Nuclear Power Sucks
Posted: Monday, June 19th, 2006 by damnHippyTags: Energy, Obvious, Science, Technology
With increased attention towards the issues surrounding human induced climate change, the nuclear option has been steadily gaining support. The reason is that the nuclear plants themselves produce nothing but steam as a byproduct… oh except for that pesky nuclear waste.
Nuclear waste remains toxic to living things for 250,000 years. Think about that… a quarter million years. How do you manage something that toxic for a quarter million years? Who knows… we still haven't found a solution. Sure we could store it in a geologically quiet mountain for that time period but who will guard that mountain for 250,000 years? How will we ensure it doesn't fall into the hands of terrorists in that quarter million year time period (now I'm just being silly)? The nuclear waste problem is a ridiculously good example of the limits of human ingenuity meeting pure human stupidity.
50 years ago scientists dove head first into the nuclear power trend figuring that we could store the stuff in tanks for 50 years until we figured out a permanent solution to the problem. "Surely in 50 years we will have figured it out" they thought. Well we still haven't figured it out. We now are stuck with leaking nuclear waste dumps all over our planet because of it, and it's a risk to us all.
Until we find a real solution for the nuclear waste issue we have no business making the waste problem bigger than it already is. Oh and the article barely mentions the waste as an issue, they attack the amount of greenhouse gases that are produced during the mining, refinining, and enrichment of the fuel that these so called clean power plants use. Read on, but know this… nuclear power sucks.
Not green clean or cheap » [True Local]
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