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Nuclear energy (from fission) has a very large number of disadvantages. Here are just a few:

- It's inherently and obviously risky --- even its greatest proponents know that, but they just choose to minimize the importance of that risk and its deadly consequences. There have been more than enough nuclear reactor disasters already, yet some people just don't learn. Even with better designs, accidents will happen from geophysical causes and through human failure, as well as by deliberate action. You can't prevent this from happening, so don't create such deadly installations (and juicy targets) in the first place.

- Radioactive waste from fission accumulates a massive liability for future generations. It forces our own chosen risk onto our descendents without giving them any choice in the matter. This is unethical even in the best of cases, but in the worst case it's downright criminal because some of those radioactive stores will unavoidably release their contents (even explosively with human help) and result in human casualties and suffering --- maybe your own descendents. Don't gamble with the lives of others.

- Nuclear energy is out of step with a world that is rapidly converting to clean, inexhaustible energy harnessed from the environment. Nuclear is not just unclean but deadly unclean, and it's very demanding on the planet's resources as well. It adds to our debt on the planet instead of reducing it.

- According to a growing number of climatologists who are witnessing first-hand the unfolding climate disaster in the Arctic and Antarctic, our existing several hundred nuclear reactors could quite possibly be the direct cause of our extinction in the decades ahead, after the indirect cause (CO2 and methane) lead to death by starvation of billions and make the world's economies collapse. Nuclear reactors can't be rapidly turned off and made non-radioactive --- the full process of decommissioning takes some 50 to 60 years as an industry average, and it takes a LOT of money. There will be no money available under conditions of economic collapse, cooling will be interrupted, and many will go into meltdown. Even if you choose to disbelieve the warnings of specialists, the risk remains. Knowing what we already know about rising sea levels and epic storms, we should not be adding to the risk.

Dr. Brice Smith of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research summarized this very well:

"Nuclear power is a very risky and unsustainable option for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Trading one potentially catastrophic health, environmental and security threat for another is not a sensible energy policy." --- Source.

The whole idea of adding more nuclear power is hazardous and ill-considered, and it's also unnecessary.

TFA says the sample was removed from a display for safety concerns. According to this source, Pu 239 has a specific activity of .063 curies/g. For a 2.7ug sample, that's 0.175 uC. I don't get why anyone thought safety was an issue for such a tiny source.

I love how projected "breakeven" and "ignition" in 2012 has suddenly been extrapolated to MW powerplants on the grid within a decade.

Nevermind that we don't capture the energy yet, which might give us best-case 50% efficiency. Nevermind we need 3x breakeven the breakeven energy for converting heat into steam to power a turbine. Nevermind just about every factor of 2-3 efficiency loss out there. I'm going to post one goddamn link that was true when I interned there, and is still consistent today and then I want to see what the "scientists" who projected this commercial powerplant planned to do about this minor detail:

http://www.ieer.org/reports/fusion/chap3.html

By contrast, a large commercial power plant using ICF will require around five shots per second. Laser drivers also have low efficiencies, currently around 1% for solid-state lasers such as those to be used in NIF.

99% efficiency loss right off the bat. What's left for these people to even argue about?

Certainly not daylight, but probably quite visible to any decent gamma ray detector. If you did a Google Earth but at the gamma or x-ray frequencies, the Irish Sea would certainly be the brightest mass of water anywhere in the world and quite possibly THE brightest mass of anything outside of the remnants of nuclear test sites.

Well, the one from the NRPB might be a better one to look at. There have certainly been more than 5 cases - indeed the only 5 I could see in this report is to a specific section in the references. The Gardner Report, which DOES mention 5 cases, refers to 5 cases that occurred in a specific time interval over the entire nation where 4 of those occurred in Seascale. The Gardner Report is the one which is the most-cited reference to childhood leukemia in Britain.

In fact, the table at the bottom-right for the Gardner Report is the most interesting for this purpose - a six-fold rise in leukemia incidents in the region surrounding Seascale with levels of leukemia remaining (a) constant and (b) at expected levels everywhere else over the same time period.

Radionuclide research groups *fried* the attempts by BNFL to conceal the link at the time and would doubtless be disgusted by the other posters here trying to attribute the cancers to "natural lead poisoning". I look forward to seeing these alleged papers "proving" that these distinguished experts were wrong and that a pseud-anonymous Slashdot poster is so vastly better and brighter that they can identify a wholly imagined lead isotope as the cause without having done an ounce of legwork.

Other links to papers that may be of interest:

• The Seascale childhood leukaemia cases-the mutation rates implied by paternal preconceptional radiation doses
• Childhood leukemia and radioactive discharges at Seascale
• Leukemia Clusters Near La Hague and Sellafield
• The CERRIE Report
• An index of anything I might have forgotten

Ah.. here it is... Apparently not confused about Caesium but about Plutonium 241 vs Plutonium.

http://www.ieer.org/ensec/no-3/puchange.html

selective quotes...

Both weapons grade and reactor grade plutonium contain some plutonium-241. Plutonium-241 decays into americium-241 by emitting a beta particle. Since americium-241 has a far longer half-life (432 years) than plutonium-241 (14.4 years), it builds up as plutonium-241 decays. The gamma radiation from americium-241 decay, which is far stronger than that from plutonium-239, also builds up with the age of the plutonium sample. Therefore, the more plutonium-241 there is and the older the sample, the greater the gamma radiation from the build-up of americium-241.

