Slashdot Mirror
Women's Institute Consulted on Nuclear Waste
Leon Stringer writes "The Guardian is reporting that the Womens' Institute is being asked for their views on the disposal of nuclear waste while senior scientists resign in protest of being ignored. What members of the public would you like to design nuclear waste storage facilities?"
I'd expect this from The Mirror, Sun or News Of The World
The article author should point out that this is in Great Britain (United Kingdom) and is an effort by the government (The Committee on Radioactive Waste Management) to get a broad range of opinion, unlike George W. Bush's White House in the USA, which is just fine with it's own set of selective facts and could care less what polls say.
I think this could be an issue of overreation. The public is being involved. Maybe the government plans all along to just ditch the input, but if it all comes a cropper then they do have the minor leg to stand on that they did consult with the public, so the public ought to just shaddup about their NIMBYism*.Interesting that the House of Lords has a Science and Technology Select Committee which is highly critical of the project. Ironically it's the Lords which are often derrided for membership qualified by title and/or heredity that are no stranger to bombast.
* Not In My Back Yard
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Why do they always leave the sweeping up to the women?
Because they arn't specialists. Postmodernist thought is to blame here. Everyone's little personal truths doesn't equate to reality. Especially when it's something as important as nuclear waste.
Just what is the "Women's Institute"? And is there a "Men's Institute"?
How about ones that are qualified to properly dispose of nuclear waste. Presumably, leading engineers and scientists. You know, the ones that could potentially design a place to put the waste into, where by the local envrioment takes as small of an impact as possible. I don't think politicians and random interest groups typically qualify for this task.
Burn Hollywood Burn
You mean your tax pence at work. And no, they're not mine.
The Garbage Men, of course.
I suspect there may be a number of Garbage Women, too, and their input is more than welcome in the design of the nuclear waste disposal facility restrooms.
We should hire the guys who hid the WMD in Iraq. They know how to make stuff completely disappear!
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
What members of the public would you like to design nuclear waste storage facilities?
Engineers.
The sea changes color, but the sea does not change.
Oh wait a minute, there isn't any!
http://www.gibby.net.au
What members of the public would you like to design nuclear waste storage facilities?
As a senior member of the Lufthansa-pudding party, I advocate putting all matters regarding nuclear waste in the hands of mustachioed women.
What should The Guardian do? Bury the story because it doesn't play into your preconceived notions of progressive politics and what newspapers should print?
Lets face it, it's a political issue, not an ecological one. They'd put it in juice boxes if it was cheap and nobody cared.
I believe this issue is too complex to be knowable and any solution that does arise should be attributed to an, as yet unnamed, Creator.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
Liberalism must be preserved in the forum!!
The "scientists" in question are probably Intelligent Design GOONs.
Stop Bush now! Support a Womans Right to Choose nuclear waste disposal...
"Some members have stripped naked for a charity calendar but now the Women's Institute has been charged with addressing a more serious matter: how to handle thousands of tons of radioactive nuclear waste."
I have "radioactive nuclear waste" I need "handled." Please book me for all your next charity calendars. Thanks.
"You're everywhere. You're omnivorous."
Politicians chose Yucca mountain Nevada over Deaf Smith County Texas.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
They are much more capable than men at it. While you're at it women's institute... can you clean my toilet?
joke, really
"There are more pleasant things to do than beat up people." --Muhammad Ali
Steve Jobs, obviously.
Hey slashdotters, don't act all surprised...
Its a womens right to choose issue here. Women have a RIGHT to choose, and these rights are hard-fought against conservative bigots.
Are you going to now oppose a womans right to choose? That is about the most regressive thing I've ever heard. Where is the social justice?
Ask Slashdot: Where would YOU put the UK's store of lethal radioactive waste?
Yucca Mountain
Loch Ness
Orbit
The basement of The Women's Institute
CowboyNeal
Breasts!
CowboyNeal's Breasts!
If nuclear waste is anything like money or information, we can rest assured that it will never leave their offices. Talk about killing two birds with one stone.
how about using it before it is "stored"
What members of the public would you like to design nuclear waste storage facilities
Steve Ballmer, he's able to reduce then lifespan of anything!
And I for one welcome our Ballmer overlords, I'd like to remind him that as a trusted peasant I could be helpful in rounding up others to toil in his underground chair repair facilities.
"I'm going to f***ing bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to f***ing kill Google"
Excuse me while I get back to helping my pregnant teenage wife
study for her exam on intelligent design. She needs to do well in order
to get in to a good uni where she can study psychology. We
don't want her to end up like some poor doctor now do we?
: p
Martha Stewart!
I am sure she could design a delightful nuclear waste storage facility, complete with floral pattern suits and a cheerful centerpiece to go with the drums. Plus she could count the work towards her community service.
What about the kids? We spend their money and leave them our trash without asking...imagine if it was a adult group of a particular gender, race or belief.
I'd expect this from The Mirror, Sun or News Of The World
In addition to blocking ads, AdBlock can also be used to maintain a sh*t list of sites you never want to see again. I have the source of this article on my AdBlock sh*t list somehow, so I guess it's not that far away from the Mirror, Sun and the like.
"John Large, an independent nuclear consultant, said: 'This is public consultation gone bananas. The disposal of radioactive waste is extremely complex and you have to make sure what you're going to do is technically possible.'"
Who the hell is ScuttleMonkey, and what did he do with the CmdrTaco Gang? He's the only one I've seen posting stories lately....
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
It's their right to change their minds.....
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
What does Microsoft call the people who pass through its program? Microsoft Certified Engineers...
I don't think that "Engineers" is nearly good enough.
How about "Nuclear Waste Disposal and Storage Engineers"?
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Assuming we could successfully dilute all the nuclear waste .. how much more radioactive overall would the earth be than before nuclear power plants?
.. //compared to today .. how much more radioactive is the earth?
.. but that seems more of a long term result. But present overall radiation levels should be temporarily higher .. right? /i mean given the fast half life of waste it's not like the radioactive waste can be rediluted into an ore or radiation absorbent of some sort and buried in the same fields it came from..
That is take the overall radioactivity of the earth in the year 1905, given all the uaranium ore and other crap there is
Some people say that since the uranium ore is being "used" the earth is actually less radioactive
Can someone do the math? Or better yet point to a page where the math is done already?
Clearly they have the wrong people making the decisions. The obvious answer is to reprocess the fuel and pull out the Plutonium which can then be combined with uranium to make mox and stuffed back into reactors where it can be burned.
If the waste is from light water pressurized reactors then the next best thing is to ship it to Canada where we have Candu reactors and we'll burn it for them. Waste from light water reactors is still more radioactive than what the Candu system is designed to run on (natural uranium - 0.7% U235, 99.3% U238) So a Candu can make very good use of it. But it should be reprocessed to remove some of the undesirables.
We need about 75 BIG 1GWe Candu's to support Tar Sands operations but it seems only Total SA has caught on. Why waste 25% or more of the carbon mined producing CO+CO2 as a byproduct of generating the Hydrogen we are desperatly short of when you can just electrolize water? The difference is that by 2015 Tar Sands will be ramping up to about 3.3 million Barrels of Synthetic crude per day. With Nuclear assitance that can be closer to 5 million. By 2015 I expect the world will be in a HUGE energy crisis because I expect world oil production to peak by 2007 and then go into decline. If we have 8 years decline of 3% per year that is a loss of about 20 million barrles per day of world production. (World production is about 82 million barrels per day. USA consumption is about 20 million barrels per day. China is about 7 million and India about 2.5 million barrels per day. Yet I see the press blames China and India for high oil demand and hense high oil prices. Thats the press for you - just a source of distortion.)
