A hole in Finland is being prepared to contain radioactive waste for 100k years
wired.co.uk
wired.co.uk
It flooded a recently, after only a decade of operation.[1]
If you like thinking about seed vault design, then this is a fanciful take on what a seed vault might be like in a distantly-imagined future [2].
[1] http://www.popsci.com/seed-vault-flooding
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/6db728/the_vault_world...
http://www.wipp.energy.gov/picsprog/articles/wipp%20exhibit%...
We'd be careful but if there was a "I have no mouth and I cannot scream" sort of horror lurking beneath we'd suffer the consequences no matter the warning.
One of the afterthoughts in that document even suggests that the most likely reason people would leave the place alone would be when people die of radiation sickness after breaking into it anyway. It just takes one group of really determined people with a decent amount of time on their hands to destroy the markers and everything else. If asked me how long I would guess until that happens, I'd say less than 100 years. If not then, how about if it's so scary that a religion arises that considers the area to be the home of an Adversary of some kind and destroys it in a holy war?
Yesterday an article on a "paint factory" claimed it to be 45,000 years old, FWIW.
There is a particularly good episode of 99% invisible (podcast) that talks about some of the challenges involved.[1]
[1] http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/ten-thousand-years/
Perverse and contrary monkeys that we are, there is no better way of ensuring that some future person will dig it up than to have all sorts of signs telling them not to do that.
> Of course we'd dig around. That's our human nature. We're curious.
If the WIPP messaging does its job, you will have at a minimum been warned that the contents of the vault are dangerous and will make you sick. If you've got the stuff needed to run a complex digging operation, you'll hopefully make something of the Level III and Level IV warnings. And, yeah, if you read all that stuff and decide to dig anyhow, good luck to you. At least it won't be a total mystery if your workers start to get sick.
If the message is simply: "There is something dangerous here", we'd probably ignore it. If the message is "There is waste from the fission of uranium buried here. It consists primarily of the isotopes I-129, Cs-135, ... Here is how the waste is stored and laid out ...", we'd be much more inclined to listen. That's what the original document proposes as well, that there should be a hierarchy of messages from "There's something dangerous buried here" to detailed descriptions of the nature and composition of the waste.
I think our best bet to actually convince a hypothetical future civilisation not to dig it up is an understated "FYI: This is radioactive waste. It's a pile of worthless stuff that will make you sick." in a few major languages. If we add more ceremony to the message, they may more likely to understand it, but I think they'll be less inclined to believe it. Why would we spend so much effort to protect something worthless?
And ultimately, how much is it worth to prevent a few excavators in the far future getting radiation poisoning? And for that matter how likely is the hypothetical series of events needed for this to happen? I think like many things to do with radiation, we're vastly overweighting the risks involved.
The idea of sending exotic signals with dramatic structures was just a brainstorming exercise that gets a lot of publicity because it seems exciting. But there's a definite risk that the waste would attract rather than repel innocent discoverers:
Storing the stuff permanently under ground may not be perfect solution, but to my knowledge it is the best one we have (not producing the waste is not an option, as it has been already done). The plans also take into account that the waste can be recovered from the storage if we later figure out a better way to handle it.
People working on the sarcofagus actually live in Chernobyl town for two weeks on, two weeks off. That way your body can get rid of the built up radiation.
The flora and fauna in the Exclusion Zone is thriving. Radiation levels have dropped significantly, and most animals don't live to the age that they might see consequences of the elevated background radiation.
That's interesting, do you think the radioactive material helped moss to grow, or that the moss patches catch the radioactive material flying around?
Nuclear scientist have been advocating managed storage of 50 to 100 years instead for quite some time, because there is a chance that (a) we might figure out a better way to separate and then transmute the long lasting fission products to quicker decaying elements, (b) we might come up with better ways to safely store, or (c) we may want to mine the waste for reprocessing the useful uranium and plutonium.
What on earth are you talking about?
The most common byproduct of most reactors in use today is Plutonium 239[1]. It has a half-life of 24,000 years. This means it generates extremely high levels of radiation for thousands of years.
While it is true that low levels of radiation aren't very dangerous, high doses are. For example, page 15 of [2] discusses studies on workers exposed to high levels of radiation from Plutonium. There are two studies, which disagree about the dangers of low level (one shows a linear relation, the other doesn't show any at low levels). At high levels, both show much higher death rates than control groups.
