>Scientists exploring the Northeast Atlantic have directly observed heavily corroded barrels of radioactive waste. Some are in bad shape. Material has even spilled onto the seafloor nearly three miles below the surface.
Yeah imagine emerging from the ocean ready to wreck a coastal city and finding it's already been destroyed by a wildfire, so you just slink back in disappointment.
Good news is, water is one of the best radioactive insulators we have! So unless youâre touching the stuff on the ocean floor youâre fine. Bad news, but occasionally good news is, the ocean is incredibly good at spreading stuff around. So any effected ocean wildlife aside, chances are the radioactive material will be spread around and diluted so much that itâll only impact the sensitive waterbound wildlifeâŚ
theyâre doing studies to try and determine whether we should freak out. we thought it would gradually dissipate but thatâs not exactly what is happening.
Oh yeah, there is some terrifying stuff out there. In the 50âs barges would go off the coast from Boston Harbor and dump 55 gallon drums full of all kinds of waste.
Some of them tended to float, so the workmen would cut a hole in the drums and fill them with concrete so they would sink better. đ
They did this in aus, too. Almost every day a giant barge would go down the river near me and empty its load off the continental shelf. Was jarosite in this case, so maybe not as bad, but still terrible.
This is horrible. We will run out of nuclear fuel and the old stuff can be reprocessed and used many times this way. Unfortunately we aren't doing it right now. Well France is but that is about it.
This isn't spent fuel, but low grade waste. France also got lots of spent fuel sitting in storage. Reprocessing once still leaves most of the fuel unused.
well what do you know. funny how reddit is being astroturfed by pro nuclear accounts for last 5 years and every youtuber with a semblance of following has made pro nuclear videos, all in last 5 years.
Right, because the issue is with nuclear power and not with the regulations surrounding it?
This is a symptom of a much wider issue, especially considering how many billions of barrels of oil are pumped into the oceans and other natural environments.
âWell yeah but those regulations and dumb rules for protecting the environment and filthy poors are a real hassle and cut into profits for our shareholders this fiscal quarter, and THAT would by TRULY unacceptable. Get your priorities straight you America-hating communist!â
- (the entire GOP and most establishment democrats probably)
Not at all, climate change is just the main symptom of CO2 pollution (but not the only one, it also creates problems like ocean acidification and in high enough quantities it will even affect human cognition).
What I mean is that neither plastic, toxins nor nuclear material influence the climate. They are harmful to the environment and can completely fuck humans over, but its non sensical to compare them to greenhouse gasses and say "compared to them they dont have a big impact"
Thats how you end up with a bunch of mercury in tuna
Yeah, but arguing that we should stop doing nuclear instead of building a world where we can safely do it is stupid and completely misses the point.
We literally just don't try because it's too expensive compared to cheaper fossil fuels which have well established processes and lots of R&D funding because...
Personally I think we could go in another direction or multiple renewable directions for the cost.
Nuclear in the province of ontario will cost 100 billion or so with all the reavtor refurbishments and new ones being built. They are also building a waste site. Everyone acts like it's some free saviour. A hundred billion could go a long way with solar, wind or even upgrade subsidies to individuals to reduce consumption. Maybe even better public transit to reduce car ownership, or better walkable cities etc. Etc.
The issue with renelables is always the variability of power output. Basically whenever the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine you have to compensate by burning coal or natural gas to maintain the grid.
And? Spend 20 bill on one reactor and 20 bill on solar, wind and batteries. Or just residential solar. Or affordable housing in denser cities that use less power. Subisdies on efficient minisplits etc. Etc.
Because a nuclear reactor has a stable output. It's not like a coal powerplant where you can increase and decrease capacity. So it really doesn't make sense to build both it and renewables
If you're going for 100% carbon neutral power generation you simply can't do it without nuclear with currently available technology.
The situation where the grid has any reliance on renewables makes it also reliant on spare capacity of fossil fuel power plants that can be turned on demand.
Renewables are great for private users to reduce their electricity costs, but not very useful for the grid itself.
What's the point? As I said it doesn't benefit the grid in terms of carbon neutrality. So you're just subsidizing someone's energy use and Chinese manufacturers that make solar.
Ah is that issue? Just chinese solar? I guess reduce consumption on the grid isn't enough? All eggs in one basket kinda thing? I see why 100 billion in solar (edit meant nuclear of course) and a new waste site is happening now. Just go bullish in nuclear just cuz.
Renewables require a stable base load with the current grid design and a new grid would cost a trillion or more. Your options for a stable base load is coal, natural gas, or nuclear.
It might reduce the base load but it doesnât eliminate the need for a base load. Unless we rebuild the grid from scratch we will have to have a base load and that cannot come from renewables without massive technological advances. So again that brings us back to the options of, coal, natural gas, or nuclear.
That's a fair point. Since renewables have gotten cheaper in recent years it makes more since to invest in them. However, the issue of cost is widely agreed to be due to regulations - which isn't an issue intrinsic to nuclear.
I mean building a reactor on one of the world's largest fresh lakes should have a ton of regulations and should be expensive as hell . . . Which is why I personally think we'd be better off spending the money elsewhere.
Sees a single thing that is vaguely related to nuclear power and isn't good
"See everyone. Big nuclear has been lying to you this WHOLE time"
Nuclear is by far and away the safest way to produce an incredibly large amount of energy and it is not at all debatable. This is not at all a problem with nuclear power and if you want to say it is then we can talk about the millions of gallons of oil that are constantly leaked into the ocean or the fact that the byproducts of fossil fuels kill way more people than all nuclear disasters combined every single year
With what we see from the deregulation of everything in the USA and other countries jumping on the bandwagon, it wouldn't surprise me to see more dumped into the sea. This is why I'm not a big fan of nuclear power. Too many greedy people without a care for anyone else in control of important decisions.
If you were expecting cartoonish barrels of green ooze, you would be disappointed. They contain low-level radioactive waste (primarily medical waste, lab materials, and protective gear) encased in concrete.
Insulated by water and far removed from human populations was initially seen as the safest way to dump such waste but the process was halted in the early-70s over obvious environmental concerns.
Today, it is not nuclear power but medical waste that makes up the vast majority of radioactive waste generated.
I found the article pretty interesting. Worth a read for sure. A few things that stood out.
1 - the discovery of these barrels wasnât unexpected and at least some of the dumping sounds as it was part of old but documented disposal operations.
2 - the barrel may also contain concrete or other agents to slow the release of radioactive materials.
3 - there is a lot of life that has made the barrels their own micro habitats.
And it sounds like theyâre collected tons of samples to try to map out how much reactive materials are impacting the ecosystem, but this part analysis is not provided or not complete yet.
Maybe the other 9 are just flooding the zone with toothpaste recommendations so you don't learn that the dentists are actually unexpectedly unanimous on the topic of giant crab things annihilating humanity
Maybe 500 million years from now, after humans are long gone, creatures resistant to barrels of radioactive waste will have become the dominant species on Earth thanks to all these barrels we've left hanging around.
Oh, all the radioactive isotopes would have expired long before then. In a hundred thousand years, pretty much all of it would be gone. The longest living isotope mentioned in the article, cesium 137, has a half-life of roughly thirty thousand years.
Oh yeah definitely, though science have actually come to actually expect it, though public understanding lags behind quite a bit.
Turns out that elevated, but still moderate doses of radiation is beneficial rather than harmful. Turns out that people and animals both around Chernobyl and Fukushima have grown resistant(!) to cancer rather than the opposite.
Wouldnt put it that way. At all in fact. Organisms having short enough lifespans cancer isnât as big a concern isnât why their lifespans are short.
Animals such as whales, who intuitively should be at a massive risk of cancer(large animals with more cells means more chances for cancerous mutation, and they can live a long ass time like us), have in fact evolved to be highly resistant to cancer.
So when cancer becomes a problem, natural selection is perfectly capable of selecting towards cancer resistance rather than just getting the reproduction over with faster. Not to mention part of that cancer resistance would be improved DNA repair mechanisms, which is useful for being able to reproduce at all.
In real life thats only an advantage when they stay in a enviroment which has a lot of radioactivity. Cancer isnt a problem for most types of animals, for the few for which it is a problem this probaly wont introduce any mutation that helps them fight off the cancer itself (probaly just select traits that prevent them from getting cancer in the first place).
All of this sounds like a nobrainer as both seem really beneficial but thats just wrong. Every adaption has its downsides, this is gonna cost them more energy/nutrition to adept and it might even change looks (meaning it comes at the cost of moving efficiently, camoflage or mating habits).
But not particularly unique. Life returned to Chernobyl pretty quickly.
Also, consider that water is the ultimate radiation moderator. It is effective against alpha, beta, and gamma radiation, attenuating their energy in a very short distance (compared to as gas). The fact life can get close to it isn't all that surprising.
Now, what would be more interesting is comparing the environments between these sites of waste dumps against deep sea thermal vents: what is the difference in radiation types and intensity; what is the difference in thermal temperature; what is the difference in biomass and diversity; what is the difference in longevity of life and is overall health throughout the life of an individual organism? Looking into those questions would be more interesting than just "there is life around radioactive waste in the ocean; it's not sterile around the dump site"
You got me thinking, how large would an organism theoretically have to be in order to use temperature gradients as a primary source of energy? Like, why isn't there already a robust layer of life all around the Earth's crust at phase boundaries?
The issue with that (I'm assuming) is that volume scales with the cube of size while surface area scales with the square due to the square cube law. So as you get larger, it becomes increasingly hard to dissipate heat when needed. So I think it would be very difficult to reach a size where you can extract the excess energy from thermal gradients while still maintaining homeostasis.
This is also ignoring the fact that it would probably need to be it's own kingdom (or maybe even domain?) of life, given that even existing hydrothermal organisms rely on sulfur reducing bacteria to get energy. New kinds of chemotrophy are easier to evolve from existing pieces than an entirely new system to gain energy. So it would take some incredible mutations to even begin the process of becoming thermotrophic.
As far as we know, the Blue Whale is pushing up against the limits of thermodynamics on lifeforms; we don't think you can get any larger than a Blue Whale. And as large as they are, Blue Whales are still too small to take advantage of a thermal gradient as an energy source.
