I’m honored to be the 10th Like of your post. I hereby bestow our award upon you, despite being uncertain that bobert drinks anything non-alcoholic.
Good hypothesis, though : - )
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We know about the radioactive isotope of uranium used to make nukes… and its 4.5 billion year half life. But remember not all uranium is radioactive. That isotope is not common but the rest is also extremely toxic from its heavy metal aspect and folks forget that.
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Advocating shredding the Constitution for his own ends should be treason.
How manyntimes must it be show to him that he lost?? Even the Cyber Ninja fraud check in Maricopa county AZ found no fraud even using their conspiracy theory approach. We could be two or three presidential elections down the road and he still would demand a redo of 2020 so he could be “preznit” and hide behind the DoJ immunity memo.
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There is so much toxic waste in this country – whether from Military, or from greedy, huge mining companies, drilling oil companies, polluting companies. There is no relief, nor is there justice for those whose land was stolen, or those who lived with the consequences of their action. I cannot imagine the extent of the beautiful lands and waterways, mountains and lakes, homesteads and ANCESTRAL lands that were taken away, and destroyed by personal greed. And stolen from those who lived in this land for thousands of years before THEIR land was invaded. That is the wrong side of our “America.” It is why I cannot stand for the Star Spangled Banner, or America the Beautiful.
I grew up in an area where paper mills operated, at their total pleasure. Chemical pollution into the ground water, into the rivers, into the air. Everything smelled and tasted of sulphur. We lived with well water, for everything (consumption, bathing, everything.) There was no municipal, treated water sources. I have survived three cancers now.
I am very sorry for your many losses, family and friends. I bear witness to what you have experienced.
I applaud ProPublica – a great journalistic resource!
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Your government at work! As we used to say in the Army, the US Government could fuck up pre-sweetened koolaid. Sad!
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Is it a historical fact that the US nuclear arsenal “won the Cold War”?
The cost of the long “tail” of uranium mining, processing, and storing its waste is often overlooked when touting nuclear energy as climate friendly. Yes, no CO2, but as long renewables remain viable (and increasingly more cost effective) nuclear energy should remain a distant last choice for planners.
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Not the nuclear arsenal itself, the Soviets made more of them. We forced them into horrendous spending to match the US on the space race and military spending, and it broke their economic system. That’s a gross simplification of what happened, but I believe it’s the CliffsNotes version of what happened.
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In the 1950s, the Australians thought they had hit the jackpot with the Rum Jungle uranium and copper oxide mine. It was strategically valuable as the US and UK were building nuclear weapons. Eventually, however, demand dried up with US and USSR’s signing of the nonproliferation treaty in 1970. What was left was a quarry site surrounded by a fence and the extracted ore placed under a cement sarcophagus. Over the years, this pristine swimming hole just 100 km south of Darwin became a big attraction for canoeists, kayakers and scuba divers happy the breach the “No trespassing signs” as there were no crocodiles in the water. Struth. The government’s lax response, and subsequent need to resume expensive remedial measures under later governments, highlights the reason crocodiles have done just fine on our planet for over 200 million years while humans are already in doodoo after just a few millennia of “civilization”. As we saw in the jaw-dropping managerial incompetence at Rocky Flats, the early nuclear weapons business existed outside any regulation or even production targets. The nuke was the “gotta have” weapon back in the day and still is in some autarkies. No worries though, mate, we’ll get past this in just 250,000 years, or at least the crocodiles will.
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The proximity to Darwin is both literal and figurative.
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When the atom was going to deliver free, unlimited energy, the Soviet Union went whole hog. (The US did, too, but had more guardrails). Nuclear powered trucks, ships, planes. Limited Nuclear explosions for mining or other massive earthworks, irradiating food for preservation, etc, etc.
The USSR built some Nuclear ships, both the US and USSR have nuclear subs. They both tried to develop nuclear planes. The US flew a small reactor in Iowa as part of its efforts. Neither managed to make it work. Lawrence Livermore labs tried to peddle limited nuclear explosions for harbors, mines, etc but found no takers because of liability concerns. I remember the push for irradiating food, which turns out to be quite effective but not cost effective at a reasonable scale.
Of course, we built nuclear power plants. People are still advocating for nuclear power despite the fact that there’s no secure storage for waste, so it’s sitting at nukes or closed nukes at substantial cost. Maine’s long-closed nuke has tons of waste at at site never intended for long-term storage and costing $1.5M/year in security and maintenance.
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" nothing’s as precious as a hole in the ground"
Midnight Oil
“Blue Sky Mine”
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The no CO2 for nukes is like saying sugar is fat-free and gluten-free. That makes it perfectly healthy, right? Eat lots of it, it’s good for you. Coal is produces no radioactive waste! It’s both a natural product and a traditional one, used for 100s of years. Let’s go coal!
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Completely different than the US, which is dealing with too many legacy issues of its own making, primarily stemming from a pervasive lack of accountability.
Well, as I understand it, the real issue is transit. I think if Yucca Mountain did open, there would be daily freight trains bringing nuclear waste to it. There are tons and tons if it currently sitting around, awaiting permanent disposal.
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Yep, Finland doesn’t have to deal with the kind of long-distance shipping of nuclear waste we’d have in the US if there was a central depository.
And there does have to be just one national “tomb” location that has the most stable geology and least groundwater impact, where all the high security can be focused in one place. It’s a hell of a problem and we haven’t come close to solving it yet. Nobody wants this in their back yard, which might be a solvable problem with enough money and new jobs as enticement, but the transit issue just complicates things.
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We have the technology to clean this stuff up, or at least to prevent it from being consumed by people and animal and agricultural plant life. But that would cost money. And Baby Elon and friends need their tax breaks.
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If we imposed a 1% wealth tax on the 20 richest Americans, that would bring in more than the EPA’s annual budget.
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Actually expired coal ash is a serious issue as well. It leaves behind heavy metals and worse toxins:
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