Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Kosh on March 04, 2009, 10:10:08 pm
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No waste in Yucca mountain (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a8vjuGJCg4ao&refer=home)
Feb. 26 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama won’t let nuclear waste be stored at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, rejecting the project after 20 years of planning at a cost of at least $9 billion.
Obama and Energy Secretary Steven Chu “have been emphatic that nuclear waste storage at Yucca Mountain is not an option, period,” said department spokeswoman Stephanie Mueller. The federal budget plan Obama released today “clearly reflects that commitment,” she said.
“The new administration is starting the process of finding a better solution for management of our nuclear waste,” Mueller said in an e-mail today.
Obama’s decision leaves unresolved a long-term plan for nuclear waste, primarily from power plants, even as utility companies seek to build more reactors.
I really think this was a bad call. Thoughts?
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No waste in Yucca mountain (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a8vjuGJCg4ao&refer=home)
Feb. 26 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama won’t let nuclear waste be stored at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, rejecting the project after 20 years of planning at a cost of at least $9 billion.
Obama and Energy Secretary Steven Chu “have been emphatic that nuclear waste storage at Yucca Mountain is not an option, period,” said department spokeswoman Stephanie Mueller. The federal budget plan Obama released today “clearly reflects that commitment,” she said.
“The new administration is starting the process of finding a better solution for management of our nuclear waste,” Mueller said in an e-mail today.
Obama’s decision leaves unresolved a long-term plan for nuclear waste, primarily from power plants, even as utility companies seek to build more reactors.
I really think this was a bad call. Thoughts?
Any better ideas on what to do with it? :blah:
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Yeah exactly. Now what the hell do they do with it, eat it?
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I suppose we could sell it to terrorist groups. :nervous:
In all seriousness, he just lost the thin shred of hope that I had for him. :ick:
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load it into rockets and send it into the sun :P
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Umm.
Feb. 26 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama won’t let nuclear waste be stored at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, rejecting the project after 20 years of planning at a cost of at least $9 billion.
20 years of planning at a cost of at least $9 billion.
That's... that's kind of a big thing to just say 'no' to. Particularly if you don't have any alternatives lined up. Y'know, it's just the kind of thing you ought to... think about before jumping to a conclusion, y'know?
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Technically if there is an earth quake risk, it actually might be a sound decision, but only if there are significant groundwater deposits at the site. The biggest risk in deep geological storage are that the containers might be breached due to some event (crushed by some force of geological scale) and dissolve into water that would flow around them. But I don't really know if these risks truly apply to Yucca Mountain's location. To me, the decision does sound a bit strange, but at least it's the kind of that is easy to reverse later on (I doubt anyone is willing to waste money on dismantling all that has been prepared on the location).
Geologically, an ideal place for end placement/disposal location would be something like Canada, Australia or Scandinavia even (or some place in Russia - but the management issues with those guys would super seriously bite anyone in the arse, what with their book-keeping records and stuff) with essentially one stable block of bedrock, as far from any significant tension points as possible. Nevada is (if I recall US geography correctly) not too far from California and San Andreas, so there might be some validity to earthquake risk claims, but I just don't have enough information on that. Any geologists here with better knowledge of US geological structure? And as far as terrorist threats go, which is in the end easier to guard - dozens of temporary locations as the problem is discussed in committees indefinitely, or transportation to one site and guarding that spot?
Besides, if some terrorist organization wants to create a dirty bomb, they can have much easier time of getting the ingredients from Russia (http://www.bellona.no/bellona.org/english_import_area/international/russia/navy/northern_fleet/incidents/31767), they don't particularly need to go to USA to get the active materials for it, and moving the stuff through and from the Russian Federation would likely be successful with any decent planning... whereas moving the stuff from the theft site to the target area would be much more difficult in USA.
I would like to hear more about the reasons behind it, but as it is, it does sound more like caving to the demands popularized by the rabid "green" lobbyists, from what I can read from that article:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, hailed the decision in a statement on his Web site. “Make no mistake: this represents a significant and lasting victory in our battle to prevent Nevada from becoming the country’s toxic wasteland,” Reid said.
