One hopes it is not going anywhere. Storage in place is not really any kind of solution for nuclear waste but it is better
than moving it around pointlessly here and there. Since I'm not persuaded that the breeder cycle is a good idea at all, I don't
see it as a solution to the waste problem. But I think I'm with you that trasmutation is where we have to go. I just hope that
it does not cost us too much energy. That would be a huge burden to have imposed as we come to see the issues involved in global
warming. For the present, I consider all nuclear power as something that has to be repaid, at least in part, and perhaps with
hefty interest because we must unmake the waste.
Some planned coal plants are being taken out of planning. This is probably a smart move. I can see a transitional role for coal
where existing plants are fitted to produce biofuels to service out existing transportation fleet, but I think that role will
diminish except perhaps for long haul trucking. It is so much cheaper to run your car on electricity from solar that as soon as
the plug-in hybrids have even 40 miles of electric only range they'll take off. I'd give maybe 18 years before most personal
transportation in based on wind or solar. To me, anyone proposing a new (not a replacement) coal plant is basically just soaking investors.
Humm.... You might want to read the news a bit more often than once every thirty years. The other accident in 1999 killed
two people. There have been others. You might want to check up on that.
Yes, but are those fees reasonable? With Yucca Mountain on the table, maybe. But it is not on the table. All bets are off.
On the other hand, other power generators carry their own insurance so it is not as though nuclear power is not subsidized quite
heavily. You make a good point though. Externalized costs need to be looked at more carefully. A case could be made for making the
atmosphere a superfund site. We could include the cost of removing CO2 in the cost of fossil fuel power generation. Similarly, we
might cost out nuclear waste in terms of what it would cost to transmute it to stable species. That, together with full liability for
accidents, ought to give us a good picture of what the "power" sources cost to use. Might also want to include some of the defense
budget in the cost of oil.
Wait, I'm ready to run for office;-) A 30% tax cut for everyone! It's your money! You decide how to spend it!
Actually the case of hydro is kind of interesting. I can't sell contracts for renting solar power much in the north west.
The market is restricted else where because of the lack of net metering laws, but in the north west that is not the problem.
There it is that power is too cheap for solar to compete yet. Solar can compete with nuclear power and coal power, but when it
comes to hydro, it can't do it. That is because renewable energy is cheaper. You'll see news of at least a GW per year new
solar fabrication capacity going in. (That's 10 GW of new solar in a decade). 500 MW will be in Oregon http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/stor y?id=47621 where power is cheap and I can't say yet where the other half will
go. But, that's renewable power making renewable power. You only need to do that about 19 more times to cover our electric power
use. That is much less investment than new nuclear power requires, and, as you can see, it is politically easy to do.
So, if you really want those new nukes, better hurry.
Humm... Three Mile Island gave many people a chance to think about the risks and decide they were too great. I suppose that might not
count as major, but thankfully so. What some people just don't seem to understand is that near disasters are part of the coin flip.
As they start to pile up, it is a reason to actually be alarmed about the level of safety at nuclear plants. Getting that close
so often really does mean that you are at the point where it could be much much worse. Though we won't know much about the lessons
to be learned from the covered up accident in Japan, we can look at the accident last year in Sweden which was close and the big accident
in the Soviet Union and get a pretty good estimate of how often a big accident will happen. About once every forty years. If there have
been more close ones, then it could be more like once every 30 years and we've just been lucky. When (not if) it happens in a very
populated region, that will be the end of nuclear power. So, it just does not seem like a good long term investment.
Well, if you are curious, here is a link about how renewables fit on the chart in Germany: http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid /40568/story.htm. Yes that is 11.8%
of the electric power supply. Renewables are cheaper and better. You just have to do them at
scale, and doing them at scale is much easier than for nuclear power.
You may also be interested in this link: http://www.resourceinvestor.com/pebble.asp?relid=2 7013.
Again, it is hard to see getting a new nuclear reactor even approved in a decade, but renewables
are set to surpase nuclear power in about 18 years.