Since reactor-grade plutonium contains substantial amounts of plutonium-241, the older the sample, the greater the radiation dose to workers handling it.

I am not sure why, assuming a long term plan, renewables are automatically assumed to be incapable of meeting baseload.

Study on renewables as baseload in North Carolina
Brief paper on baseload and renewables

Giving the time it takes to approve and build a nuke plant, surely in that same time we could at least make some big inroads into upgrading the power grid and start putting additional infrastructure in place for power storage.

I doubt batteries are the answer. However, I am not sure why renewables are automatically assumed to be incapable of meeting baseload.

Study on renewables as baseload in North Carolina
Brief paper on baseload and renewables
research paper on renewable baseload in Australia
Short paper from university of new south wales

I just wish our country could pick a direction and start moving toward it (even nuclear). The country changing its mind every 4-8 years isn't very conducive to upgrading the power grid to be 'smarter', store power (pumped storage, etc...), transfer more efficiently at longer distances, etc.. when many of these projects could take 20+ years.

I am not sure why, considering a 50 year plan, renewables are automatically assumed to be incapable of meeting baseload.
Study on renewables as baseload in North Carolina
Brief paper on baseload and renewables

Surely 50 years is enough time to upgrade the power grid and start putting additional infrastructure in place for power storage.

Rebuttal from Physicians for Social Responsibility

What are PHYSICIANS doing talking about nuclear science and nuclear war? My first thought was that there was some subtle UK/US difference, but no, both sides of the pond are in total agreement: physicians practice medicine, physicists practice physics.

I'd take with a grain of salt things said by people who don't know what their profession is called . . .

Rebuttal from Physicians for Social Responsibility

Weapons-grade fissionable material (U-233) is harder to retrieve safely and clandestinely from a thorium reactor

Thorium is not actually a “fuel” because it is not fissile and therefore cannot be used to start or sustain a nuclear chain reaction. A fissile material, such as uranium235 (U235) or plutonium239 (which is made in reactors from uranium238), is required to kickstart the reaction. The enriched uranium fuel or plutonium fuel also maintains the chain reaction until enough of the thorium target material has been converted into fissile uranium233 (U 233) to take over much or most of the job. An advantage of thorium is that it absorbs slow neutrons relatively efficiently (compared to uranium238) to produce fissile uranium233. The use of enriched uranium or plutonium in thorium fuel has proliferation implications. Although U235 is found in nature, it is only 0.7 percent of natural uranium, so the proportion of U235 must be industrially increased to make “enriched uranium” for use in reactors. Highly enriched uranium and separated plutonium are nuclear weapons materials.

Use of U-235 or Pu-239 is only required as "start up" charge if U-233 is unavailable (regarding the proliferation risk of Thorium-derived U-233, see below). Also, this is only true for molten salt reactors, Accelerator-driven systems aka "subcritical reactors" may even work without any fissile material present from the get-go (though they have their own problems)

In addition, U233 is as effective as plutonium239 for making nuclear bombs. In most proposed thorium fuel cycles, reprocessing is required to separate out the U233 for use in fresh fuel. This means that, like uranium fuel with reprocessing, bombmaking material is separated out, making it vulnerable to theft or diversion. Some proposed thorium fuel cycles even require 20% enriched uranium in order to get the chain reaction started in existing reactors using thorium fuel. It takes 90% enrichment to make weaponsusable uranium, but very little additional work is needed to move from 20% enrichment to 90% enrichment. Most of the separative work is needed to go from natural uranium, which ahs 0.7% uranium235 to 20% U235.

Reactors don't have to be 100% proliferation resistant, it just has to be harder to use them to make a bomb than the old graphite/uranium pile + plutonium extraction process. In other words, if someone can do the former, they could do the latter much more easily. U-233, like any fissile material, can be used to make bombs. However, if U-233 is bread from Thorium, it is invariably contaminated with U-232 which has a massive gamma emitter in its decay chain. This makes handling this material hard, requiring shielding both when making the bomb. Even worse, it would make an inferior bomb since you would have to shield the bomb itself to make it safe for the operator as well as shield the electronics of the bomb. Finally, the gamma emission would make the presence and location of such a device easy to detect. If you are a bad actor with the appropriate resources, it's much easier to just build one of those World War 2 piles and extract the plutonium from it.

Furthermore, note that commercial power reactors tend to be poor sources for bomb material in general unless they are specifically designed to make it easy, you require regular fuel changes in matter of months to avoid spoiling the material with elements which will ruin your bomb-making effort. This will interrupt operation and raise red flags if the reactor is shut down on every three months, which ruins your effort to be secretive which is likely your reason to use a commercial plant in the first place. This is why all the bomb making efforts in countries either use straight enrichment (rare - South Africa is the only example I'm aware of) or special-purpose bomb-making

Weapons-grade fissionable material (U-233) is harder to retrieve safely and clandestinely from a thorium reactor

Thorium is not actually a “fuel” because it is not fissile and therefore cannot be used to start or sustain a nuclear chain reaction. A fissile material, such as uranium235 (U235) or plutonium239 (which is made in reactors from uranium238), is required to kickstart the reaction. The enriched uranium fuel or plutonium fuel also maintains the chain reaction until enough of the thorium target material has been converted into fissile uranium233 (U 233) to take over much or most of the job. An advantage of thorium is that it absorbs slow neutrons relatively efficiently (compared to uranium238) to produce fissile uranium233. The use of enriched uranium or plutonium in thorium fuel has proliferation implications. Although U235 is found in nature, it is only 0.7 percent of natural uranium, so the proportion of U235 must be industrially increased to make “enriched uranium” for use in reactors. Highly enriched uranium and separated plutonium are nuclear weapons materials.
In addition, U233 is as effective as plutonium239 for making nuclear bombs. In most proposed thorium fuel cycles, reprocessing is required to separate out the U233 for use in fresh fuel. This means that, like uranium fuel with reprocessing, bombmaking material is separated out, making it vulnerable to theft or diversion. Some proposed thorium fuel cycles even require 20% enriched uranium in order to get the chain reaction started in existing reactors using thorium fuel. It takes 90% enrichment to make weaponsusable uranium, but very little additional work is needed to move from 20% enrichment to 90% enrichment. Most of the separative work is needed to go from natural uranium, which ahs 0.7% uranium235 to 20% U235.

