Bill Gates is excited about today's groundbreaking for a Gen IV nuclear reactor¹ in Wyoming:
The plant was designed by TerraPower, a company I started in 2008. But my nuclear journey started several years earlier, when I first read a scientific paper for a new type of nuclear power plant.
The design was far safer than any existing plant, with the temperatures held under control by with the laws of physics instead of human operators who can make mistakes. It would have a shorter construction timeline and be cheaper to operate. And it would be reliable, providing dependable power throughout the day and night. As I looked at the plans for this new reactor, I saw how rethinking nuclear power could overcome the barriers that had hindered it—and revolutionize how we generate power in the U.S. and around the world.
I'm basically in favor of Gen IV nuclear technology. If it can be standardized and mass constructed it really does have all the potential Gates says it does.
But—
You knew something was coming, didn't you? It's this: nuclear enthusiasts tend to sweep the problem of nuclear waste under the rug. I once thought that Gen IV reactors at least improved the waste problem, but I don't think even that much is true. They produce the same amount of long-lasting waste as older plants.
Gates doesn't mention that, and no one else does either. Partly, I suppose, this is because nuclear waste has been relatively harmless over the past 80 years. It gets stored in pools, or vitrified into glass, or buried in canisters, and hasn't resulted in any headline-worthy events yet. So maybe waste isn't really such a big deal?
Maybe, but I can't say this view fills me with cheer. Keeping nuclear waste safe for a few decades isn't that hard, but as they say, past performance doesn't guarantee future results. Waste disposal gets harder as time passes and even "permanent" solutions turn out not to be so permanent after all. If we keep making more and more of this stuff and then storing it all on-site at hundreds of different facilities while we shrug at the waste, someday it's going to backfire. I'm not sure how—groundwater contamination? terrorist attack?—but having a quarter million tons of high-level radioactive waste dotting the world's landscape seem like it's asking for trouble.
So, sure, Gen IV tech is cool and has a lot of promise as a carbon-free electricity source. But there's still all that waste. We can't pretend it away forever.
¹Yes, they number them like Super Bowls. No idea why.
Too bad Nixon killed the thorium reactor project.
Yeah. Thorium … would have changed the game.
Couldn't get bomb fuel out of the thorium reactor cycle so Nixon and the MIC decided it was a dead end.
Yeah. Thorium … would have changed the game.
I've been hearing about Thorium reactors for years. What's the delay if the concept is so compelling?
Ask yourself instead why commercial reactors have the design the do.
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Must remember to thank Harry Reid for killing Yucca Mountain…
Yucca, which is on native land, which required the loads to all go through the downtown of nearby towns, sited on native land... not to mention the fault line. And dragging it all across the country.
The facility design was great, but there are thousands of places with better access and more stable geology.
By all means, list three or five of those thousands.
Deep salt beds at various arid/semi-arid locations including those at the WIPP site. Deep, thick salt precludes ready access by water in an arid climate.
Yucca was a terrible place to locate a repository from a geologic perspective. It would not be a safe location.
But good news for you, House Rethugs trying to revive it
https://www.eenews.net/articles/the-return-of-yucca-mountain-gop-floats-waste-sites-revival/
Where did " a quarter-million tons of high-level radioactive waste" come from? One of the cheering features of nuclear power is that the amount of waste per gigawatt-hour of electricity generated is miniscule compared to other methods of power generation. A quarter-million tons of high level waste would be the product of a great deal of power generation.
I mean Kevin is off in his estimate, but not by an order of magnitude.
Just bury it on the dark side of the moon. What could go wrong?
Let's say you're West Virginia. You have all these coal mines at a time when the world is turning away from coal. That's your whole economy right there. No way are you giving that up.
But what if you were to build nuclear reactors in West Virgina and retrofitted the coal mines to nuclear waste disposal sites? The infrastructure for transporting ore deep underground is already there, and nothing traps radiation like carbon (hence the carbon rods they use in reactors). The miners could be retrained to retrofit and maintain the mines, and suddenly nobody in coal country is angry that the world is turning away from fossil fuels. That's what I call a win-win.
ground water kills that idea
Glassified waste is not water soluble.
