If nuclear is one of ways to obtain green energy, what are the byproducts of the experience and how do we sustainably rid ourselves of said byproducts safely?
In: Engineering
Nuclear energy, contrary to popular belief, is remarkably clean, efficient, and safe. Accidents are rare, the only danger lies in disposing of waste. Typically this is done by storing the radioactive materials in deep indoor cooling pools for a while (5-10 years-ish)
After this there isn’t much that can be done. Radioactive isotopes irradiate their surroundings ad Infinitum, and the only real option at the moment is to isolate them. One such option is to stick them at the bottom of an abandoned salt mine and fill it with concrete. It really doesn’t matter where you put it, the goal is to limit contact with dangerous materials.
This means we need to take into account future generations; some isotopes have a half-life (the rate at which a radioisotope activity will reduce by half) of 150,000+ years, which means we would need to warn people about them, far into the future.
Examples of some ideas are on this wiki page: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-time_nuclear_waste_warning_messages
(They’re really cool ideas, like constructing a giant forest of black concrete spikes, and big stone obelisks in many languages warning of what lies there – here’s a really good video touching on the topic): [19:50-23:10] https://youtu.be/7MOKTU9tCbw
The safest way is one in which nobody ever comes across the damn stuff ever again. We don’t know how foolish future generations will be, perhaps the big obelisks and black spikes, etc will attract even more visitors. I mean, the pyramids did a fat load of good.
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