Iraq and MONEY!

' put it underground around your town, '

Actually, im confident that even now as we speak, underneath the very chair that I am using to type this reply, there are radioactive elements buried directly below me. In fact, in quantities that would make the environmental alarmist go absolutely awol.

Do you know why I sit here, confident that I will live to tommorow, and why its so rare that sufficient quantities of naturally occuring radioactive elements pops out of the earth?

B/c millions of tons of earth and rock makes a pretty damn good barrier! The places where this does occur (Yellowstone Park, etc) are geographic anomalies, and rare enough to be counted by memory..

Anyway, as has been pointed out many times, our current storage outlook is very rosy, with the opening of several new sites, we are pretty much set for the next 50 years.

And if you are really extra paranoid and unreasonable about Nuclear waste, going contrary to the advice of pretty much the entire nuclear physics community, then there are breeder reactor designs like Super-Phoenix in France that do the job just fine.

 

Yes, millions of tons of earth and rock. Never mind that a breach of the concrete containment would potentially leech all of that nuclear waste into the surrounding environment, contaminating it for centuries. Or haven't you noticed that nuclear waste isn't exactly naturally occurring, wrt to your comment on naturally occurring radioactive elements popping out?

And who's talking about 50 years? I'm talking about thousands of years. I'm thinking long term, not until the rough end of my life and yours on this planet. give or take a couple of decades. God forbid we think about future generations.

But of course I'm just being paranoid and ignorant.........

 

Ok, im going to bite.

Lets say for arguments sake, that 16 years of physics education is wrong, that my teachers were dunces, that Nuclear physicists are incompetent.

Lets assume that there will be 1 or 2 major leaks, say every 10,000 years. Lets also assume, that we've thrown caution to the wind, and that people have actually settled near a nuclear storage facility. Now, lets say theres an earthquake or some such, and coupled to this, we have some sort of natural fire that coincides with this. Eg the worst possible situation happens (namely radioactive elements escape up into the atmosphere)

Now, this worst case scenario looks something like Chernobyl. Radiation goes like 1/r^2, the surrounding area is contamitated for the next hundred years, several hundred people end up catching cancer.

I challenge you, is that not worth it? Nature probably 'naturally' will kill via radioactivity coming out of natural sources something like two or three orders of magnitude that number during the same time frame.
Coal mining, during that time, will be far worse (yes coal has radioactive material also) in terms of 'natural' statistically insignificant casualties.

Now, consider reality... What is the statistical likelihood, that an area say the size of central park in NYC will have a major earthquake in the next 10,000 years? That the earthquake would be violent enough to create upshafts through hundreds of meters of rock. That the concrete, and metal casings of the waste also be coincidentally shot. That there will be sufficient remaining quantities of the 'bad' stuff, too equal a full on core meltdown like Chernobyl.

 

Also nuclear waste can be recycled to a large amount... which creates plutonium and makes people antsy... BTW we already had this discussion

 

Fred, the point is that mistakes happen. Unforseen events occur. Do you really want to chance it that over the next 10,000 years our predictions today are 100% correct? That your statistical probabilities are correct?

Again, it won't be our problem will it. We'll realistically be long gone in another 100 years.

 

Natoma in 10,000 years don't think they problems could be averted.


This kind of reasoning is inpart why i was so against the Kyoto treaty.

There are far to many variables to be considered within the passing of 5 years let alone 100 or 10,000.

Logically it would be impossible for our statistics to be correct do improper representation of elements affecting the system.

 

I'd rather take my chances with the opportunity to protect the environment than take my chances with potentially destroying it.

 

Even if all evidence in your favor is wrong and your are completely over reacting? WHy should corporations and their members suffer for your displaced phobias who's time frame has been extended over 1,000 years.

 

I'd take the chance that within the next 100 years we will have technology that can reduce the radioactivity of the waste to almost zero. There are good progress in this field already.

 

taking reasonable measures does not equate to throwing caution to the wind. we do it everyday it's how sciety tends to functions rather be paralysed by inaction.

 

Even if all of the evidence in your favor is wrong and you are not reacting enough?

I don't consider it a sufferance to come up with a better technology than Nuclear Fission. I would rather dump money into technologies such as Fusion, Solar, Wind, and Hydro, among others, than continue to use technologies that produce massive amounts of waste, i.e. Fission, Coal, Oil, etc.

 

Maybe then Fission would become a good technology. Though I'd take the chance that within the next 100 yeras we will have Fusion technology.

 

There are other technologies that we could use other than Fission. Who's saying anyone should throw caution to the wind? If fission was our sole source of power, or a significant chunk of it, I'd agree. But frankly it doesn't fit either qualification.