U.S. put nuclear waste under a dome on a Pacific island. Now it’s cracking open

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/05/20/us-put-nuclear-waste-under-dome-pacific-island-now-its-cracking-open/

168 107 7 years ago

Grazester• 7 years ago

Paywalled so I cant read but that dome in cover something with a porous bottom and rising sea level isn't helping either.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=autMHvj3exA

jdpedrie• 7 years ago

Clear site cookies and local storage, or open in private session.

mimixco• 7 years ago

Great documentary on this, free to watch. [0]

[0] https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/dome/

781• 7 years ago

More FUD. Nuclear energy is the safest energy.

Someone1234• 7 years ago

This is waste from nuclear weapons testing, it was concreted over as a "temporary measure" and now it seems like a more permanent solution needs to be found.

Unclear why you believe nuclear energy (by which I assume you mean nuclear power generation) is relevant.

stonogo• 7 years ago

For the same reason many readers will assume this headline is about power: "nuclear waste" is a term generally associated with reactor byproducts or weapons decommissioning.

Previous articles about this dome have used terms like "radioactive contamination" or "fallout-contaminated soil" instead, which does not have the connotations of nuclear reactor programs. I suppose those terms don't "pop" as well in headlines.

OrgNet• 7 years ago

Maybe they need to learn how to blow up their weapons all the way so that no radioactive waste is left (for testing)

gaze3• 7 years ago

I've sorta reached the conclusion that nuclear energy is the safest form of energy if everyone is well behaved and disciplined about it.

On the other hand, given the wrong incentives, you might just stow nuclear waste where it's cheapest and where you can get away with it, and then not be penalized when the containment mechanism you cheaped out on fails... or maybe you just conveniently forget to do maintenance on it as the responsibility for doing maintenance somehow conveniently evaporates due to some bureaucracy.

I think the debate isn't over whether or not nuclear power itself is safe, it's the debate over whether or not humans under capitalism are to be trusted to behave responsibly with this technology. Nuclear power isn't just the technology in isolation... humans are an intrinsic part of it.

vixen99• 7 years ago

Humans under what, then? I wonder if you're aware that the socialist economies of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union were not just economic failures; they were also environmental catastrophes.

Jeffrey Sachs has commented that the socialist nations had “some of the worst environmental problems in the entire globe.”. Companies can be held to account (failure to do so is another story) but try that with a centrally run enterprise.

wnkrshm2• 7 years ago

I think that nuclear power generation has been relatively safe over almost a century exactly due to systems engineering, incorporating procedures and the potential for human error.

I also think that you are right that some of the systems surrounding nuclear energy are suboptimally managed in places (and are often intransparent for the public, which I think is one of the factors why people are still afraid). And I think it's because nuclear power generation is a social commitment on a very long time scale - and humans aren't very good at dealing with cause and effect over long time scales.

While there is, just like in aeronautics, a paper trail connecting to each engineer and expert working on a system, it does not matter whether society can identify a person that is responsible for a decision made half a century ago. Think about leaky permanent[0] waste storage close to densely populated areas (like in Germany). Analyzing what went wrong is suddenly a task for historians, not for engineers. And history is of course necessarily colored in perspective - politicans can point to an expert who was wrong half a century ago.

In engineering and safety culture, iteration is necessary to approach an optimal system - the problem is here: How can we learn from what happened decades ago when the cause wasn't a part, a design or a process, something that can be simulated with a high degree of confidence? But a decision necessarily based on lots of unknowns? What can we do to be able to learn from it next time?

[0] officially temporary but due to how it was done effectively permanent

Edit: Markup

calibas2• 7 years ago

Can we ship all the nuclear waste to your house? Don't worry, it's the safest kind of energy there is.

Or maybe "safe" isn't the right term for something that also produces some of the most deadly substances that we know of? It's "safe" so long as nothing goes wrong, and everything is stored correctly. Of course, that regularly proves to not be the case: https://www.newsweek.com/ohio-school-closed-enriched-uranium...

ccffph3• 7 years ago

It's very worrying to see comments like this become more and more common on HN.

