> "Opponents of a planned nuclear waste dump in Nevada > argued in court Wednesday the U.S. government has > failed to ensure that the public will be protected > when radiation from the entombed waste reaches its > peak hundreds of thousands of years from now. > Attorneys for Nevada and an environmental group asked > a three-judge panel to reject the Bush > administration's plan for storing highly radioactive > waste at Yucca Mountain in the Nevada desert unless it > can be shown protective radiation standards can be met > at least 300,000 years into the future, when some of > the isotopes are most dangerous...
That is really really disingenuous. For this to happen, the isotope in question has to be a daughter product. Otherwise it decays exponentially, with the strongest radiation being immediate. Further, it has to be longer lived than the parent, otherwise exposure would be very close to an exponential, with the shorter the half life, the more radiation seen per unit time. So, we have a particular isotope that probably has at least a million year combined half life of parent/daughter. That means half the radiation occurs in a million years. A 1 year half life has half the radiation occurring in 1 year, so for a given number of atoms there are only 1 millionth the number of decays in a given year. Other factors, such as the type and energy of the radiation, can affect the relative risk, but on average, the risk from a 1 million year half life source of X grams is 1 millionth of the risk of a 1 year half life source. I've looked up the total risk, and after 200 years it approaches that of the ore that was originally mined. After a million years, the risk of radiation damage should be far less than that incurred by spending the night with someone. Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
