Going Underground in Kansas

I saved a clipping about Kansas getting the world's first mile-deep nuclear reactor and have continued to watch for recent news about the dig.  I did find that they had begun, and that some of the neighbors close to the dig were concerned about safety.  I plan to continue checking on progress.  

As I was researching the current issue, I remembered an old clipping about the tragic death of two men, one from Ulysses, Kansas, who decided to go into an abandoned mine shaft near Georgetown Colorado, in hopes of finding something worth the effort.  My mother-in-law had saved a clipping, beginning with a headline "Hope Dims for Missing Pair." The rescuers had followed their tracks left in the dust, and they knew that the two men carried tanks with enough oxygen to last 4 hours.  One of the men had 3 children, the other had two, and hope for the men's survival was strong.       

That general area in Colorado had been a mining region almost 100 years before, but no strike of precious metal was ever found in that particular mine.  Sadly, their decision to enter the mine was a mistake.  The searchers said that it appeared that the men stopped for a rest, pulled off their oxygen masks, and died so quickly they had no awareness of their mistake.    According to the newspaper, the mine was opened only a year.  

A happier story in Grant County, Kansas goes back to the late 1910s, when a farmer discovered a badger hole of nearly pure white ash.  The ash originated in the Pleistocene-era, and it was found in other Western Kansas locations.  By 1922 production reached four tons every hour and a half. The ash was used in toothpaste, grit, soaps, and cleaning powders, although superior abrasives eventually replaced it's use.  In the 1916s it was once again marketable for such things as plaster, concrete, potassium fertilizer and oil absorbents.  However, by that time, it was no longer being marketed in the area of Grant County, Kansas. 

Deep Space

As I mentioned earlier, mining in Kansas has once again made the news.  Deep Isolation is testing in Kansas, Texas, and Utah as part of President Trump's nuclear pilot program.  A newspaper article described an "expedited testing of new designs" to ultimately design a pressurized water reactor--"the world's most common kind of clear technology--small enough to fit into the borehole and powerful enough to generate about as much power as 10,000 homes consume.  That article focused on the generation of power; however, I also found articles about the concern.  

Also of concern is the disposal of spent nuclear fuel.  The current process, as I understand it, uses existing drilling techniques used in the oil and gas industry.  Currently, the concerns about the deep boreholes are primarily the impact on the ground water and aquifer contamination, and while the companies assure the mile deep placement is secure, local people remain particularly concerned.  

Borehole drilling is common in the oil and gas industry, however, apparently using it for nuclear energy and waste disposal is something new. I have only dipped my toe into the issues that appear to be already underway. What concerns me is whether the safeguards I once trusted are still as competent as they once were.  I do not know.  However, I do know that we are living in a far different world that moves faster and seems less dependent on the wisdom of those well educated in their particular sciences.  AI is amazing but as I understand, isn't it only as intelligent as what the information of humans put into it.  It thinks faster and can assimilate the wisdom of a great many people all at once, but for difficult new issues, I still hope that human beings have a place.  We are already giving too little attention to Mother Nature's warning about global warming.  If we become careless about our planet, we do not yet have a backup, although apparently, we are also working on that!