That's only Plutonium 239. There are other high level nuclear waste products which last much longer, but aren't produced in such high amounts.
[1] http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fue...
This 24,000 year half life of Plutonium 239 is much shorter than something like the 4.5 billion year half-life of Uranium 238. There are things with much shorter half-lives too, of course.
The danger from radioactive substances comes from many things. In Plutonium 239's case the danger is if any gets within the body. The alpha rays it generates don't penetrate through a body, but on the other hand if plutonium particles are ingested or breathed they cause "somewhere between 10 and 1,000 times more chromosomal damage than beta or gamma rays"[1]
This is one of the reasons why the OP is so completely, utterly wrong. Without proper - very long term - protected disposal of high level nuclear waste it kills very easily.
[1] http://www.livescience.com/33127-plutonium-more-dangerous-ur...
"During the Manhattan Project in 1944 and 1945, 26 men accidentally ingested plutonium in quantities that far exceeded what is now considered to be a lethal dose. Since there has been a consistent interest in the health effects of this brand new substance (first discovered by Glenn Seaborg’s team at the University of California in 1940), these men were closely tracked for medical studies.
Forty Years Later As of 1987, more than four decades later, only four of the workers had died and only one death was caused by cancer. The expected number of deaths in a random sample of men the age of those in the group is 10. The expected number of deaths from cancer in a similar group is between two and three."
https://atomicinsights.com/how-deadly-plutonium/
Of course that doesn't count the demon core.
And if we don't develop these machines, our AI augmented successors will.
Ironically, it's just really short-sighted to plan for something that far in the future.
The mantle is ... large.
The total volume of the oceans is about 1.35 billion cubic kilometers.
The total volume of the mantle is 909 billion cubic kilometers, roughly 1,000 times greater.
Moreover, the radioactive minerals which came out of the Earth's crust either originated within, or are otherwise found in, the Earth's mantle and core.
We're also talking about timecycles of hundreds of thousands of years, and, frankly, a mixing dynamic which is probably not well known.
I'm actually not much a fan of nuclear power (it's potentially useful, but highly problematic, and much more limited in capacity than is generally understood), but deep-mantle-injection would actually be, on the grand scheme of things, statistical noise so far as any radioactive risk is concerned.
We're also not aware of any biological activity occurring within the mantle. The problems with ocean pollution -- plastics, metals, fertilisers, etc. -- were that these are:
1. Generally unevenly distributed, with concentrations in specific areas.
2. Highly interactive with life forms -- biological concentration of heavy metals, forming algael blooms, etc.
3. For lighter detritus (especially plastics), confined to what's effectively a film at the surface of the oceans, rather than mixed throughout the full volume of the ocean.
Even for substances which do mix with seawater, such as CO2, the rate of mixing through the entire benthic column is a concern.
Where radioactive waste has entered seawater (numerous reactor cores, mostly from the nine nuclear-powered submarines which have sunk, waste disposal, and liquid discharge e.g., from Daichi-Fukushima), dilution with seawater tends to make this a very low-level threat at any distance from the immediate site.
(Despite this, I strongly discourage the practice.)
My point: in the list of risks to worry about, this isn't one I'd spend much time on. I've already spent more than it's worth.
Or even if you count the awesome toys that Boston Dynamics puts out; they're still just that, toys. Incredible toys, but nowhere near taking over from humans.
We're nowhere near the AI that futurists of the past thought we'd have by now. Same goes for cancer cures (CRISPR).
Drawing targets around what you shot at regardless of where you're aiming has a name: Texas Sharpshooting.
It's an exceptionally poor rebuttal or response to the observation that forecasts have failed. Moreso if in doing so the reasons for the deviation isn't specifically analysed.
It's not something making smaller and faster transistors can solve.
It reminds me of that concept where if you want to travel to another star, the best time to leave is not 'as soon as possible'. It may actually be better to wait several decades or centuries to develop new propulsion technologies (possibly based on entirely new branches of science), launch later, and arrive earlier.
Blast, I can't remember what that's called.
In the meantime the involved people fight against water which flows into the tunnels reaching the containers with the nuclear waste and they try to get back the waste which is harder as supposed.
