The problem with no solution of nuclear waste
We never knew what to do with this bloody waste. We still decided to launch the nuclear industry, hoping that, with the developing technology, we would find a solution at some point. But then we started to produce waste, and we still had no clue of what we could do with it. So we thought, out of sight, out of mind, let’s send it deep into the oceans, where no human being will ever run into it. Bad luck, the containers moved, there were some leaks, some animals and then some people got contaminated, and soon, we couldn’t send the waste into the oceans anymore. But we were still producing nuclear waste, we needed to do something with them. So we thought, out of sight, out of mind, let’s bury them as deep as we can. But when we went to see people to propose to dig in their garden, in their town, in their region, we were welcomed with pitchforks. So we decided to put a lot of means to find a solution. But instead of funding research, we rather decided to put our financial means into making people agree with getting the waste in their region, in their town, in their garden. We were really creative at that period. In 1991 we even produced a law that talked about reversibility, research and distributing lots of money. We had lots of money and the rest would look nice on paper. With all those nice promises, some regions were inviting us. And it’s between Meuse and Haute-Marne that everything began.
ANDRA or the nuclear mafia
Hi, my name is ANDRA, I’m the French national agency of nuclear waste management.
I have 650 employees. Small, but strong. My job is to place this … waste.
With help of the State (it’s my daddy), and years of experience, I have lots of little tricks to get rid of my waste without trouble. Ok, I’ll do a DIY tutorial :
1) You choose some lost place, the less people there is, the more chocolate, but more importantly, the less resistance.
2) You build a pied-à-terre, mine was called « house of ANDRA » .
3) To make friends in the neighborhood, you start distributing money to towns, associations, and even people. But don’t do it directly, it would look weird. I used the help of a friend called GIP (Group for Public Interest).
4) So that the people have a good image from you and forget a bit why you are here, start a research project and build a lab.
5) Then, as taking care of the children is always valuable, start programs in schools.
6) And step by step, buy more and more lands to make your garden bigger.
7) And whenever you feel that you control well enough the territory, announce that you will dig galleries beneath the villages, the fields, and the forests to bury the waste.
8) And if ever people start to scream to loud, call dady so he sends his armed staff.
CIGEO’s risks
The nuclear waste of high and medium intensity and long life that is involved in the CIGEO project have a radioactive life ranging from hundreds of thousands of years to millions of years.
In the long list of what could go wrong when you start designing a project as absurd as CIGEO, we selected for you :
- Transport : we could easily forget it, but to bury nuclear waste in Bure, we first need to move them around. Sprinkle a little dose of accidents and soak in a big bowl of wild radioactivity rejections on highly used routes and you can eat it right away.
- Also forgotten and highly noxious we would propose the collapse of galleries where the waste will be stored. Already two deaths of employees in the laboratory experimental galleries due to ground motions.
- You can then choose between out of control fire and explosion. Indeed, the nuclear waste produce hydrogen that you have to ventilate if you are not fan of nuclear explosions. But ventilating the waste is fueling the fire. The nuclear waste packages are super hot, and the more radioactive it is, the hotter (it’s the heat that makes the turbines of our lovely centrals work).
- And the all categories champion would be our inability to remember that someone planted a poisoned gift on a site of geothermic interest hundreds of thousands of years in the past. If someone has an idea how we can communicate with the beings of the next millions of years, ANDRA launch a nice creative contest.