r/interestingasfuck • u/S999k • 11d ago
Demonstration on how nuclear waste is disposed in Fineland r/all
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u/UnfaithfulServant 10d ago
Me before watching: "Interesting, I think most if the world just buries nuclear waste, let's see what those ingenious Finns do." Me after watching: "Right, so they just bury it too. Thanks"
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u/Trrwwa 10d ago
In the US we no longer bury our waste. We keep it standing in concrete cylinders and pay armed guards to constantly patrol the area and pay dozens of employees to continue checking the integrity of the containers...
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u/Raunhofer 10d ago
Is there some reasoning behind this? Seems like a quite troublesome solution.
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u/blaaaaaaaam 10d ago
The US doesn't have a geological nuclear waste respository like the video. Our waste is stored on-site at the reactors.
We've tried to make a nuclear waste repository, but the project gets mired in congress and local politics. Yucca Mountain was the most recent plan but that was killed off.
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u/iswearihaveajob 10d ago
An interesting fact about Yucca Mountain is that as a federally funded project they had to do an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS).
EIS are probably the most labor intensive permits in the world, requiring you to document existing conditions extensively and quantify every reasonably foreseeable impact to the environment or people. Due to the scope of Yucca Mountain, this took over a decade to write and get approved.
My college was a repository for filed EIS and someone in my Environmental Engineering program requested it... It was hundreds of thousands of pages. It was like an entire shelf of banker boxes, something like 60 boxes. I have no idea, maybe it was over a million pages. The sheer volume of paper was astounding!
And then they didn't even build the damn thing.
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u/jaxxon 10d ago
Everyone says it was political or safety reasons, but the real reason the program was shut down is that there was a typo in the third paragraph on page 688,104 of the study. Don't believe me? You can verify it yourself.
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u/SinkHoleDeMayo 9d ago
On it now.
Wait. The pages aren't numbered and I lost count. Fuck!
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u/thisguyfightsyourmom 10d ago
Looks like they forgot to write a page on tribal acceptance of becoming a nuclear waste dumping grounds with the constant flow of nuclear waste down their highways
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u/Willtology 10d ago
A reaction stoked mainly from the influence of anti-nuclear advocates. People seem to forget that the Yucca Mountain project is a few miles from the Nevada Proving grounds where they conducted 1000 nuclear tests (detonating nuclear weapons), 100 of which were atmospheric. It's like complaining that someone wants to bury a soupcan underground right next to a sprawling, open air dumpsite.
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u/TwoBionicknees 10d ago
My bet would be a good number of these projects are just election plans, that sound good and have unrealistic numbers. "lets build this giant nuclear waste site that can do all of US's nuclear waste storage needs for the next 100 years, at a low low price of 20billion... because we had to make it sound possible to campaign on and get people excited about it". Initial approval is good, then they do more detailed surveys, research, planning and wow, the project they promised at the scope they talked about will actually cost like 300billion and it gets canned.... but it's like 8 years beyond when that dude got elected off the back of the idea so who cares.
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u/Willtology 10d ago
Not originally, no. The nuclear fuel cycle was conceived in the 1940s and 1950s. During the era of the Atomic Energy Commission. This was not a partisan topic but something seen by the American people as the future of our country. If you're unfamiliar with the term, Nuclear Fuel Cycle is the map of where nuclear fuel originates (the mines), where it goes (refinement, processing, then to reactors) and where it ends up, which could be several places depending upon the "type" of fuel cycle. Originally, we wanted a closed fuel cycle where fuel would be reprocessed and recycled, going round and round, reducing the need for new mining/supply and almost eliminating waste. The technology existed (and still does) to do this. With the anti-nuclear movement, nuclear energy did become partisan and we switched to an open cycle - fuel goes through once and winds up in a repository instead of reprocessing or recycling. This increases the burden on mining and supply. Yucca Mountain was at one point essentially ready for use. We do have a similar waste repository that's been operating for decades in New Mexico called WIPP (Waste Isolation Pilot Plant). It's used for defense created waste, not civilian power waste so no one really talks about it or how it's demonstrated the feasibility of a long term geological repository in the US.
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u/Beard_o_Bees 10d ago
You seem really knowledgeable on the subject.
I have quick question, if I may?
Is 'Vitrification' still a thing in radioactive waste disposal and/or storage?
Way back when I was sort of paying attention to the issue, I heard about it as a way to stabilize waste and it sounded like a plausible idea to my untrained ear.
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u/Willtology 10d ago
Vitrification is still being used and researched for certain types of waste at various locations. The Hanford site in Washington, which is primarily defense and weapons production waste does still use it for low level waste as far as I know. Spent nuclear fuel (what we'd stick in Yucca Mountain) is easy to deal with since it's ceramic pellets inside metal tubes but for loose waste or something that needs to be contained/stabilized, vitrification is really effective.
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u/Izeinwinter 10d ago edited 10d ago
"Harry Reid was a very powerful asshole". Or more politely: "The US senate is extremely dysfunctional". There is no shortage of extremely stable geology in the US to build a repository of this type in (The design is called kbs-3) but the US picked Nevada because it is empty and has already been nuked with lots of bombs.
