I am interested in hearing your opinions about nuclear power, what you know, if you have any fears, or ideas? Do you know if your country has any nuclear power generation?
I am interested in hearing your opinions about nuclear power, what you know, if you have any fears, or ideas? Do you know if your country has any nuclear power generation?
Only ~3% of nuclear waste is really dangerous, that’s the spent fuel rods. The majority of “nuclear waste” is stuff that was in proximity and contains intermediate to low levels of radioactivity. It’s obviously not great to injest or spend all your time around, but it can be safely stored almost anywhere as it’s mostly only emitting alpha and beta particles.
So what about the dangerous stuff like fuel rods? Well, if you took all the dangerous waste nuclear power ever created and piled it in one place, it would cover a football field and be stacked 3 meters high. That sounds like a lot, but remember, that’s is ALL the dangerous waste nuclear power has EVER produced. Compare that to literally any other form of energy production, including solar and wind, and the footprint from nuclear is laughably, almost unimaginably, small.
I think you have no clue how dangerous that waste is. There is literally no way to store it in a volume like you described because of all the heat it generates. If it gets distributed for some reason, it could contaminate the entire planet.
Also, other nuclear waste is not not dangerous. You have to store it in a way that it doesn’t pollute water, for example. That is a much harder problem than you might think. Here is an interesting read for you:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asse_II_mine
I don’t think OP was saying we should store it that way, just that it’s not as physically as big a problem as people imagine. It’s a question of scale.
We could just leave them all in the storage containers that the plants use and put them in one place and the overall facility wouldn’t be that big.
As for groundwater contamination, you are right. No leaks allowed. This is a consideration for any waste management really (superfund sites, anyone?). Transportation is another issue for consideration. If you move the waste on a roadway, and there’s an accident, you’re going to have to clean up the mess (assuming there is any. We have really amazing containers for shipping) or at least check for any issues, which means every fire department with a major roadway needs to both be trained and have the equipment to handle a radioactive car crash.