Generation IV reactors will completely nullify any sincere concern about nuclear waste. What is left over amounts to a few pounds and has a half-life of a few decades.
But you can’t have a neo-feudalist society with cheap, abundant energy.
Well, that ship has sailed...
I have a childhood friend whose parents (yes, both of them) were nuclear physicists. They are well into retirement now. I know that they say nuclear energy is the cleanest stuff out there, but that people are very afraid, largely because of 3 Mile Island and Chernobyl. I haven’t talked with them about this, per se, but in general, I would say that they believe nuclear energy is clean, safe, and reliable. Not trying to put words in their mouths, but that’s the way I recall our discussions on the topic in the last 15 years.
William Winpisinger was the “Chuck Schumer” of professionally angry, young, and then older, socialists who sought control over the AFL-CIO in opposition to Jimmy Hoffa (Teamsters, before the divorce from the AFL-CIO) and in opposition to George Meany.
I’m a proponent of nuclear power and for years have absorbed as much information on the subject as a lay person is able. That said there are big drawbacks with waste. Many smart people say Thorium reactors are the solution to the waste problem as a thorium reactor will burn waste fuel down to a small percentage.
Problems is, there are no working Thorium reactors. It’s all theory. If this country had spent the money we have on the unworkable green energy programs on reactor technology we very well have been the world leaders in a technology that leaves very little waste but produces massive amounts of energy to power the future.
Instead the Marxist communists led the sheep down a garden path of unworkable green energy that will end in the destruction of our quality of life. It’s all going according to plan. They fill their pockets while subjugating us to satisfy their power fetish.
When I attended the University of Arizona in the 1970’s, the anti-nuke kooks were on campus trying to stir up everyone to stop the Palo Verde nuclear power plant from being built. They were on campus every day.
The plant has been in operation for over 30 years without any problems that I’m aware of.
Best solution for high level non-recyclable nuclear waste is to bury it in a subduction zone on the ocean floor. No one will be able to access it there, and it will be safely stored for hundreds of thousands of years, until it is incinerated below the tectonic plates.
Most particularly, the life of tritium, necessary for the hydrogen bomb, has very short life and needs to be continually manufactured to replace that which is no longer usable or reliable. This generates a lot of long half-life-cycle waste, if I recall correctly from meetings on it and how to deal with it.
Waste from power plants should not be a concern of the vox populi or the even less-well-informed media, IMHO.
Put the waste in salt domes that are many thousands of feet thick. Salt has one wonderful property. At deep burial depth and pressure it is plastic, it flows but incrementally slow over time. Once buried in the dome if an earth quake occurs it heals itself. Even high level waste can be disposed of with safety.
1 - Pay foreign debts with an ICBM.
2 - Prevents collectors from going above critical mass.
3 - Bank robbers would need lead suits, slowing them down during the subsequent chase
We do not even need to wait for “Gen IV” reactors.
We have a solution for all the current nuclear waste we have and could yet produce. That solution is deep underground storage area in Nevada. Presidents have allowed the courts to over rule the elected government to keep the site unused to this day.
The final argument from the environmentalists that won the court decision keeping the site unused? Well, it - the site - “may” ONLY keep the material safe for 1,000 years.
We need a President who tells the courts we are going ahead with the use of the site and give science 1,000 years to come up with alternatives.
I’m not going to bother to watch the video, but my question is will they recommend adding the nuclear waste to city water systems as a health additive much as they did fluoride?