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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.
but the nuclear bros told us, that there is no waste, and if there is, it can be fuel again and it isn’t that radioactive, just used clothing and such…
do you mean they lied to delay the switch to renewables? /s
I mean, this is leftover from 1940s technology, that was used in a mad rush to create a bomb. There are many other areas of the world that have been fucked over in the same manner because of the way we manufactured technology in the old days. But nobody is saying “we can never make solar panels ever again because industrial superfund sites exist” are they?
Nah, in primary school, we got some nice rubbers from nuclear lobby with a black plastic coin attached to them. The text said: “this is the amount of nuclear waste a family household produces in a year”. This should show us, how “few” waste is produced. That this waste is highly radioactive and toxic was concealed
disclosedsubsequently.Or what the lifetime of said waste is, and how much of it accumulates due to there just being a huge fucking amount of households.
Yes. TBF, from burning coal, oil or natural gas, which were the alternatives considered in these days (yes, I’m old) there are also ashes and other remainders which are ‘more’ in terms of mass and volume, some also toxic, but not that radiant. Thus, we already have places to store and deposit them which are considered safe enough. For the nuclear waste this does not hold, some countries now have quite elaborated plans for permanent storage facilities. But in Germany, everything is still under discussion and subject of research and thus, a permanent storage facility for highly radioactive waste will not be ready in less than 50 years, and probably not even in 100 years.
Because nuclear storage sites need to be safe and understood for thousands of years to come, even if civilization falls.
Exactly, yes. That’s why it’s such an idiotic idea to even build new nuclear power plants. (I just corrected my wording I’m my 1st reply.) In the past, German politics has made enormous mistakes in the choice of Gorleben as long term storage facility before even checking if it was suitable. Additionally, the pro nuclear Bavarian government doesn’t want to have the waste in Bavaria, although there are possibly suitable types of rock located.
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.
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.
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.
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.