USS Clueless has a nice post on the relative danger of transporting radioactives, vs. all the other crap that gets transported across the nation.
Radioactive stuff has somehow become a visceral fight-or-flight kind of issue. I don’t know if it was the duck-n-cover drills of the 50s and 60s, or all those movies with radioactivity creating Giant Monsters, or what, but all you have to do is whisper about the possibilitity of a few stray neutrons and folks go absolutely bonkers.
Radiation is dangerous. Radioactive waste is dangerous. No question.
So are a lot of other things. Let’s be realistic.
41 view(s)
Read once, somewhere, long ago, that coal plants put out more ambient radiation than nuclear power plants, partly because the latter was more firmly regulated. Mind you, that was in Canada where CANDU reactors were reportedly very well-designed. Not sure how the US ones compare.
Part of the problem is that comparing most production US reactors (e.g., San Onofre, Calif.) to current reactor designing is like criticizing a modern Chevy for the crappy gas mileage of the ’64 model year. Let’s not pretend nuclear power is perfectly safe, but let’s not overblow the danger, either.