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NPR Story on the Future of Nuclear Power
deeptrace writes "The Living on Earth show on NPR recently had a segment on the future of Nuclear Energy. The nearly hour long show is available as an mp3 and in transcript form. It talks about hot fusion, cold fusion, and Pebble Bed Reactors. It provides a well balanced and informative overview of progress towards their use for future nuclear power generation. Most interestingly, they talk with Dr. Pamela Boss and Dr. Stanislaw Szpak at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center in San Diego. Dr. Szpak says of their cold fusion experiments: 'We have 100 percent reproducible results'."
We have 100 percent reproducible
100% success or 100% failure?
NASA's done some great things. They've given us Tang and Velcro. They've popped water balloons on the Shuttle. And they've put a big old American flag on the Moon. It's a shame that they have gotten to be the butt of so many jokes in recent years due to their continuing mismanagement and crappy safety record.
But look at it from the perspective of the astronauts. You know that there is a non-zero risk of exploding in a bright flash and becoming a spectacle on the evening news. You know that NASA really hasn't fixed anything relevant to the problems of the previous Shuttle disasters. And you know that you'll be just as forgotten as the other astronauts once NASA blows up the next Shuttle flight after yours.
But it's space! Only a handful of people have ever gone up there. It's something that you train hard for and long for, because despite the risks and odds, the payoff is just too great to ignore.
Does nuclear power also have that same ability to pay off in spades? The risks are well known. It's like putting a revolver to your head, but you know what? 5 out of 6 times, that hammer's just going to click and nothing's going to happen.
Considering all the various physical constraints and obstacles to sustained fusion reactions (like: current density must be over 2.6 A / squared cm, surface status must be as crack-free as possible, hydrogen-metal ratio inside electrode must be over 0.84, there must be some but not too much "light" water in the heavy water, etc...) I prefer calling it "Difficult Fusion" :D
Maybe we deserve this world ?
Were these the guys who did the Crystal or Sonic based fusion? As I recal, while they are repeatable, neither of them were particularly usefull for creating large scale fusion reactions.
I love to slaughter the english language.
Now that NPR is on board, when can we start to build new reactors?
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
You can never put TOO much water in the reactor.
...seem like an interesting concept.
I was especially interested to read the following (apart from the funny connotations of the scientists name!)
Sue Ion is the technology director for British Nuclear Fuels. She thinks nuclear energy is becoming more attractive because of the growing concern over greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants. Ms. Ion also says pebble beds have an added benefit that can move them beyond the electricity business. The reactors will operate at extremely high temperatures -- not hot enough to melt the fuel, but hot enough to efficiently desalinate ocean water for drinking. And actually so hot they could crack open molecules of water. That would make it possible to manufacture hydrogen.
It would seem that this could kill several birds with one stone - "cleaner" electricity production, a source of hydrogen for motor vehicles and the possibility to make sea water domestically usable. Those seem like massive upsides, what are the downsides?
I wonder how feasible it would be to convert nuclear plants to fusion plants later? Granted we don't know what all of the requirements for a fusion reactor will be, but it seems like we could at least make some adjustments to reactors currently being designed with the goal of converting them later, or are they so different that this won't be possible?
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
Well, General Foods gave us Tang in 1957, and Swiss engineer by Georges de Mestral gave us Velcro in *1948*.
The 1st NPlant in the US came in ahead of time and ahead of budget. Protests have kept every other plant from being on time and on budget. It also made every plant larger and larger; as they tried to make the economics work.
Each plant being so big and so custom made to the area, also makes them hard to inspect; each one is different to some degree.
The French have been building small scale N-Plants w/ passive cooling; meaning if something goes wrong it shuts itself down without any need (or room for) equipment failure. (an example being using the pressure from the reaction to hold back water. If there is less pressure or more pressure the water enters an shuts down the plant.
It seems to be passive cooling and uniform construction is key to safety. Building them smaller means there are more of them and they are closer to "you." So not sure how I feel about size. Also there is security risks, more plants to watch equate to more risk.
http://www.hawknest.com/
Of course it is hot, of course it can vaporize water : this is how it works ! Desalinize sea water with it if you wish, but this is a waste of heat that could be used to produce electricity. You can make hydrogen too, but I doubt that it will be more efficient than making electrolyse...
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Fission reactors will always produce harmful waste, but we have been able to deal with that in the past quite effectively. The problem that will kill nuclear energy is people. Private citizens are freaked out about both meltdowns and terrorism, so they'll lobby to have new plants built in someone else's backyard. The other people problem is the people running the plants. If you hire an $8/hour rent-a-cop to guard your facility, you're asking for trouble. Also, both the Three Mile Island incident and Chernobyl were caused by inattention and lack of maintenance. I guarantee that turning over contol of nuclear facilities to the private sector will immediately trigger the hiring of low-wage bare minimum staffs to save money. Eventually, someone will screw up, trigger another disaster, and that'll be the end of nuclear power in the US forever once people start demanding a stop to it.
I agree that nuclear energy is probably one of the best choices for the future as coal, natural gas and oil run out, but it's got a lot of obstacles to overcome.
And what precisely did you find left-leaning about the article? You did read the article, didn't you?
As it turns out, you guessed right that the article was not very balanced, but not he way you thing. The imbalance here stemmed from the way informed criticism of the technology (not of local economic issues) were awarded about one sentence in an great big sales-brochure-like presentation of the proponents' view.
Yes, valid criticisms do exist, and from solid sources too. Google it. Not necessarlily saying they're wnough to tip the scales in the "no-go" direction, but pretending there are none, or that this article was anything close to balanced, is just ridiculous.
