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From: rbg@cbosgd.UUCP (Richard Goldschmidt)
Newsgroups: net.followup,net.politics
Subject: Re: Re: Lockport Blast: safety of oil vs nuclear power
Message-ID: <200@cbosgd.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 4-Aug-84 11:12:07 EDT
Article-I.D.: cbosgd.200
Posted: Sat Aug  4 11:12:07 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 5-Aug-84 06:26:47 EDT
References: <338@tellab1.UUCP> <1588@druxv.UUCP>, <651@teltone.UUCP>, <4146@utzoo.UUCP> <447@tty3b.UUCP> <805@ihuxx.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Columbus
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>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.
>Dave Ihnat	ihuxx!ignatz

There is another alternative way of eliminating nuclear wastes:  lift them off
the planet into space, and aim them for the sun.  It is imperative to package
them in such a way that the container will withstand any kind of launch 
failure and still be recoverable, but the technology exists now, without a
major building program or long delay.  As the costs of lifting into orbit
goes down, this may well be feasible for many kinds of highly toxic wastes.

Rich Goldschmidt  

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