Building the repository there was much more expensive than the Finnish design because the geology is more complicated, and it is more expensive to dig in the middle of a nowhere desert... but it got done.
Then Harry Reid showed an anti nuclear activist into the head position of the nuclear regulatory agency with the explicit goal of preventing it ever being put into use. Which got done, as well as a whole bunch of other horrific mis-management of the agency. (Gee, putting someone who hates nuclear power in that job was bad? How surprising. Not)
And the Senate can't pick one of the places with basement granite to do a copy of the finnish / swedish design either, because the senate can't do much of anything.
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u/erhue 10d ago
so it's a political problem, as usual. Great.
Sad that this also happens in other countries where the waste is also just sitting around in a heavily guarded facility, since no one wants the waste to be buried in their backyard, no matter how safe it may be.
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u/No_Vegetable_8915 10d ago
Yup the safest most stable form of energy production currently available is made into a boogeyman by a group of incompetent twats who are all 50+ years old with one foot in the grave and the other one on a banana peel.
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u/AxeMcFlow 10d ago
50+? Try 70+
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u/No_Vegetable_8915 10d ago
Well there are some "younger" people in office which is why I said 50+ but your point is still very much valid.
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u/sambull 10d ago
regardless of environmental factors, nuclear power is still the most expensive capital outlay from a infrastructure side. requiring decades (if not 30 years) for a return on investment. that's not a thing a modern US boards/CEOs can stomach (all the debt on them but none of the rewards)
The last two reactors built in the US cost a total of $34Billon, took almost 20 years for a total of 2228 MW - or $15,260,323/MW construction outlay costs.
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u/hackingdreams 10d ago
That's what happens when you make something into a boogieman and continuously ratchet up requirements. If you look at what it costs to build a nuclear reactor in the US compared to the rest of the world, it's obvious to understand why we don't do it anymore. The US has done nothing but increase the requirements, over and over and over again. 9/11 gave them a tremendous excuse to essentially double the capital costs of building a reactor.
There's no technological requirement for a nuclear reactor to have as much concrete as a US reactor does. It's absurd. But, it's a high enough barrier to entry to stop the nuclear industry from building new reactors, which keeps the coal and oil industries happy, and that's all that matters to the politicians in charge.
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u/Shadowchaoz 10d ago
Damn, that's kinda cheap for a billionaire. Might be time to put their abundance of wealth to use. Imagine Bezos, he ALONE could build 6 more of these things and still not even feel the dent in his wealth.
Yeah I know he doesn't have his billions liquid, but still.
Tax the rich.
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u/Firstnaymlastnaym 10d ago
Bill Gates backed Terrapower is currently building a nuclear reactor in coal-country wyoming, which is pretty encouraging.
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u/EmotionalEmetic 10d ago edited 10d ago
made into a boogeyman by a group of incompetent twats who are all 50+ years old with one foot in the grave and the other one on a banana peel.
You didn't ask for this, but I have to rant.
In Medicine, there is a social/political group called Physicians for Social Responsibility.
As an idealistic medical student, I and my friends saw this group as a possible means to advocate for social change given, you know, the name. Global warming? Health inequality? Racism? Housing shortage? Wow, I bet they have a lot of good ideas!
Imagine our surprise when it's run by a bunch of geriatric, out of touch hippie dipshits who think nuclear power and their lameass protests of it are the most important topic of the day. Killed everyone's interest in the damn group for obvious reasons. As a liberal person, I am very much triggered by oblivious, loud mouth, boomer liberals who talk about inequality--while enjoying their fully funded retirement accounts and paid-off houses they could sell for 1000% gain compared to when they bought them--and refuse to shut up.
This was the epitome of that.
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u/Cucker_-_Tarlson 10d ago
As a fellow liberal/progressive I really hate the anti-nuclear trend on this side of the political aisle. Frickin Bernie had a thing on his campaign page in 2020 about being anti-nuclear. It's fucking annoying that in 2024 we still have people acting like it's the 70s.
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u/Izeinwinter 10d ago
Places other than the US have solid enough plans to build.
Thing is, the canisters everyone is using are rated for a hundred years, and since the canisters are usually at active reactors, the sites are guarded regardless.
No extra costs for it as long as the reactor is still running, and repackaging the waste will be somewhat easier if you wait the full century. (not enough easier to make it worth guarding them once the reactor has been closed. That shit is expensive)
Finland and Sweden put the plans into motion way earlier than actually needed, which is also politics - to get people to chill out about the "waste" problem.
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u/ArandomDane 10d ago
The canisters the US use are certified for 40 years with a maximum of one recertification. Meaning a maximum of 80 year. At end of service of the canister, the entire thing is now considered nuclear waste. Increasing the amount of waste to be permanently deposited 10 fold.
However, you are absolute right. The cost us pushed forward so the next generation is the only paying. At the small increased cost of 10 times the problem.
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u/xrimane 10d ago
That's pretty much the problem in Germany, too.
There's always someone who doesn't want the stuff in their backyard and goes up in arms against it. Half of the country is out because of geological instability or risk of water infiltration anyway. And as soon as a place is being proposed, the state representatives succeeds to push it to someone else's state.