Even water-held waste doesn't mix with ground water. It's not in open containers!
There are, regrettably, reports of waste containers that were not made of the highest quality materials that are corroding in their cooling ponds.
I was under the impression control rods used boron or perhaps some other elements. But not carbon.
Graphite rods (carbon) are used as neutron moderators in nuclear power plants. I don't know enough about nuclear reactors to know the difference between a moderator and a control rod, which uses boron etc. They sound like two sides of the same coin, but apparently they serve different functions.
Even if you ignore the waste problem, you still have the cost problem. Let's say everything goes great and the Gates-reactor comes online in 2030. Then Terrapower starts building 10 more plants that come online in 2036, but cost just a little bit less than the first one. At that point they would be ready to scale up to 100 plants by 2042 and would hopefully, finally, start having relatively cheap builds.
But meanwhile, during those 18 years, PV, Wind, batteries and even geothermal get a *lot* cheaper. And nuclear is still hugely relatively expensive.
Why do you think the cost curve on PV and wind will curve downward more sharply than that due nuclear?
PV and wind are now mature technologies. Barring a major breakthrough there will be no dramatic cost decrease and if we eliminate subsidies there will be increases.
On the other have, next generation nuclear reactors are new technology. The cost reduction curve should be steep for the next decade or two.
Cost curve on PV and wind doesn't need to curve down more sharply since it is starting so much lower. It just needs to be better than orders of magnitude less sharp.
Can you provide your evidence that PV and wind without subsidies are cheaper than Gen IV nuclear reactors?
Remember - we sitll have to subsidize PV and wind to get them used in preference to coal and natural gas.
It's already cheaper, Mr thinks-pedestrians-should--be-killed-for-complaining-about-being-hit-with-cars.
The most recent nuclear plant to come online cost $13k per kW, but most plants are never completed, so their money is wasted.
A home solar install costs under $3k per kW.
Battery storage costs about $0.5k per kWh, and their costs are coming down sharply.
And if the negative externalities of coal and natural gas were actually priced in, they'd be more expensive.
No cite means no credibility.
Solar and wind still get subsidies. Eliminate them and see how much still gets installed.
Another good point it China, which produces plenty of solar, wind, and battery tech but is still building nuclear power plants as fast as it can.
Nuclear is still the only carbon free energy source that can produce baseload power at scale at acceptable cost.
"Solar and wind still get subsidies. Eliminate them and see how much still gets installed."
Why? Should we remove the subsidies to student loans and see how many people still go to college? Remove the deduction for charitable giving and see how many people still donate to churches?
Likewise, let's impose the social cost of carbon as a tax on gas-fired power plants, and see how many still get built.
????????????
I think you need to eliminate those ks. $3 per kw is absurd for a solar installation; $3 per w is believable. The same applies to nuclear power and batteries.$13 per watt is believable for a nuke plant; $0.50 per watt hour is about right for battery storage.
A nuke plant has a high capacity factor; once you get it running it tends to be running most of the time. With 8,640 hours in a non-leap year, one watt gives you about 8 kwh per year. At ten cents per kwh wholesale, that one watt of generating capacity will give revenue of 80 cents per year and at $13/watt would pay for itself in about 16 years, but for operating costs.
At $13 per watt, you need to charge more than ten cents per kwh to make the plant economically viable. Construction costs of nuclear reactors need to come down by about half to get reasonably priced nuclear power; that's probably doable if hundreds or thousands of reactors of the same design were built, thereby creating economies of scale.
And this is where you need something more than whistling up figures. Here are two posts from the very excellent site dothemath:
I _highly_ recommend you click _both_ those links and read through them.
The assumption that we need a week's worth of power stored is absurd. A big chunk of power generation is highly reliable hydro. Another chunk will be nuclear. It's utterly implausible that there would be no solar or wind power for a week, particularly since the solar panels and wind turbines are not all concentrated in one place.
