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Sweden approves plan to bury spent nuclear fuel for 100k years
- friendlydog 5y agoJudging from the current historical record is this feasible? Most civilizations don't have enough time behind them to prove this out.
- Aardwolf 5y agoIn addition, if our civilization lasts that long and technological advancement continues, there's a good chance some use will be found for the nuclear waste and it'll be mined out again
- gerikson 5y agoThat's the source of the "This is not a place of honor" meme - it's a study about designing a site that is foreboding across vast time scales, so our remote ancestors^Wdescendants won't be tempted to dig it up. Sweden is going to rely on good old record-keeping though...
- jfk13 5y ago> so our remote ancestors won't be tempted To nit-pick, I think you mean descendants.
- gerikson 5y agoD'oh, thanks. Fixed.
- sparcpile 5y agoThe No Place of Honor came from the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant report out of Sandia National Lab back in 1993. It is good read about long time and how to deal with communicating messages through the ages. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1279277/ https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1279277/ https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1279277/m2/1/high_res_d/10117359.pdf https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1279277/m2/...
- Permit 5y agoThere's a documentary that explores this idea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_Eternity_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_Eternity_(film) They deal with exactly the problems you're imagining. How do you convey danger to a civilization 100,000 years in the future? How do you get them to take your warnings seriously? (We'd ignore any warning in the Egyptian pyramids created only ~5,000 years ago) How do you handle earthquakes and other natural disasters? I found it interesting and you might too.
- new_guy 5y ago> We'd ignore any warning in the Egyptian pyramids created only ~5,000 years ago Worse, the 'mummys curse' became a part of popular culture!
- kzrdude 5y agoThe key is probably do explain honestly what the warning is about. Then the grave robbers can make their own decisions.
- AnimalMuppet 5y agoWe'd ignore any warnings in the Egyptian pyramids, because they'd warn us that the gods would get us, and we don't believe in the gods. We warn future people that the radiation will get them, and if they're more advanced than us, they still believe in radiation. (And if they're not more advanced than us, maybe they think that radiation is a spell from the gods?) The problem is to communicate "radiation danger" to someone 10,000 years from now who doesn't use our language, alphabet, or iconography. That's not easy. Not impossible, but not easy. The other problem is devising warning signs that will survive 100,000 years...
- NikolaeVarius 5y agoUnlike Egyptian Gods, which I'm pretty sure have never had any supernatural effects on grave robbers/archeologists who have studied tombs, I'm pretty sure at some point, radiation poisoning will become somewhat obvious. In the same way that the dangers of radiation were found fairly quickly from usage of radium in paints, anyone in the future will probably figure out pretty quickly something is wrong.
- karaterobot 5y agoLook at it this way: so far, our ability to communicate to the future and understand evidence from the past has only increased over time. So, while we have no precedent, we also have no reason to doubt the humans of future.
- PaulHoule 5y ago... and then they'll dig it up and reprocess it when they really need the energy contained in it.
- a9h74j 5y agoCould be. My unpopular prediction is that within 100 years, well-engineered deep-ocean burial will be considered good enough, given all else which is likely to become clear by then.
- poteznykrolik 5y agopraying irrationally for shipping the junk to the moon. that'll show em.
- artful-hacker 5y agoIf you can get it to the moon isn't it almost as easy to just shoot it into the Sun?
- whoisburbansky 5y agoActually nope. It takes more energy to slow yourself down enough to crash into the sun, starting from the earth, than it does to hop on over to the moon.
- tomjakubowski 5y agoDefinitely a stupid question, because I actually have no idea how they work: can a solar sail be "tacked" so as to decelerate towards the sun, like a sailboat sailing into the wind? (Setting aside the risky problem of getting this waste off earth and into space to begin with)
- hutzlibu 5y agoI have not done any calculations now, but given how small the solar wind is in drag, it would have to be a very, very big sail.
