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U.S. put nuclear waste under a dome on a Pacific island. Now it’s cracking open

RappingBoomer 7y ago
so we just have to go in and fix it up. No big deal.
Grazester 7y ago
Paywalled so I cant read but that dome in cover something with a porous bottom and rising sea level isn't helping either. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=autMHvj3exA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=autMHvj3exA
- jdpedrie 7y ago
  Clear site cookies and local storage, or open in private session.
mimixco 7y ago
Great documentary on this, free to watch. [0] [0] https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/dome/ https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/dome/
781 7y ago
More FUD. Nuclear energy is the safest energy.
- Someone1234 7y ago
  This is waste from nuclear weapons testing, it was concreted over as a "temporary measure" and now it seems like a more permanent solution needs to be found. Unclear why you believe nuclear energy (by which I assume you mean nuclear power generation) is relevant.
  - stonogo 7y ago
    For the same reason many readers will assume this headline is about power: "nuclear waste" is a term generally associated with reactor byproducts or weapons decommissioning. Previous articles about this dome have used terms like "radioactive contamination" or "fallout-contaminated soil" instead, which does not have the connotations of nuclear reactor programs. I suppose those terms don't "pop" as well in headlines.
  - OrgNet 7y ago
    Maybe they need to learn how to blow up their weapons all the way so that no radioactive waste is left (for testing)
- gaze 7y ago
  I've sorta reached the conclusion that nuclear energy is the safest form of energy if everyone is well behaved and disciplined about it. On the other hand, given the wrong incentives, you might just stow nuclear waste where it's cheapest and where you can get away with it, and then not be penalized when the containment mechanism you cheaped out on fails... or maybe you just conveniently forget to do maintenance on it as the responsibility for doing maintenance somehow conveniently evaporates due to some bureaucracy. I think the debate isn't over whether or not nuclear power itself is safe, it's the debate over whether or not humans under capitalism are to be trusted to behave responsibly with this technology. Nuclear power isn't just the technology in isolation... humans are an intrinsic part of it.
  - vixen99 7y ago
    Humans under what, then? I wonder if you're aware that the socialist economies of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union were not just economic failures; they were also environmental catastrophes. Jeffrey Sachs has commented that the socialist nations had “some of the worst environmental problems in the entire globe.”. Companies can be held to account (failure to do so is another story) but try that with a centrally run enterprise.
    - gaze 7y ago
      "failure to do so is another story" How is that 'another story?' It's THE story.
  - wnkrshm 7y ago
    I think that nuclear power generation has been relatively safe over almost a century exactly due to systems engineering, incorporating procedures and the potential for human error. I also think that you are right that some of the systems surrounding nuclear energy are suboptimally managed in places (and are often intransparent for the public, which I think is one of the factors why people are still afraid). And I think it's because nuclear power generation is a social commitment on a very long time scale - and humans aren't very good at dealing with cause and effect over long time scales. While there is, just like in aeronautics, a paper trail connecting to each engineer and expert working on a system, it does not matter whether society can identify a person that is responsible for a decision made half a century ago. Think about leaky permanent[0] waste storage close to densely populated areas (like in Germany). Analyzing what went wrong is suddenly a task for historians, not for engineers. And history is of course necessarily colored in perspective - politicans can point to an expert who was wrong half a century ago. In engineering and safety culture, iteration is necessary to approach an optimal system - the problem is here: How can we learn from what happened decades ago when the cause wasn't a part, a design or a process, something that can be simulated with a high degree of confidence? But a decision necessarily based on lots of unknowns? What can we do to be able to learn from it next time? [0] officially temporary but due to how it was done effectively permanent Edit: Markup
- calibas 7y ago
  Can we ship all the nuclear waste to your house? Don't worry, it's the safest kind of energy there is. Or maybe "safe" isn't the right term for something that also produces some of the most deadly substances that we know of? It's "safe" so long as nothing goes wrong, and everything is stored correctly. Of course, that regularly proves to not be the case: https://www.newsweek.com/ohio-school-closed-enriched-uranium-discovered-radiation-cancer-1424704 https://www.newsweek.com/ohio-school-closed-enriched-uranium...
  - ccffph 7y ago