"Three days' reserve power for small-scale off-grid wind and solar installations" is because all the generating capacity for such a system is in one place and can be completely or substantially disabled by one weather system. A national, or even large regional, grid will not require nearly as much storage measured against the total output of the grid.
Also, almost none of the large scale storage systems being built use lead-acid batteries.
One piece of evidence is that there are thousands upon thousands of megawatts of new wind and new solar in the interconnection queues of ISOs across the continent, and there are zero new nukes in the queues. So it seems that the market has spoken on the matter.
Why do people like you continually refuse to address the intermittency problem inherent in 'renewables'? Oh, we know why, of course, but I'm interested in hearing your particular spin.
The intermittency problem can be solved by storage. In particular, as BEVs become more numerous, V2G connections can turn effectively the entire BEV fleet into a vast decentralized storage battery.
There are currently about 200 million private passenger vehicles in the US. The typical BEV has about 70 kwh of battery capacity. 100 million BEVs hooked up for V2G would provide 7 terawatt hours of storage, which is certainly more than enough for the whole country.
See the links I just gave you immediately above. The sad fact is that a big number multiplied by another big number is still a big number when you divide the result by a somewhat smaller big number.
Yeah, tell us all how you're antinuke without telling us you're antinuke. The tell here, of course is Real Cheap Batteries (or national grid interconnects with instantaneous permitting and too cheap to even mention) that will definitively solve any and all intermittency issues associated with renewables.
We haven't had a peak power shortage here on the central coast since Moss Landing started running.
And? What did your reply have to do with what I said? Unless, perhaps, you think Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, etc. enjoy the same climate you do? Please tell me you don't think that.
Don't forget batteries and other forms of energy storage--and better transmission lines.
Sodium metal coolant (hot enough for sodium to melt, 98 C, so just below boiling), so please don't get it wet.
At first I thought it was one of those micro-plants--but no. The micro plants are built in a factory and the intact unit (minus fuel) can fit in a tractor trailer. More amenable to "mass production".
"Sodium metal coolant (hot enough for sodium to melt, 98 C, so just below boiling), so please don't get it wet." Or expose it to air. Spontaneous combustion temperature of 135. Which is going to have to be well below the temperature necessary to make a steam generator work I would think.
Sodium coolant sounds good, but the history of sodium cooled reactors (EBR-1, the original Seawolf reactor, Fermi 1, FFTF, Phenix, Super Phenix) is not a pretty one. Leaks in the heat exchangers and superheaters (water on one side, sodium on the other) have been a continual problem. That and the problems of trouble shooting while under power when the sodium coolant is something like 30,000 times more radioactive than water coolant. I wish Bill luck, but I don’t think no will be buying any stock.
Hyman Rickover once commented a sodium cooled reactor might work if you were designing a submarine to operate in a sodium ocean.
The Russians did a lead-coolant job. But well, Russians.
The way TerraPower solves the cost problem with their Natrium (aka Sodium) reactor is by getting the Department of Energy to pay for half the project, $2 Billion.
Do you think the Department of Energy is going to kick in half the cost of the next ten?
It’s a little like kids playing with matches.
All the enthusiastic statements I have read by the nuke boosters read like some kind of PR copy. Nothing technical about them, all praise and gloss. No indication that the person spouting the propaganda has the slightest knowledge of physics, nuclear engineering, even power plant operation.
Plus, reading more carefully, it's all glitzy rainbows and promises: it turns out none of these paragons of clean electricity have even been built! They're on the drawing board!
Bill Gates is a smart guy, but I doubt that his smarts lies in anything nuclear. He has done great work funding various medical projects world wide, and could be very helpful in carbon-free energy, too. So long as the hucksters and frausters don't get hold of him.
All the enthusiastic statements I have read by the
nukerenewable boosters read like some kind of PR copy. Do I really need to say any more?Boom.
Every worry-wart bit about nuclear is a gift to the fossil fuel industry.
“Greens” are to blame for a lot of climate change.
I've been following the nuclear industry for four decades. I adored the math, the promise, the safety culture.
It hasn't moved anywhere in that time.
