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Nucular Hydrogen Economy
Mark Baard writes "The hydrogen economy will at least in part be based on nukes. The DOE will build a pilot high-temperature, gas-cooled reactor (HTGR), which theoretically can co-generate electricity and hydrogen, side by side, inside a cheap modular unit."
when did dubya start posting here?
You could read the article.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
Spell Czech?
It looks like people may soon accept the fact that Nuclear * is here to stay! With energy consumption rising, and coal/oil/etc screwing everything up, we need something safe, clean, etc for the future.
I think there was a Bond movie about some solar cell thing-a-ma-jiggy that would solve this. I guess nuke's will work too.
I'm holding off on getting a new car until I get get a hydrogen one.
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
Here is the text of the article...
On a sunny Saturday morning 30 years from now, you may decide to take your family for a ride to the country. You'll still be driving a car, and you may still get stuck in traffic. But that's OK, because the only thing you'll be breathing in is water vapor from the car in front of you.
Welcome to the seemingly benign "hydrogen economy" President Bush has touted over the past year. Pollution-free cars. Abundant fuel. A cleaner environment.
But there's one factor the president isn't talking much about: the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of new nuclear power plants his administration imagines making all of that hydrogen.
The Bush administration and Senate Republicans want to give billions of taxpayer dollars to the nuclear industry to make high-temperature, gas-cooled reactors (HTGRs), which--theoretically--can co-generate electricity and hydrogen, side by side, inside cheap modular reactors. Advocates of the plants say they wouldn't need the expensive protections required for traditional models.
This summer, the Senate is expected to vote on the Energy Policy Act of 2003, which includes funding for new HTGR plants and the construction of a pilot co-generation facility to be run by the U.S. Department of Energy in Idaho. The bill was sent to the full chamber by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee last month.
Spokespeople for the committee and the DOE say the aim is to cut greenhouse emissions, since energy companies continue to use coal and natural gas in making hydrogen. But small, modular HTGR plants may do it more efficiently and cleanly, they said.
That all depends, of course, on how you define "cleanly." To extract hydrogen from water--to get the H out of the H2O--you first have to make steam. The modular nuclear plants would do that without polluting the air, but would also leave behind radioactive waste.
Scientists have not yet designed a nuclear facility whose safety and efficiency trumps that of gas or coal. One proposal, from MIT, has a nuclear reactor sitting under the same roof as a chemical plant bubbling with sulfuric acid and hydrogen iodide.
Each modular plant would produce as little as one-tenth of the energy of a single light-water reactor. And since by some estimates the United States would need the equivalent of 500 light-water reactors to produce enough hydrogen, it may take thousands of modular plants to get the same job done.
The nuke industry, not surprisingly, says it's interested in joining the hydrogen economy. Entergy, the second-largest nuclear energy producer in the U.S., hopes to break ground on its co-generation Freedom Reactor within five years.
But only the feds seem willing to pay for the research and development that would make the futuristic plants a reality. "We generate electricity," said a spokesperson for Exelon, the country's largest producer. "We're not heavily involved in funding research and development."
Taxpayers may soon be. The Senate's energy bill affords the DOE $1.1 billion to build an HTGR co-generation nuclear plant at its Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory within 10 years.
The bill also proposes to kick-start a nuke renaissance by subsidizing half the cost of six to 10 new HTGR power plants in the United States.
"We need to move toward clean-air energy sources that are more reliable than wind and solar," said Marnie Funk, a spokesperson for New Mexico Republican senator Pete Domenici, chair of the energy and resources committee.
Renewable energy sources, like wind and solar, are emissions-free. But the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow. Many people also see wind turbines as an eyesore: Cape Codders are fighting plans for an offshore wind farm that would obstruct their views. "And then you've got the bird issue," said Funk. Wind turbines earned some notoriety by killing as many as 50 golden eagles along California's Altamont Pass during the 1990s.
Today, w
This is really a revival of a program that Clinton zeroed out the funding for in 1992. Supposedly, (I had friends working on it) Al detested the thought of anything nuclear.
So long and thanks for all the fish . . . !!!
I'm aware of two economic methods of generating H2. The least economic is from cracking water using electricity (the topic of this article). The most economic is by cracking natural gas - this is the method used by everybody I know of in the chemical industry.
Natural gas, mostly methane (CH3) is reacted with steam (H2O) such that CH3 + 2H2O = CO2 + 3.5H2
So, when somebody says he wants a hydrogen powered vehicle, what he really means is he wants a natural gas powered vehicle.
-AD
Both, the energy implications of this article, and the number of /.'ers who immediately crashed in on "nucular" within the first 15 posts.
It's a reference to who's pushing the plan, and a quotation of the article's title. It makes sense, even if it's putting my teeth on edge.
Entergy, the second-largest nuclear energy producer in the U.S., hopes to break ground on its co-generation Freedom Reactor within five years.
OK, we can cut it out with this "Freedom" stuff everywhere now. Tell Entergy that they can go back to calling it their "French" Reactor again, the war is over.
It should be noted that many of these technologies are theoretical and are the result of basic research combined with applied research. While I am not a fan of the current administration, I do tend to agree with their view of nuclear power as long as newer safe designs are implemented. To those who are critical of this, it should be noted that we have a large coal burning electricity plant in central Utah that produces as much radioactivity and throws it into the atmosphere as Three Mile Island did. This is because of the high uranium content of the coal. At any rate, the basic research is important here and should be funded along with the applied research into such things as computational modeling of high temperature physics.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Although it's a fairly trollish one of negligable humour value.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Maybe the nuclear reactors are a temporary measure until we get enough hydrogen to keep the process running primarily with fuel cells. Seems to me that hydrogen should be easy enough to extract from seawater though without resorting to other drastic measures.
Still, what's worse, depending on foreign oil from the volatile middle east, or dealing with radioactive waste here in the states ? I'll bet Nevada isn't too happy about all this.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
The only safe way of getting rid of them would be to send them into the sun, but that would take (with today's technology) make more waste than what it would get rid of.
The Raven
Hmm, ok, I'll admit to missing that. Still, there's a difference between as subtle joke (as the VV headline was), and a punchline out of context (as this one was) -- maybe from the yes-the-spelling-is-a-joke dept. would have been clearer...
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
Coal makes up most of the USA's electric generating capacity. If you want a hydrogen powered car that uses "electricity cracked water", then what you have is (largely) a coal powered car.
However, if you use hydrogen from "steam cracking" of natural gas (CH3), then you have a natural gas powered car.
Nobody said the hydrogen was free!
-AD
mmmm.... explosive gases and fissile material in close proximity.
All the fun of blowing up a nuclear power plant with the explosives already provided. I really don't want to see hydrogen gas anywhere near a reactor.
I like my beverages with warning labels!
I liked the quote: "But the truth is that all of the waste produced by all of the world's nuclear reactors could fit in a two-story building, on an area the size of a basketball court." While that may be true, if you actually distribute it around (like, say, Chernobyl did) its not quite as safe.... And don't forget, if you've got a black hole you can fit, oh, everything in a singularity.
Don't go to a brothel if you want to buy broth
i have never heard of this... nucular? does it support linux?
Rooted on the word for the center of the atom, the nuculus. Duh! Come on, folks!
I think the keyword is "could" and that might be stretching it
Scaramangia (the man with the golden gun) was going to have sell out to oil sheiks. But Bond and Goodnight foiled him and his evil midget.
A terrorist attack, a war (sic) on terror and then every cynical bastard with an agenda to push sticking "Freedom" on the front of it to garner support.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
"nucular, it's pronounced nucular." -Homer Simpson
The amount of anti-nuclear sentiment in the U.S. today is just silly. If you think nuclear power is unsafe or damaging to the environment, well, it's possible to make that case, but it's a battle that from both the public safety and environmentalism standpoints is FAR, FAR less important than a bajillion other battles that are just being neglected because they don't have a dramatic scare word like "NUCLEAR!" attatched to them. Moreover, the end result of anti-nuclear protest is NOT going to be in any way to encourage inefficient "alternative energy sources"; the only result will be that corporate interests will stay with "safe" (becuase it doesn't cause protestors) fossil fuel based energy sources, thus increasing our nation's depednence on oil just that little bit further, spewing god knows what horrible things into the air day and night, and harming the environment more than nuclear power ever could. Way to go.
If nuclear power can have the added side effect of producing Hydrogen to use in hydrogen power, then great, that's just one more advantage. Now if only we could convince the U.S. to use breeder reactors so that there wouldn't be quite so much of that pesky nuclear waste that the protestors keep going so much on about.
Note to the anti-nuclear protesters and PETA: You are not doing anything productive, you are reflecting badly on "the left", and you are pre-empting actual important work being done by others because when faced with a PETA or anti-nuclear story the news will run it, because those are issues that catch the public's eye, but when faced with a story in which people are protesting real, harmful corporate abuses they don't run it, because hey, they did the "protester" thing with the PETA story yesterday. Please go away.
(Although i will recognize the people complaining about the nuclear waste dump site near Las Vegas have a point-- building a nuclear waste containment policy in a *mountain* on a *fault line*, even a small fault line, is just a fucking dumb idea.)
And the methane is cheap and easy to get as well... 99 cent menu at lunch means that you can drive home in the evening...
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
This begs the question: Which is more efficient: Burning natural gas to make a car go, or converting natural gas (with steam, which requires energy to make) to hydrogen, and burning that to make your car go?
I'm amazed - I didn't see TOO many people having the old, knee-jerk, "NUCLEAR IS BAD!" "NUCLEAR ENERGY KILLS SCHOOLCHILDREN" reaction that I usually see - people seem to be fairly realistic (with a few exceptions). Go ./ readers! (for once).
I figured that George W. would have gone for the "Old Fart" methane method.
"But the truth is that all of the waste produced by all of the world's nuclear reactors could fit in a two-story building, on an area the size of a basketball court."
Truthfully!
-- Each tock of the Planck clock is a new world and here we are still life. --
Renewable energy sources, like wind and solar, are emissions-free.
Not quite the whole story. Anyone looked at the industrial waste that making solar panels creates? IIRC, it's nontrivial.
Just a thought...
Do you know why the road less traveled by is littered with the bones of the unwary?
To (badly) quote Walt Kelly: "It isn't new and it's not very clear!"
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
the real question is, when will mark baard stop posting his own stories to slashdot? a search indicates this is not the first time he's done this.
observe...
submitter: Mark Baard
url: http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0322/baard.php
the story:
It's Nucular
by Mark Baard
May 28 - June 3, 2003
"But the truth is that all of the waste produced by all of the world's nuclear reactors could fit in a two-story building, on an area the size of a basketball court."
How did my company even cross his mind?
The coolest voice ever.
When will we get Nucular wessels???
this from a person who has a web page for recipes entitled "recipies": http://tomsdomain.com/recipes/index.htm.
only a geek would call a basketball stadium a 'basketball court building'. congrats
Renewable energy sources, like wind and solar, are emissions-free. But the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow
One of the main benefits of a hydrogen economy is that you can generate hydrogen cleanly and efficiently in places where there is a lot of sunshine (and access to water) and ship the hydrogen safely to places that need it. Just like oil, only safer, more environmentally friendly, and renewable. And the US has lots of regions that are good for that kind of solar generation of hydrogen.
The Bush administration and Senate Republicans want to give billions of taxpayer dollars to the nuclear industry to make high-temperature, gas-cooled reactors (HTGRs),
I'd prefer greenhouse gases to nuclear waste. Greenhouse gases may end up causing lots of devastation, but they probably go away within a matter of centuries. Nuclear waste poses a lethal risk for tens of thousands of years and can be used for creating dirty bombs and other mischief.
I get the feeling that Bush administration policies can largely explained as using popular issues ("the environment", "national security", etc.) as an excuse to transfer large amounts of government subsidies to big donors.
"No structure - geological or man-built can do that."
