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I don't understand why nuclear waste disposal is so controversial. The amount of waste generated is relatively tiny. Choose a site without a permeable path to a

I don't understand why nuclear waste disposal is so controversial. The amount of waste generated is relatively tiny. Choose a site without a permeable path to an aquifer, dump the waste, seal it off, and forget about it. What are the risks? 1. Some population thousands of years from now stumbles upon the waste and a small minority may die from exposure/contamination 2. Containment breach occurs due to degradation or earthquake or some other destructive event and some minimally radioactive waste leaks out of the containment site. Are either of these serious concerns with respect to the benefit of nuclear power? If disposal occurs somewhere deep in the continental U.S., are there even any actors powerful enough to commandeer the waste for nefarious purposes? What am I missing?

jjoonathan 7y ago
> a site without a permeable path to an aquifer This is why salt formations are ideal. The existence of the formation is proof that water isn't leaving the area and hasn't been leaving the area even on geological time scales.
- andor 7y ago
  Exactly, like the Asse mine and nuclear waste repository in Germany. Which now has 13500 liters of water flowing in each day, dissolving salt formations making for a slightly corrosive environment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asse_II_mine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asse_II_mine https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.deutschlandfunk.de%2Fmarodes-atommuelllager-die-wachsende-gefahr-von-asse-ii.724.de.html%3Fdram%3Aarticle_id%3D440331 https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https...
YeGoblynQueenne 7y ago
>> What are the risks? Experience teaches that anytime we can't see the risks of a technological solution, it's not because there aren't any. But because we can't see them.
- YeGoblynQueenne 7y ago
  Like for example: Radium (used in all manner of products meant for human consumption), Thalidomide and asbsestos (used everywhere in building materials). Or BSE (mad-cow disease; at the time, the UK minister of agriculture, John Gummer, publicly fed his daughter a beef burger to show there was no danger from consumption of Brittish beef) though that one is not a technological solution, as such; but it's a well-known case were risk was underestimated.
ghostbrainalpha 7y ago
3. Transportation Here in Nevada a lot of us don't care about the waste that is all ready stored in Yuca Mountain. The Native Americans do, but that's another issue. Many of us worry about how the waste is transported there, on large trucks, just recently on I-15 which goes directly through the center of downtown Las Vegas. Especially because its done in secret so there are no extra protections around the trucks carrying that waste. 4. Proper Payment (Not a risk, but still an issue) Many of us would also be ok with keeping the waste in our backyard, but whenever there is an unevenly distributed danger or burden it is proper to reimburse the communities most effected, which isn't really happening. Nevada as a state has either the worst public schools in the country or sometimes we get up to 48th place, depending on the year. A few million for our public schools in exchange for being the nuclear waste disposal site for the country seems like a fair trade.
carapace 7y ago
> Some population thousands of years from now stumbles upon the waste and a small minority may die from exposure/contamination > I don't understand why nuclear waste disposal is so controversial. You answered yourself. > What am I missing? A functioning conscience.
- allovernow 7y ago
  That's naively reductive. Any human endeavor, at virtually any scale, carries some risk. A cursory cost benefit analysis indicates that the potential reward, slowed or reversed climate change and fewer deaths from pollution, likely offsets the tiny probability that some future group of humans may stumble upon the waste and suffer. Consider also that any future civilization is likely to be advanced enough to recognize the danger of such an archeological site. Not to mention it's unlikely that any pictographic warnings will completely degrade over the course of thousands of years. This really comes off as a minor issue considering the huge ratio of benefit to cost.
  - carapace 7y ago
    The shape of your thought is that of the car exec who okays the production of a dangerous car because it won't kill enough people to matter to the bottom-line. There's a difference of degree but not kind. You really don't understand how that's controversial?
    - allovernow 7y ago
      Every time you get in your car, you take the risk of causing a fatality to another driver or pedestrian. Have you sworn to walk everywhere? Real life carries risk. The rational behavior is to consider cost/benefit and make an optimal decision. The car exec is pinching pennies to buy a yacht. I'm talking about switching to nuclear power to save potentially millions of lives with a marginal risk to a small number of people in the future. It's like the infamous train problem, where you must choose between one life or multiple lives. Except in this case it's quite unlikely that future lives will be significantly impacted by nuclear waste. To simplify further, you have 3 options: 1. Do nothing and allow continued fossil fuel related deaths and the likely progress of climate change 2. Ignore nuclear, bet on renewables, which have their own cost and may not come online quickly enough to avert global crisis. 3. Switch to nuclear yesterday, save millions (or billions) of lives from climate change and pollution, with a tiny risk to some future civilization. Yes, the executive and I are both thinking "coldly", but the difference is that he is optimizing for pennies, whereas I am optimizing for lives and environment.

