been thinking about nuclear waste lately in terms of collapse and wonder what people think some different likely scenarios are, and also what would be our ‘best case’?
it seems to me that no matter which way i cut it, we’re on a sitting time bomb and i can’t think of any solution that is even remotely safe, particularly over the long-term as civ collapses and our capacity to monitor and put energy intensive resources into keeping it stored away dwindles.
seems pretty grim to me…any thoughts?
I have mulled over this dilemma too.
Some friends of a friend who are preparing for peak oil (and the intensified warfare that will likely accompany it) have built places to live in what are called “nuclear shadows” - the eastern side of a mountain where winds carrying radioactive elements have already passed over the mountain peak and (supposedly) have dropped off the radioactivity. I don’t know the details, I don’t know how it works, but I imagine that these people aren’t wackos and that they’ve done their research.
When I get back to Seattle I’ll ask my friend if he can explain nuclear shadows better. I don’t know these friends but he might be able to put me in contact with them if he doesn’t know enough to explain. I looked up “nuclear shadow” on wikipedia and got no results.
I think that wherever in the world you live, it is crucial to consider all radioactive facilities nearby (nuclear power/weapons/what have you) and establish a rewilding community on a landbase far, far away from them, as well as in a place where radioactive drift (from, say, warfare) is absolutely minimized.
This is something I wonder about too. Nuclear waste can take over 10 000 years to decay. One facility for long term storage covers many acres. Has massive pillars with warning signs and labels in many languages positioned inside a huge fence, inside those is another fence, I believe, then a library containing the history and description of what is stored hundreds of feet below, in every known language.
Sounds like a horror movie: A temple with long forgotten languages is discovered, only deciphered once it’s too late, and the stuff has been unearthed.
I recently read an article in Backpacker Magazine, which talked about one of the purest wilderness areas in the US… the reason it was so pure? A nuclear plant which broke a few rules, and ran into problems has polluted the surrounding area. People couldn’t enter the area for over 20 years. The site itself is still under an intense cleanup operation, but the surrounding area was recently deemed safe for hikers…as long as you follow the posted “DANGER-RADIATION” signs. >:(
How to keep such areas ‘off-limits’ for 10 000 years after the collapse is something to think about.
… it makes my stomach turn.
Sometimes I think I’ll get myself sterilized as long as there are still modern medical facilities around…
Can something really be called “pure” if it contains dangerous levels of radiation?
Then again, a good point that has been made on this board: “pure” is not a very realistic way to describe nature. “Pure” is a civilized concept.
I was thinking about this and plastics recently, about how long these things are going to last. Some insights came to me, though I do not if they evidence wishful thinking on my part (some kind of muted cornucopian stance?) or if any worth resides in them. I wrote the following in my journal that day (edited to make some sense):
The fact is we don’t know what the Universe s capable of. In so many ways, we should know, should be awe-struck for it has produced this glorious world. Human civilization has fucked shit up terribly, but it’s a young, short-lived monster. We could say that plastics and radioactive waste will blight this planet for millions of years until the sun swallows us. But we don’t know. These things have only been around for less than a century. Predictions concerning their decay are based solely on experiments in sterile laboratories apart from the incredible, multifaceted web of life. Adaptation of complex systems is something we can’t predict and shouldn’t underestimate. In a couple of thousand years, after the fall of Western Civilization, who knows what microbe will spring up in landfills, munching on plastics and styrofoam, turning them back into organic compounds. Or who knows how the world will adapt to radioactive waste. In the short term these things, very understandably so, appear frightening, but once the world rewilds we don’t know what will come of them. It may take a long time from the standpoint of one human lifetime, but from a multi-generational perspective, the healing of the world could happen much more rapidly than expected. But we can’t know this healing until civilization contracts and collapses, allowing the world to once again do what it is doing and has always done. Growth, Change, Succession.
Reminds me of the plastic trash islands in the worlds oceans. Two in the pacific the size of Texas, affecting animal populations thousands of miles away from any civilization…that made me feel sick when I read about it.
A serial number stamped WWII aircraft part was found on one pacific island, making it safe to say the crap is stuck with us for at least our lifetimes.
Also, in the ocean it can’t degrade, because only sunlight significantly decays plastic, as far as we know. On land its predicted to last “only” a few hundred to a few thousand years.
That makes me feel a lot better, actually. It’s not much, considering the amount of trash out there, but its definitely comforting.
Perhaps, if it behaves anything like yeast, it will ‘learn’ to use plastic more effectively.
If one uses too much refined sugar in a beer, it can cause an incomplete fermentation because of the rapid natural selection taking place. The yeast can lose the ability to fully consume malt, becoming specialized in the consumption of refined sugar.