Re: Tilting At Windmills

From: Karl Johanson (karljohanson_at_shaw.ca)
Date: 11/30/04 

Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 06:33:57 GMT

"fumblus" <fumblus@nospamYahoo.com> wrote in message
news:41aab47e$0$31703$61c65585@un-2park-reader-01.sydney.pipenetworks.com.au...
> Dez Akin wrote:
>> eunometic@yahoo.com.au (Eunometic) wrote in message
>> news:<e935396a.0411232103.36559df7@posting.google.com>...
>>
>>>Yucca Mountains would not be required but for the absence of
>>>reprocessing and/or transmulation burn up of wastes in only slightly
>>>more advanced reactors. Both developments have been curtailed by
>>>political issues rather than serious economic or technical ones.
>>
>>
>> Quite right, but even without advanced reactors (molten salt) Yucca
>> is
>> not required. All this waste can be stored on site for decades in
>> large concrete casks. Human civilization isn't going anywhere. Its
>> not
>> as if the waste management problem has to be dealt with as if
>> humanity
>> is leaving the earth sometime in the next twenty years and intends to
>> preserve it as a park.
>
> Imagine if ancient Egypt had generated a large amount of toxic and
> mutagenic waste product that had to be stored securely for a hundred
> millennia.

Spent nuclear fuel loses around 60% of it's level of radioactivity in
around a day. In 10 years it's around 10,000 times less radioactive. In
around 600 years it's less radioactive than some Uranium ores.

>What if ancient Rome did?

Rome mined huge amounts of toxic and mutagennic lead. It lasts forever.

>Imagine being the ancestor of people from a civilisation who left you a
>legacy of waste that is absolutely no use to you, and that you simply
>*must* continue to maintain, expensively, for a time frame that might
>as well be forever.

Imagine if one is using coal, gas, oil, biomass or geothermal energy &
the radioactive components of those are emitted into the environment.

> Imagine trying to justify to people 100, 1000, 10000 years from now
> why *they* must continue to expend real resources to pay for *your*
> squanderous energy consumption.

Hey, you're using electricity. The internet you chose to post your
message on, gets a significant amount of its energy from nuclear.

Karl Johanson

Relevant Pages

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