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Can we make part of the problem into part of the solution? by Win Wenger, Ph.D. ![]() For years, we have been creating and conducting thinktanks using various methods for creative problem-solving. On some occasions we have been able to run several thinktanks at the same time in parallel on the same issue or problem, each using different methodsperhaps the only place on Earth where this has been done, and very instructive about those methods. 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... ![]() Can we make part of the problem into part of the solution? Can the most nightmarish part of our environmental and global pollution problem actually provide a major part of the solution? Let's look at power sources: So what is left?Those very same radioactive wastes already produced! The end product of radioactivity is heatenough heat, when brought together, to melt and pump sodium as a thermal conductor, or oil or steam if less than that, to drive turbines or other power-generating devices. Can there be much doubt that, as a working power source, a given set of radioactive "waste" would receive much more careful handling than it does now as "waste"? Still dangerous, but the assembly of radioactive wastes into "secondary," thermal reactors has to be counted as a major safety improvement over today's situation. Every unit of power generated from radioactive "waste" is that much less greenhouse effect, that much less air and water pollution, that much less fossil fuel used up, that much less foreign trade deficit and dependency resulting from more conventional power generation. Unlike conventional nuclear reactors, such "secondary" reactors from radioactive "waste" will not generate more such waste. In fact, there will be less such waste, because: Design and building of these "secondary reactors" will also be a useful conversion of some of the technical resources of our dwindling defence industry, and a good spur to our economy, perhaps coming at a time most needed in our economic cycle whose long-running upside by now has to be aging and vulnerable! In the 1940s and '50s we made the basic national decision, echoed elsewhere, to build regular nuclear power plants and to treat their non-power output as waste, rather than as part of a thermal, secondary power retrieval system. Whatever the economics were then as regards such secondary retrieval, those economics have certainly changed since, and the whole issue certainly bears rethinking. When we originally made that basic national decision, we were in the throes of a technological fantasy about limitless clean nuclear power. Fusion power was just around the corner, we had not yet come to appreciate how hard it is to keep up safety standards in large-scale enterprises and over long periods of time, and we'd certainly not anticipated or come to appreciate the extent of the problem that we are now posed vis-a-vis horrendously accumulating, dangerous, nowhere safely disposable radioactive wastes. Each of these factors by itself fully justifies we rethink that decision of not converting radioactive wastes into secondary thermal retrieval power reactors. Taken together, it's quite remarkable that no one is exploring the issue. |
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