Now, maybe you could have some animal that somehow harnesses energy by taking heat gathered at the surface and diving deep, to create a gradient across its own skin between its internal temperature and the surrounding water. But it's entire life would likely be spent making these dives and nothing else. And I can't picture a way it would harness that energy at all.
US Navy is dumping stuff all the time, especially under the current administration. Maybe not nuclear waste, but garbage and fuel containers are also bad in their own ways.
I really don't want scientists to find a quick way to soak up radiation because I feel like that old green light nuclear warfare if you can just run an airplane over the site dumping a bunch of fungi afterwards and everything's good within a year or two
The French government. This was an expedition by the French government to check on the condition of their waste disposal sites. Theyâve sent previous expeditions which this one was following up on, particularly to study the species colonizing the waste barrels.
Interesting in the way that further testing is interesting when you go to the hospital, nothing to worry about just some scans andblood testing, q lumbar puncture or two etc.
The person who "found the article pretty interesting. Worth a read for sure" and posted "A few things that stood out." is being dismissive?
They engaged with the material and moreso here. They even stated they don't belive this is a good thing.
tf are you on about? What more do you need? People like you drive me crazy. Making enemies out of allies. They didn't act in the "right" way, coincidentally what is undoubtedly your way.
This dates back a bit, in short, sourced by the CNRS (the french national scientific agency's findings): they detected above expected levels of radioactivity in the direct vicinity of the barrels (order of magnitude of the meter), on the sediment floor.
These barrels were dumped in the 1950s-1990s and contain low radioactivity waste, for instance scientific equipement's parts or protection clothing: it's waste part of what the vast majority of the world's total radioactive waste by volume is.
The samples have low enough radioactivity that they can be handled in laboratories without heavy protection equipment.
Scientists are monitoring if there could be effects on the wildlife living nearby.
I just want to make the point about the expected danger here, seeing the other comments: is it not high, and the articles I've read about it are almost all phrasing it way out of proportions for sensationalism.
Yeah, I used to work in a nuclear power station and ours did the same with low level stuff, except it was put in glass and the barrels were dumped underground.
There are far worse radioactive sites in the oceans - the old bomb test sites are still a mess and fukushima is still leaking.
Not condoning it or saying that people shouldn't be held responsible, just adding a bit of perspective.
Same for nuclear medicine. Though the longest isotope we worked with was a 10 day half life. So no point in burying it. Throw stuff in the lead room and let it decay and come back in a few months
During the Fukushima incident in 2011 "citizen scientists" detected radioactive Iodine-131, a short-lived product of nuclear fission, in the waters of Boston harbour in the US. This was adduced as proof that we were all going to die because Fukushima contamination had spread all around the world.
In fact the I-131 (half-life of 8.5 days) was coming from sewerage outfalls fed by Boston hospitals where patients were being treated with radioactive iodine injections for thyroid cancer and pissing out the surplus iodine.
Governments spent millions of pounds/dollars/euros encasing the radioactive waste in concrete and steel then shipping it out where it could be dumped in 3 miles of water.
That's right. That's what not high looks like. High level waste still has no permanent storage sites in the USA.
There is a lake in Russia that had high level dumped in it in the 1950-60s and I believe you can't stand by the lake shore for more than a few minutes.
Being able to handle them with gloves does not make them safe exactly. They are still very dangerous when ingested so the water is really the last place this stuff should end up in.
Could be a reason for sure. Lots of other reasons people are just letting slip by. Almost like the second amendment is an excuse for assholes to think they look cool.
Sure, we can remove the barrels and dispose of them properly at a truly astronomical cost that will be likely be 1,000x more costly than just doing the disposal a reasonable way the first time.
Has anyone expected all the barrels of toxic materials to stay intact indefinitely? I think that some people simply only care to line their pockets and do not care how it will impact millions down the line.
Despite the wrongness of this (landfills are not just big holes in the ground) you also can't dispose of nuclear waste in a landfill for a variety of great reasons.
Sure theyâre âengineered waste repositoriesâ and have all kinds of processing and all of that, but in its simplest definition thatâs exactly what it is. Maybe not âjustâ and I understand your point of âradioactive materials arenât the sameâ but my point is, when you throw something away, youâre doing the same thing of, âIâm just gonna dump this and itâs no longer my problemâ so thatâs not necessarily the issue here. This wasnât just some guy like, âI donât want to handle this properly so Iâm just gonna drop them off a boatâ it was, âthis is the best solution we can come up with at the moment with what we knowâ
Sucks and Iâm sure the people in charge could have thrown more money to find a better solution, but at its core itâs not, âI hate this worldâ worthy. There are plenty of other reasons for that
If this is the ones I'm thinking of, then they shot the barrels with rifles to help them sink. (Edit: it's from multiple dumping operations by several countries, not just the one company i'd seen posts of before as I was thinking of)
They weren't just being careless, the knowledge at the time was that the ocean was vast enough to dilute any harmful byproducts away to harmlessness.
Considering the North Atlantic is still a huge fishery, it seems to have been mostly correct. The effects on wildlife from this will be mostly very local.
Thats a gross oversimplification. This waste is extremely low level and can be handled safely with little more than gloves. The ocean is vast and the contamination is as localized as a shipwreck. Its the safest way we had back then.
That has nothing at all to do with these barrels in the ocean.
The microplastic thing might or might not be a problem, no one knows, we don't even know if it's something that just started happening or if it's been a thing for decades and we didn't know. For all we know both of us might have been born with microplastics saturating amniotic fluid and placenta, but no one was testing for any of that until very recently so we have no idea.
Are you 110 years old? I think that by the 50's and 60's and DEFINITELY by the time i was born plastic was literally everywhere and most likely microplastics were a thing.
We just started looking for them like 2 years ago and everyone is freaking out like this is something new or novel when in reality we have no clue how long it's been a problem.
to be fair it's in a much safer spot in the ocean. anywhere on dryland it could carry the risk of contaminating drinking water. ngl there are better solutions than dumping it but it may be the best minimal effort solution that still sounds way worse than it really is.
Maybe not dumping nuclear waste in the ocean is the first step. There are tens of thousands of abandoned mines on Earth. How hard is it to put the waste in proper containers and put it in these mines than dump it in the ocean and let it rust?
It was expected to leak over time. When the barrels were dumped it was thought the abyssal plain was more or less devoid of life, so it seemed like a safe way to dispose of the waste. These particular dump sites are deep and remote enough there isnât much concern of pollution impacting people, just the immediate ecosystems. Since then weâve obviously learned thereâs quite a lot of life on the deep sea floor, so this kind of disposal has been banned since the â70s.
Same logic as landfills. Itâs really funny (and sad) to think about them. Like a child hiding a broken plate under a rug so it will âneverâ be found. Pay no mind to the wasted land, toxins seeping into the ground water, and the permanence of plastics.
the French have a long history of dumping radioactive waste in the ocean. The French Government actually bombed and sank a Greenpeace ship, The Rainbow Warrior, that was trying to prevent the dumping of waste into the deep oceans
They did it because of Greenpeace's interference with nuclear weapon testing, not waste dumping. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_Warrior_%281955%29
> France was one of several European countries that dumped radioactive waste in the region. Historical records cited by CNRS show that the country disposed of more than 46,000 barrels during two operations in 1967 and 196
And thats a rookie number compared to the estimated half a million barrels of leaking toxic waste, pesticide and nuclear waste dropped on the californian coast from san pedro basin to finwds
It's been known for decades that the radioactive waste material in these barrels would sooner than later begin leaking. This was never a permanent solution but no one did a damn thing, and now it's happening.
Thatâs perhaps the best place for radioactive material though, there is absolutely a massive amount of water for it to diffuse into. It basically poses no risk at all to humanity or anything but whatever lives in that exact location. Also KaijuâŚitâs about time we start breeding them.
Had to scroll a ways to find this. I remember some image about radioactive waste in cooling ponds (spent fuel rods in barrels at the bottom of pools) and it showed how you could swim at the top of the pool and be totally fine given how effectively water limits the radiation range. In the OP scenario, add on to that the absolutely massive amount of water that everything gets mixed in with and it becomes genuinely negligible, no more than normal amounts of radiation everything is exposed to all the time except for that very limited vicinity (a few meters).
If anyone knows the math on this one, would love to see it.
Same vibe as people complaining that you can't recycle wind turbine blades. 'it's terrible, it's catastrophic that there's some fiberglass in a landfill!' Who the fuck cares. What does it actually impact. Don't harvest shellfish there, problem solved.
File this under 'things that sound bad until you actually compare it to the things that have tangible consequences'. The fact that we are still making BRAND NEW cars that will run on gasoline for their entire lifecycle is infinitely worse but it doesn't sound salacious.
Wtf are we doing to this planet? We destroy the climate, we cut trees, kill the animals, now destroy the seabed and contaminate the water. Water that travels everywhere thru the currents. What a mess we are đ we think we are so clever but we cannot see we are destroying ourselves, our future, our children's future.
Let's poison the next generations . See the "pristine" US Catalina island , they have the same issues , 300k + barrels toxic waste , its no wonder the humans/ California seals have cancer. dont eat the fish and clams in that area.
Another report alongside this one about France on USA as a secondary culprit..
https://www.earth.com/news/us-officials-dumped-thousands-of-barrels-of-toxic-waste-into-the-ocean-and-now-they-are-leaking/
Study from article above :
https://www.cnrs.fr/en/press/radioactive-waste-dumped-atlantic-scientific-mission-document-its-interactions-ecosystems
Safest would be to not create toxic wastes. This idea we have of "getting rid" of toxic waste in a materially finite environment is so elementary it shocks me. We can hide it, but once it's created, it's here. And there is always a risk that it escapes out of its storage, as in this case.
And at night or on still days it produces no power. By what pollution free method do you intend to store it? Thatâs ignoring the pollution emitted during the fabrication, maintenance demand disposal of wind and solar.
Well, you did name them, Iâll give you credit for that.
Solar thermal is massively expensive, manpower intensive, takes up a huge footprint, and hurts wildlife and uses large quantities of water. Thereâs a reason these are being decommissioned in favor of photovoltaic. Doesnât solve the current PV solar storage issue at all.
