Better Living Through Nukes?

perkonis writes "So, you've got 23,000 nukes laying about and no one to use them on. What to do with them? Well, you blow up stuff for fun and profit. Some of the ideas range from good on paper (such as mining oil shale) to just downright bad (such as making a new Panama Canal). Making a big ditch by blowing up nukes — what could possibly go wrong?"

Comments

I don't know if someone proposed this but...

[JamesP]

blowing up geological faults to 'ease the tension'. Better a small slip than a full-blown earthquake.

Or maybe if it's just for fun, give it to the Mythbusters.

Re:I don't know if someone proposed this but...

[Anonymous Coward]

while a good idea on paper, in reality you would have to put bombs every few kilometers on those geological faults and blow them up in a certain pattern.

The "small" slip happening thereafter will release a lot of the created radiating material in the atmosphere, which depending on wind condition can pollute residential areas. (the san andreas fault might got enough energy for a whoppy slip already this time around)

You can think about what will happen then...

Re:I don't know if someone proposed this but...

[arthurpaliden]

Just launch them into the Sun.

Re:I don't know if someone proposed this but...

[mrmeval]

Can we do that to California?

If a wide enough opening is made in the mountains between California and other desert states would it bring good climate change? If Arizona, Nevada, etc could be made lush I'd nuke 'em.

Re:I don't know if someone proposed this but...

[JoeCool1986]

Yes they have. I remember my geol professor talking about trials of this. If I remember correctly, it came down to it that they had no reason to believe that the "small slips" they could produce were really helping. Even worse, they had no way of knowing if they might accidentally cause a full out earthquake by the explosions, which would obviously defeat the purpose (and kill many people).

Re:I don't know if someone proposed this but...

[maxume]

Safer to just leave them sitting wherever they happen to be.

Re:I don't know if someone proposed this but...

[Tubal-Cain]

Even worse, they had no way of knowing if they might accidentally cause a full out earthquake by the explosions, which would obviously defeat the purpose (and kill many people).

If we leave it be, an earthquake would happen anyways. It's just a matter of when. With the nuke method, "when" is a controllable variable. "When" can be "after we have warned everybody in the surrounding 300 miles incessantly for the past 6 months".

Re:I don't know if someone proposed this but...

[Greg_D]

Oh sure, and then instead of nukes, we'll have a radioactive solar powered NUCLEAR MAN to come and lay waste to the world.

No thanks!

Re:I don't know if someone proposed this but...

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a geology student, studying seismology, and it is a personal pet peeve when someone says that a small earthquake will relive the pressure of a large fault. The force of an earthquake is measured on the Richter scale*, which is a logarithmic scale. A difference of one magnitude on the scale is equivalent to 10 times the force. Lets say we had a fault that had built up the pressure for an 8.0. Let's also assume that with a single nuke you could create a small earthquake at a force of 3.0. This is a difference of 5 orders of magnitude, so 100 000 times the force, and you'd need 100 000 3.0 earthquakes to equal one 8.0 earthquake. Do you really wish to set off that many nukes?

Please do not say that a smallish earthquake is going to prevent a large one. To a geologist, this makes you sound about as stupid as the people who believe that California is going to fall off into the ocean the next time we have a large earthquake. http://www.usgs.gov/faq/list_faq_by_category/get_answer.asp?id=152

*We use the moment magnitude scale for the most part these days, but most non-geologist are more familiar with the Richter scale. MMS is 30 times the force for one degree of magnitude.

Re:I don't know if someone proposed this but...

[JamesP]

"When" can be "after we have warned everybody in the surrounding 300 miles incessantly for the past 6 months".

Just like the digital tv transition! Oh wait...

Re:I don't know if someone proposed this but...

[BitZtream]

You'll still have the earthquake, the pressure is still there and its still going to be released, all you are doing is helping it get started.

At best you just know when it might happen. Might being the key word because you're talking about releasing the pressure of two or more plates of the Earths crust pushing against each other. One nuke, regardless of size won't do it, you'd need thousands all detonating at the right time in order to do anything.

So you remove the friction that was causing the pressure to build up, and instantly these massive land masses move into that space. Now you have the force of acceleration as the plate begins to fill the void which is probably not nearly as damaging as when everything meets up again and suddenly stops.

So the base of your sky scrapers start moving suddenly while the top isn't. Lets assume you survive that, the stop sudden stop at the end is going to tear it apart.

Example: Put a Janga game together on a cart with wheels. Roll that cart into a wall at 5mph. While you may be able to start the roll without the Janga blocks falling, that sudden stop most certainly will cause it to topple.

Re:I don't know if someone proposed this but...

[omris]

To a geologist, this makes you sound about as stupid as the people who believe that California is going to fall off into the ocean the next time we have a large earthquake.

Hey. We can hope, can't we?

Re:I don't know if someone proposed this but...

[pedalman]

I hear that Somalia could use a few....errrrr...adjustments.

Re:I don't know if someone proposed this but...

[BitZtream]

Except ... to actually do anything useful ... you have to detonate several kilometers under the surface where the friction thats preventing the movement is actually occurring, and where detonation will result in nothing getting anywhere near the surface.

There are however hundreds of other reasons why this won't work. One of the biggest being that as powerful as our nukes are, they aren't shit compared to the energy released in an earthquake of any size.

Re:I don't know if someone proposed this but...

[Anonymous Coward]

totally.

i wouldn't mind a real geologist giving serious thought to instituting a program of regular nuking of the San Andreas, commencing right after the next big one.

Re:I don't know if someone proposed this but...

[The Grim Reefer2]

Just launch them into the Sun.

Perhaps we can launch all of the coal and oil on the planet into the sun as well. That should speed along the technology for the use of magic pixie dust for generation of electricity.

Re:I don't know if someone proposed this but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just launch them into the Sun.

We send radio waves to the aliens hoping for a response. Clearly that's not working.
8000 so nukes making a massive explosion in space should get a little attention. I mean when no one will listen to you on earth, what do you do? you build weapons.

Re:I don't know if someone proposed this but...

[Bageloid]

Lex? Is that you?

Re:I don't know if someone proposed this but...

[igny]

I suggest blowing all the ice in Antarctica to put more water into oceans to dissolve all that dangerous CO2 to keep it away from the atmosphere to stop the global warming and finally to avoid the melting of Antarctica.

Re:I don't know if someone proposed this but...

[Anonymous Coward]

"blowing up geological faults to 'ease the tension'."

It's not that easy. A single nuclear bomb might trigger a fault plane to move over some of its area if detonated in the right spot, but all that does is shift the stress into adjacent fault zones, which will then be prone to fail sooner and/or with larger quakes. It won't pay off. And this is leaving aside any radioactive contamination issues in groundwater or at the surface.

I would watch the Mythbusters episode, though.

Re:I don't know if someone proposed this but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Tsar Bomba, which was an above-ground detonation, resulted in a 5.5 on the Richter scale, and could be detected on its 3rd trip around the globe.

Re:I don't know if someone proposed this but...

[Idarubicin]

There are however hundreds of other reasons why this won't work. One of the biggest being that as powerful as our nukes are, they aren't shit compared to the energy released in an earthquake of any size.

There are however hundreds of other reasons why a nuclear bomb won't work. One of the biggest being that as powerful as our batteries and pushbuttons are, they aren't shit compared to the energy released in a nuclear explosion of any size. Oh...wait....

There's no physical law that says releasing stored potential energy will require a comparable amount of activation energy. That's not to say that the activation energy required in this case will be small, nor is to say that it would be easy (or even possible) to predict where that activation energy should be applied. (I know I can prevent a hurricane in Florida by killing a butterfly in China -- but I'll be damned if I can figure out which butterly it is that I need to whack.) But an argument based solely on the relative amounts of energy involved in the two processes - nuke versus quake - doesn't hold water.

Re:I don't know if someone proposed this but...

[Firethorn]

And there's not much energy involved in a shout or explosion that sets off a avalanche, compared to the energy released during one. We already deliberately set off avalanches early in order to either limit the damage or to prevent loss of life by having it happen at a controlled time.

The general idea would be that having a 5.0 annually is better than a 6.0 once a decade.

Still, the science is nowhere developed enough. Problems I can think of off hand:
1. Need to identify the point under the 'most' strain, and how much extra energy is needed, where, to break that point. Or even find a lesser point that, once broken, will break more points, ending in an ultimately lower energy potential.
2. Need to ID just HOW strong the resulting earthquakes would be under this - we need to release enough energy to matter, but not so much we level the area. Preferably, the shocks would be minimal to no damage.
3. Along with 2, we need to ID where the new strain points are going to be, and the stress they'll be under, to verify that the chances of a dangerous earthquake will actually be reduced by our action. After all this, you'd resurvey, and start modeling again for the next shot.

All in all, it says to me that we need much improved maps of the earth in the area, and good supercomputer modeling programs.

We're a long way away from having to worry about where we'd get a nuke from to do this.

Re:I don't know if someone proposed this but...

[Dahamma]

Didn't you see Superman? All that would do is make "Otisville" prime beach front real estate...

Re:I don't know if someone proposed this but...

[Forge27]

That didn't work too well in Superman 2.....

Re:I don't know if someone proposed this but...

[Anonymous Coward]

And after you've done that, be sure to warn the people beyond 300 miles away that the stress has now been released from the target area, and has therefore been increased in their area.

It sounds so great in principle, but it just doesn't work the way people think it does. At best you're releasing one fault segment and transferring the stress somewhere else.

Re:I don't know if someone proposed this but...

[amRadioHed]

No. The faults in California are lateral so an earthquake will not result in Arizona Bay, sorry to ruin your well thought out plans.

Re:I don't know if someone proposed this but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Lets do it and see what happen:)

Re:I don't know if someone proposed this but...

[Anonymous Coward]

So we get to naturally select out people who don't listen to warnings. Sounds like a good trait to be rid of.

Re:I don't know if someone proposed this but...

[Anonymous Coward]

they'll only do that if we don't pay them...one *MILLION* dollars!

Re:I don't know if someone proposed this but...

[mrmeval]

I meant cutting a pass in the mountains which would allow a severe weather pattern change that would benefit the western states. That was proposed as a use for atomics but I'm not sure by whom.

Re:I don't know if someone proposed this but...

[mrmeval]

I'm almost bald but I'm not that cool.

Re:I don't know if someone proposed this but...

[sponga]

I personally liked the idea I think a University (San Diego) had or did a test with some agency(USGA?) regarding infusing a very lubricated type of mud to cause slip on the faults.

They would inject the mud/lubricant via tubes along the fault which would cause it to slip slowly instead of violent quick jolts.

Theres a video out there of it where they inject the ground with it and set off some type of explosion to test it.

Re:I don't know if someone proposed this but...

[kestasjk]

Google the "orion project"; making spacecraft that can travel up to 0.3x the speed of light and weight tonnes, using nukes.

Re:I don't know if someone proposed this but...

[amRadioHed]

I see. That makes a little more sense. Hardly seems worth the effort though. Coastal southern California is very dry itself, it's not like there's plenty of moisture to go around before the mountains squeeze it out.

Re:I don't know if someone proposed this but...

[ShakaUVM]

Perhaps we can launch all of the coal and oil on the planet into the sun as well. That should speed along the technology for the use of magic pixie dust for generation of electricity.

You, sir, have made my day.

Re:I don't know if someone proposed this but...

[meringuoid]

If a wide enough opening is made in the mountains between California and other desert states would it bring good climate change? If Arizona, Nevada, etc could be made lush I'd nuke 'em.

It'll never work, Lex. Superman will be able to stop both missiles, don't fool yourself. Go back to the cake plan - no one is looking.

Re:I don't know if someone proposed this but...

[BlueParrot]

I am a geology student, studying seismology, and it is a personal pet peeve when someone says that a small earthquake will relive the pressure of a large fault. The force of an earthquake is measured on the Richter scale*

I'm a physics student and if you are going to moan at somebody for getting their physics wrong, at least try to not confuse fundamental physical concepts:

Force:
  The rate of change of momentum of a rigid body.
  SI unit: Newton = kg * meter / second^2

Energy:
  The integral of the scalar product between a force acting on a body and the body's displacement taken over a path.
  SI unit: Joule = Newton * meter

Pressure:
  The force exerted on surface per unit area of the surface in question.
  SI unit: Pascal = Newton / meter^2

   

Re:I don't know if someone proposed this but...

[jamstar7]

Just a million? Lemme get my checkbook...

This is an old idea

[2.7182]

In the 50s there were lots of civil engineering projects planned, and stuff like Freeman Dyson's Orion space ship. It never got going since it doesn't sound so safe.

Re:This is an old idea

[Brian Gordon]

Now there's an understatement.

Then the radioactive waste is poured into the subterranean cavity so formed

"Radioactive waste is dangerous and toxic so we need a safe way of disposing of it without the possibility of it leaking into the ground. I propose pumping it into the ground."

Re:This is an old idea

[Doctor Jimmy]

The book The Curve of Binding Energy by John McPhee follows the exploits of Ted Taylor and has several ideas using nukes to create plutonium extremely rapidly - detonating a thermonuclear bomb above a square sheet of uranium. The ideas were quickly shot down though.

Re:This is an old idea

[jimpop]

Radioactive waste is dangerous and toxic....

As are many of the items in use by people on a day to day basis.

Re:This is an old idea

[Idiomatick]

I don't see how a ship the size of a city propelled by hundreds of nuclear explosions sounds dangerous. You just aren't adventurous enough.

Re:This is an old idea

[Anonymous Coward]

I propose dumping it into you...! No just kidding... I propose we dump it into the sun.

Re:This is an old idea

[KahabutDieDrake]

Not on a scale of tens of thousands of years. Nor do very many "daily" use items have a tendency to destroy reproductive qualities immediately. Radiation attacks the fast growing cells first (or more rapidly) and therefore renders any biological exposure fatal to the blood line.

The testing in the 50's caused a noticeable legacy. Most of the test sites are still unsafe for human occupation, and the planets background radiation level still hasn't dropped to pre-nuke levels.

I don't have a problem with nuclear power plants. They have proven that they are more or less a safe (acceptable risk) use of the technology. The same can NOT be said for nuclear bombs. Air bursting causes most of the radioactive fallout to go into the super-sphere, but it comes down eventually, some if, if not all. Ground shots tend to destroy any local ecology and permanently irradiate environments. Read up on Bikini Atoll, and the Baker test.

Re:This is an old idea

[Anonymous Coward]

As are many of the items in use by people on a day to day basis.

The difference being that most of them are safe in the doses we use them in unless you, say... drink nothing other than aspartame laden diet coke by the gallon every day. The kind of radioactive waste generated by using nuclear explosives for civil engineering is a whole story.

Re:This is an old idea

[Brett Buck]

For the most part, this is nonsense. The Okla reactors http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor offer a perfect case study for this. Specifically:

"Remarkably, most of the non-volatile fission products and actinides have only moved centimeters in the veins during the last 2 billion years."

      Brett

Re:This is an old idea

[westlake]

As are many of the items in use by people on a day to day basis.

How many common household items will remain dangerous for 1,000 years?

10,000? 100,000?

How many present relatively simple problems of disposal or recycling?

How many of these items "expose" their danger only to an advanced scientific and technical civilization?

We didn't have the means to detect radiation or the intellectual framework needed to understand it until the mid-nineteenth century.

Re:This is an old idea

[jimpop]

How many common household items will remain dangerous for 1,000 years?

Possibly none. But, we do deal with many dangerous and toxic items on a day to day basis and we've learned to deal with it. Is there any data to suggest that humanity can't deal with them for the next 1,000 or 10,000 years?

Re:This is an old idea

[denzacar]

Is there any data to suggest that humanity can't deal with them for the next 1,000 or 10,000 years?

Not yet.
None of the time machines we sent to the future have yet returned.

Re:This is an old idea

[fredklein]

Not on a scale of tens of thousands of years.

Morbo says: Half-lives do not work like that!

The stuff that'll be around for "tens of thousands of years" is not that radioactive. It's the stuff that only hangs around for a few years that puts out a really dangerous amount of radiation. But, then, it's only dangerous for a few years.

Re:This is an old idea

[Firethorn]

Not on a scale of tens of thousands of years. Nor do very many "daily" use items have a tendency to destroy reproductive qualities immediately. Radiation attacks the fast growing cells first (or more rapidly) and therefore renders any biological exposure fatal to the blood line.

Hmmm... Then can you tell me, how long before arsenic degrades to be non-toxic? How about Mercury? Lead?

And reading up on Bikini Atoll indicates that there is still lots of life in the area - it's just somewhat too radioactive to be considered safe for humans. If radiation was so great at producing sterility, you wouldn't have that life there.

That doesn't mean that nuclear bombs don't produce toxic radiation, but I think you're overstating the problem. Compared to some contaminants, radioactive isotopes are short lived.

Nuking fault lines is unlikely to release radioactive materials into our environment, especially like ground nukes like Bravo. Heck, pure air bursts don't produce as much either.

Re:This is an old idea

[CrimsonAvenger]

Not on a scale of tens of thousands of years.

Yeah, mercury doesn't last for tens of thousands of years...it lasts forever....

Re:This is an old idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep! Did you know flouride is toxic, a poison, and considered hazardous material, which means it must be disposed in a similar manner? It is a by-product of the aluminum industry, and most of us drink it in our tap water and slather it on our teeth every day.

Re:This is an old idea

[Anonymous Coward]

You tell 'em! So's chlorine! Do you eat salt?

Re:This is an old idea

[jimpop]

None of the time machines we sent to the future have yet returned.

So...since we can't rely on responses from time machines, should we just avoid taking any risk until such time that future results can be reliably predicted? ;-)

Re:This is an old idea

[emmons]

Pumping it into the ground 1500 feet down into the earth's crust in the middle of a tectonic plate and far below any water tables is perfectly safe. Leaving it above ground waiting for some weird freak accident to allow contaminates to somehow get into the water table is a tiny bit less so.

It should be noted though that the casks they use at US nuclear power plants to store spent rods are really really freakin' tough. So it's really more just a problem of the stuff taking up space and not having a permanent home. That, and uneducated hippies hearing "nuclear" or "radioactive" and going off their rockers.

Re:This is an old idea

[BlueParrot]

Not on a scale of tens of thousands of years. Nor do very many "daily" use items have a tendency to destroy reproductive qualities immediately.

*clears throat*

Elemental toxic metals that remain toxic indefinitely: mercury, cadmium, lead, lithium, nickel, antimony, barium , thallium, vanadium ... etc

Then there is Persistent Organic Pollutants, which while not as long-lived as rad-waste are produced in far larger quantities and can still be a severe problem for many generations.

Then there's pollutants that are short-lived but considerably more mobile, including nitrous oxide emissions, sulfates, fly-ash , carbon particulates etc ...

You know what, a reasonably small volume of radioactive but chemically inert ceramic stored underground in bedrock is WAY better than the crap we currently dump in the biosphere. Every year carbon particulates alone kills more people than have died from radiation accidents in the entire history of nuclear power. If you include Hiroshima and Nagasaki you might need 3 years or so, but the point remains the same. Compared to our present practice nuclear power is extremely clean.

Then there is also the philosophical question of whether it is likely that radioactive waste will be a problem with the technology our descendants will have access to in 100.000 years time. To put it in perspective, electric lighting is just above a century old, and the atomic theory of matter did not enter mainstream science until about 200 years ago. Heck, the fact that a nuclear reactor could be built was not demonstrated until the 40ies. There's still people alive from that time.

Ideas

[OldProgrammerDude]

I always wanted to get back at John for that prank!

Been tried, major fail

[Ancient_Hacker]

It was tried back in the 60's with "project Plowshare". Blowing up new harbors, blowing up gas wells, etc, etc, etc. Did not pan out. Radioactive gas spewing into your home through the cooktop, not a big win. Radioactive dust and water from making a new harbor, not too keen either, and this was before peta and greenpeace et al.

Re:Been tried, major fail

[Anonymous Coward]

We just put peta and greenpeace in the soon to be harbor, then detonate the nuke.

Kill three birds with one stone.

Re:Been tried, major fail

[Anonymous Coward]

What if these results in some sort of mutant PETA/Greenpeace/Harbor monster?! It might protest us to death!

Re:Been tried, major fail

[tbischel]

clearly you don't recall past successful genetic experiments as a result of such radioactive waste disposal!

Re:Been tried, major fail

[Idiomatick]

Not really. It was just politically infeasible. Nuclear weapons can be built to have very low fallout. So the gas was probably safe to use.

Re:Been tried, major fail

[dlenmn]

From TFA:

"The natural gas work culminated in 1973 with the explosion of three 33-kiloton bombs thousands of feet underground in Rio Blanco, Colorado. The key problem was that the gas this produced had measurable amounts of radioactivity. Not surprisingly, that created political problems for the method, even though the scientists involved in the experiments claimed the radiation would not be detrimental to public health."

...

From one of the scientists on the project (quoted in TFA):

"For excavation, we put a lot of time and effort and money into developing nuclear explosives which had minimal fissionable material so that you could carry out a 100-kiloton cratering explosion and release the radioactivity equivalent to a 20-ton explosive of fissionable material."

Radiation is a problem, but over 2000 nuclear test have been carried out, and we haven't all dropped dead. A few more explosions that have specifically designed to minimize fallout won't kill us either.

Re:Been tried, major fail

[Tubal-Cain]

Kill three birds with one stone.

That depends on the type of bomb. Gun-type fission bombs use 2 "stones"

Re:Been tried, major fail

[drinkypoo]

Nuclear weapons can be built to have very low fallout.

It's not going to help with repurposing the stockpile, though. Also there is a history of bungling such things. We totally blew it with using a lot of stuff, like DDT, Asbestos, PCBs, etc - in each case, overuse and use where it was inappropriate, when we completely knew the risks.

Re:Been tried, major fail

[Anonymous Coward]

Kill three birds with one stone.

This is the only reason PETA would be against the idea..

Re:Been tried, major fail

[Scott Carnahan]

The referenced article mentions the project name and claimed that it was a technical success. They didn't bother to mention several technical failures, including unexpected releases of radioactive dust (some of which drifted into Canada, in contravention of a treaty), and a general inability to predict the outcome of their explosions. One of their experiments attempted to create a hill, but ended up with a crater. Another experiment did the opposite. They tried to connect two natural gas cavities, and not only failed to do so, but made the gas too radioactive for safe use. This is only a success in some weak sense, where we can move the goalposts to some relatively trivial problem, like that of making explosions underground. See also: this article.

