See Selafield UK on what all nukes have to look forward to.

And Yucca Mt after you've seen Selafield.

The waste problem will always be with us.

Just cutting off water flow thru a nuke waste site is mega death.

The waste problem will always be with us.

Just cutting off water flow thru a nuke waste site is mega death.

That's a misunderstanding that tends to perpetuate carbon monoxide poisonings, each of which has associated with it a few tens of millions of dollars in fossil fuel tax revenue.

When spent fuel is old enough to leave its cooling pools and go into dry casks -- minimum five years, I think -- it no longer requires any cooling water.

Our year-2108 descendants will inherit lands in which, buried a kilometre deep or a little less, are 250 billion watts of radioactivity. This may include, halfway down or a little further, our radioactive legacy to them, now approaching 0.3 billion year-2108 watts, in sturdy containers. The rest will be natural; it's there now.

How shall the car gain nuclear cachet?

I've been protesting nukes since TU's Matagorda Plant.

I've neglected in depth studies to concentrate on other matters.

I'll engage you across the board on this, but note that we'll be decommissioning
these plants faster than we can get new ones up and running.

I note you didn't bring up Sellafield and Yucca.
We can start at 1998:

Friends of the Earth: Press Release: BNFL/WESTINGHOUSE DEAL ...
The NII has urged British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL), which runs Sellafield, ... including Sellafield (also Yucca Mountain in the US, and a site each in East Asia ...
www.foe.co.uk/pubsinfo/infoteam/pressrel/1998/19980624164849.html

Then 2000:

Crisis deepens over British nuclear reprocessing plant
Before the approval of the Yucca site, BNFL had expressed interest in transporting waste materials from the US for storage in Sellafield. ...
www.wsws.org/articles/2000/apr2000/nuc-a03.shtml - 20k

2004:

[Jan 15, 2004] Irish MEP Nuala Ahern has called for a team of international experts to investigate possible contamination at the Sellafield nuclear plant in Britain. Ms Ahern said yesterday that a study conducted by the British Ministry of Health found higher levels of plutonium in people living close to ...

2007

Sellafield 'not fit' for nuclear waste disposal | Business | The ...
It was last updated at 09:54 on November 02 2007. The government has been warned that it would be "wrong" and possibly illegal to use Sellafield in West ...
www.guardian.co.uk/business/2007/nov/02/nuclearindustry.greenpolitics - 60k

And do Yucca Mt the same way.

If you so desire.

Sounds like you're changing your ground.

The Matagorda nuclear plant? Do you think you made a difference?

Not at all.

Just establishing my postion/bona fides.

And yes I did.
(3 Mile Island/Chernobyl did it and cost over runs)

As much as protesters brought VietNam to an end.
(Mutiny in the ranks did it and cost over runs).

I'll stay with Sellafield and Yucca.

" But lingering resentment over cost overruns, concerns over spent fuel storage and fear of terrorist attacks or human error that could cause catastrophic destruction means California's major utilities may have to look outside the state to build a nuclear power plant -- at least initially, Mr. Wan says."

And it seems no one has talked about Matagorda in awhile.

I asked, "The Matagorda nuclear plant? Do you think you made a difference?".

'mcgowanmc' answered,

... yes I did.

Then we agree.

... it seems no one has talked about Matagorda in awhile.

That's what I figured, since I hadn't heard of a Matagorda plant.

We agree you made a difference. Has anyone died, in the region that might have been powered by the plant you stopped, from domestic carbon monoxide poisoning? From natural gas explosion?

That is the sort of difference I believe you have made. Also, government has made a lot of money taxing fossil fuel that might, but for you, have stayed in the ground.

If no-one's talking about the Matagorda plant any more, maybe you should restart the talk. It is not impossible for a traitor to mend, but time is limited.

How shall the car gain nuclear cachet?

Senator Reid has done an excellent job delaying Yucca Mountain.

And dont forget a million tones of radioactive gloves, packaging, pipe lagging, floor sweepings, nose blowings - the sort of stuff piling up at places like Drigg near Sellafield [300 metres from the sea incidentally].

We are going to be diverting enough energy cleaning up non-radioactive landfill.

Name all the people who have died from civilian nuclear waste in the last 10 years.

Didn't 160 people or so get fried in one single platform (piper alpha) in the North Sea?

Name all the people who have died from civilian nuclear waste in the last 10 years.

Just on the death certificate, or is it OK if the life was shorten because of processing material that ended up in in some manner that a civilian paid for the kWh?

