Radiation from Fukushima Will Be 10 Times Bigger than All Radiation from Nuclear Tests Combined

[PamW]

38. WRONG Again

Nuclear scientists and engineers from the very beginning of nuclear power wanted to reprocess and recycle the radioactive waste.

When you do that; you end up with SHORT-LIVED waste.

Nuclear Physicist, Dr. Charles Till, then Associate Director of Argonne National Lab explains the process in this Frontline interview:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/interviews/till.html

Q: And you repeat the process.

A: Eventually, what happens is that you wind up with only fission products, that the waste is only fission products that have, most have lives of hours, days, months, some a few tens of years. There are a few very long-lived ones that are not very radioactive.

If one recycles waste as above, GONE are the multi-thousand year problems; the lifetime is on the order of what Dr. Till states above.

Additionally, how much waste do you think we have; a lot? We have 77,000 tons of very dense material that would fit in a high school gymnasium if we put it in one place. All that for about a half-century of 20% of the US's power.

However, 96% of that is U-238; which is no more radioactive than the day it was dug out of the ground. That U-238 doesn't need any special burial; we could put it back where we got it.

So we would have one little corner of a high school gym. Is that too much; for 20% of our electric power for a half-century?

Coal plants make waste many, many times that in a day.

If we recycled like Dr. Till states; and that waste didn't last for thousands of years; but for the relatively short timescales that Dr. Till stated; what's the problem.

We make much, much more electronics waste that has infinite longevity; just so we can have computers and cell phones. Is that worth it?

Do you ever check things out to ascertain the truth; or do you just post the things you read from the resident propagandists here and the propagandist websites.

One of my college Professors said the purpose of a college education is to teach you how little you know; and that before you go shooting your mouth off; you really need to go look things up to learn the truth.

PamW