6 ms·

The issue is not finding a place that's geologically stable now. But finding one that's geologically stable in 850.000 years. And to find a place where no post

by j-pb 6y ago

The issue is not finding a place that's geologically stable now. But finding one that's geologically stable in 850.000 years. And to find a place where no post worldwar 5 civilization accidentally diggs is up. And to have a tracking chain where no fuel gets into the wrong hands. Do you know how germany decided on the position of its long term nuclest storage facilities? East germany choose the salt mine closest to the west german border. And in retaliation west germany build theirs right next to it, in the closest saly mine that they had to the east german border. Nuclear tech is awesome and great, and too dangerous for careless, political, corrupt, humanity to be trusted with. So I'd rather spend that money on renewables, where the worst thing that can happen is someone hitting you with a PV cell.

sobellian 6y ago
If World Wars 3, 4, and 5 all occur then I think we can safely say the global population has already been thoroughly irradiated.
- kmonsen 6y ago
  Yeah, if the dangerous scenario is what if ww3 happens, wipes out all human knowledge, civilization is rebuilt and accidentally digs a kilometer down and finds some nuclear waste then I mean the whole ww3 is probably a bigger deal. Also continents can moving in 800.00 years, sure but we can also move the nuclear deposits. It's not like they have to stay in that exact spot for all eternity. Nuclear is all about buying humanity time to solve the energy problems. I think we might need that time to get to full renewables, if we ever get there.
spideymans 6y ago
>And to find a place where no post worldwar 5 civilization accidentally diggs is up. This is premised on the idea that some future civilization would dig kilometres deep in some random and remote location and just happen to come across some nuclear waste stored in a space that is no larger than a small house. It's also presumes that future civilizations will have no recollection whatsoever of humanity storing nuclear fuel, and thus take no measures to avoid it. This seems really unlikely to me. Given that we're faced with the threat of apocalyptic climate change today, it's a risk I'm willing to take.
- pizzapill 6y ago
  We are talking about time frames that are many times longer than the existence of modern humans as a species. We have absolute zero clue what most humans did 200k years ago, we have only little knowledge what humans did 4000 years ago. How can you expect us to communicate with a world in eight hundred thousand years, or 1.6 million years? We don't even manage to get any of the nuclear waste out of our oceans we put there 40 years ago.
  - Turing_Machine 6y ago
    > We are talking about time frames that are many times longer than the existence of modern humans as a species. No, we absolutely are not. "Long half-life" = "less radioactive". By definition. Do you know what the half life of CO2 is? Infinity.
    - pizzapill 6y ago
      The half life of Plutonium is ~24k years. That's way beyond a time frame we have any grip on. Then its still very, very dangerous. Uranium (nuclear fuel) has a half life of 200k - 4.4 million years. Then its half as dangerous. CO2 has a half life of ~ 10 years in our atmosphere btw.
      - creato 6y ago
        Elements with very long half-lives aren't very radioactive. Something with a half life of millions of years is essentially not radioactive at all. Nuclear fuel itself isn't radioactively dangerous, it's dangerous because it's a heavy metal (like lead). After nuclear fuel is reacted, it produces a bunch of nuclear decay products. Some of these decay products have a half-life of 10s of years, which are the problems: they're short enough to be dangerously radioactive, but long enough that they need to be handled carefully for a long time. But not for 10s of thousands of years.
      - Turing_Machine 6y ago
        And those things aren't very radioactive. Just as I said. Most of what you've read about plutonium is patent nonsense. For one, it isn't even close to being the "most toxic substance known". You can pick up a lump of it and hold in in your hand. You'll be fine. Really. It is an alpha emitter, and alpha radiation can be stopped by your skin or even a piece of paper. You'd have to eat it before you saw any ill effects. Not to mention that plutonium is a useful nuclear fuel. It's not going to be left lying around. You do know that the ocean has megatons of uranium in it? Why aren't you concerned about that? For that matter, we could grind up all the nuclear waste ever produced and disperse it in the ocean. It wouldn't change the radioactivity of sea water by any significant degree. The Soviets used to dump their scrap sub reactors in the Arctic Ocean whole. There are a bunch of them up there. > CO2 has a half life of ~ 10 years in our atmosphere btw. Oh? So we can just wait until things start to get uncomfortably warm, then stop cranking out CO2 for a decade or two and everything will be better? Good to know.