    It's very worrying to see comments like this become more and more common on HN. Yes, I will take the waste. If it's in the containers we've developed specifically for this purpose, yes. It beats the current situation in the US where everyone stores waste on site because politicians can't decide where to put it because of people like you. Modern waste, with proper precautions, is safe for long term disposal and storage. I cannot stress this enough. If you don't believe me, this website has plenty of information regarding nuclear power, straight from the source. It is developed and run by the UN. Based on your misinformation, I strongly urge you to pore over this content and then attempt to reevaluate your own question. http://www.world-nuclear.org/Information-Library.aspx http://www.world-nuclear.org/Information-Library.aspx
    - Krasnol 7y ago
      > world-nuclear.org There is nothing more sad out there than linking to a homepage the nuclear lobby uses to drive this artificial nuclear hype we've seen here in the last months.
      - mikestew 7y ago
        That says nothing about the truthiness of the page. Let's hypothetically assume that every word on the page is true. Would one not expect the "nuclear lobby" to link to it? Let's assume every word on the page is a lie, but favorable toward nuclear energy. Would one not expect... There is nothing more sad... I can think of two things: 1. A lack of second order thinking. 2. Dead puppies.
jason_zig 7y ago
Does anyone else feel helpless when reading stuff like this? Is there anything I can do to make things better in these scenarios?
- acct1771 7y ago
  Tell people around you to stop implicitly trusting centralized power.
  - NotSammyHagar 7y ago
    How about it's never too late to work to rectify the mistakes of the past. We at least have to do our best as human beings. I can't do anything about something 1000 years ago, but I can help that person I saw on the street maybe, or I can add my voice to those who decry some terrible behavior of the government. I can vote. I can go to city councils and speak out.
  - addicted 7y ago
    Who goes around implicitly trusting central power. In any aspect of their lives. I can literally think of no one I know who wouldn’t respond to me telling them “hey you should stop implicitly trusting central power” by asking what drugs I’m on if I think they implicitly trust central power. I guess this straw man is necessary to create so some can beat it down, but as far as I can tell such people don’t actually exist.
    - ben509 7y ago
      > Who goes around implicitly trusting central power. In any aspect of their lives. It's required for the government to provide a "social safety net" and more broadly for the Progressive vision of society. That includes Progressive-era reforms in education and retirement, as well as Progressive inspired reforms in healthcare and welfare, esp. the Great Society. These reforms are predicated on the notion of a government agency collecting statistical data and reviewing comments from the public to determine policy that provides baseline services and acts as a buffer to economic variance. Note also "implicit" trust. Trust is transitive: you might trust in some service the government provides without necessarily understanding that the service relies on some centralized power. Thus you might not explicitly trust a central authority, but because you rely on the services it provides you may be implicitly trusting it.
anovikov 7y ago
I don't think there's so much activity left after so many years
- ocdtrekkie 7y ago
  Plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24,110 years. Source: Wikipedia.
erentz 7y ago
The US needs to go in and clean up this mess and should feel very obligated to move quickly on this, but is hasn’t. See also this article from 2015 [1] and folks may enjoy this video for the visuals of it [2]. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/03/runit-dome-pacific-radioactive-waste https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/03/runit-dome-pac... [2] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=autMHvj3exA https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=autMHvj3exA
- _bxg1 7y ago
  "The US needs to go _____ and should feel very obligated to move quickly on this, but it hasn't." Same old story. I think most of the world has given up expecting the U.S. to be any kind of responsible world citizen.
- mc32 7y ago
  There also the ~900 Tbq disposed by the then USSR in the Baltic, not to mention the vast quantities that ended up in the Arctic Ocean. But definitely the US should improve that encasement or otherwise minimize the dangers.
- sailfast 7y ago
  That would be a nice thing to do, but per the article in 1983 the Marshall Islands traded US liability for nuclear issues as part of their move to self-government. That is not to say that some Federal-level support is not warranted like other Superfund sites, but that it may not be the total and complete responsibility of the US Federal government to resolve the issue, as agreed to legally by both parties.
  - erentz 7y ago
    Shivetya up thread posted a PDF report that's quite an interesting read, so it's not being totally ignored by the US gov. I agree they signed an agreement, still I'd expect us to do the clean up, agreement aside, we made the mess, have what's needed to fix it. The Marshall Islander's are a poor nation that could not afford to fix this without assistance. It's the neighborly thing to do.
