🚀 go-pugleaf

> The problem of high level nuclear waste has not been resolved anywhere in
> the world, after four decades of nuclear electricity generation. The early
> confidence that nuclear scientists would somehow solve the waste problem,
> just as they had built the atom bomb, has evaporated.

No, this isn't the case.
What has evaporated in the US is the politcal will to answer politically
difficult questions

> In the United States, sound science has been overtaken by political
> considerations in the rush to relieve utilities of the liabilities
deriving
> from the spent fuel accumulating at reactor sites. The Yucca Mountain site
> is the only one under investigation. Yet calculations done for this site,
> including those by Department of Energy contractors, indicate that
radiation
> doses could be hundreds or even thousands of times above presently
allowable
> limits. There is pressure to relax standards and change calculation
methods
> instead of improving the repository program.

The US first began considering disposal of radiaoctive waste in 1955 - 45
years ago. Taking
more than 45 years (Yucca Mountain to open (?) in 2012 - ~ 57 years) to
answer any question
can hardly be credibly referred to a "a rush" to do anything for anyone. It
is a measure of just how gutless the US has become on controversial issues,
however.

Calculations in fact suggest that the Yucca Mountain site is very likely to
meet requirements. As long as the opponents continue to suggest that
anything less 100% guarantees is unacceptable, and as long as the
politicians remain spineless, the dance will continue...until the lights go
out. (and it was the politicians, with little understanding of the science,
but abundant understanding of the electoral facts of life, who focused on
Yucca Mountain in the HLW Amendment Act of 1987. Former Louisiana Senator J.
Bennett Johnson said, following its passage, "We have solved the high-level
waste problem." I wonder if he's any more capable of understanding the facts
of the mater now than he was in 1987?)