U.S. put nuclear waste under a dome on a Pacific island. Now it’s cracking open • Hacker News Board

Re: U.S. put nuclear waste under a dome on a Pacific island. Now it’s cracking open

#51

Post by asp12357 » Mon, May 20, 2019, 5:15 PM UTC

yongjik wrote: post #47

colordrops wrote: post #43

I hear things like "we should go full nuclear, modern nuclear reactors are safe" all the time, yet this ignores externalities, unknown unknowns, human incompetence, and the unexpected. Who would expect the ocean to rise over your nuclear waste dome? Have people suggesting this forgotten the allegory of the unsinkable ship the Titanic? Entropy always wins in the end.

Ironically, if we did go full nuclear, the oceans probably wouldn't have risen, saving us from a cracking nuclear dome and an untold number of other hassles. Sure, nuclear power is not 100% safe, but its "worst case" pales in comparison to fossil fuel's "guaranteed outcome by 2100." I'm OK with building, say, solar instead of nuclear. I'm definitely NOT OK with keeping fossil fuel where nuclear is available, while pa…

its "worst case" pales in comparison to fossil fuel's "guaranteed outcome by 2100."

I'm fairly certain nuclear catastrophe is far worse than global warming.

Re: U.S. put nuclear waste under a dome on a Pacific island. Now it’s cracking open

#52

Post by omegaworks » Mon, May 20, 2019, 5:20 PM UTC

sailfast wrote: post #36

erentz wrote: post #12

The US needs to go in and clean up this mess and should feel very obligated to move quickly on this, but is hasn’t. See also this article from 2015 [1] and folks may enjoy this video for the visuals of it [2]. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/03/runit-dome-pac... [2] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=autMHvj3exA

That would be a nice thing to do, but per the article in 1983 the Marshall Islands traded US liability for nuclear issues as part of their move to self-government. That is not to say that some Federal-level support is not warranted like other Superfund sites, but that it may not be the total and complete responsibility of the US Federal government to resolve the issue, as agreed to legally by both parties.

>the Marshall Islands traded US liability for nuclear issues as part of their move to self-government.

This is classic over-the-barrel negotiating tactics used by colonizing nations over their former colonies. The Marshall Islanders had few options here. Continue to have their sovereignty dictated from and literal lands and lives ruined by a foreign nation, or take liability for the colonizer's experimentation and some control of their future back.

Just because a choice was made, doesn't make the process just or right. It may release the United States from a legal obligation, but it doesn't excuse any ethical or moral obligations of the state to the people of the islands.

Re: U.S. put nuclear waste under a dome on a Pacific island. Now it’s cracking open

#53

Post by ben509 » Mon, May 20, 2019, 5:24 PM UTC

gnode wrote: post #41

_bxg1 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Democracy is the only system that has ever served any kind of majority of the population. I disagree. Sortition / demarchy, which is the selection of officials randomly from the population (much like a grand jury), has been used throughout history, and is a strong contender. It's exponents tend to state diversity of representation, anti-corruption, and the minimisation of factionalism as advantages.

So that's what it's called. An appointed Senate and demarchist House would be ideal. An interesting advantage is courts can readily convene a committee to clarify the meaning of legislation, which is largely impossible with a fixed number of reps in the House. This removes the specter of a handful of justices legislating from the bench.

Re: U.S. put nuclear waste under a dome on a Pacific island. Now it’s cracking open

#54

Post by Circuits » Mon, May 20, 2019, 5:24 PM UTC

Some messes are just too big to clean up. They knew going into the testing that it was going to kill thousands and thousands of natives and effect native people in a terrible way for generations to come but they didn't give a shit then and they dont give a shit now. That's why most of the natives have 6 fingers and 4 toes, are sterile and the land is poisoned and will stay poisoned. You can deny it all you want but if it was not true shit like this wouldn't be so common place. We aren't the only ones and this isn't the only site and it's not just radiation, its carbon, its carcinogens, it's plastic... there is a whole boat load of shit like this that everyone pretends to care about when their talking about it with their husband or best friend but seems to have no trouble sleeping off the next day. What makes us think we can all just act like animals one day and civilized humans that next... I have no clue but that's reality. People ask: "Oh what can I do, I am so small and the problem is so big!" idk but I do know this if you ACTUALLY cared you would figure out some way to help. What's the difference between pretending to care and actually caring you ask? It's simple, doing something about it versus talking about doing something about it, it's that simple, that's the difference. Write your governor, send some money, do anything or just admit you don't care, and do nothing. That's what the US government is counting on you to do and that's why they got away with this and that's why they will get away with similar shit in the future.