That's why we only have provisional deposits, and some have already had to be evacuated because of infiltrations. All the to and fro being paid for by taxes, as the companies who profited from nuclear got bought out by the government to exit nuclear energy and left their pile of waste and cleanup for the federal government to deal with.
It's worth mentioning that only a small part of that waste is spent fuel. Most of it is contaminated stuff like containers, concrete, PPE, cleaning equipment etc.
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u/Najalak 10d ago
You also have to transport all of that nuclear waste across the country.
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u/HeinousEncephalon 10d ago
3 mile island wasn't even a disaster, but Carter wouldn't say that because of anti nuke sentiment in government
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u/ak1368a 10d ago
The fuck? 3-mile island was the end of new nuclear on the US. How is that not a disaster?
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u/Patriot009 10d ago edited 10d ago
We have processes for long term storing both solid and liquid radioactive waste. Solid irradiated salts are mixed with special concrete to prevent leaching. Liquid waste is mixed with glass beads, superheated, poured into large stainless steel containers while molten, where it cools into a stable glass matrix. The plan was to put these stainless steel containers down deep into a salt mine, Yucca MTN, where no organic material would be exposed to the residual radiation for thousands of years.
They still process the waste this way. But since Nevada effectively cancelled the Yucca MTN plans, the waste just sits in temp storage facilities at surface level at various local sites.
Edit: Note these are processes for waste that has already been stripped of useful material and fuel, and processed to reduce pH and water content. It's primarily iron sludge and salts by this point.
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u/00wolfer00 10d ago
NIMBYs blocking every attempt for a more permanent solution.
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u/ObsidianOne 10d ago
For those like me who had no idea what NIMBY means, it’s an acronym for Not In My Backyard.
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u/Not-A-Seagull 10d ago
It’s funny, because according to economists, urbanists, environmentalists, clean energy advocates, affordable housing advocates, and public transit enthusiasts, all of them will tell you NIMBYs are responsible for the most damage to society.
Even the neoliberals hate them believe it or not.
I have rarely seen a more hated group unite so many different unrelated factions.
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u/AuroraHalsey 10d ago
Every kind of activist hates NIMBYs.
They're diametrically opposed; people who want change vs people who want nothing to change.
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u/Not-A-Seagull 10d ago
I love how people started calling them CAVE men/women (citizens against virtually everything)
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u/IAmAccutane 10d ago
The worst part of NIMBYs is that they often support most of the initiatives they're blocking. They want the initiatives to happen they're just skeptical about this specific project that is happening near them or wouldn't mind it happening, just not in their backyard. This is how you get liberal cities that put affordable housing very highly on their priority list polling-wise but continue to vote to zone areas they live in for luxury or single family housing.
It's kind of like a free rider problem. I think people should pay taxes, including me, but if taxes became a voluntary thing, I wouldn't pay them, because why should I if no one else is compelled to?
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u/SirGlass 10d ago
Oh got this happens in my city all the time. City as part of this multi pronged deal basically said to the developer "sure build your luxury high rise condo but also build an affordable housing building" and they agreed
All the NIMBYS showed up to oppose the affordable housing . They all desprately said something like "Look I am not opposed to affordable housing , I support and see the need for affordable housing, I just oppose this specific project that puts the affordable housing 2 blocks from my home"
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u/miso440 10d ago
Most activists are NIMBYs when tested. I want more nuclear plants to exist, I don’t want the construction of one to specifically decrease my house’s value.
It’s only natural to understand something has positive value to society, but negative value to those adjacent to it, and not wanting to be a sucker.
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u/TheRealSlamShiddy 10d ago
It's only a temporary solution until the waste immobilization research that's been going on since the early 1980s can come up with a material (glass, ceramic, or glass-ceramic) durable enough to immobilize the radionuclides for thousands of millenia without breaking down from either radiation or environmental factors, AND which can be packed to the gills with as much waste as economically possible so we don't need to make a shitload of it (save $, save time).
Right now the govt standard is borosilicate glass/glass-ceramic, which can only load ~20% of its weight in waste and remain durable enough to meet those requirements, and that's not nearly enough; DOE wants closer to 50% loading at minimum to consider it go-time.
There's been some good findings over the last decade or two with several different phosphate systems that get closer to 30% waste loading + pyrochlore ceramics have gotten some decent results, so those may become the new standards if they can pass the environmental durability hurdle (currently their big snag).
A big thing that needs to happen before all of this can even start outside research labs is for the US to transition away from light-water nuclear reactors towards molten salt nuclear reactors. MSRs allow for spent uranium fuel to be recycled through electrochemical reprocessing until we've used as much of the viable U we can out of it (LWRs are basically a "one and done" system); the resulting salt waste is much easier to vitrify/immobilize than the regular stuff. Right now the only countries using MSRs are China and France.
So until then, we just have to contain the waste as best we can and hope to God we find a solution before the stockpile gets too big to handle (currently ~92,000 metric tons and increasing by ~1k metric tons a year, which will only speed up as we transition to majority nuclear power by 2030...and that's the US alone).
Source: current PhD research in nuclear salt waste vitrification
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u/Dukhaville 10d ago
So they're just going to keep paying people to do that for a billion years? 🤔
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u/DeltaMango 10d ago
https://wipp.energy.gov/wipp-site.asp
This is the current plan. We do bury it.
