Mining the electorate for votes and nuclear power

For mining engineers it is an absurdly trivial problem: dig a deep hole into the ground and bring out the valuable ore.  I know that the reverse is also a trivial challenge to mining engineers, namely dig a deep hole and put something valuable into the hole.  Underground miners place backfill into mines every day with great success. 

Now maybe is the time for underground mining engineers to stand up and tell the public the obvious, trival truth:  they can dig a deep hole in the ground as a storage place for high level radioactive waste from the nations nuclear power plants. 

Why, they have already done it and take precious little credit for it.  I refer to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) Project in southeast New Mexico.  As I write it is receiving the nation’s defence-generate nuclear waste. 

I am no expert, but I bet the average underground mining engineer would have no difficulty in quickly and safely expanding WIPP to take the waste from the 45 new nuclear power plant McCain promises if he becomes president. 

Forget about Yucca Mountain.  Las Vegas will never support it.  It was political to begin with, and it has continued political ever since.  Even though the mining engineers have done a fine job there so far.  Focus instead on our nation’s successes and let us move proactively forward to some semblance of self-sufficiency in energy.  REUTERS reports:

The key roadblock to new U.S. nuclear plants has been finding a home for nuclear waste. Congress designated Yucca Mountain, 90 miles (145 km) from Las Vegas, to be the nation’s waste repository, but the site is years behind schedule and may never open because of powerful opponents like Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.

In the same REUTERS report we read the usual narrow uninformed focus: 

Though nuclear energy is key to meeting U.S. climate concerns, the issue of disposing of nuclear waste from U.S. plants and solving nuclear proliferation concerns are also paramount, Obama’s campaign said on its website.

If only Obama had spent less time listening to ranting and raving priests for twenty-years of Sundays and spent a little more time on catching up with the facts of science, technology, mining, and national successes, he (and his web-writer staff) would not now be writing such uninformed stuff—-if you consider the vacuous statement to even warrant the designation of “information” or “opinion.” 

 There are alternatives to WIPP.  These include reprocessing, the deep South African mines, many places in Siberia, and off the continental shelf.  It is not an issue of no-opportunity.  It is simply another instance of not-yet-needed and lots of rote journalism and political spin. 

With a mere half tank of gas for $40 this morning and beautiful views to the five oil rigs off the coast of Huntington Beach on this morning’s bike ride, I am however trying to do my bit towards mining and energy sanity by posting this piece.