asking people to store something for a very long time is very hard. Take the nuclear waste from the US atom bomb tests in the pacific. They capped the thing w/ tons of concrete but sea level rise and cracks are making it inevitable its going to cause a mess. And thats literally less than a century ago. The half life of these things is tens of thousands of years.

I think you underestimate how 'temporary' many seemingly strong structures are and how high the temptations to cut costs are. Its very easy to be like "welll...this'll probably hold. I'm sure of it."

Eventually we'll just burn the "spent" fuel in breeder reactors. Anything else doesn't make much sense.

I think you also missed where I'm advocating for DGRs for non-nuclear material too. I think you underestimate how some materials don't have a halflife at all and are still dangerous (e.g. heavy metals never become less dangerous over time).

Call me irrational but storing small amounts of highly radio active material in many locations is, from my point of view, basically asking for a dirty bomb to happen at some point. It only needs an event like the end of the soviet union to happen in a single country on earth and any terrorist organization would be able to buy enough of it. I acknowledge that this may happen anyways with the current situation but your scenario makes it even more likely.

Dirty bombs aren't an issue. You might want to ask yourself why we've never seen one used, especially if you understand how easy it is to obtain the necessary materials. IIRC we've only caught a handful of devices (none exploded). Also we have to consider when it explodes, it just doesn't make enough radiation. It is pretty difficult to generate enough radiation that would actually cause an increase in cancer rates (bombs disperse the radiation quickly, though it does aerosolize it). And then that cancer hits in 20+ years. It just isn't an effective weapon. Sure, it makes for a scary pipe bomb, but at the end of the day it is far more dangerous for the maker and greatly increases the complexity of the terrorist attack (also greatly increasing the likelihood that you get caught before you can deploy).

So a terrorist just gets a slight increase in fear factor, but it doesn't increase deadliness of the weapon, requires a lot more work, greatly increases the chance that they get caught, puts them in more danger, and so they just don't do it. There's too many downsides for only a minor upside. Why do it when you could just make a dozen pipe bombs and put them in trash cans around the city?

Really just think if you were a terrorist and wanted to do damage. There's a lot of things you could do (bunch of rusty nails on the I-5) that just don't happen. They are easy to accomplish, can do a lot of damage, but just don't. Why? Different objectives and just terrorism is extremely rare in the first place. And I'm pretty sure a drilling through feet of concrete and metal in a likely highly monitored site is too big of a hurdle when you can just go to home depot and get some stump remover and some steel pipes.

To add onto this, widespread and cheap is way more effective at generating terror.

The current trend in Kabul are bombs that get stuck onto vehicles by passing motorcyclists using magnets. It’s quite terrifying, since the ease essentially allows terrorists to enact a widespread campaign against civil service and civil society. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/16/world/asia/afghanistan-ma...

Exactly, terror is based on perpetuating the idea that anyone could be the victim of a terrorist attack. That they are simple and easy to do so the FBI/CIA has no chance of catching these "rogue" actors. Dirty bombs just don't fit into a typical terrorist's prerogative. Dirty bombs aren't cheap and can't be made by anyone. It takes a lot of time to collect the materials in a way that isn't immediately noticed.

Yes, the time that a dirty bomb is most dangerous is before it goes off

You don't have to be pretty smart to realize that it's a hell of a lot more expensive and requires a significant amount more work to create a dirty bomb vs a conventional bomb. Or rather you don't have to have any intelligence because both those things are physical limits.

... so you aren't arguing the premise there (ie, that dirty bombs are inefficient for terrorists). So your argument is distressingly close to "terrorists would be ineffective if they did [this], so we should ban it to stop them making mistakes". I doubt you believe that, I'm just drawing your attention to the fact you have to attack the premise to get anywhere on this issue.

godelski is arguing that terrorists who can be convinced to try and use dirty bombs will be less effective than if they had chosen other, more damaging, options.

