There are any of a number of ways to address our energy needs. The problem is, there's no one way that is sufficiently good that it trumps the others in public opinion/policy making.
No one has enough political capital to push their own pet method through fully, but each side seems to have enough to prevent the other alternatives or at least make them unpalatable.
What I fear is most likely is that we'll get down to a make or break right now crisis, we won't build up the new infrastructure and alternatives over decades. We'll have to make a quick fix decision in a panic and set ourselves up for trouble that way.
Personally, I'm pro-nuclear but admit it has problems. Some of them technical, many of them political.
So do all of the other sources.
Wind, solar and geothermal have questions of availability and steadiness in many areas and all address one side of energy, just like nuclear. Electricity.
Coal and other fossil sources have obvious emissions problems and limited supply. Many of the current sources of oil require geopolitical compromises (often seriously bad ones).
Nuclear needs a more advanced fuel cycle before it doesn't have a supply limit problem.
Fusion doesn't exist in usable form yet and shows no sign of getting there soon.
Etc, etc. We can all fill in the blanks on the downsides.
And what do you have to show it's a major release other than hearsay, innuendo and supposition?
Certainly what you cited wasn't a significant exposure. Reread what you just wrote. 1 month's normal exposure. Guess you never get any x-rays or fly long distances. And it wasn't 100 miles out, but an aircraft that flew close and they just barely picked it up on their monitors. And that's in a Navy that takes the slightest exposure incredibly seriously.
Mea Culpa on the magnitude, but the error is in a direction that underscores the point I was making.
For more accurate comparison you'd need the ground shake data from where the plant is. That would allow for the distance and the vagaries of the geology the waves went through.
Richter scale is what's still largely reported via news and what most people have a grasp on.
"Tepco's last safety test of nuclear power plant Number 1--one that is currently in danger of meltdown--was done at a seismic magnitude the company considered the highest possible, but in fact turned out to be lower than Friday's quake. The information comes from the company's "Fukushima No. 1 and No. 2 Updated Safety Measures" documents written in Japanese in 2010 and 2009. The documents were reviewed by Dow Jones. The company said in the documents that 7.9 was the highest magnitude for which they tested the safety for their No. 1 and No. 2 nuclear power plants in Fukushima".
I agree that Tepco isn't a third party, but this was their own filing on a safety issue before this happened. If they were distorting, you'd expect them to say it would take a greater quake, not lesser.
WSJ is just one source that mentions several of the things I said including mentioning the RCIC. The failures of the power and RCIC backup cooling systems have been in mutiple places in the news as well as Tepco's own reporting on their (highly slashdotted) site.
The height of the tsunami was from memory of CNN reporting a couple of days ago. That might be criticized as not being accurate, but if you look at the before and after pics of the plant waterfront area it went over some pretty high seawalls regardless.
Godzilla and the Smog Monster: Toho Film Company, 1972.;)
And I'm very much in favor of those things. We don't use passive solar in building. We have a lot of old technology out there.
Mea culpa on that one. I've done HVAC work and yet I still have a pair of 40+ year old furnaces heating my house.
But much of that's in the consumer realm, and that's hard to change quickly.
In industry, there's a lot less than a couple decades ago. Much better motor control technology and materials increased the efficiency a lot. A lot of the low hanging fruit from efficiency has already been taken.
The variable output/storage is a big problem, as is the inability to effectively use electricity rather than fuel for ships and long haul trucking. If we can figure that one out, it'd help a lot. New tech batteries are getting a lot better, but they aren't quite there yet.
Ok, how about this? We need power to support the infrastructure needed to provide food to the existing populations.
Like it or not that situation exists. The only way to remedy it is to reduce the population drastically and return to lower carrying rate methods on farming and only local travel/shipping.
There was a time like that. It was called the middle ages.
"We aren't impressed that having made huge stores of poison, you haven't killed that many people YET. We want you to stop making huge stores of poison, period."
