
Deep Borehole Disposal - lelf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_borehole_disposal
======
pstuart
This reminds me of the short story about a bottomless hole, which is
definitely worth 3 minutes of your time to read:
[https://www.tommoody.us/archives/2015/03/17/he-y-come-on-
ou-...](https://www.tommoody.us/archives/2015/03/17/he-y-come-on-ou-t-a-short-
story-by-shinichi-hoshi-translated-by-stanleigh-jones/)

~~~
war1025
I started in about halfway through to get to the punchline faster. The ending
didn't make any sense.

Decided to start from the beginning. Ah.

A very good little tale.

~~~
m4rtink
And that, gentleman, is why we leave weird artifacts like this one to the
profesionals, namely the SCP foundation. ;-)

------
allovernow
I don't understand why nuclear waste disposal is so controversial. The amount
of waste generated is relatively tiny. Choose a site without a permeable path
to an aquifer, dump the waste, seal it off, and forget about it. What are the
risks?

1\. Some population thousands of years from now stumbles upon the waste and a
small minority may die from exposure/contamination

2\. Containment breach occurs due to degradation or earthquake or some other
destructive event and some minimally radioactive waste leaks out of the
containment site.

Are either of these serious concerns with respect to the benefit of nuclear
power? If disposal occurs somewhere deep in the continental U.S., are there
even any actors powerful enough to commandeer the waste for nefarious
purposes? What am I missing?

~~~
carapace
> Some population thousands of years from now stumbles upon the waste and a
> small minority may die from exposure/contamination

> I don't understand why nuclear waste disposal is so controversial.

You answered yourself.

> What am I missing?

A functioning conscience.

~~~
dang
No personal attacks, please, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you
feel they are.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
carapace
Sorry dude. (I tried. You shoulda seen the stuff I deleted. Radiation
poisoning is a horrible way to die.)

------
Accujack
This is mostly notable as an option because:

A) It's cheaper than building a Yucca Mountain

B) It can be built faster than Yucca Mountain, enabling it to actually be
finished before it can be defunded or protested out of existence.

Most power generating reactors don't generate much waste relatively
speaking... the bulk of the waste that exists is from nuclear weapons. So
there's a need for waste disposal, but it's not as bad a problem as many
people seem to think.

On top of that, newer reactor designs produce less waste, so in the future
there may be even less of a need.

~~~
cr0sh
> enabling it to actually be finished before it can be defunded or protested
> out of existence.

Except, both of these things have already occurred:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_borehole_disposal#America...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_borehole_disposal#American_deep_borehole_disposal_tests)

~~~
Accujack
Nonetheless, they still have the potential to be an easier to implement
disposal solution because they're faster/cheaper to create than a massive
project.

I expect it'll still be necessary to put the hole somewhere there aren't
hundreds of people protesting oil pipelines, but that's a topic for the
future.

~~~
8bitsrule
I heard of a place waaaaaay out in the woods - very few people lived in the
area - near the Canadian Shield. One day some some Unidentifed People with
serious machinery started drilling a hole. After several days, they went home
for the weekend. When they came back, the hole had been filled in.

This re-occured a couple more times. The UP never returned.

~~~
Accujack
Well, then. You need to dig it out and report what you find.

------
sgift
Personally, I think all of the current "long term storage" options are bad.
They promote the idea that we can deal with the garbage once and then the job
is done. Continued storage in short term facilities on the other hand has
various advantages:

* We can easily take the containers out again, if we find a better way to dispose or (re)use the garbage

* We can update the containers if new technologies allow better ones

* We can check that the containers are still sealed

* We do not forget about the garbage, so the chance that someone in the future is hurt by accidentally digging into it is minimized

~~~
cgriswald
It also has some pretty serious disadvantages. Just off the top of my head:

\- End-of-life storage requires re-storage regardless of whether better
technologies exist

\- Spillage is more likely to occur due to more frequent
handling/repackaging/relocation

\- Workers are exposed to greater danger due to more frequent
handling/repacking/relocation

\- Overhead is greater since there will likely be a greater number of short
term than long term storage facilities

\- Accidents are more likely and more spread out over a larger area
(assumption: short term storage requires more space than long term storage)

~~~
hinkley
\- The public is exposed to greater danger due to relocation.

Every time you move this stuff there's a chance for a vehicular accident or
just a storage breach due to human and/or manufacturing error.

Whatever happened to vitrification as a solution for some classes of nuclear
waste? That was the story for one hot second and I haven't heard about it
since.

