Eli5: What is so bad about the waste of nuclear power plants? Why are many governments so against it? What is so hard about storing the waste in a safe place?
In: Technology
I’m a nuclear engineer. Elements can have different weights when they have different numbers of neutrons in their nucleus. A reactor is a neutron throwing machine. Certain atoms split into pieces when it absorbs a neutron, making smaller atoms, while others hold onto the neutron and get bigger. Generally, more neutrons make the atom radioactive, meaning it spits out energy and/or parts of the atom to be more stable, like a ball rolling down a hill. So, after running for 3-4 years, nuclear fuel has made some of every element in different weights. That includes toxic metals, which makes it chemically toxic, and many radioactive versions of atoms.
People have long been conditioned to be afraid of radiation, though compared with most industrial hazards it is pretty easy to manage. In fact, the atoms that decay slowly (“they last for hundreds of thousands of years”) release radiation slowly, and is of little risk. The real problem ones last a hundred to two hundred years, which is relatively easy to store.
The short answer is fear and lack of perspective. Basically, reactors make a chemical soup that is capable of putting out a lot of energy for a couple hundred years, and after that you’re left with a weird mix of elements. We have multiple techniques for reusing, recycling, and safely storing the used fuel, but fear keeps hitting those ideas down and we’re left in a weird limbo as an industry. Essentially, a technically challenging but solved problem is being confused with the politically challenging and unsolved problem.
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