There’s a area in Wiscasset, Maine (Population 3,742) protected by armed guards. On the sphere is a sequence hyperlink fence surrounding a pad of concrete. On the pad are 60 cement and metal canisters that comprise 1,400 spent nuclear gasoline rods, the leavings of an influence plant that shut down nearly 30 years in the past.
The containers are stuffed with nuclear waste. The locals don’t find it irresistible, however there’s nowhere for it to go. The concern of what to do with America’s nuclear waste is an issue that’s solved in idea however stalled in observe because of a decades-long political struggle. The nation wants extra energy, and quicker, and tech corporations corresponding to Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon all introduced this yr that they’re shifting ahead with plans to go nuclear.
That means there’s going to be extra nuclear waste than ever earlier than. Where will it go? If the present system holds, it’ll be saved close to the reactors. Right now, nuclear waste is put in chrome steel containers and sealed in a concrete construction known as a dry cask. Dry casks are, by all accounts, remarkably secure. If they’re undisturbed, they might stay so for hundreds of years.
But the world isn’t static. The local weather is altering. Wildfires, earthquakes, and rising ocean ranges pose a risk to these dry casks. An earthquake, flood, or fireplace swallowing up one or two dry casks won’t trigger an issue. But there’s about to be extra of them.
Aerial images of the previous Maine Yankee web site in Wiscasset taken Wednesday, February 6, 2013, exhibiting the steel-lined concrete containers that maintain spent gasoline assemblies.
Big Tech’s nuclear push
America’s nuclear waste is piling up. It’s a political downside, not a scientific one. Other international locations with nuclear infrastructure bury their waste deep underground in specifically designed storage amenities known as deep geological repositories. We may do this in America. We even began constructing one. The downside is that nobody needs a large cave full of nuclear waste of their yard.
It’s laborious guilty them. The U.S. has a horrible observe file relating to dealing with waste. For years, we’d retailer it in barrels and dump it into the ocean. Waste leftover from the Manhattan Project continues to be poisoning individuals at present. In South Carolina, radioactive alligators as soon as roamed the Savannah River Site the place items of nuclear weapons had been made. The Hanford Site in Washington state is sitting on 54 million gallons of waste that will by no means be cleaned up.
To meet Big Tech’s vitality calls for, we’ll add extra to the pile.
2024 was the yr Big Tech went all in on nuclear vitality. Data facilities are power-hungry beasts and the elevated use of number-crunching synthetic intelligence methods implies that tech corporations want extra vitality than ever earlier than. To remedy the issue, Meta, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon are all betting on nuclear vitality.
Google introduced a partnership with Kairos Power geared toward constructing a number of small modular reactors (SMR) in October. Amazon additionally introduced it was constructing SMRs in cooperation with Energy Northwest, X-Energy, and Dominion Energy. Meta, later to the sport than the others, requested corporations for proposals on the way it may generate 1-4 gigawatts (the equal of tons of of thousands and thousands of LED gentle bulbs) utilizing nuclear energy.
Microsoft, who has been engaged on this for a very long time, is partnered with TerraPower to construct SMRs. It additionally introduced a partnership with Constellation Energy that might reopen the Three Mile Island nuclear energy plant in Pennsylvania.
Nuclear energy is tough to do. Its gasoline sources are uncommon and closely regulated. When it really works, it gives clear and environment friendly gasoline for thousands and thousands of individuals. When it goes mistaken, it’s a catastrophe that may assist topple governments and provides most cancers to thousands and thousands. Traditional reactors require billions in funding and a long time of development time.
But Big Tech isn’t seeking to go the normal route. They’re speaking about new sorts of reactors. “There’s been a chat of a renaissance for many years. Depending on who you discuss to, we could possibly be in our third or fourth renaissance, or our eighth or ninth. So let’s depart the R-word apart,” Cindy Vestergaard, a senior fellow and director of Converging Technologies for the Stimson Center, informed Gizmodo. Vestergaard is a nuclear provide chain skilled who focuses on nonproliferation.
When individuals consider nuclear energy they typically image the big cooling towers and sprawling complexes full of scientists. The dream of SMRs is that they might cast off a lot of that. There are dozens of designs, however the fundamental idea is that these new reactors can be tiny in comparison with conventional reactors (a few of them would even be transportable) and might be spun up and decommissioned to match the calls for of the grid.