If anyone things the oil crisis of the 70's was bad I can say right now that is was a picnic compared to what is comming!
Next, we should be building the advanced Integral Fast Reactors (IFR's) which Argonne Labs designed by about 1994. The program was shut down by Clinton.
The wisdom of this will be very clear long before 2014. By then the short sightness will be felt every summer when the electricty is out and also every winter when the heating oil is short.
IFR technology is proven and it burns all actinides leaving only short lived waste which has industrial uses such as gamma sources and atomic batteries.
In short - none of the so called waste is really waste. It is actually very valuable if used intelligently.
Furthermore it can solve our energy needs for at least 100's if not 1000's of years.
They just can't make up their minds.
"Scientists don't change their minds, they just die." -- Max Planck
I dunno, maybe those whacky brits are onto something...I'm guessing those women might know of a couple of places where they might tuck stuff away.
By: Ivor Biggun & the D Cups
Bra size forty-five, Bra size forty-five, Bra size forty-five, Bra size forty-five
Well I went out for a boogie, a week ago last Tuesday I was doing the Wiggin Hustle and the Palais Glide
I met a girl in big suspenders and her boswams were stupendous Like two bald-headed men sitting side by side
She wore a bra size forty-five, and she could jump and jive And when she stopped dancing, bits of her kept wobbling about
She said you drive me crazy, burn some rubber on me Baby She grabbed my little whistle and she began to shout...
Hit me with your rhythm stick, Hit me, Hit me Je t'adore, Ich liebe Dich, Hit me, Hit me,
Hit me Hit me with your rhythm stick, I'm six feet tall and five feet thick Hit me, Hit me, Hit me...
Bra size forty-five, Bra size forty-five
I couldn't do nothing but stand and stare, she gave me a hug like a grizzly bear
I couldn't see much, I thought I was dead, I had boobs upside my head Boobs upside my head, boobs upside my head
Oh what a front she had, enough for me, my brother and Dad A chest of drawers no doubt, one with the top drawer half pulled out
Oh what a front she'd got, believe me son, she's got the lot Right before my eyes, and she was bra size forty-five
Erm, excuse me, what do I do now? Man be cool - gotta get down and have a rap
I beg your pardon? I think I'll do a talking bit instead...
She was the big economy size, her boswams were gigantic Like two fat little boys, wrestling under a blanket
The flickering strobes lit up the globes that thrust from her pullover I think her name was June 'cause she was busting out all over
She said, "Can you feel the force, do y'wanna take one step beyond?" I said, "Goodness gracious great balls of fire, there's a whole lotta shaking going on"
She said, "Knock on wood, I'll blame it on the boogie, now what do ya think about that?" I said, "Ooh heck, it must be jelly, because jam don't shake like that"
Not so much of the night fever, more like a belt with a tire lever She was not at all pendulous, in fact she was tremendulous!
Bra size forty-five, Bra size forty-five, Bra size forty-five, Bra size forty-five
She wore a bra size forty-five, and when they played "I will survive"
She went crackers, and her animal desires became much keener
She said "John I'm only dancing, but I'd rather be romancing"
She had me inside out and upside down in the back of my Cortina
Hit me with your rhythm stick...
And there in my car, the windows all steamed, and my throat on her chin
She let it all hang out in bras (size forty-five)
And there in my car, I thought "this is it", an instant replay,
My foot out the window in bras (size forty-five)
Oo-rah, Oo-rah, Oo-rah, ay,
Over the hills and now I'm on my way
I got out my tent pole and shooter
Oo-rah, Oo-rah, Oo-rah, ay,
Over the hills and now I'm on my way
Come on, let's do the Bristol Stomp
She wore a bra size forty-five, I thought I never would revive
When I tackled that young lady with the bounciest of blouses
But she left me for a geezer who had much more chance to please her
With his own master blaster and a pair of baggy trousers
Oh what fun they had...
Bra size forty-five, Bra size forty-five, Bra size forty-five, Bra size forty-five
Wanted: Clever sig, top $ paid, all offers considered.
Steve Jobs could design a stylish nuclear waste facility ("iNuke") that really sells well, and looks stylish in the comfort of your own home, followed by a pocket version ("iNukePod") which allows you to easily take your nuclear waste around with you and enjoy it on the road.
"Get your lazy ass off the couch and take out the nuclear waste!"
"The nuclear waste disposal is broken again!"
"That's not a nuclear waste container!"
"Oh, on your way home, drop by store and pick up nuclear waste bags and some pampons."
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
If they're asking non-technical people to make technical judgements, then it's daft.
But if they're asking for political opinions, then this is probably a good idea. No matter how good the technical decision, the choice still needs to survive a political process on the way to implementation. Soliciting diverse opinions up front will be helpful in getting the product through that painful phase. It beats pressing blindly forward and hoping for the best, anyway.
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
after his last encounter with the WI:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/781183.stm
dosen't that sound like the beginning to the Dukes of Hazzard??
Burkle Durkee Burkle Durkee Burkle Durkee Just a good ole boys, Burkle Durkee Burkle Durkee
That nuclear waste materials are moved by ship to be stored in huge underground facilities where they are covered in a water bath until they have stablized enough to be processed for reuse in medical equipment, radiothermic generators, smoke detectors, etc. As for what should be done, well we should continue fission power station research so breeder reactors become so efficient they produce little to no nuclear waste materials.
How we know is more important than what we know.
It seems modern governments are more concerned with keeping their power by bowing down to the opinion of the general doesn't know what their talking about' public instead of giving greater weight to those people that do know their stuff. Next they'll be telling us Iraq has WMD's because they overherd someone talking in the rugby club showers.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Or, how about garbage men, erm waste removal technicians. They deal with handling undesirable material everyday.
Then again perhaps the best thing to do is let the *committee* that decided to ask the WI spend 3 months living in close proximity to 50,000 of nuclear waste and let them decide.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
I vote for having middle school students decide this based on the available evidence. Let them call witnesses and decide on the process.
Oh, I realize this will piss off the scientists. Think of it this way: these adult politicians and scientists are suggesting handing over the responsibility for extremely toxic and long-lasting waste to future generations. It's a persistent reminder of our failure to use cleaner alternatives, and we should be made to account for this.
Although we can't ask the 7th generation what their wishes are, we can ask the next. Does this infuriate you? Do you think they're not responsible enough? Think this through: they will be handling that waste when you're wearing diapers.
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
Will the containers be pink or purple?
A common theme when it comes to burying nuclear waste is "Not in my backyard." Everybody agrees that it should be done, but nowhere near where they live. This happened with the AECL hearings back in the 1990s. The plan was to dig into the Canadian Shield (which is all Precambrian Shield), and bury the waste safely and backfill it. It did seem technically possible, but the public wasn't going to have any of it. Kind of a shame when you consider that hundreds of engineers and researchers spent a good chunk of their lives developing ways to do this. My Dad is still one of the few remaining engineers there, but I know lots of people who were laid off after the political pressure was against doing it.
Real shame.
I can't spell ripburger
UK Women's Institute?
Don't be taken in by their reputation for fine home cooking. These old birds can be as tough as battalion of guardsmen. Hmmn, a meeting of the local branch would probably conclude that there isn't much room for a nuclear waste dump in a typical English village of only 100-200 people, especially where every square inch of garden is given over to dahlias for the village flower show or prize marrows. A proposal from Lady Snides from the "big house" that the dump be located in the village council estate was narrowly rejected.
