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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • Yucca mountain is a political problem, not a technical one. But sure, if you want examples of good practice, I refer to COVRA in the Netherlands, where I had a tour a few months ago. Very interesting facility. If you want a deep geological repository, there is Onkalo in Finland. I’m not a fan of dedicated DGRs, but since it’s around, we might as well use it I guess.

    In my view, should you care, we’re not going to put away the spent fuel at all in these DGRs, but recycle them in until we used all of the fuel. At this point there actual waste, should we no longer be able to recycle this, is around 1% of the current ‘waste’ in volume and consists solely of short lived isotopes remaining radioactive for around 300 years. If you want to bury that, sure, I guess.

    But please, now you tell us more about how fantastic the waste management is of the arsenic mining tailings in China, which are a result of digging for rare Earths to make solar panels. I look forward to it!



  • Before we can advance the use of solar panel use, the question of waste must be answered. Humans and corporations aren’t known for their responsibility.

    See the double standard? No? I guess not.

    Of any industry, the civilian nuclear industry has been exemplary in dealing with their waste streams, in contrast to all other energy industries. A waste stream that’s actually highly recyclable and becomes no longer dangerous (unless you eat it) after just 300 years.

    Nuclear waste is not an actually existing problem, and anyone raising it is employing a delaying tactic for our society moving away from fossil fuels actually killing our planet.







  • Great overview, but I have two notes:

    1. A mention is made of the proliferation risks due to purified plutonium. But no mention is made of the difference between weaponsgrade Pu-239 and useless Pu-240. Pu-240 has the annoying characteristic that it can ‘spontaneously’ fission, which of course for is highly undesirable in warheads. These are mixed up and hard to separate. This simple fact makes proliferation risks at best a theoretical scenario.
    2. Vitrification of the fission products is explained well, but is still accompanied with the obligatory “hundreds of thousands of years” comment. This is incorrect. After 300 years, these fission products are no longer radiotoxic.