Can you really put three miles of continuous steel liner (a “casing”) down the drillhole (1 mile of vertical access and 2 miles of horizontal storage)? How does it get around the curved section?

It is standard practice in the extractive industries to have wells lined with a continuous steel casing go down vertically for over a mile and horizontally for two miles. Some wells are several miles deep vertically and over five miles horizontally. The well casing is comprised of 30-foot-long sections screwed together at the drilling rig as they are lowered into the hole. The steel casing bends easily around the curve from vertical to horizontal after reaching the “kickoff point.” A typical distance to go from vertical to horizontal is 1000 feet. However, we cannot bend our disposal canisters containing the spent nuclear fuel assemblies. So, depending on the length of our canister and the diameter of the drillhole, the curve to transition from vertical to horizontal may take 2000 feet instead of 1000 feet.