  - 7y ago
Shivetya 7y ago
PDF of report done in 2013 [1] which basically says and leaks will rapidly dilute. The key to remember is the lagoon and surrounding areas are already far more polluted than what this dome may leak. Besides, if ever want a real scare go look at the maps for all the chemical munitions dumped in our oceans that we know about [2] - does not include normal munitions and such. So while it is a problem it is not the real problem that already exist. [1] https://marshallislands.llnl.gov/ccc/Hamilton_LLNL-TR-648143_final.pdf https://marshallislands.llnl.gov/ccc/Hamilton_LLNL-TR-648143... [2] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/decaying-weapons-world-war-II-threaten-waters-worldwide-180961046/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/decaying-weapo...
- Someone 7y ago
  News from a few weeks ago https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/05/02/first-world-war-mustard-gas-leaks-belgian-underwater-grave/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/05/02/first-world-war-...: ”Deadly mustard gas has leaked from a First World War underwater “weapons cemetery” in the North Sea, close to the Belgian coast” Those were trace amounts, so there is not much immediate danger, but things can get worse. And for normal munitions, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mines_in_the_Battle_of_Messines_(1917)#List_of_the_mines https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mines_in_the_Battle_of_Messi... probably lists a few of the scariest (a few 10,000+ kg stashes of explosives buried in Belgium since World War One. One of them exploded in 1955 after a lightning strike, showing that they were still dangerous after fortie-is years; a few others still buried somewhere)
  - alexwasserman 7y ago
    And also - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Richard_Montgomery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Richard_Montgomery The Doomsday Wreck.
- Tade0 7y ago
  FTA on the town’s main drag proudly advertise fish and chips made with Baltic-caught cod on their menus. My friends from this area generally advise against eating at any place which advertises this too strongly. To the locals it's actually a turn off to begin with.
JSeymourATL 7y ago
Tangentially related: What ever became of Taylor Wilson? > https://www.businessinsider.com/taylor-wilson-taking-the-energy-industry-by-storm-2017-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/taylor-wilson-taking-the-ene...
cameldrv 7y ago
Pretty bad reporting. OK, it contains Pu-239, but how much? If it leaks, what effects will that have?
- cyrix100 7y ago
  This is the correct thought process. The linked article from llnl [1] states that “The final plan called for (1) removing all radioactive and non-radioactive debris (equipment, concrete, scrap metal, etc.), (2) removing all soil that exceeded 14.8 Bq (400 pCi) of plutonium per gram of soil, (3) removing or amending soil between 1.48 and 14.8 Bq (40 and 400 pCi) of plutonium per gram of soil, determined on a case-by-case basis depending on ultimate land-use, and 4) disposing and stabilizing all this accumulated radioactive waste into a crater on Runit Island and capping it with a concrete dome.” It goes on to state that “A estimated total of 73,000 cubic meters of surface soil...was recovered by scapping and deposited in Cactus crater on Runit Island.” Unfortunately, it does not provide an average specific activity for the material stored, only a lower limit threshold. If we assume it was near this lower limit of 14.8 bq threshold (could be the case depending on how often case (3) was used) and assume mostly plutonium-239. Since isotopic distribution is unknown, this is a conservative assumption because the longer half-life will yield a larger mass in the calculation. The molar density can be calculated from the specific activity listed: Na/m = a x hl/ln(2) = 14.8[decay/s] x 23110[yrs]/ln(2) = 1.57e13 atoms/gram = 2.61e-11 mol/gram The mass of the dirt collected will be assumed to be wet sand with a density of 1905 kg/m^3 [2] (note that density is actually slightly higher than this due to the plutonium contained). And finally, the volume collected is 73,000 cubic meters, or 1.39e11 grams. So the total amount of plutonium is: 2.61e-11[mol/g] x 1.39e11[g] = 3.63 mol So our envelope calculation yields about 870 grams of plutonium. So how accurate is this? It is probably on the high side after reading the paper posted by Shivetya [3]. They cite a total inventory of 545 GBq. Using the assumptions above, one would expect an inventory of 2058 GBq. As for the effects, that’s difficult to tell. Really the two scenarios that come to mind are a constant leaching into the environment or a disaster that results in the total mass being dumped. In the latter case a disaster of that magnitude would likely disperse the material in a biased direction. In this case it would dilute relatively quickly. Impacts from the radiation would probably be apparent close by in the biased direction. A constant leak would depend on the leach rate and leak locations. The