← Back to context

Comment by adrianN

3 days ago

The radioactive material doesn’t go away, it’s either diluted until safe or concentrated until you can bury it somewhere safe.

6 comments

adrianN

Reply
defrost  3 days ago

So we shouldn't bioremediate radioactive or heavy metals contaminated sites then?

The point being, there are biological processes that address toxic waste.

Further, there are waste issues with pretty much all human uses of energy and resources, including "green" technologies. It's impossible to have green tech w/out rare earths, and impossible to have rare earth end products w/out creating radioactive waste.

* https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/05/business/china-rare-earth...

* https://hamiltonlocke.com.au/unlocking-clean-energy-the-cruc...

The sane approach is to address external costs from the get go, not assert that there are none.

  • ben_w  3 days ago

    > It's impossible to have green tech w/out rare earths, and impossible to have rare earth end products w/out creating radioactive waste.

    Where do you get this idea from? (If it's NYT, paywall, can't read it).

    Solar power does not leave us with radioactive waste.

    Considering radiation and heavy metals as the same problem because they're both bad for you and involve remediation processes when things go wrong is like treating a lack of seatbelts in cars the same as sugar induced diabetes.

    Closest I can think of for why someone might think "rare earths" are "radioactive" is lithium deposits come in salt flats, salt flats contain potassium, some potassium is radioactive. But that's already diffused everywhere on the planet making *all life* radioactive well before we arrived in the pre-neolithic.

    • defrost  2 days ago

      > Where do you get this idea from..

      a few decades in mineral and energy exploration, processing, etc. Several million line kilometres of environmental radiometric surveying, covering both exploration and industrial settling ponds across many countries. Had a 42 litre crystal pack and spectrometer airborne in Northern India over the 1998 Pokhran-II test series.

      > (If it's NYT, paywall, can't read it).

      Try archive.md et al.

      See second link:

      Unlocking Clean Energy: The Crucial Role of Rare Earth Minerals: What’s all the Fuss About?

        Without an abundance of rare earth minerals, renewable energy technologies would not exist in their current form or would be highly inefficient when compared with traditional generation methods such as oil, coal and gas.

      > Closest I can think of for why someone might think "rare earths" are "radioactive"

      Any reason your "thinks" might be better than actual exposure to mineral processing IRL ?

      China, Malaysia, other rare earth processing locations have concentrations of radioactive waste as a result of refining concentrates to end product (see NYT article).

      1 reply →