“But what about nuclear waste?”
The RationalOptimist Society crew lit up our inbox with this question when I wrote about small modular reactors (SMRs) and their potential torevolutionize nuclear energy.
The idea ofradioactive green goo oozing out of rusty barrels is scary. The truth is thatnuclear waste is a solved problem. And now, innovators are turning it into anopportunity.
First, thebasics: All the nuclear waste ever generated in America—60 years’ worth—couldfit on a single football field, stacked less than 20 feet high.
Nuclear’swaste footprint is a speck compared to the 43 billion tons of CO2 pumped into the atmosphere every year from fossil fuels.
Atomicleftovers have never harmed anyone in the US. Spent fuel is safely tucked awayin sealed containers at over 60 locations across 34 states.
But why juststore 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 mostfrustrating aspect of the nuclear waste “problem” is we’ve been sitting on thesolution for 60 years. In the 1960s, Argonne National Laboratory built reactorsthat could recycle nuclear waste into fuel.
Why don’t werecycle fuel already? Blame politics. President Carter halted reprocessing inthe '70s over nuclear proliferation fears. Reagan lifted the ban, but by then,companies had moved on.
Innovatorslike Oklo are bringing the future back. And did you know the US has enoughnuclear waste stockpiled to keep the entire country powered for 150 years?
I rarelycompliment 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. Itsreactors reuse 96% of their spent fuel. Only 4% ends up as waste.
As ourfriends at Doomberg like to say, “There are no solutions, only tradeoffs.” Ilove solar, but it’s no saint, either.
Solar panelsdie after 20–30 years. By 2050, solar waste could hit 78 million metric tonsworldwide, much of which contains toxic materials that are expensive orimpossible to recycle. That equals mountains of waste versus a few footballfields 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.
