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Building a Plutonium Memorial
edsonw writes: "The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is giving $3,000 in prizes in a contest which will select the better ideas about how to
handling and storing plutonium.. In their words, "We're inviting artists, architects, and general visionaries to submit their artistic work for what we're calling the "Plutonium Memorial," a facility that would house the world's unwanted weapon plutonium. We see the memorial, were it actually ever to be built, as a grand and visible emblem reminding the world that short-sighted paths to power can lead to a big pile of problems"."
Sorry if I'm being obtuse, but we have all of the world's surplus plutonium, about 8 tonnes, having a relative atomic mass of 244g/mol.
The critical mass of Plutonium is a bit less than 250g. So, if you put all 8 tonnes of highly dense weapons-grade Plutonium together, you are going to get a bang.
Because you don't know shit about physics. Critical mass is heavely dependent on density and for low density it's infinite. The critical mass is telling you what amount of material of the particular density will start a chain-reaction caused by the natural neutron-flux. The natural neutron-flux is more or less constant.
--
Forget Napster. Why not really break the law?
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
There is a fair bit of evidence (see practically every time this discussion has happened on /.) that the Japanese were about ready to surrender anyway
Perhaps, but (a) I don't consider Slashdot claims authoritative, and (b) has anyone claimed the Americans had any reason to know this? In February of '45, all 22,000 defenders of Iwo Jima fought to the death, killing 6,000+ Americans in the process. In April, 16,000 Americans died at Okinawa, facing 1,400+ kamikaze planes, and 120,000 or more Japanese soldiers, 90% of whom died. It was not longer after the battle that Truman gave the go-ahead to drop the bomb, armed with pretty solid evidence that the Japanese were prepared to fight to the death.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
The long term success rate of human civilizations aren't terribly high. There's no guarantee that the U.S. will be around multiple millenia from now. There's no guarantee that English will still be the predominant language in the U.S.
;-)
Oh come on now. Don't be silly. Civilizations are destroyed by invading barbarians. Don't you remember your history lessons? Unless the Canadians suddenly start dressing in furry animal skins and fashioning weapons and spearheads out of dead moose carcasses I'm not going to worry that the United States is going to go away anytime soon. At worst everyone in the world will nuke each other and we'll live in some weird ass post-apocalyptic world like something out of "Waterworld" or "The Postman". Kevin Costner is such a visionary.
How about we just figure out somewhere to put it for about 50 years, by which time space access should be cheap enough to blast it all into the Sun or something.
you weren't lazy enough to not fix the problem, why not do it right the first time? :-)
-l
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The wheel is turning but the hamster is dead.
The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.
And done well:
http://www.halcyon.com/blackbox/hw/wipp/wipp.html
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Our grandchildren are really going to be pissed at us. First we burn up all the oil by driving around aimlessly and keeping our houses at a constant temperature no matter what the season.
Just wait until they find out that we dug up all the radioactive materials, purified them, and then reburied them in unreachable places so our ancestors can't have nuclear energy either. How can anybody explain that?
"The best you can hope for is to be buried in secret so your grave won't be desecrated".
Haven't we already figured out that "security through obscurity" doesn't work? Even hiding it away, the resourceful terrorists (ie, the ones we should be scared about) will find it anyway. If it's hidden away, it's less likely to be well protected and therefore easier to steal.
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for getting RID of nuclear waste:
It all comes from the ground in some form, but it has been concentrated to the point where it is lethal. So, after it has been used (and calmed down a bit) turn the stuff back into dust and spread it around the earth in small enough doses that it is undetectable next to normal natural radioactive ore.
I am sure there is a problem since nobody disposes of waste this way. I can imagine the ignorant outcry of the masses: "Not in my backyard!".
Oh well.
Breathing in Plutonium dust is also a very bad idea - and where you handle Pu there's probably going to be some dust (2mg breathed in will kill you through cancer).
And after Pu emits alpha radiation it's gone, but what with the stuff that pops up instead? That's surely not stable already and will probably generate more dangerous radiation.
what else?
Why not skip all the dramatics and put it into a subduction zone at the bottom of the ocean?
People always miss the obvious solution.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
The actual point of burial wouldn't be right at the ocean floor. It should ideally be hundreds of feet below that. There's no water there, so it won't matter if the containers get crushed (a long time from now). The whole mess will be drawn deep into the planet.
And, it's kinda the whole point that the containers get melted in the interior of the planet
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
The pyramids are way too tempting for something that you want people to leave alone. They are visible from a long way away, for one thing.
If you want people to leave something alone, make it an uninteresting shape, bury it way underground in a highly inhospitable place, etc.
What about mixing the plutonium with glass to be the 'filler' against it becoming a critical mass, and also to store the thing in whatever container you like... more glass? .. you can use as much glass as you like so it's safe and it probably will not go anywhere during the life of the plutonium. Keyword: probably. IANANP (I am not a nuclear physicist) but this seemed like a possible 'solution'.
i.e. mix it with enough benign matter (glass sounds good to me) so it becomes just a big blob of not-very-harmful-stuff.
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Delphis
Delphis
A late reply of mine .. Just wanted to acknowledge your response and thank you for the information :)
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Delphis
Delphis
There's the coal ash too, it doesn't all seep into the atmosphere. The coal ash is even 100ppm od so Uranium..... The ash heaps make pretty good memorials themselves though...
make it really ugly too.
That will scare people away.
If you make something big, like the large pyramids,
they'll attract people.
Dont they mean a plutonium dump?
Microsoft aggravates my tourettes syndrome.
Why not recycle it? You can learn about the process Here From the web page: "Used nuclear fuel can then either be disposed of as waste or recycled. By separating the three percent of waste from the usable uranium and plutonium, 97 percent of nuclear fuel can be recycled."
Don't Panic! but with the Don't crossed out.
On a side note- in one of my classes the professor told us that a lot of the scientists at the time were concerned that detonating an atomic bomb would ignite all of the oxygen in the atmosphere, causing the whole planet to burn.
IIRC - the concern was that the detonation of the first atomic bomb would cause a chain reaction of nitrogen fusion, resulting in an atmosphere composed of silicon and oxygen, which would react to form silicon dioxide. They estimated that there was only a 10% chance that they would convert the atmosphere to sand.
Frighten people away, rather than attracting them with the idea of buried treasure, archeological relics or whatever;
There's only one way to do this: kill people. The goal of placing a message on this pile of plutonium that will be universally understood for tens of thousands of years is ludicrous. However, the plutonium itself is a pretty robust messenger. Whatever else you do, store the plutonium in such a way that whoever discovers it will die.
Some will no doubt think this is too cold-hearted; I would ask if they intend to avoid unnecessary deaths by eliminating all pathogens and large predators so that our descendants won't be threatened by them? Perhaps level every cliff on the planet so that no one will fall off? Drain the seas so no one will drown? Place warning signs saying "DO NOT LIVE HERE" near all coasts susceptible to hurricanes, in all plains subject to tornadoes, and along every fault line that generates earthquakes and volcanoes?
We've created a force of nature. We can't hope to warn everyone of its danger EXCEPT by allowing peoples and cultures who come into contact with it to experience the danger.
Then again, a more expensive (but definately cooler) idea would be to store it all in a big tunnel in redmond, washington. Maybe it'll mutate the clarity gene and M$ might stop being so crappy
..in one spot and the problem will rapidly take care of itself.
Well, at least, it won't be plutonium anymore.
-- Alastair
Not so. That's a science legend (a la urban legend) that is so repeated it has found its way into high school textbooks. Do a search, or go to a higher level source (like a professor in materials science), and you'll find the truth.
The historical basis of this legend is amusing as well... it has to do with a mistranslation of a german text on the subject. Apparantly (and I am not a materials scientist myself), since glass does not crystalize, it's in a small category of materials called something like "amorphous". The german word was mistranslated, and the resulting text seemed like it was saying that glass is a super cooled liquid. Similar to the Mars "canals" error.
