7 ms·

I've always thought the concern of future generations finding a radioactive waste disposal site is overblown and is one of the weaker arguments advanced by the

• racer-v 9y ago
  > doesn't it make more sense to invest in carbon-neutral power technology like nuclear and maybe help stave off a potential collapse Very big maybe. Given the extensive track record of human civilizations collapsing (Angkor Wat, Maya, etc) I'd suggest that investing in carbon-neutral tech is no guarantee there won't be more.
• JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  > We won't go poking through waste disposal sites for no good reason We don't need a global collapse to make disposal sites problematic. Imagine the total dissolution--think post-Ghadaffi Libya or Iraq and Syria at the height of ISIL's power--of a state containing nuclear waste. Keeping nearby civilians, who could have forgotten or never known of the hazard, from harm seems like a good enough reason to give this some thought. (I agree with your general sentiment, however.)
  • u801e 9y ago
    > Imagine the total dissolution Even that doesn't have to happen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident
    • wjn0 9y ago
      Having never heard of this event before, the fact that this has been called one of the worst nuclear events, speaks to just how tightly nuclear waste from energy production is regulated, in my opinion.
    • YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
      Perhaps more relevant are the accidents in Tamiku (Estonia), and Lia Lilo (Georgia), that followed shortly after the dissolution of the USSR and involve the inappropriate handling or complete abandonment of radioactive sources: [1] http://www-pub.iaea.org/books/IAEABooks/4738/The-Radiological-Accident-in-Tammiku http://www-pub.iaea.org/books/IAEABooks/4738/The-Radiologica... [2] http://www-pub.iaea.org/books/IAEAbooks/10602/The-Radiological-Accident-in-Lia-Georgia http://www-pub.iaea.org/books/IAEAbooks/10602/The-Radiologic... [3] http://www-pub.iaea.org/books/IAEABooks/5968/The-Radiological-Accident-in-Lilo http://www-pub.iaea.org/books/IAEABooks/5968/The-Radiologica...
  • wbl 9y ago
    What is the actual risk compared to living in mountains or on top of granite?
    • TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
      I don't know why this comment was down voted. Living on top of granite at altitude is a fairly good yardstick for radiation exposure comparison / risk evaluation, as far as the layperson's (that's me!) understanding goes.
    • tzahola 9y ago
      Or working in a banana warehouse. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_equivalent_dose https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_equivalent_dose
• lifeformed 9y ago
  Yes, it sounds like a case of premature optimization. Optimize the safety of the worst case, or change up the whole algorithm (of power generation) that prevents the worst case scenario from happening in the first place?
• has2k1 9y ago
  > Barring a major collapse, we are unlikely to forget about them ... It is not a given that generations that live through changing times (whether regressing/progressing technologically) will maintain the same priorities and convictions. For example, imagine there are 100 (some number much bigger than 1) radioactive waste sites scattered around locations with different economic capabilities. Then a discovery is made that, though costly enables complete recycling/cleanup of the nuclear waste. Some locations are able to cleanup and some are not. The emergence of a solution reduces the perceived danger posed by nuclear waste. The longer it takes for all the locations address the issue, the easier it becomes to forget about it.
• ubernostrum 9y ago
  We won't go poking through waste disposal sites for no good reason. And yet earlier today a discussion on reddit sent me once again to the Goiânia incident, in which that was precisely what happened: an abandoned medical facility was raided for scrap, which happened to include a cesium radiotherapy source. 4 people dead, hundreds of others exposed, expensive cleanup operation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident
  • vilhelm_s 9y ago
    And, to tie back to the original article, accidents like this one prompted the creation of a new warning symbol for enclosed radiation sources, which is designed to to rely of people being able to read any particular language or being familiar with the "radiation" trefoil. https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/new-symbol-launched-warn-public-about-radiation-dangers-0 https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/new-symbol-launched-war...
    • YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
      The assumption that is made however is that whoever approaches a radioactive source will be able to understand the new sign. Another assumption is that this person will believe the sign- for instance, Egyptian Pharaohs went to great lengths to ward people off their buried treasures but their tombs were robbed anyway, by grave robbers who simply figured out it was all to keep them away from the goods. This concern was big in the mind of Gregory Benford and his team who designed the thorn fields etc- that a sign telling you to keep off may just be read as "here be treasure". Finally, the dearth of knowledge among the majority of the population on nuclear physics should not be underestimated. In the Goiania accident, and other similar cases, people realised that the radioactive sources they had found were important and potentially valuable, because they exhibited uncommon properties, like glowing in the dark or emitting heat (in Lia, Georgia, a 90Sr source with an activity of 1295 TBq was used as a heater by folks gathering wood in the forest). So they kept those sources, putting them in pockets and taking them home, to show their families and then probably looking for a way to cash in on them, until they were taken to hospital with strange illnesses. These actually seem to be pretty clear patterns of human activity and they don't seem to be deterred by simple signage, which is often present on medical equipment etc.
