Big hole in the side of mountain in a desert, stick the waste in, full it with rubble and concrete, job done. If some primatives in a hundred thousand years stumble across it and dig it out, fuck em, who cares.
The pyramids have chambers that were unopened for over four thousand years, bone dry inside. Pick an area with very little rainfall, surround it with rock and the problem will stop existing on human timescales.
Dig a hole, anywhere, there’s a chance it’ll fill with water. Especially with climate change. We’re seeing moisture getting dropped in areas at greater frequencies that didn’t happen decades ago. There’s no guarantee you can dig a hole anywhere on earth that wouldn’t become apart of our aquifers as the water travels back to the ocean.
It isn’t really minimal since the water cycle on earth is all connected.
Water in the ocean evaporates. It’s carries inland by Hadley cells that deposit the moisture inland. It gets dumped on the highest points which all run back the ocean and creating all our aquifers along the way. Those aquifers feed our great lakes and wells.
But you’re suggesting we bury toxic material that remains toxic for hundreds or thousands of years somewhere remote that would just be high up in that water cycle. In places where private companies would be out of the eyes of watchdog groups
The hole would be 0.5m wide and >1000m deep, backfilled with bentonite clay and concrete. At the bottom, the path curves back upward, so waste is not stored at the bottom.
Even if geology doesn’t collapse the hole, it’s hard to imagine material climbing up through 1000m of clogged pipe.
Launching radioactive waste into space is a terrible idea, because rockets on occasion crash. Once that happens it becomes a nuclear disaster.
Instead we can safely store it in depleted mines.
Mines fill up with water if they’re not constantly pumped out. Even the salt mines which seemed like a solution were found to have this issue
Big hole in the side of mountain in a desert, stick the waste in, full it with rubble and concrete, job done. If some primatives in a hundred thousand years stumble across it and dig it out, fuck em, who cares.
Dig a hole, anywhere, now leave. What will the hole eventually fill up with?
The pyramids have chambers that were unopened for over four thousand years, bone dry inside. Pick an area with very little rainfall, surround it with rock and the problem will stop existing on human timescales.
https://www.livescience.com/was-ancient-egypt-a-desert
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/04/deep-isolation-aims-to-bury-nuclear-waste-using-boreholes.html
Dig a hole, anywhere, there’s a chance it’ll fill with water. Especially with climate change. We’re seeing moisture getting dropped in areas at greater frequencies that didn’t happen decades ago. There’s no guarantee you can dig a hole anywhere on earth that wouldn’t become apart of our aquifers as the water travels back to the ocean.
There is no guarantee of anything.
But if you’re storing it hundreds of miles from the ocean, the risk is minimal.
It isn’t really minimal since the water cycle on earth is all connected.
Water in the ocean evaporates. It’s carries inland by Hadley cells that deposit the moisture inland. It gets dumped on the highest points which all run back the ocean and creating all our aquifers along the way. Those aquifers feed our great lakes and wells.
But you’re suggesting we bury toxic material that remains toxic for hundreds or thousands of years somewhere remote that would just be high up in that water cycle. In places where private companies would be out of the eyes of watchdog groups
That is not what I am suggesting.
Sealing a deep narrow borehole isn’t a difficult problem. The Earth has contained oil and gas underground for millions of years.
Its contained it using geological features but once exposed how is it possible to recreate that. Its also not like this material is goo
The hole would be 0.5m wide and >1000m deep, backfilled with bentonite clay and concrete. At the bottom, the path curves back upward, so waste is not stored at the bottom.
Even if geology doesn’t collapse the hole, it’s hard to imagine material climbing up through 1000m of clogged pipe.