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Nuclear 'Asteroids' Due In A Few Hundred Years
easyCoder writes "In this space.com article, it mentions a RORSAT satellite that has been leaking radioactive coolant, leaving little droplets of it in orbit around our planet. However, further down, it also mentions this, quoted here for maximum impact: 'After a RORSATs tour-of-duty was over, the reactor's fuel core was shot high above Earth into a "disposal orbit." Once at that altitude the power supply unit would take several hundred years before it reentered the Earth's atmosphere.' Wow. So ... our great-grandchildren can expect a lovely day, partly cloudy with the occasional nuclear reactor plummeting down from outer space."
Grand children? I'm celibate by popular demand you insensitive clod!
By then Skynet will be in control, let it be the "Machines" problem.
...wildly positive articles that Linux is just about to break big and take over the desktop from Microsoft. ;)
....in a couple of hundred years, I'd be most depressed if they can't deal with a small nuclear reactor falling back to earth.
I mean we're meant to be progressing in our knowledge and abilities, no?
tom-george.comBecause geeks rate higher t
The Soviets have lost one or two before that have burned up, and no I'm not just talking RTG's. And since I only have 3 heads, not 5 and none of them is green, I'm not particularly worried.
Professor: About... 300 years.
Kid: ...so we have a little time.
This sig no verb.
By then, Nuclear war will have happened, and humans will be back to the stone age, or at least some quasi-magick age like in Thundarr The Barbarian. When this thing lands, an evil wizard will use its powers to "make lightning" come out of a stick or something.
That will be cool.
davejenkins.com |
Not that it matters much what an asteroid is made of when it's landing on you.
I would hope in a few hundred years we have the technical expertise to do an "orbital cleanup" job and get rid of all the crap floatind around the Earth.
Maybe zap them with laser beams!
Execute? [Y/N] _
Boy, I'm sure glad I gave up that career in space flight and instead opted for becoming a laid-off IT guy. And my guidance counselor said I couldn't make a good decision...
Mom says my
In a couple hundred years, they'll be able to clean it up before it causes problems. If not, then humanity probably isn't progressing much, and it won't be that great of a loss.
Asteroids != meteors. This is about them entering the Earth's atmosphere eventually, right? So, shouldn't we be expecting nuclear 'meteors'?
Am I the only one thinking about the Futurama "A big piece of garbage" episode? The best way to solve this would be to shoot up another reactor to deflect the falling one...
"I used to have that really cool,funny sig
Well we've invested in the laser technology haven't we? And those things were designed to cook nuclear missiles...
How much material are we talking? Will this be a major event to the earth, or will the upper atmosphere just shrug and eat it up?
It's a pretty freaking big planet. If we're talking about 5kg of fissionables, that seems pretty small to me compared to the daily dosage the planet gets from the sun - although I do understand there's one hell of a difference between solar radiation and vaporous uranium - the latter's toxic as well as radioactive, iirc.
The guy who decided this was a great idea was smart. By the time it comes down, he won't be around to take blame for his smart plan, and most likely his immediate children wont be either. It's Someone Else's Problem(tm)! Thinking further into the future would require too many brain cells and/or would demand convincing stupid beancounters that they should spend crapload of money to actually *fix* the issue instead of pushing it to future generations.
A view that is so common in our society today. It's *so* much fun to find yourself in crappy situations during your workday all the time, caused by the same mentality - "Out of sight, out of mind" and "Whew, got rid of the problem for now. Next time it's someone else's problem". Yeah, you can try spending time finding out who's to blame, but usually the idiot has covered his tracks well enough so that it's not worth the effort - easier just to permanently handle the situation (or, like lots of people enjoy to do - push it back so it becomes YET AGAIN someone else's problem)
A little radiation won't kill anyone. Sheesh. The amount of radiation released by the NaK coolant drops (especially after being vaporized on hitting the atmosphere) will be negligible.
Once again, the media makes a big deal out of a little thing.
(Note that this doesn't excuse the Soviets' lack of foresight on the reactor. Then again, they did manage Chernobyl...)
I had but a simple dream, to destroy all humans.
Or 1978.
Since 3/4 of the surface is watter, it has a high chance of hitting the watter. Maybe by that time we have a satalite fall out fall down forcast appended to the wether forcast: "Don't go walking on the beatch near post 23.4, between 16:40 and 16:42."
-- (:> jms cs.vu.nl (_) --"---
If pieces of this stuff lands in my greatx5 grand daughter's yard and it gives my greatx6 grandkid leukemia, who are they gonna sue? The Soviet Union's been Chapter 11 liquidated for over a decade by now.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
we would have blown ourselves to bits with our nukes anyway.
So who cares about a nuclear reactor floating out there somewhere in earth orbit?
-Grump
Is it true that more people vote for the winner of American Idol, than vote for the president? -Ali G.
Somewhere in this article is the potential for a "Soviet Russia" line that's actually funny, and yet no one's posted it.