The "old glass windows are thin on top and thicker on the bottom" is semi-true: about one-quarter of the time. The old process for making glass turned out panes with a slight wedge shape to them. When taken out (as most have), you can only see that they are thicker at one end, and thinner on the other. In fact, that thick end could have been facing to either side or to the top. I have also *seen* verification of that fact from historical reenactors who make glass using techniques from centuries past.
Now, of course, just like many people have said here: *all* material slowly alters. I believe it was Discover magazine that published the actual model of how long it would take glass (at room temperature) to "flow". It came out to millions or billions of years for a small change. But then, that's true of steel and other "solids".
Do a search on the subject on Google.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
.. or even until it naturally becomes "safe"..
It only needs to be stored until we invent a way to make it safe. (Perhaps we'll invent cheap ways to manipulate things at a subatomic level?)
At the current rate of technological improvement, I doubt that will be more than 200 years before we figure something out.
Of course, I just pulled that "200 years" figure from my ass, but the point is, stop hugging trees and trying to hide/bury the problem (which seems nearly impossible) and start figuring out a way to fix the problem.
-TomK
Why, you could of course use it as the world's largest hardware random number generator.
Preferably located deep in some desert, though.
Indeed, my first thought on reading the article was, "well, I think it should look like a power plant."
This sounds goofy, and it probably is, but didn't all this stuff come from the earth? Why not put it back? We have loads of oil wells that have dried up - drop some plutonium down there when you cap a well. We have to seal the cap anyway, and the low quantities of waste per drilled hole would mean there wouldn't be much of a reward if terrorists tried to pull the stuff back up.
What's your damage, Heather?
Written and spoken language would change drastically over 10,000 years, how would we show the people of the future that this is a BAD building to enter?
Well, I'm no psychologist, but I can't imagine anything of the sort working. Look at how we dug into pyramids, despite them having the best barricades they could think up just a short few thousand years ago.
But furthermore, you're implying that people 10,000 years from now won't be able to detect radiation before it's too late. I would imagine that 10,000 years from now, detecting radiation won't be any more difficult than it is today. "Gee, I'm losing my hair. Hmmm." Hahaha.
What's your damage, Heather?
Correct, In a hundred thousand years the stuff will still be radioactive...
However, in 600-1000 years nuclear waste decays to the same radiation level as uranium ore. Just have to keep the stuff 1000 years and then bury it again.
Rob
(yes, 50 Kg is more than enough..but it will remain functional longer as the stuff decays) (yes, I'm being silly -- a boobytrap bomb would become nonfunctional in much too short a time to provide long-term "safety")
There's a little problem with that. Total destruction means that not all the victims are known. In Vietnam, there were records of the U.S. soldiers which were sent there and who did not return.
A pebble bed plutonium burner is safer and can burn several fuels, including plutonium.
Absolutely! Good point.
I've grown-up in the middle of Pennsylvania's soft coal country, and have been surrounded my whole life by HUGE piles of coal ash and red dog. This stuff is quite possibly the worst environmental hazard that I've ever seen. The seepage from this crap turns green vibrant rivers and streams into smelly, baren, acidic, yellow-orange eyesores. Another problem is that the boney piles (waste coal and ash) tend to spontaneously combust and smolder for years.
Unfortunately, as with many problems that we face, ignorance is pervasive and the solution is not politically correct. In this area, coal means jobs, and jobs mean political prosperity. A coal fired power plant needs a constant supply, nuclear requires an occassional (~7 years) refueling.
Raise your hand if you know how much radiation leaked out of Three Mile Island. The answer is none! The US Nuclear industry has been heavily regulated with redundant safeguards since the early 50's so this accident was safely contained. It's a shame for California that the anti-nuke activists could prey on the ignorance of the general public to make "Three Mile Island" synonymous with "Automatic Death."
Yes, I know that Chyrnoble (however you spell it) was a real disaster, but that was due to poor design and lack of adequate safeguards. In short, when properly implemented, nuclear is a much cleaner and safer form of energy than coal or any other fossil fuel.
-- Len
I've had that problem before. Get an account and you may get mod points some day.
-- Len
It's a shame that some people are offended when others present facts that refute the falacy that they believe in. I am beginning to think that the annonymous nature of moderation on slashdot is becomming more cowardly than those who post as AC's.
If anyone were to try to post a story about this underground fire in China, it would surely never make it on to the board as 'News for Nerds,' but it would definately fall under 'Stuff that Matters' when engaging in discourse about the future of our civilization and current environmental policies.
What a shame that this silent censorship can be fostered within a system designed to prevent just such a thing.
-- Len
Er.. hello? Stick it in a building? NO THANK YOU.
There's these things called "Fast Breeder Reactors". They have them in Canada. They convert Plutonium into less radioactive byproducts which are safer. They generate power.
Jeeeeez... it's like saying "Let's put all of the world's oil in a big vat in the middle of the Atlantic...".
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
Plutonium is bred in ordinary nuclear reactors in the course of operation. By the time the fuel elements are nearing their end of use (mostly due to accumulation of neutron-absorbing fission products) some significant fraction of the reactor's power output is from the fission of plutonium, not uranium. (I think I recall about 30%.)
So, sure, power plants can burn plutonium. There are, no doubt, some engineering details, but it obviously can be done because it is being done, every day, in every nuclear power plant on the planet.
That's the appropriate way to dispose of unwanted plutonium, I say, as I sit here in California waiting for another rolling blackout.
Don't have any design ideas, but the name for the structure is easy: the Archimedes "Ludwig" Plutonium Memorial, to honor the Atom Totality Theory and a pioneer Usenet Kook.
I suggest that we build a large field filled with thousands of cylidrical (and phalic - everyone loves phalic memorials) shapes (one or two for every major city in the world). We split up the plutonium into small ammounts and put some at the
top of each cylinder. Then we fill the rest of the cylinders with expensive electronics and rocket fuel.
This memorial would be a constant reminder to the world how dangerous it used to be to mess with us.
This sounds like it was taken right out of planet of the apes part 2.
(the most disapointing movie of all times - they got progressively worse, but by that time I wasnt expecting much)
The problem with ideas like this is, as many others have pointed out, that storage of materials which will present a significant danger many thousands of years later is extremely difficult and costly to consider. Adding to the problem of storage of fissonable materiel as opposed to fission by-products is that a ready cache of such materiel would be *very* hard for human beings to resist using.
The only viable solution, as I see it, is to build a launch vehicle that would accelerate the fissionable mass to a velocity capable of embedding the materiel deep enough into the sun to effectively destroy it. Of course, if it doesn't go deep enough, it might just cause a solar flare that would simply blast a huge wave of highly radioactive particles right back at us along the solar winds. Hopefully, if this were to happen, the cloud would be sufficiently dispersed as to not pose too great a problem.
Perhaps deep space, or even a black hole, is a better answer; not that I want some possible civilisation to find us shooting a large batch of dangerous materiel at them, but the probability of its being found and used against us in anyway is likely less than the probability of its being used against us if we keep it on Earth. Building such a launch vehicle would of course be insanely expensive, but I believe the expense of keeping the stuff here is going to turn out to be far greater.
Hmmm... your post reminded me of my first thought when I read the summary:
"reminding the world that short-sighted paths to power can lead to a big pile of problems" (emphasis mine)
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
Does anyone else see a problem with storing all or most of the world's weapon-grade plutonium in ONE memorial? Especially an extrememly visible and recognizable memorial? I say we shoot it all at Venus and see if it shoots back :)
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Co-founder of GerbilMechs
So a "curse of the pyramids"-type thing? Sounds interesting...
Might be feeding a troll, but what the heck...
First, like many Allied actions in WWII, the nuking of Japan probably had more to do with scaring the Russians than anything else. (Along those lines, let me recommend Saving Private Power for a useful antidote to the usual WWII propaganda...some of the author's opinions are a bit far out there, but the facts he presents are a healthy lancing of the "good war" boil.)