Yes, I will take the waste. If it's in the containers we've developed specifically for this purpose, yes. It beats the current situation in the US where everyone stores waste on site because politicians can't decide where to put it because of people like you.

Modern waste, with proper precautions, is safe for long term disposal and storage. I cannot stress this enough.

If you don't believe me, this website has plenty of information regarding nuclear power, straight from the source. It is developed and run by the UN. Based on your misinformation, I strongly urge you to pore over this content and then attempt to reevaluate your own question.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/Information-Library.aspx

mikestew2• 7 years ago

Can we ship all the nuclear waste to your house?

Assuming the alternative (which you conveniently left out) is the negative externalities of coal-fired power ending up on my doorstep? Yes, I'll take the nuke waste, thanks. Pull around on the left side of the house, please, so that you don't crush the sewer lines.

Don't worry, it's the safest kind of energy there is.

Nothing in your comment contradicts that statement.

thrower123• 7 years ago

Seal it in a lead box, and I'll put it in my basement, sure. I've already got radon leaching out of the bedrock, and a big bunch of bananas in my kitchen. I think I'm already picking up more rads from that, not to mention all the chest X-rays I had to do on a regular basis for a few years.

RappingBoomer• 7 years ago

so we just have to go in and fix it up. No big deal.

jason_zig• 7 years ago

Does anyone else feel helpless when reading stuff like this? Is there anything I can do to make things better in these scenarios?

acct17712• 7 years ago

Tell people around you to stop implicitly trusting centralized power.

NotSammyHagar• 7 years ago

How about it's never too late to work to rectify the mistakes of the past. We at least have to do our best as human beings. I can't do anything about something 1000 years ago, but I can help that person I saw on the street maybe, or I can add my voice to those who decry some terrible behavior of the government. I can vote. I can go to city councils and speak out.

addicted• 7 years ago

Who goes around implicitly trusting central power. In any aspect of their lives.

I can literally think of no one I know who wouldn’t respond to me telling them “hey you should stop implicitly trusting central power” by asking what drugs I’m on if I think they implicitly trust central power.

I guess this straw man is necessary to create so some can beat it down, but as far as I can tell such people don’t actually exist.

irrational• 7 years ago

But whom has the power to clean something like this up except for centralized power?

gubbrora• 7 years ago

People trust centralized power because there is no viable alternative to trusting the centralized power and hoping for the best.

_bxg13• 7 years ago

Vote. As futile as it feels, that's all any of us can do.

tenpies• 7 years ago

It is futile because you think that the only country with this issue is the US.

I can guarantee that China and Russia have similar if not worst storage problem - the difference is that the US allows this information to exist in the public. Even if those governments allowed the information to be public, what are you going to do, not for the Party/Putin? That sounds like a great way to win a free trip to Siberia or the re-education camp.

gnode• 7 years ago

Voting is a blunt instrument; it's effective, but it's a poor signal. It says only one thing: I want this entity to wield power. If you want to sue someone, you don't become a judge, you bring a lawsuit.

If you want to cause political change, you need to bring something into the public discourse; make it known to the politicians and the electorate. People do this by writing their politicians, getting media attention, organising or joining political action groups, backing candidates, or even going into politics themselves.

gooseus• 7 years ago

Yes.

Plenty of people will offer things you can do, but really they're only things that will treat your feeling of helplessness and not things that have any significant chance of improving these scenarios.

duxup• 7 years ago

I think this event sounds far worse than it is. The site is contaminated already worse than any leak would cause.

That's not good, but it's not some sort of catastrophic event here.

anovikov• 7 years ago

I don't think there's so much activity left after so many years

ocdtrekkie• 7 years ago

Plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24,110 years. Source: Wikipedia.

erentz2• 7 years ago

The US needs to go in and clean up this mess and should feel very obligated to move quickly on this, but is hasn’t. See also this article from 2015 [1] and folks may enjoy this video for the visuals of it [2].

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/03/runit-dome-pac...

[2] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=autMHvj3exA

_bxg13• 7 years ago

"The US needs to go _____ and should feel very obligated to move quickly on this, but it hasn't."

