3. letter to the editor about the new itu building

Dear ladies and gentlemen, please publish my
letter to the editor about the letter to the editor "no reason to be upset" from november 7th, 2011

unfortunately i have to disappoint the letter writer mr. bläss. his assumptions that the research at kit (formerly the nuclear research center) and itu in karlsruhe serve to make a meaningful contribution to today's nuclear waste disposal using transmutation are wrong.
because when it comes to transmutation, only one technique is being researched,
which is intended solely to reduce the radioactivity time of the waste from the
4. generation, i.e. the coming generation of nuclear reactors. these should then no longer radiate radioactively for 1 million years, but "only" for 1000 years - but then with further
disadvantages, such as: e.g. enormous emissions during transmutation.
 
unfortunately, there are still countries today, such as the usa, japan
and still the european union, which want to continue to rely on
nuclear energy in the future and then as a special argument use the
less long-radiating nuclear waste of the 4th generation nuclear reactors
to advertise and create new acceptance.
and this is exactly what research is to be done at the former karlsruhe nuclear research center, even though germany will definitely phase out nuclear energy in 2022.

in the mediation process, it became clear that transmutation of today's nuclear waste (highly radioactive waste or highly spent
radioactive fuel) would be purely theoretically possible, but whether
that makes sense is a completely different question. however, the by far largest
amount of low and medium radioactive
radioactive nuclear waste that has already been generated today cannot under any circumstances be reduced in its radiation duration by
transmutation.

in this respect, the hope of the letter writer that theoretically
transmutation can be used to tackle today's nuclear waste is
(unfortunately) unfounded. it "reminds me to an astonishing degree of the 'business policy' of some medieval alchemists who, with
giant promises and pointing out an always imminent breakthrough in the artificial production of gold from
base metals, continually extracted new resources from the heavily indebted princes" (quote frederic vester).

with kind regards, wolfgang oberacker

5. meeting monday, november 21st, 2011 eggenstein/linkenheim