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Yes, "Green" measures help. Mostly in keeping things from getting even worse.

* Recycling absolutely works for aluminum, less so for other materials; China is refusing to take waste because *they* are very serious about going green.
* Electric cars, taxis, busses, and trucks actually do pollute less. The air quality is clearly better.
* Wind and hydro aren't perfect, but they're better than running coal
* Energy efficiency on consumption is indeed necessary, but it's just part of the overall solution
* 5 years vs 3 years is still better than NEVER.

That it's not immediately perfect is not a reason to claim that it's not working. You need to compare against the alternative, which is obviously worse.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Overread wrote:
The main risk with nuclear long term storage is that when you look at history the longest running empire was only around 500 years old (give or take) and through that period it went through vast changes in its size and organisation.

China could do it.

 Whirlwind wrote:

 Luke_Prowler wrote:
Did you know coal ash waste is also radioactive? When coal gets burned (such as in power plants), the trace amounts of radioactive material, as well as other nasty things like mercury and arsenic, concentrates into fly ash and bottom ash. Where as Nuclear Waste is highly regulated and talked about as the last few post has shown, coal ash is generally dumped into large basins open to the air near to the coal plant itself. Which is always near a body of water, and it's a matter of when than if there's going to be a spill.

I'm not sure anyone is suggesting we return to coal. There are plenty of existing clean energy sources already. A combination of wind, solar and geothermal energy if located and stored correctly could provide sufficient of our energy needs. It needs an integrated grid but if you took Europe as an example you could have solar in the southern EU countries, wind in the northern EU countries and geothermal where there is significant residual heat (Scotland, Iceland, parts of France, Italy and so forth). Combined this with a huge increase in local energy generation on houses (i.e. solar panels on every roof) then you shouldn't need coal or nuclear. Of course this side of the pond it would require some form of union of European countries with equivalent networks and rules...ahem...

Maybe no one in Europe is suggesting going back to coal, but there is a very large and entrenched coal industry here in the US. Some states economies and job market that have coal as a, if not the, major contributor and as a whole we exported 15% of our production of coal in 2018. Which is a rise from 12% in 2012. So clearly, there is at least some people pushing for coal.

jouso wrote:

 Overread wrote:

 Whirlwind wrote:
The real problem with Nuclear is the waste. A lot of it has substantial half-lifes ranging from 100,000's to millions of years. That means the material will be radioactive for a very long time.

The question is how do we protect people not only now but in the future. There are languages that are a mere 5000 years old that we don't understand. How do you design warnings not only for now but in 20,000 years when there is a possibility no one would understand our language/customs/symbols and so forth. For these people the markings would be akin to superstitions surrounding Egyptian Mummies and Tombs.

There's really two sides to this

1) The evolution of language. All languages evolve with use (even latin today evolves and changes) so any nations that lasts a long long time will have evolution of its language over time. Really old English is still English, but it is quite different to the English of today. Furthermore there are key events such as when we were invaded by the Normans, which caused bigger shifts in language structure. So if societies that store nuclear material remain stable enough to be functional then the old warning signs will just get updated every so often. Though it might also be some remain in use, they would just shift from common parlance into work specific phrases.

2) The fall of nations. This is the big risk really, when one nation falls. A massive collapse can trigger a situation where storage facilities could be lost, information on them lost and, if enough time went by, even understanding of them would dwindle. Of course this gets a bit trickier to envision because we'd require a world wide collapse in order to get to a point where unclear material was unintelligible. A massive collapse alongside a solar flare that wipes out digital data could probably do it; provided there was no preparation beforehand.

More important to me is the economic case. You're saddling thousands of generations with the results of a few decades of localised energy generation.

If you try to annualise that the cost of nuclear energy is basically infinite.

Clearly you know very little about Nuclear power other than what some hippy nutjobs have told you.

The US supply of Uranium and Thorium would be enough to theoretically last for 100,000 years.

http://www.daretothink.org/numbers-not-adjectives/how-long-will-our-supplies-of-uranium-and-thorium-last/

Add in the rest of the world and we have a very very very large amount of nuclear fuel on this planet. More than enough to last until we have FTL travel, which would give us access to the rest of the universe's fuel supply. But even before we get FTL, we'll be able to mine the rest of our solar system.

