bilby
Fair dinkum thinkum
- Joined
- Mar 6, 2007
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I don't have a problem with nuclear power per se. I share your concern about waste disposal. This is material that can be highly dangerous for hundreds of years, and in some cases much longer. Who knows what society and the environment will be like just 100 years in the future, let alone even further. I feel it's highly irresponsible to leave what could be an immense and highly dangerous problem for future generations to deal with when it's quite possible there may be no solution.
It is not an 'immense' problem; the world inventory of high level waste is about 1,000m3, and could easily fit in a single underground repository. There are plenty of places where it is naturally dangerous to dig; adding one more small location to the worldwide list of places you shouldn't dig into without protective gear is not an 'immense' problem. And of course that problem can be further dramatically reduced by reprocessing.
The reason nuclear waste is hazardous is that it gives off lots of energy. That makes it a resource, as well as a hazard; burying it to assuage the fears of the ignorant is silly on many levels - not least of which is that the ignorant refuse to be assuaged by ANYTHING. You can't argue with someone who has declared an activity to be a sin.
Nuclear 'waste' powered RTGs would be a smart, carbon neutral source of heating for remote and/or off-grid locations, particularly in high latitudes, where solar power is not viable.
Throwing stuff away because it frightens the ignorant is silly; Not throwing it away, and instead storing it long term in facilities designed only for temporary storage, because the ignorant are frightened that a proper storage might encourage the use of the technology is fucking insane.
No solution my arse. Here are a bunch of solutions:
Reprocess
Use in RTGs
Bury in abandoned deep mines
Dump in deep abyssal silt
That's four off the top of my head. Given that this is far from an exhaustive list, and given that four is greater than zero, can I take it that you won't be repeating the "No solution" canard again?
I didn't think so.