I think they might tell the government that they are already suffering the consequences of a nuclear waste dump in the form of a gipsy encampment half a mile up the road. On reflection, the Institute might recommend the government should send the stuff to America instead. About time that ghastly George Bush with his face puckered up like a goat's bottom returned a favour. And there'll be no need to send Tony Blair back after he's been reprocessed.
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï
The following has a basis partly in the realm of 'intuition' as opposed to scientific and engineering credentials, but reflects a long-held opinion:
There is no long-term solution to the problem of nuclear waste, except sending it to the sun.
I believe we (humans) are not (yet) capable of damaging it.
I believe this very issue will determine the economic viability of both the nuclear industries and the space elevator.
There's serious money available (at least, during some (US) administrations) potentially available for the research and development of any solution to this problem.
Good Golly, humans walked on the moon 30 years ago. This is do-able.
Again I say: in the long term, there is no other solution.
"What members of the public would you like to design nuclear waste storage facilities?"
The bastard who designed the shrink wrap on CD-Rs. You know the one, where you pull the little tape that splits the plastic coating except it snaps so you run your nail along it except it's so bloody flexible that it won't tear. Then you have to get a really sharp knife and cut it scoring the jewel case. I mean for f***s sake, if getting a CD out of a wrapper can be made such a pain in the arse by a thin bit of plastic just think the container he/she could make if given enough steel, lead and time.....
And another thing.. F***king blister packs that need a friggin scalpel to open... NNNNNNNRRRRGGGHHHHHHHH,.,..... World turning red..... can't think...... I think I'm lapsing into unconciou
Hmmmmmm..... Deep fried and look like Squirrel.
It's funny you should mention this because I read an article about this no less than 3 minutes ago. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi actually tried to dissuade President Bush from going to war and actively tried to keep it from happening through diplomatic channels in the Middle East. Italy never sent troops to Iraq to fight in the war. In fact they did not send troops to Iraq at all until after the UN mandated support for the reconstruction effort.
CowboyNeal!
Of course, the only one who could do it properly!!!
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
I'd like to see a Martha Stewart-Arnold Schwarzengar-Silvester Stalone matchup.
And turn it into a reality show.
>What members of the public would you like to design nuclear waste storage facilities?
Whoever designs them, has to live in them with their kids.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Breeder reactors, folks. Know them, use them, love them.
IFRs are good, too.
How about the people the people who'll have to live on top of the dumping site in 1,000 years time. Oh...but we haven't discovered communication through time yet. Cool, that means we don't have to take their opinions into account at all. Dump away!
Coal is more damaging to the environment than the small amount of nuclear waste we produce.
The public of course should be consulted. That's supposed to work through the public's representatives, Members of Parliament, but it's become clear those public servants really serve corporate interests. So we include extragovernmental groups of organized citizens. It's probably about as much acknowledgement of the limitations of our current republican democracy as are trade unions under a socialist government.
Excluding scientists, though, has nothing to do with including the public. Except when government excludes scientists who'd come to politically unpopular decisions, like creating less nuclear waste to "dispose". Then including the public, especially selected groups without any mechanism to ensure uniform representation, is probably just a smokescreen to distract from the disastrous course of ignoring the scientists. Which is probably a lot like letting the Prime Minister continue to run foreign policy after demonstrating complicity in catastrophic invasions of other countries.
--
make install -not war
I think it's entirely appropriate to consult a womens group on the disposal of toxic waste.
After all, when they're at home doing what they should be, they deal with toxic waste all the time.
(Yes, I know it's sexist. That's the whole joke of the post dummy!)
Personally I could care less what gender the decision makers are. So long as they have enough brains to figure out the best way to store the stuff (based upon today's understanding of it anyway), and so that they do so in as secure a manner as is possible.
I want to see at a minimum:
* No leakage, seepage, or emissions from the storage area
* Ability to withstand a nuke attack itself (hell, make it able to withstand 1000 contiguous hits)
* No storage near any sort of water supply
* No storage on a seismically active zone
* Ability to store stuff there for at least 100 years before having to construct a new facility
* Make it compartmentalized so that if something does go terribly wrong that it can be PERMANENTLY sealed off with ZERO chance of escape (well, as close to zero as possible anyway)
In short - no bullshit. Just make it work, and work correctly the first time.
Good lord! If uneducated baboons, sorry I mean politicians and lobbyists, can manipulate the general public then why can't all the highly educated people in the world get with the program?
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to read what marketers are doing to influence and create our thoughts about what we think we want and need every day.
But instead of figuring out how to win, the scientists complain about how nobody loves them, everybody hates them, and that they'll just go out and eat worms!
Abstinence is a government conspiracy. www.SafeSexZone.co
Women have disposal issues men can't begin to imagine.
Sorry, not funny. Try again.
If you fill out the nuclear waste reclamation facility survey on isle 12 near the adult diapers, you become eligible receive a 5 dollar off coupon on cigarettes!
I would like to see gangsters consulted on this. They are good at making things disappear and seem to have a knack at avoiding governmental red tape. Of course, pirates are a close second.
JET Program: see Japan, meet intere
Here in the United States, and eventually the world, I think the Christian Church should be the ones to decide.
If we're going to have faith based science, why not faith based nuclear waste disposal?
Oh, wait. You mean it has to be something different than the way we do it now.
Intolerance for ambiguity is the mark of the authoritarian personality.
There is plenty of oil to last for a good while. I suggest a little more research. The tar sands themselves will last a good while and plenty left to drill before it hits the peak.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for developing new energy sources, just not into the scare-mongering "peak oil" crap that isn't close in the near(50 to 100 years) future.
"I don't which is worse, that everyone has a price, or that the price is always so low"--Hobbes
Senior scientists.
Seriously. Have you ever asked a six year old where his shoes are? Give them all your nuclear waste, tell them NOT TO LOSE IT, then forget about it for the next 10,000 years. Some future archeologist will find it under an unopened package of Yugi-Oh! cards he just HAD to have, assuming the future archeologist is a mom, searching for a pair of shoes, for another six-year-old who lost his for the billionth time.
And you're going to get the new energy sources how?
Everyone insists that when oil runs low all these other options will magically become viable, but since options like the tar sands extraction and such require energy (at least, more energy than pumping free oil), they're going to become expensive at the same rate as increasingly rare crude.
Start now, is all I'm saying. 100 years, and we'll be trying to figure out how to ship nuclear plant parts down the road on a truck that gets 800 dollars to the mile.
Oh man, I'm going to burn for that. Better tick "Post Anonymously".
Men don't need an institute because they already have one: all of western society.
Find me a job that a man can't have because he's a man.
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
It will look like this:
http://www.giveboobs.com/nuclear.jpg
(safe for work)
Some of you may remember this scene from one of the Naked Gun movies.
Libertas in infinitum
Since I live in Calgary Canada and work in the industry then I'll put it this way. If you know where to drill then why don't you make some suggestions. British oil companies certainly don't because the North Sea peaked in 1999-2000.
Mexican oil companies don't because Canatarell production is expected to go into terminal decline in 2006 and Pemex has some prospects but not much. Indoneasia doesn't seem to know where to drill because Indoneasia became an oil importer this year as did Britian. Indoneasia use to supply Australia.
Iran doesn't know where to drill. The Saudis say they can up production but they have been saying this for years and so far no real joy. The USA doesn't know where to drill because their production peaked about 1970. Two years ago the largest geophysical field operations company in the world shut down North American operations. It seems there was not enough exploration work to keep them going. They were a client of mine.
Ok. More research.
