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Comment by manigandham | Hacker News Reader

We could dump it into the ocean and not worry about it. There's so much cooling capacity and radiation shielding in the oceans alone that we'd never run out of space, so all of the current disposal strategies are way above and beyond what's needed. Containment is solved problem.

It's important to note that other energy types also produce waste. For example, coal ash is incredibly toxic and hard to dispose of, and we create much more of it every year.

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Another option which is completely safe and permanent* is drilling a borehole few km down and dumping the waste there. It's not coming back no matter what. The research done into it shows that "only" 800 boreholes would be required to store literally all nuclear waste ever produced.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_borehole_disposal

*to a point where it was actually brought up as a negative, because if we ever wanted to recycle that waste into something else, it's literally impossible this way.

There's one in Finland:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_re...

They have thought thousands of years ahead and set up many different types of warning signs and symbols in case a future civilization discovers it.

I think the difference is that the one in Finland can still be entered like a normal tunnel. The deep borehole is literally just a vertical shaft that goes 5-6km down, you put the waste on the bottom and fill it back up. No geological process is bringing the waste back up in any conceivable timescale, and even if the entire civilization collapsed no primitive society can dig to 5km depth, so there's no need for much long lasting signage, no one is going to stumble upon it by accident.

No, they put zero warnings. Warnings only make it more likely that someone decides to start digging.

The idea that civilisation collapses and then recovers to the specific extent, where it is advanced enough to have coal-mines or similar, but not to know about radiation. Then it must find this particular repository and start digging, and die. Thousands of years must pass but they must dig up this sight withing a particular 100-year period of their development.

This is such a stupidly contrives scenario that you might as well plan for an alien incasion or zombie apocalypse. Lime prerequisite for that theory is civilisation collapsing, our investment in making sirebcovilisation does not xollapse is zero. You deal with it by making sure civilisation does not collapse.

Then they will know about radiation.

> They have thought thousands of years ahead

That level of stupid theatrics really annoys me. If society has regressed then it will be a godsend to rediscover nuclear power. If society has advanced this is like the Romans trying to anticipate modern problems.

And than there is Asse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asse_II_mine

You just don't know.

The time frame is too long. It's too long for natural causes and far too long for human civilisation. The earlier we stop producing this crap, the better.

Sure, but that's why I suggested deep borehole storage - there is no known geological process that can bring up material stored at 5km+ depth into the surface on any sort of human timescale. A mine, even at 700m depth, is just too shallow for long term storage.

But there are many human processes which can.

....and? If you wanted highly dangerous materials to use for some evil purposes it's 1000x easier to just manufacture some poison rather than dig 5km deep. I'd argue that making radioactive isotopes in an accelerator is still easier than digging. Not sure what your concern is here.

> It's not coming back no matter what

If you can drill down to put it in, can't you also drill down (or use the same hole) to get it out?

Well, yes, technically. I meant more that the waste won't come back on its own, through tectonic movements, earthquakes, meteor strikes or pretty much any other natural process known to man. You could drill down to retrieve it, but then it's a very specific thing serving one specific purpose. It's not like mine repositories, where they are at a much shallower depth and could be entered "easily" from the surface.

> We could dump it in the ocean and not worry about it

This is the things that make me cringe when I see this people saying again "This time will be different, we promise".

Look mum, radioactive tornadoes coming from the ocean...

What do you mean by this time? Nuclear waste has already been dumped in the oceans before (prior to new regulations). 8 nuclear submarines have been lost and there's no environmental impact detected.

This has been well studied by several groups including the US Navy, which is one of the biggest nuclear operators with over 80 reactors currently in warships. In the event of catastrophic loss, the plan is to just leave it because the oceans already have billions of tons of radioactive material and infinite capacity to absorb more.

Also nuclear reactors have occurred naturally [1] and without any serious fallout or contamination risks, showing that containment is really not that challenging. Most people think nuclear is scary because of popular science and culture, and they lack the knowledge and understanding to know any different. It's similar to people not trusting vaccines because they don't understand medical science.

1. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/natures-nucl...

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Deep sea ecosystems are extremely fragile and we need to leave them as is if we want to feed people

Time to just get rid of the mess hiding it under the rug and saying that "There is not our fault, it was yet like that when we arrived and now is somebody else's problem" has passed.

We deserve better, much more honest and much more smart people this time.

There is plenty of evidence - of no impact. As I said this has been extensively studied and there's so much radioactive material in the ocean that it makes no difference.

Also maybe you misunderstood the post because dumping in the ocean wasn't a real proposal. The point is that containment is solved, and indeed solved by very smart people. It's politics and general ignorance that has hampered nuclear power, not technology.

> There is plenty of evidence - of no impact.

There is plenty of evidence of the opposite in fact and is not difficult to find at all. We can choose to close the eyes to not see it, but the truth is stubborn:

Techa river (Russia): Used as dumpster from dismantled nuclear submarines until 2004. 25 times more probable than normal of having limb and organ malformation in newborn babies from people living there, plus a bonus 40% increase of probability of having cancer. This is the harvest of just 50 years of activity. What would you call that?

Do you not understand how water dampens nuclear reactions, or how large the ocean is?

Learn about trophic chains, cycle of water in this planet, sea currents, tidal forces and oceanography.

How do you keep the nuclear waste contained in salt water for thousands of years? The radionuclides will end up sooner or later in the water.

No need to keep it contained, the oceans have billions of tons of dissolved radioactive material already. Adding more isn't going to change anything.

Dumping in the oceans isn't a serious proposal. I was pointing out that waste is not a huge problem.

You don't? The volume of water in oceans is so big that this won't be a problem as long as you don't dump it in coastal waters. Keep in mind that there's plenty of reactors from sunken nuclear submarines in oceans right now.

The kind of nuclear submarines governments are trying to raise and properly dispose of, because they're worried bioaccumulation will taint their fish stocks? [1]

[1] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200901-the-radioactive-...

And governments are known for not over reacting to anything related to nuclear power /s

And in this case, the government of a country whose primary export is oil.

Don't fool yourselves, we are talking about one of the richest extant fisheries of Atlantic cod. This is pretty serious stuff for Maine, Newfoundland or Massachusets, for example.

We are talking about trying to keep your "fish and chips" safe to eat, or maybe not.

Last time the fisheries collapsed in 90's 37.000 people lost their job only in Newfoundland and the social impact was massive. It has not recovered still after almost 30 years with a record of lowest captures registered in 2016.

Or use the waste (which is still highly energetic) in a traveling wave reactor a la terrapower?

Yes, waste reduction through sustained reuse through different reactors is a good process. Eventually there will always be some waste to deal with though.

Are you trying to piss off Namor?

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