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Originally Posted by LostCause
My first patent: 2245413
Hey, only 10,000 years...as long as we're not burdening our children with the byproduct of our greed.
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We already are. There are all sorts of cancer causing substances that we've put into the food chain, some pesticides which have longer lives than nuclear isotopes. Mercury in our oceans which will be around for thousands of years.
But with nuclear waste we're talking about burying it in casks in the ground, there is some minute risk that it a volcano could result in the isotopes being suspended in Magma. But we won't ever be putting poisonous substances into the environment in general with nuclear power, unlike many other human activities.
Also calling it greed is a cheap shot. You're using a computer. You drive a car. The manufacturing processes for those result in a range of long lasting effects. If you're using grid power then you're supporting the coal industry. Nuclear could allow you to do these things without intentionally spewing poisons into our environment, Wind and Solar can't (yet), though they can make a nice contribution if people like.
Quote:
Originally Posted by LostCause
I thought the reprocessing issue centered around nuclear proliferation. After India demonstrated it could build bombs from reprocessed fuel, Carter nixed our nation's use of that technology. France, the United Kingdom, and Japan, who had already invested heavily in to the technology, kept going. While the PUREX method produces very little weapon's grade plutonium, the potential exists.
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Proliferation? India and Pakistan already have nuclear bombs. Iran is well on the way to getting one. North Korea already does. This wasn't from reprocessing technology used in France or one picogram of reprocessed fuel from France. It's a lot easier for a country like Iran or North Korea to set up a few centrifuges and use uranium hexafluoride to create material for a bomb then it is to infiltrate a US reprocessing plant, get a large quantity of pre-processed weapons grade plutonium without anyone noticing and alerting anyone (nearly impossible since all quantities are constantly measured, like people working with diamonds), bring it across the border (where it is extremely easy to detect even at great distances), and then hurry home and build a bomb quickly before the plutonium degrades too much, and then use the bomb in under a year before it's shelf life runs up, without having the ability to actually test this bomb technology to see if the designs they have actually work and aren't fake, which they probably are.
Quote:
Originally Posted by LostCause
Environmentalists...who likes those willing to call a glutton fat? I think we should rip up the world's rivers and valleys looking for uranium
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Not necessary. Current reserves at the Olympic Dam mine ALONE would last until 2040 if they were to mine specifically for Uranium. Currently they consider Uranium to be an annoying impurity which they need to get rid of so they can get at the profitable gold and silver, not even worth mining by itself.
http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=-30.4...228,136.888675
There's the largest Uranium mine in the world, in all it's mundane glory. Under six square miles in the middle of a desert in Australia, and it isn't even a Uranium mine, it's a Gold mine.