cbmuser 6y ago
> The issue is not finding a place that's geologically stable now. But finding one that's geologically stable in 850.000 years. Something that takes several hundred thousand years for decay isn't actually dangerous. Short half-life: High radioactivity. Long half-life: Low radioactivity. Furthermore, spent nuclear fuel can be recycled up to 95%: > https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-nuclear-fuel https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-... > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlMDDhQ9-pE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlMDDhQ9-pE > https://www.rosatom.ru/en/press-centre/news/the-first-serial-batch-of-mox-fuel-loaded-into-bn-800-fast-reactor-at-beloyarsk-npp/ https://www.rosatom.ru/en/press-centre/news/the-first-serial... > East germany choose the salt mine closest to the west german border. And in retaliation west germany build theirs right next to it, in the closest saly mine that they had to the east german border. East Germany never put any spent fuel into their own soil. They sent the spent fuel back to the USSR. Spent fuel is a resource with a market value. The GDR and the USSR didn't just threw that away. > Nuclear tech is awesome and great, and too dangerous for careless, political, corrupt, humanity to be trusted with. It's actually pretty safe and has among the lowest numbers of deaths per TWh: > https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy > So I'd rather spend that money on renewables, where the worst thing that can happen is someone hitting you with a PV cell. Actually, the worst thing is that it causes Germany to build new gas power plants and stop shutting down coal plants: > https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_geplanter_und_im_Bau_befindlicher_Gaskraftwerke_in_Deutschland https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_geplanter_und_im_Bau_bef... > https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nord_Stream#Nord_Stream_2 https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nord_Stream#Nord_Stream_2 > https://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/DE/Sachgebiete/ElektrizitaetundGas/Unternehmen_Institutionen/Versorgungssicherheit/Erzeugungskapazitaeten/Systemrelevante_KW/Systemrel_KW_node.html https://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/DE/Sachgebiete/Elektrizitae... > https://www.wa.de/hamm/kraftwerk-westfalen-in-hamm-uentrop-ist-systemrelevant-90245477.html https://www.wa.de/hamm/kraftwerk-westfalen-in-hamm-uentrop-i... > https://www.stuttgarter-zeitung.de/inhalt.grosskraftwerk-mannheim-systemrelevant-kohlekraftwerk-darf-block-7-noch-nicht-vom-netz-nehmen.e02dcb17-f186-4c43-a560-88fc7f62c13b.html https://www.stuttgarter-zeitung.de/inhalt.grosskraftwerk-man... > https://www.stuttgarter-zeitung.de/inhalt.energieversorgung-im-land-enbw-baut-neues-kraftwerk-im-kreis-ludwigsburg.c5ab8105-272e-4dd1-8552-6cb86680e5fb.html https://www.stuttgarter-zeitung.de/inhalt.energieversorgung-... > https://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/muenchen-kohleausstieg-heizkraftwerk-nord-verbot-1.4663664 https://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/muenchen-kohleausstieg-... > https://www1.wdr.de/nachrichten/ruhrgebiet/datteln-vier-geht-ans-netz-100.html https://www1.wdr.de/nachrichten/ruhrgebiet/datteln-vier-geht... Compare Germany's and France's emissions in the energy sector: > https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-emissions-by-sector?time=latest&country=~DEU https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-emissions-by-sector?t... > https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-emissions-by-sector?time=latest&country=~FRA https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-emissions-by-sector?t... Germany emits SEVEN(!) times as much as the French for producing electricity and heat. The nuclear phase out is causing 1100 premature death every year in Germany and causes additional costs of $12 billion per year: > https://haas.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/WP304.pdf https://haas.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/WP304.pdf And Germany has the highest electricity prices - worldwide: > https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/electricity_prices/ https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/electricity_prices/ Renewables have actually caused multiple deaths during the Texas blizzard because they couldn't provide enough electricity during the cold.
Chris2048 6y ago
What happens when post worldwar 5 civilization digs up an old Uranium mine? Or even any site where uranium ore, and/or radioactive gas exists?
- kbelder 6y ago
  If they can dig kilometers deep, they'll be advanced enough to notice the radiation, and take precautions. If they're smarter than us, they'll mine the stuff and use it to power their sky cities.

