RE: Why nuclear power still matters
to cardhung@...
Congratulations for your unusually accurate and well balanced contributions. In 18 you identify carbon 12 as a naturally occuring radioactive element. A typo I am sure - the "culprit" is carbon 14. You might also include pottasium 41 as well as uranium and thorium and their many radioactive decay products - all quite natural and with us at all times and to some extent, at all locations. It is also worthy of note that those of our species who have lived for generations at high mountain locations, while subject to substantially higher exposure to cosmic radiation than those at sea level, are not particularly short lived or ravaged by cancer. And cosmic radiation has been arriving from outer space for millions of years.
Re 21, I am skeptical, but not informed, so I make no comment other than about thorium "reactors". A fissionable isotope of uranium can be made by neutron irradiation of thorium but as far as I am aware, nuclear fission whether of uranium isotopes or plutonium, generates the radioactive "products of fission", which are hazardous and are storage and disposal problems of considerable consequence.