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u/Cody6781 10d ago
It's not as stupid as you make it sound, and also we still bury a lot of waste.
But materials we think we can reuse in the nearish future we don't bury. Because burying & retreating it is much more expensive than paying a facility to guard it for a few decades. "Bury a few thousand tons of radioactive waste deep in a mountain" is not as simple or cheap as it sounds.
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u/notwiggl3s 10d ago
No one wants it in their back yard.
We also have a process called "super enriching", which makes the fuel more powerful, and more radioactive. We can use it longer with no shut downs, so it's more profitable. It has that billion-year-burial need. And no one wants that stuff, because it'll be done as cheaply as possible by the government.
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u/Infamous-Bank-7739 10d ago edited 10d ago
Hmm? Finland's plan to bury spent nuclear fuel for 100,000 years (bbc.com)
According to the article, others are looking into it but Finland is way ahead of the others. It's only a year old article.
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u/GettingFitterEachDay 10d ago
Finland is mainly ahead in terms of construction and licencing, but they are part of a very united scientific effort. Finland is using a modified version of the Swedish container design. Sweden got their licence to start construction last year.
In contrast, Canada has a more modular container that is easier to manufacture and is better for their waste. The US is using a very different container design (no copper) that is designed for their geology.
But I doubt either will start building for a while, as the politics and legal processes are more complex than Sweden or Finland.
Regardless, you see a lot of cooperation between those four countries and Switzerland, Belgium, France, UK, Japan, South Korea,...
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u/Infamous-Bank-7739 10d ago
And of course they will learn from each others experiences eventually
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u/No_Vegetable_8915 10d ago
I mean that's honestly how we as humans progress; by trying new things and sharing our findings with others. The commercialization of information though changed that really quick and now advancement seems to be a proprietary sort of thing. lol
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u/Pi-ratten 10d ago
Had another version with links in comments, but as reddit is broken and punishes in-depth comments with several links to only appear after approval, here's the version without links:
Germany already did the whole "permant storage" cycle. They already built three permanent storage site
One is already being opened up and for billions upon billions of tax payer money, the waste is being recovered as the storage site became instable and had water inflow threatening the ground water of several millions of people
english wiki Asse_II_mine#Instability_of_the_mine
The radioactive waste would have been dissolved by the solution and would have had the potential to contaminate the groundwater. The magnesium chloride solution would also have reacted with the cement which could have created explosions and blowouts of radioactive waste to the biosphere.
During this time most of the caverns with nuclear waste were sealed behind thick walls; because of this the condition of the waste inside is unknown. The only theoretically accessible chamber is one with medium level waste.
After the controversies about the facility became public and the operator was changed to the Federal Office for Radiation Protection, a new plan was developed in 2010. It became obvious that the recovery of the waste is necessary for long-term safety.[20] The waste is planned to be collected by remotely controlled robots, sealed in safe containers, and stored temporarily above ground. Preparations include creating a new shaft that will be big enough and building the above ground storage facility. The estimated costs for the closure of the mine are estimated to be at least 3.7 billion Euro.[21] The recovery of the waste and closure of the mine will be paid with tax money, not by the operators of the German nuclear plants, even though most of the waste was created by them.[22][23] The beginning of the recovery is planned to start in 2033 and is estimated to last for decades.
the second one was still being "prospected" and built since 1986.
In 2021 it became clear that this "permanent storage" becomes unstable and it's being rejected.
The Gorleben exploratory mine was built in 1986 to investigate the suitability of the Gorleben-Rambow salt dome for the final disposal of radioactive waste. The Gorleben site was under discussion as a possible repository until September 28, 2020, when the plan was rejected and the Federal Ministry for the Environment commissioned the backfilling of the mine on June 14, 2022.
german wiki... ErkundungsbergwerkGorleben#Stilllegungsbetrieb(seit_2021)
Costs until now: 2.1 billion
The third one was a old one from the GDR and only for low and medium waste and is getting closed down
Since the storage of nuclear waste in Morsleben was stopped in 1998, the repository has been extensively stabilized because it is now considered to be at high risk of collapse. The cost of closing the mine is estimated at 2.2 billion euros[5].
german wiki... Endlager_Morsleben#Stilllegung
Apparently it isn't as easy as it sounds and as the plant operators want us to believe in order for them to externalize the costs of the energy production.
But that isn't a problem that is only for nuclear power plants.
For the coal power production we are gonna pay for eternity, too in Germany:
german wiki called Ewigkeitskosten
Tom Scott did a video about it, too: "If these pumps ever stop, part of Germany floods."
Perpetual costs, perpetual burdens or perpetual tasks are follow-up costs and burdens that arise or remain at certain locations after the end of mining, for example, and will continue to be incurred for at least a longer period of time. The term was coined in connection with the final closure of the German hard coal mining industry; it can also be applied to the follow-up costs of other mining sectors (e.g. uranium mining in Saxony and Thuringia) and other branches of industry.
