This is a plan of deep geologic repository in Germany. Wait, in Germany? I've heard Germany is closing down its nuclear plants?!
But who said it's #nuclear? Millions of tons of highly toxic mercury and arsenic waste is being stored worldwide in geologic repositories for decades. That's the only thing you can do because unlike nuclear waste you can't recycle these metals.
You can read more about deep geologic repository of mercury and arsenic on the website of German operator K+S https://www.kpluss.com/en-us/ but similar repositories have been operational worldwide, for example in Canada https://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100027422/1100100027423
🇳🇱
@kravietz You actually could recycle the metals, sorta, its just super expensive and not really workable yet. At least thats my understanding.
Basically you can use high voltage plasmas at high heat to break down literally anything to its elemental components. the issue is you can only do it in small quantities at a time for a lot of energy input.
Sure, as a matter of fact the *only* reason why there are so few deep geology storage sites for nuclear waste is that there was *too few* of it to make economical sense. For example the whole UK nuclear industry produced slightly over 2000 m3 of high-level waste during the whole 60 years of operation! You don't build a huge underground site for such amount, you just keep it in at the plant (that's the whole waste of Swiss nuclear program for the last 40 years or so).
@kravietz Makes sense.
In the contemporary world that's gold mining companies going through slag heaps from some iron mines because they now contain enough gold for the effort.
And it doesn't decay, so while nuclear waste will lose 95% radiotoxicity in just 100 years, mercury and arsenic will last forever!
When did you last hear Greenpeace chaining themselves to rails to prevent transport of mercury and arsenic waste to these mines? Never. Because it's not radioactive, it's not scary, even though it's much more toxic.
People just trust this salt mine will last forever, and they're right because this is what geology says.