Is nuclear fission safe?

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Radioactive waste can take millennia or even eons to break down on it's own.

Something dangerous about dumping radioactive bricks into the ocean: Organisms will make food of anything they can get even if it's radioactive. It's actually an issue with many of the benthic food webs. If they eat stuff that's been irradiated by these bricks, or, possibly use the radiation itself (as is the case with some of the bacteria in Chernobyl) they will build it up. With each trophic level, the radioactive substances are concentrated (just like with heavy metals). This has been observed in ecosystems downstream of power plants.

Eventually, some of those animals in the deep that people love to eat will build it up in their systems. This means that people will either eat radioactive fish or fishermen will have to be further deprived in what they can catch.

And thus, a brick in the ocean can lead to not only problems to everything living there but people being affected back here on land as well.

How would they make use of glass as food?


What organisms live 6 miles deep and are eaten by people?

With many organisms, it wont be the radioactivity itself that they make a meal of. Food is hard to find for the organisms that live that deep, so they don't pass up the opportunity to get something to eat, even if that something contains radioactive waste, or something that was close enough to it to become radioactive itself.

Although, as I mentioned earlier, there are bacteria in Chernobyl (and possibly fungi) that can make direct use of the energy from radiation. I personally haven't read any of the studies or articles about this yet, but some of my classmates have. Among bacteria, it is not uncommon for a similar feature to evolve in two different species that are located in different places.

I'm not sure if the fish that we eat go as deep as the bricks are located but some of their food sources could easily come from those depths.

On top of this, Blue Max makes a good point that the radiation will not stay with the bricks.

You drop a radioactive thingy in a bucket of water, the water itself most certainly DOES become radioactive. Dump radioactive bricks in the deepest ocean, the water will still carry radiation with the current, just like it did with the air & water around Chernobyl and Fukushima, as well as other waste leaks over the years.

The closest BIG nuclear reactor to us is the Sun, and its 150 million kilometers away.

It can give you a really bad case of sunburn, and screw around with our satellites and be very dangerous to people on the space station.

Yep, its dangerous, keeping on the sun is a good idea. If just used the energy the sun provides us with we would be better of.

Also don't have to worry about getting rid of nuclear waste, earthquakes, and human error with running and protecting the reactors.

Citation needed. There are 3 primary radioactive decay types, alpha, beta, and gamma. Alpha and beta radiation can be stopped by a piece of paper and a sheet of tinfoil, respectively. Since the stuff is encased in glass slugs, only gammas are going to get out at all, and they aren't going to cause water to become radioactive.


Are there appreciable currents 6 miles down? More importantly, how are you supposing it will get out of its container?

The only things I can see possibly going wrong with this scheme physically is the containers physically breaking (despite being designed not to break), the waste in the container that breaks being something that can leak out (liquid, dust, something that can dissolve in water), getting into the local ecosystem, and then spreading from that ecosystem to others until it finally reaches seafood that humans eat, and yet, for all that spreading out, still being concentrated enough to be measurable. That seems quite a stretch to me.

Gosh, I guess the new sarcophagus project for the still-radioactive Chernobyl plant can be made of tinfoil? Wow... I guess all those "how to stay safe from radioactivity" videos were wrong, and simple paper/tinfoil clothing will protect you from all but the shockwave and heat!

Okay, all snarkiness aside - you're SERIOUSLY under-estimating the potency of radioactivity (waste or fallout) as evidenced by the bombs of WWII, nuclear plant disasters and waste leakages. The horrible, pervasive human cancers and mutations are the stuff of nightmares - many years after each. No "safety barrel" is going to hold the radioactivity inside forever... the contents will continue to be dangerously radioactive FAR longer than the metal/seams of the barrel will ever last, especially in the corrosive salt and pressure of deep ocean.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/radiation-sickness1.htm
http://science.howstuffworks.com/nuclear-test1.htm (several pages, read more than just this link)
http://science.howstuffworks.com/nuclear-power.htm
http://science.howstuffworks.com/nuclear-power4.htm
... "The splitting of an atom releases an incredible amount of heat and gamma radiation, or radiation made of high-energy photons. The two atoms that result from the fission later release beta radiation (superfast electrons) and gamma radiation of their own, too."
Gamma radiation is the especially-dangerous stuff that can't be stopped by tinfoil, it needs to be absorbed into something heavy... and a lot of it. The heavy water of deep ocean is absorbing that radiation from the failing dumped barrels... better hope that water doesn't move anywhere. Hmm... let's check for current movements of deep ocean... humans still know so little about ocean currents. So far, I'm glad to know the Marianas Trench is a protected landmark full of life - so no dumping!
http://geology.about.com/od/platetectonics/f/seadisposal.htm (this one addresses it pretty directly... now to find the process of how/when nuclear waste contaminates things...)
>> Here's a whole dang BOOK on the subject - I'll have to read it all. <<
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/radioactivity_in_the_ocean_diluted_but_far_from_harmless/2391/


So far, the only ones saying radiation is essentially harmless once dumped/stored is the nuclear agency themselves. ...but this is the kind of thing that can take years to study, because while the evidence points in one direction, it's not 100% conclusive yet.

