Certainly the ocean distributes solids from trenches.

Solids dissolve and mix with water. Would uranium? Well, gold mixes with water, and so does lead. So by following your closest comparison, the answer is a solid Yes.

Moreover, the uranium itself is but a fraction of the problem. It contaminates what it comes in contact with. And what it comes in contact will be distributed by the ocean rather quickly. That includes the water itself, the materials carried in it, the organisms that live by it, the containers, and so on and so forth.

To be more specific about process, water washes away stone, no? We certainly do not have to imagine the sea lifting and tossing entire rods around, possible as that certainly is, to recognize the certainty of the eventual erosion of the materials.

This is a virtual guarantee of millennia of contamination.

There is also the possibility of accumulating a critical mass in any of those areas - just as one cherry possibility. A true full-on explosion would be unlikely even so, but the release of tremendous force and considerable distribution would certainly result.

Of course the uranium previously existed, and though you do not seem to take the enrichment process into account, that process itself accounts for only a small percentage of the total radioactivity from uranium.

However, it does make a difference where the stuff goes. The Marianas and other trenches are deep, but they are not bottomless, not discrete from the rest of the ocean, and not even an ecosystem altogether apart from humans.

The major difference between uranium buried deep in the ground and uranium sunk deep in the ocean is that solid ground is considerably less mobile and dynamic -- less fluid, one might say -- than the ocean.

Nope, the trenches are a no-go even to the agencies that open the plants when they're shut down and blow the emissions over the countryside the better to send workers in to clean the pressurizers.

The BG radiation of the ocean has already risen measurably, and will continue to do so from the uranium and plutonium already there.

That "safety record" is not public.

"The safety argument has largely been settled with the exemplary safety record of commercial nuclear power (far better than coal-fueled plants) and inherently-safe designs like pebble bed reactors."

Sez you, and say the proponents of nuclear power, but for me it is not settled, nor is it settled for any environmentalist or anyone who seriously considers the dangers involved in producing nuclear power or even obtaining the raw materials needed to produce it. I'm not saying that coal powered electricity is better. I am saying that nuclear is not an acceptable replacement for coal energy any more than it is acceptable for the replacement of petroleum based energy.

Federal funding should only be given to the development of safe, sustainable energy such as wind, solar, hemp, algae and whatever else I'm leaving out.

Instead of asking how much power we need, why don't we first ask ourselves how much power that's being guzzled is not really needed in the first place? Different people use different amounts of power. Even then, it is not as if solar and wind power cannot fulfill the basic and critical needs. If people want more then they'll just have to learn to find ways to conserve and be energy efficient. I have no problem with that.

Actually, wind, solar, water, and conservation can work based on technology immediately available.

Industry estimates here have a huge built-in distortion.

Large companies ask the question that interests them, not the one that interests the public. They call green methods inadequate because they cannot use them gainfully.

Here's the most basic distortion, one among many. To run photovoltaic cells or windmills, power companies need to purchase and maintain land to house them. In most contemporary economies, this constitutes a large expense, which the company, naturally, factors in.

However, land with windmills and photovoltaic cells can be farmed, lived on, and driven past. Those of us farming, residing, or in charge of highways can use much of that land at little or no added cost.

Next, demand is not at all fixed. Europeans live nicely - better than Americans, if you can believe the stats - on a bit above 1/4 of per capita American energy use. And, frankly, the Europeans could do better.

The trouble is that this is not primarily a matter of personal decisions alone, but one that requires public or mass action to influence government and corporate decisions.

Government would subsidize public transport and green housing than power plants if it wanted to reduce carbon footprint instead of maximize crony profit.

I'll assume for the moment that the benefits of public transport are obvious.

State and local building codes are badly out of date, and need be changed to accommodate green housing. Earthen houses can eliminate or virtually eliminate the energy used in heating and cooling and produce their own energy for lighting. Many of these houses cost far less than conventional houses to produce.

Google "Cal-Earth," "Michael Reynolds" and "Earthships," and "Cob construction," or "the cob cottage company" for three excellent, affordable, and in at least some cases easily learned techniques.

I lived in a Mexican desert in an adobe house -- that is, a dirt house, no concrete -- with a roof made of metal and mesquite trunks. Outside of the nifty indoor toilet and running water, the total materials and tools cost from an American building supplies store would have run to several hundred dollars. Nearly identical houses at the center of the town had remained occupied continuously since the 1700's. When I asked the residents about repairs, they said that every few years they had to wet the walls, smear mud ("good" mud, with the proper mix of clay) on the places where the water ran by or where the pigs scratched their sides. Thatch roofs had to be changed regularly, metal roofs every few decades.

Check out Reynolds' Earthships. It's amazing to see the snows on the outside of the house in sub-zero temperature in the New Mexico desert, and look through the window to see fruit on the banana tree growing inside.

What am I doing living in a little box inside a big box?

8-10 inches of precipitation per year outside of Taos, and Reynolds has houses that provide their own water and electricity.

And lots of compromises are available.

I would move back to that adobe house in a snap, and I may work out a way to do it.

At Cal-Earth in Hesperia, California, they have all-earthen structures that have passed California earthquake codes. City testers were so suspicious that they continued to apply more and more force until their testing equipment started to come apart.

Existing buildings stand less than 20 miles off the San Andreas Fault. The older ones have seen several earthquakes and have not suffered a crack. They're gorgeous, with beautiful interior curves and arches, gloriously comfortable without AC on 100-degree plus days, and about 1/3 the cost of the buildings around them.

In Oregon and Northern California, people have made not only liveable but quaint and beautiful cob houses with hundreds of dollars of materials (if roofing materials do not grow on the lot, you'd add a few thousands for the roof).

Why dirt cheap? It's dirt, folks - or soil, as I suspect they'd correct me.

People mix soil with the right % of clay and sand with straw, and sculpt the house. There are some details about a base in the soil, and they need broad overhanging roofs in rainy weather, but there are examples of this architecture standing in Wales after hundreds of years.

Children and elderly people, men and women, participate in the construction.

...

So, what do we propose? Is it more practical to build a multi-billion dollar plant that spews radioactivity over everything downstream and downwind because we cannot assemble a line of grandmothers to pat together the proper confection of mud, clay, and straw?

This is not rejected because it's impractical for us; it's rejected because it's unprofitable for Edison, Westinghouse, Bechtel, Halliburton & their fellow travellers.

You're wrong about the potential of even current technology, but you're correct in that compromises will be needed. I'd LOVE to shut down all nuclear and coal plants immediately, for instance, but that would kill a lot of people.

You are correct that we will need to compromise some to get time to retool.

Since rebuilding nuclear technology is particularly expensive, I suspect that a reasonable answer is to shut the plants down gradually as they become less tenable -- as the steam generators rot out with rust, basically.

But to do that will require considerable resources devoted to retooling. The plants get more dangerous with age.

I would particularly welcome input from anyone who has seen these numbers crunched!

Another point I would broadcast is that the idea that Americans "live well" because they spend vast amounts of energy is false. The idea that conservation would primarily require "sacrifice" is ridiculous.

It's like calling the work to fix a leaky gas tank a sacrifice.