In this piece I really lay down the challenge for how we think about nuclear waste, drawing on the production and management of other waste types, comparing it to current and future management of spent nuclear fuel, including discussion of Generation IV reactors. This is one of my favourite pieces
The problem of nuclear waste has been solved. At least, compared to how we manage many other types of waste you are responsible for.
Perhaps more than any other single issue about nuclear power, we are continually bombarded with the message that the problem of radioactive waste has not been solved. This is not true; it has been. Well, provided you are applying approximately the same criteria to its management as you are for pretty much every other waste stream you are, in part, responsible for as a citizen of an industrialised society. In fact, if that is your yardstick, the challenge of spent nuclear fuel is more “solved” than nearly everything else. You just need to have a look around.
What would it mean for a waste problem to be “solved”? There is a hierarchy of options that can guide that answer. First and best of all, we stop producing the waste in the first place or if that proves impossible, steeply reduce the amount we produce. Industrialisation is replete with examples of efficiency measures and improved designs and processes that have either eliminated or steeply reduced the production of a waste stream. This is the ideal outcome: same desirable output, less undesirable by-product. By virtue of the fact that such outcomes generally improve profits, there is a pretty strong force behind these types of improvements on a continual basis, though they are invisible to most of us.
But waste still happens. When it does, we can regard it as a good outcome if we catch the waste at the source, undertake some treatment of the waste to render it less intrinsically harmful or less likely to be able to do harm by escaping into the environment, and store it securely. That type of process happens for some types of waste streams. For other types, we do things like engage in some treatment, and then “disperse and dilute” the waste into the environment so that it is spread around and less harmful. That may not sound great but, at present anyway, that’s life.
So let’s lift out heads up and take a look at a modern Australian life, and see what we find. Your household garbage is collected every week. Let’s face it, for nearly all of us the bin is at least half full. This waste is landfilled. Landfills are much better places than they were a generation ago (National waste Report 2010 Factsheet), but the basic principle still applies: Dig hole, fill with garbage, cover. The more recent additions to this process are things like improved design and construction of the hole including better base materials, planned management of leachate, planned management of landfill gases and Closure/Post Closure Management Plans addressing these issues adequately for new and the older cells (holes) alike. Something else we all know is that much of what goes into the hole will still be there in a thousand or so years. I’ve seen some plastics dug up after a few decades looking very sprightly. Other items shouldn’t be there at all, like your household batteries. But they and other hazardous post-consumer waste are there, guaranteed, leaching toxins with no half-life whatsoever; they will be just as toxic in future as they are now. The crowning glory on this process is that fact that there is no serious plan in place to change this. Recycling levels have improved, but annually Australia is landfilling about 13 million tons of household garbage (National Waste Report 2010 Factsheet), and over 20 million tons of waste in total, and there is no end in sight. The sector contributes about 11 million tCO2-e and that is not expected to budge (National Waste Report 2010 Factsheet). By virtue of our acquiescence and participation, our Government has the clear message that this is basically ok by us.
If this troubles you, I have news. This is roughly the same process for the treatment of some hazardous waste in South Australia. I quote:
Currently only one landfill is licensed by the EPA to accept waste treatment plant residues and other solid listed wastes (including hazardous wastes), which meet the criteria of the EPA issued licence… At current filling rates this landfill has a capacity to accept waste for at least the next 20 years.
(Environment Protection Authority Hazardous Waste Strategy 2006-2010)
You’ve got it. For a great number of waste streams deemed hazardous, our strategy is to prepare a special hole, then fill the hole, cover, and manage. The major differences are a synthetic liner and better leachate management. If that troubles you, get ready.
