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0 pointsmartinbfine1d ago0 comments

But what do they do with the waste? And how much fresh water is that going to use?

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9 comments · 6 top-level

delecti1d ago· 3 in thread

Leaving aside that Canada is huge, waste is really just not that much of a problem. It would be easy to safely store all the waste that will ever be produced at a dedicated storage site, if you could drum up the political will for such a site to exist. But really, it's even easier to just store it all on-site. Not that much waste is produced; stick it in a cask and leave it alone.

fc417fc8021d ago

> But really, it's even easier to just store it all on-site.

I agree with the rest but on site storage of high level waste is a terrible idea. Even after vitrification that's material that will remain dangerously radioactive for longer than agrarian human civilization has existed. Ideally it should enter a disposal chain that keeps as little of it at ground level for a short a time as possible in order to hedge against the long tail possibility of a large scale disaster stranding it on the surface.

I think the finnish plan to bury it on site 500 meters down in bedrock is a decent one.

theeyescanner1d ago

This is why I always scoff at people talking about the scarcity of landfill space. We have damn near unlimited space here. It might not look like it if you never leave a major city, but if you drive up north you will see nothing but trees forever.

The only hard part is ensuring your waste doesn't enter the water system, but that's just bog standard mining engineering.

xienze1d ago

> but if you drive up north you will see nothing but trees forever.

Problem is you'll get some tribe coming out of the woodworks claiming whatever inaccessible area hundreds of miles from civilization is some sacred ground that can't be touched.

gucci-on-fleek1d ago

> But what do they do with the waste?

The Canadian Shield [0] is uniquely well-suited for this: it's remote, sparsely populated, and geologically stable.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Shield

crypttales1d ago

If there's something Canada has in excess it's water and storage space.

shevy-java1d ago

This is a problem that can be handled. Finland handles this pretty well IMO as one example. Also Canada is huge. That means lots of potential places (most Canadians live on the southern parts, close to the US border).

postalrat1d ago

The sun uses much more water on earth than people do.

quickthrowman1d ago

I think most (all?) nuclear plants use once-thru cooling. There is a water intake upstream (or in an ocean/lake) of the plant, the water passes through the cooling loop interfacing with a heat exchanger that has hot heavy water from the core on the other side. Some of the water is evaporated in hyperboloid cooling towers, and the rest is discharged downstream (or back in the ocean/lake)

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