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This Place is Not a Place of Honor (www.damninteresting.com)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/longreads

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An exploration into the biggest challenge to the proposed Yucca Nuclear Waste Repository: Warning future beings against treating it as an Indiana Jones film set.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I'm not an expert on this topic, and the following is my impression from the information I've seen.

1&3: A nuclear repository needs to be sealed to prevent radiation. A chemical landfill does not. People can see the waste inside landfills from afar and realize that it's nothing of value. Meanwhile, nuclear repositories will have their waste far far away from what people can see. Future beings will not see the glowy warm metal quickly, and just breaking the concrete to see it will cause significant disruption.

1b: There are parts of spent fuel that are completely spent and unreusable; in fact, reprocessed uranium costs way more than just dumping the spent fuel and buying new uranium.

2: You are assuming that the future beings will only discover and somehow manage to breach the place before recivilizing. If such an apocalypse occurs, there 78% will be a point in time where they at least reach 19th-century levels of technology. Even if they didn't, having the place breached before the future figures out how to seal radioactive things/use concrete will choke out their development and despair us all for eternity until evolution manages to make a resistant species, which will take a long time.

[–] Tar_alcaran 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

1&3: A nuclear repository needs to be sealed to prevent radiation. A chemical landfill does not. People can see the waste inside landfills from afar and realize that it's nothing of value.

I work in waste management, and every closed surface impoundment I see reminds me of an ancient burial mound. But my point is more that while our civilization is around, we need to manage those sites, so we will also be able to manage a nuclear site. This post-apocalypse site is useless while our civilization exists.

1b: There are parts of spent fuel that are completely spent and unreusable; in fact, reprocessed uranium costs way more than just dumping the spent fuel and buying new uranium.

True, now. Which is I said we'd need to find an economicslly viable method, but assuming we will never is unlikely.

2: You are assuming that the future beings will only discover and somehow manage to breach the place before recivilizing.

Absolutely not. Even prehistoric humans figured out not to live near the malaria pond, not to eat the wrong berries and which parts of the animal make you drop dead. And if they maintain civilization, all the warnings are useless anyway.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Absolutely not. Even prehistoric humans figured out not to live near the malaria pond, not to eat the wrong berries and which parts of the animal make you drop dead. And if they maintain civilization, all the warnings are useless anyway.

First off, I'm not saying they'd maintain civilization; I'm talking about the case in which they lose a ton of civilization but manage to get to a state where they can quarry and break concrete before they rediscover radiation, as well as lose their language. Finally, by the time they figure it out, the nuclear radiation would have spread out a ton from the site. The ability to break does not imply the ability to construct.