"Nuclear waste"

["Ted Rockwell" <tedrock@cpcug.org>]

> This is not a nuclear fuel issue. He should
> have entitled his article "Radioactive waste needs a home", but I can
> forgive him for this common error.
__________________________________

You're right, Otto.  I jumped too fast.  I like to think that I would have
carefully re-read the article if I had intended writing to the paper about
it.  Thanks for the "head up."

But I am concerned that we all consent to phrases like: "...it's dangerous.
Nuclear waste doesn't belong in neighborhoods and workplaces. How much
better to isolate it in arid, unpopulated land."

Hospitals, factories and various types of activities routinely store and
handle many materials that are mildly dangerous--certainly more so than LLW.
The guy who tends swimming pools carries big glass jugs of concentrated
hydrochloric acid to balance pH, and concentrated sulphuric acid to clean
the copper electrodes.  The lady across the street from me keeps glass jugs
of concentrated acids which she uses for engraving and other artwork.  Lots
of people store gasoline, solvents, pesticides and rat poison.  But we keep
supporting the view that rags slightly contaminated with barely detectable
radioactivity are more dangerous than these common materials we handle
without panic.

We have to work on changing that point of view.  Should we handle LLW
carefully and responsibly?  Of course.  But we should work to get the rules
changed to where we treat it like materials of comparable hazard.  And
meanwhile, we should not concur in statements that imply that LLW poses an
unprecedented threat to the future of humanity.  Because that is the context
and unspoken premise behind everything we do.  We should not keep assenting
to it.

For example, we should be outraged, not pleased, that $33 million (if I
remember correctly) was spent to "remediate" a small lot that was
"contaminated" with "thorium tailings."  Such tailings are presumably
material dug out of God's good green earth, that had most of the radioactive
material (thorium) already removed elsewhere.  I understand that the factory
there was producing rare earths which are found in such tailings.  Where's
the hazard?  That's the stuff Indians, Brazilians and Iranians pile on their
bare skins to lie within its healing range.  Maybe we can't prove it heals,
but there is sure no evidence that it harms.  We have to keep remembering
that, and speak from that knowledge.

Ted Rockwell






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