NRC defines monthly sewer release limits of material in Table 3 of 10 CFR Part 20 Appendix B - standards for protection against radiation. The number given for Pu is 84 uCi or 3.108e6 Bq. Based on the plutonium inventory calculated and neglecting material decay, the material could leach out within NRC limits over a period of 55 thousand years (2058e9/3.108e6/12). Note that this number is likely highly inflated given the assumption that all radioactive material is Pu-239 and the comparison in [3]. Using the number from [3] and assuming all activity is Pu, the duration would be 14 thousand years. However this is a rough analysis that does not account for isotopic distributions, so please take the results with a grain of salt. [1]:https://marshallislands.llnl.gov/enewetak.php#cleanup https://marshallislands.llnl.gov/enewetak.php#cleanup [2]:https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/amp/dirt-mud-densities-d_1727.html https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/amp/dirt-mud-densities-d_... [3]:https://marshallislands.llnl.gov/ccc/Hamilton_LLNL-TR-648143_final.pdf https://marshallislands.llnl.gov/ccc/Hamilton_LLNL-TR-648143...
api 7y ago
One "meta" way of looking at things like this is that it represents a part of the technical debt left behind by the industrial revolution. Eventually we have to go back and fix this stuff, but as with technical debt in most code bases we tend to ignore it. Unfortunately technical debt is subject to compound interest, so the longer we ignore it the more costly it is to eventually deal with.
colordrops 7y ago
I hear things like "we should go full nuclear, modern nuclear reactors are safe" all the time, yet this ignores externalities, unknown unknowns, human incompetence, and the unexpected. Who would expect the ocean to rise over your nuclear waste dome? Have people suggesting this forgotten the allegory of the unsinkable ship the Titanic? Entropy always wins in the end.
- Dduuggrr 7y ago
  That's true. They used same words before... But after Chernobyl and Fukushima... How they can expect we believe them?
  - gtirloni 7y ago
    This is not a matter of faith in some group of people ("them"). What's your point? That the whole nuclear industry, full of scientists and engineers can't be trusted with their studies?
    - colordrops 7y ago
      All it takes is a single point of failure, one scientist that got the calculations wrong. That's what happened with Meltdown/Spectre vulnerability. An academic paper that many chip manufacturers based their designs on turned out to be flawed, causing a vulnerability across architectures. The nuclear industry isn't any different. Ironically the Meltdown vulnerability could have potentially been used by bad actors to hack and take out a nuclear reactor.
      - gtirloni 7y ago
        You can say that about anything humans have ever built.
        colordrops 7y ago
        Exactly, so how is everyone so sure that "modern nuclear reactors" will encounter no problems?
Circuits 7y ago
Some messes are just too big to clean up. They knew going into the testing that it was going to kill thousands and thousands of natives and effect native people in a terrible way for generations to come but they didn't give a shit then and they dont give a shit now. That's why most of the natives have 6 fingers and 4 toes, are sterile and the land is poisoned and will stay poisoned. You can deny it all you want but if it was not true shit like this wouldn't be so common place. We aren't the only ones and this isn't the only site and it's not just radiation, its carbon, its carcinogens, it's plastic... there is a whole boat load of shit like this that everyone pretends to care about when their talking about it with their husband or best friend but seems to have no trouble sleeping off the next day. What makes us think we can all just act like animals one day and civilized humans that next... I have no clue but that's reality. People ask: "Oh what can I do, I am so small and the problem is so big!" idk but I do know this if you ACTUALLY cared you would figure out some way to help. What's the difference between pretending to care and actually caring you ask? It's simple, doing something about it versus talking about doing something about it, it's that simple, that's the difference. Write your governor, send some money, do anything or just admit you don't care, and do nothing. That's what the US government is counting on you to do and that's why they got away with this and that's why they will get away with similar shit in the future.
teslaberry 7y ago
without question the lack of overfishing in these waters, like in chernobyl ensures that if you did a real study on the health of this area, biodiversity is thriving, because people and development are lacking. it's amazing how much nuclear fear mongering there is , persistenly. with all the idiots listening to washington post and other venues about shutting down nuclear power , by fear mongering it with nuclear weapons. alas, this is how progress dies, and artificial scarcity is imposed, no less of a low c02 and zero emission source of energy.
fuckamerica 7y ago
Sounds like typical thing U.S. would do
sunstone 7y ago
The people who designed it have now passed on so it has met its designed lifetime.