Mom says my
Have you met some grand kids.... they are little bastards. I say let 'em play catch the bright red ball.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
The article isn't worried about the radiation from the drops of coolent, they are worried that, as the collent falls back to earth, it could impact other sats causing a cascade that would destroy a large chunk of the sats currently around earth. And in the process render space a much more dangerous place due to the extra space junk that would be released.
that seems pretty small to me compared to the daily dosage the planet gets from the sun - although I do understand there's one hell of a difference between solar radiation and vaporous uranium - the latter's toxic as well as radioactive, iirc.
However.. the earths magnetic field, stratosphere and all of that other junk up there in the sky protects us from most of the most harmful damage of the sun, whereas 5KG of fissionables wouldnt be Dilluted by the earth's atmosphere!
I blame canada, or perhaps they're in collusion?
You win battles by knowing the enemy's timing, and using a timing which the enemy does not expect. Miyamoto Musashi
By doing what he did he secured that we as a race will have the capabilities to catch this sucker and render it harmless when it arrives.
Good forward thinking ;-)
Help fight continental drift.
This class of satellite -- no longer launched -- carried a nuclear reactor to power a large radar dish that enabled day/night snooping of Earth's oceans.
Yes, I'm sure that the Soviets were using this for day/night observation of Earth's oceans. Or possibly day/night observation of the missile silos in the US. But it's a tough call.
And just as junk emails cause a threat to network connectivity, space junk can potentially damage future space missions. NASA constantly keeps its eye on the movements of these bits of space trash.
space.com has a comprehensive list of space junk items, and who put them there.
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Nothing to see here
All our plans for regular space travel, not to mention all kinds of other space uses, will be in jeopardy. Paint chips, bolts, pieces of wire, etc. We need some really smart people thinking about a solution to this.
Alaska Village invited to test cheap, clean nuclear power
Yea, because the only thing that comes out of the current Solid Rockets we use is rainbows and perfume...
The above blatantly stolen from Einstein
"Once at that altitude the power supply unit would take several hundred years before it reentered the Earth's atmosphere.' Wow. So ... our great-grandchildren can expect a lovely day, partly cloudy with the occasional nuclear reactor plummeting down from outer space.
Well here's a clue for the terminally short-sighted: Do you think maybe- just maybe -we'll have a better way to deal with it in several hundred years??? I mean for cryin' out loud, the damn things safe in parking orbit. It's not going anywhere for the next few centuries! Could the submitter be anymore of an alarmist if he tried? Heads up, Chicken Little, the sky is falling!
Sigh.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
.. from our children, and their children, and their children's children.. And this little legacy is just to teach them not to put their parents in crappy nursing homes in future.
I dont know that exact satelite, but most of those "reactors" are in fact thermoelectic, powered by decay death.
Those things use isotopes with a half life in a low 2 digit year range, because they NEED a HIGH decay rate to create heat. So in a few hundered years there wont be too much left to make our great - great children 3 eyed...
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
There is also a difference between having the suns radiation hit your skin and breathing radioactive material that bond to the calcium in your bones delivering a 24/7 does of radiation to a single spot.
You can stand on a floor of strontium 90 every day and not really be affected (well, I think there are parts of your skin thin enough that the radiation will cause problems), breath a few particles of it and some Bad Things will happen.
I think the stuff talked about here make strontium 90 look good. Some of that stuff takes VERY little though yellow and magenta chains grant immunity to radiation (Ok, inside joke, govt labs use yellow and magenta plastic chains to rope off radioactive areas with no other explaination leaving you wondering what the actual contamination is from. Nothing like a 2 foot square hole in the hall in front of your office with one of those chains around the very edge of the hole).
------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it
"We just collided with a satelite. We're venting oxygen. We have 2 minutes of air left."
"Oh no, it was a nuclear satelite! What about the radiation? Now we have 1 minute, 55 seconds of air left. I knew nuclear power was a bad idea."
It's amazing how short sighted we've become as a species. So long as it doesn't happen in our lifetimes, who cares? Most species will die defending their children. We leave them to deal with our messes. They mention one small satelite. What about the space station? One day it won't be cost effective to maintain and it will come down. Of course it'll be dumped in the ocean where we dump the rest of our trash. Mercury levels in fish are already becoming dangerous. That's just one heavy metal. A problem that I've never heard mentioned is what do we do with all the skyscrapers? September 11th should have made it painfully clear implosion isn't an attractive solution. It'll be a few hundred years before most are ready to come down. What then? Like nuclear waste hopefully the next generation will figure out an answer. What do we care we'll all be dead. It'd be interesting to see what happened to attitudes if a means was devised to prolong life to 300 to 500 years. Suddenly all this crap becomes our problem again. If there's one thing more important than how to do a thing it's how to undo it.
Even if all of the Soviet reactors reentered the atmosphere tomorrow, it would be insignificant compared to the many tons of radioactive material that was released into the atmosphere by above-ground testing of nuclear weapons.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
As long as we are not talking about things like Plutonium 238, I think we are still safe.
These droplets will quickly burn as soon as they enter in the atmosphere since Na and K are highly reactive. Both the sodium and potassium will absorb CO2/H20 becoming small crystals of inoffensive carbonates. The most dangerous compound coming from this Na/K coolant might be Argon-39 (released from the radioactive Sodium-24).
