> The plan of how to treat the most dangerous radioactive waste
Someone lied to you. Spent fuel has been not only treated by actually *recycled* for years in Orano la Hauge. This is truly fascinating process and worth watching how it's done:
https://scitech.video/videos/watch/53184e23-6490-4158-a616-68af6afc0925
Clarification: "the most dangerous" was an abbreviation for « Déchets MA-VL » 45000 m^3 + « Déchets HA » 3650 m^3 in https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestion_des_d%C3%A9chets_radioactifs_en_France. 90500 m^3 of FA-VL is not yet stored.
Lower emission waste is already stored.
A *tiny* fraction (1172 tonnes/yr , 2013) is recycled at:
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usine_de_retraitement_de_la_Hague
As for the full life cycle:
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Démantèlement_nucléaire
Very few FR politicians want to take proper responsibility for handling the full life cycle (waste + dismantling old reactors).
> few FR politicians want to take proper responsibility for handling the full life cycle
Of course, because Greenpeace made the topic of anything nuclear so toxic that they can only lose popularity by association.
If you let politicians into energy sector you get German Energiewende - shut down nuclear, build new "safe" fossil gas and North Stream to import more gas.
But, most importantly you get 5x more CO2 emissions.
Regarding the waste, there are two reasons why new storage is introduced so slowly: political and economical. Political - people are misinformed by Greenpeace and protest. Economical - the amount of waste is so tiny now that it's not economically viable to build expensive underground storage. Yet.
I don't understand the focus on Greenpeace. CRIIRAD is not run by Greenpeace. Neither Le Canard Enchaîné, Charlie Hebdo, Réseau Sortir du nucléaire, or the Association française des malades de la thyroïde are controlled by Greenpeace.
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%A9seau_Sortir_du_nucl%C3%A9aire
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_fran%C3%A7aise_des_malades_de_la_thyro%C3%AFde
Keep in mind the corporate/market/military/state complex [Eisenhower] which has its own interests in misleading the debate.
Without #OpenScience we won't get far.
France is where most of the hard empirical data based on a half-century of experience is.
The number of quantifiable parameters for responsible social decision making is huge.
The (statistical) quantification of #risk is not just blabla (if done properly).
Low-probability high-risk events, such as pandemics or civilian nuclear accidents, are part of this. Modelling extreme events (e.g. with a #Gumbell distribution) is harder than modelling Gaussians...
You're absolutely right, but the worst nuclear accident that can happen in third-generation PWR reactor is shutdown in case of total loss of external and internal power, and loss of coolant.
https://www.neimagazine.com/features/featurepassive-safety-in-vvers/
And you cannot run risk analysis in industry without *comparing* against alternatives, can you?
This is precisely why I highlighted the deep geologic repositories in Germany - they are there, they store cyanides, mercury, arsenic... yet nobody cares.
And this widespread disinformation is precisely the reason why I always just bring the discussion to these basic engineering metrics:
Because, again, this is engineering challenge that has been misrepresented by "environmental" activists.
In Germany there are actually already TWO deep ACTIVE geologic repositories - Herfa-Neurode and Zielitz.
There have been zero protests or controversies around them. Why? Because they "only" store highly toxic waste like arsenic, mercury, cyanides. But not nuclear.
Main difference? Nuclear will be 7% toxic after 100 years, the others remain 100..
https://www.kpluss.com/en-us/our-business-products/waste-management/underground-disposal/
As you speak of decommissioning, this applies to *any* technology and singling our nuclear is a manipulation.
Coal ash releases hundreds times (!) more radioactive elements to the environment than a nuclear power plant, yet countries are still burning coal and producing coal ash at 2000 m3 per day, which they just dump on huge heaps that occupy thousands of hectares.
These hills on the picture (Poland) are all coal ash, and they also require decades of treatment...
And this applies to renewables too: photovoltaic panels contain toxic elements such as cadmium which, if just left on site unprocessed, poison the ground as it happened many times on failed PV projects.
Wind turbines contain hundreds of liters of gearbox oil which is deadly toxic to marine life and also require careful handling.
It's only in Greenpeace stories where renewables are made of pranic energy and never expire... In reality all engineering is dirty if mishandled.
Now, as I mention 2000 m3 of coal waste *per day,* the whole UK nuclear program just that amount over... 50 years! Nuclear plants produce really extremely tiny amount of waste, especially compared to the amount of energy they produce. And this waste can be easily packed, stored and over 100 years it loses 93% of its activity.
@kravietz @boud There isn't a lot of waste and the fuel is incredibly dense, but there is a massive environmental impact in mining fissile material. Massive amounts of raw yellow cake ore has to be refined in centrifuges. It's often mined in places like Australia and then gets transported in full to refinement facilities in the destination country. There is also an environmental impact mining uranium ore. The Yucca Mountain facility isn't even operational yet and there have been leaks in NV.
@kravietz @boud I do agree we should have way more nuclear power and the environmental impact is much lower compared to the land that has to be cleared for wind or solar, but there is still a significant impact that can't be ignored. Not to mention the tritium leaks TVA has tried to cover up at their breeder reactor at Wattsbar.
There are leaks and fuckups in each industry. PV leak cadmium, wind leaks gearbox oil, coal leaks ash and radioactive elements, gas and oil leak CO2 and methane... and radioactive elements etc etc.
So until we have nuclear fusion which shouldn't leak anything significant -- and if we want 24/7 electricity -- we need to focus at what leaks the least of everything per kilowatt-hour of energy.
Traditional reactors were not energy programs, they were an offshoot of the nuclear weapons industry. It's kind of not a surprise that they were dangerous and inefficient as their primary purpose was not to produce safe, cheap power, but rather to lock in a production pipeline for weapons grade fissile material that would not be subject to weapons treaties. It's the same reason why despotic regimes always have nuclear 'power' programs based around those same kinds of reactors.
It's simply a category mistake to blame their shortcomings on the nongovernmental nuclear power industry.
@kravietz @boud
I always encourage everyone talking about environmental impact of A to *compare* against X, Y, Z.
There's tons of misconceptions in this sphere, unfortunately created by environmental activism who in their effort to portray renewables as "clean" and nuclear as "dirty" simply resorts to utter nonsense.
The reality... this is what a photovoltaic panel is made of. Note what industry authored this advertisement... 😉
So at the end of the day what matters are objective comparisons of *lifecycle* usage of non-renewable resources. In case of energy sector I consider these as first priority:
* surface power density (how much land surface per unit of energy)
* greenhouse gas emissions (how much CO2)
* capacity factor (which makes any 1000 kWh of PV only 150 Wh in UK reality)
And then secondary metric:
* levelized cost of energy (LCOE, how much $$$ per unit of energy)
@kravietz
The long-term risks and costs of civilian nuclear power are too high.
France has the most nuclearised electricity:
* The cost of managing closed-down civilian nuclear reactors is huge: they produce no electricity but remain radioactive and must be permanently protected from tourists, thieves and terrorists.
* The plan of how to treat the most dangerous radioactive waste is still very uncertain; it *might* start at #Cigéo in 2025:
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestion_des_d%C3%A9chets_radioactifs_en_France
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cig%C3%A9o