Re: Nuclear waste, I've often wondered...

[OKIsItJustMe]

4. Why Not Dispose of Waste in Ocean Trenches?

http://geology.about.com/od/platetectonics/f/seadisposal.htm

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Even the fastest subduction is very slow, geologically slow. The fastest-subducting location in the world today is the Chile Trench, running down the west side of South America. There the Nazca plate is plunging beneath the South America plate at about 25 centimeters (10 American inches) a year. It goes down at about a 30-degree angle. So if we put a barrel of nuclear waste in the Chile Trench (never mind that it's in Chilean national waters), in a hundred years it will move 25 meters—as far away as your next-door neighbor. Is that anyone's idea of efficient?

After their hazardous period of 10,000 years those waste barrels would have moved just 2.5 kilometers, about a mile and a half, and would lie only a few hundred meters deep. (Remember that every other subduction zone is slower than this.) And for all that time they could be easily dug up by whatever future civilization cares to retrieve them. After all, have we left the Pyramids alone? Even if future generations left the waste alone, the seawater and seafloor life would not, and the odds are good that the barrels would corrode and be breached.

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