And what's "left" about believing in pshychic phenomena, anyway?
sudo ergo sum
We should turn off all energy plants, stop burning fossil fuels then find a cave or tree to cling on to and eat bark for the rest of our lives. :-|
Wikipedia on pebble beds:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor
Other useful stuff:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synroc
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitrification
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_waste
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneutronic_fusion
Suffice to say, these articles cover alot of ground.
NPR may not be the best source, but to compare it to Fox News is an insult and simply wrong.
I believe in conservation as a means to make our society more energy efficient. However, in a world of increasing population and bringing 3rd world economies into a one world modern economy, we cannot expect global energy consumption to decrease. This means either burning fossil fuels at a faster rate, wind and solar, or nuclear. As far as burning fossil fuels go, realize that we will run out and that burning coal releases tremendous radioactivity into the atmosphere. I love wind and solar but I think we need to hedge our bets with a major committment to developing safe nuclear power generation.
At some point you have a heat exchange process somewhere, right? They didn't detail it -- I did listen to the hour long program. Now, isn't that heated coolant considered 'dirty' and if so, what coolant can you use to carry that heat to an exchanger but use a low enough volume of it so that what is exchanged is still hot enough to crack open water to get hydrogen and still have enough energy left open to produce the steam required to run the turbines? Once you're used the steam that way, and its gone through the expansion process, how do you STILL have enough energy to heat even more water to desalinate it?
It seems like you're re-using the same heat from that coolant quite a few times. You can't use the coolant directly without the exchanger, I assume, since it would be contaminated -- and what good would desalinated but otherwise radioactive water be to anyone?
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
These technologies will only become viable when Homer Simpson gives his approval.
re-using your diswasher as a television. They're both appliances and run on electricity after all, but they do entirely different things in entirely different ways. You could probably re-use some parts -- but it would cost more than starting over.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
Which it is:
Air America
Google reports that they are "Progressive talk radio network"
And talking to dogs is left-wing how?
James P. Barrett
IIRC, the pebble bed designs usually use helium as primary coolant, and helium simply doesn't get "dirty". The natural isotopes (He3 an He4) are stable, and the others are both hard to create and have half-lives of under one second.
sudo ergo sum
And do you know what the neatest thing is about them? If you have a catastrophic collant loss, the whole thing shuts down. No boom, no pop - but perhaps a fizzle and sigh.
But but... what about the children? And the arts! Art is a family value!
At least it's only 10% of their budget.
What was wrong with Ms. (Dr.?) Ion's parents, naming her Sue of all things.
If my name was Ion, I'd surely name my daughters Anne and Katya (Kat for short).
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I'm asking this next question in the utmost sincerity:
Are you saying this because of specific misinformation in the piece, or is this a knee-jerk reaction you had without even hearing it?
An insult to Fox News, you mean. Fox News actually has to compete for its market share, it doesn't get government handouts for producing content that no one listens to.
Fox News has also never had a scandal relating to people being hired and fired based on their political affiliations - which NPR has had. NPR managers were deciding on who to hire based on whether or not they were Republicans. Great way to get balanced news, huh?
Then there was the funding scandal, where it was discovered that NPR was misusing the funds it got from the government...
I agree, though, comparing NPR to Fox News is an insult and simply wrong - an insult to Fox News, and simply wrong to compare a public company to a government-controlled media source.
I think they're broken.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle#Th e_Thorium_fuel_cycle
For the moment, I don't think we should let the lack of an absolutely permanent solution stop us from migrating away from coal. Vitrification or Synroc for now. There is plenty of fuel in the world. And (hot)fusion produces a significant amount of waste on its own.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_power
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneutronic_fusion
Another good idea that would probably rival cold fusion for efficiency is hamsters, wheels, a turbine, and crystal meth. Animals are 80%+ effecient in converting energy to force, which is far better than the 10-12% of artificial systems. The crystal meth would even be free, since they're still brewing massive quantites of it as Americans need something more powerful than caffeine to keep them awake to work their 2-3 jobs to make ends meet in our spiffy new minimum wage service economy. The only waste here would be hamster shit, but you could probably sell that to hippies at a good food store. Or maybe make a super-coffee out of it from the unexchanged meth. Clearly, great potential regardless.
Please point to one study that shows the left bias of NPR News. Every rigorous study I've seen, including the reviews instigated by the noted conservative Republican chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting Kenneth Tomlinson, have concluded that NPR provides coverage that is very balanced and fair.
Perhaps you're confusing fair and balanced with "Fair and Balanced"(c).
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
You could never cycle drinking water through the reactor as the primary coolant anyways, it becomes radioactive. iirc, helium, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide do not (or the nuclear products have sufficiently short half lives that it's not a problem), which also has the benefit of massively reducing the impact of a coolant leak (some people may talk funny until the helium dissipates vs. tens of thousands long term deaths from cancer).
You could still heat exchange from an inert gas to water, however, and most likely have more than enough heat to boil it or "crack" it.
NPR is a media organization. Their focus is on public discussion, information dissemination, and issue analysis. As such, NPR is much more useful, and threatening to the status quo, than they would be if they were a politicized organization such as MoveOn.org or the American Heritage Foundation. (And yes, I did mean the American Heritage Foundation.)
If you think NPR is leftist you've never met a real leftist.
This is REALLY interesting to me. I've heard the mnemonic that "contamination is the sh*t, and raditation is the stink" -- so in this case Helium is a great thing to use since sh*t doesn't stick to it and its own sh*t doesn't stink!
That's really interesting.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
Very little tax money goes to NPR anymore (1-2% of funding).. and the money that does is through competitive grants, meaning that they are in some sense competing for the money. (Note: NPR != NPR affiliate stations)
And as the sibling said, if you think NPR is leftist, your 'left-right' spectrum is way out of whack.
