yeah “no great deed is commemorated here” etc etc etc. spooky stuff.
but… that’s also true for asbestos. except it’s worse because the moment you dig it gets worse, it can get into the water supply, and it doesn’t stop being dangerous. it’s carcinogenic forever. there are entire mining towns in canada that are condemned and cordoned off because of the risks of asbestos in the air.
like, there are as of right now two countries that have long-term storage plans for nuclear waste, and they both are “dig a big hole”. …okay? so just do that. there are thousands of abandoned mines that go down almost a kilometer where we have extracted millions, billions of tons of material. the total amount of nuclear waste ever produced is like… 200 000 tons. and uranium is dense, so by volume it’s not a lot. just fucking dump it in an old mine if you want.
or better yet… don’t! the fact that it is still radioactive means that it is still useful for generation. with the technology we have today, we can breed away like 40% into inert substances and new fuel. if we dump it all down a hole, what will happen is we’ll have to dig it back up again in 20 years because it’s too valuable to leave down there.
i used to live next to the biggest iron mine in the world, the luossavaara-kirunavaara mine. they have mountains of slag and waste product. far bigger than the actual mountain the mine is in. and in the mid-2000’s, they started mining the slag. because there’s still so much useful material in there.
yeah “no great deed is commemorated here” etc etc etc. spooky stuff.
but… that’s also true for asbestos. except it’s worse because the moment you dig it gets worse, it can get into the water supply, and it doesn’t stop being dangerous. it’s carcinogenic forever. there are entire mining towns in canada that are condemned and cordoned off because of the risks of asbestos in the air.
like, there are as of right now two countries that have long-term storage plans for nuclear waste, and they both are “dig a big hole”. …okay? so just do that. there are thousands of abandoned mines that go down almost a kilometer where we have extracted millions, billions of tons of material. the total amount of nuclear waste ever produced is like… 200 000 tons. and uranium is dense, so by volume it’s not a lot. just fucking dump it in an old mine if you want.
or better yet… don’t! the fact that it is still radioactive means that it is still useful for generation. with the technology we have today, we can breed away like 40% into inert substances and new fuel. if we dump it all down a hole, what will happen is we’ll have to dig it back up again in 20 years because it’s too valuable to leave down there.
i used to live next to the biggest iron mine in the world, the luossavaara-kirunavaara mine. they have mountains of slag and waste product. far bigger than the actual mountain the mine is in. and in the mid-2000’s, they started mining the slag. because there’s still so much useful material in there.