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Ah, yes, decommissioning, that dirty little word no one in the nuclear industry likes to talk about. Decommissioning can take decades and cost billions, usually
by mimixco 7y ago
Ah, yes, decommissioning, that dirty little word no one in the nuclear industry likes to talk about. Decommissioning can take decades and cost billions, usually passed on the ratepayers. These costs are never mentioned when the industry discusses its economics.
I'm also getting kind of tired of the "solar pollutes, too" argument. Yes, solar pollutes. So does making PC processors. But neither of those activities create radioactive materials which can poison people from a distance and persist in our environment for thousands of years. There is simply no comparison between poisonous heavy metals and radioactive nucleotides.
- cuspycode 7y agoThere is one aspect in which non-radioactive heavy metals are worse: since they are stable elements they must be stored away and guarded forever, not just for a limited number of years.
- mimixco 7y agoHeavy metals can't hurt you unless you ingest them. Proximity or handling doesn't hurt people. Radioactive materials, however, vomit particles everywhere in an untraceable way. Radioactivity cannot be removed from contaminated materials without transferring the radioactivity to something else. This is the key difference. Heavy metals can also be filtered from water and segregated from other substances, while radioactivity cannot.