Teller's vision of reshaping the crust to our will has a strong appeal, especially since conventional earth-moving is still expensive 50 years later. Geological structures still strongly affect the development of cities and the economy of nations, and the idea that many of the problems that arise from this can be made to disappear makes this project very compelling to those who don't consider the unexpected costs. Before we can do this well, I think our technology needs to progress to the point where we can not only produce large amounts of energy such as that produced by a fusion bomb, but also direct it in a controlled way, and we still seem to be relatively far from that goal.

Re:Been tried, major fail

[drinkypoo]

A few more explosions that have specifically designed to minimize fallout won't kill us either.

Let's say I stab you in the liver three times, and you're not dead. Would you prefer that I:

• Option A: Stop stabbing you.
• Option B: Stab you three more times.

• • Think carefully before you answer...

Re:Been tried, major fail

[Yokaze]

> It was just politically infeasible. Nuclear weapons can be built to have very low fallout.

Please enlighten me:
How can you possibly design a weapon
- which consists mainly out fissionable material
- which in turn is highly radioactive
- and which is going to explode (that's the whole point of a weapon)
- and thereby has only a very low "efficiency", but a fairly large radius
to have a "very low" fallout?

Either, it transcends my knowledge of physics, or it isn't a question of the design of the weapon, but is a placement of the weapon quite deep underground, and therefore is what grandparent already stated.

Re:Been tried, major fail

[Trintech]

Radiation is a problem, but over 2000 nuclear test have been carried out, and we haven't all dropped dead. A few more explosions that have specifically designed to minimize fallout won't kill us either.

Right... but how many people have cancer? I find it much more likely that small amounts of radiation in the environment are causing cancer than some of the "carcinogens" found by scientists such as sugar.

Re:Been tried, major fail

[dlenmn]

I'm sorry, I don't understand bad analogies that don't involve cars.

Re:Been tried, major fail

[dlenmn]

Sure. And almost all of that radiation comes from sources other than nuclear tests.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Background_radiation

Re:Been tried, major fail

[RsG]

I'll preface this by stating that I think the stuff in TFA is idiotic. Partly from a radiation and proliferation standpoint, partly because we already have perfectly good used for old bombs (for one thing, turning the fissile material into reactor fuel). But more than those reasons, because the methods proposed for the peaceful use of nuclear weapons all strike me as being colossal overkill - like using thermite to perform household repairs.

That being said, your specific objection - that you don't see how to make a nuclear weapon with little fallout - is based on your knowledge of modern military nukes. They don't have to be built that way.

The amount of fissile material needed to make a bomb is small. We're talking on the order of a kilo or two of plutonium here. Older designs needed more than that primarily because we hadn't mastered miniaturization of the bomb components. With a decent neutron reflector, high grade of fissile fuel, implosive type detonation system and other improvements, the actual amount of radioactive crud in the system to begin with is small.

Moreover, the more efficient you make the bomb, the less fissile material is left over after you detonate it. This is the stuff that your burning to generate the initial blast after all; you don't want leftovers.

There are still radioactive daughter products, but in relative terms, those matter less. And a general rule of thumb is that the more radioactive something is, the shorter its half life is going to be - the nastiest stuff decays first. Meaning that the only really serious byproducts we need to worry about are the bioactive ones like Strontium 90 - the ones where radiation is not the sole metric of organic harm.

So, the fission core need not produce that much fallout. The bulk of the explosive energy can come from fusion, which does not produce radioactive byproducts, though it can render the matter near ground zero radioactive by way of neutron bombardment. Again, this is less serious than you might think - 2 stage hydrogen bombs produce a fraction of the amount of fallout per blast energy than fission only or 3 stage bombs.

In a modern nuclear weapon however, the bomb does not rely solely upon fusion to amplify the initial blast. The tamper of a typical thermonuclear warhead is made of depleted uranium, which fissions merrily when bombarded by the neutron radiation given off by the fusion stage.

Because the tamper is essentially the casing that holds the rest of the bomb together, it masses quite a bit more than either the lithium-deuterium mixture used for the fusion stage or the weapons-grade uranium or plutonium used for the primary stage. The amount of radioactive crud leftover from the vapourized and fissioned tamper is huge. This, and not the rest of the bomb, is where the terrible spectre of radioactive fallout comes from in a modern nuke.

Subtract this, make the tamper out of iron or lead or some such, and the bomb becomes far cleaner than you'd expect. Two kilos of spent plutonium and some neutron irradiated dirt is far less to worry about.

(You might wonder why we don't build them this way to begin with. Truth is, we built the nuclear arsenal of the cold war with the implicit assumption that we would not use it, save in the more dire circumstances. To the mindset of the engineers making these 3-stage "dirty" bombs, the use of one bomb would mean the use of all bombs, and the resultant nuclear holocaust would be the end of civilization, possibly the end of our species. Against that, a little more fallout hardly seemed to matter. For a bomb we intent to use, and use peacefully, fallout is a much more important consideration.)

Re:Been tried, major fail

[Moridin42]

Pfft.. Bring on your mutant PETA/Greenpeace/Harbor monsters! They'll be made out of mostly glass! And we, in the US at least, know lots about flinging stones at glass. I mean, sure, a lot of that practice is with glass houses. But it seems to be a favored pastime. Annnnd just imagine how much legislation you can cram down everyone's throats as a mutant enviroment/alist monster fearmongerer. After which, you can charge exorbitant amounts to permit the populace to engage in the therapeutic destruction of said monster. It is the perfect guide to a peaceful world without nuclear weapons!

Y'know.. its times like this when I feel I should pat myself on the back and ignore nagging questions such as "what could possibly go wrong?"

Re:Been tried, major fail

[bcmm]

Nuclear weapons can be built to have very low fallout.

Not if you then set them off at ground level. If there is material near the device (air hardly counts, as it isn't very dense), the high-energy neutrons will transmute nuclei in that material into radioactive elements, which are then scattered to the winds by the blast. The fact that a cleaverly designed weapon uses up nearly all of it's own radioactive material doesn't really make a difference in this case.

Re:Been tried, major fail

[DerekLyons]

Nuclear weapons can be built to have very low fallout.

Sure, nuclear weapons can be built to have less fallout - in the same sense that a .45 shot through your heart will leave a smaller hole than a 5-inch shell. But neither is exactly fun for the recipient.

Re:Been tried, major fail

[Anonymous Coward]

It sounds like you know a lot about it. Why don't you write an article about this "project plowshare" and then have slashdot link to it? Seeing as how that would be more relevant than what ever this article talks about.

Re:Been tried, major fail

[jamstar7]

Naw, just make sure they use a snuke, that should take care of the dispersal necessary to keep them from surviving to mutate...

Re:Been tried, major fail

[Yokaze]

> Moreover, the more efficient you make the bomb, the less fissile material is left over after you detonate it. This is the stuff that your burning to generate the initial blast after all; you don't want leftovers.

Um, no. It is a bomb, efficiency is measured in yield per initial fissile material, not non-fissile material left. There is no time for a nuclear reaction chain, reaching from Pu/U down to the more harmless stuff, like you could do in a breader reactor.
You split the Pu/U and that's it. The best you can hope is splitting as much of it as possible, to maximise the yield.

> Again, this is less serious than you might think - 2 stage hydrogen bombs produce a fraction of the amount of fallout per blast energy than fission only or 3 stage bombs.

Yes. Amount of fallout per blast energy. At the centre is still a conventional fission bomb, which still needs to reach critical mass. The cleanliness is not reached by reducing the fallout of the "minimal" bomb, but by maximising the fusion blast, so that the fallout is comparably small.
Hardly something useful for civil engineering.

> This is the stuff that your burning to generate the initial blast after all; you don't want leftovers.

Same in reactors. Still in such a controlled environment, the conversion rate is merely a single digit percent number (IRC, 5%). But the converted material is hardly any better than the original.

> Subtract this, make the tamper out of iron or lead or some such, and the bomb becomes far cleaner than you'd expect.
> Two kilos of spent plutonium and some neutron irradiated dirt is far less to worry about.

The term "clean" nuclear bomb you seem to refer to makes only sense in contrast to a dirty nuclear bomb, which may create a lethal fallout in 16000km^2 area. I think that is what your term "clean" is based on.

My value of very low fallout is not based on an old nuclear bomb, but on no nuclear bomb.

And what happened to the other 8 kilos of Plutonium necessary to reach critical mass? Still, two kilos of plutonium (or any other alpha emitter) vaporised in the air is hardly something to look forward to. Plutonium is incorporable and accumulates in the body. Inhaling 1Âg to 0.26mg suffice to create lung cancer. It is incorporated to the bones, liver and some other internal organs.

> You might wonder why we don't build them this way to begin with. Truth is, we built the nuclear arsenal of the cold war with the implicit assumption that we would not use it, save in the more dire circumstances.

I don't. There are several other reasons, too. There was work done on "clean" nuclear weapons, from the earliest beginnings, and also recently under the Bush administration, especially in context of "tactical nukes".

It also created some diplomatic tension, as it was internationally seen as further proliferation as it would lower the inhibition threshold to actually use a nuclear weapon.

Re:Been tried, major fail

[dotancohen]

We just put peta and greenpeace in the soon to be harbor, then detonate the nuke.

No! Then the PETA-people will be unfit for consumption. A much better method is to cut a 1 cm slash in their jugular. This keeps them alive for long enough to let their own heart pump out almost all their blood, thus saving you draining time. Sure, it's cruel, but it makes for tasty PETA burgers.

Re:Been tried, major fail

[RsG]

There was work done on "clean" nuclear weapons, from the earliest beginnings, and also recently under the Bush administration, especially in context of "tactical nukes".

It also created some diplomatic tension, as it was internationally seen as further proliferation as it would lower the inhibition threshold to actually use a nuclear weapon.

Hmm, didn't know about that Bush administration stuff. Sounds like something they'd do though.

However, my point as to why we built dirty bombs and your point about proliferation, are the same point.

To the mindset of the engineers making these 3-stage "dirty" bombs, the use of one bomb would mean the use of all bombs, and the resultant nuclear holocaust would be the end of civilization, possibly the end of our species.

See there? That's a no-first-use attitude right there on the part of the weapon designers. You and I are saying basically the same thing about why the 3-stage bombs were made, we're just going at the subject from different angles.

And what happened to the other 8 kilos of Plutonium necessary to reach critical mass?

That's ten kilos of plutonium to make a bare sphere go critical. You're well informed, but using the figures for the minimum critical mass.

I realize that this next bit comes from Wikipedia, whom I generally wouldn't cite in situations like this. However, it's a subject I know a bit more than most about, so I'll vouch that in this instance Wiki has it right:

This is applied in implosion-type nuclear weapons, where a spherical mass of fissile material that is substantially less than a critical mass, is made supercritical by very rapidly increasing Ï (and thus Σ as well), see below. Indeed, sophisticated nuclear weapons programs can make a functional device from less material than more primitive weapons programs require.

Critical Mass

Plain english version for those readers just tuning in: You don't need to amass very much fissile material to make a bomb, provided you get everything else right. And the amount of fissile material used is the most important factor in determining fallout from a pure fission device.

Now, on to the next point. See the opening paragraph of my previous post?

I'll preface this by stating that I think the stuff in TFA is idiotic. Partly from a radiation and proliferation standpoint, partly because we already have perfectly good used for old bombs (for one thing, turning the fissile material into reactor fuel). But more than those reasons, because the methods proposed for the peaceful use of nuclear weapons all strike me as being colossal overkill - like using thermite to perform household repairs.

I actually agree with you that using nukes for civil engineering is a bad idea. So I'd agree that no bomb is better than a "clean" bomb. My point is more that you can actually make that clean bomb work, for some values of the word "clean".

As long as the only sources of fallout are nuclear daughter products from the initial fissile core, and the neutron activated matter from the blast site, the total fallout will remain tolerably low. I wouldn't want to visit the blast site immediately, but the problem of poisoning people downwind is largely averted.

And before someone else weights in here with "any fallout is too much", I'd like to candidly point out that we already pump plenty of radioactive heavy metal into the air by burning coal, are already exposed to radon seeping from the ground in our own homes, and get zapped by a measurably dangerous amount of ionizing radiation every time we go to the dentist to get x-rayed, or the beach to get a tan. We're tougher than most people think where radiation is concerned. So, for that matter, is the environment - see the returning wildlife around Chernobyl for proof of this

Re:Been tried, major fail

[GargamelSpaceman]

But some of these projects, if the Nuking had been done then, would now be ready to use because the radioactive shit would have decayed mostly.

What if the digging had been done fifty years ago, and we could now extract the oil shale? Why not blow some shit up now so it will be pre-blown up and decayed when we need it.

Re:Been tried, major fail

[Ancient_Hacker]

>But some of these projects, if the Nuking had been done then, would now be ready to use because the radioactive shit would have decayed mostly.
What if the digging had been done fifty years ago, and we could now extract the oil shale? Why not blow some shit up now so it will be pre-blown up and decayed when we need it.

Nice idea, but the 90+% of the Plutonium that does not fission does not decay. It has a 28,000 year half life, so the oil and gas you drain out 50 years later still has 99.4% of the original Plutonium, which is not a good thing to breathe after you burn the oil and gas.

Re:Been tried, major fail

[GargamelSpaceman]

Except that plutonium isn't the main contaminant. It's other things that have been made radioactive by the blast, and also the decay products of those things. These have much shorter half lives, at least for the most part.

there's got to be someone...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure you can find someone to use them on...

2 is better than one

[Anonymous Coward]

I would like 2 moons. mayby they wont be perfectly round but I dont care.

Re:2 is better than one

[BitZtream]

The result would eventually be two mostly round objects like it is already. Its a natural effect of gravity when the mass of an object exceeds a certain level.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrostatic_equilibrium

Re:2 is better than one

[anarche]

I want two moons!

Then the tidal forces will pull the ocean up to my doorstep once a fortnight and I can sail the outtide to south africa!

Re:2 is better than one

[bingoUV]

It works for fluids. Moon is not fluid.

what I thought was interesting.

[onepoint]

I really liked the thought on some new harbours and canals, but due to the radioactivity it's not viable yet.

Likewise, I could imagine making a few lakes out in the mid west or along the Mississippi river to catch some of the flooding ( and some huge bass ponds )

Re:what I thought was interesting.

[ColdWetDog]

( and some huge bass ponds )

Mutant bass? With lasers?

I find your ideas intriguing and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

Re:what I thought was interesting.

[WCguru42]

I really liked the thought on some new harbours and canals, but due to the radioactivity it's not viable yet.

I think more accurately, due to radiation it's not viable ever. Maybe using conventional explosives would work but nuclear weapons simply won't, until we develop a mutation that makes radiation impotent to humans (I don't even think this is evolutionarily possible).

Re:what I thought was interesting.

[maxume]

Do they disperse material so well that they would work better than just starting digging?

I can't imagine that scraping a few dozen feet of somewhat radioactive material off of 100 square miles (or 1,000, whatever) is going to be any easier than scraping a deeper layer of non radioactive material off of a smaller area.

Re:what I thought was interesting.

[DavidShor]

Conventional explosives have problems too. They work via chemical reactions, and pretty bizarre ones at that. The mushroom cloud ends up containing all sorts of super-toxic chemicals.

There do exist ways to decrease nuclear fallout, and it's actually fairly plausible that we might be able to do this to a point where it's environmentally superior to conventional explosives. Unfortunately, this is the sort of thing that tends to be heavily classified, so I don't know how far along we've come with this.

It's been a while since I've read up on the subject, but if I remember correctly, it's "Fission=bad and fusion=good" so far as radioactivity is concerned, and that the main source of radio-activity in H-bombs are the fission reactions used as a trigger. This is because Uranium fission produces a bunch of long-lived and heavy radioactive elements, while H-H reactions mainly just produces a lot of energy, and the radioactive byproducts(hydrogen and lithium isotopes), mostly float out into space.

But I'd love to hear some physicists comment here.

2 Words: Fall Out

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm all for using explosives. Not so much for the nuclear kind. Too much fall out and contamination of land or water.

Re:2 Words: Fall Out

[BitZtream]

Detonating them deep enough under the surface generates no fallout or water contamination as far as we're concerned on the surface.

You still get a crater as the matter near the blast changes forms (vaporized) and is pushed into the surrounding rocks. When the initial pressure subsides, the roof of the now massive cavern collapses and on the surface you end up with a basin that is not radioactive in the least.

Theres a reason we detonate them underground when testing in our own country without worrying a whole lot. I don't think I'd call it safe, but its certainly nothing like using a bomb as a weapon where it is detonated a distance above the surface so that its blast can spread and do the most damage.

Mutants anyone?

[iammani]

What about creating mutants?

Re:Mutants anyone?

[marco.antonio.costa]

If it's not that stupid metaphysical ending-screwing Fawkes from Fallout 3 we're talking about here, then I'm all for it. :D

Re:Mutants anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

What about creating mutants?

We sure got a whole hell of a lot of mutants from bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki... how many again? None?

Re:Mutants anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

It wont work. Radioactivity creates only nuclear powered trolls. They hang out here, on slashdot.

Re:Mutants anyone?

[anarche]

Really, I thought thats why the Japanese are so short :O

Re:Mutants anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

We've set off lots of nukes on Earth. You'd think we would see some mutants by now.

Re:Mutants anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

What about creating mutants?

or nuka cola

Sell them for cash, lots of it.

[auric_dude]

Sell them to Iran, North Korea or whoever wants some and use the cash obtained to finance various economic stimulation packages. Then as soon as the money, gold, diamonds or whatever is in the bank have them self destruct via some CIA,NSA bit of trickery. Seen it in a James Bond film so it must be possible.

Re:Sell them for cash, lots of it.

[Extremus]

I think they will find it a little bit suspicious: "They say Mr. Obama was nice, but never that nice!"

Re:Sell them for cash, lots of it.

[Idiomatick]

That would never work. All those countries are poor.

Re:Sell them for cash, lots of it.

[Hal_Porter]

Exchange the nukes for the secular, educated people. Get the wheat out, fry the chaff.

Re:Sell them for cash, lots of it.

[Erikderzweite]

That is true. North Korea is one of the most literate countries in the world, with a literacy rate of 99% for adults.

Re:Sell them for cash, lots of it.

[CrimsonAvenger]

That is true. North Korea is one of the most literate countries in the world, with a literacy rate of 99% for adults.

By the U.N. definition of literacy. Which basically means they can read and write "a simple sentence". Since that definition means that most six year olds in civilized countries are literate, I'm not impressed.

Re:Sell them for cash, lots of it.

[Hal_Porter]

That's probably not true. This WaPo article describes North Korean defectors struggling with reading and math.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/11/AR2009041100766_pf.html

Teenage defectors spend two months to two years at nearby Hangyoreh Middle-High School, a remedial boarding school the government built three years ago to help the increasing number of newly arrived youngsters who are unfit for public schools. Many have been out of school for years and have difficulty with basic reading and math.

"All I learned in school in North Korea was that Kim Jong Il was the best leader and that North Korea was the best country," said Lee, who is in her final year at Hangyoreh and hopes to become an English teacher.

"Education in North Korea is useless for life in this country," said the school's principal, Gwak Jong-moon. "When you are too hungry, you don't go to learn and teachers don't go to teach. Many children have been hiding in China for years with no access to schools."

I think the problem with the literacy figures is that a country like North Korea can always cheat by only showing the inspectors the schools for the elite and claiming they are typical. Actually they are far from typical - NK had a famine relatively recently and still has chronic shortages of everything. It's highly unlikely that the non elite education system is particularly high performance.

South Korea isn't like that - rich capitalist asian countries (SK, Japan and Taiwan) have an incredibly high pressure education system and most children seem to go along with it. Thus when North Koreans arrive in South Korea they are far behind as the WaPo article describes.

Probably forbidden by international treaties

[MikTheUser]

There is a Treaty banning Nuclear Weapon Tests In The Atmosphere, In Outer Space And Under Water (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PTBT), which would probably hold and prevent this from happening, even though the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NNPT) still allows nuclear explosions for "peaceful purposes". Anyway, the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CTBT), which stands on much better fotting again since Obama supports it, would definitely prevent it.

Re:Probably forbidden by international treaties

[BitZtream]

You wouldn't detonate at the surface, that would be silly.

You detonate far below the surface. Well below the water table. The resulting void under the surface results in the collapse of the rock above it into the void, end result: A depression on the surface of the planet, with all the bad stuff far below ground, relatively locked away.

The problem is that we don't have enough information about the rock we'd want to detonate the device in, and as a result we may end up releasing radioactive and other dangerous materials into our enviroment by accident/ignorance.

It'll probably be something we can consider when we have far better ways of mapping the Earths crust.

Re:Probably forbidden by international treaties

[mattwarden]

> Probably forbidden by international treaties

Sorry, you must not have read the article. We're talking about the US.

Re:Probably forbidden by international treaties

[myowntrueself]

There is a Treaty banning Nuclear Weapon Tests In The Atmosphere, In Outer Space And Under Water

Read that sentence again.

Note the use of the word 'test'.

This is not about nuclear tests! This is about practical real-world detonations, not tests!

Re:Probably forbidden by international treaties

[PNP_Transistor]

This is not about nuclear tests! This is about practical real-world detonations, not tests!

Some countries may use a "practical real-world detonation" as a cover for a nuclear test. A country like North Korea could set off some bombs to test/demonstrate their nuclear capability and claim it was for mining or something. Kind of like how their recent missile test was supposedly for the entirely peaceful purpose of a satellite launch.

Re:Probably forbidden by international treaties

[MikTheUser]

I kindly invite you to RTFC to the end. The CTBT's article I reads: "Each State Party undertakes not to carry out any nuclear weapon test explosion or any other nuclear explosion, and to prohibit and prevent any such nuclear explosion at any place under its jurisdiction or control."

Re:Probably forbidden by international treaties

[myowntrueself]

Ok so the treaty is totally mis-named and isn't a *TEST* ban but a *TOTAL* ban.

