Safer Nuclear Power, at Half the Price

[hunter]

24. And the half life of mercury is forever.

I didn't say it was harmless, I said in a few centuries it is comparable to other familiar industrial toxins and mining wastes, none of which are harmless.

In 48,000 years, maybe even 480 years, it's likely there will be many places that are more dangerous than the area around Chernobyl because they've been polluted with non-radioactive industrial toxins. There are plenty of non-radioactive places today where you wouldn't want to grow your vegetables because they've been contaminated with non-radioactive industrial toxins.

The mechanisms of toxicity are myriad, radioactivity is just one family of them. Radioactive toxins are not any scarier than non-radioactive toxins. I don't want to eat a fish contaminated with mercury any more than I want to eat a fish contaminated with radioactive caesium.

People ought to be viewing fossil fueled power plants the same critical way they view nuclear plants. By the numbers, coal fired power plants are a greater danger to our health and civilization than nuclear plants, but "better than coal" is a pretty low standard to aim for.