Thorium produces 10 to 10,000 times less long-lived radioactive waste;

Proponents claim that thorium fuel significantly reduces the volume, weight and longterm radiotoxicity of spent fuel. Using thorium in a nuclear reactor creates radioactive waste that proponents claim would only have to be isolated from the environment for 500 years, as opposed to the irradiated uraniumonly fuel that remains dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years. This claim is wrong. The fission of thorium creates longlived fission products like technetium99 (halflife over 200,000 years). While the mix of fission products is somewhat different than with uranium fuel, the same range of fission products is created. With or without reprocessing, these fission products have to be disposed of in a geologic repository.

Thorium comes out of the ground as a 100% pure, usable isotope, which does not require enrichment, whereas natural uranium contains only 0.7% fissionable U-235

Compared to uranium, thorium fuel cycle is likely to be even more costly. In a oncethrough mode, it will need both uranium enrichment (or plutonium separation) and thorium target rod production. In a breeder configuration, it will need reprocessing, which is costly. In addition, as noted, inhalation of thorium232 produces a higher dose than the same amount of uranium238 (either by radioactivity or by weight). Reprocessed thorium creates even more risks due to the highly radioactive U232 created in the reactor. This makes worker protection more difficult and expensive for a given level of annual dose.

(The article goes into a bit more detail. One does have to keep in mind that PSR is generally quite anti nuclear - but I think these are fairly reasonable counterarguments)

Lastly, no one has actually made a commercial level thorium cycle reactor despite decades of trying. It MIGHT have some advantages and engineering and research efforts should continue, but it's hardly a viable solution as of yet.

http://www.ieer.org/fctsheet/thorium2009factsheet.pdf

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ProponentsÂclaimÂthatÂthoriumÂfuelÂsignificantlyÂreducesÂtheÂvolume,ÂweightÂandÂlongâtermÂ
radiotoxicityÂofÂspentÂfuel.ÂUsingÂthoriumÂinÂaÂnuclearÂreactorÂcreatesÂradioactiveÂwasteÂ
thatÂproponentsÂclaimÂwouldÂonlyÂhaveÂtoÂbeÂisolatedÂfromÂtheÂenvironmentÂforÂ500Âyears,Â
asÂopposedÂtoÂtheÂirradiatedÂuraniumâonlyÂfuelÂthatÂremainsÂdangerousÂforÂhundredsÂofÂ
thousandsÂofÂyears.ÂÂThisÂclaimÂisÂwrong.ÂÂTheÂfissionÂofÂthoriumÂcreatesÂlongâlivedÂfissionÂ
productsÂlikeÂtechnetiumâ99Â(halfâlifeÂoverÂ200,000Âyears).ÂÂWhileÂtheÂmixÂofÂfissionÂ
productsÂisÂsomewhatÂdifferentÂthanÂwithÂuraniumÂfuel,ÂtheÂsameÂrangeÂofÂfissionÂproductsÂ
isÂcreated.ÂÂWithÂorÂwithoutÂreprocessing,ÂtheseÂfissionÂproductsÂhaveÂtoÂbeÂdisposedÂofÂinÂaÂ
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Â
IfÂtheÂspentÂfuelÂisÂnotÂreprocessed,Âthoriumâ232ÂisÂveryâlongÂlivedÂ(halfâlife:14ÂbillionÂ
years)ÂandÂitsÂdecayÂproductsÂwillÂbuildÂupÂoverÂtimeÂinÂtheÂspentÂfuel.ÂÂThisÂwillÂmakeÂtheÂ
spentÂfuelÂquiteÂradiotoxic,ÂinÂadditionÂtoÂallÂtheÂfissionÂproductsÂinÂit.ÂÂItÂshouldÂalsoÂbeÂ
notedÂthatÂinhalationÂofÂaÂunitÂofÂradioactivityÂofÂthoriumâ232ÂorÂthoriumâ228Â(whichÂisÂ
alsoÂpresentÂasÂaÂdecayÂproductÂofÂthoriumâ232)ÂproducesÂaÂfarÂhigherÂdose,ÂespeciallyÂtoÂ
certainÂorgans,ÂthanÂtheÂinhalationÂofÂuraniumÂcontainingÂtheÂsameÂamountÂofÂradioactivity.ÂÂÂ
ForÂinstance,ÂtheÂboneÂsurfaceÂdoseÂfromÂbreathingÂtheÂanÂamountÂ(mass)ÂofÂinsolubleÂ
thoriumÂisÂaboutÂ200ÂtimesÂthatÂofÂbreathingÂtheÂsameÂmassÂofÂuranium.Â
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radioactivityÂassociatedÂwithÂtheseÂisÂexpectedÂtoÂbeÂconsiderablyÂlessÂthanÂthatÂassociatedÂ
withÂaÂcomparableÂamountÂofÂuraniumÂmilling.ÂÂHowever,ÂmineÂwastesÂwillÂposeÂlongâtermÂ
hazards,ÂasÂinÂtheÂcaseÂofÂuraniumÂmining.ÂÂThereÂareÂalsoÂoftenÂhazardousÂnonâradioactiveÂ
metalsÂinÂbothÂthoriumÂandÂuraniumÂmillÂtailings.Â
Â
OngoingÂTechnicalÂProblemsÂÂ
ResearchÂandÂdevelopmentÂofÂthoriumÂfuelÂhasÂbeenÂundertakenÂ

