Environment & Energy

Last edited Thu Feb 12, 2026, 03:58 PM - Edit history (2)

Is there any evidence that doing so has ever at any point in the 70 year history of used nuclear fuel killed anywhere near the 19,000 people who will die today from air pollution?

I often challenge antinukes and "I'm not an antinuke" antinukes to produce, using reputable references in the primary scientific literature, that show that the storage of used nuclear fuel on the site where it is generated has killed, over its entire history, as many people as will die in the next six hours from fossil fuel waste, aka "air pollution;" we can ignore climate change over which antinukes cry crodile tears.

They never get back to me, the reason being that no such data exists.

How is it that antinukes and "I'm not an antinuke" antinukes find it acceptable for fossil fuel plants to dump fossil fuel waste directly into the planetary atmosphere, not at all constrained by geography but unacceptable to store used nuclear fuel where it is until the world overcomes radiation fear and ignorance, ignorance that the antinukes themselves perpetuate?

Just recently, in the last few days, an "I'm not an antinuke" antinuke informed me that is acceptable in New York to run dangerous natural gas in "peaker" plants in New York when its solar cells are covered by snow and ice, as they've been for weeks recently.

That's not acceptable to me. I object to the use of fossil fuels any time anywhere under all circumstances. Why? Because fossil fuel waste is leaving the planet in flames.

I have very little patience for antinuke carrying on about so called "nuclear waste" but I am thrilled beyond measure that Yucca Mountain was never commissioned since it was always a dumb idea, a part of the absurd waste mentality that dominates industrial practice.

It turns out that storing used nuclear fuel has properties and components found nowhere else on Earth, notably isolatable quantities of the elements technetium, neptunium, plutonium, anericium and curium.

It is also true that used nuclear fuel contains more of the precious and industrially important critical metal rhodium than all the ores on the planet.

And still, and still and still...

We have people thinking we should dump this stuff.

How about we find a place to dump all that microplastic leaching used wind turbine blades cluttering the earth, the triflic imide from spent batteries, oh, and yes, the 36 billion tons of carbon dioxide dumped each year while we all wait for the "renewable energy" and fusion nirvana that did not come, is not here and frankly won't come?

It is deplorable that people who clearly know nothing about a subject, nothing at all, feel entitled to declare what is and is not acceptable when that subject is raised.

Have a nice afternoon.