I'll ignore the silly arguments that have been made on this thread and
simply comment that the cure for purified or concentrated anything is
dilution.

I would not want to sleep, live, eat any form of concentrated (e.g. enriche=
d
fuel rods) nuke waste. However, I would be very happy to sleep, live, eat
and even breath just about anything if it were diluted to the point it is
normally found in nature, and even more so if it were replaced in the
locations from which you collected it.

Please: Look up the total aggregate amount of radiation released by coal
into the air (you are currently breathing this) and compare to the radiatio=
n
that would be released by diluting and dumping nuke fuel rods into the
bottoms of the mines from which it was collected.

Compare apples to apples on apple trees, not apples to concentrated extract
of apple injected into your veins.

--
James Newton
1-970-462-7764=20

-----Original Message-----
From: piclist-bounces@mit.edu [mailto:piclist-bounces@mit.edu] On Behalf Of
RussellMc
Sent: Sunday, August 15, 2010 02:29
To: Microcontroller discussion list - Public.
Subject: Re: [TECH]: Jame's nuclear waste

> The point is that human processing can change the threat of a substance
> substantially.

Part of the argument, made by others as well, is that the net
radioactive profile of the waste and the half lives, are no worse than
the original.

I'm not too convinced on that but have never felt exercised by that
aspect alone to go into it in detail. You could safely enough use a
cubic meter of yellowcake (Uranium ore) as a dining room table
(suitable sealed) and probably a kg of U239 under your bed would not
be overly hazardous for a few nights.

I'm told that M1A1 et al tank commanders receive an annual radiation
dose during one tour of duty due solely to proximity  to the "DU"
(depleted Uranium) in their main gun's penetrator rounds. (The DU for
these is reportedly sourced from "purified"  "waste" uranium from
reactors that has had the "good stuff" stripped out, and their are
substantial questions (and equal amounts of denial) about its purity
and radioactive profile.

Another point raised is that if you use breeders to increase the
utility for the fuel you consume greater portions of what you'd
otherwise dump  as waste. This issue is of course 'hotly' [tm]
debated :-).



                      R
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