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submitted 11 months ago by m0darn@lemmy.ca to c/askscience@lemmy.world

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...

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[-] habanhero@lemmy.ca 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months 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.

this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2023
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