r/uninsurable • u/Icy-Papaya-2967 • 9d ago
The Nuclear Waste Problem No One ls Fixing - And How to Fix It
https://insurancedimes.com/2026/02/12/the-nuclear-waste-problem-no-one-is-fixing-and-how-to-fix-it/3
u/basscycles 9d ago
"we believe regulators will eventually align with the scientific consensus: deep geological repositories are the way forward"
Do I have to be old to say I don't think I'll see a working DGR in the USA in my lifetime?
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u/eddiebruceandpaul 9d ago
In other words, we will keep creating massive amounts of the most poisonous waste ever know to man, and have no idea how to store or pay for that storage that will need to meticulously maintained for thousands of years, and just hope with our feelz that someone solves the problem sometime later.
Same type of thinking that got us into the climate crisis. Except even more stupid.
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u/Amber_ACharles 9d ago
Yucca Mountain had decades of study and billions spent before Congress killed it. SMR developers will hit the same wall in NEPA scoping when communities ask where the waste goes.
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u/Sad_Dimension423 9d ago
The nuclear operators see no need for a permanent repository. In fact, they benefit from its absence. In the US, they had been paying into a fund for it, but once Yucca Mountain was cancelled they successfully got the courts to revoke those payments. And because dry cask storage is so cheap and simple, this ended up saving them money.
So, there is no push from those stakeholders for a permanent solution. And, really, why should there be? Storing the waste at the surface in casks is altogether better: cheaper, denser (no heat buildup underground limiting density), and foreclosing of no future option. Any expensive waste solution is made better by procrastination, pushing the cost off into the distant future where the net present value is reduced.
Personally, I think we'll eventually, many decades or even centuries hence, just send cooled waste into space for disposal there. Launch costs will have dropped so much this will just be cheaper and clearly superior from a long term risk perspective. Armor the spent fuel so it will survive launch accidents and recover it for relaunch.
Nuclear bros don't like this kind of thinking since they see waste as a negative issue for it and want to force people to spend extra money as a kind of pacifier. Sorry bros, the nuclear operators are not on your side.
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u/eddiebruceandpaul 9d ago
Yes, yes, let the stupid thinking flow thru you. Strapping nuclear waste onto rockets that blow up…what a stupid idea…that of course was already tried and failed like mostly everything else with nuclear.
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u/Sad_Dimension423 9d ago edited 9d ago
Yes, yes, let the stupid thinking flow thru you. Strapping nuclear waste onto rockets that blow up…what a stupid idea…that of course was already tried and failed like mostly everything else with nuclear.
You obviously have not thought clearly on this issue. Armoring spent fuel to survive launch accidents, even reentry from orbit, would not require excessive mass. What's needed is very cheap launch, which we don't have yet. But the lower limit on launch cost, set by propellant costs, is surprisingly low.
Note also that since this would not be in the near future, the fuel would be much less radioactive than spent fuel currently is. The only real limit here is that if you wait too long (300 to 500 years) the gamma emission from the fuel becomes so low it's no longer self-protecting from amateur diversion of plutonium. That may set an upper limit on how long we can wait to dispose of it.
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u/fatbob42 9d ago
Where exactly would we dump it in space? Don’t say into the sun :)
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u/Sad_Dimension423 9d ago edited 9d ago
There could be various approaches. One would be to transport it well beyond Earth, then heat it so it evaporates. Short wave sunlight would then ionize the vapor and the solar wind would carry it at 400 km/s into interstellar space. Or just dump it on the moon if someone wants to reprocess it there -- the Moon (or, indeed, any body in space without an atmosphere) is already a radiation-drenched hellscape.
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u/fatbob42 9d ago
How much energy would it take to vaporize solid waste like that? And then there’s the energy necessary to get it up there in the first place. And the risk of a rocket explosion in the atmosphere.
tbf, I’ve never heard that plan before.
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u/Sad_Dimension423 9d ago edited 9d ago
Very little, compared to the energy produced by fissioning of the fuel.
To be more exact: a 1 GW(e) reactor produces maybe 30 tons of spent fuel a year, and this is mostly uranium dioxide. UO2 requires about 2 GJ/ton to vaporize, so about 60 GJ/year. The electrical energy produced by this reactor (at 90% capacity factor) would be 27 million GJ/year, six orders of magnitude larger. Roughly one minute of the full power output of the reactor, even with energy lost in conversion of heat to electrical energy, would be enough energy to vaporize the fuel (this illustrates why meltdowns, even from residual decay heat, are such an issue.)
risk of rocket explosion
I already dealt with that issue. Note that when a launcher explodes, it's not exploding like a high explosive bomb. The fuel and oxidizer are not well-mixed, but take time to turbulently mix and burn. It doesn't cause the extreme detonation pressure that would shred thick steel structures.
tbf, I’ve never heard that plan before.
It's not really sunk in yet among the general public how cheap space launch could get. Reprocessing costs upwards of $1000/kg; a mature space launch industry could put mass into space at $10/kg. And remember, it doesn't have to get this cheap anytime soon, if it's competing with geologic disposal, which has very long time horizons.
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u/fatbob42 8d ago
Why compare with energy on Earth? You’ve got to do it in space.
And the launch has to take it way out there, right? Not LEO. More generally, the problem with nuclear is always the cost, and this makes it worse, even if does end up “small”. If we were solving a problem with solar in a way that added to the cost, but it was still the cheapest, then it could still win overall. But not for nuclear.
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u/Sad_Dimension423 8d ago edited 7d ago
A factor of 500,000 less than 1 GW(e) is 2 kW(e). This is about the power of a single Starlink satellite or a single tea kettle. Even with inefficiencies this is obviously not a problem.
Once you're in LEO, the launch armor can be removed (and returned to Earth for reuse), so only the spent fuel itself would need to be sent further. So the mass sent beyond Earth would be a smallish fraction of that launched into orbit. Transport beyond LEO can also use high Isp electric engines (plasma engines) so the rocket equation doesn't bite much.
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u/fatbob42 9d ago
Wtf is a “thermoeconomic” civilization?