1) Saudi Ghawar field 5 MBOPD
2) Mexico Canatarell 2.1 MBOPD less 14% per year starting 2006
3) Kuwait Bergan 1 MBOPD
4) China DaQing 1 MBOPD less 7% per year starting 2004
These are the 4 largest sorted by production. Ghawar is running over 55% water cut with over 7 million barrels of water injected per day. 65% comes from North Ghawar. Original reserves were estimated to be about 65 billion barrels and 55 billion have been produced to date. Most of the flank wells on the anticline have become injector wells. With the remaining reserves clearly dropping (but no acknowledgment from the house of Saud) the arial extent of that feild is significantly smaller today than it was say in the 70's. It is about 1/4 or less in fact. The writing is on the wall and the Saudi's can lose 2 MBOPD production at the drop of a hat.
So I don't know where you get your information from. I get my information from industry sources including the Geological Survey of Canada. I do consider myself informed. Now if you want to beleive the DOE be my guest.
As for the Tar Sands. Yup - it will last a good long while because there is something like 1.8 trillion barrels in them. However with over $1 billion per year being invested in production facilities we are going to be lucky to get production up to 3.3 MBOPD by 2015.
So if you feel you are up to it I guess we can go head to head and compare each and every oil project in the world. When we do this the numbers come out to 2007 as being the most optimistic realistic estimate for the world peak.
But yes - you are correct there is lots of oil adn lots more to be found. We just cannot find it fast enough to replace our consumption.
A MASSIVE building program to tap every renewable and alternative energy source should have been underway 10 years ago. In addition we should re-engineer our homes to capture as much solar energy as possible, probably via more insulation - over R50 and passive solar designs.
There is no reason that all new housing should not be energy self sufficient in fact. It can be done. I know how to do it. I've been in houses in Calgary that demonstrate the principals - houses without a furnance.
Since North American Natural Gas production peaked in 2001 we have lost a large percentage of the North American Fertilizer industry and now we'll be losing the plastics industry. The president of DOW Chemicals has already announced possible plastics shortages. This is due more to hurricane damage - but declining production is in the picture as well.
The way I see it - North America does not have a workable energy program in place. The world does not have a workable energy program in place. The political administrations are dreaming and are proposing solutions like wars.
As I see it - the only reason the UK and USA are in Iraq right now is control over oil and a desire to liberate Iraqii oil. I would prefer to see engineering solutions instead.
If people think nuclear waste is difficult to handle then I will suggest it is a lot better to handle than 1000's of body bags filled with dead kids.
I don't know who I'd get to design a nuclear waste disposal factory, but I'd sure as hell get Marcel Marceau to design my next washing machine, cause you can be sure it will be completely silent!
You know, maybe I'm crazy, but I sort of would prefer that those deciding what to do with radioactive waste have specialist knowledge of the subject.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
*tosses chair across the room*
Ballmer "I'm going to fucking bury that nuclear waste, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to fucking kill the Women's Institute!"
Scientists are not impartial. They know when to shut up when their jobs are at stake. The old biddies are far more likely to think about the legacy of nuclear waste we're leaving for our kids and beyond.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I'm sorry, what qualifications do you have to voice an opinion on this? Are YOU a member of the Women's Institute? I didn't think so! Leave it to the people who KNOW what they're talking about, sir. :)
How about instead of burying it in the ground, we inject it back into the earth's core somehow, or at least as far as possible by any means? At least this way, it's down under the crust, and I don't think nuclear waste is going to send radiation thru all that molten metal, plus 10-20+ miles of mineral and metal-laden crust. I'm not a radiation expert, but that just seems like a shitload for radiation to travel thru.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Here is how. The new energy sources have already been discovered but have not been exploited. I like technology that is decades old because we can count on it working!
1) Thermal decomposition.
Put some hydrocarbons in a bucket - put the lid on - heat it up under pressure and we get oil. There is a plant near a butterball turkey plant that is doing this. We can use thermal decomposition for any organic wastes including sewage. However we might be better off turning sewage into organic fertilizers.
2) Fischer Tropshe.
Put some carbon (or hydrocarbon) in a bucket. put on the lid - heat it up under pressure and inject water. Depending on how you do this you can get liquid fuels or gas such as methane. The Germans did this int he 2nd world war from Coal and South Africa has been doing this as well. Its tried and proven. This will be the basis for the Hydrogen plants Suncor is building at a billion a pop for their tar sands expansion. They decided to not go nuclear. Their pres doesn't want to hear the word used in fact. The next pres may feel different.
3) Passive and active Solar.
I know this will work. Photons arrive with high energy which is typically not captured. If you take a glass tube and evaccuate it and put a collector then without cooling the collector will melt. So this has a lot of potential. The energy per meter is max about 1 KWatt. That is a considerable amount of energy that can be captured. Our houses were designed to discard almost all incomming solar energy and then replace this with energy from a "cheaper" source. This IMHO is a very short sighted plan. A well designed solar house can be cheaper to build because you can leave out the furnace. If you check Fiberglass insulation - then you'll note that the R50 insulation costs about $1 buk per square foot. Wall construction labor and other materials are not changed - its just the wall thickness needs to be about a foot. A 2000 sq ft home might be 30x40 so that is about 1400 square feet of wall surface plus another 2000 for the ceiling. Upping the insulation in the building envelope to R50+ would cost only $3500 or so extra. This will _really_ cut down heating and cooling bills and has a pay back of only a couple years because you can probably subtract out the HVAC.
4) Vaccume panels.
Europe has these in testing now. They can do R40 per inch. The ones they are testing are a passive system. The factory builds the vaccume into the panel and once installed they are expected to last several decades. I figure one can use an active system. A vaccume pump can be purchased for $250 bux (maybe too small - but it only needs to top up the vaccume). Or a serviceman could come by once a year to pump down your walls. R 40 - R70 is in the range we need. Replaceable panels are also an option. IE - they can look like siding.
5) Geothermal coupling with radiant heating.
Currently quotes in Calgary are $20,000 for a contractor to install a soil coupled heat pump. Water Furnace International has systems running as well.
To couple your HVAC to an air source which has low thermal coupling and a delta-Temp that wanders all over the graph is just stupid. Soil or water coupling is far more efficient and the temperature gradients are much much smaller.
For that $20,000 an active solar system with more insulation will probably eliminate about 90% of the energy costs so I really think the Geothermal coupled heat pump is probably not the way to go.
6) Fiber Optics and the virtual office
Most people are now doing Intellectual service work which typically can be done from a home office. A virtual commute will add 2-3 hours per day of free time. Why sit in a traffic jam with 6 lane stop and go listening to the radio with the A/C on max when you can just walk across the hallway to an office which is far more comfortable than any cubical employers want to provide? I have been doing this since 1980. I made more money and had time to spend with my kids. I
There won't be a "crisis" as long as politicians don't go on about "price gouging" and fix prices on a resource of limited supply and increasing demand. We will simply slowly ween ourselves due to the increasingly unattractive price.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
"Now wrap your silk handkerchief around the plutonium pellet, and tie it with your ribbon. Hold it between your palms. Isn't this a functional, yet beautiful little hand warmer? And remember, it'll stay warm for over six thousand years. What a lovely little multi-generational trinket we've created."
Get off my virtual lawn, you damned virtual kids!
I just have to say that a great deal of care is taken to ensure the safety of people around radioactive materials. The uninformed would imagine that nuclear waste disposal consists soley of dumping everything into a huge bin and burying it somewhere out of sight. The reality is a lot more comforting. To ensure that waste is disposed of properly, careful doccumentation is made about each form of waste contained in a bin and the bin is designed specifically to safely contain that TYPE of waste. For example, neutron activated materials are contained in an isotope of gadalinium that has a high neutron capture cross-section. When neutrons are captured, this isotope transistions to another stable (non-radioactive) isotope. The end result is that the waste has decayed to become non-radioactive and has NOT created more radioactive material in the process. A lot of people don't have a background in nuclear physics... and those people should not be looked to as judges of the safety of disposal systems. The simple fact of the matter is that most people feel like a cop in a raid. They know they're wearing a bullet-proof vest, but they'd rather not get shot in the first place. Personally I don't blame them, but they have to learn to trust the vest.