I know you have an ax to grind with nuclear power for some reason - but calling it "dirty" compared to it's alternatives is just silly and you should know better.

BS! Nuclear power is dirtier than either solar or wind. With both there is no waste to be stored. And there is no processing or reprocessing of fuel. The sun or wind is the fuel.

Does it create some potentially hazardous materials that have to be dealt with? Yes
Are they in reality THAT HARD to deal with? No

Yes it is hard to deal with. Even the French, who have gone further with reprocessing nuclear waste has problems doing it. "France is aggravating both problems: spent fuel and separated plutonium stocks." "Reprocessing [pdf] and MOX fuel use are uneconomical and will remain so for the foreseeable future;"

"Nuclear France - The Myths Uncovered"
"France gets nearly 80% of its electricity from its 58 reactors. However, such a heavy reliance on nuclear power brings with it many major, unsolved problems, most especially that of radioactive waste. Despite assertions to the contrary, the French nuclear story is far from a gleaming example of nuclear success. The example, set by the French nuclear infrastructure - and best exemplified by its giant nuclear corporation, Areva, is not to be emulated."

Are they really that bad for the environment? Not really

If you believe that you haven't seen the effects of uranium mining. "The Effects of Uranium Mining are Disastrous."

biggest problem with dealing with nuclear byproducts is NIMBY.

The biggest problem with wind is NIMBYism. The government's National Renewable Energy Lab has produced an atlas of wind potential through the US. The Rocky Mountains alone contain enough potential wind power to power the continental US. Which I might add that Texas Oil Man T Boone Pickens is pushing with his Pickens Plan. But that's not all. The Pacific Northwest has a lot as well. If you draw a line south from there to Southern CA then turn east to Texas, you'll see more potential. Now go east, the Appalachians is a good location for wind as well. The mountains up the east coast have good locations. Offshore from Cape Hatteras to Cape Cod there's another line of good cites.

Oh, I think it's rather telling that so called environmentalist activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr is one of those NIMBYs fighting wind farms in Cape Cod, from that first link on Nimbys.

Just like there's no such thing as clean nuclear (gotta do something with that waste)

Actually, the French have been recycling their spent nuclear fuel for years.

And "France Acknowledges Massive Radioactive Pollution at La Hague".
Or "PRESS RELEASE"
"Vice-President Cheney Wrong About French Nuclear Repository Program, Independent Institute Asserts"
"French Public's Opposition to Nuclear Waste Repositories as Deep as that in the United States"

Then there's the matter of whether nuclear power is profitable. The libertarian free market CATO Institute has this article: "Nuclear Energy: Risky Business". In it it says
"Given all of this, how do France, India, China, and Russia build cost-effective nuclear power plants? They don't. Government officials in those countries, not private investors, decide what is built. Either these governments build expensive plants and shove them down the market's throat-or they build shoddy plants and hope for the best."

Falcon

The tanks described in this paper scare me. Self-boiling, self-criticality, and they really don't know for sure what's in all those tanks.

Hanford's tanks are a real nightmare, too. There used to be a paper online that detailed where all of the isotopes came from and where they went. It also detailed all sorts of actions they've taken to try and stabilize the tanks against leakage, self-boiling, criticality, and other nasty things. Oddly, I can't seem to find it anymore. 8-) This paper, while not as detailed, still does a fair job of describing the vast amount of waste that exists in the tanks and how little they know about what is exactly in each tank.

I'm fairly sure that E=MC^2 should've been outlawed before they used that formula to bomb the hell out of 2 Japanese cities...

Nah, it's not E=mc^2 that should have been outlawed. What should have been outlawed was the racism that led the U.S. to decide in 1943 that the bombs whose whole raison d'etre was to defeat the Nazis, ought to be used first to blow up Japanese people. What should have been outlawed was the grasping for geopolitical power that prompted the use of the bomb as a demonstration to the world (especially to the USSR) of American might, even Japan was trying to negotiate an end to the war.

no environmental impact studies

If you don't care about environmental impacts then I bet coal and gas fired power plants can be built faster than nuclear power plants. These studies are done for a reason though.

None of which are good for base load. If wind turbines can survive in the open marketplace (i.e. no government handouts like Pickens wants) who am I to question the invisible hand. But I wouldn't put down a major bet they could compete against nukes if nukes were given a chance.

People use France as an example of how nuclear power can compeat but even there the government subsidies nuclear power. According to one person how much nuclear power in France is subsidized is a "state secrete". The French nuclear power giant Areva is government owned, and will be compeating with US companies for US subsidies. Areva also may have some problems.

I won't be voting for McCain. Like most elections I will be voting against the Democratic Socialist Party's candidate.