Gravity batteries like pumped storage are only viable where you have elevation changes and even then theyâre limited in number of locations like hydro. Weighted gravity is expensive and unproven at scale. A gimmicky little engineering proof of concept idea at best.
Sodium ion is probably the best route, which is why commercial power is actually putting money into this option. But again, the scale is going to be absolutely off the charts if weâre discussing a total transition to renewables. These sodium ion stations are also not without risk, which is why nobody wants the. In their back yards.
We may eventually scale up the last option but that doesnât answer any of the questions about compatibility of the current grid with renewables. But that is a different expensive conversation. Take care!
Itâs not indisputable. Solar panels have a life cycle of a decade to a few decades at most, after which they will become mostly e-waste.
Wind turbines kill a lot of birds due to collisions with the turbines.
Next, these two also take up a lot of space that encroaches natural natural habitats of flora and fauna.
Next, to provide base load power, solar and wind need vast amounts of battery storage for when there is no wind or sun around. Lithium mining and battery production are among the most polluting processes on earth. When you want to rely on these sources it is only fair to factor this in as well. And⌠the large battery units take up even more space.
Geothermal is pretty solid, but itâs just not feasible everywhere, is extremely costly and takes up a lot of space as well.
Hydro relies on flowing rivers with a large enough volume and elevation difference, that is not possible everywhere. And hydro-electric power plants are a major hazard to underwater ecosystems.
And of course nuclear has its downsides as well, like building the plant and mining the uranium. But after that it is a very safe and green energy. Uranium is also very energy-dense, so one plant can provide base load power for a large area. There are also plenty of places to safely store the radioactive waste, for example deep underground in decommissioned coal mines. There is also a lot of progress being made in the development of small modular reactors and molten salt reactors that will increase efficiency and reduce costs, as well as nuclear waste.
So what we really need is a mix of these types of power generation. And that includes nuclear for base load power. When there is lots of sun or wind, the NPP can adapt and be turned down, burning fuel more slowly and when renewable energy isnât available it can be increased again.
Nuclear is scary to a lot of people, but in this day and age, it is very safe. Deaths due to nuclear power (including Chernobyl!) are actually between that of wind and solar, and well below that of hydro-electric and the rest.
Not disputing that. Disputing storage of said energy overnight or during surplus production of those sources. We do not currently have this ability at scale and we have no timeline of when this ability will exist.
Look I appreciate the link but your article never mentions energy storage once, so it is irrelevant to the conversation.
Net zero means you are producing more energy through renewables than you consume. Typically you export surplus renewable power to your neighbors, with the understanding that they will give some of it back when your renewables arenât producing enough. That exchanged power is often from non renewable sources.
You canât use geothermal Iceland and mountainous nations with massive hydro resources as examples because very few nations have those types of consistent renewables at any scale. But I appreciate the conversation
Still. Hide waste is not the same that no waste and clean.
Nuclear is not clean. Nuclear is just hiding waste.
If we take coal electricity generators and use electrostatic precipitators to catch the co2 and then we dig a big hole and bury the co2 then will coal generators be clean?
It's just the same with nuclear.
Solar is clean. Hide nuclear waste doesn't make nuclear clean.
To bury waste doesn't make a industry no waste. Just does make then a "hide the shit" industry.
Nuclear is not a clean industry. Is just a "hide the shit under the rug" industry.
And the notice in this very post it's proof of it. But is not the only one.
The nuclear defensors of the past said the same about the barrels in the Atlantic.
And was false then for the same reason is false now.
Hide waste never will be clean. Only no waste is clean.
Until it's not because earthquakes, tectonic movement and so on.
Still. To bury waste doesn't make any industry clean. Nuclear is not clean.
If coal industry bury all their waste will then become clean?
Same goes for nuclear
Why do you think the word "Store" is used, and not "dispose of"? The point isn't to throw the waste into a deep pit and go "Welp, that's that sorted", the point is to safely store it, so that when we inevitably come across technology to nullify the danger of radioactive waste, we can dig it back up and properly get rid of it.
"Safely stored deep underground where it won't fuck with nature" certainly still beats "Just pump fifty krillion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere jerry, we aren'T being paid to care about the climate, we're paid to pad the pockets of fossil fuel companies", especially in areas where wind or solar might not be as useable
In France they had to shut down 3 nuclear reactors because it was too hot.
Nuclear isn't reliable with climate change, is susceptible to war/terrorism, creates a single point of failure and creates waste. All the effort put into nuclear would be better spent on distributed wind/solar installations.
More feasible sure, but still not any better. Any hurdles to storage and transmission are no more difficult than the insane cost, insurance requirements and logistics of nuclear.
Logistics for nuclear include long term storage, protecting reactors in a situation of war (as we have seen in places like Ukraine) where failure is catastrophic. Also as we see in France, the cooling systems don't work well in a climate changed/water restricted era. Nuclear that has to be shutdown when it's hot, dry and sunny is hard to rationalize vs. solar.
Transmission for distributed system is already possible, and storage has many options now, sodium ion and even heat storage...all without the downsides of nuclear.
Just looking at failure modes alone, renewables win by a long shot. Why wouldn't we want to choose that route.
Sorry but you see quite gullable towards anti nuclear propaganda. France lost only 12% of nuclear power production capacity during the heat wave / dry spell
The burden of proof is on you first, pal. Without any supporting evidence, you fervently defend your argument that nuclear waste is a bigger problem than the census makes it out to be. I'll give you sources if you back your argument up first.
There's no burden of proof here.
Or you will even try to deny that nuclear energy produces radioactive nuclear waste and what radioactivity of that kind does to life?
What is to discuss or to deny there?
Well, we could shoot it into the sun... But the costs would be insane so that's not gonna happen. Maybe dumping it into an active volcano but if that's not hot enough then we'd get radioactive ashes which would be even worse
Edit: lot of nuclear fanboys on the thread today. You can have all the great great engineering you like but until you can engineer corrupt humans out of the equation there are flaws in your systems
Nuclear is exceptionally clean when looking at comparative damage done to comparative regions for the amount of energy output. That also isn't taking into account that fusion is past the feasibility stage with sights on efficient enough, even if it is 200 years to crack we would be way better going fission now than staying on fossil fuels for that 200 years. Even if fusion never happens we are also discovering ways to increase efficiency and decrease longevity and amount of fissile waste.
The amount of damage car exhaust pollution causes on a worldwide scale, let alone producing gas for all those cars.
If we even are around 8000 years from now when the super deep empty salt mines are nearing full because we didn't find a solution, and we really don't want to move to using the abundance of other super stable geological formations, I'm sure by then we will have the ability to get it to space if we absolitely had to. If we don't gwt off of fossil fuels now though we are going to be extinct well before we have to worry about it.
Water blocks radiation and mostly that is alpha and beta radiation. From first covers you even paper ,from beta water is sufficient. Gamma usually last not that long since being with high energy potential,it needs be from heavier waste and nuclear waste decay over time. Each radionuclide have time where from 1 kg of uranium over time will last only 500 g of it
[OP] mrcanard | 15 days ago
Lede,
>Scientists exploring the Northeast Atlantic have directly observed heavily corroded barrels of radioactive waste. Some are in bad shape. Material has even spilled onto the seafloor nearly three miles below the surface.
Romanopapa | 15 days ago
You want Kaiju? This is how you Kaiju.
A_Guy_Oz | 15 days ago
Without Kaiju you have no Gipsy Danger, so yeah, please continue
Velorian-Steel | 15 days ago
This guy sounds like he's ready to cancel the apocalypse
sweetica | 15 days ago
Neural handshake!!!
patientpedestrian | 15 days ago
Yeah, but they do neural docking in this one.
The_Lapsed_Pacifist | 15 days ago
Battletech Mormons?
Redfish680 | 15 days ago
Hey, no kink shaming here!
boli99 | 15 days ago
> docking
snigger commences
Cornelius907 | 15 days ago
One heck of a Mandela effect
TolMera | 15 days ago
Neutral handshake đ¤
Prize_Chemical1661 | 15 days ago
I'm on board with this apocalypse over the current state of affairs. When does Knuckles show up?
Fab1e | 15 days ago
With all the shit that is going on, Kaiju won't make much of a difference.
But it will be more entertaining.
OkChildhood2261 | 15 days ago
Yeah imagine emerging from the ocean ready to wreck a coastal city and finding it's already been destroyed by a wildfire, so you just slink back in disappointment.
Tipop | 15 days ago
Who wants to rage and stomp all over ruins and ashes? You just get dirty feet.
TheRealPallando | 15 days ago
Stupid sexy Kaiju
Fab1e | 14 days ago
You just have me an idea: what if - instead of giant lizards & monkey - we have giant, super sexy female or male humanlike-mutated kaiju?
I'd watch that movie...
MatthewBlack6 | 15 days ago
What do you think is going to destroy capitalism, democracy?
Godzilla is not only the hero we need, he's also the enemy we deserve
Idiotan0n | 15 days ago
Only if we first send Caillou
theworstvp | 15 days ago
best we can do is partial food chain poisoning
BakerOne | 14 days ago
How do we stop though without getting a sequel?
avarageone | 15 days ago
At this point Kaiju would be an improvement
Initial_Row_6400 | 15 days ago
Ahh man that sucks. Iâm a scuba diver and I fucking hate hearing shit like this
kippy3267 | 15 days ago
Good news is, water is one of the best radioactive insulators we have! So unless youâre touching the stuff on the ocean floor youâre fine. Bad news, but occasionally good news is, the ocean is incredibly good at spreading stuff around. So any effected ocean wildlife aside, chances are the radioactive material will be spread around and diluted so much that itâll only impact the sensitive waterbound wildlifeâŚ
technodeity | 15 days ago
The solution to pollution is dilution!â˘
EssEllEyeSeaKay | 15 days ago
âThe atmosphere is natures binâ.
Guess it also applies to the ocean.
el_lobo1314 | 14 days ago
theyâre doing studies to try and determine whether we should freak out. we thought it would gradually dissipate but thatâs not exactly what is happening.
mycall | 15 days ago
Wear a lead suit?
superanth | 15 days ago
Oh yeah, there is some terrifying stuff out there. In the 50âs barges would go off the coast from Boston Harbor and dump 55 gallon drums full of all kinds of waste.
