Reply #20: Reactors underground

[izquierdista]

The real, workable solution is to locate any new reactors half a mile underground, in old coal, potash, or salt mines. When the reactor becomes too old or unreliable, then there is no "problem" with disposing of all the waste, as it is already in its final resting place. Just cut the cord to the surface, backfill the shafts and tunnels and leave it there.

Of course, the suitable geology will have to be found in the first place to avoid leaching problems like with some abandoned gold mines in Colorado. However, those problems are surface mines that have ground water running through them, and deep mines are located under ground water, under an impermeable layer.

Just to let you know, coal plants produce quite a bit of radioactivity themselves. When a nuke plant is downwind of a coal-fired power plant, they can always tell when there is a temperature inversion; all the radiation monitors start going off.