If technological civilization doesn’t survive long enough to make nuclear waste a laughable problem I don’t really care what happens.
Well, in the long-run, yes. But what happens in the short-run? If there’s a planet-wide disaster that reduces the technology level for a while, it could take a very long time to get back to decent tech levels. In the meantime, the presence of nuclear waste could be quite bad. Indeed, if humans are trying to bootstrap back up to high tech levels by looking at the remains of our civilization, leaving radioactive material around could be very bad.
This line of thinking is similar to one of the major reasons we should not burn fossil-fuels- it isn’t as at all easy for a civilization to bootstrap up to current tech levels without them. We really don’t want to be in a position where a severe civilization crash is not recoverable. And having lots of radioactive material around could easily in a post-apocalyptic scenario be the difference between a return to civilization and extinction.
lots of radioactive material around? enough to pose an existential risk in a return to stone age communities? waste is highly localized. it is coal burning that is dumping radioactive materials into the atmosphere directly.
1) If humans are trying to bootstrap they are going to spend time investigating lots of sites from our society. That’s going to include the ones that had radioactive material. People run into this problem even today when they should know better.
2) While most of the radioactivity today is being released by things like the residual radioactive material in coal, that’s partially due to a lack of catastrophic events. We’re doing a pretty good job keeping most of the severely radioactive material contained for now. But if there were little or no maintenance, it wouldn’t take much (a few earthquakes or fires) to let loose a lot of radioactive material. Look at what happened at Chernobyl and then keep in mind that only a small fraction of the total radioactive material was released and that almost all that material existed prior to the accident itself. There are around 400 nuclear power plants in the world right now. It doesn’t take many of those to have worse than Chernobyl results to make things unpleasant.
That’s a remarkably good point, and I should have thought of it.
On the other hand… bureaucracy can be pretty good at forgetting safety protocols and losing documentation, even over a period of less than ten years. We should definitely at least continue to make a big political point of storing them, so that the storage locations will be documented for the people who care to look it up.
Also, the people who are conscientious enough to bother to keep up the containment would be far fewer, in absolute numbers, in magical England (which needs to store Dementors) than in muggle America (which needs to store nuclear waste), due to the much smaller total population. If that absolute number dips below one, there could be pretty serious trouble.
If technological civilization doesn’t survive long enough to make nuclear waste a laughable problem I don’t really care what happens.
Well, in the long-run, yes. But what happens in the short-run? If there’s a planet-wide disaster that reduces the technology level for a while, it could take a very long time to get back to decent tech levels. In the meantime, the presence of nuclear waste could be quite bad. Indeed, if humans are trying to bootstrap back up to high tech levels by looking at the remains of our civilization, leaving radioactive material around could be very bad.
This line of thinking is similar to one of the major reasons we should not burn fossil-fuels- it isn’t as at all easy for a civilization to bootstrap up to current tech levels without them. We really don’t want to be in a position where a severe civilization crash is not recoverable. And having lots of radioactive material around could easily in a post-apocalyptic scenario be the difference between a return to civilization and extinction.
lots of radioactive material around? enough to pose an existential risk in a return to stone age communities? waste is highly localized. it is coal burning that is dumping radioactive materials into the atmosphere directly.
1) If humans are trying to bootstrap they are going to spend time investigating lots of sites from our society. That’s going to include the ones that had radioactive material. People run into this problem even today when they should know better.
2) While most of the radioactivity today is being released by things like the residual radioactive material in coal, that’s partially due to a lack of catastrophic events. We’re doing a pretty good job keeping most of the severely radioactive material contained for now. But if there were little or no maintenance, it wouldn’t take much (a few earthquakes or fires) to let loose a lot of radioactive material. Look at what happened at Chernobyl and then keep in mind that only a small fraction of the total radioactive material was released and that almost all that material existed prior to the accident itself. There are around 400 nuclear power plants in the world right now. It doesn’t take many of those to have worse than Chernobyl results to make things unpleasant.
I think we’d have to get down to brass tacks and look at real projections because I still seriously doubt it could be an existential threat.
That’s a remarkably good point, and I should have thought of it.
On the other hand… bureaucracy can be pretty good at forgetting safety protocols and losing documentation, even over a period of less than ten years. We should definitely at least continue to make a big political point of storing them, so that the storage locations will be documented for the people who care to look it up.
Also, the people who are conscientious enough to bother to keep up the containment would be far fewer, in absolute numbers, in magical England (which needs to store Dementors) than in muggle America (which needs to store nuclear waste), due to the much smaller total population. If that absolute number dips below one, there could be pretty serious trouble.