Some of them tended to float, so the workmen would cut a hole in the drums and fill them with concrete so they would sink better. đ
utdconsq | 15 days ago
They did this in aus, too. Almost every day a giant barge would go down the river near me and empty its load off the continental shelf. Was jarosite in this case, so maybe not as bad, but still terrible.
Next-Coat-2833 | 15 days ago
Little dioxin never hurt no one (sarc) jic.
Neither_Berry_100 | 15 days ago
This is horrible. We will run out of nuclear fuel and the old stuff can be reprocessed and used many times this way. Unfortunately we aren't doing it right now. Well France is but that is about it.
PaleIter | 14 days ago
This isn't spent fuel, but low grade waste. France also got lots of spent fuel sitting in storage. Reprocessing once still leaves most of the fuel unused.
verbol | 15 days ago
Whoâs stuff is it?
you-farted | 14 days ago
How close to land? I wonder if any health concerns have arisen by those located close by.
SmegmaSupreme | 15 days ago
well what do you know. funny how reddit is being astroturfed by pro nuclear accounts for last 5 years and every youtuber with a semblance of following has made pro nuclear videos, all in last 5 years.
people are so gullible
twoiko | 15 days ago
Right, because the issue is with nuclear power and not with the regulations surrounding it?
This is a symptom of a much wider issue, especially considering how many billions of barrels of oil are pumped into the oceans and other natural environments.
myaltduh | 15 days ago
Yeah this is really bad but still absolutely trivial compared to whatâs happening to the climate right now.
cityshepherd | 15 days ago
âWell yeah but those regulations and dumb rules for protecting the environment and filthy poors are a real hassle and cut into profits for our shareholders this fiscal quarter, and THAT would by TRULY unacceptable. Get your priorities straight you America-hating communist!â
- (the entire GOP and most establishment democrats probably)
Reagalan | 15 days ago
It's not bad at all and climate change will kill so so so so so so 1,000,000,000 times more
anti-nuclear people are stupid or evil (fossil fuel shills) or both.
Dovahkiinthesardine | 15 days ago
Pollution and climate change are two different issues
myaltduh | 15 days ago
Not at all, climate change is just the main symptom of CO2 pollution (but not the only one, it also creates problems like ocean acidification and in high enough quantities it will even affect human cognition).
Dovahkiinthesardine | 15 days ago
What I mean is that neither plastic, toxins nor nuclear material influence the climate. They are harmful to the environment and can completely fuck humans over, but its non sensical to compare them to greenhouse gasses and say "compared to them they dont have a big impact"
Thats how you end up with a bunch of mercury in tuna
hypomaniacmeg | 15 days ago
Plastic production & pollution does have a big impact on the climate.
sweetica | 15 days ago
Oh Trump rolled back all the nuclear regulatory agencies and fired a bunch of people... What could go wrong?? This is what could go wrong!
Kafkatrapping | 15 days ago
You're saying the problem is capitalism and the current world order? Cool, we still cant handle nuclear waste and bombs.
twoiko | 15 days ago
Yeah, but arguing that we should stop doing nuclear instead of building a world where we can safely do it is stupid and completely misses the point.
We literally just don't try because it's too expensive compared to cheaper fossil fuels which have well established processes and lots of R&D funding because...
Capitalism. Surprise.
Nisseliten | 15 days ago
Hello astroturfing pro-nuclear account!
Peteistheman | 15 days ago
Every human agrees with you because your position is so obviously correct, right?
Main-Company-5946 | 15 days ago
Yes it is impossible for anyone to actually be pro nuclear
love_is_an_action | 15 days ago
Iâm pro-nuclear, and have been so for free. Where do I sign up for the gravy train? Being paid to be on the right side of history sounds rad.
Nico280gato | 15 days ago
I dont think it's fully astroturfed, it's people who read 1 thing, make up their mind, and refuse to see any other way.
The astroturfers are the pro-nuclear crowd who are against renewable energy.
moosemune | 15 days ago
That seems like a weird Venn diagram, being only pro-nuclear.
I wonder what about renewable sources that sort of person might dislike?
msief | 15 days ago
What's wrong with nuclear?
humansomeone | 15 days ago
Personally I think we could go in another direction or multiple renewable directions for the cost.
Nuclear in the province of ontario will cost 100 billion or so with all the reavtor refurbishments and new ones being built. They are also building a waste site. Everyone acts like it's some free saviour. A hundred billion could go a long way with solar, wind or even upgrade subsidies to individuals to reduce consumption. Maybe even better public transit to reduce car ownership, or better walkable cities etc. Etc.
Instead a massive investment on one industry.
CrowdLorder | 15 days ago
The issue with renelables is always the variability of power output. Basically whenever the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine you have to compensate by burning coal or natural gas to maintain the grid.
humansomeone | 15 days ago
And? Spend 20 bill on one reactor and 20 bill on solar, wind and batteries. Or just residential solar. Or affordable housing in denser cities that use less power. Subisdies on efficient minisplits etc. Etc.
Why is it always all or nothing?
CrowdLorder | 15 days ago
Because a nuclear reactor has a stable output. It's not like a coal powerplant where you can increase and decrease capacity. So it really doesn't make sense to build both it and renewables
If you're going for 100% carbon neutral power generation you simply can't do it without nuclear with currently available technology.
The situation where the grid has any reliance on renewables makes it also reliant on spare capacity of fossil fuel power plants that can be turned on demand.
Renewables are great for private users to reduce their electricity costs, but not very useful for the grid itself.
humansomeone | 15 days ago
You can reread what I wrote several times if you want. I mention subsidies for residential users to do that.
CrowdLorder | 15 days ago
What's the point? As I said it doesn't benefit the grid in terms of carbon neutrality. So you're just subsidizing someone's energy use and Chinese manufacturers that make solar.
humansomeone | 15 days ago
Ah is that issue? Just chinese solar? I guess reduce consumption on the grid isn't enough? All eggs in one basket kinda thing? I see why 100 billion in solar (edit meant nuclear of course) and a new waste site is happening now. Just go bullish in nuclear just cuz.
conker123110 | 15 days ago
>you can reread what I wrote several times if you want.
This doesn't retort anything he said
> I mention subsidies for residential users to do that.
He had a lot more to his point than just that
humansomeone | 15 days ago
I didn't remove my comments so it's all still there besides your selective quoting. Pretty ironic of you . . .
Accidental-Genius | 15 days ago
Renewables require a stable base load with the current grid design and a new grid would cost a trillion or more. Your options for a stable base load is coal, natural gas, or nuclear.
humansomeone | 15 days ago
Yeah and reducing consumption and adding renewables can help quite a bit.
Accidental-Genius | 15 days ago
Sure but that doesnât do anything to solve the base load problem.
humansomeone | 15 days ago
No? Reducing consumption by 25% or so doesn't reduce the base load?
Accidental-Genius | 15 days ago
It might reduce the base load but it doesnât eliminate the need for a base load. Unless we rebuild the grid from scratch we will have to have a base load and that cannot come from renewables without massive technological advances. So again that brings us back to the options of, coal, natural gas, or nuclear.
humansomeone | 15 days ago
Yeah what? I never said get rid of nuclear. I think you got here late in the discussion.
msief | 15 days ago
geothermal could be a stable base load as well.
msief | 15 days ago
That's a fair point. Since renewables have gotten cheaper in recent years it makes more since to invest in them. However, the issue of cost is widely agreed to be due to regulations - which isn't an issue intrinsic to nuclear.
JuliaKyuu | 15 days ago
The article we comment under is showing us directly what happens without enough regulation.
humansomeone | 15 days ago
I mean building a reactor on one of the world's largest fresh lakes should have a ton of regulations and should be expensive as hell . . . Which is why I personally think we'd be better off spending the money elsewhere.
SmegmaSupreme | 15 days ago
nothing in theory. but we don't live in theory.
all the promise of safe disposal have been proven to be lies.
International_Neckk | 15 days ago
Sees a single thing that is vaguely related to nuclear power and isn't good
"See everyone. Big nuclear has been lying to you this WHOLE time"
Nuclear is by far and away the safest way to produce an incredibly large amount of energy and it is not at all debatable. This is not at all a problem with nuclear power and if you want to say it is then we can talk about the millions of gallons of oil that are constantly leaked into the ocean or the fact that the byproducts of fossil fuels kill way more people than all nuclear disasters combined every single year
Old-Individual1732 | 15 days ago
With what we see from the deregulation of everything in the USA and other countries jumping on the bandwagon, it wouldn't surprise me to see more dumped into the sea. This is why I'm not a big fan of nuclear power. Too many greedy people without a care for anyone else in control of important decisions.
CaptainCarrot7 | 15 days ago
there is way more dangerous waste that is created by other power sources.
coal power makes more radioactive waste and its released into the atmosphere for us to breathe unlike nuclear waste that is buried forever.
nuclear power is actually really clean and safe.
sxales | 15 days ago
These barrels were dumped in the 1950s and 1960s.
If you were expecting cartoonish barrels of green ooze, you would be disappointed. They contain low-level radioactive waste (primarily medical waste, lab materials, and protective gear) encased in concrete.
Insulated by water and far removed from human populations was initially seen as the safest way to dump such waste but the process was halted in the early-70s over obvious environmental concerns.
Today, it is not nuclear power but medical waste that makes up the vast majority of radioactive waste generated.
Tasik | 15 days ago
I found the article pretty interesting. Worth a read for sure. A few things that stood out.
1 - the discovery of these barrels wasnât unexpected and at least some of the dumping sounds as it was part of old but documented disposal operations.
2 - the barrel may also contain concrete or other agents to slow the release of radioactive materials.
3 - there is a lot of life that has made the barrels their own micro habitats.
And it sounds like theyâre collected tons of samples to try to map out how much reactive materials are impacting the ecosystem, but this part analysis is not provided or not complete yet.
Not saying any of it is good. Just interesting.
ArtisticTraffic5970 | 15 days ago
Hey there's a positive at least: whichever species aren't killed by this will go on to develop some serious resistance to cancer and radioactivity!
jackofallcards | 15 days ago
Or, as another comment said, kaiju
ArtisticTraffic5970 | 15 days ago
I don't know realistically... Maybe? Hopefully?
