IT ALL seemed straightforward two decades ago when the US government was designing a permanent repository for high-level nuclear waste. It picked Yucca Mountain, a fairly remote desert site in the state of Nevada. Sure, there was a lot of geology and hydrology and seismic work to do to be certain the waste would not leak.
But they had years to work on that. And eventually the scientists concluded that they could build something that would protect people who might decide to live or farm near the site 10,000 years from now.
However, the behaviour of rocks and water…
