Re: [Phys-l] Darwin, Republican, Democrats

["Kilmer, Skip" <kilmers@greenhill.org>]

I'm not arguing against current plans; although it's not easy to figure out what they are, and they seem to change continuously. I was suggesting that it's wasteful, as well as risky, to bury these exotic fission byproducts, just as I think it's wasteful to burn oil, rather than using it as a valuable and limited raw material for who knows what?
I think the process I remembered was something along these lines:
http://fti.neep.wisc.edu/tofeprogram/pdf/etchengATcts.com1083258609.pdf
skip

-----Original Message-----
From: phys-l-bounces@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu [mailto:phys-l-bounces@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu] On Behalf Of Rick Tarara
Sent: Wednesday, April 02, 2008 2:41 PM
To: Forum for Physics Educators
Subject: Re: [Phys-l] Darwin, Republican, Democrats


----- Original Message -----
From: "Kilmer, Skip" <kilmers@greenhill.org>

> I seem to remember a few years ago reading a proposal to "burn" nuclear
> waste, both rendering it relatively harmless and yielding some energy in
> the process. Does anyone else have such a memory, and has it gotten
> anywhere? I'm skeptical of any government's ability to keep tons of stuff
> secure for thousands of years.
> Skip

It is this last part that I believe to be the fallacy in the arguments
against current plans.  Who here doesn't believe that we will have much
better ways to deal with nuclear waste a century from now or even think a
millennium from now?  That is, we don't necessarily have to store the stuff
for tens of thousands of years.  The obvious solution is to shoot it all
into the sun (the volume of high level waste is not really very large).
When our transports to space are as reliable as our trucks, this becomes
feasible (after all, we do ship the fuel rods to the plants, and have
shipped nuclear weapons all around for decades).  We might actually find
economical means for recycling and extracting more energy from the spent
fuel, or who knows what other ideas and technologies might develop over the
next few centuries.  My view is that if it is 99% safe for the next few
hundred years, that's just fine.

Rick

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