Does the nuclear waste disposal process remove its viability as a sustainable power solution? | Utilimarc Fleet FYIs

Gretchen Reese (00:12):

Hey there. Welcome to the Fleet FYIs podcast, the weekly podcast by Utilimarc that reveals how you can make the most of your data for smarter fleet management. My name is Gretchen, and every week you'll hear from me or some of the industry's finest in candid conversations that will not only shed some light on over two decades worth of fleet data insights, but also some of the industry's hottest talking points and key metric analysis with the aim to help you better understand your fleet from every angle.

(00:52):

But before we begin, if this is the first time you've heard our show, thanks for stopping by. I'm so glad you decided to come along for the ride with us. But I've got a quick favor to ask you; once you finish today's episode, if you could take a few minutes to leave us a review on your favorite podcasting platform, we would really appreciate it. Give us a rating, five stars, I hope, or tell us what you liked, or leave us a comment or a question about what you've heard in today's episode. If we haven't yet covered a topic that you're interested in hearing more about, let us know. We would be happy to go over it in detail in a later show.

(01:34):

Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the Fleet FYI's podcast. By now, I'm sure we all know that energy consumption in the United States is constantly growing as our world becomes more dependent on electronics and advancing technologies. And you know what I'm talking about here, right? We're looking at smartphones, we're looking at just the digital advancement in vehicles. You know the drill. It's pretty expansive right now. But the thing is, with mass electrification slowly but surely underway, energy suppliers are already needing to think forward to the logistics behind charging millions of new electric vehicles with the current electric grid infrastructure. Could this potentially pose a challenge? Perhaps.

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There's a couple questions you need to ask. Two key ones being what infrastructure will the grid need to support this transition to electric as this movement starts to continue? And then also will the available energy supply keep up with demand? Generation isn't the issue, but distribution tends to be. Though we do have some people talking about generation as well. If we think even further ahead, another question you could ask is, how will we power these electric vehicles with clean energy and ensure that they're truly emissions free rather than just moving emissions from tailpipe to wherever we're manufacturing the vehicle or powering it with the charging infrastructure? Let's dig in.

(03:30):

Let's get started with where we are at today. So today over 60% of electricity in the United States is generated from fossil fuels. So this is the coal, petroleum, and natural gas that we've talked about in other episodes of this show before. Now, these resources have provided cheap and reliable energy for over a century, but they've also been one of the main contributors of CO2 and other harmful greenhouse gases. Renewable energy sources like solar, wind, and hydropower are much cleaner without a doubt, and account for about 20% of electricity generated today, in terms of the overall energy profile that we tend to look at. These though, it's important to take note that they have their own obstacles, especially when we look at costs as a whole. It's the higher capital costs, the difficulty in entering the market and the transmission infrastructure that is generally designed for fossil fuel and nuclear plants being a little harder to accommodate these other three sources.

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So if we take a look at another clean option, which we've already discussed this a little bit on this show, we're talking about nuclear power here. What about it? What if we wanted to use nuclear power as a source of power that could potentially be a sustainable option, and also one that could power an abundance of electric vehicles on the road? Well, today, again, about 19% of electricity is generated from nuclear power, which is not a particularly large increase from an 11% share in the 1980s. So like our renewable resources, nuclear energy is a clean power source emits no greenhouse gas emissions. It's also quite stable and provides even cheaper energy than a fossil fuel would. However, as I'm sure you know, there's several concerns that arise whenever nuclear energy is brought up. Major disasters, bingo, that's always the one that people start with. In the past decades, they've left nuclear energy clouded by a negative association and politically divisive overtones.

(05:26):

But granted, that tends to happen. If ever something bad happens, you'll have politically divisive issues and you'll have a negative association if it was particularly harmful. In this case, still over half of American adults are still in favor of expanding domestic nuclear power production, believe it or not. But the thing that I really want to focus on today is the even bigger challenge that nuclear power suppliers face, and it's an issue that's remained unsolved for decades. And what is that you might ask? Well, I think it's pretty simple to deduce, but we're talking about nuclear waste. Now, the challenge of nuclear waste here, nuclear fuel can be used to generate power within a reactor for multiple, multiple years. And as it nears the end of its fuel cycle and becomes spent nuclear fuel, it has to be removed from the reactor, and it is highly reactive or highly radioactive nuclear waste once it is removed from these reactors themselves.