...They really are good at cleaning up, aren't they?
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
Next, we should be building the advanced Integral Fast Reactors (IFR's) which Argonne Labs designed by about 1994. The program was shut down by Clinton.
Yes, closing down the Integral Fast Test Reactor was a pretty crass move. The Bush administration isn't the only one that opposes research for political reasons.
This is very well said.
Most people didn't realise that the nuclear concentrations performed in Tennisee in the 40's were dangerous. Richard Feyman almost had a heart attack when he saw their storage system and boldy ran to the powers in charge (L. Groves) to explain the whole plant would blow up unless they stacked the Uranium Hexafloride properly.
The simple fact of the matter is that it is not a good idea to poll the general public what should be done because the general public has no clue what we are dealing with.
Clearly the pollies don't either.
I think its all well and good that they're trying to get a broad range of opinions. I support that. I just don't know about this angle, it seems like its trying to garner too much political support by their question, not by the answer their looking for. We shouldn't care if they're asking a women's group, are they asking an all-male group? (I realize that scientists by and large are, but thats not the point, are they asking an organization based around getting men together in brotherhood or whatnot) The sex of the people involved should be moot if there truly was equality.
Now, I understand that that would be in a more ideal world (in my opinion) and that we are working towards it, and in the meantime we have to make some concessions, but why don't we start working on our point of view right now? I want to know what women have to say, but not because they're women, but because the person is an intelligent human being with a different point of view than mine.
-Da3vid-
To choose who we (America, anyways) goes to war with. Sadly, if you knew anything about the constitution, you'd know that Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11 says Congress has the power "To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water". Oh well. Most people don't seem to bother to actually read the Constitution, let alone understand what its purpose instead. Instead they just echo whatever political indoctrination they have been exposed to.
While Congress never formerly declared war, the War Powers Resolution grants the President a [limited] ability to make war. Even then it's not the peoples' right to decide who we engage in conflicts with.
Seriously. Doesn't anyone on Slashdot actually care about the Constitution?
...has no chance of being elected unless he (or she, but that's another thread) professes devotion to Christianity, there is your Christian Church.
I.e., you know exactly what is meant by Christian Church--feigned ignorance does not prove nor disprove anything.
Cheers,
e.
Nuclear geeks are like any other geek, they: 1. Like to geek out 2. Have a narrow perspective focused on the TECHNOLOGY. Nuclear is cool science! Its the ultimate power source, like E=MC^2 dude! Look we invented the ultimate, infallible, total risk-free reactor and supply chain this time... really! The problem is geeks notoriously bad at the rest of the big picture. Economics, distribution, supply chain security, risk assessment, environmental impact, geopolitical issues, terrorism, etc. etc. etc. Not that the public is very informed on science of any kind, but the nuclear geeks aren't particularly who I want running things either. After hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidizing this whole science project of an industry for 50 years, without a truly economically competitive thing to show for itself, should the public still believe in there advisement? Especially when there are so many renewable options that are cheaper and have less externalities?
Mod-parent up!
NA is truly screwed. There are no energy solutions that are going to meet our requirements. I am personally trying to figure out how to find a home that is cheap to purchase and heat/cool. I know that my current fuel-oil furnance is going to only more and more expensive.
and oh yeah, read kunstler!
http://www.kunstler.com/
This is to the grand-parent post.
Peak Oils not real? Keep reading fella. You know, on second thought it won't matter. Because someday in the near future, you will be sitting in some heated atrium in the middle of winter
eating a caesar salad that traveled 3000 miles to get to your plate, and you will not believe your eyes, because the housing bubble has burst. Oil is $84 a barrell, and the stock market has tanked because the Chinese are playing fuck the Americans.
Oh yeah, does anyone remember a Tom Clancy book from the 1980s called Debt of Honour? The premise is that Japan had a major holding of US bonds. Its used this holding to basically create a stockmarket collapse and then attacked the US. Currently China is buying huge portions of US Debt. A county were everyh official is on the take and looking to our number one, and getting rich from it.
I think it only a matter of time before the US is attacked:
Scenario 1 : EMP Nuclear detonation over NE US. No energy, and probably none, for a very long time. In the middle of January would be a very good time.
Scenario 2 : Attack oil shipping lines and distribution within the US.
Scenario 3 : Attack US interests in Asia with a major countries assistance. Maybe Iran.
Vote for your favorite.
I don't know, but it sounds like a great idea for a Fark photoshop contest to me.
P.S. You submitted this with a funnier headline
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
Put on your tinfoil hat and come take your medicine. There's a good boy.
Hmmm. One of the books in my collection is The EBR-II Fuel Cycle Story copyrighted in 1987 (an ANS punlication). What I've herd of the IFR design sounds like an update of the EBR-II. Seem to recall that Argonne was in charge of INEL.
Heard some stories about the efforts to shut down the program...
Wondering if an HTGR design may be better suited for providing the process heat needed for the tar sands (IIRC, the CANDU may be good for 550F max).
OK, the USG has only een around since 1776. The Swiss government has been around a few hundred years more. Nuclear waste remains hot for a lot longer than that. Has any institution been around longer than the Catholic Church? So, these guys are used to long planning cycles, maybe they'd work out.
If state politicians were actually concerned about energy usage, then they could just change the building codes. Even if existing houses are grandfathered in it would still help, if you live in an area with a ton of new construction going on.
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
Women should be treated just like men from a public view, nothing more or less.
Everything that tries to promote a one-sided view of the world is crap.
Where I disagree with you is in your assumption that without this sort of political stupidity, we will have time to wean ourselves off of oil. I give us about 30% chance of that happening, assuming the politicians get smart.
Laws are horrible moral guides, moral guides make even worse laws.
What members of the public would you like to design nuclear waste storage facilities?
How about a phew phucking physicists, maybe? Just a phucking thot.
A statistic from the among the above cited URL, and this page as follows;
without prejudice
I'm not saying going to Iraq was a remotely intelligent thing to do, I'm just saying let's dispense with this whole cheap bullshit about oil motivating the war. It's just such simplistic college freshman politics.
Lets see..
You mean the tons of yellow-cake discovered in Iraq?
Which tons of yellow-cake? where are the news items on this from verifiable and independent sources?
Or the sarin-filled artillery shells the terrorists were using against the Iraqi people?
First of all they were the legal and recognized government of the country (helped to power and supported by the USA for a long time)
Seconmd, that is about 1 1/2 decade ago
Third, the ingredients for this were provided by the west.
This does not change that it was horrible and evil what the officially recognized Iraqi government did there (and in many other cases) of course.
What about the mobile weapons lab?
What mobile weapons lab? Noone ever showed undisputable proof of those existing. Speculation about the use of specific trucks, which could indeed have been mobile weapons labs, and could as well have been many completely valid and non weapons related things are all anypne ever produced. Where are they? why didn't we get a huge amount of press coverage when there was this undisputable proof for them?
Or the buried MiG fighters?
I was not aware that Iraq was banned from havign jet fighters. Thery were banned from using them over specific areas of the country after the first gulf war. There is nothing weird or illegal about a country trying to protect its property.
Or the satellite photos of Russian trucks leaving key installations known to house WMDs for Syria before the invasion?
