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by sarbaz 2252 days ago
Nuclear waste can basically be safely solved by dumping sealed containers into the sea. We're talking about extremely small amounts of waste. A swimming pool can contain a year's supply of waste, and 20 ft of water is extremely effective radiation shielding. The ocean is so large that this would be totally negligible even if the worst happened.
1 comments

It's been done before.

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

It wouldn't be negligible. Dumping all our HWL waste (250,000 tons) would increase background radiation of the oceans by 10% if completely mixed, but of course oceans are not. We would simply end up with highly radioactive areas of ocean if and when the containment failed.

Just a throwaway idea, but instead of radiating the whole ocean evenly, why not dump it in the already highly radiated nuclear weapon test zone? The US blow around 100 nukes and I wonder if a few thousands of tons would actually do much worse compared to what already down there.