And that’s why you could bury it underground in thick concrete tunnels. Might cause a few issues when it starts leaking in a few thousands of years, but I’ll be long gone by then
The_Paradox25 on
I know it’s a meme but…the danger lies precisely in the faster decay
GlassDragon1400 on
A bullet isnt going to become safe over any resonable time on its own. If you shoot it up in the air, it does have a chance to hit someone, but after a short time, it is safe.
LETS SHOOT ALL OUR BULLETS IN THE AIR!!
nothing against Nuclear by the way. Waste is waste which can and should be minimized and dealt with safely.
K0nkyDonk on
Another bot shilling nuclear energy… Whats up with all these bots lately?
Motor_Initiative7952 on
People hear ‘radioactive’ and imagine glowing green goo, but forget the coal ash from power plants actually releases more radiation into the environment. Fear is loud, facts are quiet.
TipsieRabbit on
I swear all of these accounts pushing nuclear energy are shills for some company that mines or enriches uranium. It’s the only logical explanation
StarBtg377 on
I think you’re missusing this template
GenPhallus on
Nuclear waste is severely misrepresented by pop culture.
Those barrels aren’t full of toxic goo, it’s like mops, brooms and protective gear that have been exposed. The sealed barrels are stamped with info so we can tell when the contents are no longer dangerously toxic, then they are disposed of normally.
The actual radioactive materials are like ceramic rods, and they are used until they are depleted of energy.
And for those who don’t know, nuclear energy is just boiling water with self-heating rocks
jbrunsonfan on
After seeing the 500th meme trying to get me to love nuclear energy, I am starting to feel a deep distrust of nuclear energy. This is the language drug dealers use when they’re pushing to teens lol
Worried_Raspberry_43 on
Hi there, do you know the term “astroturfing”? Because that post reeeeally looks like it as well as several posters answers. Be more subtle to really please your corporate masters.
Liquidmetal7 on
Coal plant releases MILLIONS OF TONS of radioactive contaminants directly into the air you breathe.
Nuclear plant produce a few kilograms that is very much contained and never allowed near you.
stromer_ on
Why are people upvoting propaganda?
calego13 on
You know what else is radioactive? The sun. Therefore we should destroy it!
NeedlessPedantics on
Nuclear power bros always focusing on one of the lesser issues with nuclear power to poison the well.
ShadowGLI on
And it also is less than radioactive than other the coal ash we make from coal fire plants and takes up a fraction of the space.
Here’s a local one to me that spilled heavy metals into drinking water
We shouldve stopped using coal and swapped to nuclear DECADES ago.
Glitch0110 on
Just wait till we get ficsonium
pleski on
Yes well, if the proponents want to hang around for 12,000 years guarding highly concentrated nuclear waste dumps, they’re welcome to spout this rhetoric as much as they want.
ShortNefariousness2 on
Idiotic comments below adding nothing. We have to suffer the bad effects of this tech because it provide base load electricity that renewables can’t do yet. Sadly lobby groups slowed down the move to renewables that would have prevented this. thanks guys!
Wind_Best_1440 on
100% of the by product from nuclear can be recycled into new fuel and or used for medical.
France does this, its just expensive and it is dangerous materials which can be used by nefarious individuals on the open market, which is why a lot of other countries don’t do it.
fixminer on
That natural radioactivity is very dilute compared to some radioactive waste and it is usually trapped deep underground.
Dealing with the waste is a very solvable engineering problem, given the right budget. But it’s dangerously disingenuous to pretend that nuclear waste is basically harmless.
Shiningc00 on
What a dumb argument, they are obviously more “concentrated” in a spot which is more dangerous.
There are also many radiation that do not exist naturally in nature.
Thulak on
Its also more concentrated in location and higher in energy density of the radiation making it a multitude more dangerous to come into contact with.
Nuclear realy is an insanely good and low carbon source of power, but the dangers of mishandeling are real.
Dismissal is not going to get people on your side. The waste has to go somewhere suitable which will likely displace people in many regions of the world. The better option would be to prepare reactor rods for a second and third round, but thats not economically viable.
There is also the issue of profitability. Nuclear power plants operate on low cost… as long as the waste isnt taken into account. Then rentability plumets. Nuclear reactor would need to be state run – which I am in favor of -, but thats a legal hurdle in states with privatized energy sectors.
SteveRogests on
“whence”
haveanairforceday on
This is dumb.
“Forest fires are just natural oxidization of trees but faster”
Its a very serious situation that is not at all analagous to the slow natural decay. Im for nuclear but this is a dumb statement that doesnt represent reality thruthfully
0ijoske on
And even then a lot of Nuclear waste (the fuel rods, not the trashed equipment) can be reused in a lot of cases since there are plants that have the facilities to convert them back into proper fuel with minimal loss.
