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Comment by cujo | Hacker News Reader

> Yes, no one wants those, they cost a lot of money and are at best temporary. But they are practical.

I don't understand this, and would love if someone could point me to a resource on it. How is it practical to essentially "kick the can" on storage/disposal?

As I understand it, the plan o more or less bury the stuff and hope we figure it out in the future. I read this as "just let some future generation deal with a catastrophic failure". That sounds awfully similar to how we've dealt with the climate/environment in general.

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Ok, storing carbon in the air and oceans is much more practical as it basically comes for free. Well, not counting in the cost of climate change of course.

Burying atomic waste on the other hand requires laughable amounts of space if you want to compare atomic waste vs carbon for let's say 100 years of global energy production. We already have to deal with the "catastrophic failure" of carbon storage as a "future generation" as you already mentioned.

I know a lot of people like to imagine that getting rid of atomic waste is basically some people with shovels digging holes for some hazardous yellow barrels, hoping in a thousand years no one will find them. Well, no. Atomic waste is much more manageable. And to be honest: If we had a way to say efficiently compact/solidify/whatever carbon then we would do the same with that stuff today already, just with the difference that we would leave much much much more waste behind for future generations.

Also, I think people keep underestimating just how little actual radioactive fuel goes into a powerplant and how little actual waste goes out.

Can you clarify this statement? Do people (in your opinion) overestimate the amount of fuel needed, or underestimate it?

Overestimate the amount of fuel needed and the waste generated. People seem to believe nuclear waste is a huge problem by volume, whereas in reality, it's a small and only somewhat tricky problem.

You're exactly right about the current stance on long-term storage of radioactive waste.

What do you mean by "deal with a catastrophic failure" in this case? Yes, we pretty much bury the stuff. That doesn't sound like a catastrophy to me.

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