“The real issue is that the US doesn’t have a plan for its spent nuclear fuel. I’m not feeling optimistic right now.”
to study nuclear waste out of a love for the arcane. Figuring how to bury radioactive atoms isn’t exactly simple—it takes a blend of particle physics, careful geology and engineering, and a high tolerance for reams of regulations. But the trickiest ingredient of all is time. Nuclear waste from today’s reactors will take thousands of years to become something safer to handle. So any solution can’t require too much stewardship. It’s gotta just work, and keep working for generations.
But the authors say the “back-end” of the fuel cycle, which includes waste and decommissioning, should be a bigger factor in what they consider to be the precarious economics of the new reactors. “The point of this paper is to prompt a discussion,” says Allison Macfarlane, a former chair of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission and a coauthor of the paper. “We can’t get to how much it is going to cost until we understand what we’re dealing with.
Those varied streams of waste complicate the calculus for a permanent storage facility, which needs to be carefully designed to ensure the surrounding geology can safely sequester the material for thousands of years.
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