) are dangerous places to work and live near.

It creates a lot less waste, which is the point. Lots of fuel (waste) in, little bit of waste out.

It's like the US doesn't already have a number of remote areas like Hanford, Oak Ridge, Idaho Falls, the Savannah River Site, Rocky Flats, etc. that are already set up (and somewhat contaminated already) for handling this sort of material and process. In reality it's a political nightmare, not a pollution one.

Not every nuclear waste producing country has so much space.

Actually most don't.

I just don't get the problem, like at all. Dig a 5-6km deep shaft(we already have the technology for that depth, no issues), put the waste at the bottom. Keep drilling shafts until all waste is burried. That's far below the depth of any water sources, and unless you bury it near a tectonic fault, it's not making its way back through geological processes for eons. Like, can someone explain to me why we're not already doing that?

I can't explain you that but just the fact that nobody is doing it might give you the idea that this is probably something you shouldn't do.

As others have pointed out, most issues are political, not technical. There are already places which would be perfect(deep mine shafts surrounded by salt deposits, so they are literally impenetrable as salt is self-sealing) but the countries/states they are in object to keeping the waste as some sort of ideological issue.

What I want to know is whether there is a technical issue with what I am suggesting.

You just literally proposed to dig a 5-6m deep hole and assumed that would be enough...not even salt mines are enough. See Germany where there is suddenly groundwater seeking into a salt mine full of radioactive waste. A salt mine that was considered safe once. Now they are looking for years now to find a new safe spot and Germany stopped producing new waste. Still they have those problems. Tax payers are paying for this search. They'll also pay for the retrieval and they are paying for pumping out of the water.

There are many issues there obviously. This is not some easy thing you try to dig in there. It'll be there for a very long time.

To be fair, he said 5-6 kilometers, and the Asse II mine is less than 800m deep.

Yeah, when I saw that, I couldn't edit anymore.

My argument was also not aimed at the depth but at the unreflected "just dig a hole and hide it there" idea which reminds me of the dumping of nuclear waste into the sea.

Well, the clear difference is that stuff dumped into the sea will make it to the surface sooner or later. Containers will eventually leak and the dangerous materials will get into water, which then will carry it all over the world. Waste dumped into a 6km deep borehole is not coming out ever. I've made another comment above with a link to the wiki article about project deep borehole - where exactly this was researched and found viable for long-term storage of radioactive material. But was of course stopped by......public protests.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_borehole_disposal

But at least we know were it was or came from and that pretty soon. Hiding the stuff in a deep hole and probably be forgotten before it becomes safe is just irresponsible. I would even prefer that you keep it in one of the dumps on the surface in case we do come up with an economical way to reprocess or "zapp" it in 10, 50, 100 years. At least we know where it is.

I won't even touch geological issues that may come up. A few decades ago we wouldn't know that we would be able to cause earthquakes because we're shooting chemicals into the ground. Who knows what will be in 100 years or in 200?

I mean, if there is a geological process that can bring stuff up from 6km depth then we're all dead anyway - the layer of impermeable rock above it is not called that for no reason. And with the half life of some of the elements in the waste as long as 100k years yes, it's ideal if it's buried and forgotten where no one can get to it. Irresponsible is storing this stuff on the surface - if the civilization collapses and no one is there to look after these containers they pose mortal danger to anyone finding them even in thousands of years. But no one is in danger from stuff quarter of the way from the Earth's mantle.

The irony here is that you already propose to disturb this layer. Even though the technology is pretty new. Despite that you already not only want to penetrate this layer, you want to drop radioactive waste in there.

Btw what about Countries like Japan. They can't do that for obvious reasons. Will the US take this waste? I mean, they will keep producing it. And what about the next country that comes along. I'm sure they can pay good because it won't be every country that can afford this procedure. What about the former soviet republics (currently already used as dump by France for example)? They can't afford that. Will the US take that too or will they pay for it? Maybe the EU because they are closer and are more afraid?

