The US National Ignition Facility has achieved even higher energy yields since breaking even for the first time in 2022, but a practical fusion reactor is still a long way off
It is oddly enough easier to store nuclear waste since it is very easy to contain. Coal waste is nearly impossible to do that. No matter how hot you burn or how much you scrub or what tricks you play with syngas/distillate you are still going to end up with CO2 in air.
But nuclear waste will be dangerous longer than any container could possibly survive. Plutonium 239 has a halflife of 24,000 years. Some uranium isotopes are as much as 4.5 billion years. And that’s half-life, not how long it will take to be not dangerous. That’s one reason Yucca Mountain was never completed and the US has zero permanent storage facilities. Eventually it WILL get into the ground water and it will be extremely difficult to clean up, if not impossible, before it contaminates a large area and possibly becomes airborne with evaporation. One earthquake, one change in the water tables that puts water in direct contact with the outside of the pools. One flood. One bomb. Maybe not in our lifetime, but it is inevitable. And if we end up with more power plants and acres and acres of temporary storage pools that will never find a place to put it, it’s going to be really bad. We can’t even get enough money to remove lead pipes or asbestos from most homes. How will we store something that will be dangerous until the sun goes nova.
I’m not saying to stick with coal. I’m saying why invest in using a dangerous energy source when renewables are plentiful? We just need better batteries to store the energy and release it more evenly.
It is oddly enough easier to store nuclear waste since it is very easy to contain. Coal waste is nearly impossible to do that. No matter how hot you burn or how much you scrub or what tricks you play with syngas/distillate you are still going to end up with CO2 in air.
But nuclear waste will be dangerous longer than any container could possibly survive. Plutonium 239 has a halflife of 24,000 years. Some uranium isotopes are as much as 4.5 billion years. And that’s half-life, not how long it will take to be not dangerous. That’s one reason Yucca Mountain was never completed and the US has zero permanent storage facilities. Eventually it WILL get into the ground water and it will be extremely difficult to clean up, if not impossible, before it contaminates a large area and possibly becomes airborne with evaporation. One earthquake, one change in the water tables that puts water in direct contact with the outside of the pools. One flood. One bomb. Maybe not in our lifetime, but it is inevitable. And if we end up with more power plants and acres and acres of temporary storage pools that will never find a place to put it, it’s going to be really bad. We can’t even get enough money to remove lead pipes or asbestos from most homes. How will we store something that will be dangerous until the sun goes nova.
I’m not saying to stick with coal. I’m saying why invest in using a dangerous energy source when renewables are plentiful? We just need better batteries to store the energy and release it more evenly.