so we just have to go in and fix it up. No big deal.

Paywalled so I cant read but that dome in cover something with a porous bottom and rising sea level isn't helping either. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=autMHvj3exA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=autMHvj3exA

jdpedrie 7y ago
Clear site cookies and local storage, or open in private session.

mimixco 7y ago

Great documentary on this, free to watch. [0] [0] https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/dome/ https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/dome/

781 7y ago

More FUD. Nuclear energy is the safest energy.

Someone1234 7y ago
This is waste from nuclear weapons testing, it was concreted over as a "temporary measure" and now it seems like a more permanent solution needs to be found. Unclear why you believe nuclear energy (by which I assume you mean nuclear power generation) is relevant.
- stonogo 7y ago
  For the same reason many readers will assume this headline is about power: "nuclear waste" is a term generally associated with reactor byproducts or weapons decommissioning. Previous articles about this dome have used terms like "radioactive contamination" or "fallout-contaminated soil" instead, which does not have the connotations of nuclear reactor programs. I suppose those terms don't "pop" as well in headlines.
- OrgNet 7y ago
  Maybe they need to learn how to blow up their weapons all the way so that no radioactive waste is left (for testing)
gaze 7y ago
I've sorta reached the conclusion that nuclear energy is the safest form of energy if everyone is well behaved and disciplined about it. On the other hand, given the wrong incentives, you might just stow nuclear waste where it's cheapest and where you can get away with it, and then not be penalized when the containment mechanism you cheaped out on fails... or maybe you just conveniently forget to do maintenance on it as the responsibility for doing maintenance somehow conveniently evaporates due to some bureaucracy. I think the debate isn't over whether or not nuclear power itself is safe, it's the debate over whether or not humans under capitalism are to be trusted to behave responsibly with this technology. Nuclear power isn't just the technology in isolation... humans are an intrinsic part of it.
- vixen99 7y ago
  Humans under what, then? I wonder if you're aware that the socialist economies of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union were not just economic failures; they were also environmental catastrophes. Jeffrey Sachs has commented that the socialist nations had “some of the worst environmental problems in the entire globe.”. Companies can be held to account (failure to do so is another story) but try that with a centrally run enterprise.
  - gaze 7y ago
    "failure to do so is another story" How is that 'another story?' It's THE story.
- wnkrshm 7y ago
  I think that nuclear power generation has been relatively safe over almost a century exactly due to systems engineering, incorporating procedures and the potential for human error. I also think that you are right that some of the systems surrounding nuclear energy are suboptimally managed in places (and are often intransparent for the public, which I think is one of the factors why people are still afraid). And I think it's because nuclear power generation is a social commitment on a very long time scale - and humans aren't very good at dealing with cause and effect over long time scales. While there is, just like in aeronautics, a paper trail connecting to each engineer and expert working on a system, it does not matter whether society can identify a person that is responsible for a decision made half a century ago. Think about leaky permanent[0] waste storage close to densely populated areas (like in Germany). Analyzing what went wrong is suddenly a task for historians, not for engineers. And history is of course necessarily colored in perspective - politicans can point to an expert who was wrong half a century ago. In engineering and safety culture, iteration is necessary to approach an optimal system - the problem is here: How can we learn from what happened decades ago when the cause wasn't a part, a design or a process, something that can be simulated with a high degree of confidence? But a decision necessarily based on lots of unknowns? What can we do to be able to learn from it next time? [0] officially temporary but due to how it was done effectively permanent Edit: Markup
calibas 7y ago
Can we ship all the nuclear waste to your house? Don't worry, it's the safest kind of energy there is. Or maybe "safe" isn't the right term for something that also produces some of the most deadly substances that we know of? It's "safe" so long as nothing goes wrong, and everything is stored correctly. Of course, that regularly proves to not be the case: https://www.newsweek.com/ohio-school-closed-enriched-uranium-discovered-radiation-cancer-1424704 https://www.newsweek.com/ohio-school-closed-enriched-uranium...
- ccffph 7y ago
  It's very worrying to see comments like this become more and more common on HN. Yes, I will take the waste. If it's in the containers we've developed specifically for this purpose, yes. It beats the current situation in the US where everyone stores waste on site because politicians can't decide where to put it because of people like you. Modern waste, with proper precautions, is safe for long term disposal and storage. I cannot stress this enough. If you don't believe me, this website has plenty of information regarding nuclear power, straight from the source. It is developed and run by the UN. Based on your misinformation, I strongly urge you to pore over this content and then attempt to reevaluate your own question. http://www.world-nuclear.org/Information-Library.aspx http://www.world-nuclear.org/Information-Library.aspx
  - Krasnol 7y ago
    > world-nuclear.org There is nothing more sad out there than linking to a homepage the nuclear lobby uses to drive this artificial nuclear hype we've seen here in the last months.
    - mikestew 7y ago
      That says nothing about the truthiness of the page. Let's hypothetically assume that every word on the page is true. Would one not expect the "nuclear lobby" to link to it? Let's assume every word on the page is a lie, but favorable toward nuclear energy. Would one not expect... There is nothing more sad... I can think of two things: 1. A lack of second order thinking. 2. Dead puppies.

