Managing Nuclear Waste: The Illogic of Reprocessing

[Williamwallis33]

Nuclear electricity is the most expensive electricity in the world. Entitlements and tax-payer bailouts for the industry keep it afloat. The cost of managing the radioactive waste will cost taxpayers for the next 20,000 years. Would you buy a hamburger for $10,000? Nuclear electricity is the kind of electricity you use once and pay for every year until the cancer causing radiation disapates.

[Wafflepudding]

...I know it doesn't harm or benefit his arguments, but the way he speaks still gives me a headache.

[170116]

I CANT WATCH THIS ANY MORE ITS TOTALLY WRONG.

FRANCE IS THE LEADER IN NUCLEAR PLANTS,they have and will always use nucs,they erxport the excess power to other countries.

the USA already seperated the spent fuel into basic components,so its already STARTED,REPEAT STARTED.

INDIA has the biggest supply of THORIUM,so gee why not use it ,da

the USA is held back by very narrow views.

Transuranic waste has already been figured out how to be taken to a less threating state.

get out of the 60's

[JohnClark362]

@JohnClark362

such a high proportion of nuclear generation leaves France unable to meet peaking demand effectively. Since npps have such a high capital cost and such a low operating cost operations want to run as much as possible. These two facts mean France generations copious amounts of unneeded electricity, getting rid of it by dumping it on other EU countries at much lower than market prices.

Basically they export power because the overbought inflexible, high capital cost power plants.

[JohnClark362]

@JohnClark362

"the USA already seperated the spent fuel into basic components,so its already STARTED,REPEAT STARTED."

If they have, they shouldn't.

"INDIA has the biggest supply of THORIUM,so gee why not use it ,da

the USA is held back by very narrow views."

Well if it's not economical for India to use it's Thorium reserves compared to imported Uranium, that's why. There's no reason for the US to use Thorium in LWRs though. The latest MIT study on nuclear fuel cycles concludes this.

[JohnClark362]

@JohnClark362

"Transuranic waste has already been figured out how to be taken to a less threating state."

The waste problem isn't solved. If it was the US wouldn't be spending so much money on finding geological repositories.

[rsty615]

Remaining Lifetime of an Open Fuel Cycle: ~80 years

Remaining Lifetime of Closed Fuel Cycle: ~Infinity (for all intensive purposes)

UREX+ works, just ask THE REST OF THE WORLD.

Enjoy your wind farms and deserts with thousands of mirrors; I'm sure there's lots of energy there.

[jasbcor]

I think you have those two flipped around, pls double check.

[hotFusionReaction]

How are we to develope better safety standards IF WE DON'T DO IT!

Basically, he is saying we shouldn't do it because we can't to is right. We can't learn to do it right because we can't do it.

HE IS TALKING IN CIRCLES.

[humexavier]

Reducing Radiation waste.Atomic Plant atomic clock. Can be powered and energized by a solar clock but doesn't use sun power but only by laser light which is absorbed in clock's solar panel cells or photo voltaic cells which absorb laser light(not sun)and sends it to it's atomic plant clock or other small devices.The reason to use this. It is not smart to have any electrical wires any were around atomic things not fire safe, compared to laser beam which is safe even if cut from mile away.

[milofonbil]

Thanks for the very informative talk. Not reprocessing means we will be approaching peak uranium soon.

[bob1qaz]

We have to reprocess nuclear is the future. There are new ways to reprocess plutonium to a non-weapon grade state. Also thorium shows promise for a safe fuel for a nuclear vehicle it is just a matter of showing the masses how safe it really is.

[milofonbil]

While Thorium does not produce plutonium, it still generates large amounts of high-level waste, including trans-plutonics. Their ultimate disposal is still an issue.

I really don't think that you can ever have a safe vehicle transporting a breeder reactor that uses Thorium.

[bob1qaz]

Think again! Transportation and storage is not a problem at all! Watch the first 2 videos on my profile favorited.