Occasionally we focus on a different solution to one of the great "impossible" problems of this country or of the world. This present article, excerpted from the periodic Winsights column running on this website, shows how to dispose of our overflowing nuclear wastes...

Let's look at power sources:

There's only so much hydroelectric potential to go around.

Conventional, fossil-fuel-burning power stations—

• pollute air and water;
• worsen our accumulating world greenhouse CO2 effect;
• if oil-fired, worsen our trade deficits and national dependency.

Solar power—after many decades, we've never yet managed to master the art or science of making it economical on a large scale. Hopes for space-based solar power have slipped another generation further back with the successive retreats of plans for the U.S. Space Station.

Geothermal power—it pollutes air and water.

Ocean waves and tidal inlets—after many decades we've never managed to make them into an economical power source.

Temperature differences within different layers of part of the ocean—after more than a decade we've not yet managed to make it economically feasible as a power source. Perhaps the same principle could become feasible with the sharper temperature differences found in groundwater in desert regions. (Aluminum and bauxite companies, and municipal power companies in the southwest, please note!)

Controlled fusion power—it seems more out of reach now than when we first invented nuclear reactors, and "cold fusion" has gone into the books as an historic example of myth and hysteria in science.

Conservation of power, as relatively a power source, has begun to bump into its limits. Thermal insulation of buildings has run into radon. We don't seem to be able to push Detroit into much higher fuel efficiencies. Social resistance to further measures is climbing unless we radically adjust incentives. Only the computer revolution has significantly reduced power demand, and how much further can that aspect go?

Nuclear reactors are not only directly dangerous, a la 3-Mile Island and Chernobyl, but their greatest problem is the continued accumulation of radioactive wastes, already far more than we've figured out how to handle and potentially the most lethal threat to all life on Earth. To build additional conventional nuclear reactors would be one of the most irresponsible decisions in the annals of history! (Though many more such continue to get constructed around the world, in such ideally stable and morally dependable states as North Korea and Iran, and elsewhere....)

It moves stuff from essentially uncontrolled "dumps" into much more carefully handled power plants; and

Its power can begin to replace conventional nuclear power, thus reducing the rate at which further such wastes are being created! Power-starved industries can again prosper and expand.

Internationally, there would be no longer any excuse to accommodate North Korea, Iran, and dozens of other countries in the building of their waste-producing reactors—we could make a major export industry out of helping them consume their wastes into power instead, no more worries about creating bomb materials!