Darn me for doing that. I just get up in the morning and release the demons from the earth and set them on the peasantry. It just seems like the thing to do before I've had my coffee.;)
Uh... You seem a bit breathless.
The coast of Japan is smashed, tens of thousands are missing with many of them dead, and you're more concerned about a potential radiological release?
So, let's see. So far these plants have endured an earthquake 10 times what they were designed for (8.9 Richter earthquake. Design was for 7.9. Modulo distance/ground transmission from epicenter.), a 23 foot tsunami that took out backup generators and the switchyard taking out all but battery power, failures of the RCIC backup cooling system, and 2 massive hydrogen explosions that took out the buildings around the containments.
And thus far no significant release of radioactivity.
And we've got people saying the plants are fragile and unsafe?
What do you want? The North Koreans hitting it with bunker busters? A meteor strike?
Godzilla and the smog monster duking it out on the grounds?
When I saw the headline, I immediately thought of:
Doolittle: Hello, Bomb? Are you with me? Bomb #20: Of course. Doolittle: Are you willing to entertain a few concepts? Bomb #20: I am always receptive to suggestions. Doolittle: Fine. Think about this then. How do you know you exist? Bomb #20: Well, of course I exist. Doolittle: But how do you know you exist? Bomb #20: It is intuitively obvious. Doolittle: Intuition is no proof. What concrete evidence do you have that you exist? Bomb #20: Hmmmm... well... I think, therefore I am. Doolittle: That's good. That's very good. But how do you know that anything else exists? Bomb #20: My sensory apparatus reveals it to me. This is fun.
Leftist luddism is alive and well, thank you very much. Much of the organic foods/anti-gmo movement, for example. Regardless that the massive negative health effects claimed from processing and modern agriculture just don't show up in studies.
It's largely due to the left and some pretty dubious assertions on the nature of waste and proliferation hazards that we don't rely much more heavily on nuclear power.
Michio Kaku's campaigning against the RTGs on deep space probes was classic. And now he's held up as a guru of promoting science. He's far more a guru of promoting Michio Kaku.
The left is happy to support science that it agrees with.
Because he was one of the science relativism types back in the ago. When his methods started being used to undermine things he believed in, he suddenly decided his former positions were bunkum.
Software just can't substitute for brains. Sure you don't have to chase a CD or DVD down, but it's all crunchy rather than soft and squishy the way they're supposed to be.
Oh please. If you're going to troll as an AC at least show some skill at it.
He's arguing against putting in communications by saying that due to sovereignty communications shouldn't be put in without the permission of a government that very much doesn't want news coverage.
Noting that he's effectively saying the same thing as Saif is hardly calling him a Nazi.
Using that tired gambit of saying someone called someone a Nazi and therefore their argument is somehow stricken down regardless is bush league.
Those evil outsiders. Daring to put in links to a blacked out area so people can talk and communicate.
I don't buy it. Countries violate the sovereignty of others all the time. And then cry great walrus tears when their own is infringed on. If you were arguing against a no fly zone, or military aid to one side I'd give it more credence.
After all, Gaddhafi just wants to be left alone so he can murder his people in peace and not have people around the world know he's doing it.
But, one of the problems for the media has been getting news out of Libya. Having a functioning net connection helps a lot in that even if most don't have access to it. You're not limited to satellite phones and portable sat terminals which are expensive and often slow.
Short of doing a difficult isotope separation on the Pu, I'd be quite surprised if they were able to make use of power reactor Pu for bomb production. The British and the US both did some testing toward that in the 50s and concluded it was impractical. It's far easier to set up a reactor with a neutron energy cross section that limits the amount of heavier Pu isotopes.
This is why the US and other countries were willing to build light water power reactors for North Korea, as the Pu would be difficult to divert into a nuclear weapons program.
This idea that power reactor Pu is easily processed into bomb fuel is largely a myth.
The problem for proliferation is, that if a country sets up a reprocessing facility for recovering plutonium, it looks the same no matter whether it's processing power reactor fuel, or fuel from a reactor specifically set up to make bomb fuel.