...excuse me, one radioactive waste disposal site is not physically capable of turning a whole friggin state into a toxic wasteland, or even radioactive wasteland. Not even in any kind of worst case scenario. The physical amount of waste are actually pretty low, and it's only really a danger if it's vaporized or blown into air as particles, or when it's dissolved into drinking water (or if someone is dumb enough to steal a high-active, used old strontium battery from a soviet lighthouse... in which case it's a danger mostly to themselves). And slippery slope doesn't really work here because it's not like they were designing to make a smooth layer of the waste over the state.
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Heh I thought this had something to do with TBP.
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To me, the decision does sound a bit strange, but at least it's the kind of that is easy to reverse later on (I doubt anyone is willing to waste money on dismantling all that has been prepared on the location).
Given that the environmentalists and nuclear scaremongers have been fighting this, it seems more like political pandering to me.
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****ing hippies
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Given that the environmentalists and nuclear scaremongers have been fighting this, it seems more like political pandering to me.
Well... I always did think Obama was a populist (though aren't all politicians to a degree or another) and the fact that it's easy for him to do so and still appear as a good guy doesn't diminish the fact that he's still a populist in the core.
I did say during the long election run multiple times that I don't trust either candidates longer than I could throw them, but that I still thought Obama a better choice over the two. Mainly because the Republican party and their candidate would have been more likely to mainly continue on the lines of Bush administration, and we all know how that went... but we'll never see how that would've gone down, and only the future will show how Obama administration can handle the massive swirling vortex of defecation that the country and the world is in.
Overall, matters like nuclear waste disposal are at the moment probably pretty low on priority anyway... although that doesn't mean the issue should be covered by a carpet, that stuff needs to go somewhere, and in the light of the fact (?) that he doesn't seem to have an option to suggest, it does sound a bit strange to simply say no go to a solution that has been prepared for years.
I would still like to give him a benefit of doubt, though, as I do not have any illusion of knowing all the facts regarding the matter (and I sincerely hope Obama does...).
Nevertheless I tend to think that Obama's decisions are probably a lot less affected by lobbyists and other powers that be than McCain's would have been... and by different factions than Bush administration was affected by. We'll just have to wait and see how they deal with things I suppose... It's not like we can judge Obama as a president just yet. Although with the information given, the decision does seem somewhat dubious as I already said. :nervous:
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Mainly because the Republican party and their candidate would have been more likely to mainly continue on the lines of Bush administration, and we all know how that went... but we'll never see how that would've gone down, and only the future will show how Obama administration can handle the massive swirling vortex of defecation that the country and the world is in.
I'm honestly not sure it would have made any difference. From what I heard about the stimulus package, most of its provisions don't take effect until 2011, conveniently in time for the next election. If that wasn't enough it was loaded with so much pork for the lobbyists everyone in the world can have a christmas ham.
Overall, matters like nuclear waste disposal are at the moment probably pretty low on priority anyway...
Yeah but to simply ditch 20 years of planning, construction, and so many billions of dollars when the facility would have opened in less than 10 years anyway makes no sense.
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Heh I thought this had something to do with TBP.
As much as TBP gained attention recently, it's not fair to confuse it with TPB. Which has happened a lot recently ;)
(see, I can spell a lot correctly! :p)
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The Yucca Mountain thing has been having problems for a decade.
Wikipedia:
The Department of Energy was to begin accepting spent fuel at the Yucca Mountain Repository by January 31, 1998 but has yet to do so because of a series of delays due to legal challenges, concerns over how to transport nuclear waste to the facility, and political pressures resulting in underfunding of the construction.
Nevada ranks third in the nation for current seismic activity. Earthquake databases (the Council of the National Seismic System Composite Catalogue and the Southern Great Basin Seismic Network) provide current and historical earthquake information. Analysis of the available data in 1996 indicates that, since 1976, there have been 621 seismic events of magnitude greater than 2.5 within a 50-mile radius of Yucca Mountain. Reported underground nuclear weapons tests at the Nevada Test Site have been excluded from this count.
