"I am even willing to support nuclear power in order to make hydrogen fuels or whatever else we need."
You should support it any way. The waste problem is a big problem, but can be dealt with short term by segregating the high level stuff, which is a small volume, from the low level stuff. The low level stuff can be parked somewhere like a convenient desert for a couple of decades. The high level stuff, well, picking a crater like Del Rey crater on the Moon and impacting it there isn't the worst idea...
Coal is a huge problem. They dump a large amount of radioactivity into the air. There are 5.4 billion tons of coal mined every year. If all of it was burned in a modern power plant, and it isn't by any stretch of the imagination, there is 27 tons of uranium that goes into the air every year. Of that, about 380 pounds is U235 which is highly radioactive, it is what we make bombs out of. There is another 27 tons of thorium released, in addition to the radon and other radionuclides. The coal is about 90% carbon and 10% other stuff that becomes the fly ash. The ash from all that coal contains another 5400 tons of uranium(38 tons of U235), 5400 tons of thorium. Not much radon though, it went out the stacks. Now true, it is diluted in the silica and other stuff 100,000 to 1, but it still is there. |