While I personally don't get cable anymore, anyone who does pays for Fox News, whether they like it or not. The only way to not pay for Fox News is to not have cable or satellite, which is a minority of the US.
I don't think that they are proposing that you re-use the heat. Power generators like to have steam go from ~900F to ~500F, to imporve efficiency. Everything after that is waste, which they dump out of the cooling tower. If the power plant is nearby some homes & offices, you could capture that heat and pipe it to where it's needed, but that would require more heat exchangers, etc. I'm not sure the economics would work.
For the desalination or hydrogen cracking, I believe they are talking about that being the *primary application* of the reactor. In a place where you need power, you use the heat to make electricity. In a place where you need water, you use it to desalinate. In a place where you need hydrogen, you use it to crack water.
Electricity is great for running stationary objects like buildings, but not so good at vehicles. A storable fuel is better for that.
Consider some seaside urban area that is outgrowing its supply of fresh water. Since these reactors are modular, you could install one reactor to make electricity, one to make water and one to make hydrogen for the cars. The power, water and hydrogen distribution grids are all in place and benefit from economies of scael, and you can share the administrative/training/regulatory overhead of running the reactors.
Need even more power/water/H2? Install another module.
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain
There are studies (which I don't have on hand right now) that say we could only have about 50 years worth of fissionable Uranium left, and five years after that if we dismantled all our warheads. Nuclear power is fairly clean, per gigawatt, but it's not renewable. Unless we find more deposits of ore, nuclear fission needs to be a transitional, temporary technology.
Yeah, it's an insult alright - an insult that our tax dollars prop up the blatantly leftist NPR.
Well, conservatives believe that *all* media is liberal, with the possible exceptions of Fox News and certain talk radio programs. This fact adds nothing to our understanding of NPR. Note that most people who have actually listened to NPR approve of it. Hence, it is doing its job.
The notion that government should promote conservative values and stifle everything else is arrogant, ignorant, and in the end inadequate for a pluralist society.
Yes, it is a good idea for the coolant part. But remember it does nothing for the waste problem, the uranium mining, transport and processing needed to produce the fuel, transport and trade with radioctive fuel and waste materials, the "dirty" building which will sooner or later need to be decommissioned, the finite uranium resources available, the potential misuse for weapons, etc. etc.
sudo ergo sum
If you read the piece NPR seemed to spend a lot of time criticising pebble bed reactors. Deeming them as polluters and saying the money should have been spent on conservation, glossing over the saftey of these reactors as well as the benifits they can provide now. All the while playing up the very controversial cold fusion.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
As for leftism at NPR, you don't expect them to completely reveal themselves when Republicans write the checks, do you? That said, Bill Moyers seems to be nearly that stupid.
Actually, NPR has to compete for their federal money. And that money only makes up 1-2% of their budget, to boot. Plus, they certainly do have to compete for market share, and listener dollars, since pledges (through local affiliates) make up a good part of the budget.
Couldn't find any info on an NPR hiring scandal (unless you mean the recent Bush CPB scandal?) Care to provide a link? Or is this a 20-year old canard that you are still holding onto like Chappaquiddick? Also couldn't find anything on a funding scandal so a source there would be helpful as well.
I don't believe Fox is publicly owned.. or did you mean Fox as the 'government-controlled' media source?
NPR managers were deciding on who to hire based on whether or not they were Republicans. Great way to get balanced news, huh?
Well, the Republicans in charge thought that Republican views weren't getting enough airtime apparently, so they wanted to hire more Republicans to call the shots. I've listened to several talk-radio stations, both lefty (which there are very few of) and righty (which are everywhere), and NPR is nothing at all like either type. You'll not find anything like Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly from the right, or Thom Hartmann or Jerry Springer from the left. Compared to the righty and lefty stations out there, NPR is the model of balance and journalistic integrity. They regularly have both democratic and republican guests on several of the shows. They have shows like Justice Talking where you actually get two sides of an argument presented in a manner that doesn't devolve into a Crossfire-esque shouting match like you find on many "news" shows these days. The host puts forth questions and the guests both get some time to answer them. Simple. Fair. Comprehensible. So go ahead and take a shot at them for their funding, but don't even try to compare the level of bias with Fox or any other news organization that hardly even tries to appear balanced.
Of all the people who bash NPR, I wonder how many have actually listened to it for any length of time. It's one of the least biased news sources out there right now. Hell, I know quite a few Republicans that support it. I'm an independent who pretty much fits the bill of the social liberal / fiscal conservative. Needless to say I'm very much frustrated with the current state of both major parties. At least I have a decent radio station to listen to on the way to and from work though. Sure beats Rush or Springer (I can't believe they gave him a political show).
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
We talk about the dangerous of this waste as if it were the only danger there was. In terms of its toxicity to the environment and to the people in that environment the volume of waste just isn't anything compared to the daily wreckage from burning fossil fuels. The biggest difference is that the waste from the nuc plant is contained in one place, not stuck up in their via tall stacks or blown out tailpipes.
The weaponization of the waste is an important issue, but its also one which can be managed both by so called 'fast reaction' plants and by monitoring and policing.
We focus on dangers that are BIG SCARY ones but ultimately these aren't the ones that kill people. Most of us will die earlier than our maximum potential through being lazy and eating less carefully than is optimal for our bodies. Not radiation poisoning. You have to die of something, I suppose.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
Actually, you can.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
I obviously didn't equate not paying for cable with not paying taxes. And you don't have to stoop to panhandling to not pay federal taxes. Plus you do realize that the small amount of federal dollars that NPR gets is a drop in the bucket, right? Cut that funding and your tax bill will not change.. sorry to burst your bubble.
