In the words of the author, Larry Niven, circa 1985:
"The Roentgen Standard" was a party conversation among some of the
crazier members of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society. Most of what
I did that night was listen. When Omni bought the article, I earmarked
half the money as a LASFS contribution.
The LASFS turned the money over to the Viking Fund, lest mankind ever
sever communications with Mars.
It happened around the time of World War I. The Director of Research for
Standard Oil was told, "There's all this goo left over when we refine
oil. It's terrible stuff. It ruins the landscape, and covering it with
dirt only gets the dirt gooey. Find something to do with it."
So he created the plastics industry.
He turned useless, offensive goo into wealth. He was not the first in
history to do so. Consider oil itself: useless, offensive goo, until it
was needed to lubricate machinery, and later to fuel it. Consider some
of the horrid substances that go into cosmetics: mud, organic goop of all
kinds, and stuff that comes out of a sick whale's head. Consider
sturgeon caviar: American fishermen are still throwing it away! And
the Japanese consider cheese to be what it always started out to be: sour
milk.
Now: present plans for disposal of expended nuclear fuel involve such
strategies as
1) Diluting and burying it.
2) Pouring it into old, abandoned oil wells. The Soviets tell us that it
ought to be safe; after all, the oil stayed there for millions of
years. We may question their sincerity: the depleted oil wells they use
for this purpose are all in Poland
3) The Pournelle method. The No Nukes types tell us that stretches of
American desert have already been rendered useless for thousands of years
because thermonuclear bombs were tested there. Let us take them at their
word. Cart the nuclear wastes out into a patch of cratered desert. Put
several miles of fence around it, and signs on the fence:
IF YOU CROSS THIS FENCE YOU WILL DIE
Granted, there will be people willing to cross the fence. Think of it as
evolution in action. Average human intelligence goes up by a fraction of
a percent.
4) Drop the radioactive wastes, in canisters, into the seabed folds where
the continental plates are sliding under each other. The radioactives
would disappear back into the magma from which they came.
Each of these solutions gets rid of the stuff; but at some expense, and
no profit. What the world needs now is another genius. We need a way to
turn radioactive wastes into wealth.
And I believe I know the way.
Directly. Make coins out of it.
Radioactive money has certain obvious advantages.
A healthy economy depends on money circulating FAST. Make it radioactive
and it will certainly circulate.
Verifying the authenticity of money would become easy. Geiger counters,
like pocket calculators before them, would become both tiny and cheap due
to mass production. You would hear their rapid clicking at every ticket
window. A particle accelerator is too expensive for a counterfeiter;
counterfeiting would become a lost art.
The economy would be boosted in a number of ways. Lead would become extremely valuable. Even the collection plates in a church would have to be made of lead (or gold). Bank vaults would have to be lead lined, and the coins separated by dampers. Styles of clothing would be affected. Every purse, and one pocket in every pair of pants, would need to be shielded in lead. Even so, the concept of "money burning a hole in your pocket" would take on a new meaning.
Gold would still be a mark of wealth. Gold blocks radiation as easily as lead. It would be used to shield the wealthy from their money.
The profession of tax collector would carry its own, well deserved penalty. So would certain other professions. An Arab oil sheik might still grow obscenely rich, but at least we could count on his spending it as fast as it come in, lest it go up in a fireball. A crooked politician would have to take bribes by credit card, making it easier to convict him. A bank robber would be conspicuous, staggering up to the teller's window in his heavy lead-shielding clothing. The successful pickpocket would also stand out in a crowd. A thick lead-lined glove would be a dead giveaway; but without it, he could be identified by his sickly, faintly glowing hands. Society might even have to revive an ancient practice, amputating the felon's hand as a therapeutic measure, before it kills him.
Foreign aid could be delivered by ICBM.
Is this just another crazy utopian scheme? Or could the American people
be brought to accept the radioactive standard of money? Perhaps we
could. It's got to be better than watching green paper approach its
intrinsic value. The cost of making and printing a dollar bill, which
used to be one and a half cents, is rising inexorably toward one dollar.
(If only we could count on its stopping there! But it costs the same to
print a twenty...)
At least the radioactive money would have an intrinsic value. What we
have been calling "nuclear waste," our descendants may well refer to as
"fuel." It is dangerous precisely because it undergoes fission...because
it delivers power. Unfortunately, the stuff doesn't last "thousands of
years." In six hundred years, the expended fuel is no more radioactive
than the ore it was mined from.
Dropping radioactives into the sea is wasteful. We can ensure that they will still be around when the Earth's oil and coal and plutonium have been used up, by turning them into money, now.
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