dagblog - Comments for "Strontium in the Bone"

I had great hopes for paying

erica20 — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 22:51:52 +0000

I had great hopes for paying the Hatians to move somewhere else, then boxing up all our crap and placing it on a deforested hillside somewhere between Port au Prince and the Dominican border. Who knew that place was in an earthquake zone?

Back to the drawing board....

We are not even properly

Richard Day — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 23:11:20 +0000

In reply to Strontium in the Bone

We are not even properly disposing our dead computers that contain undesireable elements.

And we sure the hell are not doing a very good job of taking care of nuclear waste.

Everytime someone proffers a bill concerning disposal of this hellish substance some Senator stands on the floor of Congress yelling:

NOT IN MY STATE!

I would not be surprised if we start burying the stuff in some place like Samoa where they cannot vote on the subject!

Thanks for this Donal. I'm

Verified Atheist — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 11:51:40 +0000

In reply to Strontium in the Bone

Thanks for this Donal. I'm quite familiar with the theory behind nuclear power generation, but as the pithy saying goes, "In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they're not." In the past I've been a weak pro-nuclear advocate, in that nuclear is a lot better than coal. I still think that nuclear is better than coal, but it's seeming more and more that it's like choosing being poisoned versus being boiled alive (and, no, I'm not sure which is which in my bad analogy).

You laugh, but since I

Verified Atheist — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 11:48:38 +0000

In reply to Using radioactivity to make

You laugh, but since I initiated that process not a single person has stolen my mail. Of course, I'm also past-due on a lot of bills, but still, you can't argue against success!

The United States has 60,000

NCD — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 04:01:00 +0000

In reply to Strontium in the Bone

The United States has 60,000 tons of 'spent fuel' all in temporary storage at the nuclear reactor facilities it was produced. Fukushima has about 4,500 tons, Chernobyl had 180 tons (which blew up). The Yucca Mountain storage site in Nevada which the federal government spent over $13 billion constructing, was officially dropped as a permanent storage site due to possible leakage to the water table and local opposition. The spent fuel must be safely stored for over 10,000 years more or less to be 'safe'. No new nuclear reactor has been built for about 30 years in the US, and none are built without Dept. of Energy (government) guaranteed loans due to the risk the plant will never operate or will be shut down early (due to construction defects, geological risks discovered after construction, or other reasons) and be a financial loss.

Germany is phasing out nuclear and they produce about 23% of their electricity from nuclear, we produce about 20%. If German engineers don't think they can build safe nuclear plants, or they don't think it is 'worth it', why would anyone else build more of them?

Using radioactivity to make

Rootman — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 03:13:10 +0000

In reply to Strontium in the Bone

Using radioactivity to make energy is as appropriate as using alligators for mall security.