Lithuania's Nuclear Waste Problem

Following in the footsteps of other countries trying to find a permanent place to store their spent nuclear fuel, Lithuania is searching for a stable place underground to hold 2,500 tons of nuclear waste for the next 100,000 years...
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[@frosty_mentos1238]

I feel like resistance from locals is maybe the biggest issue, despite how safe it is stored when on the surface. But people are insane here about these things, paranoia about nuclear war and shutting the reactor we could have had for so much longer and supplied with such cheap energy that now we are going in the minus because of people's delusions. I hate it here sometimes I swear.

[@shieldmea]

I heard a lot of opinions that closing the Ingalina Power plant was a big mistake. Lithuania was able to supply a cheap electricity and heat from it but no more. And this power plant was a pretty safe one...

[@vaidotast]

Interesting. I saw a video about France's efforts to sort their nuclear waste. They have LOADS of it. It is true that the majority can be recycled, but the more you want to recycle it, the more expensive it becomes to do it. So for now they just decided to store it for future, when we have more advanced technologies, I guess. And it is logical, when you think about it. We can already have hydrogen cars, but production of hydrogen is still much less efficient than what we have now, so it is just not worth. Same with nuclear waste recycling...

[@zethijs2724]

France actually already recycles near half its spent fuel, fueling a large chunk of its nuclear reactors with recycled uranium

[@Max-pk6uc]

You want to store nuclear waste in a crystaline layer, hard rock, not loose soil, since even if something breaks, the fuel physicly can't leak out, the Nordics are a great place for such storage, anyone who has been to any of those countries (except denmark), aspecially arriving by ferry would have probably seen how the shore is often hard blackish rocks, this is because they don't have a thick sedentarry layer (dirt, sand, clay etc) because the last glacial maximum scraped it off. Lithuania by contrast has a reletively thick sedentary layer (in part made up from the rocks and other materials that the ice sheets brought from Scandinavia) and so if you wanted to store the waste safely you would have to dig down a lot deeper and it really wouldn't be worth the effort. Storing nuclear waste is not as dangerous as people think and finging room for it is not hard aswell, any cliffside in the scandinavian mountain range, or the alp, or the pyranese or alaska or urals etc etc, would work fine and bring little to no ecological damage, the only factor working against this is cost, since the best storage places tend to be the furthest from where people actually live

[@Max-pk6uc]

Also would like to point out that the amount of nuclear waste we are talking about is equivelant to the weight of a medium sized pickup truck, it's not a lot, I balieve the most economical thing for the government might be to pay another country to store it, one caviat being that it would most likely be expensive and beaurocraticly taxing to move even this amount of nuclear waste, aspecially if you have to cross borders

[@karliszemitis3356]

I would like to see 2500 TON sized pickup truck.

[@Max-pk6uc]

@@karliszemitis3356 oh it only now occured to me that it's probably not 2,5tons but 2500 tons, I forget that other countries use the comma in a difrent way. Well if even rocket scientists make such a mistake, I am sure I can be forgiven for it aswell

[@stekra3159]

Can you please talk about Lithuania‘s net Zero Plans?

[@Clickworker101]

Same shit but bigger in Germany

[@anzelmasmatutis2500]

Why not store in Ignalina? Site was good for power plant but not for waste storage?

[@Lithuanian_NAFO_lad]

Different requirements.

[@icylime3607]

@@Lithuanian_NAFO_lad Elaborate

[@Lithuanian_NAFO_lad]

@@icylime3607 building a nuclear power plant and a storage facility for nuclear fuel is not that simple. They both have different requirements, like a nuclear plant does not require a hard rock tomb in case of a meltdown. The storage facility does. But you should not be asking me. I am no Power plant professional.

[@MDMssHypNoTiZe]

Lithuania can make nukes (this is a soviet reactor and all of them produce material for nuclear weapons), or use this fuel again in new types of reactors.