Nuclear Waste Quotes & Sayings

There's no free lunch. If you want an industrial economy, you need energy. If you want energy, it will produce pollution. You can have it in two forms. You can have it dissipated in the atmosphere - like carbon dioxide - which then you cannot recover, or you can have the waste concentrated in one small space like nuclear. That is far easier to deal with. The idea that you can be able to create renewable energy at a price anywhere near the current price for oil or gas or coal is a fantasy. — Charles Krauthammer

The pirates are serving a purpose right now. They come from regions which have been completely ignored, and Westerners have tried to destroy these regions by their constant plundering of resources and by the illegal dumping of nuclear waste. The pirates really began in order to discourage these actions - initially. And then the business became lucrative. — K'naan

It's a national concern, I mean how we dispose of nuclear waste in a safe way, how we deal with this incredible amount of nuclear waste we have created over the years. — Tom Udall

Thermophilic composting requires no electricity and therefore no coal combustion, no acid rain, no nuclear power plants, no nuclear waste, no petrochemicals and no consumption of fossil fuels. The composting process produces no waste, no pollutants and no toxic by-products. Thermophilic composting of humanure can be carried out century after century, millennium after millennium, with no stress on our ecosystems, no unnecessary consumption of resources and no garbage or sludge for our landfills. And all the while it will produce a valuable resource necessary for our survival while preventing the accumulation of dangerous pathogenic waste. — Joseph Jenkins

My holy grail is fusion energy. Nuclear fusion has little to no radioactive waste. It's clean. It's very abundant. The fuels are everywhere. There are problems with fusion. — Taylor Wilson

All we need do with nuclear waste is dilute it to a low radiation level and sprinkle it over the ocean
or even over America after hormesis is better understood and verified with respect to more diseases. — Arthur B. Robinson

Bullying builds character like nuclear waste creates superheroes. It's a rare occurrence and often does much more damage than endowment. — Zack W. Van

The risks of transporting deadly nuclear waste, the environmental justice impacts and the long-term health effects of both these projects are untenable ... We cannot afford to be silent on these important issues. — James Cromwell

Nuclear power is a permanent disaster. Producing its uranium fuel is an environmental disaster - now tucked and folded over the horizon in mostly-poor countries where miners are paid $5 a day and unprotected against radiation. Building reactors is a financial disaster, always shifted to government subsidies. Waste disposal is both an environmental and economic disaster. When the fateful time comes to decommission the Doomsday Machines, after the easy 10-year life extensions run out, this is another economic disaster. But when a reactor becomes what it really is - the most massive Dirty Bomb you or Bin Laden (radhi Allah anhu) can imagine - the nuclear disaster will be hard to yank out of the media, quicktime, and carry on like nothing ever happened. — Andrew McKillop

If we take into account the existence of our planet, we have to recognise that we are guests that spend a short and very determined period in this world, and all we leave behind is nuclear waste. — Gunter Grass

I can think of a number of areas in New York where three acres of nuclear waste would make the neighborhood safer to walk around in than it is now, and better lit. — P. J. O'Rourke

Accident - A statistical inevitability. Some nuclear power plants are built on fault lines, but ever mine, dam, oil rig, and waste dump is founded upon a tacit acceptance of the worst-case scenario. One a long enough timeline, everything that can go wrong will, however small the likelihood is from one day to the next. The responsible parties may wring their hands about the Fukushima meltdown - and the Gult of Mexico oil spill, and the Exxon Valdez, and Hurricane Katrina, and Chernobyl, and Haiti - but accident is no accident. — CrimethInc.

By burning nuclear waste as fuel, we believe we can power the United States cleanly for hundreds of years without ever touching new resources. — Nathan Myhrvold

Nuclear energy is a waste of time. They should go about harnessing the power of the unconscious when it is in the act of denying Death. — Steve Toltz

For 50 years, nuclear power stations have produced three products which only a lunatic could want: bomb-explosive plutonium, lethal radioactive waste and electricity so dear it has to be heavily subsidised. They leave to future generations the task, and most of the cost, of making safe sites that have been polluted half-way to eternity. — James Buchan

All the waste in a year from a nuclear power plant can be stored under a desk. — Ronald Reagan

You can guarantee that mining uranium will lead to nuclear waste. You can't guarantee that uranium mining will not lead to nuclear weapons. — Anthony Albanese

If all of your electricity in your lifetime came from nuclear [energy], the waste from that lifetime of electricity would go in a Coke can. — Stewart Brand

Eighty percent of global warming is the result of man's wrongful use of the resources of the planet and the dumping of millions upon millions of tons of nuclear and other waste in the world, creating great toxic areas all over our skies, our oceans, our rivers, and the earth. — Benjamin Creme

Certain countries are dumping nuclear waste directly into
the ocean, making fish flesh even more poisonous. — Sathya Sai Baba

The beauty of the concept is that it takes the wind out of so many would-be ethical sails: the company that owns the porn-mag owns the company that makes the washing powder. The company that owns the munitions plants owns the company that makes the budgerigar food. The company that owns the nuclear waste owns the company that picks up your trash. These days, thanks to me, unless you pack up and go and live in a cave, you're putting money into evil and shit. And let's be realistic, if the cost of ethics is life in a cave ... — Glen Duncan

The nuclear approach I'm involved in is called a traveling-wave reactor, which uses waste uranium for fuel. There's a lot of things that have to go right for that dream to come true - many decades of building demo plants, proving the economics are right. But if it does, you could have cheaper energy with no CO2 emissions. — Bill Gates

We are 'nuclear waste' from the fuel that makes stars shine; indeed, each of us contains atoms whose provenance can be traced back to thousands of different stars spread through our Milky Way. — Martin Rees