Plus its only Uranium based power plants that give off the nasty byproducts. Thorium plants have practically zero dangerous waste in comparison. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power

Furthermore, it is actually quite easy to safely store nuclear waste. We're already doing it. Burying it under a mountain in the desert only has risks when you start thinking about it thousands of years down the line, by which time technology will enable us to fix any possible problems that might arise from plate tectonics braking up a nuclear waste dump.

Worrying about stuff that long term is quite silly. You might as well worry about the sun itself running out of fuel so you can't run your precious solar panels anymore.

Nuclear power is the only choice we have for long term high volume power generation. We know for a fact we have thousands and thousands of years worth of these fuel types, why not use them? The risks are negligible.

 Overread wrote:
The main risk with nuclear long term storage is that when you look at history the longest running empire was only around 500 years old (give or take) and through that period it went through vast changes in its size and organisation.

Even if a country that has a nuclear waste stockpile collapses, that doesn't mean the waste suddenly gets dumped into the environment. It just means the bunker it was being stored in doesn't have guards. The nuclear waste isn't going to waltz out if left unattended. Its just going to keep sitting there, which is safe.

It only becomes unsafe if some terrorist wants to deliberately sabotage the environment. Which isn't a problem with nuclear power, thats a problem with people. A problem whose solution has nothing to do with banning nuclear power.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Even if a country that has a nuclear waste stockpile collapses, that doesn't mean the waste suddenly gets dumped into the environment. It just means the bunker it was being stored in doesn't have guards. The nuclear waste isn't going to waltz out if left unattended. Its just going to keep sitting there, which is safe.

It only becomes unsafe if some terrorist wants to deliberately sabotage the environment. Which isn't a problem with nuclear power, thats a problem with people. A problem whose solution has nothing to do with banning nuclear power.

If people aren't going to change (and it doesn't look like they will), then long term nuclear waste storage is going to require a centuries-long solution that factors terrorists as a potential problem.

Which is something that is easily accomplished. You can build the bunkers in such a way that the waste cannot be taken out, at least not without fatally irradiating yourself and that would require complex equipment a mere terrorist wouldn’t have.

And it’s not like our existing storage doesn’t put severe obstacles in between the outside and the stored waste. Even with nobody to stop you, it would be a very difficult thing to get in.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Which is something that is easily accomplished. You can build the bunkers in such a way that the waste cannot be taken out, at least not without fatally irradiating yourself and that would require complex equipment a mere terrorist wouldn’t have.

And it’s not like our existing storage doesn’t put severe obstacles in between the outside and the stored waste. Even with nobody to stop you, it would be a very difficult thing to get in.

Great so if there ever is a need to change location/ do extensive repairs, you just made it way harder.
The big problem with building a save storage facility is that it has to be save for a long time and erosion will find a way inside given enough time. So even if there is no unexpected problems (and given enough time there always are), one would have to constantly monitor and renovate the facility in order to keep it save. All that while storing tons of radioactive waste in it, which seeing as there is always some idiot that doesn't follow safety protocols, means that at some point something will go wrong. Even if it is just a minor thing with basically no impact, the public reaction would most likely be negative.

A problem with our current nuclear plants that hasn't been mentioned is the impact of climate change on them. To keep the cooling running, they require fast amounts of water which is typically taken from a nearby river. With the change in climate droughts are more likely, which bring the risk of nothaving enough water for that. Another often overlooked fact here is that the cooling system of the plants is designed with a specific water temperature in mind. So if the water temperature rises over a certain point, the cooling system will no longer work as intended.

 Whirlwind wrote:
The real problem with Nuclear is the waste. A lot of it has substantial half-lifes ranging from 100,000's to millions of years. That means the material will be radioactive for a very long time.

That's a double edged sword though. Uranium-235 has a half life of 700 million years. That sounds scary, it's a long time. But what that actually indicates is that the actual activity of the element is low, if you had two atoms of U-235 it would take around 700 million years before one of them sent out an alpha particle (obviously this only really holds true for large numbers of atoms, since radioactive decay is a random process so you need a large sample). Elements with high activity (i.e. they are emitting a lot of radiation) have short half lives. Most of the actual heat (i.e. radioactive decay) created by spent nuclear fuel is from isotopes with much shorter half lives, such as Strontium-90 or Caesium-137 which have half lives of around 30 years.