I'll remove my pedant hat now...

pickle 'em?

[Theolojin]

I don't get what the big deal is. How can they lead to healthy living? They don't exactly have a lot of nutritional value---just a smidgeon of vitamin C. Don't get me wrong; they are yummy and all---especially the hot house variety, with fewer seeds and the flavor...oh, the flavor is wonderful.

Wha? Oh. *N*ukes.

Sorry.

Panama canal and asteroids - 2 birds, one nuke

[davidwr]

Well, maybe more than one nuke.

Killer asteroid en route? Send up some nukes to change its course and speed so it lands in the isthmus. Modern human civilization might not survive the impact, but whatever civilization arises to follow will have a nice cut-through between the Americas.

Disclaimer: This solution does not apply to Earth-shattering heavenly bodies.

Re:Panama canal and asteroids - 2 birds, one nuke

[Guysmiley777]

And hopefully we can get Bruce Willis and his merry band of asteroid hunters to save us!

Nukes won't save us from a killer asteroid at short notice. When you do the math of asteroid impacts there is a maximum amount of energy that can be applied to the planet, anything larger (short of one large enough to confetti the planet) reflects back off into space. If you were to use nuclear explosions to shatter a massive asteroid into "smaller" pieces (go from the state of Colorado to 8 states of Vermont), you're then getting 8 worst-case impacts instead of one. Our serious best hope is early detection and then doing something that applies a small force over a long period of time like an ion engine or something similar. Hey, the ion engine could be nuke powered! Or nuclear detonations far enough away to not shatter the asteroid... Shumacher-Levy was pretty sobering, the scars on Jupiter were about the size of Earth... each!

Re:Panama canal and asteroids - 2 birds, one nuke

[techno-vampire]

Or nuclear detonations far enough away to not shatter the asteroid...

Or, a series of detonations, with enough time separation that they hit different parts of the asteroid. The nice thing about it is, if you have enough lead time, you don't need to make that much of a change. As an example, let's say that we spot an asteroid that's predicted to impact on the equator at local noon. (Direct central impact.) Now, let's also say that we can hit it with enough nukes to shift it to one side by 1 mph, while it's over two years away. (Lots of luck with that, but let's pretend.) 1 mph doesn't sound like much, but in two years, it will add up to over 8,000 miles, more than enough to miss. Yes, I'm simplifying the hell out of this, but it think the principle involved is clear.

Re:Panama canal and asteroids - 2 birds, one nuke

[myowntrueself]

As I understand it, nukes behave very differently in vacuum.

The fireball and blast effect that you get from nukes detonated in atmosphere is due to the xray radiation detonating the air.

In vacuum there is little blast; its mostly hard radiation which might not do a great deal to change the course of an asteroid.

Re:Panama canal and asteroids - 2 birds, one nuke

[jamstar7]

Actually, it'll deflect the asteroid by 17520 miles, until you calculate gravity effects in. 17520 miles away is still enough to make an astronomer change into his brown pants...

Re:Panama canal and asteroids - 2 birds, one nuke

[techno-vampire]

until you calculate gravity effects in

Of course, of course, I was just simplifying to illustrate the basic point. It's kind of like the canonical "spherical cow of uniform density."

Re:Panama canal and asteroids - 2 birds, one nuke

[jamstar7]

or 'spherical American girlfriend of uniform density'...

Operation Plowshare...

[LaRoach]

...anyone? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Plowshare

Re:Operation Plowshare...

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, they mentioned that in the article, thanks

Global cooling

[russbutton]

Several years ago, the Brits published a study that even a small scale nuclear exchange would kick up enough crap in the atmosphere that it would cool the planet. Here's a way to get rid of a few nukes and stop global warming at the same time! Hey! You could call this... are you ready... Glow-ball cooling! Whaaaaat? You want me set to the damn things off with a match?

Re:Global cooling

[earlymon]

This solution was proposed in a short scifi story several decades ago, in fact. In the story involving the USA and USSR, one side was visiting the other and no one noticed that a colonel from the entourage stepped aside and pulled a counterpart aside and they spoke briefly. A year later there were two accidental launches, one from each side. Political tensions eased when it became clear that the two small nukes landed in the deep ocean, and sent up huge plumes of water vapor with little radiation. Not too long after, global warming was solved.

And not too long after that, the ice age started.

I think it was by Elison....?

How about a good old megatons to megawatts program

[Anonymous Coward]

Megatons to Megawatts Program

Re:Horrible idea.

[yvesdandoy]

TOTALLY AGREE.

ummmm fallout??

[Anonymous Coward]

i dont understand how this could be anything else but ignorance. you cant use a nuke without living with the radiation side effects. and that means globally.

Re:ummmm fallout??

[Anonymous Coward]

Underground explosions don't cause fallout.

Forget bin Laden

[davidwr]

There are some nice juicy targets on and just off the cost of Somalia.

The US Marines got rid of pirates off the coast of Libya back in the day, with modern weaponry they can do so much more.

Re:Forget bin Laden

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard they even wrote a song about it. Whatever happened to tradition?

Let's just blow up the moon.

[Rod Beauvex]

Would you miss it? Would you miss it!!!???

Re:Let's just blow up the moon.

[peterjb31]

Umm... yes both for aesthetic and practical reasons.

Re:Let's just blow up the moon.

[Hawthorne01]

And bring about world peace!

Re:Let's just blow up the moon.

[harry666t]

Yea, I would, for the rest of my life. My children probably wouldn't, though, because I don't have any yet, and without the moon I'm probably not going to have any. Ever noticed that the length of a woman's menstrual cycle is about equal to the length of the full cycle of the moon?

Re:Let's just blow up the moon.

[NonSequor]

http://vodpod.com/watch/1456331-mr-show-we%E2%80%99re-gonna-blow-up-the-moon

Re:Let's just blow up the moon.

[Creepy Crawler]

mmmMMMmmmmm... Moonblood never tasted soo good :)

and yes, I do that. and she's very grateful.

Security and Radioactivity

[Roger W Moore]

Even if this was deep enough to contain the radioactivity do we really want lots of civilian uses for nuclear explosions? This will mean demand to make more and, rather than being stored on high security military bases, they will be looked after by companies hiring security guards. If we want to get rid of them the safest option is to disassemble them and either burn the fissionable material in a reactor or render it non-weapons grade. Developing commercial uses will only encourage us to build more.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[Rei]

And the radioactivity is really problematic for some of these tasks. For example, oil shale. That was studied a lot in the 70s, and last I saw, it was deemed infeasible because it'd leave the oil too radioactive to be usable.

Oh, and as for using any relevant amount of nuclear weapons on the surface at once -- say, the amount that would be exchanged between India and Pakistan in a nuclear war -- um, no. That would be a Bad Thing(TM).

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[Jurily]

they will be looked after by companies hiring security guards.

And that is worse than the Russian military how?

Developing commercial uses will only encourage us to build more.

Yes. And used responsibly that can be a good thing. We might even see new nuclear power plants, which is definitely a good thing.

Fearmongering will get us nowhere.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[firmamentalfalcon]

Developing commercial uses will only encourage us to build more.

That sentence is so wrong with that "only" there. When good commercial uses are found for nuclear explosions, then that is a good thing.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[Zordak]

Fearmongering will get us nowhere.

I don't know about that. Al Gore has made many millions of dollars off of fearmongering.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[aliquis]

Oh, and as for using any relevant amount of nuclear weapons on the surface at once -- say, the amount that would be exchanged between India and Pakistan in a nuclear war -- um, no. That would be a Bad Thing(TM).

Looks like a decent solution to the global warming issue... Also if more people starved and died it would leave more room for other species and kick of more evolution. An extra bonus would be even more evolution, again, thanks to all the resulting mutations.

As Nike would had put it: Just do it!

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[aliquis]

And that is worse than the Russian military how?

And they are worse than the US of A military how?

Or well, I assume you may have better oversight of it all, but who knows, and I don't trust your people more than the russian people.

We might even see new nuclear power plants, which is definitely a good thing.

Nuclear power plants is totally unrelated to nuking things outside a reactor. No contradiction.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[Jurily]

and I don't trust your people more than the russian people.

The Hungarian army couldn't take over Heathrow Airport, so that's understandable.

Oh, you thought I was American?

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[BitZtream]

The civilian sector already uses military grade controlled explosives for civilian uses. They just do so by asking the military to allow them to do so and to provide the materials and expertise to pull it off.

Just because a civilian use for it exists, doesn't mean that you let civilians do it themselves.

The final catch is that nuclear fuel is a finite resource, just like oil. You can just run around using it for all sorts of silly things unless you intend to run out of it. The main difference between petroleum and nuclear fuels is that there is a A LOT more petroleum. Many countries have already stopped mining uranium because its no longer economical to do so. Seawater is full of it, but you spend more energy getting it out of the seawater than you get back in a power plant.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining

While we're not running out tomorrow, and there are alternatives that can be used in reactors, its still rare enough that governments aren't going to just let it be used for any random thing.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[Anonymous Coward]

IANYourL. This post is my rambling, not legal advice. Do not rely on this post for any reason.

And here I was, about to use your profound insight to make life changing decisions. Pompous ass.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[poopdeville]

If we want to get rid of them the safest option is to disassemble them and either burn the fissionable material in a reactor or render it non-weapons grade. Developing commercial uses will only encourage us to build more.

This isn't just safe. It is smart. These weapons were built specifically because they store a lot of energy. That energy can now be used peacefully, and is sorely needed. Certainly, a 10 megaton bomb is more energetic than 10 megatons of coal.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[Anonymous Coward]

You people criticizing this idea have no sense of adventure or play.

The average guy dreams about having one of those little earthmover things to play with. He watches Mythbusters and those demolition documentaries because blowing things up is cool!

Dreaming about what/who to blow up with your very own personal nuke. Come on, admit it. That would be so awesome!

Don't take life so seriously. You aren't going to get out alive, so at least TRY to have some fun. ;)

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[Miseph]

Nope, nor is a pound of lead any heavier than a pound of feathers... but it IS a lot more convenient.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[Dare nMc]

radio active waste hasn't stopped coal power plants, I would think as clean as we are able to burn oil now, sepearte out any heavy metal at the end would be easier than coal. Actually just mixing it into a pipeline seams pretty safe from what the article says about the lack of radioactivity in the low fissionable material bombs should make this a non-issue.
Coal-burning plants are particularly noted for producing large amounts of toxic and mildly radioactive ash due to concentrating naturally occurring metals and radioactive material from the coal.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[jswigart]

You can be the first in line for the starving and dieing part.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[aliquis]

Yes I can!

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[Anpheus]

Since the cold war, demand for uranium has dropped too. If we had more nuclear power plants, we'd have more mining capacity, and we'd have something that could bridge us over until widespread renewable energy adoption and/or fusion. (It's only 20 years away!!! Still...)

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[Kevster]

See also Stupid to the Last Drop: How Alberta Is Bringing Environmental Armageddon to Canada (And Doesn't Seem to Care) by William Marsden. There's whole chapter devoted to this. Nukes + oil = horrendously dumb. Doesn't even get much oil out.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[Sebilrazen]

Fearmongering will get us nowhere.

I don't know about that. Al Gore has made many millions of dollars off of fearmongering.

True, but to be fair so has the Catholic Church and every large political campaign ever ran.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[DavidShor]

"Fearmongering will get us nowhere."

It's not fear mongering, it's basic understanding of expected utility. The gains from producing plutonium and highly-enriched uranium are... not very high(Slightly more efficient nuclear power plants, and maybe some of these odd-ball "use nukes to dig tunnel" ideas).

On the other hand, the mere *presence* of these materials leave open the chance that one day, some whackjob or terror group is going to get a hold of one, and proceed to kill millions of people. Worse, there could be a misunderstanding or technical error, as has happened already, that ends up triggering nuclear war, killing most of the human race.

It really is imperative that we do everything we can to cut down the number of nukes to as small a number as possible(I don't see why 10 nuclear weapons per world power isn't enough for effective deterrence), and guard them extremely closely.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[im_thatoneguy]

And if they do get around to it they better offer public admittance to up-wind viewing sites.

I really want to see a Nuke and have been dissapointed my entire life that I never have gotten the opportunity to see one.

Hopefully I'll get to on my terms some day.

If you think the Obama inauguration was packed I can only imagine the number of tickets which would be sold to a hydrogen bomb test.

In fact this might be a way to turn around the economy. Hydrogen bomb test in the middle of the pacific. Charge $5,000 a pop for the cruise and complimentary glasses and ear plugs. $2,000 to the cruise company and $3,000 to the government.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[Jurily]

I really want to see a Nuke and have been dissapointed my entire life that I never have gotten the opportunity to see one.

It's not a Nuke, but Paks Nuclear Power Plant is open for viewing. AFAIK that's the only one on Earth where they actually let you see the reactor and the 70's style control room. It's kind of fun to see Soviet technology still working as intended.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[Ihlosi]

In fact this might be a way to turn around the economy. Hydrogen bomb test in the middle of the pacific. Charge $5,000 a pop for the cruise and complimentary glasses and ear plugs. $2,000 to the cruise company and $3,000 to the government.

I think you found the one joke they forgot to include in Fallout 3.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[Captain Segfault]

There's the other critical difference that there is A LOT more energy in uranium than in petroleum.

Uranium is not economical to mine because there aren't enough power plants, not because there isn't enough energy in it. There would be A LOT more accessible uranium if its price went up by an order of magnitude.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if this was deep enough to contain the radioactivity do we really want lots of civilian uses for nuclear explosions? This will mean demand to make more and, rather than being stored on high security military bases, they will be looked after by companies hiring security guards. If we want to get rid of them the safest option is to disassemble them and either burn the fissionable material in a reactor or render it non-weapons grade. Developing commercial uses will only encourage us to build more.

Why not just have them stored on a military base and transported onsite last-minute by military personnell? It's not like it takes a lot of time or work.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[catmistake]

We might even see new nuclear power plants, which is definitely a good thing.

Fearmongering will get us nowhere.

Your opinion is astoudingly, but unsurprisingly, uninformed.

No matter how safe something that is incredibly dangerous is made... it never stops being incredibly dangerous.

So far, nuclear anything has 2 major problems compounded by 2 obvious ones. First, the obvious:
1) nuclear waste is deadly
2) nuclear waste remains deadly for 10,000 to 100,000 years.

Now, the major problems:
1) How do you safely store something deadly for that amount of time?
2) If location is solved, how can deadly material be safely transferred from all over to that location?

The answers to these two major issues are currently easily answered.
1) right now? You can't. No one knows how.
2) right now? It can't. There's so much of it that in transporting it, there's bound to be an accident (consider that the current best method, using railways, is unsafe... 3000 train wrecks per year in the US).

Now, add as a preface to the problem that every single TEMPORARY holding tank at every single operating nuclear plant in the US is at capacity, i.e. ALREADY FULL (and afa I know, have been for years) and it might start to dawn on you that there are probably better options than more nuke plants.

What gets me is if half the resources spent by our government in the 50's developing nukes had been spent on say developing better solar energy, then right now we would all have cheap solar energy RIGHT NOW.

Nuclear Power is like magic beans. Sure, only three of them and just look at that massive bean stalk... we'll never need beans again! But that giant keeps climbing down and eating people's heads off ... until Solar Jack comes along and destroys both the giant and the beanstalk, and gives us his energy laying solar goose.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[Jurily]

http://www.nuclearwasterecycling.com/

Thank you for calling me uninformed. Now go read it.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[Hurricane78]

I don't know about that. The Bush Family and Dick Cheney have made many billions of dollars off of fearmongering.

There, fixed that for you.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[falconwolf]

Developing commercial uses will only encourage us to build more.

Yes. And used responsibly that can be a good thing. We might even see new nuclear power plants, which is definitely a good thing.

Citation needed.

More nuclear power plants are not needed. Alternative energy sources can generate plenty of electricity, even for electric vehicles. According to the article "A Solar Grant Plan" in SciAm by 2050 solar electricity can provide 69% of the US's energy. And the wind potential in the Rockies is enough to provide the 48 continuous states with electricity as well. The Wind Energy Resource Atlas of the United States details by region the wind potential of the US. And for a baseload geothermal can be used, though the SciAm article also goes over energy storage.

Falcon

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[catmistake]

Ah! So you are informed? You are aware that recycling nuclear waste is itself an enourmous task, dangerous, sure, but will require millions, maybe billion of dollars, and many many motivated and brilliant people over decades to pull it off successfully and safely rid ourselves of deadly nuclear waste, only to replace it with smaller amounts of even deadlier waste? Then your post was sarcasm? apologies, I missed your subtle humor (along with half who replied to your now outed sarcasm).

THANK YOU FOR BEING RATIONAL AND INFORMED. ...now, if wecould just do something about that sense of humor of yours...

This might help: there is effectively no difference between merely pretending to be an jerk... and actually being a jerk. Effect is the same: everyone thinks you're a jerk.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[Jurily]

Since you didn't read the link I gave you, here's an excerpt:

Santillis method consists in certain resonating means which stimulate the decay of nuclei which are naturally unstable. Once decayed in a radiation protective environment (such as the pools of current nuclear power plants), the resulting debris are constituted by light, natural and stable elements, which, as such, do not constitute a threat to society. In this way, radioactive waste with meanlife of tens of thousands of years can be stimulated to decay into stable elements in short periods of time depending on the intensity of the resonating means, and can be of the order of minutes per pellet of radioactive waste. Santillis equipment is sufficiently small to be used by nuclear power plants, thus avoiding completely the transportation to a common dump. In particular, while the latter transportation would cost hundreds of billions of dollars to taxpayers, Santillis equipment is expected to be purchased by the nuclear power plants for future operations, thus avoiding a massive public expenditure.

Santillis recycling method has an unquestionable credibility, since the studies were initiated in 1978 at Harvard University under DOE financial support; the studies were then published in major refereed journals quoted in the references below; and the method has been confirmed by direct experiments also outlined below.

Despite that, according to documentation available to qualified observers, Santillis method for the recycling of radioactive nuclear waste via its stimulated decay has been STRONGLY OPPOSED by politicians and scientists alike. The strongest documented opposition has been that in the U.S.A. and the DGXII Division of the European Community in Bruxelles, which went to extreme of opposing first, and then disrupting an international conference in the field under organization by the Institute for Basic Research which was intended to be attended by the best minds in the field from all over the world, As of today, it has been impossible to organize such a conference, while thousands of other, comparatively irrelevant international conference are fully supported in the U.S.A. and Europe. Oppositions to Santillis method of waste recycling also exist in the politics of many other countries.

Thank you for keeping a civil tone in this discussion.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[catmistake]

Thank you for keeping a civil tone in this discussion

Excellent that you noticed.

I did read the site before. And I believe nuke waste recycling should be pursued. But it doesn't answer to any of the 4 problems I pointed out (even if we can recycle it, doesn't solve that the waste is deadly, its deadly for a long time, no safe place for storage, no safe way to transport it to storage).

Further, developing technology to safely recycle nuclear waste lends no positive support to the blind statement "more nuclear reactors would be a good thing" (such as the obvious benefit of more power for consumers). Its kind of like saying MS Windows is good because we have antivirus.

The response is a straw man, and doesn't speak to the salient details I spelled out (1,2 & 1,2).

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[Jurily]

But it doesn't answer to any of the 4 problems I pointed out (even if we can recycle it, doesn't solve that the waste is deadly, its deadly for a long time, no safe place for storage, no safe way to transport it to storage).

Umm...

You do understand the sentence "radioactive waste with meanlife of tens of thousands of years can be stimulated to decay into stable elements in short periods of time", right?

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[Mr. Freeman]

Just because the Russian military does it that way doesn't mean it's a good thing.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[smithmc]

Fearmongering will get us nowhere.

I don't know about that. Al Gore has made many millions of dollars off of fearmongering.

He's totally serial.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[catmistake]

Umm...

You do understand the sentence "radioactive waste with meanlife of tens of thousands of years can be stimulated to decay into stable elements in short periods of time", right?

And you understand this
1) doesn't make nuclear waste any safer
2) doesn't matter whether its 500 years or 10,000 years, whatever "short period" means, its going to be "a long, long time"
3) doesn't make transporting the waste any safer
4) doesn't provide a safe storage method

Recycling the waste does NOT solve these very critical problems such that we could now full steam ahead carefree and build 100 more reactors to satisfy our energy needs.

So, again... I strongly disagree with your OP, but, sure, think recycling the current surplus of waste is a great idea, too... but if its meant to counter the claims I've made, or support your statement that more reactors are a good thing, then it is a straw man argument, i.e. a fallicious argument.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[yndrd1984]

I hate to interrupt, but you clearly aren't reading what Jurily is posting.

1) doesn't make nuclear waste any safer
"resulting debris are constituted by light, natural and stable elements" - i.e. not radioactive

2) doesn't matter whether its 500 years or 10,000 years, whatever "short period" means, its going to be "a long, long time"
"can be of the order of minutes per pellet of radioactive waste" - i.e. not years

3) doesn't make transporting the waste any safer
"Santillis equipment is sufficiently small to be used by nuclear power plants, thus avoiding completely the transportation to a common dump" - i.e. no transport

4) doesn't provide a safe storage method
What???

Call this theoretical, call it fringe science, call it not cost effective, but please read the post before you reply. Thank you.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[catmistake]

You are perpetuating the straw man.

All 4 responces you made are fallicious because a mountain of waste is NOT made safe instantly just because someone has a good idea of what to do with it.

How, exactly, do you safely transport the waste to this theoretical nuclear waste recycling plant that goes online in 2029? How many more nuclear power plants were you hoping to build in the mean time? What was it you wanted to do with the waste currently overflowing the temporary containment pools?

What nuclear proponants are failing to realize is we've already screwed ourselves... we need to NOT increase the amount of waste we already make. We need to bite the bullet and find simpler, cleaner energy... at our own expense.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[Jurily]

More nuclear power plants are not needed. Alternative energy sources can generate plenty of electricity, even for electric vehicles. According to the article "A Solar Grant Plan" in SciAm by 2050 solar electricity can provide 69% of the US's energy. And the wind potential in the Rockies is enough to provide the 48 continuous states with electricity as well. The Wind Energy Resource Atlas of the United States details by region the wind potential of the US. And for a baseload geothermal can be used, though the SciAm article also goes over energy storage.

The US is not the whole world, you know. Hungary for example doesn't even have a mountain. 40% of our electricity comes from Paks, and it's getting old.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[hobbit]

"Informed by Prof. Santilli" is not necessarily the same as "informed".

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[Jurily]

I don't know about that. The ruling elite in the US have made many trillions of dollars off of fearmongering.

There, fixed that for you.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[rtb61]

Whilst nuclear waste does represent some storage problems ie continued monitored storage over thousands of years it is still better than burning stuff and storing the pollutants in the air that your breath and the water that you drink. So nuclear energy is simply a means by which to transition away from fossil fuel burning as soon as possible and bridging the gap to developing other safer and cleaner methods of energy generation. So nuclear for the next hundred years (the waste is really concentrated and doesn't need all that much land area) while advances in nano technology, super conductors, on of course natural energy resources solar et al are developed along with much greater energy efficiency in products.

So nuclear, unfourtunately, as a necessary stop gap so we can basically stop burning stuff, well, today.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[ozmanjusri]

A lot of these ideas were championed by Edward Teller in the late '60s.

In Western Australia, he convinced local iron ore magnate Lang Hancock to lobby the state government to use nuclear tools.

But the project required a new port. Hancock, in a spectacularly bizarre twist, brought Dr. Edward Teller to Western Australia to investigate the use of 'nuclear tools' to expedite the development of the Pilbara. One plan, for example, was to bury a nuclear charge deep under one of the region's high-grade haematite formations and then cook off the bomb. Teller told Hancock there would be no release of radioactive dust into the air because a silicon bubble would form around the immediate area of the blast, while the rest of the deposit/mountain would be reduced to convenient, human-head sized boulders of iron ore.

The craziest application of 'nuclear tools' was Hancock's suggestion of detonating five 200-kiloton nuclear bombs at a depth of 800 feet off Cape Keraudren. This was designed to create a deep water report that could handle the massive freighters hauling ore from the Pilbara.

http://www.dailyreckoning.com.au/wa-govt-iron-ore/2007/07/05/

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[anarche]

Really? According to the IAEA http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/News/2006/uranium_resources.html world uranium prices have quintupled in the last 8 years, part of the reason the State Government of Western Australia have decided to start mining yellowcake (the other reason being ideology and the lack of protesting in WA)

Don't think that the demand isnt there. It is.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[yndrd1984]

You are perpetuating the straw man.
You don't know the meaning of "straw man", do you?

a mountain of waste is NOT made safe instantly just because someone has a good idea of what to do with it
Who's making that claim?

How, exactly, do you safely transport the waste to this theoretical nuclear waste recycling plant
Again, nobody is suggesting that anything be transported anywhere.

What was it you wanted to do with the waste currently overflowing the temporary containment pools?
Convert it into non-radioactive isotopes.

I don't know if you're trying some kind of trolling or have a severe learning disability.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[anarche]

Nope, nor is a pound of lead any heavier than a pound of feathers... but it IS a lot more convenient.

Bad analogy - enough coal to produce a megaton or energy would weight considerably more than enough uranium to produce a megaton of energy.

You're thinking of the other definition of megaton..

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[ozmanjusri]

Thank you for calling me uninformed.

Is this the recycling scheme proposed by Ruggero Santilli, the "hadronic mechanics" theorist?

The same guy who invented MagneGas and MagneHydrogen, which are made of magnecules?

This is a person who was criticised by other scientists as having;

Many serious misinterpretations, and misunderstandings of the "data" presented... [the paper] creates some doubt as to whether [the author] actually knows the difference between a gas chromatograph (GC) and a mass spectrometer (MS).

Are you suggesting his method of recycling high-level nuclear waste is a credible solution to the waste problem?

If so, you're not merely uninformed. You're as crazy as a loon.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[jc42]

I don't know about that. The ruling elite in every part of the world throughout history have maintained their control over their society by fearmongering.

Why bother with local, specialized cases when you can acknowledge a general pattern of human social behavior?

Al Gore, George Bush, Dick Cheney, and the rest of them have just been using the main tool for getting a society to follow their leaders.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[triffid_98]

It really is imperative that we do everything we can to cut down the number of nukes to as small a number as possible(I don't see why 10 nuclear weapons per world power isn't enough for effective deterrence), and guard them extremely closely.

You seem to be under the misconception that stealing nukes is the only way wackjob organizations can get them. I'll admit this was high tech stuff back in 1945, but it's now the year 2009. It's largely a question of cost.

Sure, they may not be able to make a small warhead, but something that will fit in a cargo ship? No problem really. Globally we've already refined tons of fissionable material and a bomb only needs a few kilograms.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[denobug]

I don't know about that. The Bush Family and Dick Cheney have made many billions of dollars off of fearmongering.

There, fixed that for you.

Corrections needed. The Bush Family did not make billions of dollars off of fearmongering. Our last president blew many billions of dollars of YOUR money off of fearmongering.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[MrKaos]

Yes. And used responsibly that can be a good thing. We might even see new nuclear power plants, which is definitely a good thing.

Building a geologically stable containment facility would be a responsible thing to implement before considering new Nuclear power plants.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[fractoid]

Flamebait? Nope. I'm pro-global-warming, wanna know why? The world that the Dinosaurs knew was destroyed by global cooling. The carbon locked away by millions of years of fossil formation left the Earth vulnerable to the 'white earth' scenario, a fate which we very narrowly escaped a few times. Now we have the technology to liberate all that carbon and return the world to its pre-Cambrian state as a warm, lush paradise. Sure, a few coastal cities may need relocating but necessity is the mother of invention and hardship fosters ingenuity and all that.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[mgblst]

What is the point of bringing that up, does that change anything??

You just stabbed my wife? True, but to be fair people have been stabbing each other for thousands of years.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[Roger W Moore]

And that is worse than the Russian military how?

I thought that would be extremely obvious. Are you really saying that because we already have one organization that does not secure its nuclear devices properly there is no problem with increasing the number of organizations that do likewise?

Yes. And used responsibly that can be a good thing.

The point I am trying to make is what happens when they are NOT used responsibly? Nuclear weapons are simply too dangerous to have around in common use - not primarily because of the radioactivity they cause but simply because of the power of the devices. Conventional explosives in the wrong hands can maximally kill a few hundred people on a plane or building, a nuclear device could kill millions in a city. So is a 10,000 fold increase in the risk worth it over conventional methods? This is not fearmongering but simply asking a reasonable question about risk vs. reward. I see a huge increase in risk and minimal (and that not yet proven) reward. Show me some proven benefit that outweighs this and I'll reconsider.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[jamstar7]

So far, nuclear anything has 2 major problems compounded by 2 obvious ones. First, the obvious:
1) nuclear waste is deadly
2) nuclear waste remains deadly for 10,000 to 100,000 years.

2) Not necessarily. Hydrogen is the most common element in the universe for one simple reason. Every other element has been created in a 'nuclear reactor' known as a star, and released from the core of the star when it 'breaches core containment' by going nova. Since you're not 100% hydrogen, it's obvious that you are partially nuclear waste, just like me.

2) Not necessarily. See Answer #1 above.

About 99.999% of the current problem with nuclear power is the hot button effect. Everybody starts screaming "MY GOD THEY'RE BUILDING NUKES!! WE'RE ALL GONNA FUCKIN DIE!!!!" without sitting down and taking a good honest look at things. Let's start with a couple more things...

Now, the major problems:
1) How do you safely store something deadly for that amount of time?

Not necessarily. You're forgetting the definitition of the word 'half-life'. An element's half-life is the amount of time to statistically insure the quantity of the element is reduced by half. So, that 25 kilos of Element ZZ, with a half-life of 10 years should be 12.5 kilos at the end of that decade, and statistically reduced to 6.25 kilos the decade after, and so on. Replace Element ZZ and the time period from any particle physics text book.

2) If location is solved, how can deadly material be safely transferred from all over to that location?

Believe it or not, railways are about the best way to do it. The engineers of the Atomic Energy Commission designed a rail car to transport nuclear materials that can withstand derailments and direct impacts. None of the containers has ever been breached in an accident. It's safe proven technology.

The site dealing with 'nuclear waste recycling' is a bit X-Files/tin-hatty for me, and I don't think that science will work until you show me the math. But dammit, don't dismiss guys like this off the cuff just because they're weird and don't quite have their science right. They're trying to do something about the problem they see, not giving up like so many of us do. Cut 'em some slack, jail the obvious con artists, and fund the nutjobs a bit cause you never know what they might come up with...

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[Anonymous Coward]

But then what about using them to countereffect the global warming? That sounds brilliant! Let's talk about it to Kim Jong-Il, he won't miss that chance to save the whole humankind and be praised eternally.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[jamstar7]

http://www.nuclearwasterecycling.com/

Thank you for calling me uninformed. Now go read it.

Read it, but it doesn't make a whole lotta sense. Where's the math for this?

I don't think this will work quite as Santilli thinks it will, but it's an interesting idea. And dammit, at least he's trying. Give him some credit for that.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[palegray.net]

they will be looked after by companies hiring security guards

Having served in the submarine force, I can assure you that the probability of nuclear weapons ever being watched over by average Joe security guards, in a civilian environment, is zero. Government requirements to be anywhere near a nuclear weapon for watchstanding purposes are pretty insane.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[shaitand]

Why single out the catholics? Pretty much every church/religion has made its money off fearmongering.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[shaitand]

Why is defending the russian military flamebait and insulting them +5 insightful?

Buying into US propoganda much?

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[supernova_hq]

they will be looked after by companies hiring security guards.

And that is worse than the Russian military how?

How many people do you know that are dumb enough to try to steal shit from the Russian Military?!?

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[dkf]

The Hungarian army couldn't take over Heathrow Airport, so that's understandable.

A lesser known fact is that they tried a few years ago, but are still waiting for their bags to arrive...

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[catmistake]

You are perpetuating the straw man.
You don't know the meaning of "straw man" [wikipedia.org], do you?

Please let me rephrase. Obviously I have lost you with my cunning prose and left you in a state of false understanding. What I meant, and still mean, is that you are now standing behind Jurily's straw man argument (pointed out in the now great grandparent post)... because that's where you interrupted. I was not referring right there to any new argument (within the straw man argument) that Jurily or you were trying to make, only that you bought, lock, stock and barrel, Jurly's straw man argument.

The summary:
Jurily - more nuke plants are a good thing
Me - no, we got 4 problems, the waste, its really dangerous... for a long long long time... can't store it safely... can't move it safely.
Jurily - nonsense... look at this link... we can recycle nuclear waste, but they won't let us, scientists have received threats, its a major world wide conspiracy... !
Me - straw man.

a mountain of waste is NOT made safe instantly just because someone has a good idea of what to do with it
Who's making that claim?

It's either/or. Either Jurily's conspiracy against recycling nuclear waste is a straw man, OR, if you are saying that recycling nuclear waste makes nuclear waste safe, you and Jurily have made this claim. If "we can recycle nuke waste!" is the argument that negates "1) doesn't make nuclear waste any safer," then, yes, I think, you and Jurily have claimed that (yes, me putting the precise words, but not the underlying meaning, which you infer): "a mountain of waste is made safe instantly just because someone has a good idea of what to do with it." If just because there is the ability to recycle nuclear waste says nothing toward the danger of the existing waste, yet, and I admit you both neither specifically claim this, but you infer that the ability to recycle nuclear waste makes nuclear waste safe enough that more nuclear power plants would be a good thing (Jurily's original crazy statement that was finally outed to be sarcasm... at least I thought). The analogy I used before was with Windows, I think it still applies... It doesn't matter if your antivirus is good (against the token virus), it doesn't eliminate viruses (the type).

How, exactly, do you safely transport the waste to this theoretical nuclear waste recycling plant
Again, nobody is suggesting that anything be transported anywhere.

You've missed something I think... or I have. Are these nuclear waste recycling plants mobile or portable or something? Because the nuclear waste, that toxic crap that I'm bitching about, is all over the place. Presumably, in order for nuclear waste recycling to work, one would have to actually ... recycle ... the nuclear waste... right? So... How would we get it there? That's the problem. The crap is dangerous. Too dangerous for us to safely move. Its a real pickle. It keeps piling up and we need to do something about it because its so dangerous... but we can't because its too dangerous.

What was it you wanted to do with the waste currently overflowing the temporary containment pools?
Convert it into non-radioactive isotopes.

Right there? in the temp containment pools? On site? I think I did miss something. There's now technology to, like a switch, drop radioactive rods to non-radioactive isotopes within hours? That sounds like fantasy. I can't believe I just slept through the grand stroke brilliant solving of one piece of the nuclear problem. Oh, wait... its not my fault I missed it... there's a massive conspiracy (that I mistook for a straw man) covering it up... all those scientists and politicians railroading the idea

I don't know if you're trying some kind of trolling or have a severe learning disability.

Probably a little of both. But I'm still seeing Jurily's respon

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[Anonymous Coward]

you fucking Hippie, get with the program.

1) USA = the über, super most awesome, can't do anything wrong, best fucking country in the world ... no USA === World
2) Any country outside of USA borders is full of animals living in straw huts
3) Russia is a special case, they somehow turned a straw hut into a beeping gizmo and send it to God so it could circle around the USA AKA World so we hate them the most.
4) Mhhh, I think I could get rid of 2) and 3) and just have 4 say, everybody outside of the USA is a TERRORIST. That explains the moderation above.

Clear now? I sure fucking hope so!

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[Anonymous Coward]

How many people do you know that are dumb enough to try to steal shit from the Russian Military?!?

Plenty of people that work for it. I live in Finland and know people that are interested in military gear and visit Estonia often. They say that there are many Russians that steal all military shit they get their hands on and sell it there. Estonia is making enormous progress towards a more westernized society but there's still plenty of lawlessness - pirated CDs and DVDs are trivial to find and stolen Russian military gear isn't hard at all either. Once I went along just out of curiosity when I was visiting Estonia anyway and was pretty quickly offered a helmet with built-in night vision goggles - intended for a tank driver!

Supposedly even more stuff is for sale in Russia but fewer people buy it there because it's harder to import because customs monitor travellers much more strictly.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[Anonymous Coward]

Not that I agree with proliferation of nuclear weaponry, or the number we have today, but the idea is to make the largest deterant possible. The only way to defend against an all-out nuclear attack is to make sure YOU can retaliate (if they can destroy every one of your nuclear launch sites, you're in a bit of trouble). And the best way to do that is to make as many launch sites as possible - the more launch sites you have, the more difficult it is to destroy every one of them in one fell swoop (ie. the bigger a system is, the more likely it is to fail, so with a system the size of Russia/USA's, a quick launch is almost guaranteed to leave at least one counter-attack facility intact, then you're screwed). Limiting countries to 10 nukes each means they'll either circumvent the rule and have unmatched superiority (split their lands and install puppet governments, or lie about the number of nukes, etc) or that someone crazy will risk an attack regardless and deal with the devastation of 10 (or less) nuclear strikes (countries with large land masses could do it - we're looking at you, Russia)
 

And the sad part is, nuclear deterrence has worked - since the invention of the nuclear bomb, (despite forcing the world to live in constant fear) there has never actually been direct warfare between two nuclear-armed nations (ie. we've not seen a repeat of WW2's horror, despite huge advances in mass killing technology). Funny how the most cynical systems are the most successful (eg, democracy - assumes leaders are corrupt, capitalism - assumes people are greedy, Windows - assumes users are gullible idiots, etc).

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[yndrd1984]

The summary: ... Me - straw man.
That isn't a straw man argument. His facts may be in error, he may be making some other kind of logical fallacy, but unless he's restating or reinterpreting your position in order to make it easier to argue against, he isn't making a straw man.

It's either/or.
I found most of this paragraph incomprehensible, but I'll try:

if you are saying that recycling nuclear waste makes nuclear waste safe
Recycling clearly makes it safer. If Jurily's technology exists as advertised, then it would be completely safe.

Jurily's original crazy statement that was finally outed to be sarcasm... at least I thought
He was being sarcastic about civilian nuclear explosions being a worth it if it encouraged nuclear power, not about nuclear power being a good thing.

Are these nuclear waste recycling plants mobile or portable or something?
They aren't separate 'plants', it would be built into the power plant - just like the heat exchangers, the turbines, and the generators. Nothing gets moved off site.

There's now technology to, like a switch, drop radioactive rods to non-radioactive isotopes within hours? That sounds like fantasy.
Same to me. But even if it is pure fiction, your early posts don't count as an argument against him, because they've completely ignored him.

But I'm still seeing Jurily's response, whatever you want me to call it, ... as a straw man argument response
You can gripe about a flaw in his response all you want, but as long as you use the wrong name for that flaw, I'll keep pointing it out.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[Anonymous Coward]

No matter how safe something that is incredibly dangerous is made... it never stops being incredibly dangerous...Nuclear Power is like magic beans

You talk about nuclear power like some Christians talk about stem cells.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[aliquis]

I guess you are correct that a hotter climate is more positive in general once life have adjusted. Except maybe for the fact that with costal lines moving you get less ground, and with less ground comes less places to grow crops so then maybe we lose some of the benefits of a hotter climate. Though then once again there is life in the seas to and that would expand instead I assume ..

I wonder, if the earth was once all covered with ice, would it then be just cooler and cooler all the time? Would the oceans freeze to the bottom (atleast if it wasn't for radiation and friction from movements in the earth)? Since the snow/ice would likely reflect much of the sunlight.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[aliquis]

Sorta funny how he speaks bad of the russian military and then ends his post with:

Fearmongering will get us nowhere.

... to.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[fractoid]

Less ground? We get more ocean - and oceans are the real 'cradle of life' from whence we all came. Not to mention (being human-centric, I am human and all) that sea-based algae or plankton crops hold the greatest overall promise for net gains in both carbon sequestration and food production for squishy land mammals.

As for the Earth cooling continually once an appreciable portion is ice; yes, and this is one of the major problems early climate researchers found when they ran computer simulations. Our planet sits on the brink of what I mentioned earlier as the 'white earth' or 'cold earth' scenarios, and the early sims often ended in this state, with oceans frozen and the world covered in a shiny layer of snow, which reflected incoming warmth and bound the earth forever in ice.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[aliquis]

Yeah, but regarding algae for some weird reason spirulina and chlorella is still expensive as hell even though I assume they shouldn't be (grown in ponds instead of the sea though ..)

Somewhat related: I heard on TV how grown salmon used up more fish than wild caught since they are feed with fish flour and stuff like that .. Good idea! So people buying grown fish don't help at all, same thing with crabs and stuff like that there like 90% of the things they pull up is thrown back because it's the wrong things, but it all dies anyway. Or fish quotes where they throw back anything they don't like / which is to small wasting even more fish. Animal consumers suck =p, sure, fish is a good food, but people should just accept that they can't eat it because there is way to little.

Snowball earth sounds like a bad scenario indeed. I guess the radioactive "drive" of the earth slows down all the time to, though then the sun may come to help when it starts to expand but ..

In any way we're doomed! :D, we need to leave this rock, and find a non-expanding energy to hydrogen universe there new stars light up forever!

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[catmistake]

The summary: ... Me - straw man.
That isn't a straw man argument. His facts may be in error, he may be making some other kind of logical fallacy, but unless he's restating or reinterpreting your position in order to make it easier to argue against, he isn't making a straw man.

Um... sure is. Here's why... To make this simple for you, lets forget his initial statement about more nuke reactors being good... and lets say the first statement of our argument is what I said... Nuclear power needs to solve these 4 problems. Jurily enters his straw man argument immediately following... His response is (in the form of a "look at this!" link)... he props up an issue that wasn't introduced before (what I was referring to as 'conspiracy'). I can't really argue against this accusation of conspiracy, can I? So... what I interpreted Jurily was saying was:

Its clear recycling nuclear waste is a good thing.
Politicians and Scientists are conspiring against recycling nuclear waste.
Therefore, recycling nuclear waste makes nuclear waste safe.

Do you see it now?

It's either/or.
I found most of this paragraph incomprehensible, but I'll try:

if you are saying that recycling nuclear waste makes nuclear waste safe
Recycling clearly makes it safer. If Jurily's technology exists as advertised, then it would be completely safe.

There you go again perpetuating Jurily's straw man argument! But there's another one slipped in here as well. The straw man is separate from the token/type fallacy. No, recycling nuclear waste does NOT "clearly make it safer." Nuclear waste is not a singularity. Its a bunch of stuff. You may take this kilo of waste... put it through recycling, and bam! That kilo of waste is no longer dangerous, because its something else! What you are Jurily are saying is that if you can make this kilo of waste safe, all nuclear waste is safer. Does disarming a bomb make all bombs safe? No, not really.

There's now technology to, like a switch, drop radioactive rods to non-radioactive isotopes within hours? That sounds like fantasy.
Same to me. But even if it is pure fiction, your early posts don't count as an argument against him, because they've completely ignored him.

Well, that's like... your opinion, man. I recognized the straw man early, and claimed correctly that whatever that link provided, didn't answer to, for instance, my claim that nuclear waste is really dangerous. It introduced a whole new thing about some miracle process that's being suppressed. And for a few more posts you and he basically repeated yourselves.

But I'm still seeing Jurily's response, whatever you want me to call it, ... as a straw man argument response
You can gripe about a flaw in his response all you want, but as long as you use the wrong name for that flaw, I'll keep pointing it out.

And I will keep schooling you as well... until you see it. You're stuck on both fallacies, failing to see that introducing conspiracy into the argument is a straw man, and failing to recognize the difference between token and type.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[Roger W Moore]

I'll admit this was high tech stuff back in 1945, but it's now the year 2009. It's largely a question of cost.

It was still a question of cost then. Thankfully isotope separation is extremely hard to do but at some point technology will give us a way to do it more easily and cheaply (France already is investigating laser isotope separation techniques) and when it does we should be very worried.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[snowgirl]

The project was called "Plowshare" from the old notion of "Swords to Plowshares". They wanted to see what other uses they could use nuclear weapons for.

The fact that someone would still attempt to propose that we could use nuclear weapons to create artificial water ways is just down right stupid, not because it's obvious, but rather because we already have actual empirical evidence that it would be a Bad Thing(TM).

My dad worked as an engineer for Sandia National Labs, and got involved in, or knew a lot about a ton of really cool projects, like Project Tempest, and Project Plowshare. He also clued me in about how our nuclear weapons are transported for safety... trust me, no one is going to be able to take them... unless some idiot doesn't follow protocol.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[DavidShor]

"The only way to defend against an all-out nuclear attack is to make sure YOU can retaliate (if they can destroy every one of your nuclear launch sites, you're in a bit of trouble). And the best way to do that is to make as many launch sites as possible - the more launch sites you have, the more difficult it is to destroy every one of them in one fell swoop"

Most nuclear weapons were built before missile technology was well developed. This made a lot of sense, since bombs had to be delivered by bombers, and most bombers would be destroyed before they reached their targets. The development of truly effective ICBMs and Nuclear Submarines destroyed the rationale for such large nuclear stockpiles, and both Russia and the US have been trying to negotiate arms reduction agreements ever since then.

Today, this kind of thinking doesn't make much sense. Today, preventing a 'second strike' response is no longer a matter of shooting down a bunch of incoming bombers. One would have to destroy every enemy launch site and submarine within about five minutes. Keep in mind, nuclear missile silo's are often embedded in train cars, traveling discretely across the country at any given time. Even if there were only 10 submarines and silos altogether, this would be impossible or extremely unlikely.

And remember, you don't actually need to put a nuke in every submarine or silo. You could produce hundreds or thousands of "duds" and arm a huge number of silos with them. The enemy would waste most of the firepower on destroying the duds, and the real nukes would slip through.

'Limiting countries to 10 nukes each means they'll either circumvent the rule and have unmatched superiority (split their lands and install puppet governments, or lie about the number of nukes, etc)'

I didn't propose limiting countries to 10 nukes each, I proposed limiting each great power with 10 nukes each. Realistically, these are the countries who already have nukes(Hopefully we could claw them back from North Korea), and extend some sort of plausible defensive umbrella out to the rest.

I don't see why a country would claim to have less nukes than they actually did. If anything, I'd expect the opposite(I personally suspect that both the US and Russia have a lot less functional nuclear weapons than they claim).

And I really don't see the marginal value of an extra nuke after 10 for someone planning a first strike. Once you launch a nuke, it's going to successfully hit the target(anti-missile defense is bullshit against advanced missiles). You can effectively immobilize any military with 10 nukes.

And remember, preventing second-strike capability does not require nukes. Missile Silos can be temporarily disabled with conventional weapons, as can submarines.

'or that someone crazy will risk an attack regardless and deal with the devastation of 10 (or less) nuclear strikes (countries with large land masses could do it - we're looking at you, Russia)'

There is no country that could deal with the complete devastation from 10 thermonuclear warheads(especially if combined with a conventional weapons strike). Logistics networks would simply shutdown, and it seems rather likely to me that the military would mutiny at that point. Like before, the marginal destructiveness of nukes falls off pretty quickly.

Of course there are sometimes crazy leaders, but I doubt the generals would allow a crazy man to allow a first strike. Recall that the Russian generals formed an agreement not to follow any nuclear launch order while the Soviet Union was collapsing.

"since the invention of the nuclear bomb, (despite forcing the world to live in constant fear) there has never actually been direct warfare between two nuclear-armed nations"

This isn't true. China and Russia had a serious skirmish in the 60's over an island on the border. More recently, India and Pakistan fought the Kargil war only a decade ago. And nuclear armed countries get invaded all the time(Israel in 67 and 73, the UK during the Falklands war, ...). Deterrence isn't very useful, because "I'm going to nuke and invite certain destruction unless you withdraw from Kasmir" isn't a credible threat.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[yndrd1984]

Just to be clear, a straw man is: "an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position."

His response is (in the form of a "look at this!" link)... he props up an issue that wasn't introduced before (what I was referring to as 'conspiracy').
Yes, introducing new information is a legitimate way to debate someone.

I can't really argue against this accusation of conspiracy, can I?
Yes you can, you just say that you don't trust his source, or find a more credible source that disputes his claim. Even if you can't, that doesn't make his argument a straw man.

So... what I interpreted Jurily was saying was:
The argument you presented isn't even vaguely related to what Jurily actually said.

No, recycling nuclear waste does NOT "clearly make it safer." Nuclear waste is not a singularity. Its a bunch of stuff.
PUREX, the standard reprocessing technique, reduces the amount of waste by reusing plutonium and uranium, which I would argue makes nuclear power safer. More advanced methods can pull out even more heavy metals which can be transmuted in a reactor to less dangerous forms, making the waste itself less radioactive, and thus safer.

didn't answer to, for instance, my claim that nuclear waste is really dangerous.
Yes, it does. In fact it answers it so well, you've called it a "miracle process".

It introduced a whole new thing about some miracle process that's being suppressed. And for a few more posts you and he basically repeated yourselves.
Because you obviously aren't reading what we've written. How many posts did it take to explain to you that, with this technique, nothing was going to be transported anywhere?

introducing conspiracy into the argument is a straw man
Introducing conspiracy into an argument is not a straw man - period.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[catmistake]

statement [a]:
More nuclear reactors are a good thing.

False. Here's why:
argument [B]:
1. nuclear reactors make dangerous, deadly waste
2. the waste is deadly, effectively, forever
3. we can't find a safe place to store it
4. we can't safely move it to storage
(thus, statement [a] must be false)

argument [c]:
But we can recycle the waste! This crackpot process would work if only there wasn't this conspiracy.

rebuttal [D]:
That's a straw man argument because, in fact, its not actually a response to any of the points I made, yet it IS a response to SIMILAR BUT DIFFERENT points that I have NOT made, thus making it APPEAR as though the opposition has responded to my points, but have not.

review:
argument [B]:1 nuclear reactors make dangerous, deadly waste

the response: recycling nuclear waste (regardless of fact/fiction, whatever process you'd like) will make nuclear waste safe.

FALLACY (straw man) Recycling the waste doesn't speak to whether or not nuclear reactors make dangerous, deadly waste. They still do, and will.

Interestingly, there's another fallacy at work as well, comes up in the response to [B]:2... token/type, explained in previous post... pretty sure you got that, because you didn't refute it.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[JWSmythe]

    I'm glad someone else is aware of that project. It was in the early 60's. Search for "Operation Plowshare" and "Sedan Crater"

    They were experimenting with opening up mountain passes. The nuke exceeded their expectations, but the area is still too hot (radioactively) for people to hang around in for too long. They do tours of the site, but the exposure is short enough to not be a real problem. These days, it equates to something like getting an X-ray at the hospital. If you were to break down there, it would be a good place to be stuck all day waiting for a tow truck, or have a route that runs you through it on a regular basis.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[c6gunner]

Eh? "Environmental Armageddon"? From mining oil sands? Why do I get the idea that this guy probably spends his weekends standing on a street-corner, with a placard and a megaphone?

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[c6gunner]

Why is defending the russian military flamebait and insulting them +5 insightful?

It's not flamebait - just stupid. But there's no "-1 Stupid" mod, so some people abuse the flamebait mod.

Buying into US propoganda much?

First off, the words "propaganda" and "lies" are not interchangeable. Propaganda simply means information intended to convey a certain point of view - it can be either factual or made up.

And, second, we don't need US propaganda in order to judge the Russian military. There are plenty of other sources, all of which draw similar conclusions.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[c6gunner]

That's a straw man argument because, in fact, its not actually a response to any of the points I made

No, it's not a straw man, because it does address the argument you've made. You were arguing that nuke plants are a "bad thing" because of problems with the waste. The people who have responded have shown you that the waste problems can probably be eliminated. Just because you keep calling their demolition of your argument a "straw man", that doesn't mean it's so.

Now, please, just stop. You've embarrassed yourself enough for one day. I've read the entire thread from start to finish, and I can truthfully say that you've gone from voicing a reasonable concern, to making yourself look like a drooling moron. Every comment you've made has been more wince-worthy than the previous one.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[yndrd1984]

statement [a]: More nuclear reactors are a good thing.
Yes, that's the thesis that started all of this.

False. Here's why: argument [B]: [1-4] (thus, statement [a] must be false)
And that's your antithesis - "More nuclear reactors are a not good thing, because of various safety issues"..

argument [c]:But we can recycle the waste! This crackpot process would work if only there wasn't this conspiracy.
Whether it's a crackpot process or not has no bearing on the topic of whether or not he's used a straw man, but other than that, yes.

rebuttal [D]:That's a straw man argument because, in fact, its not actually a response to any of the points I made, yet it IS a response to SIMILAR BUT DIFFERENT points that I have NOT made, thus making it APPEAR as though the opposition has responded to my points, but have not.
And that's where you're wrong, because his arguments mean that your points no longer support your antithesis.

1. nuclear reactors make dangerous, deadly waste
True, but if it can be made safe quickly and on-site, that fact only weakly supports your antithesis.

2. the waste is deadly, effectively, forever
True, on its own it would be, but if we can convert it into a non-deadly form, you can't use that fact to support your antithesis.

3. we can't find a safe place to store it
True, but if we don't need to store it, you can't use that fact to support your antithesis.

4. we can't safely move it to storage
True, but if we don't need to transport it, you can't use that fact to support your antithesis.

review: FALLACY (straw man) Recycling the waste doesn't speak to whether or not nuclear reactors make dangerous, deadly waste. They still do, and will.
But recycling does affect how dangerous nuclear power generation is, which is directly relevant to the validity of your antithesis - "More nuclear reactors are a not good thing, because of various safety issues". That's why it's not a straw man.

Interestingly, there's another fallacy at work as well, comes up in the response to [B]:2... token/type, explained in previous post... pretty sure you got that, because you didn't refute it.
That also wasn't a fallacy, but some of us have to work for a living, which limits our troll-baiting time. Time's up!

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[catmistake]

Somewhere in a parallel universe...

statement [a]:
More nuclear reactors are a good thing.

False. Here's why:
argument [XB]:
1. nuclear reactors make dangerous, deadly waste, and we need some way to change that waste into something that's not so deadly.

2. the waste is deadly, effectively, forever, and we need a way to take that nuclear waste - that's made with current methods of harnessing fission energy which produces that nasty long term deadly waste, and somehow shorten the lifespan of its deadliness.

3. we can't find a safe place to store it
4. we can't safely move it to storage
(thus, statement [a] must be false)

argument [c]:
But we can recycle the waste!
Check it out...
1) "resulting debris are constituted by light, natural and stable elements" - i.e. not radioactive

2) won't take long! "can be of the order of minutes per pellet of radioactive waste" - i.e. not years
3) won't have to!
4) won't need to!

argument [a] is valid (if blah blah blah good thing blah blah blah).
RESOLVED.

...meanwhile under a bridge somewhere...
 

And that's where you're wrong, because his arguments mean that your points no longer support your antithesis.

Because you(s guys) have changed what my points are, and argued successfully against those points (rather well, I should add), I'd have to agree with you... the points in argument [XB] no longer support anti-statement [a]. But the points I made were argument [X].

So long as fission power produces nuclear waste, nuclear reactors are an awful idea. Change the process, so that its no longer produced, so the waste is just not there, and you've got something. Even if its successfully recycled, this doesn't make it safe or safer, nor does it reduce its current risk to do seriously bad stuff to you. Even if the process works, there's always the risk that some of it could be used for ill purposes, and, of course, there's always room for mistakes.

That also wasn't a fallacy, but some of us have to work for a living, which limits our troll-baiting time. Time's up!

as if...
If you have a street sweeper, it doesn't mean all streets are clean.
If you successfully recycle any amount nuclear waste, it doesn't make nuclear waste any safer. Does recycling nuclear waste make turning waste into a weapon of mass destruction impossible? Then it isn't any safer.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[catmistake]

You were arguing that nuke plants are a "bad thing" because of problems with the waste.

No, I wasn't. And its certainly not a straw man just because I say it is. Nuclear power produces deadly nuclear waste. Recycling the deadly waste doesn't change that. As long as it is made, it can be stolen, or it can I don't know what, get in your ham sandwhich... recycling nuclear waste doesn't make nuclear waste any safer.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[yndrd1984]

Because you(s guys) have changed what my points are, and argued successfully against those points
Nobody changed your points. Jurily gave additional information that weakened the support that your points gave your main idea. That is not only not a straw man, but is a basic part of any debate.

Even if its successfully recycled, this doesn't make it safe or safer
Are you really saying that if I take X (which is dangerous) and convert it to Y (which is not) I haven't really made anything less dangerous, because X (in the original form) would still dangerous if it still existed? That takes an excessive amount of insanity.

Even if the process works, there's always the risk that some of it could be used for ill purposes, and, of course, there's always room for mistakes.
Wow! A reasonable argument! Too bad you didn't start with that.

If you have a street sweeper, it doesn't mean all streets are clean.
No it doesn't, but it does have a bearing on any argument about how clean my street can be kept.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[yndrd1984]

Way back at the beginning you say:

So far, nuclear anything has 2 major problems compounded by 2 obvious ones. First, the obvious: 1) nuclear waste is deadly

But then:

"You were arguing that nuke plants are a "bad thing" because of problems with the waste." - No, I wasn't.

You truly have taken stupid to an epic level. :)

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[xous]

I'm just guessing but:

They've been doing it longer than most popular religions?

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[raffnix]

AFAIK that's the only one on Earth where they actually let you see the reactor and the 70's style control room. It's kind of fun to see Soviet technology still working as intended.

In fact, you can book guided tours to the Chernobyl plant. I haven't been there myself but supposedly they show you the reactor.. or what is left of it and not covered by concrete.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[catmistake]

yes, because clearly "problems with waste" has the exact same meaning as "existence of waste" or "production of waste."

You seemed to have grasped 2, 3, & 4 but are completely ignoring
1) nuclear reactors produce deadly waste

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[catmistake]

If the alternate universe didn't show you what you both think I said, and you can't see the difference between the meaning of

1) Nuclear reactors make deadly waste

and

1a) Nuclear reactors make deadly waste and we need a way to recycle the waste

then it is hopeless.

They are 2 different statements, with different meanings.

Also, if you think that because some waste is recycled, all waste is safer, you also have some deeper flaws in understanding logic. If your street is cleaner, it doesn't make all streets any less dirty.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[shaitand]

'First off, the words "propaganda" and "lies" are not interchangeable.'

Actually they are, presenting facts via selective bias is lying just as surely as presenting outright lies. It is no different than a partial quote or quote out of context that conveys a message that is different than reality.

For example, the US propoganda of the russian military is that after the 'collapse' anyone can easily buy nukes for 10-50k from the corrupt, evil, and incompetent russian military. Yet, oddly enough, apparently nobody has taken advantage of this because there are precisely ZERO new russian armed nuclear powers. No sold technology, no sold bombs, nada, zip, zilch, zero. There are small arms but I think you will find the U.S. military illegally traded as many if not more arms both during and after the cold war. In fact, by all credible accounts the U.S. military/government is the largest legal and illegal arms dealer in the world.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[yndrd1984]

yes, because clearly "problems with waste" has the exact same meaning as "existence of waste" or "production of waste."
Well, technically "existence of waste" and "production of waste" are examples of your "problems with waste". You can't use apples and oranges and then claim you weren't using any fruit.

You seemed to have grasped 2, 3, & 4
I've grasped them just fine from the beginning. What I don't grasp is why you think a legitimate counterpoint to them is a "straw man".

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[yndrd1984]

Nuclear reactors make deadly waste
Right, that's a claim you've made, and as far as I know everyone agrees that it is true.

Nuclear reactors make deadly waste and we need a way to recycle the waste
Nobody in this thread has suggested that you've claimed this, and I'm quite aware that these are different statements.

What you don't seem to grasp is that when you use "nuclear reactors make deadly waste" as an argument against the use of nuclear reactors, anything that reduces the amount of waste, the deadliness of it, the likelihood that it will kill someone, etc. becomes a legitimate way to try to counter your argument. We aren't altering what you've said, we're weakening the support those facts lend to your conclusion.

if you think that because some waste is recycled, all waste is safer
I've never claimed that, but I have claimed that "recycling does affect how dangerous nuclear power generation is". For someone who doesn't know what a straw man is, you use it quite frequently.

If your street is cleaner, it doesn't make all streets any less dirty.
But it does make streets in general less dirty. More importantly, it demonstrates that the dirtiness of streets may be less of a problem than one might otherwise believe.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[c6gunner]

Actually they are, presenting facts via selective bias is lying just as surely as presenting outright lies. It is no different than a partial quote or quote out of context that conveys a message that is different than reality.

No. A selective bias is involved in any exchange of information. It is simply not feasible, if not impossible, to document every single aspect of any complex concept.

For example, the US propoganda of the russian military is that after the 'collapse' anyone can easily buy nukes for 10-50k from the corrupt, evil, and incompetent russian military.

Nope. I've never heard any such statements made by any government official. Although I see what you're doing here - you're presenting your OWN bit of "selective bias".

There are small arms but I think you will find the U.S. military illegally traded as many if not more arms both during and after the cold war. In fact, by all credible accounts the U.S. military/government is the largest legal and illegal arms dealer in the world.

And no again! The AK-47 is THE most numerous firearm in the world today.

Three strikes - you're out!

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[catmistake]

I'll try again.
my argument is that deadly waste is created.

my argument is not "we need a way to recycle waste," but that is what you seem to think my argument is. That is a straw man you are arguing against and not my position.

Try it this way:
my argument is using plastic creates plastic garbage.

But you say we can recycle plastic.

I'm aware of that. But if we can recycle plastic, why is not all plastic recycled? There's plastic garbage everywhere....and because I didn't say "we need a way to recycle plastic," if you claim to have solved my problem, you argued against a position that wasn't precisely mine... if you said "we'll stop using plastic" or even "no it doesn't" you would be, and you would not be making a straw man argument.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[catmistake]

c/ we're aproaching a wall, we need to stop

y/ no we don't, we have brakes, we can slow down

c/ hooray for slowing down, but that's an answer to a straw stuffed man's argument, not mine. my argument is we need to stop.

y/ occam's arrow?

c/ still not stopping

y/ what about altering our angle of approach?

c/ is that stopping?

y/ no, but its ....better than heading straight at it...

c/ ok, but we still need to stop

y/ why?

c/ because of the wall, approaching fast, we should just stop

y/ I already said we have brakes!

 

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[Anonymous Coward]

'It is simply not feasible, if not impossible, to document every single aspect of any complex concept.'

Thus selection is required, selection to intentionally misrepresent facts in order to present a bias is another matter entirely.

'And no again! The AK-47 is THE most numerous firearm in the world today.'

What does that have to do with anything?

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[rufty_tufty]

Jumping in:

1. nuclear reactors make dangerous, deadly waste
2. the waste is deadly, effectively, forever
3. we can't find a safe place to store it
4. we can't safely move it to storage

Taking each point:
1. Lots of things make deadly waste, many chemical processes create vast amounts of horrendous chemicals, (cyanide springs to mind as a popular one). However over the years we've learned to deal with these toxic products; I see no reason we can't do the same with the waste products a nuke plant produces. At least they're not being dumped straight into the atmosphere.

2: False. Reprocessing gives you a bunch of material with long half lives (hundreds of thousands of years). And a very small amount of material with very short half lives (in the order of years.
A long half life means that it isn't very radioactive and therefore safe, certainly no more radioactive than the uranium we originally dug up. Earlier comments have compared the radioactivity of the average human to being less than that of depleted uranium because we have lots of carbon 14 in us.
A short half life means it is very radioactive but it won't be radioactive for long. worst case scenario you're storing it for 60 years or so.
With reprocessing there is no long term storage problem.

3. Even without reprocessing, there are plenty of safe places to store it, the problem is politically acceptable places.

4. I've yet to see any evidence there is a problem with the transport methods that have been in place for the last 50 years. Please prove me wrong.

c. You need to prove there is a conspiracy and not just ignorance and fear such as you yourself are showing.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[yndrd1984]

And here's my perspective:

c/ We need to stop because we're approaching a wall.
y/ Uhm, but the wall is four blocks ahead, and I'm turning at the next right, so I don't think we need to stop.
c/ We need to stop, and that's a straw man!
y/ I understand you'd rather stop, and I'm willing to debate about that, but how is what I said a straw man?
c/ Because I never said that "because of the wall we need to turn", I said we need to stop.
y/ I know what you said, but how is offering an alternate solution a straw man?
c/ *More stuff about straw men that ignores what y has said* ...

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[yndrd1984]

my argument is that deadly waste is created.
That's just one part your argument - and it's a fact that nobody disagrees with. Your whole argument is (roughly) "Building more nuclear power plants is a bad thing because they produce waste, that waste is long-lived, ..." - and it's that argument as a whole that people are disagreeing with.

my argument is not "we need a way to recycle waste," but that is what you seem to think my argument is.
Nobody is this thread has said that that was what you said, thought that you said that, or argued against that point. That delusion exists only in your mind.

my argument is using plastic creates plastic garbage.
Again, that's just a fact, and one I agree is true, but not an entire argument. A reasonable analogy would be "We must use less plastic because using plastic creates plastic garbage."

But if we can recycle plastic, why is not all plastic recycled? There's plastic garbage everywhere
Because it's not a perfect counter to your argument - but that doesn't mean that the fact that (many) plastics are recyclable isn't directly relevant to arguments about whether or not we should use plastics, especially if people are pointing out the (potentially recyclable) trash it produces as a supporting point.

because I didn't say "we need a way to recycle plastic," if you claim to have solved my problem
I have never claimed to have solved the issue with waste, only that your argument is less compelling when recycling is taken into account.

you argued against a position that wasn't precisely mine
No, I haven't. I am allowed bring up new or more detailed information about waste in order to show how strong your argument about waste is. Period.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[catmistake]

LOL
now we are talking

I have no personal ax to grind with nuclear power, but all those other clean energies that don't have that issues (among what ever issues they have).

Nuclear technology shouldn't be abandoned in its entirety, just this energy/waste thing. Once nuclear energy becomes an essential part of the world economy (it has, via cheap power, plant workers, need for quality education, etc.), it becomes permanent, or rather difficult to abandon... esp. by nuclear engineers and the like. And if we just recycle or even safely temporarily store it, there's a whole economy around that. If there's FUD about nuclear energy, I say use it... its just a bad choice... all these other choices, sure more expensive now. Worth it. Bargain. For the piece of mind that someday there will be no more new nuclear waste.

perhaps meaningless antidote...

old abandoned industrial site... been "cleaned up" and repurposed. Janitor finds a small, heavy object, not knowing what it is, puts it in his back pocket. A short time later, surely after he had gone home, changed clothes, showered... anyway, at some relatively short time later, whatever that interesting object was, it ate his ass off before killing him.

Nuclear power is creepy. Its bad for me, its bad for you, and we need all the smart careful humans (who could presumably provide us with safe carefree nuclear power/waste cycle) for lots of other things. I bet a 2 year tech degree recipiant could run a solar plant, esp if solar plants were common... zero risk there of killing everything in a 5-50 mile radius with those, so less education needed. And because those nuclear resources are freed up, who knows what amazing technologies might appear (derived from smart people no longer wasting time coming up with complex or elagant ways to ... deal with deadly waste).

I never get beyond that first point...
if deadly waste exists, and all the good intentions of our best can still make mistakes or get swindled or there is thing that can go wrong... why even still consider it when there's 20+(whatever, many) valid viable technologies that have nothing to do with deadly waste, of which there's a :.... lot of

don't insult the full notion that we're making superduperdeath in accumulating small and larger amounts by saying recycling makes it safer. You've heard of that large growing island of floating plastic in the Pacific? I bet ya somewhere in there theres already some radioactive trash... why, as a rational species, are we still fucking with something that could end us?
   

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[yndrd1984]

LOL - now we are talking
No, you're just trying to change the topic back to something that you aren't blatantly wrong about. Next time, stick with this type of post instead of making false claims about other people's statements.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[catmistake]

if you could take your own advice, this catastrophe of a thread might not have occurred

I stand firm.

Recycling nuclear waste doesn't prevent it from being created. There is nothing inherent in recycling that can change that. You can try to say recycling a small bit reduces the total badness, but its crap. We know how the world works... bad shit happens all the time. Even when we're REALLY careful, space shuttles get destroyed. Its the same thing as saying taking a cup of water from an ocean reduces the overall size of that ocean. Yeah, true... but completely impotant against some argument "the beach sucks! (because of the ocean)."

And so, thus, you can finally see you were wrong, yes? About your straw man argument?

c-nuke waste bad

y-recycle

OR

x-death is bad

y-we can live healthier

^---y gives straw man responces

I don't even need to know what you think you're arguing against to know the response is, and has been since I called it out, a straw man fallacy.

Nuclear power produces near eternal deadly waste.
The following responces would not have been a straw man:

1) no, they don't
2) no, it isn't
3) there's a new process, waste is no longer produced
4) yeah, sucks
5) but we do have a way to recycle it

oops, 5 is actually a straw man response because original statement never mentioned that we need to do something with it... if anything, all its, and I'm saying and said it we need to stop making it.

You must see the difference between:

1) waste is bad, we should stop making it

and

2) waste is bad... if only there was something we could do with it...

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[yndrd1984]

And so, thus, you can finally see you were wrong, yes? About your straw man argument?
Jurily did not make a straw man argument. Your stubborn misunderstanding of that phrase was abundantly (and painfully) obvious even to a random reader (c6gunner).

We shouldn't use nuclear power because of dangers it produces, such as "near eternal deadly waste."
I don't think that it's so dangerous that we can't use it, because we do have ways to mitigate many of those dangers, such as by recycling the waste.
That is not a straw man because it is directed at the phrase in bold through the part in quotes, not directly at the part in quotes.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[catmistake]

Again, you are attempting to weaken the meaning. I never intimated that we need a way to mitigate the deadliness, right or wrong, my meaning is that we have no option but to cease production of the stuff.

here's another crappy metaphor:

c-Guns are deadly.

y-We have bullet-proof vests.

c-can a bullet still kill?

y-sure, no one doubts that

c-then your responce is a straw man because my point is not that we need to mitigate (LOVE that word) a gun's deadliness by giving everyone bullet-proof vests, even if now they may survive being shot, guns are still deadly. We should stop production of guns and bullets.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[yndrd1984]

I never intimated that we need a way to mitigate the deadliness
That's correct, Jurily was the one who brought up the subject of recycling and how it may lower the amount of danger nuclear power poses. He wasn't changing or ignoring the meaning of your statements, only adding his own. And that's why everyone else knows he wasn't using a straw man - you cannot make a straw man argument by adding new information, only by misrepresenting what another person says, which he hasn't done.

More to the point, you seem to think that we're disputing the fact that nuclear power plants make nuclear waste - we aren't. We're disputing the idea that nuclear power plants are too dangerous to use, which is an opinion based on the difference between a person's tolerance for danger and their assessment of the danger posed by the plants. Because the results of recycling that waste can change that assessment, they're germane to the conversation.

my meaning is that we have no option but to cease production of the stuff.
That is a good example of the perfect solution fallacy.

Anyway, this thread should be closed to new posts soon, and it's pretty clear that you're beyond my ability to help. So good luck, I think you'll need it.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[catmistake]

I never intimated that we need a way to mitigate the deadliness

That's correct, Jurily was the one who brought up the subject of recycling and how it may lower the amount of danger nuclear power poses. He wasn't changing or ignoring the meaning of your statements, only adding his own. And that's why everyone else knows he wasn't using a straw man - you cannot make a straw man argument by adding new information, only by misrepresenting what another person says, which he hasn't done.

That's exactly what he's done, and you just aren't capable of conceding, or seeing the difference in what I have said and to what you are answering.

No. Even if recycling nuclear waste was easy, cheap, and widespread (all of which recycling is not) it could not make nuclear waste any safer. I believe I've made this point quite enough times, and I appreciate that you disagree with me.

Whenever the NEC got around to designing and building all those power plants, do you really think they said "ok, we're gonna make a lot of waste here... and its bad stuff... but its not so bad that we shouldn't use fission widespread for energy production," i.e., they had the same opinion as you and Jurily? Actually, this fact was brushed aside, likely not even considered seriously... because we needed fuel for bombs. The major reason we have so many plants is that apparently, we grossly overestimated the amount of fuel for bombs that we needed or wanted. Flash forward a few decades, and we have a whole economy/culture surrounding nuclear power. Suddenly, it looks better than clean energy because an infrastructure is already in place (that we built when we needed fuel for bombs). Yes, we have problems... like what to do with the waste, et al., but apparently, arguments will solve this.

More to the point, you seem to think that we're disputing the fact that nuclear power plants make nuclear waste - we
aren't.

you've said a few times now. No, I'm not.

We're disputing the idea that nuclear power plants are too dangerous to use, which is an opinion based on the difference between a person's tolerance for danger and their assessment of the danger posed by the plants.

Unfortunately, nuclear power plants aren't like skydiving, where its a single individual that pretty much decides if they're jumping out of the plane or not. A person's tolerance for danger had absolutely nothing to do with the construction of any of the currently operating nuclear power plants. Surely there were studies into something similar, such as what how many rads does to what kind of living tissue or something.

Because the results of recycling that waste can change that assessment,

right, as I explained, like taking a cup of water from an ocean changes its total volume, yet... its really not significant, is it? Recycling plastic is so much cheaper, easier, widespread... and yet we have plastic garbage nearly everywhere. You are not changing the assessment of any waste except the waste that is recycled, not all nuclear waste.

they're germane to the conversation.

sure, which is why oceanographers and conservationists are measuring oceans to the milliliter... because every drop counts.

my meaning is that we have no option but to cease production of the stuff.

That is a good example of the perfect solution fallacy.

great... so I wrote a perfect solution fallacy between the lines. I can't believe you.

Anyway, this thread should be closed to new posts soon, and it's pretty clear that you're beyond my ability to help. So good luck, I think you'll need it.

Hey, really appreciate your attempts at condescension and, of course, the inaccurate assessment of my argument. Take care.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[yndrd1984]

That's exactly what he's done, and you just aren't capable of conceding, or seeing the difference in what I have said and to what you are answering.
Well, that isn't what he's done, you're just as incapable of conceding, and you never address my points directly. So we're stuck here.

Unfortunately, nuclear power plants aren't like skydiving, where its a single individual that pretty much decides if they're jumping out of the plane or not.
Right, that's why having an open conversation is so important - it's a decision we have to make together. But it looks like you're insisting that certain ideas shouldn't even be allowed on the table.

You are not changing the assessment of any waste except the waste that is recycled, not all nuclear waste. ... sure, which is why oceanographers and conservationists are measuring oceans to the milliliter... because every drop counts.
That's a legitimate viewpoint, but other people believe it's a fairly effective way to manage the risks - and that's a legitimate viewpoint as well, not a fallacy.

// I never intimated that we need a way to mitigate the deadliness, right or wrong, my meaning is that we have no option but to cease production of the stuff.
so I wrote a perfect solution fallacy between the lines
Your insistence that the deadliness of something means that the only option is not to use it looks like a textbook example.

The good news for me is that it gives me a fourth option to the troll/stubborn/learning issue framework I had been using. If it's correct, your insistence on a perfect solution means that imperfect solutions get dismissed out of hand. So when someone offers one, you assume that they must be making some kind of mistake or are warping your argument.

And I suppose that it good for you in that you'll be remembered as someone merely blinded by passion, rather than something more negative.

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[catmistake]

I guess you're right... It just seems so absurd to me that there's plenty of of other power generating methods, some really really cool ones that work well and don't make that kind of waste. Some are more practical in some areas than others, but there's other choices. There's stuff we know, like about what fission produces and what it can be used for, then there's all the other industrial processes that somehow make bad waste that we never hear about... deadly waste management is a thriving industry. And unnecessarily. My perfect solution would be if we stopped advancement of nuclear power globally, except those plants in production maybe, which could be phased out eventually, and some small scale research or military power plants... and then provided power to most humans on the planet by any other means, hopefully something smart and clean, but if not, then dirty, and anything but nuclear. Boo nukes. We have other means of providing electricity. My personal favorite is wind. I'd like to own a giant power generating wind turbine some day. And hydro is popular, and that weird generator that makes power from ocean waves is interesting. Geothermal power generation is outstanding. And did you hear what the Pope is doing?

Re:Security and Radioactivity

[poopdeville]

Sorry, this is silly. TNT is far more energetic by weight than coal. A ton of coal is far less energetic than a ton of TNT. Ergo, a megaton of coal is less energetic than a megaton bomb.

Great Idea...

[actionbastard]

But...KABOOM!

Now look what you've done.

Re:Great Idea...

[omuls are tasty]

No Rico, not yet.

Not really 23,000 nukes

[j. andrew rogers]

The majority of the "23,000 nukes" have essentially been deactivated and are only counted because they have not been fully disassembled yet. The link itself says only 8,000 are operational globally. On the other hand, if you count plutonium cores, trigger assemblies, and miscellaneous spare parts lying around that could be engineered into a functional weapon if required there are significantly greater than 23,000 potential nukes.

What does or does not constitute a nuclear weapon for accounting purposes does not necessarily match common sense understanding.

Re:Not really 23,000 nukes

[auric_dude]

http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/ may well support your thinking but I can't be bothered to click through the archive to make sure.

Re:Not really 23,000 nukes

[Anonymous Coward]

The most difficult part of creating a nuke is refining the plutonium or uranium to weapons grade. The rest is trivial.

Re:Not really 23,000 nukes

[Ihlosi]

The most difficult part of creating a nuke is refining the plutonium or uranium to weapons grade.

That's not difficult, just expensive.

The rest is trivial.p If you want to build a cumbersome gun-type bomb, maybe. Building an implosion nuke is far from trivial.

Re:Not really 23,000 nukes

[anarche]

Because having spare parts around to repair your newly-denoted bomb is necessary, right?

Re:Not really 23,000 nukes

[jamstar7]

Relatively trivial, maybe, unless you're going for the absolute top yield from a baseball sized chunk of plutonium. Say, bout 2 kilos. Got a desktop supercomputer handy to handle your arithmetic? Got a decent supply of plastic explosives sourced out? Got a nice checkbook?

Actually, it'd probably be cheaper to just buy surplus nukes from the Russians.

Re:" no one to use them on."

[Anonymous Coward]

Burning the village to save it. That's always worthwhile. Riiight.

Also, we already showed the might of the US arsenal over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and we've drawn up plans for annihilating opponents since the cold war. Our arsenal has only gotten bigger.

better idea

[ILuvRamen]

I think it'd be more effective to empty out the uranium and make a big statue out of it. Then it'd be so decorative and artistic lol.

Re:better idea

[A Nun Must Cow Herd]

Lucky critical mass isn't an issue, since it's just a statue!

Tides?

[VampireByte]

We'd lose the tides, and that would be bad because we are supposedly going to be generating clean energy from tidal forces.

Re:Tides?

[im_thatoneguy]

We'd lose the tides, and that would be bad because we are supposedly going to be generating clean energy from tidal forces

We would still have the tides. I assume blowing up the mooon mean making it a small asteroid field. The mass of the moon would collapse it back onto itself in all likelihood. It would be far more cosmetic than anything else.

Re:Horrible idea.

[fahrbot-bot]

This is one of the dumbest, most henious and dangerous ideas I have ever heard.

You must be new here. Stick around; I'm sure something dumber, more henious or dangerous will be posted soon - probably by a reader!

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to cook and dye some Easter eggs so I can leave them out for hours in the warn weather for kids to find tomorrow...

According to Space 1999...

[VampireByte]

You will end up with no moon instead of two moons because the moon would be knocked out of orbit by a nuclear explosion.

Great!!! This will be the greatest...

[Anonymous Coward]

4th of July EVER!!!

Geothermal Boreholes!

[sam_handelman]

You puncture a big hole in the earth's crust, and let the ocean flow in. You use the electrical output from the turbines to re-smelt the turbines (because they get coated with salt), and you use the steam as fresh water.

Re:Geothermal Boreholes!

[drinkypoo]

Maybe we could send them to Mars and build some boreholes there. Thickening the atmosphere would be a big win.

Launch heavy payloads into orbit.

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously.

Remember all those underground nuclear bomb tests that were all the rage?

Now you can direct your anger toward the stars!

Yes we can.

[LWATCDR]

1. You take them apart.
2. You put the material in a reactor.
3. You sell the electricity.
4. You reprocess the waste like they do in Japan. "But without pouring it into a buck through stupidity."
5. Profit.

Engineering with Nuclear Explosives

[Animats]

The classic book on this is "Engineering with Nuclear Explosives". I have a copy, discarded from the Stanford engineering library, and I had the Internet Archive digitize it. It has the Panama canal plan, plus several other proposed projects.

The California Department of Highways seriously considered using 22 nuclear bombs to excavate for I-40 through the mountains between Barstow and Needles. Here's the environmental impact statement: The cloud resulting from each of the two row shots would be cylindrical in shape, about 2 miles high, and 7 miles in diameter. The density of dust in this cloud might be such as to obscure vision during its passage within the first 100 miles. While radioactivity levels in the cloud would not present a hazard, it might be necessary from a traffic hazard viewpoint to close any highways in the path of the cloud during passage within the first 100 miles.

Based on the Sedan experience, it is estimated that access to the channel for limited periods of time for inspection purposes would be possible within about 24 hours. Entry for an 8-hour work day or 40-hour work week without unusual safeguards should be possible within about 4 days.

Things were so much simpler then.

Re:Engineering with Nuclear Explosives

[timeOday]

It would be funny to see our response if China or Iran made this proposal for their own use today.

Re:Engineering with Nuclear Explosives

[CodeBuster]

Things were so much simpler then.

They probably made it into one of those cheesy government information films with a "Mr.Atom" character animated by Walt Disney to explain the wonderous benefits of peaceful nuclear explosions complete with unintentionally funny naration of the type favored by documentary film makers who dig out these old films to embarass the government and corporations ala the Better Living Through Chemsitry campaigns.

Re:Engineering with Nuclear Explosives

[Animats]

It would be funny to see our response if China or Iran made this proposal for their own use today.

China has proposed punching a water tunnel through the Himalayas using shaped nuclear charges. (This doesn't mean a row of spherical caverns; it's possible to make shaped nuclear charges and drive a projectile of molten metal through rock, much like anti-tank ammo.)

Re:Engineering with Nuclear Explosives

[Valdrax]

Here's the environmental impact statement...

I'm pretty sure that whole cockamamie scheme was pre-NEPA.

well if we're talk FUN and profit

[circletimessquare]

you have to implement all these schemes from orbit

its the only way to be sure

Make a fireworks display for all of Earth!

[Anonymous Coward]

There isn't anything we can do with them on the Earth that wouldn't end in serious damage to the environment. So lets blow them into space for a fireworks display the entire Earth can enjoy :D

Nuke the moon!

[jmorris42]

Oh come on, if the subject is silly uses for a nuke can anyone beat A Realistic Plan for World Peace a.k.a. Nuke The Moon. And it would be just crazy enough to work if we still had Bush. Nobody would believe Obama had the balls for the kind of crazy the plan requires though.

Re:Nuke the moon!

[Anonymous Coward]

I always thought nuking Venus would be a worthwhile venture. The planet's atmosphere is pretty f'd up as it is. It could use a nuclear winter. Maybe then, in a couple thousand years, it might be habitable.

Can't they be used as non-explosive fuel?

[istartedi]

Isn't there some way to use the fissile material in there as non-explosive fuel? Build a nuke plant in Panama and use specialized electrically powered earth-moving equipment to dig. Then when you're done you have a clean new canal and a nuke plant instead of a toxic canal.

Or better yet, build several of the same types of reactors they use on aircraft carriers, and install them in enormous digging machines. Retired naval personnel could even be used to run the nuke operations on the diggers. Then when you're done you have several small reactors and a clean canal.

Re:Can't they be used as non-explosive fuel?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't there some way to use the fissile material in there as non-explosive fuel?
Build a nuke plant in Panama and use specialized electrically powered earth-moving
equipment to dig. Then when you're done you have a clean new canal and a nuke plant
instead of a toxic canal.

I'm pretty sure that when the original plowshare program was conceived one group of scientists probably put forth an argument such as you make.

I'm also pretty sure that another group of scientists countered it by saying that idea lacked the total awesomeness of massive nuclear explosions and mushroom clouds.

Finally, I'm pretty sure that both groups of scientists consider "those other guys" to be a bunch of spoilsports.

Re:Can't they be used as non-explosive fuel?

[BJ_Covert_Action]

Just one problem with your idea, if someone mentions the words "nuclear powered..." anything, somewhere, someone throws a political hissy fit over the possible environmental and public health issues these nuclear powered anythings 'could possible create...' Rather than recognize the fact that research and understanding of both fission and fusion reactions has advanced and evolved since their original implementations to result in safer, better controlled power plants and applications, some ignoramuses would much rather pull on their sheep costumes and declare proudly to their pseudo-scientific overlords that "nuclear powered" anythings are the purest evil mankind has ever wrought.

See at this point in time, applying any of our most modern technologies is considered a moral blasphemy because, well, technology is unnatural, not understood and dangerous. Fissile materials and nuclear power production are no exception to this rule. The general populace seems entirely convinced that if an element has an atomic weight somewhere above the number 100, the element is a magical compound that will result in Armageddon and the deaths of all children (WON'T SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!?).

So no, my friend, we cannot use decommissioned nukes to progress the human species in any form because frankly, it is entirely impossible to implement such technology without killing every living thing on the planet...or at least that's what we are supposed to think.

Cheers.

Re:Can't they be used as non-explosive fuel?

[adavies42]

now there's an idea--nuclear-powered chunnel machine. we could start with the gibraltar-morocco tunnel and work our way up to the london-sydney gravity train.

Re:Can't they be used as non-explosive fuel?

[hcdejong]

This is already being done. Several European nuclear plants use fuel that consists in part of high-grade uranium from dismantled Russian warheads.

Electric power is hard to use for e.g. dump trucks. Even excavators move around so much that the risk of severing MW-rated power cables is too great. A hydrogen generation plant may be the answer, but that's rather inefficient. A nuclear powerplant weighs a lot, the current naval reactors are around 1000 metric tons. Smaller designs are feasible, but I suspect you get to a lower limit where you can't apply enough shielding (see the experiments to put a nuclear reactor aboard an airplane, the NB-36).

How about Orion?

[downix]

I say dig up the old Project Orion files and let's start getting serious about space exploration and colonization.

Re:How about Orion?

[master811]

Except that still doesn't solve the issue of what if something goes wrong (rocket launches are still not perfect) and when it launches, a mass of radioactive material gets released into the atmosphere due to an on-board explosion or something.

Re:How about Orion?

[j_sp_r]

Send nuke on Trident missile into orbit (I saw that on Deep Impact so it must be true), catch missile, use nuke.

Bonus points if you are rotating for artificial gravity at the same time

Re:How about Orion?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. I want to get off this rock.

Also, if we just want to use Orion to lift materials into space, we can subject it to higher Gs and use fewer nukes.

See http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/03/if-nuclear-cannon-jump-started-space.html - and read the second section.

Re:How about Orion?

[dkf]

I say dig up the old Project Orion files and let's start getting serious about space exploration and colonization.

If we're filling the atmosphere with that much post-detonation material, we'll have to be really serious about colonization...

Re:How about Orion?

[Valdrax]

As long as you get off the ground first so that you aren't stuck here dealing with the the aftereffects, right?

I find it stunning today that there are science-educated people who still think using Orion as a launch vehicle is a great idea. As nuclear propulsion ideas go, it's about the only thing dumber than an open-cycle gas core rocket.

Is this for real?

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't a late April Fools joke is it?

Both the US and old Soviet Union experimented with the whole "nukes to plowshares" idea in the late 60's. It was abandoned as being dangerously impractical.

And we know a heck of a lot more about long term radiation exposure and ecological damage now then we did then.

Winter

[evilphish_mi]

With all the hub-bub about "man made global warming" why not counter it with man made nuclear winter.

the firecracker boys

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.amazon.com/Firecracker-Boys-Dan-ONeill/dp/0312134169

book about this back in the 60's..... scary

Advocating climate control nukes

[arthurh3535]

I've actually been advocating the use of nukes if our climate shift truly does get to the point of extinction level heat.

We can easily clear a few mines (or make a pure waterway in Central America) to get enough volcanic-type particulates into the air to drench the world in rain or snow. Radiation fallout would be unpleasant, but better than the extinction of humanity.

Re:Advocating climate control nukes

[thefringthing]

It won't work; they'll just start using us as batteries.

Re:Advocating climate control nukes

[HTH NE1]

I've actually been advocating the use of nukes if our climate shift truly does get to the point of extinction level heat.

We can easily clear a few mines (or make a pure waterway in Central America) to get enough volcanic-type particulates into the air to drench the world in rain or snow. Radiation fallout would be unpleasant, but better than the extinction of humanity.

Been there, done that.

"And taking a look at the long range forecast, continued snow, darkness, and extreme cold. This is Howard Handupme, saying goodnight... ...goodbye."

Firecrackers

[Normal Dan]

Sell them as firecrackers for the 4th of July. You may have to retrofit them with a sticker that says "Aim away from face." But that wouldn't be too hard, I have a label maker.
...
Or, you could put them all together and make one really big firecracker!

A weird weapon, it only works if you don't use it

[Simonetta]

A weird weapon, it only works if you don't use it... shades of WarGames.

Nuclear weapons have solved the problem of national defense, but at a stiff price. In the past, there was always someone out there who thought that they could just come to your country or piece of ground, kick your ass, steal everything of value, rape your women, and turn your (and your women's) children into their slaves to buy, sell, fuck, or work to death as they please.

Hell, we even did it ourselves and got away with it for a long time. Your ancestors did also to your neighbors. And your neighbors did it to you. It's quite possible that you are thinking right now about doing it to someone.

It's not a bad idea, actually. You get all the benefits and you get to kill off all the assholes and bullies in your society that would make your life miserable if they weren't occupied by raging, raping, and pillaging someone else, somewhere else. Excuse me, I meant to say "turn all our brave boys into heroes or martyrs, proudly serving in our nation's defense..." Same thing.

However, there are some countries that no-one imagines or seriously plans to conquer and enslave. These countries have, at great expense, developed refrigerator-sized machines that convert hydrogen into helium in the most environmentally-insensitive way imaginable. When someone shows up at the border for a little bit of the old in-out, they get met with a few of these hydrogen-to-helium converters thrown their way, along with a few tossed through outer space to the folks back home.

What a mess. Basically the consequences of having to deal with having hydrogen-to-helium machines thrown your way far exceeds the joys and profits in ravishing and pillaging your neighbors. So you find something else to do. And we have world peace. Peace through machines. Not microprocessor-controlled dildos, or cool stereos playing groovy music, but through hydrogen bombs.

One small problem: If you have a few of these hydrogen-to-helium conversion machines, it's real easy to get your friends and neighbors to give you their stash and daughters. Without having to go through the trouble of violently taking it. Just go to their embassy with a list in one hand and picture of the H2H machine in the other. Don't say a word; they'll get the message.

So they want a few of the H2H machines themselves. And the more that there are around, the more likely that some one, somewhere, for some reason, under some God's direction, justified by some ancient holy book, is going to set them off. Which is bad for business.

So an elaborate game evolves. You pretend that you are going to use them if it were to happen that someone might assume that they could pretend to do something that would piss you off, if it were possible that it could ever happen.

And, success, you get world peace. Civilized people don't fuck with each other any more. Giant corporations can pretend that chickenshit things like trading MP3 files are a major issue, and other fantasies.

The only problem is when weirdos and fanatics get the H2H devices. And you don't know if they are going to be willing and able to play the 'pretend that we use them' game. So you can ignore them and hope for the best, as we do with nuclear powers like Israel and Japan ( please don't insult our intelligence by telling me that the Japanese don't have hydrogen-to-helium conversion machines), or you can threaten to kick their ass in advance if they cross a certain line that you and the other civilized nations have drawn in the sand (Pakistan and Korea). Or, if you're lucky, you can just buy them off and get them to surrender their H2H machines (and their U238 little brothers), like South Africa and the Ukraine.

Anyway, back to the point. You don't want to use the H2H converters for anyt

Re:" no one to use them on."

[bdenton42]

Given the effects of the relatively dinky nukes dropped on Japan, I don't know how anyone can seriously consider dropping them at random to smoke out one idiot.

On top of that "those" people do not think like "we" do... dropping nukes on them will likely embolden their cause against us rather than driving them to surrender. Same for those Somali pirates... despite having a destroyer right next to them with one man being the only thing keeping them from becoming a grease spot they don't appear to have any intention of giving up. I hope the USN has no intentions of letting those guys go, and brings a bunch of warships down there to drive them out of business.

Whoa, whoa, whoa...

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you thinking, buddy?

Cook?

Re:A weird weapon, it only works if you don't use

[KahabutDieDrake]

^ THIS

Mod parent up. This is by far the most rational explanation for why nuclear weapons should continue to be deterrents, and nothing else.

Besides, if you just want a big boom, you don't need to irradiate the planet to get it. We have chemical explosives that are more than adequate.

Alaska was a hotbed of this kind of stuff

[Alaska Jack]

...back in the day.

Project Chariot was a program to blast a new harbor near Point Hope, led by none other than Ed Teller.

Alaska was also the site of several nuclear test blasts, among them the largest one the U.S. ever conducted: Amchitka's Nuclear Legacy.

- Alaska Jack

Re:Alaska was a hotbed of this kind of stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

...back in the day.

Alaska was also the site of several nuclear test blasts, among them the largest one the U.S. ever conducted: Amchitka's Nuclear Legacy.

- Alaska Jack

That explains what's wrong with the Palins! Exposure to Radiation!

Re:Alaska was a hotbed of this kind of stuff

[mbone]

Yes, in Alaska there weren't many people to complain (it wasn't even a state until '59), and in Panama the feeling was you could ignore local complaints.

There was a project, Plowshare and a series of engineering bursts, including Sedan, which left a nice crater and "contaminated the most US residents of any nuclear test," and Gnome, which created a highly radioactive cavity in a salt dome. All in all, I don't think that any of this resulted on any engineering anyone might want to use.

My suggestion: Use as energy source.

[aliquis]

Save the material in case you can make energy of it later.

Why waste it?

No, that song was about Mexico

[davidwr]

From the Halls of Montezuma, to the shores of some place I don't remember.

Re:No, that song was about Mexico

[ubergeek2009]

from the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli.

Brand new shiny canal

[nurb432]

That no one can use for 50 years due to the radiation.. ( or the country that it goes thru )

These people stoned or what?

Mines, you say?

[benjamindees]

You mentioned the ratio of ten women to each man. Wouldn't that necessitate abandoning the so-called monogamous form of sexual relationship?

fuel

[localoptimum]

That's a crap article. And anyway, the only realistic solution is to burn them to make electricity.

Rebuild communites

[HartDev]

All those communities with houses older than dirt itself, and water and electrical systems that are ancient, simply have all the east coast stay with relatives in the west coast and then nuke it and then you can rebuild the electrical infrastructure and never worry about blackouts again! Until another couple hundred years...

Weapons of Mass Construction

[Anonymous Coward]

As all scorced earth fans know the best weapon to use in this case is a "heavy digger".

Re:A weird weapon, it only works if you don't use

[Kagura]

Wow, good post. There are some things I don't agree with (Japan may have the ability to develop nuclear weapons in an extremely short time, but that's not the same as having a stockpile right now), but I liked it so much I would have modded it up highly. Hopefully some others can do that in my place.

Edward Teller would love it.

[Beelzebud]

Edward Teller would love this article. Since he spent his remaining years clinging to the idea that his hydrogen bomb was a useful invention.

Is there?

[thatskinnyguy]

Is there really a peaceful use for nuclear weapons? Really? I mean, weapons grade nuclear fuel is an order of magnitude higher in concentration than fuel pellets used in reactors. Could a reactor be built to handle weapons-grade Uranium? Aside from that little idea, which no doubt has been thought before by someone who is more brilliant than I, I'm out of ideas for peaceful use.

Re:Is there?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure it can be diluted.

Re:Is there?

[shentino]

They already do, it's called downblende

Re:Is there?

[NuclearError]

Naval reactors run fuel that approaches weapons grade enrichment (~90%). This means that they have to refuel about every 20 years, compared to ~3 years for a civilian reactor with 4% enrichment. However, naval reactors are guarded by military personnel and in the case of submarines, are hidden. Civilian nuclear reactors do not have this luxury. There is the perfectly viable, save for political reasons, option of taking weapons grade fissionable material and blending it with depleted uranium to make fuel suitable for civilian reactors. The problem is that most weapons use plutonium, which is less desirable in reactors because it causes more rapid power changes and in general changes the handling characteristics that operators may be used to, as most civilian reactors use uranium. As a reactor fuel loadout ages, power changes actually become faster because the U238 is converted to Pu239 over time.

They need to be dismantled.

[kheldan]

Beyond Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the only valid use for nuclear weapons has been as a threat. Actually using them at all is incredibly irresponsible and stupid. Dismantle them and find some peaceful, constructive use for the fissionable and otherwise radioactive materials. That being said, we need to keep a few of them around, intact, ready to use, because humans are still stupid and violent animals, therefore we NEED the deterrent of the threat of their use to keep the more violent and irrational ones in check.

Re:They need to be dismantled.

[myowntrueself]

Beyond Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the only valid use for nuclear weapons

Are you saying that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were *valid* uses of nuclear weapons?

If so have you ever wondered, of the people who died in those attacks, how many were children?

Re:They need to be dismantled.

[KeithJM]

Are you saying that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were *valid* uses of nuclear weapons? If so have you ever wondered, of the people who died in those attacks, how many were children?

This is a tough question. Probably not more children than died in the bombing of Germany (or Britain, for that matter), and maybe not more than would have died if the allies invaded Tokyo because Japan hadn't surrendered.
There isn't anything magical about nuclear weapons, they are just really efficient killing machines. The alternative wasn't less killing, just less efficient killing.

Re:They need to be dismantled.

[kheldan]

Fuck you, sir. If the U.S. hadn't developed and used the bomb, Germany would have in short order, and do you REALLY THINK that they would have stopped at dropping just two of them? Hell no, they would have bombed all their enemies back into the stone age. It sucked to have had to use them in the first place, but at the VERY LEAST WW2 would have gone on for YEARS longer otherwise.

Re:They need to be dismantled.

[Nazlfrag]

No, fuck you, sir. Germany surrendered in May '45. The bombs were dropped in August '45. Keep trying to justify the use of nuclear weapons on a civilian population though, I'm sure you'll be able to rationalise such a depraved act of inhumane behaviour.

Re:They need to be dismantled.

[jamstar7]

No, fuck you, sir. Germany surrendered in May '45.

Heh. We got lucky the Nazis never figured out how to make it work. The Manhattan Project succeeded because the brains working on the project weren't screened for racial parameters. By limiting their ideas to those created by 'Arayan Science' at the expense of 'Jewish Science', the Nazis screwed themselves. Of course, we can see that clearly from here, but it wasn't until the Nazis surrendered that we could take a look at what they were doing and see where they screwed the pooch.

Re:They need to be dismantled.

[rally2xs]

There's no big deal about this - use nukes on the populace - use fire bombing on the populace - they're just as dead either way, and we'd been using fire bombing for quite some time during the war. The best thing about it was that it scared hell out of 'em, and they surrendered. End of war. 100's of thousands of lives saved. That's how you justify it.

Re:Horrible idea.

[BitZtream]

Ignorance is bliss, isn't it?

Every time a nuke is detonated, the result is a dispersion of radioactive material into the environment. The environmental impact of this can be considerably negative.

Detonated far enough below the surface results in almost no environmental damage.

Oil shale mining has already been criticised in altering the hydrography of the environment and erosional and water flow patterns, perhaps causing a permenant change in wildlife habitation patterns and so on for many years to come.

Right, and the house and city you live in, they haven't changed the environment at all. Nor do the roads, rail and seaports that get you the PC you use to talk to slashdot, or the power plants that power that PC.

Unless you're living in a cave that already existed, pretty much everything about modern civilized human life changes the environment in a long term way. What you do in that cave will forever change the enviroment in the cave. The planet is constantly changing. New species are coming into their own, and others are disappearing. This is the way its always been and the way it always will be, regardless of how special you think you are, we're not doing anything that wasn't done long before we existed, nor will it stop when we cease to exist. Wind and rain change the environment, destory mountains, make valleys and change shorelines, are you going to stop them as well?

This idea belongs in the waste bin where it belongs with other bad, dangerous, ideas which show little concern or sensitivity for the environment and fail to recognise the effect of ecosystem loss, destruction of natural environments and ecosystems, and scenic quality of our planet, things which are of inestimable value. We need to recognise the intrinsic value in the earths environment and scenic beauty as is rather than looking at everything as something to exploit for profit for material greed.

You don't believe this, or your just a twit, not sure which really. If you had a clue and believe it you wouldn't be using a PC or electricty in general as it has massive effects on the enviroment, from the mines that the coal comes from to the pollution produced, to the power lines cutting across the country side right down to the heat used to cool and warm your home. You sir are a hypocrite.

Oil shale will be depleted in a few decades anyway but the environmental damage would be permenant, it should not be developed at all. When we destroy or alter the earths landscapes we are stealing the environmental legacy from future generation, an example are people displaced by mines or by dam projects who have lost their homes, land to which they were entitled which were stolen from them.

You really need to get some perspective. Change will happen regardless of what we do. Our children can not possibly inherit the planet in the exact same state as we did. It is not possible for you to live on the surface of the planet without changing it. If you truely believe what you say, you need to kill yourself now otherwise you are just perpetuating the problem, that too will change the planet however.

The rights of a native people who fish in a river and live off the land in a sustianable way with little impact on it, is more importnat than that of dams and other projects that would destroy the ecosystem which they have lived off of

I really can't stand this level of ignorance. You have no clue and live in a dream. Building a dam does not destroy the environment, it changes it. Its going to change no matter what happens. By building a dam we can actually help protect areas of the river downstream from the change that results from massive floods. We can prevent the deaths of people due to those floods. We can provide a more consistent source of water for everything involved in the rivers ecosystem.

I grew

No Holy Land for You!

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, it's mostly below sea level. blow a channel allowing the mediterranean to flood the whole damn lot. Where's your promised land now? Hahahahahahahhaaaa

Re:A weird weapon, it only works if you don't use

[hitmark]

something tells me that the moment we find a way to get rid of that pesky radioactivity, all this goes out the window...

Obama a retard

[Anonymous Coward]

If you ban testing nuclear weapons, then only folks wwho disregard treaties will test nuclear weapons. It sure as hell won't discourage Iran, North Korea, or the next Libya.

Digging a canal with nuclear bombs?

[jafo]

When I was young and wasn't studying hard enough, my evil stepfather would always say "Do you want to end up a ditch digger?"

This post makes it sound much more appealing than he ever did.

Sean

I'm really surprised...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody has mentioned "fuel" yet. Reprocess the cores as fuel for conventional or pebble bed reactors.

please send one bomb plus small reactor

[fyoder]

Could the material in a bomb power a small data centre sized reactor? Because the limiting factor in a data centre I have to interact with isn't space anymore, it's electricity. If so we'd like to order one along with a small reactor. Thanks.

Re:Horrible idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

True, let's nurture and preserve the environment by nuking the fuck out of it.

Is this bad enough?

[randmcnatt]

I remember a seeing an article in Popular Science or Mechanics or such about using an open-face reactor to build highways, using a critical mass of nuclear fuel to directly melt dirt into glass. Is that crazy enough?

Re:Is this bad enough?

[KingKiki217]

It's just crazy enough to work!

Why is it "downright bad"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would be building a new Panama Canal be "downright bad"? The current one is falling into disrepair. (It won't be too many more years before the canal is inoperable.) It is also limiting the size of ships that can get through it. (Large ships are more efficient in terms of payload per nautical mile.)

Re:Why is it "downright bad"?

[Arimus]

Well.... would you really want someone to dig a new trench using nukes? Building a new/second Panama canal is not a bad idea. Using nukes to dig the hole is.

Re:Why is it "downright bad"?

[gatkinso]

Several reasons were discovered during Plowshare.

Obvious - lots of fallout. Radioactive spoil that could not be moved for years.

Others not so obvious - the sides of the new canal would be crumbly. Constant radioactive silt buildup in the canal requiring an insane amount of dredging. Bedrock at the bottom of the canal would also be shattered and become very pourous. Need I go on?

Re:Why is it "downright bad"?

[rally2xs]

OK, we make a new canal... but not in Panama. With nukes, we can afford do dig it down to sea level all along our southern border. So, the industrial activity associated with that would make the S. border worth protecting, and put enough people there that controlling who gets across would be a lot easier. I mean, they'd really have to _swim_, and look out for that really big boat, too. No more wading across. And, it'd be harder for some Democrat to give away to a foreign country that didn't build it, again.

Re:Why is it "downright bad"?

[jamstar7]

Interesting... How were you planning on convincing the Mexican government to go along with this? Or were you planning on doing the trenching say, 5 miles north of the border?

Pretty story... Very apologetic...

[denzacar]

Pity its logic is flawed...

As long as some people just want to watch the world burn.

Re:Pretty story... Very apologetic...

[Xaositecte]

I read this, and instantly though ofthis guy

Re:A weird weapon, it only works if you don't use

[Garrett Fox]

To understand the alternative to this dilemma, look up Operation Downfall, the plans for the land invasion of Japan.

As opposed to the

[Anonymous Coward]

trillions lost based on fearmongering over the last 8 years? I will take somebody who is at least honest and will even fight for the nation.

Re:A weird weapon, it only works if you don't use

[Yokaze]

> One small problem: If you have a few of these hydrogen-to-helium conversion machines, it's real easy to get your friends and neighbors to give you their stash and daughters. Without having to go through the trouble of violently taking it. Just go to their embassy with a list in one hand and picture of the H2H machine in the other. Don't say a word; they'll get the message.

So, the US hasn't fought a war, excuse me, armed conflict in the last 50 years?

Nuclear weapons aren't good for small things. They are an all-out-weapon. They may help avoiding an all-out war, as it is M.A.D., but do next to nothing in small cases. Any threat is void, if you can't realise it. The usage of tactical nukes would generate a diplomatic and economical outfall, which would far outweigh any positive benefit you might possibly expect from the usage of said weapon. Even the hint at using a nuclear weapon will create a backlash from other nations.

> please don't insult our intelligence by telling me that the Japanese don't have hydrogen-to-helium conversion machines

Aside from experimental reactors in laboratories? Or is that your euphemism for hydrogen bombs? If not going as far as questioning your intelligence, I have at least doubt your knowledge on foreign nations. Look up the Japan's non-nuclear policy. It already created a severe discontent in the general populace, that the Japanese government allowed the US to dock a nuclear driven military vessel in a Japanese harbour.
IRC, the last notable Japanese politician that suggested in context of the build up of nuclear power in North Korea, it might be a good idea to have a own nuclear weapons had to resign due to public outrage.

Send it to mars

[WindBourne]

I have thought that if we blow up some of that wonder CO2 that is frozen on the poles, we could start the Global warming occurring there. Obviously, it would not last that long, BUT, it would certainly bring up the equator a number of degrees. From there, we could push some ammonia based meteors into mars increased dense atmosphere.

Also, I would not mind blowing one or two near several locations that appear to have some heat. Perhaps, we could tap a bit of volcanic action to create a SECURED source of heat, read energy.

Now, as to the issue of fallout, well, let me point out that with a weak magnetosphere , a lot of radiation is already getting through. I would suspect that the amount of extra radiation would not matter.

Of course, in the end, I would rather see us send several nuke reactors there.

Re:Send it to mars

[Strange Quark Star]

Of course, in the end, I would rather see us send several nuke reactors there.

Just don't forget to start those reactors.

After all, we need to give these people air.

Wasn't this Edward Teller's dream?

[Anonymous Coward]

And we all know what a fine, upstanding person he was. I mean, he wouldn't claim credit for other people's work or back-stab his boss just to get ahead, right? Oh, wait...

The only answer...

[denzacar]

Radiation is a problem, but over 2000 nuclear test have been carried out, and we haven't all dropped dead. A few more explosions that have specifically designed to minimize fallout won't kill us either.

You, your family, friends and their family - you try it out first.

Let us know how it went in a dozen generations or so.

Re:The only answer...

[dlenmn]

This experiment has been running for quite some time already. About 3% of background radiation comes from non-medical human sources. A fraction of that is from nuclear testing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Background_radiation

PS Good luck opting out of the study!

Fuel for a new generation of clean Nuclear plants?

[Latinhypercube]

How about fuel for a new generation of clean Nuclear plants ?

Re:Horrible idea.

[CubicleView]

Informative, what the hell do misinformed hippies have to do with anything?

It terrifies me...

[seeker_1us]

It terrifies me that people keep trying to come up with USES for nuclear weapons. A few years ago we had some morons trying to push a "bunker buster" nuclear weapon that they would be using in conventional warfare. Now this shit?

mod parent up

[dunkelfalke]

this is the most realistic idea so far.

Re:" no one to use them on."

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry, but that is just flat wrong and wishful thinking. There are plenty of enemies out there we can use them on, such as Al Queda. I think dropping a few random nukes in Afghanistan should smoke out Bin Laden, or at least show the world the might of the US nuclear arsenal.

You can't make friends by beating them.

And with China rising as a potential military adversary, we shouldn't be taking our nuclear advantage for granted.

And before you start to beat them, be sure that you can defeat them.

Al Gore

[falconwolf]

Al Gore has made many millions of dollars off of fearmongering.

Al Gore has also made a lot from oil. He has had a long relationship and been an investor in Occidental Petroleum.

Falcon

Yes. It's called "Megatons to Megawatts"

[denzacar]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megatons_to_Megawatts_Program

The Megatons to Megawatts Program is the name given to the program that implemented the 1993 United States-Russia nonproliferation agreement to convert high-enriched uranium (HEU) taken from dismantled Russian nuclear weapons into low-enriched-uranium (LEU) for nuclear fuel.
From 1995 through mid-2005, 250 metric tons of high-enriched uranium (enough for 10,000 warheads) were recycled into low-enriched-uranium. The goal is to recycle 500 metric tons by 2013. Much of this fuel has already been used in many nuclear power plants in the U.S., as it is indistinguishable from normal fuel.

