[ RadSafe ] Yucca Mountain, etc. (includes Proliferation -- of vulnerabilities)

[Brennan, Mike (DOH)]

James:

You don't actually get to redefine words just to keep from having to
admit to being wrong.  The definition of "current", from American
Heritage Dictionary is:

adj.   
1.
	a. Belonging to the present time: current events; current
leaders. 
	b. Being in progress now: current negotiations. 
2. Passing from one to another; circulating: current bills and coins. 
3. Prevalent, especially at the present time: current fashions. See
Synonyms at prevailing. 
4. Running; flowing. 

n.   
1. A steady, smooth onward movement: a current of air from a fan; a
current of spoken words. See Synonyms at flow. 
2. The part of a body of liquid or gas that has a continuous onward
movement: rowed out into the river's swift current. 
3. A general tendency, movement, or course. See Synonyms at tendency. 
4. Symbol i, I Electricity 
	a. A flow of electric charge. 
	b. The amount of electric charge flowing past a specified
circuit point per unit time.  

If you want to cite an equally authorative source for definitions, feel
free.  But, if you look, I think you will find that no where in those
definitions is there anything that implies that current includes the
past and the future.  The closest one might come is defining a period,
such as the current year, where upon phrases like, "so far in this
current year" or "before the current year is over" would clearly mean
pieces of the past and future that, at some point, you intend to treat
as part of a whole that includes the now.  

James, if you think you are going to intimidate, or even impress, me by
throwing "chaos theory", "quantum mechanics" and "general relativity"
around, think again.  I've had 400 level classes on the subjects.  I
have read extensively on them.  There was a period (several, actually)
in which I did relativity calculations recreationally, to try to work it
into a war game I was designing.  I am confident I know more about it
than you do, and it doesn't apply.

>The current rate of hazardous events can be influenced by properly
measuring expected events.

No.  The risk of hazardous event can be based on expected events, but
the rate of events is how many are happening per unit time.  I have not
a clue as how one goes about "properly measuring expected events".  The
closest I can come up with is predicting a rate based on a model, then
comparing the prediction to what actually occurs after a given amount of
time has passed.

And, BE THAT AS IT MAY, the current rate at which U238 is leaking out of
storage pools at US commercial reactor facilities is zero, the expected
rate is zero, and you have yet to demonstrate that the past rate is not
zero.  And, if there was a situation in which it was leaking out, there
would be other isotopes of much greater concern.

Life is easier, James, once you admit that you can be wrong.  As you are
in this case.  


Mike Brennan wrote:

> James, READ YOUR OWN QUESTION!  The word "current" is in there.

The current rate has three components:

(1) First, the past rate.  It is an established fact from statics that
there is nothing anyone can do to  change the past.  This includes
values for which the certainty is not absolute.

(2) In the middle, and small, is the present rate, which can be zero.
The present rate is sometimes considered the same as some rate over
time, which can be zero, but when there is no denomination of time in
the rate, then the present rate is not necessarily the same as the
current rate.  Sadly, the amount anyone can influence the present rate
decreases with proximity.

(3) On the other hand, the current rate also includes the expected rate.
According to chaos theory and various interpretations of quantum
mechanics, everyone who is still alive has some influence on expected
rates within the Minkowski metric causality cone on the noneuclidian
Riemann field of general relativity, the boundaries of which expand at
the speed of light when there are photons traveling from the centroid of
the cone to some external event worth measuring.

The current rate of hazardous events can be influenced by properly
measuring expected events.  For example, if the extent of the likely
hazard from one substance relative to another is not measured correctly,
then the likelihood of hazardous events is either unnaturally raised or
lowered.

Another example is Yucca Mountain.  The longer we leave old reactor
cores out in the open, the more likely it is someone's going to try to
bomb one of them.

James Salsman