 Luke_Prowler wrote:

 Whirlwind wrote:

 Luke_Prowler wrote:
Did you know coal ash waste is also radioactive? When coal gets burned (such as in power plants), the trace amounts of radioactive material, as well as other nasty things like mercury and arsenic, concentrates into fly ash and bottom ash. Where as Nuclear Waste is highly regulated and talked about as the last few post has shown, coal ash is generally dumped into large basins open to the air near to the coal plant itself. Which is always near a body of water, and it's a matter of when than if there's going to be a spill.

I'm not sure anyone is suggesting we return to coal. There are plenty of existing clean energy sources already. A combination of wind, solar and geothermal energy if located and stored correctly could provide sufficient of our energy needs. It needs an integrated grid but if you took Europe as an example you could have solar in the southern EU countries, wind in the northern EU countries and geothermal where there is significant residual heat (Scotland, Iceland, parts of France, Italy and so forth). Combined this with a huge increase in local energy generation on houses (i.e. solar panels on every roof) then you shouldn't need coal or nuclear. Of course this side of the pond it would require some form of union of European countries with equivalent networks and rules...ahem...

Maybe no one in Europe is suggesting going back to coal, but there is a very large and entrenched coal industry here in the US. Some states economies and job market that have coal as a, if not the, major contributor and as a whole we exported 15% of our production of coal in 2018. Which is a rise from 12% in 2012. So clearly, there is at least some people pushing for coal.

The Poles are keen on coal.

China is building dozens of new coal power stations as part of its Belt and Road project.

Britain already gets 30% of its energy from wind and solar and has had a number of days when no coal was burnt.

 Kilkrazy wrote:


China is building dozens of new coal power stations as part of its Belt and Road project.

IMHO, China is a bit of a special case. Yes, they are building dozens of new coal power stations, but they are also leading the world in new purchases of wind farms. Currently, they are the world leader (in GW production) of wind power, with many of the top ten wind companies having active projects underway in China right now.

This is because they are seeing an economic growth and modernizing of astounding levels. . . Basically, they are crunching the economic growth and exploding middle class of the US 20th century, into a couple decades. I mean, if you watch the Grand Tour, you probably saw the China Special, and even if you don't believe 100% of what the boys were saying about the road construction projects, you can visibly see that it is largely true (I am referring to how many miles of motorway they had in 1985 compared to the number of miles today, which is one stat they mentioned)

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, any green measures that do not include a departure from the economic and population model of "all growth, all the time" is at best a stop-gap measure (not necessarily needless or without effect, mind you), at worst a distraction from the actual problem - overpopulation and our economic system's subservience to profit and greed at the top.

 Desubot wrote:
Geothermal is probably the most sustainable and consistent, but its limited by its location.

Wind and solar are also very limited and unreliable. no wind or too much wind and bad things happen. also not good if the sun aint shining for solar. (also iirc solar is most efficient in cold climates not super hot sunny ones.)

Dams also have massive ecological impact so probably shouldn't pull a China.

It would be nice to put solar on literally every roof top possible. though what kinda carbon foot print does it generate to make those panels in that sort of quantity.

recently i saw a youtube vid on the possibility to power the entire US with solar. it actually would be possible to fit it in death valley but would also cost an absolutely insane amount (though i think it was almost reached through the us highway program(?))

Geothermal is more viable than most think because of the assumption that it has to be built near active volcanism. But this isn't correct because rock takes an awful long time to lose heat. There are areas in Scotland where geothermal should be viable because of the heat locked in granite even though it is 10's millions of years since it formed. Not all geothermal needs to be in places like Iceland (though it is easier to get at). That places like Japan use nuclear instead of geothermal is rather strange. The US has options all down the Rocky Mountains, France the Massif Central.

It's not about providing only one option but a connected grid of renewables that can support each other at different times. Yes the carbon cost is higher but that is simply because we are already a high carbon usage society anyway and as we move away from this then the carbon costs of new renewables sources becomes much less. Yes it is expensive, no one has ever refuted that - but the argument is that it will cost society much more in the future if we don't spend the money now to reign in the carbon greed.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Whirlwind wrote:
The real problem with Nuclear is the waste. A lot of it has substantial half-lifes ranging from 100,000's to millions of years. That means the material will be radioactive for a very long time.