DOE has stated that seismic and tectonic effects on the natural systems at Yucca Mountain will not significantly affect repository performance. Yucca Mountain lies in a region of ongoing tectonic deformation, but the deformation rates are too slow to significantly affect the mountain during the 10,000-year regulatory compliance period. Rises in the water table caused by seismic activity would be, at most, a few tens of meters and would not reach the repository. The fractured and faulted volcanic tuff that comprises Yucca Mountain reflects the occurrence of many earthquake-faulting and strong ground motion events during the last several million years, and the hydrological characteristics of the rock would not be changed significantly by seismic events that may occur in the next 10,000 years.
I'm leaning pretty strong towards the "Obama done made a mistake" side of things. Nevadans are all pissed off about storing nuclear waste when they don't have any plants themselves, but we do nuclear testing around yucca all the time, so whatever.
Obama should probably get some new advisors. I have a feeling he doesn't know a goddamn thing about the Yucca Mountain thing.
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I'll try and add to this discussion but I can't fully recall the relevant info I learned during my lectures on the subject of nuclear energy and waste...ugh and it wasn't that long ago either. Those were cool lectures. I'm not that knowledgeable about Nevada's geology, but isn't that area mostly a salt basin? Salt deposits indicate a lack of groundwater.
I remember learning about ideas on disposal involving drilling into the oceanic crust at subduction zones and leaving the waste there, so it eventually ends up in the upper mantle. Of course that has potential problems, not just with leakage into the ocean but also with what ends could end up erupting out of the volcanic arc on the other side.
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I was going to write this myself, but it appears that the same wiki article already did it for me:
The volcanic units have been tilted along fault lines, thus forming the current ridge line called Yucca Mountain. In addition to these faults, Yucca Mountain is criss-crossed by fractures, many of which formed when the volcanic units cooled. While the fractures are usually confined to individual layers of tuff, the faults extend from the planned storage area all the way to the water table 1,000 feet (300 m) below.
The volcanic tuff at Yucca Mountain is appreciably fractured and movement of water through an aquifer below the waste repository is primarily through fractures.[36] Future water transport from the surface to waste containers is likely to be dominated by fractures. There is evidence that surface water has been transported through the 700 vertical feet of overburden to the exploratory tunnel at Yucca Mountain in less than 50 years.
When welded tuff fractures, it basically turns into stratigraphic popcorn. A sandstone, or other sedimentary unit, may be naturally porous, but its usually pretty consistent, volcanic units like these tuffs are often all or nothing, and were originally selected because of their "all" characteristic of being natively a-porous. The problem is it doesn't stay in its native state in an active tectonic region. One big earthquake and pow, you might lose the water table. Pretty big risk. Burying this stuff sounded like a plausible idea 30 years ago, but I think you will be hard pressed to attend a GSA meeting and find that "most" geologists think its a good idea. Everyone wanted Yucca Mountain to work, and usually when everyone wants something, they turn a blind eye to problems with the plan.
Yucca Mountain has been a(n arguably) very expensive study in hydrodynamics, seismology and stratigraphy. We've learned a great deal. And some of the evidence points to potential catastrophe. Maybe preventing bad things isn't a bad investment...
Other ideas floated by researchers I have heard are: Bury it in salt formations, drop it in the Marianas (sp?) trench, or shoot it into the sun. Each has some unique, potentially catastrophic problems of their own.
The stuff is nasty, and nobody has a safe way to get rid of it (except build bombs with it, but that's stretching the "safe" definition). The disposal debate has been going on since there were reactors.
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Salt deposits actually don't contra-indicate groundwater, but salt in and of it itself is basically a big fluid, the geology and hydrology can get complex. But that can be another post if people really care about the science behind it.
FYI, I spent 1984-1995 as an academic studying high temperature geochemistry and structural geology and have done field work on similar/related volcanic units to the Yucca Mountain deposits. Credits available on request :)
That also means that my direct knowledge of it is aging to the point of being questionably useful.
