“Great, but what about nuclear waste?”
The Rational Optimist Society crew lit up our inbox with this question when I wrote about small modular reactors (SMRs) and their potential to revolutionize nuclear energy.
The idea of radioactive green goo oozing out of rusty barrels is scary. The truth is that nuclear waste is a solved problem. And now, innovators are turning it into an opportunity.
First, the basics: All the nuclear waste ever generated in America—60 years’ worth—could fit on a single football field, stacked less than 20 feet high.
Nuclear’s waste footprint is a speck compared to the 43 billion tons of CO2 pumped into the atmosphere every year from fossil fuels.
Atomic leftovers have never harmed anyone in the US. Spent fuel is safely tucked away in sealed containers at over 60 locations across 34 states.
But why just store it? SMR startups are building reactors that run on waste. Oklo’s Aurora micro-reactor, small enough to fit in a large living room, can take used fuel from old plants and turn it into new energy. Like a car that runs on exhaust fumes!
The most frustrating aspect of the nuclear waste “problem” is we’ve been sitting on the solution for 60 years. In the 1960s, Argonne National Laboratory built reactors that could recycle nuclear waste into fuel.
Why don’t we recycle fuel already? Blame politics. President Carter halted reprocessing in the '70s over nuclear proliferation fears. Reagan lifted the ban, but by then, companies had moved on.
Innovators like Oklo are bringing the future back. And did you know the US has enough nuclear waste stockpiled to keep the entire country powered for 150 years?
I rarely compliment Europe, but America should take a page out of France’s playbook. Roughly three out of four homes in France are powered by atomic energy. Its reactors reuse 96% of their spent fuel. Only 4% ends up as waste.
As our friends at Doomberg like to say, “There are no solutions, only tradeoffs.” I love solar, but it’s no saint, either.
Solar panels die after 20–30 years. By 2050, solar waste could hit 78 million metric tons worldwide, much of which contains toxic materials that are expensive or impossible to recycle. That equals mountains of waste versus a few football fields for nuclear.
The real killer isn’t nuclear waste. It’s the nuclear plants we don’t build, leaving us stuck with dirtier options. Innovators are turning a fake problem into real power. Stop fretting and start building.
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