Organized Crime Cleaning Up With Nuclear Waste 138
mdsolar writes "The Mafia has been involved with waste disposal for forever but they seem to be getting very interested in nuclear waste disposal these days. In Europe they scuttle ships containing nuclear waste in the sea. Now in Japan, their Asian counterparts are angling for disposal contracts resulting from the Fukushima nuclear disaster."
So... (Score:5, Insightful)
So, when this starts happening in the US, I'm guessing Yucca mountain will sound a lot more appealing to all those naysayers. Just a guess, though.
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Wanna know how I know you're clueless?
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I think he intended 'lower levels of waste' to mean less of it, not lower radiation levels. I understand what you're getting at, though.
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when we should have recycled the waste and turned it into lower level wastes with shorter half lives.
There is an inverse relationship between radioactivity and half-life. The idea of having something with both less emissions and a shorter half-life is nonsense.
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If you assume energy content is constant, yes, but what if it isn't constant (such as if, say, "recycling" it meant using it as fuel some more)?
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Actually, in all fairness, they oppose humans in general. In an ideal environmentalist's world, every human would just commit suicide and return earth to the pristine paradise that it was before our evil presence--a world where no species ever goes extinct (because only mankind causes animals to go extinct), the weather is always mild (because all bad weather is caused by the global warming that we are solely responsible for), and peace and kindness rule the land.
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Hmm, maybe someone should let them know about their impact on the Earth and suggest that they protect the environment by removing themselves from it.
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Could we get them classified as a hate group so they no longer get tax advantages.
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If? In the last 15 years 84 incidents happened worldwide.
http://www.ccnr.org/SMA_Radioactive_Scrap.pdf [ccnr.org]
http://www.epa.gov/radtown/orphan-sources.html [epa.gov]
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There's really no difference in illegal activity between undocumented immigrants and natural-born citizens. Except that whole illegal-immigrant label, really.
So if you are singling out illegal immigrants as a source of crime, while ignoring the same statistical prevalence in the majority population of the nation, then you are a racist. Or a bigot, if you prefer to see brown-skinned white-folks as genetic white-folks, though the rest of us know you're really ticked off because they're as different as anoth
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That will not work. What will happen is people will slow down on hiring 'brown people'. Too risky.
The national registry get 3 out of every 100 people wrong. Flags them as illegal. So that's 3 out of 100 people that can't get work.
Having the companies do more then check ID puts too much of a burden on the employer.
Here is the fix:
Stop caring about it. Now everyone competes at the same wage. No one can undercut wages because they aren't hiring Illegal that can't turn them in.
The response to that solution will
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Also assuming only brown people come here illegally is a sure sign of stupidity and racism.
And short memory. The entire furor died down back when they caught that hot russian spy woman and everyone realized that white people like them could be accused of being illegal too, and realized white Americans don't really carry around anything that proves their citizenship. Now everyone's forgotten about that, and the calls for people to carry their papers are coming back too.
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Stop caring about it.
The IRS will like to have a talk with you.
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The response to that solution will tell you who is racist.
Because clearly the only possible opposite viewpoint is racism. I'm glad you're here to tell us these things.
Thanks for giving us the 2011 version of "You're either with us, or with the terrorists."
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And the thing is, when you repeat such things often enough, people will join the terrorists out of sheer annoyance. That's one of the reasons why nationalists parties are on the rise in Europe - they don't tell people they're evil racists who sould be ashamed of having a national or cultural identity. And any at
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This is utter crap.
I know lots of white people that would love to have a Job right now. *ANY* damn job. And can't because someone that doesn't have the right has it instead.
- Dan.
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Sure, and the person who hired them for 50% of the wage of a documented worker because they know the person is illegal and can't complain, all the while pocketing most of the extra 40%, is blameless, right? It's only those brown folks' fault for wanting to leave a country with few economic opportunities or fleeing drug-war fueled violence pushed by the USA.
So here's the kicker, when global warming (that thing all the neo-cons and Tea Partiers are in denial about) really gets to messing with the livability i
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Sure, and the person who hired them for 50% of the wage of a documented worker because they know the person is illegal and can't complain, all the while pocketing most of the extra 40%, is blameless, right? It's only those brown folks' fault for wanting to leave a country with few economic opportunities or fleeing drug-war fueled violence pushed by the USA.
This is the natural pull of a Free Economy, New laws are being laid down to penalize these practices, and enforce existing Laws.
http://www.facebook.com/StandWithArizona [facebook.com]
So here's the kicker, when global warming (that thing all the neo-cons and Tea Partiers are in denial about) really gets to messing with the livability in the tropics through more powerful tropical storms, flooding, heatwaves, etc., the migration from Central America through the Mexico border is going to make the last few decades look like a trickle.
