And there’s the rub. Nuclear power has been around for 70+ years - and this is the first long-term waste storage site being constructed.
All the other storage sites are either stopgap solutions or superfund sites if you look closer.
Not to mention that 100,000 years isn’t long enough for plutonium. That would be in the neighbourhood of 300,000+ years.
Which is roughly the timespan that humans more or less like us have walked the Earth so far.
And pacemakers:
http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2015/ph241/degraw2/
Some of which are still in operation:
Pah. Bring back the Lenin class icebreakers with their disposable reactors, I say!
(Seriously, what were they thinking.)
I imagine the use cases for this over the thermoelectric alternative would be where the power/weight ratio was really important and lifespan wasn’t as critical.
In 1950 Lloyd Bentsen called on President Truman to consider nuking several Korean cities. This was the ‘left’ position; Bentsen ran as a Democratic VP candidate (with Dukakis).
Old news (2016).