So, while there are some who have not thought this through very well, who look to nuclear power as an answer to
global warming, there is little likelihood that nuclear power can contribute anything of significance to that
effort and would really only waste time and money. Look to France for good math, good wine and good friends, but
watch Germany for engineering trends. Wait, germans make good friends too though it is spooky how many hits I
get from there on my blog. Hey, good physics, good beer, you know the stuff.... You're just wrong about ULIRGs....
Since renewables can provide all the power we use and more at lower cost than a pie in the sky breeder program, why even consider it?
Renewables don't run out. They don't make waste; they're cradle-to-cradle in a very fundemental way. So, why waste the time? Why waste
the money? Why endanger people's lives?
Sodium cooled reactors, while thought to have some inherent safety advantages, have a poor history of safe operation. One in four has experienced meltdown.
Nuclear waste remains waste if it can't be used safely. Breeder programs inspire little confidence on that front. As we see today,
the nuclear industy's credebility is at an even lower ebb as it participates in cover ups at regular reactors which it is at pains
to paint as safe to operate. It is hard to see why the industry should be cut any slack at all. Ending the production of nuclear waste
should be a priority.
An AC really stood up for the name coward today on another thread. http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=226977&cid=183 87065.
Trolling used to be such a fun sport, catch a fish or two, enjoy the Sun and the water.... Now they dynamite the fishes.
But, it is not clear which side is threatening the warming deniers. It could easily be their own side to manipulate them into
crying about it. It turned out that the guy who said he was threatened was a PR guy so it makes you think. They have been less than scrupulous in other ways: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/your-opinion-c ould-be-paid-for-by.html.
My feeling is that that would be a poor choice on how to invest resources. The law seems reasonable to me just based on thinking
about proliferation issues.
That's it, I'm out with the bucksaw to deal death and destruction to that 7 inch thick vine before the sap flows! The saw
arrived last weekend. I've avoided using the chain saw for obvious reasons.
You should have another look at the economics of renewables. Wind is already cheaper tha fossil fuels in Texas and, to toot my own horn,
you can rent solar power for what you pay now to your utility. I think also that you are mistaken about the contribution of people
to stopping nuclear power. I feel they (we) did not go far enough. You can see why here http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/knowing-warmin g.html seventh paragraph. -- Power your home with solar: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html
Actually, to even get this kind of stretch you need to rely on methods which are not legal in the US. At the present rate
of consumption and price for fuel we've probably got enough for a hundred years, less than what is available for the present rate of consumption of coal. Uranium is a smaller fraction of the cost for power production than coal, so it is OK to boost the cost on mining
a bit and get at some less desirable ores. Suppose this gives us 300 years at the present consumption level. Then nuclear energy can
replace fossil fuel use for 30 years. So, its not really worth building the reactors I think. -- Go fusion! http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html
Actually there is a link between the ozone layer and warming but it is a bit complex. The refrigerant substituted to help
protect the ozone layer is also a potent greenhouse gas. And, as India and China produce more air conditioners, we are getting
more of it into the atmosphere. I've blogged on it here http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/02/heir-of-leader ship.html and
here is a fresher NYT link http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/15/business/worldbu siness/15warming.html since the one in the blog
will use up one of your subscription points.
Sorry if you felt offended. Con Ed, for example, has been censured for failing to report an incident in a timely way so I was
curious if you had been a part of this or some other cover up that up to now has been more successful.
Now, to details: You say 90% of the list represents minor spills. I count two minor spills. Which are the others?
It is so strange that you bring up coal. I did not. Both nuclear power and coal have poor safety records. There have been
cover-ups in the coal industry as well. Quite obviously the granularity of fatalities in the two industries differs. Should
we wait for nuclear power to kill even more people in its inevitable way, and at a level that dwarfs any single coal related
incident before doing what needs to be done?
Humm... It is a little discouraging that someone with responsibility for nuclear safety considers venting or spills unimportant.
I would say that your list of studies does not really pass the smell test for a system that has any chance of ever being considered
reliable on the safety front. Sounds like system complexity is a bit too high.
I have not seen companies that own reactors shutting down the coal plants that they also own so are you not being a bit optimistic on
the idea that nuclear power can replace coal?