Same old story. I think most of the world has given up expecting the U.S. to be any kind of responsible world citizen.

mc32• 7 years ago

There also the ~900 Tbq disposed by the then USSR in the Baltic, not to mention the vast quantities that ended up in the Arctic Ocean.

But definitely the US should improve that encasement or otherwise minimize the dangers.

sailfast2• 7 years ago

That would be a nice thing to do, but per the article in 1983 the Marshall Islands traded US liability for nuclear issues as part of their move to self-government.

That is not to say that some Federal-level support is not warranted like other Superfund sites, but that it may not be the total and complete responsibility of the US Federal government to resolve the issue, as agreed to legally by both parties.

erentz2• 7 years ago

Shivetya up thread posted a PDF report that's quite an interesting read, so it's not being totally ignored by the US gov.

I agree they signed an agreement, still I'd expect us to do the clean up, agreement aside, we made the mess, have what's needed to fix it. The Marshall Islander's are a poor nation that could not afford to fix this without assistance. It's the neighborly thing to do.

omegaworks• 7 years ago

the Marshall Islands traded US liability for nuclear issues as part of their move to self-government.

This is classic over-the-barrel negotiating tactics used by colonizing nations over their former colonies. The Marshall Islanders had few options here. Continue to have their sovereignty dictated from and literal lands and lives ruined by a foreign nation, or take liability for the colonizer's experimentation and some control of their future back.

Just because a choice was made, doesn't make the process just or right. It may release the United States from a legal obligation, but it doesn't excuse any ethical or moral obligations of the state to the people of the islands.

Hydraulix989• 7 years ago

They should also clean it up in my hometown's backyard:

https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/03/23/what-lies-beneath-numec...

Shivetya• 7 years ago

PDF of report done in 2013 [1] which basically says and leaks will rapidly dilute. The key to remember is the lagoon and surrounding areas are already far more polluted than what this dome may leak.

Besides, if ever want a real scare go look at the maps for all the chemical munitions dumped in our oceans that we know about [2] - does not include normal munitions and such.

So while it is a problem it is not the real problem that already exist.

[1] https://marshallislands.llnl.gov/ccc/Hamilton_LLNL-TR-648143...

[2] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/decaying-weapo...

Someone• 7 years ago

News from a few weeks ago https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/05/02/first-world-war-...:

”Deadly mustard gas has leaked from a First World War underwater “weapons cemetery” in the North Sea, close to the Belgian coast”

Those were trace amounts, so there is not much immediate danger, but things can get worse.

And for normal munitions, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mines_in_the_Battle_of_Messi... probably lists a few of the scariest (a few 10,000+ kg stashes of explosives buried in Belgium since World War One. One of them exploded in 1955 after a lightning strike, showing that they were still dangerous after fortie-is years; a few others still buried somewhere)

alexwasserman• 7 years ago

And also -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Richard_Montgomery

The Doomsday Wreck.

Tade0• 7 years ago

FTA on the town’s main drag proudly advertise fish and chips made with Baltic-caught cod on their menus.

My friends from this area generally advise against eating at any place which advertises this too strongly. To the locals it's actually a turn off to begin with.

JSeymourATL• 7 years ago

Tangentially related: What ever became of Taylor Wilson? > https://www.businessinsider.com/taylor-wilson-taking-the-ene...

cameldrv• 7 years ago

Pretty bad reporting. OK, it contains Pu-239, but how much? If it leaks, what effects will that have?

cyrix1002• 7 years ago

This is the correct thought process. The linked article from llnl [1] states that “The final plan called for (1) removing all radioactive and non-radioactive debris (equipment, concrete, scrap metal, etc.), (2) removing all soil that exceeded 14.8 Bq (400 pCi) of plutonium per gram of soil, (3) removing or amending soil between 1.48 and 14.8 Bq (40 and 400 pCi) of plutonium per gram of soil, determined on a case-by-case basis depending on ultimate land-use, and 4) disposing and stabilizing all this accumulated radioactive waste into a crater on Runit Island and capping it with a concrete dome.” It goes on to state that “A estimated total of 73,000 cubic meters of surface soil...was recovered by scapping and deposited in Cactus crater on Runit Island.”