“A whole lot of these designs have been round for many years,” Vestergaard stated. It’s simply that the financial incentives didn’t exist to make them a actuality. Thanks to local weather change and the calls for of Big Tech, that’s modified. “Solar and wind are nice in some ways, however they have to be supplemented.”
Big Tech could perceive enterprise, however vitality corporations are a complete completely different factor. “We have a beginner partaking on this…which suggests now we have a lag time in what all of it means,” Vestergaard stated. “They have some huge cash, so deep pockets, I believe, assist drive a variety of innovation going ahead that we’d not have seen prior to now. So I believe that provides them a nuclear leg-up…most traders don’t perceive the lengthy sport in nuclear.”
The pitch for a lot of of those SMRs can also be that they’re safer they usually’ll produce much less waste. Vestergaard isn’t so certain. “We hear ‘oh, they’re safer, they’re extra environment friendly.’ Well, we don’t know that. Maybe on paper. We have to check and show this.”
I reached out to Google, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, and a few of their nuclear energy companions to see how they’re desirous about easy methods to handle waste. Meta and Microsoft referred me to posts on their web sites about sustainability. Amazon informed me to succeed in out to its vitality companions. Google didn’t reply.
Of Big Tech’s companions, solely TerraPower—who’s working with Microsoft—bought again to us. It stated that its Natrium reactors will produce extra vitality and fewer waste than another reactor on the planet. “The Natrium know-how will scale back the quantity of waste per megawatt hour of vitality produced by two-thirds due to the effectivity with which it makes use of gasoline,” it stated. “The waste the Natrium reactor does produce shall be saved safely and securely onsite via confirmed strategies used at vegetation all through the nation till the United States identifies a everlasting geologic repository.”
TerraPower recognized the core downside of nuclear waste within the U.S. The authorities must establish a everlasting geologic repository. It’s having bother doing that.
Not in my yard
According to Vestergaard, Big Tech is probably not prepared for one thing it’s been unhealthy at prior to now—coping with an indignant populace. “The native populations pay billions into these enormous infrastructure tasks,” she stated. “Big tech, traditionally, has not had a superb sense of what it’s wish to have engagement on the native stage. That’s one other factor the place they’re going to should be taught, and modify, and adapt to public hearings.”
People come out when nuclear waste enters their backyards. The threat of most cancers, radioactive animals, and environmental destruction is actual. And individuals comprehend it.
These reactors shall be in-built somebody’s yard. Several of the businesses are speaking about constructing them on-site, subsequent to knowledge facilities. Taxpayer money will go in direction of these reactors and it’ll anticipate to get one thing in return. Not all the ability can go to the info facilities and huge language fashions.
It’ll all generate waste. Waste with nowhere to go. After a long time of mismanagement, the federal authorities tried to pay money for America’s nuclear waste downside within the Eighties. Its answer was to construct a deep geological repository in Yucca Mountain, Nevada. It even began development. The individuals of Nevada, who’ve lengthy borne the brunt of America’s nuclear ambitions, didn’t need it there.
“In the United States, there’s by no means actually been public consent. It’s not like they went to Nevada and stated ‘What if we put it right here? What do you guys give it some thought?’” Vestergaard stated. “The United States itself is extremely cut up and caught on its nuclear waste downside, So there’s a legislation, again from the 80s, that claims it’s gotta be at Yucca Mountain.
She added that, at this level, America has sufficient nuclear waste ready round to fill Yucca Mountain 3 times over. “So even when Yucca Mountain was nonetheless a viable possibility, it isn’t. Particularly for brand new nuclear reactors that might be approaching board,” she stated.
Opponents known as the legislation the “Screw Nevada Bill.”
The identical legislation that designated Yucca Mountain as the location of future nuclear waste additionally created the Office of the United States Nuclear Waste Negotiator. The concept was that this workplace would negotiate with states and tribal leaders within the U.S. to seek out an interim storage answer for nuclear waste. Created in 1987, the place wasn’t stuffed till 1990. It was eradicated in 1995.
One of the issues is that, in response to the legal guidelines, nuclear waste can not be saved in a state or patch of tribal land with out the consent of the individuals who stay there. And nobody needs it. So as a substitute of going to a central location for everlasting disposal, it sits on websites close to the place it’s made, some 94 areas and rising.
