[awesome_dude]

This has to be snark - Waste is never safe to store - the containment has to prevent leeching - over a lifespan of thousand, or tens of thousands of years

And it only takes one earthquake, or animal digging to completely upend that strategy

[throwthrowuknow]

What kind of animal is going to dig through concrete and steel and also be hundreds of meters underground in solid rock?

[Mawr]

Apparently the hypothetical future humanoids, somehow ignorant of all prior history, who will, ignoring all warning signs, start eating as much of the waste as fast as possible, then ignoring the obvious connection between eating that stuff and getting sick...

I wish I was kidding, but the argument does seem to be "what if 100_000 years from now somebody digs this stuff up and a few people get sick or die".

It's concern trolling at its worst.

[awesome_dude]

Until we find the Rosetta stone hieroglyphs were unintelligible, and that language only stopped being used 2000 years ago.

[bethekidyouwant]

I guess they won’t have Geiger counters in the future

[awesome_dude]

We don't have a lot of technology that we knew existed in earlier civilisations - the Aztecs, Mayans, pueblo peoples, the Easter islanders, to name just a few were doing things we have no idea how to do

[throwthrowuknow]

Ridiculous, not knowing exactly how stoneage peoples carved and moved rocks and dirt around doesn’t mean we don’t know how to move rocks and dirt.

[awesome_dude]

Neither concrete nor steel have the lifespans we're discussing thousands, or tens of thousands of years.

And. Bacteria.

[fc417fc802]

When sealed several hundred meters underground in nonporous rock they do have such long lifespans. It's like observing that corn doesn't have a 10 year lifespan when left out on the counter and then objecting to canning it on that basis.

[awesome_dude]

It's non porous right up until an earthquake or some movement of the area makes it not

[fc417fc802]

So just to be clear the concern here is that something buried 2+ miles underground, in a secure container, encased along with other secure containers in a concrete vault, all homed in nonporous rock, in a geologically stable area, is suddenly going to be subjected to an earthquake, against all odds a fault is going to open right through the waste storage area, again against all odds groundwater will appear, the reinforced vault will be weathered to the point of failure (over what timespan I wonder?), and the resulting leak of radioactive material that is multiple miles underground will then somehow affect humans living, what, somewhere within a few hundred miles? Does that really sound like a reasonable scenario to you? Because as far as I'm concerned it's pure concern trolling.

[awesome_dude]

So, just to be clear, you're demanding that I re-answer every concern that I've already addressed otherwise you're going to label me a troll

Sounds like abuse to me.

[palata]

An earthquake will not suddenly take the waste from hundreds of meters underground and throw it in the air. I mean, assuming you store it in a reasonable place.

[awesome_dude]

It doesn't need to - all that needs to happen is for water to suddenly have a course to where the materials are being stored.

[chpatrick]

Sure, you need the right place, but it's not like there's a shortage of space far away from everything.

[noosphr]

And yet we had a natural nuclear reactor that's been self contained for 2 billion years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reacto...

[awesome_dude]

Yeah, i know about that one and it kind of proves my point, it's been active as a nuclear reactor for roughly a billion years if i recall correctly - every time water seeped into the rock it slowed the neutrons down and the reactor started up, created steam, which then evaporated and stopped the reaction

Dangerous the whole time.

[duskwuff]

If only there had been some kind of geological steam turbine to go with it... :)

[awesome_dude]

Would have made a nice steamed ham