The time frame we are talking about invalidates the "safety" because the earth's crust moves and warps, which allows water to access that sort of storage
The Earth's crust will take far longer to move yucca than the nuclear waste will be a problem. That's the whole reason that site was chosen. Even Yellowstone isn't set to blow on that time scale.
Why dont you suggest what "safe" looks like, and we can discuss your understanding of safety. Its clear to me that the issue is your standards and not actual waste disposal.
My understanding is that this material remains toxic to life for thousands, to tens of thousands of years.
Safe means that it's stored such that there's no harm to the environment for that lifetime.
In all "bury it" scenarios, the place where the waste is buried will be subject to change resulting in water, air, able to interact with that waste when normal tectonic and erosion processes do their thing.
I keep coming back to this to reply but I cant really figure out how to tackle it. Theres so much of a particular view of the world in each statement.
How do you think spent uranium interacts with the environment?
There's an estimated 4.5 billion tons of uranium dissolved in seawater. Naturally occurring. I honestly think we missed a trick when we outlawed dumping in the ocean, there's basically no way for human generated nuclear waste to even move the needle on ocean sources.
Lets say I take you completely at face value. Every notion of yours comes to pass. We cask it, and leave it in an underground vault. 9999 years later, a cask fails. Whats the issue? Are you using that vault as a busy thoroughfare? Its still in a big hole in the ground. Maybe theres an earthquake? And the vault shears a little. What is the radiation now doing in your mind that makes it dangerous? TBH we shouldnt leave signs warning people to stay away, we should leave a concrete recipe behind on all the signage.
There's life thriving in Pripyat just past the big concrete dome. There's a war going on there.
> I keep coming back to this to reply but I cant really figure out how to tackle it. Theres so much of a particular view of the world in each statement.
The problem you're running in to is most likely that you asked someone to define a subjective measure. What you then bump into with the anti-nuclear crowd is safety has one standard for most things and then a different, inconsistent standard when "nuclear" gets mentioned. So a level of harm (or cost/benefit to be more precise) that would be fine for say, lead poisoning or car safety would be a shut-down-the-industry event if it involved nuclear material.
And there isn't really a follow up at that point because there is a definitional tautology where, because it involves nuclear material, nuclear material can't be safe. The problem with that is obvious if you want people to have access to clean-cheap-safe power, but it is logically valid and there isn't really a socially acceptably way to have a go at someone for having inconsistent standards if they are happy to own it. And the argument just got derailed away from the actual issues.
The more argumentatively correct line is to ask what level of harm is acceptable for nuclear, get told "zero", then point out that this is a standard that isn't applied to anything else in power generation and that our standards of harm from nuclear power should be consistent with everything else. The argument then isn't over a definition but why they think it is acceptable to have an unreasonable and inconsistent standard (which is the real issue).
Hi, what's your physics understanding of the problem?
You need to get very concrete. The waste is the problem, not the containment. You can find out what the 'background' levels are X m away from containers, and the containers--and their containers--are very strong and stable.
You accuse the "nuclear crowd" of dealing in misinformation while suggesting yucca mountain isn't a safe storage site because of plate tectonics, which is a total non-issue, or as you call it, "some wild theories that only live in your imagination."
Tectonic and erosion processes take place over millions of years, so they aren't an issue for waste that's only dangerous for tens of thousands of years.
690,000 tons of waste containing dioxins and furans , 220,000 tons of waste containing mercury, 127,000 tons of waste containing cyanide, and 83,000 tons of toxic waste containing arsenic. Each year additional waste is added and it will be toxic forever.
The movement of tectonic plates is something that takes millions, not thousands, of years. Not to mention Yucca Mountain is far from the edge of any tectonic plate.
The time frame we are talking about invalidates the "safety" because the earth's crust moves and warps, which allows water to access that sort of storage