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Question for anyone who knows. In a world where we have mines many kilometers deep, which do get abandoned from time to time, why is it so hard to get rid of nuclear waste?

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.

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Geology. Rocks move over time, especially in areas of high tectonic activity, but also in others. Water tables exist, and mines were not designed to be watertight, or airtight, or to contain such dangerous material.

Also political expedience.

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).

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