Slashdot Mirror
Megatons To Megawatts Program Comes To a Close
necro81 writes "In the aftermath of the Cold War, the disintegrating Soviet Union had tens of thousands of nuclear weapons and tons of weapons-grade fissile material. In the economic and political turmoil, many feared that it would fall into unfriendly hands. However, thanks to the doggedness of an MIT professor, Dr. Thomas Neff, 500 metric tons of weapons grade material made its way into nuclear reactors in the United States through the Megatons to Megawatts program. During the program, about 10% of all electricity generated in the U.S. came from weapons once aimed at the country. Now, after nearly 20 years, the program is coming to an end. The final shipment of Soviet-era uranium, now nuclear fuel, has arrived in Baltimore."
The pollution from coal waste is permanent, it never decays unlike nuclear waste. US coal-fired power generators pump 50 tonnes of mercury into the environment every year, it never goes away or decays, it ends up in water and the soil, in the sea and seafood. Nobody cares, any attempt to reduce these sorts of emissions is a "War on Coal".