Repo_co

When my wife and I were coming back from our honeymoon in the UK, the CBP agent barely made eye contact with us before waiving us through. Is there a certain level of profiling that happens, and to what degree, based on destination/origin of travel/national origin/race/religion/age/gender/anything?

Thanks for your question! When nuclear waste is removed from a reactor, it is highly radioactive, making it also very physically hot. You first need to actively cool the waste in a pool of water (water is a rather effective radiation shield as well), but after a couple of decades, it can be transferred to so called "dry cask storage" until it can be reprocessed or disposed. Reprocessing (or recycle) is a chemical process which removes useful components from used fuel and allowing the remaining non-useful, highly radioactive waste to be disposed. Disposal can be achieved through a number of ways, but the method chosen by most developed countries at this point is in underground repositories. These are deep caverns bored into favorable geologic media which can store the waste for the entire time that it will take for the radioactive materials to decay. This can take hundreds of thousands of years, so careful consideration must be taken to study the geology, geochemistry, volcanology, and hydrology of a region. Engineers in my field study in all of these areas to optimize the process.

Thanks for your questions! I'd want to do a couple of different things, depending on how magical this wand is. I'll start with the most ambitious, and go to the most pressing/realistic need.

First, I would wish that the waste was about 1,000 years older than it is now. This would mean that the major, problematic short term radionuclides (like Cs-137 and Sr-90) will have decayed away. This would make the waste a LOT easier to handle. I am of the opinion that there is a ton of valuable things in used nuclear fuel that could be used for other purposes, and some of the more dangerous components were completely gone, it would be easier to recover them. If the magic wand can't do that...

...I would wish that there was a piece of land ideal for underground waste disposal. This would probably be something like a completely homogeneous salt deposit, far from any aquifers, far from civilization, and with a local government who would welcome the material due to the financial benefit that might come from hosting such a facility. If the magic wand can't do that...

...I would wish that international governmental bodies could agree to a framework for deep seabed disposal of used nuclear fuel. Disposing of waste in ocean trenches and letting plate tectonics carry it into the earth is probably the ultimate form of disposal. You would never see that waste again. It's a really ugly geopolitical problem, so if we could get everyone on the same page it would be nice. If the magic wand can't do that (and now we're talking about a pretty crappy magic wand)...

...I would wish that Congress would take meaningful action. It's a pretty hot button issue and most lawmakers don't want to touch it. Because of this inaction though, a tremendous financial liability is mounting. Thanks for your question!

Nuclear power generation is very safe! In the 60+ years of commercial nuclear power generation in the United States, there have not been any public fatalities due to their operation and only one major incident. The industry is highly regulated by the NRC and are subject to serious safety standards across all aspects of plant construction and operations. This makes for one of the safest industries in the history of the United States.

I think that the world should build more nuclear power plants because it is the most readily available technology for producing large amounts of baseline electricity without carbon emissions. This makes it the best option for addressing climate change from an electricity production standpoint, in my opinion. Nuclear waste, much like any other industrial waste, will probably always have some element which is harmful to humans. With proper consideration given to waste disposal however, this danger can be almost completely eliminated. Effective, long term disposal in favorable geologic media will be what renders nuclear waste as safe.