Anyone live near a windfarm?

[ruffdog]

Trump’s nuclear ‘renaissance’ rests on risky plan for radioactive waste​

The administration goes all-in on recycling spent fuel, despite a history of spectacular mishaps, including an unintentional atom bomb.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/09/22/trump-nuclear-waste-recycling-risk/

But the details that are public so far, experts say, don’t seem to break new ground.
“These are the same technologies that were developed and rejected decades ago,” said Ross Matzkin-Bridger, a senior adviser at the Energy Department during the Biden administration who now heads the Nuclear Materials Security Program at the nonprofit Nuclear Threat Initiative. “They have been rebranded with new names and slight tweaks, but they still have the same problems. The only thing new is misleading narratives that they have solved the safety, security and waste management issues that make these technologies unworkable.”

 

[Jstpssng]

That may be true, but businesses make decisions based on estimated profit and risks every day

The Department of Defense has warned that the offshore windfarms being proposed off the east coast would be a major national security concern that they'd be unable to safeguard. Gigawatts of power that could be easy attacked.

Our infrastructure security is woefully inadequate. Look at what some idgit did in North Carolina with a rifle a few years ago.

 

[gsganzer]

Trump’s nuclear ‘renaissance’ rests on risky plan for radioactive waste​

The administration goes all-in on recycling spent fuel, despite a history of spectacular mishaps, including an unintentional atom bomb.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/09/22/trump-nuclear-waste-recycling-risk/

But the details that are public so far, experts say, don’t seem to break new ground.
“These are the same technologies that were developed and rejected decades ago,” said Ross Matzkin-Bridger, a senior adviser at the Energy Department during the Biden administration who now heads the Nuclear Materials Security Program at the nonprofit Nuclear Threat Initiative. “They have been rebranded with new names and slight tweaks, but they still have the same problems. The only thing new is misleading narratives that they have solved the safety, security and waste management issues that make these technologies unworkable.”

I think the most significant change to our nuclear waste program was firing that luggage stealing, LGBTQ activist, Sam Brinton. What a trainwreck that person was. Sam Brinton

Many of the other countries reprocess nuclear waste without incident.

 

[ning]

Many of the other countries reprocess nuclear waste without incident.

Reprocessing it is one thing. Storage is another.

Where do they store their waste?

AFAIK, nobody's got a good plan for long-term storage yet. The French who've pretty much had the most nuke power still have theirs in surface-level short-term storage.

 

[gsganzer]

Reprocessing it is one thing. Storage is another.

Where do they store their waste?

AFAIK, nobody's got a good plan for long-term storage yet. The French who've pretty much had the most nuke power still have theirs in surface-level short-term storage.

I'll have to see where I read it, but I believe there's a difference in the fuel and the reprocessing/storage with the newest type of reactors. Instead of 10's of thousands of years to decay, it is more like 150 years. Still not inconsequential, but a giant leap better.

 

[KennyG]

I really didn't want to continue commenting on this thread, but the Washington Post hit piece needs some perspective. It's a great example of why people don't trust the "traditional media". It combines the concepts of nuclear is bad and the US is bad.

It claims the US provided the technology that gave Pakistan nuclear weapons and somehow ties that to reprocessing. The US did provide Pakistan with basic nuclear technology via the "Atoms for Peace" program, but the heavy water reactor technology, critical for producing weapons grade plutonium came from Canada. Their reprocessing technology came from the UK. The critical enrichment technology was stolen from Urenco in the Netherlands.

There is no practical way to produce nuclear weapons from light water reactor spent fuel. The Pu-239 is so contaminated by Pu-240 that enrichment is required. It is much safer, easier and cheaper to enrich Uranium than the Plutonium in spent fuel. Weapons grade Plutonium is produced in purpose built heavy water reactors.

The article claims it would take dozens of acres to store the spent fuel. The US contains about 2.5 trillion acres. A solar farm to replace one nuclear reactor requires 10s of thousands of acres. What's the issue?

The article says Plutonium is the most dangerous substance on earth. Why? Pu-239 has a half life of about 24,000 years. A long half life sounds scary but what it really means is that it isn't very radioactive. And it's an alpha emitter which means it must be taken internally to be a concern. If you have a subcritical mass of Uranium or Plutonium, you can pick it up and carry it around. It's no big deal. In the early days of the Manhattan project a number of scientists were contaminated with plutonium. They formed a group called IPPU (I pee Pu). Most lived to a ripe old age.

New technologies are always impractical and expensive until they are fully developed.

 

[KennyG]

Reprocessing it is one thing. Storage is another.

Where do they store their waste?

AFAIK, nobody's got a good plan for long-term storage yet. The French who've pretty much had the most nuke power still have theirs in surface-level short-term storage.

Finland and Sweden have long term deep storage facilities (100,000 years).

 

[ning]

The article claims it would take dozens of acres to store the spent fuel. The US contains about 2.5 trillion acres. A solar farm to replace one nuclear reactor requires 10s of thousands of acres. What's the issue?

The issue is that those "acres" are for short-term storage, and the waste that's in short-term storage isn't in a form that's safe for very long. Typically it looks like a swimming pool, and the water helps cool the waste. You don't want that water to disappear (earthquake? terrorism?) and you don't want someone to grab some (suicide, yes, but we've seen that before, and this is a great way to get a dirty bomb going).

Long-term you need deep storage, such as Yucca Mountain, deep salt mines, etc... but you also need that storage to be in a form that still shouldn't leak - you can't just chuck it into steel or poly barrels and hope for the best.

My recollection - and I haven't read about this in at least a decade or two - is that vitrification, where the waste is essentially mixed with molten glass and the waste is part of the resultant matrix, is the most likely to avoid leaching; someone would have to chip off a chunk of glass to move the waste around and it would be the safest for adding to the storage facility because there's no worries about bringing in another load and finding you need a sump pump for that sludge that's suddenly on the floor

 

[gsganzer]

My recollection - and I haven't read about this in at least a decade or two - is that vitrification, where the waste is essentially mixed with molten glass and the waste is part of the resultant matrix, is the most likely to avoid leaching; someone would have to chip off a chunk of glass to move the waste around and it would be the safest for adding to the storage facility because there's no worries about bringing in another load and finding you need a sump pump for that sludge that's suddenly on the floor

I worked on a project years ago that was demonstrating/testing and proving the viability of the vitrification process. Apparently, that's how most of Europe already does it. Of course, our government groups had to fully test it ourselves so we could prove we could screw it up.

 

[etpm]

The article says Plutonium is the most dangerous substance on earth.

I don't agree with this assessment as the most dangerous but it certainly is one of the most poisonous substances. That said, it is not particularly dangerous in the solid form and wrapped in a piece of paper or two. Being an alpha emitter and being that alpha particles are stopped by even a sheet of paper or a few feet of air it is not that dangerous to be near to. Ingesting it is of course very bad, especially breathing the dust. But using a chunk as a door stop is not as near as dangerous as some would believe. Encased in acrylic I would be fine having it in my house.
Eric