I'm not voting for McCain either, if Bob Barr is not on the ballot I don't know if I will vote for anyone for President, I've left blanks on ballots before. As for your vote, please vote for whom you want to be president and not against, I'm guessing Obama. I did that in 2000 when I picked Gross, er Gore. I didn't want a Gore president but a Bush president was worse to me. After that vote I swore I would not vote against someone again.

Falcon

Atlas Shrugged is about what happens when genius goes on strike.

And in the real world, the answer is: not much.

For example, all the medical researchers in the nation striking would not have the impact of rank-and-file doctors walking out. And all doctors in the nation going on strike would not have the impact on public heath of all the garbage collectors and plumbers refusing to work. (The majority of the increased life expectancy we enjoy today is due to effective sanitation.)

Day-to-day, the more "genius" someone's work requires, the less direct his or her impact. We don't need genius to maintain the world, we need the "working stiffs" to show up.

I'm not saying we don't need genius; but to elevate intellectual work over more physical labor is just as much of an error as Maoist or Marxist anti-intellectualism.

Would WW2 have been lost (apart from a few million more casualties in the invasion of Japan)...

Japan was already suing for peace by the time the bombs were dropped. The idea that millions would die in an invasion if we hadn't nuked is just wrong. The decision to drop the first nuclear bomb on Japan rather than Germany was made in 1943; the decision to follow through on it was based more on intimidating the Soviets and justifying the cost of the Manhattan Project than on any need to incinerate tens of thousands of human beings.

So, no, WWII would not have been lost if the physicists had gone on strike. But had the labor unions gone on strike, it would have been a different issue - which is why the federal government fscked up the union system during the war.

atomic weapons do not predate television.

Yep, I screwed up. My usual rhetoric is to point out that any nation industrial enough to build a color TV set, is at about the tech level to handle fission - first color television broadcast was 1951.

a pre-emptive annihilating nuclear strike on Iran would almost certainly forestall other nations from threatening to develop nuclear weapons.

Like our nuking of Japan forestalled the Soviet Union from developing nukes?

(And make no mistake, scaring the Soviets was the main point of the bombing. Japan had already begun to sue for peace by the time of Hiroshima, but they were selected by the U.S. military as the target of the first nuke as early as 1943. Originally we were going to nuke Japan to scare the shit out of the Nazis. But after the Soviets beat the Nazis - they had much more to do with the Allied victory in Europe than the U.S. did - we decided we needed to scare the shit out of them.)

At a whopping 10 fissions per kilo per second, I doubt that much of the radiation is even escaping the material.

Where do you get that figure? Specific activity of Pu-239 is .063 curies per gram, so 63 curies per kilo. That's 233E10 decays per second per kilo, not 10. So you're off by a bit.

Your general point is dead-on; this isn't stuff that we should be calling 'waste' and trying to wall off from the universe until it runs to lead, it's good fissile fuel that we should be burning in an Integral Fast Reactor or similar advanced design. Hell, burn it in a PWR, and let fuel reprocessing take place. Nuclear waste is a concern, yes, but there's no point whatsoever in making it more of a concern by calling all sorts of useful, fissile or fertile isotopes "waste."

But you are right. These are not facts. Let's keep our eyes wide shut.

One could argue that the fact that we find these disfunctions is proof positive that the nuclear safety process is working, but the truth is that there is a hudge gap between the reality of the danger and the supposed nuclear safety : it's only because of various counter powers that these disfunctions are known. The nuclear industries are closely linked to the military industries and to say the least the field lacks in transparency

I should also point that if you sticked to a scientific and factual approach of the problem, you would certainly realize that defining something as safe once and for all clearly is not a good safety procedure. Err , let's just hope you are not in charge here !

Proliferation of nuclear power will lead to chernobyl like problems, if not only statistically then in the same way that the US power grid is failing : safety brings no short term profit.

But in all your arrogance and pride for your technology i doubt that you can stand back from this nuclear fiction, untill a disaster happens. In your backyard maybe ?

Security processes have no zero default, and you know it. Nuclear safety is a myth. What is the risk ? Don't ask. What are the benefits ? Trust us. The reality is that we shall leave our fate in the hands of the nuclear goons, despite the wastes, despites the risk, despite the damage already done but most of all despite the fact that this energy is over used and wasted in mainly illogicals and ineficient ways. Only the fake sense of safe and infinite energy that the nuclear industries promess permits such a waste of energy, and this has other dramatic effects. One simple example : excessive packaging. Very expensive energy wise, very destructive (plastics, heavy metals in paints, chemical tratement of paper et al), mostly useless.

And keep the insults to yourself, nuclear monger, because be it reason or unfortunately disaster, time is on my side.

Actualy, the heavy elements (uranium and plutonium are way over on the heavy end of the periodic table) weren't 'decayed out of something else' they were fused inside stars from lighter elements. Inside fission reactors they 'decay' into lighter elements.

I was spcifically talking about Plutonium and said "decayed out to something else". The half life of plutonium is short enough that all naturally created plutonium decayed into Uranium (or some lower metals). All plutonium currently existing on earth has been man made in the past century.

Plutonium Decay: http://www.ieer.org/ensec/no-3/puchange.html

Plutonium Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium#Occurrence

It's a good thing he's not pushing it too hard or I might find myself saying crazy things like "I agree with Bush"

At one tyme I was against nuclear power, mostly for two reasons. One is the possibility of accidents and the other is storage of the waste. However new reactor designs, such as the fast breeder reactor designs India uses or those that use pellets or pebbles are safer. There's still the problem with the waste however I heard some of the new designs produce little waste. If they can get rid of the waste then I'd be all for nuclear power. It certainly shouldn't be stored at Yucca Mountain. For one thing it's been shown Water can travel miles from there, and the other thing is that Yucca is an earthquake prone area. Some buildings were damaged there in an earthquake.