Second, Little Boy used U-235. Fat Man was plutonium, but as Vonnegut said, "I know a single word that proves our democratic government is capable of committing obscene, gleefully rabid, racist, yahooistic murder, of unarmed men, women, and children....the word is Nagasaki."
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Amen.
And for all you enviroweenies talking about how we need Kyoto, and how horrible the US is for burning fossil fuels:
From a site on the weird chemistry going on around the Centralia Coal Fire, which has only burned a town in PA, something for comparison:
Now, could someone explain to me again why nuclear power is bad? Sheesh.
>
> Well, I'm no psychologist, but I can't imagine anything of the sort working.
Agreed. The last thing you want is a "grand and visible emblem".
My solutions, in order of preference:
1) Use it in breeder reactors. Turn it into something less dangerous (shorter half-life) and get some energy out of it. Sticking this much energy in a hole in the ground is a waste.
2) Stick it (if you must waste it!) in a hole in the ground with the rest of the waste. Call the place Yucca Mountain. Guard the hell out of it while our civilization lasts, but place no big-ass warning signs designed to attract curiosity-seekers for the next 10,000 years.
If our descendants in the year 12,001 have at least our level of technology, they'll know it's bad juju by the time they get anywhere near it. (And they'll probably wonder why the hell we buried all this useful Pu-239 instead of using it to power our cities!!)
If our descendants have stone-age technology, they won't be able to dig through a mile of rock salt. No warning needed.
If our descendants have 19th-century technology, no matter how intimidating the warning, they'll dig their way in, the same way we dug our way into the Pyramids. "Look, the ancient Americans placed big ugly spikes and pictures of dying people all over this site to warn us off. Silly primitives."
(Or in the words of Zaphod Beeblebrox, "Great! We really must be onto something if they're trying to kill us!")
No warnings, no memorials, nothing that could interest a passer-by, be he a civilian or an archaeologist.
Better idea: A memorial (in the traditional sense) to those who died to bring us this technology. Your contributions will not be forgotten.
I may be totally full of it but I rember one of my more free-thinking teachers telling me that originally the gubnit planned on taking all the spent fuel from nuclear power plants and refining it into new fuel rods, discarding all spent waste. Supposedly they halted this plan because it would put weapons grade plutonium in the hands of private plant operators. So instead of recycling fuel until it is gone, we leave it sitting around to be a big mess.
I don't really mind double posts on
What makes the arbiters of thsi plan think that stockpiling weapons grade plutonium in one place wont make it much easier for nuts to get hold of it? Isn't plutonium the hardest component to acquire when building a nuclear weapon?
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
use absolute JUNK.
No matter what material you use, whether it's glass, ceramic, steel, marble, or something else, some culture that comes after ours, will see the amazing mass of $seminaturalresource and decide that they can sell it for a profit, whether they can tell what's inside or not.
The pyramids have been "investigated" by museums, but plenty of gravesites and momuments were pillaged by thieves long before that.
I'm not so scared about people stealing it, but what really scares me is a location of whatever security, where is posted a sign that says, "no matter what, don't make any explosions here"
"The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is giving $3,000 in prizes in a contest which will select the better ideas about how to handling and storing plutonium.. In their words, "We're inviting artists, architects, and general visionaries to submit their artistic work for what we're calling the "Plutonium Memorial," a facility that would house the world's unwanted weapon plutonium."
Better idea for handling and storing plutonium? Recycle it back into forms reusable for nuclear fuel. The main concern which has stopped anyone from recycling nuclear waste back into fuel is the fear that terrorists are going to steal the material. Either A) you have an artistic, monumental waste of plutonium just sitting there requiring massive security or B) you build a reprocessing plant that has the ability to get rid of most of our nuclear waste problem (you're welcome, Nevada) while requiring massive security. Personally, with all of the security problems over in Russia, I doubt knocking off a well-secured reprocessing plant would be half as attractive an option as paying a few bribes to underpaid Russian technicians.
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
As the subduction zone moves, the containers holding the toxic waste will get crushed, and will leak toxic waste into the ocean.
Also, subduction zones are hot (think magma), right? so the toxic containers might melt also.
Stefan
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
Unfortunately, none of those structures come anywhere close to being a good model for the storage of nuclear waste. I think the pyramids are the only buildings that come close to being airtight. I have serious doubts that the most Governments are capable of building a structure that will remain air-tight leak-free and undisturbed by geological activity for the next 5,000 - 100,000 years.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
Interesting one of my friends found FOIA information about weapons grade Uranium that was missing, stolen, eaten, disappearing, $INSERT_FAVORITE_TERM_HERE, throughout the 1940's - 1980's. Along with those disappearances, many people were killed, and it was alleged that a) enough was gone for 30 potent weapons, b) some had gotten into the water supply for experimentation, etc.
Anyways for those who're interested check out MKUraniumcide
Want Root?
In my ongoing quest to make on-topic posts of the link you don't want to click. I propose decorating the monument with an image of everyone's favorite enlarged anus. I can almost gaurantee that 100k years from now that image will still be sufficiently repulsive to scare away any beast which might happen near to it.
________________________
I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
You are correct.
They don't want to build a memorial to the waste produced by coal plants, because there is about 5 million times as much of it, and it all seeps into the atmosphere anyway. That way, the public doesn't have to think coal waste is a problem.
I was thinking that if all the weapons plutonium were gathered it would be appropriate to create a clock set back to a minute after twelve o'clock to symbolize the beginning of a new era of hope.
Maybe it would be nice to have something like that some day.
But I think considering the important comment about the Warning Function, this clock should be set to the time the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has set the Doomsday Clock when the center is built. The front cover of the current Bulletin says, "PLUTONIUM - WHO WANTS IT ?" Consider the symbol used for dangerous biological components, it is a much scarier looking version of the trefoil used for atomic energy. I would put the two hands of the doomsday clock, with a great brilliantly glowing crystal at the twelve o'clock digits mark above, at the entrance to this facility. From far away one would see only this brilliant light suspended in the air, and on approach one would see the dark clock hands, supported from a point on the ground that would be the center of the clock. One hand, the hour hand, rises vertically from that point and supports this crystal beacon. Branching off from the main clock hand pillar is the minute hand, set perhaps to nine minutes to midnight as the current clock reads.
Warning? Perhaps the light would warn off a plane coming in for a crash landing.. but more importantly, warn future generations about how close we came, why we sequestered plutonium, about the seduction of energy, and the hidden threat that anybody with Plutonium power can go nuclear in a short amount of time. Like Japan, which is a classic example of irresponsible leadership and a committment to the plutonium breeding cycle.
Perhaps heads of state could be required to visit this vault and shrine before taking their oaths of national security so that they personally understand the responsibility they have for forging and maintaining peace. Someone who "wants" Plutonium should have to walk through that door first.
I am not anti-energy. I am anti-horror. If we could link this sort of thing to the net and hyper-equipped locations around the world it would be nice. But we need a commanding icon which will send a message to everyone who sees it in person or in facsimile. Like the Doomsday Clock, or the rays of the nuclear half-life ticking away the centuries, the millenia.
I'm thinking this might be a good submission.
My own personal thought has always been that the best way to deal with all this radioactive waste is just to shoot it all into the sun or something. I mean, it's not going ot damage the sun at all, and the problem disappears.
The only problem is the cost. If we can just step up the pace on that space elevator, getting it from Earth orbit to the sun would be a relatively cheap proposition.
... a lot can change.
The Egyptian dynasties were around a mere 3000 years ago, our earliest examples of writing less than 6000 years ago. We can't decipher those early writings. And how many of their relics still exist? where now are the cities of Akkad, Ur, Uruk?
Now add 4000 more years and work out what will be left. How many buildings or artifacts last this long? What will climatic changes and geological changes will happen to any location on the planet?