• IntronExon 9y ago
  We won't go poking through waste disposal sites for no good reason We do just that, for the good reason that archaeology thrives on the study of garbage. Middens are invaluable resources, but historically there was no danger that would last through the ages. Now future archaeologists will have to worry about radioactive hazard, chemical hazards, and god knows what else. The real horror might be coming across some black site storing or studying NBC agents. We’re a messy species, and a lucky one so far, but luck never lasts.
  • srtjstjsj 9y ago
    Archaeologists have died investigating booby-trapped tombs. Nothing new under the sun.
    • ben_w 9y ago
      I thought that only happened in fiction. Examples?
      • tzahola 9y ago
        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_the_pharaohs https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_the_pharaohs
        • ben_w 9y ago
          > The evidence for curses relating to King Tutankhamun is considered to be so meager that Donald B. Redford viewed it as "unadulterated clap trap".[3] Almost all of the supposedly related deaths definitely didn’t come from the tombs.
    • IntronExon 9y ago
      Try to find a real-life example of that, I’ve never been able to.
    • kjs3 9y ago
      Yeah, but the booby-trap historically wasn't weaponized smallpox or anthrax, or spent fuel rods, that don't just kill the archaeologist, but do so slow enough and can be conveniently carried out of the dump to kill people far beyond.
• justin66 9y ago
  > Barring a major collapse, we are unlikely to forget about them, either That is a backwards way of looking at the problem. Creating labels such that future generations can identify harmful stuff after a collapse is much easier than guaranteeing a major collapse will not eventually occur. If you are thinking long term, why not just tick it off the list? > The only scenario where we forget about these sites and the dangers of them is some hypothetical future collapse of civilization, where records are gone and the survivors have regressed to a pre-industrial understanding of the world. > If you're an optimist, you don't expect that scenario to happen. But suppose it could - doesn't it make more sense to invest in carbon-neutral power technology like nuclear and maybe help stave off a potential collapse, rather than worry about a small number of the survivors dying of radiation sickness? Suddenly, sharply regressing to nineteenth century industrial-era steam tech would probably be more than enough to make people stop researching the finer points of where the previous civilization buried its forgotten stuff. The interesting part if you're pro-nuclear is that one way to help those people in that future calamity is to use nuclear today and leave the relatively easy-to-use fossil fuels in the earth so those future people, in their dire straights and lessened technological status, can use energy and rebuild without having to figure out how to create and operate a nuclear reactor. But none of that is an argument against making sure nuclear waste is well labeled and well concealed and so on.
  • roenxi 9y ago
    It isn't at all backwards, it is an argument that there is no problem beyond any other industrial process. If a hypothetical future society doesn't have the technology and wherewithal to identify a nuclear waste dump then the situation will be so catastrophic that accidentally stumbling into a nuclear waste dump isn't going to register with said hypotheticals. France produces 10g/citizen/year of waste [1]. This is a tiny volume, I've seen slag heaps from pre-modern lead mines (thinking the 70s) that are bigger than that that will sit there polluting waterways and whatnot. Lead poisoning in lead mining towns is one of the long list of things that is probably worse than Chernobyl. This is not a challenge that would register in the public discourse if nuclear radiation was visible like electromagnetic radiation. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France#Environmental_impact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France#Enviro...
• Animats 9y ago
  I've always thought the concern of future generations finding a radioactive waste disposal site is overblown The most likely problem is someone building or farming on top of a low-level radiation site. High-level sites are more deeply buried, and are only a risk to miners that have serious digging equipment but no radiation meters.
• quotemstr 9y ago
  Most anti-nuclear people don't appreciate that radioactivity is inversely proportional to half-life. The waste that's really dangerous isn't long-lived, and the long-lived waste isn't all that dangerous.
  • abstractbeliefs 9y ago
    That's almost worse in this context: a place that kills within hours will be shunned quickly after being (re)discovered, after killing only a small handful of people. Somewhere that subtly poisons over twenty years could blight multiple generations with radiation related illness that a less scientifically sophisticated culture is unable to tie to the materials we hide.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
  >> If you're an optimist, you don't expect that scenario to happen. But suppose it could - doesn't it make more sense to invest in carbon-neutral power technology like nuclear and maybe help stave off a potential collapse, rather than worry about a small number of the survivors dying of radiation sickness? Radioactive waste stays radioactive for a very long time and its radioactivity is not reduced by the number of people irradiated. That means that for example, a few (different) people a year can keep getting irradiated for a very long time -thousands of years- leading to thousands of deaths in the long run. Then of course there's the issue of "a small number of people" looting the radioactive materials from their burial sites and bringing it back to their community, where others admire it for its fluorescence, use it as a dye or give it to their kids to play with, therefore irradiating and possibly wiping out entire communities. Btw, this has happened in the present: see the IAEA report on the irradiation accident in Goiânia [1]. Far from a fringe concern of "the anti-nuclear movement", safety of use and disposal of nuclear material is an acknowledged responsibility of modern nuclear scientists. _____________ [1] http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/Pub815_web.pdf http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/Pub815_web.pdf