Well, you're forgetting insignificant parts where Germans invaded France and the USSR, committing crimes that make every other genocide pale in comparison.
I worked on a nuclear power plant last year (well, actually on two powerplants). You won't believe the amount of paperwork that follows ANYTHING and most of this paperwork can (and is) inspected by the IAEA. As for lying and misrepresenting, well, no industry is blameless. Personally, I don't think additional oversight will help. Right now we need additional incentives to abandon old reactors and build new ones.
"High-level meaning what?"
Waste containing high concentrations of long-lived (with half-life of hundreds to thousands of years) radioactive isotopes. The 'scary stuff' that will be radioactive for geological timeframes. IAEA has a definition somewhere on their site, but I'm too lazy right now.
"And what about the rest? Given your record, and that of the industry, the "medium level" waste is very likely to be compeltely scary poisonous stuff that's going to remain active for a million of years. And in copious amounts."
No. Medium-level waste is usually steel/concrete contaminated with cesium, strontium and trace amounts of other stuff. It's uneconomical to reprocess it, so right now it's usually simply stored. In a couple hundreds of years it'll be safe enough - long-lived isotopes won't be gone but there's not that much of them.
My opinion: just fucking dump it into deep-ocean trenches.
1) Solar panels won't work. They are too expensive, unless a breakthrough happens - there are some hints that it might happen, but nothing definite so far. Also, strong periodicity and possibility of wide-spread fluctuations make solar unsuitable for baseload.
2) Solar thermal is possible, but waaay too expensive. It has all the disadvantages of solar (diffuse energy, fluctuations) and thermal power plants (costly generating equipment). Contrary to popular beliefs, solar thermal does not automatically allow to store heat for 'rainy days'. And molten salt heat storage is way too expensive.
3) Reduced consumption is a non-starter. Consumption WILL grow, because of electric automobiles, third-world countries (which are the main source of growth, btw) and so on.
Nuclear industry is incredibly open. You can fairly easily obtain most technical specs for powerplants, industrial processes, evaluations of safety, etc.
And there are intrinsically safe reactor designs. Like pebble bed reactors which are meltdown-safe. Or new CANDU reactors which can be passively cooled in case of cooling system failures. Or IFRs and continuous burning wave reactors. There are lots of designs, but very little of real development. For several reasons: NIMBY is one of them, then there's the high financial risk of failure. And nuclear power subsidies are actually minuscule compared to alternative energy, if one compares it on per-MWh basis.
And there's no real waste problem. You might have heard that all the high-level waste after reprocessing would only take the size of one football field and about 1 meter deep.
Nope. It's enough to replace nuclear power, but fossil power will have to _grow_ to compensate for growing demand. And German government is not even trying to conceal this, conceding that they'll have to build more fossil power plants.
As I've said, it's "either/or" situation. Either you replace nuclear or you can get rid of fossil power plants. But not both at the same time.
(unless you live in a place with abundant and reliable wind/geothermal/hydro power)
And global warming will cause increase in extreme weather events, that involve sudden evacuation of large areas possibly with a huge economic (not to mention human) impact. In particular in densely populated areas. Please stop belittling it.
"It is you who claimed that nuclear is self contained. My point is that you, who know better, are lying. I really would like to know why."
No. I'm telling that for most practical purposes nuclear power is self-contained. It's not perfectly self-contained (nothing is), but is close enough.
"Why are you so attached to that technology? It is scary."
Because there's no alternative. And denying it guarantees that we'll head hit the worst GW projections.
From living for about a year in area with 10 times the legal limit of arsenic in water. Leaching from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoil_tip from coal mining.
Now, arsenic is not that bad for wildlife. It's just another selective pressure to which animals and plants adapt just fine. But so is radiation.
But you'd have to do a cleanup comparable with cleanup from nuclear fallout to remove accumulated heavy metals from soil.
Oh, so Germany is uncivilized. Great, that explains it. Thanks! Current CO2 taxes in European countries are nothing. They are a laughingstock.
You demand for nuclear power to be insured against the possible radiation leaks. But at the same time you should demand that fossil fuel powerplants should be held accountable for the global warming because right now fossil power plants are essentially free to emit CO2.