GroundsKeeper2 | 15 days ago
Giant crab things might solve world hunger.
PsychologicalTowel79 | 15 days ago
By feeding the hungry to the crabs?
GroundsKeeper2 | 15 days ago
I mean, technically, it does solve world hunger.
TrulyOutrageous42 | 15 days ago
And they say AI can't solve problems for us!
GroundsKeeper2 | 15 days ago
Let's be real, we all know the rich would sacrifice thousands of people for profit.
If they could do gladiator battles to the death amongst "the poor," that shit would be PPV on ESPN.
Far-Earth-886 | 15 days ago
Since weâre being playfully expressive here, isnât that basically UFC
Babelfiisk | 15 days ago
That was a really good episode of Love Death and Robots.
Handbasket_For_One | 15 days ago
A modest proposal.
kpooo7 | 15 days ago
Going to need a shit ton of butter!
Agonio | 15 days ago
Dentists recommend the total annihilation of humanity by giant crab things as a sure way to solve nearly all of humanities problems đ¤ˇ
Infamous-Crew1710 | 15 days ago
Only 1 out of 10 Dentists says that
Agonio | 15 days ago
Maybe the other 9 are just flooding the zone with toothpaste recommendations so you don't learn that the dentists are actually unexpectedly unanimous on the topic of giant crab things annihilating humanity
Timmar92 | 15 days ago
Crab people crab people
KeenbeansSandwich | 15 days ago
I was gonna say. Isnât this basically Godzilla/Pacific Rim?
zleuth | 15 days ago
Everyone assumes Kaiju will be like giant Godzilla-like monsters and not giant Akira-like amorphous cancers that eat whole cities.
Stainz | 15 days ago
Maybe 500 million years from now, after humans are long gone, creatures resistant to barrels of radioactive waste will have become the dominant species on Earth thanks to all these barrels we've left hanging around.
ArtisticTraffic5970 | 15 days ago
Oh, all the radioactive isotopes would have expired long before then. In a hundred thousand years, pretty much all of it would be gone. The longest living isotope mentioned in the article, cesium 137, has a half-life of roughly thirty thousand years.
Agi7890 | 15 days ago
Cesium 137 half life is 30 ish years.
You want a long lasting half , go with bismuth 209. Plus itâs fun to carry around in the palm of your hand.
TrumpsCovidfefe | 15 days ago
My takeaway from this is that we need to keep putting radioactive barrels in a similar spot to continue the experiment.
chrissz | 15 days ago
And they may find that life is more resilient than we thought, similar to some of the findings from Chernobyl.
ArtisticTraffic5970 | 15 days ago
Oh yeah definitely, though science have actually come to actually expect it, though public understanding lags behind quite a bit.
Turns out that elevated, but still moderate doses of radiation is beneficial rather than harmful. Turns out that people and animals both around Chernobyl and Fukushima have grown resistant(!) to cancer rather than the opposite.
MrCookie2099 | 15 days ago
Nature deals with cancer in most cases by letting the organism die long before cancer is ever a concern.
Wank_A_Doodle_Doo | 15 days ago
Wouldnt put it that way. At all in fact. Organisms having short enough lifespans cancer isnât as big a concern isnât why their lifespans are short.
Animals such as whales, who intuitively should be at a massive risk of cancer(large animals with more cells means more chances for cancerous mutation, and they can live a long ass time like us), have in fact evolved to be highly resistant to cancer.
So when cancer becomes a problem, natural selection is perfectly capable of selecting towards cancer resistance rather than just getting the reproduction over with faster. Not to mention part of that cancer resistance would be improved DNA repair mechanisms, which is useful for being able to reproduce at all.
superindianslug | 15 days ago
Are the Chernobyl wolves resistant, or do they just reproduce faster than cancer kills them?
kelldricked | 14 days ago
In real life thats only an advantage when they stay in a enviroment which has a lot of radioactivity. Cancer isnt a problem for most types of animals, for the few for which it is a problem this probaly wont introduce any mutation that helps them fight off the cancer itself (probaly just select traits that prevent them from getting cancer in the first place).
All of this sounds like a nobrainer as both seem really beneficial but thats just wrong. Every adaption has its downsides, this is gonna cost them more energy/nutrition to adept and it might even change looks (meaning it comes at the cost of moving efficiently, camoflage or mating habits).
XanZibR | 15 days ago
Feral ghoul crabs imminent
mokrieydela | 15 days ago
Point 3 is interesting. Really interesting
McFlyParadox | 15 days ago
But not particularly unique. Life returned to Chernobyl pretty quickly.
Also, consider that water is the ultimate radiation moderator. It is effective against alpha, beta, and gamma radiation, attenuating their energy in a very short distance (compared to as gas). The fact life can get close to it isn't all that surprising.
Now, what would be more interesting is comparing the environments between these sites of waste dumps against deep sea thermal vents: what is the difference in radiation types and intensity; what is the difference in thermal temperature; what is the difference in biomass and diversity; what is the difference in longevity of life and is overall health throughout the life of an individual organism? Looking into those questions would be more interesting than just "there is life around radioactive waste in the ocean; it's not sterile around the dump site"
patientpedestrian | 15 days ago
You got me thinking, how large would an organism theoretically have to be in order to use temperature gradients as a primary source of energy? Like, why isn't there already a robust layer of life all around the Earth's crust at phase boundaries?
greenhawk22 | 15 days ago
The issue with that (I'm assuming) is that volume scales with the cube of size while surface area scales with the square due to the square cube law. So as you get larger, it becomes increasingly hard to dissipate heat when needed. So I think it would be very difficult to reach a size where you can extract the excess energy from thermal gradients while still maintaining homeostasis.
This is also ignoring the fact that it would probably need to be it's own kingdom (or maybe even domain?) of life, given that even existing hydrothermal organisms rely on sulfur reducing bacteria to get energy. New kinds of chemotrophy are easier to evolve from existing pieces than an entirely new system to gain energy. So it would take some incredible mutations to even begin the process of becoming thermotrophic.
McFlyParadox | 15 days ago
As far as we know, the Blue Whale is pushing up against the limits of thermodynamics on lifeforms; we don't think you can get any larger than a Blue Whale. And as large as they are, Blue Whales are still too small to take advantage of a thermal gradient as an energy source.
Now, maybe you could have some animal that somehow harnesses energy by taking heat gathered at the surface and diving deep, to create a gradient across its own skin between its internal temperature and the surrounding water. But it's entire life would likely be spent making these dives and nothing else. And I can't picture a way it would harness that energy at all.
mokrieydela | 15 days ago
Way above my intellect, but I think I've found my next documentary rabbit hole
Peripatetictyl | 15 days ago
Life, uh, finds a way.
AliceLunar | 15 days ago
>disposal operations
Dump it in the ocean
AstronautSlothPhD | 15 days ago
US Navy is dumping stuff all the time, especially under the current administration. Maybe not nuclear waste, but garbage and fuel containers are also bad in their own ways.
HereIGoAgain_1x10 | 15 days ago
I really don't want scientists to find a quick way to soak up radiation because I feel like that old green light nuclear warfare if you can just run an airplane over the site dumping a bunch of fungi afterwards and everything's good within a year or two
Dave5876 | 15 days ago
So who put them there?
captainjack3 | 15 days ago
The French government. This was an expedition by the French government to check on the condition of their waste disposal sites. Theyâve sent previous expeditions which this one was following up on, particularly to study the species colonizing the waste barrels.
shongage | 15 days ago
3-eyed fish?
fpsachaonpc | 15 days ago
Man, boomers really did ruin our planet
Franksss | 14 days ago
It's really not a big deal. Some low level waste out of the way of humans. It was never meant to be contained forever, and it doesn't need to be.
That's why we classify waste. High level waste, yeah, but we don't dump that in the ocean.
mycall | 15 days ago
> there is a lot of life that has made the barrels their own micro habitats.
Do they happen to glow in the dark?
Delicious-Resist-977 | 15 days ago
Interesting in the way that further testing is interesting when you go to the hospital, nothing to worry about just some scans andblood testing, q lumbar puncture or two etc.
You seem very dismissive of it.
tony_bologna | 15 days ago
The person who "found the article pretty interesting. Worth a read for sure" and posted "A few things that stood out." is being dismissive?
They engaged with the material and moreso here. They even stated they don't belive this is a good thing.
tf are you on about? What more do you need? People like you drive me crazy. Making enemies out of allies. They didn't act in the "right" way, coincidentally what is undoubtedly your way.
gfy
Ahaiund | 15 days ago
This dates back a bit, in short, sourced by the CNRS (the french national scientific agency's findings): they detected above expected levels of radioactivity in the direct vicinity of the barrels (order of magnitude of the meter), on the sediment floor.
These barrels were dumped in the 1950s-1990s and contain low radioactivity waste, for instance scientific equipement's parts or protection clothing: it's waste part of what the vast majority of the world's total radioactive waste by volume is.
The samples have low enough radioactivity that they can be handled in laboratories without heavy protection equipment.
Scientists are monitoring if there could be effects on the wildlife living nearby.
I just want to make the point about the expected danger here, seeing the other comments: is it not high, and the articles I've read about it are almost all phrasing it way out of proportions for sensationalism.
Monsoon_Storm | 15 days ago
Yeah, I used to work in a nuclear power station and ours did the same with low level stuff, except it was put in glass and the barrels were dumped underground.
There are far worse radioactive sites in the oceans - the old bomb test sites are still a mess and fukushima is still leaking.
Not condoning it or saying that people shouldn't be held responsible, just adding a bit of perspective.
Agi7890 | 15 days ago
Same for nuclear medicine. Though the longest isotope we worked with was a 10 day half life. So no point in burying it. Throw stuff in the lead room and let it decay and come back in a few months
LegoNinja11 | 15 days ago
All good until the patient uses the loo and estates have to have access restrictions on all of the sewer system.
OldTimeConGoer | 14 days ago
During the Fukushima incident in 2011 "citizen scientists" detected radioactive Iodine-131, a short-lived product of nuclear fission, in the waters of Boston harbour in the US. This was adduced as proof that we were all going to die because Fukushima contamination had spread all around the world.
