The Big Lie About Nuclear Waste
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN cites it in nuclear power debates for the point that recycling waste is largely a solved problem, though costly to build.
What it is
Cleo Abram's explainer on whether nuclear waste is really the intractable problem it is portrayed as, looking at how spent fuel can be recycled and used. It features a collaboration with Johnny Harris.
Recommended by 0 HN commenters across 0 different months, 2023 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Cites alexcombessie · 2023-06 · on “Finland's plan to bury spent nuclear fuel for 100k years”
It’s a great milestone to establish a complete & safe lifecycle for nuclear fuel. From what I understood of current technology, recycling used nuclear fuel is too expensive and impractical today, so it makes economic sense to invest in long-term waste storage. But I do wonder if in 30-50 years, the main way to deal with nuclear waste would be recycling. I saw an interesting interview of experts about this last month: [this video]
Cites ttfkam · 2023-07 · on “Nuclear Fission Fuel Is Inexhaustible (2022)”
How well do solar and wind infrastructures handle tornados and hurricanes? Also, consistent wind resources are notably absent in the South/Southeast. There are no Hoover Dam-like sites available there. Do you honestly expect to tell tens of millions of people that they should just be content with a single hurricane knocking out their electricity grid for a month? That's not realistic. You cannot plan an electrical future on the hope that the weather is always pleasant and consistent. This is one of the reasons why fossil fuel dominance continues in those regions. Go ahead and draw a map of those places where hurricanes and tornados are most prevalent and their large scale adoption of solar a
Cites dvtkrlbs · 2025-09 · on “EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy”
The annoying thing is recycling nuclear waste is kind of a solved problem. I've watched this video a while ago but iirc it is just more expensive to build a reactor that can also recycle its own waste. [this video]