Yucca Mountain

E-mails hinting at fudged data have triggered more scandal over Yucca Mountain. Joshua Gilder offers his comments:

...it's worth putting the issue in perspective. The e-mails in question concern computer models of possible water seepage at the site, which might then eventually carry radioactive residue into the nearby, sparsely populated Amargosa Valley... In order to obtain licensing from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, scientists will likely be required to demonstrate that the repository will pose no health risks for the next 10,000 years. Give that one a moment to seep in.

...continued in full post...

Ten thousand years ago was the beginning of the Mesolithic era, when the Ice Age was ending, Great Britain became an island, and human beings started to take up agriculture. If Yucca is still a problem in 10,000 years, it will only be because our civilization has completely collapsed and we've all reverted back to the Stone Age. ...the more important issue is why the waste from nuclear power is being held to such an extraordinary standard to begin with. A typical 1,000-megawatt coal-fired plant produces about 88 pounds of radioactive waste every day because the coal it burns contains trace amounts of radioactive elements. About 1 percent of that or more will be released into the atmosphere, the rest ending up on the slag heap, along with highly toxic metals such as arsenic, lead and mercury.

Um. OK, 88 pounds. What is that in Curies? 88 pounds of U-238 and 88 pounds of I-131 are both 88 pounds of radioactive material, but pound for pound, one is 360 billion times more radioactive than the other. Oh well...

The point, though, is that storing waste at Yucca Mountain is pretty darn safe, especially compared with things we're already doing without thinking about it.