There are plenty of waste solutions. Most nuclear waste is actually short lived, either a few days or a few years. Most waste is not the long life stuff, the waste issue has been blown way out of proportion by groups that are simply against nuclear in general, not using facts based on reality.
In the UK for instance (readily available numbers):
94% – low-level waste (LLW)
~6% – intermediate-level waste (ILW)
<1% – high-level waste (HLW)
Numbers will be similar elsewhere for uranium based reactors.
The bigger issue that no one ever wants to talk about is how much other radioactive material is not accounted for from other power sources. People talk.about radiation from nuclear obviously, but what about the nuclear material ejected directly into the atmosphere from other power plants?
For instance, the amount of ash produced by coal power plants in the United States is estimated at 130,000,000 tons per year, and fly ash is estimated to release 100 times more radiation than an equivalent nuclear plant. Meanwhile, a 1000-megawatt nuclear power plant produces about 27 tonnes of spent nuclear fuel (unreprocessed) every year. And remember, it is the airborne radioactive elements causing most issues during incidents like Chernobyl and Fukushima.
If a nuclear plant released the amount of radioactive material a coal plant does in just an hour it would be an international nuclear incident.
There are plenty of waste solutions. Most nuclear waste is actually short lived, either a few days or a few years. Most waste is not the long life stuff, the waste issue has been blown way out of proportion by groups that are simply against nuclear in general, not using facts based on reality.
In the UK for instance (readily available numbers): 94% – low-level waste (LLW) ~6% – intermediate-level waste (ILW) <1% – high-level waste (HLW)
Numbers will be similar elsewhere for uranium based reactors.
The bigger issue that no one ever wants to talk about is how much other radioactive material is not accounted for from other power sources. People talk.about radiation from nuclear obviously, but what about the nuclear material ejected directly into the atmosphere from other power plants?
For instance, the amount of ash produced by coal power plants in the United States is estimated at 130,000,000 tons per year, and fly ash is estimated to release 100 times more radiation than an equivalent nuclear plant. Meanwhile, a 1000-megawatt nuclear power plant produces about 27 tonnes of spent nuclear fuel (unreprocessed) every year. And remember, it is the airborne radioactive elements causing most issues during incidents like Chernobyl and Fukushima.
If a nuclear plant released the amount of radioactive material a coal plant does in just an hour it would be an international nuclear incident.