The debate over nuclear power just goes around in circles, and it makes me tired. I have my personal biases just like the next guy, but when I read the defenses put forth by its proponents, my eyes start to glaze over. For me, there is one issue that supersedes all others and renders them moot. When someone tells me that nuclear power is “clean,” my hand balls up into a fist. It is not clean just because it does not place noxious chemicals in the air.
It is indeed “dirty”—we are just putting the pollutant it produces in storage containers. Tons upon tons of the most dangerous substance I know of has been and is continuing to be produced, and it lasts thousands upon thousands of years. This is not an exaggeration; it’s the simple truth (and if you don’t believe this, stop reading).
I have heard two arguments in rebuttal. The first one goes something like this: “Don’t worry, someday the scientists will figure out how to convert this stuff and reuse it and/or render it inert.” Maybe so. I’m not an engineer, and I don’t have a crystal ball, but I think that’s just plain irresponsible. With something as dangerous as nuclear waste, you figure out how this will be accomplished before you start making the stuff because, well … what if it turns out you’re wrong?
OK, I remember seeing an article or two claiming that such a technology already exists, at least “on paper.” Again, maybe so. I’m not qualified to have an opinion on whether the scientific explanation they put forth is sound or not. But if so, we should be shoveling money into it and, again, stop producing the stuff unless and until we have the process in place.
The second thing I hear is equally shortsighted: “Don’t worry, we’ll keep it all in big, thick cement containers tucked away in safe places.” Really? For thousands upon thousands of years? Am I just a sappy old sentimentalist for caring about the people who are going to be here long after I’m gone? You don’t need a crystal ball to know that over the span of these thousands of years, records will be lost, mistakes will be made in container maintenance and the storage sites will undergo dramatic physical changes because that’s how Mother Nature works. People will die.
So go ahead and make your arguments. I’ll concede that everything you say is correct, but so what? They’re all trumped by this single issue.
On second thought, I won’t concede everything. Another thing that knots up my shorts is when I’m told that wind and solar won’t do it because the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow. Well that’s what batteries are for. Duh.
Timothy Tucker
Los Osos
This article appears in Jan 18-28, 2018.
Sure, nuclear is potentially dangerous. But all the other ways that we currently use are definitely dangerous. Potential danger is (slightly) better that definite danger.
Danger aside, it’s not the danger to the environment or the long lasting consequences that decide what we use to generate power, it’s money. Figure out the money side, and you can get any kind of power you want.
How did you miss the key fact: “in containers” ?? The fundamental truth is mastering nuclear power is a critical stepping stone for humanity. It is a GOOD thing to have a fuel that is 200 million times more concentrated, and a waste stream that is 200 million times more controlled (contained) if your plans are to explore, grow in understanding, and creative powers. I have to suspect you are either clueless, brainwashed, or a demonic foreign agent trying to weaken the free world.
Measuring radioactivity in ocean units is a nice way of testing this. The world ocean naturally contains radiopotassium that produces 1.8 gigawatts of radiation and uranium that, with its various radioactive daughters, produces 400 megawatts. Other minor natural radioactivities also exist but don’t change the total, 2.2 gigawatts, enough to matter.
This is a nice size of unit because it’s midway between the very large amounts of radioactivity that naturally exist in the continents, thousands of ocean units, and the rather small amounts that exist in typical nuclear power waste caches, e.g. the containers seen in the background at https://www.dropbox.com/s/pwgb0ahfuv1lejb/Screenshot_2016-12-26-10-20-51.jpg?dl=0 . Each of them contains about a millionth of an ocean unit, about the same amount that got *into* the ocean as a result of the Fukushima meltdowns, but could not duplicate even that very slight contamination because their contents are too old to have any self-melting potential. If dropped in the ocean, each one would just lie on the bottom, keeping its micro-ocean-unit to itself as it diminished to a nano-unit (a billionth) and beyond.
So when we ignore the disposal of nuclear power waste, it’s because it has never been a genuine concern to anyone. In this we behave rather like the Greenpeace associate seen pretending to pull a boat at http://www.x-journal.com/member/owe/?xjMsgID=3443 . If nuclear power waste were a genuine concern, the waste-to-be in the two reactors he’s posing with, being a thousand times more radioactive than it will be when it attains waste status, would be a concern a thousand times more genuine.