Letters to the Editor
cabdriver
Published Letters: 394 Editor's Choice: 8
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on McClatchy newspapers
[Read the article: High standards at the Washington Post Op-Ed page]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"the McClatchy newspapers seem to be a better choice than most of the MSM"
I'll second that opinion.
In fact, I'll go so far as to say that in any given section, the Sacramento Bee is a superior paper to the Washington Post in terms of its coverage.
fwiw, I don't hate every reporter and op-ed columnist at the Post. My problems with the paper have more to do with those actually running it, hiring and assigning the writers, and placing and editing the stories.
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SamFrancis...
[Read the article: High standards at the Washington Post Op-Ed page]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I can tell- already!- that to elevate yourself to intellectual mediocrity would be several steps up for you- probably insurmountable ones.
I usually refrain from such snap judgements, but in this case, you've made it easy.
Your comments here won't be missed, since they consist of hate from beginning to end.
By contrast, despite the tendency toward predictable sarcasm, even Electro-robot's comments keep a sense of some civility about them.
For the moment, your comments are instructive as an exception- if anyone out there feels the need to read comments that paint the picture of an exceptionally insecure "white man"...they can delve into the brief oeuvre of your letter archive, "SamFrancis."
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America's Nuclear Problem
[Read the article: Winds of change]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"We have nuclear waste sitting, waiting, endangering in places such as South Haven, Michigan (right on the Lake Michigan shore). This is million-years poison."
The question that begs a response is exactly how much of this has been due to dithering and inertia, engendered primarily by political pressure rather than inherently intractable problems of science and engineering. It seems that no one wants to ship the nuclear waste out of Hanford, Washington or Rocky Flats, Colorado either, even though it's being stored on top of groundwater basins and aquifers. And there it will remain, leaking away, as long as all of the more appropriate storage, transport and disposal sites remain off-limits, due to people who insist on focusing on every last possible hazard imaginable, while simultaneously hooting down any proposed solution- often, in my observation, without bothering to gather even a minimal knowledge base. People who don't know the difference between a beta particle and a gamma ray. People who don't know the difference between the half-life of plutonium, and that of other elemental radioisotopes.
Ever heard of "subduction disposal"? It basically consists of placing radioactive waste caches between tectonic plates in the deep ocean, where it's eventually drawn into the earth's crust, under the mantle.
Of all of the types of potentially toxic material to dispose into the ocean, heavy radioactive elements encased in protective matrices like vitrified cylinders are the safest. The elements aren't water-soluble. Their inherently heavy mass makes them inclined to sink, rather than to be miscible in ocean water. The deep ocean provides a peerless heat sink for those elements, defusing the possibility of any sort of spontaneous critical mass event. The mass of billions of gallons of 39F degree water has a way of doing that. The deep ocean is massively dilutant of any tiny portion that might mobilize. Much of the ocean bottom is relatively barren of living organisms, especially the more complex life forms. I'm not talking about the mind-boggling historic folly of the U.S. Navy dumping nuclear waste packed into in concrete-filled oil drums into the Farallon Islands, sinking them a mere 300 feet deep into a rich littoral zone ecosystem. This is an entirely different proposal.
http://www.etsu.edu/writing/3120f99/zctb3/nuclear2.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste
Go on, anyone- enumerate your objections. Knowledgably, without talking through your hat. Above all, resist the urge to resort to resort to scoffing sarcasm intended to shut down all further consideration of the idea- an odious tactic, whether invoked by Rush Limbaugh, or anyone else. Just provide a rational explanation of the technical impossibility or impracticality of such a project.
"We can live without nuclear."
I find the communication value of that statement to be approximately zero. In the absence of a practical alternative solution, it's empty rhetoric. Unless you want to take it further, and claim that "we can live without electric power"...that would make the statement not merely empty, but palpably false. If "we" is understood to be a population anywhere close to the 6 billion humans inhabiting the planet, we can't live without a worldwide electric power grid.
I know the tone of this comment sounds a bit hostile and disputatious. But I'm tired of perfected visions of nature that don't accord with reality.
The nation of France's practical attitudes toward the cordon sanitaire zones required to sequester radioactive wastes may have something to do with a previous reality they've already had to cope with- the millions of acres of French territory northeast of Verdun that have been uninhabitable ever since the end of World War One, due to unexploded ordnance and chemical weapons. Formerly mostly farmland, those old battlegrounds remain a no-man's land encircled by barbed wire fences and "no trespassing" warnings, 90 years after the end of WW1. Given the fact that they've managed to cope so stoically with that unenviable state of affairs, I think they consider the wholesale fastidiousness of Americans toward delegating even a tiny portion of their huge nation to serve as optimal sites for radioactive waste storage and transport terminals to be more than slightly self-indulgent.