Not a denier, and not a chicken little, but congressional hearings have exposed gore's financial interest and research bias. Where ice shelves melt on one side of the polar caps, they have been growing on the other. Furthermore there have been demonstrated cycles of temperature extremes going back thousands of years. Recordings with a variet
Just when I thought I was out... (Score:3)
...they keep pulling me back in...to the emergency room for more blood transfusions.
RAD +1!
model of management and commitment (Score:1)
Re:model of management and commitment (Score:5, Insightful)
The biggest problem with nuclear power is exemplified by a headline I saw when the earthquake happened: "NUCLEAR REACTOR BLOWS UP! 10000 DEAD!". In very small letters underneath: "Earthquake was the biggest in Japan history".
Re:model of management and commitment (Score:4, Informative)
Never mind the fact that the 10000 dead was the earthquake, not the reactor. Sensationalist media is the biggest contributor to stupidity in this world.
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Never mind the fact that the 10000 dead was the earthquake, not the reactor. Sensationalist media is the biggest contributor to stupidity in this world.
The earthquake itself didn't kill that many people - the resultant tsunami did.
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It might be the other way around: sensationalist media exists because of stupidity in this world... :)
<sarcasm> Why do we assume people are stupid because of something? Many of them were just born that way ;) </sarcasm>
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Half the population has an IQ LOWER than 100. Just sayin...
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scared yet?
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Not saying I'm 100% sure it didn't happen; I'd just like to see the proof before I buy into your malarkey.
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I can't remember the exact words, but I read a headline in exactly that spirit.
How many reports have you seen about the Fukushima reactors? How many reports have you seen about the oil refineries that blew up in the earthquake? How many reports about potential nuclear contamination? How many reports about the diseases that may be spread by the decomposing organic matter that has been spread around?
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It's a pretty common newspaper tactic, there's a reason the front of the newspaper often looks like it was designed by someone who just found out that you can change the font size.
Re:model of management and commitment (Score:5, Informative)
I've seen such sensationalist headlines with my own eyes
this is a slashdot comment about CNN headline from one of the earliest entries about fukushima
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2036214&cid=35478190 [slashdot.org]
It's disgusting; CNN.com's current main page headline is "Japan's reactor problems mount; death toll rises."
WTF?
which was a reply to another post saying that summary makes it look like the deaths are the direct result of fukushima (which it did).
iamrmani was one of several people reporting updates on the Fukushima Nuclear plant that has been struggling following last Friday's disaster. A third explosion (Japanese) has been reported, along with other earlier information. MSNBC has a story about similiar reactors in the US. We also ran into a story which predicts that there won't be significant radiation. But already Japan is facing rolling blackouts, electricity rationing, evacuating the area around the plant, and thousands dead already.
example of article
http://ibnlive.in.com/news/blast-at-japan-nuclear-plant-death-toll-rises/145722-2.html [in.com]
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That may not be the headline, But that is how it seems. They cover the earthquake and the nuclear plant problems in the same story explaining the death counts all together.
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I still think we should be working harder on getting fusion working, as that solves a lot of the actual technical issues of fission (such as what to do with waste that will outlast humanity even if it stays contained).
As for the scuttling of ships carrying nuke waste, those pose all kinds of threats. Not just the immediate ones of pollution, etc, but they also constitute a source of extremely deadly material that will kill either through radiation or toxicity, parked in fairly accessible locations right off
Re:model of management and commitment (Score:5, Insightful)
scuttling ships full of dangerous waste is pretty terrible even if it's not radioactive.
There's no shortage of non nuclear mutagens which aren't radioactive and they'll fuck you up just as badly, there's no shortage of industrial wastes which don't have any half life at all.
it's more disgusting that this appears to only really be getting attention when the word nuclear is attached.
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The waste from a modern 4th gen plant will last 200-500 years, depending on the material, and it will burn existing waste.
So no, not longer then humanity..probably *looks up for comets.*
AS for the ship, it depends on depth and containment type. We could put are waste in the trench at the bottom of the ocean, and there would be no change in the ocean. however bury material that we might find out how to use later in a permanent way isn't the best thing to do.
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Should probably qualify that: the waste from *some* of the 4th gen designs would be no more radioactive than the natural ore the fuel came from within 200-500 years.