Example: If Iran had no reprocessing facility, you could be fairly sure they weren't using the Pu path to weapons. (Reprocessing facilities can be fairly easily detected as they are large industrial operations that leave an isotopic footprint, as mentioned in the article you link to.)
But, if Iran had a reprocessing facility, ostensibly to reprocess fuel from a power reactor like Bushehr, it would be difficult to verify they weren't also using it to reprocess fuel from a different source that had a better isotopic makeup for bomb fuel.
This is why developing a different reprocessing method than PUREX, like pyroprocessing, is attractive. It creates a mixed fuel of all the actinides remaining in the spent fuel that isn't particularly suitable for bomb making.
The key is "up to" 15 years. Unless it has a mandatory minimum sentence, the judge has a lot of leeway in what is handed down. A lot of other crimes have pretty broad sentencing guidelines as well.
In this case, Whac-A-Mole isn't that big of a deal. If an arcade game fails, it's rare someone gets hurt. He'll get off lightly.
If he'd done this with something more mission critical (and it somehow made it past QC) that might warrant more.
Imagine if he'd put a logic bomb in a system controlling a radiation therapy machine for cancer. Even if it hadn't hurt anyone, the potential for harm would be much greater, and the judge would take that into account in setting the sentence.
Slashdot Mirror
There are any of a number of ways to address our energy needs. The problem is, there's no one way that is sufficiently good that it trumps the others in public opinion/policy making.
No one has enough political capital to push their own pet method through fully, but each side seems to have enough to prevent the other alternatives or at least make them unpalatable.
What I fear is most likely is that we'll get down to a make or break right now crisis, we won't build up the new infrastructure and alternatives over decades. We'll have to make a quick fix decision in a panic and set ourselves up for trouble that way.
Personally, I'm pro-nuclear but admit it has problems. Some of them technical, many of them political.
So do all of the other sources.
Wind, solar and geothermal have questions of availability and steadiness in many areas and all address one side of energy, just like nuclear. Electricity.
Coal and other fossil sources have obvious emissions problems and limited supply. Many of the current sources of oil require geopolitical compromises (often seriously bad ones).
Nuclear needs a more advanced fuel cycle before it doesn't have a supply limit problem.
Fusion doesn't exist in usable form yet and shows no sign of getting there soon.
Etc, etc. We can all fill in the blanks on the downsides.
I had the luxury of making those stupid newbie posts on the Plato system starting in 1979. (Though, there are some archives somewhere, I think.)
Now, I just have to worry about all the stupid posts I made on Usenet when I should have known better.
And even worse, all the pointless flamewars I got into here on Slashdot.
And what do you have to show it's a major release other than hearsay, innuendo and supposition?
Certainly what you cited wasn't a significant exposure. Reread what you just wrote. 1 month's normal exposure. Guess you never get any x-rays or fly long distances. And it wasn't 100 miles out, but an aircraft that flew close and they just barely picked it up on their monitors. And that's in a Navy that takes the slightest exposure incredibly seriously.
Mea Culpa on the magnitude, but the error is in a direction that underscores the point I was making.
For more accurate comparison you'd need the ground shake data from where the plant is. That would allow for the distance and the vagaries of the geology the waves went through.
Richter scale is what's still largely reported via news and what most people have a grasp on.
From the Wall Street Journal: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703555404576195700301455480.html
"Tepco's last safety test of nuclear power plant Number 1--one that is currently in danger of meltdown--was done at a seismic magnitude the company considered the highest possible, but in fact turned out to be lower than Friday's quake. The information comes from the company's "Fukushima No. 1 and No. 2 Updated Safety Measures" documents written in Japanese in 2010 and 2009. The documents were reviewed by Dow Jones. The company said in the documents that 7.9 was the highest magnitude for which they tested the safety for their No. 1 and No. 2 nuclear power plants in Fukushima".
I agree that Tepco isn't a third party, but this was their own filing on a safety issue before this happened. If they were distorting, you'd expect them to say it would take a greater quake, not lesser.
