Thursday, March 31, 2011

What Do You Do With The Bodies?

Every day there's a new tragedy...
"Radiation fears have prevented authorities from collecting the bodies of as many as 1,000 people living in the evacuation zone who died in the 11 March earthquake and tsunami."

Left as they were, the bodies could pose a health threat to relatives identifying them at morgues, the agency said. Cremating them could create radioactive smoke, while burying them could contaminate soil."
- Japan Under Pressure To Widen Nuclear Evacuation Zone, The Guardian, 31 March 2011
What do you do with the bodies? It reminds me of our nuclear waste dilemma. Where are we going to put it? Yucca Mountain is out:
"Funding for development of Yucca Mountain waste site was terminated in 2010 and the NRC license application was withdrawn in March 2011.

This leaves the United States without any long term storage site for its high level radioactive waste, currently stored on-site at various nuclear facilities around the country."
- Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository, Wikipedia
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Yucca Mountain tunnel boring machine from Atlas Obscura

3 comments:

Angela and Melinda said...

I suppose eventually we'll shoot the waste into space, thus eventually polluting not just our home planet, but the rest of the galaxy. "What a piece of work is Man," said dripping w/ sarcasm.

Bix said...

Space! Oh my god, I'm laughing but I think I heard this. Can you imagine the cost and the energy needed for a mission into space to take out the trash?

This makes me think about food, and the externalities that food producers aren't managing, or paying for. The polluted runoff, the air quality problems.

How desirable would nuclear power be if its cost included waste disposal?

elfriide tramm said...

yeah, man is the only creature who can destroy the planet, that gives life to him/her. hopefully we are not allowed to do so by the universe.

greetings from europe