As I said above: it may be the least of my short term problems but that says nothing about after any such war:
My point was that what happens after such a war is largely irrelevant. If you've been setting off weapons large enough to cause problems for that kind of underground storage facility, the existence of the storage facility is completely irrelevant compared to the effects of the weapons themselves. We're not talking about a small war made worse by radioactive waste being dispersed, we're talking global nuclear winter.
Interesting. Certainly if one was directly exposed to radiation it is my understanding that there are delayed effects, and that excess cancers in that population are still in evidence more than 50 years later.
I have read several source which state that it is too early to say much about the effect on subsequent generations, if any: though effects have been observed in animals. I gather that despite the large sample the statistics are unreliable: not being numerate I cannot understand why that should be so but it is what I have read
This is a good book on the subject of radiation and its risks. There's a section in it about the after-effects of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as Chernobyl.
Was the contamination and the effects of it the same at chernobyl?
No.
Is it the case that the area is now open on the basis that people who move there some time after have no increased risks?
No, but observations of animals that live there show pretty much no effect. Interestingly, animals actually seem to de much better around Chernobyl than they do in the surrounding area, presumably because of the lack of humans.
Fair enough: it was a trivial example because, as I said, I do not have the imagination of a determined terrorist
Despite the constant fearmongering about the dangers terrorists pose with nuclear material around, I'm not aware of a single case where terrorists have actually attempted to either acquire or use any. The certainly doesn't mean its not something to take into consideration, but it just doesn't seem to be a major threat.
I think I have answered this above but if not we can come back to it
I'm not sure you have answered. If I understand what you said above correctly, you are more concerned about a potential release of radiation due to some catastrophic event than you would be about the effects of said catastrophe itself. If that's the case, then I think that's a rather odd stance to take, and is the kind of unreasonable view that Allison addresses in the book I linked above. If that's not what you're saying then I apologise for misunderstanding.
So long as we do not go ahead until we have solutions you are, of course, correct. But in view of the fact that the potential problem is known to subsist for hundreds of years yet the actual plans and cost projections go no further than 100 (if Belz's article is correct) the situations do not look that different to me. They certainly should be, though
How are the situations not different? Not only are we very obviously thinking about the possible effects, we're demonstrably not going ahead with things at the moment.
War happens all the time, Cuddles. Terrorism happens all the time. Judging from our less than complete knowledge of various sophisticated early civilisations forgetting about stuff happens fairly regularly. At least over the time scales we are talking about. Complacency happens all the time too. You may feel that disaster of any kind on the requisite scale is impossible: maybe you are right. I don't see any reason to suppose you are but there it is
I never said anything was impossible. But the kind of things you're talking about are things that would cause far bigger problems than a bit of radioactivity. You're talking about the collapse of civilisation and the forgetting of a large portion of modern physics, and waste facilities are seriously at the top of your list of concerns? It's not complacency to consider it pointless worrying whether you left the gas on when an asteroid has just flattened your house.
Well no. If the nuclear fuel will only last 40 years then I do not think we will run out of fossil fuel first, though I am open to evidence on that.
The evidence has already been presented in this thread. There's enough nuclear fuel to last thousands of years.
What I do know is that there is a great deal we could do to reduce our consumption of fossil fuel and it is not being done.
No arguments there. Of course, the irony of typing this on a computer over the internet where it can't possibly have any real effect on anything doesn't escape me.
I have no idea how much difference we could make or how the costs compare. But before I can accept the blithe assertion that there is no alternative I would like to see at least some of those figures. Cos I have heard that phrase before and it was a big, fat lie
What phrase do you consider a lie? Even if you could, in theory, provide enough power solely from renewables, none of them are suitable for providing base load power. That's what you need running 24/7. Solar obviously can't, wind can't. Geothermal, tidal, waves and others simply aren't options in many places. And that's ignoring the massive problems involved in actually generating and distributing that much power from them to start with. If you, or anyone else, can think of some kind of clean, renewable energy source that's actually viable, I'm all ears. Until then, nuclear remains the only realistic option for providing the main part of our power.
