Soot From Fossil Fuel Power Causes Hyperclotting Strokes

[jordan179]

http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/murder-mystery-solved-14283.html

But remember, we must not build atomic reactors because atomic energy is EVIL.

Right?

Comments

[jordan179]

The solution to waste disposal is simply to store the wastes underground, in geologically-inactive areas with deep to nonexistent water tables. One need not worry about the fate of the wastes centuries or millennia from now, any more than one normally worries about the fate of any wastes over such time scales. This is because we cannot meaningfully predict what the capabilities or demands of the human civilizations in the far future will be: in particular, they will (1) probably have far better waste disposal technologies than we do, and (2) possibly may view the wastes less as a "problem" than a "resource," becuase they will almost certainly have industrial processes far more advanced than our own.

By comparison, consider that we generate thousands to millions of tons a year of all sorts of chemically toxic wastes and dispose of them with only minimal protection. Yet these chemical wastes are in many cases indefinitely toxic, while radioactive wastes normally become safe within a matter of mere millennia.

Nuclear wastes are being held to an artificially and impossibly higher standard, largely out of superstitious fear. If we held our other techologies to the same standards, we would never have adopted any of them!

exactly ...

[btripp]

view the wastes less as a "problem" than a "resource"

Anything that "hot" has got to be a resource to somebody with the technology to utilize it ... nuclear wastes are massive thermodynamic "peaks", one just needs to figure out a non-lethal way of utilizing that "energy topography".

[ext_45275]

I suggest a big pile of crates in the desert, with a chain-link fence around it, armed guards, routine inspections, and signs reading "if you cross this fence, you will die". That should do until we invent something better.

It's not like there's *that* much of it to worry about.

[kallistos]

Borrowing from Jerry Pournelle I see. ;)
I think that's great, keeping it available for reprocessing and use as a resource. You can't really do that when its buried 3000 feet down in solid rock.