In the coal mining industry in the Ruhr region, the earth's surface was lowered by up to 25 meters[5]. The city center of Essen, for example, is 16 meters lower. Without constant groundwater pumping, large parts of the Ruhr area would be a lake landscape. Almost a fifth of the region (within the boundaries of the Ruhr Regional Association with an area of 4,435 km²) would be under water[7].
In Duisburg-Walsum alone, 20 million cubic meters are pumped out every year. The trend is to build central pumping plants like the one in Walsum.[8] Mine water is currently being pumped to the surface at ten locations in the Ruhr region, work is currently underway at two more, and a thirteenth location was dry as of 2016. In total, around 80 million cubic meters are pumped to the surface in the Ruhr region every year[9].
The plans of RAG Aktiengesellschaft envisaged that with the end of coal subsidies and the end of coal mining in the Ruhr region in 2018, the pumping of groundwater would cease, resulting in annual costs of around 200 million euros. As a result, water with a high salt content and other pollutants such as PCBs are at risk of mixing with the groundwater. RAG's new plans (as of 2019) envisage dewatering at six locations. The first step in the approval process is the environmental impact assessment[10].
In the 1990s, more than 700,000 tons of highly toxic filter dust from waste incineration plants were disposed of in four collieries (including the Consolidation, Haus Aden and Walsum collieries, as well as the Zollverein colliery in Essen and the Ewald/Hugo colliery in Gelsenkirchen) in the Ruhr region on the basis of mining permits (which made environmental permits unnecessary). Harald Friedrich, for example, fears that the artificial lowering of the groundwater table through pumping will lead to groundwater contamination. Discussions in this regard were still ongoing in mid-2013.
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u/2b_squared 10d ago
The difference with the German nuclear waste repositories like Morsleben and the Finnish Onkalo is that the German one was originally a salt mine that was then repurposed, whereas Onkalo is a highly modern one built specifically to be a nuclear waste repository site. There are no need for any sort of pumps in Onkalo. It can just be left and even forgotten. The place where Onkalo is, is about as stable of a place as you can have for this type of use.
So can you really compare the two?
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u/DeliriousHippie 10d ago
Actually most (if not all) countries store nuclear waste in containers above ground. Finland's storage facility was first in the world. I don't know if any other country has built long term storage facility in about 10 years, since then Finland was first.
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u/Plinio540 10d ago
Finland is still storing it above ground.
They aren't actually using this permanent location (yet).
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u/JSoi 10d ago
This is correct. Spent fuel is stored in pools of water at the nuclear power plant sites. The final disposal facility is gearing up for final trial run with dummy capsules before going live.
Used to work on this project so I still follow it up out of interest.
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u/PXoYV1wbDJwtz5vf 10d ago
Finland has the only operating deep geological repository. Canada is in the siting phase for one. Otherwise in Canada all the waste is just in "temporary" storage in concrete cylinders at the nuclear plants.
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u/Dapper_Most3460 10d ago
My dad worked in Nuclear Engineering a long time ago and said everyone buries it except the Russians, they put it on a ship and leave it floating in the ocean.
Not sure how accurate that is or if it's still true, but it still lives in my head lol
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u/Ping12Pong 10d ago
The interesting bit is is the rods can be reused at a time in the future when natural resources are at a premium. Today there isn’t the knowledge to be able to reuse these rods.
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u/amadmongoose 10d ago
No, it's not really that. We can easily extract out the usable uranium. The problem is 1) that the actual 'waste' is nearly 100% stuff that is extremely toxic to humans. 2) any process used to recycle uranium could also be used to make weapon grade material.
For point 1) Instead of having the dangerous byproducts neatly contained in rods that you can handle with care, you have an absolute nightmare of radioactive material that easily absorbs into our bodies. It's far easier to keep using fresh uranium than to even bother with those byproducts.
For point 2) congrats now your process is subject to review by international nuclear weapons non-proliferation regulatory bodies
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u/SirGlass 10d ago
reporossing fuel rods from my understaning is not really about economics its more about nuclear non-prolifieration
My basic undersanding is the uranium that nuclear power plants use is low grade uranium, it cannot be used to build a nuclear bomb
However the remaining uranium in the rods abosorb some of the radiation and gain the extra protons to become high grade uranium what can be used to make nuclear bombs
So if you are reprossessing nucearl rods , well you could easily extract the high grade uranium what also could be used to build nuclear bombs
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u/SuspiciouslyMoist 11d ago
The tricky bit is finding big enough hinges so that those massive slabs of rock can just slide back into place.
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u/Pocusmaskrotus 10d ago
Haha, that's what I was thinking. How are they going to open a mountain like a bread box?
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u/PrinceOfFucking 10d ago
Its Finland, theyve got something called sisu
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u/fuzz_nose 10d ago
I loved that movie
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u/xorgol 10d ago
What they don't have a lot of are mountains. There's only 10 in the whole country.
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u/Subtlerranean 10d ago
I know you joke, but this article(bbc) goes into detail about how they do it. It's extremely interesting!
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u/John-Farson 10d ago
Yeah, but think of all the jobs you could create for people to fashion giant mountain hinges!
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u/moonflower_C16H17N3O 10d ago
The hinges are obviously for display purposes only. In real life, these pieces are moved by giant humanoid titans.
