A Commentary on Failure, Delusion and Faith: Danish Data on Big Wind Turbines and Their Lifetimes.

[NNadir]

9. Actually, the deal killer of "waste" should apply to dangerous fossil fuels, not used nuclear fuel.

So called "nuclear waste" - which I contend would be an extremely valuable material is a less stupid world - has a spectacular record of not killing anyone because it is easily contained.

By contrast, dangerous fossil fuel waste, in the form of "air pollution" kills about 7 million people a year without a peep of concern from the very same people who worry their heads off about what they call "nuclear waste." I produce this comment all the time, appealing to the Lancet Global Burden of Disease Risk Factor Analysis which comes out every few years, the most recent being cited:

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:

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).

Note that the study does not include any reference to people being killed by exposure to so called "nuclear waste."

The selective attention paid to so called "nuclear waste" is criminal given that between 150 million and 160 million people have died from dangerous fossil fuel waste in this century while for the whole time, people have carried on insipidly about so called "nuclear waste" which hasn't killed anyone.

This does not include the rising death toll from climate change, another effect of the planetary exposure to dangerous fossil fuel waste.

It is supremely arrogant to assert that "no one knows what to do with it." Such a statement can only made in complete ignorance of the tens of thousands of published scientific papers on the subject of processing used nuclear fuels. I have personally been studying the chemistry of used nuclear fuels for over 30 years. I have personally read thousands upon thousands of scientific papers on the subject.

I personally know exactly what should be done with it: It should be put to use to solve some of the world's most intractable environmental problems. There are things that gamma radiation can do that no other form of energy can do as well, for just one example, clean carbon fluorine bonds, one of the most exigent environmental risks before humanity in terms of the atmosphere, bodies of water and land, although despite the dwarfed by climate change.

It is obscene to the extreme to isolate and used nuclear fuel from all other risks. This fetish is, frankly, deadly.