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Actually it is the right way to plan centuries ahead. Taking a reasonable look at the risk and making an assessment. The actual risk of nuclear waste is incred

Actually it is the right way to plan centuries ahead. Taking a reasonable look at the risk and making an assessment. The actual risk of nuclear waste is incredibly small. You point would make sense if it was a nuclear weapon that could just randomly go off or something like that. However with civilian nuclear waste you really have to come up with pretty unlikely stuff for it to ever harm anybody. And you a tinfoil hat to come up with some scenario where it hurts a large number of people. And those risks are incredibly easy to detect should they ever happen. So again, unless you have total government collapse this simply isn't an issue. And if you have anarchy in Finland the least problem anybody will care about is a few leaking casks of nuclear waste that might happen. This is like worrying about bad air quality for your great grant children while your house is on fire. There are about 1000 ways I could think of to improve the lives of people in 200 years that have a far better way to spend billions of $ then burying nuclear waste. The more likely case is that people in 200 years will look back and say 'people back then already had all the fundamental research why were they so shit at using fission and fusion. What the fuck were they thinking'

chmod775 3y ago
> However with civilian nuclear waste you really have to come up with pretty unlikely stuff for it to ever harm anybody. Germany will be glad to hear that. They can continue using Asse II instead of needlessly spending billions clearing it out.
- panick21_ 3y ago
  Germany did exactly the stupid thing they shouldn't have done. Instead of easily managing the waste above ground they threw it into a mine. You are literally making my point for me. Burring low level nuclear waste in Asse II would have been fine. Managing the high level nuclear waste above ground would have been preferable. Germany would have saved a lot of money and trouble if they had simply managed their high level nuclear waste above ground. PS: I'm sick of the argument that 'somebody did something stupid with nuclear waste 50 years ago therefore it disproves everything'. The reality is in terms of safety there were 1000s of things happening in the 70s that damaged far more people then some nuclear waste management. Even totally unattended Asse II death count would likely be 0 or very close to 0. In all of nuclear history a almost vanishingly small amount of people have died from civilian nuclear waste, maybe its actually 0. And more people will actually die from building these big hole to dump nuclear waste in then would actually have died if this was was managed above ground.
  - smaudet 3y ago
    "The reality is in terms of safety there were 1000s of things happening in the 70s that damaged far more people then some nuclear waste management." Eh, no. You are making my point for me. All the "nuclear is safe and sustainable" propoganda hinges on getting a series of highly complex reactors all built and interoperating (well), and even then I am not clear that all the fuel is re-used, or that the "unspent" portions have some amazing-yet-not-yet-known use. I am sick and tired to the argument that "it's ok lets just do thes 20 other things 5 of which don't even exist yet and have innumerable hurdles facing them and it will be fine". It's really not fine, as you state we are quite good at making mistakes and bungling things, adding more factors into the equation increases the risk of something going wrong, it doesn't reduce them. We can even see from this article, the "solutions" already involve unproven theories that we think quite possibly are wrong, and yet the plans proceed as if nothing were to go wrong.
    - panick21_ 3y ago
      So many things wrong here. Even if you don't build any 'highly complex reactors' as you call them nuclear waste is safe. Reduction of waste threw a reusable fuel cycle would reduce the amount of waste considerably but it isn't actually a necessary condition. Geological storage is unproven and costs billions, but that you seem to ok with. That also involves a lot of steps and a lot of things that can go wrong. > portions have some amazing-yet-not-yet-known use We already know many of the potential use cases but I guess if you are not interested in production of medical isotopes to advance cancer research then I'm not sure what to tell you. Right now we build new reactors only to make these isotopes and the are incredibly limited and only available to a limited set of people. Equally the storage of nuclear batteries has run out and NASA and other space agencies are desperately to start producing them again. > It's really not fine, as you state we are quite good at making mistakes and bungling things, adding more factors into the equation increases the risk of something going wrong It also increases the risk of bringing sustainable reliable green energy, advances in nuclear technology with many application and high paying jobs in the local economy rather then putting up some solar panels produced in China. > unproven theories that we think quite possibly are wrong The theories are not unproven. Its simply a matter of doing the engineering, nobody really questions that these things are possible. Its just a matter of having the funds. Instead of every country spending billions digging a hole, investing in next generation technology is just obviously a better idea. For the price of the nuclear repository Switzerland is planning they could literally build a whole fleet of new reactors to power the country.
- cyberax 3y ago
  > Just walk away, turn off the pumps, it'll be fine. Pretty much, yeah. "Contamination" there is at trace levels, some places on Earth have naturally more radioactive water.