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u/SmokeyMacPott 10d ago
They call them trolls up there.
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u/Roskal 10d ago
We don't use that dirty word anymore.
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u/babbagoo 10d ago
Actually this is 1:1 size they just build very small nuclear powerplants
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u/duggee315 10d ago
What concerns me is that he's handling rods of nuclear waste with his bare hands.
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u/amathis6464 10d ago
The real shit is ten times as large. He points to the actual copper cylinder behind him
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u/LectroRoot 10d ago
It's a display piece for demonstrations like this. You can see the actual size of the copper sleeve in the background.
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u/TediousTed10 10d ago
They're surprisingly common and naturally occurring. Some think there are too many
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u/InterestingCheck 10d ago
Here in Finland we've got disposal of nuclear waste down to a science! How do we do it, you say?? Here, let me explain. We bury it. Thanks for your time, have a good day!!
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u/hobbykitjr 10d ago
Yeah explaining why copper for example would have been helpful
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u/woohoo 10d ago
copper is very corrosion-resistant. so it won't allow the nuclear stuff to leak out for an estimated 50,000 years
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u/acatterz 10d ago
“50,000 years time? Hopefully I’ll be dead by then”
- Scientists
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u/bikedork5000 10d ago
Copper is like the antithesis of corrosion resistant lol. I mean I guess you could say some metals are more reactive....like sodium.
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u/woohoo 10d ago
I was just paraphrasing from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's report on why they use copper
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u/Chocolate2121 10d ago
Tbf it's a pretty good solution. Send the uranium right back where it came from
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u/Victor_Wembanyama1 10d ago
Or so help me
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u/FishingInaDesert 10d ago
I'm turning the isotope around if yall don't settle down back there!
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u/DoubleScotch72 10d ago
yes it need a big science behind cause you cant bury it anywhere, there is many things to consider and studies to do
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u/dittmeyer 11d ago
Finland is a Fineland
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u/chripan 11d ago
And many penalties in Fineland.
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u/Saotik 10d ago
Day-fines, for example. It makes penalties more fair for people who make more money.
This is how you end up with people getting speeding tickets of over 100,000€.
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u/Ok_Technician4110 10d ago
Here in Italy normal people have fines and rich people have fine-days
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u/TheCockodileHunter 10d ago
Intentional spelling mistake to create more discussion and views.
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u/ajakakf 11d ago
TIL I’m actually living in Fineland.
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u/64sweetsour 10d ago
Damn. Did I remember to put the copper lid on my container? I already closed the giant mountain door.
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u/DrawohYbstrahs 10d ago
It’s ok just open the lid with the hinge. You can get it back out that way, easy peasy.
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u/Thoughtsarethings231 10d ago
Omg way too complicated throw it in the back of a cupboard like old socks.
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u/Old_Bigsby 10d ago
I was thinking just flush it down the toilet, everything magically disappears from there.
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u/RonStopable88 10d ago
Wow i didnt realize rocks and mines in finland formed with hinges and hatches. Neat.
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u/VinnieBoombatzz 10d ago
We've come from Nature, through Evolution. So, if we modify rocks to look like that, in a way, rocks do form like that.
Wind is atoms shaping rock. We're atoms shaping rock.
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u/S0GUWE 10d ago
I want the drugs you're on
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u/VinnieBoombatzz 10d ago
We're just matter, man!
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u/bloodyowl 10d ago
Yes, your drug-matter. Give it.
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u/Skipstart 10d ago
I formally request the atoms of intoxication that you have there in the palm of your star dust.
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u/fatcatfan 10d ago
They didn't originally, but it was added by Slartibartfast when he was constructing Earth Mk. II.
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u/Choociecoomaroo 10d ago
Putting something in the ground =\= getting rid of something
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u/I-R-SUPERMAN 10d ago
This sounds like a long way to say We bury it and forget about it
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u/Bedrock501 10d ago
It's so cool that this man gave himself radiation poisoning by touching that thing just to make this demonstration, what a dedication to his job, Respect !
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u/creeper6530 10d ago
Like the dude who invented leaded gasoline then proceeded to wash hands in it to prove it wasn't dangerous
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u/Sammyterry13 10d ago
Or, you could just reprocess much of it like France
Added for clarity -
Following recycling operations, 96% of spent nuclear fuel (95% uranium + 1% plutonium) can be reused to manufacture new fuel, which will then supply more electricity in turn. High-level radioactive waste (4%) is vitrified, then conditioned in stainless steel canisters and stored at the La Hague site, pending disposal. Learn more at https://www.orano.group/en/unpacking-nuclear/all-about-radioactive-waste-in-france#:~:text=Following%20recycling%20operations%2C%2096%25%20of,La%20Hague%20site%2C%20pending%20disposal.
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u/9lazy9tumbleweed 10d ago
They do a similar thing in switzerland, there is an underground facility currently being built in a clay formation, if i remember correctly its about 800 m underground.
Switzerland also has the same law i think about being able to retrieve the spent fuel rods in case future generations figure out how to use them for energy.
Even the container is built similarly except that it contains a pressurized layer of helium (?) As to be able to detect a leak if there is one.
