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Finland's plan to bury spent nuclear fuel for 100k years

bbc.com

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Re: Finland's plan to bury spent nuclear fuel for 100k years

#231

Post by Manuel_D »

culopatin wrote: post #141
Manuel_D wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What, really, is the impact of a compromised nuclear casket in a remote, unpopulated area above ground? What is the impact buried just 100 feet deep in an unpopulated area? Someone would have to excavate the uranium and either spend loads of time around it or move it to a populated area. Water contamination from naturally occurring uranium is a bigger risk than nuclear waste (uranium, like lead, can cause heavy metal…

Thing is that maybe in 300 years someone wants to develop that land and the documents that say to not do that there are in an old version of .docx in an obsolete storage form buried under layers of bureaucracy. That’s how someone ends up living on the casket growing a massive thyroid. Same reason that makes us not write code that only the author can understand (when working in a team), we need to plan ahead in the sa…

And why aren't we raising the same objection to the vastly greater quantities of non-nuclear industrial waste that will never decay into safer isotopes? Again, the question is, what is the heightened risk specific to nuclear waste that warrants so much more attention?

Re: Finland's plan to bury spent nuclear fuel for 100k years

#232

Post by Manuel_D »

janalsncm wrote: post #171
cyberax wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Options: 1. So you start digging and find huge concrete cylinders with clearly marked "radioactive" warning signs. Hilarity ensues, people sue each other, and cylinders get moved somewhere else. 2. You just build a house on the ground (without digging). Nothing bad happens. 3. Civilization collapses, nobody cares about the abandoned casks.

There is a fourth option. Nuclear waste can be used in dirty bombs and poisons as well. So waste sites should be somewhat secure. So in the analogy it would be as if we left a stockpile of guns and ammo. I don’t think leaving a bunch of loaded guns around is a responsible way to hand the future to our children, especially since we can’t know what the future political situations will be.

It'd be easier to just mine naturally occurring uranium. Are terrorists somehow going to successfully excavate a mile deep into bedrock in Finland, without anyone noticing?

Again, we do have big stockpiles of guns and ammo. We have bunkers full of artillery shells, missiles, and weapons. Where's the outrage over the dozens (hundreds?) of munitions stockpiles militaries have strewn across the globe? Again the question is, what risk does nuclear pose that we don't already navigate with other more mundane materials?

Re: Finland's plan to bury spent nuclear fuel for 100k years

#233

Post by fwlr »

karaterobot wrote: post #77
fwlr wrote: post #11

I do think the borehole plan (3km deep, rather than 400m deep) is better, although it is more speculative and this proposal has the overwhelming advantage that it’s being enacted.

Agreed; perfect is the enemy of the good in this arena. We just need someone to do something first, to make it easier for the second group, and the third, who can then offer some improvement to the process without having to overcome the same level of NIMBY challenges. NIMBY may not be the right acronym. Not In My Very Remote, Geologically Stable Bunker System.

A friend coined a useful sibling acronym for when NIMBY doesn’t quite fit - NOME, Not On My Earth. I quite like how it highlights the claim being laid to the whole planet (one can of course view climate change as a justification for this claim).

Re: Finland's plan to bury spent nuclear fuel for 100k years

#235

Post by Manuel_D »

tstrimple wrote: post #173
panick21_ wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or somebody spends 100$ on a Geiger counter ... Nuclear waste will not simply be lost. The only way it gets lost if society literally collapses. And if that happens the small amount of nuclear waste is the least important problem anybody will have.

Nuclear waste has been lost multiple times throughout history and has killed people. Kind of amazing someone could think it cannot happen. https://www.nti.org/analysis/articles/overview-of-the-cns-gl...

That was nuclear waste from medical instruments, not 12 foot high concrete cinders of nuclear power plant waste: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_cask_storage#/media/File...

If anything, this example serves to prove that we have an irrationally heightened fear over nuclear power's waste: we have had incidents with medical radioisotopes, but yet that doesn't get nearly as much press as the supposed "waste problem" with nuclear power.

