[HN Gopher] Spain asks US to clean up site of 1966 nuclear accident
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Spain asks US to clean up site of 1966 nuclear accident
Author : melenaboija
Score : 52 points
Date : 2023-05-10 16:03 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.foxnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.foxnews.com)
| pvaldes wrote:
| Same news in Spain: US tells Spain that is opened to clean site
| of 1996 nuclear accident. LOL
|
| IMAO feels like there is an increase in the perceived danger of a
| nuclear black swan (shaped as unnamed rogue agents using
| uncontrolled radioactive waste to make dirty bombs). The Putin
| war is clearly escalating. We are now at the massive launching of
| phosphorus bombs part so a "nuclear but not so much and unsigned"
| event is unfortunately closer than ever.
|
| Probably is in the mutual benefit for both parts to take control
| over this stuff and put it in a safer place.
| boc wrote:
| Russia using a "dirty bomb" on Ukraine makes zero sense. The
| whole strategic interest in occupying and conquering Ukraine
| was to access their resources. If you irradiate everything it's
| gone for generations on all sides.
| pvaldes wrote:
| All about Russia makes zero sense currently, and is
| increasingly becoming obvious that after the first plan (to
| kill the president none less) failed, they pivoted around
| committing genocide
| iudqnolq wrote:
| Russia using a dirty bomb is unlikely, but you're wrong about
| the reason why. Ukraine doesn't have anything economically
| worth what Russia is doing. At this point they're fighting
| because they don't want to have lost.
|
| A dirty bomb is unlikely because it could lead to escalations
| by Europe and the USA.
| bigbacaloa wrote:
| Spain has been asking for this for decades
| pvaldes wrote:
| Yes. It seems that Spain and US signed an agreement about
| that in 2015 that then never started. The more interesting
| part here is why now?
| bigbacaloa wrote:
| Glib answer is that Trump came and went.
| logdap wrote:
| [dead]
| htag wrote:
| 1. Expectations of what to do in these situations should have
| been negotiated when Spain agreed to let US fly nuclear armed
| airplanes in their airspace.
|
| 2. The Spanish government is currently renting the land from it's
| owners. I am very curious about the rent, as this land is
| currently useless. I don't know the details of Spanish law, but
| on the face this seems like a good case for eminent domain.
|
| 3. At this point, the cleanup process would involve moving dirt
| that contains trace amounts of radioactive material. This has
| been done before, but I think this would be both the largest
| effort and the one in which the dirt traveled the furthest (from
| Spain to the US, probably to a facility west of the Mississippi
| River.
|
| 4. Once the topsoil is removed, then what? Replace it with top
| soil harvested from someplace else? Start a project to restore
| the topsoil with lots of compost? It'll take another sixty years.
|
| EDIT: This type of cleanup is an ideal use case for robotics, and
| I would love to see what technology they use to perform the
| cleanup. I imagine several semi-autonomous remote controlled
| tractor sized machines loading into containment boxes made of
| nine inch thick steel.
| bigbacaloa wrote:
| Franco was in charge when this was allowed.
| logi2mus wrote:
| 1. Well should have, but I think in that time nuclear waste was
| dumped into the ocean.
|
| 2. long term lease is common and not that expensive for
| agricultural land.
|
| 3. Well done in Fukushima, I think it is not that big of
| adifficulty. As it is low activity waste so old mines should
| do.
|
| 4. Renaturation is standard in for example open pit coal mines.
| juujian wrote:
| Renaturation is standard, but the environmental quality of
| result is still subpar. Sometimes it looks pretty, but plant
| and insect diversity is very low. It's a good idea to think
| about this -- i cannot think of any large scale example that
| has ecologic and not just PR value.
| btilly wrote:
| I've been to https://www.butchartgardens.com/. It is
| admittedly a highly artificial example, but it is an
| extremely pretty reclaimed coal mine that is reasonably
| large, and with good plant diversity. They don't use
| herbicides or pesticides, but instead rely on released
| insects to protect the plants. (Unfortunately they have not
| found an alternative to fungicides to protect the roses.)
| This suggests at least some insect diversity.
| jmclnx wrote:
| At this point, I wonder how bad the area is. it has been 60+
| years.
| croes wrote:
| It's Plutonium 239 with a half life of 2.411x104 years, so
| still bad.
| bombcar wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium-239#Hazards seems to
| indicate most of the hazards have to do with ingestion of the
| dust vs radiation.
| sgc wrote:
| It is the radiation of course, but when it it is _inhaled_
| or ingested, rather than just being in the vicinity. Of
| course, that is true for many types of radioactive
| particles, and they do require cleanup or other
| remediation.
| rsynnott wrote:
| > It is the radiation of course
|
| It's not _just_ the radiation; it's also pretty toxic,
| and, like a lot of heavy metals, the body struggles to
| get rid of it.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Plutonium is particularly dangerous because it
| essentially does not exist in nature and evolution has
| had zero opportunity to create mechanisms to handle it.
| brendoelfrendo wrote:
| It's particularly dangerous because it is a heavy metal
| and an alpha particle emitter. There are plenty of both
| of those in nature, and evolution can't do a lot against
| them. Unless you can evolve tiny shields around your
| chromosomes to protect them from getting bombarded by
| high-speed particles.
| speed_spread wrote:
| Actinides (including Pu) oxidizes readily in air, spalling
| off radioactive PuO2 airborne dust with no external
| mechanism required.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spall#Corrosion
| croes wrote:
| Don't forget the inhaling part
|
| >It has been estimated that a pound (454 grams) of
| plutonium inhaled as plutonium oxide dust could give cancer
| to two million people
| [deleted]
| belorn wrote:
| The question as I read it is about how concentrated the
| plutonium is in that region. Everything start to difuse given
| enough time.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Only 24050 years to go.
| CorrectHorseBat wrote:
| Then only half is gone though
| Accujack wrote:
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/19/us-to-clean-up...
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(page generated 2023-05-10 23:02 UTC)