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From: morrison@ubc-cs.UUCP (Rick Morrison)
Newsgroups: can.politics
Subject: Re: The Safest Way
Message-ID: <11@ubc-cs.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 18-Sep-85 15:26:10 EDT
Article-I.D.: ubc-cs.11
Posted: Wed Sep 18 15:26:10 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 18-Sep-85 21:24:00 EDT
References: <1386@utcsri.UUCP> <5952@utzoo.UUCP> <820@water.UUCP> <793@lsuc.UUCP> <5960@utzoo.UUCP> <4@ubc-cs.UUCP> <1682@dciem.UUCP>
Reply-To: morrison@ubc-cs.UUCP (Rick Morrison)
Organization: UBC Department of Computer Science, Vancouver, B.C., Canada
Lines: 59
Summary: 

Martin Taylor writes:

>By any measure (even radioactivity released to the environment), nuclear
>power causes less environmental damage than any of its major competitors.

	This, I presume, is another well established "fact".

	Considering that we have been operating nuclear power plants for
	less than fifty years, and storing waste for even less, 
	I would be most interested in the evidence for this claim.
	Bearing in mind that we will be charged with safely storing nuclear
	waste for tens of thousands of years, such evidence is something
	I would be reluctant to bank on.

>All other major sources of power create mutagens, and mutagenicity is 
>the main reason for fearing radioactive leakage.

	None approach the longevity of the most virulent nuclear wastes.

>The one thing one can say about radioactive
>waste is that people care about it and worry about it.  It is highly
>concentrated and the worst that is likely to happen is that the concentrated
>dumps would be left untended and would slowly leak through local aquifers.

	I don't consider the Pacific Ocean, where there are at this
	moment leaking waste cannisters, a local aquifer.

	Q: What would be the effects of such contamination?
	A: We don't know.

>Industrial chemical leakage, like the aforementioned Love Canal (only one
>of several hundred such sites in the US alone), is not concentrated,
>is not cared about, 

	Agreed.

>and is substantially more dangerous when it does leak.

	I wasn't aware that the mutagenetic "superiority" of
	say, dioxin, had been established over say, plutonium.
	Do you have a reference?

>It takes a large stretch of the imagination to say
>that Pickering or Darlington could lead to such a problem.
	
	Only for those of us with inflexible minds.

	Besides, we aren't comparing chemical dumpsites and
	nuclear power. We are comparing the potential effects
	of wide-spread use of nuclear power with alternative sources.
	The worst of the chemical toxins are the herbicides
	and pesticides.

>Let's get the problems in balance.  By all means, store radioactive
>waste as securely as possible, but let's WORRY about industrial waste
>that is distributed through the air, the land, and the water we drink.

	Let's WORRY about ALL waste materials, and let's not jump
	on a nuclear bandwagon before we know where it's going.