Re: U.S. put nuclear waste under a dome on a Pacific island. Now it’s cracking open

#55

Post by wnkrshm » Mon, May 20, 2019, 5:25 PM UTC

gaze wrote: post #10

781 wrote: post #4

More 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…

I think that nuclear power generation has been relatively safe over almost a century exactly due to systems engineering, incorporating procedures and the potential for human error.

I also think that you are right that some of the systems surrounding nuclear energy are suboptimally managed in places (and are often intransparent for the public, which I think is one of the factors why people are still afraid). And I think it's because nuclear power generation is a social commitment on a very long time scale - and humans aren't very good at dealing with cause and effect over long time scales.

While there is, just like in aeronautics, a paper trail connecting to each engineer and expert working on a system, it does not matter whether society can identify a person that is responsible for a decision made half a century ago. Think about leaky permanent[0] waste storage close to densely populated areas (like in Germany). Analyzing what went wrong is suddenly a task for historians, not for engineers. And history is of course necessarily colored in perspective - politicans can point to an expert who was wrong half a century ago.

In engineering and safety culture, iteration is necessary to approach an optimal system - the problem is here: How can we learn from what happened decades ago when the cause wasn't a part, a design or a process, something that can be simulated with a high degree of confidence? But a decision necessarily based on lots of unknowns? What can we do to be able to learn from it next time?

[0] officially temporary but due to how it was done effectively permanent

Edit: Markup

Re: U.S. put nuclear waste under a dome on a Pacific island. Now it’s cracking open

#56

Post by Rockslide » Mon, May 20, 2019, 5:25 PM UTC

ccffph wrote: post #42

Krasnol wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> world-nuclear.org There is nothing more sad out there than linking to a homepage the nuclear lobby uses to drive this artificial nuclear hype we've seen here in the last months.

The page is run by the UN. Who, in your opinion, would be a more reputable source?

What makes you think this site would be "run by the UN"? The WNA is a nuclear industry lobbying organization. Nothing more, nothing less.

Re: U.S. put nuclear waste under a dome on a Pacific island. Now it’s cracking open

#57

Post by sq_ » Mon, May 20, 2019, 5:28 PM UTC

asp12357 wrote: post #51

yongjik wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically, if we did go full nuclear, the oceans probably wouldn't have risen, saving us from a cracking nuclear dome and an untold number of other hassles. Sure, nuclear power is not 100% safe, but its "worst case" pales in comparison to fossil fuel's "guaranteed outcome by 2100." I'm OK with building, say, solar instead of nuclear. I'm definitely NOT OK with keeping fossil fuel where nuclear is available, while pa…

its "worst case" pales in comparison to fossil fuel's "guaranteed outcome by 2100." I'm fairly certain nuclear catastrophe is far worse than global warming.

I can’t say I agree with you there. Worst case for nuclear power is highly contaminated local areas (highly unlikely with modern designs), whereas the worst case for climate change is global environmental collapse.

Re: U.S. put nuclear waste under a dome on a Pacific island. Now it’s cracking open

#58

Post by colordrops » Mon, May 20, 2019, 5:29 PM UTC

gtirloni wrote: post #49

Dduuggrr wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true. They used same words before... But after Chernobyl and Fukushima... How they can expect we believe them?

This is not a matter of faith in some group of people ("them"). What's your point? That the whole nuclear industry, full of scientists and engineers can't be trusted with their studies?

All it takes is a single point of failure, one scientist that got the calculations wrong. That's what happened with Meltdown/Spectre vulnerability. An academic paper that many chip manufacturers based their designs on turned out to be flawed, causing a vulnerability across architectures. The nuclear industry isn't any different. Ironically the Meltdown vulnerability could have potentially been used by bad actors to hack and take out a nuclear reactor.

Re: U.S. put nuclear waste under a dome on a Pacific island. Now it’s cracking open

#59

Post by ben509 » Mon, May 20, 2019, 5:29 PM UTC

sethhochberg wrote: post #28

_bxg1 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Once the mob gets blood lust, any kind of system or thought goes out the window and everyone will be desperate to put the brakes on.

Re: U.S. put nuclear waste under a dome on a Pacific island. Now it’s cracking open

#60

Post by yongjik » Mon, May 20, 2019, 5:30 PM UTC

asp12357 wrote: post #51

yongjik wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically, if we did go full nuclear, the oceans probably wouldn't have risen, saving us from a cracking nuclear dome and an untold number of other hassles. Sure, nuclear power is not 100% safe, but its "worst case" pales in comparison to fossil fuel's "guaranteed outcome by 2100." I'm OK with building, say, solar instead of nuclear. I'm definitely NOT OK with keeping fossil fuel where nuclear is available, while pa…

its "worst case" pales in comparison to fossil fuel's "guaranteed outcome by 2100." I'm fairly certain nuclear catastrophe is far worse than global warming.

Unless your idea of a "nuclear catastrophe" includes a global thermonuclear war, no, it really isn't.