Late-Button-6559 on
But the ‘where’ is the critical part of radiation.
Hundred of metres underground – fine.
Dumped on public land – not fine.
Blackrock121 on
The extremely long half life of normal Uranium means its barely radioactive while radioactive waste hits that horrible sweet spot where its extremely radioactive but wont stop being radioactive for a long time.
AdunfromAD on
So who will be the first to volunteer their land as a disposal site for the waste?
radumalaxa on
Please have a read through Zion Lights’ new book “[Energy is Life – Why environmentalism went nuclear](https://amzn.eu/d/0g00an5S)”. She is an ex-Extinction Rebellion activist that chose to part ways when she realised that her colleagues were more interested in “nuclear bad” than in facts.
Her short book puts into very plain english why nuclear is the most clean and efficient source of energy we have now and goes into a lot of detail about all the myths surrounding it. Everything is very well researched and the sources are in the forms of links at the end of the book.
Please please please have a read or recommend it to someone in your life who’s a nuclear skeptic.
Also the book has been published in february 2026 so it’s not available for free online yet. If anyone in the UK or Europe really wants to read it but can’t afford it DM me and we can work something out.
Lillobillo02 on
As a big pro nuclear energy, this doesn’t make much sense even if it’s true 😂. The key in radioactivity is the frequency of decay, nuclear waste frequency is relatively high while the natural radioactive sources are mild in comparison. For reference: the nucleus with the longest halving time in nuclear waste are usually in the order of the millions of years while the natural sources can go up 4.5Billion of years. But what does this mean? A higher frequency of decay (shorter halving time) indicates a higher probability to do so, therefore the source is more active and usually more dangerous, but it depends on the kind of radioactive emission (even on that side natural sources are far less scary). So yeah nuclear energy is a big resource and not scary at all once I get to know it so please don’t talk any nonsense, there’s so many different reasons why we should use nuclear energy… there’s non need to be misleading🙃
LocalNHBoy on
People really don’t know what a “half-life” of materials mean lol
Cursedbythedicegods on
We have the ability to safely store radioactive waste by mixing it into concrete blocks and sealing it away underground in extremely remote areas hundreds of miles from and populated areas.
This has been a known technique since the 1970s.
Fox1904 on
…Yes… it goes away faster because it is more radioactive. Also it is more dangerous because it is more radioactive and goes away faster.
comicgeek1128 on
Fossil fuels are already killing people and causing environmental damage everyday so the notion that they are safer or less risky is just oil company propaganda.
BoiFrosty on
Dig a whole, put it in the whole. Fill it in with concrete. DONE.
Seriously we can drill a mile deep bore hole and it’s not moving anywhere on a geologic timescale.
LazerWolfe53 on
That’s such a good point. Why do we have to burry it somewhere humans will never see it when it was mined from the earth?
Yelmak on
Having a shorter half life does not make something safer, it’s usually the opposite since faster decay equals faster release of energy.
The other issue is the type of radioactivity. Uranium and many of the byproducts release alpha radiation, which can be stopped by paper, so basically don’t eat it, don’t breath it in, wear gloves and you’ll be fine.
The biggest issue with nuclear waste comes from the other two types: beta and gamma. Beta can pierce your skin while gamma can pass through several feet of concrete. All types of radiation are present in the most exposed materials, with uranium fuel rods going from something that you can handle with gloves to delivering a fatal dose almost instantly after use.
The good news is that the more dangerous beta and gamma tend to decay faster than alpha so despite having a maximum half life of tens of thousands of years the most dangerous radiation is gone after a few decades.
lukasbradley on
Pretty dumbass meme. WTF happened to Reddit?
NoWingedHussarsToday on
OP is a shill for nuclear. At least they are getting their money’s worth with them for astroturfing.
Pardon-Marvin on
You do know what Nuclear “Enrichment” is, right?
Gomez-16 on
What waste? This isnt 1950s nuclear power. 60 years of a modern plant produce 1 swimming pool amount of waste. 60 years of power for 1 pool!
puzzlebuns on
Im 100% pro-nuclear energy but yall trying to argue nuclear waste isnt extremely dangerous….some terminally online folks in here.
Naus1987 on
I remember having an “oh duh, I’m stupid moment” once about this.
I was reading an article where they were talking about burying the waste in deep shafts below the power plants. And the question came up “what if someone digs into it later?”
And the answer is, uranium and such are ALREADY radioactive and exist in nature deep in the earth. So it’s like just taking that shit out of it’s natural home and sticking it back in there. It’s not like humans are inventing uranium out of wood and stones. That shit already exists, and it already was radioactive.