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USGS still has some good resources:
Geologic cross section of the site
(http://water.usgs.gov/ympb/images/cross-section.jpg)
Pretty decent summary of the hydrology:
http://water.usgs.gov/ympb/hydrologic_studies.htm
This being the clearest representation:
(http://water.usgs.gov/ympb/images/Hydrotoon.jpg)
The USGS seems to be maintaining a decent amount of material on the YMP, most of it seems unbiased and relatively easy to read for non-experts.
Of course if you want to get a little geeky:
http://pubs.usgs.gov/wri/wri024010/wrir024010.pdf
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Here's the place, eye alt. at just above 106 km (thanks to google earth):
(http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/7341/beztytuumgd.jpg)
The nearest city visible from space is Las Vegas, at over 120 km away.
The biggest man made crater (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedan_Crater) is 45 clicks NE, and Area 51 is 67 km NE, just a few mountains from the crater.
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looking at the craters ne of there kinda gave me a woody :D
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Finally, debate research is good for something! :D
The IFR (Intergral Fast Reactor). Burns waste. Proliferation proof.
Links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_Fast_Reactor (Because everyone wants a wiki)
http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA378.html
Hmmm..... the other links on wiki don't work anymore. Funny, I'll have to dig up what I got from those.
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Call or not, he directly wasted 9 BILLION DOLLARS we cant affoard!
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Um, that money was wasted already. He arguably prevented more money from being wasted on the project.
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Maybe I dreamed it up but weren't the Japanese testing some sort of Plasma incinerator a few years ago that you could probably put nuclear waste in and the plasma reaction would have it come out the otherside as a relatively harmless substance. You could even use it for building materials they were saying....
Overly optimistic tests that never panned out?
Call or not, he directly wasted 9 BILLION DOLLARS we cant affoard!
If what Inquisitor is saying is right then its likely that the gains in geology and hydrology research are worth quite a bit on its own.
Plus to put into context 9 billion over 20 years is a drop in the bucket. More is spent in a month on Afganistan and Iraq.
The only problem with shutting it down is that there doesn't appear to be a new plan and they desperately need a new plan for dealing with nuclear waste. My bet is on some sort of technology to reuse or eliminate it instead of holding it around...holding it somewhere seems unsustainable to me.
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I'm more curious in why he is worrying about a place to put toxic waste, when our economy is crashing and burning like an out of control wildfire.
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I'm more curious in why he is worrying about a place to put toxic waste, when our economy is crashing and burning like an out of control wildfire.
Right, because he can't possibly do more than one thing at a time, and thinking constantly about one problem is going to make the solution come proportionally faster.
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I'm more curious in why he is worrying about a place to put toxic waste, when our economy is crashing and burning like an out of control wildfire.
It's because he has no plans to fix the economy, and it's easier to distract people than to apologize for lying through your teeth (or lie about lying through your teeth).
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I'm more curious in why he is worrying about a place to put toxic waste, when our economy is crashing and burning like an out of control wildfire.
It's because he has no plans to fix the economy, and it's easier to distract people than to apologize for lying through your teeth (or lie about lying through your teeth).
Well, um, that economic stimulus package sure seems like 'plans to fix the economy.' You might think it's not a good plan, but you can't deny it's a plan.
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I'm more curious in why he is worrying about a place to put toxic waste, when our economy is crashing and burning like an out of control wildfire.
It's because he has no plans to fix the economy, and it's easier to distract people than to apologize for lying through your teeth (or lie about lying through your teeth).
Well, um, that economic stimulus package sure seems like 'plans to fix the economy.' You might think it's not a good plan, but you can't deny it's a plan.
So, if the plan falls horribly on it's butt and we waste $700 billion dollars, it's ok because at least it's a plan?
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I never made any valence judgment about the plan.
I was simply asserting that it was a plan, in response to BloodEagle's assertion that there was no plan.
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Ah, partisan politics, and science. Gotta love it.
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I'm more curious in why he is worrying about a place to put toxic waste, when our economy is crashing and burning like an out of control wildfire.
It's because he has no plans to fix the economy, and it's easier to distract people than to apologize for lying through your teeth (or lie about lying through your teeth).
