Nuclear reactors create radioactive waste that will remain radioactive for 240,000 years. The half life of plutonium 239 is 24,000 years, which only means that it will only be half as radioactive in 24,000 years. It will remain dangerous for 240,000 years. It has to be monitored for 240,000 years. There has never been a government in the history of humanity that has lasted 240,000 years. Mankind has barely been on the planet that long. Bury it in Nevada they say. 240,000 years ago Nevada was in the Pleistocene Age (ice age) and there were Mammoths and saber toothed cats. Mankind was in the Stone Age. How can we even begin to imagine what it will be 240,000 years in the future? One clue: if we accept all of the nuclear waste for those 240,000 years there won’t be any life forms here in Nevada. You may say of course we won’t be doing it for 240,000 years. How long will we be doing it? How much is too much? I would say any at all is too much. Until a clean method of recycling nuclear waste is in common use (not trying to stuff it somewhere, but actually making it safe), nuclear energy should not be used. If we don’t stop it, the developers will have a nuclear reactor in every state in the union, the waste will pile up exponentially. The developers will rake in billions of dollars. The rest of us will pay the real cost of their profit.Please support clean renewable sources of energy. Like wind, solar, geothermal, ocean wave action, use of the water cycle (evaporation, rain, river flow). Even use of human muscle. And please support the development of machines that use these clean renewable sources of energy. Lets not get into another disaster by burying ourselves in pollution.
60 gallons a minute pouring from pipes The Vermont Department of Public Service is asking the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to send inspectors to examine the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in Vernon to see if it is safe. The call comes in the wake of the discovery of more problems with the plant's cooling towers. The state wants inspectors to "consider whether any of the newly discovered cooling tower problems could affect the safety or seismic cooling tower cells," said the letter by Public Service Commissioner David O'Brien's letter, dated Friday, to NRC regional administrator Samuel Collins.