jason_zig 7y ago

Does anyone else feel helpless when reading stuff like this? Is there anything I can do to make things better in these scenarios?

acct1771 7y ago
Tell people around you to stop implicitly trusting centralized power.
- NotSammyHagar 7y ago
  How about it's never too late to work to rectify the mistakes of the past. We at least have to do our best as human beings. I can't do anything about something 1000 years ago, but I can help that person I saw on the street maybe, or I can add my voice to those who decry some terrible behavior of the government. I can vote. I can go to city councils and speak out.
- addicted 7y ago
  Who goes around implicitly trusting central power. In any aspect of their lives. I can literally think of no one I know who wouldn’t respond to me telling them “hey you should stop implicitly trusting central power” by asking what drugs I’m on if I think they implicitly trust central power. I guess this straw man is necessary to create so some can beat it down, but as far as I can tell such people don’t actually exist.
  - ben509 7y ago
    > Who goes around implicitly trusting central power. In any aspect of their lives. It's required for the government to provide a "social safety net" and more broadly for the Progressive vision of society. That includes Progressive-era reforms in education and retirement, as well as Progressive inspired reforms in healthcare and welfare, esp. the Great Society. These reforms are predicated on the notion of a government agency collecting statistical data and reviewing comments from the public to determine policy that provides baseline services and acts as a buffer to economic variance. Note also "implicit" trust. Trust is transitive: you might trust in some service the government provides without necessarily understanding that the service relies on some centralized power. Thus you might not explicitly trust a central authority, but because you rely on the services it provides you may be implicitly trusting it.

anovikov 7y ago

I don't think there's so much activity left after so many years

ocdtrekkie 7y ago
Plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24,110 years. Source: Wikipedia.

erentz 7y ago

The US needs to go in and clean up this mess and should feel very obligated to move quickly on this, but is hasn’t. See also this article from 2015 [1] and folks may enjoy this video for the visuals of it [2]. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/03/runit-dome-pacific-radioactive-waste https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/03/runit-dome-pac... [2] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=autMHvj3exA https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=autMHvj3exA

_bxg1 7y ago
"The US needs to go _____ and should feel very obligated to move quickly on this, but it hasn't." Same old story. I think most of the world has given up expecting the U.S. to be any kind of responsible world citizen.
mc32 7y ago
There also the ~900 Tbq disposed by the then USSR in the Baltic, not to mention the vast quantities that ended up in the Arctic Ocean. But definitely the US should improve that encasement or otherwise minimize the dangers.
sailfast 7y ago
That would be a nice thing to do, but per the article in 1983 the Marshall Islands traded US liability for nuclear issues as part of their move to self-government. That is not to say that some Federal-level support is not warranted like other Superfund sites, but that it may not be the total and complete responsibility of the US Federal government to resolve the issue, as agreed to legally by both parties.
- erentz 7y ago
  Shivetya up thread posted a PDF report that's quite an interesting read, so it's not being totally ignored by the US gov. I agree they signed an agreement, still I'd expect us to do the clean up, agreement aside, we made the mess, have what's needed to fix it. The Marshall Islander's are a poor nation that could not afford to fix this without assistance. It's the neighborly thing to do.
- 7y ago

Shivetya 7y ago

PDF of report done in 2013 [1] which basically says and leaks will rapidly dilute. The key to remember is the lagoon and surrounding areas are already far more polluted than what this dome may leak. Besides, if ever want a real scare go look at the maps for all the chemical munitions dumped in our oceans that we know about [2] - does not include normal munitions and such. So while it is a problem it is not the real problem that already exist. [1] https://marshallislands.llnl.gov/ccc/Hamilton_LLNL-TR-648143_final.pdf https://marshallislands.llnl.gov/ccc/Hamilton_LLNL-TR-648143... [2] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/decaying-weapons-world-war-II-threaten-waters-worldwide-180961046/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/decaying-weapo...

