Nuclear Waste Storage
a.k.a.
- Nuclear Waste Disposal Areas
- waste dumps
- waste pits
- Nuclear Disposal Area
- NDA
Intro
In Space: 1999,
there were a number of nuclear waste storage areas,
comprised of nuclear waste,
presumably from
Earth's nuclear reactors,
and perhaps decommissioned nuclear weapons as well.
These areas became some major plot points,
as well as part of the series premise.
They were managed from
Moonbase Alpha,
by humans who would later become known as
Alphans.
There appear to have been at least four such Areas.
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List
- Area One: A relative small cluster of storage pits,
hasn't been further used for the five years before
September 1999.
Suffered a magnetic disturbance and eventually an explosion.
- Area Two: A far larger cluster,
this suffered a massive disturbance and exploded catastrophically,
propelling the Moon into interstellar space,
in what became known as Breakaway.
- Another area was later targetted by aliens for the energy
an explosion would create.
This was foiled by the Alphans.
- Area B7, intentionally exploded
by the Alphans
to change the Moon's path away from
a collision course with a young planet (in
"Seance Spectre")
There, the shafts were 10,000' deep.
Notes
- Presumably a small amount of the stored waste
was from Moonbase Alpha itself,
as it was shown to be nuclear-powered.
- Storage seemed to be in at least three different appearances:
small pits capped with a heavy cover topped by a conical
(electronic?) object; large, deep, cylindrical pits;
and half-dome structures.
It is not clear if this represents
(within the story)
advancement of storage protocols,
or had some other reason.
It is the first type which appeared most subject
to the magnetic disturbances which set off nuclear
accidents, but that may be coincidence,
and the root cause of the magnetic disturbances
itself remained one of the mysteries.
- The series apparently assumed,
before Three Mile Island and well before Chernobyl^,
that Earth's development of nuclear power would
continue to rapidly grow.