That's a double edged sword though. Uranium-235 has a half life of 700 million years. That sounds scary, it's a long time. But what that actually indicates is that the actual activity of the element is low, if you had two atoms of U-235 it would take around 700 million years before one of them sent out an alpha particle (obviously this only really holds true for large numbers of atoms, since radioactive decay is a random process so you need a large sample). Elements with high activity (i.e. they are emitting a lot of radiation) have short half lives. Most of the actual heat (i.e. radioactive decay) created by spent nuclear fuel is from isotopes with much shorter half lives, such as Strontium-90 or Caesium-137 which have half lives of around 30 years.

Although correct in some cases there is still nuclear waste that is considered both long lived and high level. It assumes that once decayed the material becomes non-radioactive which isn't correct. You can get chains of decay that can last thousands to millions of years that produce levels of radiation harmful to humans and the environment. You then have to consider that material around the decayed atom can absorb the emitted particles (alpha, beta) that the atoms absorbing them radioactive as well. If we consider one small non-interacting lump of material in isolation with a long half life then yes the risks are lower (though the energy levels of the decay can also impact this). However, it is rarely as simplistic as the decay chains and interactions keep things 'hotter' than single chain assumptions. We also have to consider that the material is concentrated in one location so although in small quantities a single decay might be low risk, you then have to multiply this by the concentration of the material.

Realistically if we wanted to save the planet then we should look to Bender Bending Rodríguez in that we need to "kill all humans"

Jorim wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Which is something that is easily accomplished. You can build the bunkers in such a way that the waste cannot be taken out, at least not without fatally irradiating yourself and that would require complex equipment a mere terrorist wouldn’t have.

And it’s not like our existing storage doesn’t put severe obstacles in between the outside and the stored waste. Even with nobody to stop you, it would be a very difficult thing to get in.

Great so if there ever is a need to change location/ do extensive repairs, you just made it way harder.
The big problem with building a save storage facility is that it has to be save for a long time and erosion will find a way inside given enough time. So even if there is no unexpected problems (and given enough time there always are), one would have to constantly monitor and renovate the facility in order to keep it save. All that while storing tons of radioactive waste in it, which seeing as there is always some idiot that doesn't follow safety protocols, means that at some point something will go wrong. Even if it is just a minor thing with basically no impact, the public reaction would most likely be negative.

A problem with our current nuclear plants that hasn't been mentioned is the impact of climate change on them. To keep the cooling running, they require fast amounts of water which is typically taken from a nearby river. With the change in climate droughts are more likely, which bring the risk of nothaving enough water for that. Another often overlooked fact here is that the cooling system of the plants is designed with a specific water temperature in mind. So if the water temperature rises over a certain point, the cooling system will no longer work as intended.

None of those concerns apply to the way the US stores our waste. Buried under a mountain in the desert. You'd literally be looking at millions of years of plate tectonic shifts before that area became unstable enough to destroy those bunkers.

If you bury something a half mile deep under a mountain, in an area that is about as far from impacting the food chain as you can possibly get on this planet, its not going anywhere even if you do nothing more than lock the doors. We're not storing nuclear waste at ground level in a warehouse. Its going down a mineshaft.

Oh, and its not like if we stopped using nuclear power that all this radioactive matter isn't on earth anymore. Much of Earth's known uranium deposits are found pretty dang close to human civilization. Canada has one of the biggest sources and its rather uncomfortably close to the great lakes. If you're so concerned about contaminating the environment, then its actually better that we mine all of that Uranium, use it for fuel, and when we are done go bury it in Nevada where it can cause less damage than if its left to sit in its natural deposits, where it will eventually get into the environement in a much worse place for it.

 Grey Templar wrote:
None of those concerns apply to the way the US stores our waste. Buried under a mountain in the desert.

If we actually did that, maybe.

However, the reality is that ZERO waste is buried there. NONE.

The waste at the decommissioned SONGS plant is still sitting there right by the ocean. And it's like that at every other US plant - just sitting in piles next to the reactor.

 Grey Templar wrote:

Jorim wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Which is something that is easily accomplished. You can build the bunkers in such a way that the waste cannot be taken out, at least not without fatally irradiating yourself and that would require complex equipment a mere terrorist wouldn’t have.

And it’s not like our existing storage doesn’t put severe obstacles in between the outside and the stored waste. Even with nobody to stop you, it would be a very difficult thing to get in.

