SOS said:
Interesting suggestion - anyone know if this is viable?
Of course it is.
I wouldn't steer you wrong:
Subductive waste disposal method is the state-of-the-art in nuclear waste disposal technology. It is the single viable means of disposing radioactive waste that ensures non return of the relegated material to the biosphere. At the same time, it affords inaccessibility to eliminated weapons material. The principle involved is the removal of the material from the biosphere faster than it can return. It is considered that ‘the safest, the most sensible, the most economical, the most stable long-term, the most environmentally benign, the most utterly obvious places to get rid of nuclear waste, high-level waste . . . The subductive waste disposal method forms a high-level radioactive waste repository in a subducting plate, so that the waste will be carried beneath the Earth’s crust where it will be diluted and dispersed through the mantle. The rate of subduction of a plate in one of the world’s slowest subduction zones is 2.1 cm annually. This is faster than the rate (1 mm annually) of diffusion of radionuclides through the turbidite sediments that would overlay a repository constructed in accordance with this method. (Rao, 2001, Current Science 81:1534-1546)
This technique has been patented in the U.S. and Canada and the process described in
detail.
As far as terrorist attacks on U.S. NPP's, they have been targeted; plans of U.S. NPP's were found with captured Al Quada in Afghanistan. And no one knows what would happen to a containment structure that was hit by a 767. The containment structures were not specifically designed to withstand such impacts. And the kinetic energy of a fully loaded 767 is an order of magnitude greater than a F-4 fighter, Cyrus. Also, the pools used to store spent fuel rods are less protected and more likely to release mass quantities of radioactive materials into the atmosphere when hit. And NPPs are also vulnerable to attack by well-trained commando teams.
As for wind, 6% of the Earth's land surface could generate 5 times the current world-wide demand for electricity. It's true that managing the supply and demand for electricity gets tricky when wind power penetrates more than 20%-70% of the total supply; but the grid makes use of gas and coal fired plants that are "part-loaded"--that is these plants have the capability to rapidly adjust their output to match fluctuations in supply and demand. And though nuclear is not intermittent, it suffers from an analogous problem in that it cannot rapidly adjust output to meet fluctuations. That is, nuclear electricity is not part-loaded; nuclear is used as base-load capacity that still needs to be tied to part-loaded gas and coal-fired plants. Unless, of course, nuclear energy was stored mechanically by pumping water for example, or perhaps by generating hydrogen. But then again, wind energy can be stored using the same methods. If this makes wind energy less efficient, well then nuclear suffers from the same problem.
As for birds, it's true that some birds are killed by turbines. But automobiles also kill birds by the millions every year, more millions of birds fly into plate glass windows, are killed by hunters, cats, and oil spills and so on, so in the grand scheme of things, wind turbines are not major sources of bird mortality. Typically, the bird card is played by those suffering from NIMBY syndrome, and not because an endangered bird species will go extinct if a wind farm is built.
As for the land that the turbines take up, a rancher that leased a section of his or her land to a wind energy outfit, would only lose about 1% of the available graze to roads and foundations. Cows and antelope don't seem to mind much.
And it's true that major areas of the U.S. are pretty marginal for wind--e.g., most of the southeast portion of the country. Still, power generated by coal-fired plants is piped some respectable distances. I believe that the Jim Bridger plant near Rock Springs Wyoming sends most of its power to California. And loss of efficiency over distances is a problem that plagues other energy sources as well. Coal can be bought at the mines in Wyoming for $10 a ton, but the Japanese pay $50 per ton because of the cost of shipping. So nuclear might have an advantage here. However, as new superconducting wires come on line, this problem will disapear. Also offshore areas are the best for wind--it's mostly steady, and with little turbulence, so off-shore wind might work in a place like SoCal where all the land has already been developed. Cape Cod is actually classified as a zone 7 wind area--the best there is.
As far as costs to poor people, if a carbon tax was charged for fossil fueled electricity, wind energy would definitely be cheaper. In fact, wind energy has received very little government support. The government only charges nuke plants one tenth of one cent per kilowatt hour to take care of the spent waste. What a ripoff! Here in Colorado, you can buy wind energy in 100 kWh blocks, if you want. The New Belgium Brewery here (they make Fat Tire) runs entirely off of wind energy--they felt guilty for pumping out so much CO2 from fermentation. Usually, the wind energy is slightly more expensive, but I guess you get the satisfaction of not contributing as much to the greenhouse effect as recompense. However, with the price spike in fossil fuels last summer, if you had bought the wind futures, you would have actually saved money. With the new 1 to 3 megawatt turbines that are now being mass produced, the cost of wind energy is going to go down while fossil fuel electricity (and nuclear if it were honestly accounted for--not to mention that most of the high grade uranium ore has already been dug up) prices are only going to increase. So, in the near future, we can expect wind energy to be the cheapest form of electricity there is.
And also the safest. When was the last time you heard of someone being killed by a wind turbine? And while coal mining is a dangerous business, it's also not the case that Americans have not been killed by nuclear radiation from the Three Mile Island debacle (
Mangano, 2004). And who knows how many people got cancer from Chernobyl? Really, we've been lucky so far, and maybe we shouldn't push it. And if 50,000 people are killed by a clandestine nuclear bomb constructed under the cover of peaceful nuclear power or because someone swiped some plutonium, are we going to count those deaths as a result of nuclear power?
), the US breaches of the UN Convention on Torture, the illegal war in Iraq, not to mention the US funding and training of terrorists to overthrow democratically elected gov'ts all around the world and Israel's continuing refusal to abide by UN resolutions. 
Where will the waste ultimately go.
- wouldn't!):
It may be unfair, but that's the way it is. And until that changes, any aggressive counterpositioning is an incredibly dangerous play (albeit a powerful one if performed correctly, as with the DPRK), made exponentially more dangerous when your country is located in the sandy hornet's nest that is the middle east. 
