4 ms·
Sure, but has anyone ever built a container that lasts 30k years, and remains watertight? Thus far, most off-site containment storage sites over 10 years old h
by Joel_Mckay 4mo ago
Sure, but has anyone ever built a container that lasts 30k years, and remains watertight?
Thus far, most off-site containment storage sites over 10 years old have failed to stop containment leaks, Radon gas diffusion, or hot-material fires. Fission reactors are a 1950's loss-leader technology, and only make sense for already uninhabitable areas like space. =3
- margalabargala 4mo agoThere are plenty of dry areas like in the American Southwest which can be projected to not have meaningful water attempt ingress in that time frame. Also, fission reactors make phenomenal sense on aircraft carriers, submarines, etc.
- bobmcnamara 4mo agoWe've already leached too much uranium into the groundwater for many to drink just from the mining alone.
- iamnothere 4mo agoWe’ve also already depleted many aquifers past the point of recovery. We have too many people to hydrate, too many crops to water in order to feed them, and not enough water. At some point widespread desalination is probably inevitable, but that requires a lot of energy. Or the public could accept a reduction in their standard of living, but that’s likely not happening without a civil war.
- atmavatar 4mo agoWe're also not even attempting to be smart about our water usage, particularly when it comes to agriculture. Growing crops in a desert that require significant amounts of water to grow is already pretty bad, then exporting the bulk of those crops overseas adds insult to injury. Of course, all that is made possible by our pants-on-head stupid water rights laws.
- parineum 4mo ago> Or the public could accept a reduction in their standard of living, but that’s likely not happening without a civil war. I suspect what we'll actually do is what we always do. Innovate our way into a higher standard of living while simultaneously elevating the poorest people out of poverty and finding novel ways to feed, clothe and house our population. It's funny how persistent malthusians are in the face of evidence to the contrary.
- Joel_Mckay 4mo agoSeems more plausible given current trends. lol =3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_Green https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_Green
- iamnothere 4mo agoWe’ll see what that looks like in the face of demographic decline and increasingly expensive oil. It’s possible that some kind of technological miracle rescues us, but it seems more likely to me that we follow the pattern of catabolic collapse seen in the Bronze Age, Easter Island, and Europe in the Dark Ages. Civilization may rebound, sure, but humans have a history of overextension followed by decline (as do all animals).
- Joel_Mckay 4mo agoIf pituitary driven impulse models are representative, than current trends of exploiting generations is provably unsustainable. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CXj0AGuh4c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CXj0AGuh4c I wouldn't worry about it, and have a wonderful day. =3
- autoexec 4mo agoA very small number of people are taking (and often wasting) the majority of the worlds wealth and resources and harming everyone else in the process. We could probably stave off that decline for a lot longer if we did something about the leeches accelerating our collapse.
- tencentshill 4mo agoSolar energy is abundant in the places desalination is most needed. The market will balance out once that becomes apparent to constituents. They will vote to fund solar, politics are only a temporary impediment.
- autoexec 4mo ago> At some point widespread desalination is probably inevitable, but that requires a lot of energy. We'll also need somewhere to put all that salt. It'd be best to stop the largest wastes of the clean water that we have. We have plenty of water for people and food. We just have to stop the wasteful practices of industry and force them to be more efficient and responsible even though it will eat into their profits.
- Y-bar 4mo ago> At some point widespread desalination is probably inevitable, but that requires a lot of energy. This might be true, but desalination is not without it's own externalities (not counting energy usage). The primary one I am thinking of is the increase in salinity and heat in the local area killing sea life. These issues may be possible to avoid with limited use of desalination today, but a significant increase in volume may reach a point where things like dilution and cooling by mixing does not have the desired effect.
- kurthr 4mo agoWait till you find out how much uranium there is in coal ash and how many tons a year are put in the air or dumped into ground water. Both the ash and uranium tailings are in the 50ppm range, but we make 100Mt per year of one of them and basically no uranium tailings in the US. Globally, the ratio is over 1Gt of coal ash and 10-20Mt of uranium tailings. One is currently a problem, the other isn't.