Re: Finland's plan to bury spent nuclear fuel for 100k years

#236

Post by Trencin »

What happens when we've filled every nook and cranny of the earth with our poison?

Is this the gift we are leaving for posterity?

What about "do no harm" instead? Looking for advancements in authentically environmentally friendly technologies.

The dissonance of I'm driving a Tesla and I'm saving the world! Instead of filling the air with poison, we're filling the bedrock with it.

Re: Finland's plan to bury spent nuclear fuel for 100k years

#237

Post by culopatin »

belorn wrote: post #230
VeninVidiaVicii wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the argument is clearly trite, .docx seems like a joke, and very more likely within the hundreds to thousands of years, people probably won’t even speak Finnish there anymore.

I find the argument that they will need to speak Finish to be boring. Why should they in hundreds to thousands of years need to read an ancient document to figure out whats below the ground. It is not a realistic problem.

You don’t know that, all you can do is try your best TODAY to avoid issues in the future.

It seems very clear to me that if we all follow the rules of traffic we can safely go 90+ since I’m a pretty good driver, everyone else must be too. Yet the speed limit is much lower and people crash all the time anyway.

It’s evident to me that if I order a coffee, it’ll be hot, but the lid says “caution hot”.

It’s obvious that if I see that the floor is wet and the surface is slippery, I shouldn’t run if I’m trying to avoid slipping, yet we have those yellow signs everywhere.

Just because you think something is below YOU, super smart HN user, it doesn’t mean it keeps the average idiot safe in the future.

Re: Finland's plan to bury spent nuclear fuel for 100k years

#238

Post by cyberax »

janalsncm wrote: post #171
cyberax wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Options: 1. So you start digging and find huge concrete cylinders with clearly marked "radioactive" warning signs. Hilarity ensues, people sue each other, and cylinders get moved somewhere else. 2. You just build a house on the ground (without digging). Nothing bad happens. 3. Civilization collapses, nobody cares about the abandoned casks.

There is a fourth option. Nuclear waste can be used in dirty bombs and poisons as well. So waste sites should be somewhat secure. So in the analogy it would be as if we left a stockpile of guns and ammo. I don’t think leaving a bunch of loaded guns around is a responsible way to hand the future to our children, especially since we can’t know what the future political situations will be.

You can make poisons without nuclear materials just fine. Keep in mind, that regular heavy metals also don't go away.

The nuclear material in casks is not _that_ dangerous because of its long half-life. So dirty bombs made from it would not result in a significant loss of life. They'll just result in a very expensive cleanup of the affected areas.

Re: Finland's plan to bury spent nuclear fuel for 100k years

#239

Post by cyberax »

oxfordmale wrote: post #209
cyberax wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Options: 1. So you start digging and find huge concrete cylinders with clearly marked "radioactive" warning signs. Hilarity ensues, people sue each other, and cylinders get moved somewhere else. 2. You just build a house on the ground (without digging). Nothing bad happens. 3. Civilization collapses, nobody cares about the abandoned casks.

1. You start digging, and you find these huge mysterious concrete cylinders with a funny symbols. These must clearly have been gift to their God(s) given the amount of work they put in. We should recover them, open them up and have buses of school kids admire them up close

If you have buses, then you also likely know about radioactivity. And the archeological lab will quickly identify the casks.

And if it's a pre-historic society, then why would you be digging 30 meters below ground anyway?

Re: Finland's plan to bury spent nuclear fuel for 100k years

#240

Post by oxfordmale »

cyberax wrote: post #239
oxfordmale wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. You start digging, and you find these huge mysterious concrete cylinders with a funny symbols. These must clearly have been gift to their God(s) given the amount of work they put in. We should recover them, open them up and have buses of school kids admire them up close

If you have buses, then you also likely know about radioactivity. And the archeological lab will quickly identify the casks. And if it's a pre-historic society, then why would you be digging 30 meters below ground anyway?

Why would a pre-historic society go to the trouble of dragging large stones 150 miles or more ? (Stonehenge)

Mankind has gone to great lengths to admire the death, and digging a 30 meter hole is definitely achievable given other prehistoric monuments.

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