If those were 'known to house WMDs' why weren't they destroyed? With all their cruise missiles and long range bombers, smart bombs and all, it would have been pretty easy to do so. There were also no legal obstacles to doing so, considering that the Clinton administration spent 8 years doing exactly that, bomb installations that were known to have been involved with WMD production in the past. This could be done easily and legally due to the first gulf war.
None of the things you claim have been proven other then the use of chemical weapons 15+ years ago. Many of the claims have been disproven however.
Do you know what it is to actually think instead of just repeating the nonsense your favorite politican spoon feds you?
If you were arguing that Saddam is a very evil dude and that it was good to remove him from power I can agree, but if you can't see the lies from your government for what they are then you are a complete and utter idiot uncapable of any critical thought. The lies are too clear and obvious to miss unless you desperately want to miss them or are mentally retarded.
Seriously, If I wanted a multi-BILLION dollar solution to a problem involving nuclear waste, would I be out of line consulting the men and women who deal with this stuff on a daily basis?
Forget the fact that physicists might have an idea how to deal with this stuff, would you really want members of congress, (who have more experience dealing with lawyers and campaign contributions), dealing with an issure that very few of them can even comprehend?
If I want a solution to a medical problem, the first person I would ask for an opinion would be a doctor, not a senator.
If I have concerns about NUCLEAR FRICKIN WASTE, I would rather talk to an engineer, rather than some congressman with a huge NIMBY attitude.
Today's show is brought to you by the number 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0: 25
Yes, anyone who points out the facts about dwindling oil supplies must be a crazy lunatic.
Retards blind to their own self destruction.
I don't care where the repository is, or what they put in it, but it should have some of those dinky little chintz curtains - you know, the ones you can get at M&S.
Oh, and some hanging baskets. Mrs Pewtry over the road does a lovely arrangement with geraniums.....
The Women's Institute Sunday morning inspection of nuclear waste disposal.
Maggie: "Oh this is really nicely disposed. I especially like the welded seal around the top."
Judy: "Yes, it is lovely."
Maggie: "Who did it?"
Judy (checks clipboard): "Oh that would be Darpinder Singh."
Maggie: "Who?"
Judy: "You know, the young Asian lad."
Maggie: SPpppppeeewwwwaaaaarrrghhhhhhh.... Oh.... Oh... Sspppppewwwaaaaaargghhhhhh!!!
- Jonathan :)
No tuna is safe.
The only reason we have a 'Nuclear waste problem' is due to short-sightedness and a lack of political will. There is practically nothing that actually needs disposal.
Uranium-238 (depleted Uranium)? This should be used as a fertile element for breeder reactors/IFR reaactors. Spreading it over battlefields is a massive waste of a concentrated energy source, as well as being polluting.
Uranium-235. Should be recycled back into reactor fuel.
Plutonium 239, 240, etc. Cannot be used to make bombs, since near-pure Pu-239 is required, and power reactors make a mix of isotopes. Should be recycled back into reactor fuel and hence disposed of.
Other Actinides (Neptunium, Americum, etc (small amounts only). Should be recycled into reactor fuel for the IFR, and burnt up.
Short life fission products (Krypton, Iodine). Decay away in a few weeks; not a problem.
Medium life fission products (Ceasium-137, Strontium-90). Half life of around 30 years. These should be separated out and made into Nuclear batteries, to give vital infrastructure (Air traffic control, Hospitals, etc) free, always-on UPS. If these have a use, then it is far less likely that they will be lost or forgotton about.
A tiny amount of longer life fission products and actvated container materials. Dilute these down as liquid, and inject them in to underwater, salt-sealed empty natural gas fields (Already leak-tested for >100,000 years, self-sealing). Even if they leak, the effect on overall seawater radioactivity would be undetectable.
Or, we could try to bury used reactor fuel for >100,000 years, at the same time requiring 60 times as much Uranium mining and leaving large amounts of depleted uranium around. Hands up who thinks that that option is clever, or environmentally sound.
*golf clap*
Doubt that you'll get an answer.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
If this is an indication that the government is going to bite the bullet and actually make a commitment to nuclear power at some point then this sort of work can be a good thing. Thanks to years of CND and anti nuclear propoganda most peoples knee jerk reaction to hearing about new nuclear reactors being built is not a positive one and some kind of propoganda campaign pointing out the benefits and saftey of nuclear power certainly wouldn't go amiss.
If on the other hand his is the government testing public opinion to determine it's energy policy then this is not a good thing.
Can anyone recomend alternative sites for my daily intake of "geek" news??
Who is more inteligent than the inteligent designer? I think that all nuclear waste should be given to the inteligent designer supporters. After all if he made such wonderfull things, that nature it self can not make over more then a billion years of evolution (and gossip has that he made it all in one week, and he even took the sunday off). Well if he is so powerfull and made us, he may have some plan to our wastes. The only people that are complaing are those damn scientist, what do they know?
[]'s Victor Bogado da Silva Lins
^[:wq
You mean the tons of yellow-cake discovered in Iraq?
The UN knew the yellow cake was there, it was under UN seal at the time and most of it disappeared after the invasion due to US failing to provide security for the area. Where did it go? Locals stole the barrels it was contained in and dumped the yellow cake. US troops refused UN access to this site for many months after the invasion.
Or the sarin-filled artillery shells the terrorists were using against the Iraqi people?
All of the shells thus recovered were in such a state of decay and lack of numbers that it has been determined that they are holdovers from 1980s stocks and not actually anything significant.
What about the mobile weapons lab?
Disproved by inspectors later on. No evidence of chemical production were found in the vehicles announced as labs.
Or the buried MiG fighters?
What about them? Everyone knew Iraq had MiG fighters, and burying them ruined them - they werent coocooned or protected. They would never fly again.
Or the satellite photos of Russian trucks leaving key installations known to house WMDs for Syria before the invasion?
This is a new one, I have never ever heard this one - wheres the evidence? Wheres the photos? Wheres the outcry?
Noone disputed that Iraq *had* WMD at one point in the past, it was whether they *CURRENTLY* had them and *CURRENTLY* was working toward stocks or new versions. And so far all the evidence has been that no they werent.
Since Bush's family *sell* oil, how upset do you think they are about high oil prices?
Geeze...
It's far easier and cheaper just to build new Nuclear Reactors. The technology works. It's available now. We should just do it.
See:
http://nuclearinfo.net/
Yes - you are correct. If you want the cheapest solution then Nukes are a go.
But I sort of compare them to women. I don't want a cheap woman - do you?
Funny but the story is Woman's Institute! RRRiight!
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
From what I've learned on TV I think all these concerns should be
taken to athiest gay black women or Al Gore. They seem to be the
wisest of us all...
Why does everybody on the left think the US went to Iraq to secure the oil? It's just such a stupid accusation.
I used to agree with you. I looked at every possible explenation for the war that I could identify, investigated each one with the tools that I have (CNN, Google, etc) -- and the only alternative that I couldn't eliminiate was a play in the oil-futures market.
Spending $1.0*10^10 doesn't make a whole hell of a lot of sense, but in the future, as the price of oil goes up, it might actually let the US maintain its lifestyle a little longer. Lots of people will die if we can't drive trucks full of food into the cities, and the economy will collapse if people can't get from their suburban homes into their city-jobs...
