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

submitted 1 month 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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[–] Tar_alcaran 2 points 1 month 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 1 month 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.