Realistically, if REAL carbon tax is imposed then fossil fuel powerplants won't be cost-effective. But we need power right now, so we let it slide.
"Saying nuclear is "self-contained" is just a blatant lie. Self contained perhaps if you look at a given year of operation, but certainly not on the long rung, and not at all if something bad happens."
So are ALL other types of energy production. And your point is...?
Most of these so called 'studies' assume that: 1) There won't be growth in electric power consumption. 2) There'll be significant improvements to the whole grid. 3) There'll be significant improvements to the generating technology. 4) Capital is unlimited. 5) Optimal circumstances for their particular brand of renewable power are universal.
I haven't yet seen _any_ report which doesn't make at least two of these assumptions.
Realistically, it's either fossil fuels or nuclear power for the next 50 years or so.
The nominal power output is about 4 times the average output. Yep, inland wind farms typically work at 25% of their nominal power. Offshore wind powerplants can reliably produce about 50% of their nominal power.
There were two reactors AVR and THTR-300. AVR was a prototype built in 1966 and worked for 20 years, producing electricity. Problems were found only during its decommissioning (quite significant ones, sure). THTR-300 was essentially yet another prototype reactor - it used thorium instead of uranium. And had a lot of flaws because of it.
But even with these flaws the inherent safety of pebble bed reactors was not in question.
You won't get any greenhouse gas emissions using natural gas. CH4 is about twice as effective as carbon per mole of emitted CO2.
However, the problem is in methane leaks. Methane is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2 and just about 2% of leaking CH4 will negate all the benefits of natural gas.
They are/were not really centrally controlled economies, but they did (or still do) have very strong centrally planned component in their economy. So yeah, complete centralization doesn't work well. But a certain amount of centralized planning works quite well.
Pebble bed is a quick-and-dirty solution. It can be made safe enough (Germany had problems with an _experimental_ reactor).
There are other solutions: IFRs, thorium reactors, CANDU, etc. There's no shortage of designs, actually. Some of them are being built, for a fraction of price that goes towards 'green' incentives in Germany alone.
90% efficiency is thermodynamically impossible in gas turbines. The electric generation efficiency of gas turbines is little less than in modern steam power plants. One can achieve 90% efficiency by using waste heat for residential heating, etc. But that's certainly possible with other types of fossil fuels.
And 'bridge fuel' is total bullshit. It's not a 'bridge technology', it's a permanent shift away from CO2 reduction. Germany is looking at generating at least 50% of its power using fossil fuels for at least 30 more years, realistically.
But that's to be expected considering the general dumbosity of the so called 'green' party.
"The open pit coal mines, would work stop there tomorrow, would be safe to visit the next day, and green, and lush, and inhabitable, in a matter of years."
Have you ever BEEN near a coal mine or open pit mines? They won't be safe for living for many hundreds of years (sky-high levels of mercury, arsenic and other nice elements) and won't be green for many tens of years unless one restores topsoil.
That's why Germany and Russia are building pipeline at the bottom of the sea to transfer gas directly from Russia to Germany without any middle-men: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordstream
See, that's what planning is! No need for those pesky nuclear reactors when one could happily burn natural gas from Russia.
Oh, CO2 emission target? What CO2 emission target?
Apartheid by definition is racial segregation within borders of a country.
That's what happens in Israel. Palestine Authority is not a country but a part of Israel, however its citizens are denied the right to move freely within the borders of Israel.
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Well, you're forgetting insignificant parts where Germans invaded France and the USSR, committing crimes that make every other genocide pale in comparison.
Actually, I think posting real information will cause as much damage as defacing.
Just imagine how many people will experience terminal cognitive dissonance upon reading real news on Fox News!
I worked on a nuclear power plant last year (well, actually on two powerplants). You won't believe the amount of paperwork that follows ANYTHING and most of this paperwork can (and is) inspected by the IAEA. As for lying and misrepresenting, well, no industry is blameless. Personally, I don't think additional oversight will help. Right now we need additional incentives to abandon old reactors and build new ones.
"High-level meaning what?"
