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11.May 2010 - 22:42

Nuclear waste challenges the impetuous human

I once ordered a completely new combination of words from a Latinist, because I was longing for a fresh and accurate definition of a human being. I was convinced that of the human’s general definitions – among others, Homo Faber (the handy smith-like human), Homo Ludens (the playful human) and Homo Sapiens (the wise human) – miss the very essential description explaining human behavior, impulsive rushing.

I received a wonderful word pair for the definition of the impetuous human: the Homo Trepindans. This human spoiled many things by rushing. Including nuclear power.

Product development for the resolution of the waste problem should have naturally been finalised before a single nuclear reactor was erected to this world. Unfortunately, this was not done. The history of technology is full of examples of gadgets and systems that resolved one issue but gave birth to a whole bunch of others. The reason is the reverse side of Homo Sapiens: Homo Trepidans.

If we still were at an intersection, where we could decide whether we want to do anything to urane – the only element, which cannot be used for anything unless its atoms undergo a fusion – I would opt for “no thanks”. We cannot do anything to history, however.

Because of the waste problem I was also once an opponent of nuclear power. However, I did not know that uranium also radiates a bit by itself in nature. The waste argument also featured last weekend, when the environmental organisations organised an anti-nuclear power protest. Many interviewees vindicated their opposition by the fact that the uranium waste used as a fuel will remain the problem of the generations to come.

Today, I consider the waste problem the worst reason to oppose nuclear power. Shortly, because nuclear waste is, above all, a qualitative rather than a quantitative problem. Humanity will, in any case, have to process the waste of nuclear energy and nuclear arms for it to become harmless or at least to store it safely. We cannot deny this obligation even by opposing nuclear energy, because these substances already exist anyway. Whether we have more or less of it, is not the nucleus of the question. The nucleus of the question is that it exists.

Therefore, in the Finnish discussion the waste argument is intellectually dishonest. It creates an impression that by turning down the sixth or the seventh reactor we could have bypassed or tackled the waste problem. But it is exactly that problem that we have not bypassed or tackled – the truth is possibly even the contrary, as future nuclear power plants may be the key to the solution.

The future generation IV reactors can be fuelled using nuclear waste; even nuclear weapons’ waste. The development process should not be finalised until we have reactors that can utilise uranium more effectively and completely. For example, the future IFR reactor type is considered a possible solution, because it can be fuelled using the waste of the present reactors. IFR burns the remaining uranium and plutonium, new uranium does not have to be extracted and no long-term relocation of waste is needed. In this case, swords could really be beat into ploughshares.

IFR is only one example of future techniques, but they go to show that the development path should not end here, because then we would only be left with the problems of nuclear waste, not its fully-fledged benefits. Nuclear power, which leaves the air clean and produces little waste, could provide with a transition period while we prepare ourselves to ever-more efficient renewable energy forms.

Nuclear energy should not be run down before we find good alternatives to it, and the time for their development is now. Until now, the reduction of nuclear energy has, without exceptions, meant the increase in fossil energy. In practice, the green movement and environmental organisations have, unfortunately, been the best coal and oil lobbyists.

Therefore, it would be quite a pity, if the Homo Trepidans panicked with a waste problem and did not tell Sapiens to finalise what it started.

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