Storing Toxic Stuff

While searching for a topic about which to write this morning, I found this very interesting Los Angeles Times article I put into my blog fodder file back in May: Yucca and Gitmo and What They Share, by Jonah Goldberg. It's a prime example of the wonderful piece I wish I were smart enough to write myself. Take a minute to read it. I'll wait.

The point of Mr Goldberg's article is this: there are two places our government has chosen to store deadly items.

Yucca Mountain, Nevada, is intended as the permanent repository for nuclear material so deadly that it will be toxic for tens of thousands of years (my blog post with the all-time record for number of hits - Don't Dig Here! - dealt with the problem of designing signs to warn people of the danger of this site far into an unimaginably distant future).

Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on the other hand, is the temporary repository for people perceived to be so deadly they can't be imprisoned anywhere else (Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Ramsi Bin al Shibh, and other mass murderers, for example).

Both sites are the subject of moves to close them down and prevent their use, and both sets of arguments ignore critical realities.

If we never allow Yucca Mountain, located in one of the most remote and inhospitable corners of the country, to open and store deadly radioactive material, how do we store the stuff? The nuclear industry advertises itself as a clean and environmentally responsible alternative to oil and coal, but we've got to store the deadly by-products somewhere...and nobody wants it in their back yard, no matter how far away that back yard is.

If we close Guantanamo, we've still got to put the inmates somewhere. Many of them can probably be released and of those, some will probably be pissed off enough to go back to killing Americans. But some of them are so toxic that, like radioactive waste, they'll be deadly forever. What do we do with them? In most cases, their home countries don't want them back, preferring to leave the problem on our hands. Do we try them as criminals? Take them out back and shoot them? Drop them into a vacant oubilette (look it up) somewhere and forget about them?

I wish I had the answer to both problems, because both are critically important. And both Yucca Mountain and Guantanamo are routinely condemned by people who offer no realistic alternative to them. I don't care if you object to either one, that's your right. But if you don't have a better alternative, shut up and color.

If I were king, I think I'd kill two birds with one stone: I'd open the Yucca Mountain repository tomorrow and use one of its galleries to house the people from Guantanamo.

That wasn't so hard, was it? We'd have all the deadly stuff in one place, and the evil bastards from Guantanamo can read their US Government-provided korans by their own light as they glow in the dark.

No need to thank me...I'll just bask in the glow of knowing I solved two intractable problems.

So to speak.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo