Joshua (Josh) Clark

Other people point out that an isotope of uranium, I think 236 or 8, has a half-life of 4.5 billion years.

So it depends on who you talk to just how long.

this stuff is really toxic for.

But it seems like the stuff that the people are most concerned of are things like iodine-129, which has a half-life of 15 million years.

It's not good.

But then on the other hand, you have cesium-131, I think I mentioned earlier, that that is really easy to get into the environment, so it causes a lot of problems.

So does iodine-129.

But it has a half-life of, I think, like 30 years.

So as long and a lot of the worst stuff actually goes away while it's in those pools for the first few years.

So it really kind of depends on what element or isotope you're worried about, whether it's safe after however many years or not, or if it ever will be safe under anything but geological deep time, you know.

You know, you get the impression on some of this that they are saying that because there doesn't seem –

So you would think there would be, like, figures bandied about everywhere.

Like, oh, this is how long nuclear waste is dangerous for, you know?

And this is why.

It's just all over the place.

And that actually is a little bit unnerving.

So I think, if anything, you should err on the side of caution, which is, I think, what they're doing with the geological repositories, which essentially is saying, put it as deep in the earth as we possibly can, cover it up, walk away, dusting your hands off, and pretend that it never even happened.

I think it was 100 and they just multiplied it by 1,000.

Yeah.

So, yeah, we don't really have to worry too much about low-level waste, I think is the upshot of that, right?