There really is no true yardstick to measure the progress but:
stimulus bill
budget bill
Iraq withdrawal date
Afghanistan "surge"
Gitmo decision
releasing previously secret Bush documents
talk of healthcare reform
It's been less than 2 months.
Jan 21st to March 6th.
Or did you honestly expect the economy and everything to be fixed in less time than that?
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I'm more curious in why he is worrying about a place to put toxic waste, when our economy is crashing and burning like an out of control wildfire.
It's because he has no plans to fix the economy, and it's easier to distract people than to apologize for lying through your teeth (or lie about lying through your teeth).
There really is no true yardstick to measure the progress but:
stimulus bill
budget bill
Iraq withdrawal date
Afghanistan "surge"
Gitmo decision
releasing previously secret Bush documents
It's been less than 2 months.
Jan 21st to March 6th.
Or did you honestly expect the economy and everything to be fixed in less time than that?
I don't think many(besides the crazy) thought it would turn around that fast. But, when you look and see the markets tank every time he opens his mouth it brings up a lot of questions.
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There are only so many levers the government can pull to affect the economy anyway. You can change the taxes, increase/decrease the money supply, or try this stimulus package deal. Thats about it, FDR didn't magically snap his fingers and make the Depression go away. :P Especially when its FUMTU at nearly every level, it ain't easy to fix an economy based on people spending more then their income.
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I don't think many(besides the crazy) thought it would turn around that fast. But, when you look and see the markets tank every time he opens his mouth it brings up a lot of questions.
The problem with the Dow Jones (and I really need to find the articles dealing with it) is it's no longer industrial or an average.
Take a look at the companies in the Dow Jones and see what companies are involved in this debacle of housing credit and mess and you'll see a lot of similar faces.
Yes, I fully expect these companies to have their stock prices tank on news that the things that let them all get rich are gone and now the government might have to step in and fix them (probably removing most profits for a long time).
But to tie it back into the thread here:
A lot of people are saying "we already picked this spot" or "we've already spent money on it", which to me is like saying "well I'm already in my pajamas"
It's a thinking of "I don't want to deal with it anymore" which is not the thinking we need for this kind of stuff.
*edit* Don Jones!
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I'm more curious in why he is worrying about a place to put toxic waste, when our economy is crashing and burning like an out of control wildfire.
It's because he has no plans to fix the economy, and it's easier to distract people than to apologize for lying through your teeth (or lie about lying through your teeth).
There really is no true yardstick to measure the progress but:
stimulus bill
budget bill
Iraq withdrawal date
Afghanistan "surge"
Gitmo decision
releasing previously secret Bush documents
talk of healthcare reform
It's been less than 2 months.
Jan 21st to March 6th.
Or did you honestly expect the economy and everything to be fixed in less time than that?
No, you silly goose.
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No, you silly goose.
So you honestly think after what I've listed in the time he's been President so far is "no plan" and "lying through his teeth"?
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Just because he's doing things doesn't mean he's doing what he said he was going to do, or not doing what he didn't agree with McCain on before.
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See it as trustworthy as you see fit
http://politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/
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I'm more curious in why he is worrying about a place to put toxic waste, when our economy is crashing and burning like an out of control wildfire.
It's because he has no plans to fix the economy, and it's easier to distract people than to apologize for lying through your teeth (or lie about lying through your teeth).
There really is no true yardstick to measure the progress but:
stimulus bill
budget bill
Iraq withdrawal date
Afghanistan "surge"
Gitmo decision
releasing previously secret Bush documents
It's been less than 2 months.
Jan 21st to March 6th.
Or did you honestly expect the economy and everything to be fixed in less time than that?
I don't think many(besides the crazy) thought it would turn around that fast. But, when you look and see the markets tank every time he opens his mouth it brings up a lot of questions.
Well there is more than one market and not all of them are glued to every word that the US president is saying. Pretty much every time anyone says anything about the economy the markets tank. This is a worldwide phenomenon....it may have started in the States but it was a domino effect that has put the whole world economic system into chaos from the streets of Beijing, Tokyo, and Shanghai to London, New York and Toronto.
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Correlation under no circumstances implies causation.
