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delecti 6 hours ago

Leaving aside that Canada is huge, waste is really just not that much of a problem. It would be easy to safely store all the waste that will ever be produced at a dedicated storage site, if you could drum up the political will for such a site to exist. But really, it's even easier to just store it all on-site. Not that much waste is produced; stick it in a cask and leave it alone.

fc417fc802 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> But really, it's even easier to just store it all on-site.

I agree with the rest but on site storage of high level waste is a terrible idea. Even after vitrification that's material that will remain dangerously radioactive for longer than agrarian human civilization has existed. Ideally it should enter a disposal chain that keeps as little of it at ground level for a short a time as possible in order to hedge against the long tail possibility of a large scale disaster stranding it on the surface.

I think the finnish plan to bury it on site 500 meters down in bedrock is a decent one.

theeyescanner 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

This is why I always scoff at people talking about the scarcity of landfill space. We have damn near unlimited space here. It might not look like it if you never leave a major city, but if you drive up north you will see nothing but trees forever.

The only hard part is ensuring your waste doesn't enter the water system, but that's just bog standard mining engineering.

xienze 4 hours ago | parent [-]

> but if you drive up north you will see nothing but trees forever.

Problem is you'll get some tribe coming out of the woodworks claiming whatever inaccessible area hundreds of miles from civilization is some sacred ground that can't be touched.