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Balancing Acts
Let’s talk about a type of pollution that scares the hell out of everyone, radiation and radioactive waste. Use the words Nuclear Power, Nuclear Energy, or Nuclear Powerplant positively, and you are nearly guaranteed to cause an argument if there are more than three people that can hear you and respond. After all, we have been conditioned for over seventy years that there is nothing more dangerous than nuclear anything, except perhaps that most insidious of all pollutants, the result of nuclear bombs and nuclear power plants, radiation. So, let’s put some of this in perspective. As a note before we start, I am not an expert. I am an able amateur who is good at looking up sources on the internet and filtering bullshit. So, please don’t take my word for any of this, do some looking for yourself, it’s amazing what a good search engine will find with some simple searches.
The first point everything is radioactive, period, you, me, the chair you are sitting in, the air, the rocks, the sky, everything. Some things are more radioactive than others. When a type of thing reaches a high enough emission of radiation, then we call it radioactive to distinguish it from all of the other radioactive objects. But, really, the difference is in scale, not what is physically happening. Humans grew up as a species with radiation, and while yes, we have increased the amount of radiation that we are exposed to, the source isn’t what you…