Now, Argon-39 has a beta-decay mode, with around 300 years half-life. First, beta-decay is one of the least dangerous types of decay. For example, tritium is much more dangerous than Argon-39 since it has a half-life of only 10 years. But tritium is used everywhere today, in exit signs for example, or other "glow in the dark" toys. You can order this stuff on the Internet today...
Don't try to use the force. Do or do not, there is no try.
Incidentally "meteor" can refer either to the incandescence of a meteoroid burning up in the atmosphere or it can refer to the object itself (in which case it is a perfect synonym for "meteoroid").
The fuel was U-235. Half-life 704 million years, resulting in a chain of 10 other radioactive elements (excluding branches) before stopping at stable Pb-207. And that's just the original fuel, not fission by-products. A veritable nuclear cocktail.
In no way will I excuse the extreme sloppiness of the Russians in all things nuclear, but the radiation hazard from these things has been greatly exaggerated to sell newspapers, books and TV spots. Several of these orbiting Soviet reactors failed to go into their disposal orbits and have already fallen back to earth -- and we're still here. Yes, you could say we were lucky that they fell in relatively remote areas. But most of the earth's surface is still sparsely populated (such as the 70% that's covered by water).
Another thing to remember about spent reactor fuel is that its radioactivity falls rapidly with time. While a reactor operates, a significant fraction of the generated power comes from the decay of short-lived fission products. This radioactive decay heat continues even after the chain reaction has been shut down; that's why emergency core cooling is so important in terrestrial reactors. Depending on the reactor design and the fuel, a few hundred years may be enough for its radioactivity to decay to that of the uranium ore from which it was originally made. This point is often lost in the shrill criticism of permanent high-level waste disposal sites.
I do have one question about the physical properties of the NaK coolant: what is its vapor pressure? This particular alloy was chosen partly because it's a liquid at or just above room temperature, so it must have some vapor pressure that would cause it to slowly sublime in the vacuum of space. That sublimation would occur much more quickly for small droplets than large. Anybody have numbers?
why not send it towards the great bright waste disposal unit in the centre of our system
Getting objects out of our lowly planet's gravity takes more energy than parking in a high orbit. Think going in orbit past the moon then keep going. It's a lot of fuel. On original launch date, they are usualy very concerned with weight. Minimual station keeping fuel is all that usualy remains. They at least had the forsight to take enough fuel to park it in a higher orbit. Most of our stuff doesn't carry the extra fuel. When it runs out of station keeping fuel, it's usualy de-orbited.
The truth shall set you free!
The linked article notes that "16 of a total of 31 RORSAT nuclear reactors orbited lost coolant following core ejection into disposal orbits."
The biggest short term problem seems to be the loss of NaK coolant, with the number of these drops "estimated to be 110,000 to over 115,000." Wih the possibility for more of them to leak if other space junk punctures the radiators of the satellites. In the most immediate future these droplets are mostly just navigation hazards, but the amount of radiation that might remain in them is unknown, and it's not known if they're further contaminated. I'm guessing the radioactive argon in the droplets, of which there is a presently unknown quantity, is a relatively small hazard...but please correct me if this suspicion is wrong.
I'm not sure how radioactive the reactors themselves might be; the article didn't give much information on this side of the problem. If anyone is familiar with Soviet spaceborne reactor design, please speak up! My strong suspicion is, however, that even in the likelihood they are thermoelectric reactors with short-lived isotopes, there would still be enough residual radiation to make them unpleasant devices to have land on you patio. And since there are so many of them, it seems a little too optimistic that they'll all land in the ocean.
Finally, I found it interesting that the article notes "we are on the threshold, if we have not already exceeded it, of reaching a critical density' of objects in low Earth orbit, where collisional fragmentation will cause the debris environment to slowly grow even if all other sources are eliminated." How will we respond if low Earth orbit becomes too dangerous for reliable operation of satellites or manned spaceflight? How dangerous is it right now, or does anyone know how many satellites are believed to have been lost due to space collisions?
I think you mean nucular war
a RORSAT satellite that has been leaking radioactive coolant, leaving little droplets of it in orbit around our planent.
It's not an accident, it's our interplanetary nuclear defense system.
Operating a radar took a lot of power, more than you could get from solar panels or an RTG.
31 kg of 90% U235.
n t/rorsat.htm
Reference: http://www.fas.org/spp/guide/russia/military/sigi
There have been dozens of nuclear powered satellites launched by both USSR and USA. When the satellite reaches its end of life, the core is ejected into a higher orbit. The result of all this is there are several tonnes of nuclear waste and a few hunderd pounds of enriched uranium orbiting the Earth. You can read more about it here Nuclear Powered Space Missions
How much material are we talking?
According to "Der rote Orbit" by Harro Zimmer, a book on the Soviet space program based on data released in the 1990s: There is about 940 kg of highly enriched uranium and more than 15 tons of radioactive material. The sattelites will stay about 600 years in orbit before coming down. Argon-39, mentioned in the article, will still be around then.
One exception is Kosmos 1900. On this RORSAT mission the core ejection was done later than usual due to a technical problem. Since the orbit was already very low then, the core was shot to an altitude of about 750 km, where it will only last about 100 years.
