Smaller Reactors May Still Have a Big Nuclear Waste Problem

upstart writes:

The US needs to figure out what to do about its radioactive garbage:

Lindsay Krall decided to study nuclear waste out of a love for the arcane. Figuring how to bury radioactive atoms isn't exactly simple-it takes a blend of particle physics, careful geology and engineering, and a high tolerance for reams of regulations. But the trickiest ingredient of all is time. Nuclear waste from today's reactors will take thousands of years to become something safer to handle. [...]

[...] Congress has shown little interest in working out a solution for future generations. Long-term thinking isn't their strong suit. "It's been a complete institutional failure in the US," Krall says.

But there's a new type of nuclear on the block: the small modular reactor (SMR). [...] A Department of Energy-sponsored report estimated in 2014 that the US nuclear industry would produce 94 percent less fuel waste if big, old reactors were replaced with new smaller ones.

Krall was skeptical about that last part. "SMRs are generally being marketed as a solution-that maybe you don't need a geological repository for them," she says. So as a postdoc at Stanford, she [...] got an answer: By many measures, the SMR designs produce not less, but potentially much more waste: more than five times the spent fuel per unit of power, and as much as 35 times for other forms of waste. The research was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences earlier this week.

Read more of this story at SoylentNews.