Nuclear option is FOLLY

Ace Hoffman has written an EXCELLENT, to-the-point article. With a background of 4 decades of experience in radiation safety and working with nuclear materials, I reject the non-specific, unsubstantiated, pejorative abuse of post #1.  
 
I have been working with radioactive materials for 40 years as a research scientist, taught radiation safety courses and indeed this year gave a course entitled \"nuclear, greenhouse and poverty threats\" and which that dealt with these issues. 
 
Mankind has produced about 100 billion Curies of high level radioactive waste in a mere 6 decades. Admittedly this is decaying away but many of the nuclides produced have half-lives measured in thousands and tens of thousands of years or even greater. 
 
Notwithstanding good risk management procedures in the nuclear power and related areas , accidents are inevitable.  
 
One aspect not dealt with in the article are the radiation safety codes themselves that allow for huge margins of error in the interests of public safety.  
 
However in accidents of the kind imagined by Ace Hoffman, while possibly not being immediately catastrophic in themselves (except for those killed immediately in such accidents) the resultant contamination might well require that authorities tear up the Radiation Safety Codes for the region affected to prevent any \"economic disruption\". 
 
A good example to illustrate this is the irresponsible and RACIST use of depleted uranium (DU) by the US and surrogate military in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza, Somalia ...  
 
Even if one assumes (for the purposes of argument) no untoward effects of this widespread environmental contamination with radioactive materials, this cavalier, widespread RADIOACTIVE POLLUTION PRACTICE would be totally forbidden by Safety Codes in a domestic, metropolitan American setting. 
 
In relation to global warming, the nuclear power option is NOT carbon neutral (the overall carbon dioxide pollution in the overall nuclear cycle can be the same as for a modern gas fired power station); there remain huge State and non-State \"nuclear terrorism\" security problems in terms of the physical bulk and specific materials of the radioactive waste; the high level waste problem, has not been solved; and the nuclear option will be very SHORT-TERM - massive \"economic\" use of available high uranium-235 content ore deposits could see their depletion in a matter of DECADES; and the latest technology RENEWABLE options are now ALREADY CHEAPER in terms of cents per kilowatt hour than the REAL cost of coal-based electric power (see \"War on Terra, Climate Criminals, \"Terra\" painting\" on MWC News via the link below).  
 
Apart from material for research-, non-nuclear industry- and nuclear-medicine-oriented reactors, the uranium oxide should stay in the ground together with the fossil fuels that are destroying out Planet.

http://mwcnews.net/content/view/1375/247/

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