Will this be a major event to the earth, or will the upper atmosphere just shrug and eat it up?
This is unclear. There were two incidents in the RORSAT history where the reactor core re-entered Earth's atmosphere. Kosmos 1402 did not leave a radioactive trace while the infamous Kosmos 954 spacecraft certainly did.
OS Reviews: Free and Open Source Software
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_accid ents
These types of 'accidents' happen all of the time.
However, argon is a noble gas that does not combine chemically with anything, so long-term exposure from absorption into the human body is not exactly a big issue. It also forms a small but detectable proportion (about 1%) of the Earth's atmosphere, so it will be diluted by a factor of billions or trillions to one.
Sodium of course is highly reactive. I assume that it's the K (potassium?) that decays into the sodium as Na = sodium already... nuclear science is not my strong suit unfortunately. Upon hitting the high atmosphere, sodium will combine rapidly, probably with hydrogen (NaH) or Oxygen (NaO2/Na2O/Na2O2) none of which are used by the human body... may be a problem if it recombines, but again we're talking minute quantities relatively speaking.
The coolant is all in the form of liquid droplets which will be showering down over the earth over a period of hundreds of years. To be honest I can't see what the big deal is here. Yes, there's radiation showering down, but these are *droplets*, they're not going to smack you in the eye - they will break up probably before they hit the stratosphere, let alone the troposphere.
The net effect will be an increase in background radiation levels too small to measure.
The original article focuses on the hazards of the droplets as space junk... which to me seems sensible. As an earthbound radiation source these don't figure. As space junk they present not only a collision hazard but a radioactive one.
Just in case you couldnt be bothered to track the flaw in this guy's argument, let me make it easy for you. His claim is that there will be a massive "die-off" when we run out of oil, and compares it to biological systems that face resource restriction. The flaw is that oil is not our only source of energy! Coal and natural gas can easily make up the energy differences and will last us quite some time still, so we arent going to go into energy starvation. Certainly there will be a change in the economy, as alternate fuels [note not energy sources] start to compete economically with gas as prices rise. So while the future is not all sweetness and light, its also not certain doom.
OK slashdoters... I challenge you to somehow link this story to President Bush. Bonus points for making it his fault.
3cx.org - A truly bad website.
Anything that has a halflife of 17 million
years isn't going to be particularly radioactive.
It will release a particle every now and then but
unless you build your house and everything in it
from that material, you should probably be more
worried about natural radon gas emissions.
sigs are hazardous to your health
The posting of this article to Slashdot is FUD, pure and simple, as is most anti-nuclear propaganda. Radioactive material, like all other toxins, requires a certain concentration to be lethal. The danger is only to spacecraft, and that from collisions.
Sigmentation fault - core dumped
I wish they said how many hundred years. While I am not familar with the RORSAT reactors, the waste from commericial nuclear reactors is as dangerous as the ore it came from in between 600 and 1200 years, depending on how you measure toxicity.
The spent fuel will burn up in the atmosphere, disintegrating into small particles. It will spread out and deliver a dose probably less than what you get in a doctor's office from an X-ray machine.
The posting of this article to Slashdot is FUD, pure and simple, as is most anti-nuclear propaganda. Radioactive material, like all other toxins, requires a certain concentration to be lethal. The danger is only to spacecraft, and that from collisions.
Ok, I can see all of the above as a very valid point, for not making this a bigger issue than it needs to be. On the other hand, the biggest changes, and also some of the most detrimental ones take place at a gradual rate. If things like this are being handled so sloppily now, what else is being irresponsibly handled? Where is the system of accountability in these kinds of situations? We?re shooting nuclear reactor fuel cores into orbit around are planet, not knowing when it will come back into the atmosphere, yeah it?s ?said? that it will take hundreds of years before it comes back, but the safety checks for the shuttle Columbia also said that everything was go and the shuttle was in tip top shape?
How much power are we going to give to ?research? and how vulnerable are we willing to make ourselves as a planet, to the ?hypothesis? of other individuals, who I?m sure some, have their own agenda, besides the benefit of mankind?? What happens if that reactor core falls back into the atmosphere, into a town and kills an entire city of people? Will the research community just say ?oops?, apologize and just call it a day? How much do we know about human-produced radioactive substance burning in our ozone, and it?s by-products and effects? Lots of questions, I know, but I have wonder about how out of control things are getting, right underneath our own noses?
A man from Lockheed, whose nuclear space program is located in King of Prussia, PA, just gave a talk on this at Penn State to the Nuclear Engineering students. To clarify what is actually up there, there is 1 US RTG core, and about 35 Russian RTG cores (that we know of). RTG is a Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator, they provide power for a very long time many times outlasting the life of the satellite. The reason we use these and not just solar panels has to do with harsh environments, and solar energy exponentially decays the further from the sun you get, once you get past Mars it is effectively zero. All the cores total about 1 Metric ton of highly enriched Uranium 235. The reason they are there is a simple one, when a malfunction happened on board a satellite the nuclear core was detached and shot off into a higher orbit. (on one occasion the satellite's guidance system was out and it actually sent the core crashing towards Earth. It landed somewhere in the jungle of South America, but the Soviets never found it, and refused our help.) So those cores are sitting up there in a high orbit and will come crashing down in about 600 years. As far as burning up in the atmosphere, well that was the methodology that NASA used to work with (now they are working with the idea that they should make the core indestructible and just retrieve it), however I am not sure and the man from Lockheed didn't give the impression it was. Personally I believe that's what we hope, but we just are not sure. Also, remember that we only have 1 core up there, the Soviets have 35 (at least) so who knows what to say about their cores.