In fact the I-131 (half-life of 8.5 days) was coming from sewerage outfalls fed by Boston hospitals where patients were being treated with radioactive iodine injections for thyroid cancer and pissing out the surplus iodine.
cosmic_sheriff | 15 days ago
Hanford is my favorite radioactive playground.
Wunjo26 | 15 days ago
Yeah itâs called Transuranic Waste and while it is still radioactive itâs not spent fuel rods levels of radioactivity
WinterTourist25 | 15 days ago
Speak for your own transuranic waste!
TerrorTown77 | 15 days ago
1990s, we really went "fuck it, someone else's problem."
No_Faithlessness6939 | 15 days ago
Do you know if they are going to remove them from the ocean?
Apptubrutae | 15 days ago
Given that thatâs currently the safest place for them to be, I highly doubt it
jamothebest | 15 days ago
shooting the radioactive waste to the moon / space is much safer
RollinThundaga | 15 days ago
There's ecosystems nucleating around them. Probably not unless the science turns out that they're more harmful than helpful.
P01135809-Trump | 15 days ago
When you say " not high"....
Governments spent millions of pounds/dollars/euros encasing the radioactive waste in concrete and steel then shipping it out where it could be dumped in 3 miles of water.
That's a lot of money and effort for "not high".
akira23232 | 15 days ago
That's right. That's what not high looks like. High level waste still has no permanent storage sites in the USA.
There is a lake in Russia that had high level dumped in it in the 1950-60s and I believe you can't stand by the lake shore for more than a few minutes.
MysticHero | 14 days ago
Being able to handle them with gloves does not make them safe exactly. They are still very dangerous when ingested so the water is really the last place this stuff should end up in.
firedrakes | 15 days ago
This has been a known problem for over 20 years now
Eelroots | 15 days ago
Is there a solution?
Nevermind04 | 15 days ago
Seizing the assets of those who are responsible.
tinywienergang | 15 days ago
I mean thatâs not really a solution though.
Boatster_McBoat | 15 days ago
It involves pitchforks
Open-Price-4568 | 15 days ago
I thought it was the reason why the Americans have so many guns.
Dave5876 | 15 days ago
They don't even seem to care about becoming a fascist state so idk
EggplantAlpinism | 15 days ago
It was supposed to be anyways
UselessHalberd | 15 days ago
Could be a reason for sure. Lots of other reasons people are just letting slip by. Almost like the second amendment is an excuse for assholes to think they look cool.
jarvis0042 | 15 days ago
When 3 miles deep in the ocean, I think it is a trident.
694meok | 15 days ago
I don't think pitchforks are the best tool to use 3 miles under the ocean.
Boatster_McBoat | 15 days ago
I thought you were trying to solve the problem of people thinking it's ok to dump stuff like this
694meok | 15 days ago
Yeah I know, just making jokes.
gymdog | 15 days ago
Aquaman seems to think so.
Gullenbursti | 15 days ago
Tridents then
firedrakes | 15 days ago
Costly clean up.
ThaddeusJP | 15 days ago
Yeah at like a trillion dollars. 15,000 ft is 2.8 mi. To give you an idea of the Titanic is 2.4 miles down. That stuff is down there forever
sundancer2788 | 15 days ago
The depth and the highly corroded containers say no
Actual__Wizard | 15 days ago
Sure, we can remove the barrels and dispose of them properly at a truly astronomical cost that will be likely be 1,000x more costly than just doing the disposal a reasonable way the first time.
Reagalan | 15 days ago
Yes.
Do nothing.
It's far away, low-level, and this sort of stuff fixes itself because physics.
The folks here advocating violence are either idiots or being sarcastic or both.
Source_Required | 15 days ago
Is it a problem though?
Reagalan | 15 days ago
It's not a problem.
Current_Finding_4066 | 15 days ago
Has anyone expected all the barrels of toxic materials to stay intact indefinitely? I think that some people simply only care to line their pockets and do not care how it will impact millions down the line.
corgi-king | 15 days ago
The people who dumped it know it will leak. But it is not their problem anymore, isnât it?
I hate this world.
jackofallcards | 15 days ago
In a sense thatâs what we do when we put trash in a trash can. It goes to a big hole in the ground and we forget about it
corgi-king | 15 days ago
But we donât have to dump into ocean. There are tens of thousands abandoned mines.
AlizarinCrimzen | 15 days ago
Despite the wrongness of this (landfills are not just big holes in the ground) you also can't dispose of nuclear waste in a landfill for a variety of great reasons.
jackofallcards | 15 days ago
Sure theyâre âengineered waste repositoriesâ and have all kinds of processing and all of that, but in its simplest definition thatâs exactly what it is. Maybe not âjustâ and I understand your point of âradioactive materials arenât the sameâ but my point is, when you throw something away, youâre doing the same thing of, âIâm just gonna dump this and itâs no longer my problemâ so thatâs not necessarily the issue here. This wasnât just some guy like, âI donât want to handle this properly so Iâm just gonna drop them off a boatâ it was, âthis is the best solution we can come up with at the moment with what we knowâ
Sucks and Iâm sure the people in charge could have thrown more money to find a better solution, but at its core itâs not, âI hate this worldâ worthy. There are plenty of other reasons for that
RollinThundaga | 15 days ago
If this is the ones I'm thinking of, then they shot the barrels with rifles to help them sink. (Edit: it's from multiple dumping operations by several countries, not just the one company i'd seen posts of before as I was thinking of)
They weren't just being careless, the knowledge at the time was that the ocean was vast enough to dilute any harmful byproducts away to harmlessness.
Considering the North Atlantic is still a huge fishery, it seems to have been mostly correct. The effects on wildlife from this will be mostly very local.
JaFFsTer | 15 days ago
Thats a gross oversimplification. This waste is extremely low level and can be handled safely with little more than gloves. The ocean is vast and the contamination is as localized as a shipwreck. Its the safest way we had back then.
MagicWishMonkey | 15 days ago
They knew it would slowly release over time and not cause much harm. They were right.
corgi-king | 15 days ago
Seriously?!
Men have microplastics in their sperm, and microplastics are a lot larger than radiation particles. And you think it will not harm us in the end?
MagicWishMonkey | 15 days ago
That has nothing at all to do with these barrels in the ocean.
The microplastic thing might or might not be a problem, no one knows, we don't even know if it's something that just started happening or if it's been a thing for decades and we didn't know. For all we know both of us might have been born with microplastics saturating amniotic fluid and placenta, but no one was testing for any of that until very recently so we have no idea.
corgi-king | 15 days ago
Sigh.
Plastic was invented in 1907, and you think people born before that will born with microplastics?
MagicWishMonkey | 15 days ago
Are you 110 years old? I think that by the 50's and 60's and DEFINITELY by the time i was born plastic was literally everywhere and most likely microplastics were a thing.
We just started looking for them like 2 years ago and everyone is freaking out like this is something new or novel when in reality we have no clue how long it's been a problem.
blazesbe | 14 days ago
tbf the ocean floor is huge, bigger than any dryland, water blocks radiaton pretty well and the ocean floor is barren for the most part
corgi-king | 14 days ago
Ocean floor has many creatures. And the food chain is a circle. It might one day affect us.
We can do better as human. The ocean is not the dumping ground.
blazesbe | 14 days ago
all i'm saying is that this headline is sensationalist and sounds way worse than it is. meanwhile more important issues are brushed under the rug.
corgi-king | 14 days ago
Really? Do you want nuclear waste dumped in your neighborhoods, or even around your city?
blazesbe | 14 days ago
i don't live in the ocean /s
to be fair it's in a much safer spot in the ocean. anywhere on dryland it could carry the risk of contaminating drinking water. ngl there are better solutions than dumping it but it may be the best minimal effort solution that still sounds way worse than it really is.
corgi-king | 14 days ago
We have microplastics in our sperm. Who should have thought of throwing plastic in rivers and oceans will get back to us?
This nuclear waste will somehow come back to haunt us. Maybe not now or in the near future, but someday.
blazesbe | 14 days ago
>We have microplastics in our sperm.
my brain concerns me more tbh
>This nuclear waste will somehow come back to haunt us.
this is why it's being regularly monitored and sampled and everything is found nominal otherwise this headline would contain actual news
corgi-king | 14 days ago
Maybe not dumping nuclear waste in the ocean is the first step. There are tens of thousands of abandoned mines on Earth. How hard is it to put the waste in proper containers and put it in these mines than dump it in the ocean and let it rust?
BranchNo3740 | 15 days ago
Karate Kid III villain.
captainjack3 | 15 days ago
It was expected to leak over time. When the barrels were dumped it was thought the abyssal plain was more or less devoid of life, so it seemed like a safe way to dispose of the waste. These particular dump sites are deep and remote enough there isnât much concern of pollution impacting people, just the immediate ecosystems. Since then weâve obviously learned thereâs quite a lot of life on the deep sea floor, so this kind of disposal has been banned since the â70s.
KourteousKrome | 15 days ago
Same logic as landfills. Itâs really funny (and sad) to think about them. Like a child hiding a broken plate under a rug so it will âneverâ be found. Pay no mind to the wasted land, toxins seeping into the ground water, and the permanence of plastics.
1000handnshrimp | 15 days ago
Was searching for more of these dumps. Bloody hell. Look up what Russia dumped in the Artic: https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-finally-moves-to-raise-radioactive-debris-from-arctic-waters/30640975.html
rrn30 | 15 days ago
This should be getting more attention then drums of radioactive waste
tiny_chaotic_evil | 15 days ago
the French have a long history of dumping radioactive waste in the ocean. The French Government actually bombed and sank a Greenpeace ship, The Rainbow Warrior, that was trying to prevent the dumping of waste into the deep oceans
Goatf00t | 15 days ago
They did it because of Greenpeace's interference with nuclear weapon testing, not waste dumping. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_Warrior_%281955%29
Altruistic_Pea_2946 | 15 days ago
Oh man...
glizard-wizard | 15 days ago
> France was one of several European countries that dumped radioactive waste in the region. Historical records cited by CNRS show that the country disposed of more than 46,000 barrels during two operations in 1967 and 196
46 THOUSAND??
BrunoStAujus | 15 days ago
It was a good time for the barrel makers.
