A #Chicago activist Michael McLean demonstrating 30 years of spent fuel in a LaSalle County #nuclear power plant. That’s it, these containers represent over quarter of century of low-carbon generation.

And it’s incorrect to call it “waste” - the fuel in these containers still contains 90%+ usable uranium which is just unsuitable for generation as it has been “polluted” by fission byproducts. But it can be reprocessed back into new fuel - the only reason why it’s not being done today is that it’s cheaper to use newly mined uranium for that purpose. This may change in future and then these containers will be opened and reused.

On average, only 4% of each container is actual “nuclear waste” that needs to be stored somewhere long-term. But even that doesn’t means “millenia”, because the very point of radioactive decay is that this waste loses activity pretty quickly. The more active it is, the faster it decays - and the byproducts separated from spent fuel will drop down to 7% of their original activity in only 100 years.

@kravietz Except that ~ noone does reprocessing, because it is expensive & dangerous. So ... it is waste. If you put **** into water, it is waste water, even through it is 95% clean water.

@pavel

As I explained, it’s only “expensive” because mined uranium is cheaper. When mined uranium becomes more expensive, e.g. due to carbon tax or increasing demand, reprocessed uranium will be a viable option. And actually France does reprocessing it all the time. Here you can see how “dangerous” it is on a live example:

https://scitech.video/w/bg8Jbqf22RsvutB3DZZbxx

@kravietz It is expensive because it is ... expensive. Yes, taxes could be used to make people do more reprocessing, but is unlikely to be good idea. You want nuclear power to be cheaper, not even more expensive. Uranium is unlikely to run out -- there's enough. But yes, putting U238 into reactors is stupid, and it would probably be better to burn thorium, but that's unlikely to happen "soon". France is really an exception, btw. Breeding reactors rare and "dangerous".

@pavel

You want nuclear power to be cheaper, not even more expensive

Excellent, would you say the same thing about off-shore wind? As a reminder, off-shore wind is typically twice as expensive as on-shore wind, PV and nuclear… and it still provides intermittent electricity output. Rooftop (residential) PV is 3x more expensive. Yet, people are all the time calling to increase capacity in both, and for subsidies to make them more affordable.