Bill Gates: Nuclear waste is not a reason to avoid nuclear energy

Nuclear waste isn’t a motive to keep away from utilizing nuclear power, in keeping with Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist who extra just lately based a next-generation nuclear power startup, TerraPower.

One frequent criticism of nuclear energy is that nuclear reactors generate waste that stays radioactive for 1000’s of years.

“The waste problems should not be a reason to not do nuclear,” Gates mentioned in an interview with the German business publication Handelsblatt, revealed on Thursday. “The amount of waste involved, the ability to do geological sequestration — that’s not a reason not to do nuclear.”

The quantity of nuclear waste could be very small, particularly when put next with the power generated, Gates mentioned.

“Say the U.S. was completely nuclear-powered — it’s a few rooms worth of total waste. So not, it’s not a gigantic thing,” Gates mentioned. The value of storing and sequestering nuclear waste underground is “not a huge problem,” as it may be put into deep boreholes underground “where it stays geologically for hundreds of millions of years,” he mentioned.

In distinction, the quantity of carbon dioxide emissions generated from burning fossil fuels for power is “something gigantic” and sequestering that underground is a really arduous downside, which Gates mentioned “may not be possible.”

Nuclear energy is assessed as a “zero-emission clean energy source” by the U.S. Department of Energy, as a result of producing electrical energy with nuclear fission doesn’t launch any greenhouse fuel emissions.

Currently, 19% of electrical energy generated within the United States comes from nuclear energy vegetation, in keeping with the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That represents about half of the carbon-free electrical energy technology within the U.S., in keeping with the U.S. Department of Energy.

But after a increase of nuclear energy reactor building within the Nineteen Seventies and Eighties, the development of latest nuclear energy technology got here to a digital standstill.

“The best hope for nuclear is if we could get a completely new generation — and I’m biased, because I’m involved in that — where the countries that are committed to nuclear prove it out and show that the economic safety, waste management is handled,” Gates mentioned.

“And then the other countries who are less engaged can look at that and see what they think, give it a fresh evaluation. And, you know, that data on that won’t be in for almost another eight years or so,” Gates mentioned.

After a long time of nuclear energy technology, there’s nonetheless no everlasting repository for nuclear waste within the United States. The closest the U.S. nuclear trade obtained to a everlasting nuclear waste repository was at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, however that effort has been stalled due to political impasses.

Currently, nuclear waste is saved in dry casks, that are stainless-steel canisters surrounded by concrete. The prime nuclear watchdog within the U.S., the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, considers these dry casks to be protected. The world’s first permeant underground geological storage web site is being constructed in Olkiluoto, Finland.

Also, not all nuclear waste has the identical degree of radioactivity. Most of the radioactivity is in a really small share of the waste generated.

“The vast majority of the volume of nuclear waste there is Low Level Waste,” Jonathan Cobb, spokesperson for the World Nuclear Association, instructed CNBC. “Around 90% of the volume of nuclear waste produced is LLW, but it contains only 1% of the radioactivity. This can include things like protective clothing, mops, filters, equipment and tools that have become contaminated with radioactive material at a low level. One common category of LLW comes from nuclear medicine use and can include swabs, injection needles and syringes.”

Meanwhile the high-level nuclear waste, which incorporates used nuclear gasoline or greater exercise wastes from reprocessing, is “about 3% of the volume of radioactive wastes produced, but contains 95% of the radioactivity,” Cobb instructed CNBC.