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Thing is that maybe in 300 years someone wants to develop that land and the documents that say to not do that there are in an old version of .docx in an obsolet

Thing is that maybe in 300 years someone wants to develop that land and the documents that say to not do that there are in an old version of .docx in an obsolete storage form buried under layers of bureaucracy. That’s how someone ends up living on the casket growing a massive thyroid. Same reason that makes us not write code that only the author can understand (when working in a team), we need to plan ahead in the same way. We can’t rely on the future solving our current problems or even understanding them fully.

panick21_ 3y ago
Or somebody spends 100$ on a Geiger counter ... Nuclear waste will not simply be lost. The only way it gets lost if society literally collapses. And if that happens the small amount of nuclear waste is the least important problem anybody will have.
- tstrimple 3y ago
  Nuclear waste has been lost multiple times throughout history and has killed people. Kind of amazing someone could think it cannot happen. https://www.nti.org/analysis/articles/overview-of-the-cns-global-incidents-and-trafficking-database/#report https://www.nti.org/analysis/articles/overview-of-the-cns-gl...
  - panick21_ 3y ago
    We are talking about spent nuclear fuel casks from civilian nuclear. Not medical isotopes that fell of a truck. We are mostly talking about many meters long fuel casks. They might get rerouted on a train once but they are rarely lost and even if they are, even during transport they are packaged to be save for a considerable amount of time. And I couldn't find a clear indication of how many people died from civilian nuclear waste. The article you linked does not really give much information and I'm not gone read the whole report. Every study shows that that nuclear energy has the lowest death per person. People are more likely to die during construction then anything else.
  - throwuwu 3y ago
    That report includes radiation sources which are much more radioactive and much smaller than nuclear waste from power plants. Small radioactive sources can be easily lost or stolen due to their size. Nuclear waste from a power plant is larger being mostly fuel rods or irradiated containers and is stored and transported in large containers that are not easily lost or stolen. Making an argument based on that report also covers arguing against the use of radioactive materials in healthcare and industry since that is where most of the small losable isotopes are employed.
  - Manuel_D 3y ago
    That was nuclear waste from medical instruments, not 12 foot high concrete cinders of nuclear power plant waste: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_cask_storage#/media/File%3ANuclear_dry_storage.jpg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_cask_storage#/media/File... If anything, this example serves to prove that we have an irrationally heightened fear over nuclear power's waste: we have had incidents with medical radioisotopes, but yet that doesn't get nearly as much press as the supposed "waste problem" with nuclear power.
cyberax 3y ago
Options: 1. So you start digging and find huge concrete cylinders with clearly marked "radioactive" warning signs. Hilarity ensues, people sue each other, and cylinders get moved somewhere else. 2. You just build a house on the ground (without digging). Nothing bad happens. 3. Civilization collapses, nobody cares about the abandoned casks.
- janalsncm 3y ago
  There is a fourth option. Nuclear waste can be used in dirty bombs and poisons as well. So waste sites should be somewhat secure. So in the analogy it would be as if we left a stockpile of guns and ammo. I don’t think leaving a bunch of loaded guns around is a responsible way to hand the future to our children, especially since we can’t know what the future political situations will be.
  - karlerss 3y ago
    But we did leave a stockpile of weapons and ammo. It's a minor inconvenience. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_bomb_disposal_in_Europe https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_bomb_disposal_i...
    - janalsncm 3y ago
      It’s a minor inconvenience in Europe because of the political stability of the region. However, it has been stable for only a relatively short period of time, with no guarantees for the future. So let me reframe the question. Do you think it would be a good idea to store spent nuclear waste in present day Iraq or Syria?
      - HPsquared 3y ago
        Proliferation is the biggest hazard, I think. Proliferation of the fissile material remains a problem for much longer than the radiation from the fission products (which is only a few hundred years). The best way is to burn up these actinides in a suitable reactor.
belorn 3y ago
You can not just go around and develop land today. First you need to take a survey, soil samples, water quality control, and then during digging and construction there are all kind of different dangerous. Most countries in EU still have a bunch of bombs in the ground left over from world war 2, and they will be there until someone finds them and disarms them. Soil and water contamination from industry is anyone guess, and protected archeological finds are only more likely to be found in 300 years than it is today. There will never be a .docx file to tell you that a specific land was the dumping ground for lead by-products in 19th century. Land developers are not allowed, nor will ever be allowed to just assume that some land has never been used before. Too much of history is undocumented, and what is documented is not reliable.
- VeninVidiaVicii 3y ago
  I think the argument is clearly trite, .docx seems like a joke, and very more likely within the hundreds to thousands of years, people probably won’t even speak Finnish there anymore.
  - belorn 3y ago
    I find the argument that they will need to speak Finish to be boring. Why should they in hundreds to thousands of years need to read an ancient document to figure out whats below the ground. It is not a realistic problem.
    - culopatin 3y ago
      You don’t know that, all you can do is try your best TODAY to avoid issues in the future. It seems very clear to me that if we all follow the rules of traffic we can safely go 90+ since I’m a pretty good driver, everyone else must be too. Yet the speed limit is much lower and people crash all the time anyway. It’s evident to me that if I order a coffee, it’ll be hot, but the lid says “caution hot”. It’s obvious that if I see that the floor is wet and the surface is slippery, I shouldn’t run if I’m trying to avoid slipping, yet we have those yellow signs everywhere. Just because you think something is below YOU, super smart HN user, it doesn’t mean it keeps the average idiot safe in the future.
Manuel_D 3y ago
And why aren't we raising the same objection to the vastly greater quantities of non-nuclear industrial waste that will never decay into safer isotopes? Again, the question is, what is the heightened risk specific to nuclear waste that warrants so much more attention?

