"is not so widely recognised is that the final disposal of waste will require a lot of energy. This begins to become clear when you think about what has to be done to keep high-level wastes safe for the thousands for years in which they must lie undisturbed. Containers have to be built from steel, lead and electrolytic copper; vast repositories have to be dug and lined with clay; much of the work needs to be done by robots; retired fuel-rods have to be kept cool and safe for a century or so before the final disposal programme begins. Then there is the energy-cost of dismantling and burying the old reactors, doing the best that can done to rehabilitate the disused uranium mines to some semblance of sustainability and safety, and dealing with the stocks of leaking depleted uranium hexafluoride gas. (It is “depleted” in the sense that it has been used as a source of the uranium-235 needed by reactors, but some uranium-235 and all the uranium-238 remains)."
I wonder whether that has been added to the carbon footprint of 'clean' nuclear energy?
In fact we're told how energetically expensive it is: "To deal with the total legacy of waste left by a nuclear reactor through its whole life-cycle requires energy equivalent to about 25 percent of the gross energy supplied by the reactor to the grid."
And remember, we have to add to that the footprint of building the thing in the first place.
The article is mostly, in fact, about the likely shortfall in uranium. So it looks like, if we do go down the nuclear road bigtime (God forbid), we will have to generate the energy for disposal from other means: ironically, this could have to be renewables.
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