Inadequate funding is part of it but there is also the difficulty of building a vitrification plant that once it starts processing the waste will be too radioactive for a human to enter regardless of how much shielding they're wearing. All maintenance and repair for the plant will have to be done remotely.
One of the main advantage to putting the Hanford storage tanks underground is that the ground serves to absorb most of the radioactivity. This waste is so radioactive that it would take massive amounts of shielding to store it safely above ground.
I guarantee you that no private interest would want to touch the Hanford reservation with a 100 mile pole. They wouldn't want the potential liability. In the early days some of the waste was simply dumped in trenches in the ground.
One of the biggest problems with the vitrification plant is that once they actually start processing the waste it will be way to radioactive for any human to enter it ever again. They have to set it up so all maintenance and repair can be done remotely.
Most of the low level waste such as technicians work wear and tools are low level wastes and it's sufficient to put them in a landfill set up to receive the low level waste. The really nasty stuff is what develops in the fuel rods of a working reactor and/or the processing to concentrate nuclear ore enough for fuel or bombs. That is what takes extra special handling.
Yes, building that plant to separate the radioactive elements from the rest of the toxic waste is a huge problem. The radioactives are so nasty that once the plant starts running it will be impossible for a human to safely enter it for thousands of years. They have to design and build it so maintenance and repair can be done remotely. Just thinking about that stuff which is about 200 miles from where I live gives me the willies. It's mostly leftovers from the production of plutonium in the 1940's and 1950's. Some of the first waste from the production of plutonium for the Fat Man bomb was just dumped in trenches in the ground but once they came to realize how nasty the stuff was they started putting it in tanks. Some of it has been there for nearly 70 years now.
If you compare the heat put out by all the volcanoes in Antarctica to the heat required to melt 160 GT/year you'll find that you need several orders of magnitude more volcanoes to melt that much ice.
However, the average rate of ice thinning in West Antarctica has also continued to rise, and mass losses from this sector are now 31% greater than over the period 2005–2011.
You assume the rate of 0.43 mm per year will continue until 2100. Do you have anything to back that up? All evidence indicates that the rate will continue to rise as time goes on.
geekoid is right. You really don't have a clue about how climate models are supposed to work in the first place. Just because they don't work they way you think they should doesn't mean they are wrong.
I don't think you understand science either. We do scientific research on all sorts of things where it's not possible to control only one variable at a time. It doesn't sound like you understand models very well either. For example observed temperatures are still within the uncertainty ranges provided with climate model projections so you really can't call them wrong, just imperfect. They're still better than anything else we have. As George Box famously said "All models are wrong but some are useful."
The quote in the posting from Jonathan Overpeck was:
"The fires in California and here in Arizona are a clear example of what happens as the Earth warms, particularly as the West warms, and the warming caused by humans is making fire season longer and longer with each decade," said University of Arizona geoscientist Jonathan Overpeck. "It's certainly an example of what we'll see more of in the future."
I don't see that he's conflating weather and climate, he's just saying more fires such as the ones in California are an expected effect of global warming. It's already well known that there has been a significant increase in fires and acreage burned since the 1960's for a number of reasons, including increased fuel load and humans encroaching further into the wild land. But global warming is also a factor both directly and indirectly.
You just keep believing that. Meanwhile global sea level is up over 2 inches since 2000. When you're only a few feet above sea level to begin with that's significant. Subsidence just makes it worse.
Note they just said fires are getting worse, not that droughts are... and even the fire things is mostly true of California, not the west in general.
Tell that to Colorado which had the two worst fire seasons in its history in 2012 & 2013.
According to CSU, wildfires in Colorado destroyed less than 100,000 acres per decade over the 1960s and the 1970s. For the 1980s and 1990s, the total was over 200,000 acres per decade. For the 2000s, the total was approximately 1,000,000 acres.
Actually wildfires are endemic everywhere west of the Rockies and for a ways east as well. California has just been getting the publicity lately but we've already had a few small fires in Oregon this year.
So did global warming cause last month's lack of wildfires or not?
What an inane question. All global warming does is on average cause hotter drier conditions in many areas like the American west and Siberia. Those conditions make it easier for a wildfire to get started and once it gets started make it more difficult to stop. Whether a fire actually gets started or not is still a matter of chance but with global warming potential fires that might have fizzled out in the past have a better chance of becoming a noticeable fire.
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Inadequate funding is part of it but there is also the difficulty of building a vitrification plant that once it starts processing the waste will be too radioactive for a human to enter regardless of how much shielding they're wearing. All maintenance and repair for the plant will have to be done remotely.
The radiation from coal plant emissions doesn't come anywhere close to the nastiness of some of the stuff that came from the production of plutonium.
The waste in question at Hanford is largely left over from the production of plutonium which is essentially not found in nature.
