I am a little late getting on this subject but here is a little history. In
the late 1950's early 1960's some of the top nuclear scientist and nuclear
power plant designers were telling the government that nuclear power was just a
stop gap measure to get us to the year 2000. That by then we needed to have
developed alternative sources for electrical power. Of course this did not
happen.
Spent fuel was the big driver behind this position, it has been a recognized
problem from the start. In more recent years an exceptionally safe storage
facility was getting ready to start but many states passed laws prohibiting
them movement of radioactive materials so it came to a halt. More over this
meant that not only reactor facilities had to store spent fuel rods but other
contaminated waste. This is (was) true for hospitals and any other facility
using any form of radioactive material. The biggest salvation for the medical
use is that scientist were able to come up with radio isotopes with very short
half life's (hours).
The horror reporters comments such as the one quote is one of the biggest
reasons that logical, sane approaches and solutions can not get by the voting
public. I am reminded of the editorials and cartoons a few centuries back when
the first of some really big cannons were being built. These proclaimed that
the noise from the cannons would cause the earth to split apart. How ridicules
are we going to look down the road because we let horror stories keep us from
finding and moving forward with good solutions.
Just my 2 cents from being in this industry 50 years ago.
Bob Kitterer
1960 Austin Healey Sprite (Mk IV in disguise) - in storage
1966 Austin Healey Sprite Mk III (Trevor) - still in boxes - in storage
On May 9, 2011, at 6:45 AM, Kurt Appley wrote:
>
> The fact is that there have been three fairly major nuclear accidents all at
> plants designed by the best and brightest who supposedly took every possible
> problem into consideration. As one writer said after the latest accident it
> will simply be a matter of time before some country becomes uninhabitable
> because of a nuclear accident.
> Then there is the matter of nuclear waste. Something that will remain a
> deadly poison to all life for tens of thousands of years. If the US
> goverment [read that us] had'nt agreed to accept all nuclear waste in the
> 50's there would have never have been a nuclear plant built!
> BTW the US goverment [us!] are paying the nuclear plants for storing this
> crap!!!!!
>
> Kurt.
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