RE: Fw: Russian Waste Repository

["Ted Rockwell" <tedrock@CPCUG.ORG>]

Friends:



All this discussion is based on two premises:  First, that radwaste presents

a major health threat if not appeased with billions of dollars of handling.

Second, that the natural radioactivity of the land or the sea is small

compared with the radwaste.  Both of these premises have been demonstrated

to be false.



Low-level radiation is not harmful and can be beneficial.  Radwaste cannot

harm anyone unless it is eaten.  Solution to this situation: Don't eat

radwaste.  For similar reasons, one should not eat horse manure, which is a

somewhat greater health threat, but one we have managed to live with.

Perhaps if radwaste were buried in manure...



Second, the amount of natural radioactivity that washes off the land into

the sea each day is far greater than the total of all our nuclear power

radwaste. If all our radwaste were thrown into the sea, without containers,

you could only find it with detectors set at levels far below the health

hazard level.  When the submarines Thresher and Scorpion were first lost,

only the most careful searching with sensitive multichannel analyzers could

detect their hulls, even close up.  The marine biologist and former AEC

Chair Dixie Lee Ray said that if logic prevailed, all radwaste would be

disposed in the sea.  The fact that one might be barely able to measure in

the seawater a particular isotope identified with radwaste does not define a

health problem.



If this question were treated rationally, radwaste would be seen to present

no hazard by any practical definition of "hazard"--it has harmed no one, and

never will.  If we did nothing at all, this would continue to be true.  The

minor nuisance of have to move radwaste off of certains properties planned

for other use could be handled in any of several simple ways.  In the

extreme case, if each person agreed to store all of the radwaste produced

for him during his lifetime, it could be put into a small shielded drum in

his basement or garage.



If someone objects that this material remains toxic for thousands of years,

you can point out that this is its big advantage over non-radioactive

poisons that remain at their maximum toxicity forever.  And in fact, in a

few hundred years, the radwaste is no more toxic than the ore that was dug

up from God's good green earth.



This is a problem??!



Ted Rockwell







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