https://www.science.org/content/article/finland-built-tomb-s...
The amount of fuel waste is small enough that burying it underground in places like Finland with suitable geology seems like a workable solution. The long-term risk doesn’t compare with the immediate threat from climate change, IMO.
Not every country even has candidate sites. And there's a lot of issues from "I think we have a solution" to actually having implemented it.
Only in the political sense. Waste volumes are small enough that we easily could if they were willing to dig a big enough hole.
Putting the waste on a ship with the potential of the ship sinking or having an accident elicits a big "nope" from me.
France has plenty of problems with its nuclear power. Germany is moving away from Russian gas, and a lot quicker than Russia would like.
The problems France has with its nuclear reactors is the need to replace them and build new ones.
(a ship sinking is usually an environment desaster, but the nuclear waste sinking should be a very small concern because the waste are fixed in glass, and water absorb radiation)
Scaling nuclear power up by factor of 10 to 100 means scaling transport of nuclear waste up by the same factor at least. Including all the risks associated with it. People are not going to take these vague assurances after so much has gone wrong in the past.
Are you aware the several nuclear submarines have sunk? Their fuel is enriched far higher than terrestrial nuclear plants (>80% for nuclear subs, ~20-25% for power plants). Yet no adverse impact is observed. Even in cases like Kursk where some radioactivity release is monitored, it subsides to background levels just a few meters outside the wreck.
Which is surely one of the reasons why they generate less waste -- less non-fissile fuel to be irradiated, smaller reactor vessels to be activated, etc.
Plus the average power generated is way lower for a nuclear submarine. A single commercial ~1 GW nuclear reactor quite likely produces as much power as the whole US submarine fleet on average, and there's hundreds of such ~1 GW units in the world.
And less power means fewer fission events, which means less activation and less waste. So even a sunk sub is nowhere near the levels of a sunk commercial waste fuel shipment when it comes to what either of the two could release into the environment should the bad stuff leak out.
Can't they just dig down? Are you saying some countries don't have bedrock?
Once you’ve done this to little effect, the wrath of the whole world will fall on you for breaking this taboo. So it’s really not worth the trouble.
https://thebulletin.org/2014/01/mexicos-stolen-radiation-sou...
> Thus the consequences of this incident appeared to be less grave than in two earlier cases—in Brazil in 1987, and in Thailand in 2000—when unsuspecting scavengers who dismantled old radiotherapy machines exposed themselves and their families to very high doses of radiation. Four of the exposed people died in Brazil, and three in Thailand, and more were seriously injured. The cost of cleanup and recovery for their communities was substantial.
> Officials, especially in the United States, were relieved that the stolen Mexican capsule did not end up with terrorists, who could have used it to build a “dirty bomb.” Even though many planning scenarios predict that such a bomb would probably cause few radiation-related deaths, its economic impact could be disastrous.
Two previous incidents of material disappearing killed the thieves, and even still a dirty bomb isn't any more dangerous than a regular bomb to the intended victims. They're essentially not really a thing as I posted earlier. You'd probably just bake yourself trying to build one.
Do it in a place like Manhattan and the cost to remediate would be potentially huge. We're not talking about turning an isolated former nuclear or chemical weapon production/storage facility into a nature preserve, but returning a 'slimed' dense urban area into one suitable for long-term human habitation. That's the real power of a radiological dispersal device.
(Yes, this is unintuitive. It's also true. The ocean is huge, the abyss not very active and water is great at blocking radiation.)
Have you ever seen what oceans do to glass over time?
I don't care what your imaginary nuclear scientist says or what the general public thinks.
Step 1 would basically be instilling Joe Q Public with an appreciation for quantification and if you can do THAT you've also solved a huge range of problems unrelated to nuclear power at the same time. This is also an _extremely_ difficult step that I'd expect to cost tens to hundreds of billions of dollars in education and propaganda.
"17,000 containers and 19 vessels with radioactive waste, as well as 14 nuclear reactors, five of which contain hazardous spent fuel."
Note that reactor vessels themselves are sometimes at least partially underground in a reinforced concrete pit in the containment.
I've always thought deep underwater would make sense, provided the containment was very good. You would never have to worry about a meltdown really since there's an unlimited heat sink readily available and the reactor could be constructed to passively cool itself through convection in a total failure / walk away scenario.
Problem is that if you break containment water will carry all that nasty radioactive material everywhere. I'd look at ceramic fuel packaging such as pebble beds or sealed fuel rods that are highly water insoluble, then waste vitrification or encasement in highly water insoluble glass or ceramic materials.
Until you have to. ;)