Reply #9: It isn't thousands of generations. Really. [View All]

[Dogmudgeon]

Spent nuclear fuel certainly has risks, but that's an exaggeration. It is partly true for medical cesium, but that decays pretty quickly. IIRC, the chunk of stolen cesium from the poisoning episode in Brasil a few years ago decayed away in a few years. The more radioactive something is, the faster it decays.

Spent nuclear fuel has much less radiation than it originally had -- about one one-millionth. It's still significant, but it's hardly the stuff of disaster fiction.

And spent fuel continues to decay. The most common type cools off to background levels in a few hundred years. Yes, this is a significant risk, but it's hardly an eternal poison.

And you do know that even seawater is radioactive, right? About 12 parts per million, or 12 Becquerels (12 bq). Any other substance with that much radioactivity found loose in a rector building would be a cause for a major investigation. And coal has a similar concentration of radionucleides, which typically end up in the atmosphere, not a containment vessel.

There are also nuclear energy cycles that can completely drain the energy, leaving totally inert metal. CANDU reactors (Canadian Deuterium-Uranium) can use weakly radioactive material and drain it down. It may soon be possible to eliminate nearly all nuclear tranformations (the actual radiation) in an active isotope as a matter of normal operation.

Now, cadmium --- THAT is an eternal poison, and it's fantastically toxic. Unlike nuclear fuel, it NEVER decays. It really IS forever. There have been hundreds of lethal cadmium spills with thousands of deaths. And it is used in the manufacture of solar electric panels. The next generation of more-efficient panels will use much more cadmium.

But should we stop solar energy research and development? Hell, no! As with all technology, we have to learn to use it wisely and clean up our messes. There is no other way. Even if all nuclear material in the universe were to disappear into the ectocosmic hyperplasmic void of Slack tomorrow afternoon, we would still have the same problem. We'd have to learn to deal with lead, mercury, arsenic, cadmium, etc. -- and we have done a poor job so far.

Nuclear materials have real risks -- and they can be calculated with high precision. Vigilance and intelligence is always required. But we should stop scaring ourselves over things that we know about and can deal with. Getting educated about all aspects of nuclear energy is necessary to make a fully informed decision, no matter what that decision ultimately is. It also is the best antidote to both fear and propaganda, no matter who is promoting what. Science fiction is best left in the movie theater.

We have nothing to lose but our fear. And we'll gain being able to make the right decisions. I am pretty sure that we will accept nuclear energy -- but I could be wrong about that. And I know that enough information exists so that I will be able to discover what's true and what isn't.

But don't take my word for it. Scientifically based information can be spun, but the truth of it can't be hidden for very long. The information is out there for the taking.

--p!