>How can you evaluate cost of managing basically forever (at the human scale) dangerous wastes?
I think we need to be optimists. Not 'glass is half full' optimists, or 'humans are perfect' optimists but 'progress is possible if we keep trying' optimists.
If we decide to be optimists then our wealth, technological capability and sense of responsibility will all continue to increase. Handling historical waste will become safer and cheaper. An exciting future university project, perhaps, with documentaries, museums and spin-offs abounding.
What it isn't possible to do is to prophesy the precise means by which it will happen.
We may build reactors that produce less and less waste or no waste at all. Nuclear engineers and physicists may figure out how to transmute harmful elements into safe ones. We may end up launching material directly into the Sun. Or we might just dig a better hole. Or something else. Or something else again.
The fact that we don't know in advance is not grounds for pessimism.
“Pessimism becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy; it reproduces itself by crippling our willingness to act.” (Howard Zinn)
I think we need to be optimists. Not 'glass is half full' optimists, or 'humans are perfect' optimists but 'progress is possible if we keep trying' optimists.
If we decide to be optimists then our wealth, technological capability and sense of responsibility will all continue to increase. Handling historical waste will become safer and cheaper. An exciting future university project, perhaps, with documentaries, museums and spin-offs abounding.
What it isn't possible to do is to prophesy the precise means by which it will happen.
We may build reactors that produce less and less waste or no waste at all. Nuclear engineers and physicists may figure out how to transmute harmful elements into safe ones. We may end up launching material directly into the Sun. Or we might just dig a better hole. Or something else. Or something else again.
The fact that we don't know in advance is not grounds for pessimism.
“Pessimism becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy; it reproduces itself by crippling our willingness to act.” (Howard Zinn)