What are rates supposed to do? Hopefully an AI data center won't be built or if it doesn't the State of Alabama regulatory body will force the data center to pay for the upgrades.
New Nuclear Reactors coming to Northeast AL
- Thread starter wavinwayne
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You are correct!
We also had spent billions of dollars on a nuclear waste depository in Yucca Mountain. Billions wasted, almost completed, shut down by politicians.
It’s disgusting and power plant operators are being forced to store this waste on site when they were promised over a decade ago that the federal government would start accepting nuclear waste from them. So we have pools and pools of nuclear waste at these nuclear plants with a constant flow of cooling water over them.
Just waiting and waiting for a disaster to occur
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The article says it may result in lower utility prices. We'll see but I won't hold my breath. I'm mostly hopeful for the short term construction jobs, and long term on-site jobs that this new nuclear venture will create. Will it all turn out to be a costly dud? Possible, but hopefully not.
Utah too- scroll down
https://www.bcutah.gov/article/2553268
https://www.bcutah.gov/article/2553268
You seem to think that high level is a big problem. Define it for us. How much is there in the US?
You too own a computer, right?
Define it for you?
All you have to do is click on the first return of any search.
Presumptuous question of yours
Anyway, here you go.
“High-Level Waste
High-level radioactive wastes are the highly radioactive materials produced as a byproduct of the reactions that occur inside nuclear reactors. High-level wastes take one of two forms:
- Spent (used) reactor fuel when it is accepted for disposal
- Waste materials remaining after spent fuel is reprocessed
https://www.nrc.gov/waste/high-level-waste
Here’s another one for you
“More than a quarter million metric tons of highly radioactive waste sits in storage near nuclear power plants and weapons production facilities worldwide, with over 90,000 metric tons in the US alone”
https://cen.acs.org/environment/pollution/nuclear-waste-pilesscientists-seek-best/98/i12
Oh wait, you asked how much is there?
We don’t have a item by item breakdown, but it totals 95 million metric tons according to this more recent story
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/09/nuclear-power-energy-radioactive-waste-storage-disposal.html
Yes being that 2 new reactors were built in Georgia at double the budgeted price.
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You can get on Google Earth and look at Brown's Ferry Nuclear Power Plant in North Alabama, and clearly see the big cylindrical tubes that they keep the spent fuel in once it has cooled enough. The tubes sit out in the open on a concrete pad, waiting for a future permanent storage solution.
Yes, I would be thrilled.
They were supposed to build, actually they started construction of two nuclear power plants near me when I lived in South Carolina, which was just a short while ago. It was too compliment in already existing nuclear power plant on site.
Partway through construction, the plug was pulled.
Big scam over cost overruns, time to completion.
However, this was only the fault at the time of Westinghouse Toshiba, which was and as far as I know might still be in terrible financial shape.
Anyway, major problems with timely production of components needed in a whole bunch of stuff
The scandal part was the electric company started covering up. The problems and those public officials may have even went to jail. I can’t remember.
Anyway, as far as you’re concerned, I would be thrilled. Actually, South Carolina is trying to get companies on board to restart construction. It’s a political minefield, so things are moving slow.
South Carolina and its business friendly environment. This would be a grand slam for more industry.
Very cool, I think many people don’t realize and it might even be because of the words “spent nuclear fuel.” One would think as I did that means less powerful and less dangerous.
However, spent nuclear fuel is much more powerful and dangerous. Nuclear fuel starts out as lack of better words on the mild side however, as reactions take place, it creates a more powerful dangerous nuclear material called plutonium.
Plutonium has a lifespan of 24,000 years before it becomes harmless.
I’m no genius, but I learned about this in videos and our own government websites. I was looking for a video online that a news organization did with those pools of circulating water to keep the radioactive waste, cool until it’s cool enough to be stored in those concrete tubes or cement slabs.
The plant operator in that news report is incomplete dismay that they are being forced to keep all this dangerous stuff on site. They built these plants with the promise by the federal government there would be a place to send it.
OVERKILL
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SNF is only stored in water for 8-10 years, then it's moved into casks once the decay heat has sufficiently reduced to a level that allows for dry storage.
