25 comments on Nuclear Britain
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25 comments on Nuclear Britain
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Other arguments about price, operating safety, capital diversion, security and sustainability of uranium supplies are secondary to this fundamentally moral question.
Personaly I hope that contemporary ecoutopists will not be judged too severely by the same future generations after we leave them struggle the energy shortages. I hope, but I don't really believe it.
Whether we can ask them or not, surely our future generations should not be pressed into service by the choices made by their forebears.
If we leave our children, grand children, and great grand children nothing more than an environment free of chemical and nuclear and genetic waste, them we, their forebears, have done well.
Sure, maybe we could have prevented climactic catastrophe had only we walked. But, we didn't. We drove our cars. We chose to fly. We couldn't control ourselves.
If we leave them the shit hole that's implied by your "ecoutopists" label, then no matter what, they're fucked and we've fucked them.
What, exactly, are you saying? Are you saying that we should spare them the struggle of life under draconian energy conditions in exchange for?
If so then, what do propose we do to prevent future generations suffering from the choices we've made today? Choices we could change, for the better of all life, not just human.
So, when you wake up tomorrow and have your hot shower in your gas heated home just remember that some disgruntled "ecoutopists" were hoping to make the future for your sprogs way easier than you seem to be willing to.
No more than we have to take care of the ruins they left us.
From Wikipedia:
The radioactivity of all nuclear waste diminishes with time. All radioisotopes contained in the waste have a half-life - the time it takes for any radionuclide to lose half of its radioactivity. Eventually all radioactive waste decays into non-radioactive elements; for example, after 40 years 99.9% of radiation in spent nuclear fuel disappears [1].
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_waste
After 2000 years the radiation of nuclear waste would be 0.000000000000000008% of the initial radiation. Million times lower than the natural radiation level. Or you want to shield our kids from the natural radiation too?
Nuclear waste consists of many different isotopes such as U238 with a half life of 4.5 billion years and several isotopes with very short half lives. These are not the problem. It's the isotopes with intermediate half lives such as the biologically active strontium 90 and caesium 137 with half lives of around 30 years that require future generations to ensure that our wastes are kept isolated for thousands of years.
Considering that isotops like the one you mentioned are some 0.1% of the nuclear waste it would turn out that if you decide to eat (!) 1 gram of 1000 old waste you would receive some 10 million atoms of radioactive stroncium in your organism.
In comparison only the naturally occuring radioactive C-14 staying permanently in your organism is 1,505,000,000 million atoms and you don't seem to die from it, right? Do you have any idea how much radioactive materials you breath every day from emissions from coal power plants and from car exhaust? I guess you don't but if you make the research don't try not to breath - it can be dangerous.
http://archive.greenpeace.org/mayak/
"Some of the radioactive elements in spent fuel have short half-lives (for example, iodine-131 has an 8-day half-life) and therefore their radioactivity decreases rapidly. However, many of the radioactive elements in spent fuel have long half-lives. For example, plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24,000 years, and plutonium-240 has a half-life of 6,800 years. Because it contains these long half-lived radioactive elements, spent fuel must be isolated and controlled for thousands of years."
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/nuregs/brochures/br0216/r2/index.html#how_hazardous_hl w
Don't get me wrong - the nuclear waste problem is not to be underestimated. But it is largely technically solvable and in many countries is successfully solved. The reason it is not solved sufficiently in western countries is just one - NIMBYSM - and your attitude shows exactly that. For example there are billions accumulated for that storage in Yucca Mountain and still the problem is protracted because some people don't have other purpose in life than denying everything and everywhere.
And digging out Russian stories dating from Stalin's time is a bright proof for that. Where are the same stories for USA, France, England, Germany? They also store nuclear waste, and much larger amounts BTW. Or you feel nostalgic for early Soviet's Russia? I don't.
So, where are the mutating children, where are the terrorists making dirty bombs and enriching plutonium in their basements? Where?
Pushing your daydream "solutions" will not help neither yours nor my children. Read some technical books about energy, finish some technical course and then you will have the moral position of giving advices to the people that keep you warm and fed. The same that will keep your kids warm and fed too.