119 lines
5.8 KiB
Plaintext
119 lines
5.8 KiB
Plaintext
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{:} {:}
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{:} YET ANOTHER MODEST PROPOSAL: {:}
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{:} -The Roentgen Standard- {:}
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{:} {:}
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{:} Typed by: The Radioactive Snail {:}
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{:} of TP&the Heartbreakers {:}
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{:} {:}
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It happened around the time of World War I. The Director of Research for
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Standard Oil was told, "There's all- this goo left over when we refine oil.
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It's terrible stuff. It ruins the landscape, and covering it with dirt only
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makes the dirt gooey. Find something to do with it."
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So he created the plastics industry.
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He turned useless, offensive goo into wealth. He was not the first in history
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to do so. Consider oil itself: useless, offensive goo, until it was needed to
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lubricate machinery, and later to fuel it. Consider some of the horrid
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substances that go into cosmetics: mud, organic goop of all kinds, the stuff
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that comes out of a sick whales head. Consider sturgeon caviar: American
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fisherman are still throwing it away! And the Japanese consider cheese to be
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what it always strarted out to be: sour milk.
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Now: present plans for disposal of expended nuclear fuel involve such
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strategies as
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1> Diluting and burying it.
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2> Pouring it into old, abandoned oild wells. The Soviets tell us that it
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ought to be safe; after all, the oil stayed there fore millions of years. We
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may question their sincerity: the depleted oil wells they use for this purpose
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are all in Poland.
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3> The Pournelle method. The `No Nukes` types tell us that stretches of
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American desert have allready been rendered useless for thousands of years
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because thermonuclear bombs were tested there. Lut us take them at their word.
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Cart the nuclear wastes out into a patch of cratered desert. Put several miles
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of fence around it, and signs on the fence:
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IF YOU CROSS THIS FENCE YOU WILL DIE
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Granted, there will be people willing to cross the fence. Think of it as
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evolution in action. Average human intelligence goes up a fraction of a
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percent.
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4> Drop the radioactive waste, in canisters, into the seabed folds where
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continental plates are sliding under eachother. The radioactives would
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disappear back where they came from.
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Each of these solutions gets rid of the stuff; but at some expense, and no
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profit. What th world needs now is another genius. We need a way to turn
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radioactive wastes into wealth.
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And I believe I know the way.
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Directly. Make coins out of it.
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Radioactive money had obvious advantages.
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A healthy economy depends on money circulating fast. Make it radioactive and
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it would certainly circulate.
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Verifying the authenticity of money would become easy. Geiger couters, like
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pocket calculators before them, would become both tiny and cheap due to mass
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production. You would hear their rapid clicking at every ticket window. A
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particle accelerator is too expensive for a counterfeiter; couterfeiting would
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become a lost art.
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The economy would be boosted in a number of ways. Lead would become extremely
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valuable. Even the collection plates in a church would have to be made of lead
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(or gold). Bank vaults would have to be lead lined, and the coins separated by
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dampers. Styles of clothing would be affected. Every purse, and one pocket in
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every pair of pants, would need to be shielded in lead. Even so, the concept of
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`money burning a hole in your pocket` would take on new meaning.
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The profession of tax collecting would carry its own, well, deserved penalty.
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So would certain other professions. An Arab oil sheik might still grow
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obscenely rich, but at least we could count on his spending it as fast as it
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comes in, lest it go up in a fireball. A crooked politician would have to take
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bribes by credit card, making it easier to convict him. A bank robber would be
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conspicuous, staggering up to the teller's window in his heavy, lead-shielded
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clothing. The successful pickpocket would also stand out in a crowd. A thick
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lead-lined clove would be a dead giveaway; but without it, he could be
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identified by his sickly, faintly glowing hands. Society might even have to
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revive an ancient practice, amputating the felon's hand as a therapeutic
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measure, before it kills him.
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Foreign aid could be delievered by ICBM.
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Is this just another crazy utopian scheme? Or could the American people be
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brought to accept the radioactive standard as money? Perhaps we could. It's
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got to be better than watching green paper approach its intrinsic value. The
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cost of making and printing a dollar bill, which used to be one and a half
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cents, is rising inexorably towards one dollar (If only we could count on it
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stopping there! But it costs the same to print a twenty..).
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At least the radioactive money would have its intrinsic value. What we have
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been calling `nuclear waste`, our descendants may well refer to as `fuel`. It
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is dangerous precisely because it undergoes fission.. because it delivers
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power. Unfortunately, the stuff doesn't last thousands of years. In six
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hundred years, the expended fuel is no more radioactive than the ore it was
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mined from.
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Dropping radioactives into the sea is wasteful. We can ensure that they will
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still be around when the Earth's oil and coal and plutonium is used up, by
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turning them into money, NOW.
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Avid Niven readers will recognize this easily (Limits, p.200). But it was
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awfully funny, and I had to type it up.
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The Last Dimension AE ...................................(10megz) 214/827-5249
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