In fact this might be a way to turn around the

[falconwolf]

economy. Hydrogen bomb test in the middle of the pacific.

And can do something about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Falcon

Joking

Re:A weird weapon, it only works if you don't use

[Aereus]

Conventional war is what you do when the country isn't coerced into meeting your demands via pictures of your H2H machines. Because you know that you won't use them. And they know that you won't use them unless they use them first. (Assuming they have them)

Re:A weird weapon, it only works if you don't use

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yeah, no one attacked the US since they have nuclear weapons at their hand. Due to that the USA lives in peace since the 1950s and could lower military budget to just maintaining the nukes.

Re:Horrible idea.

[antirelic]

You missed his overall point.

Humans are EVIL and destroying the world. EVERYTHING humans do is BAD. No matter what. the person you replied to will find something wrong with the world around him/her, simply because they cannot adjust to it. Feel comforted in the fact that if this same person was living in a cave, surrounded by the scenic beauty of nature, he would in turn be longing for civic society and technological advances that would one day make nature less hostile and lethal to weakly human beings.

Some people are just malcontents and can only identify negatively to the world.

problems with nuclear power

[falconwolf]

2) nuclear waste remains deadly for 10,000 to 100,000 years.

I'll oppose nuclear power until it can be proven to be environmentally friendly, which I doubt will ever happen, but by reprocessing nuclear waste into more fuel the amount of waste and the length of tyme needed to store it can be significantly reduced.

Falcon

Re:problems with nuclear power

[Anonymous Coward]

You want more environmentally friendly than nuclear power?

You think plastering windmills across mountains and coastlines is environmentally friendly? Covering the Sahara with solar panels?

Nuclear power does have an impact, sure. You have to mine the uranium, build the plants, and they produce heat. But it is by far the lowest profile solution practical for supplying our energy needs.

Please, please stop opposing it. Opposition to nuclear power will ruin this planet unless it disappears soon.

Re:problems with nuclear power

[catmistake]

I agree with you.... but...

Let's say a nuclear recycling plant went online yesterday. The 110 or so nuclear power plants and however many nuke plants on aircraft carriers and submarines still continue to produce the bad stuff. And the places we "safely" store the stuff is still overflowing (so to speak... its not necessarily liquid but I believe most of the mass is in spent rods).

How do we get safely, day in day out for years and years, transport what there is to our new nuclear recycling plant?

I think we need to do both. Once we solve the transport problem, recycle the waste (to reduce the cumulative mass and volume), but also phase out current plants (that aren't absolutly necessary) with solar/solar thermal/wind/hydro/geothermal energy plants. And our energy appetites be damned!

Re:problems with nuclear power

[SomeKDEUser]

It is a myth that there is an overflow. The volume of waste is in fact very small: the stuff is really dense.

But solar panels are nasty. I mean really toxic-nasty. You do not want highly dispersed, decentralised energy production based on toxic chemistry. At least, nuclear powerplants are small and localised.

Wind, were it not so fickle would be a nice solution. Though I sometimes wonder haw much we humans could disrupt the flow of the prevailing winds around the planet.

You really want nuclear powerplants. And you also want fast breeders so the "waste" is not waste but extra energy.

And yes, better energy usage. But although you can encourage society evolution, sometimes even attempt to mandate change, you should first try to find solutions not requiring humans to spontaneously behave the "right way". Because it is better to bet on good engineering and sloth, than a sudden increase in human intelligence and awareness.

Re:problems with nuclear power

[MartinSchou]

Can you prove any type of power plant to be environmentally friendly?

I don't mean just the power plant itself - the entire process. From getting the raw materials needed, transforming raw materials into components, building the damn thing, getting the fuel needed etc.

Coal is right out. Oil, gas etc. too. In fact most things that produce electricity is right out as it needs copper, and copper mining isn't exactly a clean process.

In fact, here's a much easier one - prove that humans are environmentally friendly. We're not. We mold the environment to fit us - not the other way around. That's not being environmentally friendly. Personally I find it laughably naive to think that humans past hunter/gatherers are environmentally friendly.

Re:problems with nuclear power

[bcmm]

But solar panels are nasty. I mean really toxic-nasty

Not true. Now, "potentially toxic-nasty" would be debatable. Cadmium telluride is indeed toxic, but not as horrible as elemental cadmium (there is chlorine in your table salt, etc.), and not considered dangerous unless you grind it up and snort it (which can, of course, happen by accident in a factory). There is no "dispersed, decentralised" toxic chemistry, as elemental cadmium is involved only in the production and recycling of solar panels, which would take place at dedicated facilities. Compare this with nuclear power, where nasty stuff will eventually need to be transported over long distances for disposal (even if you reprocess spent fuel, you make a lot of equipment pretty radioactive in the process). Now THAT is "highly dispersed and decentralised", as well as very toxic indeed (not to mention radioactive).

At least, nuclear powerplants are small and localised.

You neglect not only the issues of transport to disposal, but also the issue of fuel supply. Even if you put fuel purification and waste processing on-site, fuels need to be mined. As uranium deposits are used up, there will presumably be more and more smaller mines, making things even less localised.

Re:problems with nuclear power

[catmistake]

It is a myth that there is an overflow. The volume of waste is in fact very small: the stuff is really dense.

What are you talking about? This has been well documented since whistleblowers started coming out of the industry in the late 80s. We've been producing waste since 1940-ish, and guess what? It doesn't go away. We still have all of it. Yes, the temporary containment facilities at every single operating nuclear reactor facility in the US are full. Not myth. Fact.

Re:problems with nuclear power

[falconwolf]

How do we get safely, day in day out for years and years, transport what there is to our new nuclear recycling plant?

This is in part why I don't support nuclear power plants.

I think we need to do both. Once we solve the transport problem, recycle the waste (to reduce the cumulative mass and volume), but also phase out current plants (that aren't absolutly necessary) with solar/solar thermal/wind/hydro/geothermal energy plants.

I'm all for phasing out nuclear, and coal and gas, power plants. About the only thing I can see where we can deal with the nuclear waste we already generated is to build new plants and reprocess the spend fuel. There may be a way to dispose of waste, by drilling holes into tectonic plate subduction zones. But if feasible I have no idea how long it would take before we are capable of it.

Still, I support alternative energy sources such as those you list and others. Biomass, geothermal, solar, tidal, and wind can all be used. A mixture of different energy sources is in my opinion better than the one size fits all of nuclear power.

Falcon

Re:problems with nuclear power

[falconwolf]

But solar panels are nasty. I mean really toxic-nasty. You do not want highly dispersed, decentralised energy production based on toxic chemistry. At least, nuclear powerplants are small and localised.

Reprocessing spent nuclear fuel also generates a lot of toxic chemicals. See the IEEE "Spectrum's" "Nuclear Wasteland".

You really want nuclear powerplants.

You may want it but I don't. I want clean energy and nuclear power is not clean. While there is no real "clean" energy there are sources that are cleaner than nuclear. Nor do I want my tax dollars subsidizing nuclear power, and without government subsidies nuclear power isn't profitable in the US. And don't try to use the argument that that's because all of the regulations and NAMBYs, without government subsidies nuclear power is not profitable in France, India, or Russia either and they don't have the laws and regulations the US does. As the freemarket CATO Institute says in "Nuclear Energy: Risky Business"
"Given all of this, how do France, India, China, and Russia build cost-effective nuclear power plants? They don't. Government officials in those countries, not private investors, decide what is built. Either these governments build expensive plants and shove them down the market's throat-or they build shoddy plants and hope for the best."

Falcon

Project Orion !

[mbone]

Let's resurrect Project Orion, and use this stuff to put a few 100 people on Mars and prospect the main belt asteroids.

After all, this was one of the original rationales for Orion. In all of this time, I don't think that anyone has come up with any better ideas, and we sure aren't getting into the solar system very fast with chemical rockets.

WTF are you talking about?

[Alaska Jack]

Do you have any idea how big Alaska is? Let's say you live in, oh, I don't know -- Memphis, Tenn. Here are a few places that are closer to YOU than Amchitka Island is to Wasilla:

Phoenix, Arizona
Boise, Idaho
Mexico City, Mexico
Regina, Saskatchewan
Montego Bay, Jamaica

    - Alaska Jack

Re:WTF are you talking about?

[Valdrax]

So, what you're saying is...

"Alaska is big. Really big. You may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to Alaska. [...] The simple truth is that intra-Alaska distances will not fit into the American imagination."

Re:WTF are you talking about?

[Alaska Jack]

Haha.... well played, sir!

    - Alaska Jack

So...

[denzacar]

...answer to SOME radiation is for everyone to get MORE radiated?

Does that work with other potentially dangerous materials and processes or is radiation unique and magical?

Did I hear you correctly?

[cwike]

I'me sorry? You have no one to nuke, so you are turning them on your own country? This has left me bewildered!

Reality Check

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Coal contains trace amounts of uranium, typically at around 3ppm.

However ordinary soil contains trace amounts at concentrations ranging from between 1-5ppm.

Re:Reality Check

[Joce640k]

The radioactivity in soil stays put, burning coal releases it into the air. If you live downwind of a coal power station you might want to borrow a Geiger counter and check out your garden (or not, if you prefer ignorance).

Re:Reality Check

[Dare nMc]

one kilogram of uranium-235 can theoretically produce about 20 trillion joules of energy (2 × 1013 joules); as much energy as 1500 tonnes of coal.

so 2 pounds / 1500 tonnes = .6 ppm basically if their is no energy gain by using uranium to blast oilsands, per unit of energy. We still have a factor of 5 in-efficiency before we are worse than coal as far as worst-case uranium contamination per watt of energy.

Also you use up most uranium, but whats left is heavy, easily separated from oil on-site. Things like radon that are radioactive, and created by uranium have a shelf life of 2 days. So basically if you separate out leftover uranium, in 2 days I would expect your extracted oil would be radiation free.

now plenty of hazards at the site to be avoided. So it would be a bad place to be, but the end product should be OK.

Re:How about a good old megatons to megawatts prog

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the US has been buying up some of the retired Russian nukes and using them to fuel our nuclear power plants.

Santa can bring them some clean coal plants too

[leftie]

The Easter Bunny can deliver that clean nuclear power along with those new ideas the GOP promised.

Re:Santa can bring them some clean coal plants too

[Latinhypercube]

Nuclear is indisputably cleaner than any other fossil fuel.

Re:A weird weapon, it only works if you don't use

[MagusSlurpy]

A weird weapon, it only works if you don't use it... shades of WarGames.

Tell that to the Japanese.

That 70's Show

[flyneye]

" I'm really pro-nuke,but I just don't talk about it because I'm still hoping to screw Jane Fonda"
--Pete Townsend to a Creem Magazine Journalist shortly after the No Nukes benefit concert

Damn! It's nice to know I'm not the only one...

[Anonymous Coward]

Who thinks these damn tree-huggers don't get it.

Having grown up in Oregon, and worked in the construction/forestry industry, I have heard a lot of garbage from the enviro-wackos.

Specifically, the people who thing logging is a horrible industry, and that all logging should stop NOW!

My questions to these people are, "Do you have any idea where your toilet paper comes from? Do you know what your home is made of?"

FACRISAKES!!! Trees are the one frickin' resource I can think of that actually DO grow back...

over...

the Soviets created a lake with it

[Trepidity]

Lake Chagan was created by a nuclear blast purposely sited so its crater lip would dam the river, which created both a lake upstream of the river (and prevented downstream flooding), and a lake in the crater itself. Downside: the lake is still radioactive, 40+ years later.

Re:the Soviets created a lake with it

[jamstar7]

How radioactive is it these days? And with which isotopes?

Re:the Soviets created a lake with it

[Trepidity]

According to this journal article (2008), there were about 2 x 10^10 beryllium-10 atoms per gram of soil; and about 60,000 Bq/m^2 from cesium-137.

Best use

[TheCount22]

I vote for Project Orion. I am sure Carl Sagan would agree if he was alive.

Use them as fuel for reactors

[knobsturner_me]

We won't need to mine uranium for 300 years, and we will burn up almost all nuclear waste as well. See Tom Blees Prescription for the Planet. Looks good to me.

Re:Use them as fuel for reactors

[argent]

Yah, this is the obvious one. Of course, that's not wacky enough for Wired.

This is not a new idea.

[atomica]

Operation Plowshare: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Plowshare

Re:A weird weapon, it only works if you don't use

[gknoy]

We fight "wars", but not against anyone we think has hydrogen to helium conversion devices. (I love the name, btw.)

Unclear to Nuclear Physics

[Roger W Moore]

Things like radon that are radioactive, and created by uranium have a shelf life of 2 days. So basically if you separate out leftover uranium, in 2 days I would expect your extracted oil would be radiation free.

Sorry but this is completely wrong. First uranium itself is not very radioactive (although it is toxic). The half-life for U235/238 (what you find in a Uranium bomb) is 0.7/4.5 billion years respectively. This means that even in large non-critical lumps the radiation is low. Secondly radioactivity after a nuclear explosion comes from the fission products of Uranium (or what they very rapidly decay into) like Strontium, Xenon, Caesium etc. which have varying but generally medium half lives (of order decades). Radon is a decay product of Uranium (after several steps), not a fission product.

Finally radioactive nuclei, particularly heavy ones, usually decay into other radioactive nuclei. Hence the fact that one isotope of radon has a short half-life does not mean that "all the radioactivity" will be gone because there is a decay chain. For example Radon-222 which has a half-live of 3.8 days (there is no Radon isotope with a 2d half-life that I could find) will eventually decay into Lead-210 which has a half life of 22.3 years.

Re:Unclear to Nuclear Physics

[Laser_iCE]

It's comments like this that make me wish I listened more in Physics in High School. Ah well, at least I've got Wikipedia now.

Re:Unclear to Nuclear Physics

[adavies42]

i believe a common comparison is that you'd get less radiation from sharing your bed with an equivalent mass of u238 than you do from your s.o.--people are full of c14 and k40. (plus u238 probably makes great cosmic ray shielding)

Re:Unclear to Nuclear Physics

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't feel too bad - the commentor's history seems to indicate that they are, at least, a physics post-grad and actively involved in physics research.

Re:Unclear to Nuclear Physics

[Roger W Moore]

Oh its far worse than that - I'm a physics professor :-)

Re:Unclear to Nuclear Physics

[Roger W Moore]

True but Uranium is highly toxic so you might not die of radiation but you may still die or at least get rather sick. Also pure U-238 is called depleted Uranium so it is not really a completely fair comparison because weapons use enriched Uranium which has a far higher concentration of U-235. I can't remember the exact percentage required off the top of my head but since the half-life is over 6 times less than U-238 this will increase the radiation.

fire them in the upper atmosphere...

[roc97007]

p. ...to combat global warming. It's no less zany than some of the other proposals.

Nukes for the Panama Canal

[otmar]

That was one of the premises of an early German SF book: Hans Dominik's Atlantis. Barely readable by today's standards, but maybe an interesting glimpse on the thinking 80 years ago.

Project Plowshare ?????

[Politicus]

All of this and no mention of Project Plowshare? It's disappointing to see Wired this far under journalistic par. Unless of course, you ignore that so that you can go on with a seemingly clever article.

Re:A weird weapon, it only works if you don't use

[dotancohen]

Just nitpicking, that should be H2He, but otherwise that is a great post. Thanks!

unforseen consequences

[Anonymous Coward]

Might this not cause instabilities in the crust of the Earth, leading to unexpected earthquakes?

Not to mention, it is already difficult to predict earthquakes without dropping artificial ones randomly to serve our own personal D.I.Y.W.N. (do it yourself with nukes) building projects.

I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.

Re:Horrible idea.

[arkhan_jg]

So because the wind will do it eventually, we should grind down all the mountains in the hunt for minerals? We should strip mine the earth, pollute the seas and rivers with toxic materials and kill all the animals for food? Other predators kill all they want, so we should too?

Not all change is good. While good (for humans) can come from change, sometimes the bad outweighs the good.

Ignoring the long-term costs to the environment for short term benefits is what leads to air pollution causing asthma and respiratory diseases, heavy metal toxicity in our food supply and loss of species diversity and sustainability through over-fishing and habitat destruction, not to mention our energy-heavy society that's causing increasingly damaging climate change.

Science-driven environmentalism is just long-term planning, for the benefit of the human race instead of its detriment.

Re:Horrible idea.

[Grim Beefer]

Ok, do you mind if I shoot you in the head with this nail gun? Don't worry, I'm not going to hurt you, I'm only going to change your skull. Also, great job on the ad hominem criticism, because we all know that only perfect people have valid things to say. Sure a lot of environmentalist hippies may have obvious hypocrisies, but you're an apologist, and that is much, much worse. Now that I think about it, I really can't see the difference between the environmental impact of posting on Slashdot and nuking the planet. It's all so clear now thanks to your amazing ontological semantics! Thanks!

You seemed to be missing a vital point so I'll spell it out for you - an argument favoring environmental or ecological initiative a over b due to personal or moral considerations can not immediately be inflated to an argument calling for the dismantling of all technology that effects the planet.

Maybe, just maybe, it's possible that some clean renewable source of energy could be harvested to power our Ipods, but I'll be darned if I can think of it! I guess we might as well stick to building aircraft carriers and mountaintop removal, because it's simply impossible that we could live any other way that the way we do right now, and besides it's not like we're fucking anything up. Just changing it, you know. By the way, how much research do you think a trillion bucks, about the estimated amount pissed down the drain in Iraq, would buy? Fuck it, let's get into that Alaskan wildlife reserve ASAP!

Answering one of life's great questions........

[gadget junkie]

..... Will it Blend?

Re:A weird weapon, it only works if you don't use

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you read a lot of Vonnegut? You sound like you read a Vonnegut a lot :)

Nuclear Disposal

[DynaSoar]

A moderate yield nuke deep in hard bedrock results in a hollow dome. Make it deep enough, below the possibility of rising to the water table. Dump in nuclear waste from reactors (nothing that can reach a critical mass). When full, detonate a small yield device in the bore hole above the dome, sealing it. This can accomplish disposal of both waste and surplus warheads.

The US is not the whole world, you know.

[falconwolf]

Yes I know. However Hungary is part of Europe. And nuclear power won't last long there either, "In the late 1980s, estimates of the actual size of the country's uranium deposits were unavailable, but official sources indicated that Hungary had uranium reserves sufficient to supply its domestic needs until about the year 2020. In the mid-1980s, the Soviet Union guaranteed Hungary's future nuclear-fuel needs." I don't know how authoritative it is but the Austrian Energy Agency says the Hungary Renewable Energy Profile is advancing to an open energy market with "very good prospects for biomass energy projects. There are additional opportunities for hydro and geothermal energy development (especially for heat applications). However, opportunities for large scale wind or solar projects appear limited." Where Hungary falls short on electrical needs High-voltage direct current transmission lines can provide electricity from solar and wind where those are feasible. Spain and Germany, who are the third and second largest wind energy generators, could provide some electricity. And Turkey, and again Spain, can provide solar power.

Now as a matter of trade, Hungary would have to produce something these other countries want and I don't know what Hungary produces.

Falcon

environmentally friendly energy

[falconwolf]

Can you prove any type of power plant to be environmentally friendly?

There are none, but some are cleaner than others. Such as solar and wind.

Falcon

BLOW UP THE MOON

[anoopdotk]

Yes, Blow up the moon to make it two. So that there's a full moon everyday !

Geothermal, yes really

[stonewolf]

This was studied back in the '60s and looked pretty good...

1) Find magma up wellings like the one out side of Salt lake City (except for being close to SLC that's a good one because it mostly under a chemical and biological testing range...)

2) Drill a deep hole.

3) Put a small nuke, 1 to 10 kilotons, down the hole.

4) Fill in the hole.

5) Blow the nuke.

6) Wait 5 years for the nasty short lived isotopes to decay.

7) Drill another hole down the the cavern carved by the nuke. It will be full of high temperature steam.

8) Run the steam through a heat exchanger to boil water. Send the condensate back down the hole. (You need to do that because there will still be some radioactive material in the hole after 5 years.)

9) Use the nice clean steam from the heat exchanger to run turbines and generate electricity.

10) Keep doing #9 for 10,000+ years. Because that magma is going to take a very long time to cool off.

Seriously, there are many places where this could be done. The risk of a release of radioactive material is very small and in return you get pollution free power for centuries.

Now, what would be great is if this could be done without nukes. What would be even better is if this could be done any way at all without the gas, oil, coal, nuclear, wind, solar, and tide energy people spending billions on lobbying to stop it.

No really, you can build a power plant that works this way. You can spend use the five year waiting period to build the power plant.

Stonewolf

Re:A weird weapon, it only works if you don't use

[LunaticTippy]

That is some seriously talented writing. Reminded me of Kurt Vonnegut.

Re:Open the Panama Canal

[GargamelSpaceman]

Ever since the isthmus of Panama closed 2 million years ago, the globe has been subjected to wild climate swings - ice ages and thaws, which have been getting worse each time. Maybe opening the isthmus will be necessary at some point to save the world from ice.

Blonde girlfriends are not uniform density

[Anonymous Coward]

Light in the head, and once they hit 30, not so light everywhere else.

Howmany nukes does it take to...

[Vernes]

stop an asteroid hitting earth?

I don't know but I hope we have enough.
How's that for 'Better Living Through Nukes'?

Or...you could just be less sensational

[Obermeister]

....And just convert the fissile material into fuel rods for nuclear reactors. But I guess that's less exciting than blowing crap up.

If it's good enough for Xenu...

[HTH NE1]

We could detonate our nukes in volcanoes filled with the enemies of the world. Of course, we'd have to catch and transport all our enemies there in DC-8s; it's not like they'd all congregate there like Bond villains.

Aaah... yes.

[denzacar]

+1 Troll - my favorite.

Ah... those juvenile delinquents with mod points coming late to the party.
Aren't they cute?

Making a big ditch by blowing up nukes....

[Dretep]

Making a big ditch by blowing up nukes -- what could possibly go wrong?

They could end up with another one of these... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USA_09847_Grand_Canyon_Luca_Galuzzi_2007.jpg