Another big problem with metals/rare earth minerals is the pollution caused by mining them. Tailings piles left to pollute surface and ground water. Recycling seems to be taking a hit as the costs outweigh the financial benefits causing businesses to make choices that reduce what can be recycled. Without some other incentive, all these batteries may present big problems in the future…
One possibility is grinding the radioactive waste and mixing it with a whole lot of filler, then burying it. This is basically sending it back where it came from and in approximately the same radioactive density. Find a Geiger counter and a granite building. You might be surprised at how radioactive that building is.
The amount of filler might be too much to make this practical, but all the filler (tailings) the uranium came from is around somewhere.
This only affects 4% of the radioactive waste. The remainder is reprocessed into fuel again.
One of the by-products of a nuclear plant is Plutonium-239 which has a half life of over 20,000 years and is NOT found in nature.
Plutonium-239 is not nuclear waste but is a valuable nuclear fuel itself, and is removed and reprocessed into new reactor fuel. Usually, if something has a super long half life, it’s an indication that it is not intensely radioactive. Pt-239 becomes U-235 by emitting an alpha particle, which is essentially a helium nucleus. Alpha particles can be stopped by a few centimeters of air or the dead outer layer of your skin.
It probably was formed in nature in a long ago supernova explosion, but after billions of years, it decayed into lighter elements.
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I was watching that show where they see something from satellite images and try to unravel the mystery. One was from the desert southwest, I forget exactly where. Strange looking white mounds. They had a guy drive there and found a completely deserted town. Used to be a bustling mining town and the white piles? tailings from uranium mining. It’s completely uninhabitable and will be for a l o n g time.
I suggest burying it far underground because it is dangerous. I’m not a nuclear waste expert. What do you suggest we do with the remaining 4%?
There has been no fuel reprocessing in the US in many years.
I know what I would say to do with it.
Got my copy of Hemmings today though and noticed an add for a house in Florida by the gulf. It had a 12 car garage for collector cars and a couple lifts. Less than $700,000 but what would a guy do with 12 collector cars? Of course then there was about a 1927 restored Chris Craft for only $35,000 so that could take up one of the stalls.
Bury it next to the houses of who is making money off of it?
The genie is out. Remediation funds in escrow has to become the norm to avoid pollution from mining.
Regarding the nuclear waste, I never said I had answers for that. Just pointing out the there’s no mystery where to find the tailings piles…
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Construction of the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository began in 1987 near the Nevada test site in the waste lands of Nevada. The site has faced opposition for years from Senator Harry Reid and a number of nervous housewives.
There was a campaign promise made a dozen years ago to end the future of the repository but that person did not have the authority to do so (like many other promises).
Yucca Mountain is available to store nuclear waste under ground but it seems the public would rather have it stored above ground.
This may seem like a suggestion from a movie, but would it be too risky to load the nuclear waste into a rocket and shoot it into the sun or just out into space? It might be a mission geared for Tesla with their rockets.
How many rockets do you need to lift 250,000 tons of high level waste per year? The SpaceX Falcon Heavy has payload of around 70 tons.
How much does that cost? Musk estimates $150M at most but those are low risk payloads compared to nuclear waste.
What if it explodes in our upper atmosphere?
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+1
Not practical, safe, or cost-effective.
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Where did you come up with that number? I looked up the annual spent fuel output of the United States and I came up with 2000 tons per year, and most of that can be recycled into new nuclear fuel.
Sounds like an artificial (political) problem to me. We could ship it to France where spent nuclear fuel is reprocessed.
This should be the standard for all businesses that cause problems requiring cleanup. From mines to dry cleaners to gas stations. It’s ridiculous that a dry cleaning shop spends 30 years dumping toxic chemicals in the ground, then closes and the government has to come in and spend a bunch of money hauling the contaminated soil out because no one thought to require a cleanup deposit beforehand.
Before I bought my house I had to put a security deposit on every rental property I occupied, just in case I was a slob and didn’t clean/fix the place before I left. Why aren’t we requiring that of businesses that we know are going to leave a toxic mess behind?
Yes:
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Some states/cities actually wave environmental regulations to bring in companies for their jobs. One main reason I’m for national standards.
Near where I grew up in Syracuse there’s Onondaga Lake. One of the most polluted lakes in the world. For decades companies (Allied Chemical, Church and Dwight, Crucible Steel) used the lake as a dumping ground.
Bringing it back to car…Franklin Engines (used in the Tucker ) had part of it’s operations in the area that also dumped into lake Onondaga. The area is right next to the NY state fair grounds. And in July it hosts one of thee largest car shows in the US. I went to it once. It’s HUGE. People come from all over.
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That might be possible if our alliance with France can be healed.
Currently, it is in shambles, along with most of our other European alliances.
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We already do launch nuclear fuels into space. They are the power source for the observatory, though. These are very small amounts of fuel, and still there is a huge stink every time it occurs. BTW, there are very few missions that use nuclear power. As long as the Sun can provide energy, there is no need for riskier fuel sources on the top of rockets.
It’s ok, we’ve figured out how to make our own wine, cheese, and cars that won’t start when the temperatures dip into the 40’s, and we can also figure out how to reprocess spent nuclear fuel.
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It was an industry website and worldwide number. It’s not just a u.s.a. problem. That was the net number for high level waste after about 1/3 recycled. I can look for it again.