• uniqueid198x@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      10
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      The majority of solid nuclear waste, the kind that lasts milenia, can be reprocessed in to fuel and used again. France is particularly good at this.

      The water released from Fukushima contains no solid nuclear waste. Rather, its irradiated water where some of the hydrogen has become tritium. Tritium has a half life of about 12 years, and is naturally occuring from solar radiation. The safest way to deal with it is to filter it, then dilute it so that the percentage of tritium is not much higher than the natural level. This is what Japan is is doing, and will continue doing for several years.

      Simply put, safely dealing with nuclear waste is a well understood process, and the main reason it doesn’t get done is because of objections from anti nuclear-power activists

    • prole@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      You should look into the modern tech here, it isn’t just burying millions of tons of toxic waste under New Jersey. There are “breeder reactors” that use the recycled fuel to generate more power. They actually generate more fissile material than they consume, so instead of waste, they mostly produce more fuel.

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor

      • zik@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        They also don’t exist in large scale energy production and likely never will. (Just some test plants) They’re too expensive compared with other energy generation so no-one’s seriously considering them right now.

      • kool_newt@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        They actually generate more fissile material than they consume,

        So we’ll need to store or dispose of large amounts of fissile material until it can be used – which only makes more? This seems unsustainable.