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I am sure copper availability is not an issue, because there is so little nuclear waste around, relatively.

There are ethical problems with ocean storage. What if the stuff leaks? Then it will hurt all nations on earth, not just the one responsible for the waste. And its harder to retrieve the stuff if needed, and harder to fix if something goes wrong during the process of stashing the stuff down there.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

by Starvid (arvid.hallen at gmail.com) on Mon Aug 14th, 2006 at 12:21:36 PM EST
[ Parent ]
The stuff is glass.  Unlike a liquid, glass doesn't leak.  If it gets in contact with water, it dissolves.  Very, very slowly.  So slowly in fact, that the waste from operating a 1GW nuclear plant for a year will probably kill around 0.6 people over the course of a few million years.

If this is supposed to be an ethical problem, then why can a coal plant kill 75 people per year through air pollution and nobody gives a f*ck?!  Get a grip on reality, folks.  For details, see http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter11.html

by ustenzel on Thu Aug 17th, 2006 at 09:21:10 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Our waste is not glass as it has not been reprocessed and vitrified. It's ceramic.

Why don't people care about coal? Because they're ignorant and scientifically illiterate, that's why.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

by Starvid (arvid.hallen at gmail.com) on Thu Aug 17th, 2006 at 12:06:05 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Oops, you're right.  But the difference isn't all that great, glass and ceramics are chemically almost the same.  There's also the option of just conditioning waste into the glass form without reprocessing.  If I understood correctly, that's the (hypothetical) scenario Bernard Cohen is talking about.

I don't think ignorance can explain the people's disregard for the deaths caused by coal.  I rather think, these 75 people per GWa are a price most would be willing to pay.  The problem is the wrong perception that a few grams of plutonium would kill millions if they came in contact with water, so people think a radwaste repository much more dangerous than it really is.  Three decades of propaganda by liars like John Gofman have pretty much ensured that.

by ustenzel on Thu Aug 17th, 2006 at 04:27:33 PM EST
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