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> I think the standard response is “but what about a hypothetical future civilization somehow disconnected enough from ours to not know what nuclear waste is wh

> I think the standard response is “but what about a hypothetical future civilization somehow disconnected enough from ours to not know what nuclear waste is who find it and dig it up thinking it’s holy or whatever” It is not. Why is it one straw man after another in this discussion? The response is that countries like Germany have already spent a lot of time looking for a suitable place, and haven't found one. At this point it seems likely there isn't one. If a place is found, by all means, go build nuclear reactors. But sort the waste problem out first. We've already done the "build first, figure the waste problem out later". Many decades later, here we are.

Lammy 6y ago
The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.
exar0815 6y ago
This is not true. The most sensible place was intentionally overlooked because one of germanys larges political parties (CSU) has all her voters there, and the next best place (Gorleben) was politically and ideologically fought over for decades until we gave up and said fuck you and everyone, lets just store it where it stands.
- logifail 6y ago
  > most sensible place Can you define who gets to decide whether a place is "most sensible"? Subject-matter experts? National politicians? Regional politicians? Or maybe it's more like: voters (nationally)? voters (regionally)? voters (locally)?
vidarh 6y ago
The problem is that in the meantime the alternatives that are actually being used are killing thousands of people a year right now.
- lispm 6y ago
  Nuclear is not an alternative. It has a lot of unwanted side effects and it just does not scale to solve the problem. It's extremely costly, comes with costly unsolved problems and is slow to build up.
  - yellowapple 6y ago
    > It has a lot of unwanted side effects So does literally every other power source. Nuclear is, if anything, among the least bad options in this regard. > and it just does not scale to solve the problem. It absolutely does, if we're willing to actually try. Evidently, we'd rather just keep killing ourselves with coal.
    - lispm 6y ago
      > It absolutely does, if we're willing to actually try. We are trying that since 66 years, since the first nuclear power plant. What we have achieved so far is a nuclear industry which is hardly able to keep the status quo of installed power generation, sky high rising costs for building nuclear power plants, extremely long build times, very little technological progress in the last decade, unsolved financial and technological problems, ... If it were commercially viable and scalable, it would thrive by now. All the promised next-gen problem solvers like breeders, thorium fuel cycle, reprocessing industries, ... have been more costly and financially toxic.
      - Lammy 6y ago
        The costs are hard to argue with, yeah. I certainly wouldn’t try with my limited understanding of the world of energy politics. I did enjoy learning more about the history of why nuclear is so expensive though even if it isn’t entirely useful knowledge. It’s pretty dry and I don’t have a PDF link handy to share, but I found the “President’s Report on Three Mile Island” (iirc, prepared for Carter while in office) to be a very very interesting read. Also these guys: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GE_Three https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GE_Three
      - 6y ago

Lammy 6y ago

The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.

exar0815 6y ago

This is not true. The most sensible place was intentionally overlooked because one of germanys larges political parties (CSU) has all her voters there, and the next best place (Gorleben) was politically and ideologically fought over for decades until we gave up and said fuck you and everyone, lets just store it where it stands.

logifail 6y ago
> most sensible place Can you define who gets to decide whether a place is "most sensible"? Subject-matter experts? National politicians? Regional politicians? Or maybe it's more like: voters (nationally)? voters (regionally)? voters (locally)?

vidarh 6y ago

The problem is that in the meantime the alternatives that are actually being used are killing thousands of people a year right now.

lispm 6y ago
Nuclear is not an alternative. It has a lot of unwanted side effects and it just does not scale to solve the problem. It's extremely costly, comes with costly unsolved problems and is slow to build up.
- yellowapple 6y ago
  > It has a lot of unwanted side effects So does literally every other power source. Nuclear is, if anything, among the least bad options in this regard. > and it just does not scale to solve the problem. It absolutely does, if we're willing to actually try. Evidently, we'd rather just keep killing ourselves with coal.
  - lispm 6y ago
    > It absolutely does, if we're willing to actually try. We are trying that since 66 years, since the first nuclear power plant. What we have achieved so far is a nuclear industry which is hardly able to keep the status quo of installed power generation, sky high rising costs for building nuclear power plants, extremely long build times, very little technological progress in the last decade, unsolved financial and technological problems, ... If it were commercially viable and scalable, it would thrive by now. All the promised next-gen problem solvers like breeders, thorium fuel cycle, reprocessing industries, ... have been more costly and financially toxic.
    - Lammy 6y ago
      The costs are hard to argue with, yeah. I certainly wouldn’t try with my limited understanding of the world of energy politics. I did enjoy learning more about the history of why nuclear is so expensive though even if it isn’t entirely useful knowledge. It’s pretty dry and I don’t have a PDF link handy to share, but I found the “President’s Report on Three Mile Island” (iirc, prepared for Carter while in office) to be a very very interesting read. Also these guys: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GE_Three https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GE_Three
    - 6y ago