panick21_ 3y ago

Or somebody spends 100$ on a Geiger counter ... Nuclear waste will not simply be lost. The only way it gets lost if society literally collapses. And if that happens the small amount of nuclear waste is the least important problem anybody will have.

tstrimple 3y ago
Nuclear waste has been lost multiple times throughout history and has killed people. Kind of amazing someone could think it cannot happen. https://www.nti.org/analysis/articles/overview-of-the-cns-global-incidents-and-trafficking-database/#report https://www.nti.org/analysis/articles/overview-of-the-cns-gl...
- panick21_ 3y ago
  We are talking about spent nuclear fuel casks from civilian nuclear. Not medical isotopes that fell of a truck. We are mostly talking about many meters long fuel casks. They might get rerouted on a train once but they are rarely lost and even if they are, even during transport they are packaged to be save for a considerable amount of time. And I couldn't find a clear indication of how many people died from civilian nuclear waste. The article you linked does not really give much information and I'm not gone read the whole report. Every study shows that that nuclear energy has the lowest death per person. People are more likely to die during construction then anything else.
- throwuwu 3y ago
  That report includes radiation sources which are much more radioactive and much smaller than nuclear waste from power plants. Small radioactive sources can be easily lost or stolen due to their size. Nuclear waste from a power plant is larger being mostly fuel rods or irradiated containers and is stored and transported in large containers that are not easily lost or stolen. Making an argument based on that report also covers arguing against the use of radioactive materials in healthcare and industry since that is where most of the small losable isotopes are employed.
- Manuel_D 3y ago
  That was nuclear waste from medical instruments, not 12 foot high concrete cinders of nuclear power plant waste: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_cask_storage#/media/File%3ANuclear_dry_storage.jpg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_cask_storage#/media/File... If anything, this example serves to prove that we have an irrationally heightened fear over nuclear power's waste: we have had incidents with medical radioisotopes, but yet that doesn't get nearly as much press as the supposed "waste problem" with nuclear power.

cyberax 3y ago

Options: 1. So you start digging and find huge concrete cylinders with clearly marked "radioactive" warning signs. Hilarity ensues, people sue each other, and cylinders get moved somewhere else. 2. You just build a house on the ground (without digging). Nothing bad happens. 3. Civilization collapses, nobody cares about the abandoned casks.

janalsncm 3y ago
There is a fourth option. Nuclear waste can be used in dirty bombs and poisons as well. So waste sites should be somewhat secure. So in the analogy it would be as if we left a stockpile of guns and ammo. I don’t think leaving a bunch of loaded guns around is a responsible way to hand the future to our children, especially since we can’t know what the future political situations will be.
- karlerss 3y ago
  But we did leave a stockpile of weapons and ammo. It's a minor inconvenience. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_bomb_disposal_in_Europe https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_bomb_disposal_i...
  - janalsncm 3y ago
    It’s a minor inconvenience in Europe because of the political stability of the region. However, it has been stable for only a relatively short period of time, with no guarantees for the future. So let me reframe the question. Do you think it would be a good idea to store spent nuclear waste in present day Iraq or Syria?
    - HPsquared 3y ago
      Proliferation is the biggest hazard, I think. Proliferation of the fissile material remains a problem for much longer than the radiation from the fission products (which is only a few hundred years). The best way is to burn up these actinides in a suitable reactor.

belorn 3y ago

You can not just go around and develop land today. First you need to take a survey, soil samples, water quality control, and then during digging and construction there are all kind of different dangerous. Most countries in EU still have a bunch of bombs in the ground left over from world war 2, and they will be there until someone finds them and disarms them. Soil and water contamination from industry is anyone guess, and protected archeological finds are only more likely to be found in 300 years than it is today. There will never be a .docx file to tell you that a specific land was the dumping ground for lead by-products in 19th century. Land developers are not allowed, nor will ever be allowed to just assume that some land has never been used before. Too much of history is undocumented, and what is documented is not reliable.

VeninVidiaVicii 3y ago
I think the argument is clearly trite, .docx seems like a joke, and very more likely within the hundreds to thousands of years, people probably won’t even speak Finnish there anymore.
- belorn 3y ago
  I find the argument that they will need to speak Finish to be boring. Why should they in hundreds to thousands of years need to read an ancient document to figure out whats below the ground. It is not a realistic problem.
  - culopatin 3y ago
    You don’t know that, all you can do is try your best TODAY to avoid issues in the future. It seems very clear to me that if we all follow the rules of traffic we can safely go 90+ since I’m a pretty good driver, everyone else must be too. Yet the speed limit is much lower and people crash all the time anyway. It’s evident to me that if I order a coffee, it’ll be hot, but the lid says “caution hot”. It’s obvious that if I see that the floor is wet and the surface is slippery, I shouldn’t run if I’m trying to avoid slipping, yet we have those yellow signs everywhere. Just because you think something is below YOU, super smart HN user, it doesn’t mean it keeps the average idiot safe in the future.

Manuel_D 3y ago

And why aren't we raising the same objection to the vastly greater quantities of non-nuclear industrial waste that will never decay into safer isotopes? Again, the question is, what is the heightened risk specific to nuclear waste that warrants so much more attention?