Ok, this Excel thingy must be good for SOMETHING, let's do the math on this huge leeakage problem: Assumptions: 100 liters spread out in a shell 30 miles thick, 200 miles up, each droplet one microliter: earth radius 4000 miles distance up 200 miles orbit distance 4200 area 221670590.4 sq miles thickness 30 volume 6650117712 cubic miles coolant amount 100 liters microliters 100000000 microliters microliters/cubic mile 0.015037328 microliters/cubic foot 1.02157E-13 -------------------- So there's less than a millionth of a tenth of a millionth of a microliter per cubic foot up there. Left for the reader: how many of these droplets will a satellite with say 10sq feet of cross section intersect per year? BTW if the coolant is a liquid, isnt it likely to evaporate into individual molecules (unless it's soemthing with super low vapor pressure, like mercury) ? Regards, Ancient_Hacker
If things like this are being handled so sloppily now, what else is being irresponsibly handled?
If it was nuclear and built by the Soviets, it was probably handled irresponsibly. NASA has *never* flown an automated reactor in orbit, and the deep space probes with RTGs (a passive power generation system that works by converting the heat generated by Plutonium into electricity) have nearly all had the RTG packaged in an indestructable black-box.
What's that? You were trying to blame the Americans for this? You didn't read the article? Oh. Sorry to burst your bubble.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I don't see this as anti-nuclear propoganda at all. It's not the existance of this material that causes the issue. The issue stems from the dolt who decided to dispose of it by launching it out of site/out of mind. That's probably one of the most moronic things I've ever heard. (And yes, I'm sure it happens pretty regularly.)
Orbital mechanics is a bit more reliable than crossing our fingers and hoping that the shuttle never hits anything with its wings. Given a few radar fixes after the reactor core's acceleration quit, its fate is predictable to within quite reasonable limits. Or, more succinctly, we have a darned good notion of when this thing will come back to haunt us.
But it probably doesn't matter anyway, because we're going to have to pick up all of our junk sometime in the next hundred years if we want to make significant use of near space -- and there are plenty of people who do and who are arranging the wherewithal to use it. Time wasted on worrying that, "OMG, there's *RADIOACTIVE STUFF* in the universe!" would be better spent starting up the debate at the U.N. *now* over who is going to pay for the cleanup.
It's happened more than you might think. There are problems with those satellites that use nuclear reactors and those that use radioisotope thermal generators (RTGs). From memory...
As for those returning to Earth...
There have been a number of launch failures.
The coolant spills have been seen from some of the later Kosmos reactors which have ejected their cores, so it appears to be a shortcoming in the design of the eject mechanism. The first signs of leakage came from Kosmos 1900 in 1997 - this is also a Kosmos which has failed to send its reactor into a high-level disposal orbit. Having said that, some 14 Kosmos RORSATs did successfully eject their cores between the first flight of the design in 1980 and the suspension of the programme in 1988.
NASA and the Air Force have tracked a number of satellites that have begun to disintegrate after many years in orbit. The cause of this failure is completely unknown, but amongst the ones that are known to have failed are the US SNAPSHOT satellite - the first to be flown with a nuclear reactor in 1965 that began disintegrating in the late 1970s, and Nimbus VI, launched in 1975 which appears to have completely broken up.
Kosmos 1461 appears to have exploded in orbit for no readily apparent reason. Kosmos 1900 is also stuck in a lower orbit that intended and will fall back to Earth before the nominal 600 year period.
Finally, there was the RTG from Apollo 13 which should have powered its Lunar experimental station, but remained on the Lunar Module which acted as a lifeboat for the failed mission. The LM disintegrated in the atmosphere, the RTG appears to have survived and crashed into the West Pacific. No radiation was detected.
Best wishes,
Mike.
I actually haven't seen a decent rebutal for it yet, and I'm looking for one - mainly to calm my nerves.
I don't know if the following will be much of a rebuttal, but it might calm your nerves a bit.
To the key to understanding the article is this paragraph:
The human spirit is capable of some miraculous things. We need a miracle right now, so the human spirit had better get its' ass in gear, pronto.
The author is trying to shake us up into action. That doesn't mean that the science behind his polemic is necessarily incorrect, but it does mean that scientific correctness isn't his priority.
On the whole I do agree with much of what he says. Concept of Peak Oil is credible, that's how finite resources and geometrical growth work. The world economy is based on oil and oil shortage in inevitable.
What I don't agree is the decree to which we can cope with the depletion. The author calls alternative energy sources a hoax. According to him, for various reason, alternative energy sources aren't practical replacements for oil. I don't find his arguments convincing.