Bill Moyers? You're still on that witch hunt? And your theory would then be that NPR was a raging pit of socialism during the 90s?
what bonehead moderator thought you were trolling? Yikes!
San Francisco Photographers
The problem is that rampant liberalism at NPR coupled with tax dollar subsidies is unacceptable in a pluralist society. Wake up and envision a sitaution where NPR was conservative and being supported by your tax dollars.
There are people out there who seriously think Fox News is the epitome of journalism and that any other source (except maybe the WSJ and Wash. Times) is hopelessly biased. No, I'm not kidding.
It's not christian! It's so Darksided!
n g-Spouses -- Psychics and Christians.
http://media.putfile.com/Lady-Goes-Crazy-on-Tradi
Yes Air america is still around and growing.
http://www.airamericaradio.com/stations
I understand that they get pretty good ratings in the markets that they are in.
Stars may look easy, but have you ever tried making one? Just figuring out where to put all the hydrogen you'll need is a major logistics headache. And don't even get me started on the nightmare Environmental Impact Statement you have to fill out. Face it, if the sun hadn't just been there by chance, we never would have gotten the funding / permits needed to build it.
--MarkusQ
If you read the piece NPR seemed to spend a lot of time criticising pebble bed reactors. Deeming them as polluters and saying the money should have been spent on conservation, glossing over the saftey of these reactors as well as the benifits they can provide now. All the while playing up the very controversial cold fusion.
What are you talking about? Most of the article was spent talking about the benefits of the technology, with only a few comments thrown in from critics. If they hadn't mentioned the concerns of critics of the technology, then the story would have been completely one-sided and not really an unbiased article. I swear, I think that some people take any criticism or even mention of criticism as an attack and consider anything less than a one-sided cheerfest for their particular viewpoint to be a demonstration of blatant bias against them. This is why I can't stand the majority of "news" shows around today.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Indeed. Listen to a my hometown radio station KPFA in Berkeley, Ca. for a few hours then you will know what real leftist radio sounds like.
Another day closer to redwood heaven
It turns out that dropping things into the subduction zones doesn't work out very well. The problems are mainly due to instability, as it doesn't simply suck what's there into the earth's core, but rather spews it around as well. There's some better solutions that involve burying it in the deep clays in more geologically stable areas.
Of course, many countries have banned dumping radioactive waste into the sea under the London Convention. The United States signed it in 1998, but it hasn't been ratified yet.
The amount of excess heat is usually about a few Watts per square centimeter of palladium electrode.
During some experiments this excess heat is believed to achieve much higher value:
One event described here which is not described in the technical literature is an extraordinary 10-day long heat-after-death incident that occurred in 1991. News of this appeared in the popular press, but a formal description was never published in a scientific paper.
Mizuno says this is because he does not have carefully established calorimetric data to prove the event occurred, but I think he does not need it. The cell went out of control. Mizuno cooled it over 10 days by placing it in a large bucket of water. During this period, more than 37 liters of water evaporated from the bucket, which means the cell produced more than 84 megajoules of energy during this period alone, and 114 megajoules during the entire experiment. The only active material in the cell was 100 grams of palladium. It produced 27 times more energy than an equivalent mass of the best chemical fuel, gasoline, can produce. I think the 36 liters of evaporated water constitute better scientific evidence than the most carefully calibrated high precision instrument could produce. This is first-principle proof of heat.
A bucket left by itself for 10 days in a university laboratory will not lose any measurable level of water to evaporation. First principle experiments are not fashionable. Many scientists nowadays will not look at a simple experiment in which 36 liters of water evaporate, but high tech instruments and computers are not used. They will dismiss this as "anecdotal evidence."
It is a terrible shame that Mizuno did not call in a dozen other scientists to see and feel the hot cell. I would have set up a 24-hour vigil with graduate students and video cameras to observe the cell and measure the evaporated water carefully. This is one of history's heartbreaking lost opportunities. News of this event, properly documented and attested to by many people, might have convinced thousands of scientists worldwide that cold fusion is real. This might have been one of the most effective scientific demonstrations in history. Unfortunately, it occurred during an extended national holiday, and Mizuno decided to disconnect the cell from the recording equipment and hide it in his laboratory. He placed it behind a steel sheet because he was afraid it might explode. He told me he was not anxious to have the cell certified by many other people because he thought that he would soon replicate the effect in another experiment. Alas, in the seven years since, neither he nor any other scientist has ever seen such dramatic, inarguable proof of massive excess energy.
Here is a chronology of the heat-after-death event:
Total evaporation equals:
Cold Fusion And The Future, by Jed Rothwell, published by LENR-CANR.org, December 2004, 186 pages, 41 illustrations and figures.
The reality of cold fusion is growing and has spawned a series of books that describe the phenomena in ways a general reader can appreciate.
This is the latest entry. It shows how this controversial energy source might change our future. The book describes how many nightmare problems that seem beyond any present solution, such as global warming, invasive species, and providing clean drinking water and sanitation to billions of poor people, may be remedied with cold fusion combined with other technologies.
The future might be better than you think.
Cold Fusion And The Future"Thanks! Can you recommend a reliable Mind De-boggler?" - Arthur C. Clarke
The problem is that rampant liberalism at NPR coupled with tax dollar subsidies is unacceptable in a pluralist society.
Rampant liberalism?? You've been drinking the Rush kool-aid haven't you? You really don't have a clue what bias is do you?
