Re: The Year 2038 Problem

Jens.Toerring_at_physik.fu-berlin.de
Date: 05/30/04 

Date: 30 May 2004 11:28:08 GMT

In comp.programming Gerry Quinn <gerryq@deletethisindigo.ie> wrote:
> In article <2hrgvfFd8qnpU1@uni-berlin.de>, Jens.Toerring@physik.fu-
> berlin.de says...
>>
>> > Then do an assay of the amount of natural radionucleides that are hidden
>> > 'under the rug'. I've heard there's stuff called uranium with a half-
>> > life of 4000 million years, just hidden in rocks in unmarked locations
>> > all over the planet. If you have a granite fireplace, there's even some
>> > in your house, oozing radioactive radon gas into the air you breathe.
>>
>> Well, if I am not completely mistaken, there's quite a bit of a
>> difference in the _concentration_ the stuff has been hidden 'under
>> the rug' by nature (plus stuff like plutonium doesn't seem to be very
>> common there) and the one the waste products are going to be stashed
>> away in. Or did they come upt with a way to distribute that stuff
>> evenly over a volume of a small mountain range and nobody told me?

> The irony is that that (dispersion) is precisely the sort of thing that
> people object to! The result is that radioactive waste is held in
> concentrated form and everyone is afraid of it. If it were diluted, the
> environmentalists would protest that where there were once a thousand
> tons of nuclear waste, there are now a million.

Problem is that you can't properly dilute it down to a level similar
to the concentration in nature. Even if you could bring all the stiff
into a soluble form and a make a very fine powder out of it and then
drop it in the sea it would still take a long long time until it's
dispersed down to an acceptable level. While mixing comes free, thanks
to the second law of thermodynamics, it takes quite some time. But if
you have to speed it up you need lots of extra energy. If that would
be different please explain why e.g. in the Irish sea due to the
Sellafield/Windscale plant (or whatever they call the thing nowadays)
the concentrations are still that high.

> Note how frequently you see a casually implied estimate of the threat
> from nuclear materials in terms of the mass of material multiplied by
> the halflife.

> And people complain about quite insignificant amounts of radionucleides
> in seawater.

What's "insignificant" is depends a lot on whom you ask. And it meant
something quite different in the fifties compared to what it means
now, even to the stout supporters of the use of nuclear power. It's
simply that nobody knows what levels are "insignificant" since no-one
really understands all the mechanisms by which added amounts of radio-
active materials can influence living organisms. Some people (and not
from the crackpot fringe) even claim that small amounts are healthy -
having such a range of opinions shows quite nicely that nobody really
knows).
                                     Regards, Jens 

-- 
  \   Jens Thoms Toerring  ___  Jens.Toerring@physik.fu-berlin.de
   \__________________________  http://www.toerring.de

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