Are Three-Mile-Deep Boreholes the Long-Term Answer for Nuclear Waste Stalemate?

摘要

Among geologists, there are givens: Humans don't build things that last a million years. And only the bowels of Earth itself can be trusted to swallow -forever - the radioactive nuclear waste that humans have created. So it was with a flush of optimism that the U.S. Department of Energy announced the Deep Borehole Field Test project in 2015. The $35 million idea was simple: Drill a test hole about 3 miles deep into Earth's crust in rugged North Dakota. Study the properties of the crystalline "host rock" buried there. Determine if it might be suitable for the mission at hand: Interning America's spent fuel canisters - including those piled up at California's San Onofre and Diablo Canyon plants - at the bottom, then sealing the hole with miles of concrete-and-asphalt plugs, never to be seen or heard from again.