From: jquimby@utmmg.med.uth.tmc44.edu (Jeanette Quimby) Date: Thu, 15 Aug 1996 09:41:42 -0700 Subj: Radioactive Waste Food for thought on radioactive/nuclear waste disposal........ Living in Texas, we have recently had debate in our papers concerning "Radioactive Waste Disposal". Seeing this, made me think, how close we really could be to having to find "another location" for this waste. Sierra Blanca, Texas is in the western part of our state (I myself grew up in El Paso). The powers that be are attempting to dispose of "low level (namely it will actually decompose in less than 500 years if we are lucky) by burying it in an area with a sparse population (voter registration is less than 1200) and in the middle of a huge desert. Because of the population and location, folks feel they can dump this wonderful stuff there (hey it would create another 15 - 30 jobs - not necessarily filled by the local folks). The premise of the show is based on disposal of radioactive/nuclear waste on the moon. How close are we really getting to making this a reality. There really is no "safe" place to store it on our planet - even in the middle of the desert (I don't think I would trust it buried in the ground - especially since ground water is my primary water source - no matter what "guarentees" a politician would make). If we can't store it "safely" on our own planet - where are we going to store it? So, the show may be Space: 1999 and at that point we have already been storing waste up there. But give us a few more years, when the space station is finally built, and the possibility of a station on the moon is even closer, and we may be sending our waste up there. Jeanette Houston
From: mpoindexter@classtrain44.com (Marshall Poindexter) Date: Thu, 15 Aug 1996 10:39:26 -0700 Subj: Re: Radioactive Waste It never was fully explained in the series (at least I don't *think* it was from what I remember), but it seems that there was A LOT of waste stored up on the Moon. In fact, that waste seems to be more than just some random amounts that now may possibly be stored in rural Texas. In the S:1999 Technical Manual, it's explained that the nations of the world destroy all their nuclear weapons after Switzerland is destroyed by one in 1987. They melt them all down and send them to the Moon. Now if all the nations were to do that today, think of how much waste we'd have to store up there. Heck, we might even have to develop multiple waste dispersal areas, much like those theorized in our favorite sci-fi series...
From: jflmgcnp@capitalnet44.com (John J Fleming @ COLD NORTH Publishing) Date: Sat, 17 Aug 1996 05:48:44 -0700 Subj: Our sun going nova >Are you saying that the sun will go nova because of the waste disposal? >Anyone know a physicist who would care the speculate on the effects of >Nuclear waste on the sun? Sorry. It was a joke reffering to an incedent in another Sci-Fi novel. Obviously you didn't read that one. I recommend it, "Bill, The Galatic Hero" by Harry Harrison. Bill gets stuck on this planet. He ends up working for the sanitation dept. His first job is to come up with a way of getting rid of millions of plastic caffeteria trays. They were sending them into the sun, but it went nova because of all the plastic trays. Bill comes up with the plan to randomly mail the trays to people all around the galaxy. This solved the sanitation dept's tray problem. Of coure, it just tranfered it to everyone else. But it worked for Bill, and the sanitation dept.
From: HNoll@t-online44.de (Horst Noll) Date: Sat, 17 Aug 1996 13:31:08 -0700 Subj: Re: Radioactive Waste Jeff Godwin wrote: > > > > > I always thought that shooting Nuclear waste into the sun was a viable idea. > > Any thoughts on this??? > > > > -K- > > > > I think this would be a great idea. I was just thinking of that myself. > It could work like this: a) A giant accellorator "shoots" football- > sized nuclear waste material into a net near an orbiting space station. > b) Workers at the nearby station collect waste out of the net and > load it into a large waste sack and launch it out of earth orbit (this > would require minimal fuel) until it is in orbit about the sun. c) a > large solar sail would be deployed from the space-junk junk (pun) > causing the craft to lose orbital velocity and its orbit would slowly > decay into the sun where it could do no harm. This would also have the > benefit that, if we found some practical use for nuclear fuel (recycling > or something) the waste-satelite could possibly be retrieved from its > suicide mission. What does anyone else think? > sincerely > jeff godwin Hello ! I think that this would be to much expensive. And think : Where does all that radioctive material come from ? Originaly it was burried in the ground by nature itself, until man dug it out and concentrated the material. And even in our body there is a lot of natural radioctive material, i.e. Potassium (K40), which is responsible for an everage radiation of 30000 Bq/kg. Why couldn't the manmade materials not be burried again at original location (as far as possible; there it was over geological periods of time) or somewhere else in nature on "save" positions. An absolutely "save" place can't be found nowhere, and I think a waste disposal area on earth, which was secured as far as possible is much better, than to discuss what to do and leave the materials laying somewhere around on the surface of the planet. An than : to transport this material into space is relativly expensive and much more dangerous than anything else. Think on a malfunction and the radiocative material dispersed in the entire atmosphere ("better" than the atmospheric tests of atomic bombs in the 50's and 60's). We've opened the pandorian box and now we have to handle the problem as save as we can, but we must handle it.
From: Ermes Mercury (monachus@xtreme44.it) Date: Thu, 29 Aug 1996 10:20:09 -0700 Subj: NEW BREAKAWAY? MAXIMUM ALERT!!! Hello Everyone! maybe one day a writer of science fiction will write a new episode of Space:1999, entitled: "New Breakaway".But this time the story won't be set on the Moon,but rather on the Earth! A terrible explosion,caused from colossal storages vault of radioactive waste,will projected out from this orbit our planet. Our Earth wandering in the Space,out from the Solar System,will be a new Moonbase Alpha,now EARTHBASE ALPHA! Now 5.000.000.000 of Alphans,but which is the new Jonh Koenig? Now millions of doctors,of scientists,of technicians,of space pilots,but which are the new Dr.Russell,Victor Bergman,David Kano,Sandra Be nes,Alan Carter? The Earthbase is too vast:she becomes ungovernable! I shall stop here: I leave this idea to real writer of Sci-fi. But a moment:it is a question of Science fiction or of tragic possible reality? THE NUCLEAR DESERT OF HANFORD In the next 75 years the U.S Governement will try, in the southeastern part of the State of Washington, in Hanford, an enterprise described so: "The most impressive civil project of the American History". When the project will have completed (cost $50.000.000.000!!), we won't see a spatial center; there will be instead millions of tons of radioactive waste. Here a example of thing there will be in Hanford: 1) 177 enormous subterranean cisterns of radioactive waste to talll activity,some of which have leaks. 2) at least a ten of tons of plutonium, in part in the ground or anyhow without protection. 3) 5 gigantic structures, deeply contamined. 4) 2100 tons of irradiated fuel,in basins that a possible earthquake could transform in something of absolutely deadly. Stop, Alphans: I think that this suffices! The words of the Commisioner Simmonds: "The problem of the radioactive waste is the problem of the century", are topical in worrying way. We hope that all this is only object of Science fiction, not of the History!! Regards Ermes
From: Amardeep_Chana@xn.xerox44.com (Chana,Amardeep) Date: Thu, 29 Aug 1996 11:39:15 -0700 Subj: RE: NEW BREAKAWAY? MAXIMUM ALERT!!! Wow! That's extreme. The only problem is even if it survived intact the planet would freeze over in a matter of days. Think of the implications... billions of years later Earth wanders into another inhabited solar system and another race of beings discovers it once had a civilization now meticulously preserved for their archeologists. Amardeep