There is no place where we can safely store worn-out reactors or their garbage. No place!
We tried burying the waste at sea and the concrete cannisters that held it cracked open.
We've pumped waste into cavities in solid rock and found that it spread through the rock.
Some otherwise sane scientists have seriously proposed that we tuck this deadly garbage under the edges of drifting continents but how can they be sure the moving land masses will climb over the waste and not just push it forward?
Yet another proposal would have us rocket the waste into the sun, but, as you're probably aware, about one in ten of our space shots doesn't quite make it out of the earth's gravitational field.
Perhaps most ridiculous of all is the suggestion that we 'keep' our radioactive garbage for the use of our descendants. This 'solution', I think, requires an immediate poll of the next 20,000 generations.
The risk presented by these lethal wastes is like no other risk, and we should not be expected to accept it or to project it into the future in order for manufacturers and utilities to make a dollar killing now.
Even if you build the perfect reactor, you're still saddled with a people problem and an equipment problem.
Once we open the door to the plutonium economy, we expose ourselves to absolutely terrible, horrifying risks from these people.
It's very hard for me to know what to say about fusion right now, inasmuch as it is not yet scientifically feasible. I just can't understand how so many people are able to predict so much about something that still isn't scientifically possible.
I will say this, - though: If it is true that fusion will put unlimited amounts of energy into our hands, then I'm worried. Our record on this score is extremely poor.
It seems that every time mankind is given a lot of energy, we go out and wreck something with it.
Understanding how DNA transmits all it knows about cancer, physics, dreaming and love will keep man searching for some time.
It is absolutely imperative that we protect, preserve and pass on this genetic heritage for man and every other living thing in as good a condition as we received it.
When people say, 'You're not being realistic,' they're just trying to tag some thoughts that they can't otherwise handle.
What's even more unsettling is the way these people hide what they're doing from the public. They strip the labels off miracle wheat when they ship it, for instance, and say, 'Watch out. Don't plant too much and don't depend on it too much.'
We've got to search back to our last known safe landmark. I can't say exactly where, but I think it's back there at the start of the Industrial Revolution, we began applying energy in vast amounts to tools with which we began tearing the environment apart.
Perhaps we'll realize that each of us has not one vote but ten thousand or a million.
For how many people do you think might yet stand on this planet before the sun grows cold? That's the responsibility we hold in our hands.
