I’m having trouble wrapping my head around the scale of the problem of nuclear waste. If we took all the nuclear waste produced in a year and evenly blended it into all gasoline burned in a year would the radiation be deadly? Dangerous? Detectable?

It’s easiest to get numbers for the US.

2 000 000 kg of waste per year

510 000 000 000 Liters of gasoline

Obviously this isn’t a real proposal, although I think it would reduce carbon emissions…

  • habanhero
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    1 year ago

    I’m not sure why you think dispersing nuclear waste into our environment instead of isolating it is a good idea.

    If it’s just a thought experiment from a mathematical / chemical perspective, maybe someone else would like to take on the question and do the math.

    From a sociological and logistical perspective, it’s just not gonna happen. Pretty sure people’s tolerance for radioactive materials anywhere near them is zero. There isn’t any amount of radioactivity / danger that is considered socially acceptable.