A typical nuclear power plant produces approximately 2-3 cubic metres of high-level radioactive waste per year of operation, meaning the entire lifetime output of a plant running for 40 years would fill a space roughly the size of a large living room. All the high-level nuclear waste ever produced by US commercial reactors in over 50 years of operation would fit under one American football field stacked less than 10 yards deep.

Oct 4, 2026 · 9:24 AM UTC

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Replying to @engineers_feed
And it retains over 90% of its energy which is usable in a modern breeder reactor!
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Replying to @engineers_feed
Why don't we have a permanent storage location? Why is waste kept at each reactor site indefinitely? This is obviously not a solution to last 100,000 years.
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Replying to @engineers_feed
And most of it can be bred into fissile material for power generation.
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Replying to @engineers_feed
If you're only talking about raw waste that's correct. But for safety reasons all this waste is usually divided into small portions, then sealed into different types of containers ( eg: glass and stainless steel) The total size of the waste+containers is actually much bigger
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Replying to @engineers_feed
The waste is literally put in huge containers stacked on site of each facility. It’s much larger footprint than a living room
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Replying to @engineers_feed
Oh my god you people want to put nuclear waste underneath our football fields?? When will your tyranny end?
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Replying to @engineers_feed
But dangerous for millions of years. How will those containers be monitored and kept sealed? WHO will do it for thousands of generations?
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Replying to @engineers_feed
Another reason I question WHY, they don’t use small scale nuclear reactors (like for subs) for Data Centers ?
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Replying to @engineers_feed
We should be harnassing the energy from the waste for data center power. Both can go in middle of nowhere
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Replying to @engineers_feed
Isn’t the issue the energy it takes to store the waste not its space dimensions?
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Replying to @engineers_feed
Volume isn't the problem. No greenfield reactor in a Western democracy for 30+ yrs. I'd take the waste over the negative learning curve.
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Replying to @engineers_feed
What is nuclear waste? Why can't it be recycled, used, or neutralized?
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Replying to @engineers_feed
Canada's CANDU reactor can run on that waste. and reduce it by 75%.
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Replying to @engineers_feed
The Canadian Moltex SSR‑W (Stable Salt Reactor – Wasteburner) is designed to consume spent nuclear fuel, such as CANDU bundles: first converting it into a molten‑salt fuel, and then burning the transuranics. Tested principles, to be deployed within a decade.
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Replying to @engineers_feed
96% by mass is still fuel only the 4% fission products is actual waste the U238,U235, and actinides are all fuel. And the transuranium elements are perfect fuel for fast breed reactors. It's a crime against humanity to bury what is thousands of years worth of energy.
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Replying to @engineers_feed
Hey @elonmusk now that we have @SpaceX, couldn’t we just launch the nuclear waste to a black hole on the other side of the universe?
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Replying to @engineers_feed
@grok can that waste be used by fusion?
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Replying to @engineers_feed
Which is 0.0000000585% of the land area of the United States.
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Replying to @engineers_feed
if you put nuclear waste together it will go critical and melt
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Replying to @engineers_feed
So under the stadium the Browns use? I mean, it's not like they're using it for playing decent football.
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Replying to @engineers_feed
It could be recycled by sticking it in Starship and send it into the Sun
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Replying to @engineers_feed
Have Elon musk fire it into space via starship!
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Replying to @engineers_feed
every kg of mass in spent fuel other than the 4% by mass of fission products is packed with 83,000 GJ worth of energy. On a Lower Heating Value (LHV) basis, 1 kg of fully fissioned U or Pu is equivalent to approximately 15,200 barrels of oil (bbl) For fucks sake
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Replying to @engineers_feed
The USA alone has more than 220 million metric tons of uranium mining tailings. These require management for up to 1,000 years and can contaminate groundwater or release radon gas.
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Replying to @engineers_feed
A shame they take 12+ years to build...
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Replying to @engineers_feed
More context from Grok, “At a realistic spacing of about 6 meters center to center, the whole U.S. inventory fits on a pad of roughly 70–100 acres.” “The Bureau of Land Management manages nearly 48 million of those acres” (in Nevada) Seriously, nuclear waste is not an issue.
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Replying to @engineers_feed
hey @grok, if we replaced every coal powered plant with a nuclear plant, how much nuclear waste would accumulate, using the measurement comparisons above?
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Replying to @engineers_feed
Grok bro @grok kindly calculate the raw weight and the weight with enclosures needed.
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Replying to @engineers_feed
1,440,000 ft³, correct?
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Replying to @engineers_feed
The volume is the easy part. What makes it hard is that the same small pile stays hot for centuries, so storage is about time.
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Replying to @engineers_feed
But radioactive enough to kill everything from three times the diameter around the pile
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Replying to @engineers_feed
All that waste fitting in a living room is wild when you think about the power it actually produced
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Replying to @engineers_feed
You only talk about the used fuel. The annual waste of a 1 GWe reactor (Used Fuel + High-Level Waste (HLW)) is 25–30 metric tonnes per year And then there is also the low- and Intermediate-Level Waste (LLW/ILW)
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Replying to @engineers_feed
Pre-approved SMRs would drive electric costs to near $0 for most residential customers.
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Replying to @engineers_feed
Nuclear energy is clean, safe, and wildly efficient. Decades of waste fitting under a single football field completely destroys the left's anti-nuclear hysteria. Build more plants!
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