Comment by Llamamoe
15 hours ago
You need to look up how much nuclear waste is actually produced. It's a minuscule amount relative to the energy produced, and it doesn't actually need more than to be transported and then encased in concrete.
15 hours ago
You need to look up how much nuclear waste is actually produced. It's a minuscule amount relative to the energy produced, and it doesn't actually need more than to be transported and then encased in concrete.
It's not the volume of the waste that's the challenge - it's handling and storage that remain mostly unsolved.
By unsolved I mean - not convincingly solved, and certainly not yet tested over the expected duration that material needs to be safely contained.
"mostly unsolved"? It's cheap, low-maintenance, and essentially risk-free barring potential terrorism.
Even if the storage got somehow compromised(extremely unlikely), the disposal sites are distant enough from civilization and the amounts small enough that the environmental harms would still be far below tons of other manmade events.
What more do you want?
We have lot of nuclear waste. Can you take it?
'Apart from terrorism ... or war, seismic activity, etc.'
I'm not sure where you're getting cheap from, or low-maintenance.
The above-ground stuff is locking future generations in for on-going maintenance for several centuries, perhaps longer. There's been think-tanks trying to work out how you just signpost such a place, given storage may exceed the expected lifetime of languages, and we'd want to be polite and at least contend with societal collapse.
It is hubris to observe that the many locations chosen now will remain 'distant from civilisation' for many centuries.