So you shoot it out of the solar system (delta v for that is actually smaller than dropping it into the sun). When you reprocess the waste to reduce its mass, you make it hot enough for use in RTG power sources that can run sensors and a transmitter. You wind up with a large number of space probes to explore near interstellar space and you get rid of the waste.
Yea, pronouncing it the same way the only Nuclear Engineer to occupy the White House is so wrong. How dim of him having a bit of an accent!
:-)
Now, for the real news, I am well ahead of the curve with my hydrogen powered Jeep! Glad to see these other folks following my lead
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
for all you nyookular geniuses.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT NUCLEAR ENERGY
by John McCarthy
This page discusses nuclear energy as a part of a more general discussion of why human material progress is sustainable and should be sustained. Energy is just one of the questions considered.
Up to: Main page on why progress is sustainable
Incidentally, I'm Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University, emeritus as of 2001 January 1. Here's my main page. I write about sustainability as a volunteer public service. I am not professionally involved with nuclear energy.
Here's a new page on Nuclear Energy Now. It is motivated by the Bush Administration in the U.S. having tentatively re-opened the question of building new nuclear plants in the U.S. I hope they persist and are successful.
One of the major requirements for sustaining human progress is an adequate source of energy. The current largest sources of energy are the combustion of coal, oil and natural gas. These are discussed in the main page on energy. They will last quite a while but will probably run out or become harmful in tens to hundreds of years. Solar energy will also work but is not much developed yet except for special applications because of its high cost. This high cost as a main source, e.g. for central station electricity, is likely to continue, and nuclear energy is likely to remain cheaper.
Q. What are the details on nuclear energy?
A. It is somewhat complicated and depends on facts about nuclear physics and nuclear engineering.
Nuclear power can come from the fission of uranium, plutonium or thorium or the fusion of hydrogen into helium. Today it is almost all uranium. The basic energy fact is that the fission of an atom of uranium produces 10 million times the energy produced by the combustion of an atom of carbon from coal.
Natural uranium is almost entirely a mixture of two isotopes, U-235 and U-238. U-235 can fission in a reactor, and U-238 can't to a significant extent. Natural uranium is 99.3 percent U-238 and 0.7 percent U-235.
Most nuclear power plants today use enriched uranium in which the concentration of U-235 is increased from 0.7 percent U-235 to (nowadays) about 4 to 5 percent U-235. This is done in an expensive separation plant of which there are several kinds. The U-238 "tails" are left over for eventual use in "breeder reactors". The Canadian CANDU reactors don't require enriched fuel, but since they use expensive heavy water instead of ordinary water, their energy cost is about the same.
In 1993 there were 109 licensed power reactors in the U.S. and about 400 in the world. They generate about 20 percent of the U.S. electricity. (There are also a large number of naval power reactors.) The expansion of nuclear power depends substantially on politics, and this politics has come out differently in different countries. Very likely, after some time, the countries whose policies turn out badly will copy the countries whose policies turn out well.
For how long will nuclear power be available? Present reactors that use only the U-235 in natural uranium are very likely good for some hundreds of years. Bernard Cohen has shown that with breeder reactors, we can have plenty of energy for some billions of year.
Cohen's argument is based on using uranium from sea water. Other people have pointed out that there is more energy in the uranium impurity in coal than in could come from burning the coal. There is also plenty of uranium in granite. None of these sources is likely to be used in the next thousand years, because there is plenty of much more cheaply extracted uranium in conventional uranium ores.
A power reactor contains a core with a large number of fuel rods. Each rod is full of pellets of uranium oxide. An atom of U-235 fissions when it absorbs a neutron. The fission produces two fission fragments and other particles that fly off at high velocity. When they stop the kinetic energy is converted to heat - 10 million times as much heat as is produced by burning an atom of coal
This article is pure unadulterated fear mongering, and is an insult too be posted as news. Each man can form his own opinion, thank you.
TurboD
Wired magazine had an article a couple of months ago about Iceland using geothermal energy to generate hydrogen, I believe through electrolysis. They have started using hydrogen in vehicles and fishing vessels. Since geothermal is minimally polluting, and since they have utilized geothermal extensively, Iceland is able to sell some of their Kyoto Protocol 'pollution credits' to other countries.
What does this have to do with a cleaner world? Crack water with electricity? Why would you need nuclear power plants to do that? (unless some of the people who gave you money during your election need some PR!) This is a non existant industry. GIVE the nuclear power industry ONE BILLION DOLLARS to do research?
The Bush administration and Senate Republicans want to give billions of taxpayer dollars to the nuclear industry
This says it all right here. This is CORPORATE WELFARE.
"would take their heads out of their asses long enough to realize that wind turbines alone could provide enough energy to power the whole planet "
I'd like to see your calculations on this. What are the kw/person rate you are using? What efficiency are you using for the technologies?
Not to mention that it is a REALLY bad idea to cram a bunch of highly radioactive material in a relatively small space...
Also, does this include the cooland water? methinks not.
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
As the article says, the US always gets shoe-horned into a "well if we want clean solutions, lets go wind/solar!" agenda... but since either solution is a pipe-dream, we continue living the same coal and oil lifestyle. Countries like Germany, that didn't have the benefit of West Virginia coal, went nuclear a while ago (and haven't been Chernobyl-ing left and right as some anti-nuke FUD would tell us).
Heck, maybe the US can finally sneak into Kyoto if this goes through! Could it be possible that *gasp* GWB might make the US a cleaner place while anti-nuke environmental nut Al Gore screwed the pooch on this one? What is the world coming to?
What is music when you despise all sound?
Then I want a slice of the revenues.
None of this "donated to the public" bullshit.
If some chiseler is going to get a free ride on government patents, he's going to pay a cash license fee for it.
The article's relentless insistence on how THE GOVERNMENT MUST MUST MUST IMMEDIATELY LAUNCH A Manhattan-project-like effort to develop a hydrogen economy and SAVE AMERICA reminded me of those Anime Otakudom lines about "The World Will Be Saved By Steam!", or like various other rants that people go on, usually political or anti-drug. Sure, there's good technical discussion in there about fuel cells and storage issues, but that's not really what it's about.
So Remember, Kids, Hydrogen isn't the answer! Professor Steamhead says ""Steam. Water plus heat equals steam. Always remember this. The world can be saved by steam." and he's got a giant steam-powered mecha robot to do the job with!
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
If you use SEP containment technology it doesn't have to last a million years. It only has to last the career of an elected official. After that, it becomes Somebody Else's Problem.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
If anyone can find a copy of it online, there's an excellent article from the Dec 8, 1978 issue of Science that provides some perspective. Someone cranked the numbers for the concentration of uranium in coal and America's yearly consumption, and (if I remember it correctly) they found that the trace levels of uranium were actually high enough that we'd have gotten more energy from using it in a fission reactor than from burning the coal. That means that it'd be far more than the amount of uranium consumed in reactors each year, and it's all just going straight into the atmosphere.
We keep the article posted in our undergraduate physics lab, just in case people start complaining about the weak little sources we use for radioactivity-based experiments.
Microsoft delenda est!
Most electricity in this country comes from burning coal. Coal doesn't burn cleanly and gives off all sorts of contaminants _including_ radioactive material. Getting off coal and back on nuclear will be a big step forward.
JET Program: see Japan, meet intere
look at Bush's sorry environmental record in Texas, and guess again.
Hint:
allowing logging companies to harvest trees off of public lands (ie. Land that belongs to Taxpayers like you and I) does not reduce forest fires, and does not benefit the environment.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
begging the question doesn't mean what you think it means
you mean "raises the question"
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Before you complain about the spelling, note that the original article is headlined "It's Nucular" and the /. headline is echoing that on purpose.
:).
Okay, now you can post
Why do I feel that more and more cash is being poured into special interests in Washington? Oh yeah, that's because they are. The current regime needs to wake up and smell the algae. Research into 100% green renewable fuel sources should rule this next century. Terrorist want to crash an airplane into the fields of H2 producing algae? I didn't think so.
One front runner in the field is the use of green-algae based H2 production by exploiting a metabolic switch by reducing the amount of sulfur available to the organisms.
A couple of links:
http://www.melisenergy.com/SF_Chronicle.ht m
http://www.h2net.org.uk/PDFs/Prod2001/H2NetFRH. pdf
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,5445 6, 00.html
Interesting article:
http://www.hfcletter.com/letter/march00/ feature.ht ml
DoE News: Berkeley/NREL Team Develops Green-Algae-Based Renewable H2 Production Technique
BERKELEY, CA/GOLDEN, CO - It sounds a little wild, but a lowly micro-organism, a green alga, may come one of the milk cows of the hydrogen age. Better make that "fuel" cows.
Voila, the hydrogen herd:
Cultures of tiny algae, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, can be conditioned via a simple microbial switch to forego what they normally do best: produce plant matter via photosynthesis and give off oxygen in the process. Instead, switched-on algae would produce hydrogen renewably, essentially from sunlight and water, stored in its cells as carbohydrates and other biochemical materials.
Nor is this process, discovered by a team of researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, CO, a one-shot proposition that would kill the "cows:" After generating hydrogen for several days, the gas can be drawn off and the molecular switch can be reversed again, permitting the algae to recover to their normal state and produce more plant matter, including carbohydrate fuel.
That process can be repeated "many times," says Prof. Tasios Melis, a specialist in plant and microbial biology at Berkeley who heads the team. How many times isn't clear so far.
At present, the overall energy conversion efficiency of the process - photons absorbed and converted into hydrogen product - is only about 10%. But, says Melis, with optimization, it could come close to or be about the same as photosynthesis itself: With the right amount of light - not too much because otherwise photons would be wasted - it could be anywhere between 85 and 90%, possibly as high as 95%. "Photosynthesis is nearly perfect machinery," Melis says.
The work has already attracted wide public attention. A press briefing in late February in Washington, DC, arranged by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and scheduled for one hour, lasted a lot longer because the 45-odd reporters kept asking questions past the cut-off time. Stories by the Associated Press, Reuters and BBC generated later phone calls from as far away as Portugal and Greece, Melis said.
Two-Year Investigation
Melis, together with postdoctoral associate Liping Zhang and with NREL's Michael Seibert, Maria Ghirardi and postdoctoral associate Marc Forestier, described the outcome of their two-year investigation, the result of a suggestion made at an April 1998 hydrogen workshop sponsored by the Energy Department and the National Science Foundation, in a paper in the January 2000 issue of the journal "Plant Physiology." Both institutions have taken out a joint patent for the process.
"I guess it's the equivalent of striking oil," a university press release quoted Melis as saying. "It's enormously exciting."
The fact that green algae can produce hydrogen has been known for more than half a century, the team reported, but only in very small amounts.
The production rates of the new Berkeley/NREL process are very small so far as well, but Melis thinks this novel p
And of course it sounds frightening to be in a H_2-powered car in an accident. Remember Hindenburg?
I really really really don't want to support our dependence on NUCLEAR power. While it's a might bit cleaner then coal atleast as far as atmospheric polution... nuclear waste is a fuck of concentrated toxic deadly. And we really don't have an adquate means of disposing of it, unless you advocate the placement of it in the salt mines of utah. I'm fortunate enough to live in a region that has reasonable hydropower, while it does have an impact on fish and wildlife, it's destructive potentical if far less then nuclear.
I must admit though, the fixed powerplant makes a fair amount of sence, as present technology is pretty prohibitive regarding pure electricly driven vehicels. Chemical power, wether it be hydrogen, or hydro-carbon chain provides far more power per weight.
I personaly feel that we shouldn't persue our quest for hydrogen in this way. Not when we do have the ability to produce alcohol or methane. The jump to nuclear should be seen as a "last resort" unless we can actually create a viable nuclear waste management program.
"People automatically picture vast quantities of drums, oozing green slime and ruining our lives," said John Ritch, director general of the World Nuclear Association. "But the truth is that all of the waste produced by all of the world's nuclear reactors could fit in a two-story building, on an area the size of a basketball court."
