Our high-level nuclear waste, spent fuel from nuclear reactors, is the most substantive creation of human civilization. It will outlast everything else humans have made.
It is how our descendants will know us, we are the people who made that.
How do we warn the 1,000s of generations who will experience risk from this radioactive waste?
@bojacobs@sts@histodons This is a popular myth but it’s not true at all. This stuff will last 10,000 years at most. The really nasty stuff will last about 300 years.
There are other things we produce that will actually last forever. Arsenic, for example, which is both a byproduct of burning coal and of certain industrial processes. Unlike radioactive material it does not become less harmful over time. That’s with us forever. 1/?
@bojacobs@sts@histodons Arsenic created as a byproduct of industrial processes is typically sealed up and sequestered in vaults below the water table, but the stuff from burning coal gets into our waterways and soil.
You’re much more likely to be exposed to that and other “forever chemicals,” including radioactive ones, than anything that comes out of a nuclear power plant. 2/?
@bojacobs@sts@histodons As for spent civilian nuclear fuel, that’s almost entirely recyclable. We don’t have the special reactors for recycling it in the U.S. but they exist elsewhere.
The non-recyclable stuff is the really nasty stuff with the short 300-year half-life. 3/?
@bojacobs@sts@histodons Stuff like the nuclear weapons research waste at Hanford is really bad but if we had a MOX reactor we could burn it all up (and nuclear warheads too).
The other stuff we are just dumping out there, like PFAS and of course all the greenhouse gases that we don’t know how to sequester and clean up, worries me a lot more. /end
@MisuseCase
To be fair though, I don't think there are many MOX reactors anywhere in the world, and most (all?) of them are still experimental.
We can use MOX as a (small) part for the fuel of regular reactors such as REP, but I don't know of any industrial-grade fast neutrons reactor in activity (and for good reason, that stuff poses really hard technical challenges).
Not saying it's impossible, nor even that we shouldn't use them, just pointing that it's cutting edge technology at best and not exactly production ready.
@bojacobs@sts@histodons it is mind-warping to think about how long nuclear #waste lasts, but safe locations with extremely low #seismic activity (like #Finland) can be used to safely store waste for 10s of thousands of years. This, together with how small the waste really is, is enough for me to feel safe knowing that #nuclear is part of the #energy chain.
Eek! the nuclear trolls have found you. I guess they have never heard of plutonium.
As to what are we going to tell 1000s of generations... We clearly have no intention of making it out of this century.
@doomscroller@bojacobs@sts@histodons The half-life of plutonium is about 90 years, our descendants thousands of generations from now will not have to worry about it unless we have a whole thermonuclear war.
Talking about “thousands of generations” without bothering to know anything about the actual half-life of radioactive material, and when we are facing the very real risk of catastrophic climate change which has nothing to do with that…that is trolling.
What a wildly misleading statement. As if nuclear waste was 100% plutonium? (It's not, uranium is the main fuel ) and as if all plutonium isotopes were the same (also, no). And this completely ignores what is left after radioactive decay - the resulting elements can also be toxic and/or radioactive, often much longer.
@sonjdol I haven't tried, I don't normally get enough notification traffic to worry about it. On a quick glance I can't see a no-ping setting, I guess you could turn off notifications altogether. Depending on your platform you could also probably fiddle with the notification settings either for your server's website or for the app you're using - can probably silence them that way.
@VoxDei
Nuke trolls living up to their name. Misinformation, lies, and disruption and generally nuking the place. Rosatom backing and support all over Twitter and same lies turning up here. @MisuseCase@taoish@bojacobs@sts
@MisuseCase@doomscroller@bojacobs@sts@histodons
Half life time means, only half of it's radiatoon is gone after 87.7 years. The half of the remaining half needs another 87.7 and so on. Also the decay product of Plutonium-238 is Uranium-234 wich has a half life time of 234000 years.
Hundert of thousands of generations will have to deal with this hazzardous shit. And there is not containment technic / material that will last that long
@MisuseCase@doomscroller@bojacobs@sts@histodons
Half life time means, only half of it's radiatoon is gone after 87.7 years. The half of the remaining half needs another 87.7 and so on. Also the decay product of Plutonium-238 is Uranium-234 wich has a half life time of 234000 years.
Hundert of thousands of generations will have to deal with this hazzardous shit. And there is no containment technic / material that will last that long
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