William "Chops" Westfield wrote:

> On Feb 27, 2008, at 4:23 AM, Gerhard Fiedler wrote:
> 
>> Heck, we already /know/ that most things we create don't last longer
>> than a few years.
> 
> We've been storing nuclear waste of one sort or another for close
> to 60 years now.  That should be something of a case study.  

It maybe is, and it seems to tell us that none of these sites worked
without constant and close supervision and without fault. So these "case
studies" seem to contradict the ones that say otherwise.

> As far as I know, the (known) ecological consequences have been less than
> those from conventional mining of various sorts, or even farmland
> construction via rain forest destruction.  (and perhaps less than the
> results of burning 60y worth of fossil fuels.)

As I already said, I don't want to say which one is worse. I don't know,
and I don't see a way to tell for sure. But I think the storage scenario is
much less certain than some would like to present it, and much less
"factual". I always go into "deep distrust" mode when someone wants to
claim facts for the future, and when that is the future over several
thousand years, that becomes "deep deep distrust" :)  Our past is the only
"case study" we have for something like that, and a little bit of history
would do good to consider in this context. (Don't forget: /one/ case study
is not science... Science is about "statistical consensus", and one case is
not enough to even start with statistics.)

Gerhard

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