It can not, will not save us in time for climate change which is now.
The only thing that will save us is some combination of carbon capture and geoengineering. Too much greenhouse gas in the atmosphere already.
"'Greens' are to blame for a lot of climate change."
You might have a point if there would be a lot of nukes if not for "Greens" opposing them. But that's not the case. Greens are busy trying to get filthy coal plants shut down and preventing them from being replaced with gas-burners. By contrast, nukes are so expensive, they oppose themselves.
For example, the only power company to even try to build a nuclear plant in the past several decades was Southern Company, and not only did "Greens" not prevent SoCo's new Vogtle nuke units from being built (indeed, the Obama administration gave the project nearly $10 billion in loan guarantees), the overall cost balloned from the initial eye-watering $14 billion for 2.2 GW of capacity to a colossal $25 billion, bankrupting Westinghouse in the process. And it took 18 years from proposal to grid tie in.
Nobody in the utility space looks at that record and says, yeah, cut me a slice of that.
Sigh. Not following what's happening in Germany, I see.
Not really, no. I live in the US. Are German Greens blocking nukes in Germany? They just lost some seats, so whatever mighty power they weild is probably waning somewhat.
Ya got that right. 'Greens' show their hand every time they manage to shut down a nuclear facility as opposed to a coal or natural gas plant. Either AGW is an existential crisis or it isn't, in which case these children are just plain antinuke
Scent, lying does not suit you.
If I were lying, you'd quote the bits where I did. But you haven't now, have you?
Sodium has the property that it absorbs more neutrons the hotter it gets. guarantees you cant have runaway reactions in the presence of sodium, if you keep the sodium from catching fire.
And touching water.
Unfortunately, the math heavy technical papers that nuclear engineers write for each other tend to be incomprehensible to us mere mortals. "Nothing technical" is the level most people operate at, so articles written for the mass market are necessarily non-technical.
I'm certain that with a bit of poking around on Google, and maybe payment of a fee to get behind a paywall, you can find papers about nuclear power that are as technical as you could possibly ask for.
It is interesting to compare 1) a quarter million tons of admittedly dangerous stuff, but which remains under containment (of course, with lots of room for improvement there) with 2) 35 Billion tons of CO2, which is dumped into the atmosphere annually and is not contained at all, with known and progressive direct impacts worldwide.
Yes, nuclear power seems a foolish bargain, but objectively it doesn't compare with the stupidity of what we are doing with CO2. And that doesn't even consider that the risk from nuclear waste is borne mainly by those who generated and benefited from it, while the damage from CO2 is borne mostly by people who did not benefit from generating it.
Indeed.
CO2 is allegedly an existential threat. Nuclear waste is at most a local threat to local populations where it is stored.
If you are not supporting nuclear power then you do not believe that global warming is really a crisis.
FOAD troll
Nope, he's right on this one.
Why would we take advice from the guy touting murdering pedestrians who have the gall to complain about being hit by a car?
I wouldn't take advice from him, but in this case he happens to be right. That's unusual, I know, but there it is.
Just drop the nuclear waste in the middle of that giant island of plastic swirling in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Everyone is really good at ignoring that.
Good idea! East Coast could use the Bermuda Triangle. Or, in a slightly different direction, a presidential commission? Nothing ever emerges from any of those places.
Heh!
Either AGW is an existential issue or it's not. Pick a lane.
There are constant arguments on how to best increase zero-carbon power generation. Wind? Solar? Nuclear? Geothermal? Tidal?
My answer tends to be "yes". If we're going to decarbonize in any reasonable time frame, we need A LOT of zero carbon watts and we need them quickly. So let's do all of the above, quickly.
EXACTLY! You see, that's the tell that these people aren't serious. Every -- and I mean every -- so-called 'pro-nuke' booster I have met is more than willing to concede the disadvantages of nuclear power and enthusiastically endorse renewables wherever they fit into the landscape. That is, the pro-nuke crowd are more accurately described as pro-nuke _and_ pro-renewable. The 'renewable' crowd in contrast doesn't play nicely with others and will throw everything, including the kitchen sink, at nuclear power because it is bad, bad, bad. The pro-renewable people, IOW, are more accurately described as pro-renewable and anti-nuke. There is no symmetry here whatsoever.
