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From: ignatz@ihuxx.UUCP (Dave Ihnat, Chicago, IL)
Newsgroups: net.followup,net.politics
Subject: Re: Re: Lockport Blast: safety of oil vs nuclear power
Message-ID: <805@ihuxx.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 3-Aug-84 18:11:56 EDT
Article-I.D.: ihuxx.805
Posted: Fri Aug  3 18:11:56 1984
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Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, IL
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Gosh, Mike, if you could have said anything more damaging to your
stance, I don't know what it is:

"...you will never convince me we need nuclear power."

Closed-minded, or what?  Say things like that, and no one will listen
to what you say, either.

Suppose I informed you that a means DOES exist to get rid of those
nasty nuclear wastes?  Is, and has been feasible, and results in
a waste product with a half-life measured in 10s of years, not 10000s.

A friend of mine is an editor at Nuclear News.  (For those not in the
know, this is the publication of the American Nuclear Society; but
it's not always in good odor with the industry, because of some
misguided notion that it should report facts, instead of being an
industry propaganda sheet.  Believe me, Mike would not espouse some
position to make ANS happy.)  He told me, a couple of years ago, that
the means to get rid of the worst of the nasty long-lived radioactives
in the waste fuel has been tested.  It involves building high-energy
accelerators to, essentially, transmute the materials and hasten
their decay.  The problem is that you're talking about an industrial
accelerator, not a scientific test tool.  To build ones big enough,
reliable enough, and safe enough to process power-plant waste, it
would take a massive, multi-megabuck building program RIGHT NOW to
process this country's wastes by 2000.

It isn't going to happen, for a lot of reasons.  Mostly political.
(Incidentally, those who question this technique, or want more
info--let me know, via mail; if I get enough requests, I'll ask Mike
to write a brief USENET article expressing the details and
considerations.)

The question is not whether we need nuclear power.  The question is:
We need intense power sources for our industrial lifestyle.  Where do
we get them, and where do we want to use them? (Note that I am NOT
willing to 'conserve', if by conserve you mean back off to an
energy-starved economy.  High-tech is the only way we're going to
support this planet, and high-tech needs abundant energy.)

		Dave Ihnat
		ihuxx!ignatz