Waste containing high concentrations of long-lived (with half-life of hundreds to thousands of years) radioactive isotopes. The 'scary stuff' that will be radioactive for geological timeframes. IAEA has a definition somewhere on their site, but I'm too lazy right now.
"And what about the rest? Given your record, and that of the industry, the "medium level" waste is very likely to be compeltely scary poisonous stuff that's going to remain active for a million of years. And in copious amounts."
No. Medium-level waste is usually steel/concrete contaminated with cesium, strontium and trace amounts of other stuff. It's uneconomical to reprocess it, so right now it's usually simply stored. In a couple hundreds of years it'll be safe enough - long-lived isotopes won't be gone but there's not that much of them.
My opinion: just fucking dump it into deep-ocean trenches.
There are no alternatives which can scale.
1) Solar panels won't work. They are too expensive, unless a breakthrough happens - there are some hints that it might happen, but nothing definite so far. Also, strong periodicity and possibility of wide-spread fluctuations make solar unsuitable for baseload.
2) Solar thermal is possible, but waaay too expensive. It has all the disadvantages of solar (diffuse energy, fluctuations) and thermal power plants (costly generating equipment). Contrary to popular beliefs, solar thermal does not automatically allow to store heat for 'rainy days'. And molten salt heat storage is way too expensive.
3) Reduced consumption is a non-starter. Consumption WILL grow, because of electric automobiles, third-world countries (which are the main source of growth, btw) and so on.
Nuclear industry is incredibly open. You can fairly easily obtain most technical specs for powerplants, industrial processes, evaluations of safety, etc.
And there are intrinsically safe reactor designs. Like pebble bed reactors which are meltdown-safe. Or new CANDU reactors which can be passively cooled in case of cooling system failures. Or IFRs and continuous burning wave reactors. There are lots of designs, but very little of real development. For several reasons: NIMBY is one of them, then there's the high financial risk of failure. And nuclear power subsidies are actually minuscule compared to alternative energy, if one compares it on per-MWh basis.
And there's no real waste problem. You might have heard that all the high-level waste after reprocessing would only take the size of one football field and about 1 meter deep.
Nope. It's enough to replace nuclear power, but fossil power will have to _grow_ to compensate for growing demand. And German government is not even trying to conceal this, conceding that they'll have to build more fossil power plants.
As I've said, it's "either/or" situation. Either you replace nuclear or you can get rid of fossil power plants. But not both at the same time.
(unless you live in a place with abundant and reliable wind/geothermal/hydro power)
And global warming will cause increase in extreme weather events, that involve sudden evacuation of large areas possibly with a huge economic (not to mention human) impact. In particular in densely populated areas. Please stop belittling it.
"It is you who claimed that nuclear is self contained. My point is that you, who know better, are lying. I really would like to know why."
No. I'm telling that for most practical purposes nuclear power is self-contained. It's not perfectly self-contained (nothing is), but is close enough.
"Why are you so attached to that technology? It is scary."
Because there's no alternative. And denying it guarantees that we'll head hit the worst GW projections.
From living for about a year in area with 10 times the legal limit of arsenic in water. Leaching from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoil_tip from coal mining.
Now, arsenic is not that bad for wildlife. It's just another selective pressure to which animals and plants adapt just fine. But so is radiation.
But you'd have to do a cleanup comparable with cleanup from nuclear fallout to remove accumulated heavy metals from soil.
Oh, so Germany is uncivilized. Great, that explains it. Thanks! Current CO2 taxes in European countries are nothing. They are a laughingstock.
You demand for nuclear power to be insured against the possible radiation leaks. But at the same time you should demand that fossil fuel powerplants should be held accountable for the global warming because right now fossil power plants are essentially free to emit CO2.
Realistically, if REAL carbon tax is imposed then fossil fuel powerplants won't be cost-effective. But we need power right now, so we let it slide.
"Saying nuclear is "self-contained" is just a blatant lie. Self contained perhaps if you look at a given year of operation, but certainly not on the long rung, and not at all if something bad happens."
So are ALL other types of energy production. And your point is...?
So?
Solar power in Germany is even more prohibitively expensive. Yet it received great subsidies and a lot of praise: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7053
Most of these so called 'studies' assume that:
1) There won't be growth in electric power consumption.
