nuclear-news

Don’t make the nuclear waste pile any bigger

We need a solution before we make the problem bigger. Mr. Obama should lay down this challenge to the nuclear industry: Come up with a disposal method we can live with, figuratively and literally. No plan, no permit.

No nuclear option –  – timesunion.com – Albany NY, 18 Feb 2011, We can’t talk about building more nuclear plants until we figure out what to do with radioactive waste._____________________The United States has been using nuclear power for more than half a century, and it still hasn’t decided what to do with waste that will be lethal for thousands of years, even a million or more in some cases.The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s answer? Kick the cask down the road another 30 years…….
the dilemma facing the government, the nuclear energy industry and, in the end, all of us: Even as President Obama pushes to build nuclear power plants, there is no plan for disposing of waste permanently.

Maybe it’s the staggeringly long time that we need to plan for that makes a solution so elusive. The half life of various isotopes — 10,000 years, 200,000 years, 1 million years or more — is hard for our species to grasp. We were, after all, Neanderthals just 25,000 or so years ago. Human beings, as we know them, may not exist by the time this material is benign.

Still, we should assume that humanity will be around for quite a while yet, and as stewards of the planet right now, we have a responsibility to keep it habitable, not to mention some self-interest……o we’ve piled up more than 60,000 tons of radioactive waste that we have no idea what to do with besides store it “temporarily” for years.

We need a solution before we make the problem bigger. Mr. Obama should lay down this challenge to the nuclear industry: Come up with a disposal method we can live with, figuratively and literally. No plan, no permit.

No nuclear option – The Observation Deck – timesunion.com – Albany NY

February 19, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | general