I'm so sorry to hear about your husband's death. Multiple myeloma is often caused by metastasis from an earlier cancer, from what I've heard. I've lost a couple of IEEE friends to that. Your comment about politics vs. science is extremely important. As long as critical scientific decisions are made by politicians, or hacks like the CDC/NAIAD 'trust the science' goons, we will have problems that will include unnecessary death and injuries. I've come to the conclusion that the Anointed not only don't really care about the rest of us, they think these sort of 'side effects' are beneficial! If properly trained engineers and physicists were allowed to plan the processing and storage for spent fuel, we would have far fewer problems. Keep in mind that all forms of energy have unintended consequences including petroleum, natural gas, coal and even solar and wind. Some of these consequences included illness, injuries and death. Basically, resource extraction is a dangerous business. With more modern technology, spent fuel can be reprocessed and the uranium re-used. Many radioactive isotopes in the spent fuel have medical and industrial uses. Properly handled, and that is key, nuclear is no more dangerous than other sources of energy and in fact, _properly handled_ it can be better than most.