"Underground" usually also means degraded containment (micro-tears in 15cm thick steel), seeping water soluble heavy-metal salts, off-gassing Radon, and sometimes literally on fire when using the wrong brand of kitty-litter to clean up toxic waste.

When (not if) the salt caverns collapse from rotten concrete, they hope it will remain stable and dry. Even vitrified ceramic containment isn't perfect, but seems better than a caveman bucket technology. We will have to disagree about it justifying fission tech sustainability. =3

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fruitworks 2 days ago | parent [-]

The salt caverns we're talking about are pretty geologicially predictable, so we won't have to hope.

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Joel_Mckay 2 days ago | parent [-]

All holes eventually fill with water, especially in places with soluble structures and negligent engineering assumptions.

Or, people could put up a 20kW solar roof for $1k year in most places. =3

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fruitworks 8 hours ago | parent [-]

I know a guy who was a nuclear engineer and geologist who did planning for yucca mountain and he seemed to know his stuff.

I don't know if you would be getting that much water in the desert that is the nevada test site, or who would even be drinking from that water.

Also the cat litter thing you mentioned earlier is already regulated by 10 CFR, and all uranium offgasses radon (even natural uranium that never gets dug up and used in a reactor in the first place).

The threat from used fuel is that the short lived nuclides seep into groundwater, or that someone might use the fissile material create a weapon. So as long as you keep it in a deep cave in the middle of nowhere and guard the entrance, it's fine.

Solar will probably remain cheap as long as it can take advantage of the existing grid capacity and push that storage externality on the rest of the electrical grid.

Nuclear's long-term problem in the USA is the massive reserves of cheap shale gas discovered in the last 10 years.

	▲	Joel_Mckay 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		>yucca mountain and he seemed to know his stuff. If I recall it was found to be perforated with deep defects that already leak water. And deserts do have ground water, but may only see periodic annual precipitation. Paleowater is also quite common in some areas. >Solar will probably remain cheap It gets cheaper every year, but $/kWh is not as cheap as the upfront naive costs of fission yet. Hence the loss-leader pejorative is accurate. >regulated by 10 CFR It was a real accident not hyperbole. The carbon matter based kitty litter actually did start a real radioactive fire in the disposal facility. The proximity to hot waste causes material degradation and contamination. Stable isotopes in child eye lenses have already shown it rarely stays localized (baby boomers didn't show this phenomena). The gas company shenanigans are well known, and they often do end-runs with 10 year below market cost contracts to maintain monopolies with large firms. They often wait to pull this stunt just before a project breaks ground to maximize losses. Centralized infrastructure may simply be too expensive to reliably maintain under unstable conditions. =3