Also the government needs to stop subsidizing and shielding the industry. But if they did then nuclear power wouldn't be profitable.

Based on a small sampling of Google references, I would have to go with the 10kg critical mass for a bare sphere of Pu-239.

Here's a good reference IEER Factsheet on Pu.

It does mention in that reference that the smallest theoretical critical mass is a few hundred grams, but it does not go into the other bits required in that extreme case.

And to what real purpose? Threatening the US (or S. Korea or Japan) with a nuke? That is a fight they could not hope to win. Trade Honolulu, Seattle, or LA (or Seoul or Tokyo) for their entire country. That's like threatening a tank platoon with a hand grenade. Sure, you may take out one or two guys, but you personally will be a rapidly expanding pink mist.

parent is not off topic. There was concern that playstations would be used to power a ballistic missile weapons system.

Constant or gradual? Seems to me that there's more than one way to do this. Use your first nuke to blow a crater into the asteroid. Use successive nukes at the bottom of the crater to shape the radiation itself- after all, even gamma and alpha particles have some mass, if very slight.

But given your total, that's 15,239,192 Joules, give or take a bit, needed. From the conversion factors at http://www.ieer.org/clssroom/unitconv.html that's only .00362837541924 tons of TNT. In other words, one Tsar Bomba at 50 tons of TNT would yeild 13780 times as much energy as needed, or given your 50% conversion factor, 6890 km/s to the asteroid. Given that the earth is ONLY ~13,000 km wide, all you need to do is hit this less than a week before collision with just such a nuke- in such a way that sends it out of the plane of the eliptic, preferably.

I am a former officer in the USN, stood many an engineering watch, and have some background with radiation protocol. I also am about as far from a Nader fan as you can get.

Anyhow, ingestion is rarely a problem with plutonium because plutonium is rare.

The article you linked is nearly worthless because nowhere does it describe what amount the plutonium was, nor the isotope (which is critical for knowing what type of particle emissions we're talking about).

Plutonium Isotopes

In particular, note the inverse relationship between half-life and specific activity. Shorter half-life = more particles emitted.

That means it is actually far safer to ingest a small quantity of bomb-grade Pu-239 than it is to ingest "depleted" Pu-238, which is what would most likely be used in the batteries referred to in this article, if plutonium were used at all.

Have you seen the cost for a gram of Tritium?! That's why it's not used more.

Hyper-focus? I have no idea what you mean. I simply made note of apparent misunderstanding on your part and then used that to question the validity of your conclusion. Perhaps you're being a little hyper-sensative?

By the way, just to be clear. After much study and thought I have found that there is no perfectly safe, or even acceptably safe method of building nuclear power plants on earth.

I do agree designs are better. Are they perfect? Hardly. Every engineer will tell you there's no such thing as a perfect system. For example, the nuclear power industry tried quite hard from the get go to build "safe" reactors, Here is the result:

http://www.nuclearfiles.org/hitimeline/nwa/index.h tml
http://www.ieer.org/reports/accident.html
http://www.ccnr.org/CANDU_Safety.html
http://www.lbl.gov/nsd/education/ABC/wallchart/cha pters/15/7.html
http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/cndscot/trisaf/ch4.ht m
http://www.clemson.edu/ep/radiat3.htm
http://www.sea-us.org.au/no2reactor/rr-oops.html

Once you've read through as many studies on operator error in control rooms as I have, then we can talk. In the interm, perhaps you should trust me when I say, it can't safely be done.

As well, the economics are not as good as you've been led to believe. See:

Nuclear Power is Uneconomical

Since its beginning, nuclear power has cost this country over $492,000,000,000 -- nearly twice the cost of the Viet Nam War and the Apollo Moon Missions combined. In return for this investment, we have an energy source that, until the mid-1980's, gave us less energy in this country than did the burning of firewood! In the U.S., nuclear power contributes only 20-22% of our electricity, and only 8-10% of our total energy consumption. In Illinois these percentages are much greater due to Commonwealth Edison's over-reliance on nuclear power.

Since 1950, nuclear power has received over $97,000,000,000 in direct and indirect subsidies from the federal government, such as deferred taxes, artificially low limits on liability in case of nuclear accidents, and fuel fabrication write-offs. No other industry has enjoyed such privilege.

According to a recent study conducted by the Citizens Utility Board, Commonwealth Edison's customers now pay the highest electric bills in the Midwest, due primarily to the over-reliance on nuclear power plants.

Many costs for nuclear power have been deliberately underestimated by government and industry such as the costs for the permanent disposal of nuclear wastes, the "decommissioning" (shutting-down and cleaning-up) of retired nuclear power plants, and nuclear accident consequences. In January, 1994, Commonwealth Edison acknowledged that it had to nearly double its estimate for reactor decommissioning -- from $2.3 billion to as much as $4.1 billion!
http://www.neis.org/literature/Brochures/npfacts.h tm

Depends on the isotope. The really dangerous stuff has less of a half life. It's more dangerous because it's decaying faster.

Please don't say something is dangerous because it has a long half life. There is an iron isotope (Fe-60) out there that has a half life of 3x10^5 years, but the only way you are going to get hurt by it is if someone smacks you on the head with it.