by j-pb 6y ago

sobellian 6y ago

If World Wars 3, 4, and 5 all occur then I think we can safely say the global population has already been thoroughly irradiated.

kmonsen 6y ago
Yeah, if the dangerous scenario is what if ww3 happens, wipes out all human knowledge, civilization is rebuilt and accidentally digs a kilometer down and finds some nuclear waste then I mean the whole ww3 is probably a bigger deal. Also continents can moving in 800.00 years, sure but we can also move the nuclear deposits. It's not like they have to stay in that exact spot for all eternity. Nuclear is all about buying humanity time to solve the energy problems. I think we might need that time to get to full renewables, if we ever get there.

spideymans 6y ago

>And to find a place where no post worldwar 5 civilization accidentally diggs is up. This is premised on the idea that some future civilization would dig kilometres deep in some random and remote location and just happen to come across some nuclear waste stored in a space that is no larger than a small house. It's also presumes that future civilizations will have no recollection whatsoever of humanity storing nuclear fuel, and thus take no measures to avoid it. This seems really unlikely to me. Given that we're faced with the threat of apocalyptic climate change today, it's a risk I'm willing to take.

pizzapill 6y ago
We are talking about time frames that are many times longer than the existence of modern humans as a species. We have absolute zero clue what most humans did 200k years ago, we have only little knowledge what humans did 4000 years ago. How can you expect us to communicate with a world in eight hundred thousand years, or 1.6 million years? We don't even manage to get any of the nuclear waste out of our oceans we put there 40 years ago.
- Turing_Machine 6y ago
  > We are talking about time frames that are many times longer than the existence of modern humans as a species. No, we absolutely are not. "Long half-life" = "less radioactive". By definition. Do you know what the half life of CO2 is? Infinity.
  - pizzapill 6y ago
    The half life of Plutonium is ~24k years. That's way beyond a time frame we have any grip on. Then its still very, very dangerous. Uranium (nuclear fuel) has a half life of 200k - 4.4 million years. Then its half as dangerous. CO2 has a half life of ~ 10 years in our atmosphere btw.
    - creato 6y ago
      Elements with very long half-lives aren't very radioactive. Something with a half life of millions of years is essentially not radioactive at all. Nuclear fuel itself isn't radioactively dangerous, it's dangerous because it's a heavy metal (like lead). After nuclear fuel is reacted, it produces a bunch of nuclear decay products. Some of these decay products have a half-life of 10s of years, which are the problems: they're short enough to be dangerously radioactive, but long enough that they need to be handled carefully for a long time. But not for 10s of thousands of years.
    - Turing_Machine 6y ago
      And those things aren't very radioactive. Just as I said. Most of what you've read about plutonium is patent nonsense. For one, it isn't even close to being the "most toxic substance known". You can pick up a lump of it and hold in in your hand. You'll be fine. Really. It is an alpha emitter, and alpha radiation can be stopped by your skin or even a piece of paper. You'd have to eat it before you saw any ill effects. Not to mention that plutonium is a useful nuclear fuel. It's not going to be left lying around. You do know that the ocean has megatons of uranium in it? Why aren't you concerned about that? For that matter, we could grind up all the nuclear waste ever produced and disperse it in the ocean. It wouldn't change the radioactivity of sea water by any significant degree. The Soviets used to dump their scrap sub reactors in the Arctic Ocean whole. There are a bunch of them up there. > CO2 has a half life of ~ 10 years in our atmosphere btw. Oh? So we can just wait until things start to get uncomfortably warm, then stop cranking out CO2 for a decade or two and everything will be better? Good to know.

