On 01/06/2013 20:36, Farmer Giles wrote:
On 01/06/2013 19:13, Nightjar wrote:
On 01/06/2013 18:28, Farmer Giles wrote:
...
What frightening complacency. Even if I accept what you say above -
which I don't - what about earthquakes (which can happen anywhere,
however unlikely it may appear from past history),

Fukushima was hit by an earthquake that was many times more powerful
than it was designed for and suffered no damage from the earthquake
itself. That earthquake was about 30,000 times more severe than
Britain's most powerful recorded earthquake, which knocked the head off
a waxwork in Madam Tussauds.

terrorist attacks, etc?

If those are going to bother you, you may as well go and live in a deep
cave in the middle of nowhere.

Whether they bother me, or indeed what happens to me, is of little
consequence. What happens to the world and, more importantly, what
happends to future generations, is not.

You tell me what might have happened if those aeroplanes had been flown
into nuclear power stations instead of the World Trade Centre?

The death toll would have been less.
There would have been unnecessary panic from you and harry.




These products will need to be stored for hundreds, if not thousands, of
years. They will be added to and added to, because no-one knows how to
detoxify them.

We have known how to do that for more than half a century. Storing them
is cheaper.

Really? I may be wrong, but my understanding is that we are no closer to
detoxifying nuclear wastes now than we were 70 years ago.



You can't detoxify nuclear waste any more than you can detoxify any
other toxin.
Radiation is not toxic, it doesn't poison you despite what you think.

All you need to do is store the stuff until its safe, that is a few
decades for the highly radioactive stuff and not at all for the long
lasting stuff as it isn't very radioactive.
You could store plutonium in a cardboard box and it would be safe as far
as radiation goes.