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Big reactors, big prizes, big problems (Score:4, Interesting)
With the current situation of subsidised faux-commercial civilian nuclear power and very long construction times the odds of getting highly professional management for the entire time until commissioning instead of a well connected horse judge or two is very low. Running such a project is full of pork and prestige which tends to squeeze out the merely competant for those that are seen to deserve a reward. Because so much capital is at stake and expectations are high it generates a situation where the lies, evasions and shortcuts seen in Japan maintain the prestige of the position in the short term unless something goes wrong to expose how badly things are run, so such lies become the default. It's about the size of the project and the perceived commercial gains after careful cooking of the financial books - research reactors don't seem to suffer from it due to clear goals and not being as desirable as a nepotistic reward.
We've had it very clearly demonstrated to us since the 1970s that big reactors that require active cooling are bad news for many reasons. Smaller reactors have the promise of greater safety and significantly shorter construction times - they have the potential to get built while the initial goal is still in sight and are not seen as such a big deal so may not attract the flies that will instead go to corrupt other pots of honey.
It gets attention and sums up the nepotism problem (Score:2)
Face it - some important projects are plagued by party boys in the shape of men that are not in their management roles b
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Yes, yeas it isd.
We almost ahd it, but the people started lying about Yucca mtn and the politicians are to afraid to tell those people to STFU and let the scientists and engineers who are experts in this fields do their job.
Hell. most people don't know what nuclear waste consists of, how it is moved, what it is stored in, or how much(little) there is.
At this point, they should be run buy the government. Take away bonus and people using it to get rich, and you take away the incentive to cheat. Private indust
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Hell. most people don't know what nuclear waste consists of, how it is moved, what it is stored in, or how much(little) there is.
1,188,273 Tons of depleted Uranium, Half life of 4.5 billions years and the storage only lasts decades and had already leaked! [wikipedia.org]
Depleted Uranium is extremely toxic.
So enough crap about there not being much or the half-life being short etc.
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Oh god. Here we go.
Read the MSDS on water sometime. Most things are extremely bad for you when inhaled as a dust. Supposing for a second that spent fuel was a useless health hazard, refining uranium for reactor use is much more efficient than using natural uranium. By removing the U-235 from the natural uranium extracted from soil or ocean water, you are taking a nasty substance OUT of the environment and putting it to good use. If the complaint is that we don't want uranium to be highly concentrated then w
Re:model of management and commitment (Score:4, Insightful)
The fact that it has a half life as old as the universe demonstrates that it is very very very mildly radioactive - any less radioactive and it would be considered stable. The "depleted" term is a giveaway.
The main risk is that it is a heavy metal, like lead, and can bioacumulate. We just need to bury it somewhere with no liquid water and it will be fine.
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The U.S. Army has commissioned ongoing research into potential risks of depleted uranium and other projectile weapon materials like tungsten, which the U.S. Navy has used in place of DU since 1993. Studies by the U.S. Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute conclude that moderate exposures to either depleted uranium or uranium present a significant toxicological threat.[100]
Note how is says "depleted uranuim or uranium" - the toxicity is similar.
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Toxicity =/= Radiation
Yes, it is a heavy metal which will poison you, all uranium is.
No, it is not highly radioactive, it is depleted, the radiation hazard is near nil.
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You people are un-fucking-believable, not matter how bad nuclear power gets you just don't get that humans can't yet be trusted to manage it safely. Nuclear accidents, oh well it won't happen again. Corruption? Mafia dumping the shit in the sea? I swear the only thing that would stop the nuclear zealots here would be all out nuclear war.
Americas politicians are corrupt and can't be trusted to manage nuclear power.
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You know, when you say things like this in response to a correct and logical statement, you are the one who looks like a zealot.
DU is 60% less radioactive than U. A piece of paper stops the radiation coming off of it. This is FACT, not opinion.
DU is a heavy metal, a little more dangerious than lead, it is not a radiation hazard unless it gets inside you.
There are many well known ways to deal with Alpha emitters, this is a solved problem. The problem with dealing with the waste is a human issue, zealots d
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"DU is 60% less radioactive than U."
So not much less radio-active then, like I said - would you drink 40% of a pint of cyanide - the point is that we are now going to have a million tons of radioactive crap lying round for the next 4.5 billion years, god only knows how many revolutions and govt's we'll have in that time, we don't need crap like du sitting about. Yucca mountain sounds good to me.
Look at this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium#Uranium_hexafluoride [wikipedia.org]
"About 95% of the depleted uranium
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Starting with ridiculous overkill like that, of course 60% reduction isn't meaningful.
