The Problem of Nuclear Waste, for kids: Imagine what your house would be like if no one EVER took out the garbage. Not only would your home be dirty and stinky, but it would also be a very unhealthy place to live. See Yucca Mountain Johnny while you can, because it looks like he won't be around much longer.
posted by cerebus19 on Jun 25, 2007 - 41 comments

The site of the world's first nuclear reactor? Gabon. About 1.7 billion years ago several deposits of uranium in Oklo, Gabon spontaneously began to undergo nuclear chain reactions fed by small drips of water. These natural breeder reactors ran for almost a million years, producing both intense heat and plutonium byproducts. Aside from the strangeness of naturally occurring reactors, Oklo provides the only existing case of how highly radioactive waste behaves over a period of tens of millions of years -- exactly the problem faced by the DOE's Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site.
posted by blahblahblah on Feb 16, 2005 - 19 comments

Coca culture (NYT) I am a cocalera. I owe my life to coca. My father died when I was 2 and my mother raised six children by growing coca. I was a farmer myself, growing coca for traditional purposes. But the United States says it is better for us to just forget about coca. In the early 1990's, Bolivian officials distributed American money — $300 to $2,500 per farm — and told us to try yucca and pineapples. But 60 pineapples earn us only about eight bolivianos (about $1). And unlike coca, yucca and pineapples are difficult to carry to the cities to sell, and they spoil. So many farmers returned to growing coca.
posted by magullo on Oct 16, 2003 - 34 comments

all aboard! next stop, yucca mt. the proposed yucca mt nuclear waste storage site has been approved by the senate. while only a handful of senators believe "we are being forced to decide this issue prematurely," and others are concerned with "thousands of waste shipments crossing 43 states" - most worry only about the risk of the next proposed dump site being in their state if yucca mt falls through. apparently the buildup of toxic waste at the power plants is getting pretty bad - "I believe it is a safe repository," said Lott. If the country does not find a central place for the waste, he said, "we're going to have to shut down" the nuclear industry. is shutting down the industry a bad thing? if the waste produced by these methods is so deadly and destructive... why aren't we questioning the risk/reward factor of nuclear power plants, instead of just worrying about where to stash the glowing green ooze? they've spent 4.5 BILLION dollars just researching the yucca mt site... could that money have been spent on developing clean power generation and maybe even helped fund its deployment?
posted by ggggarret on Jul 9, 2002 - 15 comments