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NUCLEAR
NEWS FOR LIFE
RADIATION |
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COMMENTARY :
Continuing waste problem should prompt shutdowns
From: "Save Ward Valley"
The following article appeared in the April 3rd Edition
of the Radiation
Bulletin. It really gets to the point about
nuclear waste and the most
glaring solution concerning the production of it.
Molly
Posted: Monday, April 3, 2000 | 6:34 a.m.
By Charles J. Guenther Jr.
NUCLEAR POWER
There is no safe place to put nuclear waste and no safe way to
transport
it. The only viable solution is prevention--shut down the plants and
stop
generating waste that will be hazardous for millennia.
THE ongoing nuclear waste crisis is a striking example of short-sighted
science and technology. It was as predictable (and avoidable) as the
Y2K
computer problem. Unlike the Y2K problem though, no amount of mouse-
clicking or computer coding can subtract one year from the 24,000-year
half-life of plutonium or remove one gram of deadly nuclear material.
For decades, the waste issue has been met with procrastination,
neglect
and outright denial by the promoters of nuclear energy. Now that the
waste
has piled up for decades at nuclear power plants that should not have
been
built in the first place, the nuclear industry wants to move the waste
to
make room for more.
The cheerleaders who promised "electricity too cheap to meter"
from
nuclear power plants did not factor in the hazards and costs involved
with
trucks and trains hauling radioactive waste to dump sites that would
have
to be guarded for tens of thousands of years.
In 1995, the Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers
reported
that the nuclear industry was negotiating with an Apache reservation
in
New Mexico to store 20,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel rods for 40 years
"until a Federal disposal plan emerges." The Apaches were offered
compensation that amounted to a whopping 16 cents per pound a year.
Now
the nuclear industry and some members of Congress want to transport
the
waste over a period of some 30 years across the country to Yucca Mountain
in Nevada. Nevada doesn't want it, and there are serious questions
of
safety concerning both the transportation and storage of the waste.
It is worth examining how we got to this point. Unfortunately,
education
in the post-Sputnik era helped reinforce the erroneous impression that
scientists and engineers are primarily concerned with advancing and
developing technology, and that they are too busy and important to
question applications or worry about their negative effects. Dealing
with
nuclear waste seemed somehow janitorial, beneath the dignity of a white-
coated scientist or a paper-pushing engineer.
In 1965, I took an elective course in nuclear engineering that
covered
the principles of nuclear reactors, reactor operation and radiation
hazards and shielding. Nuclear waste was not addressed in any meaningful
way. The course textbook (Raymond Murray, "Introduction to Nuclear
Engineering") glossed over "the waste disposal problem" in a mere five
pages, with dry comments such as: "many suggestions on storage have
been
proposed"; and "the danger is always present that vessels (storing
waste)
will rupture or erode away."
Clearly, this was a low-priority issue. But, just as clearly,
nuclear
engineers knew of the hazards and longevity of nuclear waste, and were
capable of estimating the quantities of waste generated per kilowatt-hour
of electricity. It was easier (as well as more beneficial to one's
career)
to design a shiny new reactor than to contemplate the intractable problem
of what to do with the waste that it would produce.
There are lessons to be learned from the nuclear waste crisis.
There is
no safe place to put it and no safe way to transport it. The only viable
solution is prevention--shut down the plants and stop generating waste
that will be hazardous for millennia.
We need scientists and engineers who are informed with humility
and
oriented toward a long-term social responsibility. Education alone
may not
be sufficient to correct the collective myopia exhibited by many
practitioners of science and technology. How can humility and social
responsibility be taught in a culture that continues to exalt the rocket
scientist as the highest evolutionary life form? How can students acquire
a long-term view when they are taught to embrace technology-driven
change
at rates that exceed society's capacity for absorbing it, let alone
its
capacity for evaluating and examining it?
Charles J. Guenther Jr. is professor of
engineering & technology at St.
Louis Community College at Meramec.
Save Ward Valley
107 F Street
Needles, CA 92363
ph. 760/326-6267
fax 760/326-6268
http://www.shundahai.org/SWVAction.html
http://earthrunner.com/savewardvalley
http://www.ctaz.com/~swv1
http://banwaste.envirolink.org
http://www.alphacdc.com/ien/wardvly4.html
http://www.greenaction.org
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