"It's funny how your reasoning processes as well as your prejudices can be affected by your interests and what you feel strongly about.

We all know how we tend to look the other way when it's our own comfort and prosperity that are at risk, it's a question all honest people have wrestled with, and its one we all have probably harbored contradictions about. The product you enjoy or the industry that contributes to your livelihood pollutes or is unsafe, and somehow it doesn't seem too bad. I'm all in favor of low income housing and a halfway house for convicts, but not in my back yard! I know guns should be outlawed, as long as mine is the last one to be confiscated! I know power boaters should be licensed for the public's safety but that sailors should be exempt from the expense and inconvenience because they are naturally better seamen..."

Yet a seamen could not even be able to swim and may not even normally wear a lifejacket- not to mention not know anything about small boats. And it seems to me that seamen should have more interest and desire to go through the effort of being licensed for public safety. In any way you look at it a seamen should be strongly supportive of having everyone who goes near the water [including himself] be licensed.
The only possible problem with the licensing is that process may be a waste of time because it's flawed, such as requiring you to know things which are wrong or not important.

"But it isn't just a dollars and cents issue, or a personal security and lifestyle problem. I firmly believe that protecting habitat for an endangered species, or the respect owed to native sacred grounds, trumps the desire to develop a piece of ground for commercial use; but if they want to erect a major astronomical observatory on an optimum observing site, I say to hell with the fuzzy-wuzzies and the aboriginal graves. The use of plutonium power plants is certainly a risky proposition, but in the case of interplanetary probes, it's a risk I'm willing to take. I could go on, and you can probably add to the list."

I think aboriginal graves should treated the same if the land is going used for a McDonald's or astronomical observatory. Aboriginal graves should be treated the same as any graveyard. You have two things: a historical site and a sacred site. Resolving the issue can be complicated, but the interest of all parties involved should not be to make it more complicated than it already is. And I think that dollars and cents can be a major part of how it's resolved- as dollars and cents is a pretty good way to reflect value. Who owns the land is also important, if it's government land, it makes it more complicated because it obviously then is political matter which can be easily and commonly distorted and muddied- but the government also has a fair amount power and therefore can provide more possible solutions [though because humans generally greedy and self centered can cause problems because of this capability]. But the overarching principle should be who are the interested parties, and what will these parties give [not get] to resolve the issue.

As far as plutonium. Rockets can fail and even if rocket has 99% success rate that is pretty poor in terms of risks. But the plutonium is encased so that it remains intact even if the rocket fails, therefore it's not really a problem.