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?"
"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."
Which is 100% wrong on how our National Nuclear Waste Facility and local facilities are figured out.
Yucca Mountain is a ridge-line in Nye County, Nevada; composed of volcanic material (mostly tuff) ejected from a now-extinct caldera-forming supervolcano. The "mountain" is most notable as the site of the proposed Yucca Mountain Repository, a U.S. Department of Energy terminal storage facility for spent nuclear fuel and other radioactive waste.
The US has been discussing and debating this since 1957 at the Local, State and National level for national sites, local sites and transportation.
"The last time I even saw this issue in print was while Clinton was still president."
Try a Google News for Yucca Mountain
Results 1 - 20 of about 384 for yucca mountain.
Theres tons out there in print in this issue, and there has been all through the Bush Administration.
"Pegging Yucca Mountain to anything Bush has pursued lately is absurd." Google is your friend... actually in this case your enemy. "On July 23, 2002, President Bush signed House Joint Resolution 87, allowing the DOE to take the next step in establishing a safe repository in which to store our nation's nuclear waste." - From the Department of Energy Website. It's OK to hate Bush, but please try to use logic and check your facts before you post.
Engineers invented it. Engineers discovered how tough it would be to store this.
You're confusing this with the actions of power hungry politicians.
Not at all. As an engineer it is my business to say that if such and so is important to you than it will cost so much and have the following additional implications which it is up to you to weigh. Granted, politicians (and managers of every stripe) often fail to take this advance into account and choose to operate on wishful thinking... But that's not my point. Gathering input is a legitimate job for politicians to do in a democracy. It's what they ideally do.
Now if the Women's Institute says the breakdown rate of vitrified waste is such and so, and the engineers you hire say something else, then the engineers are more credible. But if the engineers say 1000 years containment is sufficient, and the Women's Institute says it is not, they are on equal footing.
Furthermore, you're ignoring the nature of engineering -- different engineers have different opinions and engineers hired by one position tend to support that position. So the XYZ Corp.'s engineers say a site is good for 10,000 years, but the Women's Institute hires engineers equally qualified who disagree, we're on equal footing again until the claims can be examined.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
today, no such limits are necissary.
The Price-Anderson Act that limits the liability of nuclear operators to around $400M per plant was last renewed in 2002. What's changed since then?
In the United States, the question was put to Congress. And among those voting for war were a majority of the main opposition party, including that opposition party's next candidate for President. And the reason the majority of the opposition party supported it was that the American people supported the war so strongly the members of the party were afraid they'd take a beating in the November 2002 election if they dared oppose it.
Now, after the elections, when it was safe to do so without political repercussions, there was a symbolic anti-war resolution endorsed by major figures in the opposition party in order to throw a bone to their base. But the U.S. Congress endorsed war because it was unquestionable the American people supported it (as the polls of the time clearly show).
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.
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
I don't know where you learned that fact, but it's not true or even applicable in this case of people living near reactor sites since it's NRC regulations that people cannot receive more than the average natural dose if they are outside boundaries of the site (also why most sites are in remote areas). Facilities are very heavily insured for both the site and the utility. They need laws limiting liability same as they need laws limiting the liability for a surgeon. Some laws are created for the benefit of the masses. It is entirely true that a family member is priceless to one's family, but should an accident occur, that person is not considered priceless by others. If a site has an accident and a worker dies, should the family be awarded as much as they want? The answer you get from most people is: of course not! Barring another chernobyl (which is impossible with western reactors due to the negative void coefficient and containment structures), what damage could be done to a large area that a utility would be liable for? A utility in that case would go under faster than Enron so there would be no trial. So you want a reason why facilities don't insure them fully? There ya go.
Now, I will agree with you that parts of the county can seem pretty empty, but that's because it's traditionally sheep-farming land, and has been for long before Sellafield arrived on the scene. In fact, as Sellafield is the biggest (over 12 000 jobs at present) employer in the West of the county by some considerable margin (and has been ever since the local mining industry closed down), you could quite easily argue that West Cumbria would be more desolate without Sellafield than with it.
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.
Nuclear Industries Indemnity ACT.
HTH. HAND. DFRNA.
At least Britain and Australia only had small majorities against the war
I can't speak for Australia, but up until war was declared, the majority of British people opposed the war.
There's also the small matter of the largest popular demonstration against government policy ever recorded.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
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