Nuclear Waste Quotes

• The risks of transporting deadly nuclear waste, the environmental justice impacts and the long-term health effects of both these projects are untenable...We cannot afford to be silent on these important issues.

  James Cromwell

  Impact, Environmental Health, Issues

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• It's a national concern, I mean how we dispose of nuclear waste in a safe way, how we deal with this incredible amount of nuclear waste we have created over the years.

  Tom Udall

  Mean, Years, Nuclear

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• Truth is like nuclear waste: it needs to be dealt with carefully. Sometimes it needs to be buried way, way out of town. And sometimes it should never be uncovered at all.

  Gina Barreca

  Needs, Nuclear, Way

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• All the waste in a year from a nuclear power plant can be stored under a desk.

  Ronald Reagan

  Funny, Years, Office

  "Burlington Free Press" (Vermont), February 15, 1980.

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• I know that nuclear is better than fossil fuels when it comes to carbon dioxide, but nuclear energy is by no means clean. We don't know what to do with the waste we already have and it seems like a bad idea to me to make more when we have so many cleaner options such as wind and solar.

  Sheryl Crow

  Mean, Wind, Ideas

  "Learning the Truth about Coal and Nuclear Energy" by Sheryl Crow, www.huffingtonpost.com. April 18, 2007.

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• You can guarantee that mining uranium will lead to nuclear waste. You can't guarantee that uranium mining will not lead to nuclear weapons.

  Anthony Albanese

  Guarantees That, Uranium Mining, Nuclear

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• By burning nuclear waste as fuel, we believe we can power the United States cleanly for hundreds of years without ever touching new resources.

  Nathan Myhrvold

  Believe, Years, Touching

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• For 50 years, nuclear power stations have produced three products which only a lunatic could want: bomb-explosive plutonium, lethal radioactive waste and electricity so dear it has to be heavily subsidised. They leave to future generations the task, and most of the cost, of making safe sites that have been polluted half-way to eternity.

  James Buchan

  Years, Tasks, Three

  "A complete waste of energy". www.theguardian.com. September 12, 2002.

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• I can think of a number of areas in New York where three acres of nuclear waste would make the neighborhood safer to walk around in than it is now, and better lit.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Funny, New York, Humorous

  P. J. O'Rourke (2007). “All the Trouble in the World: The Lighter Side of Overpopulation, Famine, Ecological Disaster, Ethnic Hatred, Plague, and Poverty”, p.158, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• Romantics might like to think of themselves as being composed of stardust. Cynics might prefer to think of themselves as nuclear waste.

  Simon Singh

  Science, Thinking, Nuclear

  Simon Singh (2004). “Big Bang: The Most Important Scientific Discovery of All Time and why You Need to Know about it”

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• I could draw Bloom County with my nose and pay my cleaning lady to write it, and I'd bet I wouldn't lose 10% of my papers over the next twenty years. Such is the nature of comic-strips. Once established, their half-life is usually more than nuclear waste.

  Berkeley Breathed

  Writing, Years, Paper

  16 Copy quote

• For thousands of years, human beings had screwed up and trashed and crapped on this planet, and now history expected me to clean up after everyone. I have to wash out and flatten my soup cans. And account for every drop of used motor oil. And I have to foot the bill for nuclear waste and buried gasoline tanks and landfilled toxic sludge dumped a generation before I was born.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Motor Oil, Years, Feet

  Chuck Palahniuk (2005). “Fight Club: A Novel”, p.124, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Certain countries are dumping nuclear waste directly into
  the ocean, making fish flesh even more poisonous.

  Sathya Sai Baba

  Country, Ocean, Nuclear

  5 Copy quote

• Our reactor actually burns nuclear waste as fuel. So not only is it safe and powerful, it solves an important issue: It actually reduces nuclear waste instead of creating. It's the reactor of your dreams.

  Nathan Myhrvold

  Dream, Powerful, Creating

  6 Copy quote

• All the atoms we are made of are forged from hydrogen in stars that died and exploded before our solar system formed. So if you are romantic, you can say we are literally stardust. If you are less romantic, you can say we're the nuclear waste from fuel that makes stars shine.

  Martin Rees

  Stars, Shining, Atoms

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• All we need do with nuclear waste is dilute it to a low radiation level and sprinkle it over the ocean -- or even over America after hormesis is better understood and verified with respect to more diseases.

  Arthur B. Robinson

  Ocean, America, Needs

  "Republican Suggested "Sprinkling" Radioactive Waste on America". Article by Bruce Wilson, www.dailykos.com. Septmber 19, 2012.

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• What is it that you contain? The dead. Time. Light patterns of millennia opening in your gut. Every minute, in each of you, a few million potassium atoms succumb to radioactive decay. The energy that powers these tiny atomic events has been locked inside potassium atoms ever since a star-sized bomb exploded nothing into being. Potassium, like uranium and radium, is a long-lived radioactive nuclear waste of the supernova bang that accounts for you. Your first parent was a star.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Stars, Light, Long

  Jeanette Winterson (2010). “Weight”, p.3, Canongate Books

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• There is no question we need an energy policy overhaul in America. A key part of that overhaul must include moving forward aggressively with expanding nuclear energy as a renewable energy source. Storing nuclear waste is an important piece of that effort.

  Erik Paulsen

  Moving, Keys, America

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• I'm staying," Henry said, annoyed. "Why?" "Because, if I leave, it would be like abandoning two mentally challenged people in a nuclear waste dump.

  Lisa Lutz

  Two, People, Annoyed

  Lisa Lutz (2008). “Curse of the Spellmans: Document #2”, p.216, Simon and Schuster

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• The pirates are serving a purpose right now. They come from regions which have been completely ignored, and Westerners have tried to destroy these regions by their constant plundering of resources and by the illegal dumping of nuclear waste. The pirates really began in order to discourage these actions - initially. And then the business became lucrative.

  K'naan

  Order, Pirate, Nuclear

  "K’naan: Straight Outta Mogadishu". Interview with Eamon Kircher-Allen, www.motherjones.com. March/April 2009.

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• We subsidize the disposal of waste in all its myriad forms — from landfills, to Superfund cleanups, to deep-well injection, to storage of nuclear waste. In the process, we encourage an economy where 80 percent of what we consume gets thrown away after one use.

  Paul Hawken

  Nuclear, Use, Waste

  "Natural Capitalism". www.motherjones.com. March/April 1997.

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• As a child, I was aware of the widely-held attitude that the ocean is so big, so resilient that we could use the sea as the ultimate place to dispose of anything we did not want, from garbage and nuclear wastes to sludge from sewage to entire ships that had reached the end of their useful life.

  Sylvia Earle

  Attitude, Children, Ocean

  "Earth Has a Heart — It’s Blue" by Sylvia Earle, www.huffingtonpost.com. May 31, 2010.

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• Astronomy is so easy to love. ... Fairly or not, physics is associated with nuclear bombs and nuclear waste, chemistry with pesticides, biology with Frankenfood and designer-gene superbabies. But astronomers are like responsible ecotourists, squinting at the scenery through high-quality optical devices, taking nothing but images that may be computer-enhanced for public distribution, leaving nothing but a few Land Rover footprints on faraway Martian soil, and OK, OK, maybe the Land Rover, too.

  Natalie Angier

  Science, Land, Squinting

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