As for me, I'm thinking that a few hundred acres in Montana or Saskatchewan might be a good place to raise some kids-who-can-handle-anything.
http://www.chasingthefrog.com/reelfaces/calendargi rls_cal2.php
some hot mommas in here
Sorry, but you are wrong. Back in the mid eighties, NY State decided to site a low level nuclear dump (mostly medical radiological waste) in a low lying swamp on an active fault line in the southern tier of the state (Alleghany County). Why did they pick that site? Low population and low income. They figured they could do it quietly and that the local population did not have the money for a legal fight and that they could be bought with 'jobs'.
m W .asp
The siting commision was wrong, and they were received by armed locals. Luckily the state police running escort were all senior officers and kept a level head. It could have turned into a real fiasco but ended as a minor disturbance. There were a few legal battles after that, then the whole issue faded. The siting commission regrouped and did a fairly extensive analysis of the process. (The last link)
Speak not of that which you do not know.
http://www.piercelaw.edu/risk/vol7/spring/vari.ht
http://herrick.alfred.edu/special/collections/LLR
http://www.nap.edu/execsumm/0309055393.html
Actually, it is appropriate for women to be bought into the debate. Unbeknownst to the scientific ommunity, for the past thirty years feminism has presented itself as a serious field of academia. Where not just talking about women's liberation movements, but into areas such as national security. I think that whats failing in modern scietific university courses is liberal arts issues. For example, a rigorus examination of the philosophy of scietific method would explain why ID was scietifically sound, comparable to evolution, and why creationism isn't. There is a very real importance to this article and this is news, and should inspire people to examine what's happening in the world of thought, not just science. Now, mod me down for dissenting.
...except that the Republicans apparently all thought the war would be way over & done with by now. Never mind all the WMD & Iraq-9/11 crap.
You f**k up that bad, don't be surprised if people start to question both your motives and your intelligence...
You might be interested in Snopes' take on the 'Al Gore invented the internet' thing - If you haven't heard it, or any of the other umpty-billion other people who pointed out that the whole thing was a giant con job.
Buried in sealed plastic containers from last time they tried to build an atomic bomb, back in 91. They were allowed to have this, before anyone gets any ideas, and we knew they had this and let them keep it.
Note that 500 tons of yellowcake isn't anywhere as impressive as it sounds. Yellowcake's the stuff you get uranium from. And after you get uranium, you have to enrich it. It takes a lot of yellowcake to make a nuke.
But while 500 tons may or may not have been enough to make a nuke, and there are arguments on both sides about whether or not the yellowcake they had could have made an atomic bomb, much less a 'program', it obviously would have been in Iraq's best interest to use their own stuff first. We found no indications they had done so. None of the certifuges required, none of the labs, none of the many complicated things that turning huge mountains of yellowcake into tiny qualities of uranium 232 requires. Much less any of the complicated things it takes to turn uranium 232 into a bomb.
Which makes the 'Iraq was trying to buy yellowcacke from Niger' even more preposterious. They had yellowcake. They weren't doing anything with it, but they had it. You don't go shopping for things that will raise suspicious when you already have them. You build the facilities and use what you have first to refine the process, and then you go shopping.
About the only thing that Iraq had that they officially weren't allowed to have was some missiles that could apparently go like 5% farther than the weapons range they were supposed to be restricted to, and that's probably because someone screwed up the math somewhere, not because of some secret invasion plot. (Not that Iraq could attack the US with these missiles under any circumstances, the missile restrictions were to keep them from attacking Kuwait.) If Iraq was going to delibrately break the rules they would have bought missiles that flew a lot farther and actually hid them, instead of showing them off to various people.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
No they arent humans, because humans are at least intelligent enough to realize their own mortality. They are nothing but animals living on instinct alone.
"What members of the public would you like to design nuclear waste storage facilities?"
How about a filtering device that separates the radio active materials from the stuff that isn't radio active? You would have one expensive pile of radio active materials, but it would be a very, very small "Pile".
As I see it - the only reason the UK and USA are in Iraq right now is control over oil If we just wanted to control oil, we would have invaded Venezuela instead of Iraq, much closer to home, would have been easier to control, and it is surrounded by countries that are a bit more friendly to us than Iraq's neighbors are.
"22 astronauts were born in Ohio. What is it about your state that makes people want to flee the Earth?" Stephen Colbert
And that "less oil" coming out of Iraq would be firmly in the hands of those who initiated the "reigeme change" rather than in the hands of the French and the Russians, who notably, were the ones voting against military action in Iraq. From the West's point of view the Middle East has ALWAYS been about oil and still is.
The willful short sightedness on the part of our leadership (mostly due to buy offs (read bribery) from industry and pressure groups) will come home to roost sooner rather than later and the sad thing is that we will simply continue to perpetuate the stupidity.
"Highly toxic and radioactive" implies both highly toxic and highly radioactive. That is absolutely not the case. While uranium, like any heavy metal, is toxic if ingested, it's not only not highly radioactive, it's bordering on inert. Because almost all the U-235, the active isotope, is gone, it's far less radioactive than uranium in its unrefined form.
Half-life and radioactivity are inversely related. The more radioactive an element is, the shorter its half-life is. For those who don't remember the definition, half-life is the time it takes for half of the atoms in a substance to undergo radioactive decay. Therefore, something that is emitting radiation at a high rate -- that is, undergoing a lot of atomic decay -- is necessarily going to have a short half-life; something with a long half-life is mostly sitting there, and once in a while a nucleus decays. In the case of U-238 (which constitutes 99.8%+ of depleted uranium) in four and a half billion years, roughly half the atoms in your sample will have ejected an alpha particle and turned into lead. The other half have just been sitting there, doing nothing, being inert, for four and a half billion years. As radioactive materials go, that's pushing pretty close to not radioactive at all. In fact, depleted uranium is used for radiation shielding to block gamma rays!
Now, with regard to those alpha particles: they're flying helium nuclei. They're not very good at penetrating things. Like, oh, skin. Paper. Substantial amounts of air. Try it yourself sometime: get your hands on an alpha source (your local antique shop can probably supply you with a piece of red Fiesta Ware pottery) and a Geiger counter (surplus stores often have them). Put the Geiger counter's tube by the Fiesta Ware, listen to the nice clicking. Now put a sheet of notebook paper between them. The clicking stops.
He'd have had to be eating the depleted uranium to get anywhere close to that level of exposure. At which point, he'd be dead from heavy metal poisoning already, so any radiation wouldn't be an issue. Remember, something doesn't become radioactive from being exposed to alpha particles. You need slow neutrons for that, and U-238 is not a good slow neutron source. Enough slow neutrons to make a human being radioactive will also make him dead. Enough depleted uranium in the body to produce measurable radioactivity will kill him just like a large amount of lead, mercury, or other heavy metal.
As for "5,000 times the acceptable level of radiation"
Too much scary writing, too many misstatements, and too many numbers that just don't add up.
Eivind.
Doubting the existence of evolution is like doubting the existence of China: It just shows that you're uninformed.
