written 9 August, 2026
published 16 August, 2026
Reality is whole, interconnected at the deepest levels, and life works in consort. Every species ingests energy and material, and excretes "waste", but the "waste" of one species is "food" for another. Except for industrial humanity. We have forgotten our commonality of being, and produce "waste" that is toxic to life, indigestible, and widespread. Three examples are radioactive nuclear debris, plastic, and atmospheric carbon dioxide.
Industrial scale nuclear production began 80 years ago with two wartime facilities: Hanford, Washington, producing plutonium, and Oak Ridge, Tennessee, producing enriched uranium. They ended WWII, supported the Cold War nuclear arms race, and jump started commercial nuclear power reactors.
The production and use of nuclear fuel creates highly radioactive waste byproducts, toxic to life for a hundred thousand years. No chemical or biological systems can break down this waste, only time. The safe disposal of such waste requires careful handling, which is expensive and time consuming. Forty years ago, production at both military sites ended, and decontamination cleanup began. Almost $100B has already been spent, but completion is estimated to cost $1T more, and take another 60 years. Mildly radioactive debris is buried in dedicated landfills, but highly radioactive material is buried at a military geologic facility in New Mexico.
Spent fuel from commercial reactors, a much larger volume, also requires geologic disposal. Globally, 427 reactors produce 8,500 tons of this toxic waste each year. The U.S., with 92 operating reactors, began building a geologic depository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. After spending almost $100B, construction was shut down because the location was geologically unsuitable. Only Finland, with 5 reactors, has an operating depository for such waste. No other geologic site is currently in operation anywhere, so power plants store their waste on site, in specialized casks.
The two most widely known nuclear accidents, Chernobyl and Fukushima, also produced radioactive waste problems, still unresolved. Chernobyl has a human exclusion zone, and a large barn covering the power plant wreckage, which is beginning to fail. Fifteen years after the event, Fukushima hasn't yet uncovered the melted reactor core material, and they are running out of room to store the radioactive water being pumped out of the broken power reactors. Cleanup is optimistically expected to cost $1T, and take a century.
Ignoring all this, the U.S. is investing heavily in modern reactors, which will produce even more radioactive waste with no place to go.
Plastic production began in the early 20th century, but increased dramatically in the 1950's. Today, 500 million tons of plastic are produced annually. Only 9 percent is ever recycled, 12 percent is incinerated, producing toxic air pollution, and most goes into landfills. But one third is "mismanaged", tossed into the natural world, with 8 million tons entering the ocean each year.
Plastic is biologically inert and doesn't rot, so it persists long beyond its usefulness. Plastic can take 1,000 years to degrade, not transformed, but broken down into smaller and smaller pieces over time, becoming microplastic. Microplastic is found in every ecosystem, from the deepest ocean to the highest mountain peaks. Total oceanic microplastic weighs almost 100 million tons, and will soon outweigh all the fish. 100 million marine animals are killed by plastic annually.
Microplastic is found in every part of the human body. Each week, we ingest 5 grams of plastic, the weight of a credit card, from air, food, and water. Stanford Medicine Newsletter reports, "animal and cellular studies have linked microplastics to biological changes including inflammation, an impaired immune system, deteriorated tissues, altered metabolic function, abnormal organ development, cell damage and more."
Yet it is still "profitable" to create new plastic.
Unlike radioactive waste or ingested plastic, atmospheric carbon dioxide doesn't kill directly, but is increasingly heating the planet, disrupting every part of the environment, shifting us away from a climate where humans have thrived. We add 35 billion tons every year, over 1,800 billion tons since the industrial revolution began, most of which will endure for over 1,000 years.
Our economy is distorted, artificially excluding fundamental costs, which makes suicidal economic decisions look "profitable". In a unity reality, all expenses are included. Pretending they are not is bringing down our entire civilization. Short term thinking, and the illusion of separation, are obsolete perspectives. We know better. The information has been broadcast for decades. But flawed economics still dominate. We have demonstrated we are smart enough to manipulate the material world. The question is: do we have the wisdom to endure?
