It's incredibly frusturating that this isn't part of the public discourse, where are the pro-nuclear candidates? Which parties are pro-nuclear?
We still have no solution a) where to put nuclear waste, and b) how to communicate to civilizations for the next 25000-50000 years what kind of waste that is.
In Germany, the ongoing search for a permanent waste repository is going on for decades now. Funnily enough, this taxpayer's money is never calculated into the total cost of operating nuclear plants. It only makes sense if you subsidize cost by taxes of current and future generations.
2. you can't convert ALL of the waste into short-lived isotopes, just a fraction of it.
Sure, we can invest time and money into researching these topics, why not. But why not put the same energy into researching renewables?
Like if we had no medium half life isotopes, we may only need to keep waste safe for a few hundred years, perhaps 1000 at most, before remaining short lived isotopes contribute negligible radiation, leaving just the long half life isotopes. If those are long enough we have waste not meaningfully more dangerous than the original uranium ore, and can simply bury it.
A lot of this does depend on the specifics of input fuel and breeding cycles used, but there have been designs that would be able to reprocess any medium lived half-life outputs, leaving only reasonably short lived, and very long lived outputs.
The real question is what is the overall effect of such reprocessing on the cost efficiency. Presumably, breeder reprocessing entails some level of cost (additional equipment, additional monitoring, etc), and we may end up with some not completely optimal components in the fuel after reprocessing, which would mean lower operating efficiency. But by how much? How much less cost efficient doing the right thing here makes the plants is a critically important concern.
https://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html
> b) how to communicate to civilizations for the next 25000-50000 years what kind of waste that is.
I would solve the climate change problem first, otherwise all problems appearing in 25000 years are moot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo...
People care about this way more than it actually matters. If going near a certain area kills you, people are going to learn that after the first few deaths. The casualties are never going to anywhere near the stakes of global warming.
And besides that, the whole worry only applies in the narrow range of futures where humanity neither drives itself extinct nor retains advanced technology. It occurs to me that in that kind of future, society might actually be helped overall by the scientific advancement driven by having access to radioactive sources.
He's since changed his tune for the same reason I have -- nuclear is too expensive and too slow.
Nuclear had its run and we blew it. Literally.
Is it really political kryptonite or is that the oil lobby owns all of the politicians
Regarding the comparison with other power production methods, you are most certainly right about fossil fuels causes more harm than nuclear. Facing climate disaster it's hard to argue otherwise.
Unfortunately nuclear hazards in the form of accidents are much more ominous. Invisible, immediate and easily measured. It's just a scary technology.