Kissing casks
I kissed a cask (of nuclear waste) and I favored it. pic.twitter.com/xR0ZEERVUk
— isabelle 🪐 (@isabelleboemeke) December 19, 2024
Science and nuclear influencers like to kiss nuclear waste. “I kissed a cask (of nuclear waste) and I favored it,” Isabelle Boemeke, referred to as Isodope on-line, stated in a put up on X on December 19. The connected photos present her kissing a dry cask full of nuclear waste.
Boemeke is one among quite a few nuclear influencers who use their platform to agitate for extra nuclear energy. The kissing a cask of nuclear waste stunt is fashionable amongst science YouTubers and the one factor unusual about Boemeke’s put up is that it’s come after so many different individuals have executed it.
“Yes, dry casks are extremely secure,” Vestergaard stated. “I put my hand on them as nicely and stood by them.”
The downside isn’t that casks aren’t an effective way to retailer nuclear waste, they’re, it’s that they stick round on the location the place the waste was made. Boemeke’s pic was on the Diablo Canyon Power Plant in California. The plant is California’s final operational nuclear energy web site and the state deliberate to close it down.
Then Boemeke and Grimes began making PSAs on-line about why it wanted to stay. It labored. Regulators voted to increase the lifetime of Diablo Canyon to a minimum of 2030. That means the location will generate extra nuclear waste. Waste which is able to stay on web site. Diablo Canyon is subsequent to main fault traces. It’s close to San Luis Obispo, a group now perennially threatened by wildfires. The San Onofre nuclear energy plant south of Los Angeles sits on a significant faultline. It’s additionally sitting on 3.6 million kilos of nuclear waste.
For some consultants, the dry casks are a nice answer and the advantages of nuclear energy technology far outweigh the negatives of nuclear waste. “Climate change is a transparent and current hazard of worldwide scale with a variety of damaging impacts on geologic time scales,” Jesse D. Jenkins, an Assistant Professor at Princeton University, stated in a put up about nuclear waste on BlueSky. “Small volumes of spent nuclear gasoline might be contained safely in dry cask storage for century+ time scales.”
“The complete historical past of US civilian nuclear energy, which has produced 1/fifth of our electrical energy for many years with no CO2 or air air pollution, has produced lower than 100,000 tons of high-level waste. We burn billions of tons of fossil fuels EVERY YEAR,” Jenkins stated. “That means everything of spent nuclear gasoline matches in lower than 10,000 dry casks…That’s it. All of it. And that is ‘the nuclear waste downside’ meaning we must always supposedly eschew this confirmed supply of emissions-free electrical energy? Nah.”
I’m not arguing that we shouldn’t undertake nuclear vitality. Jenkins and others are proper. Dry casks are largely secure. But I do assume nuclear waste is an issue. And extra reactors imply extra spent gasoline that must be managed, extra dry casks unfold throughout the nation, and extra armed guards on patrol like these in that area in Maine.
A 2024 report from the Government Accountability Office uncovered one thing surprising. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the federal government company that manages waste, hasn’t studied the results of local weather change on the dry casks and nuclear energy vegetation.
“NRC primarily makes use of historic knowledge in its licensing and oversight processes reasonably than local weather projections knowledge,” the report stated. When the GAO interviewed officers on the Commission, they informed investigators that that they had it underneath management. “However, NRC has not performed an evaluation to show that that is the case,” the report stated.
The report detailed the hazards dealing with nuclear energy vegetation. “According to our evaluation of U.S. Forest Service and NRC knowledge, about 20 % of nuclear energy vegetation (16 of 75) are situated in areas with a excessive or very excessive potential for wildfire.” More than sixty % of nuclear energy vegetation, 47 of 75, are situated in areas with publicity to Category 4 and 5 hurricanes and in an space the place NOAA predicted the ocean ranges will rise.
Big Tech goes to construct extra nuclear energy vegetation. Oil and gasoline are soiled sources of energy. Nuclear has the potential to be a lot cleaner and extra environment friendly. Nuclear vitality can also be largely secure, the issue is that when issues go unhealthy they go catastrophically unhealthy. More reactors imply extra factors of failure and extra waste. Waste that’s in want of a everlasting house.
One can solely hope that the identical lobbyists Big Tech rolls out at any time when it wants one thing executed in Washington can assist them discover a everlasting house for America’s spent nuclear gasoline.
