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[IndonesiaWarMinister]

What we really need is a big hamster that doesn't need to eat and runs around in one of those wheel thingys turning a turbine.

We can made some hamster eating all thrases in the world to recycle them, in about 50 years or so.
The bad part is that could spell disaster, like in BioMeat ...

[Dae]

If you don't want to read it that's your issue.

Oh, I read it. Also :

Some people claim that there's no 'nuclear waste' to worry about, that it can be reused. I don't see how it could be done. When the spent fuel is reprocessed, it means removing the neutron absorbing 'poisons' from it so that the remaining fuel can be put back to work. There's no real recycling there.

Palazzo is right. Part of nuclear waste can be reused, the part that didn't react in the last reaction. The rest is too stable to conduct the chain reaction, ans is therefore unable to free enough energy. Now, if we could manage to control a fusion reaction nuclear energy would be virtually waste-less (although I doubt such big atoms like uranium would be the best to conduct a fusion).
In the article, they're not denying it. They're cleverly giving the first impression that there's no wastes, but they just say that it can be used several times. Exactly, they say :

Spent nuclear fuel can be removed from the reac­tor, reprocessed to separate unused fuel, and then used again.

So what they're talking about is the unused fuel. About the used fuel, they say it could be stored under a mountain. To your defense, they put it in quite a clever way : first they say that they're not so much waste, then that in the future there can only be less, then that we already take care of the waste to end up writing the conclusion into your mind : 'The argument that there is no solution to the waste problem is simply wrong.' This sentence is the only one someone reading this text once would remember.
Also, they're not lying, there are solutions, but we don't know any very good one. Yet.
Also, I doubt nuclear plants were specifically designed against terrorist attack, yet this I'm not sure. I guess the new ones would be, and perhaps the old ones were designed against attacks (Cold War and all this). So this might be true.

Personally, I don't see that much problem with storing the waste underground. Bury it, mark the place and stay away from it, what's so difficult there?

I guess the main problem with the waste is its concentration. It's pure, refined uranium (or at least it has just been). This can be found nowhere in the Nature. I live in a place full of granite, I'm a little more irradiated than other people (though it's almost pointless saying it), so I'm not that afraid of radiations. Never harmed anyone here.
Anyway, waiting for Uranium to be non-toxic takes a very long time, at best hundreds thousand years. Now, try to think about what we know about people a few centuries ago, or a couple thousand years before. Almost nothing. You could object now we can keep track of what happened, they had no writings. But we could as well be buried under the amount of information we record everyday. I personnally wouldn't take the risk, but again there is an international comission talking about it. I'll try and get the name.

I guess the better way to dispose of waste would be to put it back in the Earth mantle, but at a reasonnable speed. Dumping two tons of uranium at a time isn't probably a good idea. Messing with Nature's balance never is. But perhaps several grammes every kilometer would do the trick... well you got my point anyway. May someone more informed than me tell us what he thinks about it ?

[Duke 2.0]

 Let us remember such radioactive decay is very quick on a geological timescale. I'm sure plates going deeper into the mantle would be perfect places to bury things we don't want to exist when little bits of it melt, radiate away everything they've got and rise up in the middle of an ocean somewhere as harmless dense metals. From what I understand, the mantle is radioactive. Sure not as radioactive as our wastes, but magma never gave somebody cancer(Note, any stories about cancer from lava stems from the gasses lava often appears with).

 A possible precaution for reactors is to dig a large pit under reactor cores so any radioactive waste and fuel melts through the floor and gets collected into the pit instead of into the local water table and making the surrounding area uninhabitable. Of course, none of us are nuclear scientists(Unless one of us is, in which case educate us as you know the most of our fears and solutions).

 

[DJ]

although I doubt such big atoms like uranium would be the best to conduct a fusion

Of course not. You can't get net gain of energy with fusion of atoms heavier than iron, or with fission of atoms lighter than iron.

Anyway, regarding all that talk about doing your part at home: switch to firewood if it's practical. According to Wikipedia an average home spends 20 000 kW-h of energy per year, and out of that 12 000 kW-h are spent on heating. If you switch from fossil fuel or electricity to firewood, you will save enormous amounts of oil. Plus, you'll be much greener, as firewood is carbon neutral. And it's significantly cheaper.

[Aqizzar]

What if you don't have a fireplace?

Or you live a warm climate, where most of that 20000 goes to cooling?

[Duke 2.0]

 Then we run into the problems of deforestation. Now American forests can be forested just fine, as we are capable of replanting our trees and cutting them down the next generation. However, rainforests like in South America cannot be replanted as they largely consist of a few inches of rich soil that is basically just decomposing bio matter over a bed of useless sand. Once you strip away the trees, there is no more energy in the system to sustain itself. You end up with swampy sand dunes.

 I'm all for logging, just from renewable areas.

[DJ]

I said to do it if it's practical. Besides, if you're in a warm climate, you're spending much less energy anyway. But you can still use saguaro to fuel you secret moonshine factory :p

And nobody clear cuts forests for firewood nowadays anyway. The only reason to clear cut a forest is to, well, get clear land. Besides, you can harvest wood from rainforest without destroying it. It's just that people in Brazil are destroying it on purpose to make space for farms.

[Duke 2.0]

 Even so, that land is often cut for farmland. Horrible, horrible farmland.

[DJ]

Well, I'm certainly not advocating that, and firewood has nothing to do with it.

[Duke 2.0]

 I guess I was going off on that. Sorry folks.

 Still, isn't most wood shopped off for construction? wouldn't diverting large amounts of these resources to fuel cause difficulties constructing new homes and buildings? Or will we enter an age of alternative materials for traditional homes? i personally look forward to homes made of metal and glass.

[Aqizzar]

You're more right than you know.  Wood is a really horrible and inefficient material for building with, compared to other possibilities.  It's just used universally because for most of human history it was the easiest and most abundant thing to build with.  But it rots, warps, distends, attracts termites and other bugs, uses up trees, and all sorts of other problems.  Bricks and metal would make a hell of a lot more sense, if we had more power-efficient ways of making the stuff.

[DJ]

You use different types of wood for construction and fire. You sure as hell don't want to build your house out of birch, and you don't want to fuel your fireplace with pine.

Also, wooden houses are an American thing. Where I live all houses are made of bricks.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Wooden houses are also a russian thing. Log houses are our traditional rural construction.

[Il Palazzo]

A possible precaution for reactors is to dig a large pit under reactor cores so any radioactive waste and fuel melts through the floor and gets collected into the pit instead of into the local water table and making the surrounding area uninhabitable.

No need. Nowadays, the design of reactor cores makes a fuel rod(or whatever shape it is) meltdown impossible. If there are some plants using old-generation reactors, then they sure should be decommissioned.

Plus, you'll be much greener, as firewood is carbon neutral.

Meaning what, exactly? It does put CO2 into the atmosphere.

[DJ]

And forest growth takes CO2 out of the atmosphere. So as long as the forest you're harvesting has a constant volume of lumber (and all properly managed forests do), the net output of CO2 is zero.