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(http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/correlation.png)
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Correlation under no circumstances implies causation.
You just said that so someone would use today's comic. :p
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1.) most of the stimulus bill doesn't take effect until a year before the next election, and it is aimed at lobbyists, not what is needed.
2.) people have been talking about healthcare reform since election in '92, and it didn't happen. It didn't happen because of entrenched lobbying interests as well as scaremongering. I don't expect anything to change this time around.
3.) I'll give him credit on the rest of that stuff.
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Correlation under no circumstances implies causation.
You just said that so someone would use today's comic. :p
Gah! But I don't even read XKCD!
Look, you idiots, it just happened to occur on the same day! Correlation doesn't imply causation!
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Correlation doesn't imply causation, but it does waggle its eyebrows suggestively and gesture furtively while mouthing 'look over there'.
You were saying? :D
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Correlation under no circumstances implies causation.
You just said that so someone would use today's comic. :p
Gah! But I don't even read XKCD!
Look, you idiots, it just happened to occur on the same day! Correlation doesn't imply causation!
:lol:
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Correlation created causation of the movie...the beast of yucca flats.
........flag on the moon.........how'd it get there?
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Correlation created causation of the movie...the beast of yucca flats.
........flag on the moon.........how'd it get there?
Progress.
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Progress.
Oh yeah. Out at yucca you need to watch for some big fat bald dude with oatmeal all over his face that is uncivilized.
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Put all garbage and toxic waste on a NASA flight to space. Make a crappy cargo xport. Load it up, and send that bastard into the sun. Problem solved.
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Put all garbage and toxic waste on a NASA flight to space.
We can't.
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Put all garbage and toxic waste on a NASA flight to space.
We can't. won't.
Fixed.
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Put all garbage and toxic waste on a NASA flight to space.
We can't.
That would mean giving NASA more money, can't have that.
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You guys might want to read up on that one. It was seriously considered.
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Maybe I dreamed it up but weren't the Japanese testing some sort of Plasma incinerator a few years ago that you could probably put nuclear waste in and the plasma reaction would have it come out the otherside as a relatively harmless substance. You could even use it for building materials they were saying....
Overly optimistic tests that never panned out?
Call or not, he directly wasted 9 BILLION DOLLARS we cant affoard!
If what Inquisitor is saying is right then its likely that the gains in geology and hydrology research are worth quite a bit on its own.
Plus to put into context 9 billion over 20 years is a drop in the bucket. More is spent in a month on Afganistan and Iraq.
The only problem with shutting it down is that there doesn't appear to be a new plan and they desperately need a new plan for dealing with nuclear waste. My bet is on some sort of technology to reuse or eliminate it instead of holding it around...holding it somewhere seems unsustainable to me.
Incineration is NOT an option. You'd have to transmute ("perform alchemy") on the elements themselves to make them non-radioactive.
Another couple of things to consider:
America right now uses a really wasteful nuclear (power plant) doctrine. You use the fuel in a single fuel-cycle, then bury it forever. Used nuclear fuel cartridges still contain a high (you could say, majority) of still viable fuel. The fuel in this case is fissionable material.
The problem is, that this fuel was dirtied by short half-life highly radioactive fission by products in the reactor. To use it again, you have to separate these elements. This procedure is called Reprocessing and is a sound technique with established methods.
The reason why the US was so against it, is that the process also involves separating the plutonium from the fuel, therefore automatically creating material for atomic weapons. (Though frankly you could use plutonium in a nuclear reactor just the same as you do with enriched uranium).
This increases the chance of nuclear proliferation and makes the reprocessing plants highly sensitive areas as far as national security is concerned.
On the plus side, if reprocessing was used, the amount of nuclear waste to be stored could be lessened multi-fold. Instead storing the whole nuclear load of the reactors a tiny fraction - only the transmuted nuclear waste - would have to be safely "disposed of".
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Those are nice cross-sections on page 1. Structural geology nearly always leaves me :confused:
Yeah, I've heard about transmutation. From what I can remember only small amounts can be treated effectively that way. At present, anyway.