"There is no symmetry here whatsoever."
I'm not sure why "symmetry" is a value here, but: as somebody who works in this space* there is very little real "green" group opposition to nukes in the US--it's almost all focused on fighting fossil. Part of that is because nobody is actually building nukes, not least because the fine folks at SoCo failed so colossally that most utilities are not interested in following their lead.
I think that, if in ten years, there's enough renewables on the grid that intermittancy starts becoming a significant concern, and if the only real solution is nukes, then yeah, there may be a real split in the enviro community between folks who have a more 1960s-1970s anti-nuke sentiment, and the folks most concerned with climate change. But in the meantime, the biggest hurdle to nuke construction in the US is that we have on the one hand extraordinarily expensive classic designs nobody wants to build, and extraordinarily expensive new designs that only exist on paper.
Time will tell.
______
*And yes, I realize, "take it from me, an anonymous internet person!" is not super compelling.
The asymmetry matters because the renewables only crowd are definitely big on propaganda. They love the argument when it is phrased as pro-nuke vs pro-renewables. Not so much when it's phrased more accurately.
As for the 'take it from me' bit, well, I'm just another rando as well. I keep a rolodex for our more obnoxious regulars and you're definitely not in them.
Nuclear power mainly missed its window of opportunity. Keeping older plants online, as long as they are running well, makes sense even if the costs are higher than for electricity from fossil fuel plants.
New plants, if they can lower emissions from construction, will be needed--but even if more efficient to build and run, will have to be subsidized. Waste management already is, and is actually scary. Spent fuel rods and their containers do break down.
https://www.salon.com/2024/06/02/biden-nuclear-ai-cop28-climate-dod-2035/
It is, and something that costs more than 4x more per kW and takes decades longer to come online is not a solution - it's a smokescreen to avoid responsibility.
I have to agree with Kevin in that I'd be a whole lot happier if the cheerleading also touted complete lifecycle planning. That would include not only dealing with spent fuel but also with the contaminated metal and other materials in the isolated reactor structures they're designing, when their useful life is up.
This kind of planning has been an integral element of design for several years now for carmakers that want to sell in Europe, and we're talking about a known and foreseeable issue for nuclear facilities that should be attracting some of the best minds in the field. If it isn't being done, it should be; if it is, it should be talked up.
Build safer designs, by all means, but in all aspects. All viable avenues need to be available.
Please stop pretending we haven't figured out how to store waste from nuclear power generation, or that the alleged problems with storing it are sane counter-arguments to limitless and endless carbon emissions.
You're carrying radioactive water for the wrong crowd, buddy.
We haven't.
Because it's still sitting in water baths at decommissioned and decomposing nuclear plants instead of glassified and stable in thermal battery storage underground.
We don't know how to do this. Sure, we know the individual parts, but we don't know how to pay for it or convince people it should happen.
So you're playing at saving the world and AGW is not an existential crisis is what you're telling us.
It uses depleted uranium as the power source, so, there is that.
Of course, as more traditional LWR plants are shut down, won't that affect the demand of enriched uranium and therefore the supply of depleted uranium in competition with higher caliber ammo?
They only just started the permitting process.
The milestone they reached was that the NRC deemed their application complete and accepted it for review. They think they'll get it approved in 2 years, which appears to rely on a recent law limiting EIS to 2 years rather than what used to take up to 5 years. I doubt this law will stick. If you don't fund the NRC even while adding fixed time limits for reviews, safety will suffer and there will be whistleblowers talking.
They also seem to think it'll only take 4 years to complete construction, which seems extremely unlikely for a new reactor type, given the history of past nuclear reactors in the US. Sure, there are no cooling towers, but that's not usually where the hiccups occur. Vogtle didn't stall because of the towers, and Vogtle also projected only 4 years to complete construction but took an extra 7 years.