I won't suggests that there is a single solution, like going all-out nuclear, but I will suggest that there doesn't need to be a single solution. Rather there will a whole host of solutions, competing but at the same time complementary.
The author suggests that oil is necessary predicate for all the other energy sources. This is not true. Oil just is the cheapest energy source currently, so it is used in all manufacturing extensively. There is nothing to prevent us using, for example, electrical energy from a nuclear reactor to build solar panels or to operate a thermal depolymerization facility to "recycle" oil for the uses that oil is essential for.
The author does not factor in increased efficiency in, well, just about everything. We can do more with less and the evolution will not stop.
Also written off is voluntary conservation of energy by, for example, speeding limits that are build into cars.
I think the author underestimates our ability (as a species) to adept. I don't buy the part that oil depletion will devastate our economy and cripple our ability to implement renewables (that is build the infrastructure for harvesting and distributing the energy for alternative/renewable source). Have you ever considered how much dead weight there is in our economy? How much untapped economical potential there is even in the most advanced western societies? What is the portion of workforce that are involved in fields essential for survival (agriculture, energy supply, industry and manufacture (including distribution))? I'm not saying that our society will not change, but I'm confident that in a pinch we will be able to tighten our collective belts. A new Great Depression maybe, massive die-off very unlikely.
--Flam
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers - Pablo Picasso
BEWARE THE DAYSTAR!
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
I've never seen someone compose a Slashdot post in Microsoft Word before (the broken 'smart quotes' gave you away).
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
We can get some idea what the re-entry will be like from history -- in January of 1978, a Soviet spy satellite with a nuclear reactor on board (not an RTG, an actively-cooled fission core) re-entered out of control and landed in the Canadian arctic. My recollection is that in this case, the reactor core failed to eject, and remained partially protected within the satellite, meaning that the core was still relatively compact when it hit the ground. In this respect, the event was unlike an atmospheric bomb test, and hopefully, also unlike the re-entry of a properly-ejected reactor core.
There were no direct casualties from the crash, but only a small fraction of the power supply was recovered. One website I found says the Canadian government billed the Soviets for $6 million (Canadian, 1978) dollars.
Google on Cosmos 954 for more.
2*3*3*3*3*11*251
You may think this is a big deal, but just think about the Russian nuclear submarines that have been disposed in the oceans, during the last 30 years.
Sigged!
Exactly. Worldwide impact would likely be on the same order as a new gigawatt coal facility coming online without modern emissions controlls. What all the anti-nuclear people seem to miss is that there are only a handfull of instances where nuclear power facilities released measurable amounts of radioactive material, yet coal power plants (the ones most likely to replace nuclear due to abundant reserves) pour out literally tons of radioactive material every year!
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
As Larry Niven said, "The dinosaurs died out because they didn't have a space program."
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Actually, there is scientific evidence that not only is low-level radiation exposure harmless, it is actually good for you, and the optimium level is well above the normal background radiation.
Here Here and here for example.
It is true that any ionizing radiation can damage cellular material, but the human immune system seems to derive benefit from practicing fending off such low-level damage.
The evididence is not conclusive for low-level radiation benefits, but there are several good studies that suggest that it is, and not one scientific study that suggest the opposite as far as I know. If so, I would like to see it. Nearly all nuclear radiation threat assesments is based on extrapolation from high-level radiation exposes.
"OMG, there's *RADIOACTIVE STUFF* in the universe!"
Clearly the words of a Slashdotter with authority in the UN.
That's probably one of the most moronic things I've ever heard.
Since you're so quick to deem it moronic, perhaps you could enlighten us all by telling everyone what you would've done differently. After all, anyone can complain about a bad plan, but an intelligent person will complain and have a better plan ready to present.
Of course, whatever you elect to do must be practical (no "it should be launched into the Sun" or "the Shuttle should go up and retrieve it" plans) and cost-effective.
Now, given those limitations, please, tell everyone how much better your plan is, since I'm sure you have one. This isn't flamebait; I'm honestly challenging you to actually think about the problem instead of just criticizing it. Maybe you can come up with something that the best rocket scientists on the planet couldn't come up with.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
And, you think that these... what do you call them... "facts"... have any influence on some of these people screaming bloody murder about anything with the word "nuc-u-lar" in it?
Ha! ha! You is so silly!
I wonder what would happen if some of these dolts found out what the sun really is? They'd probably be lobbying that we send the FDNY up there to put it out immediately.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
Manned missions to space has been and will always a dangerous job. But it's a job that they accepted and knew full well of the dangers, just like all the astronauts that came before them.
You are rocketing up and what is pretty much a controlled explosion. And then coming down through an atmosphere that can tear your craft apart, only to have one attempt to land with that manned rock.
NASA takes every precaution that it can to prevent a mishap, but accidents happen.
Unlike a chemical explosion, a nuclear explosion is rarely more than 10% efficient. Most of the fissionable material is not consumed in the nuclear reaction, instead it is vaporised into the environment. The vast majority of fissionable material ever used for explosions has been put into the atmosphere where it has gradually settled back to Earth.
Best wishes,
Mike.
More like batteries?
I think im using the wrong batteries then, mine dont have liquid metal coolant or rockets to eject themselves from my diskman.
