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["Marie McHarry" <mmcharry AT gmail.com>]

On 9/22/07, KNat <knat AT sprintmail.com> wrote:

> In the children's bedrooms of the people who got the gain from it? The
> companies that produced it, the lobbiests, the politicians, the
> universities declaring it safe. Add the people in university programs
> and companies promoting to produce more. Surely in such minute
> quantities they'd all agree it was a safe level. Otherwise they can
> spend that gain on finishing their usage. It has to be considered in the
> stream not as a separate entity!

High-level RW isn't safe (the very hottest stuff you can walk up to,
but you don't walk away). That's why it needs to be isolated.

I don't believe the government went into nuclear development with the
understanding of how politically impossible it would be in this
country to handle the stuff rationally.

Yes, of course, there's an industry, but there are also millions of
people who are getting their electricity from nuclear power plants.
The whole energy industry is dirty and destructive of the environment.
Coal plants not only cause global warming, but they kill the miners
who extract the coal and destroy the environment where the coal is
extracted (lots of people in West Virginia are upset that their
mountains are being de-topped and the slag pushed into streams. Plus,
coal being an element extracted from the earth releases radioactivity
when it is burned. The average coal plant releases more radioactivity
to the general public than a nuclear plant does. No happy answers
exist.
>
> I appreciate looking at disposal besides military use but injecting the
> planet anywhere is a global decision, whether in the ocean or earth's
> mantle. Keep responsibility with profit for a sane economy.
>
That's why I think the ocean trench solution should be studied by an
international group of scientists. Look, we have the stuff, and
pretending it will just go away isn't going to help much.

Marie