WSJ is just one source that mentions several of the things I said including mentioning the RCIC. The failures of the power and RCIC backup cooling systems have been in mutiple places in the news as well as Tepco's own reporting on their (highly slashdotted) site.
The height of the tsunami was from memory of CNN reporting a couple of days ago. That might be criticized as not being accurate, but if you look at the before and after pics of the plant waterfront area it went over some pretty high seawalls regardless.
Godzilla and the Smog Monster: Toho Film Company, 1972. ;)
And I'm very much in favor of those things. We don't use passive solar in building. We have a lot of old technology out there.
Mea culpa on that one. I've done HVAC work and yet I still have a pair of 40+ year old furnaces heating my house.
But much of that's in the consumer realm, and that's hard to change quickly.
In industry, there's a lot less than a couple decades ago. Much better motor control technology and materials increased the efficiency a lot. A lot of the low hanging fruit from efficiency has already been taken.
The variable output/storage is a big problem, as is the inability to effectively use electricity rather than fuel for ships and long haul trucking. If we can figure that one out, it'd help a lot. New tech batteries are getting a lot better, but they aren't quite there yet.
Ok, how about this? We need power to support the infrastructure needed to provide food to the existing populations.
Like it or not that situation exists. The only way to remedy it is to reduce the population drastically and return to lower carrying rate methods on farming and only local travel/shipping.
There was a time like that. It was called the middle ages.
"We aren't impressed that having made huge stores of poison, you haven't killed that many people YET. We want you to stop making huge stores of poison, period."
Darn me for doing that. I just get up in the morning and release the demons from the earth and set them on the peasantry. It just seems like the thing to do before I've had my coffee. ;)
Uh... You seem a bit breathless.
The coast of Japan is smashed, tens of thousands are missing with many of them dead, and you're more concerned about a potential radiological release?
Get a sense of proportion.
So, let's see. So far these plants have endured an earthquake 10 times what they were designed for (8.9 Richter earthquake. Design was for 7.9. Modulo distance/ground transmission from epicenter.), a 23 foot tsunami that took out backup generators and the switchyard taking out all but battery power, failures of the RCIC backup cooling system, and 2 massive hydrogen explosions that took out the buildings around the containments.
And thus far no significant release of radioactivity.
And we've got people saying the plants are fragile and unsafe?
What do you want? The North Koreans hitting it with bunker busters? A meteor strike?
Godzilla and the smog monster duking it out on the grounds?
When I saw the headline, I immediately thought of:
Doolittle: Hello, Bomb? Are you with me?
Bomb #20: Of course.
Doolittle: Are you willing to entertain a few concepts?
Bomb #20: I am always receptive to suggestions.
Doolittle: Fine. Think about this then. How do you know you exist?
Bomb #20: Well, of course I exist.
Doolittle: But how do you know you exist?
Bomb #20: It is intuitively obvious.
Doolittle: Intuition is no proof. What concrete evidence do you have that you exist?
Bomb #20: Hmmmm... well... I think, therefore I am.
Doolittle: That's good. That's very good. But how do you know that anything else exists?
Bomb #20: My sensory apparatus reveals it to me. This is fun.
A kitchen conversation in a few years:
"Mom! I'm hungry!"
"You know how to print a double cheeseburger yourself, young man."
Leftist luddism is alive and well, thank you very much. Much of the organic foods/anti-gmo movement, for example. Regardless that the massive negative health effects claimed from processing and modern agriculture just don't show up in studies.
It's largely due to the left and some pretty dubious assertions on the nature of waste and proliferation hazards that we don't rely much more heavily on nuclear power.
Michio Kaku's campaigning against the RTGs on deep space probes was classic. And now he's held up as a guru of promoting science. He's far more a guru of promoting Michio Kaku.
The left is happy to support science that it agrees with.
Because he was one of the science relativism types back in the ago. When his methods started being used to undermine things he believed in, he suddenly decided his former positions were bunkum.
