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On a visit to a pub I talked to a guy from VTT, the Finnish technology institute, about the wisdom of concentrating nuclear waste in particular locations. My po

On a visit to a pub I talked to a guy from VTT, the Finnish technology institute, about the wisdom of concentrating nuclear waste in particular locations. My point being, Murphy predicts that if there is an asteroid strike, it will hit a nuclear waste repository - and render mankind extinct. His response was that if you put the waste far enough underground, like a km or more, then if an asteroid actually disturbs it, the dispersion of the waste won't actually be your biggest problem.

darby_nine 2y ago
> it will hit a nuclear waste repository - and render mankind extinct. People far overestimate the destructive power of nuclear weapons and nuclear fallout. This fear of them is of course greatly encouraged by states that hold nuclear weapons, but they're far from humanity's most destructive tendencies.
lupusreal 2y ago
You could also just dump it into a deep part of the ocean. Objectively this is safe and effective, but emotionally it's just terrible and people will think I'm trolling for even suggesting it. Look up the PPM for uranium in ocean water, then multiply that out by how much ocean water there is. The amount of uranium naturally dissolved into the oceans is staggering. Nothing humanity can do will ever come close. Even when you throw the nasty transuranics into the consideration, it's nothing. Dump nuclear reactors straight into the oceans and stop worrying about it.
- thecyborganizer 2y ago
  It would be safe and effective if we had a mechanism of distributing nuclear waste evenly throughout the entire volume of the Earth's oceans. But we don't have that and that's impossible to build! Dumping nuclear waste into the ocean will, mathematically, result in a globally acceptable concentration of nuclear waste in ocean water - but it will be locally problematic for wherever we put it, and that's assuming it stays put.
- perihelions 2y ago
  I don't buy that. Sure, that's true: there's billions of tons of uranium in the ocean and nothing bad happens—but it's *also* true that we added just a few thousand tons of mercury, and there's already fish that are hazardous to human health as a result. There's large chemical differences, in how different things are absorbed by microbes, and bioaccumulate in sea life; it's not an automatic given that everything's as comparatively safe as soluble uranium. (And don't forget: spent nuclear fuel isn't one element—it's about half of the entire periodic table. Many of those transuranics are barely researched, chemically). This is a question that would need to be extensively researched, before committing to something that's irreversible on a geological timescale. Handwaving arguments aren't enough, for something this important, this consequential. (There's actually rather a lot of spent nuclear reactors littering the ocean floor, so opportunities to research this question are available right now—if any scientists could be bothered).
- Moldoteck 2y ago
  Imo it's bad not for environmental reasons but bc it's wasteful to throw away the waste we could use in the future when breeding reactors or reprocessing plants become mainstream
- chickenbig 2y ago
  Well https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_floor_disposal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_floor_disposal was a thing being considered. One of the problems associated with this option includes the difficulty of recovering the waste, if necessary, once it is emplaced deep in the ocean. That's a big mystery about spent nuclear fuel disposal; why do people want to be able to recover it, other than to add compromises.
  - briffle 2y ago
    Spent nuclear fuel in most older reactors retains more than 90% of its potential energy.
    - chickenbig 2y ago
      In the form of Plutonium? Perhaps. In the form of U-238? Perhaps too, but look near enrichment plants and you will see yards full of steel cylinders filled with depleted Uranium hexafluoride. https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@53.2635448,-2.9592278,327m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@53.2635448,-2.9592278,327m/da... So the spent fuel does not contain valuable energy. Better off removing the requirement to be able to retrieve it and just get on with disposing of it.
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> it will hit a nuclear waste repository - and render mankind extinct You could leave the world's nuclear waste and weapons on the surface and not have it be an extinction-level concern in the event of an asteroid impact.
- ForOldHack 2y ago
  ^^ Excellent applied statistic problem and solution.
gwbas1c 2y ago
> My point being, Murphy predicts that if there is an asteroid strike, it will hit a nuclear waste repository - and render mankind extinct. Depleted uranium is not explosive: You will not have an explosion like a nuclear bomb. A nuclear engineer can probably explain this better. My understanding is that depleted uranium is a highly toxic substance, so we wouldn't want it to leech into soil / groundwater. I also doubt meltdowns are a substantial risk because the fuel pellets would have to fall / land in a way that they are concentrated together. Funny anecdote: Two years ago I took my family on vacation, and I happened to be near a pumped hydro storage plant that was built to balance an early reactor. I couldn't find it, and when I turned around, I looked out the windshield, and across the river was a bunch of nuclear waste in dry storage: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Yankee+Atomic+Electric+Co/@42.7270362,-72.9319507,2116m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m14!1m7!3m6!1s0x89e0c49b670ab3d3:0x1597762b5d1c44da!2sYankee+Atomic+Electric+Co!8m2!3d42.7270323!4d-72.9271871!16s%2Fg%2F1vm_yw_g!3m5!1s0x89e0c49b670ab3d3:0x1597762b5d1c44da!8m2!3d42.7270323!4d-72.9271871!16s%2Fg%2F1vm_yw_g?entry=ttu https://www.google.com/maps/place/Yankee+Atomic+Electric+Co/... I wouldn't have even known what it was if I hadn't gone looking for it on Google Maps a few years prior. Getting back to the point, if an asteroid hit the dry storage that I mapped above, I doubt there would be an explosion. The Deerfield river would probably become very toxic, but I wouldn't call it an extension event.
- FireBeyond 2y ago
  > Depleted uranium is not explosive: You will not have an explosion like a nuclear bomb. This was similar to the confusion in Chernobyl. Engineers were saying "The reactor has exploded", while the Chief Engineers were retorting, "Tell me how it explodes. There's graphite rods and uranium rods". Tangential to the waste byproducts, absolutely.
  - moralestapia 2y ago
    I am the one confused now ... didn't Chernobyl explode?
    - FireBeyond 2y ago

darby_nine 2y ago

> it will hit a nuclear waste repository - and render mankind extinct. People far overestimate the destructive power of nuclear weapons and nuclear fallout. This fear of them is of course greatly encouraged by states that hold nuclear weapons, but they're far from humanity's most destructive tendencies.