OVERKILL
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The simplest way to look at radiation is that the longer the half-life, the less dangerous it is. While this doesn't get into the details of the different types of radiation, which themselves have different shielding requirements (alpha, beta, gamma), like alpha rays being blockable by a piece of paper, the concept is the same. Each decay is what emits the emission, so the fewer the number of decays, the longer the half-life (how long it takes to decay to half its original level) and the lower the radioactivity, and thus the relative danger.
Spent nuclear fuel, right out of the reactor, is full of short lived daughter products from the fission process which are decaying rapidly, and thus producing incredible amounts of dangerous radiation, and subsequently, heat. As these short-lived actinides decay away, the amount of heat generated (decay heat) drops off, as do the cooling requirements.
After a period of time, which is about 300-500 years, the main concern becomes ingestion, which is the same sort of hazard for many other "forever dangerous" chemicals that we also store like cyanide, arsenic, mercury, lead...etc.
Plutonium specifically, is valuable, since it can be extracted and reused. This is what the PUREX process employed in France does, it chemically separates the plutonium (and any remaining U235) from the non-valuable materials, the rest of which is vitrified, while the fissile products are used to produce fresh fuel. There is not a lot of plutonium in SNF. In a CANDU reactor, where the fuel bundles start off with much less U235, the amount of plutonium and other fissile material (U235) recoverable after the fuel has been poisoned-out is so small that it's effectively irretrievable barring more complex salvage processes like fluorine reprocessing. But the cost is still prohibitive.
Regarding the volume of spent fuel currently stored on-site from power reactors (which is quite different from weapons program byproducts and the like), in Ontario, all the spent nuclear fuel created since we operated our first power reactor in the early 1960's to now could easily fit inside a Costco. That's a tiny amount of space relative to the massive amount of electricity that was generated.
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Yes, I’m aware. I knew it wasn’t permanently water cooled. The problem is the casks were originally supposed to be able to be taken away and the power plant operators are being forced to store them on site
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from what I understand, plutonium 239 has a half life of 24,000 years and 240 6,000 years both of which are formed in nuclear power plants and is also contained in the power plant nuclear waste
In the United States, we do nothing to re-process or dispose of this waste in Yucca mountain and it’s stored at nuclear power plants all over the country
If I’m correct, France is the world standard to nuclear power production
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OVERKILL
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Yeah, the pricing for these isn't looking to be that much of a bargain at this time, we are looking at over $20 billion for the first four here at Darlington, which will represent 1,200MW. This isn't appreciably cheaper than Vogtle, particularly if we look at the cost of the first unit in isolation, as the subsequent price declines are predicted, not guaranteed, for the subsequent units.
There's also nothing small about the project. The current excavations are about half the size of the adjacent 3,512MW Darlington A facility, which consists of 4x880MWe CANDU reactors. I expect the four "SMR's" are in fact going to occupy more space than Darlington A, making them small only in generating capacity.
OVERKILL
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Yes, which makes it less dangerous compared to the short-lived products that are producing the decay heat. P239 is one of the fissile elements removed during PUREX reprocessing:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PUREX
Along with U235 as I noted.
We may or may not be talking about the same thing.
I’m not sure if you’re aware in the United States we do absolutely nothing to re-process or bury spent nuclear power plant fuel.
“The United States does not currently recycle spent nuclear fuel but foreign countries, such as France, do.”
https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-nuclear-fuel
This is the long version
https://www.epa.gov/radiation/frequent-questions-radioactive-waste
OVERKILL
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No no, I'm aware that the US doesn't currently strip the plutonium and other fissile products still in SNF out of it, even though it's valuable, I'm just pointing out that it's valuable and that other countries do. It's something the US should consider doing with their SNF, then vitrifying the remains, like France also does, to store it.We may or may not be talking about the same thing.
I’m not sure if you’re aware in the United States we do absolutely nothing to re-process or bury spent nuclear power plant fuel.
“The United States does not currently recycle spent nuclear fuel but foreign countries, such as France, do.”
https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-nuclear-fuel
This is the long version
https://www.epa.gov/radiation/frequent-questions-radioactive-waste
That doesn't change the requirements for SNF storage however. Cask storage is "interim", with a DGR as the final disposition location.