Someone 7y ago
News from a few weeks ago https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/05/02/first-world-war-mustard-gas-leaks-belgian-underwater-grave/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/05/02/first-world-war-...: ”Deadly mustard gas has leaked from a First World War underwater “weapons cemetery” in the North Sea, close to the Belgian coast” Those were trace amounts, so there is not much immediate danger, but things can get worse. And for normal munitions, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mines_in_the_Battle_of_Messines_(1917)#List_of_the_mines https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mines_in_the_Battle_of_Messi... probably lists a few of the scariest (a few 10,000+ kg stashes of explosives buried in Belgium since World War One. One of them exploded in 1955 after a lightning strike, showing that they were still dangerous after fortie-is years; a few others still buried somewhere)
- alexwasserman 7y ago
  And also - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Richard_Montgomery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Richard_Montgomery The Doomsday Wreck.
Tade0 7y ago
FTA on the town’s main drag proudly advertise fish and chips made with Baltic-caught cod on their menus. My friends from this area generally advise against eating at any place which advertises this too strongly. To the locals it's actually a turn off to begin with.

JSeymourATL 7y ago

Tangentially related: What ever became of Taylor Wilson? > https://www.businessinsider.com/taylor-wilson-taking-the-energy-industry-by-storm-2017-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/taylor-wilson-taking-the-ene...

cameldrv 7y ago

Pretty bad reporting. OK, it contains Pu-239, but how much? If it leaks, what effects will that have?

cyrix100 7y ago
This is the correct thought process. The linked article from llnl [1] states that “The final plan called for (1) removing all radioactive and non-radioactive debris (equipment, concrete, scrap metal, etc.), (2) removing all soil that exceeded 14.8 Bq (400 pCi) of plutonium per gram of soil, (3) removing or amending soil between 1.48 and 14.8 Bq (40 and 400 pCi) of plutonium per gram of soil, determined on a case-by-case basis depending on ultimate land-use, and 4) disposing and stabilizing all this accumulated radioactive waste into a crater on Runit Island and capping it with a concrete dome.” It goes on to state that “A estimated total of 73,000 cubic meters of surface soil...was recovered by scapping and deposited in Cactus crater on Runit Island.” Unfortunately, it does not provide an average specific activity for the material stored, only a lower limit threshold. If we assume it was near this lower limit of 14.8 bq threshold (could be the case depending on how often case (3) was used) and assume mostly plutonium-239. Since isotopic distribution is unknown, this is a conservative assumption because the longer half-life will yield a larger mass in the calculation. The molar density can be calculated from the specific activity listed: Na/m = a x hl/ln(2) = 14.8[decay/s] x 23110[yrs]/ln(2) = 1.57e13 atoms/gram = 2.61e-11 mol/gram The mass of the dirt collected will be assumed to be wet sand with a density of 1905 kg/m^3 [2] (note that density is actually slightly higher than this due to the plutonium contained). And finally, the volume collected is 73,000 cubic meters, or 1.39e11 grams. So the total amount of plutonium is: 2.61e-11[mol/g] x 1.39e11[g] = 3.63 mol So our envelope calculation yields about 870 grams of plutonium. So how accurate is this? It is probably on the high side after reading the paper posted by Shivetya [3]. They cite a total inventory of 545 GBq. Using the assumptions above, one would expect an inventory of 2058 GBq. As for the effects, that’s difficult to tell. Really the two scenarios that come to mind are a constant leaching into the environment or a disaster that results in the total mass being dumped. In the latter case a disaster of that magnitude would likely disperse the material in a biased direction. In this case it would dilute relatively quickly. Impacts from the radiation would probably be apparent close by in the biased direction. A constant leak would depend on the leach rate and leak locations. The NRC defines monthly sewer release limits of material in Table 3 of 10 CFR Part 20 Appendix B - standards for protection against radiation. The number given for Pu is 84 uCi or 3.108e6 Bq. Based on the plutonium inventory calculated and neglecting material decay, the material could leach out within NRC limits over a period of 55 thousand years (2058e9/3.108e6/12). Note that this number is likely highly inflated given the assumption that all radioactive material is Pu-239 and the comparison in [3]. Using the number from [3] and assuming all activity is Pu, the duration would be 14 thousand years. However this is a rough analysis that does not account for isotopic distributions, so please take the results with a grain of salt. [1]:https://marshallislands.llnl.gov/enewetak.php#cleanup https://marshallislands.llnl.gov/enewetak.php#cleanup [2]:https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/amp/dirt-mud-densities-d_1727.html https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/amp/dirt-mud-densities-d_... [3]:https://marshallislands.llnl.gov/ccc/Hamilton_LLNL-TR-648143_final.pdf https://marshallislands.llnl.gov/ccc/Hamilton_LLNL-TR-648143...