Terrorists who try to make dirty bombs are incredibly likely to kill themselves when handling the material. A dirty bomb in general is ineffective, but sitting around next to highly radioactive material will put you down from your GI tract dying within 1 to 2 days.

Even more likely because you're going to need to powderize the nuclear material. Which is super dangerous. (weighted dosage is higher for internal exposure since it is closer to organs and less "shielding") Radioactive dust is something you really do not want to be messing around with, even if the radioactivity is comparatively low.

> They are going to try anything that can generate terror in large scale

Sounds they better write blog posts about google and facebook tracking

1 in 5 Islamic terrorists have engineering degrees (that’s nearly 10x the rate of engineers in the general population) and a further 2 out of those 5 have degrees in Islamic studies. That 3/5 of terrorists and doesn’t include those with other degrees. Suicide bombers are probably patsys, but they aren’t anywhere near the majority.

These people are smart, but are still indoctrinated. Despite the “religion of peace” propaganda, a clear reading of the Koran shows certain duties that cannot be avoided if you accept the premise that (unlike most of the Bible) it God’s exact words and also the final truth. The proof of the pudding is in the eating and the smarter the reader, the more inescapable those conclusions become.

It’s also not a fringe idea. Imagine if everyone in the US or everyone in the EU suddenly started believing suicide bombings of civilians is at least sometimes justified. That’s around the total number of people who actually believe that across the globe (even more believe in terrorism when targets and/or methods are changed).

More generally though, lots of very smart people get indoctrinated into cults every day. If our life history were just a bit different, you or I probably would have joined one too no matter how smart we are.

One of the biggest hurdles in the manufacturing of dirty bombs is that they are made from highly active sources. You can more or less safely manipulate a plutonium ball to manufacture a conventional a-bomb. But you just can't do it with highly active sources like cesium-137 without a significant amount of shielding during assembly and transportation. With this kind of source, acute radiation poisoning is a matter of hours, even minutes.

> Terrorists are not known to be the most logical people, to be honest

Terrorists want blood and guts on national TV, not a statistical raise in cancer over 30 years.

Look around you at the world stricken by pandemic. What self respecting terrorist isn’t pivoting to bioweapons now instead of keeping Black Sunday or The Sum of All Fears on loop in the headquarters (for the life of me I can’t remember the name of the Tom Clancy book where Iran weaponizes Ebola)

> What self respecting terrorist isn’t pivoting to bioweapons

for some reason I find it funny to imagine a terrorist pondering about his long term career plans and prospects.

do they also have stuff like resume driven development?

the terrorist might find some operation ridiculous but does it anyway to make his resume better, that way he can get hired into the FAANGs of the terrorism sector.

> (for the life of me I can’t remember the name of the Tom Clancy book where Iran weaponizes Ebola)

Executive Orders.

IilIRC his last actual book.

Coal plants are like aerosolized dirty bombs operating 24/7, so the trade-off is still good even with that (irrational, IMO, but for the sake of argument let's consider it probable) factor.

Terrorists are going to break into a government facility, go a mile deep, retrieve massive concrete cylinders, and transport them back to base. Just to get access to low level nuclear material? If they want to poison people en-masse there are way better options. Uranium is a relatively slow killer. And we test our water supply for it because it's a heavy metal like lead. So any real attempt to poison people with it will get detected pretty promptly.

Groups that have the expertise to covertly retrieve spent fuel could probably just buy guns and shoot up a stadium. And that would cause more damage. The relative risk presented by nuclear waste is trivial.

So? The parent suggested to store the waste in place, not a mile deep in some central, well protected mine. And that would be stupid indeed.

Storing waste in place is also hardly any risk. Are terrorists going to retrieve one of these [1], weaponize it, and then deploy it? If they have this capability, then they almost certainly have the capability of shooting up a mall. And the latter would cause more damage. I see effectively zero additional danger presented by nuclear waste in this regard.

