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NOISEBOB wrote

The high radiation is hazardous and must be kept isolated from the biosphere. We have not yet agreed on what should be done with this high-level nuclear waste.

nuclear energy is a terrible idea.. sure, we can maybe handle the waste now and for a couple of hundred years, but who will take care of it 500 years from now?

collapse, you know...

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86944 OP wrote

No one has to take care of a deep geologic repository. We know this is safe because of the natural fission reactor in Oklo, Gabon.

It is estimated that nuclear reactions in the uranium in centimeter- to meter-sized veins consumed about five tons of 235 U and elevated temperatures to a few hundred degrees Celsius.[4][8] Most of the non-volatile fission products and actinides have only moved centimeters in the veins during the last 2 billion years.[4] Studies have suggested this as a useful natural analogue for nuclear waste disposal.[9]

Sink the spend fuel thousands of feet into the earth, it's not going anywhere and you don't have to worry about illiterate collapse survivors getting to it. Anyone with the technology to dig thousands of feet into the earth is going to recognize fission products.

Yucca mountain is a safe final resting place for spent waste. It's ready and waiting to be used when we finally decide to stop letting NIMBY's trump reason. Finland is building the Onkalo deep geologic repository to store it's waste.

Waste is more of a political problem than anything else.

That said I'm against permanently storing spent fuel for now. The spent fuel has 95% of the energy it did when it was new. the US alone has enough fuel sitting in dry casks to meet our current needs for about a century.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor

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moonlune wrote

Breeder reactors don't existe yet.

Lol@ extracting 0.001 ppm uranium from sea water lol

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86944 OP wrote (edited )

Breeder reactors don't existe yet.

But they do, and have.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor#Development_and_notable_breeder_reactors

The BN-600 and BN-800 reactors in Russia, the Fast Breeder Test Reactor in India and a Chinese fast breeder reactor remain in operation today.

Also the Soviets had a submarine powered by a breeder reactor.

Lol@ extracting 0.001 ppm uranium from sea water lol

It's completely possible, just not economical today. We wouldn't have to resort to that for a long time though.

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moonlune wrote

Wow! today I learned!

I'm looking forward to thorium reactors since today thorium isn't used in anything and is "trash" for most mines, where they pile it up at the entrance because they don't know what to do with it.

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86944 OP wrote

Well first I recommend you look at the "thorium as nuclear fuel" and ""thorium myths" sections of the site.

https://whatisnuclear.com/thorium.html

https://whatisnuclear.com/thorium-myths.html

When people gush about the benefits of "thorium reactors" they're mostly describing the benefits of molten fuel fast breeder reactors, which don't necessarily run on thorium.

Furthermore, Thorium can be used as fuel in many existing reactors. It's just more expensive to do so.

"trash" for most mines, where they pile it up at the entrance because they don't know what to do with it.

It's not that we don't know what to do with it, it's just not economical to use. Uranium is so cheap that it's also mine trash. Phosphate mines have uncountable amounts of uranium as a byproduct just sitting in the open.

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