A decade ago I had a job interview with the Nuclear Regulatory commission. I did not get the job. The reasons may have been that the job looked boring and I may not have shown enthusiasm, but probably mostly everything I said to the boss dude was alarmist. I knew of the geologic hazards to 3 nuclear Power Plants; Diablo Canyon and San Onofre in California and Indian Point north of New York City. He asked me about the Yucca Mountain proposed (cancelled by Obama) high level nuclear waste site, and I said I was fine with it except what was with the 10,000 years that it had to be safe? Were not the half lives of some of the elements long enough that at would still be highly dangerous in 10,000 years?

I was under the impression that Plutonium had a half life of billions of years. But, the link shows the different half lives of different isotopes of plutonium. Looks like 80 years and 24,000 years may be important.

I am saying this because reactor 3 at the disaster site has some plutonium. Our "favorite" alarmist Kaku was talking this morning about possibility of permanent dead zones. A day or 2 he was talking about dead zones in the ocean.

I need to watch CNN because their expert knows more about nuclear plants.

Let's say that Pu-238 is released, and let's say that 10 km from the plant there were 10x the safe level in the ground eventually. In 80 years there would be 5x the safe level.

Just something for you Californians (and New Yorkers) to think about when considering the future of your nuclear plants, and plans for more, and the wisdom of storing high level nuclear waste on site.
Chris

• half life plutonium