From: zcbag@cnfd.pgh.wec.com (B. Alan Guthrie)
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion,sci.environment,sci.energy
Subject: Re: Nuclear fusion soon?
Date: 8 Nov 1997 14:48:22 GMT

In article <346347a3.1746450@nntp.ix.netcom.com>,
Brian Mueller <invalid@homo-sapiens.org> wrote:
>Adam Hamilton wrote:
>
>>	For how long must the waste be stored?
>
>Many thousands of years.
>
>> Have we seen any storage
>>that has lasted this long?
>
>Well here in the great nation of the United States of America (I'm
>patriotic, so sue me) there is a plan to store nuclear waste in
>underground salt deposits in the midwest. They are *very* stable
>geologically and are expected to store the waste safely for a very
>long time. Of course it's a problem to warn future generations not to
>use the land, so they plan to build  large concrete posts, which are
>themselves supposed to last thousands of years, which denote the
>demensions of the area and warn not to use the land, in several
>languages (English, Latin, etc.). They are also considering to build
>fangs there so if, thousands of years from now,  Mankind can no longer
>read English or Latin, he can see the fangs and recognise that there
>is something dangerous there.


  Uh, you are showing your age ;-)  A proposal existed to dispose of
  high-level rad waste in salt domes (is that the right term?) near
  Lyons, Kansas, but the proposal was abandoned around 1974 or so.

  About ten years later, when, in a fit of energy, the USofA decided
  to do something about high-level waste disposal, the salt dome
  idea was revisited, although, as I recall, the candidate site(s)
  in this case was along the Gulf Coast (and my mem'ry may be very
  wrong as to the site).  At that time, we were going to have two
  candidate sites - one in the West and one in the East.  Politics,
  being what politics is, rather quickly scuttled the eastern proposal
  (the Gulf salt domes were one of several proposed eastern sites),
  and Yucca Mountain, NV, was the last site left standing, or buried,
  or whatever.  And, of course, the high-level disposal program is
  languishing at this time.

  I am really just quibbling here.  Salt deposits, since they are
  in existance, indicate a absense of water movement, and thus are
  certainly good candidates for an ultimate high-level waste repository.


--
B. Alan Guthrie, III          |   Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?
                              |
alan.guthrie@cnfd.pgh.wec.com |   My opinions only
                              |