Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science » in reply to Here is an interesting graphic from the ITER website

ITER Long-Lived vs. Short-Lived Waste

Short-Lived Waste
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You would need storage for 5-times the mass of operational reactors. Assuming power output is similar to fission reactors and they can be replaced 1-for-1 with fusion reactors, then my estimate is something around 34.8 million tonnes. After a batch of waste has been stored for 100 years, 80-percent is removed to a landfill, and 20 percent to a long-term repository.

Long-Lived Waste
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If 80-percent of the waste has decayed to 1/1000 of its original radiotoxicity after 100 years, then the decay curve after 100 years represents long-lived waste (probably wrong, but let's go with that). Then the remaining 20-percent of the waste would take 50,000 years to decay to 1/1000 of the radiotoxicity level at 100 years. So every hundred years the long-term repository would accumulate an additional 6.96 million tonnes. After 50,000 the long-term repository would accumulate 3.48 billion tonnes of long-lived radioactive waste.

Conclusion
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Approximately 113-times more long-lived radioactive waste would eventually accumulate compared to the short-lived waste. Still looks bogus to me, even if they did build it.

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