Re: The Climate, Environment and Energy Thread
Reply #812 –
I have to take issue with the The Rage's Mike Foley and his alarmist misreporting regarding the generation of nuclear waste.
While Dutton was selective in his declaration about a nuclear waste filling a coke can, The Rage's Mike Foley is being equally selective report of 27,000 cans is the opposite extreme.
Dutton is unequivocally correct in that the annual high level waste, the stuff lasting thousands of years that people think of when we talk about nuclear waste, fits in a coke can, this is the genuine unusable (spent) long term waste. If you do not believe that then know this, the entire energy efficiency of the first bomb dropped on Japan consumed a total of less than 2 grams of material, the rest was medium to low level waste.
Foley is correct if we regard nuclear waste the same way we regard nuclear waste in the 1950s and 1960s, back then a power station generates many tonnes of nuclear waste per annum.
The modern truth is that used fuel rods are something like 99% recyclable, and modern nuclear uses a raft of processes and procedures to turn the residues in those used fuel rods into new fuel, often the used fuel rods for dramatic purposes get referred to in media as "spent fuel rods", but the spent component in minimal.
The waste that comes out of a nuclear power station has a spectrum of radioactivity, on average by volume, much of it is less radioactive than the accumulated dust emitted from the traditional brown coal fired power station. ( That should alarm people about coal but they seem indifferent to it, as it gets diffusely discharged into the surrounding environment. Actually, if you live in or own a basement, much more radiation enters your lungs through the ground than you'll ever get from X-rays or a nuclear accident. ) Like Hiroshima and Nagasaki, like Chernobyl, much of the vast bulk of the waste / contamination from such events is gone in just over a decade or two.
The bulk of a modern reactors nuclear waste has a half-life of less than 100 years, a lot of it has a half life of less than 20 years, the bit that has a half life measured in thousands of years fits comfortably in a coke can and that is the tiny tiny bit that must be stored safely for thousands of years. But even now, science and industry are finding ways to use even the high level waste, for space, medicine, advanced manufacturing, and demand for access to it is growing.
You get far more toxic waste every year from the manufacture of an energy equivalent number of solar panels, and based on current SolarPV longevity you have to deal with second round of a similar amount to be disposed of in 20 years time when the panels fall in efficiency.
To me Foley's claim just exhibits how far the renewables sector is prepared to go to tarnish the low or zero carbon alternatives, it is a disgraceful position and exposes how disingenuous the debate has become, zero carbon is no longer the focus or the priority, the battle is for long term profit.
The real irony for me set in when the fusion Industry started spreading misinformation about nuclear fission energy, the last thing fusion wants is diminished interest in fusion which would happen if energy sources become effectively carbon free, reliable and cheap. Fusion has $Trillions invested and have not yet built a single break-even facility, they do not want funding cut. Renewables have similar big $ at risk, yet after almost two decades still cannot even supply 10% of 24/7 demand on average, and that milestone / achievement ignores the 3-fold growth predicted to be required to electrify the transport sector.
Topic: The Climate, Environment and Energy Thread (Read 87830 times)
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