Some things we produce can be neither safely treated, nor do we allow them to be disposed of this way. I am talking about organochlorine pesticides (OCPs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) or general pesticides. These chemicals are as deadly as they come, and they don’t just disappear. PCB’s are a known carcinogen, a neurotoxin (think “snake bite”), and an endocrine (hormone) disruptor, with serious consequences for pregnancy if women are exposed in high amounts. They are also often liquid; they move. So, what do we do about it? Here is the South Australian situation:
There are presently no treatment facilities in South Australia for organochlorine pesticides (OCPs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) or general pesticides. EPA licensed facilities exist within other jurisdictions for the treatment of OCPs and PCBs. Unfortunately due to the physical limitations of the facilities OCP and PCB waste must be stored securely on a medium- to long-term basis until it can be treated… There are some wastes, such as OCP and heavy-metal mixtures that cannot be treated in Australia. These wastes are referred to as intractable wastes and are stored on a long-term basis pending the development of suitable treatment facilities within Australia or the attainment of a permit to export the waste to a country with a treatment facility.
(Environment Protection Authority Hazardous Waste Strategy 2006-2010)
Got that? We produce these uber-toxins and then store them with no end in site (pun intended). Other states can dispose some of them but their sites are already too busy, so we are stuck with it. Does that scare story sound familiar?
What about your car? Again, with few exceptions, in Australia we all either own one or rely on one. The efficiency of our vehicles has been improving steadily, but slowly, and we are putting more of them on the road. The engine technologies are improving, including devices that scrub the exhaust of some of the pollutants. But after that? We drive around relying on “disperse and dilute”. The failings of this approach are well known. Urban air pollution is a big health problem and cars are a big contributor. As for greenhouse gases from the tailpipe, the principle is downright unhelpful. Dispersed and dilute is exactly how greenhouse gas does its damage. Note that capture and storage is pretty much the antonym of dilute and disperse. Like landfill, there is no pathway for this to change.
Sure, some of us watch with interest as electric vehicles slowly penetrate the market. Meanwhile, 90,000 of us buy a new “dilute-and-dispersemobile” every month (ABS). It’s in the hands of the market. When EVs are cheaper and better, they will dominate. Until then, we happily accept the waste as a trade off for the mobility.
The most pertinent comparison for spent nuclear fuel is, of course, the waste from fossil fuel combustion. Here is the annual waste from 2.2 GW of production at Loy Yang Power in Victoria. Getting these numbers was no feat of investigation; they are in the 2009 annual report for all to see, fully accepted by all:
So our current power sector produces wastes of various types in vast quantities, applying a mixture of containment but mainly using dilute and disperse which is, of course, the opposite of good for greenhouse gas. Note that this is not the mining waste. This is just from the power production.
What would happen if we added a nuclear reactor to this picture? Well, replacing that 2.2 GW of capacity in the Loy Yang would firstly eliminate all of the above waste streams. Instead we would produce about 10t of spent fuel per year, which would occupy about 30m3. Every bit of it would be captured, because it is neither liquid nor gas, it is ceramic, in a robustly contained reactor. It would be cooled for a few years in water, before being transferred to a dry cask. That is an innocuous term for something so strong you can hit it with a locomotive and just end up with a damaged train.
There it would sit, quietly and safely, going nowhere, leaching nothing, emitting nothing that is not easily blocked by the steel and concrete. All of this is costed into the price of the electricity.
A short way down the track we would take it out, reprocess it into fuel for an Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) and recycle it to produce another 99 times the zero carbon electricity, displacing fossil fuels every step of the way. In the process we reduce the mass by about 99% and we reduce the half-life of the residual waste to about 30 years. We then vitrify (turn to glass) this minute remainder and give it a safe home for a very manageable period of time.
Is this perfect? Nah, it’s just pretty darn close. If you have a problem with it please, check your waste expectations; you will find that spent nuclear fuel is pretty much the leader. Using the “unsolved waste” argument to say no to nuclear power is dangerously misguided. We are forgoing the profound benefits of a scalable, zero-carbon form of electricity generation that could eliminate the devastating harm caused by the mining and combustion of fossil fuels. We do this in the name of a “problem” that is both temporary and also immensely smaller and more manageable than the status quo.
People may still like to throw the “unsolved waste” line at me do. Unless those people are living in a yurt, wearing skins and growing their own food, I suggest they put the moral high horse back in the stable and throw it an apple.
There is a scenario I often play out in my head in the event that we fail to reel in climate change. It’s me, listening to incredulous grandchildren who are facing a dangerously altered world, saying: “Explain it again: What was the big problem with nuclear waste?”.
I have no good answer for them.