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by pfdietz
1323 days ago
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Well, unless we become immortal, waiting long enough means letting someone else deal with problems. Right now, the obviously (and I do mean that) best way to deal with spent nuclear fuel is (after some cooling) to stick it in dry casks and just let it sit there. It's much cheaper than the alternatives, it's quite safe, and it doesn't preclude any other solution. But (you might say) we're leaving the cost of dealing with it to our descendants. I respond: we leave the consequences of all our actions to our descendants. For example, if we spend resources of doing something to nuclear waste, we do not do something else with those resources that might have been better for our descendants. Economics is all about tradeoffs; you can't just look at anything in isolation. Delaying dealing with a problem also means that those who ultimately solve it can choose the solution they prefer, rather than one we impose on them. Maybe they'll want to extract plutonium. Maybe they'll want to bury the fuel unchanged. Maybe they'll want to shoot it into space. They will know better which solution is best for them. This question is mostly orthogonal to the question of whether more waste should be made (except if you're trying to use the waste issue as a bludgeon to force the other issue.) I get the distinct impression the waste problem is being greatly overstated for rhetorical reasons. |
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Well, yes. We have to stick it in something, and then let it sit somewhere. I'm not sure that on the surface, anywhere it can be reached by weather, anywhere close to the ocean, is a good place to let it sit.
> They will know better which solution is best for them.
Sure. So we shouldn't close off their options. That doesn't mean we don't have a problem now, that we need to solve.
[Edit] Actually, I'm not at all sure that "they will know better". It could well be that human interest in fundamental physics fades away completely in the next 5,000 years. That would leave our descendants without the tools to even understand the problem, let alone fix it, or try to exploit it.
> This question is mostly orthogonal to the question of whether more waste should be made
I don't agree. We have a problem now, of how to deal with the waste (and devastated land) we've already created; we don't have a way of dealing with it. We shouldn't make more waste until the problem is solved.
> bludgeon to force the other issue
> for rhetorical reasons
Hey, I'm taking you seriously, there's no need to suggest bad faith. Your other remarks have been pretty straight-arrow; I'm not sure why you're switching to ad-hominem now.