<story><title>Energy</title><url>http://blog.samaltman.com/energy</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>andy_ppp</author><text>Isn&amp;#x27;t decommissioning nuclear power plants still basically a huge bill underwritten by the tax payer?  I&amp;#x27;m not really sure about creating radioactive waste that has such huge half lives...&lt;p&gt;From Wikipedia:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    Of particular concern in nuclear waste management are two long-lived fission
    products, Tc-99 (half-life 220,000 years) and I-129 (half-life 15.7 million
    years), which dominate spent fuel radioactivity after a few thousand years.
    The most troublesome transuranic elements in spent fuel are Np-237 (half-life
    two million years) and Pu-239 (half-life 24,000 years).[39] Nuclear waste
    requires sophisticated treatment and management to successfully isolate it
    from interacting with the biosphere. This usually necessitates treatment,
    followed by a long-term management strategy involving storage, disposal or
    transformation of the waste into a non-toxic form.[40] Governments around the
    world are considering a range of waste management and disposal options, though
    there has been limited progress toward long-term waste management
    solutions.[41]
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
Here: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Radioactive_waste#Management_of_waste&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Radioactive_waste#Management_o...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>donttrustatoms</author><text>I am one of the UPower founders.  There are two big stories here that most people don&amp;#x27;t know yet:
1) that a fast reactor can be waste-negative, I.e. transform existing waste to energy.
2) a fast reactor destroys the long lived waste- instead of trying to store waste for a hundred thousand years it&amp;#x27;s on the order of a hundred.&lt;p&gt;Both of these are critically important for existing waste but also having an emission free energy source with a closed fuel cycle.  No other energy source is better than a hundred thousandth as energy dense and no other energy source could produce clean energy for its own recycling.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s obviously just a cool technology but more than that it&amp;#x27;s amazing what that could mean for the environment and remote communities.  Even for solar and wind materials mining, these remote mines generally have to burn tons and tons of diesel.  That&amp;#x27;s what we are trying to fight.</text></comment>
<story><title>Energy</title><url>http://blog.samaltman.com/energy</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>andy_ppp</author><text>Isn&amp;#x27;t decommissioning nuclear power plants still basically a huge bill underwritten by the tax payer?  I&amp;#x27;m not really sure about creating radioactive waste that has such huge half lives...&lt;p&gt;From Wikipedia:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    Of particular concern in nuclear waste management are two long-lived fission
    products, Tc-99 (half-life 220,000 years) and I-129 (half-life 15.7 million
    years), which dominate spent fuel radioactivity after a few thousand years.
    The most troublesome transuranic elements in spent fuel are Np-237 (half-life
    two million years) and Pu-239 (half-life 24,000 years).[39] Nuclear waste
    requires sophisticated treatment and management to successfully isolate it
    from interacting with the biosphere. This usually necessitates treatment,
    followed by a long-term management strategy involving storage, disposal or
    transformation of the waste into a non-toxic form.[40] Governments around the
    world are considering a range of waste management and disposal options, though
    there has been limited progress toward long-term waste management
    solutions.[41]
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
Here: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Radioactive_waste#Management_of_waste&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Radioactive_waste#Management_o...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rwcarlsen</author><text>Power plants fund their own decommissioning [1].  And they also (in a way) already pay for disposal - a 1 mill per kWh fee on all energy generated payed to the federal govermnent in exchange for the feds taking responsibility for disposal [2].  This fee has been paid for decades - the industry has no problem supporting that level of disposal cost (and could even afford a higher fee if necessary). There has been an enormous amount of research into ways for dealing with the waste all kinds of disposal, treatments, recycling, etc.  The only real blocker has been a lack of political&amp;#x2F;public will to make any decisions and move forward.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nrc.gov&amp;#x2F;waste&amp;#x2F;decommissioning&amp;#x2F;finan-assur.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nrc.gov&amp;#x2F;waste&amp;#x2F;decommissioning&amp;#x2F;finan-assur.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Nuclear_Waste_Policy_Act&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Nuclear_Waste_Policy_Act&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>