Environment & Energy
In reply to the discussion: Vicious words mark the war between pro and anti-nuclear environmentalists [View all]izquierdista
(11,689 posts)Is that before or after you factor in the cost of a Chernobyl or a Fukushima? I would think that retrofitting an old coal or hardrock mine would be much less time and money than building a multibillion dollar above ground sarcophagus after the fact. Many centuries into the future archaeologists may get confused as to why there was such a time lag between the construction of the pyramids at Giza and the ones at Chernobyl and Fukushima.
I didn't become an advocate for this idea from reading an old article. I came up with it independently when I was standing at the edge of a burial pit at Hanford and staring down at the cores of 3 submarines lying in a trench. It was after that informative visit that I began to dig up old articles and think about them. The history of nuclear power is full of bad decisions, ones that were usually made by managers who looked at the economics rather than engineers who looked at the safety.
The real competition for nuclear power should be from geothermal. The question that should be asked is "If we drill a hole here, will we get enough natural steam coming up to power a turbine, or do we have to bury a nuclear reactor to make more?"