Hacker News Reader

Comment by posix_me_less | Hacker News Reader

> we're going to produce more and more nuclear waste, and there isn't really any answer as to what we can do with that.

There are several answers to the question "what we can do with it", such as 1) reprocess it and use it again; 2) keep it in the power plant pools or similar storage facilities; 3) dump it to some deserted place where it isn't a big problem (high depth, stable earth crust). In the past, UK just dumped nuclear waste in barrels into the sea, which seems kind of convenient and irresponsible, but if done right (better isolation from sea creatures), this could work too.

It is true that there is no single universally agreed upon answer. But that is the same as with all other waste. Most of waste gets either burned or dumped at some place. The same will happen to nuclear "waste", until people start reprocessing it.

View on HN

I didn't think nuclear waste could be "burned" ... I was given to believing that containment was the only option right now.

I'm familiar with your (1) (2) (3) items, but again, from what I've read these aren't fully satisfactory. (1) is probably ideal but hasn't really been cracked, (2) and (3) are just different facets of containment, but (3) is admittedly the most plausible right now.

We can tolerate a limited amount of this for sure, while we work on other solutions, but unless this question gets resolved it will hamper the widepsread adoption of nuclear.

The UK approach is interesting because yes, they just dumped it in the Irish sea. There's a deep underwater ravine between Scotland and Northern Ireland where it's all dumped, along with various other bits of old military hardware and other bits that are inconvenient.

Think about that the next time you here Bojo talking about building a bridge to Northern Ireland.

Fast reactors can burn waste pretty well, as few other designs. However, it's politically problematic because it involves using plutonium burning (not as fuel, but produced in the reactor while burning down uranium).

This is not liked by certain governments, even if theoretically NPT gives a framework to do it safely, and large scale commercial reprocessing essentially died after India used Canada-built CANDU reactors to kickstart their nuclear weapons program.

Global-politically, there shouldn't be any problem for the US, UK, France, Russia, and China to have fast-breeder reactors, but it still may be a concern in local politics due to environmental or terrorism concerns.

Nuclear waste has to be shipped to the facility. All the shipping routes from all the nearest waste-producing reactors converge there. That's naturally a concern to all those who live nearby.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com