If that was the only issue, then we would build a two story building to house the size of a basketball court. Problem solved? Yea right! If we were talking about something that it takes liters to be deadly, then yea. But something that it takes miligrams... no dice.
Now IF these mini-powerplants could generate enough in the way of hydrogen an oxygen to rocket the worlds nuclear waste to mercury, then you might have something. Not sure if i'd agree, but it would at least be a game plan.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
"Jerk store Jerry, jerk store... Jerk store!"
Instead of hoax hydrogen cars,
it's better to leave gas cars alone (may be
modifying them like Toyota Prius), and
use http://www.changingworldtech.com
to get oil from waste.
Defending my brother and the good folks at the Voice: the spelling was a joke, a reference to the fact that this potential nuclear revival would result from a Bush administration initiative. I'm astonished so many smart people in this group didn't get an obvious joke, mocking the administration.
Erik Baard
Vote for Larry and Moe on '04.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Not to mention that the actual spent fuel is maybe 1/1000th (10,000th?) of the total amount of "Nuclear Waste". Unfortunately anything that comes into any kind of proximity with the fuel or the reaction also becomes radioactive and must also be disposed of eventually. So it really is hundreds, maybe thousands of tons of radioactive waste that will need displosing over the next 30 years just from the plants that are on line right now.
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
Crack smoking moderators should not have moderated the parent a troll.
The total list of items consumed to make silicon products, including solar-electric cells, is rather enormous. There most certainly are significant environmental costs associated with their fabrication. If you don't like this, support more research into solar cell fabrication technology, don't just ignore the issue. It (the total cost of fabrication) is probably the biggest problem preventing widespread adoption.
Regards,
Ross
Yes, the energy required to get equal portions of H2 is less when dealing with methane. But consider the cost of this energy, and of the source of hydrogen.
Also, yes, the startup costs for the process are greater for the nuclear route, since building a reactor is more costly than building an equivalent methane processing chemical plant.
However, on the grand scale needed to provide hydrogen as a significant fuel source to the nation, the cost of the source of the hydrogen will be significantly greater than the cost of production.
With the nuclear route, the bulk of the costs is up-front, and semi-annual for nuclear fuel. With the chemical route, the costs are linear, and grow in proportion to production.
Water is infinitely cheaper, and more abundant, than natural gas.
Consider also the cost of the infrastructure needed to transport the source of the hydrogen. Gas pipelines are more expensive, and more dangerous, than water pipes. And you only need the pipelines when you can't drill for water. But you can, almost anywhere.
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
Oh, that's right, they feel that Of course, the United States must be prudent in how it exercises its power. Well that's alright then. I feel safer now.
Perhaps we can harness the potential kinetic energy of people hugging trees.
Lets face up to the fact that no energy source is 'suitable' for the environmental movement.
Solar panels create toxic waste as a byproduct of their manufacture; endangered birds fly into the blades of wind turbines (yes, this has been raised as an issue!).
Blah.
-- Greg
Slashdot, would a spell-checker for posting be too much to ask? It's not rocket science!
When was the last time a coal powerplant had a catastrophic failure that endangered all who lived near it? The key for any energy creating plant is to keep the size and scale down to a level where your worst case scenario doesn't involve molten uranium plunging down towards the earth's core. My favorite hydrogen stripping power plant idea is to use bacteria. Once the whole world is being powered by microscopic farts we will all be in a better place!
We're talking about emissions during generation of electricity, not during creation of the device used to generate it.
If you want to talk about waste during production, don't forget that gas and coal generators have nontrivial waste as side products of their creation, as well. Compare a couple of buckets of nice sand, maybe some heavy metals, wire, and some plastic for solar cell production, to lots of steel and other metals that get strip-mined, not to mention oil, a lot more wire, etc., for gas/coal-burning generation.
If that doesn't convince you, take a look at all the oil and stuff needed to keep generators going, versus maybe spraying the surface of the solar cells with water every now and again to get the grit off...
Get off my launchpad!
Defending my brother and the good folks at the Voice: the spelling was a joke
sure, in fact every time anybody misspells anything around here its a joke.
thanks to everyone for all the laughs.
If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
Um. Yeah, Chernobyl does. But that is an incredibly bad analogy.
Chernobyl==Horribly designed reactor without a containment building. Thus it experienced a meltdown and spread some radioactivity.
Yucca Mountain==Heavily redundantly shielded space under 1000 feet of rock and hundreds of feet above the water line.
Yucca Mountain can't melt down. It's physically impossible. At any rate, the safety for well built Western reactors has been adminable. There have only been a few people killed. TMI didn't kill anybody at all. Compare that to coal: It is estimated to kill 50,000 people a year due to pollution. In addition, coal plant workers are killed in accidents regularly. Workers in nuclear plants aren't.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
And spells speech, "speach."
Actually, the only reason nuclear powerd reactors were so prevelant in years past was that the US govt needed a way to refine radioactive material into fission material for bombs.
Now that the US administration wants to restart research on low-yield nukes, it will need a way to get the material to test and devlop these wonderful toys. Mind you, they arent weapons of mass distruction, as that would mean the US would have to invade itselve to protect the world from such weapons.
Talk about political spin, this is one of the classic ones. Convince people the one benefit is in their best interests, and use the spoils for yourself.
A nuclear reactor releases no radioactive material, only steam, so this is true if coal burning releases any radioactive material whatsoever.
My other first post is car post.
What I found on the web says that a car moving at highway speeds uses about 15 kW of power. The standard estimate for domestic power use is 1 kW averaged throughout the day.
Back of the envelope, let's say 10 million Californicators spend an hour a day in their cars. Averaged over 24 hours, this is over 6 GW. Entire daytime power usage in CA is about 35 GW (depending on season). And this doesn't account for SUVs using more power or commercial trucking.
I would be interested in seeing a real estimate, but it looks like this would require a substantial increase in power production facilities.
And this leads to a sticky question. If we can provide electricity via renewables to generate hydrogen, as the administration suggests we can, why aren't we using using renewables for half our energy now!
WHADAYA MEAN "Spell Czech"? Czech spelling of word nuclear is *nuklear*
Spellcheck option in Slashdot would be wellcome addition - alphabet started as a phonetic business and even now there are some languages that like to keep it that way (...Czech, for exaple).
AND I am getting tired of jokes like "Bounced Czechs" [Especialy when the bounced people turn out top be Gypsies]
I doubt that we will ever figure out - and I suspect that even if we did figure out we couldn't do much about it
Photovoltaics can easily produce plenty of power. The electricity can be used to split H2O dwn to (H2)x2 and O2 for portable fuel cell storage. The drawback of cloudy days and nighttime are mitigated by large scale power storage (battery, fuel cell, etc...)
The only remaining drawback is the ratio of dollars per killoWatt hour production. A good PV gets around 8% to 15% in effective solar to electric production, depending on location, condition, age, materials, etc... Also, material costs are still too high. Pump a few hundred million into solid, steady research and we can get efficiency up and cost down.
It's a matter of priorities. The politicians support what they think the people will go for. The old saying goes like this: "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." We "have" nukes now. In reality, the development costs for taking PV to the level that will trounce NUCUL... (whatever) and fossil fuels is within reach. It will probably cost less (wild, but semi-educated guess) to bring PVs to the more cost effective level than the HTNGs.
Think about it...
--==-- I've found Karma to be a relative thing... Ya know, the kind you invite to Christmas...
I think the larger problem is that this administration tends to take a "damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead" approach. If they think something is the right thing to do, they ignore any voices to the contrary and just forge ahead. This is exactly how you end up with problems like Chernobyl (read the book, its in there) and the two space shuttle crashes. As tragic as the shuttle crashes are, they do not have a direct long term impact on world health and safety. That is not the case when it comes to Nuclear power. It is scary indeed to think of what these folks might do to pursue their ideological views without letting a few inconvenient facts get in their way.
To tie into another posting... we may just get that operational test where they, with a fully operating core they dump the coolant. If things work as they are engineered and as the design intends, sure, things will likely be pretty much safe. BUT, what if things go wrong. We've just created our own disaster without any means of undoing it.
Why don't we throw a few live ICBMs at, say, a couple of our own cities to test SDI? Who says you can't test it?
And anyone who's ever played SimCity 3000 will tell you that it's a whole lot easier to build and maintain a single nuclear plant than a zillion wind turbines.
The world's entire energy requirements could be met with 1 KW Honda portable generators, too. That doesn't mean it would be practical or economical to do so.
Please, don't get me wrong, I'm rather more in support of solar than I am coal, oil, or other fossil fuels. Very much so and I have consistantly said this irl and here.
However, iirc, something that is not said is that when you actually process this stuff to make solar panels, its not a clean process and does in fact produce nontrivial industrial waste. This is what I wanted to point out.
It would be a very interesting comparison to show from start of manufacture to end of life for any and all power sources and their industrial waste.
Do you know why the road less traveled by is littered with the bones of the unwary?
I agree, if solar is efficient enough to bother with in 30 years. What's it at right now? 20% tops?
I had a sucky sig.
No, I do not know anything of the sort. Please post a citation to the LD50 (the dose at which there is a 50% probability of causal fatality per kilogram of body weight) for each. I think you will find that caffeine does not accumulate in the bones as heavy metals do, and it does not emit leukemia-causing radiation once it is there.
To the extent that most people prefer their nuclear power at least eight light-seconds away, that is true.
However, I think you will find that the most heavily subsidized and poorly-insured nuclear power runs about US$0.12 per kilowatt hour, whereas wind power is already under US$0.03/kwh. Plus, the new wind turbine models can power the entire U.S. in only 14,000 acres. If trends continue, by this time next year, wind will be approaching two cents/kwh, placing it firmly under European coal, and in two years it will be on parity with dirty U.S. coal, which is presently running around 1.5 cents.
You wanted to know what the left thinks. I need to check Howard Dean's web site to make sure he knows all this.
Plus, the new wind turbine models can power the entire U.S. in only 14,000 acres. If trends continue, by this time next year, wind will be approaching two cents/kwh, placing it firmly under European coal, and in two years it will be on parity with dirty U.S. coal, which is presently running around 1.5 cents.
I need to check Howard Dean's web site to make sure he knows all this.
Uh. A 3,000 megawatt hour nuclear power plant uses a whole lot less raw materials to build than the 100 to 200 square feet per *kilowatt hour* equivalent photovoltaic system.
There are some really nasty things that go into manufacturing some PV cells. Copper Indium Diselenide (copper, indium and selnium) requires hydrogen selenide which is a really really nasty gas. All that plastic, glass, arsenic, silicon, gallium, etc.
The world is neither black nor white nor good nor evil, only many shades of CowboyNeal.
Good Bog, I was aware of the '57 incident but had no idea it was that bad. A little googling confirmed what you posted.
Oh I feel for those people....the previous Soviet leaders have a LOT to answer for. If only we could bring them back to make them do so....
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
Couldn't we simply put the nuclear plant in the middle of nowhere for those people who feel they are dangerous. Why not put it in the middle of the Pacific or Atlantic Ocean. Tankers could then be used to transport the hydrogen to the mainland.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
True, yet, proton exchange membrane hydrogen electrolysis systems are about 50% efficient.
The most heavily subsidized and poorly-insured nuclear power runs about US$0.12 per kilowatt hour, whereas wind power is already under $0.03/kwh. Therefore, wind-based electrolyzed hydrogen already costs less than nuclear-based hydrogen.
I need to check Howard Dean's web site to make sure he knows all this. As if it wasn't inevitable anyway.
"When was the last time a coal powerplant had a catastrophic failure that endangered all who lived near it? "
E X. pdf
T .p df
Aug. 15, 1999. Myrna, Georgia (near Atlanta). At least that is the lastest one I know of.
I was almost killed in a coal boiler explosion in Tennessee in 1993, but that probably didn't "endanger" anyone outside the facility.
