Tangentially related: What ever became of Taylor Wilson? > https://www.businessinsider.com/taylor-wilson-taking-the-ene...
U.S. put nuclear waste under a dome on a Pacific island. Now it’s cracking open
21–30 of 120 posts
Re: U.S. put nuclear waste under a dome on a Pacific island. Now it’s cracking open
#22Does anyone else feel helpless when reading stuff like this? Is there anything I can do to make things better in these scenarios?
Vote. As futile as it feels, that's all any of us can do.
That's exactly the belief those in power most want you to hold on to. Elections are a cruel joke. Build guillotines.
Re: U.S. put nuclear waste under a dome on a Pacific island. Now it’s cracking open
#23Does anyone else feel helpless when reading stuff like this? Is there anything I can do to make things better in these scenarios?
I think this event sounds far worse than it is. The site is contaminated already worse than any leak would cause.
That's not good, but it's not some sort of catastrophic event here.
Re: U.S. put nuclear waste under a dome on a Pacific island. Now it’s cracking open
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Vote. As futile as it feels, that's all any of us can do.
That's exactly the belief those in power most want you to hold on to. Elections are a cruel joke. Build guillotines.
And replace elections with what?
Democracy is the only system that has ever served any kind of majority of the population. Ours may be in rough shape right now, but burning it all down instead of fixing it helps no one.
Re: U.S. put nuclear waste under a dome on a Pacific island. Now it’s cracking open
#25More FUD. Nuclear energy is the safest energy.
I've sorta reached the conclusion that nuclear energy is the safest form of energy if everyone is well behaved and disciplined about it. On the other hand, given the wrong incentives, you might just stow nuclear waste where it's cheapest and where you can get away with it, and then not be penalized when the containment mechanism you cheaped out on fails... or maybe you just conveniently forget to do maintenance on it…
Humans under what, then? I wonder if you're aware that the socialist economies of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union were not just economic failures; they were also environmental catastrophes.
Jeffrey Sachs has commented that the socialist nations had “some of the worst environmental problems in the entire globe.”. Companies can be held to account (failure to do so is another story) but try that with a centrally run enterprise.
Re: U.S. put nuclear waste under a dome on a Pacific island. Now it’s cracking open
#26Pretty bad reporting. OK, it contains Pu-239, but how much? If it leaks, what effects will that have?
Re: U.S. put nuclear waste under a dome on a Pacific island. Now it’s cracking open
#27More FUD. Nuclear energy is the safest energy.
Can we ship all the nuclear waste to your house? Don't worry, it's the safest kind of energy there is. Or maybe "safe" isn't the right term for something that also produces some of the most deadly substances that we know of? It's "safe" so long as nothing goes wrong, and everything is stored correctly. Of course, that regularly proves to not be the case: https://www.newsweek.com/ohio-school-closed-enriched-uranium...
It's very worrying to see comments like this become more and more common on HN.
Yes, I will take the waste. If it's in the containers we've developed specifically for this purpose, yes. It beats the current situation in the US where everyone stores waste on site because politicians can't decide where to put it because of people like you.
Modern waste, with proper precautions, is safe for long term disposal and storage. I cannot stress this enough.
If you don't believe me, this website has plenty of information regarding nuclear power, straight from the source. It is developed and run by the UN. Based on your misinformation, I strongly urge you to pore over this content and then attempt to reevaluate your own question.
Re: U.S. put nuclear waste under a dome on a Pacific island. Now it’s cracking open
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's exactly the belief those in power most want you to hold on to. Elections are a cruel joke. Build guillotines.
And replace elections with what? Democracy is the only system that has ever served any kind of majority of the population. Ours may be in rough shape right now, but burning it all down instead of fixing it helps no one.
Plus, surely we'd need some kind of way to decide which of our current leaders get the guillotine... maybe by asking everyone to write down their opinion, and counting up the results...
Re: U.S. put nuclear waste under a dome on a Pacific island. Now it’s cracking open
#29Does anyone else feel helpless when reading stuff like this? Is there anything I can do to make things better in these scenarios?
Vote. As futile as it feels, that's all any of us can do.
It is futile because you think that the only country with this issue is the US.
I can guarantee that China and Russia have similar if not worst storage problem - the difference is that the US allows this information to exist in the public. Even if those governments allowed the information to be public, what are you going to do, not for the Party/Putin? That sounds like a great way to win a free trip to Siberia or the re-education camp.
Re: U.S. put nuclear waste under a dome on a Pacific island. Now it’s cracking open
#30One "meta" way of looking at things like this is that it represents a part of the technical debt left behind by the industrial revolution. Eventually we have to go back and fix this stuff, but as with technical debt in most code bases we tend to ignore it. Unfortunately technical debt is subject to compound interest, so the longer we ignore it the more costly it is to eventually deal with.