Unfortunately, it does not provide an average specific activity for the material stored, only a lower limit threshold. If we assume it was near this lower limit of 14.8 bq threshold (could be the case depending on how often case (3) was used) and assume mostly plutonium-239. Since isotopic distribution is unknown, this is a conservative assumption because the longer half-life will yield a larger mass in the calculation. The molar density can be calculated from the specific activity listed:

Na/m = a x hl/ln(2) = 14.8[decay/s] x 23110[yrs]/ln(2) = 1.57e13 atoms/gram = 2.61e-11 mol/gram

The mass of the dirt collected will be assumed to be wet sand with a density of 1905 kg/m^3 [2] (note that density is actually slightly higher than this due to the plutonium contained). And finally, the volume collected is 73,000 cubic meters, or 1.39e11 grams. So the total amount of plutonium is:

2.61e-11[mol/g] x 1.39e11[g] = 3.63 mol

So our envelope calculation yields about 870 grams of plutonium. So how accurate is this? It is probably on the high side after reading the paper posted by Shivetya [3]. They cite a total inventory of 545 GBq. Using the assumptions above, one would expect an inventory of 2058 GBq.

As for the effects, that’s difficult to tell. Really the two scenarios that come to mind are a constant leaching into the environment or a disaster that results in the total mass being dumped. In the latter case a disaster of that magnitude would likely disperse the material in a biased direction. In this case it would dilute relatively quickly. Impacts from the radiation would probably be apparent close by in the biased direction. A constant leak would depend on the leach rate and leak locations. The NRC defines monthly sewer release limits of material in Table 3 of 10 CFR Part 20 Appendix B - standards for protection against radiation. The number given for Pu is 84 uCi or 3.108e6 Bq. Based on the plutonium inventory calculated and neglecting material decay, the material could leach out within NRC limits over a period of 55 thousand years (2058e9/3.108e6/12). Note that this number is likely highly inflated given the assumption that all radioactive material is Pu-239 and the comparison in [3]. Using the number from [3] and assuming all activity is Pu, the duration would be 14 thousand years. However this is a rough analysis that does not account for isotopic distributions, so please take the results with a grain of salt.

[1] https://marshallislands.llnl.gov/enewetak.php#cleanup

[2] https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/amp/dirt-mud-densities-d_...

[3] https://marshallislands.llnl.gov/ccc/Hamilton_LLNL-TR-648143...

cyrix1002• 7 years ago

Just wanted to add that the mass leakage rate to remain under NRC limits would be 1.39e11 [g] / 55000 [yrs] = 2527 [kg/yr] = 7 [kg/day]

Put into that context, it might not be too absurd to think leakage would remain under NRC limits if only small cracks were present (assuming those limits are actually applicable to this scenario)

api• 7 years ago

One "meta" way of looking at things like this is that it represents a part of the technical debt left behind by the industrial revolution. Eventually we have to go back and fix this stuff, but as with technical debt in most code bases we tend to ignore it. Unfortunately technical debt is subject to compound interest, so the longer we ignore it the more costly it is to eventually deal with.

colordrops6• 7 years ago

I hear things like "we should go full nuclear, modern nuclear reactors are safe" all the time, yet this ignores externalities, unknown unknowns, human incompetence, and the unexpected. Who would expect the ocean to rise over your nuclear waste dome? Have people suggesting this forgotten the allegory of the unsinkable ship the Titanic? Entropy always wins in the end.

secfirstmd• 7 years ago

Also the costs of disassembly are insane, hidden and have proven to multiply once underway by many many times.

Dduuggrr• 7 years ago

That's true. They used same words before... But after Chernobyl and Fukushima... How they can expect we believe them?

gtirloni3• 7 years ago

This is not a matter of faith in some group of people ("them"). What's your point? That the whole nuclear industry, full of scientists and engineers can't be trusted with their studies?

