Something I was studiously avoiding was the windmill thread however I
had to say something in response to this:

Only when you have a really STUNNING case on paper - as nuclear power was in the 50's -

In Britain the cost of nuclear research cost the general public a
secret amount of money, so secret that even cabinet members were
unaware of the expense.

(It was such a vast amount that the economy, already devastated by WW
2, took much longer to recover than the rest of western Europe where
the Nazis had stripped it of all they could loot and eradicated vast
sections of the population either in death camps and forced labour, or
to other casualties of war.)

The cost effect was to cripple not only Britain in the 50's but have
damaging long term effects as the shoddy, unstable reactors were kept
in production and their faults kept secret up to today.

More overt were the ways waste was disposed of. Dumping it untreated in
45 gallon drums of the sort heros in police chases inadvertantly crash
into half way through a drive through factory in whatever Bond type
film.

Today some waste is vitrified. How they deal with Oxygen and Hydrogen I
can't say but carboon is left buried. The vast quantities of graphite
used in Wylfa will be encased in concrete.

But the point is that research into the reuse of waste is still to be
done as throwing it away wa once th preferred option. Radio active
components may well turn out to be erasable by incorporating the waste
ino the fuel rods or whatever.

Some research has shown the capability. So the massive stock piles of
waste we fear leaving to our children might turn out to be more useful
than we think.

It is still fresh history to note that such waste products as petroleum
gas was routinely burned at the oil field where only petrol and
paraffin were wanted. And before the motor car even the petrol was not
considered precious.

I believe it was Tony Benn that asked the industry to pipe the gas
ashore and find a use for it. But even so, some years later, the town
or borough councils around the Stanlow (IIRC) processing plant refused
the offer to use their waste to heat local houses.

I am not validating anything Tory BLiar has said about nuclear fuel.
The man is a maniac lickspittle and should be shot out of hand not
respected as a leader of men.

A recent programme on the TV showed that small doses of background
radiation seems to alleviate cancers in that the genes to fight them
seem to be initiated in people who live in regions with fairly high
natural radiation.

Work on the Chernobyl site seems to back this idea up. Less people were
known to have died directly from the disaster than are killed each week
on the roads in the UK.

Another pundit or (schill?) this week told an interviewr that more
people die from fall out from coal fired generators than nuclear
reactors and that the health and safety record of hydro-electrical
power is terrible.

I wonder if they include the body count for the Hoover dam. (The site
engineer responsible should have been hanged by vigilantes for that and
all of the US congress or whatever their parliament is called with
him.)

But until nuclear power design, cost and management and everything else
is openly discussed, the only way to maintain good safety specs is that
everyone responsible for building them should be forced to live the
rest of their lives near them until the reactor is long closed -when
their kin will be responsible for their oversight until the waste
denatures to safe levels..

I can't see Tory BLiar pushing that one through under those
circumstances. But this is a democracy so who is going to stand for
that sort of protection?