Most coal disasters are actually at the mines (methane or coal dust) not at the plants (coal dust or steam pressure). Of course, many people have their life expectancy reduced by polution from air and groundwater pollution that comes from using coal for power, but those deaths are spread out over distance and time so they seem less important.
For destructive potential to nearby residents it is hard to beat hydroelectric dams, though.
http://www.uic.com.au/nip14app.htm
http://www.msha.gov/S&HINFO/TECHRPT/FANDE/CDUST
http://www.msha.gov/S&HINFO/TECHRPT/P&T/COALDUS
now.
// The fastest Alt-Tab in the West
(2) Chernobyl: Needs no explanation! At least they tried a containment building, though it didn't hold up to the hydrogen gas explosion that destroyed the plant.
So, now they want to build a reactor without containment? If they want a way to permanently deep-six nuclear power, I do believe that's it!
It takes a ton of energy to make the things.
I can believe that. Sorta. But notice that I was comparing to traditional coal and gas-burning electrical generation, and not nuclear power. Personally, I think nuke plants, at least those that reprocess and minimize their waste, are great.
From a practical matter, however (as in, will the US and the other nuclear powers allow countries, corporations, and individuals own these), the obstacles to entry are much more difficult to overcome than for any other serious method.
Get off my launchpad!
The elephant in the room is that there currently isn't enough energy available to have the world live on 1st world level energy consumption. With countries being bludgeoned into having decent economies all around the world, everybody is going to bid up the price of energy tremendously if there aren't significant new sources found.
The energy giants have come on board with the idea of hydrogen being the common denominator with everything geared to consume it (or electricity made from it) and energy sources geared to producing it. Thus you have pig farmers and corn growers as hydrogen producers on the side. But even reusing methane and shifting ethanol to hydrogen, you don't have enough. So nuclear ends up having to be rehabilitated to get us across the stop gap until about 20-25 years from now when we can start bringing orbital power stations on line (where solar's promise truly is) on the back of low cost lift systems like the space elevator we've been hearing about.
The article itself, from the title line on, is a hit piece on President Bush and his efforts to fix this huge problem without anybody panicking or even much noticing that the entire world economy might go off the cliff in a decade if we don't fix the energy crunch that's coming.
and don't forget that the helium they are using to cool these reactors comes from Texas, which has 90% of the worlds helium reserves. That is why the zeplins used hydrogen, the US government wouldn't allow the export of helium to germany in the 30s.
"I'm not high, just stupid" --JY
But I think the Federal Government needs to completely take over the power generation industry. Electricity is, in every sense of the word, a basic need for us now. Without electricity for extended periods of time, people die in this country.
You can disagree and call me a socialist bastard, but I just don't think something so basic as power generation should be in the hands of people who are trying to make a profit out of it. I'm sure that those of you in California who suffer through summer brown outs might agree with me if you think about it.
Furthermore, the Federal Government has a huge advantage going for it. They don't have to turn a profit. The military sure never came close to it, and we love spending money on them (with good reason). But imagine the safety regulations and procedures and the environmental guidelines that could be implemented with government control of power plants.
The U.S. Navy has never had a nuclear incident or accident, despite running a significant portion of the worlds nuclear plants with guys under 30 that don't have college educations. Why? Because no one asks the Navy to make a profit. They can afford to spend the extra money on safety measures, education for those operators and strict guidelines.
It seems that he's pronouncing it perfectly. :)
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
Maybe you should reconsider your loony conspiracy theory. This policy change originated with the Bush administration.
Unfortunately, the problem of nuclear power in the US is largely based on fears of litigation, being sued to death. Nobody wants to plow money into a field with well organized opponents who will drag you into court every other week until you run out of money.
The real solution, of course, is tort reform, to go to a loser pays system where foolish, ill-conceived lawsuits result in significant financial cost to those who insist on bringing them. But the trial lawyers would be starving in the streets and since trial lawyers are more influential than unions, minorities, or the poor in today's Democrat party we're not going to see loser pays until there's a Republican President with a 60 vote Republican majority in the Senate and a comfortably Republican House. That'll be 2004 if Al Sharpton gets the nomination but probably not otherwise.
Since we're running against the clock, the Republicans, led by GW Bush are pushing incremental tort reform in doses that they think will pass while working around the areas that won't pass with corporate welfare.
As a libertarian, I think it sucks. It's less efficient, distortive in its own right, and its only real advantage is that it's better than the other alternative on the table, doing nothing until we have massive energy spikes as 3rd and 2nd world countries start having significant portions of their huge populations convert to 1st world style energy consumption levels.
We will blow you infidels to hell with our nucular weapons!
It claims that nuclear power plants are dirtier and polute more than coal ones which is obviously ...
...
not true. Coal burning produces sulfur and
carbon oxides - millions of tons of it - much
more than nuclear waste. Also they should take into account waste related to coal mining
Also they should compare loss of lives in
the nuclear and coal industry - there are hundreds
of coal-miners dead every year in China,
South Africa and other countries
In one year more coal-miners loose their lives than all the people that died due to nuclear
power plants.
France derives 75% of its electricity from nuclear energy. This is due to a long-standing policy based on energy security.
France is the world's largest net exporter of electricity, and gains some EUR 2.6 billion per year from this.
Wastes: The national policy is to reprocess spent fuel so as to recover uranium and plutonium for re-use and to reduce the volume of high-level wastes for disposal. Waste disposal is being pursued under France's 1991 Waste Management Act which sets the direction of research which is mainly undertaken at the Bure underground rock laboratory in eastern France, situated in clays. Another laboratory is researching granites.
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
The world consumes about a quadrillion gallons of petroleum a year (1,000,000,000,000,000 gallons) of which roughly 70% goes into motor vehicles (700 trillion gallons)
Liquid hydrogen contains approx 30,000 BTUs of energy per gallon while liquid petroleum contains 130,000. Now assuming a fuel cell vehicle is roughly three times as efficient (90%) at converting liquid-hydrogen to horsepower as is an internal combusion engine (30%) then we will need to produce:
130,000 / 30,000 * 700 trillion / 3 = 1 quadrillion gallons of liquid hydrogen a year. Of course my estimate is conservative as we will need to use energy to compress and liquify the hydrogen as well as to keep it cold and to transport it in a distribution system.
According to British Petroleum (or Beyond Petroleum, depending on who you talk to), it takes 55kWh to produce a gallon of liquid hydrogen from electrolysis of water. Thus to produce enough liquid hydrogen from nuclear energy through electrolysis would require:
1 quadrillion * 55kWh = 55 trillion megawatt hours.
(by the way, here in Indiana electricity is roughly $0.04 a kWh so a gallon of liquid hydrogen would cost 55 * $0.04 = $2.20 to PRODUCE. Current liquid petroleum PRODUCTION costs are roughly $4 a barrel (42 gallons) = $0.10 per gallon to produce -- can liquid hydrogen compete economically with petroleum if production costs are 20x higher (not to mention distribution costs)?)
Current world production of nuclear energy is less than 3 trillion megawatt hour. Total world production of electricity is roughly 12 trillion megawatt hours. Thus to both replace petroleum as a transportation fuel the world would need to increase electricity production from 12 trillion to 55+12 = 67 trillion megawatt hours.
Assuming in the future that none of that electricity will be able to come from petroleum sources and that coal burning will not increase means that we need to build enough nuclear plants to satisfy about 60 trillion megawatt hours.
That's roughly twenty times the number of plants, worldwide, that we have now. Even more if it comes from smaller boutique plants.
Do check my math.
See how they're all marked Funny? Looks like you're the one who missed an obvious joke :-)
Hydrogen is not hard to make. The hard part would be setting up hydrogen stations to refuel the cars. The "evil" and "wealthy" oil companies are not going to invest in H stations. They sure as hell would be out to squash anybody they could that tried. The only way a hydrogen car and a hydrogen fuel station is going to survive is with the automakers themselves. Let's take for example, Honda. Honda has the money and the technology to make a pure H car. They fit every dealer who sells the H cars with a H station. People who live decently close to the dealer could buy a H car and actually use the thing. As more and more of the cars are sold, new stations could be added by demographics. The oil companies could gripe all they want and it would be illegal for them to turn-away gasoline burning Hondas at their gas stations. Hydrogen will have to be a new industry totally separate from the oil industry. It is just going to have to take a company with some insight, duty to the enviroment, and money.
A politically-motivated article in the Voice. Who woulda thunk? I thought Bush was supposed to be in bed with the oil companies. That's what everyone kept crying about. But now liberals are bitching about hydrogen. You just can't win...
Shame on Google.
I would guess that wind power would win that comparison. The turbines are very durable, and are mostly metal or wood(yes they make the blades out of wood) so they are environmentally benign. .
To know what high power energy is, you 'ought to be in the room with my Dad after a curry.
There is one clean and safe way of generating as much power as we will need for the forseeable future. Orbiting solar power stations.
Whilst the original designs for these were costed in the billions - intelligent design and utilisation of space bourne resources would reduce the costs by orders of magnitude.
No more pollution. No more need to build new power stations (coal, gas, nuclear, wind, solar, wave, etc). Just a few fields of photovoltaic arrays a few square kilometres across and the use of existing distribution networks.
Actually, what I would like to see is the cost of every item produced include a "tax" that was determined to be the cost of recycling the material to a benign state (which would basically be a tax on the material components), and included the cost of completely neutralizing any chemical process used in the manufacture - i.e. there would be no dumping of chemicals as this tax would pay for the processing of waste material by separate agencies.
But of course this will never happen. For one thing, in the US we do not believe sufficiently strongly that each must pay his own way - if the cost of a car was going to be twice as much, then there were be much gnashing of teeth about the poor - why else do you think one side of our political spectrum whines so much about "tax breaks for the rich" (casually not mentioning that it's their money).
TANSTAAFL - so what we end up with is a society that allows and encourages pollution because it's cheaper for the voting masses that way.
But hey - we can alway make fun of people's pronunciation rather than listen to their vision and assess the potential of their policies to get us there.
"That all depends, of course, on how you define "cleanly." To extract hydrogen from water--to get the H out of the H2O--you first have to make steam. The modular nuclear plants would do that without polluting the air, but would also leave behind radioactive waste."
I'd like to see them print up the amount of waste and the life expectancy of each. How much nuclear waste will there be? How much will there be if recycling of this waste is allowed? Yes, even nuclear waste can be recycled.
Compare this to coal and oil, how much waste is generated by these. How long does it remain? Since it's dumping is not as strictly controlled how long will it's effects last in the environment? Even if it's dumping is as strictly controlled how long can this waste have the potential to effect the environment?
This looks to be a good site for information on HTGR technology.
http://www.iaea.or.at/inis/aws/htgr/
If you go to google and search for "coal waste" you won't find any numbers, but you will find page after page of information, most of it high signal to noise.
This is not a simple subject, to allow many countries to enjoy the lifestyle of 1st worlders a
reasonably clean, reasonably non-polluting ENERGY SOURCE is needed. Hydrogen is not an energy source but a storage method that has some appeal. Current nuclear politics are geared to keeping the third world, third and subservient.
A form of nuclear power that is easy to control, cannot easily be converted for weapons use and is within the capabilities of third world countries to install and maintain (and eventually manufacture) would be one method of improving their relative wealth and all that comes with this.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
In his autobiography, Ansel Adams describes how he told an interviewer that he would like to "drown Ronald Reagan in my martini," which led to an invitation to lunch at the White House. The only thing the two agreed on about the environment was their support of nuclear power. Those who don't like books can read a paraphrased account here.
Look. Nuclear energy sounds fine in many ways, and we can always do some handwaving about storage of the waste products (synroc etc), but really finally you have to decommission the plants. How expensive is that ? When I realised just how expensive it was I changed my opinion ... nuclear energy isn't feasible. If a coal fired plant has a critical accident then you just inject some money to clear the rubble and build a new one. But if you have a Chernobyl, then the costs are absolutely monstrous. And the cost to decommission a typical nuke plant are still massive.
