Quote:
Originally Posted by Erick Estrada
Is nuclear energy really a long term solution? The radioactive waste still gets stored on earth and it lasts thousands of years. I realize that the CO2 mass emissions far surpasses what the equivalent radioactive waste would be but annually storing tonnes of radioactive waste on the planet will one day likely result in severe consequences.
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With traditional Water Reactors, yes.. this is correct.
The problem is in 1% of the waste - the transuranics. These are the elements that are heavier than Uranium ... Am, Cm, Np. These elements are the reason long term, deep geological storage facilities are proposed. They have half lives that can be in excess of hundreds of thousands of years.
We have to put them away because Light water reactors can't burn them up as fuel because of the way the fuel assembly is designed. The fuel rods have solid pellets of enriched uranium pressed together. Completely randomly, you'll have some of the atoms fission into these transuranics, and they create hot spots which increase the risk of melting, so you've got to switch the rods out, process the pellets, etc.
There are alternative designs which avoid the issue of long term storage. Again, a single fluid MSR allows all of the isotopes to float in a homogeneous mixture, so these transuranics actually get burned as fuel instead of having to be left behind as waste.
The waste footprint of an MSR is a fraction of conventional reactors, and the waste is far less radioactive. Storage becomes a completely different challenge, not like the one we have today.
Read more here:
http://www.terrestrialenergyinc.com/msr-waste.html