No doubt that the world would be a safer place if we had more of this. NOT

[madokie]

scares the piss out of me just looking at the photo. dm :scared:

http://www.wired.com/culture/art/multimedia/2008/01/gallery_simon?slide=2&slideView=2

StumbleUponSponsored by:

Culture : Art
Photographer Captures America's Best-Kept Secrets
By Jenna Wortham
01.14.08 | 12:00 AM
Cherenkov Radiation, Nuclear Waste Storage Facility
Submerged in a pool of water, these stainless-steel nuclear-waste capsules contain radioactive material. The water serves as a shield against the radiation emitted. Nearly 2,000 capsules reside at the Hanford Site in southeastern Washington State, which is considered among the most contaminated waste sites in the United States.

"Radiation is a light source I've never worked with, so there was no visual reference to shoot (the images) from -- it was a leap of faith," Simon said. "I found this one section that resembled the U.S. That was a great find." The blue glow comes from an effect called Cherenkov radiation.

Photo: Taryn Simon, courtesy of Gagosian Gallery

[Dogmudgeon]

1. Just don't swim in it or eat it, and you'll be safe

After all, the stuff is safely stored, not floating in the air like the tons of uranium and thorium belched into the sky by just one coal plant each year.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site">Hanford, incidentally, was originally a military radwaste dump taken over by the Department of Energy. You can keep track of the status of the waste and the clean-up work http://hanford-site.pnl.gov/envreport/2004/15222.htm">at this link.

--p!
Fear is the little death ... the mind-killer.
-- The Scriptures of the Bene Gesserit order (of the Dune mythos)

[madokie]

2. will the civilizations coming after us know to not swim in the water

prolly not. so sad for them...

[RC]

4. You must be a optimist. How about species that develop after we are gone?

[madokie]

5. maybe as they evolve they will develop an immunity to radiation

I must say I hadn't thought of that
No way shape or form do we have a right to leave nuclear waste to thousands of generations into the future to have to deal with. With our air pollution we are certainly going to kill us all but when we die the world will be able to bounce back from that in a relatively short time where as with nuclear waste it goes on and on, killing for centuries. I say stop it now.

[Nihil]

7. Three comments:

1) If we are talking about "future species" then the timescale will be
sufficiently long that the intensity of the radiation will be significantly
reduced (exponential tailoff - each container is now less deadly than it
was when it was placed there).

2) If we are talking about "future civilisations", when the civilisation
gets to be sufficiently advanced as to require energy in large amounts,
there is a source of energy available for them to use. Hell, we could do
it ourselves if our "civilisation" wasn't so stuck up its own arse in
pursuit of profit.

3) I agree with you that "we" shouldn't be consuming resources and leaving
waste all across the planet but at least most of the nuclear waste is confined
to small areas and the contribution of "nuclear waste" is simply trivial
compared to every other kind of poison that "we" have spread across, under
and above the surface of the earth.

We don't have any "right" to leave *ANY* waste to future generations to
have to deal with. Nor do we have any "right" to consume all the resources
that have built up over millions of years in less than ten generations.
That is the frightening thing to me: not a handful of isolated sites with
deadly blue water but a whole fucking planet mined out of minerals and
biodiversity then coated with a layer of man-made scum.

[madokie]

10. our material waste will be short lived but the nuclear waste is here to stay

a long long time, actually there is no comparisons to the two. imo

[Nihil]

17. If you only consider "our material waste" to be paper, etc. then yes.

If, on the other hand, you recognise that
- (most) plastic doesn't degrade over the timescale of a typical civilisation,
- heavy metal pollution doesn't degrade without industrial activity,
- radioactive dust (from fly-ash) degrades at exactly the same rate as the
same elements when present in nuclear waste,
- all of the above (and more) have been spread right around the world by humans,
then you will see the difference between point source nuclear waste dumps
and thin layer non-nuclear waste "dumps".

Don't get me wrong: I'm not saying that nuclear waste is "good" but I *am*
saying that it isn't the biggest threat to future generations/species that
"we" have caused.