Just for reference, back in 2021 they thought they'd finish construction in 2028 and now they project it to be completed in 2030. Despite the 2 extra years to completion, they still claim the cost will be the same $4B as cited in late 2021, up from $1B in 2020.
Have they solved the "rust" problem?
But if Gates and Buffet are carrying most of the costs, including overruns, who are we to criticize the cost structure and timeline issues? That's their problem, not the American taxpayer's.
If Gates and Buffet are willing to store all the waste in their basements, sure.
IDK. Seems like the depleted depleted Uranium would have a place to be used in armor and high caliber ammo casings.
I am not familiar with examples of nuclear waste killing people or poisoning a water supply. Has that happened?
Read up on Hanford, Washington.
And the UMTRA project (which never seems to complete).
Wiki says Hanford was initially a plutonium production facility for WW II / the cold war nuclear weapons but then transitioned to power generation. It mentions a water supply contamination and law suits but it does not mention any deaths assigned to this. I had heard of Hanford but didn't know the backstory.
UMTRA sounds like it has not had any deaths associated with it (again Wiki). I had never heard of it.
Or the Navajo Nation
Are you talking about nuclear testing or waste from nuclear power plants? I can't find anything about the Navajo nation being affected by nuclear waste from power plants.
No, and it can't outside of movies. The series Chernobyl made many mistakes about nuclear power and radiation including the laughable claim that radiation is contagious.
Nuclear waste CAN kill, but only if it is handled with total incompetence or the victim goes to a great deal of effort to get exposed to a lethal amount of radiation.
Decisions to solve complex problems typically require material trade offs. NO source of energy is truly free: all options require materials, land etc and carry some risk.
Given global warming, AI, politics etc, I suspect we need a LOT more energy globally, at an affordable price. Nuclear has the potential to be a lynch pin, energy source. We see deployments, for example in France or even in the US military, that demonstrate nuclear energy can be cost effective and safe....
What gigs me is the fact hat the Nuclear crowd poses this false dilemma: "Either you let us build hundreds (thousands?) of nuclear plants or you fry!"
The only real, long-term solution is to USE LESS ENERGY.
- Efficiency (i.e. ditch the ridiculously ginormous pickup truck - your pecker is a perfectly normal size.)
- Fewer senseless things (i.e. globetrotting vacations)
I know, I know. People won't agree to changing their lifestyles. That is the fatal flaw in the nuclear option. If it manages to be cheaper, once we dump all this extra energy into the economy, the humans will just buy more, bigger cars and air-condition their backyards. Without the cultural change to go with updated energy production, the trade-offs of nuclear energy just aren't worth the bupkis we get on the climate change front.
"The only real, long-term solution is to USE LESS ENERGY."
Sadly, no, this is not a long-term solution. Unless you are saying "use less energy" by going back to an agrarian pre-industrial economy supporting at most a few hundred million humans, reducing carbon emissions doesn't prevent the apocolypse, it just staves it off a bit. The only long-term solution is a closed carbon-cycle economy.
To be clear, I am very, very much in favor of energy efficiency (the cheapest kw-hour is the one you don't use!) and not squandering energy on stupid things. Just pointing out that emitting less is very different from emitting zero.
IF anything, our future, will require a LOT more energy. The new Nvidia chip, the state of the art for AI, uses the same power as three EVs: this chip is running 24/7.
Beyond western uses, there is a huge portion of sub Saharan Africa, and parts of Asia, that lack sufficient power (not to mention parts of emerging economies such as Vietnam).
I am certain, our globe will require a much more energy in the future.
How much is 250,000 tons of radioactive waste? Assuming a density of 2 grams per CC (water is 1 gram per CC, Uranium metal is 19, Uranium Dioxide is 11), 250,000 metric tons is a cube 50 meters on a side.
The history of the NuScale small modular nuclear reactor is not encouraging. It was abandoned in Nov '23 by its only customer, the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems consortium, because it ran 3X over-budget and was not going to deliver on its $/MWh price. That was already 2X higher than a battery-backed solar scheme, and those are getting cheaper all the time. It turns out that reactors really benefit from economies of scale in unit size, so building a few big ones is much cheaper than a lot of small ones.
