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this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2026
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The good news is that they weren't meant to be permanent, only hold long enough for the material to decay. The article doesn't say (or they don't know yet) if that was achieved. They do say that the measurements for radioactivity picked up something, but it might have been the background radiation that's everywhere thanks to worldwide nuclear testing. Not much we can do about it at that depth.
Water is such a good radiation insulator that you need to be a few meters from the nuclear waste to be able to detect any radiation, the issue usually is the effect to wild life, that absorbs radioactive heavy metals, but so deep in the ocean, it's not much of an issue.
The background dose rate attributable to nuclear testing is pretty negligible when compared to the bigger sources, i.e. radon in the ground and other naturally occuring elements, as well as cosmic radiation that makes its way to the Earths surface. The EPA has a fairly comprehensive page on the subject.