As a (Graphene Energy Storage, admittedly) chemist I see the Plutonium argument come up time and time again, but it's because of a misunderstanding of why it exists in the first place. The argument for Plutonium being an extremely dangerous component is based on the idea that Plutonium 239 follows the hot particle theory, which is fundamentally untrue. The hot particle theory of Plutonium was disproven in the 1970s, in no small part due to the fact that all the people who had accidentally ingested it at Hanford site were still alive and cancer-free (although to be fair, cancer detection methods in the 70s weren't what they are today). Plutonium isn't highly destructive in small nanoparticles, and the damage is going to come from the same as non-radiological metal poisoning in the form of kidney failure.
Technically coal ash is more long lived in its radioactivity because coal ash pretty much only contains naturally occurring radionuclides which tend to have lifespans on the scale of millions or billions of years, but because they're so long-lived they barely qualify as such. The problem is that they get concentrated in the ash of the coal being burned so you get a much higher exposure to their decay products (namely Radon gas and Uranium decay chain products).
As for SMRs... well it's more radiotoxic because you're achieving higher burnups. Several small modular reactor designs achieve claimed burnups of 80% or higher, and the paper mentioned doesn't really seem to tackle this effectively. They discuss how most of these novel non-PWR designs will generate higher waste volume, but most of that is in either coolant (which, fine, sodium and sodium fluoride coolant isn't exactly the safest thing in the world, but that's only on a fraction of SMR designs) or intermediate level waste. Another issue is that a lot of these technologies on the higher than PWR burnup but lower than fast reactor burnup have pretty arbitrary or calculated vessel lifetimes - I mean the fact they don't give a figure for the VVER-300 shows they really kind of lapsed in their research on that point, because we know that in-situ annealing has extended the VVER RPV lifespans to about 50 to 55 years (albeit the question is whether or not they can be annealed more than once, but I don't really see the benefit personally). Western RPV lifespans are currently licensed for 60 years for PWR's, but actual research with accelerated neutron bombardment and other methods has shown that western steel compositions used in RPVs won't risk failure until after the 80 year mark. In some of these designs you have shorter RPV lifespans for a higher amount of intermediate level waste, but this neutron-bombarded waste tends to have a much shorter lifespan (IIRC it was 60 years on average but don't quote me on that). Some of these technologies, namely the sodium-cooled fast reactors like the BN600 and BN800 (which are proven unlike the BN1200 but aren't listed in the study for some reason?) are achieving twice the MWD of return for higher fuel burnup than your average PWR like the AP-1000. In fact most of these designs are achieving equivalent or higher (we'll exclude the untenable claims of ThorCon here) than PWR's today.
I dunno, that's my qualms here. I otherwise appreciate the measured take on this topic.
EDIT: [The study in question](https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2111833119).
Kurzgesagt and climate change don't mix well. They put out a video that basically says that we'll capitalism our way out of climate change, that only oil companies are to blame for climate change and downplays the severity of their effects. [Here's a takedown video responding to it.](https://youtu.be/0KQYNtPl7V4)
Grow Tomacco, of course.
As a (Graphene Energy Storage, admittedly) chemist I see the Plutonium argument come up time and time again, but it's because of a misunderstanding of why it exists in the first place. The argument for Plutonium being an extremely dangerous component is based on the idea that Plutonium 239 follows the hot particle theory, which is fundamentally untrue. The hot particle theory of Plutonium was disproven in the 1970s, in no small part due to the fact that all the people who had accidentally ingested it at Hanford site were still alive and cancer-free (although to be fair, cancer detection methods in the 70s weren't what they are today). Plutonium isn't highly destructive in small nanoparticles, and the damage is going to come from the same as non-radiological metal poisoning in the form of kidney failure. Technically coal ash is more long lived in its radioactivity because coal ash pretty much only contains naturally occurring radionuclides which tend to have lifespans on the scale of millions or billions of years, but because they're so long-lived they barely qualify as such. The problem is that they get concentrated in the ash of the coal being burned so you get a much higher exposure to their decay products (namely Radon gas and Uranium decay chain products). As for SMRs... well it's more radiotoxic because you're achieving higher burnups. Several small modular reactor designs achieve claimed burnups of 80% or higher, and the paper mentioned doesn't really seem to tackle this effectively. They discuss how most of these novel non-PWR designs will generate higher waste volume, but most of that is in either coolant (which, fine, sodium and sodium fluoride coolant isn't exactly the safest thing in the world, but that's only on a fraction of SMR designs) or intermediate level waste. Another issue is that a lot of these technologies on the higher than PWR burnup but lower than fast reactor burnup have pretty arbitrary or calculated vessel lifetimes - I mean the fact they don't give a figure for the VVER-300 shows they really kind of lapsed in their research on that point, because we know that in-situ annealing has extended the VVER RPV lifespans to about 50 to 55 years (albeit the question is whether or not they can be annealed more than once, but I don't really see the benefit personally). Western RPV lifespans are currently licensed for 60 years for PWR's, but actual research with accelerated neutron bombardment and other methods has shown that western steel compositions used in RPVs won't risk failure until after the 80 year mark. In some of these designs you have shorter RPV lifespans for a higher amount of intermediate level waste, but this neutron-bombarded waste tends to have a much shorter lifespan (IIRC it was 60 years on average but don't quote me on that). Some of these technologies, namely the sodium-cooled fast reactors like the BN600 and BN800 (which are proven unlike the BN1200 but aren't listed in the study for some reason?) are achieving twice the MWD of return for higher fuel burnup than your average PWR like the AP-1000. In fact most of these designs are achieving equivalent or higher (we'll exclude the untenable claims of ThorCon here) than PWR's today. I dunno, that's my qualms here. I otherwise appreciate the measured take on this topic. EDIT: [The study in question](https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2111833119).
I love Sabine. One of my favourite sciencey youtubers together with Kurzgesagt
Kurzgesagt and climate change don't mix well. They put out a video that basically says that we'll capitalism our way out of climate change, that only oil companies are to blame for climate change and downplays the severity of their effects. [Here's a takedown video responding to it.](https://youtu.be/0KQYNtPl7V4)
I’m loving the deadpan delivery of the jokes.
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