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Everytime I hear about cold fusion, my BS alarm just rings like wild. If they're getting such real results, then why not hook up an array of these to a small generator that feeds back into itself and give themselves some free energy. Any competent physicist/chemist would know how to convert heat to electricity with an acceptable loss rate - especially at the 4x output that's being claimed in some cases.
If I had a portable fusion generator, the first thing I would do is hook one up to my house and disconnect myself from the electric company so I wouldn't need to pay electric or heating bills anymore. The next thing I would so is start selling "long life" battery systems, or "super duper efficient" heating systems to fund my research. Considering that this is the last thing they are doing, even after having 8 years to study it - my BS alarm is ringing like wild. They wouldn't happen to be seeking big government funding would they? Hmmmm.
A 2002 Economist article looked at the pebble bed reactors, they described the process as
The SA plan for pebblebed reactors seems ridiculous to me. If I heard right, they were going to spend $2 billion on them. Once built nuclear power plants provide very cheap electricity but they constitute a massive capital investment. SA is capital poor but rich in cheap labor. A distributed system of cheap locally produced wind turbines and solar panels would make a lot more sense.
If we use our heads, there is much better than a 50 year supply.
h e_Thorium_fuel_cycle
http://www.world-nuclear.org/sym/1999/adamov.htm
http://canteach.candu.org/library/20054702.pdf - PDF Warning!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle#T
>Protests have kept every other plant from being on time and on budget. It also made every plant larger and larger; as they tried to make the economics work.
The industry used to have a rule of thumb that the cost of a plant scaled like the square root of the power output. In a world without protests they would still have built big plants because one big plant was cheaper than two small ones.
BTW utitlity companies hated this. They'd have preferred finer-grained control over their capacity (and their debt burden!).
the waste problem, the uranium mining, transport and processing needed to produce the fuel, transport and trade with radioctive fuel and waste materials, the "dirty" building which will sooner or later need to be decommissioned, the finite uranium resources available, the potential misuse for weapons, etc. etc.
As opposed to the much greater environmental impact and economic costs associated with mining, processing, transportation, harmful waste products and finite resource base associated with coal, our current favorite source of electricity?
And don't get me started on the "potential for weaponization". I once got hit with a lump of coal, and it hurt like hell.
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain
You use two seperate systems. One for contaminated water and one for clean water.
The primary (or contaminated) system is just a loop. You heat it (in the reactor), take the energy out (in a steam generator) and condense the water for reuse. It remains under pressure and never boils. It never leaves the primary system and is reused.
In the steam generator you have primary piping and secondary (non-contaminated) water. In the steam generator the primary's heat is given off to the secondary. The water from each system never meets.
I hope that someday we will be able to put away our fears and prejudices and just laugh at people. - Jack Handey
If you check out the study that FAIR did a while ago(www.fair.org), you'd see that in fact, there were more Republicans on NPR's shows then there were any other political party. Not quite as many republicans as say Fox News but still slanted towards the right.
And you call this leftist? ugh...
Bullish Machine Tzar
They regularly have both democratic and republican guests on several of the shows. ... where you actually get two sides of an argument presented ...
That's what "liberal" means these days...
Wake up and envision a sitaution where NPR was conservative and being supported by your tax dollars.
The funny thing is that there are many liberals who feel that NPR is too conservative. Or rather, too corporatist, due to the fact that they've generally given up government money and are now reliant on corporate grants (aka sponsors).
When both sides call a source biased, that's a good indication that they're about as middle-of-the-road as you can get.
I love NPR. NPR is a fine source for in-depth news, and I listen to it every morning and every afternoon during my commute. But I listen with a critical ear.
Without doubt, NPR is left-wing in every aspect from story selection to its vocabulary. They are just subtle about it. Their very vocabulary of referring to liberals as "progressives" is revealing; "progressive" being the now self-chosen moniker of the left (since liberal is now a dirty word). The stories to which NPR chooses to give air time are the stories that that concern "progressives". Have you ever noticed that when they report about a "crisis" in health care, there is usually a Democratic sponsoned health bill pending? When they report about the "evironmental crisis" in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, it is usually when the enviromentalists are working to defeat drilling in ANWR. Whenever the anti-war rhetoric is heating up, they run some heart-wrenching story about the mom of some soldier who was killed or some innocents accidentally targeted by the US (but never an in-depth story about people deliberately target by insurgents - just a three-second blurb). All the while, they maintain the facade of being objective. They also provide numerous forums for traditionally left-wing interest groups or members of the Democratic Party coalition. For example: 'Latino USA' is an NPR show about issues that affect a traditionally Democratic voting group. Their religious show "Speaking of Faith" almost always has flattering portraits of exotic, non-traditional, or liberal Christian beliefs (i.e. likey Democrates) as "enlighted" and "inclusive", there by implicitedly casting traditional Christian beliefs (likely Republicans) as old-fashioned and boarderline bigoted. "Speaking of Faith" (and most of media) also referes to liberal protestant denominations as "mainstream protestants" but excludes the conservative Southern Baptist Convention from that description. (The Southern Baptist are the largest protestant denomination in the country and in fact have more members than all the other "mainstream" denominations combinded (perhaps not counting Methodists), but are somehow not mainstream.)
So yes, NPR is biased. They are just sly about it. Read (or listen) between the lines.
Hey, if Doc Oc can figure out how to produce nuculer (Dubyuh shot) fusion why can't we?
Chernobyl blew the 100TON lid off the reactor. It went into the air and crashed back down. I am not sure what you design to "contain" a blast like that. The operators did some tests that terrorists coming into the reactor could not have engineered. They broke so many rules to get this failure that it boggles the mind. One would think that OPEC paid them to do it. Still the better option is more small reactors, closer to the consumers. The navy has gotten a lot of miles out of thier reactors.
