Dr. Schund, what futuristic highway technologies await us?
Our great nation is eternally beleaguered by highway maintenance. Promises of a runaway Greenhouse Effect - desiccative self-immolation of all Terra - have not fomented the most meager dent in snow-covered roads. Whole mountains of coal are ground into dust and blown into boilers to burn, to make heat, to make electricity to power street lights. Nuclear reactors since WWII have accumulated high level irradiated fuel waste mountains glowing bluely with Cerenkov radiation under huge pools of cooling water subjected to perpetual high level security patrol (a diversity hire with a uniform and a cell phone). The solution to all these problems is therefore obvious: themselves.
The safe place to store nuclear waste is under thick concrete or asphalt freeways. No international cabal of terrorists is going to risk life and limb in traffic on I-5 to retrieve the stuff. There is no way to steal the stuff without concomitantly causing a traffic jam extending from San Diego to San Francisco. 24 hours/day seven days/week plus holiday and Super Bowl Sunday security is thus assured. Any subversives so hellbent on doing a nuclear naughty that they disguise themselves as CalTrans employees doing honest labor will be instantly exposed as impostors, for no CalTrans worker ever worked up a sweat. The Union will ferret them out and levy brutal punishment, sparing an alphabetic garble of armed Federal agencies and impotent Liberal courts the onus of jurisdiction.
Nuclear waste decay heat will keep the pavement defrosted and toasty warm throughout the nastiest Wisconsin winter or the most frigid arctic wasteland Minnesotan miseries. Penetrating Cerenkov radiation will illuminate our way with a cool blue glow, for free! Electricity so saved will be diverted to more tangible undertakings like microwave crematoria and ultrasonic bikini line depilation modalities. Why would anybody disapprove?
Enviro-whiners sworn to oppose progress in its every form will snivel and whine at one more technological triumph. They will piss and moan about fragile and endangered undiscovered species being mysteriously expunged by our profits and unbridled pursuits of happiness. Goodbye forever, giant flying vampire toad. Adios in perpetuity, Patagonian coughing weasel. Ciao for all eternity, lesser nectar-sipping marmot. We hardly knew rumors of you, and never had a chance to mount a trophy in our den or appraise a barbecued cutlet.
What about human radiation exposure from billions and trillions of curies of radioactive isotopes sequestered mere inches below your fanny as you drive along in your car? No problem! At an average California commute speed of 85 mph a car squanders a negligible 8/1000 of a second over any square foot of freeway pavement. Keep moving! We have at long last unearthed strong personal motivation to never again have a traffic jam, and without the jackbooted forays of social engineering. If Enviro-whiners chain themselves to enormous chunks of concrete to block our way on the roads it will be a sterile demonstration of deadbeats soon enough.
The engineering idiocies of the E*L*E*C*T*R*I*C car whitewashed by social engineering travel hand in hand with the apologia of the "self-steering" car (smoke and mirrors catch phrase to follow). You will buzz along the freeways drunk or otherwise preoccupied and leave the driving to a HAL-9000 in the trunk (or something buggy, expensive, and dangerously stupid from Bill Gates). More likely a string of cars Officially zooming along with four foot separation at 80 mph will be guided by situational software contracted by the government and figuratively tapping a white cane looking for magnetic guide dots. Like airbags, Federally mandated safety devices can have 40% casualty rates in use and still be immune from civil remedy as there is no law against being protected to death with Washington in loco parentis.
Why place magnets in physically aggressive environments rich with iron filings and other magnetic debris? Hall magnetic field sensors are finicky and liable to go wonky from magnetic hernia trusses or multi-hundred ampere turn field leakage from E*L*E*C*T*R*I*C cars. Breakthrough radiation illuminating promenades with charming blue Cerenkov radiation could be buried with spatially modulated intensities to serve as digital road markers for self-steering cars. Nuclear radiation sensing is cheap and not prone to competition form miscellaneous natural sources - not at these intensities!
We have a permanent secure repository for unlimited amounts of nuclear waste. Winter salt and snowplows will be superfluous even in the most brutal northern climates. Every street will be self-illuminated without further infrastructure or energy expenditure. Future technologies saving lives (or at least expending them with Liberal good intentions) are accommodated. Do it today!