The big opportunity right now is to exploit the experience of the construction of the Vogtle 3 and 4 AP1000 reactors in Georgia. Those too ran way over-budget and behind schedule, but the AP1000 design is good, and they now know how to do it. Lots of other AP1000s are being built around the world. Rather than betting on yet another untried design like TerraPower, we should drive for a known good design while there are still people who know how to build it. Or at least that's what Jigar Shah of the Biden DoE thinks.
yes.
these are all paper reactors.
Way back, I was almost for nuclear waste until I thought about the waste that was forever. The ex and I had a heated discussion about waste that led to a divorce, and he was a scientist.
I still think nuclear waste is a huge issue.
" A liberal blogger doesn't understand nuclear waste; dog bites a man. Highlights at 11."
"Gen IV tech is cool and has a lot of promise as a carbon-free electricity source. "
why does Drum keep repeating this lie?
the processes for mining and refining uranium ore and making reactor fuel for SMRs, or conventional nukes, all require large amounts of energy. There was a massive coal plant built at Oak Ridge used exclusively there to enrich uranium back in the day
so
not carbon free
If the "large amounts of energy" required are provided by nuclear reactors, then nuclear power is carbon free. During the transition from fossil fuels to zero carbon power, fossil fuel power will continue to be used, but in steadily diminishing quantity. Any complex production chain, such as getting from ore in the ground to functioning reactors, will probably continue to have some fossil fuel input until the transition to zero carbon is complete.
people following this have known for years SMR has a waste problem
https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2022/05/small-modular-reactors-produce-high-levels-nuclear-waste
people choose to ignore it
Folks rarely think through all the costs, risks and impacts. We think can spin up centuries-long waste management plans when America has only been a nation for a little over 200 years. Any functioning nuclear power source will need impeccable security, which costs money, which usually means inevitably corners will be cut down the road and security become more lax. Waste generated needs to be managed for decades-to-centuries and again always with impeccable security. Once you commit in this direction, small government becomes a myth, you need a deep, deep state to manage the risks and security involved with nuclear power and waste.
The only genuinely LONG-term problem is the Plutonium which is always generated from the "unenriched" part of "enriched" Uranium when it's fissioned. Plutonium has a 25-odd thousand year half-life so it's not hyper radioactive, but it is devilishly toxic, seemingly to all forms of life.
So burn it; no, not that way. Design safe reactors that use it as a fuel. With modern robots the no-go zone can be well tended.
I am not saying "build breeder reactors"; they run very hot and can become unstable. And, yes, Plutonium fission produces other radio-nuclides, but, like those produced by U-235 fission, most are either short-lived or rarely produced. It's the Plutonium that's the biggest problem, and it can be separated chemically; it doesn't have to be centrifuged.
".... someday it's going to backfire. I'm not sure how—groundwater contamination? terrorist attack?—but having a quarter million tons of high-level radioactive waste dotting the world's landscape seem like it's asking for trouble."
Kevin Drum, Are you familiar with the difference between penetrating and
non-penetrating radiation? If not you are not qualified to talk about
spent nuclear fuel (being a problem). I suggest you educate yourself by going to
https://gordianknotbook.com/download/spent-nuclear-fuel-slides
Other nuclear power problem area issues are also clearly explained at that link.
I have read that dry cask storage of nuclear waste is the way to go (with the fuel rods which have cooled enough to be placed there). They require no power, are air-cooled, and survived Fukushima. Taking all the spent rods out of the pool cuts down on risk (because when cooling pumps break they get rather hot).
I don't know if a level IV design builds these in or not.
Like it or not, nuclear waste is less of a problem than fossil fuel waste. Nuclear is a local problem. CO2 is a global problem. Nuclear waste can devastate an area, but it doesn't pose the civilization ending possibility that carbon does. So countries like Germany taking their nuclear plants off line to replace them with gas fired plants aren't serious about addressing climate change.