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>It's a mess we won't be able to clean up for many generations. With current generation tech ? I love how people project problems we have now on to long time

>It's a mess we won't be able to clean up for many generations. With current generation tech ? I love how people project problems we have now on to long time spans like that makes any sense given how fast the technology is moving, especially if the scale of problem changes giving more incentives to solve the problem. Like all the people saying that in 100 years we'll starve to death because global warming will cause arable land to flood - meanwhile we know how to produce food from stuff like algae even now and could scale that up relatively fast if needed, GMO advances are almost guaranteed to give us a way to efficiently produce macro nutrients from simple organisms if we just don't figure out efficient ways to synthesize them directly on that time span. It's how people used to worry "In 50 years, every street in London will be buried under nine feet of manure", http://watervat.blogspot.hr/2016/02/great-horse-manure-crisis-of-1894.html http://watervat.blogspot.hr/2016/02/great-horse-manure-crisi..., worrying about long term problems based on current technology and scale is ridiculous - if nuclear scaled up it would put even more incentives to deal with the waste and 60 years is a lot of time to come up with ways to deal with it. It just requires dedicated investment/work.

konschubert 10y ago
So you think it is silly that people are worried about the impact of something because you are sure that technology will advance so fast that it will be able to take care of this. Your assumption is wrong, though. Technology has not always advanced in the history of mankind. And it also hasn't advanced faster and faster.
- rubber_duck 10y ago
  No I think that if the problem reaches a certain scale, more incentives will be there to solve it and on a long enough time scale it will get solved one way or another. I'm not saying nuclear doesn't have problems, I'm just saying 50-100 year long impact is impossible to asses realistically and should not really be the deciding factor.
Tepix 10y ago
I agree that future tech can help with the cleanup (robots are a good example). However it's still reckless to leave this huge burden for future generations. The first nuclear reactor was built in 1942, 75 years ago. Our tech has advanced spectacularly. It's still an unsolved issue. Using the same arguments we can just continue with the CO2 and say "future tech will reverse global warming".
- rubber_duck 10y ago
  >future tech will reverse global warming Or - more simply - will allow us to live with the consequences of global warming. Global warming doesn't mean that the planet will implode. It will have huge impact on the ecosystem but we already have the technology to isolate ourselves from the adverse effects of that - it's just a matter of scaling and perfecting it. Instead of dealing with manure you create cars. Instead of saving agriculture, climate, etc. you create controlled livable environments that aren't be impacted by the environmental changes.
- zatte 10y ago
  > It's still an unsolved issue. Reducing the waste (future tech) and managing it are two different things. In Sweden there are far gone plans for deep underground storage with significant R&D (www.skb.com). Though untested, as we need several thousands years to be truly sure of its effectiveness, I would still argue that it is a close to solved problem but with a fair degree of uncertainty due to its' long time span. > Using the same arguments we can just continue with the CO2 and say "future tech will reverse global warming". The big difference is that at lot of CO2 emitters doesn't have to store or pay the full price of their bi-product. It is a huge difference in incentives.
tcbawo 10y ago
What is the mitigating factor with cleanup? Do we lack materials that can survive the extreme levels of heat and radiation? Are we unwilling to pay the cost? Or, is the problem a lack of sufficiently complex robotics that can perform the necessary tasks at a distance? If the problem is materials, we're in trouble.

konschubert 10y ago

So you think it is silly that people are worried about the impact of something because you are sure that technology will advance so fast that it will be able to take care of this. Your assumption is wrong, though. Technology has not always advanced in the history of mankind. And it also hasn't advanced faster and faster.

rubber_duck 10y ago
No I think that if the problem reaches a certain scale, more incentives will be there to solve it and on a long enough time scale it will get solved one way or another. I'm not saying nuclear doesn't have problems, I'm just saying 50-100 year long impact is impossible to asses realistically and should not really be the deciding factor.

Tepix 10y ago

I agree that future tech can help with the cleanup (robots are a good example). However it's still reckless to leave this huge burden for future generations. The first nuclear reactor was built in 1942, 75 years ago. Our tech has advanced spectacularly. It's still an unsolved issue. Using the same arguments we can just continue with the CO2 and say "future tech will reverse global warming".

rubber_duck 10y ago
>future tech will reverse global warming Or - more simply - will allow us to live with the consequences of global warming. Global warming doesn't mean that the planet will implode. It will have huge impact on the ecosystem but we already have the technology to isolate ourselves from the adverse effects of that - it's just a matter of scaling and perfecting it. Instead of dealing with manure you create cars. Instead of saving agriculture, climate, etc. you create controlled livable environments that aren't be impacted by the environmental changes.
zatte 10y ago
> It's still an unsolved issue. Reducing the waste (future tech) and managing it are two different things. In Sweden there are far gone plans for deep underground storage with significant R&D (www.skb.com). Though untested, as we need several thousands years to be truly sure of its effectiveness, I would still argue that it is a close to solved problem but with a fair degree of uncertainty due to its' long time span. > Using the same arguments we can just continue with the CO2 and say "future tech will reverse global warming". The big difference is that at lot of CO2 emitters doesn't have to store or pay the full price of their bi-product. It is a huge difference in incentives.

tcbawo 10y ago

What is the mitigating factor with cleanup? Do we lack materials that can survive the extreme levels of heat and radiation? Are we unwilling to pay the cost? Or, is the problem a lack of sufficiently complex robotics that can perform the necessary tasks at a distance? If the problem is materials, we're in trouble.