Originally Posted by raymor

The science on nuclear waste is actually very interesting. There is dangerous waste and there is a lot of waste, but there's not a lot of dangerous waste. I wouldn't mind at all having most nuclear waste in my backyard. 90% of nuclear waste is what's called LLW, low level waste. It's less dangerous than your smoke detector. You get about a million times as much radiation taking a walk in the sun. You could eat a bowl of it and probably be fine. Not that I'd want to actually eat a bowl of it, but I did consider having a spoonful during a presentation to make the point. I'm less scared of that stuff than I am of a tanning bed.

That leaves some that's intermediate level and a few pounds of high level. High level is the dangerous stuff. You want to encase it in metal and bury it a couple hundred feet under the desert, or in a deep cave. Fortunately, there's so little of it, getting it well shielded and deeply buried isn't really a problem.

So you have one kind that's not a problem because it's very low level - much, much less radiation than the sun. Then the other kind that's produced in small enough quantities that isn't pretty easy to pack safely away. The problem, waste wise, is purely a political problem. Disposing of all the country's nuclear waste is actually less damaging than disposing of all the toxic chemicals in batteries from hybrids, but long standing political positions get in the way of clear thinking.