Assinine question. Hell propane gets trucked all over the place and even at the same time as chlorine. Hell they just plant bloody huge tanks of propane in parking lots and have attendants distribute the stuff to a population where 50% are below median intelligence. That strikes me as slightly more worrisome than 149 spills from 1145 truck accidents with LLW over 17 years
The smog from Las Vegas is more dangerous to the inhabitants of NV than the proposed Yucca site.
Pfft…ever seen a Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) Tanker?
Wouldn’t want to be within 30 miles of one of those if someone screwed up.
Amazed those things are allowed anywhere near a port. They could level a sizable chunk of a city.
Hell, we had the Texas City Disaster which killed 581 people when a ship full of fertilizer went up.
You tell me, Gonz. Does the rate of death matter all that much? And what exactly was your point…or did you even have one?
-XT
Wasn’t my question. It was in response. The claim was zero deaths. It is not so simple in radiation. Not only is death slower but genetic damage is passed on. Dump a truck of radioactive material and perhaps you can clap your hands and say" see nobody died’. That would not be a complete answer. Genetic changes can kill you and take time to harm. It may be future heirs that suffer. But i am used to you not following a discussion very well.
Who claimed this? Do you have a cite (I’ll hold my breath)?
If you dumped a truck load of nuclear material on someone’s front lawn they most certainly WOULD die (assuming it’s high level nuclear wasted)…fairly quickly too, depending on the exposure. Which is why they go to all those extraordinary lengths to encapsulate the stuff it such strong and sturdy containers. Containers that can be hit by trains, dropped from several stories up onto spikes, burned in fires for hours, etc, without rupturing.
And no one is claiming otherwise. You don’t seem to be following the discussion (ironic, considering your next sentence)…it’s about probabilities, Gonzo. The probability of you dieing from a nuclear accident, even if you live close to a nuclear power plant or if you are one of the multitude (snort) living in the shadow of Yucca Mountain is a lot less than you dieing from all manner of other things (including death by tooth pick ingestion, death by air plane accident or some other low probability event). I realize that you aren’t listening, and that, sadly, even if you were you wouldn’t get this, but that is really the bottom line. A nuclear accident is a low probability event.
I’m certain you are VERY used to more than just me not following whatever cryptic and obscure (and invariably wrong) points you THINK you are making…
-XT
That ‘claim’ is invented out of whole cloth, pure and simple.
I am aware, believe it or not, that radiation can cause long-term damage to people when they are exposed to it in dangerous conditions. However, the same could be said for fluoride, or acid, or natural gas, or any number of things we regularly ship around the country. These items are not treated with the sort of fear and awe you give to nuclear waste–in fact, they go with much fewer safety precautions without a word! And nuclear radiation, when it is being transported, is not significantly more dangerous than these other dangerous and toxic chemicals.
Shouldn’t you be calling for the cessation of all hazardous waste trucking?
:rolleyes: Was that really necessary?
AGAIN, xtisme and gonzomax, you’re both to take your personal issues to the Pit.
Please, he can not help himself.
Nuclear waste does get dumped. If we start shipping it from all over the country to a hole like New Mexico, it still has to go through real cities and towns. It will be problematic. No i do not live in fear. I point out that shipping it, containing it, and dropping it into the ground in a container that will get eaten by radioactivity may be a problem. Then the cost of building plants. The impossibility of getting private financing or insuring, the need to have guards around a plant forever and a day are all catches that should make people thing nuclear is not such a simple clean answer, It is not. Those who claim it is are totally unrealistic. Just think it through better. Then there are melt downs and day to day breakages and operator mistakes.
Thus, the two tier containment system. You’ve got the steel casket, and the deep underground vault. Alone, perhaps one could fail in 500 years. Together, they will last until any radioactive materials are no more harmful than uranium ore that we mine in the first place.
And yet…other countries seem to handle these issues just fine. What do they have that we don’t, other than a lack of rabid anti-nuke protesters? Hmm?
Which, when totaled together, have killed the same amount of people throughout their full decades-long operations as coal mining alone kills in two years.
Nuclear Accident =! Nuclear Meltdown
Nuclear Meltdown =! Nuclear Explosion
FWIW it is possible to build inherently safe nuclear reactors. Inherently safe in that even if humans tried to cause a meltdown (e.g. shut off all the coolant) the physics of the reaction are self limiting. The reactor itself, via physical properties and not mechanics, slows itself down and remains safe.
Also, kinda curious how people think someone might steal this nuclear waste?
The storage casks for spent fuel rods weighs 160 tons (each). You simply cannot move that around without some serious heavy equipment.
Break into the casks? Well, these things are made to be super tough. They are a steel shell surrounded by a concrete shell and made strong enough to be run over by a train locomotive without breaking. So, you would need a good amount of time with jack hammers and blow torches to break into one.
Then, even once broken into the waste will probably kill anyone trying to handle it in short order unless they are wearing some serious protection (and even then not sure how long they could safely hang around it).
In short, it’d be a helluva task to abscond with this stuff.
Add to that if the US does some waste processing such a vitrification (essentially turning the waste into a glass) or some other ideas then even if you have the waste you will need some serious industry and know how to get the stuff you want back out.
I think you are better off mining the stuff and processing it if you want nuclear material for nefarious reasons.
One last thing.
If we build things like the Traveling Wave Reactor we could, in theory, consume gobs of the lower level radioactive wastes and solve a great deal of our energy problems. The link is to an SDMB discussion and it seems there are some issues to be worked out but if it delivers what waste was left over would be minimal indeed.
I read in the paper the other day that 70? something children? die every year from choking on hot dogs.
How many people have US nuclear plants killed? How many children have chocked on hotdogs since Three Mile Island? 70 times 30 years = over 2000, which is way more than US nuclear power deaths, and of the same magnitude health wise that Chernobyl has had.
So, US hot dogs are more of a threat to the health and safety of children than Chernobyl is/was.
So much so that some dumb bastards want to “redesign” the hot dog.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health/doctors-urge-change-of-shape-for-hot-dogs/article1477053/
I suggest two small meat balls attached at one end to prevent swallowing. Also good for practice.
I resent that. Only one of us is continuously personal and nasty. It isn’t me.
You misspelled “I resemble that”:
As Marley noted, you need to knock it off.
[ /Modding ]
As I pointed out, you are aimed in the wrong direction. I actually put XT on my ignore list for several months due to his pettiness. That means I was trying to avoid the confrontations. I suppose I could do that again.
gonzomax, you are not allowed to say who is on your ignore list outside of the Pit. This is a warning: stop hijacking this thread and drop the insults. The staff will be discussing whether you need a break from the boards.