It's a great and worthy problem of our own making for people to solve. I heard the US military were looking at this problem a few years ago and came up with a symbolic language to mark out high level radiation dumps. Can anybody give me a reference to this?
It's also worth checking out the Long Now Foundation for their work on a 10,000 year clock and The Rosetta Project looking to create written artifiacts that will physically survive and be decipherable in a time period twice as long as the history of the written word so far...
What ever the solution we owe it to our future generations to sort it out. I wonder though if we're so fixed on short term plans and desires that we won't be able to dedicate the energy to making it happen. Sixty years after the nuclear age began and we're already finding that our leaders attitude towards nuclear waste is just to dump it out of sight and mind.
My friends and I have been convinced that the NRC made a deal with McDonalds Corporation to store the waste, in miniscule amounts, within Chicken Nuggets (they appeared in the market about the same time this became a problem in the early 80s). With everyone processing nuggets through their system in small amounts, we effectively distribute the waste over a large area, thus rendering it relatively harmless.
Prove this theory wrong!
davejenkins.com |
But isn't that exactly what we were going to do to Russia? Except that he's proposing the missile never come back down.
So your rocket blows up.. just encase your radioactive waste in something that won't break apart in the explosion and use a submarine to go pick it up & try again.
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Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
The question is, "Who on earth would want a pile of plutonium in their back yard?"
How bout we take all our plutonium and dump it right in Saddam's backyard in Iraq, right when Saddam's there holding a barbeque or something? That way, we get rid of the plutonium that we don't need, and Saddam gets all the plutonium he wants! Course, he may not survive and be able to use it, but it's a win-win situation!
But if a "memorial" is what they want, I'd say just dump it all on the White House lawn and put a sign there saying, "We be fucked." I'd say it's a fitting tribute to all the money we spent on developing the stuff during the Cold War.
Plutonium has been created in nuclear reactors, how about we destroy it in nuclear reactors?
CANDU reactors can safely burn fuel consisting of mixed uranium and plutonium. If all the CANDU reactors around the world were fed the appropriate mixture, the entire 270 ton stockpile of plutonium could safely be disposed of within a couple years.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
Hmmm.. lets rebuild the statue of liberty out of plutonium, that way it was be self lighting :)\ =\=\
=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=
It could be lined with the plutonium, as well as other unpleasant stuff, like, um, a bunch of NT servers for example.
Say, wait a minute, I know just the place we can use....
The present fundamental tenet of the anti-nuclear crowd is that there is no possibility of safe storage of nuclear materials long term. (Except as in the native ores that we make the materials from, perhaps.) Now this? Or does the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists consider the Union of Concerned Scientists completely misguided? I wouldn't think so.
I say forget about the "memorial" and start stocking plutonium in every corner store!
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You're happily assuming that we'll be more advanced than we are today in 10,000 years time, and that may not be the case.
I thought the whole point of the memorial was that advanced cultures will have no problem picking up the radioactive decay and so avoid it, but if there's a massive disaster and we're back to sticks and stones then the monument would still be effective at scaring people away.
Don't be silly. We Canadians don't use moose parts for spearheads... We use flint for that.
The only thing delaying the invasion is retrofitting all of our dogsleds with wheels. HTH, HAND.
This
Huge underground peace vaults, filled with nukes and weapons-grade plutonium, like in Star Control! The Ur-Quan Hierarchy will never know what hit 'em!
Five tons of flax.
Clearly, we should build a mega-university in Ohio, and store the waste beneath the sewer system.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Apparently, you've never seen the "Godzilla" movies. Bad things happen when you dump hazardous material into the ocean.
Why does the phrase "critical mass" keep springing to mind when I read this?
"We're inviting artists, architects, and general visionaries to submit their artistic work for what we're calling the "Plutonium Memorial," a facility that would house the world's unwanted weapon plutonium. ..."
Well, let's see. Weapons-grade plutonium contains a high concentration (90% or more) of plutonium-239. Pu-239 has a half-life of around 24000 years. Plutonium is nasty stuff - even its least radioactive isotope, Pu-242, causes tumours, mainly due to plutonium's long-lived, alpha-emitting characteristics.
The best memorial for this stuff would be a large, impregnable safe so that its contents could not fall into the "wrong hands". On the safe would be a large display indicating in how many years it would be safe to open it, allowing for the natural decay of the plutonium contents. A cat and vial of poison are optional...
A factsheet on plutonium
IANAME (materials engineer) but that sounds like a pretty tall order to this and try to keep this container within a reasonable size to be launched via rocket or some other mechanism. I'm also not an Aerospace engineer so I can't help there either.
-- A computer without COBOL and Fortran is like a piece of chocolate cake without ketchup and mustard
If you use p-239 in a breeder reactor to generate energy you will end up with MORE p-239.
That's why it's called a BREEDER reactor, it makes more...
"...can you imagine a BEOWULF CLUSTER of these? That'd be some serious power!"
The fact is that a single coal plant emits more naturally occuring radiation from its stacks in one year than all the nuclear powerplants in the world, save one in Chernobyl... Chernobyl was a massive human lack of common sense and oversight when they shut down all sorts of safety systems then stressed the reactor to see what whould happen
"...can you imagine a BEOWULF CLUSTER of these? That'd be some serious power!"
Is this what you saw?
Simply take these two pieces of plutonium, bring them together, and Boom!
Anyway, we're after something that represents the idea of letting dirty technologies run rampant with no regard for the conseqences: How about a giant statue of a small tree? Would that go over the Texan in question's head enough?
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
Its an intersting idea, but only if you be the one who volunteers to hit the world's supply of plutonium with a hammer and chisel, not me ;)
Seriously, I think a monument and storage places shouldn't be mixed. You want the monument where people will see it for it to have any impact on the populace at large, which is something you really don't want the plutonium itself to have.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
I don't think the question is one of if bombing was a better plan than a troop invasion, but rather if it was a necessary part of getting the surrender. There is a fair bit of evidence (see practically every time this discussion has happened on /.) that the Japanese were about ready to surrender anyway, under the exact terms (or near as important) that they did after the bombings. Certainly Nagasaki looks in hindsight more like a rather sick tech demo than a wartime necessity.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
"Monuments and storage places shouldn't be mixed? What do you think cemeteries and tombs are?"
err, I meant in this instance, not generally. Dead bodies usually don't have a toxic half-life of thousands of years, and if they did they probably wouldn't be in areas the general public spend a lot of time in.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
I certainly don't consider said evidence conclusive, but to be fair some did provide some backup to their claims (that I wish I could find easily now). I suppose my main point was more that I've yet to be convinced that dropping a second, plutonium bomb was entirely a decision that the first, hydrogen one wasn't persuasive enough, and was at least to a fair extent done to show that it worked. Thats why I referred to Nagasaki, as I can certainly see your argument for Hiroshima.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
Just make the cheque out to Dan Simmons.
Scientific 'Merican (or was it The Sciences - NYAS) had a piece about this problem about.. geeps 7 to 10 years ago. The Shrike Palace would be a good model. The real problem is longevity. How do you build something that will last at least as long as the half-life of the material (10K years?). You also must be able to communicate that the contents are dangerous. Sounds easy enough, but how many people can read languages more than 2000 years old now? It should at least have an MS Bob interface.
Now was that really a MS bash?
one better than mcleodeight
Haven't we already figured out that "security through obscurity" doesn't work?
How do you know security through obscurity doesn't work? You hear about the times when it doesn't, but since the times that it works you don't hear about it. It might actually have a really high success rate, but since we only hear of the few failures and none of the successes we can't judge it's effectiveness.
--
Waterworld" or "The Postman".
OMFG.. go rent the Mad Max movies and see how it's supposed to be done. The above (and MM: Beyond Thunderdome, don't bother with that one) are just crappy ripoffs.
