This is premised on the idea that some future civilization would dig kilometres deep in some random and remote location and just happen to come across some nuclear waste stored in a space that is no larger than a small house. It's also presumes that future civilizations will have no recollection whatsoever of humanity storing nuclear fuel, and thus take no measures to avoid it.
This seems really unlikely to me. Given that we're faced with the threat of apocalyptic climate change today, it's a risk I'm willing to take.
Ancient Egypt was a super advanced civilization continuously existing for 4000 years! Yet shortly after the decline nobody could read Hieroglyphs anymore.
We don't know what the future holds. Lets say in 50 years a low intensity Gamma Ray Burst hits earth and destroys all digital information but fries only half of all living creatures. The survivors dig trough the trash of the past to get to the rare earth metals they need to rebuild their civilization and find this really neat bunker with those funny signs...
> However, even a storage space hundreds of meters below the ground might not be able to withstand the pressures of one or more future glaciations with thick sheets of ice resting on top of the rock, deforming it and creating internal strains.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_geological_repository
We have made surprisingly little progress in the regard of long term storage, because the timespans involved and the potential dangers are not manageable by humans atm.
The question is do we want to put more on the pile or not? If the alternative is to destroy our planets with coal and co the answer should be clear.
But take Germany for example. We've built up wind energy from 0 to more output than nuclear energy in 15 years. I think this is preferable to nuclear energy which is not that dangerous but has the potential to become a unmanageable catastrophe at some point.
When we look at global warming there are two nations that need to act. China and the US, producing around 50% of Green House Gases. Both have more wind, way more space and potentially more money than Germany (China announced last year that they are gonna spend 1.5 Trillion USD in the next decades to become greener).
> glaciation
Seems like a very future problem. If humans are around by then, we can move the stuff easily.
> We have made surprisingly little progress in the regard of long term storage
Agreed.
But this is not exactly a problem for nuclear power. (Even if it has become a talking point.) Nuclear waste storage is a boring and simple problem. (It needs cooling and physical security.) It should be put simply on a big remote boring military base - plenty of them in Nevada - so people don't worry about it being close to where they live.
Long term storage is a long term problem it needs basic research, and simply the continuation of our civilization, which then puts the waste where currently it thinks it should be.
Eg. it's completely possible that 500 years from now we'll finally recycle it, and then dump the rest into the Sun just for the lulz. (Or put it on an inert rock.)
Though I think we should build the amazing big spikes someone proposed to mark the site as "bad": https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/ten-thousand-years/
https://www.abc.net.au/triplej/programs/hack/temple-of-doom-...
> I think this is preferable to nuclear energy which is not that dangerous but has the potential to become a unmanageable catastrophe at some point.
Agreed!
No, we absolutely are not.
"Long half-life" = "less radioactive". By definition.
Do you know what the half life of CO2 is? Infinity.
CO2 has a half life of ~ 10 years in our atmosphere btw.
Nuclear fuel itself isn't radioactively dangerous, it's dangerous because it's a heavy metal (like lead).
After nuclear fuel is reacted, it produces a bunch of nuclear decay products. Some of these decay products have a half-life of 10s of years, which are the problems: they're short enough to be dangerously radioactive, but long enough that they need to be handled carefully for a long time. But not for 10s of thousands of years.
Most of what you've read about plutonium is patent nonsense. For one, it isn't even close to being the "most toxic substance known". You can pick up a lump of it and hold in in your hand. You'll be fine. Really. It is an alpha emitter, and alpha radiation can be stopped by your skin or even a piece of paper. You'd have to eat it before you saw any ill effects.
Not to mention that plutonium is a useful nuclear fuel. It's not going to be left lying around.
You do know that the ocean has megatons of uranium in it? Why aren't you concerned about that?
For that matter, we could grind up all the nuclear waste ever produced and disperse it in the ocean. It wouldn't change the radioactivity of sea water by any significant degree.
The Soviets used to dump their scrap sub reactors in the Arctic Ocean whole. There are a bunch of them up there.
> CO2 has a half life of ~ 10 years in our atmosphere btw.
Oh? So we can just wait until things start to get uncomfortably warm, then stop cranking out CO2 for a decade or two and everything will be better?
Good to know.