"They believed they were being called in to fight just a regular fire."
At a nuclear power plant. With a humongous, gaping hole in it.
They knew. They may not have been told, but they knew.
And here's the REAL question you need to ask yourself, would it have mattered if they had been told? I doubt very seriously that firefighters would refuse to do their job regardless of the circumstances.
How pathetic are you that you follow me from topic to topic and waste all your mod points at once modding me down?
You judge NPR's bias based on the guests they have?
Maybe you should look up what bias actually means, then slap yourself for what you posted.
By the way, I'm NOT claiming NPR is biased ( I believe that certain prominent individuals at NPR may have bias, but overall they do a decent job).
How pathetic are you that you follow me from topic to topic and waste all your mod points at once modding me down?
I am not sure what you design to "contain" a blast like that.
You build a containment vessel.
The fact that one couldn't be built economically for a reactor the size of Chernobyl just tells you that Chernobyl's design was stupid.
All reactors that rely on boiling liquid to gas to generate electricity or anything else can potentially blow up, if the liquid boils to excessive pressure. Building one such reactor without a containment vessel to handle an explosion is stupid. It's doubly stupid if you've got radioactive material near said possible bomb.
Anyone who whines about being modded down should be.
The nuclear energy future is interesting, but frankly, few really understand the nuclear energy PRESENT. As may have been mentioned before, if Slashdot readers would like an entertaining inside look at nuclear power in the US today, they can checkout the novel "Rad Decision" at http://raddecision.blogspot.com./ It was written by a longtime engineer in the nuclear industry (me). There is NO COST to readers.
"I'd like to see Rad Decision widely read." - Stewart Brand, tech icon and founder of The Whole Earth Catalog, who has called for a second look at nuclear energy.
Other comments from the homepage:
"The nuclear accident stuff is fast-paced, entertaining stuff."
"I started reading Rad Decision because of my interest in nuclear power -- then found I could not put it down!"
"Very nice, good pace. The tech was good but not overwhelming."
James Aach
jimaach@comcast.net
The only way not to pay for NPR is to quit your job and start panhandling - that's a far cry from deciding to cancel your cable service.
That is also the solution to making sure you don't pay for the war in Iraq, goverment-assisted family planning, faith-based charity initiatives, Medicare, public schools, etc. Sometimes your tax money is used for things you don't it to be used for. Suck it up and deal.
Chernobyl blew the 100TON lid off the reactor.
:-)
So you're saying that Chernobyl blew up a lid that weighed 23% less than the dry weight of a 757. Question? Can a structure be built to stop a 757? I should think the answer is "yes".
I am not sure what you design to "contain" a blast like that.
Lots of steel framed concrete. The purpose of which isn't so much to stop the blast cold, as to stop the blast from escaping. The stucture might sustain irrecoverable damage, but at least the materials won't be released. A truck can come by and cement the destroyed reactor in place as soon as the rescue operations are complete and/or the area is cool enough to approach.
They broke so many rules to get this failure that it boggles the mind.
No arguing that.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
NPR definitely has a slant. They are decidedly pro illegal immigration (They always refer to it with the usual euphamism of "undocumented"). They also seem to spend more time covering the suffering of the common man in other countries and pointing an accusatory finger back at US policy than they do outlining bad behavior of foreign governments and individuals.
Having a speaker for both sides is'nt good enough.
You should'nt select a lying moron from the other side in order to make them look bad. If you do it reveals your bias. NPR never lets a David Duke public statement go unreported, Fox does the same with Michael Moore and Barbara Strisand. Why would anybody report any of these three individuals verbal farts except to make their 'side' of an issue look as stupid as possible?
NPR is very biased and their member stations are federally funded to a much greater extent then 1-2%. The member stations in turn support the main program with show fees.
Cut off all federal funding to NPR and NPR member stations (as well as PBS and member stations). They were arguably needed when we had three networks, today in the age of satalite and cable access they are a waste of money. NPR also is cutting off the air supply to air america, why build a commericial lefty network when their is already a public one (which fits lefty thinking perfectly).
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Does'nt FAIR claim the NY Times is biased right also (they are to the right of the old school Pravda). LOL
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
to restrict this naming convention to use on twin girls.
Fraternal, not identical.
Kill yourself now.
And stop acting like you've got a choice about reproducing. This is /.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
required the long-term abandonment of a good size city and of hundreds of square miles of high quality farmland?
The loss of life may have been moderate (is 4,000 dead people moderate?), but thelong-term economic and human cost is very, very large.
This is true whether or not you favor nuke, and whether or not you think Chernobyl-type major-release accidents are possible again. It may be true to say that the risks of a major-release accident are very low, but it is NOT true to say that the cost of such an accident is moderate.
Well Centralia, PA pops to mind when you ask that question. Although there are no dead there. But a 40 year fire is pretty bad.
I am not a resource! I am a free man!
and 1 smallish town. This is not within orders of magnitude of the abandonment at Chernobyl.
BTW, uranium mining also causes - has caused some noticeable devastation. As has coal; ask Mr. Peabody and his trains. Mining problems are managed (and at least potentially maneageable) in a qualitatively different manner from plant accidents.
From what I can see from this article, this may or may not be a mining incident. Anyone know if that exposed coal vein was exposed by mining, or naturally?
If people are so concerned about plutonium, then we can stop using uranium. Thorium works just as well as a nuclear fuel, is more abundant, and does NOT have plutonium in it's decay chain!!! If people are cutting down nuclear energy because of plutonium, we should just pick an element that does not make it.
