Don't talk about Americans that way!
Nuclear waste is small and solid, not a leaky green ooze like you see in the Simpsons. You can just bury it deep in a mountain, which is where you extracted the uranium from in the first place.
- https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-...
- https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-...
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/03/11...
> Nuclear waste is small and solid
As long as all goes well. Fukushima has a slightly different experience.
> You can just bury it deep in a mountain, which is where you extracted the uranium from in the first place.
Imo it's stupid to put nuclear waste in a place where you can't get at it anymore. In the ideal case we invent better reactors where you recycle all radioactive parts as usable fuel and the output is truly 'spent'.
I don't disagree with you that the pros of nuclear (as opposed to fossil) outweigh the cons. But there are cons, and eventually we'd be better off harvesting our energy from the sun.
> Imo it's stupid to put nuclear waste in a place where you can't get at it anymore.
Things obviously need to be weighed against each other. Burying it in a mountain does make it safe to store indefinitely, but obviously not easily accessible. It can be dug out again, however, if it becomes useful again. It's going to be more expensive, but you pay for the safety.
> As long as all goes well. Fukushima has a slightly different experience.
One of the articles I linked makes the argument that Fukushima is not as tragic as people think.
Quote:
> But now, eight years after Fukushima, the best-available science clearly shows that Caldicott’s estimate of the number of people killed by nuclear accidents was off by one million. Radiation from Chernobyl will kill, at most, 200 people, while the radiation from Fukushima and Three Mile Island will kill zero people.
That would depend on the category of the waste:
- High level waste - Transuranic waste - Low level waste
where high level waste comes in two classes: spent fuel and reprocessing waste, the latter being liquid (possibly not green).
https://ieer.org/resource/classroom/classifications-nuclear-...
You can just bury it deep in a mountain
Belgium is notably lacking in mountains, which is why they now start building a site for low level nuclear waste storage, adding to the cost. For high level nuclear waste they have to build deep underground, waterproof, bomb-proof facilities at high expense:
As for the article by Shellenberger you linked, please note that he is a right winger criticising wokeism etc, who claims eternal growth can continue like until now without ecoogical impact
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Shellenberger
Edit: I just found out that Shellenberger now works on finding the Aliens:
Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth", Shellenberger claimed sources have told him that intelligence communities "are sitting on a huge amount of visual and other information" about Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP)
Same wiki.
Ad hominem. Criticize the argument. Your opinion about Shellenberger or even his other opinions are irrelevant.
I don't particularly like him, but that does not mean all his points are invalid.
As for the validity of his statements, please read his Congressional Testimonies in said wiki and see if that changes your mind.
More of a political problem, from what I hear. This is, if anything, worse: simply not knowing is a research problem, but knowing how to do it and yet having an influential group saying "no because reasons" could be genuinely insurmountable.
So imo not really a political problem.