I accept paypal. 75,000 years from now, it will still take 10 days for a check to clear.
Game: Player 'Donald J Trump' now has AI skill level 'experimental'.
It was mentioned to Stalin that we had a new super-weapon, and he acknowledged. He had no idea about this weapon. Think about it. If Truman didn't know until FDR kicked off, how would Stalin know?
Game: Player 'Donald J Trump' now has AI skill level 'experimental'.
Who's gonna look inside a cow?
Game: Player 'Donald J Trump' now has AI skill level 'experimental'.
--
Friends don't let friends use multiple inheritance.
will only fall at the hands of Americans. /. user in the sub-1000 range is deluded, perhaps the statement that 'Civilizations are destroyed by invading barbarians.' is a little oversimplistic, perhaps gleamed from playing too many marathon sessions of Sid Meier's Civilization? The lack of decent education, a tabloid media and unashamed grabs for global power(while isolating and distancing yourslves from traditional allies) is what's going to scupper the ol' US...despite the best efforts of the Geek 3l,337th.
Some would argue that means barbarians will be responsible for America's downfall - my only worry is that you guys might take the rest of us with you.
8)
Seriously, though far be it from me to suggest a
8)
Concrete analysis...
..to the phrase "perfect".
"Slightly Used" is more fitting.
"Cheap" [to the buyer, not the taxpayer] should also be mentioned.
8)
Concrete analysis...
Well, they may have to protect this like Fort Knox, because some bad guys may think, it's a good place to get lots of plutonium.
It should some sort of carving that gets accross the idea of Pl. I was thinking a skull and cross bones along with a drawing that shows its particals, as that would be something the any scientist anywhere anytime could understand.
You can make the glass pellets small enough that they will spread out evenly over a large area.
It is that, or launch it into the sun, but we do not want a challenger type disaster when launching nuclear waste.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Two places: Microsoft campus in Redmond (do we really need Seattle anyway??) or RIAA Headquarters (let's face it no one really likes LA anyway)....
there are no stupid questions, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots
I was just going to post that... Damnit. The core of the earth is radioactive already, so why not?
Before it gets to it's half life, it will probably make it there on it's own. We can just leave it in California somewhere.
Then again, we could do what we always do with highly dangerous, weapons grade payloads... Sell it to Iran!
-Tom
ATOM.
-Archimedes Pootonium
Frankly, the moon is about the only place you could safely put it. Assuming that any post-modern culture develops, it will be some time before they are able to detect concentrated radiation on earth. (Well, except by noticing that people start dropping off, at least). On the moon, the material will be safe until the race has space-faring ability and will (with any luck) know not to touch the plutonium. Who knows. Maybe they will be able to put it to good use in the future. (Which makes it a better idea than to drop it into the sun. :-)
alias uptime="echo '5:33pm up 22342352324 days, 6:28, 2124315623 users, load average: 2432.40, 12312.31, 123123.19'"
Unless you like two-headed fish of course...
What do you mean by "a professional?" Some sort of hooker? :-) Or the guys over at buttse.cx?
I'm so proud to be human. We can actually build a monument to our shame, letting all future generations know that we realized we were dumbasses. When did we become so enlightened? Usually we take care of shameful things by cover-ups and denial.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Consider further that the oldest known human structures are about 5000 years old (in central America, IIRC.)
No, the world's oldest structure is off the coast of Japan.
No, it's a on Malta
I mean Egypt.
Actually, it's north of Tokyo.
Or, is it a wine jar?
First, like many Allied actions in WWII, the nuking of Japan probably had more to do with scaring the Russians than anything else.
I'm gonna have to disagree with you on that. If you look at how we had to fight the war in the pacific, it was all about sending Marines onto small islands to kill the Japanese inhabiting the island (and I mean KILL, they were not going to give up). That style of combat resulted in a HUGE number of American deaths. The last group of islands we had to attack was Japan itself. As soon as we set foot on mainland Japan we would have been attacked by every man, woman, and child, none of who were afraid to die (there was no more honorable way to die than serving the empire).
The casualties from that battle would have been tremendous for both sides. Killing 110,000 Japanese civilians wasn't a perfect solution, but it did prevent many more deaths (theoretically). I'm sure it also made for a nice display of American power and scientific knowledge, but our military leaders had more important things to think about when they decided to drop those bombs.
Killing and experimenting on many millions of Jewish people wasn't a perfect solution, but it did prevent many more deaths (theoretically)
I think I see the point you're trying to make, but that statement doesn't make any sense. How exactly did the random killing of a culture prevent any deaths?
So Marty can get back to the future.
I got it! Safety, guarded, language independent - you could for instance, set it out on a remote island, and put big statues all facing outward like guards, giant weatherable stone statues very stoically and seriously staring down anyone who approaches - it would surely convey the message to stay off the island - danger here! Stay away! Don't... oh... right... there already IS one of those, and any humanity that gets near it is doing its best to crawl all over the island like ants... (Sorry, Mr., Heyerdahl - nothing personal).
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
The security for this thing better make taking on fort Knox's tanks and guards seem like a piece of cake. It would probably be better to hide the plutonium somewhere and have a seperate representative memorial rather than risk putting the real stuff at risk of being stolen or bombed.
I see that no one has mentioned the great Archimedes Plutonium (formerly Ludwig Von Plutonium). I'd better remedy the problem:
He was one of the great early Usenet crackpots; he used to frequent sci.physics and sci.math. He'd solved all of the great unsolved mathematical problems, and determined the ultimate nature of reality, and he always seemed a little upset that people were questioning his findings. (He came across as a real-life version of Ignatius Reilly from "A Confederacy of Dunces".)
His collected works are at: http://www.newphys.se/elektromagnum/physics/Ludwig Plutonium/.
This link (http://www.newphys.se/elektromagnum/physics/Ludwi gPlutonium/File226.html) points to his proof that the Universe/God is a gigantic Plutonium atom.
This link (http://www.newphys.se/elektromagnum/physics/Ludwi gPlutonium/File216.html
contains a hymn he wrote, which would look really good on any sort of Plutonium memorial:
Carbon in me, Carbon of Plutonium
Fill me with life anew
That I may love what thou dost love
And do what thou superdetermines me to do
Oxygen, Oxygen of Plutonium
Make me wholly thine
Take me to the Nucleus
Nucleosynthesis divine
I remember watching a documentary program a few months back on discovery or something (might have been discovery today) about the big question of what to do with the ever increasing stockpile of this stuff. It turns out they are burying some if it in some old salt mines that are slowly collapsing from the weight of the rock above which will effectivly seal it all under half a kilometer of rock. The were descussing what to do about warning furture generations to its presence, such as giant monoliths with engravings in every known language saying "keep away", or markings such as radioactive symbols, but they fealt that in the future, considering we are talking of 30k year half lifes and stuff that our known languages and symbols may have no meaning. They then considered "emotions" and had one idea of what kind of looked like a thorn bush, but in stone. Eventualy the settled on the idea that best thing to do was not mark the site at all as we all know that curiosity was allways the cats downfall :-)
-- Vagnerr - (www.vagnerr.com) Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
I would like to see something really huge. Imagine the Statue of Liberty but in concrete and looking like a giant missile or something. Where should it be placed then? Who wants the worlds nuclear waste next door? There's a conflict here: if it's gonna be a monument people will want to see it, but at the same time it's dangerous and should be kept as far away from people as possible. Ciryon
Provided power to lots of deep space probes (Galileo I believe, amongst others).
Well there ya go! Build space probes. lots of space probes!
There shouldn't be any problem with security, at least until some terrorist gets a Dean drive working.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
What if someone (say Terrorists, or Microsoft) steals that plutonium?
Indifference will be the downfall of mankind, but who cares?
