AW: [ RadSafe ] ...Disposal site for used nuclear fuel will be atForsmark, Sweden's SKB announced today.

[Franz Schönhofer]

Bjoern,

Since our society only can be disturbed by exorbitant costs for projects it
was clear from the very beginning of the blocking of transport, use of
police and military that the anti's were using negative images  (police
against innocent and peaceful protesters.....) Yes, the strategy of the
anti's was always to break the nuclear cycle and to make nuclear energy so
costly that it was not competitive with "conservative" electricity
generation. 

Franz

BTW I have also some remembrance of Torbjörn Westermark or rather his
institute, because I met him only once very shortly at a conference. I will
write it to you separately.

Franz Schoenhofer, PhD
MinRat i.R.
Habicherg. 31/7
A-1160 Wien/Vienna
AUSTRIA


-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: radsafe-bounces at radlab.nl [mailto:radsafe-bounces at radlab.nl] Im Auftrag
von Bjorn Cedervall
Gesendet: Samstag, 06. Juni 2009 07:30
An: Dutch Radsafers
Betreff: RE: [ RadSafe ] ...Disposal site for used nuclear fuel will be
atForsmark, Sweden's SKB announced today.


There is plenty of relevant information that can be found at the following
website:

http://www.skb.se/default____24417.aspx

(check the Research link for instance)

 

In addition I may mention that one of the leading Green Party members
recently said that her mission was to make nuclear power more expensive (I
don't remember the exact formulation but my interpretation was "as expensive
as possible"). The Green party always says "no solution has been found yet".
SKB says "we have a solution".

 

I can add that it was my professor in nuclear chemistry (one of the
intellectual giants at the Royal Institute of Technology, KTH), Torbjörn
Westermark (who passed away about 7 years ago), was a leading brain in
formulating the principles behind our nuclear waste handling. This included
the ideas of multiple barriers, thermodynamic stability, minimizing any
driving forces like galvanic potentials and so on. As I remember his
teachings, he was not very interested in doing the calculations himself -
that was left for the PhD students et al. Instead his focus was on the
concepts and thinking. His lectures included thorough creativity discussions
("the ability to find the unexpected" a formulation that I understand came
from someone else) and also many ethics and/or risk assessment and risk
philosophy elements.

 

Most students were afraid of his exams because he would give questions, the
answers of which would not be spelled out distinctly in textbooks (instead
you might have to combine informations from different parts like page 182
and page 743 in the textbook in order to answer) or hadn´t appeared on
previous exams... I had three reasons to take his two major courses: First
the just mentioned unusual character of his approach. Second the political
controversy of nuclear power (I had already been into radiation biology and
related sciences and had good reasons to suspect that the "antis" were
unfair - I got more evidence of that...). Third, his strong interest in
botany (any RadSafer who is interest in this subject can email me directly).
That year when I focused on nuclear chemistry we were only two students
taking his courses. He was very generous - he sometimes gave us four hours
of lectures instead of the two which he was scheduled for each time and the
breaks were no breaks - instead he pulled out chocholate bars for us and
discussed cancer risks from various foods or whatever - then suddenly he
would say - OK - lets go back to the actinides. He gave us tons of
applications and contexts of nuclear chemistry that had nothing to do with
nuclear power. I apologize for this partly off-topic comment but it is
difficult to forget this man who played such an important role in the
nuclear waste arena.

 

My personal ideas only,

 

Bjorn Cedervall   bcradsafers at hotmail.com

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------


> 
> Generally, logic and reason have not played major roles in development of
nuclear waste management policies. However, in Sweden any policy that might
make sense has been particularly avoided.


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