You have some stuff correct, and some that isat least stated poorly.

“Depleted” in “depleted uranium” really doesn’t mean the same as in “depleted battery”. DU is what is left over after the uranium has been processed to remove U235, which is much more fissile than U238. As it happens, the U235 (and U234, which gets removed with the U235, but no one really cares about) have shorter half-lifes, and thus are more radioactive per atom or gram than the U238 that is left in the DU.

The use of DU in some classes of nuclear weapons is not something I am prepared to discuss, for reasons of having known classified information about it, and having forgotten most of it. The DU issue generally is not about nuclear weapons, however, but about the DU ammo used for various planes and armored vehicles. In that application, the radioactive nature of DU is not the reason it is used; in fact, it is slightly annoying. There are other characteristics that make it a particularly good projectile for killing armor with.

You are correct that the amount of radioactive material a coal fired power plant releases to the environment is much greater than for a nuke, on pretty much any basis of comparison you can think of. You are also correct that the amount of waste produced is vastly greater on a tonnage basis, and even more so on a volume basis. Ironically, the toxic material in the coal waste is mostly stable elements, while the material of concern in spent fuel is radioactive, and thus the coal wastes will remain as dangerous over time as they start out (I believe the danger is often both over stated and ignored, depending on the agenda at hand), but the spent fuel will become less dangerous over time, and within a couple hundred years really isn’t “dangerous” at all.

Welcome to the discussion.

        Jim Mapes said:

I’ve always wondered how people like fight4peace can be so ignorant. I wound up here following some tangential reading related to nuclear power and the rantings of some idiot about how its more destructive to the environment and people than say coal fired power (the industry I work in).

Welcome dear sir, you sound like just the sort of person we like to see here, please feel free to stay and add your obvious commonsense, and acerbic wit to the comments in any thread any time.

The real simple thing about this whole arguement above is – *Depleted* Uranmium. Basic english language skills yield the understanding that the energized factor of the base uranium is essentially used up to only residual levels – just like a depleted battery, you might get a faint bit of juice but its essentially intert.

Uranium is a naturally occurring element, hysterics won’t change it, nor the history of its use in various consumer applications.

What really points up fight4peace as the idiot of the hour is the whole H-bomb thing. Before detonation and After – you don’t get that? (you really are retarted aren’t you). Lets try something you might be more familiar with – fertilizer (god knows you spout enough of it). Ammonium Nitrate is a fertilizer, it makes thing grow. If you add diesel fuel to it and a blasting cap – its a bomb! Imagine that. Does that make Miracle Grow evil? DU before an H Bomb detonates is a nearly inert heavy metal, when the H-Bomb detonates, it disintegrates the DU atoms into particles. If the case was made of iron, it would do the same thing. The only difference being that iron atoms likely are harder to split, and thus won’t sustain a fission chain reaction. So fusion bomb goes off, a few atoms get shattered and its over, but if the case is uranium, the few shatttered atoms shatter a few more and so forth. You really should actually understand the stuff you spout about at least at the kindergarten level.

And one other thing fight4peace, you realize how evil the type of person you are is? Had you been born in the region around Iraq and fed some of the extremist BS, you are the type of ignorant fanatical jackoff that would be strapping a bomb to their belt and blowing up their countrymen simply for smiling at some American GI who gave their kid a canteen of fresh water – the type of jackoff our soldiers are there trying to stop. So why don’t you just sit back, relax and have a nice glass of Jone’s Koolaid – do us all a favor.

        Hawaiian_Honey said:

Well, to finish…
we would put up radiation barriers around the large piles of Thorium sand with signs saying

Hmm. Possibly some kind of attempt to claim censorship?