Decrepit Old Fool

I often know that I’m right.  That is, when it’s SO obvious that the only way to proceed is “X,” I just don’t understand why anyone would disagree.  Then I get slapped in the face by a different concept that I just… didn’t… imagine. 

See, I’ve known for a long time that the only, completely obvious thing to do with nuclear waste is to bury it in Yucca mountain.  Sure, it isn’t a perfect option, and we might wind up saying that whole valley’s off-limits to living things someday, but leaving all that junk where it is would be madness, right?  Terrorists would steal it, or fly planes into it.  Besides, we can’t just leave it for our children or grandchildren to solve, can we?

It turns out we can.  In fact, we should.

This month’s MIT Technology Review features the cover story, The best option for nuclear waste: We don’t know how to store it forever – let’s leave the solution to a generation that will. 

• In 50 to 100 years it will be thermally much cooler (and more amenable for dense storage or processing)
• Materials technology and the science of geology might be much improved by then
• The junk might even be economically useful in the energy-intensive future
• Nuclear fuel processing techniques are still improving, becoming cleaner and more economical
• Apparently Yucca mountain’s problems as a storage location are worse than I’d realized.  Burying the stuff might make the problem much harder for our children and grandchildren to manage
• A central location would be pretty easy to defend and a heck of a lot cheaper than Yucca mountain.

Doh!  (slaps forehead)  This stunningly simple and worthwhile solution comes courtesy of imagination, not multiple-choice certainty.  Someone had to get around the rhetoric, past the orthodox solutions, and “think outside the mountain.”  This example has implications far outside the highly politicized issue of nuclear waste.  It also bears on how we teach kids to think. In a rapidly changing society, conventional thinking could literally be disastrous.

In a broader, everyday context, how many good solutions remain forever hidden from us because we can’t see through our certainty?  And does that question have any bearing on how education should be done?  Because… we’re focusing pretty hard on teaching kids to value “the right answer” above all else.  We’re not giving them much opportunity to imagine that the best solution might not be listed among the answers.