jjoonathan 7y ago

> a site without a permeable path to an aquifer This is why salt formations are ideal. The existence of the formation is proof that water isn't leaving the area and hasn't been leaving the area even on geological time scales.

andor 7y ago
Exactly, like the Asse mine and nuclear waste repository in Germany. Which now has 13500 liters of water flowing in each day, dissolving salt formations making for a slightly corrosive environment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asse_II_mine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asse_II_mine https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.deutschlandfunk.de%2Fmarodes-atommuelllager-die-wachsende-gefahr-von-asse-ii.724.de.html%3Fdram%3Aarticle_id%3D440331 https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https...

YeGoblynQueenne 7y ago

>> What are the risks? Experience teaches that anytime we can't see the risks of a technological solution, it's not because there aren't any. But because we can't see them.

YeGoblynQueenne 7y ago
Like for example: Radium (used in all manner of products meant for human consumption), Thalidomide and asbsestos (used everywhere in building materials). Or BSE (mad-cow disease; at the time, the UK minister of agriculture, John Gummer, publicly fed his daughter a beef burger to show there was no danger from consumption of Brittish beef) though that one is not a technological solution, as such; but it's a well-known case were risk was underestimated.

ghostbrainalpha 7y ago

3. Transportation Here in Nevada a lot of us don't care about the waste that is all ready stored in Yuca Mountain. The Native Americans do, but that's another issue. Many of us worry about how the waste is transported there, on large trucks, just recently on I-15 which goes directly through the center of downtown Las Vegas. Especially because its done in secret so there are no extra protections around the trucks carrying that waste. 4. Proper Payment (Not a risk, but still an issue) Many of us would also be ok with keeping the waste in our backyard, but whenever there is an unevenly distributed danger or burden it is proper to reimburse the communities most effected, which isn't really happening. Nevada as a state has either the worst public schools in the country or sometimes we get up to 48th place, depending on the year. A few million for our public schools in exchange for being the nuclear waste disposal site for the country seems like a fair trade.

carapace 7y ago

> Some population thousands of years from now stumbles upon the waste and a small minority may die from exposure/contamination > I don't understand why nuclear waste disposal is so controversial. You answered yourself. > What am I missing? A functioning conscience.

allovernow 7y ago
That's naively reductive. Any human endeavor, at virtually any scale, carries some risk. A cursory cost benefit analysis indicates that the potential reward, slowed or reversed climate change and fewer deaths from pollution, likely offsets the tiny probability that some future group of humans may stumble upon the waste and suffer. Consider also that any future civilization is likely to be advanced enough to recognize the danger of such an archeological site. Not to mention it's unlikely that any pictographic warnings will completely degrade over the course of thousands of years. This really comes off as a minor issue considering the huge ratio of benefit to cost.
- carapace 7y ago
  The shape of your thought is that of the car exec who okays the production of a dangerous car because it won't kill enough people to matter to the bottom-line. There's a difference of degree but not kind. You really don't understand how that's controversial?
  - allovernow 7y ago
    Every time you get in your car, you take the risk of causing a fatality to another driver or pedestrian. Have you sworn to walk everywhere? Real life carries risk. The rational behavior is to consider cost/benefit and make an optimal decision. The car exec is pinching pennies to buy a yacht. I'm talking about switching to nuclear power to save potentially millions of lives with a marginal risk to a small number of people in the future. It's like the infamous train problem, where you must choose between one life or multiple lives. Except in this case it's quite unlikely that future lives will be significantly impacted by nuclear waste. To simplify further, you have 3 options: 1. Do nothing and allow continued fossil fuel related deaths and the likely progress of climate change 2. Ignore nuclear, bet on renewables, which have their own cost and may not come online quickly enough to avert global crisis. 3. Switch to nuclear yesterday, save millions (or billions) of lives from climate change and pollution, with a tiny risk to some future civilization. Yes, the executive and I are both thinking "coldly", but the difference is that he is optimizing for pennies, whereas I am optimizing for lives and environment.