Oh, string theory has lots of facts. In fact, it not only fits all of them, it fits all conceivable sets of them.
Peter Woit chose the name of his blog for that very reason.
Software just can't substitute for brains. Sure you don't have to chase a CD or DVD down, but it's all crunchy rather than soft and squishy the way they're supposed to be.
Ah. So pro journalists are the only newsworthy communications coming out of a country? You seem to dismiss that others might have something to say.
Hardly seems a reasonable position for someone taking an anticorporate news tack.
Oh please. If you're going to troll as an AC at least show some skill at it.
He's arguing against putting in communications by saying that due to sovereignty communications shouldn't be put in without the permission of a government that very much doesn't want news coverage.
Noting that he's effectively saying the same thing as Saif is hardly calling him a Nazi.
Using that tired gambit of saying someone called someone a Nazi and therefore their argument is somehow stricken down regardless is bush league.
Yes, and if you haven't learned them, and how to do them as a group, you get zapped in large numbers.
Ever wonder why a few advisors can make a huge difference in the performance of relatively untrained troops?
If you were correct, and it was so easy that everyone picked it up naturally then that wouldn't be the case.
Those evil outsiders. Daring to put in links to a blacked out area so people can talk and communicate.
I don't buy it. Countries violate the sovereignty of others all the time. And then cry great walrus tears when their own is infringed on. If you were arguing against a no fly zone, or military aid to one side I'd give it more credence.
After all, Gaddhafi just wants to be left alone so he can murder his people in peace and not have people around the world know he's doing it.
You obviously have never been in the infantry.
There's a lot more to small unit tactics, and even weapon use than point and pull the trigger.
I think that has been the point of some of Saif Islam Gaddhafi's speechs.
Like you, he wants the world to turn away so his dad can murder his people more comfortably in private.
But, one of the problems for the media has been getting news out of Libya. Having a functioning net connection helps a lot in that even if most don't have access to it. You're not limited to satellite phones and portable sat terminals which are expensive and often slow.
Well, thank heavens no one would ever stoop to stereotyping a whole state.
Short of doing a difficult isotope separation on the Pu, I'd be quite surprised if they were able to make use of power reactor Pu for bomb production. The British and the US both did some testing toward that in the 50s and concluded it was impractical. It's far easier to set up a reactor with a neutron energy cross section that limits the amount of heavier Pu isotopes.
This is why the US and other countries were willing to build light water power reactors for North Korea, as the Pu would be difficult to divert into a nuclear weapons program.
This idea that power reactor Pu is easily processed into bomb fuel is largely a myth.
The problem for proliferation is, that if a country sets up a reprocessing facility for recovering plutonium, it looks the same no matter whether it's processing power reactor fuel, or fuel from a reactor specifically set up to make bomb fuel.
Example: If Iran had no reprocessing facility, you could be fairly sure they weren't using the Pu path to weapons. (Reprocessing facilities can be fairly easily detected as they are large industrial operations that leave an isotopic footprint, as mentioned in the article you link to.)
But, if Iran had a reprocessing facility, ostensibly to reprocess fuel from a power reactor like Bushehr, it would be difficult to verify they weren't also using it to reprocess fuel from a different source that had a better isotopic makeup for bomb fuel.
This is why developing a different reprocessing method than PUREX, like pyroprocessing, is attractive. It creates a mixed fuel of all the actinides remaining in the spent fuel that isn't particularly suitable for bomb making.
The key is "up to" 15 years. Unless it has a mandatory minimum sentence, the judge has a lot of leeway in what is handed down. A lot of other crimes have pretty broad sentencing guidelines as well.
In this case, Whac-A-Mole isn't that big of a deal. If an arcade game fails, it's rare someone gets hurt. He'll get off lightly.
If he'd done this with something more mission critical (and it somehow made it past QC) that might warrant more.
Imagine if he'd put a logic bomb in a system controlling a radiation therapy machine for cancer. Even if it hadn't hurt anyone, the potential for harm would be much greater, and the judge would take that into account in setting the sentence.