It sure seems like dumping it in a deep hole is a very haphazard thing to do... sweeping it under the rug and pretending it's not a problem - crossing fingers and hoping it doesn't rear up again.

Don't be silly.


You're comparing planned waste disposal to Hiroshima and Chernobyl? Really?


What ruveyn suggested was borated glass slugs, not barrels.


I know what gamma radiation is. Are you seriously suggesting that 6 miles of seawater is insufficient sheilding?

I'll take a look at some of your links later, but so far, I haven't seen an explanation of how gammas magically make water radioactive or a serious attempt to explain a failure mode of ruveyn's borated glass slugs.

Fine. It's been my experience that once someone's made an opinion on something, no amount of facts in the world will make them change. I could continue quoting links until my fingers fell off, you'd still say it's "perfectly safe" and continue dumping more down there.

High level nuclear waste has already leaked into our precious
ground water at Hanford..and exploded at the Russian Ural
mountain nuclear dump. In the first 55 years of the atomic age!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Activists protest Hanford dump through initiative

by Rachel Fomon
December 04, 2003 December 05, 2003

http://www.westernfrontonline.com/vn.../3fd0eb2b2c788

The U.S. Department of Energy plans to ship 70,000 truckloads of
radioactive waste to unlined soil landfills at the Hanford Site, without
cleaning the 54-million gallons of dangerous, high-level radioactive
waste that already is there, said Eliza Johnson, field director of
Initiative-297.

Johnson and Katie McClendon, of Heart of America Northwest, a nonprofit
organization based in Seattle, spoke at Western Dec. 2 about
Initiative-297 and the effects more radioactive waste would have on the
environment and community.

"I think that, in general, people don't want nuclear waste being dumped
in their state," McClendon said.

The Hanford Site, located along the Columbia River in southeastern
Washington state, once was used as a plutonium production complex that
assisted in the nation's defense for more than 40 years, according to
the Hanford Web site.

The Department of Energy is involved in the world's largest
environmental cleanup at Hanford. The site has more than 50 million
gallons of liquid waste in 177 storage tanks, 12 tons of plutonium, 25
million cubic feet of buried waste and 270 billion gallons of
contaminated groundwater, according to the Hanford Web site.

"If we don't clean up the Columbia River, we are at danger of losing it,
and now they want to bring in more," Johnson said.

Initiative-297 would require the Department of Energy to clean
contaminated sites such as Hanford before it adds more waste. If voters
approve the initiative, it would forbid Hanford from being the nation's
radioactive-waste dump in the future.

It also would force the government to stop dumping waste into unlined
ditches, require it to clean burial grounds and stop contaminated
groundwater from spreading to the Columbia River.

Moreover, the initiative would require the Department of Energy to
remove the waste from tanks at Hanford that leak into the ground,
according to the Protect Washington Web site.

Heart of America Northwest and its volunteers have collected 180,000
signatures in four-and-a-half months, but they still need 10,000
signatures on petitions by Dec. 31 to place the initiative on the
November 2004 ballot, McClendon said.

"I think, obviously, the environment will be threatened, and we can
expedite the Columbia River as a water source and be faced with doubling
the waste already at the site," McClendon said.

One of the main concerns is the contamination of the Columbia River,
Johnson said.

Employees at Hanford are doing their part in cleaning up the site,
Hanford spokeswoman Andrea Powell said.

"Everyone is focused on the cleanup right now," Powell said. "It's no
secret that there are some contaminants in the Columbia River."

The Department of Health routinely tests the river to make sure it is
safe. The agency considers the river to be Class A, which means it is
suitable for all water activities, she said.

"This is an issue at Western because it is something that affects
everyone in Washington state," Environmental Center Co-coordinator Sarah
Young said. "It's important for all of us to be educated about it and do
something about it."

It has been my experience too, but it goes both ways

Something you don't seem to be aware of, is the difference between radioactivity itself and radioactive elements. If you let the latter roam free unimpeded, like Chernobyl or Hiroshima and Nagasaki, then sure, there will be ill effects all around. In Hanford, for example, what causes the contamination is a faulty radioactive waste storage tank, which is leaking it's contents into the river. Again, that means radioactive elements are going into the water, and that is certainly a cause of concern.

However, if such radioactive waste is fully contained, only gamma radiation will make it out. Gamma radiation does not make water radioactive, it may generate some free radicals (which is actually very bad when it happens inside someone's cells, for example) but otherwise they don't pose a threat. In fact, water does an excellent job as a radiation shield.



xkcd may not be the most serious-looking of sources , but the man behind the comic takes his research seriously.

Btw, your link is broken.

You're right that I would not be convinced by quoted links, but not for the reason you think. If the links that you quote contain good arguments, and you have actually read and understood the arguments, then you could make the same arguments here. It's also easy, if there are many links and the linked material is long, for someone to snow the other with so much verbiage that they can't possibly sort through it all. Hence I tend to take link quoting, youtube embedding, and copy/pasting much less seriously than arguments that people actually bother to make themselves.

BTW, if you had made more sense about the bucket of water thing, I probably would be more eager to get around to your links.