One of the main advantage to putting the Hanford storage tanks underground is that the ground serves to absorb most of the radioactivity. This waste is so radioactive that it would take massive amounts of shielding to store it safely above ground.
I guarantee you that no private interest would want to touch the Hanford reservation with a 100 mile pole. They wouldn't want the potential liability. In the early days some of the waste was simply dumped in trenches in the ground.
One of the biggest problems with the vitrification plant is that once they actually start processing the waste it will be way to radioactive for any human to enter it ever again. They have to set it up so all maintenance and repair can be done remotely.
Yep, Hanford is where the plutonium for the Fat Man bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945 was produced.
Most of the low level waste such as technicians work wear and tools are low level wastes and it's sufficient to put them in a landfill set up to receive the low level waste. The really nasty stuff is what develops in the fuel rods of a working reactor and/or the processing to concentrate nuclear ore enough for fuel or bombs. That is what takes extra special handling.
Yes, building that plant to separate the radioactive elements from the rest of the toxic waste is a huge problem. The radioactives are so nasty that once the plant starts running it will be impossible for a human to safely enter it for thousands of years. They have to design and build it so maintenance and repair can be done remotely. Just thinking about that stuff which is about 200 miles from where I live gives me the willies. It's mostly leftovers from the production of plutonium in the 1940's and 1950's. Some of the first waste from the production of plutonium for the Fat Man bomb was just dumped in trenches in the ground but once they came to realize how nasty the stuff was they started putting it in tanks. Some of it has been there for nearly 70 years now.
Assuming the rate of melt will remain the same for the next 100 years really puts the ass in assume.
Back to school for you. Go learn the difference between sea ice, ice shelves and ice sheets.
If you compare the heat put out by all the volcanoes in Antarctica to the heat required to melt 160 GT/year you'll find that you need several orders of magnitude more volcanoes to melt that much ice.
From the abstract:
However, the average rate of ice thinning in West Antarctica has also continued to rise, and mass losses from this sector are now 31% greater than over the period 2005–2011.
You assume the rate of 0.43 mm per year will continue until 2100. Do you have anything to back that up? All evidence indicates that the rate will continue to rise as time goes on.
geekoid is right. You really don't have a clue about how climate models are supposed to work in the first place. Just because they don't work they way you think they should doesn't mean they are wrong.
What a load of unsupported crap.
I don't think you understand science either. We do scientific research on all sorts of things where it's not possible to control only one variable at a time. It doesn't sound like you understand models very well either. For example observed temperatures are still within the uncertainty ranges provided with climate model projections so you really can't call them wrong, just imperfect. They're still better than anything else we have. As George Box famously said "All models are wrong but some are useful."
The quote in the posting from Jonathan Overpeck was:
"The fires in California and here in Arizona are a clear example of what happens as the Earth warms, particularly as the West warms, and the warming caused by humans is making fire season longer and longer with each decade," said University of Arizona geoscientist Jonathan Overpeck. "It's certainly an example of what we'll see more of in the future."
I don't see that he's conflating weather and climate, he's just saying more fires such as the ones in California are an expected effect of global warming. It's already well known that there has been a significant increase in fires and acreage burned since the 1960's for a number of reasons, including increased fuel load and humans encroaching further into the wild land. But global warming is also a factor both directly and indirectly.
It doesn't matter what you call it. What matters is how it physically affects the world we live in.
You just keep believing that. Meanwhile global sea level is up over 2 inches since 2000. When you're only a few feet above sea level to begin with that's significant. Subsidence just makes it worse.
Also these prognostications are based on "models" which have absolutely zero skill.
What qualifies you to make that judgement?
Larger fires because of larger fuel loads doesn't preclude global warming from also having an effect. It's not an either/or thing.
Yes, with the El Nino chances are the California drought will be broken next winter. That doesn't do them much good for the next 5 months.
Yes, fuel load is a big issue for wildfires but global warming creates conditions that can exacerbate the problem. It's not simply one or the other.
Note they just said fires are getting worse, not that droughts are... and even the fire things is mostly true of California, not the west in general.
Tell that to Colorado which had the two worst fire seasons in its history in 2012 & 2013.
According to CSU, wildfires in Colorado destroyed less than 100,000 acres per decade over the 1960s and the 1970s. For the 1980s and 1990s, the total was over 200,000 acres per decade. For the 2000s, the total was approximately 1,000,000 acres.
Actually wildfires are endemic everywhere west of the Rockies and for a ways east as well. California has just been getting the publicity lately but we've already had a few small fires in Oregon this year.
So did global warming cause last month's lack of wildfires or not?
What an inane question. All global warming does is on average cause hotter drier conditions in many areas like the American west and Siberia. Those conditions make it easier for a wildfire to get started and once it gets started make it more difficult to stop. Whether a fire actually gets started or not is still a matter of chance but with global warming potential fires that might have fizzled out in the past have a better chance of becoming a noticeable fire.