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Nuclear Derailment
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People get all in a tizzy about spent fuel and radiation, but I have yet to see what the big deal is. <br /> <br />Let just suppose that SOMEHOW sombody rips one of those casks in half and spills the radioactive fuel assemblies all over the tracks. What would happen? <br /> <br />Well, lets see how they're constructed: A bunch of steel & boron tubes with solid (metallic) fuel pellets stacked in the tubes. Break a tube and the pellets shoot out like BB's from a straw. How do you clean up the mess? Get a bunch of guys in lead suits with tongs to walk around and pick them up. The steel tubes are also a bit radioactive because of all the radiation they've been exposed to. Gather up all of the metallic pieces and hault it away. <br /> <br />Would it be a pain in the hiny? Sure. Would thousands die? Maybe from a terror-induced heart attack, but not the radiation. <br /> <br />The government was looking at reprocessing the fuel back in the 80's, but the "radiation" politics killed it. Too many fears about creating plutonium, a byproduct of the normal operation of a reactor. If they reprocessed the fuel they could remove over 90% of the waste before it had to be stored, and what was stored would be radioactive for less time. <br /> <br />The French do it all the time. If the French can do it, CERTAINLY the U.S. can do it, right? <br /> <br />Mark in Utah
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