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24 years of nuclear waste from the Maine Yankee powerplant (slrpnk.net)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/justpost@lemmy.world
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Operated from 1972 to 1996 and produced 119 billion kilowatt hours of energy

Dry cask storage is a method for safely storing spent nuclear fuel after it has cooled for several years in water pools. Once the fuel rods are no longer producing extreme heat, they are sealed inside massive steel and concrete casks that provide both radiation shielding and passive cooling through natural air circulation—no water is needed. Each cask can weigh over 100 tons and is engineered to resist earthquakes, floods, fire, and even missile strikes. This makes it a robust interim solution until permanent deep geological repositories are available. The casks are expected to last 50–100 years, though the fuel inside remains radioactive for thousands. Dry cask storage reduces reliance on crowded spent fuel pools, provides a secure above-ground option, and buys time for nations to develop long-term disposal strategies. In essence, it’s a durable, self-contained “vault” for nuclear waste

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[–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

I think the nice thing about breeder reactors isn't so much that they produce additional energy or are economically profitable on their own, but that they have the potential to eliminate nuclear waste that has accumulated in the last few decades, therefore effectively eliminating the storage problem.

Consider this: Storing nuclear waste costs something. A country might pay $1bn to store its nuclear waste for a hundred years. Instead, it could give that money to breeder reactors so they get rid of the nuclear waste permanently.

Breeder reactors don't have to be profitable only by producing electricity. They have another selling-point, and that is that they eliminate the nuclear waste for good. That's also worth something, and politics might be willing to pay for it at some point.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    The current situation in the US is that private industry builds and runs the reactors, but the federal government has promised to take care of the waste. So either the breeder reactor needs to be commercially viable, or the government needs to run the reactor and push in on private sector businesses. I'm not sure which would be more difficult to achieve, honestly.

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