Where will the UK bury nuclear waste for 100,000 years?
www.bbc.com
The UK's nuclear waste needs a permanent home - but finding a community willing to take it is tricky.

One of UK’s oldest nuclear waste storage silos is currently leaking radioactive liquid into the ground. That is a “recurrence of a historic leak” that Sellafield Ltd, the company that operates the site, says first started in the 1970s.

Sellafield has also faced questions about its working culture and adherence to safety rules. The company is currently awaiting sentencing after it pleaded guilty, in June, to charges related to cyber-security failings.

  • Brainsploosh@lemmy.worldEnglish
    58·
    2 months ago

    With the new tech, that is mostly true, the 70s tech is like the first of any tech: unwieldy, hard to control and very inefficient in both production and retirement.

    Compare the first x-ray machine to a modern PET-scanner. The former caused cancer in fetuses and caused radiation poisoning through walls, the latter is a clean cellular resolution scanner that can be serviced and recycled as well as most anything.

    • ceiphas@lemmy.worldEnglish
      56·
      2 months ago

      you mean we are now as efficient as the combustion engine? we developed this thing for about 120 years and just realized it is a dead end (the peak efficiency is still below 50% and it kills our whole ecosystem). nuclear is a dead end with way higher risks. if we stop using fossil fuels, we can fill the trash in a landfill, the nuclear waste will still glow when humanity has met is end.

      • Brainsploosh@lemmy.worldEnglish
        56·
        2 months ago

        Modern nuclear plants take about 1 Mt of fuel per ton of waste, and energy production is about 70-90% effective. Modern systems also dispose about 80-90 % of spent fuel at decay times that leave only a percent of radiation every 20 years.

        Nuclear is however indeed a dead end, with current exponentially increasing energy needs we probably only have 150 years of Uranium before we need to figure out an alternative. At current energy levels, we have about 550 years.

        150 years of very low pollution, stable energy is however a better, cleaner, cheaper and safer energy source than fossil oil has been throughout human history, and safer than current wind, solar and hydroelectric power.

        • DarkThoughts@fedia.io
          31·
          2 months ago

          Based on this article from 2009 it is only 230 years based on the consumption rate at that point in time, which since then obviously just went up massively.

          A huge issue with nuclear, aside from its cost and long time to build, is the fact that nations focusing on nuclear energy do not actually build a whole lot of renewables.

          Edit: Also, a lot of uranium reserves are in Russia.