William ChopsWestfield wrote:

> I left out part of my point, which was that even if planning
> for <500y storage of nuke waste IS an attractive technical plan,
> it's become politically unacceptable.  How is one supposed to
> do a technical evaluation of the true cost of an energy source
> when many of the costs are derived from political (non-technical)
> requirements?

Well, I guess you just have to live with the fact that you live with other
people.

What's so bad about "political requirements"? This is just an expression
that means that the requirements come from the process that you and your
peers have chosen for making decisions that affect all. What other
requirements should there be? I often write requirements for projects. The
initial and most important requirements are usually non-technical: after
all, I'm not in the business of creating technology for its own sake, I
create it to solve somebody's problem. That's usually a person, and the
requirements are non-technical. Part of my job is to translate that into
technical specs.

This is not different with energy creation and waste disposal. This is a
fundamentally non-objective problem, as there is no way to objectively
compare different options. Trying to "do a technical evaluation of the true
cost of an energy source" is a contradiction in terms. The "true cost" is a
social problem, not a technical or economical one. Technical and economical
aspects play an important role, and you better get them right before you go
on to the more subtle aspects, but they don't play the major role. This is
really about something else... how do we want to live? This is not a
technical question, and it can't be answered with only technical means.

Gerhard

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