chmod775 3y ago

> However with civilian nuclear waste you really have to come up with pretty unlikely stuff for it to ever harm anybody. Germany will be glad to hear that. They can continue using Asse II instead of needlessly spending billions clearing it out.

panick21_ 3y ago
Germany did exactly the stupid thing they shouldn't have done. Instead of easily managing the waste above ground they threw it into a mine. You are literally making my point for me. Burring low level nuclear waste in Asse II would have been fine. Managing the high level nuclear waste above ground would have been preferable. Germany would have saved a lot of money and trouble if they had simply managed their high level nuclear waste above ground. PS: I'm sick of the argument that 'somebody did something stupid with nuclear waste 50 years ago therefore it disproves everything'. The reality is in terms of safety there were 1000s of things happening in the 70s that damaged far more people then some nuclear waste management. Even totally unattended Asse II death count would likely be 0 or very close to 0. In all of nuclear history a almost vanishingly small amount of people have died from civilian nuclear waste, maybe its actually 0. And more people will actually die from building these big hole to dump nuclear waste in then would actually have died if this was was managed above ground.
- smaudet 3y ago
  "The reality is in terms of safety there were 1000s of things happening in the 70s that damaged far more people then some nuclear waste management." Eh, no. You are making my point for me. All the "nuclear is safe and sustainable" propoganda hinges on getting a series of highly complex reactors all built and interoperating (well), and even then I am not clear that all the fuel is re-used, or that the "unspent" portions have some amazing-yet-not-yet-known use. I am sick and tired to the argument that "it's ok lets just do thes 20 other things 5 of which don't even exist yet and have innumerable hurdles facing them and it will be fine". It's really not fine, as you state we are quite good at making mistakes and bungling things, adding more factors into the equation increases the risk of something going wrong, it doesn't reduce them. We can even see from this article, the "solutions" already involve unproven theories that we think quite possibly are wrong, and yet the plans proceed as if nothing were to go wrong.
  - panick21_ 3y ago
    So many things wrong here. Even if you don't build any 'highly complex reactors' as you call them nuclear waste is safe. Reduction of waste threw a reusable fuel cycle would reduce the amount of waste considerably but it isn't actually a necessary condition. Geological storage is unproven and costs billions, but that you seem to ok with. That also involves a lot of steps and a lot of things that can go wrong. > portions have some amazing-yet-not-yet-known use We already know many of the potential use cases but I guess if you are not interested in production of medical isotopes to advance cancer research then I'm not sure what to tell you. Right now we build new reactors only to make these isotopes and the are incredibly limited and only available to a limited set of people. Equally the storage of nuclear batteries has run out and NASA and other space agencies are desperately to start producing them again. > It's really not fine, as you state we are quite good at making mistakes and bungling things, adding more factors into the equation increases the risk of something going wrong It also increases the risk of bringing sustainable reliable green energy, advances in nuclear technology with many application and high paying jobs in the local economy rather then putting up some solar panels produced in China. > unproven theories that we think quite possibly are wrong The theories are not unproven. Its simply a matter of doing the engineering, nobody really questions that these things are possible. Its just a matter of having the funds. Instead of every country spending billions digging a hole, investing in next generation technology is just obviously a better idea. For the price of the nuclear repository Switzerland is planning they could literally build a whole fleet of new reactors to power the country.
cyberax 3y ago
> Just walk away, turn off the pumps, it'll be fine. Pretty much, yeah. "Contamination" there is at trace levels, some places on Earth have naturally more radioactive water.