textfiles/humor/nukwaste

                               YET
                             ANOTHER
                             MODEST
                            PROPOSAL:

                      The Roentgen Standard

                            --------

     It happened around the time of World War I.  The Director of 
Research  for Standard Oil was told,  "There's all this goo  left 
over  when  we  refine oil.  It's terrible stuff.  It  ruins  the 
landscape,  and  covering it with dirt only gets the dirt  gooey. 
Find something to do with it."
     So he created the plastics industry.
     He turned useless, offensive goo into wealth. He was not the 
first  in  history  to  do  so.  Consider  oil  itself:  useless, 
offensive goo,  until it was needed to lubricate  machinery,  and 
later to fuel it.  Consider some of the horrid substances that go 
into cosmetics:  mud,   organic Goo out  of  a sick whale's head.  
Consider  sturgeon  caviar: 
American fisherman are still throwing it away!  And the  Japanese 
consider  cheese  to be what it always started out  to  be:  sour 
milk.
     Now:  present  plans  for disposal of expended nuclear  fuel 
involve such strategies as
     1) Diluting and burying it.
     2)  Pouring it into old,  abandoned oil wells.  The  Soviets 
tell us that it ought to be safe; after all, the oil stayed there 
for  millions  of years.  We may question  their  sincerity:  the 
depleted oil wells they use for this purpose are all in Poland.
     3)  The Pournelle method.  The No Nukes types tell  us  that 
stretches  of American desert have already been rendered  useless 
for  thousands  of years because thermonuclear bombs were  tested 
there.  Let us take them at their word.  Cart the nuclear  wastes 
out  into a patch of cratered desert.  Put several miles of fence 
around it, and signs on the fence:

              IF YOU CROSS THIS FENCE YOU WILL DIE

     Granted,  there  will be people willing to cross the  fence. 
Think  of it as evolution in action.  Average human  intelligence 
goes up by a fraction of a percent.
     4)  Drop  the radioactive wastes,  in  canisters,  into  the 
seabed folds where the continental plates are sliding under  each 
other.  The radioactives would disappear back into the magma from 
which they came.
     Each  of these solutions gets rid of the stuff;  but at some 
expense,   and  no  profit.   What the world needs now  is a way. 
     We need a way to turn radioactive wastes into wealth.
     And I believe I know the way.
     Directly. Make coins out of it.
     Radioactive money has certain obvious advantages.
     A healthy economy depends on money circulating fast. Make it 
radioactive and it will certainly circulate.
     Verifying  the  authenticity  of money  would  become  easy. 
Geiger  counters,  like  pocket calculators  before  them,  would 
become both tiny and cheap due to mass production. You would hear 
their  rapid  clicking  at  every  ticket  window.   A   particle 
accelerator is too expensive for a counterfeiter;  counterfeiting 
would become a lost art.
     The economy would be boosted in a number of ways. Lead would 
become extremely valuable. Even the collection plates in a church 
would  have to be made of lead (or gold).  Bank vaults would have 
to be lead lined,  and the coins separated by dampers.  Styles of 
clothing would be affected.  Every purse, and one pocket in every 
pair of pants,  would need to be shielded in lead.  Even so,  the 
concept  of "money burning a hole in your pocket" would  take  on 
new meaning.
     Gold  would  still  be  the  mark  of  wealth.  Gold  blocks 
radiation  as  easily  as lead.  It would be used to  shield  the 
wealthy from their money.
     The  profession of tax collector would carry its  own,  well 
deserved penalty. So would certain other professions. An Arab oil 
sheik  might  still grow obscenely rich,  but at least  we  could 
count on his spending it as fast as it comes in, lest it go up in 
a  fireball.  A crooked politician would have to take  bribes  by 
credit card, making it easier to convict him. A bank robber would 
be conspicuous, staggering up to the teller's window in his heavy 
lead-shielding  clothing.  The  successful pickpocket would  also 
stand  out in a crowd.  A thick lead-lined glove would be a  dead 
giveaway;  but without it,  he could be identified by his sickly, 
faintly  glowing  hands.  Society might even have  to  revive  an 
ancient  practice,  amputating the felon's hand as a  therapeutic 
measure, before it kills him.
     Foreign aid could be delivered by ICBM.
     Is  this  just another crazy utopian scheme?  Or  could  the 
American  people be brought to accept the radioactive standard as 
money?  Perhaps  we could.  It's got to be better  than  watching 
green paper approach its intrinsic value.  The cost of making and 
printing a dollar bill, which used to be one and a half cents, is 
rising  inexorable toward one dollar.  (If only we could count on 
its stopping there! But it costs the same to print a twenty...)
     At  least the radioactive money would have intrinsic  value. 
What  we have been calling "nuclear waste," our  descendants  may 
well  refer  to as "fuel." It is dangerous precisely  because  it 
undergoes  fission...  because it delivers power.  Unfortunately, 
the  stuff  doesn't  last "thousands of years."  In  six  hundred 
years,  the expended fuel is no more radioactive than the ore  it 
was mined from.
     Dropping  radyoactiwes  into  the sea is  wasteful.  We  can 
ensure  that they will still be around when the Earth's  oil  and 
coal and plutonium have been used up, by turning them into money, 
now.