Posted: 6/27/2005 9:30:18 AM EDT
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Just wanted to get a read from ARFCOMMERS on this editorial. There is so much "information" on nuclear. This seemed pretty clear and favorable. Any opinions on the points made here. Just found this in my local editorial section. Sunday, June 26, 2005 Letters - Misunderstanding about nuclear waste abounds It is garbage to write about "nuclear garbage cans" that are "lethal as long as man has existed on Earth" ["No nuclear garbage cans," Letters, June 21]. The tons of spent nuclear fuel mentioned is the tightly sealed residue of enormous amounts of energy, produced with zero emissions of sulfur, nitrogen and carbon dioxide. Each ton of spent fuel represents enough electricity to power an average home for 35,000 years. Shouldn't we prefer to get power from a nuclear plant that emits nothing rather than from a coal-fired plant that, to provide the energy of a ton of nuclear spent fuel, consumes about 160,000 tons of coal and sends up the stack 500,000 tons of carbon dioxide, 6,000 tons of sulfuric oxide, 4,000 tons of nitrogen oxides, plus dangerous quantities of mercury and radium? The spent nuclear fuel is not waste. Only about 4 percent of the uranium is "burned" or converted to waste products in each pass through the reactor. Normally the remaining 96 percent would be processed for reuse, but at present it is cheaper to mine new uranium. When we decide to quit burning coal, the price of uranium will rise, all the spent fuel will be recycled and only the true waste will be buried, for which the radiation levels become trivial after 300 years. The quantities involved are hard to grasp. If all the electricity in the United States were made in reactors, each person's share of the actual fission waste produced each year would be the size of an aspirin tablet. R. Philip Hammond Laguna Woods Hammond is a retired nuclear engineer who designed and led construction of early experimental nuclear reactors at Los Alamos, N.M., and more advanced systems at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. |
man, i understand nuclear plant technology has just expanded geometrically, so much so that it would be impossible to cause a meltdown. but the fear mongers and fossil fuel industry have so scared us civs that no one wants a nuke power plant in their vicinity... course, they said the titanic was "unsinkable" too... i think if the un wanted to make itself useful they would create a world standard for ALL nuclear power plants that would make them safe and NONweaponized...but kofi din't axe me... |