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vmaldia asked in EnvironmentOther - Environment · 1 decade ago

what would environmentalists do with nuclear fuel/waste?

Assume that one day that all nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons are banned and taken offline. Don't ask me how the dictators like in north korea were made to go along, but assume there is no opposition and everyone in the world cooperates. And assume that due to a breakthrough in renewable power tech, there are no power shortages

Ok so now you have dismantled all the bombs and the reactors. You have many many tons of nuclear waste, spent fuel, unspent fuel, depleted uranium from weapons and plutonium from bomb cores. What the heck do environmentalists plan to do with them?

Pretty much I think you have at least 4 choices and AFAIK most environmentalists dont want them because they are what the nuclear industry is trying to do

1. vitrify the wastes, seal them in containers and bury them somewhere safe

2. grind it into powder and mix with the leftover rock from uranium mines until the radioactivity is equal to uranium ore then seal it back in the mine

3. dump it in the sea along subduction zones

4. construct new nuclear reactors to transmute the radioactive materials into other elements with shorter half lives, and generate electricity in the process

personally i would go for #4

7 Answers

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  • ?
    Lv 7
    1 decade ago
    Favorite Answer

    much of the waste is recyclable. breeder reactors can avoid having to mine uranium. thorium reactors may be the new wave of reactor designs in the future. there is hardly any carbon footprint from nuclear reactors. #4 is a good choice.

  • 4 years ago

    My impact is that environmentalists do not likely like nuclear skill. Why, precisely, i'm not likely helpful. Nuclear skill would not require wind, sunlight, or water. . . too many human beings think of those are our in effortless terms available suggestions, while i'm not confident that those can meet all human beings's potential needs on condition that maximum places interior the international in effortless terms have a million or 2 of those obtainable, at superb. we don't all stay interior the desolate tract the place rooftop image voltaic panels are an exceedingly valuable investment, you recognize. i don't precisely see dissimilar areas for those green materials of potential sitting on my keep cabinets, the two. what's the huge harm in a minimum of using nuclear skill interior the quick term until this all-green ability some declare must be there unquestionably will become a fact. Or did we would desire to in effortless terms wait until we are completely out of strategies? i'm nevertheless waiting for my flying automobile, you recognize. . . . confident, we then might desire to keep the waste. Does all human beings relatively have that little faith in our engineers and scientists that we are going to not artwork out those issues competently over the long term? We basically landed stuff on yet another planet -- i'm tremendously helpful we are able to try this. howdy. . . permit's deliver our nuclear waste to MARS! Oh, dazzling, we don't choose for to have the rocket explode on launch and spray the payload everywhere. . . darn.

  • 1 decade ago

    1. Many environmentalists favor nuclear power, don't generalize. Most of those who oppose it are over the age of 40 and/or misinformed.

    2. Applying to the real world where nuclear power isn't going anywhere for a very long time: Subductive waste disposal for the win; after reprocessing.

  • Anonymous
    1 decade ago

    You are right No. 4 is the only answer, Thorium reactors will get rid of the nuclear fuel, waste and warheads.

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  • 1 decade ago

    Someone truly interested in the environment would have never begun to create nuclear waste until they had a safe way to dispose of it, instead using the energy freely supplied by nature - sun, wind and water.

  • 7 years ago

    problematic matter. lookup onto a search engine. that could actually help!

  • Anonymous
    1 decade ago

    pretty much all of it can be reused now

    or stored safely

    Source(s): history channel
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