Storing Nuclear Waste Over the Long Haul

The president and nuclear power advocates have never addressed the key issue of how to safely store and dispose of highly toxic nuclear waste that will be around for at least a few thousand years. The Hanford nuclear repository in Washington state is giving us a clue on what to expect: Of the 177 underground tanks, 69 are acknowledged to have failed to date, leaking an estimated 1 million gallons of radioactive and chemically toxic solutions into the soil; this is after less than 100 years of storage. Nuclear power is a short-term response with unacceptable long-term risks. But then none of the people who benefit from nuclear power (you and I) and those who decide its fate will be alive when its deadly legacy is fully realized.

To help with the fuel supply problem and to put genetic engineering to good use, why not turn genetically grown crops into fuel for gasohol?

Ted Russell Neff

Los Angeles

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Conservationists, of course, love to harp on the problem of what to do with the spent nuclear fuel. They say that it needs to be safely stored for 50,000 years. That, however, is based on the false assumption that we won’t be able to figure out what to do with it for the next 50,000 years.

Remember that 10 years ago we didn’t know how to make a DVD player, 20 years ago we didn’t know how to make a cell phone, 30 years ago it was the PC and 40 years ago it was the color TV. I believe that, given some incentive, we can easily figure out what to do with nuclear waste in our generation, not the next 50,000 years.

Kevin Petersen

Eagle Rock