- zeotroph 5y agoIn Finland they are already filling up a 100k year long term storage mine [1]. Will every country with nuclear power have to find and dig (and counter-NIMBY) their own mines or could those with more favorable geological features offer theirs to others? Earthquake-prone Japan might have a hard time finding an appropriate location. 1: 6m Tom Scott video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoy_WJ3mE50 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoy_WJ3mE50
- dekhn 5y agoThe US already identified a plausible site but for mostly political reasons, it was rejected and now most waste is stored in several pre-existing locations in the country and the rest is stored onsite at existing reactors. Both of those options are fairly risky compared to the planned repository but are more politically expedient. It seems not unreasonable to expect many countries will follow Sweden and Finland and actually proceed with burial, and eventually some catastrophe in the US (pig farm manure pit wall breaks, sweeps plant's storage tanks into a major river) will make Yucca a possibility again. Or, we coiuld just give Nevada $50B and ask them to take on the risk for the next 100kyears.
- sidewndr46 5y agoIt's entirely possible that Finland and other countries are positioning themselves to become the biggest "exporter" of nuclear waste disposal. There are plenty of countries around the world with no actual plan for waste disposal, including the US. If Finland is willing to accept the risk in exchange for a certain amount of financial compensation, then it seems likely wealthy countries would make that choice.
- dekhn 5y agoThat's a fascinating concept. Do the people of Finland get a direct vote on that, and can they change it in the future? I'd be wary of taking on such an enormous risk [edit: see terminology correction below] even if the probability of catastrophe is very low.
- echelon 5y agoI don't understand why Europe is being so bearish on nuclear. It'll solve all of their energy woes without becoming dependent on Russia. Europe doesn't have significant earthquake or tornado risks either. It's about the best place for nuclear you could imagine. Germany shut their plants down and is now buying LNG. That's a downgrade. Nuclear is the quickest path to green, and it's staring us right in our faces.
- pgalvin 5y agoGermany has a strong cultural and political opposition to nuclear power, particularly in their Green Party, for many different reasons that I’m not qualified to discuss. I suspect the initial cost is also a barrier to much of Europe, if only for political reasons.
- mantas 5y agoI bet Russia would pay through the roof to keep West Europe hooked… wonder which German politician will get a sweet Gazprom seat this time.
- mediaman 5y agoDoes anyone have a good political explanation for Europe's hostility to nuclear power? Is it really just post-Fukushima nuclear concern? There are so many pressing issues at stake - CO2 production, dependency on an increasingly aggressive foreign adversary for fuel - that it seems like there must be some logic, but I can't figure it out. Even if wind/solar are cheaper than nuclear, it doesn't seem that they can become the only type of of energy supplied in Europe due to variability issues.
- ravenstine 5y agoAren't there now ways of renewing (for lack of a better word) spent nuclear fuel?
- NikolaeVarius 5y agoAnti nuclear sentiment has made it very difficult to build/research ways of processing currently "spent"fuel
- alkonaut 5y agoThey are in the research state, no production facilities as far as I know. I hope the tech is ready soon so at least some waste can be disposed that way.
- bananabreakfast 5y agoThis is very outdated. "Nuclear fuel reprocessing is performed routinely in Europe, Russia and Japan" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing
- alkonaut 5y agoOh I meant specifically in power generation, i.e. using the spent as fuel in "next gen" plants, thereby reprocessing it. The idea of course being that if it produces energy then some of the cost can be offset and that the end result has a much shorter half life. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_IV_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_IV_reactor
- pyrale 5y agoNever completely. Spent material is also casing for the actual fuel, for instance, which can't be reused. In the fuel itself, there is some uranium and plutonium which can be reused, but there are also atoms produced by the fission which are not useful. For instance, a possible output of an uranium atom splitting could be one Krypton atom and one Baryum atom. Both are radioactive, and the path for krypton to a non-radioactive atom includes one step with a half-life of ~10^6 years. There is also waste from the plant itself. When you decomission a plant, the vessel steel is going to be radioactive and needs to be stored safely. There are plenty or other waste types that can be stored more or less safely. Some can be reused, some not.
- im3w1l 5y agoI think it's unreasonable to expect any solution to work for 100k years. Too many unknown unknowns. But hopefully if it does fail in say a few hundred years the radioactivity will already be less and they will be better equipped to clean it up.
- willis936 5y ago100k is still on the order of engineerable problems if you do proper risk assessment. I don't think any reasonable solution expects avoiding failures, but rather is fail-safe. I'm not even sure if you call them failures if they are part of the expected lifecycle.