As for the toxicity of plutonium, well I'd like to first see a reference, and to know over what period ... caffeine is out of your system (after doing a little genetic damage) pretty quickly but plutonium lasts and lasts. Heavy metals are just not the same as caffeine. This is a misleading comparison.
Bitter and proud of it.
As has been well documented, coal is in fact the leading source of radioactive materials released to the environment.
/. is filled with people who won't let the facts get in the way of their feelings on this issue.
This would be true even if we sprinkled the waste from N-fission plants randomly across the oceans, and in that scenario, the impact on life - both human and animal - would be minimal.
The fear of nuclear power will one day go down in history as one of the great superstitions of our age. Even a geek-heavy site like
Oh well.
If humans are mostly water, and beer is mostly water, then humans must be mostly beer.
"I'm astonished so many smart people in this group didn't get an obvious joke, mocking the administration."
Well, maybe it's not that we're stupid... maybe it's that your brother isn't that funny.
Also a horribly trained crew, they had no clue of the effects of a Xenon transient and was would happen when a whole bunch of neutrons from fission burned it away.
I hope that someday we will be able to put away our fears and prejudices and just laugh at people. - Jack Handey
Most fatalities from coal are not from power-plant accidents but from mining. Mining accidents mostly kill miners (who cares about them?), but also can kill many people who live near the mine. The 1972 flood at the Buffalo Creek Coal Mine in West Virginia killed 125 people living nearby, injured over 1000, and completely destroyed 500 homes.
Worldwide, tens of thousands of deaths per year occur from coal-mining accidents, and that doesn't count slow deaths from black-lung and other chronic conditions that afflict miners. In India, the death rate is equivalent to one Bhopal per month. In China, around 5000 people per year are killed in coal mining accidents.
Compare all this to the estimated 2500 deaths due to Chernobyl.
Since when did Slashdot become a mouthpiece for the Village Voice?
The heck with NIMBY. My back yard's too small. I say, Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything.
Last time I checked, water vapor is called steam. This is a good thing?
Two Rules For Success:
1) Never tell people everything you know.
There's more radiation inhaled by coal fumes than emitted by nuclear power for the same amount of power. And then theres the ecological damage...
Pollutants produced per year by a 500kW coal plant:
"Sulfur Dioxide - Main cause of acid rain 10,000 Tons
Nitrogen Oxides - Causes smog and acid rain 10,200 Tons
Carbon Dioxide - Greenhouse gas suspected of causing global warming 3,700,000 Tons
It also produces smaller amounts of just about every element on the periodic table, including the radioactive ones. In fact, a coal-burning power plant emits more radiation than a (properly functioning) nuclear power plant!"
http://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Wait a sec, let me get this straight. You favour nuclear rocketry, but you're afraid of power plants? Do you realise how utterly insane that sounds?
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If we were a country sitting on billion and billions of barrels of oil we wouldn't be having this nuclear discussion.
Why does Iran, a country that can produce oil so cheaply, need to bring in special Russian contracters to build a power plant for their population?
Its a question that I hope someone can answer because I am confused on that point.
At first I was surprised that the slashdot crew hadn't fixed this yet, but maybe they hit the link, saw the same spelling in the VV title, and decided it was right?
Did you ever consider the possibility that the spelling was intentional? GWB Is well known for pronouncing nuclear "nucular", and the article is about GWB's energy policies. It follows that the author (most likely) intentionally mispelled the word for humor. The Slashdot editors, getting the joke, honored the spelling. All of the kneejerk slashdot bashers, on the other hand, don't seem to have a sense of humor.
I seem to recall a coal plant near Chicago had a very impressive series of explosions (coal dust apparently can explode under certain conditions). That plant is very close to I80/I94 as it rounds the southern tip of Lake Michigan. Fortunately, casualties did not extend to the highway zone. They could have. This was 2000, if I remember right.
The daily death toll of coal is well known.
I've got quite a functional sense of humour, thanks. Can't say the same for the writers, if this was his intention. First off, it's just not funny. Second, if it was intentional, the convention would be to write it in quotes.
As it is, they just made themselves look illiterate, or humour-impaired, take your pick.
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As nu-ku-ler waste decays, it generates a lot of heat. Why not tap that heat, using it to power a small generator and extract hydrogen through electrolosis at a reasonable rate for, oh, the next 25,000 years? It's better than letting it sit there and simmer. We can't get rid of it (without taking the risk of sticking it on top of a directed explosion with the output of a small nuclear weapon), so we might as well do something with it.
Walking through Grand Central Station in NYC exposes you to more radiation than standing at the front gate of a nuclear plant running full steam. The granite they used to build the train station is slightly radioactive.
The Space Studies Institute has plenty of studies and reports on the benefits we could receive from power from space - solar satellites, Lunar Solar Power, etc.. There is no basic technology mystery there (unlike, say, fusion), the hardest pieces are some development bits relating to large-scale construction in space and use of resources on the Moon. But there's no public political interest in this for some reason, and the NASA budget category for this has been basically zeroed out for years (I believe the total spent has been about $50 million, with only $2 million spent looking at lunar options).
Why aren't we at least spending more money on research in this area? So many billions are spent on nuclear power, but space-based solar power is the ONLY way we'll ever move beyond Kardashev leve 0.7!
Energy: time to change the picture.
There are some emerging alternatives for hydrogen production, like bacterial production. If you can get a cell to excrete it at greater efficiencies than solar cells can make electricity to electrolyze it, you've got a winner there.
My point is that it's a little early in the game to come to *any* conclusions. What's the name of the game? Find enough energy to run the entire globe on a 1st world lifestyle. A little clue, the energy companies, already know that there's not enough fossil fuel out there to win the game using only fossil fuel so Bush is being true to his contributors by pushing for nuclear and hydrogen and all the rest of the alternatives that will be coming up. It just so happens that he'll also be true to his oath of office and the people of the United States at the same time so you could call this politics at its best.
Policymakers, US or otherwise, have not yet faced head-on the central problem of energy policy: there are two viable choices, either fossil fuels or nuclear fission. Renewable energy sources are either too expensive, impratical because they don't generate a constant source of power, or both. Fossil fuels produce greenhouse gases and other forms of air pollution. Nuclear power produces waste that is dangerous and very long-lasting, has minuscule risks of catastrophic accident, and more relevant risks of intentional sabotage. Fusion won't magically solve this dilemma, either. A fusion reactor produces huge quantities of fast neutrons, and that will generate radioactive nuclear waste when it hits the walls and other components of the reactor. In other words, we get to pick our poison: air pollution and global warming, or nuclear waste and problems with terrorism.
Personally, I'm astonished that anyone who calls themself an 'environmentalist' could possibly think that pouring millions of tons of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere each year could be better than radioactive waste, buried deep underground.
Bring on the nuclear power and dump the fossil fuels! Thank God someone in government has some sense.
- Necron69
This is actually a key point. A key failure of the current nuclear industry is that the plants are not standardized - they follow a large number of different designs.
Standardized modules will cut costs and also make them safer; discovered bugs can be fixed in all installations.
Tor
Excuse me, but this "High Temperature" stuff scares me. Especially knowing full well that when nuclear reactors get too hot, they have this nasty tendency towards melting through the reactor, through the floor, into the ground, and finally becoming one mass of critcal mass somewhere where we'd all really wish it wouldn't.
Also, it's worth noting that gas doesn't make nearly as much of a great coolant as any number of liquids do. It would make me sleep quite a lot better at night if you would please not make this kind of reactor. Thank you.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
...At least, not in the United States. There hasn't been a now nuclear (or "nucular") power plant ordered in the US since the 70s. I believe the last one was in 1973, though I could be slightly off there.
I work at a nuke plant. This is my third summer as an intern in their IT department. My dad has worked in various nuke plants all of my life and then some. I don't understand why people are so damned afraid of these things. I know how safe they are, and I'm not the slightest bit afraid of anything happening. And don't tell me we have to worry about terrorists doing any damage to them. They're built extremely well.
Remind me to skip the tour...
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
IIRC, this doesn't offset the energy cost to actually move the cars on the road or whatever, but it's simply a supplemental return. I have no idea how viable the whole thing would be, it just felt pertinent to mention again. Comments, corrections, etc?
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
I'm sure President Carter would disagree as he famously pronounced it exactly the same way President Bush does.
you're new here, arenchya?
Yea, pronouncing it the same way the only Nuclear Engineer to occupy the White House is so wrong. How dim of him having a bit of an accent!
Amusing but quite true, Carter and Bush pronounce "Nuclear" the same way.
Carter was indeed a Nuclear Engineer in the Navy.
Happy Fun Ball is for external use only.
The administration's point is that the sooner we stop burning fossil carbon as our principal power source, the better off we'll be. Setting aside the environmental concerns, which are not slight, there are serious geopolitical reasons for getting away from fossil carbon: such as the fact that the economy of the United States - and indeed of the world - is enthralled to the increasingly corrupt, increasingly fragile monarchy of Saudi Arabia. A political collapse of that government could deprive the world of a significant source of energy for an extended period of time, with catastrophic results.
While hydrogen is by no means ideal, it's the best alternative that we have now to the fossil-carbon economy, and it does allow us to develop cleaner, more efficient means of manufacturing energy over time. I hope the Left will not let its detestation of Bush blind itself to the fact that this proposal is interesting and creative, and holds promise to lead the world economy out of the energy dilemma that it now is in.
[this
I think people are still scarred by the Chernobyl experience.
Mind you, Chernobyl was a perfect example of what NOT to do in terms of nuclear reactor design--a reactor that potentially could easily run away and NO containment structure! Small wonder why when it exploded in 1986 it spewed radioactive materials all over the place.
Compare that against what happened at Three Mile Island 1989; while the reactor core had a partial meltdown the strong containment structure meant only a tiny amount of radioactive material leaked out, the equivalent of a standard chest X-ray on a per person basis!
A new type of nuclear reactor called the pebble-bed reactor is designed to be extremely safe--even if the coolant is cut off the fissile material can still cool by convective heat once the reaction stops. Indeed, that's why one of the first applications of pebble-bed reactors is space operations for nuclear rockets and nuclear powerplants to power spacecraft.
A big advantage of applying the latest in nuclear reactor design is that unlike even burning natural gas, there is no exhaust emissions into the air, which means cleaner air for everyone involved.
In the end, I think the ultimate goal is to develop a workable nuclear fusion reactor to generate electricity; given that you can easily extract heavy water from plentiful seawater, once we reach the point of a practical fusion reactor we're talking a fuel source that has reserves of one billion years at current worldwide power consumption levels.
There are two ways to get rid of radioactive waste from nuclear powerplants.
One is to reprocess the waste back into nuclear fuel and/or turn them into pellets for RTG electric generators.
For getting rid of the waste that can't be reprocessed, the first thing you do is to fuse the waste with glass (which reduces its radioactivity dramatically), then permanently store it in an environment that will absorb the radiation. I remember some liberal wags saying "Send the radioactive waste to Texas" until scientists realized that storing glass-fused radioactive waste in salt domes over disused oil fields is actually a great idea, since salt is a great absorber of radiation.
There are several schemes out there to bind hydrogen to something relatively stable that will shed the hydrogen easily when needed for fuel. From the title on, the piece was a hatchet job. You can't expect them to get the science exactly right now can you?
Eating and injection actually avoid some of the most dangerous effects.
Plutonium is primarily(*) an alpha emitter, which means the radiation gets absorbed in a really short distance.
The worst thing you can do to yourself with a small amount of plutonium is to inhale it in finely divided form. Then zillions of particles can lodge in your lungs and each one will zap the neighboring millimeter of tissue until it finally goes cancerous.
In case you're wondering, last time I looked at a toxicology reference, plutonium likes to settle out of the bloodstream in bone.
So the answer to your question is basically that swallowing X amount of an organic toxin that targest your metabolism can be worse, *in the short term*, than swallowing the same amount of a heavy radioactive metal.