AnthonyMouse7• 7 years ago

Proponents: Newer reactors are safer than older designs. The old designs are still safer than any other alternative and much safer than fossil fuels, but the newer designs are even better and we should build those.

Opponents: Don't build new reactors.

Opponents: See? See? You said...

Proponents: ...that newer designs are safer than older ones and even older ones are safer than alternatives. Which remains true.

...

Politics occurs here. When you ask whether something is safe, in practice what you're asking is if it's safe relative to alternatives. So solar is safe because it's safer than coal, and nuclear is safe because it's safer than solar.

But there is also an absolutist definition of safe which requires an inhuman perfection that no real technology could ever meet. Not solar, not nuclear, not biofuels, it's just an unattainable standard.

So you ask if something is safe, people say yes (meaning it's safe relative to alternatives), then you apply the impossible standard and claim that they're lying.

If you want to stop nuclear over safety with any credibility you would also have to be willing to stop everything with a worse safety record. But that's every known alternative whatsoever.

yongjik2• 7 years ago

Ironically, if we did go full nuclear, the oceans probably wouldn't have risen, saving us from a cracking nuclear dome and an untold number of other hassles.

Sure, nuclear power is not 100% safe, but its "worst case" pales in comparison to fossil fuel's "guaranteed outcome by 2100."

I'm OK with building, say, solar instead of nuclear. I'm definitely NOT OK with keeping fossil fuel where nuclear is available, while paying a lip service saying "Oh don't worry, in 30 years maybe we will switch to renewables."

asp12357• 7 years ago

its "worst case" pales in comparison to fossil fuel's "guaranteed outcome by 2100."

I'm fairly certain nuclear catastrophe is far worse than global warming.

ehnto• 7 years ago

I can't see why solar isn't now the leading candidate. Nuclear is cool and all, but the simplicity of a butt-tonne of solar in a field can't be overlooked. It's not likely to fail catastrophically, maintenance is modular and low-impact. The skills needed are trades not degrees and if we can get the power output/battery/backup balance right, as a society we have clean, reliable energy indefinitely.

I say that knowing we are barreling toward fantastic solar participation in the grid in many countries, and I feel it's just a matter of time before it becomes the dominant source of our energy, especially as battery solutions come into play. It's also not the end of the world to have some backup gas generators that fire up once in a blue moon. Compared to 100% fossil fuels, the occasional gas turbine firing up on a stormy week would be negligible. Alternatively, novel storage methods such as hydro storage could make even backup energy green.

There are probably cities where it wouldn't work right now, but I can't imagine there being many places where it couldn't work at all.

linuxftw• 7 years ago

Ironically, if we did go full nuclear, the oceans probably wouldn't have risen

Unlikely. I think the consensus is that the globe was already warming, humanity may have just sped it up.

Circuits• 7 years ago

Some messes are just too big to clean up. They knew going into the testing that it was going to kill thousands and thousands of natives and effect native people in a terrible way for generations to come but they didn't give a shit then and they dont give a shit now. That's why most of the natives have 6 fingers and 4 toes, are sterile and the land is poisoned and will stay poisoned. You can deny it all you want but if it was not true shit like this wouldn't be so common place. We aren't the only ones and this isn't the only site and it's not just radiation, its carbon, its carcinogens, it's plastic... there is a whole boat load of shit like this that everyone pretends to care about when their talking about it with their husband or best friend but seems to have no trouble sleeping off the next day. What makes us think we can all just act like animals one day and civilized humans that next... I have no clue but that's reality. People ask: "Oh what can I do, I am so small and the problem is so big!" idk but I do know this if you ACTUALLY cared you would figure out some way to help. What's the difference between pretending to care and actually caring you ask? It's simple, doing something about it versus talking about doing something about it, it's that simple, that's the difference. Write your governor, send some money, do anything or just admit you don't care, and do nothing. That's what the US government is counting on you to do and that's why they got away with this and that's why they will get away with similar shit in the future.

sunstone• 7 years ago

The people who designed it have now passed on so it has met its designed lifetime.

U.S. put nuclear waste under a dome on a Pacific island. Now it’s cracking open

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