About that nuclear waste ...

A note on the anniversary of the Three Mile Island nuclear accident (March 28, 1979):

Echoing President Bush's call at the national level for more nuclear power, there's a move afoot in the Wisconsin Legislature to repeal a moratorium on new nuclear power plant construction. Story. The law, passed in 1983, requires that a federally licensed nuclear waste facility be available before the Public Service Commission can approve any new plants.

There was no plan to safely dispose of nuclear waste when the nuclear energy industry began building plants. And there is still none today, although the nukers have been promising us for decades that a solution is just around the corner.

It's not a small matter.

One of the byproducts of nuclear power, part of the waste, is Plutonium-239, so deadly that a particle the size of a grain of pollen can cause lung cancer. It decays very slowly, with a half life of about 25,000 years. In simple terms, that means we need to find a way to keep that waste safely stored and out of the environment for 250,000 years.

To put that in some perspective, just 10,000 years ago Wisconsin was covered by glaciers.