# Enviros, will you ever drop opposition to nuclear power?

**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enviros-will-you-ever-drop-opposition-to-nuclear-power/251216
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [June 19, 2004, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enviros-will-you-ever-drop-opposition-to-nuclear-power/251216 "2004-06-19T18:54:00Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Page:** 3

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### Author: ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)
#### Post date: [July 1, 2004, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enviros-will-you-ever-drop-opposition-to-nuclear-power/251216/41 "2004-07-01T20:40:11Z")

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> [@kennybath](#):
>
> I don’t think you’ve read much of the thread.
> 
> The “garbage” is minimal compared to a coal plant. Much of the gargabe can be reprocessed or turned into fuel and burned (in a breeder reactor). It doesn’t leave much “gargabe” after that. The spent fuel rods are actually a waste of fuel that can be burned, that’s where most of the gargabe is.
> 
> You’re basically imposing an impossible standard on any energy source.  
> One that isn’t met by coal. Since the country burns 1 billion tons of coal per year, 10 million train cars, it’s environmental effects are greater by orders of magnitude. It’s just that the waste is dispursed into the air instead of concentrated in one small place.
> 
> As for the waste, it’s encased in glass and rendered inert. After a few thousand years, it’s about as radioactive as the ores it came from and you’d have to melt the glass to get at it. Yuca Mtn. is a vast overkill, IMO, but that’s what needs to be done in our culture. Radioactivity of any kind of bad but mercury and NO, which kill thousands and pollute the air are ignored. The devil you know is better than the devil you don’t. The absolute volume of waste is minimal.
> 
> If the Nevadans don’t want it you could put it somewhere else, I don’t know. Put it in glass and ship it to China. They’d probably take the stuff for a small fee. It’d be a lot cheaper than Yuca Mtn. But waste as one scientist called it “isn’t an environmental or scientific problem…it’s a political one.” It would seem a shame to give up on something so promising for specious reasons.

I’m not “giving up” on _anything_. Your red-state conservatives have.

Look, it’s really simple: disposing of garbage is _always_ a political problem. I don’t have an axe to grind for or against nuclear power. But I’m a liberal, and I’m willing to talk with conservatives once they can agree amongst themselves.

Once the pro-nuke conservatives and the conservatives in those wide-open spaces can get together and agree on a place to dump the garbage, I’m game for a serious, technical, nonpolitical discussion. But I’m staying out of the way and letting the Right and the Right talk amongst themselves and figure it out first. Because it’s the Right that is presenting the political obstacle, and until that obstacle is resolved, there can be no progress.

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