The UK's nuclear waste needs a permanent home - but finding a community willing to take it is tricky.
One of UK's oldest nuclear waste storage silos is currently leaking radioactive liquid into the ground. That is a “recurrence of a historic leak” that Sellafield Ltd, the company that operates the site, says first started in the 1970s.
Sellafield has also faced questions about its working culture and adherence to safety rules. The company is currently awaiting sentencing after it pleaded guilty, in June, to charges related to cyber-security failings.
but the nuclear bros told us, that there is no waste, and if there is, it can be fuel again and it isn't that radioactive, just used clothing and such...
do you mean they lied to delay the switch to renewables? /s
I mean, this is leftover from 1940s technology, that was used in a mad rush to create a bomb. There are many other areas of the world that have been fucked over in the same manner because of the way we manufactured technology in the old days. But nobody is saying "we can never make solar panels ever again because industrial superfund sites exist" are they?
Nah, in primary school, we got some nice rubbers from nuclear lobby with a black plastic coin attached to them. The text said: "this is the amount of nuclear waste a family household produces in a year". This should show us, how "few" waste is produced. That this waste is highly radioactive and toxic was concealed disclosed subsequently.
With the new tech, that is mostly true, the 70s tech is like the first of any tech: unwieldy, hard to control and very inefficient in both production and retirement.
Compare the first x-ray machine to a modern PET-scanner. The former caused cancer in fetuses and caused radiation poisoning through walls, the latter is a clean cellular resolution scanner that can be serviced and recycled as well as most anything.
you mean we are now as efficient as the combustion engine? we developed this thing for about 120 years and just realized it is a dead end (the peak efficiency is still below 50% and it kills our whole ecosystem).
nuclear is a dead end with way higher risks.
if we stop using fossil fuels, we can fill the trash in a landfill, the nuclear waste will still glow when humanity has met is end.