...and global warming. An interesting post from Jane Galt.

[Mid morning update]

Randall Parker has further global warming thoughts.

It's also interesting (no pun intended) to apply the same kind of reasoning to the problem of disposing of nuclear waste. The solution I think you end up with is that, with a reasonable non-zero discount rate, it's best to just leave the stuff at the surface and guard it. Large investments in burial or reprocessing to avoid potential problems many generations in the future aren't worthwhile.

Which is exactly what France does. They keep radioactive waste above ground, monitor it, periodically change filters and sensors, and extract useful isotopes when changing technology makes it feasible. They assume that civilization will remain sufficiently high to keep ACTIVELY MANAGED waste under control. And if you think of it, if civilization crashes far enough for that condition to become false, then radioactive waste will be the LEAST of our problems.

Well, France was (still is?) reprocessing, which is not economically rational at current or foreseeable uranium prices. I was talking about just storing the spent fuel elements themselves, with no reprocessing of any kind. Of course, this doesn't preclude the possibility of reprocessing them in the future (or disposing them some other way, such as sending them up a space elevator, for example).

One day, assuming the survival of rational technological civilization, people will look at our desperation to get rid of "nuclear waste" the same way that we looked at the Texan ranchers burning the oil off of their property, regarding it as a worthless encumberance.

So the French can do something right? Lileks is not going to like that.

I don't really care what causes global warming, I just want to be able to ski in winter. I'm on the East Coast and this winter sucks. I don't care if it's Bush or natural cycles. Damn it, use technology to reverse it and give me back my winter.

Damn it, use technology to reverse it and give me back my winter.

Gladly. Would you like to pay inn advance or shall we bill you? ;-)

So the French can do something right? Lileks is not going to like that.

The french were/are wasting money on unnecessary reprocessing, This is not doing 'something right'.

Reprocessing was tried by the private sector in the US, and abandoned. It is economic idiocy.

Come on, you know the economics of nuclear power are purely a function of how much wild-eyed paranoia is allowed to reign. Waste reprocessing had to be outlawed here.

Come on, you know the economics of nuclear power are purely a function of how much wild-eyed paranoia is allowed to reign.

I know nothing of the sort. I do know that plutonium obtained from reprocessing has negative value -- it costs more to incorporate it into fuel elements than the cost of the enriched uranium it replaces.