Obama's Nuclear Nightmare.

Yesterday President Obama announced the building of the first nuclear reactor in decades. I'm shocked that this is happening under a democratic president but further more I'm aghast that Obama is buying into this propaganda that nuclear energy is "green" and "safe." Sure it reduces green house gases but it more than makes up for that in waste. No one has solved how to properly and safely dispose of nuclear waste, so call me a "environmental nut" all you want but I personally I don't want uranium leaking into the ground and water table. The president and others say that they want to be like France who gets like 90% of their energy from nuclear energy but for one France is a smaller country but more importantly they haven't figured out how to deal with nuclear waste:

Nuclear waste is an enormously difficult political problem which to date no country has solved. It is, in a sense, the Achilles heel of the nuclear industry. Could this issue strike down France's uniquely successful nuclear program? France's politicians and technocrats are in no doubt. If France is unable to solve this issue, says Mandil, then "I do not see how we can continue our nuclear program."

Green Man: So before they dot the countryside with nuclear reactors and turn out mountains like Yucca Mountain into hallowed out trash bins for nuclear waste perhaps we should first learn how to solve the storage problem. Otherwise it's like prescribing medications to people whose side-effect is possible cancer and/or death. This is somewhat similar to what happened with the silver and gold mining in the 19th and 20th centuries where they didn't know what to do with the toxic byproducts of mining so they just flushed it down mountain streams. Now a century or so later we are having to invest millions if not billions of dollars to "clean" them up but nuclear waste is a lot harder to "clean up" than arsenic in water. You can't just bury nuclear waste, "away"--there is no away. Geology is a very intricate science and the make up for the ground below mountains and even valleys is full of aquifers where nuclear waste could easily leach into. Sure, sounds safe to me!!

And finally, did you know that Utah is looking to import nuclear waste from other countries? I'm sure glad I don't live in Utah anymore!! Yeah, Utah is considering importation of waste from Italy. I don't want to be reliant on Middle-Eastern oil either but nuclear energy isn't the way to do it. That's like getting off heroin (oil) and switching to crack (nuclear energy). So, now America exports jobs to other countries and imports other countries radioactive waste. What a great new slogan for American tourism. "America: The World's Nuclear Waste Dump." I have an idea of where to put the waste--in the backyard of the houses of all the politicians who support nuclear energy. Oh, and interestingly President Obama took hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign donations from the nuclear energy industry. Oops.