We also don't know how to deal with lead and it will be poisonous until we figure out how to biologically re-engineer the human species. So far so good, we still use lead, you can buy the stuff by the kilo. This is a minor problem to the point where the people bringing it up aren't taking the situation seriously. The volumes are tiny and we can just dump it somewhere.
I do think there are ways to manage the problem, but tiny isn’t the word I’d use.
That is around 3 shipping containers. There is literally a risk of losing it in transit because the volume is so small. If you see 3 shipping containers in a field somewhere that might be a year's worth of nuclear waste.
It is hard to get across how small that number is compared to 20% of the US's annual electricity production. The reason the problem hasn't been "solved" in the last however long reactors have been a thing is it is too small a problem to devote time to.
I feel ridiculous having to argue that volumes of material this small represent a real threat. If you wanted to move it we could. Split it up into little loads and put it in a stupidly over-engineered shielded truck. Goodness me this is not a real problem. They've been ignoring it for decades and the consequences are somewhere between nil and nothing interesting. There is nothing here to be honest about, there is no reasonable threat to debate. We transport explosives, we transport poison, we sometimes get massive port explosions that can level a district. Then we've got old mate claiming 2,000 metric tonnes of a relatively dangerous material represents a serious national problem. The absurdity of that is frustrating to deal with.
We should decrease our power usage as a whole planet, and reduce dependence on technology that has outsized biological risks, like nuclear and plastics, rather than rushing into some future that will only enrich the already wealthy.
The benefits of making power available are extremely (!) robust and well-understood, as are the health and safety benefits of switching from combustion-based power to non-combustion-based power.
I have yet to hear skeptics raise specific nuclear concerns that are real, consequential, and also unmanaged. For all its cost and red tape, the past 60 years’ regulatory posture of “you must identify and mitigate every risk to the absolute maximum degree physically possible, damn the cost” seems to have resulted in a system where, well… they have.
Red tape in nuclear is there for a reason. I don’t trust anyone to do nuclear without tons of red tape. The only reason it’s safe is the red tape. Take red tape away from industries that aren’t inherently unsafe, fine, but not nuclear power.
Humanity might need more power some places, but it’s uneven and that probably won’t change. Your argument is moral and right, but the capitalists that choose where power go will continue to put power plants next to where their interests lie.
Developed nations need to reduce power usage so that others who are poor may have power. That is my stance, I don’t care how unpopular.
You seem to have this silly idea that LLMs are consuming huge amounts of energy.
You’re simply avoiding my main point, where additional power isn’t going towards helping under developed countries, by trying to appeal to how great the poor downtrodden masses have it without power.
Why aren’t we building renewable power plants in rural poor areas all over the world if that’s the goal? Because it ISN’T; the wealthy capitalists simply want to expend energy and build new plants near developed areas to make themselves wealthier!
You seem to be evading this simple mathematical point.
Renewables are being installed widely around the world. This is how much of the world will be lifted out of energy poverty.
I think some of the opposition to the idea of a renewable powered world comes from some of those who realize, at some level, that this relatively disadvantages the higher latitude white countries.
Everyone? A vocal group of activists, perhaps.
The same could be said for transport of chemicals by rail; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Palestine,_Ohio,_train_de... and still that goes on.
> Dry cask storage is a method of storing high-level radioactive waste, such as spent nuclear fuel that has already been cooled in a spent fuel pool for at least one year and often as much as ten years. Casks are typically steel cylinders that are either welded or bolted closed. The fuel rods inside are surrounded by inert gas. Ideally, the steel cylinder provides leak-tight containment of the spent fuel. Each cylinder is surrounded by additional steel, concrete, or other material to provide radiation shielding to workers and members of the public.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_cask_storage
There’s also a lot of low level nuclear waste which is a pain to deal with (make sure you pick the right brand of kitty litter…)
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/03/26/395615637...
I would certainly agree that nobody should actually try to put a year's generation of dangerous nuclear waste in 3 shipping containers. It'd be hazardous and the shipping containers couldn't be moved without breaking (probably do some damage to them even without moving them). The point is more that we're dealing with a volume of material that is - for an industrial society - tiny. There is a reason that in practice it is ignored it despite the braying crowd of people insisting that it is an unsolved problem that we can't ignore. It is an extremely ignoreable problem on the scale of benefits that nuclear power provides.
You may dedicate whole container to transport just a few kg of highly radioactive items.
Also, there are many things much more poisonous than radionuclide you can use to make terror weapons that are easy to get (take ricin, for instance)
I guess that the effectiveness of terror weapons has nothing to do with how many people are directly harmed.
> You can build a dirty bomb from the activated wastes of a fusion plant though so the original point stand still.
Even simpler would be to find a radioactive source (medical, irradiation, industrial radiography). Small quantities, in a portable package, but geiger detectors would definitely be able to detect the fallout.
In any case, setting the fuel disposal cost to zero still leaves fission uncompetitive, given the cost of building new nuclear power plants. This is especially the case if one imagines a nuclear powered world economy, which likely would have to resort to some flavor of breeder reactors. Reprocessing would be necessary for breeders, but that wouldn't make breeders cheaper than current burner reactors.