@nroejb Well, the nice thing about the newer reactors is that, to drastically oversimplify, the waste produced has more transuranics -- while this is more carcinogenic, it also stays dangerous for far less time than 10,000 years, and it is in far smaller quantities. There's a lot of math and chemistry involved, but the only real risk of doing something like this is nuclear proliferation...which to be honest, I'm inclined to trust y'all Germans on handling ;)
As for the shutting down of nuclear plants after Fukushima -- yes, it was done under Merkel, but wasn't the reason she did that heavy pressure on the coalition she had built with the Greens, who are quite left-wing?
27
@nroejb Well, the nice thing about the newer reactors is that, to drastically oversimplify, the waste produced has more transuranics -- while this is more carcinogenic, it also stays dangerous for far less time than 10,000 years, and it is in far smaller quantities. There's a lot of math and chemistry involved, but the only real risk of doing something like this is nuclear proliferation...which to be honest, I'm inclined to trust y'all Germans on handling ;)
As for the shutting down of nuclear plants after Fukushima -- yes, it was done under Merkel, but wasn't the reason she did that heavy pressure on the coalition she had built with the Greens, who are quite left-wing?