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Ridiculous Arm-chair Concept: - What if we make a 1 meter wall thick lead / steel container and seal the waste in and leave it? Surely nothing can break it, no

Ridiculous Arm-chair Concept: - What if we make a 1 meter wall thick lead / steel container and seal the waste in and leave it? Surely nothing can break it, not even an earthquake. Just make a giant tennis court sized containers and dump stuff in there. We know how to build bridges, surely we can build large containers. Just want to learn, I am sure this is proposed and would love to know why its a stupid idea.

seoaeu 6y ago
This is basically what we already do, and it works fine. But opponents will still pester you about where to put the sealed boxes :P
- drran 6y ago
  Put it under your home.
  - ncallaway 6y ago
    If someone else is paying the cost to excavate, bury, secure, backfill, then sure.
  - mrshadowgoose 6y ago
    Sure! How much am I being paid for the nuissance of construction, and ongoing disturbance of my day-to-day life when waste deliveries occur? So now that your appeal to emotion has failed, do you have any actual points?
random5634 6y ago
The problem is in part the anti-nuclear folks don't want the problem to be solved. So you can build a skyscraper 100 feet tall in a high earthquake zone, but you can't build a container. The normal approach (france etc) is to recycle and then vitrify the leftovers and store in a container. You get much shorter half lives, much less waste. So even if it comes out the container, it's still "in" something. Of course, you can build a reasonably secure container as well.
- lispm 6y ago
  There are a lot of authoritarian and pro-nuclear countries which have not solved the problem. Actually some of them (Russia, ...) have the worst environmental track record when it comes to nuclear technology.
  - effie 6y ago
    Russia has a lot of uninhabited space, so the contamination does not seem to be a big problem for them. Lots of countries behave this way, UK and US included.
    - lispm 6y ago
      Western countries have spent many billions to secure the nuclear reactors of rotten USSR / Russian submarines which were endangering the baltic sea and also the Soviet RBMK-1000 reactor, which was causing the chernobyl disaster... > Russia has a lot of uninhabited space Nuclear installations are not in uninhabited space. For example the still operating (!) RMBK-style reactors are not that far away from major cities.
      - effie 6y ago
        West had the money and the will, I think that was a dollar well spent. US irradiated large areas of Pacific Ocean and atmosphere (US) with its testing program, harming people living there and contaminating whole world with radioactive isotopes. UK dumped radioactive waste in barrels into Atlantic ocean, has bad record on nuclear safety (Windscale accidents) and continues to run old nuclear power plant that does not pass old safety tests, so they make the test less and less restrictive [1]. The lax approach to safety has been observed on all sides. It has to improve but it is no reason to stop development of nuclear power. Soviet-build power plants near cities aren't as bad as people think, if run safely by competent people. Chernobyl was a preventable disaster, not solely due to technology, but mainly due to incompetence and dysfunctional society. Also, the disaster wasn't as bad as people think. Few people died when you compare to other industrial accidents. The really badly polluted installations in Russia are the military/research ones in restricted areas - Mayak, Lake Karachay. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hunterston_B_nuclear_power_station https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hunterston_B_nucl...
hedora 6y ago
What if we made a giant four sided pyramid out of stone, and used the inner 1% of its volume to store your box? We could put it in the middle of the desert, and hope it gets covered in sand.
- Rarebox 6y ago
  To discourage people from finding the box inside, we could insert traps to hinder explorers.
  - yellowapple 6y ago
    Maybe also spread some myth about an ancient curse to ward off looters.
    - NikolaeVarius 6y ago
      In this case it wouldn't be a myth
- GoOnThenDoTell 6y ago
  begins quest for ancient nuclear waste in Egypt
  - regularfry 6y ago
    There is a genuine pyramid theory which posits that the Great Pyramid was, in fact, used for power generation. It's actually quite fun: the theory goes that the huge mass of the pyramid was used to couple seismic vibrations into the enormous granite blocks above the King's Chamber. Being stuffed with quartz crystals, this generated a varying electric field which excited a hydrogen atmosphere (provided by a chemical reaction in the Queen's Chamber. Or the Subterranean Chamber, can't remember which). The Grand Gallery was apparently filled with Helmholtz resonators which set up a standing wave of some sort, the portcullises at the entrance of the King's Chamber being acoustic baffles to control the resonance. The net effect of all this was apparently that the comparatively thin-walled sarcophagus in the King's Chamber (also granite) would set up an appropriate vibration in the hydrogen to cause a maser-like concentration of microwave energy to be directed up one of the "air passages". Damage in the Grand Gallery is taken as evidence that there was some sort of catastrophic failure that knocked the whole thing out of commission. It's remarkably complete, and totally, utterly bonkers. I love it.
jay_kyburz 6y ago
You can't open and close the box to put new stuff in, so you have to wait till you have enough to fill a big box. The stuff you are collecting waiting to have enough to fill the box needs managing anyhow. The big boxes still need armed guards and a stable government so that it that they are not dismantled and used as weapons by future generations of extremists.