Great so if there ever is a need to change location/ do extensive repairs, you just made it way harder.
The big problem with building a save storage facility is that it has to be save for a long time and erosion will find a way inside given enough time. So even if there is no unexpected problems (and given enough time there always are), one would have to constantly monitor and renovate the facility in order to keep it save. All that while storing tons of radioactive waste in it, which seeing as there is always some idiot that doesn't follow safety protocols, means that at some point something will go wrong. Even if it is just a minor thing with basically no impact, the public reaction would most likely be negative.

A problem with our current nuclear plants that hasn't been mentioned is the impact of climate change on them. To keep the cooling running, they require fast amounts of water which is typically taken from a nearby river. With the change in climate droughts are more likely, which bring the risk of nothaving enough water for that. Another often overlooked fact here is that the cooling system of the plants is designed with a specific water temperature in mind. So if the water temperature rises over a certain point, the cooling system will no longer work as intended.

None of those concerns apply to the way the US stores our waste. Buried under a mountain in the desert. You'd literally be looking at millions of years of plate tectonic shifts before that area became unstable enough to destroy those bunkers.

If you bury something a half mile deep under a mountain, in an area that is about as far from impacting the food chain as you can possibly get on this planet, its not going anywhere even if you do nothing more than lock the doors. We're not storing nuclear waste at ground level in a warehouse. Its going down a mineshaft.

How do you stop bad guys from getting access to it then?

The fact that it's highly radioactive is a deterrent, surely.

But the reason why the US waste wasn't buried under the mountain as planned is that geologists found that water was moving through the rock much, much faster than had been thought possible. This raised the propsect of waterborne contamination within decades rather than thousands of years.

The best place to keep high level waste is in specially built containment ponds where you can keep an eye an it and do maintenance.

Fracking has also shown how there's a lot of deep interaction at the mineral and water layers. Basically yes you can bury things deep, but it just delays when it comes back to bite you.

And as noted there's the issue of monitoring storage, a major earthquake could crack storage containers even buried deep underground and cause all kinds of issues for a huge span of time before it would be detected and even once it was access would be a huge issue.

Genuine question- what are the issue of dropping nuclear waste into the deepest parts of the ocean? I know it would likely have an impact on the ecosystems buried down there, but are there any significant risks of the stuff affecting the surface?

 Haighus wrote:
Genuine question- what are the issue of dropping nuclear waste into the deepest parts of the ocean? I know it would likely have an impact on the ecosystems buried down there, but are there any significant risks of the stuff affecting the surface?

I would assume the biggest issues are the cost of making a container capable of surviving the pressure and temperature extremes without rupturing halfway down and dumping all that waste directly into our food supply, and the danger that deep ocean volcanism would rupture any containers we did get all the way down hence dumping all that waste directly into our food system.

If burying it inside a geologically stable, room temperature, sea level pressure mountain is a bad idea, dropping it into a potentially geologically unstable pressure cooker seems...even moreso.

No-one has mentioned Gen IV reactors that cannot meltdown and consume nuclear waste as fuel.

http://theconversation.com/nuclear-power-is-set-to-get-a-lot-safer-and-cheaper-heres-why-62207 Gen IV reactors will also allow more efficient use of nuclear fuel. The fuel in current reactor designs is used only once and then disposed of, which produces radioactive waste that will take hundreds of millennia to decay to a safe level. But this waste contains valuable resources of fissile material that can be reprocessed into new fuel. Burning this fuel in specialised “fast” reactors provides would be much more efficient and generate waste that decays safely within just a hundred years or so. It would also move us towards a closed fuel-cycle that would greatly extend the lifetime of the Earth’s uranium reserves.

The reactors can be small, modular designs rather than big 'Springfield' powerplants, for more reliable and efficient power transmission. The molten salt reactors are considered 'walk away safe'. Should they reach a critical temperature, they will drain and shut down without any human input.

Effectively, Gen IV is the safest, greenest fuel we have- actually cleaning up after previous nuclear programs by eating dangerous waste.

 Haighus wrote:
Genuine question- what are the issue of dropping nuclear waste into the deepest parts of the ocean? I know it would likely have an impact on the ecosystems buried down there, but are there any significant risks of the stuff affecting the surface?

Water moves around all the time and there are multiple layers of interaction in the seas which happen all the time. So any leak at deepsea would eventually have an impact on the rest of the sea ecosystem and thus humanity.

We already have massive problems with plastics and heavy metals in the sea (to name but two of many problems) and adding nuclear waste would just be utter madness to the mix.


