I've always had a problem with the Left's concerns about the Yucca storage facility. They act as if technology stands still. Their refrain is "what if somebody digs this up 10,000 years from now-people could get killed-Oh my".
Hell, in 10,000 years they may be trying to dig it up for use in fusion reactors for all we know.
My great Grandmother in law read about the Wright Brother's first flight and now we have 747's and the Space Shuttle.
And the pace of technological change will continue, unless some Islamofacist takes us back to the third century.
And talking about the great religon that is Islam, I'm still waiting for my Achmed computer, or a "Mohamed Inside" chip.
Rant off.
Geesh.
Sure, the climate there is dry (now) and that may not pose a problem, but climate changes.
Where I sit at this moment was inundated by continental glaciers over a kilometer thick, in the past 10,000 years. Similar changes, doubtless occurred elsewhere.
It is unlikely that the area will remain desert for the next 10,000 years, and groundwater leaching of the waste remains a possibility, and a potenitally serious liability for future generations.
That said, I am not anti-nuke, and the more of this material that is reprocessed and used, the less ends up in the hill (and stored in pools on reactor/power plant sites, which may be far worse than the mountain).
Waste disposal remains one of the key problems for nuclear power's engineers to overcome. When I was in grad school, no one in the world had a viable long-term solution. Yucca may be, then again, it may not.
Only now we add the problem of needing to guard high level waste, on site and in transit, because it is the raw material for a 'dirty bomb'.
"I've always had a problem with the Left's concerns about the Yucca storage facility. They act as if technology stands still. Their refrain is "what if somebody digs this up 10,000 years from now-people could get killed-Oh my". Hell, in 10,000 years they may be trying to dig it up for use in fusion reactors for all we know. "
Yeah ... and never mind that in 1,000 years (let alone 10,000 yrs) 99.999% of the radioactivity will be long *GONE* and the radiation level would be lower than in natural uranium deposit.
The Bush plan is spot on ... nuclear 'waste' is actually just spent fuel that has about 95% of its latent energy left. If recycling is good for paper, plastic and coke cans, why not for nuclear fuel?
one real simple solution to nuclear used fuel (aka 'waste') is really simple:
1) Let the stuff cool off for 50 years
2) Take out the trans-uranic elements and reuse them as fuel
This alone reduces the amount of actual nuclear waste by a factor of 20 to 60.
"And talking about the great religon that is Islam, I'm still waiting for my Achmed computer, or a "Mohamed Inside" chip. "
Funny!
Does that computer come equipped with a sharp knife to slice off someone's head if they type the wrong thing.
Or technology to make sure women wear a veil to operate it?