I know - that's the point, Uranium is extremely deadly and depleted uranium is also extremely deadly, it's called depleted because it's no longer useful as a fuel in the reactor is was in, not because it's deadlyness is depleted. So where uranium emits N radiation per hour depleted uranium emits 40% of N radiation per hour - or can you show that this is not correct.
btw a pint is 568ml...googles to check... ah - english pints kick usa pints asses!!!!
You say my analogy is bad, but yours is devoid of logic and
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You realize that DU is an alpha emitter, right? The radiation it gives of only penetrates a few inches of air before it loses it's energy. A sheet of paper will stop the radiation from depleted Uranium.
The only radiological concerns from DU are if you ingest it somehow - breathe it in, eat it, inject it, etc.; and even then the heavy metal toxicity is likely to kill you before any radiological damage would. The World Health Organization says that an equal mass of DU would emit 60% less radiation than a l
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Mod parent up.
I'm always surprised at how energetic the pro-nuke zealots are on /.
That's probably because of the amount of misinformation coming from many of the anti-nuclear zealots.
The fact is nuclear energy has some nasty-ass waste AND IT SUCKS.
Fair comment as far as it goes. The pro-nuclear argument is that despite this, the alternatives are worse.
Yes I know there are other designs that don't make the 4.5-billion-year stuff.
The '4.5-billion-year stuff' was made before the earth formed, not by us, and in any case is only mildly radioactive.
That folks say renewables will "never" work is also irritating.
Who seriously say that though?
I don't think I've ever seen anyone argue against renewables forming part of the mix. Hydroelectric power is great for load balancing, and in the right circum
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That's probably because of the amount of misinformation coming from many of the anti-nuclear zealots.
Currently, and especially since the Fukushima disaster, it has appeared to me that most of the disinformation, FUD and blatant lies were on side of the nuclear islamists; I'm thinking of arguments about radioactivity of bananas, nothing wrong coming out of Fukushima, the quake/tsunami being an incredibly rare and unpredictable event, anyone concerned about nuclear contamination being a "luddite", "hippie", "joe-six-pack", "moron", etc, etc. I find this more annoying than simple uninformed fear of layman peo
Nothing to worry about (Score:5, Funny)
Now that we finally have a free market solution to this problem, I'm sure that there's nothing to worry about and everything will be fine.
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The Mafia is about as monolithic as Anonymous is. It's only a monopoly to those on the outside.
Goes back to the Italian Rennaisance (Score:2)
Or perhaps even earlier to Maximus Recyclimus, who engineered the waste management system in the 2nd century B.C.E. Roman Republic.
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corrcet. anyone could dump the waste in the ocean..or next to a kids school, or what ever.
Pssst.. the mafia isn't a single organization.
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just to get this clear:
a perfectly free market is impossible.
no ifs, no buts.
let's move on to something more realistic.
This in africa (Score:2, Informative)
This is one region Somali pirates were helping with. By scaring ships out of their coast, where a ton of the waste was being dumped, local fisheries had better catches and better business.
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wait (Score:3, Insightful)
i thought the free market fairy took care of all problems, and government regulation is for freedom-destroying control freaks
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i thought the free market fairy took care of all problems, and government regulation is for freedom-destroying control freaks
Well, this story seems to confirm that impression. We have free enterprise in the form of organized crime expediters triumphing over the tyrannical forces of regulation.
You can't make a highly radioactive omelet without dropping a few dozen fuel rods over the side, amirite?
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Re:wait (Score:5, Insightful)
truth:
the free market is best in some things. example: grocery store
the government is best in some things. example: health care
not truth:
the free market solves all problems
the government solves all problems
are we clear now?
don't read into my words a position i didn't take and then react to that
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the government is best in some things. example: health care
debatable, my country proves the opposite: ungodly long lines, months if not years of waiting even for potentially life saving procedures, people picking up private insurance even with 8% of their wage already taken to fund public hc. If you said 'something that is bound to be a natural monopoly' then i would be willing to agree with you.
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'something that is bound to be a natural monopoly'
then you agree with me
because
'something that is bound to be a natural monopoly' is ALWAYS the government, and you are just allergic to the terminology, even though conceptually you and i understand each other
Incompatable with a free market (Score:2)
If one of those applied to civilian nuclear power there would not be an industry at all. Taxpayers money is behind every single nuclear power plant on earth. The high capital cost and very long construction times mean that the short term focused world of commerce is just not interested in financing nuclear power. That's not to say nuclear power is bad (although the clueless fanboys that only want to hear loud cheering will see it that way), ju
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Don't blame the hippies or others with no say at all for a lack of new generation plants - blame the bankers and governments.