The fact that they paid scant attention to the "criticism of the technology" is precisely the balance problem I was talking about. They have an agenda that is clear to anyone who has ever listened to their program; promoting energy sources that do not involve oil, with minimal appeal to a real examination of scientific evidence and with no concern for actual viability, is just what I would expect. Advocating policy based on demagogic beliefs is idiotic whether it is practiced by right-wing religous zealots or left-wing utopians.
What is "liberal" about pet psychics promoting the idea that pets are equally capable of professing complex thoughts as humans? Ask a crystal worshiping hippie.
I can't see the inherant bias on NPR's side if they use a term that the GAO uses:/ undocres.htm
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d04472.pdf
Or the DOJ/INS:
http://uscis.gov/graphics/publicaffairs/summaries
Please do your research before spouting off about something you know nothing about. You only prove your own bias and obscure the argument with unfounded speculation.
If you think KPFA is leftist you've never met a real leftist. Indeed, listen to a my hometown radio station Radio Non-Free® North Korea in Pyongyang, North Korea for a few hours. Then you will know what real leftist radio sounds like.
If you are going to advocate nuclear power at least learn the basic principles of how a thermal power station works, or some simple high school chemistry.
rights are so far stinking right, that they think middle of the freakin road is left. not my fault. Fox news sucks balls.
Nuclear should stand on it's own merits intead of using the "coal is nuclear waste too" argument.
As for hydrogen power, it's just another way to shift the pollution somewhere else. Opportunists have moved in to make a buck and we have a lot of hype and more "one true energy" stuff that you shouldn't believe from anyone.
Now consider how the writers got those figures.
Now consider the margin of error of that source - very large as you'll see below.
Now consider that the whole thing is based on bespoke paper from the 1970's (on the ornl website) that no-one has considered worth citing in scientific literature since - which based things on the most radioactive coal they could find on earth and considered pollution controls too hard to think about so modelled them as a black box that throws a certain percentage of everything in this special coal into the air.
Since the current figures are not based on anyone actually sampling anything coming out of a stack but pure bullshit extrapolated by the amount of coal burned then putting numbers on it is an exercise in deception. There will be some - possibly large amounts - but the answer has to come from a reputable source without an agenda - so advertising materials for an atomic energy agency do not fit that description.
Nuclear advocates are playing the man and not the ball with this stupid "coal is nuclear waste too" argument, and it would be preferable if they stood on their own merits instead of making things up. Coal has enough problems as it is, like the large numbers of mining deaths mentioned above (and five more reported in China just yesterday), CO2 and pollution controls to stop REAL problems like NOx and SOx. Making people scared of their concrete or automotive putty (sometimes fly ash products) with this fake nuclear waste story just to try to get a bit more government funding is an exercise of unscrupulous opportunism - if it was a real problem a geiger counter would show that it is.
Chernobyl blew the 100TON lid off the reactor. It went into the air and crashed back down. I am not sure what you design to "contain" a blast like that.
Tell me the area of the lid and I'll tell you the pressure it took to blow it off -- then you engineer to beyond that.
Containments for the reactors I'm most familiar with (eg Pickering near Toronto) are multiple-meters thick heavily reinforced concrete, each reactor getting its own containment building. In addition to that there's a vacuum building, a large (larger than the containment buildings) cylindrical structure reinforced inside with a concrete lattice, constantaly maintained at a partial vacuum and connected to the containments to help keep them at negative pressure.
-- Alastair
Wow, that's quite the slant, if a news agency spent more time covering the suffering of the common man I'd almost think they were doing their job. As for illegal immigration, I've always noticed that NPR notices the complexity of the border, the American need for illegals, the problems inherent in their crossings, and the dangers that these people face in order to find better work. I think NPR covers the issue quite well without a specific slant, except for a certain humanism.
You're really going to have to do better than that, and if that's the worst accusation you can bring to bear, I think you should rethink a few things. Fox News has a smidgen of news that is swallowed up by opinion and partisan rambling and has the usual Crossfire pretenses.
Anyone who whines about being modded down should be.
However that does'nt make things much better as bottom ash is explicitly exempt from radioactive waste regulations.
Where I went to college they used it in place of salt when it snowed but was'nt too cold.
BTW electrostatic pricipitators are about 99.5% efficent at trapping fly ash.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
If you had bothered to actually read the linked article you would also be able to use his own source to show most (but not all) of the radio isotopes remain in the bottom ash.
Regarding standing on it's own merits. Is'nt one of those merits its cleanlyness verses the competing technology (which is coal anywhere but fantasy land)?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The long term economic costs....
Right now the evacuated area except less than 1/4th of square mile has only 50% higher radiation than the normal background radiation.
In the United States, 23,600 deaths each year can be attributed to air pollution from power plants.
Plus 1000 miners from dust each yer.
There is no need for accidents to happen in coal burning for it to cause deaths of people, its the pollution due to normal operations that makes them deadly. And its not CO2 that I'm talking about here.
I don't like fission power, the coal isn't just reasonable option for amount of electricity modern society needs.
A well regulated nuclear fission is best option right now, is not excellent but its best we have. The renewables are not good enough for industry, they are more like okay if it winds we can save some coal/oil by turning our plants down for a while, but we must have these plants ready for periods when there is no wind or it isn't sunny day at location of those plants. If society would adapt to a situation that at one time you have electricity and other time you don't have electricity, and the cycle of not having electricity will be multiple days in a row multiple time a year. Thats the time when renewables are option for main power production. If society isn't willing to make such changes we are stuck with either fossil fuels or nuclear. And nuclear is a LOT cleaner and safer of those too.
Emacs is good operating system, but it has one flaw: Its text editor could be better.
Lemme guess: if they were against nuclear power, you would call that left-leaing too, wouldn't you?
