Yucca Mountain

[Hubris Boy]

Originally posted by tw

The Soviets also thought it was a good idea to store waste all in one place. The resulting explosion contaminated an area I believe may be 100 miles in diameter.

Heh. Funny you should mention that... the same thing occured to me, shortly after clicking the 'submit' button. I assume we're both thinking of the Kyshtym explosion back in... oh... '59 or so? IIRC, Kyshtym was a loss-of-coolant accident, wasn't it? <sarcasm>The fact that the radioactives in question were able to reach critical mass was merely an unfortunate (and messy) side effect.</sarcasm> A little Strontium-90 in the food chain is good for diversity.

Seriously, though... that kind of accident would be pretty unlikely at Yucca Mountain, wouldn't it? If nothing else, wouldn't the impurities in the environment from the (by now decomposed) containment vessels be enough to prevent critical mass? Time to dig out the old physics textbooks... (Hmmmm... let's see... anything higher than 92 is bad, right?)