:shrug:

[madokie]

19. you know we have the technology to deal with most all those waste products

but for some reason we allow money or the lack of it to get in the way

http://www.res-energy.com/technology/index.asp

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization

I see going nuke as a cop out not as a solution to anything especially our energy needs. Have you read about the future of known uraninum deposits, I'm sure you have but for some reason chose to just gloss over on that one.;-)

[Nihil]

21. Yep!

> you know we have the technology to deal with most all those waste products
> but for some reason we allow money or the lack of it to get in the way

I totally agree with you!
There is more than enough money to sort out all of the planet's problems
but, unfortunately, there are two issues that prevent it:
1) The owners of most of that money aren't interested in saving the planet.
2) The human race will still be occupying the planet.

The first point is that the owners of most of the money are only concerned
with breeding it - making more obscene amounts of money for themselves - and
not with using it for the good of the planet & its occupants.

The second point is that even if some kind of miracle happened tomorrow and
someone waved a magic wand to undo all the harm that's been done, the fact
that the species that did that harm is still around (and enabled with ever
more powerful means of causing harm, not to mention ever-increasing numbers)
translates this win into a deferment of tragedy.

> Have you read about the future of known uraninum deposits, I'm sure you
> have but for some reason chose to just gloss over on that one.

Not glossing over it, just relegating it to its correct priority! ;-)

> I see going nuke as a cop out not as a solution to anything especially
> our energy needs.

That's fair. That's the view I have towards fusion research - it's not real
yet but even if it were, it would just allow even greater waste rather than
steering people towards *conservation* (if you'll excuse the language!).
I just see fission as an intermediate stage to "true renewable heaven",
as a means of replacing that high-end of the generation game that is
currently occupied by coal (and will continue to be for the near future).

I have no illusions that the best end result for domestic generation is
a combination of wind, solar and other renewables (with the mix varying
as appropriate to the location) but for industrial use and large cities,
we will still need large power stations so I'd much rather have nuclear
than coal & gas.

:hi:

[Dogmudgeon]

9. It isn't thousands of generations. Really.

Spent nuclear fuel certainly has risks, but that's an exaggeration. It is partly true for medical cesium, but that decays pretty quickly. IIRC, the chunk of stolen cesium from the poisoning episode in Brasil a few years ago decayed away in a few years. The more radioactive something is, the faster it decays.

Spent nuclear fuel has much less radiation than it originally had -- about one one-millionth. It's still significant, but it's hardly the stuff of disaster fiction.

And spent fuel continues to decay. The most common type cools off to background levels in a few hundred years. Yes, this is a significant risk, but it's hardly an eternal poison.

And you do know that even seawater is radioactive, right? About 12 parts per million, or 12 Becquerels (12 bq). Any other substance with that much radioactivity found loose in a rector building would be a cause for a major investigation. And coal has a similar concentration of radionucleides, which typically end up in the atmosphere, not a containment vessel.

There are also nuclear energy cycles that can completely drain the energy, leaving totally inert metal. CANDU reactors (Canadian Deuterium-Uranium) can use weakly radioactive material and drain it down. It may soon be possible to eliminate nearly all nuclear tranformations (the actual radiation) in an active isotope as a matter of normal operation.

Now, cadmium --- THAT is an eternal poison, and it's fantastically toxic. Unlike nuclear fuel, it NEVER decays. It really IS forever. There have been hundreds of lethal cadmium spills with thousands of deaths. And it is used in the manufacture of solar electric panels. The next generation of more-efficient panels will use much more cadmium.

But should we stop solar energy research and development? Hell, no! As with all technology, we have to learn to use it wisely and clean up our messes. There is no other way. Even if all nuclear material in the universe were to disappear into the ectocosmic hyperplasmic void of Slack tomorrow afternoon, we would still have the same problem. We'd have to learn to deal with lead, mercury, arsenic, cadmium, etc. -- and we have done a poor job so far.

Nuclear materials have real risks -- and they can be calculated with high precision. Vigilance and intelligence is always required. But we should stop scaring ourselves over things that we know about and can deal with. Getting educated about all aspects of nuclear energy is necessary to make a fully informed decision, no matter what that decision ultimately is. It also is the best antidote to both fear and propaganda, no matter who is promoting what. Science fiction is best left in the movie theater.