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_cask_storage#/media/File...

The "highly radio active" material that is dispersed is mainly radioactive by contamination and unsuitable for any bomb. In La Hague, uranium and plutonium are recycled. The part that could be used for a dirty bomb (other fission products) does not leave La Hague. It is called "glass storage" if you do a google search. This storage is the origin of the old logo of cogema.

Pulverised fuel ash seems a much more effective component for a dirty bomb. It mixes good with air, is much more harmful to humans both long term and short term, is also very radiactive, and mixes well with fresh water supplies. It also much easier to find and is likely much less guarded, and if stolen less likely to be tracked.

The only reason I can see why no one has used that already is that chemical weapons designed for the purpose are more effective.

Those chemical weapons are cheaper, easier to obtain (literally a grocery store), easier to produce, easier to obtain higher yields, etc. They also are extremely terrifying.

But even chemical weapons aren't used that often. We rarely hear about anthrax letters and we never hear about terrorist attacks that used bleach and ammonium even though practically everyone knows about this reaction and the materials are cheap, easy to obtain, and don't raise suspicion. (Side note: we do hear about people accidentally creating this mixture fairly frequently. Enough that almost everyone knows someone that did it)

Chemical/biological/nuclear weapons are just not worth it to terrorists. If they were we'd have seen them and if we're being honest the dirty bomb is the hardest out of all of them.

Not to mention that chemical sources are harder to detect from distance with sensors.

It also just isn't a lot of waste. It sounds like a lot, but consider that the US produces 100 million tons of coal waste per year (2014). Hell, solar has ~30ktons of waste a year (just PV panels). 11ktons over 60 years just is astronomically tiny. That's 138 tons a year, 150x less than solar and 500000x less than coal. They just don't compare.

That coal waste is also radioactive. Natural, but still radioactive.

Depending on location, it could be very radioactive... I studied and worked at lab that did measurements, and it was push for closing a nuclear plant in our city (in Siberia) for coal-based plant, but after evaluation of waste, it was decided to continue to use nuclear-based station.

The problem with coal waste is that most of it is in the atmosphere causing climate change. That might not seem like a storage problem but it is. You can't put the genie back in the bottle.

To me, it's like someone asking where me to choose which part of my house to infect with wood rot:

1. A single scrap of wood, extremely badly affected, stored in a sealed box under the stairs

2. My entire roof mildly affected by rot.

I'd take the box under the stairs.

“Natural” as opposed to? :)

Natural as in naturally occurring. Coal is formed and burns in nature with no interaction from humans. Plutonium does not occur naturally in detectable quantities. It only does so through human action.

Not sure what you’re trying to say? Asbestos is a natural mineral - not sure where you think that fits into this or how it’s relevant, sorry. We aren’t just listing all things that are naturally occurring!

It was implied in the parent context that the fact coal is "naturally" radioactive somehow matters to the fact that it is.

Asbestos is naturally occurring and incredibly dangerous. "natural" has nothing to do with risk to human life.

> "natural" has nothing to do with risk to human life.

Not sure who you think you're disagreeing with? Nobody said otherwise if you read the thread.

Then I have no idea it was necessary to talk about the "naturalness" of radioactive sources at all given the subject matter.

I usually give the "natural" qualification if it is not immediately obvious there are plenty of naturally occuring sources of radioactivity around us. This has mostly to so with human perception of radioactivity being something unnatural, maybe it was not necessary on HN. It does not matter that much in the end with respect to radioactivity.

Plutonium is not a naturally occurring element. Plenty of stuff is man made.

Tô put in perspective. 11 tons is less than half the tonage of an average cargo ship.

I didn't say it was a lot of waste?

The US produces less coal waste every year, heading rapidly toward zero as the cost of coal power increasingly exceeds that of other sources.

Ironically, most waste is radioactive. Obviously not as radioactive or we wouldn’t be having this discussion, but turns out almost everything is at least a bit.