Danielle: 10,000 tons is bullshit because it's politically generated. If the US recinded a 1978 executive order and allowed for waster refinement once again, there would be substantially less. And the majority of that weight isn't even actual spent fuel - it's largely associated materials that have been contaminated by their time in a high-neutron environment. They decay out in only a few years. Anyway, if you're in the market for 10,000 tons of waste, head out to your local landfill to see a few 100,000 tons of consumer waste leaking heavy metals into your water table. Or to ye old coal-firing electric plant and check out the mountains of ash leaching hydroxides. Everything we do generates waste, and unless we suddenly become non-corporeal beings, we're going to continue to do so. With that in mind, I'm all for the 7 orders-of-magnitude energy-per-unit-mass increase nuclear provides over any chemical reaction. And knock it off with the Chernobyl crap. The Soviets didn't respect the environment or the health of their people, and they paid the price. Bad as it's getting in the USA, we're still much better off in accountability. Start showing me mutant French (76% of their energy) and Belgians (50%) and I'll start believing you.
Disclaim as you like, the anti-nuke crowd <i>is</i> anti-technology. Which pisses me off to an exceptional degree, as most of the successes of the environmentalist movement are largely about using superior technology for higher efficiency and lower waste. Don't tell me to find better tech and then cut me off at the knees, on the word of a crowd dominated by people who wouldn't stick it out through college physics.
On space & development: I think any environmentalist should remember Apollo fondly, both for the technology payout of the effort, and for the first view of the whole world at once. Humans now have an actual picture of the entire world in their minds -- this is something that no human has ever had before the 1960s. And I think the widespread personal ability to conceptualize about the whole earth has pushed the growing understanding of the environment.
Also, we need a new frontier. Societies change fastest when some people get to escape & try something new; the results of those prototypes filter back into the parent societies. It's chaotic, but it's history.