- hypertele-Xii 5y agoThe bedrock at the Finnish nuclear waste storage site was estimated by geologists to have not moved an inch in four and a half billion years. I'd bet every penny on it standing for another hundred thousand.
- dzink 5y agoThere are multiple teams and projects using spent nuclear fuel to power new types of much smaller power plants, and even portable power boxes and space tech. Those storage facilities may start being a lucrative resource soon.
- datavirtue 5y agoExactly. I have room in my back yard.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- tephra 5y agoThe medium term storage might but the long term storage sections will be sealed and I don't think it would be cost effective (or super possible) to actually unseal it. The copper capsules will be buried 500m in the bedrock, the capsules will then be placed inside a hole which will later be covered by bentonite clay. As the sections fill up that will also be filled with clay.
- germandiago 5y agoI wonder who thinks that in 100,000 years Sweden will exist or even if Swedish in 1,000 or 10,000 years would respect this decision, haha. Looks like an impossible for me: nothing is forever, and 100,000 years is a long time.
- tomjakubowski 5y agoYeah, that's a massive timescale in human history. As far as we know we've only had intentional agriculture for around 10,000 years.
- Hamuko 5y agoI'm wondering more if humanity will exist.
- germandiago 5y agoI think it will, still. But it is just a belief.
- alkonaut 5y agoNo one, obviously. Its an open question in the project how to e.g. communicate to a future civilization that the area is dangerous.
- hectormalot 5y agoIndeed, most pyramids are less than 5k years old. A 100k years means making the step from the first Egyptian dynasty to today 20 times. That’s an incredible timespan. I don’t think we can design rules and agreements around this type of storage and expect them to last that long. Statistically it’s unlikely the country you are living in still exists in just 10k years, let alone in a 100k years.
- Manuel_D 5y agoWhat is the likelihood that some future civilization is going to just happen to dig up a nuclear waste repository stored deep underground? Furthermore, why does nuclear waste get so much attention when there's plenty of other hazardous waste sites [1]. Why aren't we concerned about a future civilization breaching a salt mine that's been pumped full of toxic chemicals? 1. https://www.epa.gov/hwpermitting/hazardous-waste-management-facilities-and-units https://www.epa.gov/hwpermitting/hazardous-waste-management-...
- petermcneeley 5y agoArtistic documentary on the project in Finland https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayLxB9fV2y4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayLxB9fV2y4
- asymmetric 5y agoThe documentary Into Eternity is a very fascinating look into the kind of longtermist questions that must be answered for a project like this, like: how do you write warning signs that are supposed to be read 50k years from now, warning not to open the storage vault? What kind of language do you use? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_Eternity_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_Eternity_(film)
- agency 5y agoI remember reading about this a long time ago at [1]. They had a panel come up with the essential message they want to communicate which I found really interesting and chilling: > This place is a message… and part of a system of messages… pay attention to it! Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture. > This place is not a place of honor…no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here… nothing valued is here. > What is here is dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger. > The danger is in a particular location… it increases toward a center… the center of danger is here… of a particular size and shape, and below us. > The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours. > The danger is to the body, and it can kill. > The form of the danger is an emanation of energy. > The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited. [1]: https://www.damninteresting.com/this-place-is-not-a-place-of-honor/ https://www.damninteresting.com/this-place-is-not-a-place-of...
- reedjosh 5y agoHow could I ever sleep again if I was investigating a ruin and read that message. I'd have to dig into it. It'd be like `Well, we warned you...` but that message is too intriguing.
- periheli0n 5y agoThis sounds like the beginning of an Indiana Jones knockoff! He will dig after reading this, for sure!
- pjot 5y ago
- streamofdigits 5y agoI propose we periodically check, e.g. every 1K years or so, to make sure the facility is working as designed. If it doesn't, whoever approved the plan should be shamed and reprimanded very publicly.
- bhelkey 5y ago> I propose we periodically check, e.g. every 1K years or so...If it doesn't, whoever approved the plan should be shamed and reprimanded very publicly. I reckon that the possibility of public shame in 3022 is not much of a deterrent.
- streamofdigits 5y agoit seems HN has lost the ability to detect sarcasm :-(
- barbazoo 5y agoI couldn't tell. Maybe be more explicit next time, try "/s" for instance.