Even in the ground there is lots of stuff moving around; nutrients and minerals being broken down at the bedrock layer move up to provide food for plants; whilst water moves down and sideways providing groundwater tables, groundwater flows and interactions.

That is all fair enough, I just wasn't sure if there was significant movement up from the bottom of sea trenches.

There's massive currents of oceanic sea water that run around the world. Moving from upper to lower regions all over. In fact its one of these that warms the UK and is the reason it and many other countries in western europe are warm rather than Siberian in climate.

That deep sea current shutting down/moving is basically what is part of the onset of a glacial period where we end up growing glaciers and the UK becomes Siberian.

Interestingly they think its linked to salt density in the ocean; a reduction in salt is one of the proposed triggers, and as such melting icecaps and land ice (eg greenland and glaciers) is, of course, a good way to increase water and reduce density!

 Overread wrote:
There's massive currents of oceanic sea water that run around the world. Moving from upper to lower regions all over. In fact its one of these that warms the UK and is the reason it and many other countries in western europe are warm rather than Siberian in climate.

That deep sea current shutting down/moving is basically what is part of the onset of a glacial period where we end up growing glaciers and the UK becomes Siberian.

Interestingly they think its linked to salt density in the ocean; a reduction in salt is one of the proposed triggers, and as such melting icecaps and land ice (eg greenland and glaciers) is, of course, a good way to increase water and reduce density!

I am aware of ocean currents in general, and the gulf stream, it was more in relation to deep sea trenches and their unusual depths and geography that I was thinking about.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
None of those concerns apply to the way the US stores our waste. Buried under a mountain in the desert.

If we actually did that, maybe.

However, the reality is that ZERO waste is buried there. NONE.

The waste at the decommissioned SONGS plant is still sitting there right by the ocean. And it's like that at every other US plant - just sitting in piles next to the reactor.

There are reasons for this. The very high radioactive material can still generate more energy than it consumes. So some radioactive waste needs to be actively cooled until it degrades enough that it won't heat up to the point and melt everything in the near vicinity (which you don't want in an underground storage vault that is difficult to access and full of other radioactive material.

 Whirlwind wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
None of those concerns apply to the way the US stores our waste. Buried under a mountain in the desert.

If we actually did that, maybe.

However, the reality is that ZERO waste is buried there. NONE.

The waste at the decommissioned SONGS plant is still sitting there right by the ocean. And it's like that at every other US plant - just sitting in piles next to the reactor.

There are reasons for this.

The main reason is NIMBY

 Kilkrazy wrote:
The fact that it's highly radioactive is a deterrent, surely.

Which is precisely why would-be terrorists would want to get their hands on those waste in the first place.

jouso wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
The fact that it's highly radioactive is a deterrent, surely.

Which is precisely why would-be terrorists would want to get their hands on those waste in the first place.

Exactly. That's why it shouldn't be sitting out in a zillion places "guarded" by rent-a-cops when it would be far better to have it properly managed on a military base. No, the military isn't perfect, but at least they aren't financially incented to do nothing and then roll the dice that there aren't consequences.

jouso wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
The fact that it's highly radioactive is a deterrent, surely.

Which is precisely why would-be terrorists would want to get their hands on those waste in the first place.

Yeah, if terrorist groups can find enough vulnerable people to generate the various suicide attackers we have seen, they can find someone willing to irradiate themselves for whatever cause they are preaching.

Recycling in some areas doesn't make any sense whatsoever. For instance, in Idaho all your recycling gets shipped to Arizona, as Idaho doesn't have a single recycling plant. Also, as for paper in general, don't recycle it. the average recycling center in the US gets too much paper and can't handle it. They end up sending something like 75% of it to the landfill. All you are doing is having more trucks driving more miles to dump it. Not to mention the labor costs.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

jouso wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
The fact that it's highly radioactive is a deterrent, surely.

Which is precisely why would-be terrorists would want to get their hands on those waste in the first place.

Exactly. That's why it shouldn't be sitting out in a zillion places "guarded" by rent-a-cops when it would be far better to have it properly managed on a military base. No, the military isn't perfect, but at least they aren't financially incented to do nothing and then roll the dice that there aren't consequences.

And seeing what happened after the fall of the Soviet Union with all kinds of military hardware the risk of guarding stuff that will be active and dangerous for millennia is pretty evident.