And blame the end of the cold war arm race, because without the prospect/need to produce large amounts of nuclear weapons, civil nuclear power generation loses most of its appeal and becomes again the very risky, dirty and financially unsound business it truly is.
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And how much of this is because of any inherent difficulty in nuclear power, and how much because a government can simply decide to force-shut your plant to please someone's voters?
If there was a *
Need more science in schools (Score:2)
I suggest looking into the subject a little more so that you have a bit more of a defence against lying PR and don't come across as looking so out of touch with reality. The nuclear stuff in the kW range that goes into satellites is very interesting, would be a good starting point and may save you future embarrassment here. Nuclear probably does have a future with small reactors in the tens of MW but the status quo is huge incredi
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No, they would come up with some absurd excuse or other to oppose it, such as blaming all incidents of cancer on it or something. Greenpeace hates nuclear power because that's part of their core ideology, and its rationalizations of that hate are just that: rationalizations.
St
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Hopefully, for the USA, we will do it differently (Score:2)
More mdsolar pseudo-factual trolling (Score:5, Insightful)
From the first article linked, there is a single informant that claims nuclear material was aboard a scuttled ship. The article as linked provides no further information, but mere allegation is sufficient for mdsolar to blame nuclear power.
In the actual article, one will note that there is no actual speculation about the Yakuza having any ill-intent. Indeed, it seems to be a general article about how the Yakuza win contracts in construction and cleanup. And after a massive earthquake and tsunami, there's lots of cleanup to be done.
As an interesting aside, he article claims that the Yakuza get 3% of the total construction in Japan. I see no reason to suspect that wouldn't include projects related to all forms of energy. I trust mdsolar would agree with my "Japanese solar power in bed with organized crime" headline.
There are legitimate gripes about nuclear power. Indeed, the numbers I've seen suggest operating costs that aren't substantially below any other forms of energy. But the sort of fear campaign spread by mdsolar (someone who himself stands to profit from such fears, see his profile for links) is unacceptable.
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It's entirely acceptable. It would still be acceptable if he tried to conceal his beliefs, although somewhat annoying.
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Not surprising (Score:5, Interesting)
That they're doing this now is really to be expected, and not as alarming or terrible as the article would seem to suggest. This has been going on with criminal groups in Japan for generations, and isn't likely to stop any time soon.
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every now now and then, organized crime starts spontaneously turning into government again. i read somewhere that during the rodney king riots, the chinese gangs (tong/triads/whatever) that all the chinese-owned businesses in the area had been paying "protection" money to for so many years actually showed up and protected them from the rioters.
cough up the cabbage, Vito... (Score:1)
or you'll find yourself six feet under in depleted uranium boots sleeping with the mutant fishes in the nuclear waste dump.
Hell of a business model. (Score:2)
Sales, to prospective account: "Yeah, we can get rid of that for you, but it's gonna cost. That shit's dangerous, and there's a stack of regulations as tall as your beautiful daughter (whom it would be a shame for anything to happen to, by the way) that we have to follow to the T. Price per pound is gonna be three, four figures at least."
Engineering, to Capo: "Yeah, we can dump that for you. You want the barge back? Effectively cheaper to just sink the whole thing. Nickel a ton, if we don't have to bu
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i would love 5 meals a day including ricotta.
man, the mob know how to live
No doubt.. (Score:2)
..their service will be the lowest cost bidder, which is all you need to win a bid. Expect glowing reviews :-(.
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Well, it's *about* refuse.. :-)
what is the damage if.... (Score:2)
If all the nuclear waste was sent to an island like hawaii that had a volcano, then all the materials were sent down inside the volcano, would that not sort of take care of all the crap we deal with such as contamination and all....I know it sounds stupid in sorts, but if someone gave me 10000 tons of nuclear waste to dispose of, and 10 millions dollars to do it, i would transport it there, and drop it in, no worries of barrels leaking, water being contaminated, etc....all would be disintegrated.
I know the
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>Idiot. Volcanos spit stuff OUT
Wow, are all volcanoes active and spewing things out...or are there some that are inactive and could be used to do such tings with...???
I really have no clue....do you?
Is this any surprise? (Score:2)
Re:Criminal Enterprise (Score:4, Funny)
I think that if one aspect of the nuclear power cycle is a criminal enterprise, then perhaps the whole thing is.
Just like the banksters.
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It's worse, the whole civil nuclear industry is just a fig leaf to make nuclear weapons more acceptable to the public. Google "Atoms for peace".
That is why, to this day, the IAEA is able to censor the WHO when it comes to nuclear accidents.
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