Sacrebleu6 | 14 days ago
And thats a rookie number compared to the estimated half a million barrels of leaking toxic waste, pesticide and nuclear waste dropped on the californian coast from san pedro basin to finwds
lowkeytokay | 15 days ago
What a terrible species we are đ Fcking monkeys with big egos
-Renee | 15 days ago
Yeesh don't put down the poor monkeys.
We are on a whole other level.
argument_cat | 15 days ago
Yeah, we're apes.
No-Builder-1038 | 15 days ago
Monkeys with egos didnât put that shit there, assholes who did it on purpose did
LuciusMichael | 15 days ago
It's been known for decades that the radioactive waste material in these barrels would sooner than later begin leaking. This was never a permanent solution but no one did a damn thing, and now it's happening.
AceArtBox | 15 days ago
Godzilla
SkyFullofHat | 15 days ago
Go, go Godzilla
digiorno | 15 days ago
Thatâs perhaps the best place for radioactive material though, there is absolutely a massive amount of water for it to diffuse into. It basically poses no risk at all to humanity or anything but whatever lives in that exact location. Also KaijuâŚitâs about time we start breeding them.
Bobbited | 15 days ago
Had to scroll a ways to find this. I remember some image about radioactive waste in cooling ponds (spent fuel rods in barrels at the bottom of pools) and it showed how you could swim at the top of the pool and be totally fine given how effectively water limits the radiation range. In the OP scenario, add on to that the absolutely massive amount of water that everything gets mixed in with and it becomes genuinely negligible, no more than normal amounts of radiation everything is exposed to all the time except for that very limited vicinity (a few meters).
If anyone knows the math on this one, would love to see it.
Capt_Hawkeye_Pierce | 15 days ago
It was an xkcd comic if that helps.
number1texashater | 15 days ago
Same vibe as people complaining that you can't recycle wind turbine blades. 'it's terrible, it's catastrophic that there's some fiberglass in a landfill!' Who the fuck cares. What does it actually impact. Don't harvest shellfish there, problem solved.
File this under 'things that sound bad until you actually compare it to the things that have tangible consequences'. The fact that we are still making BRAND NEW cars that will run on gasoline for their entire lifecycle is infinitely worse but it doesn't sound salacious.
Petrichor4Tears | 15 days ago
Old news, we did this in the 80s
SereneOrbit | 15 days ago
I would think that due to the size of the ocean the concentration will be vefy small however the local concentration may be high
trill_jefe | 15 days ago
Godzilla
HardSpaghetti | 15 days ago
Did no one watch Godzila? Because this is how we get kaijus...
PolishGoose | 15 days ago
This is why we canât have nice things
sk3pt1c | 15 days ago
Itâs ok guys, I put my plastic wrappers in the recycle bin⌠đ¤Śđťââď¸
AliceInNegaland | 15 days ago
This is the beginning of a Godzilla đŚ
djyeo | 15 days ago
And they are telling me to stop using plastic straw to save marine lives?
TwinningJK | 15 days ago
Water is the best shielding for radiation. It's technically safe to swim in the pools that hold spent fuel rods from reactors.
prettybluefoxes | 15 days ago
Put down the pipe son.
TwinningJK | 15 days ago
It's true, it's actually the safest place during any reactor based emergency if you can't leave the vacintity first.
BlueMiau | 15 days ago
Wtf are we doing to this planet? We destroy the climate, we cut trees, kill the animals, now destroy the seabed and contaminate the water. Water that travels everywhere thru the currents. What a mess we are đ we think we are so clever but we cannot see we are destroying ourselves, our future, our children's future.
jbonte | 15 days ago
So..Godzilla?
WeCanRun | 15 days ago
Godzilla
GxM42 | 15 days ago
Anyone like Godzilla? Because this is how we get to Godzilla.
Konradleijon | 15 days ago
Who does this
Icy_Tune2834 | 15 days ago
Let's poison the next generations . See the "pristine" US Catalina island , they have the same issues , 300k + barrels toxic waste , its no wonder the humans/ California seals have cancer. dont eat the fish and clams in that area.
superrad99 | 15 days ago
Well there goes our wine mixer
Icy_Tune2834 | 15 days ago
I needed that this morning. lol , thank you , inset smiling emoji
Bmor00bam | 15 days ago
âGodzillaâ by Blue Oyster Cult intensifies
gavanon | 15 days ago
This is how you get Godzillas, people. Do you want to get Godzillas?
Simple_March_1741 | 15 days ago
Imagine how many they didn't find yet. All for the profit and glory of our corporate overlords.
But hey, they are better people. Superior, one might say.
Mcozy333 | 15 days ago
we so so need some implosion Tech up in the big house ... so better than explosion tech
Inspect1234 | 15 days ago
Yeah? Like an underwater version of Hanford, Washington?
costafilh0 | 15 days ago
Nothing to worry about. Just wait 20.000 years, and it should be fine.
RollinThundaga | 15 days ago
The hotter isotopes burn off the quickest, so it's mostly fine after 60-100.
TheClassics | 15 days ago
Good thing that's like the best place for radioactive material
swiftpwns | 15 days ago
Russians?
bazzoozzab | 15 days ago
I don't think there are any Russians
And there ain't no Yanks
Just corporate criminals
Playin' with tanks
The Call - The Walls Came Down
kngpwnage | 15 days ago
Another report alongside this one about France on USA as a secondary culprit.. https://www.earth.com/news/us-officials-dumped-thousands-of-barrels-of-toxic-waste-into-the-ocean-and-now-they-are-leaking/
Study from article above : https://www.cnrs.fr/en/press/radioactive-waste-dumped-atlantic-scientific-mission-document-its-interactions-ecosystems
KittyLilith17 | 15 days ago
Samson and Sally (1984 kid's movie) touched on this.
UndergroundCreek | 15 days ago
Oupsie?
10ThousandMetalZones | 15 days ago
Did they go there on purpose or were like âope whatâs this doing here â
wildweeds | 15 days ago
all those poor animals that will get harmed by this. i really hate companies that treat our world this way.
ApprehensivePilot3 | 14 days ago
And this is how we get Godzilla.
Important-Factor-552 | 14 days ago
Good old capitalism, nothing destroys the planet faster
Additional_Squash999 | 15 days ago
Humans are the worst thing to happen to the Earth.
haverchuck22 | 15 days ago
Isnât this how Godzilla happens ?
OleDoxieDad | 15 days ago
Could it accererate mutation/evolution like the radioactivity from the rift valley?
still_cant_stop | 15 days ago
Just give Charlie Sheen a BB gun and let him go to work.
94ISS | 15 days ago
That was the first thing I thought of lol
MediumLanguageModel | 15 days ago
Can't park there, mate.
OpheliaLives7 | 15 days ago
Thanks i hate it
kevinnoir | 15 days ago
Humans are absolutely the worst things on this planet
prettybluefoxes | 15 days ago
Some humans.
Mcozy333 | 15 days ago
the Best of the Worst !!
tideshark | 15 days ago
I hate humans so much sometimes
davesr25 | 15 days ago
Safest source of energy till people get involved.
Severe_Air_4353 | 15 days ago
The great USA.
ertyertamos | 15 days ago
This has nothing to do with the USA.
Edit to add that the U.S. did this too. Just not here.
sisyphus_was_lazy_10 | 15 days ago
Sounds like usâŚ
Necessary-Dig-810 | 15 days ago
Well of course they did
kalehennie | 15 days ago
Where are the NHI now in their fancy USOâs?
StendallTheOne | 15 days ago
Nuclear is not clean. They just hide their shit under the carpet and for the next generations. Hiden waste is not the same than clean.
Kind_Resort_9535 | 15 days ago
There are safe ways to store nuclear waste.
Reagalan | 15 days ago
Deep-ocean storage, for instance.
jaithere | 15 days ago
Safest would be to not create toxic wastes. This idea we have of "getting rid" of toxic waste in a materially finite environment is so elementary it shocks me. We can hide it, but once it's created, it's here. And there is always a risk that it escapes out of its storage, as in this case.
corgi-king | 15 days ago
Compare it to letting the pollution go into the air. Nuclear is much safer. It kills a lot fewer people than gas and coal.
100-100-1-SOS | 15 days ago
and solar and wind generates no pollution and doesn't kill anyone
stablegeniuscheetoh | 15 days ago
And at night or on still days it produces no power. By what pollution free method do you intend to store it? Thatâs ignoring the pollution emitted during the fabrication, maintenance demand disposal of wind and solar.
100-100-1-SOS | 15 days ago
many ways to store it, none as difficult as nuclear. pollution pales in comparison to the others
stablegeniuscheetoh | 15 days ago
Fine, name one.
100-100-1-SOS | 15 days ago
solar thermal:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_solar_thermal_power_stations
gravity battery:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_battery
and sodium ion battery technology is available now.
etc.
stablegeniuscheetoh | 15 days ago
Well, you did name them, Iâll give you credit for that.
Solar thermal is massively expensive, manpower intensive, takes up a huge footprint, and hurts wildlife and uses large quantities of water. Thereâs a reason these are being decommissioned in favor of photovoltaic. Doesnât solve the current PV solar storage issue at all.
Gravity batteries like pumped storage are only viable where you have elevation changes and even then theyâre limited in number of locations like hydro. Weighted gravity is expensive and unproven at scale. A gimmicky little engineering proof of concept idea at best.
Sodium ion is probably the best route, which is why commercial power is actually putting money into this option. But again, the scale is going to be absolutely off the charts if weâre discussing a total transition to renewables. These sodium ion stations are also not without risk, which is why nobody wants the. In their back yards.
We may eventually scale up the last option but that doesnât answer any of the questions about compatibility of the current grid with renewables. But that is a different expensive conversation. Take care!
argument_cat | 15 days ago
Solar, wind, geothermal, and hydro are collectively far less polluting, and far more environmentally friendly, than any other source of energy.
This is completely indisputable.
GreySkies19 | 15 days ago
Itâs not indisputable. Solar panels have a life cycle of a decade to a few decades at most, after which they will become mostly e-waste.
Wind turbines kill a lot of birds due to collisions with the turbines.
Next, these two also take up a lot of space that encroaches natural natural habitats of flora and fauna.