It's not like it's cleaner than coal in collection, energy production, or cleanup.
Take a Geiger Counter outside of a nuclear plant. Now take one outside of a coal plant. Hmmm... Much higher readings outside of the coal plant. What? Coal ore contains radioactive isotopes? Those isotopes don't burn up like the coal around them? Coal ash has concentrated radioactive material? The coal industry isn't as highly regulated as the nuclear industry?
Health problems? Do a google search for black lung disease. Hell, do some research on the total number of deaths from nuclear power generation and coal/natural gas since nuclear power was introduced. Nuclear engineers will normally receive more radiation from a single round of CAT scans than from their entire career at the nuclear plant.
Chernobyl? You mean the substandard plant where operators intentionally ignored warnings and pushed the envelope of safety much too far? The final death count was less than four hundred. Yes, the town of 75,000 had to be abandoned. This is an argument for not intentionally doing stupid things with your power plant.
The worst U.S. nuclear disaster? 3-Mile Island? Go back and check your history books. Look up the number of deaths. Zero. Look up the number of injured. None.
As it stands, U.S. nuclear power technology has fallen behind. Take a look at some of the French or, even better, German designs. I find it hard to believe that anything even approaches their level of safety or efficiency.
Terrorist attacks? Personally I'd be more worried about an exposed warehouse of natural gas where someone dropped a match. How about an oil refinery? Yeah, that'll be easy to clean up...
Nuclear waste? How about the euphemism (according to rabid environmental groups) "spent fuel"? Know why they call it a euphemism? Because all spent fuel in the U.S. is waste. Know why? Because in a bid to stop nuclear proliferation in the seventies, Jimmy Carter banned nuclear enrichment in power generation. No breeders for the U.S. Unfortunately for Carter, Europe gave him the finger and continued using nuclear -- including breeded reactors. Who listened? Japan. However Japan just sends its spent fuel to Europe for re-enrichment and buys it back for further processing.
What's the big deal. Let's take Diablo Canyon on the California coast. Only two turbines. 1/5 of the power production in the region. 20%!!! If anyone is curious, take a look at the number of >0.1MW powerplants in California. Diablo Canyon is on the coast about 2/3 of the way down from the top of the state. Look at all of those dams. Imagine all of the trucks, materials, and associated air/water pollution necessary for bringing the fuel to the plant.
Folks in California wouldn't even sell Diablo Canyon the water they needed even though the water/steam used to turn the turbines doesn't ever come into contact with the reactor; It isn't radioactive. So in addition to providing power, they had to set up a reverse osmosis water desalinization plant to get the water from the ocean. And it still gives 20% of the power for the region.
For all of the people whining about the number of birds killed by power poles and cell phone towers, I encourage you to take a look at the number of birds killed by power-generating windmills.
Solar? Anyone want to do the math on the number of panels necessary for even half of the national electricity usage? What about the power and materials required for their inital production?
Tidal? Will someone explain to me how land-locked regions would be able to take advantage of tidal power?
Fuel from soybeans? That would be a nice supplementary energy source. However, let's stop making food. Let's dedicate the nation's farmland to soybeans or other similar fuel generation crops. Reduce that number by the fuel necessary to s
- I don't need to go outside, my CRT tan'll do me just fine.
Maybe the solution should have been not to launch radioactive stuff into orbit in the first place? Practical AND cost-effective;)
"As a writer / novelist you might want to spellcheck your sig.
Uh no, as the chain reaction starts, the other atoms in the core gain an enormous amount of thermal kinetic energy and the core attempts to vapourise. If it disperses, neutrons are far less likely to hit a nucleus and produce further fission events. If this process is allowed to continue fissile material is physically removed from the path of the neutrons - so some fissile material would never undergo fission.
The outward expansion of the core is unstoppable, it always disassembles the core before the reaction can run to completion - a matter of microseconds. The objective must be to stop the outward expansion of the core for as long as possible by producing an inward pressure of equal or greater force. So modern weapons use a heavy metal tamper around the core to provide a lot of inertia against expansion, and a huge amount of implosion pressure to counteract the outward movement of the core material for as long as possible.
I did some checking, Little Boy was 1.3% efficient, Fat Man was 16% efficient. Apparently normal fission cores are limited to around 25% efficiency, larger ones might be up to 50% efficient. Some of the later US tests that used so-called levitated cores got efficiencies up to 35% - which is pretty damn impressive - in a horribly scary sort of way.
Best wishes,
Mike.
Do you want to live next to a nuclear reactor -- ive got an offer, NO ONE HAS TO live next to a nuclear reactor if we get smart about our consumption -- and I mean quick. Western suburbanites need to wake the fuck up.
... Pro Reality.
If you want to build a nuclear power plant right next door to me, I'd be all for it. Not only would I rather have a nuclear plant right next door than have a coal plant 100 miles away, why should I be expected to lower my standard of living, and why should other people be denied the opportunity of achieving whatever standard of living we're capable of providing just because you're afraid of some technology that you think you understand but don't.