(*) There's also interesting things like neutrons from spontaneous fission in some isotopes, etc.
...beam give off alot of heat and eventualy cause a warming effect? Would a beam of this magnitude affect the weather and/or climate? We're not talking about your average satellite signal here, this thing would probably drop cooked birds on the ground arrays...
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
>nuclear energy companies and HTGR proponents are seeking free insurance from U.S. taxpayers. The Senate energy bill also calls for the extension of the 1957 Price-Anderson Act, a U.S.-funded disaster insurance policy, to cover HTGR reactors.
p df
Truth of the matter is, first the reactor operators pay premiums to the American Nuclear Insurers for private insurance. That covers the first $200 million of liability protection. After that, every reactor operator is on the hook for an assessment of up to $83.9 million to contribute to covering the costs of an accident at any covered reactor. Assess the maximum for each of 103 operating power reactors, and you can cover about $9 billion.
Above that the Price-Anderson Act calls for Congress to spend federal money on disaster relief. If you're feeling charitable toward the Village Voice author, you might assume that's what he means by "free" "U.S. funded" insurance.
For an unfriendly but factual look at Price-Anderson insurance, see http://www.safeenergy.org/PriceAndersonFactSheet.
Remember where they are planning on making the next big nuclear waste storage facility? Yeah, inside an 'extinct' volcano. Yucca Mountain. and everyone in the area is fighting it for all they're worth.
If we had some way of safely launching the waste into the sun, I would be all for nuclear power generation. But the way it is, we have literally thousands of tons of hot waste sitting around in pools of water, waiting for a place to put it. And noone wants to take care of it. It's the "hot" potato that noone wants to end up with.
Actually no. Whilst the power density of the beam would be higher, the actual power transmitted would be quite low.
We actually did some modelling of beaming power from Earth to geostationary orbit. Without looking at any of the numbers (ie, what I remember) - to get an equivalent power level to the Sun (1300W/m^2) we only needed 470-odd W/m^2 at a particular wavelength (it was a matter of tuning the laser to the existing solar cells) with a spot diameter of 140m. This meant that we needed something like a 1-2MW laser on the ground (36000km is a long way for) with a 1m beam diameter. So, whilst the power density at the transmitter end is high, by the time it gets anywhere useful, the power density is very low. Of course, if you wanted to transmit more power then all the numbers go up.
During this time, I was a teenager. The security guards didn't know me from Adam, yet I was never once stopped when I'd go visit my dad at work after school. I'd drive in, past the guard shack, with my hair down to my waist and my full beard and my heavy-metal concert t-shirt and my bag of weed in my pocket, and the guard would just nod and wave. I had to drive within 20 feet of the reactor building to get to the parking area closest to my dad's office. If I had been so inclined, I could have easily filled the trunk of my car up with high explosives and possibly blown a (small) hole in the reactor building. Or if a trunk full wouldn't do the trick, I could have gotten a van and filled that up, parked it in contact with the reactor building, and touched it off.
I don't know what, if anything, they've done to beef up security since then - probably a lot in light of Sept. 11 2001 - but to have ever had such lax security at a nuclear power plant is completely insane (in retrospect of course - when I was a teenager I suffered from Ten Foot Tall and Bulletproof Syndrome combined with Don't Give A Fuck Disease, so at the time I simply found it amusing).
My point here is, while I don't have any problem whatsoever with nuclear power, I do have a big problem with just letting any yahoo drive right up to a reactor building unchallenged.
"Alcohol, Tobacco, & Firearms" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
i don't think so, where is hussein? where are the WMD's? where is bin laden? you know they're slating up iran next.. and maybe syria.. bush will march our armies like rome as long as he's allowed..
I was recently involved in a class debate on whether it is necessary to increase nuclear power production threefold to meet a carbon free economy by 2100. It seems many of the topics raised in this thread deal with points we covered in our project, e.g. safety and efficiency concerns, hydrogen production, economic feasibility, etc.
As my portion of the project dealt with safety and proliferation, I can say that at least from safety standpoint, building newer nuclear plants is a better solution to accomplish these goals than sticking with fossil fuels. For example, existing coal plants cause 15,000 premature deaths annually in the U.S. alone. Now, given the probability of 400 deaths in the event of a nuclear meltdown, this would require over 25 meltdowns per year for nuclear power to be as dangerous as the coal industry. Currently the probability of a meltdown is 1 in 20,000 reactor years, or once every 30 years.
But even if you doubt these conclusions, you can rest assured that the effects of greenhouse gases would be far more severe than an incident involving localized exposure of nuclear waste (however unlikely that may be). Keep in mind the last ice age occured when the average global temperature was as little as five degrees (C) less. And currently the global temperature is rising at a rate that tops all previous historical trends.
"The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens." - Baha'u'llah
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the last time I checked, the uranium used in a nuclear power plant is M-I-N-E-D. And I would be the first to admit that the pollution that comes from coal burning electrical plants is unacceptable, but fission reactors are dangerous. There were other accidents that occured in the USSR besides Chernobyl. That's just the only one we (and unfortunately most of the Russians who lived near those plants) got to hear about. We need to pay more for clean energy rather than let supply and demand force us to use the cheapest solution because the cost is hidden in cancer costs down the road.
Birds avoid big spinning things. They can even hear the new, quiet, turbines in the dark. See Peter Asmus's book, Reaping the Wind for more information about birds.
Yes, it will mitigate about one hundredth of the solar heat we have recently been forcing to stay in the troposphere which has been causing stronger storms and mean windspeeds over the past decade.
Wow, moderation shows its true colors. I've seen about thirty comments saying "its safe, its more environmentally friendly," and generally everything but the one thing that matters.
Yes, this is a perfect solution. Except it creates the perfect enemy. Nuclear waste. US has spent iirc $6 billion looking for a place to stash waste. Waste that it knows will last another couple tens of thousands of years, many lifetimes that of man. Waste that will require extra-ordinary amounts of work to contain, to isolate, to cut off from our reality. We're talking Final Fantasy seal in crystals work here ladies and gentlemen.
Nuclear power is a great ally, but it creates an enemy which will outlive us, our children, our childrens children, and a hundred children thereafter.
In the end, it is not a real solution, but an interem solution. The world can only deal with so much nuclear waste.
Unless we get that stupid space elevator running AND are stupid enough to trust it running barrels of nuclear fuel to the sun. I dont see why NASA wants to build another shuttle when a space elevator would cost less and work so much better. And once we get it running, its not but another fourty to fifty years till we start trusting it well enough to run nuclear waste -> space -> sun. Then i start having less problems with this plan.
Now all we need is superconducting carbon nanotubes as conductors. Just run the nuclear power stations in space, and pipe the power back down to earth. Anything nasty happens up there and you just cut the teather earthside and the power station goes hurtling off into space, no cleanup necessary! Course, getting that power a couple thousand miles down to earth surface wouldnt make much sense unless they get that magic juju superconducting carbon nanotubes thing working, good luck on that one boys! somehow the thought of meltdown'ing power stations being let go to fly off tangentially into space just make it all worth it though.
Either way, I'm still a reknewable man myself. It'd only be like five or ten times the cost (guess came from out of mi arse again). And I'm a big fan of the distributed system. Just put solar on everyone's house. Couple huge honkin wind farms. Less of these gargantuan power lines everywhere.
Myren
(or, how DO we get from here to there?)
The short answer is, fixing our wrongheaded economic framework. Please allow me to explain.
Reforming hydrocarbons into hydrogen used by fuel cells both produces more useable energy per unit of fuel, and less pollution per unit of energy produced, than combustion does. That alone makes it worthwile to use hydrogen as an intermediary energy storage medium. Conveniently, hydrogen can also be produced from any other source of energy: solar, nuclear, wind, hydro, whatever.
But you just knew that when George devoted several minutes in his big speech to the hydrogen economy, it wouldn't turn into wise policy.
The Government does not need to favor any particular method of producing hydrogen. The Government just needs to start recognizing that There's Value In Non-Pollution.
That's right, by perpetuating an economic framework in which an energy converter (for example, a natural gas fired electric plant owner) may pollute (to the degree that they do) with no impact on it's balance sheet, while someone wanting to produce electricity by reforming the same fuel, converting to electricity without combustion, polluting much less in the process (or nearly not at all) per unit of electricity produced, gets no offset against their higher equipment costs for doing so. In other words, pollute a lot more than you need to save $$, we don't care. You can't expect a business to care more about not polluting than it does about its own bottom line.
So The Government is shirking the one responsibility it unquestionably has: To protect the common resources we all depend on, like clean air and water. Aggregate combustion exhaust has undeniably negative effects including increased rates of diseases such as asthma. These costs are both financial and in quality of life.
By letting producers convert energy into usable form in a dirty way just because it's cheaper, they are saying that avoiding pollution is a worthless endeaver.
I would beg to differ.
People and companies act in their own econonic self-interest. They do not see the forest (overall environment) for the trees (they're little part of the pollution problem). If we encourage people to pollute less by factoring in a true, market determined value for pollution (or lack thereof), the free market can work out which technologies to use to do it.
Even more confusing to most people is that only after you level the economic playing field to not favor cheap but dirty methods can someone choosing a technology to convert energy make a rational, economically sound choice to use equipment that produces more useful energy per unit of fuel. When you manage pollution per useful energy produced, deciding whether to use a more expensive but more efficient device is straightforward to any rational person (so long as fuel prices are somewhat predictable). But today, nobody can decide just to buy a more efficient car (one that does more useful work per unit of fuel) because the technologies that acvieve it are also cleaner and more expensive, confounding the rational calculation, making one choose to pay out of ones one pocket for the privelege of polluting less. This is Bass Ackwards. It should be those who chose the dirtier methods that incur greater expense.
This all seems so obvious to me now but most people jst don't get it, and George is obviously on of them.
Slashdotters, please don't overlook my ideas because I'm anonymous. In both science and economics, ideas stand on their own merit, not on the reputation of the speaker.
The nationality of those gypsies (living their umpteenth generation in the CR) is Czech, just as the nationality of a second-generation Czech living in the US would be American.
Sorry, you're on an international forum now... no matter how acceptable cheap comments about gypsies are in the CR, they don't fly far abroad.
Erik
I rather suspect that a space infrastructure and solar power satellites would be comparable in cost to the thousands or tens of thousands of nuclear plants which would be required to support a nuclear-powered hydrogen infrastructure.
In your scenario, only the nuclear power industry benefits. How long will these thousands of plants stay "hot" after decommissioning? A guess accurate to the nearest thousand years will do fine.
If you want a power plant in your neighborhood, fine. Sell your neighbors on this if you can.
Are you an employee, stockholder, or merely a PR flack for the nuclear industry?
Tech Public Policy stuff
"The acute lethal dose varied from 400 ug/kg (dogs) to 1000 ug/kg (mice) (Appendix 12, page 20) and 1400 ug/kg (rats) (Appendix 12, page 49, Table XXVII)."
If you want to believe you're more radiation-hardened than a dog, go ahead and inhale plutonium dust to your heart's content.
However, 400 MICROGRAMS PER KILOGRAM sounds more like 20 MILLIGRAMS for a 50 kg (110 pound) human to me.
A caffeine LD50 is more like 10 grams (200Mg/kg * 50 kg).
The guy who compared caffiene toxicity to Pu239 apparently thinks nuclear press industry handouts are SCIENCE. Science fiction is more like it, except that most publishers dump crap that obviously contrary to known scientific fact into the bit-bucket.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Just a thought, seeing as the article is about modular nuclear power. Quite a clever play on words if that's what it is.
Coming next: Jewlery, certified kosher earings.
The author of this post asserts his moral rights.
Do you really need someone to tell you it's a joke before you find it funny? Quit trying to justify your stupidity. You're only making it worse.
You can't win Darth. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
What do you mean by "radioactivity produced"? Do you mean the induced activity in the fuel and reactor components caused by operation of the reactor, or the radiation dose to the environment cause by leakage of fission products and coolant or do you mean the total activity of any leaking substances?