And yes I agree with you that it's irresponsible to store that on the surface. It's even more irresponsible to produce even more of it. But hiding it away in the hope that some later generation in the future will still remember where it is and not touch it, not do anything to the terrain around it or dig it up to misuse it is not only naive, it lacks imagination. You should read more SciFi. It teaches you to think in time frames that are relevant here. Looking back at our own short history may help also.

But....we already do penetrate it, routinely. Oil and gas fields are below it more often than not. Punching a 50cm hole in impermeable rock does nothing to it.

As for other countries - again, just because Japan cannot do it doesn't mean we shouldn't be doing this altogether. They can store their waste on the surface until we come up with a better plan. But countries like US can, and US has enough nuclear waste to fill 800 of these boreholes already - it's definitely worth doing for them, even if Japan can't. The answer to your question would be ultimately political, and yes, I imagine Japan would pay someone else to have it disposed of. But that's just a guess.

And I do read a lot of Sci-Fi, thank you for your concern. I just don't think you realize what sort of depths we are talking about - there is no geological process bringing material up from these depths to the surface. When we dig to that depth we literally find material buried for millions of years. You'd be talking about rupturing of the Earth to a point where a new mountain range rivaling the Alps would be created - and if that happens then like I said - we're all dead anyway.

As for the lack of imagination - quite the contrary! The mantle in the shallowest spot is only 7km below the surface - and the temperatures there can be as high as 4000C. That's enough to melt nuclear fuel, in which case it would just become part of the Earths crust forever - and it's not like you're polluting the Earth with filthy waste that someone might dig up at some point - the composition of the Earth at that point is already radioactive itself, dropping our nuclear waste into it is not just a proverbial but a literal drop in the ocean. Just like sending this stuff into the sun doesn't make the sun any worse off - the Earth's mantle is already an extremely dangerous place where no Sci-Fi would even suggest digging or future human activity of any kind. In that sense it's a good place for our most dangerous waste, since putting it there doesn't really make it any worse off.

And finally - as you noticed, whatever we do is irresponsible. In my mind, keeping it as we do right now is more irresponsible than burrying it in a way that makes it completely safe even if a comet struck our planet and civilization was completely wiped out. Whoever survives that won't accidentally run into steel containers full of death pebbles. And if civilization emerges that is somehow capable of not only digging but also retrieving material from close to the Earth's mantle, then that civilisation will understand what radioactivity is - no one will ever dig this stuff out "by accident". It's just the sensible option right now, while keeping it around isn't.

The deepest mine in the world is 4km deep. There are only a dozen or so more than 2km deep. Going down 5-6km may be possible, but definitely not with "no issues".

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deepest_mines

You don't need to drill tunnels for people to walk in - just a borehole wide enough to fit a cylinder filled with nuclear waste.

In fact, this very idea was already researched and test holes drilled - but of course was cancelled due to public opposition, even though we could get rid of our nuclear waste almost overnight using this method. Typical.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_borehole_disposal

Just running the numbers here.

As per your Wikipedia article, current technology limits the borehole to 50 cm. That gets us 500 to 1000 m^3 worth of storage per borehole, assuming the lower 1km to 2km is used for storage.

From this[1] page, as far as I understand, on a global scale the current amount of nuclear waste in need of such storage is 482000 m^3. So roughly 500-1000 boreholes to store the current waste inventory.

Anyone got any ideas on how much it costs to drill a 5-6km 50cm hole?

[1]: http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fue...

It costs something around 1000€ for a 6m well. Without the paperwork.

But this is your usually drilling equipment for those depths.

That's the Russian approach. Just put it in a remote place. Problem solved.

Hanford and Rocky Flats are two of the most polluted places on Earth. Hanford has polluted the Columbia River, a tragedy in itself.

Nuclear is like the insolent child who refuses to clean up his room. There isn't any cleanup, really. The waste keeps piling up (usually in something that looks like a swimming pool). It must be attended to by humans for decades or centuries. And the uranium cycle leaves its dirty underwear all over our planet.

There is nothing eco about nuclear.

Thus reprocessing - if Hanford's government contractors could get over the hump and get the vitrification plant online, it'd be a lot easier to clean up the waste that's interred in the solid dump and tank farms. And if we didn't have state governors screaming about "No atoms and radiation in my state!" and not allowing passage of waste through their state in properly designed containment and transfer casks, we'd be able to get that waste to a facility where it can be made safer.

