If Radioactivity Is So Unacceptably Dangerous …

According to Timothy Noah (seen via Rand Simberg), nuclear power is unacceptably dangerous owing to the enormous amount of time the nuclear waste takes to decay. Apparently he believes in the following two premises:

• There is no safe dose of radioactivity.
• We should be concerned about future generations for the indefinite future.

If we accept both of those, it is easy to see that we must use up the dangerous natural uranium in reactors as soon as possible. Each uranium atom will release 50 MeV before it decays to lead over the next few billion years. The nuclear fission products will release half that.