Stick Men
Posted by michael on Wednesday May 28, @05:02PM
from the don't-email-about-misspelling dept.
Pretty obviously it was intentional, although not laugh-out-loud funny, since it's a worn-out and insubstancial joke.
We can neither love nor pity nor forgive. If you make a slip in handling us you die!
The age of the nucleus is yet to come - perhaps not in our lifetime either.
Seriously, think about how people get all irrational over ANYTHING with 'nuke' in it, they're in complete denial, so badly you can't even hold a conversation - it's really like the superstitious, demon haunted people of the middle ages church persecuting Galileo for building a telescope, a 'diabolical instrument' for peering into the heavens. Don't think a vast majority of people today are modern thinkers just because they yak on a cell phone. They still want to blame the ruling authorities for bad weather, that's how much superstition and irrational fears still haunt the masses.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
As opposed to letting doctors (most of whom are not "rich" by any means) continue to go on paying more for malpractice insurance per month than I make in my entire monthly paycheck?
I know plenty of doctors (the ones I patronize) who'd drop their fees quite a bit if they didn't have the malpractice-insurance monkey on their back.
"America has done some terrible things. But I know that Americans don't cheer when innocents die." -Dave Barry
3,000 megawatt
Why don't power engineers use something like 3 gigawatt?
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Big problem with plutonium is that depending on how it gets in, it is likely to STAY IN.
As you said, Pu in the lungs is BAD. Mainly because it will stay there practically forever. Pu injected will likely have cumulative effects.
Cumulative effects of repeated caffeine doses are almost nil. Cumulative Pu doses would be very very bad.
That said - I think America's fear of nuclear power is stupid and irrational. Many previous accidents were in reactors with old designs (I believe after Chernobyl, all reactors similar to it were shut down ASAP because the accident was a result of a major design flaw). Newer reactor designs are far safer.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
> Remember the 30-some miners who got stuck in Pennsylvania
Umm, not that this takes anything away from your point, but it was 9 miners.
Multiple small reactors reduces distribution costs.
The chances of multiple very small reactors going online in Long Island would be much higher than getting a large facility approved. (Note: It's known that a large facility will never be approved on LI. Shoreham never went online due to the difficulty of evacuating the area. As a result, Long Island currently has MASSIVE power distribution problems - Companies like to have at least a 15% margin, LI ran within 1% of capacity last year.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
This is Al Gore isn't it? ;-)
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
For $10 billion dollars, you can put it in MY backyard, and I'll guard it zealously with U.S. military surplus Apaches, HMMWV's, and tanks for the next 50 years.
Just an idea.
Oh, not to be an ass or anything, but if that extinct volcano starts acting up again, nuclear waste is going to be the LEAST of your problems.
"(2) Chernobyl: Needs no explanation! At least they tried a containment building, though it didn't hold up to the hydrogen gas explosion that destroyed the plant."
s ics/PHY136.HTM
WRONG. http://newton.dep.anl.gov/newton/askasci/1993/phy
The Chernobyl reactor was high-pressure water-cooled.
If there was no water in the reactor, WHERE THE FUCK DID ALL THAT HYDROGEN COME FROM??? Nuclear reactors don't turn helium into hydrogen, at least not in any significant amounts. On the other hand, generating hydrogen gas from water is pretty damn easy.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
"literally thousands of tons of hot waste" Not true.
That's one they always leave out of the equations when discussing nuclear energy,not some puny attack with a hijacked airliner, or a conventional attack with normal high explosives, suppose "nuclear energy" was used against a plant or waste disposal area?
<P>
If you have a "nuclear" attack against nuclear facilities, I don't really think you have a problem. The disgusting fallout and blast damage from the nuclear blast itself will overshadow any amount of damage a long-lived critical mass of uranium could do, because there won't BE a critical mass of uranium left, it'll be vaporized. Now a significantly large non-nuclear event would be worrisome, but those things are stoppable by things like giant mountains.
</p>
<I>This nuclear waste is the most toxic, longest lasting, and most dangerous stuff humans have ever created in mass bulk.</i>
<P>
Per ounce, perhaps. Compared to the shit we spew out of our asses everyday, nuclear waste is insignificant in the grand scheme of things that threaten human health and survival. The tons of lead and PCBs that continue to find their way into landfills and aquifers, the rotting industrial waste, stripmining, all of these do a shitload more damage than nuclear waste does. When was the last time you were in the physical presence of nuclear waste? I know I never have, and I've lived all my life within 40 miles of two nuclear power plants. Nuclear waste is a speck on the ass of the world compared to biological waste (of which your local hospital is full).
</p>
<P>Which is not to say that I don't find meltdown's scary. I do. Doesn't bother me enough to move away from Plymouth Pilgrim (deactivated?) or Seabrook, NH.
</P>
<I>. So far, even the reactors are leaking after only a few decades, even though quite clearly they were first touted as being able to last for centuries</i>
<P>Yup, excellent point you make. Just as your first coal and oil plants virtually blackened the skies, nuclear power had significant problems not understanding reactor fatigue. And for the past 30 years, there's been no development to make it any safer, because America is so afraid of the nuclear genie that Soccer Mom's and Dad's the country over refuse to let the industry get better.
</p>
<P>And if we could get back to fuel recycling, which is no more a proliferation risk than leaving the nuclear waste at the 100 some-odd reactors operating in this country, we could eliminate a good percentage of the high-level radioactive waste we'd have to store.
</P>
Dammit, I really need to learn to use the preview button...
This is off-topic, but I had to respond.
Republicans like tort reform because then, when I sue a big corporation for poisoning my water supply by improperly dumping waste, for example, Mr. CEO can put tons of money behind good lawyers. Then when LOSE because I couldn't afford to hire an entire law firm, not only am I stuck with my untreatable cancer, but I'm also stuck with paying for the cost of the trial. With tort reform, the middle-class on down lose big time. Republican ideology (and Libertarians, for that matter) benefit the haves and punish the have-nots for not having. It's American Dream...OR ELSE!
BTW, nuclear energy is the cleanest option we have, and using it to make hydrogen and turning away from an oil-based economy will be the most significant cultural change in the world since the Industrial Revolution. (Had to throw something on-topic into this.)
----------
Cheese it! It's the FEDS!
All isotopes that are produced when uranium splits are relatively short lived; however, some of the uranium atoms do not fission with the first neutron impact. Rather, they absorb the neutron and become a more massive isotope, this process will continue these atoms eventually split forming trasuranics or actinides. Some of these (e.g. plutonium-239) , have long half lives.
Transuranics can be recycled into new reactor fuels rather easily. But it has been (misguided) US policy to restrict this process for fear of making "bomb" materials. There are new reactor designs that do the "recycle" internal which may be more palatable.
End of the day if you are being honest, you have two choices accept the risks associated high energy production (nuclear being one of the cleanest, safest, least understood choices) and industry or advocate that we reduce the size and impact of humanity through massive controls on human breeding. Other solutions available do not scale.
Home Automation & Linux -- now I know I'm a geek
On the "contaminating" side, check out the vitrification process. Turn the waste to glass (highly radioactive glass, obviously, but still solid). No leaks then.
It's easy to predict how much radiation will penetrate how much ground, so bury it deep and job done. If you're worried about it, don't live near there (hell, the US is big enough you hardly need to worry about that - plenty of places with big areas of sod all!).
Re the birth defects, there's no proven correlation between nuclear storage sites and any birth defects. Also compare and contrast to coal-fired power station emissions which have been shown decades ago to cause birth defects, illness, acid rain, deforestation, death of wildlife in area, etc. Air-scrubbers exist to prevent this, but few power stations use them bcos they cost money to set up and use, and most governments won't mandate them.
And just bcos ppl are fighting it, it doesn't mean it's not a good idea. For a US example, 150 years ago half a nation fought to keep slavery in place! Most ppl don't understand nuclear, or have been given misinformation by anti-nuclear protestors - either way, ppl get frightened and don't react logically. And with the gov involved too, you get all the anti-gov conspiracies in there too. Logic tends to have a poor survival rate in this situation.
Grab.
Incidentally, Trent was always suspiciously quiet on tort reform.
Let's hope Bill Frist will do one better.
The hot waste hanging about now is as much a social and political problem as anything else. It needs to be fractioned into new fuel, high level waste, and low level waste.
Obviously, the fuel can go back into production, and the hot waste stored until it cools. If we put our minds to it, it should be possible to extract energy from the hot waste. That's important since turning it into a resource rather than a liability will immediatly improve it's handling. It's the low level waste that will be around for thousands of years unless we can find a way to bombard it and make it into hot (and so short lived) waste.
All things considered, I would rather fence off all of Nevada and have a cheap source of power whose pollution is kept in Nevada rather than a more expensive source, surrounded by political uncertainty that spews its pollution all over everywhere indiscriminantly.
Of course, the people living in Nevada wouldn't (and don't) appreciate that very much!
I once had a summer job where I had to transcribe data collected on a paper strip from a chart recorder. The data that was collected include wind direction and the radiation level in events/second.
Normally the ratiation level showed a random fluctuation around the average background level. Ho hum. But when ever the wind was blowing from a certain direction the radiation level spiked up and stayed at a new level that was 10 to 100 times the normal background level. It would stay that way until the wind shifted.
I processed tapes like that from a number of those recorders. They were on ration monitors set up all over the place. They all showed the same kind of behavior, but with different directions.
We had a map that showed the location of each monitor, so it was easy to draw a line from the monitor in the direction the wind was blowing from. Do that for a couple or five monitors and you find that the lines cross at spedific locations.
Each place the lines crossed was the location of a big coal burning power plant. Coal contains radioactive elements. Burning coal puts those elements in the air where you and I can breath it. IIRC coal plants put out more radioactive pollution than all the nuclear plants combined. And they do it every day, year in and year out.
Stonewolf
Actually, food is basically government controlled in all industrialised countries. There's no "free market" for food because the US, EU, Japan etc all massively subsidize their farmers, as well as tightly regulating how food can be produced and restricting imports.
By setting subsidies, and the rules to qualify for them, governments basically control how much of each type of food is controlled. You want to produce more bread and less beans? Increase subsidies for wheat farmers, reduce them for bean farmers.
Without subsidies, food production would be far more efficient. On the other hand, precisely because everyone needs food, using subsidies to reduce the purchase price and clawing back the difference in tax is an effective way of transferring the cost of eating from the poor to the rich. Cheap food for the poor has been good policy since the Roman Empire -- keep the masses well fed, and they're less likely to revolt. There's a pretty good correlation throughout European history between the price of bread and popular revolutions.
However today the argument for subsidizing food in the West is pretty weak. Hunger is no longer a problem for even the poorest people in society (obesity is greatest among the poor). A hundred years ago most people spent something like 50% of their income on food. Today the average person spends only a fraction of that (I'm counting the cost of ingredients, not have a restaurant cook them for you). On the other hand, food subsidies in the West are one of the main barriers keeping the third world reliant on aid. Because subsidised food for the west undercuts local producers, local farmers go out of business (even though local food is almost always far cheaper to produce & distribute).
The author of this post asserts his moral rights.
Never said I was afraid of nuclear plants. On the contrary, my point was that I'm confident enough in the tech to even support nuclear rocketry in space. Launching with nukes might be more problematic, though sadly that's the critical point of space access at which we're failing. If nukes could be made more secure from terrorism, be run more efficiently, and their waste more securely handled, I would have more confidence in them. These things aren't impossible, and if we don't develop new energy resources to replace fossil fuels, I have no doubt that nukes will return, albeit in markedly superior form.
Erik
If we had some way of safely launching the waste into the sun
Now, the point was to generate usful energy, not to spend it all. Launching radioactives into the sun in itself uses a lot of energy as well as wasting the energy still present in the radioactives.
Remember that as long as it is radioactive it's energetic. Today's radioactive waste is tomorrows fuel.