What we learned today is that the list of nuclear accidents is incomplete owing to a cover up of a nuclear accident. We do not know how incomplete it is.
Perhaps you can help out here. Have you personally covered up any of those little spills that you feel are so unimportant?
We can already count lost sheep. Yanking this off the firehose even though it was slowly rising:
Science Daily is reporting that researchers at the Carnegie Institution and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have found that crop losses owing to global warming exceeded $100 billion between 1981 and 2002 http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/index.php?feed=Sci ence&article=UPI-1-20070316-15391700-bc-us-climate change-crops.xml. This is of interest not just because this indicates that warming is not good for crops, at least in the way that we grow them now, but that attempts to reduce warming through substituting biofuels for fossil fuels may be squeezed by this effect.
Looking at the comments on the blog I have to agree that most of your big number for waste is just bad wording. Power
generation is not all that efficient and that is the big chunk. If you heat with electricity, your taking a huge hit
there because you could burn the fuel directly for heat. But, you can't run many electric appliances that way. Transmission
losses are on the order of 7% of the actually generated electricity, they'd be a smaller fraction of the grey plus orange
blobs in the figure. -- Generate your power at home: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html
This is a very good idea. Coal plants do provide a large portion of our electric power so replacing them should probably
be done using something that scales up quickly. Solar and wind seem to have this property.
Slashdot Mirror
One hopes it is not going anywhere. Storage in place is not really any kind of solution for nuclear waste but it is better than moving it around pointlessly here and there. Since I'm not persuaded that the breeder cycle is a good idea at all, I don't see it as a solution to the waste problem. But I think I'm with you that trasmutation is where we have to go. I just hope that it does not cost us too much energy. That would be a huge burden to have imposed as we come to see the issues involved in global warming. For the present, I consider all nuclear power as something that has to be repaid, at least in part, and perhaps with hefty interest because we must unmake the waste.
Some planned coal plants are being taken out of planning. This is probably a smart move. I can see a transitional role for coal where existing plants are fitted to produce biofuels to service out existing transportation fleet, but I think that role will diminish except perhaps for long haul trucking. It is so much cheaper to run your car on electricity from solar that as soon as the plug-in hybrids have even 40 miles of electric only range they'll take off. I'd give maybe 18 years before most personal transportation in based on wind or solar. To me, anyone proposing a new (not a replacement) coal plant is basically just soaking investors.
Humm.... You might want to read the news a bit more often than once every thirty years. The other accident in 1999 killed two people. There have been others. You might want to check up on that.
Similar issues were raise in the article. You can judge for yourself here: http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/1748-9326/2/1/014002 /erl7_1_014002.pdf.s -selling-solar.html
--
Solar power: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
Yes, but are those fees reasonable? With Yucca Mountain on the table, maybe. But it is not on the table. All bets are off.
On the other hand, other power generators carry their own insurance so it is not as though nuclear power is not subsidized quite heavily. You make a good point though. Externalized costs need to be looked at more carefully. A case could be made for making the atmosphere a superfund site. We could include the cost of removing CO2 in the cost of fossil fuel power generation. Similarly, we might cost out nuclear waste in terms of what it would cost to transmute it to stable species. That, together with full liability for accidents, ought to give us a good picture of what the "power" sources cost to use. Might also want to include some of the defense budget in the cost of oil.
Wait, I'm ready to run for office;-) A 30% tax cut for everyone! It's your money! You decide how to spend it!
Actually the case of hydro is kind of interesting. I can't sell contracts for renting solar power much in the north west. The market is restricted else where because of the lack of net metering laws, but in the north west that is not the problem. There it is that power is too cheap for solar to compete yet. Solar can compete with nuclear power and coal power, but when it comes to hydro, it can't do it. That is because renewable energy is cheaper. You'll see news of at least a GW per year new solar fabrication capacity going in. (That's 10 GW of new solar in a decade). 500 MW will be in Oregon http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/stor y?id=47621 where power is cheap and I can't say yet where the other half will
go. But, that's renewable power making renewable power. You only need to do that about 19 more times to cover our electric power
use. That is much less investment than new nuclear power requires, and, as you can see, it is politically easy to do.