In fact, of the two fissile Pu isotopes (Pu-239 and Pu-241), Pu-241 has a half-life of 14.4 years, meaning that it has probably decayed into something else by now (Americium 241?)

I read that, however I felt that it was somewhat irrelevant. Yes, the fact that Bechtel created a $125 million dollar mistake is nothing to be smiled upon, and that is the reason why that reactor is not in operation.

However, San Onofre has been through 6 major earthquakes in Southern California since it went online in 1984 and is still operational.

Despite the Bechtel incident, San Onofre *is* built to withstand earthquakes: A 7.0 directly underneath the plant.

While I realize that Bechtel is a horrible company, I think the fact that it has withstood earthquakes on multiple occasions speaks for itself.

If you want to see one of the greatest examples of Nuclear Power working right in the middle of earthquake country, you need to look no further than Japan, who gets almost one third of their energy from Nuclear power.
Yes, I realize nuclear power creates horrible waste disposal problems and is probably not the best way to go for a source of energy. However, I'm more worried about a train carrying nuclear waste derailing near my neighborhood than I am of an earthquake destroying a nuclear power plant.

Pure electric would be super if you didn't have to make long trips and always had an electrical outlet to charge when parked.

Um... Approximate U.S. energy consumption by energy source (2000):

Oil and natural gas liquids - 38.50%
Natural gas - 23.70%
Coal - 22.80%
Nuclear - 8.10%
Hydroelectric - 3.10%
Other renewables (biomass, wind, etc.) - 3.80%
source

85% of US electricity comes from fossil fuels, with another 8.1% from nuclear reactors. Plugging in an electric car doesn't really help... the electricity still has to come from somewhere.

For the entire world, 18% comes from nuclear reactors, 63% from fossil fuels, 19% from hydroelectric plants, and a whopping 38% from geothermal plants. 1993 was the most current data I could find, so I'm sure the world numbers are a little different now, but I'm also sure not by much.
source

I happen to drive a full sized chevy pickup. Strangely, there is no offering on the market for a 50mpg vehicle that will pull a 34' trailer, or a 28' cattle trailer, or as enough space to load all of my bass and p/a gear for a show. Until one shows up, I'll continue to whine about the price of gas, mainly because I live in Houston, have worked for oil companies as a programmer, and fully understand their pricing model.

It cracks me up that people think their wall socket provides magical electricity that keeps them from using fossil fuels like coal, gas or oil. Quit listening to Al Gore! He drives a Suburban!

if you want "No More Hiroshimas" then I say "You First. No More Pearl Harbors."

Only superpower.

The United States is the world's largest super power. If they went around dropping mustard gas on civilians, that would be bad.

And it -was- bad when the U.S. government used civilians as ignorant test subjects for radiological experiments. Here's one of many links that can be found on the subject. For more simply type "u.s. radiological experiments on civilians" into google. I think you're trying to say that people think it's ok for Iraq to use chemical weapons against civilians. You're dumb. Next time think harder.

Yes, Pu from U is relatively easy. One of the sources said it can be done with nitric acid using a machine about the size of a refrigerator. If you're not worried about safety, it's a lot easier.

Isotopes are a different problem, and I didn't make this clear. Pu isotopes have different fission properties. For a weapons, the Pu-239 alone is desirable; the other isotopes, particularly Pu-240, tend to spew neutrons that cause pre-ignition of the reaction, resulting is a "dirty" nuclear explosion and inefficient conversion of plutonium. Non-Pu-239 isotopes also make the material harder to handle because of spontaneous decay.

A commercial reactor, esp. light-water, produces a significant proportion of the "undesirable" isotopes. Separating isotopes, as with U, is a lot of work; it's better just to produce the Pu right in the first place, that is, get the right reactor in the right configuration, and run it correctly for the purpose. But if you're a hard-up tinpot dictator and can settle for a 1-kt boom, or at least poison a water supply, and your real goal is to extort aid or concessions from other countries, then several kilos of dirty Pu will tide you over.

I'd like to know what kind of efficiency the Indian and Pakistani bombs have. I read somewhere that the device to approach 100% fission would be a very large H-bomb, and so the small "neutron bomb" of the 80's was pitched misleadingly.

Table of Plutonium Isotopes

First of all, Plutonium-240, 241, and 242 are produced in very minute quantities and are not much of a factor in waste storage.

Plutonium-239 has the half-life of 24000 years that you were referring to. However, Pu-239 is the most common fissionable isotope, used for reactor fuel and weapons. It would *never* be shipped to a waste storage site. It is simply too valuable.

Plutonium-238 is the common "waste" isotope, and it only has a half-life of 87 years. Even at 10x that duration, it is far less than the 230000 years that you are using as FUD.

- SEAL

This discussion prompted me to do some reading on French solutions to the problem, given that that nation is almost entirely dependent on nuclear power due to a near complete lack of coal, natural gas, oil, and I guess very little hydroelectric.

Unfortunately, contrary to the insistence by the Bush administration that we merely have to follow France's example, they are in much the same pickle as we, both in terms of having a permanent storage location (they don't), and in terms of public perception of permanent storage (the rural folks over there don't like the idea any more than the folks in Nevada).

A May 2001 article from the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research.

And a transcript from a 1998 Frontline show.

The conclusion suggested by these articles is that the French have adopted nuclear power not out of a preference for it, but out of a lack of options. And, that rather than having figured out a reliable and acceptable method for dealing with the waste produced, they are now struggling with the consequences of decisions made out of desperation 30 years ago.