Since that was just plain old ash, noone cared so much. The gorgeous sunsets were enough compensation for the small amount of ash. :) But I think everyone would be a little more concerned if the ash were radioactive.
What I have a problem with is having the waste sitting around in cooling pools far beyond the period of time they were designed for. Additionally, we need to come up safe storage and containment methods, not just politically expedient ones. I haven't heard of the vitrification process you are talking about, but it sounds good. Are we currently using it?
I'm just saying that until we at least decide on a good plan for what do do with the extra waste that's just sitting around, we should hold off on plans to build a whole bunch of more plants. Of course, I would still prefer a nuclear plant being built in my area to a coal or oil burning plant. But better yet, why not spend the extra money on some solar and wind power? or invest in building one of those new hydro-electric plants that don't use dams?
And just because there is a lot of misinformation, and just because most of the people upset about it don't understand it, doesn't mean that itis a good idea. Many of your detractors being stupid does not make you smart.
As a side note, I don't think that comparing nuclear power to slavery is very realistic. That could just as easily have read: "And just bcos ppl are fighting it, it doesn't mean it's not a bad idea. For a US example, 150 years ago half a nation fought to get rid of slavery!" And thank goodness they did! Ending slavery was, after all, not a very popular cause. Many (most?) people in the north just went along because slavery gave the south an economic benefit.
I might just be that it is not that funny.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
The SC business puts out huge amounts of toxins as it is. Cranking out PVs the size of your roof will be much worse than making microprocessors the size of your thumbnail.
Large solar plants do NOT use photovoltaic cells... They are far far too inefficient. What, 10-15%? 20% for rare specially selected panels.
Large solar plants are 30%+ efficient which means solar thermal, NOT photovoltaic. Solar thermal systems grab up to 80% of the energy coming in from the sun, then there's the heat->electricity conversion inefficiencies which reduce the overall to around 30%, still significantly better than the best photovoltaic panels.
There are a number of technologies, but mirrors and heat exchangers are pretty much a common theme.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Herd.
Heard of what?
Herd of cows.
'Course I've heard of cows.
No, no, no, cow herd.
What the hell do I care what a cow heard?
Debunking the "59 Deceits"
Oh, and the obligatory Tom Lehrer lyrics:
Debunking the "59 Deceits"
www.protonenergy.com/index.php/html/energysystems
This post and the majority of others like it are pretty much a case of the pot calling the kettle black. Each of the pro-nuke postings only pay attention to news sources that support their biases. So my question is, why do you, and they, think they're "unbiased"?
Debunking the "59 Deceits"
Otherwise America looses to the terrorist loving, raise-taxes-and-spend-it-on-something-useless-like -people, technology hating, creation science fondling, liberal, commie, homo luddites!!!!
Debunking the "59 Deceits"
http://www.phact.org/e/z/Bearden.htm
, .
He has been proven wrong several times, violating the
laws of conservation of energy is a great goal
but not too damn realisitic
Good Luck !
Peace,
Ex-MislTech
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
www.etis.net/balpyo/ghgt5/Papers/E8%205.pdf
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This has real promise
For those that whine about natural gas as a limited
resource, yes it is, but compared to gasoline and diesel
it is not an issue
Furthermore natural gas is a bridge to an alternative method
Nuclear fuel is FAR more limited than oil, if we switched to
pure nuclear worldwide we would run out of fuel MUCH sooner
than oil
Natural Gas reserves in undeveloped nations like Africa
are virtually untapped
In the US billionaire T. boone pickens anticipated the rise
of natural gas and capped MANY wells in lieu of this revelation
Cryogenic fractioning towers have been used by the oil n' gas
industry for sometime, and have become reasonable in cost
Powering the process with natural gas, to fraction natural gas,
to make hydrogen is better than burning coal, or having wars
in the middle east
Kill the dependence on foreign oil, and we can return the middle
east to the state it was in before its billion dollar oil boom
Leave it to the rest of the world to invent an idea, leave it
to the japanese to perfect it and improve it
Peace,
Ex-MislTech
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
The US Navy has had Nuclear accidents, it has kept them VERY quiet .
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Fortunately none are known in the past 25 years
Excerpt:
Look under Submarines and Ships section
http://prop1.org/2000/accident/partial.htm
Some of the following incidents involve the discharge of radioactive coolant water by ships and submarines. While water from the primary coolant system stays radioactive for only a few seconds, it picks up bits of cobalt, chromium and other elements (from rusting pipes and the reactor) which remain radioactive for years. In realization of this fact, the U.S. Navy has curtailed its previously frequent practice of dumping coolant at sea.
1954
An experimental sodium-cooled reactor utilized aboard the USS Seawolf, the U.S.'s second nuclear submarine, was scuttled in 9,000 feet of water off the Delawre/Maryland coast. The reactor was plagued by persistent leaks in its steam system (caused by the corrosive nature of the sodium) and was later replaced with a more conventional model. The reactor is estimated to have contained 33,000 curies of radioactivity and is likely the largest single radioactive object ever dumped deliberately into the ocean. Subsequent attempts to locate the reactor proved to be futile.
October 1959
One man was killed and another three were seriously burned in the explosion and fire of a prototype reactor for the USS Triton at the Navy's training center in West Milton, New York. The Navy stated, "The explosion...was completely unrelated to the reactor or any of its principal auxiliary systems," but sources familiar with the operation claim that the high-pressure air flask which exploded was utilized to operate a critical back-up system in the event of a reactor emergency.
1961
The USS Theodore Roosvelt was contaminated when radioactive waste from its demineralization system, blew back onton the ship after an attempt to dispose of the material at sea. This happened on other occasions as well with other ships (for example, the USS Guardfish in 1975).
10 April 1963
The nuclear submarine Thresher imploded during a test dive east of Boston, killing all 129 men aboard.
1968
Radioactive coolant water may have been released by the USS Swordfish, which was moored at the time in Sasebo Harbor in Japan. According to one source, the incident was alleged by activists but a nearby Japanese government vessel failed to detect any such radiation leak. The purported incident was protested bitterly by the Japanese, with Premier Eisaku Sate warning that U.S. nuclear ships would no longer be allowed to call at Japanese ports unless their safety could be guaranteed.
21 May 1968
The U.S.S. Scorpion, a nuclear-powered attack submarine carrying two Mark 45 ASTOR torpedoes with nuclear warheads, sank mysteriously on this day. It was eventually photographed lying on the bottom of the ocean, where all ninety-nine of its crew were lost. Details of the accident remained classified until November 1993, when the Navy admitted that it had suspected all long that the Scorpion had accidentally been torpedoed by an American vessel. The nuclear material was never recovered.
14 January 1969
A series of explosions aboard the nuclear aircraft carrier Enterprise left 17 dead and 85 injured.
16 May 1969
The U.S.S. Guitarro, a $50 million nuclear submarine undergoing final fitting in San Francisco Bay, sank to the bottom as water poured into a forward compartment. A House Armed Services subcommittee later found the Navy guilty of "inexcusable carelessness" in connection with the event.
12 December 1971
Five hundred gallons of radioactive coolant water spilled into the Thames River near New London, Connecticut as it was being transferred from the submarine Dace to the sub tender Fulton.
October-November 1975
The USS Proteus, a disabled submarine tender, discharged significant amounts of radioactive coolant water into Guam's Apra Harbor. A geiger counter check of the harbor water near two public beaches measured 100 millirems/hour, fifty times the allowable dose.
22 May 1978
Up to 500 gallons of radioactive water was released when a valve was mistakenly opened aboard the USS Puffer near Puget Sound in Washington.
Peace,
Ex-MislTech
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
1) Hydrogen power is a storage mechanism, not an energy source, because of the energy it takes to produce.
2) Hydrogen power means a much greater demand in electricity. Building that much more coal capacity defeats the purpose, and natural gas is only suitable for mid merit plants (onpeak only)
3) Nuclear power is safer than fossil fuels. Not withstanding the obvious global warming issue, buring fossil fuels releases known carcinogens, loads up small particulates, causes acid rain, and in general probably contributes to the deaths of 10,000 people a year, world wide.
4) nuclear radiation from maine yankee was lower than natural nuclear radiation from living in colorado.
This is my sig.
This is something I thought of a while ago: if you bury it really deep -- I'm talking deep enough to be below the water table -- then that really is job done, isn't it? No chance at all that it'll contaminate the groundwater, because the water can't even get to it!
And I just thought of this: there's a way proposed to send a probe to the center of the earth, covered here. Basically it involves drilling a deep hole, blasting at the bottom to make a big crack, then pouring a big blob of molten iron down it. The weight of the iron should keep opening the crack below it, and will eventually slip through the crust and into the mantle, eventually settling down onto the core. The idea was to have a probe in with the iron, that would send data back up. But why not a bunch of nuclear waste? In fact, you may *need* radioactive material in with the iron, to keep it from solidifying before it gets deep enough to stay liquid just due to the earth's internal heat.
"Orthodoxy is unconsciousness" - Orwell
Hydrogen sports would be utterly cool. It could use power cell, battery and rocket booster combination. It could top performance of any tradionally powered car. First drive around with power from powercell and if thats not enuff add some amps from reservoir batteries and if you need even more extra kick throw some O2 with Hydrogen onto rocketboosters at back of the car.
jk
Chernobyl is not the only nuclear accident in FSU. It's the only reactor breach, but there have been severe accidents in fuel processing and waste storage sites, such as the one in Tomsk April 6 1993.
If we had some way of safely launching the waste into the sun, I would be all for nuclear power generation. But the way it is, we have literally thousands of tons of hot waste sitting around in pools of water, waiting for a place to put it. And noone wants to take care of it. It's the "hot" potato that noone wants to end up with.
Actually, one of the best ideas I saw was to deep core drill a hole in the ocean bed near a subduction zone. You drill a hole 4 km into the sea floor, and dump the cannisters into the hole about 10m apart filling the space between with the sediment you drilled out. You stop dropping cannisters at about 1km. and fill the rest back up. Simulations showed that even if the cannisters completely degraded the material might seep a few meters into the surrounding sediment.
The nice thing here is you don't have to worry about 10,000 year safety life. In 10,000 years, the stuff ends up melted into the mantle.
This concept got shot down in favor of Yucca Mountain. Probably having to do with putting nuclear waste on ships. On the other hand the ocean can surely absorb a certain amount of waste with little effect. So, you minimize the amount of waste on the water at a time in order to minimize the consequences of an accident. Put the waste in containers that will survive sinking, and have features to ease recovery and risk should be limited.
Dastardly
Dastardly
Excellent point. The problem is, unsubsidized coal could cost less than unsubsidized wind for the next several years unless the environmental externalities are properly amortized (and we all know what happens to U.S. Treasury Secretaries who those kinds of "fuzzy math" commonly accepted practices!)
We have a 400-year supply of coal. It needs to last us for the next 400,000 years. The OMB can't even see far enough ahead to factor in the baby boomers.
Which hard science fiction has the best generation starships?
I like Fruedenthal's LINCOS, too.
Turn your waste into hydrogen instead of supplying potential dirty bombs to everyone.
Why did GEAR crush RDP?
Keep your eye on it ... like I said this research is going to be deep-sixed big time. You obviously don't understand how industry influence in government works. The US government supports open source software to the tune of several billion per year (in research contracts, etc).
The hydrogen and electrically powered car has already been delayed by over 20 years. 700 million over 5 years (versus 100billion subsidy to th oil industry) should keep this alternative energy in the labs where it belongs.
And he stopped allowing reprocessing of the nuclear fuel so it couldn't be recycled but became "nuclear waste" by definition.
did some research.
its true, 97% of nuclear waste has reasonable half lifes. we can deal with it. but theres a 3% of very very dangerous radio active substances which have thousands of year half lifes. this high level rad waste is the real danger, the rest is just mini bosses on the way there.
still, the average reactor goes through 25,000 - 30,000 tons a year. %3 thereof.... sounds like hell to me.
Myren