Solar and wind are increasingly outpacing nuclear power globally, with solar generation surpassing nuclear for the first time in 2025, according to WNISR 2026. The report highlights nuclear’s slow (…)
Or your know, the amount of waste produced by nuclear reactors produced global is so low relative to output that the majority of it can be stored on site for half a century without issue.
Nuclear fuel is the smallest fraction of nuclear waste. Every bit of PPE, every part replaced, tool used, etc is nuclear waste.
At the end of life the entire reactor and part of the building are nuclear waste. They go through them with a concrete mill and remove the inner layer of concrete because it has become radioactive.
100%, there re natural rock formations that emit more radiation than nuclear power plants, hell if the US Capitol building was rezoned as a nuclear power plant, half of DC would need to be evacuated and an exclusion zone setup without any change to the building or fuel brought to the site. The granite used in it’s construction emits more radiation naturally that exceeds the legal limit that nuclear power plants are allowed.
Meanwhile self professed environmentalists are anti-nuclear energy despite it having the least impact environmentally per kw produced.
it can be stored on site for half a century without issue.
Oh yeah. These issues are so mild that after your “half a century”, we need to dig everything back up, reseal it and find a new place. Playing a thousand years’ worth of musical chairs with radioactive waste may sound fun to you - until one day, the music stops and you can’t find a chair.
Most nuclear waste is below background radiation in ten years. High level nuclear waste, when taking the mean by volume, is 100 years. The stuff that lasts ‘thousands and thousands of years’ is plutonium which is the primary thing that can be recycled and reprocessed into fuel and neutron sources, to say nothing of all the ways nuclear waste has been used over the last half century in medical research and technology to save lives.
So no, this theoretical situations where we have mountains of nuclear waste sitting around killing anyone that gets close is not realistic and just a strawman.
Or your know, the amount of waste produced by nuclear reactors produced global is so low relative to output that the majority of it can be stored on site for half a century without issue.
Nuclear fuel is the smallest fraction of nuclear waste. Every bit of PPE, every part replaced, tool used, etc is nuclear waste.
At the end of life the entire reactor and part of the building are nuclear waste. They go through them with a concrete mill and remove the inner layer of concrete because it has become radioactive.
Yeah, it is quite startling to see the difference in physical fuel use between a coal plant and a nuclear plant.
And the really funny thing is that a coal plant releases far more radiation than a nuke plant.
100%, there re natural rock formations that emit more radiation than nuclear power plants, hell if the US Capitol building was rezoned as a nuclear power plant, half of DC would need to be evacuated and an exclusion zone setup without any change to the building or fuel brought to the site. The granite used in it’s construction emits more radiation naturally that exceeds the legal limit that nuclear power plants are allowed.
Meanwhile self professed environmentalists are anti-nuclear energy despite it having the least impact environmentally per kw produced.
Oh yeah. These issues are so mild that after your “half a century”, we need to dig everything back up, reseal it and find a new place. Playing a thousand years’ worth of musical chairs with radioactive waste may sound fun to you - until one day, the music stops and you can’t find a chair.
Most nuclear waste is below background radiation in ten years. High level nuclear waste, when taking the mean by volume, is 100 years. The stuff that lasts ‘thousands and thousands of years’ is plutonium which is the primary thing that can be recycled and reprocessed into fuel and neutron sources, to say nothing of all the ways nuclear waste has been used over the last half century in medical research and technology to save lives.
So no, this theoretical situations where we have mountains of nuclear waste sitting around killing anyone that gets close is not realistic and just a strawman.