lupusreal 2y ago

You could also just dump it into a deep part of the ocean. Objectively this is safe and effective, but emotionally it's just terrible and people will think I'm trolling for even suggesting it. Look up the PPM for uranium in ocean water, then multiply that out by how much ocean water there is. The amount of uranium naturally dissolved into the oceans is staggering. Nothing humanity can do will ever come close. Even when you throw the nasty transuranics into the consideration, it's nothing. Dump nuclear reactors straight into the oceans and stop worrying about it.

thecyborganizer 2y ago
It would be safe and effective if we had a mechanism of distributing nuclear waste evenly throughout the entire volume of the Earth's oceans. But we don't have that and that's impossible to build! Dumping nuclear waste into the ocean will, mathematically, result in a globally acceptable concentration of nuclear waste in ocean water - but it will be locally problematic for wherever we put it, and that's assuming it stays put.
perihelions 2y ago
I don't buy that. Sure, that's true: there's billions of tons of uranium in the ocean and nothing bad happens—but it's *also* true that we added just a few thousand tons of mercury, and there's already fish that are hazardous to human health as a result. There's large chemical differences, in how different things are absorbed by microbes, and bioaccumulate in sea life; it's not an automatic given that everything's as comparatively safe as soluble uranium. (And don't forget: spent nuclear fuel isn't one element—it's about half of the entire periodic table. Many of those transuranics are barely researched, chemically). This is a question that would need to be extensively researched, before committing to something that's irreversible on a geological timescale. Handwaving arguments aren't enough, for something this important, this consequential. (There's actually rather a lot of spent nuclear reactors littering the ocean floor, so opportunities to research this question are available right now—if any scientists could be bothered).
Moldoteck 2y ago
Imo it's bad not for environmental reasons but bc it's wasteful to throw away the waste we could use in the future when breeding reactors or reprocessing plants become mainstream
chickenbig 2y ago
Well https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_floor_disposal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_floor_disposal was a thing being considered. One of the problems associated with this option includes the difficulty of recovering the waste, if necessary, once it is emplaced deep in the ocean. That's a big mystery about spent nuclear fuel disposal; why do people want to be able to recover it, other than to add compromises.
- briffle 2y ago
  Spent nuclear fuel in most older reactors retains more than 90% of its potential energy.
  - chickenbig 2y ago
    In the form of Plutonium? Perhaps. In the form of U-238? Perhaps too, but look near enrichment plants and you will see yards full of steel cylinders filled with depleted Uranium hexafluoride. https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@53.2635448,-2.9592278,327m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@53.2635448,-2.9592278,327m/da... So the spent fuel does not contain valuable energy. Better off removing the requirement to be able to retrieve it and just get on with disposing of it.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

> it will hit a nuclear waste repository - and render mankind extinct You could leave the world's nuclear waste and weapons on the surface and not have it be an extinction-level concern in the event of an asteroid impact.

ForOldHack 2y ago
^^ Excellent applied statistic problem and solution.

gwbas1c 2y ago

> My point being, Murphy predicts that if there is an asteroid strike, it will hit a nuclear waste repository - and render mankind extinct. Depleted uranium is not explosive: You will not have an explosion like a nuclear bomb. A nuclear engineer can probably explain this better. My understanding is that depleted uranium is a highly toxic substance, so we wouldn't want it to leech into soil / groundwater. I also doubt meltdowns are a substantial risk because the fuel pellets would have to fall / land in a way that they are concentrated together. Funny anecdote: Two years ago I took my family on vacation, and I happened to be near a pumped hydro storage plant that was built to balance an early reactor. I couldn't find it, and when I turned around, I looked out the windshield, and across the river was a bunch of nuclear waste in dry storage: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Yankee+Atomic+Electric+Co/@42.7270362,-72.9319507,2116m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m14!1m7!3m6!1s0x89e0c49b670ab3d3:0x1597762b5d1c44da!2sYankee+Atomic+Electric+Co!8m2!3d42.7270323!4d-72.9271871!16s%2Fg%2F1vm_yw_g!3m5!1s0x89e0c49b670ab3d3:0x1597762b5d1c44da!8m2!3d42.7270323!4d-72.9271871!16s%2Fg%2F1vm_yw_g?entry=ttu https://www.google.com/maps/place/Yankee+Atomic+Electric+Co/... I wouldn't have even known what it was if I hadn't gone looking for it on Google Maps a few years prior. Getting back to the point, if an asteroid hit the dry storage that I mapped above, I doubt there would be an explosion. The Deerfield river would probably become very toxic, but I wouldn't call it an extension event.

FireBeyond 2y ago
> Depleted uranium is not explosive: You will not have an explosion like a nuclear bomb. This was similar to the confusion in Chernobyl. Engineers were saying "The reactor has exploded", while the Chief Engineers were retorting, "Tell me how it explodes. There's graphite rods and uranium rods". Tangential to the waste byproducts, absolutely.
- moralestapia 2y ago
  I am the one confused now ... didn't Chernobyl explode?
  - FireBeyond 2y ago