- unboxingelf 5y agoELI5: why don’t we eject it to space or send it into the sun?
- SCUSKU 5y agoSay 1 in 1,000 rockets fails like the challenger and explodes. Now you have spent nuclear waste all over the Earth!
- dclowd9901 5y agoAt the volumes and surface area we’re talking about, is it any more than a blip? Say one rocket explodes. What’s the worst result of that fallout? Is it worse than peeling a banana or flying in a jumbo jet?
- danbruc 5y agoSome fraction of rockets explodes during launch. Also dropping things into the sun costs a lot of energy because you have do decelerate it from earths orbital speed (30 km/s) or whatever you are trying to drop will just orbit around the sun.
- alkonaut 5y agoThe cost is between the same and many times higher, and the risk of explosion in one rocket approaches 100% very quickly when you launch hundreds.
- 00N8 5y agoIt's not cost effective. (Same reason we don't encase it in giant synthetic diamonds or bury it in the earth's mantle) Plus the material is valuable & space launches are dangerous. Launching to space probably introduces more contamination risk than any other option short of intentionally making dirty bombs out of it
- worik 5y agoIn one thousand years, when there are still ninety nine thousand years to go, what will the people in Europe think of us? We left toxic waste dumps, of waste that is silently toxic, a stealthy killer, all over the place. Some will be leaking. Some won't. And why did we do it? To pay for our current consumption. What will they think of us?
- baseballdork 5y agoLikely as unsophisticated people that were unable to harness the remaining energy in that waste.
- officehero 5y agoWhat do you think about people who lived 1000 years ago? Do you care about the pollution and deforestation around some mining areas in use during their time? Probably not. These issues, although serious, get swallowed by the progress of civilization.
- GaylordTuring 5y agoI don't understand why your comment was downvoted. If humans haven't transitioned into nuclear waste eating flying robots within a couple of thousand years, that's because they then have managed to go extinct, and in that case, whatever nuclear material that might leak into a nearby lake will only affect some fish and the occasional moose walking by (and these are creatures that we, today, kill for food, so it doesn't seem like most people care about them all that much). Caring about how future generations of humans will handle our nuclear waste is akin to someone 2000 years ago being worried that leaving a heap of rocks somewhere would be to much of a hazzle for us to get rid off.
- alkonaut 5y agoLikely the same as I feel about the PCB/DDT emissions from just the last century. How on earth could you be that stupid and selfish? The idea that random stuff sunk into oceans was "gone" lived into the 60's even in progressive places like Sweden. It's insane to think that this wasn't one generation ago.
- questiondev 5y ago100k years! wow, can we reuse this stuff if we are able to stabilize it enough to send into space?
- chendii 5y agoI'd love to know what cost they have put for 100k of storage of nuclear waste. Talk about intergenerational debt. Surely once storage costs are factored into nuclear energy, renewables are much much more cost effective, without all the risks of nuclear waste spilling out at some point in the next 100k years?!?!
- lm28469 5y ago> renewables are much much more cost effective It's not a cost issue, it's an "intermittent and non storable" issue. We don't need theories just look at Germany right now... Their last two nuclear reactors (max output 4GW) often produce more than their entire sun+wind system (max output 122GW) https://mobile.twitter.com/fmbreon/status/1480589479714959363 https://mobile.twitter.com/fmbreon/status/148058947971495936...
- pydry 5y agoThey also have 6 GW of pumped water storage and interconnects to countries with 20GW more, with 8TWh of storage in total. https://www.hydropower.org/country-profiles/germany https://www.hydropower.org/country-profiles/germany
- xemoka 5y agoA couple good Canadian podcasts about this (in Canada, related to our search for a Deep Geological Repository) have recently aired: on Canadaland [ https://www.canadaland.com/nuclear-waste-ignace-ontario/ https://www.canadaland.com/nuclear-waste-ignace-ontario/ ] (also an article) and "Open to Debate" on how nuclear energy is important for decarbonization [ https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/open-to-debate-with-david-mosc-749591/episodes/how-important-is-nuclear-energ-126602095 https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/open-to-debate-with-david... ];
- catears 5y agoIt's amazing to me how long 100K years are ~1-2 million years ago humans "invented" fire. ~12'000 years ago we invented agriculture. ~4'500 years ago the pyramids were built. Will human civilization even exist in 100'000 years, or will humans consider moving to the solar system next door because it has become so advanced of a civilization? All the while since 2022 some reactor fuel has been degrading in a some random hole in the country then named Sweden.
