Over 60,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel are stored across Europe (excluding Russia and Slovakia), most of which in France (Table 1). Within the EU, France accounts for 25 percent of the current spent nuclear fuel, followed by Germany (15 percent) and the United Kingdom (14 percent). Spent nuclear fuel is considered high-level waste. Though present in comparably small volumes, it makes up the vast bulk of radioactivity.

~ 2019 https://worldnuclearwastereport.org/

Last "brilliant" plan I heard was dumping it in a hole deep enough we'd never need, nor be able to recover it.

[–] szczuroarturo@programming.dev 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

A quick question . Other than a suprisingly lot of complexity involved in diggin the hole of sufficient size and depth why wouldnt it work ( or is that the reason )?

[–] Kindness@lemmy.ml 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

It would work. Much like every other sweeping of something under the rug, hiding it elsewhere for it to be a problem later always works for the person throwing it away.

After all, why would we ever wish to extract the remaining U~238~ from the spent fuel? We utilised a full 4%, let's call that square and throw the rest down a hole. Perish the thought we'll ever need to dig near this massive radioactive hole. Or that an undiscovered cycle of nature causes it to come back to bite us. Just throw it down there with the rest of the resources we never want to safely explore, and who cares if there's something valuable within it's sphere of radioactivity.

Apologies for the sarcasm. I consider the idea both wasteful and foolish.

I'm a fan of both Thorium and Molten-Salt Reactors.

[–] intensely_human@lemm.ee 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

So a hole with an elevator then?

[–] Kindness@lemmy.ml 1 points 9 months ago

If you like hauling hundreds of tons of waste up and down an elevator? Maybe. Who does maintenance every so often at the bottom of the shaft?

[–] ryathal@sh.itjust.works -1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Weight is a way to make the problem sound worse than it is, because nuclear waste is so incredibly dense. It's not enough to be a big deal yet. Dumping it deep into the ocean is an option, but it's only going to happen to waste that doesn't have potential uses first.

[–] Kindness@lemmy.ml 1 points 9 months ago

nuclear waste is so incredibly dense

Yes and no. Most current fuels are Uranium or Plutonium. Both between 19 and 20 g/cm^3^. For reference, liquid water is approximately 1 g/cm^3^. Unspent fuel is a similar weight to gold.

"Spent" U~238~ is usually around 96% U~238~. If we consider the remainder a rounding error and assume all 60 tonnes is 60 million kg of U~238~. That will give us a very rough estimate of 3,000 m^3^.

Also worthy of noting are other wastes that comes from mining and refining.

There is much waste already. The "spent" waste is too radioactive to safely re-refine until later.