It's pure madness that we keep on producing such hazardous waste! And for what purpose? Cleaner energy? Nope! If you take into account the waste management needs, the Uranium mining, the risks involved and the fact that these nuclear plants have to be highly subsidized in order to keep working. Why are we still using such an obviously flawed technology? https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/05/170525141544.h...
We're not going there with solar or wind energy
Besides, it is now clear that the real problem for the planet is not nuclear disasters, but pollution.
Nuclear is greener than many alternatives.
We need to shut down fossil fuel power plants.
That's why electric cars are better than regular cars. That's where green energy is essential, for reducing pollution and CO2 impact of the average men's life.
But if we're talking about industry, powering data centers, space era, we need something more powerful, until we discover something new, the breakthrough that will start the new industrial revolution for real.
Another consideration is that there are still unsolved problems in producing energy, wherever you look for a solution.
For example, most of the solar panels active right now are not really "green", solar panels cover and "burn" a lot of soil, we still don't know the long term effects, but it is known that solar parks are affecting temperatures and weather around them.
A recent study[1] concludes that
"A growing body of studies underscores the vast potential of solar energy development in places that minimize adverse environmental impacts and confer environmental cobenefits (2, 10, 14, 15, 21). Our study of California reveals that USSE development is a source of land cover change and, based on its proximity to protected areas, may exacerbate habitat fragmentation resulting in direct and indirect ecological consequences. These impacts may include increased isolation and nonnative species invasions, and compromised movement potential of species tracking habitat shifts in response to environmental disturbances, such as climate change. Furthermore, we have shown that USSE development within California comprises siting decisions that lead to the alteration of natural ecosystems within and close to protected areas in lieu of land already impacted by humans "
I think they mean "beginning of the most recent glacial period" rather than ice age, but anyway I hope this site is better planned out than that seed vault.[1] They need to plan ahead for 10 C temperature changes and growing/receding glaciers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ice_Age_Temperature.png
Can't we just pack it at the bottom of an ultra-deep mine, collapse all the tunnels with explosives, and walk away?
It's not like some future primitive civilization is going to accidentally dig down through 2km of rock to find it.
Most of this is 'waste' in the more literal sense of the word, unused material. We already know of reactor types that reduce this waste, they're just seen as proliferation dangers (which is why the /military/ should operate the reactors, but with full public transparency and international monitoring in real time).
It's fascinating to hear the designers rationalize their decisions, and the problems they think and hope they need to take into account for the future.
Hieroglyphics was almost a lost alphabet.
Yes. They're considering everything from pictographs up to the level of hostile architecture. The proposed message includes instructions to update the message in the language spoken at the time, in the hope of helping the message endure for generations more.
Unfortunately, I don't think any of these ideas will work quite as well as people think they do. Okay, they kind of figured that one out in the full study (they give between a 10-40% probability that a low technology society will understand the warnings) but still. Just looking at human history, mythology and media will tell you how well deterring people from a location through warnings and scary geography has worked out.
The spikes, skeletons and other deterrances are the kind of thing any future historian (or Indiana Jones style explorer) is going to find extremely interesting regardless of warnings. Even if they do know about nuclear radiation.
A future archeologist exploring the architecture is of no concern. A future environmental science team drilling down to study how well our containment procedures worked is of no concern. If people are aware of what's buried, it's not a problem.
The goal isn't to keep people out, per se, it's to let them know what's there. That's what the document proposes. None of the architecture is designed to physically prevent people from entering the site. It's all designed to tell people what's there.
Also the waste is stored several hundred meters deep and all the tunnels will be filled. This means accessing the waste later will require significant effort and reasonably advanced technology (which means those doing the digging would likely be aware of radiation).
I'd rather see these geological waste repositories as endless projects combined with reprocessing to reduce waste volume at heavily-defended military bases; continue digging ever downwards, the waste stored at the deepest stable non-construction zone levels to date, with the materials for basalt-rebar reinforced concrete plugs along the entire path back to the surface ready to drop in at a moment's notice, over say 24 hours. If certain existential triggers are reached endangering the existence of the host nation-state, evacuate the tunnels and pull the plugs to fill in the tunnels. As the tunneling surpasses 2.5 km (a little past our current deepest tunnel), our confidence level in future generations drilling that deep and knowing about radioactivity dramatically increases.