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Comment by fsmv

2 days ago

The waste isn't even that bad. There's not that much of it and we have extremely safe storage solutions. We way over engineered the safety by orders of magnitude. Nuclear waste storage facilities can take a direct missile hit and still be safe.

17 comments

fsmv

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deng  2 days ago

Reality likes to have a word with you:

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

  • viraptor  2 days ago

    > we have extremely safe storage solutions

    This doesn't mean "we don't have unsafe storage solutions".

    • deng  2 days ago

      Humans are simply terrible at long-term safety. How often do we have to experience that until we say: while it might be theoretically possible to store this stuff securely for thousands of years, apparently, we are just unable to do it, be it because of incompetence, greed, or both.

      10 replies →

  • jenadine  2 days ago

    An interesting example of bad waste management in the 70's.

    But hardly an argument for how safe nuclear energy can be. You wouldn't judge the safety of aviation based on the Wright brothers plane.

    Also note that one of the problems on that mine is not only the radioactive waste, but also mercury, lead, arsenic, and other product not coming from nuclear facilities. That kind of waste is dangerous for basically ever compared to the radioactive atoms. Yet nobody talk about it.

    Nuclear energy is not the only industry producing nuclear waste. You've got also significant radioactive waste produced by the medical, research, defence, mining, and other industries. And so we need safe waste storage regardless of the existence of nuclear power plants.