Most Earthquakes would damage the casks. Unless its right on the fault line this at best causes some damages that would have to be repaired. This is incredibly unlikely to ever happen in most of the world. Also burring the casks is more likely to cause issues in case of a major unexpected earth quake. This is one of those maybe ever few 100 years somebody has to move the casks.
Floods are pretty predictable in where they happen, don't put the nuclear waste there. And if somebody put them there in error, somebody at some point might have to slightly move them. If countries figure out to not put something away from a flood prawn area, why do you think they can build a major geologically save location that can hold up for 100k years?
> some rare natural disasters
I guess if a vulcano happens and damages cask people might have bigger issues. And again, simply not really relevant for the waste majority of places.
Once you are at maybe some unknown super disaster might happen then the whole logic with the deep geostorage also doesn't hold up anymore.
Finding a location above ground that is reasonably safe for 100 years is far, far, far, far, far easier and cheaper then building a geological storage that can last 100k years.
> forget to go back and check if the container is intact
Ok, then some light radiation might leak in a area that is likely far away from human population. Maybe not fantastic but also not some major problem that is worth spending billions of $ fixing.
And again, if a government can't manage to get a guy every year to do a quick check, then your country has far bigger problems. Also this monitoring can be done by a private person with a Geiger counter even if a country has collapse into anarchy, and people would avoid that location.
Yes, militaries, secret services and terrorists don't exist. Russia/China/USA don't exist and wouldn't find it incredibly convenient to cause major damage to each other by "leaking" these stockpiles. Added benefit, it only would kill those exposed and leave machinery untouched. Nobody would ever steal stuff like this. /S
Terrorist would hurt 1000x more people buy destroying the rails along a high speed train route.
Stealing nuclear waste is incredibly hard and borderline useless.
And Russia and China don't need to attack civilian nuclear waste, if they want to nuke you they can just do that.
Do you actually really believe a general in Russia is sitting around thinking 'mhh we can make the civilian nuclear waste leak and then maybe the cancer rate is slightly higher in 20 years'.
To actually come up with a scenario where a country is seriously hurt by civilian nuclear waste takes about 3 tin foil hats on top of each other. And the is proven by the reality that civilian nuclear casts are standing around lots of places barley protected and have been doing so for many decades with nobody giving a shit.
Be more afraid that China pays for pro-smoking ads on twitter, because that's gone cause more cancer.
Exact that not what I said. What I said to make a rational assessment of danger.
Yes things happen, how likely are their and at what risk level.
And if you do that for civilian nuclear waste you can conclude that the danger is very low and even if something happens the overwhelming probability is that it is a very low risk thing.
I have actually been to the Ukraine during the conflict? Have you? And I work with Ukrainians that have displaced family. Just saying 'what about Ukraine' is not an argument.
> Then there are the frequent insecurities, missing nuclear materials, and other fun new conflicts brewing...
Yeah what if the Russians capture the civilian nuclear waste that was originally produced in the Soviet union. The Russians could be building nuclear weapons. What then, oh the humanity.
> missing nuclear materials
When the terrorist show up and steal 12m high concert blocks only to then make an inefficient dirty bomb. I much prefer terrorist to try that then doing something that's actually effective, like derailing trains of flying planes into buildings.
> and other fun new conflicts brewing
Ok but you know what, most of the time, most nations that have civilian nuclear waste are not at war. And terrorism isn't what George Bush apparently made you believe.
And even if war or terror happen, civilian nuclear waste is incredibly low risk.
Your argument essentially boils down to 'sometimes something happens' therefore no risk of anything bad ever happening is acceptable. Of course the same argument could be made against pretty much every other human built infrastructure.
The waste has to be slightly monitored but that's it. The most likely case is that for 100+ years nobody has to do anything to this fuel.
You can easily collocate this with other research operations. Then you don't even have to pay a dedicated secure guard.
> You can't just leave the high-level waste there for anyone to steal
The lots of places where nuclear waste stands around totally unguarded with maybe a small fence. And yet in reality people don't steal gigantic concrete blocks that need spacial transport.
If you are seriously question the argument that digging a huge incredibly complex geological storage is more expensive then a normal storage building then I question your sanity.
Your argument seems to boil down to the typical 'what if highly unrealistic terrorist from a holywood movie set show up'. I prefer to live in the real world, rather then Holywood fantasy land where villains with incredibly dumb and unrealistic plans are a weekly event.