The simple idea behind critical mass is that it's not so much critical mass as critical density. You can store more than the critical mass of a radioisotope as long as you include something to reduce the density. You can (A) mix it with non-reactive filler, which cuts the mass per unit area down to non-chaining levels, or you can (B) store subcritical masses that are separated from each other by shielding (the golf-balls-in-a-box idea). In most cases, both are used in tandem. And so, there's no boom.
Virg
> So, what you do, is you encase it in glass. Simple. You could ;-)
> use it instead of a hot water bottle. Never need refilling.
Two things: first, with no seriousness at all, it really makes dropping your Thermos a bad thing. "Oops! Oh, no! (crack) BOOM!". Second, and seriously, glass is a liquid, and it's fragile. Since exposing plutonium to the environment is a bad thing, putting it in such a fragile container is asking for trouble. Besides, if you could buy your plutonium bottle at Wal-Mart, you could buy enough of them to get together a noticeable amount of fissile material. I'll warrant that building a bomb with it would be difficult, but crushing the elements and blowing the dust into an air exchange system would make for a useful terrorist tactic as well.
Virg
> why's it a bad idea?
See my post above. Lifting the garbage into orbit costs too much energy to be worth it. And, "as long as nothing goes wrong" has to be pretty exacting when you're dealing with plutonium.
Virg
Nuclear detonations don't happen by accident. Ever (and don't include accidental activation of an H-bomb here. That's not an accidental reaction, that's accidentally starting a device intended to create a reaction). The reason most nations don't store all of their plutonium in one place has nothing to do with putting it all in close proximity, it has to do with the cost and danger involved in moving it from where it's made (usually by power plants) to where it would be stored. Any accident would have to involve supercompression of the stored plutonium, and since storage is usually both mixing the material with filler and separating units of material with shielding the odds that any accident will cause such supercompression is vanishingly small.
Virg
I'm astonished that this came up, because I can indeed refute your theory (damn, what one learns in college!). In 1991 while I was in college, we passed a large number of foods under a Geiger counter to monitor natural radiation (we were bored and had lunch and a Geiger counter at hand). None other than chicken nuggets from Mickey D's was in the group, and they didn't show any noticeable increase in radioactive material from the background. Sorry.
Virg
Actually, plutonium isn't nearly that deadly. The original article even mentions some doctoral nitwit who inhaled plutonium dust to make a point. I think he's nuts, but he's still alive, so I guess he wins the bet. The issue has been and continues to be the cost associated with success, and with failure. Lifting something out of Earth's gravity well costs a lot of energy (remember, we're not just talking space shuttle stuff here, since the shuttle never leaves orbit). On all of the moon shots, 99.99 percent of the material that left the launch pad, weight-wise, was fuel. Thus, lifting tons of plutonium out of orbit would require tens of thousands of tons of fuel to do the job (that's hundreds of Saturn-V rockets worth). Not only does this represent an awesome cost, but it's also an awesome risk, since if a single one of these space shots malfunctions it'll dump a big cloud of unpleasantness into the atmosphere. Since the removal of the material from our gravity well is the stopping point, nobody has ever bothered to address where it should go once it's up there.
Virg
Leave it in the weapon form, fly it to mars, and play nuclear war. You could could even have giant green plastic army men. :-)
I want my rights back. I was actually using them when our government stole them after 9/11.
Since no one else has mentioned it, I will.
Nuclear energy is the cleanest, most efficient and waste-less form of power known to man (aside from that cool matter/anti-matter stuff).
Our waste management services for nuclear power are far beyond its coal/oil counterparts. Go look at Mexico City/Athens or LA.
And here's the best part: There's no global nuclear energy cartel making you pay ghastly prices for your nuclear power.
-D
How about we combine some technologies? There's supposedly been subsonic or ultrasonic (I forget which) devices invented by the army that can make people nauseous by being too close.
Why not setup a bunch of these in a circle around this thing we don't want people to go near? We can use the plutonium to provide power. The only issue left would be having it maintain itself. Some advances in robotics technology over the next several hundred years should manage that.
In the end, we'll have this big structure where people will naturally avoid because they'll feel sick as they approach it. Unless human physiology evolves quickly enough to render the subsonic technology worthless. But better to depend on evolution than society I'd figure.
I can't believe slashdot is falling for one of the greatest anti-technology hoaxes ever perpetrated. Plutonium is no more toxic than many other industrial substances. In fact, it is only about ten times more toxic than caffiene. Tests were done on dogs decades ago, in which a dozen or so dogs were given a tablespoon (or something like that). They all died of old age. Yet one pound of plutonium produces as much energy as the Yankee stadium full of coal! Not using nuclear is sheer environmental idiocy of the highert order. Wake up, folks!
I watch Brit Hume on Fox News
I remember reading somewhere that Salt Caverns, being almost hermetically sealed could be used to store radioactive materials. Although it's not the best monument, I doubt that a monument is something that could be used to really store something. Rather, have the monument marking the place.
01101001 01100001 01101101 01101110 01101111 01110100 01100001 01101100 01100001 01110111 01111001 01100101 01110010
There is are a lot of slashdot readers that would argue the barbarians are already here and hence invasion would be redundant....
Why?
There is a rather large edifice in Greenwich, London which could fit the bill. Dome shaped. To let. Perfect. --- Daniel.
Yep, that looks like the exact one. Cheers for the link, /me has a happy Friday evening ahead re-reading that ;)
--
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
Actually, the world's oldest struct is still present the SCO^W Caldera UnixWare kernel. 28 years' uptime! takes a lickin', keeps on (clock) tickin'...
--
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
>radiation level as uranium ore.
Er, I don't know where you got your information from, but you are profoundly mistaken.
Different radioactive elements, and different isotopes of those elements, decay at differing rates; they turn into different decay products along the way, too (some of which are actually *more* dangerous than teh stuff they started out as). Most decay through a whole series of elements with different half-lives. This is sort-of related to the way carbon (C-14) dating works.
The number usually quoted in this context, and generally misunderstood, is 'half life'. This is the period of time taken for 50% a given mass of substance X to decay into something else. (remember the decay product can still be dangerous, and sometimes more so.) See also radon gas, which occurs naturally in granite (as found all over the southwest of the UK, in Scotland, and sundry other locations... I believe there is even some in the US!) which causes a statistically significant number of cases of lung cancer.
Of course one can argue "what's the big deal about a few unfortunate deaths from cancer, compared to the greater good of mankind?" - try making that argument to the mother of an 18 year old who just suffered a protracted and painful death from the disease...
Finally, even if it *was* "no more radioactive than uranium ore", it would still be highly dangerous. You might notice that houses tend not to be built over uranium mines. Of course, you're not making the environmentalist nut's error of thinking "it's "natural"! It MUST be safe, if not actually GOOD for us!" Speaking as an environmentalist nut, that attitude's one of several things that really piss me off about my fellow tree-huggers ;)
--
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
Wherever the stuff is stored, therefore, needs to be signed in such a way as to:
- Frighten people away, rather than attracting them with the idea of buried treasure, archeological relics or whatever;
- communicate this in a way that is culture-neutral. In other words, the third civilisation after us, in say 50,000 years' time (after the catastrophic collapse of ours (due to massive climate change and population growth the planet can no longer support) and the next (caused by brain damage resulting from the accidental translation of a fossilised Dummy's Guide to Windows) must be able to comprehend the message of whatever markers we erect despite having very different language, religious traditions, taboos, social structures, etc etc.;
- Do so reliably for geological periods of time.
Consider further that the oldest known human structures are about 5000 years old (in central America, IIRC.)I'm sure this story will be full of posts from the pro-nuclear lobby; I'm somewhat sympathetic to that PoV, with the exception of the hand-waving that goes on with regard to waste disposal (including defunct power stations themselves.) I grew up within 20 miles of the largest concentration of nuclear power in Western Europe (Oldbury, Berkeley, Hinkley Point) - the former stations were built in the mid 60s, had a design life of 21 years, were kept up and running for 30, and are now testbeds for decommmissioning. It's going to take a century *just to get the buildings into a safe state for long term storage* - a huge block of concrete containing the reactor core, sitting right on the edge of an enormous river with the highest tidal range in Europe. Hmmmmm. Was it worth it for 30 years of slightly-more-expensive than coal electricity? Well, hindsight is a wonderful thing... I suggest we learn from it.