api 7y ago

One "meta" way of looking at things like this is that it represents a part of the technical debt left behind by the industrial revolution. Eventually we have to go back and fix this stuff, but as with technical debt in most code bases we tend to ignore it. Unfortunately technical debt is subject to compound interest, so the longer we ignore it the more costly it is to eventually deal with.

colordrops 7y ago

I hear things like "we should go full nuclear, modern nuclear reactors are safe" all the time, yet this ignores externalities, unknown unknowns, human incompetence, and the unexpected. Who would expect the ocean to rise over your nuclear waste dome? Have people suggesting this forgotten the allegory of the unsinkable ship the Titanic? Entropy always wins in the end.

Dduuggrr 7y ago
That's true. They used same words before... But after Chernobyl and Fukushima... How they can expect we believe them?
- gtirloni 7y ago
  This is not a matter of faith in some group of people ("them"). What's your point? That the whole nuclear industry, full of scientists and engineers can't be trusted with their studies?
  - colordrops 7y ago
    All it takes is a single point of failure, one scientist that got the calculations wrong. That's what happened with Meltdown/Spectre vulnerability. An academic paper that many chip manufacturers based their designs on turned out to be flawed, causing a vulnerability across architectures. The nuclear industry isn't any different. Ironically the Meltdown vulnerability could have potentially been used by bad actors to hack and take out a nuclear reactor.
    - gtirloni 7y ago
      You can say that about anything humans have ever built.
      - colordrops 7y ago
        Exactly, so how is everyone so sure that "modern nuclear reactors" will encounter no problems?

Circuits 7y ago

Some messes are just too big to clean up. They knew going into the testing that it was going to kill thousands and thousands of natives and effect native people in a terrible way for generations to come but they didn't give a shit then and they dont give a shit now. That's why most of the natives have 6 fingers and 4 toes, are sterile and the land is poisoned and will stay poisoned. You can deny it all you want but if it was not true shit like this wouldn't be so common place. We aren't the only ones and this isn't the only site and it's not just radiation, its carbon, its carcinogens, it's plastic... there is a whole boat load of shit like this that everyone pretends to care about when their talking about it with their husband or best friend but seems to have no trouble sleeping off the next day. What makes us think we can all just act like animals one day and civilized humans that next... I have no clue but that's reality. People ask: "Oh what can I do, I am so small and the problem is so big!" idk but I do know this if you ACTUALLY cared you would figure out some way to help. What's the difference between pretending to care and actually caring you ask? It's simple, doing something about it versus talking about doing something about it, it's that simple, that's the difference. Write your governor, send some money, do anything or just admit you don't care, and do nothing. That's what the US government is counting on you to do and that's why they got away with this and that's why they will get away with similar shit in the future.

teslaberry 7y ago

without question the lack of overfishing in these waters, like in chernobyl ensures that if you did a real study on the health of this area, biodiversity is thriving, because people and development are lacking. it's amazing how much nuclear fear mongering there is , persistenly. with all the idiots listening to washington post and other venues about shutting down nuclear power , by fear mongering it with nuclear weapons. alas, this is how progress dies, and artificial scarcity is imposed, no less of a low c02 and zero emission source of energy.

fuckamerica 7y ago

Sounds like typical thing U.S. would do

sunstone 7y ago

The people who designed it have now passed on so it has met its designed lifetime.