First contract signed for Cernavoda completion

[NNadir]

2. How is it that you choose 200,000 years?

There is, to my mind, no reason to bury anything in used nuclear fuel for any reason. Many people, most people, think there are reasons, but I don't agree. However it would take many years to describe why I believe that. I have worked very hard to come to that conclusion, spent many tens of thousands of hours reading about the physics and chemistry of all of the components of used nuclear fuel.

Most of what is in used nuclear fuel is unreacted uranium, about 95% plus or minus 1%. Another 1% is transuranium actinides, chiefly plutonium, but also small amounts of neptunium, americium and traces of curium.

To answer your question, the DUPIC cycle utilizes this "once through" uranium as fuel, and depending on the process used, consumes much of the plutonium as well. Therefore it has higher mass efficiency than enriched uranium. Once through uranium is more valuable than natural uranium because it contains significant quantities of the unnatural uranium isotope U-236. This is a precursor to neptunium and thus the very valuable isotope Pu-238.

However, to completely consume all of the uranium mined, we need the fast neutron cycle, which has been the focus of my thinking for many years, and what I am encouraging my son to study.

The fact that people only think about Chernobyl, TMI, and Fukushima, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki is absurd and is a reason why we are experiencing climate change and other aspects of wholesale destruction of the environment.

About 7 million people die each year from air pollution. Combined all the listed things don't add up to a month of air pollution deaths, including the two cities destroyed by nuclear weapons.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki took place 75 years ago. The number of people who died in those attacks is relatively trivial compared to the number of people killed in the very same war by petroleum fueled weapons, aircraft, napalm, etc. If we account for the number of people killed by fossil fuels and fossil fuel powered wars since 1945, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are even more trivial. If we were really concerned about weapons of mass destruction - we're not - we'd ban petroleum, wouldn't we?

In the 19 years I've been writing at DU, according to the papers I to which I routinely post links to several iterations of Lancet papers on the subject of risk, I estimate that between 110 million and 130 million people died from air pollution. Note I started writing in 2002, roughly 23 years after Three Mile Island.

The most recent Lancet iteration of the Global Burden of Disease study is here: Global burden of 87 risk factors in 204 countries and territories, 1990–2019: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019 (Lancet Volume 396, Issue 10258, 17–23 October 2020, Pages 1223-1249). This study is a huge undertaking and the list of authors from around the world is rather long. These studies are always open sourced; and I invite people who want to carry on about Fukushima to open it and search the word "radiation." It appears once. Radon, a side product brought to the surface by fracking while we all wait for the grand so called "renewable energy" nirvana that did not come, is not here and won't come, appears however: Household radon, from the decay of natural uranium, which has been cycling through the environment ever since oxygen appeared in the Earth's atmosphere.

Here is what it says about air pollution deaths in the 2019 Global Burden of Disease Survey, if one is too busy to open it oneself because one is too busy carrying on about Fukushima, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl:

The top five risks for attributable deaths for females were high SBP (5·25 million [95% UI 4·49–6·00] deaths, or 20·3% [17·5–22·9] of all female deaths in 2019), dietary risks (3·48 million [2·78–4·37] deaths, or 13·5% [10·8–16·7] of all female deaths in 2019), high FPG (3·09 million [2·40–3·98] deaths, or 11·9% [9·4–15·3] of all female deaths in 2019), air pollution (2·92 million [2·53–3·33] deaths or 11·3% [10·0–12·6] of all female deaths in 2019), and high BMI (2·54 million [1·68–3·56] deaths or 9·8% [6·5–13·7] of all female deaths in 2019). For males, the top five risks differed slightly. In 2019, the leading Level 2 risk factor for attributable deaths globally in males was tobacco (smoked, second-hand, and chewing), which accounted for 6·56 million (95% UI 6·02–7·10) deaths (21·4% [20·5–22·3] of all male deaths in 2019), followed by high SBP, which accounted for 5·60 million (4·90–6·29) deaths (18·2% [16·2–20·1] of all male deaths in 2019). The third largest Level 2 risk factor for attributable deaths among males in 2019 was dietary risks (4·47 million [3·65–5·45] deaths, or 14·6% [12·0–17·6] of all male deaths in 2019) followed by air pollution (ambient particulate matter and ambient ozone pollution, accounting for 3·75 million [3·31–4·24] deaths (12·2% [11·0–13·4] of all male deaths in 2019), and then high FPG (3·14 million [2·70–4·34] deaths, or 11·1% [8·9–14·1] of all male deaths in 2019).

Still people want to talk to me about Three Mile Island as if it mattered. I had one of these appalling head up the ass conversations here just last week. Some moron was carrying on about insurance for Three Mile Island. I think in this context this is simply insane. I cannot take anyone doing so seriously, morally seriously, intellectually seriously or educationally seriously.

In what moral universe does the concern that someone someday somewhere might face a health impact from Three Mile Island compare to the fact that in the last 19 years, air pollution has wiped out roughly ten times the population of Pennsylvania?

Air pollution is fossil fuel waste. Climate change is fossil fuel waste. Both kill people, in vast numbers. The difference between fossil fuel waste and what some people who know very little about used nuclear fuels call "nuclear waste," is that so called "nuclear waste" doesn't kill people.

We don't have to wait 200,000 years to find out if fossil fuel waste, aka "air pollution" will kill someone. Between six and seven million people die each year from air pollution. This works out to somewhere between 16,500 and 19,000 people per day, more than Covid killed worldwide on its worst day. In turn that works out to between 700 to 800 people an hour. If I 15 minutes writing this post, air pollution killed about 200 people while I did so.

We couldn't care less, but we do want to talk about Three Mile Island. Fukushima. Chernobyl.

Excuse my language, but what the fuck is wrong with us?

I would submit that more people have been killed by the air pollution created by power plants powering web pages where people carry on about Three Mile Island than were killed by the supposed radiation effects on health, if in fact there were any.

Selective attention, whether it derives from ignorance, deliberate or otherwise, or venality, kills people.

I've spent more than 30 years contemplating nuclear fuels. I argue that we need more of it, not less of it, and I think it outrageous that I even have to have this conversation again and again and again and again and again.

It is, to my mind, insane.