Dear Editor,
Recently, I wrote about the Small Modular Nuclear Reactors and how the waste material would be actively dangerous for 100,000 years. I have been informed the design of those reactor units involves recycling of fissionable material after 25 years of service and that in the end there is. . .
a small amount of waste that will require only 500 years to diminish to background radiation levels. To put that into historical perspective, if Christopher Columbus had brought a package of that material from Spain, it would be safe by now. Big difference, eh? I hope this makes you feel better about the whole project.
Instead of a package of fissionable material, he brought over the concept that a crowned head of Europe could ‘own’ a whole continent, and all the people who were living here were subjects of that royalty, by virtue of his planting a flag on the island of Hispaniola. The native inhabitants were considered less than human, so their lands were to be bought and sold and fought over amongst people who had no intention of ever visiting the land. Furthermore, people from another continent were kidnapped to do the hard labour for which the colonists were ill-suited.
We might have been better off with the blob of activated uranium — it would be safe by now.
Robert Wills, Shawville and Thor
