> With nuclear, the hidden cost is both long-term storage of waste and the cost of nuclear accidents.
Long term storage is actually trivial, just requires actually storing it.
Counterintuitively, best way is glassing it and dumping it on the abyssal plane in the sea.
This controls the temperature and acts as a radiation shield and there's more a hundred times more life on the surface than in the abyss. Also, no humans who get prissy about 1 in 100 chances of cancer than animals don't fare about. The ocean's also big enough that a your case corroding and some material being dissolved and spreading in the water is irrelevant (unless all your nuclear waste you ever dump manages to escape and spread throughout the ocean rather than just sit in a sullen pile you'll be under EPA limits).
> best way is glassing it and dumping it on the abyssal plane in the sea.
You say as if it's a done deal. Hanford is 14 years behind schedule on this, and now it looks as if it will off-gas toxic chemicals. Original budget was $4B and now is $17B.
The chemical they're using easily ignites and turns into hydrogen cyanide.
Long term storage is actually trivial, just requires actually storing it.
Counterintuitively, best way is glassing it and dumping it on the abyssal plane in the sea.
This controls the temperature and acts as a radiation shield and there's more a hundred times more life on the surface than in the abyss. Also, no humans who get prissy about 1 in 100 chances of cancer than animals don't fare about. The ocean's also big enough that a your case corroding and some material being dissolved and spreading in the water is irrelevant (unless all your nuclear waste you ever dump manages to escape and spread throughout the ocean rather than just sit in a sullen pile you'll be under EPA limits).