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That is not all. It repeats the falsehood: The stability of glass is one of its most attractive characteristics, for example in the storage of nuclear waste. V
by ncmncm 4y ago
That is not all. It repeats the falsehood: The stability of glass is one of its most attractive characteristics, for example in the storage of nuclear waste.
Vitrified nuclear waste, immersed, would become porous and friable long before its radioactivity decayed significantly.
It also claims that we don't have proof glass doesn't flow in historical time-frames, where in fact we have glass goblets from thousands of years ago.
It further attributes tapering in glass in windows as indicating poor quality, where in fact that was just a feature of how flat glass was made. Window makers oriented glass thicker edge down because that was the sturdier way to make things.
Until quite recently, flat glass was made by blowing a big bottle, and centering it on a turntable while still soft. Spinning, the mouth widened until the whole thing flopped out flat, with a characteristic "whomp!", the bottle mouth becoming the rim.
- kergonath 4y ago> Vitrified nuclear waste, immersed, would become porous and friable long before its radioactivity decayed significantly. Not quite. Silicates form a passive gel layer when put in water, they are quite resistant to leaching (we have examples of ancient Egyptian glass items recovered from the sea). Over very long time frames, way longer than millennia, the glass just dissolves. But for this you’d need them to be immersed and constant water circulation; silica is very stable. In this case you’re not worried about radionuclides release too much anyway, as the seas tend to be very large and have already quite a bit of them. Plus, only the low-activity isotopes remain isotopes after that time.
- ncmncm 4y agoRadionuclide glasses should be expected to be less stable than ordinary silicates.
- kergonath 4y agoIt depends on what you call “ordinary silicates”. The matrix is mostly sodium borosilicate with a bunch of additives and is as stable as a glass could be. There are precipitates caused by some of the waste elements (things like ruthenium, rhodium and palladium, for example). They have issues but still quite far from making the glass crumble. As with all glasses, crystallisation is an open question but won’t happen for a very long time either.
- KineticLensman 4y agoYes. If glass flowed precision optics would stop working after a few years
- jayd16 4y ago>we have glass goblets from thousands of years ago I think you'd also need to verify what it looked like thousands of years ago and whether it was stored in a way that held a consistent flow direction, if you wanted to use that as evidence.
- eru 4y ago> Vitrified nuclear waste, immersed, would become porous and friable long before its radioactivity decayed significantly. Eh, that totally depends on what's your radioactive material. They don't all decay at the same rate, you know?