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I find it amusing how easy we leave waste and decide for generations to come to deal with. Plutonium has a half-life of 24110 years – it will take about ten of
by mro_name 5y ago
I find it amusing how easy we leave waste and decide for generations to come to deal with.
Plutonium has a half-life of 24110 years – it will take about ten of them until it's gone.
Just imagine the provision for 1 security guard's toilet paper for a quarter of a million of years.
It's always pipe-dreams like 'somebody will eventually have a genius idea about it'.
- acidburnNSA 5y agoNuclear waste has appropriate and functional solutions on those time scales in deep geologic repositories. Finland is the leader here [1]. Compared with combustion waste from fossil and biofuel which kills ~8 million people every year and causes climate change, I have to say that the nuclear waste is dramatically better for the present and for the future. [1] https://posiva.fi/ https://posiva.fi/
- mro_name 5y agothe claim was 'long term sustainable' – burning fossils isn't a contender here.
- Turing_Machine 5y agoLonger half-life = less radioactive. By definition.
- mro_name 5y agoradioactivity isn't the only problematic property of plutonium.
- Turing_Machine 5y agoBut it's the one you mentioned. You're just trying to move the goal posts now.
- mro_name 5y agostrictly spoken: no. I mentioned the time it is around and not decayed yet. I didn't stress radiation, did I? Plutonium is very toxic. No more after decay, I guess. But that takes time as mentioned.
- Turing_Machine 5y agoSo is lead, and it has a half-life of infinity. You were clearly using "long half-life" to imply "super bad!" when in actuality "long half-life" means "not very radioactive at all".
- mro_name 5y agoI talked about long existence of nuclear waste. And yes, I consider plutonium super bad. And I consider keeping that safe longer than our species exists to date as ambitious. I may err and plutonium may be a kinda decaying lead as you imply.