We have nothing to lose but our fear. And we'll gain being able to make the right decisions. I am pretty sure that we will accept nuclear energy -- but I could be wrong about that. And I know that enough information exists so that I will be able to discover what's true and what isn't.

But don't take my word for it. Scientifically based information can be spun, but the truth of it can't be hidden for very long. The information is out there for the taking.

--p!

[bananas]

12. Seawater is radioactive, but all the surfers use Bullfrog SPF-30

because solar radiation is a lot stronger than the teeny-tiny radiation in seawater.
And hikers wear hats and sunblock because solar radiation is a lot stronger than the teeny-tiny radiation in granite.

[Nihil]

6. They'll soon learn. (n/t)

:shrug:

[NNadir]

23. There is NOT ONE fundie anti-nuke who gives a rat's ass about future generations.

Then again there is NOT ONE fundie anti-nuke who knows that mercury and cadmium have no half life.

The number of anti-nukes who can cite ONE person injured by used nuclear fuel in the entire history of nuclear power is zero.

The number of people who will die in the next twenty minutes from dangerous fossil fuel is not zero.

[losthills]

24. Here, my friend, I'll give you two of 'em....

Happy, now?

[NNadir]

25. If yiou don't know what you're talking about, make stuff up.

You may find ignorance amusing, but I think Ignorance kills.

300,000 people will drop dead in Europe this year from dangerous fossil fuel and the fundie anti-nuke cult couldn't care less.

In fundie anti-nuke land - a fundie is a person whose ideology can be changed by no amount of science - the external cost of energy is irrelevant.

On planet earth the external cost of energy is well known and is, in fact, a scientific fact, like, say, genetics and evolutionary molecular biology.

The facts are well distributed in the scientific literature. There is NOT ONE fundie anti-nuke anywhere on this site - or elsewhere - who knows the content of the scientific literature. In fact, in almost a decade of listening to fundie anti-nukes tell us how solar will save us, or some such thing, they've mostly been reduced to photoshopping graphics.

Ignorance kills.

Got it?

No?

Why am I not surprised?

Ignorance kills.

[losthills]

14. You actually call that "safe??"

--p! is for "propaganda...."

[patch1234]

3. np recycling, means --> store it forever .n/t

[phantom power]

8. Sad, because CO2 is what's going to kill us all. It just doesn't take a fab picture.

Boo! glowing blue stuff!

[madokie]

11. yes our co2 is killing us but it won't continue to kill long after we're gone

when a large enough number of us die off to make the emissions of our pollution to be small enough the world will bounce back rather quickly but with nuclear waste the time frame is much larger. is it not?

[phantom power]

13. The thing is, I would argue the exact opposite.

The current estimates are that the CO2 we've already dumped into the atmosphere will be warming the climate for at least the next 500 thousand years. And that's assuming we haven't put earth into a completely new climate basin, in which case it's anybody's guess how long it will last, but hot/dry climate regimes have lasted for tens of millions of years previously, during which time the biosphere supported less biodiversity.

Spent nuclear fuel will remain above background levels for a much shorter time. It will be a lot less dangerous in a few hundred years -- its decay is exponential. The more radioactive a substance is, the faster it is becoming less radioactive.

I once read an article on a study that tried to quantify the risk of spent nuclear fuel out to something like 10,000 years. Jpak laughed because I failed to find that article. I wish I could find it, since it would be helpful for putting risk from nuclear materials into perspective. The projected impact on human health was obviously non-zero, but it's just not in the same ballpark as the risk from fossil-fuel pollutants.

[madokie]

15. ;-)

[tinrobot]

16. CO2 can't be contained.

Not only will it stay in the atmosphere for thousands of years, it's already in the atmosphere, and more is being released daily. We simply have not been able to contain it.

Nuclear radiation may stay around for a long time, and is definitely dangerous, but at least it's in a form that can be contained. Whether humans have the vigilance to keep it contained is another story.

Neither is a good energy option, but I'm not sure nuclear is more dangerous than CO2.

