Re: Tilting At Windmills

From: Alex Terrell (alexterrell_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 11/30/04 

Date: 30 Nov 2004 00:24:11 -0800

fumblus <fumblus@nospamYahoo.com> wrote in message news:<41aba0f0$0$3600$61c65585@un-2park-reader-02.sydney.pipenetworks.com.au>...
> Alex Terrell wrote:
> >>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.
> >
> >
> > Not a problem if the alternative is that they have less land and most
> > of the Ancient capitals are flooded. Global warming is a much more
> > serious legacy than some low level radioactive waste buried 100s of
> > metres underground.
> >
> > Anyway, why would they be expending resource?
>
> 1. Future generations no longer have the use of the volume of crust used
> for your burial site.
> 2. Nor the land above your burial site.

So they miss out on 1km2 of land. No big deal! I'm sure far more land
will soon be designated "no-building" or "special construction needed"
because of natural radiation.

> 3. Nor a large exclusion perimiter around your burial site.

Why?

> 4. People or technology must be employed, in perpetuity, to guard your
> waste.

Why?

> 5. Inspections *must* be carried out at regular time intervals to ensure
> your waste containment is intact. You might project that current
> engineering practices will create containment technologies that will
> last millennia, but you have *zero* empirical evidence that this will
> happen. You may be able to justify current containment expenditure as
> just another cost of generating your energy. How will future
> generations justify the huge expenditure of a total containment refit if
> it is required?

Why?

After 1,000 years, nuclear waste is harmful if you eat it. If you
remove the plutonium for re-burning, the waste is a little more
radioactive than natural ores. You'd have to eat quite a lot to die.

Of course, in a few decades we might choose to put the waste in to the
sun, no doubt to howls of protest from sun conservationists.

>
> >>It's the pinnacle of arrogance to offload your short-term problem
> >>solving into the distant future.
> >
> >
> > So what do you propose?
> > a. We offload Global Warming
> > b. We stop generating wealth, which will impact future generations
> > c. We develop a sensible, pragmatic energy strategy accepting variuos
> > short, medium and long term payoffs, which should probably result in a
> > mixture of nuclear and renewables finally being replaced by Satellite
> > Solar Power or Nuclear Fusion.
>
> Here's a silly idea: we could take the concepts of "renewable" and
> "sustainable", make them a priority, discourage their use as catchy
> slogans for non-renewable, non-sustainable technologies, and create a
> world that ticks along without generating copious amounts of greenhouse
> gases or ghastly radioactive rubbish.
>
Well sure - that has a role. We certainly waste a lot of our energy
now. But no amount of conservation is going to keep energy consumption
at its current level assuming (and hoping) that the developing nations
get rich. Getting rich tends to increase CO2 output, even whilst
improving most other pollution indicators.

> >
> >
> >>What's more, "human civilization" will
> >>be nothing like it is now in just 1000 years. How do you convey the
> >>message "don't touch this crap, and if you know what's good for you make
> >>sure noone else does either" to people who won't even speak your language?
> >>
> >
> > Barring a fall from Civilisation, computers in 1,000 years time will
> > be able to understand English, even if no human does.
>
> I hope these computers can resurrect you and nag you for eternity about
> the waste you left behind.
>
They'll be more pissed off about all the 3.5" floppy disks I've left
behind than the nuclear waste.

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