3 ms·
It only needs a 100 year lifespan because part of the new safe confinement project is to “facilitate the disassembly and decommissioning of the reactor.” That’s
by Retric 1y ago
It only needs a 100 year lifespan because part of the new safe confinement project is to “facilitate the disassembly and decommissioning of the reactor.” That’s unrealistic for the entire zone, but I think we can safety assume people in 100k years aren’t going to randomly stumble upon the elephants foot.
> death and mutation
Even fairly recent studies are showing the legacy of past exposure in animal populations who lived through higher than current radiation levels and often carry that legacy through genetic damage across generations. Thus they overstate the exposure risk today.
Obviously even 1/1,000th of the current risk isn’t zero but it’s swamped by other considerations.
> No amount of inhaled Pu-239 is going to be fun for anyone.
There’s no benefit, but start talking individual atoms and you’ll have trouble detecting it.
I can’t find a paper on the topic but for a rough estimate, ~5-30% of the fuel was released, but not all of that remained local and some was removed etc. If something like 1/3 the fuel was nuclear waste and 0.8% of that was Pu-239 and 5% of that remains in 10k years. We’re talking well under 1kg Pu-239 across 2600 km^2. So your digger in 100k years is only inhaling and coughing up incredibly dilute material, we’re talking 10^-15 to 10^-20 kg Pu-239 in someone’s lungs depending on assumptions but even the high end is going to be swamped by normal background radiation.
- timschmidt 1y ago> I think we can safety assume people in 100k years aren’t going to randomly stumble upon the elephants foot. I think that's a big assumption. Historically, humans are interested in exploring abandoned and forbidden sites and go out of their way to do so. > part of the new safe confinement project is to “facilitate the disassembly and decommissioning of the reactor.” I've seen zero concrete plans or funding for this. And seeing as how the site is currently in the middle of a war zone, and has been hit by explosive drones[1], I think it's safe to say that things aren't going to plan. 1: https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/chernobyl-protective-shelter-damaged-by-drone https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/chernobyl-protec...
- Retric 1y ago> Historically, humans are interested in exploring abandoned and forbidden sites and go out of their way to do so. The waste is still going to be around in some form, just not in a huge lump someone can walk up to. > zero concrete plans or funding 3,000 people where working on site, so they had funding for the process and while slow quite a bit of visible progress had occurred. “The cranes have so far removed the roof of the reactor's engine room.” https://www.rferl.org/a/inside-chernobyl-nuclear-power-plant-conferment-shelter-photo/29583945.html https://www.rferl.org/a/inside-chernobyl-nuclear-power-plant... The final storage of all of Ukraine’s high level nuclear waste is unclear, but that’s a common issue in the industry. Getting this high level waste safely offsite and in dry cask storage is a reasonable goal at this point. The drone strike has been repaired, but ultimately wars don’t last forever. On the scale of a 100+ year projects it’s a temporary issue. https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/chernobyl-emergency-work-completed-to-put-out-fires-in-shelter https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/chernobyl-emerge...