- Joel_Mckay 4mo agoI have a lower opinion of coal, more than any other energy source. From an economics perspective it also costs 4% more than solar now. There is no excuse to bring back 1800's steam technology. If you grill, use charcoal because it is short-term carbon cycle neutral. We have one of the largest global coal deposits, but it is also one of the most contaminated natural hot heavy metal sources currently known. Indeed, the natural run off has already closed many water wells for small towns in the area. =3
- anonymars 4mo agoLet's also not forget how much fresh water has been ruined with fracking "Nuclear fission: the worst energy source, except for almost all the other ones"
- butvacuum 4mo agoand we've collected enough arsenic from a single mine to kill every human on the planet 300 times over in one spot- what's your point? That because we screwed up one spot we should give up? Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_Mine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_Mine
- Joel_Mckay 4mo agoNot sure why people buried your post, but many water-soluble metal salts are pretty toxic to animals and people. In areas with natural Arsenic accumulation (or Acid rain run off), farmers will sometimes place rusting iron equipment in the water ways to reduce metals accumulating in the topsoil. With low rainfall the evaporated well-water problem can certainly be a serious concern. =3
- modo_mario 4mo ago>farmers will sometimes place rusting iron equipment in the water ways to reduce metals accumulating in the topsoil. Hoes does this work and related to the arsenic and acid rain?
- Joel_Mckay 4mo agoWould have preferred a better source, but likely a similar process to the following: https://wedc-knowledge.lboro.ac.uk/resources/conference/26/wegelin-soras.pdf https://wedc-knowledge.lboro.ac.uk/resources/conference/26/w... Best of luck =3
- butvacuum 3mo agoI think it's probably because- even with a trivially verifyable source- the 300x lethal dose for 9 billion people is a knee jerk "no way!"
- jojogeo 4mo agoWhoa; TIL. It's terrifying the number of future-time-bombs we keep planting for ourselves.
- Joel_Mckay 4mo agoEvery miner knows most holes fill with water sooner or later. Corollary: Every sailor knows most vessels are sunk sooner or later. Aircraft carriers and Submarines are not civilian infrastructure, and if they sink offshore where no can live... will usually pose less of a problem like buoyant waste barrels popping up later. We are in the age of bargain conflicts, where throwing gold bricks at adversaries makes less sense strategically. =3
- margalabargala 4mo agoExactly. Most is not all and the ones that don't have striking traits in common ignored only by a fool.
- calvinmorrison 4mo ago[flagged]
- Joel_Mckay 4mo agoThe living, and sometimes those dying from lung cancer. =3 edit: Please don't down peoples karma for being crass. If it was a honest question they deserve an honest answer.
- AnthonyMouse 4mo ago> Sure, but has anyone ever built a container that lasts 30k years, and remains watertight? Why are people still proposing this antiquated 20th century storage technology instead of just building the newer reactor types that not only don't have this problem but are the best way to get rid of the long-lived isotopes we already have from 20th century reactor designs? The answer to what you do with isotopes with long half lives is that you put them in a reactor that turns them into isotopes with shorter half lives.
- Joel_Mckay 4mo agoMostly, it is the same naive lies we have all heard dozens of times before in the past. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUHuX-Gbenc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUHuX-Gbenc Also, the billions of dollars boondoggle reactor projects that never delivered is a hard sell. "Trust me bro" isn't enough anymore. lol =3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Kkgg494Ifc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Kkgg494Ifc
- AnthonyMouse 4mo agoNone of it is lies. The CANDU reactors Canada has been operating for decades can run on spent fuel from legacy reactors and China actually uses them that way. The US hasn't built any of them, or any of the other designs that can do the same thing, in significant part because people keep presenting the circular reasoning that we shouldn't build newer reactors without dealing with nuclear waste when we should be dealing with nuclear waste by building newer reactors.