Vampire_who_draws on
What up with the nukecells astroturfing lately? Sure nuclear energy is the savest and cleanest* way we got. Until it doesn’t. Then it’s the worst. But hey. Three times the charm, am I right nukecells ?
*Not included is the mining and enrichment of the nuclear fuel and then the processing and storing of the waste.
ZombieJesusaves on
What is with all pro nuclear energy propaganda? My guess is tech bros know that’s their only way to filling the AI data center power needs.
47 Comments
And that’s why you could bury it underground in thick concrete tunnels. Might cause a few issues when it starts leaking in a few thousands of years, but I’ll be long gone by then
I know it’s a meme but…the danger lies precisely in the faster decay
A bullet isnt going to become safe over any resonable time on its own. If you shoot it up in the air, it does have a chance to hit someone, but after a short time, it is safe.
LETS SHOOT ALL OUR BULLETS IN THE AIR!!
nothing against Nuclear by the way. Waste is waste which can and should be minimized and dealt with safely.
Another bot shilling nuclear energy… Whats up with all these bots lately?
People hear ‘radioactive’ and imagine glowing green goo, but forget the coal ash from power plants actually releases more radiation into the environment. Fear is loud, facts are quiet.
I swear all of these accounts pushing nuclear energy are shills for some company that mines or enriches uranium. It’s the only logical explanation
I think you’re missusing this template
Nuclear waste is severely misrepresented by pop culture.
Those barrels aren’t full of toxic goo, it’s like mops, brooms and protective gear that have been exposed. The sealed barrels are stamped with info so we can tell when the contents are no longer dangerously toxic, then they are disposed of normally.
The actual radioactive materials are like ceramic rods, and they are used until they are depleted of energy.
And for those who don’t know, nuclear energy is just boiling water with self-heating rocks
After seeing the 500th meme trying to get me to love nuclear energy, I am starting to feel a deep distrust of nuclear energy. This is the language drug dealers use when they’re pushing to teens lol
Hi there, do you know the term “astroturfing”? Because that post reeeeally looks like it as well as several posters answers. Be more subtle to really please your corporate masters.
Coal plant releases MILLIONS OF TONS of radioactive contaminants directly into the air you breathe.
Nuclear plant produce a few kilograms that is very much contained and never allowed near you.
Why are people upvoting propaganda?
You know what else is radioactive? The sun. Therefore we should destroy it!
Nuclear power bros always focusing on one of the lesser issues with nuclear power to poison the well.
And it also is less than radioactive than other the coal ash we make from coal fire plants and takes up a fraction of the space.
Here’s a local one to me that spilled heavy metals into drinking water
https://earthjustice.org/feature/coal-ash-states/north-carolina
Entropy bro
We shouldve stopped using coal and swapped to nuclear DECADES ago.
Just wait till we get ficsonium
Yes well, if the proponents want to hang around for 12,000 years guarding highly concentrated nuclear waste dumps, they’re welcome to spout this rhetoric as much as they want.
Idiotic comments below adding nothing. We have to suffer the bad effects of this tech because it provide base load electricity that renewables can’t do yet. Sadly lobby groups slowed down the move to renewables that would have prevented this. thanks guys!
100% of the by product from nuclear can be recycled into new fuel and or used for medical.
France does this, its just expensive and it is dangerous materials which can be used by nefarious individuals on the open market, which is why a lot of other countries don’t do it.
That natural radioactivity is very dilute compared to some radioactive waste and it is usually trapped deep underground.
Dealing with the waste is a very solvable engineering problem, given the right budget. But it’s dangerously disingenuous to pretend that nuclear waste is basically harmless.
What a dumb argument, they are obviously more “concentrated” in a spot which is more dangerous.
There are also many radiation that do not exist naturally in nature.
Its also more concentrated in location and higher in energy density of the radiation making it a multitude more dangerous to come into contact with.
Nuclear realy is an insanely good and low carbon source of power, but the dangers of mishandeling are real.
Dismissal is not going to get people on your side. The waste has to go somewhere suitable which will likely displace people in many regions of the world. The better option would be to prepare reactor rods for a second and third round, but thats not economically viable.
There is also the issue of profitability. Nuclear power plants operate on low cost… as long as the waste isnt taken into account. Then rentability plumets. Nuclear reactor would need to be state run – which I am in favor of -, but thats a legal hurdle in states with privatized energy sectors.
“whence”
This is dumb.
“Forest fires are just natural oxidization of trees but faster”
Its a very serious situation that is not at all analagous to the slow natural decay. Im for nuclear but this is a dumb statement that doesnt represent reality thruthfully
And even then a lot of Nuclear waste (the fuel rods, not the trashed equipment) can be reused in a lot of cases since there are plants that have the facilities to convert them back into proper fuel with minimal loss.