Fuck the new age hippies. They are not representative of liberals or even socialists. The typical person believeing that their dog understands them is a little old lady of any political persuasion. If they interviewed a right wing nut and let him make a fool of himself in front of the nation, would that make the channel conservative?
The reason the media seems left leaning to some folks is simply that those folks are way, way off to the right. In a global perspective, the whole political landscape in the US is firmly right-wing. If you place youself just-left of Darth Vader, you are free to go there, but don't act all surprised that most of the educated world is to your left.
It's a bad thing that there isn't much news on FoxNews, yes, but the jackasses at MSNBC and CNN are doing exactly the same thing. There isn't much actual news coverage on any of the news networks, but you might find if you watch and listen that Fox has fairly neutral news coverage (the talk shows are not neutral), when they're not obsessing about some 17 year old girl from Alabama who has absolutely no impact whatsoever on the lives of viewers. We'd all be much better and more quickly informed by reading 15 minutes of print/online news than by watching the news stations. I watch my share of the news stations, but i'm not delusional. Fox is crap, CNN is crap, and MSNBC is the most crap of them all. The news services and reporters will always have bias, and we should be smart enough to see though it, whether it's Fox, ABC, CNN, or NPR. The cable news networks are basically entertainment unless there's an important world event happening, so why shouldn't conservatives have a place (most Fox shows) and liberals have places (some CNN, MSNBC, NPR shows) to get political entertainment?
"Right now the evacuated area except less than 1/4th of square mile has only 50% higher radiation than the normal background radiation"
True, but... It is paatchy, and unreliable. Every filed that might be returned to productive agriculuter must be indiidually and comphresensively tested, and then the crops monitored in case of missed concentrations. That, all by itself, is a huge economic cost. Road margins are also hotter than the avareae area,adn ther are other concentratign mechanisms operating, too, that create hot spots.
I wont dispute that coal and other fossil fuels come with huge costs; you didnt mention ocean acidification, which is anaother bad one getting ready to bite us in the ass. I just dont want to underplay the potential risks of nukes in making the decisions. ALL the options come with huge potential or inevitable costs.
After reading Some Like It Hot
I thought you may be interested in the new technology I high light to deal with this largest problem of them all, Climate Change, Energy and Space propulsion.
There are three companies pursuing hydrogen-boron plasma toroid fusion, a form of aneutronic fusion , Paul Koloc, Prometheus II, Eric Lerner, Focus Fusion and Clint Seward of Electron Power Systems http://www.electronpowersystems.com/ . A resent DOD review of EPS technology reads as follows:
"MIT considers these plasmas a revolutionary breakthrough, with Delphi's
chief scientist and senior manager for advanced technology both agreeing
that EST/SPT physics are repeatable and theoretically explainable. MIT and
EPS have jointly authored numerous professional papers describing their
work. (Delphi is a $33B company, the spun off Delco Division of General
Motors)."
Vincent Page (a technology officer at GE!!) gave a presentation at the 05 6th symposium on current trends in international fusion research , which high lights the need to fully fund three different approaches to P-B11 fusion (Below Is an excerpt).
He quotes costs and time to development of P-B11 Fusion as tens of million $, and years verses the many decades and ten Billion plus $ projected for ITER and other "Big" science efforts:
"for larger plant sizes
Time to small-scale Cost to achieve net if the small-scale
Concept Description net energy production energy concept works:
Koloc Spherical Plasma: 10 years(time frame), $25 million (cost), 80%(chance of success)
Field Reversed Configuration: 8 years $75 million 60%
Plasma Focus: 6 years $18 million 80%
Desirable Fusion Reactor Qualities
Research & development is also needed in
the area of computing power.
Many fusion researchers of necessity still
use MHD theory to validate their designs.
MHD theory assumes perfect diamagnetism
and perfect conductance.
These qualities may not always exist in the
real world, particularly during continuous operation.
More computing power is needed to allow use of a more realistic validation theory
such as the Vlasov equations.
ORNL is in the process of adding some impressive computing power.
Researchers now need to develop more realistic validation methods up to the
limits of the available computing power.
Governments need to fund these efforts."
I feel in light of the recent findings of neutrons, x-rays, and gamma rays in lightening, that these threads need to be brought together in an article.
You may see my efforts with my "A New Manhattan Project for Clean Energy" article:
http://www.scienceforums.com/earth-science/3665-a- new-manhattan-project-clean-energy.html
About a year ago, I came across EPS while researching nano-tech and efficient home design. I started a correspondence Clint Seward, Eric Learner, and Paul Kolac, sending them science news links which I felt were either supportive or contradictory to their work. I also asked them to critique each other's approaches. I have posted these emails to numerous physics and science forums. Discussion groups, science journalists, and other academics, trying to foster discussion, attention, and hopefully some concessus on the validity of these proposed technologies.
My efforts have born some fruit. Clint and Joe Dwyer at FIT have been in consultation on Clint's current charge transport theory for cloud to ground lightning.
This post is a plea to the science writers among you to craft a story covering aneutronic fusion, the P-B11 efforts, Eric's high temperatures and x-ray source project, Clint's lightening theories, and DOD review, and Paul's review by GE. The minimal cost and time frame for even the possibility of this leap forward seems criminal not to pu
Erich J. Knight
There is big difference in playing russian roulette with revolver and automatic pistol.
In real world the difference is even bigger than what in that game.
The death toll of coal is a LOT more each year than worst nuclear accident ever happened. And thats in about 50 years of having nuclear power. And the risks related to rest of nuclear powerplants are a LOT less than in the powerplant that had the accident.
Emacs is good operating system, but it has one flaw: Its text editor could be better.