For someone who was educated at Princeton and Harvard Law School, Mrs Obama can also plant garden bulbs without looking as if she is handling nuclear waste. — Matt Frei

We are all stardust, or nuclear waste depending on your analysis — Christopher Hitchens

All the atoms we are made of are forged from hydrogen in stars that died and exploded before our solar system formed. So if you are romantic, you can say we are literally stardust. If you are less romantic, you can say we're the nuclear waste from fuel that makes stars shine. — Martin Rees

You grow up readings about pirates and cowboys and spacemen and stuff, and just when you think the world's all full of amazing things, they tell you it's really all dead whales and chopped-down forests and nuclear waste hanging about millions of years. — Neil Gaiman

Such is the nature of comic strips. Once established, their half-life is usually more than nuclear waste. Typically, the end result is lazy, rich cartoonists. — Berkeley Breathed

Our reactor actually burns nuclear waste as fuel. So not only is it safe and powerful, it solves an important issue: It actually reduces nuclear waste instead of creating. It's the reactor of your dreams. — Nathan Myhrvold

Fame is a spiritual drug. It is often a by-product of our artistic work, but like nuclear waste, it can be a very dangerous by-product. — Julia Cameron

Truth is like nuclear waste: it needs to be dealt with carefully. Sometimes it needs to be buried way, way out of town. And sometimes it should never be uncovered at all. — Gina Barreca

Survival is not a theory. In what way do I contribute to the subjugation of any part of those who I define as my people? Insight must illuminate the particulars of our lives: who labors to make the bread we waste, or the energy it takes to make nuclear poisons which will not biodegrade for one thousand years; or who goes blind assembling the microtransistors in our inexpensive calculators? — Audre Lorde

Every advance [in Science] will most likely tell us as much about ourselves as it will about the universe we inhabit. We are all collections of chemicals made in the cataclysmic explosions of stars; we are stardust, or nuclear waste, depending on your perspective. — Michael Brooks

I know that nuclear is better than fossil fuels when it comes to carbon dioxide, but nuclear energy is by no means clean. We don't know what to do with the waste we already have and it seems like a bad idea to me to make more when we have so many cleaner options such as wind and solar. — Sheryl Crow

We subsidize the disposal of waste in all its myriad forms from landfills to Superfund cleanups, from deep-well injection to storage of nuclear waste. In the process, we encourage an economy where 80 percent of what we consume gets thrown away after one use. — Paul Hawken

Expired condoms are like nuclear waste: there's nothing sensible you can do with it. — Andrew Smith

I find it sad, but all too human, that there are vast bureaucracies concerned about nuclear waste, huge organizations devoted to decommissioning nuclear power stations, but nothing comparable to deal with that truly malign waste, carbon dioxide. — James E. Lovelock

I could draw Bloom County with my nose and pay my cleaning lady to write it, and I'd bet I wouldn't lose 10% of my papers over the next twenty years. Such is the nature of comic-strips. Once established, their half-life is usually more than nuclear waste. — Berkeley Breathed

Astronomy is so easy to love ... Fairly or not, physics is associated with nuclear bombs and nuclear waste, chemistry with pesticides, biology with Frankenfood and designer-gene superbabies. But astronomers are like responsible ecotourists, squinting at the scenery through high-quality optical devices, taking nothing but images that may be computer-enhanced for public distribution, leaving nothing but a few Land Rover footprints on faraway Martian soil, and OK, OK, maybe the Land Rover, too. — Natalie Angier

I'm staying," Henry said, annoyed.
"Why?"
"Because, if I leave, it would be like abandoning two mentally challenged people in a nuclear waste dump. — Lisa Lutz

The discussion about energy options tends to be an intensely emotional, polarised, mistrustful, and destructive one. Every option is strongly opposed: the public seem to be anti-wind, anti-coal, anti-waste-to-energy, anti-tidal-barrages, anti-carbon-tax, and anti-nuclear. — David J. C. MacKay

The international community must do a better job of controlling the risks of nuclear proliferation. Sensitive parts of the nuclear fuel cycle - the production of new fuel, the processing of weapon-usable material, the disposal of spent fuel and radioactive waste - would be less vulnerable to proliferation if brought under multinational control. — Mohamed ElBaradei

No," said Fraa Jad, "they are probably telling us that they have figured out that Edhar, Rambalf, and Tredegarh are where the Saecular Power stored all of the nuclear waste. — Neal Stephenson

He's like six hundred years younger than you are. I refuse to be the moral compass of our cell! Most weekends I have an intoxispell bong attached to my mouth like a respirator. I love scatological humor, and I list 'pranks involving nuclear waste' and 'making demons eat things' as my hobbies. — Kresley Cole

UC Santa Cruz biologist had discovered elevated levels of radiation in fish swimming among some of the 47,500 barrels of nuclear waste that the navy had dumped in a 540-square-mile area around the Farallones between 1946 and 1970. — Susan Casey

In other words, a star is a nuclear furnace, burning hydrogen fuel and creating nuclear "ash" in the form of waste helium. A star is also a delicate balancing act between the force of gravity, which tends to crush the star into oblivion, and the nuclear force, which tends to blow the star apart with the force of trillions of hydrogen bombs. A star then matures and ages as it exhausts its nuclear fuel. — Michio Kaku

Romantics might like to think of themselves as being composed of stardust. Cynics might prefer to think of themselves as nuclear waste. — Simon Singh

There is no question we need an energy policy overhaul in America. A key part of that overhaul must include moving forward aggressively with expanding nuclear energy as a renewable energy source. Storing nuclear waste is an important piece of that effort. — Erik Paulsen

The DOE and DOD are among the most notorious offenders of our hazardous waste laws. — John Dingell