[madokie]

18. I guess you could say I am a little gun shy concerning the pro nuke people

trying to blow smoke up my ass. Its no different today than it was years ago, you'll have people who are well versed in nuclear energy talking past us regular folks. With all due respect to you I don't believe a word of it, 'for thousands of years'. Radioactive element whose half life is measured in thousands of years is not good for the worlds future no matter who is trying to spin it, you or the next guy.
peace

[GliderGuider]

20. If you're concerned about being hoodwinked by agenda driven spin

You would do well to educate yourself on the facts. That way nobody with an agenda on either side of the question will be able to smoke your butt.

I have serious concerns about nuclear power, but long term radiation risks from waste isn't one of them. As others have said, compared to the scale and nature of the waste we have already released from other processes, I think it's an insignificant risk. Not zero, but very low.

Now, you could argue that any additional risk to our civilization or species is unacceptable, and I'd be tempted to agree with that. The question then becomes on of relative levels of risk and costs of avoidance for the activities under consideration. One should always tackle the highest risk with the lowest cost of avoidance first. Unfortunately, the analysis on either of those points is complex and open to value judgments where nuclear power and fossil fuels is concerned, so it's hard to do quantitatively.

Here's how I see the safety issues:

High level nuclear waste from power reactors:

• It is relatively dangerous over the short term but the danger decays along with the radioactivity.
  
• It occupies a relatively small volume, so is easy to contain.
  
• It poses no danger to the planetary climate regime over either the short or long term.
  
• Currently and as long as containment can be maintained it poses no immediate threat to public health.

Waste from fossil fuels:

• Causes many deaths per year (on the order of a million) due to respiratory disease.
  
• Is warming the planet.
  
• Will continue to warm the planet for thousands of years (CO2 has a half-life too, thanks to the carbon cycle).
  
• May warm the planet enough that the climate tips into a new regime, becoming inhospitable for many organisms.
  
• Contains highly toxic materials including heavy and radioactive metals.
  
• Is diffuse and impossible to sequester.

Based on these considerations fossil fuels look like a very dangerous energy source in comparison to nuclear power. I personally believe that's the case. It's not the whole story though.

Nuclear power has marginal social benefit compared to fossil fuels. Many nations get along just fine without nuclear power. No nation can get by without oil, very few use no natural gas, and only a few use no coal. Replacing fossil fuels altogether would be very difficult. Stopping the use of nuclear power (or refusing to expand it and having the industry shrink through attrition) just isn't that damaging, either socially or economically). On the other hand, for fossil fuels the cost of risk avoidance through not using them is far too high for most people to accept.

I don't buy the "Lovelock argument" that nuclear power is a civilization-saving technology. My objections are that it's too capital-intensive, too centralized, many not provide the carbon savings it promises, and can't do many of the things that fossil fuels can do.

Given the public perception of high risk (warranted or not), the fact that it's not an essential energy source and the cost of risk avoidance is relatively low both socially and economically, it's hard to imagine that nuclear power will have much of a future unless something remarkable happens (and it may, we're going to see some truly remarkable events offer the next 3 decades).

Fossil fuels on the other hand will continue killing us well into the future. There is a general acceptance of (or at least a willingness to ignore) the known risks and known damage because of the perceived social benefits.

Human behaviour on both sides of this issue is driven by a strange mix of fear, hubris, denial and rationalization. We owe it to ourselves not to let photographs jerk us around emotionally so much that we become incapable of using our greatest gift - our ability to reason.

[hunter]

22. The anti-nuclear movement obscures itself within a thick smog of irrationality.

The core of the thing is a big black hole of misinformation orbited by leaders who can no longer see beyond the smoke they've spewed.

For people like Amory Lovins or Helen Caldicott (and others I won't name here because they are not such public figures) time has nearly stopped -- from their perspective it's as if Ronald Reagan is still the President and Three Mile Island is a recent event.

That's not my "spin," that's my personal experience. I don't believe they serve the causes of environmentalism any more, if they ever did. Opposing the growth of nuclear power without a similar and successful opposition to the growth of coal generated power made our situation worse then it would have been had we followed a nuclear path similar to France, or even better, made a serious effort to develop sustainable energy systems with the intent of replacing fossil fuels and nuclear power, not merely supplementing them.