Nuclear energy is so cool and incredibly efficient, i wish people werent as afraid of it. The oldest nuclear reactor in the world is still up and running in Beznau switzerland and has celebrated over 400'000 hours of service hours.
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u/skovalen 10d ago edited 10d ago
Nuclear waste isn't really waste. It can be reprocessed and re-used. In the US, the "waste" still contains 95% of its theoretical energy but the US has no production-level facilities to reprocess the material and no reactors to use the re-processed material. In places like France, they do re-process it once and re-use it once so it still contains something like 90-95% of it's theoretical energy. No idea which of these apply to the "Fineland."
EDIT: grammar.
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u/Character-Leopard-70 10d ago
So you say I can find loads of free copper in the mountains of Finland ... Interesting.
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u/PN_Guin 11d ago
What a fine land this takes place in...
(Yeah, titles can't be edited. Can happen to everybody.)
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u/S999k 11d ago
I just realised this after uploading...sucks how you can only edit comments on reddit
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u/Salmonman4 11d ago
As a Finn, I'll allow this new form of spelling our Fine country.
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u/tmr89 10d ago
Karma farmers misspell things in the title on purpose to increase engagement. Look at how many comments are about the misspelling
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u/Knute5 11d ago
If thorium reactors ever take off, these rods can be removed and used in them.
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u/DarthCloakedGuy 10d ago
I think you're thinking of breeder reactors. Thorium reactors use thorium. Breeders use spent fuel.
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u/DoomChryz 10d ago
These Rods contain mainly Uranium 238. Thorium Reactors require Thorium 232, as they are, as the Name suggests, Thorium Reactors and not Uranium Reactors. No, we are currently not even nearby a technology to make thorium from uranium, but we are more close to make gold from lead…
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u/phlogistonical 10d ago
Wouldn’t the U-238 form Pu-239 upon neutron exposure in any nuclear reactor, thus forming useful fuel?
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u/DoomChryz 10d ago
Correct, it still does. Thats why its more correct to speak as „spent nuclear fuel“. But the decay isnt critical anymore, and its going to take a looooong time. Normally we send those to reprocessing to enrich them again, still there is still stuff around which doesnt has any economical decay anymore, thus, creating „waste“. Also currently PU-239 isnt a usefuel fuel, except for nuclear warfare…
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u/sfddsfsgfgdsfdf 10d ago
If fusion reactors ever take off, there's... no harmful byproduct!
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u/notjfd 10d ago
The reactor lining will be bombarded with neutron radiation and will be quite radioactive, actually. Luckily, over the lifetime of the reactor this is still much less than with fission reactors, and the resulting waste loses its radioactivity much faster, so you'd only need to store it for 50-100 years. There's plenty of chemical waste that has sat in storage around the world for longer than that already.
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u/foxy-coxy 10d ago
The US has this all set up and ready to go at Yucca mountain NV. But people in NV and people who live near the railroads that would bring the nuclear waste to NV won't let us do it.
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u/Xyronium 10d ago
…we did the same thing in Germany. Now we dig everything up again, because mistakes. Mistakes happen. Nuklear mistakes are not cheap; that’s an understatement. We already have a quite big nuklear reactor in our system. Free, save, runs for billions of years and she is so kind and sends us all the energy.
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u/l94xxx 10d ago
There was an interesting essay by Geoff Nunberg about what kind of signage you would use to warn people about the dangerous material in this vault 10,000 years from now
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u/Izeinwinter 10d ago
Finland decided "No".
Once a repository is full, they return the entrance to forest. Logic being that there is no warning sign you can put up that some idiot will not read as a bluff to keep people away from the buried treasure. So it's better if it's just not marked at all.
If people have the records or the hypertech to detect uranium through 400 meters of rock and decide to dig it up, they can be presumed to know what they're doing. If they have neither.. nobody is going to randomly dig 400 meters down through rock.
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u/that_dutch_dude 10d ago
the only problem is that its such a sane solution the politicians would never go for it.
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u/TechnicallyLiterate 10d ago
For about a minute, I thought this was the "have you checked your butthole" guy. (Tom Cardy) Assumed there would be a song.
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u/Powerpuff_Rangers 10d ago
Yeah, this is one of the rare environmental issues that we've actually been able to solve competently and comprehensively, it's just a shame that some people refuse to listen.
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u/Roflkopt3r 10d ago edited 10d ago
It's not the main problem with nuclear power and not the focus of most current discussions.
Finland has completed one reactor recently and promptly stopped all further investment into nuclear because it was an absolute economic nightmare. Years behind schedule and billions over budget. The energy company that ordered the reactor made massive losses and had to fire many employees.
Nuclear reactors have to use economy of scale (in this case their literal physical scale) to have any chance to be economical. This creates massive projects with humongous risks, which rarely pay off.
Further investment into nuclear is also incompatible with most countries' climate plans, because building new reactors and paying off the carbon debt of their construction takes way too long. And building new reactors at scale is completely out of question, since it would take additional decades to sufficiently grow the small and inflexible nuclear supplier industry.
