“Not in my backyard” is a term normally used in conversations about proposed new housing or rail lines, but a version of it could soon be heard about one of the most dangerous materials on the planet.
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Sellafield, in Cumbria, is the “temporary home to the vast majority of the UK’s radioactive nuclear waste”, said the BBC, “as well as the world’s largest stockpile of plutonium”. It’s stuck there because no long-term, high-level waste facilities have been created to deal with it.
The “highly radioactive material” releases energy that can infiltrate and damage the cells in our bodies, Claire Corkhill, professor of radioactive waste management at the University of Bristol, said, and “it remains hazardous for 100,000 years”.
The permanent plan to handle the waste currently at Sellafield is to first build a designated 650ft-deep pit to store it. Although the contentious matter of its location has yet to be agreed, the facility will hold some of the 5 million tonnes of waste generated by nuclear power stations over the past seven decades. Then, in the second half of the century, a much deeper geological disposal site will be dug, which will hold the UK’s “most dangerous waste”, such as plutonium.
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But nuclear apologists told me nuclear is “safe” and “clean”?
Nuclear what?
I work in hazardous materials handling and safety (general as well as hazardous materials).
The majority of the waste isn’t high-level, and can be relatively safely disposed of. The vast majority of the high-level waste at Sellafield comes from nuclear weapons manufacturing. But thanks to amazing cold-wat era recordburningkeeping, nobody really what is what. A sealed vessel could hold harmless coveralls, or toxic sludge, and nobody knows anything other than that it’s built to literally without bombing, so it’s insanely slow going.
The actual civilian spent reactor fuel is a tiny fraction of what is at Sellafield, and it’s some of the easiest material to dispose of, since they’re packaged solids. The real headaches are the contaminated machinery and the nuclear weapon sludge.
So yes, nuclear power is safe and clean. Nuclear weapons being made at the cold in secret labs? Not so much. But Sellafield is only a problem because the Brits kept notes. The US dug holes in the desert and poured their nuclear sludge into them, then promptly forgot all about the. The Soviet Union did god knows what with their waste. The French poured it into the ocean.
In hazardous waste handling, the best waste is contained waste, and that doesn’t apply to any other fossil fuel. CO2 kills tens of million every year through global warming and many more die from dust, where nuclear energy deaths from all sources barely register.
Thats the point. Nuclear makes energy in a safe and clean way, but you can’t just exclude the waste problem from the discussion or dismiss it as “we’ll figure it out” as its so often done in this conversation.
Sure we are reusing some of it nowadays, but we still have tons globally that need to go somewhere
It’s really not that much. Considering how much coal ash radiation and waste is created by coal power, nuclear is still one of the best long-term alternatives.
Sure we are reusing some of it nowadays, but we still have tons globally that need to go somewhere
At this point in time, nuclear “recycling” is a grift. The French nuclear recycling industry in particular is basically just a France-Siberia import/export business.
Yes, just to provide some detailed numbers regarding the UK from an article I posted recently in a similar community (article from May 2024):
A vast subsea nuclear graveyard planned to hold Britain’s burgeoning piles of radioactive waste is set to become the biggest, longest-lasting and most expensive infrastructure project ever undertaken in the UK. The project [UK’s nuclear waste dump] is now predicted to take more than 150yrs to complete with lifetime costs of £66bn in today’s money…The waste itself includes 110,000 tonnes of uranium, 6,000 tonnes of spent nuclear fuels & about 120 tonnes of plutonium. – Source
