Nuclear waste: not a problem: unbeknownst to most people, the bulk of nuclear waste is recyclable, and the remainder can be safely stored and presents little danger to anyone.(ENERGY)(Table)

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Yes nuclear energy is clean, but the waste is a problem. The life of the waste is 100,000 years no matter what you hear. The canisters that will hold this waste will disintegrate in 1,000 years or less, or so they say.

--From TNA "Letters to the Editor"

How ironic that the nuclear wastes of concern to the letter-to-the-editor writer have become the most serious problem with nuclear power generation. Six decades ago the birth of nuclear power was praised for lowering the volume of waste products by a factor of 10,000,000. As Petr Beckmann pointed out in his classic The Health Hazards of NOT Going Nuclear, the nuclear wastes for an individual for a year is about the size of an aspirin tablet--a minuscule price to pay for inexpensive, reliable, safe electrical power. Yet when nuclear power is mentioned as a clean alternative today, the problem of wastes invariably arises.

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The "Problem" of Waste in Context

The low volume of nuclear waste as compared to wastes from coal-fired power production is what attracted the early conservationists who saw nuclear power as an ideal way to protect our ecosystem. A 1,000 Megawatt coal-fired power plant produces solid wastes at a rate of 1,800 pounds per minute, waste that includes 19 toxic metals such as arsenic, carcinogens such as benzopyrene, and mutagens from the respirable coal fly ash. A coal-fired plant also produces 50 times the radioactive emissions of an average nuclear power plant. For those concerned about such things, going nuclear even reduces C[O.sub.2] emissions by 600 pounds per second.