2) There'll be significant improvements to the whole grid.
3) There'll be significant improvements to the generating technology.
4) Capital is unlimited.
5) Optimal circumstances for their particular brand of renewable power are universal.
I haven't yet seen _any_ report which doesn't make at least two of these assumptions.
Realistically, it's either fossil fuels or nuclear power for the next 50 years or so.
But there's a smaaaaaal issue.
The nominal power output is about 4 times the average output. Yep, inland wind farms typically work at 25% of their nominal power. Offshore wind powerplants can reliably produce about 50% of their nominal power.
That's a dirty little secret of wind power.
In short, it doesn't: http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/6638
CO2 load is lessened by about 2 times, but leaked CH4 more than compensates for it.
Oh, by the way.
Natural gas power plants have insurance against global warming effects, do they?
It's kinda dishonest to compare dirty fossil fuels with uninsured and unpaid externalities and essentially self-contained nuclear power.
There were two reactors AVR and THTR-300. AVR was a prototype built in 1966 and worked for 20 years, producing electricity. Problems were found only during its decommissioning (quite significant ones, sure). THTR-300 was essentially yet another prototype reactor - it used thorium instead of uranium. And had a lot of flaws because of it.
But even with these flaws the inherent safety of pebble bed reactors was not in question.
You won't get any greenhouse gas emissions using natural gas. CH4 is about twice as effective as carbon per mole of emitted CO2.
However, the problem is in methane leaks. Methane is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2 and just about 2% of leaking CH4 will negate all the benefits of natural gas.
http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/6638
So in practice a switch from nuclear to natural gas will increase global warming emissions.
How about China, Singapore, Hong-Kong?
They are/were not really centrally controlled economies, but they did (or still do) have very strong centrally planned component in their economy. So yeah, complete centralization doesn't work well. But a certain amount of centralized planning works quite well.
As always, the dose makes the poison.
Pebble bed is a quick-and-dirty solution. It can be made safe enough (Germany had problems with an _experimental_ reactor).
There are other solutions: IFRs, thorium reactors, CANDU, etc. There's no shortage of designs, actually. Some of them are being built, for a fraction of price that goes towards 'green' incentives in Germany alone.
And it won't produce more than 25% by 2022, if that. In the long run (by 2030), it won't produce more than 50% of its energy from renewable sources.
90% efficiency is thermodynamically impossible in gas turbines. The electric generation efficiency of gas turbines is little less than in modern steam power plants. One can achieve 90% efficiency by using waste heat for residential heating, etc. But that's certainly possible with other types of fossil fuels.
And 'bridge fuel' is total bullshit. It's not a 'bridge technology', it's a permanent shift away from CO2 reduction. Germany is looking at generating at least 50% of its power using fossil fuels for at least 30 more years, realistically.
But that's to be expected considering the general dumbosity of the so called 'green' party.
"The open pit coal mines, would work stop there tomorrow, would be safe to visit the next day, and green, and lush, and inhabitable, in a matter of years."
Have you ever BEEN near a coal mine or open pit mines? They won't be safe for living for many hundreds of years (sky-high levels of mercury, arsenic and other nice elements) and won't be green for many tens of years unless one restores topsoil.
That's why Germany and Russia are building pipeline at the bottom of the sea to transfer gas directly from Russia to Germany without any middle-men: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordstream
See, that's what planning is! No need for those pesky nuclear reactors when one could happily burn natural gas from Russia.
Oh, CO2 emission target? What CO2 emission target?
Sure. There won't be problems with generating power in 2022. After all, the Nordstream project would be in operation for several years by then.
There'll be plenty of Russian gas, so don't worry!
Duh.
The question is: why not ALL Palestinians are Israeli citizens?
There might be (bad) reasons for it, but it's still apartheid. Just like in the South Africa - they had their reasons too.
What exactly?
Palestine citizens need special permissions to move past checkpoints. That's why the wall was built.
And Palestine is NOT a separate state. That's also not controversial at all.
Apartheid by definition is racial segregation within borders of a country.
That's what happens in Israel. Palestine Authority is not a country but a part of Israel, however its citizens are denied the right to move freely within the borders of Israel.