(06:24):

And if they're not stored and disposed of safely, this waste can contaminate the environment with a dangerous element called plutonium, which can be absolutely devastating for humans, animals, and the surrounding natural environment. And the spent nuclear fuel can also remain radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years, heightening the long term threat of improperly disposed waste. Now, luckily, nuclear reactors don't produce too much waste. In fact, over 70 years worth of nuclear waste in the US would fit into just one football field of stacked 24 feet high, which is not that much considering actually. But for comparison, the ways from just one year of coal generated power would stack about five miles high on that same football field. So if the problem here isn't volume or quantity, but rather secure storage and disposal tactics, where we go from here? What do we do with it? Well, since the invention of nuclear power, a lot of countries... Actually, every single country, has been really struggling to create a permanent solution for their nuclear waste.

(07:27):

And as we talked about this, as spent fuel is insanely radioactive when you take it out of the reactor, it's the most radioactive within its first 50 years out of the reactor. It would ideally be stored during this time before safely being permanently disposed of. However, some countries are still using storage strategies that have aggregated unprocessed ways from as early as the 1940s, which is kind of a long time when you think about it, about 80 years. Just an example, in Hanford, Washington, over 200 million liters of nuclear waste dating back to World War II is currently sitting in an underground storage tank waiting to be processed, which can be a little bit shocking when you think about it. And these tanks have long outlived their intended use time and are currently leaking radioactive waste and threatening the nearby Columbia River. That's a pretty big deal.

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And whilst this case may seem shocking, it's not unheard of in the nuclear industry. Ultimately, and ideally, nuclear energy suppliers hope for the development of deep geological repositories to become a permanent solution for this toxic waste that they're creating by using nuclear power and creating it. And many countries are actually conducting ongoing investigations to determine potential repository sites. But as I'm sure you can assume, development can be a pretty lengthy process from start to finish. Another solution that many have turned to is vitrifying the waste, which basically means converting it into glass. And as a completely solid substance, here's the interesting thing, nuclear waste can be stored much more safely and with virtually no risk of leakage. Still, vitrification is only a temporary solution until permanent disposal becomes an option. Again, circling back there. But after about a thousand years, these steel canisters containing the vitrified waste will inevitably corrode directly exposing the glass to the environment.

(09:18):

So it almost seems like we're back at square one here. And I don't mean for this to sound all doom and gloom. That is one thing that I know this episode is going to be a little bit harsh in terms of the potential to use this type of power source going forward, but one thing I really would like to note is that we're trying to expand on different types of power sources. It doesn't mean it's the best solution, and it doesn't mean it's the only solution, but we just wanted to talk about it on this show to be able to explore all of the options that we have in front of us.

(10:15):

So what does this mean for the sustainability of nuclear power, now that I've potentially bummed you out after listening to this episode? Well, unfortunately, nuclear waste is a problem that we have inherited from previous generations. That's no secret. And whilst nuclear power presents a great opportunity as the world enters away from fossil fuels, we cannot truthfully call it a clean energy source whilst it potentially contaminates communities and ecosystems that leave devastating results. That's no good. For nuclear plants to be a long term solution, they need to be sustainable. Not only in their generation of electricity, but also in all of the other behind the scenes operations in waste management. But I'm curious to hear your thoughts. Even with the obvious disposal issues, do you think nuclear power could still be a viable source for sustainable energy in the future? Will it be enough to power the grid as society appears to be moving away from fossil fuel based power sources?

(11:13):

Let me know. Send me an email. Tag me on LinkedIn. Use the hashtag UtilimarcFleetFYIs, send me a carrier pigeon. You know the drill by now. And speaking of LinkedIn, I actually have one more thing that I would like to tell you about. If you didn't already know before I sign off for the day, I've started a LinkedIn newsletter, which is really exciting for me and I hope you've already checked it out. And it's exciting for the Utilimarc team too, because what we wanted to do is give you an exclusive behind the scenes look at the fleet industry every single week, whether it's our best tips and tricks for data management, wanting to talk about topics that are buzzing around the industry similar like we do on Fleet FYIs. Basically, we are bringing that behind the scenes exclusive look into the fleet industry to you right on LinkedIn in short, digestible additions of our newsletter.

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So if you haven't already yet, make sure you search This Week In Fleet. You can search it by the hashtag, or you can search the newsletter on LinkedIn itself. This Week In Fleet, you'll find our newsletter that comes out every single week on Fridays, and I'm really looking forward to hearing what you think. Anyways, until next Friday, that is all from me. Ciao.

(12:16):

Hey there. I think this is the time that I should cue the virtual high five, because you've just finished listening to another episode of the Fleet FYIs podcast. If you're already wanting more content, head over to utilimarc.com, which is Utilimarc with a 'C', U-T-I-L-I-M-A-R-C.com for this episode, show notes and extra insights coming straight from our analyst to you. That's all from me this week. So until next time, I'll catch you later.