Jerry Avins wrote:

>>> Where do you propose to put the ashes?
>>
>> Well, the trick is that for every trillion of terawatts
>> that you generate with nuclear energy, you generate less
>> ashes than when generating a gigawatt by burning petroleum,
>> or equivalently, cause less damage to the environment than
>> hydro-electric energy (which BTW is too limited anyway --
>> it's not accessible everywhere, as thermo-electric
>> potentially is, and nuclear could be)
>
>
> I can form non-nuclear ashes into cinder blocks, and build things with
> them. You can't do that with nuclear waste.

Yes, this is a good point. But still, think about it; two
details: 1) it's not only non-nuclear ashes what you produce;
it's harmful amounts of CO2 and other pollutants (harmful for
the environment) that go to the atmoshpere, rivers and oceans,
etc.

And 2) the thing is, again, we're not comparing non-nuclear
ashes that result from generating a megajoule of energy by
burning petroleum vs. the nuclear ashes that result from
generating a megajoule of energy in a nuclear plant.

For the same amount of waste, you had an extra terajoule of
energy -- perhaps sufficient to do something sensible about
those ashes -- yes, perhaps even launch them in a capsule
that goes to outer space (I mean, why not? You had an
extra terajoule of energy! Spend half a terajoule in
sending those ashes straight to the Sun, and you still
had half a terajoule more energy than you would have)

Or, conversely, you could say that for the same gigajoule
that you generated -- which was after all the amount of
energy that you needed, so why gebnerate more? -- instead
of creating one ton of non-nuclear ashes, you're now stuck
with several milligrams of nuclear ashes... I still buy it!

No, really -- the numbers that I'm using may be an exaggeration,
but the principle is the same, and it's the reason why the
Energy Engineers keep insisting -- and it is my opinion that
they are right -- that nuclear energy is by far the most
environmental-friendly form of generating energy. It's so
many orders of magnitude more efficient than anything else!

Carlos
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