If there were any statistical evidence for this, fine.
the fact is that studies have now confirmed that the standards which were set for radioactivity were based on a false premise - that from the amount which would outright kill you straight off, down through a dose which would make you really sick, and then right down to tiny amounts they thought might affect some future generation, there was a straight line function - IOW any dose at all of radiation was harmful.
It is now apparent that we had (rightly) been over-conservative, and that below certain levels it was impossible to show any ill effects - I am not just making that up, that is now standard knowledge for medical treatment, radiation assessment and so on.
This means that you don't need to worry about living in Denver! - no excess deaths are detectable there due to the mile-high location!
It also means that all the talk of so many millions dying, mostly in fact hypothesised for future generations, were in fact based on this mistaken notion.
Don't go eating tritium sandwiches, but most radioactive material is a lot less harmful than mercury, released by the bucketload by the coal industry, and with a half-life of forever!

The discussion is the waste, not radiation. The waste is:
Tailings from the mines
The heavy metals
In short - things not U-235

Iraq, Kosovo and other places have some of 'civilian waste' as fine dust. When some of that dust was a sabot, said sabot did kill someone.....is that dead wo/man to be included in the body count requested?

How much harm has non-nuclear power oriented mine tailings done? Enormously more.

The comparative benefit from nuclear power relative to costs is very high.

In Iraq the deaths from uranium quite pretty insignificant from the deaths from fast moving lead and steel.

"When some of that dust was a sabot, said sabot did kill someone.....is that dead wo/man to be included in the body count requested?"

Sure, once you add up consider the many more thousands killed by petroleum powered bombers as oil deaths.

I.e. "no".

The question is civilian nuclear power, operated in a regulated environment.

Not weaponry designed to kill efficiently.

Is this magical thinking which applies only to things nuclear? That there is a vicious and essentialist spiritual contamination from clearly horrible nuclear weapons and uranium-containing missiles?

So, how many people have died from nuclear waste from civilian power in the last 10 years?

A few hundred to thousand coal miners die in China, the pollution undoubtably kills many, many more. Nuclear power directly replaces coal, or it ought to.

This is like banning vaccinations because there is a tiny chance somebody will get sick from the vaccine instead of the much larger chance of harm from the wild-type disease itself.

People die mining coal every month. People get killed driving cars every month. Thousands of people die each year due to accidental electrocution in the home, falling off ladders, building site accidents etc. Farmers get run over by their own tractors a few times a year.
Pretty much everything is dangerous to some degree.

On the other hand, the French seem to be able to manage to generate most of their power from nuclear reactors without poisoning their population. And there are plenty of reactors operating in the USA, Germany, Switzerland and Japan without problems.

The dangers associated with nuclear power are exagerated for emotional effect.

As for waste, it's waste now. Sometime within the next 200 years we are likely to figure out how to reprocess it to extract the remaining radioactivity for energy. Building a facility that will last 200 years isn't that hard - the Romans could do it.

I really don't see it doing any harm while it sits out in the desert a thousand miles from anyone.

Compared to the current fossil fuel setup, nuclear is a clean option. As an alternative to the anarchy of a poorly managed global powerdown and rapid population decrease, it looks pretty good.

Talk to the tens of thousand of sub-mariners who spent years to careers within 50 yards of an active nuclear power plant. They don't seem to be dying early. And, as their job involves possible Armageddon, any psychiatric effects and we probably wouldn't be here to talk about it. Consider the French countryside. Nuclear power is safe. Realize there is no net increase in radioactivity, rather a concentrating of natural radioactivity and a hastened and harnessed decay to less radioactive elements. Yes, there are problems. No I don't think it can entirely solve PO issues, but until someone gives me a well reasoned argument otherwise I see it as part of the (possibly temporary) solution. Ever hear of miner's black lung disease? I am open to other views but perspective is needed.

One further point, and understand that I am not rabidly pro-nuclear but this occurred to me after I just posted. The net radioactivity of the Earth decreases from nuclear power. U235, or is it 238, decays in a chain reaction through an elaborate decay scheme basically to mostly lead I believe (to bad for the alchemists;) The point is radioactivity from nuclear power cannot somehow (easily) poison the whole world. It is less than what was input as starting material. If it leaks from Yucca Mountain and distributes to an area equal to what it was gathered from it has returned to a natural state. It is only the concentration of radioactive elements that is problematic. If you want to avoid radiation exposure, and this no joke, avoid unnecessary whole body CT scans done with current equipment.