Slashdot Mirror
The Cold War's Legacy of Mutation
fm6 writes: "Not surprising, but still pretty sobering: Russian communities downwind from cold-war-era surface testing sites are experiencing 50% increase in mutation rates. I'm reminded of Terry Tempest William's term: Virtual Uninhabitants."
It's too bad everyone thinks nuclear power is the way of the future, if only we can contain the wastes. Never mind that, even when subsidized, it's still the most expensive way to boil water.
What worries me is situations like this in the future. This is just (!) after some atmospheric testing. In 10-30 years, when all the US nuclear reactors go offline, all the fuel rods and other radioactive waste (I'm not sure, but I certainly wouldn't feel comfortable if I knew that I was drinking water formerly used as steam heated by uranium) have to be dealt with. Right now, as a previous slashdot story has noted, the US will be dumping its nuclear wastes in an earthquake-prone area likely to contaminate the water table in the area of Las Vegas. Even a small amount of radioactivity, as seen in this story, can cause mutation, to say nothing of the level of contamination during that Japanese disaster a decade or three back. Think about what happens when a large US city is exposed to bunches of radiation. It suddenly becomes not far off on another continent, but in our own back yard too late to do anything about it.
Write your congressman about Yucca Mountain. Hope that state's rights prevail and the governor of Nevada can nix the project. It's our future. This isn't something like the DMCA or the SSSCA - this is nuclear waste in our back yard.