5 ms·

How can you be so sure about that? We have like waste from max 40-50 years now sitting around and the problem is still unsolved. I doubt that civilisation can m

How can you be so sure about that? We have like waste from max 40-50 years now sitting around and the problem is still unsolved. I doubt that civilisation can manage to manage this waste for 100'000y to come.

Sharlin 5y ago
It's sitting around. Solid. Inert. Meanwhile there are gigatons of CO2 released to the atmosphere every year that causes an extremely acute global problem and we have no idea what to do to that either.
- chinathrow 5y ago
  My post was not about CO2 (the fact that I hate that we emit way too much that I remove some via Stripe Climatr). Sitting nuclear waste still needs to be maintained for centuries to come and we still have no solition for that.
  - Paradigma11 5y ago
    But there is little difference to maintain the current amount of waste or 100 times as much.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
rosndo 5y ago
Because the quantities of waste are laughable https://nda.blog.gov.uk/2019/08/02/how-much-radioactive-waste-is-there-in-the-world/ https://nda.blog.gov.uk/2019/08/02/how-much-radioactive-wast... (The HLW is what people mostly worry about) Even in a weird scenario where we don’t start recycling our nuclear “waste”, storing 100000x the current amounts would not present a particularly huge challenge.
HPsquared 5y ago
The really radioactive stuff (fission products) is basically gone after 300 years. The longer-lived stuff (transuranic elements: plutonium etc) could in theory be recycled and burned up in another reactor, though this probably won't happen in practice. It's not as scary as the fission products though: it's less mobile, less bioavailable, less radioactive, etc. Still definitely a hazard, but a lower grade of hazard.
user-the-name 5y ago
The waste will be radioactive for 100000 years, but it will not be dangerous for that long. Low levels of radioactivity is not a problem. It takes a much shorter time for the waste to reach the same level of radioactivity that the original ore that we dug out of the earth had.

Sharlin 5y ago

It's sitting around. Solid. Inert. Meanwhile there are gigatons of CO2 released to the atmosphere every year that causes an extremely acute global problem and we have no idea what to do to that either.

chinathrow 5y ago
My post was not about CO2 (the fact that I hate that we emit way too much that I remove some via Stripe Climatr). Sitting nuclear waste still needs to be maintained for centuries to come and we still have no solition for that.
- Paradigma11 5y ago
  But there is little difference to maintain the current amount of waste or 100 times as much.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

rosndo 5y ago

Because the quantities of waste are laughable https://nda.blog.gov.uk/2019/08/02/how-much-radioactive-waste-is-there-in-the-world/ https://nda.blog.gov.uk/2019/08/02/how-much-radioactive-wast... (The HLW is what people mostly worry about) Even in a weird scenario where we don’t start recycling our nuclear “waste”, storing 100000x the current amounts would not present a particularly huge challenge.

HPsquared 5y ago

The really radioactive stuff (fission products) is basically gone after 300 years. The longer-lived stuff (transuranic elements: plutonium etc) could in theory be recycled and burned up in another reactor, though this probably won't happen in practice. It's not as scary as the fission products though: it's less mobile, less bioavailable, less radioactive, etc. Still definitely a hazard, but a lower grade of hazard.

user-the-name 5y ago

The waste will be radioactive for 100000 years, but it will not be dangerous for that long. Low levels of radioactivity is not a problem. It takes a much shorter time for the waste to reach the same level of radioactivity that the original ore that we dug out of the earth had.