Nuclear Waste Barrels Litter English Channel

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Friendly
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Nuclear Waste Barrels Litter English Channel

Post by Friendly »

The UK dumped 28,500 barrels of radioactive waste into the English Channel between 1950 and 1963.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/eur ... 93991.html

Found this (from 1955): http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/writ ... hurd-deeps
Mr. Hayman

asked the Minister of Works whether, in view of the proximity of the Hurd Deep to the Channel Islands, he will ask the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority to cease using these waters for the dumping of any atomic waste and arrange for it to be dumped into the Atlantic where there is no danger of any of it drifting on to coasts or important fisheries.

Mr. Birch

The Hurd Deeps are used only for the disposal of waste of low activity. This would be quickly dispersed and diluted to an extent indistinguishable from the radioactivity present in the sea.
Good going, chaps.

Just when you thought you'd heard it all. Oh the humanity.
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Re: Nuclear Waste Barrels Litter English Channel

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Re: Nuclear Waste Barrels Litter English Channel

Post by trap15 »

Certainly sounds like something the U.K. would do. Lots of terrible things related to nuclear and bio-hazard waste in the U.K....
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Re: Nuclear Waste Barrels Litter English Channel

Post by HenAi »

So from what I've heard, the barrels are supposed to have originally contained about 58 trillion becquerel. For reference, let's pick the north sea, which has a volume of approximately 94,000 km³. 94,000 km³ are about 94 quadrillion liters. (58*10^12)/(94*10^15) = 0,00061702127659574468.
I'll let you do the rest of the math from here and compare that to the EU safety limits for radioactivity in drinking water. And that's just for the north sea, which is really tiny compared to the big oceans.
This is like someone was screaming "oh god you're poisoning the ocean" at someone pissing into the water. What a load of bullshit.
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Re: Nuclear Waste Barrels Litter English Channel

Post by Friendly »

Reading comprehension, a valuable skill. Besides the fact that it's beyond retarded to dump radioactive waste into the ocean, the point is that it didn't disperse: It's still directly in front of the British doorstep, right where they dumped it in their infinite wisdom.
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Re: Nuclear Waste Barrels Litter English Channel

Post by HenAi »

Friendly wrote:Reading comprehension, a valuable skill. Besides the fact that it's beyond retarded to dump radioactive waste into the ocean, the point is that it didn't disperse: It's still directly in front of the British doorstep, right where they dumped it in their infinite wisdom.
I just told you why "it's beyond retarded" is a completely false statement. And the fact that the barrels are still there means the contents haven't actually dispersed into the water yet at all. Which means they're actually even less dangerous. Unless you try and swim directly next to them, ok, that would be unhealthy if you came within a few meters of them. So next time, let's dump them somewhere they can sink to at least 1000 meters instead.
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Re: Nuclear Waste Barrels Litter English Channel

Post by Ed Oscuro »

yo fuck deep sea life, that's what i'm sayin
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Re: Nuclear Waste Barrels Litter English Channel

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Re: Nuclear Waste Barrels Litter English Channel

Post by HenAi »

Ed Oscuro wrote:yo fuck deep sea life, that's what i'm sayin
If you actually sunk them to 1000 meters, I'd wager the number of (sizeable) sea animals seriously negatively affected by it in 10 years would be significantly smaller than the number of animals getting negatively affected by a slaughterhouse in 1 year. Actually, that's probably already true for the current location and I'm still overstating the actual effect it would have.
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Re: Nuclear Waste Barrels Litter English Channel

Post by TransatlanticFoe »

It's a shame people are still scared of radiation and think of chernobyl etc. whenever the term is mentioned. For the record, Cornwall has naturally high background radioactivity and (subject to your opinion of the west country) isn't full of cancerous mutants.

This was last done in the 60s, so without knowing the specifics of the materials present you can probably halve the activity of the dangerous ionising alpha and beta emissions. And that's an "at least" figure - it's entirely possible this "low level" material has entirely decayed by now. And even then the maths above from HenAi leaves little to fear.

Seriously. Countries in the 50s and 60s dumped all manner of shit where they liked and many now are rampant in their disregard for the environment. We don't need a thread of environmentalist guff crying about nuclear waste that's not a threat.
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Re: Nuclear Waste Barrels Litter English Channel

Post by Ed Oscuro »

HenAi wrote:
Ed Oscuro wrote:yo fuck deep sea life, that's what i'm sayin
If you actually sunk them to 1000 meters, I'd wager the number of (sizeable) sea animals seriously negatively affected by it in 10 years would be significantly smaller than the number of animals getting negatively affected by a slaughterhouse in 1 year. Actually, that's probably already true for the current location and I'm still overstating the actual effect it would have.
Trying to deflect any culpability by referring to something that is horrendous doesn't do the job.

At least with slaughterhouses we can say those are out there because they procure some arguable benefit, i.e. food for people. Throwing little radioactive bombs wherever deep-sea currents can take them? Yeah I don't see what that does other than placate people who think "well it's good they didn't put it in MY backyard."

This reminds me there is a plan to store low- to intermediate-level nuclear waste a half mile from the shoreline on Lake Huron. On the Michigan side of the lake there have been a variety of on-site storage methods, even closer to the lake.
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Re: Nuclear Waste Barrels Litter English Channel

Post by HenAi »

Ed Oscuro wrote:
HenAi wrote:
Ed Oscuro wrote:yo fuck deep sea life, that's what i'm sayin
If you actually sunk them to 1000 meters, I'd wager the number of (sizeable) sea animals seriously negatively affected by it in 10 years would be significantly smaller than the number of animals getting negatively affected by a slaughterhouse in 1 year. Actually, that's probably already true for the current location and I'm still overstating the actual effect it would have.
Trying to deflect any culpability by referring to something that is horrendous doesn't do the job.