I want to be able to heat my house without burning oil, wood, or coal (it doesn't have to be a 3000 square foot house either. I live in 800 square feet right now). I want to drive to work without burining gasoline (and I don't have an SUV), or be able to take a train without it burning diesel (to generate electricity no less!). I want the population of the planet to have all the luxuries I have without having to cull about 4 billion people for it to be sustainable. The only technology we're currently capable of that can provide these things is nuclear. If we're going to maintain our current sociatal situation, or if we're going to regress, then what's the point?
Oh, then there's this:
This can best be summed up by my saying I am
Let me give you a healthy dose of reality. People don't like to change. Hell, people don't like other people to change. THere's tons of bullshit out there about preserving cultures to the point that we have cities full of old worthless buildings we can't knock down for historical reasons and people who try to revivie dead languages. People go to war over cultural differences, yet we even try to preserve the cultural differences that cause war. Changing the behavior of people enough to gain the "efficiency" and "responsiblilty" nescicary to stop burning carbon fuels *and* not have nuclear power is not just as close as you can get to impossible without going over, it's also far more dangerous to our society than the worst nuclear power accident we're capable of.
So, you're basically saying that if it was orbiting around something _else_, (Sun, Galactic Center) that would be ok.
How is that not "out of sight, out of mind", as you previously said you were against?
- Sig
While this is modded "Funny," your idea does deserve consideration. However, the problem with your idea is that it's impractical to power a very large satellite (the RORSAT is the size of a large bus with a huge radar set on one end) for any length of time on solar power alone. RTG's or full-up reactors are a must for this type of thing.
So, good suggestion, but not practical.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Claiming that an RTG released more P-238 than all previous nuclear explosions, when the manufacturing process for a nuclear bomb involves getting rid of as much P-238 as possible before it's ever exploded. (P-239 is fissible, P-238 is not and a lot of work goes into getting rid of it to produce a viable bomb.) The layman would read that as "the RTG released more plutonium than all previous nuclear explosions," which is probably the point - to mislead the reader into thinking the danger from an RTG is like the danger from a nuclear bomb.
NASA takes every precaution that it can to prevent a mishap, but accidents happen.
I hope that is the case today, but I want to see independant evidence of it. NASA has lost the benefit of the doubt. The sad, terrible, fact is that the CAIB showed that even though sincere, brilliant, and dedicated NASA employees and contractors believed that they and NASA as a whole were taking "every precaution", they were not.
I know it is difficult for those in and close to NASA to accept and internalise this horrible conclusion, but internalize they must, or as the CAIB reprised the Roger's Commission, another investigation will be probing the deaths of more astronauts in a few years and coming to much the same conclusions.
Remember how so many in the shuttle program flatly refused to believe that foam could be the proximate cause of Columbia's demise? A lot of them maintained that belief right up until the moment the CAIB shot a hole in an RCC panel (in a test the Board had to directly administer itself after getting NASA to perform an "unnecessary" test became so much hassle). It's hard to admit you're wrong about something that cost the lives of friends and and co-workers, but it has to be done if more lives are not to be lost. Just as Gene Kranz stood up before his controllers after the Apollo 1 fire and declared "we are the cause," before leading them on the road to the Sea of Tranquility, everybody connected to today's NASA human spaceflight program must accept a similar burden.
If you haven't read the CAIB cover to cover, you must. You should also read this excellent article in The Atlantic Monthly on the disaster and investigation itself
If you have read the CAIB, how can you disgree with these findings?
a) That the loss of Columbia was not a unforseable "accident", but a preventable event that had many precursors.
b) NASA had a dysfunctional to non-existant safety culture that meant that many of the precautions that could have saved the lives of the crew simply didn't happen. One example: the ground camera network that documented launches was allowed to degrade.
c) That bureaucracy triumphed over engineering: requests for additional photography to assess the foam strike damage after the ground camera results were inconclusive were denied, for example.
d) Even the engineering had lapses: in particular the CAIB faulted NASA for an over-reliance on simulation over testing, and griped about "engineering by viewgraphs."
e) That hostility and derision greeted any external criticisms of the program or program safety. This insularity contributed to the collapse of the safety culture and so to the loss of the Columbia. It's for this reason that I will not accept on faith alone that NASA is taking "every precaution", because if it did Columbia would still be in one piece and it's crew alive.
Finally, let me say that I'm sorry for your loss and that nothing can detract from the fact that this was an incredible crew of brave and brilliant people.
"Just once, I'd like to meet an alien menace that wasn't immune to bullets." -- The Brigadier, Dr. Who
It's a miracle that we haven't had more accidents over the years.
Yes it is a miracle, not because of the inherent risks of spaceflight, but because of NASA's dysfunctional safety culture.
When NASA engineers had to prove that a situation was unsafe before cautionary action could be taken, instead of simply showing that no-one had proved the system to be safe, shuttle launches became a glorified form of Russian roulette. It was true when the Rogers commission investigated Challanger, and it was true when the CAIB investigated Columbia, even if those involved were decent, conscientious, people who honestly believed they were doing the right things for the safety of the crews.
"Just once, I'd like to meet an alien menace that wasn't immune to bullets." -- The Brigadier, Dr. Who
that within a finite space, we have infinite crude oil?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on