21–30 of 92 posts
Not really a catastrophe, more like “problem”.
Not really a catastrophe, more like “problem”.
It's not the litter, it's the typo. It was not sufficient to just write "inorganic". Given the seriousness of possible consequences, some redundancy should have been added. E.g. "inorganic mineral-based kitty litter can be used; organic kitty litter is not acceptable". A few more words would have prevented an actual nuclear incident.
From the link: In May 2012, Los Alamos published a white paper titled “Amount of Zeolite Required to Meet the Constraints Established by the EMRTC Report RF 10-13: Application of LANL Evaporator Nitrate Salts.” In other words, “How much kitty litter should be added to radioactive waste?” The answer was about 1.2 to 1, inorganic zeolite clay to nitrate salt waste, by volume. That guidance was then translated into the…
Today I learned of the existence of "organic, wheat-based cat litter"
after reading a summary, this title is very click-baity
The title reads like "a cat got into a nuclear plant, got contaminated in a and spread radioactivity with cat litter stuck to its paws"
"Hot" nuclear waste means theres still a lot of energy left to capture. Why are we disposing of materials that still have a lot of energy to capture? Seems like the closer we get to lead, in terms of capture, the better.
It would be like taking my half-full of gas car to the pump, dumping the existing gas, and getting fresh. Its a waste of energy, waste of resources, and generates worse nuclear waste.
I'm submitting this based on the current top item "North Dakota law lists fake critical minerals based on coal lawyers' names" [0]. This accident was traced to a manager transcribing "inorganic absorbent" as "an organic absorbent". A more serious example of the need to have competent people with domain knowledge in the room and empowered when documents are written. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46492161
I'm surprised they made critical material purchasing decisions based on what some guy thinks he heard in a meeting, rather than official written documents written by and cross-checked by multiple engineers.
It was an expensive mistake, but thankfully, no one died.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not just when documents are written, but also when the practices they describe are implemented. You don't need to know a lot of chemistry to realize that mixing organics with nitric acid is a bad idea. Why did none of the technicians doing the work say "hold on, this doesn't seem right"?
My guess, they were afraid to ruffle the feathers of their higher-ups. Yes, that's moronic, but this is the world we can find ourselves in IF the bosses are egotistical kingdom makers.