GEOLOGIC WASTE REPOSITORIES, UNDERGROUND SCIENCE LABORATORIES, AND RADIOACTIVITY: A PARADIGM SHIFT

Shielding provided by overburden against cosmogenic background attracts highly sensitive experiments to mined underground spaces that are also suitable to permanently isolate radioactive waste. These disparate functions focus attention on natural nuclear processes and radioactivity as geologic factors and agents. Life evolved among the ruins of cosmic fusion reactors; humans thrive in radioactive environments; without the natural fusion reactor closest to Earth, a.k.a. Sol, much of life we know is not possible; and earliest known fission reactors reached critical mass billions of years before Fermi. Natural geologic environments have isolated dangerous -including radioactive- materials for much of Earth's history. The teaching of facts, data, and real comparative risks at the interfaces between geology and all things nuclear and radioactive must prevail over the more comfortable recourse to regulatory (rarely principally science-based) standards and legal compliance in science curricula.