I never said the words "perfectly safe" about anything.

No energy production technology is "perfectly safe".

Most of the fission plants have run for decades without a mishap.

Even Three Mile Island produced no casualties. not a single one. The way I like to say it is more people died in Senator Kennedy's car when it went off the bridge than died from the Three Mile Island mishap.

On the other hand dams have burst and flooded the down stream area.


ruve

Now you're just being more lazy than you're accusing ME of. I spend a few hours searching for relevant material, reading them for validity, ingesting the info, then sharing with you.
You wave it away as, "I don't care - and I won't read your material. I don't like your view so I'll call you 'stupid' and stick to my opinion."

That gamma radiation isn't just magically disappearing once absorbed into the surrounding water... I'll continue to research what happens to it. It leaves the source and is absorbed into the dense material around it (lead, water, etc.) Most examples I've provided consider those things that have absorbed the radiation to be low-grade nuclear waste, as opposed to high-grade which is the original radioactive source. Still dangerous, still needs to be stored. You seem to propose that you could put a radioactive brick in a tub of water large enough to prevent the gamma radiation from going beyond the pool - but that somehow, that water is NOT contaminated, radioactive, or polluted in some way?

The comic example provided is only one-dimensional and looks purely at the gamma radiation emanating from its source and how much water is needed to absorb that radiation. What it does NOT consider is once the water has absorbed x amount of radiation, will it hold that radiation and for how long? If it holds it, it should carry that radioactivity with it when it moves with current, etc. (Behaving according to the principles of low-grade contamination.) You propose that it does NOT hold radiation and that once it's removed from the source of radiation, it's the same normal water it was to start with.

We'll see.

Challenge accepted.

I did not say that.


Or that.


It's two-dimensional and would generalize to three dimensions.


Radiation can't be held. It is either moving in a straight line or interacting with something. If it interacts with a nucleus, depending on what it is and how energetic it is, it may split the nucleus (fission), cause it to ram into another nucleus so hard it sticks and forms a new nucleus (fusion), or be absorbed into the nucleus. If a new nucleus is produced and that new nucleus is radioactive, then it will eventually undergo radioactive decay, producing new radiation. At no point is anything held.

I've heard of gamma rays being produced in the heart of a supernova that can shatter iron nuclei, but radioactive decay isn't going to produce anything nearly that powerful. I don't have the numbers, but I doubt it could produce enough energy to cause any kind of fission or fusion, and since it is a photon, being absorbed by a nucleus will not transmute the element. If you're going to produce a case that gamma radiation can possibly produce radioactive material at a distance, you need to find at least one energy for a gamma that is greater than the amount of energy required to produce at least one kind of fission or fusion reaction. You also need for the nucleus (or nuclei) involved to not be capable of spontaneous fission or radioactive decay, since then it would already be radioactive.

If it could produce sufficient energy to induce fission, it wouldn't be "waste", it would be "fuel". It's a bit like worrying about a tank of carbon monoxide catching fire because it's a waste product of gasoline combustion, and gasoline is flammable.

So, I read BlueMax citations and here are my thoughts on them:

http://science.howstuffworks.com/radiat ... kness1.htm

Information about the effects of radiation on humans. Doesn't say anything about where the radiation comes from, so it is not directly relevant to the topic at hand.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/nuclear-test1.htm

About nuclear tests. Explains the effects of radiation in sea life, but that radiation came directly from nuclear weapon testing, so nothing to do with waste disposal.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/nuclear-power.htm

About how nuclear plants work, advantages and disadvantages, radioactive waste disposal and nuclear meltdowns. A quite interesting read in it's own right, but bears no direct relation to the risks of deep-ocean nuclear waste disposal either.

http://geology.about.com/od/platetecton ... sposal.htm

This one is actually related, and if containers were to be dropped into a deep-sea trench they would surely break there and spill, and if they spill that is another story. But using deep-sea trenches has not been discussed so far; the model as I understand it is just a container designed to not break under 10+ km of sea water.

http://e360.yale.edu/feature/radioactiv ... less/2391/

Talks about the effects of the Fukushima accident in the water, but it isn't caused by radioactivity itself but by radioactive elements dissolved into the water, and as I said previously, those two are different cases.

The comic I posted was mainly to show how beyond a certain point, which is actually not that far off, highly radioactive spent nuclear rods' radiation becomes harmless. The effects of gamma radiation on water? As I said already, it ionizes the water and forms free radicals, like H+ and OH-, which will get together creating water again and a small amount of heat. Otherwise I couldn't find anything else (it is worth saying that in certain nuclear plant models where the water is in direct contact with the reactor core it will be exposed to neutrons, which may create isotopes or even nitrogen, and in general makes things more complicated. However, that is not the case with contained nuclear waste.) Add to that what Ancalagon just said about what is needed to make something radioactive.

In conclusion, most of your citations were not directly relevant, and the point still stands. If you can show me that gamma radiation, by itself, can make water radioactive, and make it radioactive for a long time, then I'll be convinced. Otherwise the theoretical model of unbreakable containers deep into the sea looks very sound to me.