But the ‘where’ is the critical part of radiation.
Hundred of metres underground – fine.
Dumped on public land – not fine.
The extremely long half life of normal Uranium means its barely radioactive while radioactive waste hits that horrible sweet spot where its extremely radioactive but wont stop being radioactive for a long time.
So who will be the first to volunteer their land as a disposal site for the waste?
Please have a read through Zion Lights’ new book “[Energy is Life – Why environmentalism went nuclear](https://amzn.eu/d/0g00an5S)”. She is an ex-Extinction Rebellion activist that chose to part ways when she realised that her colleagues were more interested in “nuclear bad” than in facts.
Her short book puts into very plain english why nuclear is the most clean and efficient source of energy we have now and goes into a lot of detail about all the myths surrounding it. Everything is very well researched and the sources are in the forms of links at the end of the book.
Please please please have a read or recommend it to someone in your life who’s a nuclear skeptic.
Also the book has been published in february 2026 so it’s not available for free online yet. If anyone in the UK or Europe really wants to read it but can’t afford it DM me and we can work something out.
As a big pro nuclear energy, this doesn’t make much sense even if it’s true 😂. The key in radioactivity is the frequency of decay, nuclear waste frequency is relatively high while the natural radioactive sources are mild in comparison. For reference: the nucleus with the longest halving time in nuclear waste are usually in the order of the millions of years while the natural sources can go up 4.5Billion of years. But what does this mean? A higher frequency of decay (shorter halving time) indicates a higher probability to do so, therefore the source is more active and usually more dangerous, but it depends on the kind of radioactive emission (even on that side natural sources are far less scary). So yeah nuclear energy is a big resource and not scary at all once I get to know it so please don’t talk any nonsense, there’s so many different reasons why we should use nuclear energy… there’s non need to be misleading🙃
People really don’t know what a “half-life” of materials mean lol
We have the ability to safely store radioactive waste by mixing it into concrete blocks and sealing it away underground in extremely remote areas hundreds of miles from and populated areas.
This has been a known technique since the 1970s.
…Yes… it goes away faster because it is more radioactive. Also it is more dangerous because it is more radioactive and goes away faster.
Fossil fuels are already killing people and causing environmental damage everyday so the notion that they are safer or less risky is just oil company propaganda.
Dig a whole, put it in the whole. Fill it in with concrete. DONE.
Seriously we can drill a mile deep bore hole and it’s not moving anywhere on a geologic timescale.
That’s such a good point. Why do we have to burry it somewhere humans will never see it when it was mined from the earth?
Having a shorter half life does not make something safer, it’s usually the opposite since faster decay equals faster release of energy.
The other issue is the type of radioactivity. Uranium and many of the byproducts release alpha radiation, which can be stopped by paper, so basically don’t eat it, don’t breath it in, wear gloves and you’ll be fine.
The biggest issue with nuclear waste comes from the other two types: beta and gamma. Beta can pierce your skin while gamma can pass through several feet of concrete. All types of radiation are present in the most exposed materials, with uranium fuel rods going from something that you can handle with gloves to delivering a fatal dose almost instantly after use.
The good news is that the more dangerous beta and gamma tend to decay faster than alpha so despite having a maximum half life of tens of thousands of years the most dangerous radiation is gone after a few decades.
Pretty dumbass meme. WTF happened to Reddit?
OP is a shill for nuclear. At least they are getting their money’s worth with them for astroturfing.
You do know what Nuclear “Enrichment” is, right?
What waste? This isnt 1950s nuclear power. 60 years of a modern plant produce 1 swimming pool amount of waste. 60 years of power for 1 pool!
Im 100% pro-nuclear energy but yall trying to argue nuclear waste isnt extremely dangerous….some terminally online folks in here.
I remember having an “oh duh, I’m stupid moment” once about this.
I was reading an article where they were talking about burying the waste in deep shafts below the power plants. And the question came up “what if someone digs into it later?”
And the answer is, uranium and such are ALREADY radioactive and exist in nature deep in the earth. So it’s like just taking that shit out of it’s natural home and sticking it back in there. It’s not like humans are inventing uranium out of wood and stones. That shit already exists, and it already was radioactive.
What up with the nukecells astroturfing lately? Sure nuclear energy is the savest and cleanest* way we got. Until it doesn’t. Then it’s the worst. But hey. Three times the charm, am I right nukecells ?
*Not included is the mining and enrichment of the nuclear fuel and then the processing and storing of the waste.
What is with all pro nuclear energy propaganda? My guess is tech bros know that’s their only way to filling the AI data center power needs.