The radiation plume under Hanford is not as terrible as certain sources make it to be, the same with the contamination of the river. The area around the reservation itself has led to a recovered and strong population of many endangered indigenous animals in the area as well.

Regarding Rocky Flats, again, not as terrible as many make it out to be. Once you factor in living at high elevation there's not a huge increase in overall exposure.

An important consideration that comes into this is that most of these were weapons production facilities (dealing with purifying and handling some of the nastiest material around).

The waste from properly designed and operated power reactors is a much cleaner and much easier to contain process. Condemning an entire avenue of clean energy (most of the fuel needs for a century+ which have already been extracted and refined) because the work done on the technology in the 40's-60's (when we were still figuring out how awful some of the waste is), is not conducive to progress.

Source: Field engineering on projects at Hanford, Rocky Flats, and Yucca Mountain

The UK still has a site too but yes there's only a handful globally. The former site at Dounreay in Scotland used to leak particles on a regular basis which were all kinds of bad news for anything living that came into contact with them or perhaps one kind of bad news: horrible death.

France's power is cheap by European standard [0]. So there isn't an economic issue.

Going by order-of-magnitude of input materials, if it is an environmental nightmare it is still going to be better than the mining process for raw materials going in to solar panels and whatever else. AFAIK they all use rare earths that get mined in China and refined with some horrible process. Pure volumes of solar panels suggest the incidental environmental damage will be worse from, eg, trampled grass and land disturbed.

So it isn't an environmental or an economic nightmare relative to the alternatives. In what sense is it a nightmare? It seems to be working for France.

[0] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

> France's power is cheap by European standard [0].

Because France heavily subsidized its nuclear infrastructure. They also have a big problem right now because most plants are old and have to be decomissioned, and building new plants is not economical.[0] Energy from nuclear power plants is pretty expensive sans subsidies, not just in France.

Just as an example of the live cycle costs: An old plant in my country is in the process of deconstruction - for over 25 years now. The company created as a legal umbrella for the job employs over 500 people since its creation. No end in sight.

[0] https://www.ft.com/content/c7421fbe-f326-11e8-9623-d7f9881e7...

Renewable sources are too expensive without subsidies too. So, how do we make people use solar? I know, let's make everything else more expensive: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/images/b/...

Renewables are way cheaper without subsidies. Just compare how nuclear got financed in the 1950s compared to what flows into renewables in recent decades, it's an order of magnitude smaller. And those subsidies don't include nuclear plant decomissioning, the costs of which dwarf everything else. The plant in my example cost over a billion already, and isn't even finished. A single plant.

Also those per kilowatt numbers in the chart don't mean much without comparing total consumption per household. I pay way more than the most expensive example in the charts, at 30 cents per kilowatt, yet our monthly total is only 80 Euros for a 5 person household.

Ah, yes, decommissioning, that dirty little word no one in the nuclear industry likes to talk about. Decommissioning can take decades and cost billions, usually passed on the ratepayers. These costs are never mentioned when the industry discusses its economics.

I'm also getting kind of tired of the "solar pollutes, too" argument. Yes, solar pollutes. So does making PC processors. But neither of those activities create radioactive materials which can poison people from a distance and persist in our environment for thousands of years. There is simply no comparison between poisonous heavy metals and radioactive nucleotides.

There is one aspect in which non-radioactive heavy metals are worse: since they are stable elements they must be stored away and guarded forever, not just for a limited number of years.

Heavy metals can't hurt you unless you ingest them. Proximity or handling doesn't hurt people. Radioactive materials, however, vomit particles everywhere in an untraceable way. Radioactivity cannot be removed from contaminated materials without transferring the radioactivity to something else. This is the key difference. Heavy metals can also be filtered from water and segregated from other substances, while radioactivity cannot.

This is wrong. There are many ways of reprocessing and many are far better then the limited once used so far. Its just that we haven't advanced in terms of nuclear technology in the last 40 years.

We will never solve any of these problems if we don't embrace nuclear technology.

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