Wednesday, March 17, 2021

The nuclear industry won't admit they have a problem they can't solve.

If you have a problem, the first step towards solving that problem is to admit you have a problem.

The nuclear industry hasn't done that. They won't admit that nuclear waste is an UNSOLVABLE problem. SoCalEd won't admit that the nuclear waste at San Onofre poses an unsolvable problem for California, for America, for the world, and for all of humanity AND ALL LIVING THINGS for all time to come.

So for them, this is all a game to get the local activists (that's us) to support "solving" the waste problem HERE, by giving it to someone else THERE. And they don't care where "there" is, and neither do most of the local citizens.

What they should be doing is going bankrupt and telling the rest of the nuclear industry that they cannot solve an unsolvable problem and they wish they had never made the waste in the first place. That is what activists in SoCal should be pushing for. To get SoCalEd to tell PG&E and all the other nuke blowhards that they messed up, and very badly at that.

Until SoCalEd and the nuclear industry admits they have an expensive, dangerous mess that CANNOT be solved safely AT ANY PRICE, instead of blaming the Feds for not simply taking the waste off their hands and off their lands, nothing good can be gained from helping SoCalEd solve THEIR problem alone, without consequence for the nuclear industry. Their statement even starts by saying they want the problem solved cheaply. They want the impossible and have always wanted the impossible.

Just beefing up the nation's infrastructure alone so that we can "safely" (sort of) transport the waste will cost trillions of dollars to strengthen bridges and underpasses nationwide. Recall several instances of bridges falling down in the past few decades, including the Mianus River Bridge in Connecticut (which I was going over twice a day at the time and HEARD the destruction of the pin that held the bridge several times before it fell). Also I-35 West. Also recall the Baltimore Tunnel Fire, which burned so hot and for so long, that any nuke waste containers that might have been being transported at the time would have burst and released ALL of their contents.

Some of the best scientific minds in the world have struggled with the nuclear waste problem since the dawn of the nuclear age. I outlined their decades-long failure in a newsletter from October, 2017:

Nuclear Waste Management: The view through the years... https://acehoffman.blogspot.com/2017/10/nuclear-waste-management-view-through.html

Probably the best thing to do with nuclear waste is to neutralize as much of it as possible on-site, a concept developed and patented by Dr. Peter Moshchansky Livingston and described in this newsletter from November, 2017:

What is spent nuclear fuel neutralization and why is it the best solution? https://acehoffman.blogspot.com/2017/11/what-is-spent-nuclear-fuel.html

Even neutralization won't be cheap, won't be easy, and won't be 100% successful. But it's still the BEST solution for the reasons outlined in the newsletter.

To pretend that there will ever be a solution is a fantasy -- a denial of science. A pipe dream. And helping SoCalEd solve THEIR problem without solving the REAL problem (the continued production of nuclear waste) is counterproductive in the extreme.

Ace Hoffman
March 17th, 2021

###

Why does the nuclear industry want to store its highly toxic radioactive spent fuel in "below grade" storage facilities, even though they believe it will be moved to a consolidated interim storage facility soon?

Out of sight, out of mind!