So, if you really want those new nukes, better hurry.
Humm... Three Mile Island gave many people a chance to think about the risks and decide they were too great. I suppose that might not count as major, but thankfully so. What some people just don't seem to understand is that near disasters are part of the coin flip. As they start to pile up, it is a reason to actually be alarmed about the level of safety at nuclear plants. Getting that close so often really does mean that you are at the point where it could be much much worse. Though we won't know much about the lessons to be learned from the covered up accident in Japan, we can look at the accident last year in Sweden which was close and the big accident in the Soviet Union and get a pretty good estimate of how often a big accident will happen. About once every forty years. If there have been more close ones, then it could be more like once every 30 years and we've just been lucky. When (not if) it happens in a very populated region, that will be the end of nuclear power. So, it just does not seem like a good long term investment.
I suppose it depends on what you mean by a major failure. There have been three meltdowns that we know of at civilian reactors in the US.
Well, if you are curious, here is a link about how renewables fit on the chart in Germany: http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid /40568/story.htm. Yes that is 11.8%
of the electric power supply. Renewables are cheaper and better. You just have to do them at
scale, and doing them at scale is much easier than for nuclear power.
2 7013.
Again, it is hard to see getting a new nuclear reactor even approved in a decade, but renewables
are set to surpase nuclear power in about 18 years.
l ley.html.
You may also be interested in this link: http://www.resourceinvestor.com/pebble.asp?relid=
This is also where the smart money is: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/14/technology/14va
So, while there are some who have not thought this through very well, who look to nuclear power as an answer to global warming, there is little likelihood that nuclear power can contribute anything of significance to that effort and would really only waste time and money. Look to France for good math, good wine and good friends, but watch Germany for engineering trends. Wait, germans make good friends too though it is spooky how many hits I get from there on my blog. Hey, good physics, good beer, you know the stuff.... You're just wrong about ULIRGs....
Since renewables can provide all the power we use and more at lower cost than a pie in the sky breeder program, why even consider it? Renewables don't run out. They don't make waste; they're cradle-to-cradle in a very fundemental way. So, why waste the time? Why waste the money? Why endanger people's lives?
Sodium cooled reactors, while thought to have some inherent safety advantages, have a poor history of safe operation. One in four has experienced meltdown.
Nuclear waste remains waste if it can't be used safely. Breeder programs inspire little confidence on that front. As we see today, the nuclear industy's credebility is at an even lower ebb as it participates in cover ups at regular reactors which it is at pains to paint as safe to operate. It is hard to see why the industry should be cut any slack at all. Ending the production of nuclear waste should be a priority.
An AC really stood up for the name coward today on another thread. http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=226977&cid=183 87065.
Trolling used to be such a fun sport, catch a fish or two, enjoy the Sun and the water.... Now they dynamite the fishes.
c ould-be-paid-for-by.html.
But, it is not clear which side is threatening the warming deniers. It could easily be their own side to manipulate them into crying about it. It turned out that the guy who said he was threatened was a PR guy so it makes you think. They have been less than scrupulous in other ways: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/your-opinion-
My feeling is that that would be a poor choice on how to invest resources. The law seems reasonable to me just based on thinking about proliferation issues.
That's it, I'm out with the bucksaw to deal death and destruction to that 7 inch thick vine before the sap flows! The saw arrived last weekend. I've avoided using the chain saw for obvious reasons.