------
Lendal
How about we switch to [newer
technology]([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveling_wave_reactor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveling_wave_reactor))
that doesn't generate so much waste in the first place?

~~~
na85
It still generates some waste, though, so the question of what to do with that
waste remains.

~~~
Symmetry
Right, but we can't escape thinking about things qualitatively if we want to
come to sensible solutions. If level of radiation is considered safe then we
have to do something about all the potassium in our bodies.

------
DarkWiiPlayer
Not nearly as scary as
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_disposal_of_radioactive_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_disposal_of_radioactive_waste)

~~~
quickthrowman
What makes this one scary? I agree, the optics are terrible, but studies of
each known dumpsite showed no real negative effects..

~~~
mnsc
It's scary if you think that the precautionary principle should be guiding
when dealing with radioactive waste and looking back in history of this, and
many other examples of "this seem like a permanent solution" and later
scientists going "actually...".

And I don't really get too much comfort from statements like "studies ...
showed no real negative effects". I still imagine mutant lizards emerging from
the ocean in the future with frazers[1] killing off all humanity.

[1] lizard tech, don't ask

~~~
quickthrowman
I agree that ocean dumping is bad. I asked mainly because nobody openly dumps
nuclear waste in the ocean any longer, and progress towards long term nuclear
waste storage is being made (in Finland, particularly)

It seems like the amount of water in the ocean is so vast, that the quantities
of nuclear waste dumped into it will not create a nuclear ocean, but I’m just
speculating here.

Scary nuclear incidents to me are Cuban Missile Crisis, Able Archer 83,
Stanislav Petrov incident, and the Norwegian rocket incident. Early nuclear
era ocean dumping that isn’t being continued isn’t exactly an existential
threat.

~~~
DarkWiiPlayer
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1966_Palomares_B-52_crash](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1966_Palomares_B-52_crash)
This one is also quite a scary example if you ask me.

> Early nuclear era ocean dumping that isn’t being continued isn’t exactly an
> existential threat.

I'm more worried because the mentality that lead to this doesn't seem to have
changed whatsoever. The moment something is proven to be a dumb idea, people
move on to the next best thing with the exactly same attitude of "We don't
know it's bad, so let's just go with it"

~~~
mnsc
> I'm more worried because the mentality that lead to this doesn't seem to
> have changed whatsoever.

I think the current attitude of "new technology will solve this" is an example
of this mentality. Examples readily available in this thread.

------
carapace
A lot of folks here being real casual about adding radioactive poison to _the
only known biosphere in the whole Universe,_ especially considering that's
where all our kids live.

There is a _fusion reactor_ in the sky. It's maintenance-free and so powerful
that it can burn out your retinas from a hundred and fifty _giga-meters_ away.

~~~
waste_monk
Children are the future, unless we stop them today.

------
jisco
I don't think it's a good idea.

If there will be any fissure in the steel container, then the water we put on
top for sure will get there and in the end, that hot contaminated water will
raise at the top of water column.

------
codewithcheese
I'm surprised people advocate in favor of nuclear energy when waste disposal
is still an unresolved issue. Even if it's a modern reactor that has much less
waste, it still needs to be safely handled for generations. If modern reactors
are successful and their usage scales up, well that is more waste.

Both the state governments of Nevada and New Mexico have pushed back on long
term storage plans, and the federal government appears to have no current
solution.

~~~
Aunche
Why is nuclear waste the only waste product that requires a perfect long term
solution? We don't even have temporary solutions to millions of tons of
fertilizer runoff or billions of tons of CO2 emissions. Mining for rare earth
metals of solar panels produces a lot of toxic waste, some of which is
radioactive. Why doesn't that get as much negative press as nuclear waste?

In 2010, there was an estimated 250,000 tons of nuclear waste [1]. The oceans
naturally have 4 billion tons of uranium [2]. It seems to me that even the
very dumb solution of scattering our nuclear waste across the oceans would
have a negligible environmental impact compared to other destructive
activities.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste)
[2]
[https://www.pnnl.gov/news/release.aspx?id=4514](https://www.pnnl.gov/news/release.aspx?id=4514)

------
otterpro
It's probably a bad idea, but has anyone thought of sending nuclear waste into
space? I've always thought that it might be possible to launch it into space
using a space elevator (if that is even feasible), but then I can also see the
disaster if something bad happened during the launch, resulting in cataclysmic
event.

