Deep Borehole Disposal

Re:Deep Borehole Disposal by sgift on Monday January 13, 2020 @10:31AM (#22035268)

Personally, I think all of the current "long term storage" options are bad. They promote the idea that we can deal with the garbage once and then the job is done. Continued storage in short term facilities on the other hand has various advantages:

* We can easily take the containers out again, if we find a better way to dispose or (re)use the garbage

* We can update the containers if new technologies allow better ones

* We can check that the containers are still sealed

* We do not forget about the garbage, so the chance that someone in the future is hurt by accidentally digging into it is minimized

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Re:Deep Borehole Disposal by cgriswald on Monday January 13, 2020 @11:16AM (#22035694)

It also has some pretty serious disadvantages. Just off the top of my head:

- End-of-life storage requires re-storage regardless of whether better technologies exist

- Spillage is more likely to occur due to more frequent handling/repackaging/relocation

- Workers are exposed to greater danger due to more frequent handling/repacking/relocation

- Overhead is greater since there will likely be a greater number of short term than long term storage facilities

- Accidents are more likely and more spread out over a larger area (assumption: short term storage requires more space than long term storage)

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Re:Deep Borehole Disposal by hinkley on Monday January 13, 2020 @01:47PM (#22037294)

- The public is exposed to greater danger due to relocation.

Every time you move this stuff there's a chance for a vehicular accident or just a storage breach due to human and/or manufacturing error.

Whatever happened to vitrification as a solution for some classes of nuclear waste? That was the story for one hot second and I haven't heard about it since.

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Re:Deep Borehole Disposal by wbl on Monday January 13, 2020 @12:07PM (#22036289)

You have to assess these risks against the risk of living in New Jersey with a basement.

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Re:Deep Borehole Disposal by rolandog on Monday January 13, 2020 @11:36AM (#22035904)

If it becomes cheaper to re-use or recycle than to throw away—in theory—we will reduce wastefulness and come up with better ways to deal with our problem.

But, humans being humans, some will start dumping illegally.

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Re:Deep Borehole Disposal by alanbernstein on Monday January 13, 2020 @11:33AM (#22035869)

What happens when "We" - whatever local organization is managing this stuff - becomes defunct? This seems to be nearly certain to happen when the half-life of the waste is so much longer than the average lifespan of a national government.

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Re:Deep Borehole Disposal by godzillabrennus on Monday January 13, 2020 @11:03AM (#22035580)

http://www.deepisolation.com

They have solved a lot of these issues.

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Re:Deep Borehole Disposal by slumdev on Monday January 13, 2020 @01:13PM (#22036987)

> We can easily take the containers out again, if we find a better way to dispose or (re)use the garbage

We already have ways to reuse the garbage. No new science required.

What we need is to lift the ban on breeder reactors and other modern designs.

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Re:Deep Borehole Disposal by nerdponx on Monday January 13, 2020 @01:22PM (#22037079)

Why are they banned?

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Re:Deep Borehole Disposal by ncmncm on Monday January 13, 2020 @02:17PM (#22037575)

Producing unlimited amounts of weapons-grade radioisotopes in many poorly-guarded places seemed like a bad idea.

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Re:Deep Borehole Disposal by krick on Monday January 13, 2020 @11:04AM (#22035586)

I'm not sure how, let's say, radioactive waste short term storage should look like. It's not like you can put the rods into regular containers and safely transfer them between storage facilities.

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Re:Deep Borehole Disposal by oppositelock on Monday January 13, 2020 @01:54PM (#22037371)

Thorium reactors may or may not happen, but one nice part of a LFTR is that it can continuously burn up long lived fissile isotopes into short lived ones. Part of a LFTR's operating requirements are to filter the isotopes and extract or send them back in. Perhaps one day, we can reprocess long lived nuclear waste into shorter lived waste, and this won't be such a big problem.

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Re:Deep Borehole Disposal by alex_duf on Monday January 13, 2020 @10:42AM (#22035385)

I like the idea of short term storage but it sounds more expensive

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