Ars Technica has an interesting synopsis of a recent article in Science. The point of the article is that we should stop pussy-footing around at Yucca Mountain and start storing nuclear waste there. Based on the synopsis, the authors are making a few excellent points.
- Waiting indefinitely before using Yucca Mountain isn't the safest course of action. The current network of 72 storage sites for nuclear waste is far more dangerous than activating Yucca Mountain and starting pilot programs to store waste there.
- The nature of Yucca Mountain - a facility which hopes to store waste material for a duration longer than the entirety of human civilization - means that we will most likely never have definite answers to some of the questions we all have about the facility. It's hard to predict how a structure of that scope and subject to radioactive forces will react over a 100,000 year period when we've really only known about radiation for less than 100 years.
- Scientists need to start educating the public on what science can accomplish and what it can't. Science isn't a tool for establishing certainty - it is a tool for refining "best guesses" to ever higher quality. It's important that the public understand that an undertaking like Yucca Mountain will always have a large level of uncertainty about it. They argue that the best case scenario is to start pilot programs at Yucca Mountain and begin developing real world experiences that can be used to refine our understanding of how Yucca Mountain will perform over the long haul.
Overall, I'd have to say I agree with their arguments. If we're serious about decreasing our environmental impact, we'll have to face the fact that an increased use of nuclear power is a logical part of the solution. The sooner we take steps to find a way to store nuclear wastes, the better.
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