As US policy makers renew emphasis on the use of nuclear energy in their efforts to reduce the country’s oil dependence, other factors come into play. One concern of paramount importance is the seismic hazard at the site where nuclear reactors are located.
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Are there nuclear power plants in our future? After the BP oil spill disaster, people is business and politics are beginning to think what used to be the unthinkable: nuclear power. In 1979, a film called “The China Syndrome” came out, with the premise that a meltdown at a nuclear power plant could open up a hole that would extend through the center of the earth all the way to China, on the other side of the globe. This was the same year that the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania became the site of the worst civilian nuclear accident in US history, when it suffered a partial meltdown. These two events created strong US opposition to nuclear power plants, and there has been resistance to them here ever since.
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Thank goodness! – In light of the revelation (from some of the so-called “pirates” on board) that the recent hijacking of a Russian ship may have actually been a cover up for that country shipping a missile system to Iran that would give it the power to send nukes to Israel, it turns out that nuclear bombs difficult to make (thank goodness!)
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If we can bury farm waste, why not nuclear waste? (The potential escape of nuclear material is one of the themes of Whitley’s dynamic new novel Critical Mass). We have an extensive program to do just that, but it doesn’t always work.
The first weapons-grade plutonium ever made has been found in the bottom of a landfill at the world’s oldest nuclear processing site in Hanford, WA. It was discovered inside an old glass jar inside an old safe at the bottom of the trash, abandoned and forgotten about since 1943. The Hanford factory created the plutonium that was used to make the bomb dropped on Nagasaki in Japan.
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