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Comment by lssndrdn | Hacker News Reader

Predictions of the future are always,necessarily, extrapolations of the present. Back in the 1930's, when airplanes and cars were the hot techonology of the day, it was obvious to imagine a future with flying cars. Now, we're still going through the information revolution (at least in some countries) and it's easy to imagine a future with more pervasive computational technologies.

But I wonder what the next paradigm change will be. Some (Thomas Friedman among them) say it's going to be energy revolution: cheap, clean, available energy for everyone. I think that's a pretty good bet.

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We could have had that energy revolution decades ago, but we threw it away. :) Hopefully there will be no such mistake made with solar, et al.

Are you referring to nuclear power? We didn't throw it away. Indeed, the very question of waste which can't be simply thrown away has hampered widespread nuclear plant deployment.

Nuclear is off the table until we figure out what to do with the waste.

We know what to do with the waste: burn it up in nuclear reactors. Much of what's called "waste" is really just partially-processed fuel, and the only two reasons it isn't viewed that way are, first, proliferation fear and, second, it was convenient for all the major groups involved to spread FUD about the terrible dangers of nuclear waste.

Agreed, France has an excellent nuclear power program.

Tell that to the Somalis.

The Somali pirates, who for some reason love to pillage French vessels, evolved out of fishermen, in the vacuum left by the absent government and coast guard, patrolling the shores where they fished for ships from Western (mainly European) countries dumping toxic and nuclear waste into the waters and killing the fish.

So any time I hear about how the French have their act together nuclear-wise, I have to wonder where that waste goes, and if some of it ends up off the coast of Somalia.

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