I think it's not that hard of a problem in general. There are plenty of abandoned mines with tons of space where you can forget about it forever.
For the record, this thorium reactor waste isn't harming anyone in Colorado, but they've also refurbished the plant in to a natural gas power station and it's still actively run. Should that be decommissioned, then I'm not entirely sure what it costs to maintain the waste storage facility. They're adding a couple new turbines to this plant so I expect it has a decently long life ahead, but what happens in like a century if DoE doesn't move this waste?
Regardless of the engineering, and I think we've made tremendous advances in nuclear design and have much better safety than before, I think it's more than low-information voters and regulatory issues, fundamentally we don't have a strong answer for the waste. A nuclear powerplant has a relatively fixed production life, but there is no end to the cost life.
Because the topic is politically contentious. It doesn't matter which new site is floated or who proposes it when there's effectively blind opposition without regard to technical merit.
The reality is that for any objectively defined risk metric we can come up with a solution that involves burying it in the ground at some depth and in a certain sort of surrounding geology. At some depth it ceases to matter despite what the activists seem to think.
Yes, but to be really safe, that point might be so low, it becomes really expensive, also getting it all there without accident - which is the whole point, of course radioactive waste can be treated safe and sound - but that is expensive and people and companies and governments are known to be sloppy.
In germany alone, 500 000 m³ of radioactive material is to be disposed somehow by 2050. Having people carry that underground sounds insane. There is more to waste than fuel rods. And even they .. amount to a really high number if you factor in shielding.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste
> As a general rule, short-lived waste (mainly non-fuel materials from reactors) is buried in shallow repositories, while long-lived waste (from fuel and fuel reprocessing) is deposited in geological repository.
> Overall, the 60-year-long nuclear program in the UK up until 2019 produced 2150 m3 of HLW.
And it only takes one earthquake, or animal digging to completely upend that strategy
And. Bacteria.
Sounds like abuse to me.
Do you see an obvious issue with the sequence of events I posed?
Bye.
I wish I was kidding, but the argument does seem to be "what if 100_000 years from now somebody digs this stuff up and a few people get sick or die".
It's concern trolling at its worst.
Every civilisation for the last million years has categorised itself thus, and, yet, here we are without their technology.
We still don't know how the Romans made a concrete that is as durable as it is (and nothing we have is nearly as good)
You cannot even spell the damned name properly.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/red-forest-c...
It looks like they collectively forgetting about dangers of radioactive contamination they created just 40 years ago.
Dangerous the whole time.