You should have another look at the economics of renewables. Wind is already cheaper tha fossil fuels in Texas and, to toot my own horn, you can rent solar power for what you pay now to your utility. I think also that you are mistaken about the contribution of people to stopping nuclear power. I feel they (we) did not go far enough. You can see why here http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/knowing-warmin g.html seventh paragraph.s -selling-solar.html
--
Power your home with solar: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
Actually, to even get this kind of stretch you need to rely on methods which are not legal in the US. At the present rate of consumption and price for fuel we've probably got enough for a hundred years, less than what is available for the present rate of consumption of coal. Uranium is a smaller fraction of the cost for power production than coal, so it is OK to boost the cost on mining a bit and get at some less desirable ores. Suppose this gives us 300 years at the present consumption level. Then nuclear energy can replace fossil fuel use for 30 years. So, its not really worth building the reactors I think.s -selling-solar.html
--
Go fusion! http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
Actually there is a link between the ozone layer and warming but it is a bit complex. The refrigerant substituted to help protect the ozone layer is also a potent greenhouse gas. And, as India and China produce more air conditioners, we are getting more of it into the atmosphere. I've blogged on it here http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/02/heir-of-leader ship.html and
here is a fresher NYT link http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/15/business/worldbu siness/15warming.html since the one in the blog
will use up one of your subscription points.
Zonk, you've linked to the report on crop loss owing to warming to the warmest winter citation.
t er.reut/index.html?eref=rss_topstories and NOAA
link giving state by state rankings for temperture and precipitaion http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2007/s2819.htm .
i ence&article=UPI-1-20070316-15391700-bc-us-climate change-crops.xml
Here is the CNN report http://www.cnn.com/2007/WEATHER/03/15/warmest.win
The link you posted is actually more interesting since it suggests that efforts to substitute biofuels for fossil fuels could be hampered by warming since crop losses from warming already exceed $100 billion in the US between 1981 and 2002 http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/index.php?feed=Sc
I'll try to keep my submisions down to less than one a day, there was just a confluence of news.
Check the spelling.s -selling-solar.html
--
Now its easy being green: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
Sorry if you felt offended. Con Ed, for example, has been censured for failing to report an incident in a timely way so I was curious if you had been a part of this or some other cover up that up to now has been more successful.
Now, to details: You say 90% of the list represents minor spills. I count two minor spills. Which are the others?
It is so strange that you bring up coal. I did not. Both nuclear power and coal have poor safety records. There have been cover-ups in the coal industry as well. Quite obviously the granularity of fatalities in the two industries differs. Should we wait for nuclear power to kill even more people in its inevitable way, and at a level that dwarfs any single coal related incident before doing what needs to be done?
Humm... It is a little discouraging that someone with responsibility for nuclear safety considers venting or spills unimportant.
I would say that your list of studies does not really pass the smell test for a system that has any chance of ever being considered reliable on the safety front. Sounds like system complexity is a bit too high.
I have not seen companies that own reactors shutting down the coal plants that they also own so are you not being a bit optimistic on the idea that nuclear power can replace coal?
What we learned today is that the list of nuclear accidents is incomplete owing to a cover up of a nuclear accident. We do not know how incomplete it is. Perhaps you can help out here. Have you personally covered up any of those little spills that you feel are so unimportant?
We can already count lost sheep. Yanking this off the firehose even though it was slowly rising:
i ence&article=UPI-1-20070316-15391700-bc-us-climate change-crops.xml. This is of interest not just because this indicates that warming is not good for crops, at least in the way that we grow them now, but that attempts to reduce warming through substituting biofuels for fossil fuels may be squeezed by this effect.
m _wrapper&Itemid=182.s -selling-solar.html
Science Daily is reporting that researchers at the Carnegie Institution and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have found that crop losses owing to global warming exceeded $100 billion between 1981 and 2002 http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/index.php?feed=Sc
The estimated cost of crop losses is about 25% of the cost of the Iraq war so far http://nationalpriorities.org/index.php?option=co
--
Do something: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
There seems to be a bit or rivalry here going on in the press. Seems like a "not invented here problem" to me.
Looking at the comments on the blog I have to agree that most of your big number for waste is just bad wording. Power generation is not all that efficient and that is the big chunk. If you heat with electricity, your taking a huge hit there because you could burn the fuel directly for heat. But, you can't run many electric appliances that way. Transmission losses are on the order of 7% of the actually generated electricity, they'd be a smaller fraction of the grey plus orange blobs in the figure.s -selling-solar.html
--
Generate your power at home: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
This is a very good idea. Coal plants do provide a large portion of our electric power so replacing them should probably be done using something that scales up quickly. Solar and wind seem to have this property.