Five physics lessons for Obama

Five quick physics lessons for President-Elect Obama from the author of Physics for Future Presidents (@ Amazon). One of the lessons: nuclear power is the way to go.

It’s true that after 300 years, nuclear waste is still about 100 times more radioactive than the original uranium that was removed from the earth. But even this isn’t as scary as it sounds. If the waste is stored underground in such a way that there’s only a 10 percent chance that 10 percent of it will leak — which should be more than doable — the risk will be no worse than if we had never mined the uranium in the first place.

Muller asserts that safe nuclear power is a solved technical problem and that the use of it is a political issue.

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