Saudi Arabia isn't running out of oil! Posted: November 1, 2005 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2005 WorldNetDaily.com Matthew Simmons, author of "Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy," is one of the oil industry's chief proponents of the "Peak Oil Theory." Essentially, Simmons argues that Saudi Arabia's oil production "peaked" during the 1978-1982 Iranian oil crisis, reaching only briefly an unsustainable production level exceeding 10 million barrels of oil per day. At the core of his analysis are some 200 technical reports which examine Saudi oil wells and production figures, arguing in nearly every case that the oil field under examination is limited and doomed to become depleted. Craig Smith and I wrote "Black Gold Stranglehold: The Myth of Scarcity and the Politics of Oil" to debate the contentions of Matthew Simmons and other "Peak Production" oil analysts. Central to the argument that oil is fossil fuel is that we are bound to run out of oil. After all, only a finite number of dinosaurs and ancient forests were available to rot into oil. So, inevitably we must run out of oil, so goes the tautology that is at the heart of fossil-fuel thinking. Mr. Smith and I disagree, arguing instead that oil is an "a-biotic" product that is naturally produced by the Earth on an ongoing basis, such that the world should never run out of oil, despite increasing worldwide consumption of oil. Our thinking agrees with that of Cornell astronomer Thomas Gold, who in his 1998 book, "The Deep Hot Biosphere: The Myth of Fossil Fuels," argued that hydrocarbons are formed naturally in our planetary system and beyond. Dr. Gold noted that Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune have large admixtures of hydrocarbons in their atmospheres, chiefly in the form of hydrocarbons, mainly methane. He commented that Titan, a moon of Saturn, has clouds formed of methane and ethane. Dr. Gold doubted that there ever were "stagnant swamps" or dinosaurs on Titan. If hydrocarbons could be formed naturally on other planets, Dr. Gold argued we should assume the Earth also is capable of generating hydrocarbons without the need for the debris of photosynthesized life to decay into oil. Oil industry experts, like Matthew Simmons, hold to their "Peak Production" views even when evidence contradicts their arguments. The Energy Information Administration of the U.S. Department of Energy, currently estimates that Saudi Arabia will maintain current production levels of 10.5 to 11.0 million barrels per day and are "easily capable of producing up to 15 million barrels per day in the future and maintaining that level for 50 years," despite Simmons contention that the Saudis have only been able to exceed 10 million barrels per day for brief periods of time. The EIA also quotes Khalid al-Falih, Aramco's senior vice president of gas operations, as stating that by 2006, Saudi Arabia would have 90 drilling rigs in the kingdom, more than double the number of rigs operating in 2004. This is in direct contrast to the pessimistic view painted by Simmons, who sees only depleting Saudi wells and increasing difficulty exploring new oil fields. Aramco estimates that the total depletion for Saudi oil fields is 28 percent, with the giant Ghawar field having produced 48 percent of its proved reserves. Still, Aramco insists that Saudi oil reserves are underestimated, not overestimated, as outside experts such as Simmons contend. Simmons typically sees more rapid depletion rates and a higher "water cut" than the Saudis report. Saudi Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Ali Al-Naimi now maintains that the kingdom's proven oil reserves are more properly estimated at 1.2 trillion barrels, hugely more than the 261 billion barrels of reserves previously estimated. "Saudi Arabia now has 1.2 trillion barrels of estimated reserve," Al-Naimi told an international conference in April 2004. "This estimate is very conservative. Our analysis gives us reason to be very optimistic. We are continuing to discover new resources, and we are using new technologies to e
"I don't which is worse, that everyone has a price, or that the price is always so low"--Hobbes
I agree with the second paragraph, but still maintain that nobody could have possibly been dumb enough to think the oil situation would improve.
Obviously, here on slashdot we want to see the RIAA, MPAA and SCO (and MS as security consultants) design the waste disposal facilities.
"Civis Europaeus sum!"
Or the satellite photos of Russian trucks leaving key installations known to house WMDs for Syria before the invasion? This is a new one, I have never ever heard this one - wheres the evidence? Wheres the photos? Wheres the outcry?
:) I haven't found any photos yet, but I'll touch back if I do.
I have heard this from repeated sources, including men who were in the ground invasion. Check out this site for a lot of very interesting links through.... I know it's a blog, but I actually read through the links on the page.... this very well could have happened, and NOT been fabricated. Gee, and ya wonder why Syria is nervous and making a display of force.
http://www.indcjournal.com/archives/001223.php
I'm also searching to see what else I can find!
Jho
Sorry man... the Internet pooped on me.
Its NOT waste. The fact that it is radioactive should tell you that. My now deceased father worked on a Project he called the Garbage Reactor while working for GE. It was never implemented because of ludiucrous laws from the 70's which feared anything with the word nuclear in it. Build the stupid reactors and make power from the junk till its no longer radioactive. It seems like a no brainer to me, but then, I'm not in politics....
wtf? YES!
Anyone with a sense for history knows that the Republican movers learned a tough lesson when Nixon was run out of the White House. Since that time it has been the policy of the GOP to proffer mental gimps as their presidential candidates. In GW's' case, they have found their dream date. With Mr. Bush, all denials seem plausible...
What is a troubling trend in the GOP though, is that now even the their behind the scenes lawbreakers have begun to use variants of the Reagan defense. Scooter Libby's shysters have been throwing up test ballons with this defense painted on them:
It's not perjury. it's a faulty memory.
Enough flames for now. Yucca Mountain was shoved down Nevada's throat in 2002, and that round did begin with a Bush Broken campaign promise:
Nevada's Republican Governor vetoed the presidential finding, sending the decision into the Federal legislatures. It was amazing how fast the western "state rights" politicians sccurried off of that ship. As examples: on the right, Murkowski's (R-Alaska) April 9th, 2002 statement, and on the left, Bingaman's (D-New Mexico) statement
The House overrode the Governor on May 6, 2002 in the Yucca Mountain Repository Site Approval Act. The Senate's override came on July 9, 2002, in their Approval of Yucca Mountain Repository
Just in case you have an uncontrollable urge to squawk, billydidit, billydidit:
Rush Limbaugh is a perfect real world example of an oxycontinmoron
"...unlike George W. Bush's White House in the USA, which is just fine with it's own set of selective facts and could care less what polls say."
it's (sic) own set
Golly. If they could care less, then why don't they?
Don't use nuclear power: Contains the word 'Nuclear', hence bad.
Don't use fossil fuels: GHGs, Acid rain, particulates et. al.
Don't use Wind: Unslightly, kills birds.
Don't use solar: Too polluting in manifacture.
Don't use biomass: Polluting when burnt, should be compost.
Don't use hydropower: Disrupts water based ecosystems.
Don't use Animal power: Explotitive.
Don't use slaves: Medical costs.
Don't eat animals: Cruel.
Don't live in caves: Caves are fragile ecosystems!
Don't eat live plants: If you listen hard, you can hear them scream.
Don't urinate: Causes eutrophication.
Don't breathe: That's a no-brainer.
Don't cast a shadow: You will be depriving plants of light.
Not sure why someone would think they are qualified to come up with a plan for this as well. They lack the training in this field. Maybe whoever decided to do this also goes to a Chinese carry out to buy a car.
Sorry ladies, it turns out flushing it down the toilet actually is a worse solution than processing it into a chemically stable glass, encasing it in steel and reinforced concrete and burying it 1000 feet underground in a guarded mine shaft. No, neither Febreeze nor Lysol will take care of it and simply feeding it to your Eureka Bravo vacuum cleaner only deters kittens and lap dogs from stealing it. The in-sink disposal isn't designed to handle heavy metals, and if you try to sneak it into the weekly garbage collection your rates will go through the roof due to the extra weight, although your local "sanitation engineer" might appreciate the increased productivity an extra arm would offer. Don't just give it to your husband because he'll either make some cool glow-in-the-dark toy for the kids out of it or set it on the shelf in the garage and forget about it.
Having listened to your input, I'm forced to concede that it might be a good idea after all to let people who actually understand the difference between radioactive decay and germs take care of it. If your bridge club...err...women's institute is interested in further projects, I understand NASA is interested in going to the moon and could use some input on healthy snacks for the trip and roomy colors for the interior of their space capsule.
Nuclear power plants have liability limitations because they know that
what is liable in law courts, and with uneducated juries, is almost
but not quite entirely not related to scientific fact.
In reality: coal has gotten away with it because it has gotten
away with it, and precedent matters a lot in the legal system.
A nuclear plant would be a magnet to lawsuits if they zapped a bird.