Last time I heard about any "really new" developments in antimatter, they were just figuring out how to contain 10-100 protons (circa 1992) (I know, I'm dating myself, whatever. :-) This is really cool news.

Still, even a million atoms is really physically small. I wonder

• how much it weighs?
• whether it's visible to the naked eye? (well, duh, I guess being hydrogen gas it wouldn't be, or does it have interesting optical properties?
• how much energy it would give off if you mixed it with hydrogen?
• how long it will be till someone makes a weapon out of it. Would it even work?

Anyway, just my $0.01. :-)

You're right it is innapropriate. Lava, at 1,000 to 1,500 degrees kelvin, is only three to five times hotter than my bathwater, which I like to keep between 300 and 310 degrees kelvin. It doesn't seem particularly ridiculous to suggest that concentrated Uranium 238 could be three to five times as radioactive as my monitor. Of course, comparing the electromagnetic radiation of a computer monitor to the nuclear radiation from uranium is comparing apples to oranges anyway.

Let's try, oh, mercury concentrations in your drinking water instead of this temperature bullshit. Multiplying the amount of mercury in your drinking water by ten isn't going to result in any premature death.

I wasn't talking about the electromagnetic radiation from your monitor, I was talking about the natural radioactivity as a result of trace radioactive elements in the monitor's structure.

As for using U238 for radiation shielding... I'm sure you could. It would make about as much sense as using acetic acid to wash hydrochloric acid out of your eyes instead of water or, better yet, saline solution. In other words, sure you could, but non-radioctive lead would more sense. The only reason you would want to is if you wanted to deal with something extremely radiactive and the U238 was the only sheilding available.

More like using tap water to wash out your eyes instead of distilled water.

According to http://www.ieer.org/fctsheet/pu-props.html, the radioactivity of Plutonium is 17.3 curies/gram. http://www.physics.isu.edu/radinf/natural.htm puts the radioactivity of Uranium at 0.7pCi/g, around twenty million times less. And lastly, http://www.pu.org/main/facts/pu.html has a picture of a guy handling a big lump of plutonium just wrapped in plastic, wearing nothing but some rubber gloves.

Actually, yes. I worry about radon too, but it's not an issue in my appartment.

I wasn't talking about radon, I was talking about uranium in the coal exhaust. According to http://www.ornl.gov/ORNLReview/rev26-34/text/colma in.html, worldwide about 5,000 tons of uranium and 12,000 tons of thorium were released into the atmosphere by coal burning.

And yet nobody seems to worry about that anywhere near like people worry about the much smaller amount of uranium involved in the A-10's depleted uranium ammunition.

Yes. It never ceases to amaze me either. That's why I wrote a reply in response to a poster who claimed that so-called "depleted" uranium isn't radioactive.

I didn't say it wasn't radioactive, just that it's not radioactive enough to worry about.

Now that one of us has quoted some numbers to support his argument, is the other one going to? Something tells me it's just going to be more of the same bullshit.

according to this article, Plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24,110 years, but it says nothing about how long it remains "weapons-grade." Interesting article, though.

People who care for the environment and well being of others, know that nuclear power is inherently a bad choice. I don't believe we know everything about nuclear fission, and that we will discover what really is going on when we split atoms. Mod me down all you like for meaning this, but it's my opinion and my responsibility to express it.

- Steeltoe

I think I first read about Oklo in a Scientific American in the early 80's. It is fascinating, as the conditions had to be almost perfect for a sustainable chain reaction to occur.

I would like to draw your attention to this link. The following facts are taken from that page.

"The oxidation of plutonium represents a health hazard since the resulting stable compound, plutonium dioxide is in particulate form that can be easily inhaled. It tends to stay in the lungs for long periods, and is also transported to other parts of the body. Ingestion of plutonium is considerably less dangerous since very little is absorbed while the rest passes through the digestive system." Two points - firstly, it is rather unlikely that the plutonium will be oxidized on Titan, and secondly, the main problem with plutonium is when it is inhaled. There are not many humans or other complex organisms with lungs on Titan.

Reactivity of plutonium (remember, earth is a very reactive environment, with high temperatures and many oxidizing materials, especially when compared to Titan)
"Non-divided metal at room temperature (corrodes)-relatively inert, slowly oxidizes". Not even remotely close to happening on Titan. If free hydrocarbons are present, there are not going to be many decent oxidizing agents left floating around.

Radioactive activity of plutonium is mainly alpha particles - Alpha particles are merely high speed helium ions, and will not make it far. They make it far enough to make a mess of your lungs when you inhale a bunch of finely divided plutonium particles, but alpha particles are easily stopped by a piece of paper.

Given that nuclear engineers are paid to be paranoid, expect the reactor core to be designed to remain intact after an impact. The density of plutonium is high enough that it would remain unmoved by a hurricane after it reaches the surface (twice as dense as lead, slightly denser than gold - basically, 5kg of metallic plutonium would take up about as much volume as 1 cup (250mL) of water). The total environmental impact of any crash would be limited to an exceedingly small area.

Supernova debris is present all over the universe. If they are finding it on earth (bother to read the second link?) you can bet that some is present on Titan. Also, just about everything in the universe is contaminated with radiactive material at some concentration (produced by those shiny things up in the sky called stars!!), not to mention the background radiation of the universe. Ever heard of cosmic rays? Titan should get some too. Just because it is concentrated or produced by man does not make plutonium extra special or more dangerous in any way than plenty of stuff that occurs naturally.

Darren