Incidentally the UK Govt. just approved the first UK complex of off-shore windfarms. Another interesting experiment - might work, might be a white elephant, no way of telling without trying... but at least we know that cleaning them up afterwards will be nbd.
--
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
We could pack the all Pu-239 in a small stick, call it a "space modulator", fly it to mars, and hope for the best.
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
Glass is acctually pretty odd. This would acctually be somewhat less than ideal. I assume you're envisioning mixing the plutonium as small particles in the glass. But the reason this isn't terribly happy is well glass is very strong by not tough. (Strength in a material sence is how much a tension something can support with out permenently deforming, and of course breaking. Toughness is the ability of a material to resist a crack. Metals are, in a sence, gooie, so they resist cracks very well. Glass not so much.) Over very long times, molecules of glass will evaporate (all things have a vapor pressure, even the picutre tube you're looking at has a few molecules of silica hovering over it, and then falling back and sticking) and redeposit. This is why really old windows get thin at the top, thick at the bottom. Then since glass is not at all resistant to cracks, your block of glass and plutonium, will quickly fill with microcracks. These cracks create a nice little surfaces. These microcracks and evaporation/depostition of the glass will expose the plutonium particles, and the glass itself will flake off. As for the alpha particles, I can only imagine they would encourage microcracking. Then the bigger your block of glass, the more tension there will be on parts of it, and thus the more favorable the formation of large scale cracks. The idea was, originally regaurdless what I think of its merits, looking to suppress plutonium powder.
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
They're talking about a structure which would have to stand intact for 8 half lives of Plutonium. Ummm. Ok. Sure, pyramids have gotten along ok, but they really haven't been around THAT long. Their talking about making a "facility" of some sort that will last a span of time much greater that seperating the creation of agriculture from the present. How long did "Lucy's" hut stand? But this isn't the only exceptionaly tall order.
The containers for plutonium itself are a monstrous feat of engineering, that would stretch our understanding of materials beyond the bleeding edge. Even underground in a steel container you have the effects of fatigue from every tremor they feel. With moisture present in the air no less. Ceramics and glass are no better. In periods such as these the glass will deform, the ceramics will crack, even under their own weight, and scaresly need the help of tremors to do so. Other qualities such as creep aren't easly extrapolated to very long lifetimes. And I'm talking about, in some cases, 50 years to say nothing of 100,000. Then there is the challenge of these containters being bathed in neutrons for many thousands of years, degrading the chosen materials.
While how some people obtained their doctorates is quite the conundrum. I some how doubt that this is actually serious, as in an attempt to actually build something. It seems far more likely that they might just be putting up $3000 to get some media attention for their cause, and spark discussion. That's certainly a worthy goal. Or maybe Ponds and Pal have found a place where that whole cold fusion stigma didn't follow them. The idea that professionals familiar with nuclear materials and their special challanges would consider something like this achievable, is in all honesty, inconceivable. And I do think that word means what I think it means.
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
Don't think the U.S. can be financially crippled? I wouldn't bet on it, but there are other ways. The current retard in office wants a missle defense system. This is all but useless against the most likely form of attacks against the United States. If I wanted to destroy the country I wouldn't bother with a war. War is expensive especially if you have thoughts of fighting on foreign (i.e. U.S.A.) soil. Biological or chemical attacks launched from within the U.S. borders would be far more effective. Densely populated areas, such as Los Angeles or New York City would make excellent starting targets.
Chris Kuivenhoven is a thief, beware
A structure that people would notice and preserve (or at least not destroy) like the Sphynx, Eifel tower or the Statue of Liberty might help a bit. You also need warnings that can be interpreted by future civilizations and need to assume that your native tongue is a lost language.
Chris Kuivenhoven is a thief, beware
The SNAP-27 power supply weighed about 20 kilograms, was 46 cm long and 40.6 cm in diameter. It consisted of a central fuel capsule surrounded by concentric rings of thermocouples. Outside of the thermocouples was a set of fins to provide for heat rejection from the cold side of the thermocouple.
Each of the SNAP devices produced approximately 75 W of electrical power at 30 VDC. The energy source for each device was a rod of plutonium-238 weighing approximately 2.5 kilograms and providing a thermal power of approximately 1250 W.
Plutonium-238 is a non-fissile isotope of plutonium that decays by alpha particle emission with essentially zero associated gamma emissions. This characteristic was very important for the ALSEP powering application, both because the instruments would have been negatively affected by interference from a gamma emitter and because the devices required close handling by lunar astronauts.
Even though the only radiation from Pu-238 is alpha particles which require little shielding, it is necessary to use thick gloves when handling a 2.5 kilogram rod of Pu-238. The surface temperature will reach about 500 degrees C because of the energy being released by radioactive decay. After ten years of continuous power output, a Pu-238 based RTG will still produce 92% of its initial power.
One measure of performance that is often used for chemical storage batteries is the amp-hour. A modern battery might have a capacity of 1.5 amp-hrs/kg. The SNAP-27 power supplies demonstrated the ability to provide more than 4380 amp-hrs/kg during the four years that their performance was monitored. Similar RTGs have produced 24,000 amp-hrs/kg during a 20 year operating life and are still going strong.
"Face it, a nation that maintains a 72% approval rating on George W. Bush is a nation with a very loose grip on reality.
Make a treaty with the Russians to internationalize an island between Russia and the United States. That makes it easily watchable and easily guardable (accessible too).
Ok we promise.... as long as you promise to use the preview button, Bill.
Australianus Geekus
simply a new nuclear power plant. Plutonium is usable as fuel and you might as well get some useful energy out of it instead of making a stupid political statement.
C'mon, you mean no one has considered dumping it on the Moon? It's not like there's going to be any massive explosion or anything.
"What are we going to do tonight, Bill?"
www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
Surely the purpose of a memorial is to be a visual reminder of an event, in which case it would have to be somewhere people would actually see it.
The question is, "Who on earth would want a pile of plutonium in their back yard?"
Simon
I don't think we have to guard this stuff until it decays of it's own accord; we only have to guard it until we have the technology to neutralize it ourselves. How long will that be? It probably depends on how much money we throw at the problem, but I'd guess its probably considerably less than even one half-life of whatever particular nasty substance we're talking about. Thus, spend less on storage safety and more on research.
Build a gigantic structure with a flat smooth surface for a exterior and start carving all the names of the people that have died from radiation or nuclear weapon detonation.
(Okay, so its a rip off of the Vietnam memorial, but hey.. it has a powerful effect =)
I thought I read in Wired Magazine that you could use high-energy gamma radiation to speed up the time to break nuclear waste down. The by-products being whatever the 60/40 split creates and some heat. Apparently, this solution has been staring us straight in the face for a long time and no one put 1 & 1 together.
I could be wrong I have not been able to find the article again but it seems like it should work a lot better than trying to store it. People just don't function with a long view. Look at the drivel that so called nerds have posted on this subject.
Here is one link I found on the tech.
http://www.gdr.org/atw.html
The other solution is clearly the space elevator. If the danger in sending the stuff to the sun is catastrophic launch failure (Cassini Space probe fears) then we just have to get our ducks in a row and build the space elevator.
France operates the Phenix fast breeder , as well as having the only commercial reprocessing facility. For more on the French program, from an "Official View", check out:
Profile of Nuclear Power in France
News from 10,000 years ago....
WEAPONS GRADE OBSIDIAN STORED IN MEMORIAL
After considerable debate, the ruling council of the Consolidated Tribes of cavemen have concluded that the only safe storage place for the obsidian weapons used long ago in wars between the tribes is a solid clay block buried in a hidden distant location.
