On Tue, Feb 26, 2008 at 04:06:25PM -0500, Cedric Chang wrote:
> 
> > On Feb 26, 2008, at 12:48 AM, wouter van ooijen wrote:
> > 
> > >> How can I change yours?
> > >
> > > Give a rational technical (not political or emotional)
> > > argument about the risks of burying reprocessed nuclear waste
> > > in geologically stable rock.
> > 
> > Give me a good argument and I'll change mine :)
> > 
> > Actually not 'a' good argument, but good arguments to refute all my
> > doubts at fears.
> > 
> > A problem with the 'geological stable' idea is the same as with stocks:
> > results from the past are no guarantee for the future. When you see a
> > coin turn heads up four times in a row I guess you will bet your life
> > that it will be heads the fifth time, no?
> 

But rock formation stability is not stocks nor coin flips. The first is often
controlled by peoples emotions while the second are independantly random
events. When an area is nowhere near a fault line and the research shows
that it hasn't changed in 2 million years, there's no obvious reason to
think that conditions would change anytime soon.


> > 
> > And another problem is that it geological stability is not enough. How
> > about political/sociological stability? I am not sure the USA will be a
> > peace-loving country (or even *one * country at all) in a few hundered
> > years.

The point is Wouter that radioactive material is on the surface. Anyone
with the inclination can mine it, refine it, and use it for nefarious
purposes. The whole point of Yucca Mountain is to bury the waste (which
because of reprocessing isn't suitable for weaponry anyway) deep enough
that it would be very difficult for anyone to access, even if they had a
desire to do so.

> 
> 
> Wow  #1 The U.S. is not peace loving now. #2 You bet your life every
> day that the area you live in is geologically stable.  You bet the
> neighbor is not going to go "postal".  If you drive, you bet the
> driver next to you will not die in their sleep in the next 10
> seconds.  The only difference with nuke stuff is that glimmering
> boogie men rise out of abandoned caves, turn your family into ketchup
> slobbering vampires and make geiger counters vibrate off the table.

Funny, but very true. There are many more risky behaviours that ordinary
folks engage in on a dialy basis. It's the same type of fear that many
people have of flying though from a safety standpoint it is unmatched in
the transportation industry. They happily hop into their cars when cars
cause 90+% of the travel fatalities per year.

Yucca Mountain is designed to add no more than 15 milliRems per year
exposure to the surrounding population for the first 10,000 years of use
according to http://www.epa.gov/rpdweb00/yucca/about.html and a dose of 350
milliRems per year for up to 1,000,000 years.

It's all about relative risk. If we wanted absolute risk freedom, then
there isn't one single place in the universe that you can free safe.

BAJ
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