cbmuser 6y ago

> The issue is not finding a place that's geologically stable now. But finding one that's geologically stable in 850.000 years. Something that takes several hundred thousand years for decay isn't actually dangerous. Short half-life: High radioactivity. Long half-life: Low radioactivity. Furthermore, spent nuclear fuel can be recycled up to 95%: > https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-nuclear-fuel https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-... > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlMDDhQ9-pE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlMDDhQ9-pE > https://www.rosatom.ru/en/press-centre/news/the-first-serial-batch-of-mox-fuel-loaded-into-bn-800-fast-reactor-at-beloyarsk-npp/ https://www.rosatom.ru/en/press-centre/news/the-first-serial... > East germany choose the salt mine closest to the west german border. And in retaliation west germany build theirs right next to it, in the closest saly mine that they had to the east german border. East Germany never put any spent fuel into their own soil. They sent the spent fuel back to the USSR. Spent fuel is a resource with a market value. The GDR and the USSR didn't just threw that away. > Nuclear tech is awesome and great, and too dangerous for careless, political, corrupt, humanity to be trusted with. It's actually pretty safe and has among the lowest numbers of deaths per TWh: > https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy > So I'd rather spend that money on renewables, where the worst thing that can happen is someone hitting you with a PV cell. Actually, the worst thing is that it causes Germany to build new gas power plants and stop shutting down coal plants: > https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_geplanter_und_im_Bau_befindlicher_Gaskraftwerke_in_Deutschland https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_geplanter_und_im_Bau_bef... > https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nord_Stream#Nord_Stream_2 https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nord_Stream#Nord_Stream_2 > https://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/DE/Sachgebiete/ElektrizitaetundGas/Unternehmen_Institutionen/Versorgungssicherheit/Erzeugungskapazitaeten/Systemrelevante_KW/Systemrel_KW_node.html https://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/DE/Sachgebiete/Elektrizitae... > https://www.wa.de/hamm/kraftwerk-westfalen-in-hamm-uentrop-ist-systemrelevant-90245477.html https://www.wa.de/hamm/kraftwerk-westfalen-in-hamm-uentrop-i... > https://www.stuttgarter-zeitung.de/inhalt.grosskraftwerk-mannheim-systemrelevant-kohlekraftwerk-darf-block-7-noch-nicht-vom-netz-nehmen.e02dcb17-f186-4c43-a560-88fc7f62c13b.html https://www.stuttgarter-zeitung.de/inhalt.grosskraftwerk-man... > https://www.stuttgarter-zeitung.de/inhalt.energieversorgung-im-land-enbw-baut-neues-kraftwerk-im-kreis-ludwigsburg.c5ab8105-272e-4dd1-8552-6cb86680e5fb.html https://www.stuttgarter-zeitung.de/inhalt.energieversorgung-... > https://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/muenchen-kohleausstieg-heizkraftwerk-nord-verbot-1.4663664 https://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/muenchen-kohleausstieg-... > https://www1.wdr.de/nachrichten/ruhrgebiet/datteln-vier-geht-ans-netz-100.html https://www1.wdr.de/nachrichten/ruhrgebiet/datteln-vier-geht... Compare Germany's and France's emissions in the energy sector: > https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-emissions-by-sector?time=latest&country=~DEU https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-emissions-by-sector?t... > https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-emissions-by-sector?time=latest&country=~FRA https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-emissions-by-sector?t... Germany emits SEVEN(!) times as much as the French for producing electricity and heat. The nuclear phase out is causing 1100 premature death every year in Germany and causes additional costs of $12 billion per year: > https://haas.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/WP304.pdf https://haas.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/WP304.pdf And Germany has the highest electricity prices - worldwide: > https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/electricity_prices/ https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/electricity_prices/ Renewables have actually caused multiple deaths during the Texas blizzard because they couldn't provide enough electricity during the cold.

Chris2048 6y ago

What happens when post worldwar 5 civilization digs up an old Uranium mine? Or even any site where uranium ore, and/or radioactive gas exists?

kbelder 6y ago
If they can dig kilometers deep, they'll be advanced enough to notice the radiation, and take precautions. If they're smarter than us, they'll mine the stuff and use it to power their sky cities.