"These obsidian weapons are the deadliest things currently known to man" according to weapons expert Ugh in a press conference Tuesday. "Unlike bone they never decay and they are sharper than any other rock you can imagine. Consider - a thousand, ten thousand or even a hundred thousand years from now these weapons will still be around and our decendants will have to deal with their threat."
So, lets be real. In 10,000 years our kids could probably open up a box of plutonium, let their personal forcefields come on and transmute it to something safe enough for the dog to play with. The dangerous life of plutonium is not determined by its half life, but by the speed of advancement (and persistance) of our technology.
You too can own your own personalized piece of America's nuclear history...for only 6 monthly payments of $59.95 per month. These attractive limited edition ingots of nuclear waste have been certified as authentic collectibles by the Franklin Mint, and are available only through this limited-time special offer. Proudly display your piece of American nuclear history in its attractive, handcrafted, lead-lined brass case, personalized with your name, design, or other identifying mark. Order today...supplies are limited, and are only available through the Franklin Mint.
Of course (on the serious side), this doesn't solve the problem of the "wrong" people getting their hands on plutonium...
--
"Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want."
All about Plutonium-239 used in nuclear bombs such as Little Boy.
say the size of Manhattan. Just concrete, nothing more. Pour the concrete over all the plutonium you want to get rid of, et voila: an enduring monument to the stupidity of man.
think about it...it kinda has benefits
bleh
About five yaers ago Science ran an article on another contest. It was for plans to build a site to store discarded radioactive material in general. Many submitted, including one design that was a field with 100 ft. spikes sticking up in all directions.
As the half life of this stuff is measured in tens of thousands of years, does the design not have to take durability into account. Apart from anything else, what signs do you use to show that this structure contains dangerous things?
Written and spoken language would change drastically over 10,000 years, how would we show the people of the future that this is a BAD building to enter?
Non verbal warnings (spikes, colours, sounds) may be more appropriate for the structure.
More than two Welshmen together is a male voice choir.........
Why store it at all? Once its diluted it becomes great fuel for a plutonium burning reactor. Its rather sad, we have this huge store of energy, while not as cheap as some, but once the technology was up and running, I imagine that we would find ways to make it cheaper, kind of the american way, to use a cliche. If we want to get rid of this stuff we should be using it, not warehousing it. All this stupid monument is, is a way to hide weapons grade plutonium in plain sight(would someone really be stupid enough to try and break into a storage facility guarded by a few thousand marines, with orders to shoot first and kill any survivors later?), and pander to the stupid greens who would have us all living in trees. Yes, humans damage the environment, but I think its just plain alarmist to try and claim that we are destroying the Earth, its gotten through asteroid impacts, ice ages, and volcanic eruptions(which spew ridiculous amounts of greenhouse gases), the ecosystem will adapt. End Rant.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
From the Been There Done That Department:
Gregory Benford
Deep Time
How Humanity communicates Across Millennia
ISBN 0-380-79346-6
Costs about $11 from Amazon
Those who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.
Since "unwanted weapon plutonium" practically doesn't exist (militant governments & terrorists will always want any you have spare), it's incredibly unlikely this memorial will ever be built. Sounds like this whole memorial idea is trying to get the public to buy into nuclear waste disposal, in preparation for new US nuclear reactors. Hate to be cynical, but I was born in nuclear-free New Zealand. shut up man
By the end of the war, the anti-aircraft defenses of Japan were pretty much completely destroyed. US planes were destroying about a city per day with conventional bombing raids.
The atomic bombs destroyed a city with one bomb, rather than thousands.
I personally think the whole right vs wrong on the atomic bomb is largly irrelevant, since Hiroshima and Nagasaki would likely have been completely destroyed with conventional bombs anyway.
I also dont buy the idea that the US dropped the bomb on Japan to scare the USSR.. They knew the US had the bomb, and the US knew they knew.
So why did the US drop the bomb?
My theory is that the psychological impact of one bomb destroying a city would cause the Japanese to agree to unconditional surrender. (yes, i know that they were ready to conditionally surrender, and I think the allies should have accepted that, but...)
And, I think the US leaders were so pissed off about the whole war they wanted to stick it to Japan any way they could, which included atomic bombs.
On a side note- in one of my classes the professor told us that a lot of the scientists at the time were concerned that detonating an atomic bomb would ignite all of the oxygen in the atmosphere, causing the whole planet to burn.
-Johnny 5000
The libertarian solution to the failures of capitalism is to apply more capitalism til the failures are fixed.
Stalin had more spies than Truman did.
The libertarian solution to the failures of capitalism is to apply more capitalism til the failures are fixed.
Why are they proposing the storage of weapon grade plutonium? You only store something if you intend to use it sometime. Producing and processing plutonium to weapon grade is expensive and dangerous, which is one of the reasons that the number of countries that have nuclear weapons is relativly few. Having a huge stockpile of the stuff just sitting there for the taking is too big a risk. A better solution is to dilute and 'contaminate' the plutonium with other isotopes so that is unusable in weapons. In such a form,it would be more difficult to 're-purify' back to weapons grade than to produce 'fresh' plutonium. Once you have done that, then you can put it in your fancy monument for safe keeping for all time.
-- We don't understand software, and sometimes we don't understand hardware, but we can *see* the blinking lights
Plutonium is not found in nature. It has to be man made in a nuclear reactor by (for example) bombarding uranium (which we do dig out of the ground). Natural uranium is actually very stable, and relativly speaking, not very radioactive at all. Most of it is U238, which is very stable and useless for bombs and power generation, until you stick it in a nuclear reactor and turn it into (mostly) P239. Once it's turned to plutonium, then it becomes very nasty, and the only thing that turns it back to something safe is time (lots of it), (although you can use some of it as fuel in special reactors and 'burn it up' that way, but that is not a complete solution) So you can't just throw it down a hole in the ground and forget about it. Under certain conditions, just getting it wet can cause it to blow up, and ground water is going to be a problem if you throw it down a hole.
-- We don't understand software, and sometimes we don't understand hardware, but we can *see* the blinking lights
Just wait until the heat from all that decaying plutonium cracks the concrete, then some ground water gets in and starts moderating (in a atomic sense) all those fast neutrons flying around in there, and pretty soon your concrete and plutonium is not in a nice orderly structure any more.
-- We don't understand software, and sometimes we don't understand hardware, but we can *see* the blinking lights
Space probes don't run on weapons grade plutonium. They need lots of heat, and P239 is too 'cold'. Although its got a long half life, that just means it takes *ages* to decay, and the decay heat is spread out over thousands of years. Other isotopes of plutonium, however, are a different matter, particularly the even numbered ones. (such as P234, P238). These have short half life (10's of years), which means they decay quicker and give off the decay heat faster. They will also kill you quicker, but not your grandchildren. P239 will just mutate you and your grandchldren. On a side note, having traces of these 'even' isotopes in your nuclear bomb is a real problem, since the intense radioactivity (neutrons) will cause your lump of P239 to go off before you expect it to.
-- We don't understand software, and sometimes we don't understand hardware, but we can *see* the blinking lights
That storing all the world's weapons-grade plutonium in one place is a really, really bad idea? Disregarding for the moment attempted theft, what if there's some sort of accident. There'd be enough plutonium for a pretty big bang.
There's a good reason most countries don't store all their plutonium in one place.
I'm the stranger...posting to
I read that you can mix lead into glass to make leaded glass which is a lot heavier and would sheild against radiation. So why not take all those old car batteries where we need to dispose of the lead, mix it with glass, and make filler for disposal of nuclear waste?
Burying it underneath Iraq or France. Then bomb just far enough away from the site, and make the place radioactive... fuck guarding it then. Besides, it's not like we NEED France or Iraq.
blah blah blah, I'm right, and all evidence proving I'm wrong is insufficient and false.