seoaeu 6y ago

This is basically what we already do, and it works fine. But opponents will still pester you about where to put the sealed boxes :P

drran 6y ago
Put it under your home.
- ncallaway 6y ago
  If someone else is paying the cost to excavate, bury, secure, backfill, then sure.
- mrshadowgoose 6y ago
  Sure! How much am I being paid for the nuissance of construction, and ongoing disturbance of my day-to-day life when waste deliveries occur? So now that your appeal to emotion has failed, do you have any actual points?

random5634 6y ago

The problem is in part the anti-nuclear folks don't want the problem to be solved. So you can build a skyscraper 100 feet tall in a high earthquake zone, but you can't build a container. The normal approach (france etc) is to recycle and then vitrify the leftovers and store in a container. You get much shorter half lives, much less waste. So even if it comes out the container, it's still "in" something. Of course, you can build a reasonably secure container as well.

lispm 6y ago
There are a lot of authoritarian and pro-nuclear countries which have not solved the problem. Actually some of them (Russia, ...) have the worst environmental track record when it comes to nuclear technology.
- effie 6y ago
  Russia has a lot of uninhabited space, so the contamination does not seem to be a big problem for them. Lots of countries behave this way, UK and US included.
  - lispm 6y ago
    Western countries have spent many billions to secure the nuclear reactors of rotten USSR / Russian submarines which were endangering the baltic sea and also the Soviet RBMK-1000 reactor, which was causing the chernobyl disaster... > Russia has a lot of uninhabited space Nuclear installations are not in uninhabited space. For example the still operating (!) RMBK-style reactors are not that far away from major cities.
    - effie 6y ago
      West had the money and the will, I think that was a dollar well spent. US irradiated large areas of Pacific Ocean and atmosphere (US) with its testing program, harming people living there and contaminating whole world with radioactive isotopes. UK dumped radioactive waste in barrels into Atlantic ocean, has bad record on nuclear safety (Windscale accidents) and continues to run old nuclear power plant that does not pass old safety tests, so they make the test less and less restrictive [1]. The lax approach to safety has been observed on all sides. It has to improve but it is no reason to stop development of nuclear power. Soviet-build power plants near cities aren't as bad as people think, if run safely by competent people. Chernobyl was a preventable disaster, not solely due to technology, but mainly due to incompetence and dysfunctional society. Also, the disaster wasn't as bad as people think. Few people died when you compare to other industrial accidents. The really badly polluted installations in Russia are the military/research ones in restricted areas - Mayak, Lake Karachay. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hunterston_B_nuclear_power_station https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hunterston_B_nucl...

hedora 6y ago

What if we made a giant four sided pyramid out of stone, and used the inner 1% of its volume to store your box? We could put it in the middle of the desert, and hope it gets covered in sand.

Rarebox 6y ago
To discourage people from finding the box inside, we could insert traps to hinder explorers.
- yellowapple 6y ago
  Maybe also spread some myth about an ancient curse to ward off looters.
  - NikolaeVarius 6y ago
    In this case it wouldn't be a myth
GoOnThenDoTell 6y ago
begins quest for ancient nuclear waste in Egypt
- regularfry 6y ago
  There is a genuine pyramid theory which posits that the Great Pyramid was, in fact, used for power generation. It's actually quite fun: the theory goes that the huge mass of the pyramid was used to couple seismic vibrations into the enormous granite blocks above the King's Chamber. Being stuffed with quartz crystals, this generated a varying electric field which excited a hydrogen atmosphere (provided by a chemical reaction in the Queen's Chamber. Or the Subterranean Chamber, can't remember which). The Grand Gallery was apparently filled with Helmholtz resonators which set up a standing wave of some sort, the portcullises at the entrance of the King's Chamber being acoustic baffles to control the resonance. The net effect of all this was apparently that the comparatively thin-walled sarcophagus in the King's Chamber (also granite) would set up an appropriate vibration in the hydrogen to cause a maser-like concentration of microwave energy to be directed up one of the "air passages". Damage in the Grand Gallery is taken as evidence that there was some sort of catastrophic failure that knocked the whole thing out of commission. It's remarkably complete, and totally, utterly bonkers. I love it.

jay_kyburz 6y ago

You can't open and close the box to put new stuff in, so you have to wait till you have enough to fill a big box. The stuff you are collecting waiting to have enough to fill the box needs managing anyhow. The big boxes still need armed guards and a stable government so that it that they are not dismantled and used as weapons by future generations of extremists.