Letters: The absurdity of nuclear waste
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Re “Nuclear waste can’t wait,” Editorial, Aug. 25
Three Mile Island. Chernobyl. Fukushima. Had none of these disasters occurred, the idea that our government could find a secure, cost-effective way to store nuclear waste for tens of thousands of years would still be absurd.
The huge piles of nuclear waste already on the planet will remain dangerous for far more than 10 times as long as all of recorded history. And we are adding to them at an alarming rate.
The only sane nuclear policy is to dismantle all nuclear weapons and decommission all nuclear power plants. The enrichment of nuclear fuels should be prohibited. This would make it unnecessary to make the tricky determination of whether the fuel was for peaceful or bellicose use, making monitoring straightforward.
If the safe storage of nuclear waste for 1,000 centuries is factored into the cost of nuclear power, it becomes clear that atomic power generation makes no economic sense.
Ann Hou
Camarillo
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