- Joel_Mckay 4mo agoIndeed, Canada was also indirectly responsible for many Nuclear weapons proliferation issues in North Korea, India, and Pakistan. Selling small research reactors to emerging economies had long-term consequences. As a side note, the CANDU are famously bad designs known to develop heavy maintenance costs even to remain operational. Yes these can run on garbage fuel, but only because other designs could never tolerate such waste. It is a teachable moment about legacy designs having unintended benefits as well. =3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNQu_3VQYAE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNQu_3VQYAE
- jlarocco 4mo agoI think storing nuclear waste was decided to be a bad idea a long time ago. I'm not a nuclear scientist, but I was under the impression that if something is radioactive enough to be a hazard then it's radioactive enough to generate power. Is that not the case?
- Joel_Mckay 4mo agoA brand new Uranium fuel pellet is often safe to hold with gloved hands for a moment. Spent fuel with complex decay isotopes must be kept under deep cooling pools with criticality control precautions. From a chemistry perspective, complex isotope products like Plutonium are more obscure to evolutionary biology, so it is often much more dangerous even in accidental trace exposures. I am just a sentient turnip that prefers distributed Solar products. Have a great day =3
- chickenbig 4mo ago> if something is radioactive enough to be a hazard then it's radioactive enough to generate power Only under certain circumstances is it financially worth harnessing this power. I think of space probes and their RTGs. They use alpha emitters like Pu-238, to minimize the shielding requirements. As for the rest of the stuff, dry casks are good enough. Reprocessing isn’t currently economical while uranium is so cheap, although the vitrification of the fission products can help immobilize the worst radiation emitters, but really the UO2 structure does a decent job of keeping things put.
- consensus1 4mo ago99.99% of the radiation is gone after 300 years, so you don't really have to.
- Joel_Mckay 4mo ago"Plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24110 years" There are dozens of other decay products with various hazardous properties. Scientific hubris can't be made safe, and societies have proven irresponsible with fuel life-cycle management. =3
- consensus1 4mo agoAnd why am I supposed to care? Because plutonium sounds scary?
- Joel_Mckay 4mo ago>And why am I supposed to care? Indeed, one persons opinion is not really all that important, but one is alive because of decisions made long before they were born. >Because plutonium sounds scary? Which of the 14 isotopes are you referring too? In general, synthetic isotopes unknown in our evolutionary biology are far more toxic in trace exposures. Some people don't get a chance to learn form their mistakes. Best of luck =3
- chickenbig 4mo ago> Which of the 14 isotopes are you referring too? In general, synthetic isotopes unknown in our evolutionary biology are far more toxic https://www.theguardian.com/uk/1999/aug/09/rorycarroll https://www.theguardian.com/uk/1999/aug/09/rorycarroll . Or does the biochemistry of Pu particularly depend on the isotope?
- Joel_Mckay 4mo agoIt is a complex answer, and heavily depends on decay product chemistry. =3 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK599402/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK599402/
- viraptor 4mo ago> most off-site containment storage sites over 10 years old have failed to stop containment leaks There's nothing obvious I could find that I could find that would confirm it. Could you cite something?
- Joel_Mckay 4mo agoIndeed, signal-to-noise ratio on the modern web is fairly challenging search space, but there was DoE documentation out there showing near zero practical success rate at actual long-term disposal sites. Every site has shown some concrete degradation within years, reported incidents, water ingress, and persistent operational costs. Current methodology is to pile up waste near cooling ponds, and lie to people about dealing with it at some point in the future. My point was, few organizations have ever shown actual success with what they claimed would happen. Thus, arguing sites will hold for 75 years let alone 30k years is a fools errand. Water fills holes in the ground, and will likely continue to do so in the future. =3 https://armscontrolcenter.org/nuclear-waste-issues-in-the-united-states/ https://armscontrolcenter.org/nuclear-waste-issues-in-the-un... https://www.cnsc-ccsn.gc.ca/eng/acts-and-regulations/event-reports-for-major-nuclear-facilities/ https://www.cnsc-ccsn.gc.ca/eng/acts-and-regulations/event-r... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accidents_and_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accident... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_nuclear_accidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_nuclear_accid...
- freestanding 4mo ago[flagged]
- Joel_Mckay 4mo agoSouth Park fans are hilarious =3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veHTTuePS1w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veHTTuePS1w