Yucca Mountain

I'm going to break with the Democratic Party here, and say that I'm for sending our nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Why? Because, despite what the protesters will tell you, Nevada is largely a wasteland. I should know, I lived there for 5 years.

Nevada is largely desolate, and, with the exception of Las Vegas, it's not the kind of land that people are clamoring to live on. The Federal government still owns a large chunk of the state, and they used to detonate nuclear bombs on it and under it. If you were given the task of choosing a location for the nation's nuclear waste, you'd want to choose someplace with a small population, stable seismic history, and ability to be defended from sabotage. Nevada meets all those criteria, and is practically the only place that does. Due to its legacy as a nuclear testing ground, it's perfect.

My parents live in the state, and they're against the Yucca Mountain plan. Why? When I asked my mom why, she said Nevada didn't produce any of the nuclear waste, so they don't think they should store it. While Nevada is blessed with the Hoover Dam, and all the electricity that comes with it, occasionally you have to look at the greater good, and in this case, that means putting all of our nuclear waste into one highly defensible and stable location, where it can be properly stored, monitored, and handled. Yucca Mountain is the best location we have.

A lot of the other fear-mongering comes from the job of transporting the nuclear waste to the storage location. This has been done for years, the DOE has been shipping nuclear waste around for a long time, with no problems. The casks that have been developed to contain the nuclear waste are almost indestructible, they're designed to survive horrific crashes, drops from large heights, fires, being submerged in water, you name it.

This is the legacy of nuclear power, you get nuclear waste, but it's relatively small and easy to contain, compared to what you get from burning coal, or other non-clean energy sources. I'm also a proponent of expanded nuclear power within the U.S. It's (relatively) clean, it's efficient, it's safe, and reliable. After Chernobyl, the thought of a nuclear plant in their state fills many with dread, regardless of the fact that our light-water reactors simply aren't possible of that type of meltdown. When our water boils off, the reaction stops, it doesn't escalate out of control, it's a fundamentally different design.

Until we've got more efficient clean energy generation capabilities, nuclear power is going to remain necessary, and we're going to need someplace to store all the waste. Yucca Mountain is the best place.

¿Quien es mas macho?

The Economist has an interesting bit on the "Manliness" competition that this election has turned into.

LET'S call it the testosterone election. John Kerry never misses a chance to surround himself with he-man veterans. George Bush looks happiest when addressing crowds of pumped-up soldiers. Mr Bush likes to spend his free time clearing brush on his Texas ranch, dressed in a sweaty T-shirt and a cowboy hat. Mr Kerry likes to spend his riding Harleys or slaughtering wildlife. Both potential leaders of the western world seem to be remarkably proud of falling off their mountain bikes.

Jimmy Johns

I was walking down College Street today, on my way to El Mariachi, the new Mexican restauraunt open near UNI in Cedar Falls, and I saw a store window with a big picture of a sub sandwich in it, and on the paper in the picture there was a familiar logo. It seemed too good to be true, so I stuck my head in and asked a guy installing drywall what was going in there, and he told me it was going to be a Jimmy John's. I was so happy, I was walking on air the rest of the way to lunch. Ever since I moved to Cedar Falls, I've missed Jimmy John's, which was practically a staple of my diet when I went to ISU. They have the greatest french bread subs, and they deliver, and they're reasonably priced. Every time I'm in Ames, I go eat at the store there, I think their bread has addictive ingredients. Now, I just have to wait for it to open...

Vaccination

I was vaccinated this morning for Hepatitis A, in preparation for my upcoming trip to Russia. I also got some Typhoid vaccine pills, which are a bit expensive at $10/pill. Thankfully, it only takes four to vaccinate you. I asked the doc if I needed to get Hepatitis B as well, and he told me no, since I wasn't going to be having unprotected sex or getting a blood transfusion while in Russia. How does he know what I'm going to do there?

Wounded TiVo

One of my TiVos took a hit last night. During an intense thunderstorm, our neighbor's tree lost a limb, which took out the powerline behind our house. After the friendly CFU folks came out and fixed it, we powered everything back up, only to find that the Toshiba TiVo/DVD player in our bedroom stutters during playback and emits an occasional KA-CHUNK noise from the hard drive. My laziness has paid off, however, as I hadn't gotten around to selling my old 60 hour Series 2 TiVo yet, so I was able to swap it back in to service. Tonight, I get to try to coax Toshiba to live up to their warranty, since the unit is only 4 months old. Update: Toshiba turned out to be quite reasonable, and if I ship the wounded TiVo back to them, they're going to send me a brand new one. I can't complain about that, considering their warranty says that after 90 days I'm supposed to pay labor.