~~~
867-5309
I'd imagine it would not have to leave just this planet, but also the whole
solar system not to pose any future threat

~~~
NopeNotToday
We can make anything leave the solar system, with an escape velocity and the
proper orientation.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_artificial_objects_lea...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_artificial_objects_leaving_the_Solar_System)

------
duxup
Considering the distance, is there any likelihood exposing this material (or
the radioactivity) again outside of ... just drilling 3+ km deep to it?

This seems like a pretty solid option considering the costs / possible
downsides of trying to "construct" something with similar levels of
protection.

------
bob1029
This sounds like a reasonable approach. Considering the volume of high level
wastes actually being produced, dry cask storage might be the best option if
we want to always have "eyes on" the waste materials. Physical risk is a
little higher above ground, but you always know exactly where it all is at all
times and you can constantly measure it for safety. Shoving it 3 miles deep
into the earth is very likely not going to be a problem for anyone, but you
will always have some uncertainty around how it is behaving down there.

------
Tepix
It seems counter-intuitive to use a large amount of water on top of the
borehole filling material. If some radiactive waste gets past the filling
material, particles may rise up in the water all the way to the surface.

~~~
opwieurposiu
The "water" is actually drilling mud used to keep the bore from collapsing
during construction. It is replaced with solid impermeable materials after the
waste containers are loaded into the bottom of the hole.

------
nsxwolf
What a waste of good waste.

~~~
ctdonath
Indeed. What is "waste" now may be quite usable in the not-far future.

Analogy: every time I cook using aluminum foil, I cringe at throwing out a
usable wad of the metal solely because there's some charred food waste on it,
when I presume near-future tech will easily reclaim this useful element. Would
be nice to have something between "trash" and "recycling" \- pre-sorting junk
so that future people have a not-unmanageable repository of materials they can
work with even though we can't.

Likewise nuclear "waste" \- it's still active material, generating energy,
just needing a few more years/decades before we can use it. Even today we have
(or soon will) reactors which "eat" waste from older designs. Put what we have
in stable long-term containers, and making odds on when it can be used.

~~~
perilunar
Why are you throwing out aluminium foil? Wrap it into a ball, and when the
ball gets large enough, put it in the recycling bin.

~~~
ctdonath
They don't want it with burned/crusted/rotting food on it.

------
fnord77
rather than hiding it down some hole or in a cave where it will be forgotten
until it starts seeping into the aquifer, why not create a containment system
that's right out in the open so everyone can keep an eye on it and maintain
it?

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
The way I understand it, we expect that our waste will outlast our
civilisation and that having it lying around in the open will endanger the
civilisation(s) that (we fervently hope) will follow.

See wikipedia pages and references for work on this:

Long-time nuclear waste warning messages:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-
time_nuclear_waste_warnin...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-
time_nuclear_waste_warning_messages)

Waste Isolation Pilot Plant - Warning messages for future humans:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_Isolation_Pilot_Plant#Wa...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_Isolation_Pilot_Plant#Warning_messages_for_future_humans)

Also, examples of proposed hostile architecture here:

[https://wipp.energy.gov/pdfs/site_markers.pdf](https://wipp.energy.gov/pdfs/site_markers.pdf)

And the full permanent markers implementation plan, here:

[https://wipp.energy.gov/library/PermanentMarkersImplementati...](https://wipp.energy.gov/library/PermanentMarkersImplementationPlan.pdf)

------
cultus
Storing in salt domes is easier. Salt domes are completely impermeable because
any incipient cracks creep close.

~~~
giardini
Unless water is introduced, whereupon they fail:

"Oil Drilling into a Salt Dome: Catastrophic Failure: Evidence Lake Peigneur
1980 Disaster BP"

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhwjSI3UOIw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhwjSI3UOIw)

This is why fracking is associated with earthquakes. Salt mining has a long
and well-documented history of damaging subsurface and consequently surface
structure, especially in 19th-century England.

Frackers were "whistling past the graveyard" by denying that fracking caused
earthquakes. They've essentially replicated the history of salt mining
associations and corporations who destroyed homes and even towns in their
rabid search for salt profits:

"Salt: A World History" by Mark Kurlansky

"Northwich sinks!":

[http://jsbookreader.blogspot.com/2011/09/northwich-
sinks.htm...](http://jsbookreader.blogspot.com/2011/09/northwich-sinks.html)

"Extraction of Bastard Brine in Northwich":

[http://www.cheshirebrine.com/history/extraction-of-
bastard-b...](http://www.cheshirebrine.com/history/extraction-of-bastard-
brine-in-northwich/)

~~~
cultus
You certainly wouldn't want to frack in the salt dome, but you are conflating
entirely separate issues. No one is pumping ultra-high pressure drill fluid
into waste repos.

