Re: So what now do we do?

Huh?
--- Don Winterstein <dfwinterstein@msn.com> wrote:
> Right. I predict that one day well before a
> gallon of gas costs ten of today's dollars, people
> will wake up en masse and say, "Hey, nuclear
> (fission) energy really isn't that bad after all, is
> it? And Nevada was never much of a state to speak
> of, was it?"
>
> Don

Don, how much do you know about the current (now 30-40
year old) generation of boiling water and pressure
water reactors? Or the next generation advanced light
water reactors, pebble bed technology, gas cooled
reactors, sodium cooled reactors, etc., and the
additional passive safety features in such designs?
Or the fuel cycle, or long-term spent fuel storage, or
what exact health threats radioactivity poses?

Nothing about current or future fission reactor
technology nor about long term spent fuel storage
poses any serious threat to public health. The only
reason there aren't more nuclear reactors in the U.S.
is that fossil fuels are so cheap (and current
decommissioning financial assurance requirements are
prohibitively expensive for deregulated merchant
generators). Of course, the health risks of fossil
fuels, the environmental damage, etc. almost none of
which is borne by the generators using those fuels
(unlike nuclear) are far greater than nuclear power by
any objective measure.

Yucca Mountain will not do anything to endanger the
residents of Nevada or anywhere else, so I am not sure
why putting the repository there will be the end of
the State, a State which interestingly has always been
a staunch supporter of the Nevada test site. I would
rather have a spent fuel repository in my backyard
than an atmospheric test range (or formerly an
atmospheric test range), but hey, that's just me.
Apparently, that's not Nevada, which is really, really
odd from a public health perspective.

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Received on Wed Dec 3 20:31:57 2003