Nuclear Waste, Free Markets, and Beef

In a free market there is rarely any waste, anything left over to throw away.  We have a relative free market in food in USA.  When a steer goes in for slaughter, there is nothing left over. Every bit of the cow is sold off to somebody, for something.

When the government gets involved, externalities are charged off to the taxpayers.  GE will not pay for any of the disaster in Sendai, the Japanese taxpayers and affected people worldwide will pay.  In fact, GE pays no taxes whatsoever.  In fact, they get billions in bailouts. The storage of spent fuel is a taxpayers problem. AS our cost, GE can design big nuke without figuring in the cost of spent fuel rods, which are dangerous form one million to six MILLION years.  Absolute madness.

The mini-nukes have a spent fuel that is dangerous for 300 years, still long, but an improvement over a million years. A free market would make Toshiba include that cost in its price.  Therefore, Toshiba would work to get that number down, or find some industrial use for the waste. In a free market we would likely have nuclear power, there would just be no nuclear waste.

In USA, since we have big govt/big business, Alcoa was able to avoid storing the dangerous flouride after making aluminum, it worked with public health depts and cities to put it in the drinking water.

As government workers say, "one solution to pollution is dilution."  Right, dilute it into drinking water.

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