6 ms·
Drill a 5km deep hole, drop it in there.
by thecopy 5y ago
Drill a 5km deep hole, drop it in there.
- Asmod4n 5y agoYou can’t predict if that hole will be there for the trillions of years it’s toxic.
- throwaway894345 5y ago> You can’t predict if that hole will be there for the trillions of years it’s toxic. Trillions of years is the wrong timescale. The earth is only a few billion years old, and anyway the nuclear waste won't be radiotoxic in 1-10 thousand years much less 1 trillion. I'm pretty sure the Earth won't be habitable (as we understand 'habitable', anyway) in 1 trillion years. Anyway, climate change poses an existential threat in decades or centuries.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Asmod4n 5y agowhile uranium isn't that toxic compared to the other stuff it has a half-life of 4 billions years. And while the earth has long forgotten about humans other species will still be endangered by it.
- qwytw 5y agoStill infinitely preferable (even if the number was accurate) to poisoning earth's current inhabitants by burning coal .
- wins32767 5y agoHalf-life and danger from the emitted radiation are inversely correlated. Decay is the thing that emits radiation, so if that takes forever, it's not emitting much per second.
- throwaway894345 5y agoThe half-life isn't the relevant metric--you don't need the radioactivity to decay to zero (you're exposed to non-zero levels of radiation just walking around outside). You need it decay to environmentally tolerable levels (roughly "the level of uranium ore"). Anyway, far more species are far more endangered by climate change right now than any future species will be by nuclear waste.
- reddog 5y agoSo your worried about how uranium will effect the Morlocks and the Elois? Isn't uranium a naturally occuring element that already exists underground all over the globe and has for billions of years?
- panzagl 5y agoUhh, you know there's already uranium under the ground, right?
- Lammy 5y ago"Kazakhstan number one exporter of Po̶t̶a̶s̶s̶i̶u̶m̶Uranium. All other countries have inferior Po̶t̶a̶s̶s̶i̶u̶m̶Uranium" https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-g-n/kazakhstan.aspx https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pr...
- LargoLasskhyfv 5y agoIt's much less. According to [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formation_and_evolution_of_the_Solar_System#Future https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formation_and_evolution_of_the... and from there on under The Sun and planetary environments we're toast in about 600 million years. Shrug
- jl6 5y agoIMHO it would be better to store nuclear waste in well guarded sheds. There isn’t that much of it (less than a million tons; a few football fields worth of sheds), and accessible above-ground storage means you can easily monitor it and maintain its container over time. Who knows what will happen 5km down, out of sight?
- thecopy 5y agoRelying on society is too risky. Drop them in a bore hole, fill it up again. Done.
- jl6 5y agoI do worry about bad guys digging it back up again. The search for waste storage that lasts forever feels like the search for data storage that last forever. In the latter case, no storage medium is reliable enough in the long run, and the better strategy is continuous active management, moving from one storage medium to another as technology evolves and as old media expire.
- throwaway894345 5y agoA bad guy that can dig a 5km hole can probably just as easily refine his own Uranium or steal someone else’s. If you really want, secure the hole like you would secure whatever above-ground facility you would otherwise store it in.