Muller_Essay

Nuclear Waste: Small Potatoes In Richard Muller’s article “Nuclear Waste” he suggests that nuclear waste storage isn’t as large of a concern as one might initially suggest. He explains that in order for hazardous nuclear waste to pose a danger there would have to be 1% or greater chance for it to leak and contaminate our society. He explores the idea that there is a greater chance of being exposed to the same radioactive material by drinking Los Angeles’ tap water. Muller even declares that, “I find the dangers of storing our waste at Yucca Mountain to be small compared to the dangers of not doing so, and significantly smaller than many other dangers we ignore” (208). I persist that Muller is absolutely correct with his assertion; the current focus should not be on potential leakages of a secure storage site but on the poisons we pump into our bodies at alarming rates. As a teenager I lived in Las Vegas, Nevada; during this time the debate of Yucca Mountain was a hot button issue. The topic nuclear waste was debated on the news, in school, and amongst locals. Most individuals I knew were up in arms over the transport and storage of nuclear waste into our state. However, this was considerably small potatoes compared to the obesity epidemic sweeping the state. In the fast paced environment of Las Vegas residents are all about getting tasty food quick. Many people fail to acknowledge that delicious food isn’t necessarily good for their overall health. As a society, we are consuming a large amount of material that is hazardous to our health. We are far more likely to die of cancer, heart disease, or diabetes from the food that we eat than we are to die from the hypothetical nuclear waste leaking out of Yucca Mountain. Muller puts it simply, “Raise the standards, increase the safety, do more research, study the problem in greater depth and in the process you will improve safety and frighten the public” (213). If we applied these same concepts to our food supply we could dramatically improve the quality of life of everyone. The nuclear waste that Muller speaks about can be alarming. However, as Muller points out, “Every way I do the calculation, I reach the same conclusion: waste leakage is not a great danger” (212). As Muller suggests there is a greater danger that the American public is facing; and as I see it the danger is the things that are currently making their way into our food supply. The foods that we consume are packed full of preservatives, chemicals, dyes, and who knows what else. Everything that we can pick up from the grocery store has been processed in some way. Think about the meat that we buy; the animals are packed full of hormones and fed, you guessed it, processed foods! Even vegetables go through rigorous chemical treatments before they touch our dinner plates. Next time you go to the food store pick up a bag of chips and look at the ingredients list. How many ingredients do you recognize as natural' Maybe the first ingredient will be something like wheat flour, but after that, most ingredients are words that are unrecognizable by anyone other than a chemist. Our bodies are not meant to process the chemicals that are intended to help increase the products shelf life. These chemicals are tough to break down and our bodies end up storing the toxins from these chemicals. It is thought that the toxic chemicals that our bodies store are partially to blame for increased cancer rates. If there is any evidence that chemicals in food cause an increase in cancer, why is our food system still being flooded with these products' The American public has a valid concern about the nuclear waste potentially leaking out and reaching the public. However, as Muller points out, “Colorado, where much of the uranium is obtained, is a geologically active region full of faults and fissures and mountains rising out of the prairie, and its surface rock contains about a billion tons of uranium. The radioactivity in this uranium is 20 times greater than the legal limit for Yucca Mountain” (211). With regards to the food supply, some people argue that no matter how we obtain food there will always be toxins and poisons entering our body. I argue that food grown in a personal garden can be controlled by the individual rather than being polluted by the big business farmers whose primary focus is profits rather than quality of the product. Also, as a hunter, I know that any animal I harvest during hunting season has not been pumped full of chemicals by companies trying to plump the animals up to fatten their wallets. The deer I kill will last my family 4 to 6 months and isn’t force fed and injected with growth hormones. Rather than arguing that no matter what a person does they will still have a certain amount of exposure to toxins, people should be more concerned how to minimizing their exposure. Like Muller, I find there are far more important issues facing Americans than a hypothetical leakage or exposure to nuclear waste. One of the most important issues people should be concerned with is the improvement of their current health. The food we consume today is tainted with toxins and poisons. Therefore, the food supply is causing the American people to slowly kill themselves by way of consumption. From the grocery stores, to sit down restaurants, to fast food restaurants, we are all consuming chemically treated and highly processed foods that cause cancer, heart disease, and many other health problems. Compared to the immense amount of french-fries this country consumes nuclear waste storage is small potatoes.