Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2011 9:42 am
If you think about it, almost no energy source is 'eco friendly', even the ones propagated as such. I don't find solutions that produce climate changes very 'eco'. This includes flooding areas the size of a small country and effectively sucking & reflecting all the solar radiation from a couple of square kilometers.
Wind power and geothermal turbines are the only ones that I can think of, although even for the wind turbines, the local people and bird population might be of a different opinion.
On the other hand, our country's nuclear power plant stores it's own nuclear waste and it stores it effectively. They have more than enough storage space to cover the needs for the planned operation lifetime of the plant. Despite this, the background radiation levels are a bit lower in surrounding areas, because it is built on a flat land.
Storing the waste in deep unused mine-shafts is also a completely viable option for me, but I agree that solutions with remotely located mine-shafts is preferred, so people may sleep better. As sesobebo said, the unused/unventilated shafts get filled with radon by themselves anyway. Alpha and beta radiation stop after a meter, which only leaves the gamma radiation, that is in turn stopped by a couple dosens of dirt and rocks.
It really wouldn't bother me if they put it 'in my backyard' as long as I know that it's stored correctly.
I guess this makes me look like a pro-nuclear activist, but I am none.
I am a physicist, who has worked on a research reactor before and would like the people to know ALL the facts, not just the ones that the loudest people in the media are presenting (this principle goes for every thing, not just the nuclear reactors).
Here are another two of such less known facts:
-Physicists build massive neutrino detectors deep underground in abandoned mine-shafts, because neutrinos are hard to detect and they want to eliminate as much background radiation as possible.
-A farmer working the fields receives more effective dose per year than a medical employee performing radiation therapies on cancer patients.
Wind power and geothermal turbines are the only ones that I can think of, although even for the wind turbines, the local people and bird population might be of a different opinion.
On the other hand, our country's nuclear power plant stores it's own nuclear waste and it stores it effectively. They have more than enough storage space to cover the needs for the planned operation lifetime of the plant. Despite this, the background radiation levels are a bit lower in surrounding areas, because it is built on a flat land.
Storing the waste in deep unused mine-shafts is also a completely viable option for me, but I agree that solutions with remotely located mine-shafts is preferred, so people may sleep better. As sesobebo said, the unused/unventilated shafts get filled with radon by themselves anyway. Alpha and beta radiation stop after a meter, which only leaves the gamma radiation, that is in turn stopped by a couple dosens of dirt and rocks.
It really wouldn't bother me if they put it 'in my backyard' as long as I know that it's stored correctly.
I guess this makes me look like a pro-nuclear activist, but I am none.
I am a physicist, who has worked on a research reactor before and would like the people to know ALL the facts, not just the ones that the loudest people in the media are presenting (this principle goes for every thing, not just the nuclear reactors).
Here are another two of such less known facts:
-Physicists build massive neutrino detectors deep underground in abandoned mine-shafts, because neutrinos are hard to detect and they want to eliminate as much background radiation as possible.
-A farmer working the fields receives more effective dose per year than a medical employee performing radiation therapies on cancer patients.