At least with slaughterhouses we can say those are out there because they procure some arguable benefit, i.e. food for people. Throwing little radioactive bombs wherever deep-sea currents can take them? Yeah I don't see what that does other than placate people who think "well it's good they didn't put it in MY backyard."
The one who brought "oh but the poor animals" into play was you. And the point I was making is "if you don't care about animals getting purposely slaughtered, you sure have no reason to be bothered by a small fraction of the number of those dying by other means". Or in other words: Who gives a fuck.

And there is some arguable benefit: That benefit is convenience on the one hand and security on the other hand. It's a lot easier to just dump the stuff to some place where it'll (mostly) harmlessly disperse over time than to go to length to store it securely by other means. You don't seem to quite have grasped how vast the oceans really are in comparison to that tiny bit of radioactive waste. Granted, you'd want to avoid doing a sloppy job of it, but that goes for any method of disposing of such waste.
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Re: Nuclear Waste Barrels Litter English Channel

Post by Ed Oscuro »

Thanks for proving my point. Undersea life (and also divers and any other life / activity that depend upon not being contaminated by a barrel of radioactive waste) doesn't matter to you.

- Showing that there was no harm to undersea life would have negated the point I was making. Of course, you can't. Bringing up something completely irrelevant (slaughterhouses) doesn't do it.
- Showing that we must choose between doing good in slaughterhouses or not dumping radioactive waste into the ocean, and that we can't do both, would also have negated the point. Your analogy (whatever it was supposed to be) fails terribly, just as if somebody said "hey, the holocaust was really bad, let's all be thankful we aren't dealing with that" if somebody mentions (insert horrible abuse of human rights here, just so long as "it isn't as bad as the holocaust").

You know both of these are ridiculous arguments and you were silly to even try to divert the issue, which is why you didn't follow it up. My bringing up the many things that use the sea and shouldn't be recklessly subjected to possible contamination isn't irrelevant.

About the "security benefit" (which I figured out on my own, but, in your words, "who gives a fuck") you'd have done better to highlight that before making ill-advised tirades. It's only beneficial if you assume that suddenly we can save tons of money on nuclear security, which in most cases will not materialize because reactors and spent fuel still must be guarded. On top of that, the possibility for people to be sloppy in anything critical mustn't be underestimated. We don't know precisely how underseas currents work, and even if you went along much of an ocean or a sea dispersing it as you went along, there's no guarantee that the cyclical currents won't keep it fairly well saturated. Bringing up post-Chernobyl, post-USSR bombing the hell out of Eastern Europe EU drinking water standards doesn't mask that this is still a harm, even if it is "acceptable" it is not the sort of thing that should be lightly done.

What's more ridiculous is that there's no positive to even perfectly dispersing it in the oceans instead of placing it in a mine where it can be checked and controlled, and even subject to possible future uses, beyond maybe placating local know-nothings who will fight any nuclear waste disposal. However dumping it in the sea, especially undiluted like this, is reckless as hell.

Get that Maddox-wannabe shit outta here. You lose! Good day, sir.
TransatlanticFoe wrote:We don't need a thread of environmentalist guff crying about nuclear waste that's not a threat.
wat
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Re: Nuclear Waste Barrels Litter English Channel

Post by TrevHead (TVR) »

Imo the recycled rubbish scam in the UK is much worse. Where green bin recyclable rubbish is sent to landfill in the UK or China. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... rated.html
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Re: Nuclear Waste Barrels Litter English Channel

Post by Ed Oscuro »

Yeah, there's definitely a problem when do-gooders either get ahead of the science or economics of it, or just plain don't fund things properly. And probably a lot of that stuff does end up right in the ocean where it is certainly doing more harm.
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Re: Nuclear Waste Barrels Litter English Channel

Post by O. Van Bruce »

Completely agree with Ed Oscuro Arguments right there. I was going to post something along his lines but the amount of "Who gives a fuck" attitude of HenAi stunned me, literally.
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Re: Nuclear Waste Barrels Litter English Channel

Post by Friendly »

TrevHead (TVR) wrote:Imo the recycled rubbish scam in the UK is much worse. Where green bin recyclable rubbish is sent to landfill in the UK or China. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... rated.html
That's terrible, too. But I find dumping radioactive waste into the sea (especially so close to where you live) way more terrifying.
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Re: Nuclear Waste Barrels Litter English Channel

Post by Casey120 »

I'm sure it will mix perfectly with the stuff we Dutch , The French , Belgium , Germany and the others dump in the North Sea .

They probably all use HenAi's calculation apart from each other and one dump at a time but according to the Umbrella corporation all is perfectly fine anyway :wink:
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Re: Nuclear Waste Barrels Litter English Channel

Post by Ed Oscuro »

What I find a problem is the assumption that the "low level" waste is all perfectly degradable and that it will diffuse. Some of it might just be old mop water, but if there are any solids, that certainly sets back the assumption that it will be perfectly diffuse by now, because you can see from those barrels that it isn't.
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Re: Nuclear Waste Barrels Litter English Channel

Post by JohaneS »

Nuclear waste has been a hot topic recently. Actually, I have been reading several articles regarding the subject. By the way, I onced heard about this nuclear waste treatment facility in the south of France which was shaken by a blast. The explosion murdered one and injured four others. French authorities say that no radiation was released in the incident. France gets more of its power from nuclear sources than any nation on the planet. Radioactive waste is really dangerous not only to most forms of life but also to the environment. Furthermore, it is regulated by government agencies in order to protect human health and the environment as well.
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