Next, to provide base load power, solar and wind need vast amounts of battery storage for when there is no wind or sun around. Lithium mining and battery production are among the most polluting processes on earth. When you want to rely on these sources it is only fair to factor this in as well. And⌠the large battery units take up even more space.
Geothermal is pretty solid, but itâs just not feasible everywhere, is extremely costly and takes up a lot of space as well.
Hydro relies on flowing rivers with a large enough volume and elevation difference, that is not possible everywhere. And hydro-electric power plants are a major hazard to underwater ecosystems.
And of course nuclear has its downsides as well, like building the plant and mining the uranium. But after that it is a very safe and green energy. Uranium is also very energy-dense, so one plant can provide base load power for a large area. There are also plenty of places to safely store the radioactive waste, for example deep underground in decommissioned coal mines. There is also a lot of progress being made in the development of small modular reactors and molten salt reactors that will increase efficiency and reduce costs, as well as nuclear waste.
So what we really need is a mix of these types of power generation. And that includes nuclear for base load power. When there is lots of sun or wind, the NPP can adapt and be turned down, burning fuel more slowly and when renewable energy isnât available it can be increased again.
Nuclear is scary to a lot of people, but in this day and age, it is very safe. Deaths due to nuclear power (including Chernobyl!) are actually between that of wind and solar, and well below that of hydro-electric and the rest.
argument_cat | 15 days ago
> Wind turbines kill a lot of birds due t
Stopped reading there. You have no fucking idea what you're talking about, just repeating stupid anti-renewable nonsense.
stablegeniuscheetoh | 15 days ago
Bailed once the talk went from feelings to scientific reality
GreySkies19 | 15 days ago
Oh wow⌠I guess they didnât expect me to dispute the indisputable
stablegeniuscheetoh | 15 days ago
Not disputing that. Disputing storage of said energy overnight or during surplus production of those sources. We do not currently have this ability at scale and we have no timeline of when this ability will exist.
argument_cat | 15 days ago
https://www.the-independent.com/tech/renewable-energy-solar-nepal-bhutan-iceland-b2533699.html
It's only going to get better. Battery storage will become cheaper and more efficient (many homes with solar panels already have batteries installed).
If you have enough homes with private storage, on the grid, then you have a massive pool of storage you can tap into as necessary.
This is already happening.
stablegeniuscheetoh | 15 days ago
Look I appreciate the link but your article never mentions energy storage once, so it is irrelevant to the conversation.
Net zero means you are producing more energy through renewables than you consume. Typically you export surplus renewable power to your neighbors, with the understanding that they will give some of it back when your renewables arenât producing enough. That exchanged power is often from non renewable sources.
You canât use geothermal Iceland and mountainous nations with massive hydro resources as examples because very few nations have those types of consistent renewables at any scale. But I appreciate the conversation
StendallTheOne | 15 days ago
No. There are ways to just make it the problem of future generations.
thesprung | 15 days ago
Geologist here, old salt mines are an extremely safe place to store nuclear waste as it's nonpermeable and will shape around the waste over time.
StendallTheOne | 15 days ago
Still. Hide waste is not the same that no waste and clean.
Nuclear is not clean. Nuclear is just hiding waste.
If we take coal electricity generators and use electrostatic precipitators to catch the co2 and then we dig a big hole and bury the co2 then will coal generators be clean?
It's just the same with nuclear.
Solar is clean. Hide nuclear waste doesn't make nuclear clean.
To bury waste doesn't make a industry no waste. Just does make then a "hide the shit" industry.
Nuclear is not a clean industry. Is just a "hide the shit under the rug" industry.
And the notice in this very post it's proof of it. But is not the only one.
The nuclear defensors of the past said the same about the barrels in the Atlantic.
And was false then for the same reason is false now.
Hide waste never will be clean. Only no waste is clean.
loozerr | 15 days ago
Buried waste is harmless. The alternative we've got for baseline power is actively killing us
StendallTheOne | 15 days ago
It's harmless until it's not because it's not buried anymore. And that is a black and white fallacy.
loozerr | 15 days ago
The bedrock it's buried into in Finland outlasts the material - so once it's there it's harmless.
StendallTheOne | 15 days ago
Until it's not because earthquakes, tectonic movement and so on. Still. To bury waste doesn't make any industry clean. Nuclear is not clean. If coal industry bury all their waste will then become clean? Same goes for nuclear
loozerr | 15 days ago
We have a good understanding which plates are stable
If coal's emissions could be stuffed underground yeah it would be a massive improvement
Lucas_2234 | 15 days ago
Why do you think the word "Store" is used, and not "dispose of"? The point isn't to throw the waste into a deep pit and go "Welp, that's that sorted", the point is to safely store it, so that when we inevitably come across technology to nullify the danger of radioactive waste, we can dig it back up and properly get rid of it.
"Safely stored deep underground where it won't fuck with nature" certainly still beats "Just pump fifty krillion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere jerry, we aren'T being paid to care about the climate, we're paid to pad the pockets of fossil fuel companies", especially in areas where wind or solar might not be as useable
StendallTheOne | 15 days ago
In long term there is no safety store. The Earth is constantly in motion.
Is just making it a problem for future generations and sell it as "clean".
100-100-1-SOS | 15 days ago
In France they had to shut down 3 nuclear reactors because it was too hot.
Nuclear isn't reliable with climate change, is susceptible to war/terrorism, creates a single point of failure and creates waste. All the effort put into nuclear would be better spent on distributed wind/solar installations.
Morten14 | 15 days ago
You lack transmission and long term electricity storage in the wind+solar equation. When you include this, nuclear becomes more feasible.
100-100-1-SOS | 15 days ago
More feasible sure, but still not any better. Any hurdles to storage and transmission are no more difficult than the insane cost, insurance requirements and logistics of nuclear.
Logistics for nuclear include long term storage, protecting reactors in a situation of war (as we have seen in places like Ukraine) where failure is catastrophic. Also as we see in France, the cooling systems don't work well in a climate changed/water restricted era. Nuclear that has to be shutdown when it's hot, dry and sunny is hard to rationalize vs. solar.
Transmission for distributed system is already possible, and storage has many options now, sodium ion and even heat storage...all without the downsides of nuclear.
Just looking at failure modes alone, renewables win by a long shot. Why wouldn't we want to choose that route.
Morten14 | 15 days ago
Sorry but you see quite gullable towards anti nuclear propaganda. France lost only 12% of nuclear power production capacity during the heat wave / dry spell
100-100-1-SOS | 15 days ago
I'm not anti-nuclear; it's better than fossil fuels. But renewables are arguably even better.
Indeed France lost only 12% of capacity. That's not a good thing though.
Morten14 | 15 days ago
How is storing it 1000m underground in stable geological formations pushing the problem to future generations?
StendallTheOne | 15 days ago
In long term there is no "stable geological formations" .
Morten14 | 15 days ago
Yeah i guess when the sun starts expanding and swallows our planet then the waste will be released.
StendallTheOne | 15 days ago
Yeah, strawman fallacy will get you far away ...
Delicious-Disaster | 15 days ago
"No", he says, as he desperately clings onto his ignorance.
StendallTheOne | 15 days ago
Enlightenment me.
Delicious-Disaster | 15 days ago
The burden of proof is on you first, pal. Without any supporting evidence, you fervently defend your argument that nuclear waste is a bigger problem than the census makes it out to be. I'll give you sources if you back your argument up first.
StendallTheOne | 15 days ago
There's no burden of proof here. Or you will even try to deny that nuclear energy produces radioactive nuclear waste and what radioactivity of that kind does to life? What is to discuss or to deny there?
Delicious-Disaster | 15 days ago
I do not deny the properties of fiissile material.
You fervently deny other people's comments without backing it up whatsoever. So you clearly know you're full of shit :-)
StendallTheOne | 15 days ago
Especify what I deny and I will demonstrate that is 100% based.
Delicious-Disaster | 14 days ago
"There are safe ways to store nuclear waste."
You reply 'No, it's a way to make it a future problem'.
Xzenor | 15 days ago
Well, we could shoot it into the sun... But the costs would be insane so that's not gonna happen. Maybe dumping it into an active volcano but if that's not hot enough then we'd get radioactive ashes which would be even worse
StendallTheOne | 15 days ago
Just get the waste out of The Earth pull will cost way more than the value that the nuclear material produce.
Boatster_McBoat | 15 days ago
And was this waste stored safely?
Edit: lot of nuclear fanboys on the thread today. You can have all the great great engineering you like but until you can engineer corrupt humans out of the equation there are flaws in your systems
Lostinthestarscape | 15 days ago
Nuclear is exceptionally clean when looking at comparative damage done to comparative regions for the amount of energy output. That also isn't taking into account that fusion is past the feasibility stage with sights on efficient enough, even if it is 200 years to crack we would be way better going fission now than staying on fossil fuels for that 200 years. Even if fusion never happens we are also discovering ways to increase efficiency and decrease longevity and amount of fissile waste.
The amount of damage car exhaust pollution causes on a worldwide scale, let alone producing gas for all those cars.
https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-per-energy-source
If we even are around 8000 years from now when the super deep empty salt mines are nearing full because we didn't find a solution, and we really don't want to move to using the abundance of other super stable geological formations, I'm sure by then we will have the ability to get it to space if we absolitely had to. If we don't gwt off of fossil fuels now though we are going to be extinct well before we have to worry about it.
BeersOnTheMoon | 15 days ago
Greta? Is that you?
SlippySausageSlapper | 15 days ago
Whereâs that dipshit Robert Hayes to tell us nuclear is free of risk and solar is worse?
Sykolewski | 15 days ago
Water blocks radiation and mostly that is alpha and beta radiation. From first covers you even paper ,from beta water is sufficient. Gamma usually last not that long since being with high energy potential,it needs be from heavier waste and nuclear waste decay over time. Each radionuclide have time where from 1 kg of uranium over time will last only 500 g of it
mormonbatman_ | 15 days ago
This is why I am wary of nuclear energy, btw.
adoodle83 | 15 days ago
because of shitty people shirking their responsibility for the disposal?
mormonbatman_ | 15 days ago
Yes.
OpeOofAah | 15 days ago
Wheres the nuclear bots to explain why this is the best form of pollution?