Solving That Pesky Nuclear Waste Problem

Thinking Of The Children

Key Facts, From The Nucular Energy Institüt, A Nuclear Industry Lobbying Group
(Uh, 'Editing' By Mongo)

• All the used nuclear fuel produced by the U.S. nuclear energy industry in the past 50 years -- about 72,000 tons -- if stacked together would only cover a football field to a depth of six to seven yards (Think of a single-story Ranch House, 300 feet long, and 150 feet wide, that if you tried to live in, you would die). This of course does not count all the byproducts of the U.S. nuclear weapons industry, which would cover the State of Kansas to a dept of eight inches. Its nighttime glow would be seen as far away as Pluto, and you could roast marshmallows in Alberta and Los Angeles. Cool, huh?

• Used nuklar fuel is a solid material that looks something like string cheese and is stored at nuclear power plants. Normally, it's placed in concrete pools filled with water or Old-Growth tree sap, or in containers covered with wax paper. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission determined that this method is both "wacky" and unsafe, but heck, we like the smell of the sap and the the wax paper only catches fire on occasion. We never intended this storage to be permanent -- we always thought all this stuff could be shot into the sun, or sold to Developing Countries™ as building materials.

• Since the Obama administration suspended the NRC’s review of the Yucca Mountain repository in 2010, the federal government has been bad, and we never liked them and it's all their fault. We're looking at that whole Kansas option again.

• Advanced technologies are being developed to make new Apps, hire more Uber drivers, open new pizza restaurants, create new careers for Miley Cyrus and Justin Bieber, and new iPhones and Iron-Man-like exoskeletons. Oh, and about recycling used nuclear fuel; right, sure. These technologies are mostly in comic books or movies for pre-teen children, and if they ever come true will reduce but not eliminate nuklar stuff.  So don't worry your little heads about that.

  Disposal of radioactive stuff in a "permanent geologic repository" is necessary until, oh,  roughly 308,000 A.D. We were thinking about asking the Indians if they could, you know, move again -- so all that empty Reservation land we shoved them into could be put to good use.

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