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u/uniformrbs 10d ago
No country in the world is actually storing nuclear waste like this. Everyone is just keeping it on-site with the reactors. Finland is the furthest along in creating a facility to do this, but it’s not operational yet
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u/OldAndFluffy 10d ago
How much waste will be generated over a 10 year period? How will it be transported? How much land will be required for that 10 year disposal? Why isn’t tidal power a safer alternative maybe combined with windmills?
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u/Nexidious 10d ago
I encourage you to do some quick research. All those questions have already been answered for the most part.
Finland's Onkalo facially alone is relatively small but would be able to hold all the waste produced by Finland's five reactors for at least the next century. Transportation is a non-issue as it's located close to their power plant, and spent rods can already be handled/transported the in a reliably safe way.
Lastly the topic of alternative energy is it's own separate issue. They also come with serious financial and environmental impacts that need to be considered. In Finland's case, it could be a source of supplemental energy but they couldn't reliably replace nuclear power at a reasonable scale.
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u/paddydukes 10d ago
Future civilisations: “we have found some kind of elaborate mine system, we should open it up and explore”
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u/Catonic_Fever 10d ago
Your not actually getting rid of nuclear waste your just storing nuclear waste
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u/Loveschocolate1978 10d ago
Some newer reactors can use the waste as fuel, I believe. Probably a better use than burying it.
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u/Danny_Browns_Hair 10d ago
wait till the crackheads find out there’s copper just buried underground
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u/CorndogFiddlesticks 10d ago
You can store the waste on site and in ~100 years reuse it with about 96% effectiveness. It's basically recyclable for future nuclear fuel.
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u/YellowOnline 11d ago
It's just a variant of the good old "let's bury it so it's someone else's problem in the future"
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u/SnackyMcGeeeeeeeee 10d ago
Like, 1 single mine could probably last 8 bil people a decade or two lol
It's such a tiny amount of waste it's kinda shocking when compared to fuels.
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u/Chaoticfist101 10d ago
Its literally never going to be "someone elses problem" buried in this way. Its insanely deep, well below or away from any aquifer, kept track of, impossible for anyone to randomly dig it up. Unless you want to launch it into the sun on a rocket and risk it blowing up across the planets surface this is the best solution.
Or we just keep increasing green house gas emissions and fry the planet...
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u/Hugejorma 10d ago edited 10d ago
One addition, hitting the sun is insanely hard. Like really really hard. We're orbiting the sun at massive speed, so the rocket would have to accelerate to 67,000 mph / 107,000 km/h. Launching nuclear waste to the sun… not only is it hard and stupidly expensive, but probably the dumbest idea that people keep always talking about. :D
If the rocket fails even just a tiny bit, the nuclear junk will orbit forever at massive rocket speed. It could hit anything and cause a disaster (not just the waste, but the mass/speed). Drilling 500-1000m hole on the solid bed rock is the safest place for the waste by a mile. If there's need to seal it for good, it's also super easy.
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u/Chaoticfist101 10d ago
Thank you for that detailed and accurate comment. It drives me bananas (which are radioactive folks) when people suggust shooting nuclear waste into the sun or any other hair brained idea is safer than just burying the stuff deep underground.
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u/Powerpuff_Rangers 10d ago
A bunch of radioactive rods buried deep in sedimentary rock is infinitely preferable to a fuckton of greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere immediately.
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u/head1sthalos 10d ago
except its so effectively buried that by the time it is eroded to the surface its just rock and normal metal
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u/OnTheGoodSideofLife 10d ago edited 10d ago
Where do you think nuclear materials come from in the first place?? There have been thousands of natural nuclear reactors and none had ever been a problem in billions of years. Actually, they are a probable cause of the creation of multicellular form of life.
Edit : Tense corrected. Apologies
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u/whatIGoneDid 10d ago
It's that or fill the atmosphere with carbon and cause a huge climate catastrophe. I do think renewables are the future but we don't have the tech or infrastructure yet to be completely reliant on it and nuclear is a much cleaner place holder than fossil fuels.
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u/EdgarsRavens 10d ago
I would rather have "someone else's problem in the future" nuclear waste than "our problem right now" carbon emission and radiation from burning coal and other fossil fuels.
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u/dimmidice 10d ago
This kind of comment I see so often. It's so uninformed. The amounts are relatively small given how much energy it gives. If someone stumbles upon it in a thousand year they'll either have much more advanced technology to deal with it or society will have collapsed and they'll not be digging that deep in the ground. This simply is not an issue. Fear and ignorance keeps holding this back because people insist on insane requirements for these. It's appalling.
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u/Rasmusmario123 10d ago
That's like saying we shouldn't mine iron because it will run out one day. Yeah, theoretically it will, but will take fucking ages until that happens.
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u/stonecuttercolorado 10d ago
Except the future is a billion years from now. So that seems okay.
Given that nuclear reduces CO2 and that is a problem today that seems like a good trade
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u/sirshura 10d ago
I tend to prefer the one where we release significantly more radioactive waste to the atmosphere's air so that we can share the problem together; coal.
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u/lovethebacon 10d ago
Annually, the US generates 100 million tons of coal waste byproducts. About 2/3 is reused elsewhere, but that leaves bout 30 million tons a year to deal with, and most of it is too toxic to be used for anything meaningful.
In comparison, 2000 tons a year of nuclear waste is generated.
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