Re: [cdn-nucl-l] Toronto Sun commentary

[Randal Leavitt <randal.leavitt@rogers.com>]

Andrew Daley wrote:
> Anybody see the commentary by Christina Blizzard in today's sun?
> 

I did not see her comment.  However, while walking over to the Linux 
Symposium today I met some Greenpeace activists who were out preaching 
to people on the street.  I told them that Greenpeace had to change 
and begin supporting nuclear power: clean, cheap, inexpensive, etc. 
The shocked look on their faces was impressive.  I suspect that they 
had never heard this before from someone off the street.  I got all 
the stock comments from them: Chernobyl's 400,000 deaths, Hiroshima, 
waste that lasts millions of years, windmills can do it, and on and 
on.  When I told them that the depleted uranium that comes out of 
CANDU reactors can be reused 137 more times, it did not seem to sink 
in.  I don't think they could hear it - too different from their 
convictions.  I hope I have planted some seeds of doubt, at least.

At the symposium I met a person who had a car with an electric motor 
in it.  It had a whole bunch of batteries.  It could go about 60 to 
100 km before needing a recharge, at 135 kph.  It recharged from a 
wall socket.  He showed us how it worked.  Amazing acceleration and 
totally silent.  His license plate was "NO 2 GAS".  I told him that I 
liked electric cars because if everyone got one Ontario would just 
have to build lots more nuclear reactors.  This lead to a discussion 
of nuclear waste.  When I told him that the nuclear "waste" was not 
waste but was reusable fuel that seemed to settle things down.

The message about "no waste from CANDU" really has to be spread around 
a lot more.  It seems to be the first thing that comes up when people 
express concerns about nuclear power.  As soon as they hear that 
depleted uranium is reusable, opinions seem to flip over to pro 
nuclear. People have to hear it from more places than me, however.

This may have some implications for AECL.  A new reactor that will 
receive lots of public support will have to be a fast reactor that 
consumes all the uranium in the fuel, and leaves behind rather benign 
final fission products.  I don't think the ACR-1000 does this.  AECL 
should investigate a molten salt reactor.  They could probably leap 
ahead of the US fast reactor industry with this move, in a manner 
similar to what they did with CANDU.

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Randal Leavitt        gnupg public key: bbbad04d
Registered User 267646 at http://counter.li.org/