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

[kitten_goddess]

I am all for nuclear power. It's cleaner than fossil fuels.

However, there are two caveats:

1. Possibility of meltdown

2. What are they going to do with all the nuclear waste? The stuff has a half-life of about a zillion years.

#1 has partially been answered in my mind, since the technology for preventing that has gotten MUCH better in the last 20 years.

I am intrigued by the possibility of nuclear power. I understand nuclear power does not equal atomic bombs.

[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

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".