• stoy@lemmy.zip
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    5 months ago

    Nuclear waste is a solved problem, it is contained to a tiny physical object, all we gotta do is dig a hole, put the object into the hole, and cover it up.

    We pretend that it is way harder than it is.

    I live in a suburb north of Stockholm in Sweden, and I’d support the government building a large underground permanent storage of nuclear waste from all over the world (for a fee) in my suburb, we have the best ground for permanent storage in Scandinavia, we would earn money, create jobs and make the world safer.

    • mojofrododojo@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Nuclear waste is a solved problem

      maybe solved where you live, and only for as long as your containment facility stays in one piece.

      earthquakes, meteors, tidal waves - these things do happen, sure, not often on a lifetime scale, but compared to the long half-lives of this stuff? plenty of time for the worst case scenario.

      I think you pretend the problem is simpler than it actually is, when considered the time frames involved. It’s not your lifetime we’re talking, it’s the hundreds of generations where this shit remains hot.

      AND I’d add your country is at least trying, in the US we’ve given up and store it in pools local to the reactors, it’s ignorant as fuck

      • stoy@lemmy.zip
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        5 months ago

        Scandinavia is geographically stable and has been politically stable for a long time, I can think of no better place for a global nuclear waste storage facility.

        Meteors is just s dumb risk to consider in this case, any meteor capable of breaching an underground nuclear waste will cause far worse problems than the nuclear material will.

        The baltic isn’t that tidal either, so tidal waves can be disregarded.

        Earthquakes have happened here, but they are few and far between.

        I recommend that you watch the BBC Horizon Documentary “Nuclear Nightmares” that talks about our fear of radiation.

        https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7pqwo8

        • mojofrododojo@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          why bother investing enormous amounts of money into a tech that’s already problematic? when there are better solutions at hand?

          I’m not anti-nuclear, I just think further investment into it is misguided when there are so many other options that don’t create tens of thousands of years of radioisotopes that have to go somewhere.

          good on Scandinavia, the rest of the world isn’t in such privileged positions. As seen in Fukushima. As seen in the hundreds of cooling ponds all over the US.

          • stoy@lemmy.zip
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            5 months ago

            Because we need the baseload, even a huge wind or solar farm can provide the stable baseload.

            In my first comment, I suggested that we would build a facility large enough to handle global nuclear waste.

            • mojofrododojo@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              yeah, I get it, you’re whole hog on it, the enthusiasm comes through loud and clear.

              I don’t agree, but there’s no amount of sense that’s going to sway the already decided.

                • mojofrododojo@lemmy.world
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                  5 months ago

                  nothing, not a single thing you’ve argued, will in any way reduce the radioactive leftovers nuclear reactors produce and most of the world is putting off for the next generation to fix.

                  Like climate change.

                  How many crises do you think those poor kids are going to be able to manage at once?

                  • stoy@lemmy.zip
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                    5 months ago

                    Which crisis is the most important to manage in the short term.

                    Climate change, nuclear power gives us a huge tool to deal with it by shutting down fossil furl plants.

                    If we fail the climate change, the nuclear waste will be a tiny problem to deal with.

                    With nuclear power we at least give people a problem they can deal with, climate change is far, far worse.

                    The ammount of radioactive waste is tiny relative to normal dumps, and as described before, it is easy to deal with, dig a deep hole, put the waste in it, refill it.

                    Boom problem solved.

                    CO2 from fossil plats will keep up climate change for centuries.

    • bountygiver [any]@lemmy.ml
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      5 months ago

      Also it’s only a problem if we let it be, there’s literally centuries for us to figure out a way to make those waste useful for us. Not working towards that would be the only way for the problem to come back to us in the future.

      • stoy@lemmy.zip
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        5 months ago

        An idea I have thought about, nuclear boosted geothermal power.

        Geothermal power normally just use a simple borehole with a hose going down and then up again, coolant goes in the hole, gets heated up a few degrees and the can then be processed to heat a house.

        What if we could run tubes near the nuclear waste that will keep producing heat for thousands of years?

      • mojofrododojo@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        there’s literally centuries for us to figure out a way to make those waste useful for us.

        yes, I’m sure we’ll hop on fixing this enormous issue with all the same urgency we’ve treated it with so far…