I'm just thinking off the top of my head here, but would using the space elevator concept to deliver waste into space be less risky than propelling it there via a spacecraft? I'm thinking about the absence of rockets and fuel, so there would be less chance of an explosion scattering radioactive waste into the atmosphere. I imagine it would be slower though, and there'd probably be lots of other problems I'm not thinking of.
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I fail to grasp why in the heavens the whole lot of you wants to bring this stuff into space and endanger the whole planet instead a limited region's water supply.
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I actually meant getting it into space and then into the sun, but I see your point.
There'd need to be some accurate "knowledge transfer" happening from one generation to the next if such waste is to be disposed of underground. You don't want someone drilling into it by accident 8,000 years later or something.
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Well, instead of the sun we could always just send it to some remote location on the moon where we have no plans of building a base or anything (pfft, like we have plans to do that anyway :sigh:).
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We should just put it in the water on purpose and then we can all get superpowers.
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Well, instead of the sun we could always just send it to some remote location on the moon where we have no plans of building a base or anything (pfft, like we have plans to do that anyway :sigh:).
The issue is not where we send it in space, it's how we get it into space safely in the first place.
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Short history of human spacefaring activities:
1957, Sputnik 1 - first satellite to orbit Earth
1961, Yuri Gagarin - first human in space
1969, Neil Armstrong - first man on the moon
2011, NYC Dept. of Sanitation - first established transport route between Earth and Moon
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I heard it mentioned that there has been quite a bit of research put into even just figuring out what kind of labeling to put on such containment facilities. Since what lies within will be dangerous for so long they can't quite say for sure how language will have evolved or changed over the course of the material's decay. Funny to think the stuff will still be dangerous even in such a time in the far future when today's languages have become lost in the sands of time.
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Consider how many space craft have fallen out of the sky, how we run like scared little girls when a 5 inch chunk of debris comes within 3 miles of the ISS, or how we can't keep trains on tracks, airplanes in skies, or trucks safely on the road with any certaintly, then load any of of those things up with effectively a HUGE dirty bomb.
Then ask why we don't blast it into space on space garbage scows ;)
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Consider how many space craft have fallen out of the sky, [...].
Space elevator?
:nervous:
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we could just throw it into a volcano, im sure it will sink in the lava, its pretty heavy stuff.
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I heard it mentioned that there has been quite a bit of research put into even just figuring out what kind of labeling to put on such containment facilities. Since what lies within will be dangerous for so long they can't quite say for sure how language will have evolved or changed over the course of the material's decay. Funny to think the stuff will still be dangerous even in such a time in the far future when today's languages have become lost in the sands of time.
Maybe put something like 92 (or whatever the atomic number of the stuff) strikes/tally marks on a sign or something. I'm sure even if language changes significantly they'll still understand that, and the atomic number of uranium/plutonium whatever shouldn't change.
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we could just throw it into a volcano, im sure it will sink in the lava, its pretty heavy stuff.
Yeah, what happens when it erupts? :p
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Put it in Yellowstone, that way if it erupts, we'll be dead anyways.
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Put it in Yellowstone, that way if it erupts, we'll be dead anyways.
They always blow yellowstone waaaaay out of proportion. It wouldn't be nearly as bad as they say.
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Seems as though there might be evidence to suggest it would be as bad as "they say" if it were to happen :)
http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/yvo/about/history/index.php
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/me finds the growth of this thread to be... curious. :P
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/me finds the growth of this thread to be... curious. :P
Oh noes..... Look out!! It's reaching CRITICAL MASS!!!!! :eek2:
:D :nervous:
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Just watch the movie.
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Seems as though there might be evidence to suggest it would be as bad as "they say" if it were to happen :)
http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/yvo/about/history/index.php
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,60123.msg1185277.html#msg1185277
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Well it depends on how bad "they" say it's going to be. Most people would consider covering a 1000 mile radius of Yellowstone in ash pretty bad.
Probably wouldn't make things much worse if that ash was radioactive. :p
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http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,60123.msg1185277.html#msg1185277
Not sure what 2 pages of you guys quoting slashdot and talking about sheep has to do with the evidence described on the USGS site, but ok...