- nabla9 5y agoFinland, Sweden and Canada have areas of very stable granite that is 3 billion years old with few cracks. The granite is older than multicellular life, atmospheric oxygen event, or multicellular life. Those are good places to store nuclear waste.
- pojzon 5y agoThe two most possible outcomes are: - Our civilisation collapses and there will be not much future without advanced technology - We create AI that takes over the world trying to save humans from our own stupidity (we become pets) Ofcourse we can also: - Miraculously move further in evolution, put aside our differences, start working as a collective (but I highly doubt that)
- johanneskanybal 5y agoWe're already working together for all practical purposes. I get it's often unchallenged when people are overly negative about the future especially in a younger crowd but you're not doing yourself or us any favors and your options seem ludicrous.
- animal_spirits 5y agoRight. Humans are working together more than they have ever in our history
- pojzon 5y agoI wouldn't call that being negative. It's being realistic looking at what our "leaders" are focusing on. Climate change or world pollution or population disproporties are three topics that need immediate action under rigor and force. Most estimations I'm aware of predict we will miss all of our deadlines. Young people don't have to be the most intelligent ppl on the planet to be able to read what scientists that are experts in the field with tens of years of experience have to say. And they pretty much have consensus. Few scientists can be wrong, but if vast majority of them agrees on something -> there is a pretty high chance they are right. The situation we are in right now with information about it being at hand causes young ppl to be constantly depressed. The sole result of that will be devastating for the future. Even if our predictions prove themselves to be wrong and all will be dandy. I'm not gonna even talk about geopolitical issues we are currently struggling with.
- egorfine 5y ago!remindme 99y
- mongol 5y agoThe waste will be encapsulated in huge copper cylinders, and then embedded in bentonite clay. I fear the price of copper may be a problem in the future. Some dumb tomb raiders that don't know better will dig it up like a treasure.
- jeffrallen 5y agoThe sites in Switzerland that are under consideration for the same thing: https://s.geo.admin.ch/7caba0d5c9 https://s.geo.admin.ch/7caba0d5c9
- movedx 5y agoThis could be a stupid question, but could we not literally fire this stuff into the sun? My science be bad, forgive me.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- pydry 5y agoBecause sometimes rockets explode. Not a stupid question, though.
- movedx 5y agoAll or nothing though, eh? :P But seriously I see your point, but would the cost (economic, social, environmental) of developing a launch tech that could get the mass out of the atmosphere without rockets, heading towards the sun, not be be worth it? The amount of applications for that would be insane.
- fimdomeio 5y agowhat if the launch goes wrong and suddently you have a nuclear waste going all over the place. Anyway I think the resources and overall cost to put this amount of material in space would be... astronomical.
- movedx 5y ago> ... astronomical. Ha!
- ricw 5y agoGood luck to them. In Germany the national storage facility had nuclear waste stored in it for a decade or so and it “unexpectedly” started leaking and resurfacing. The project was subsequently abandoned about a decade ago and all existing waste had to be dug out again. Mark me as skeptic as to whether this is feasible. 100k years is all marketing in any case and can’t realistically be designed for.
- layer8 5y agoThe notion of a permanent repository for nuclear waste always seemed misguided to me. There are too many uncertainties and unknown unknowns even in the relative short term. It’s like assuming a piece of software is "finished", no new bugs will ever be found and no new requirements will ever come up. I believe it would make more sense to treat the waste as something that will have to be maintained over its lifetime, and changes to the storage will have to be expected, anticipated and accommodated over time.
- _ink_ 5y agoThey haven't dug it out, though. The waste is still in that cave where ground water enters. They think that they are ready to start the recovery in 10 (!) years. The estimated cost to prepare the recovery are above 4 billion Euro.
- 1970-01-01 5y agoI longbet you the fuel won't be there 100k years from now.
- grafelic 5y agoWhat would happen if the site was hit by a meteroid 2km in diameter?