Most interesting for nuclear waste.

Storage of long lived nuclear waste is often considered a major problem. There are suggestions of firing them to the sun (worst idea ever), burring them in subduction zones (a bit more sensible) or in special sites with plenty of warning for future generations (artists get creative on this one).

The thing is, nuclear waste may actually be among the most valuable things on earth. These elements do not exist in nature, and producing them require nuclear reactors and enriched uranium, which is a finite resource.

Even today we have the technology to burn nuclear waste in fast breeder reactors, though for some reason we haven't made a lot of progress, maybe it is not commercially viable compared to more conventional reactors. This has the potential to supply us with energy for so long that we can effectively consider it renewable energy.

All that to say that in the future, nuclear "waste" may become extremely valuable. I find one particularly ironic quote from a suggested warning message for long term nuclear waste storage sites. "This place is not a place of honor... no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here... nothing valued is here." I find it extremely dismissive of future humanity, as if we somehow reach the peak of technological progress and that future generations will be cavemen.

> though for some reason we haven't made a lot of progress

The risk that reprocessing can produce weapons-grade plutonium has been one reason. [1] Frustrating not only because it makes it unavailable as an energy source, but, as I understand it, the waste products from fast breeder reactors generally have much shorter half-lives than the current waste.

[1] https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1209/ML120960615.pdf

At what point does the cost of global warming exceed the (huge) cost of adequately securing the reprocessing pipeline?

The decision not to do reprocessing was based on 1970s cost/benefit analysis. We're in a different world now.

It’s meant for a worst-case scenario. Of course if we somehow happen to keep ourselves together and progressing technologically we’ll look back at ourselves in the 21st century as buffoons who created highly valuable materials and buried it as waste.

And you have your personal inroads on the sorting technology to capitalise on that! ;)

I already had one recycling company come to talk about applying the tech to sorting waste. It never came to anything concrete though.

I could use it to sort the kids' Lego-covered bedroom! Make a handheld version that accepts a certain colour at a time and spits anything else back to the pile to simplify from a range of bins to more of a yes/no operation.

Interesting idea, that's worth thinking about. It still has the bad part of the complexity: the feed mechanism. But it could be used as a set extractor that way, and if you start with the largest sets you get the least # of bricks passing through.

You can be sure that once all the fossil fuels are gone, and society has collapsed beyond the point of return, the remaining humans will be mining our dumps for useful items. Wars will be fought over these scraps.

We’re already mining landfills actually. Pretty interesting concept if you ask me. The concentration of valuable elements is far higher than what you’d find in the wild.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landfill_mining

I like to think that a long time from now, people will marvel that we overlooked the (as of yet undiscovered) utility of used scoopable cat litter, and just threw it out with the trash

We already did this in the past for dog poop: https://www.vettimes.co.uk/app/uploads/wp-post-to-pdf-enhanc...