• Ephera@lemmy.ml
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    5 months ago

    In Germany, we’ve got a location with 47,000 cubic meters: https://www.bge.de/en/asse/
    That requires some pretty tall stacking on that football field. Or I guess, you’re saying if you’d unpack it all and compress it?

    Also, we really should be getting the nuclear waste out of said location, since there’s a known risk of contamination. But even that challenge is too great for us, apparently.
    Mainly, because we don’t have any locations that are considered safe for permanent storage. It’s cool that Switzerland has figured it out. And that some hypothetical football field exists. But it doesn’t exist in Germany, and I’m pretty sure, Switzerland doesn’t want our nuclear waste either.

    • Waryle@jlai.lu
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      5 months ago

      In Germany, we’ve got a location with 47,000 cubic meters: https://www.bge.de/en/asse/

      Read your link: 47 000m³ of low and intermediate radioactive waste.

      Low radioactive waste is objects (paper, clothing, etc…) which contain a small amount of short-lived radioactivity, and it mostly comes from the medical fields, not nuclear plants, so even if you phase out of nuclear, you’ll have to deal with it anyway.

      This waste makes up for the vast majority (94% in UK for example) of the nuclear waste produced, and you can just leave it that way a few years, then dispose of it as any other waste.

      Intermediate radioactivity waste is irradiated components of nuclear power plants. They are in solid form and do not require any special arrangement to store them as they do not heat up. This includes shorts and long-lived waste and represents only a small part of the volume of radioactive waste produced (4% in UK).

      So you’re mostly dealing with your medical nuclear waste right here, and you can thank your anti-nuclear folks for blocking most of your infrastructure construction projects to store this kind of waste.

    • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      we don’t have any locations that are considered safe for permanent storage

      I’m gonna hazard a guess that the “consideration” was not from actual scientists but rather activist homeowner groups in every potential site.

      NIMBYism and nuclear, name a more iconic duo

      • Ephera@lemmy.ml
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        5 months ago

        I mean, can you blame them? Why would anyone want toxic waste in their backyard? Not to mention that the search is mainly conducted by companies, which have a vested interest in not making all the issues transparent.

        Having said that, I am not aware of the ‘scientists’ coming up with good suggestions either. Gorleben got hemmed and hawed around for the longest time, but its selection process was non-scientific from the start.

        It’s genuinely not easy to find a location where anyone would be willing to claim that it will remain unaffected by geodynamic processes for millions of years. And we don’t have a big desert or some other unpopulated area where you could chuck it without political opposition, when it’s not 110% safe to do so.

        • JamesFire@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          Why would anyone want toxic waste in their backyard?

          It’s not toxic, nor is it in their backyard.

          Not to mention that the search is mainly conducted by companies, which have a vested interest in not making all the issues transparent.

          What issues?

          It’s genuinely not easy to find a location where anyone would be willing to claim that it will remain unaffected by geodynamic processes for millions of years.

          Good thing we don’t need to.

          • Ephera@lemmy.ml
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            5 months ago

            It’s not toxic, nor is it in their backyard.

            It is toxic and they wrote “NIMBY”, which means “not in my backyard”, which is what I used figuratively here.

            What issues?

            Depends on the location. In Asse, there is water entering into the caverns, for example.

            Good thing we don’t need to.

            You should inform the BGE about it. They’ll be glad to hear all their challenges are solved.