Just a minor quirk, but annoying. I experience no such flickering in windows XP or OS X. (I'm customarily using all 3 OSes, Ubuntu for work, OS X for home, and XP for gaming.)
I'm installing Ubuntu 9.04 on a mates new machine tomorrow. I suggested he try it first and if he doesn't like it he just shell out for Windows 7.
I'm just about to upgrade my Ubuntu installation. I doubt I play the same games as you but so far most of the ones I'm interested in seem to run ok under wine (Empire at War, COD4), I'm not really a big gamer though.
If you want a really fast free database that supports fulltext indexing, and you don't need transactions, MyISAM in the engine to use.
I can't really get by without being able to lock records in InnoDB, as opposed to the whole table in MyISAM. But I think that the Falcon engine is the long term way to go.
Maybe if MySQL was GPL3 this mess might look a lot different, then again so would MySQL.
Nowhere did I compare leeching with acid rain (which is caused by coal power stations).
I said Then there is also the Sulfuric Acid leech mining being used in Australia when it is illegal in the U.S and Russia.
You responded Acid rain is a phenoma of coal burning and its effects is much worse and more difficult to contain.
Name one continent whose entire water table was poisoned?
I said being poisoned. Australia's Great Artesian Basin is being poisoned by in-situ acid leech mining. Why don't you lobby to have all sulfuric acid leech mining banned in all countries if you are advocating a responsible Nuclear Industry?
So you cite the non-existence of a study as the cause of massive deaths.
Your response is entirely predictable. Since we don't know which isotopes were released we have no way of identifying the cancers produced in the population by elements analoged. You want to believe that no-one died from cancers contracted by TMI fallout because it comforts you and reinforces your beliefs about nuclear power. What I actually said was;
It's more honest to say "We don't know how many people died as a result of TMI because because no data was collected".
Why don't you lobby for laws to enforce all isotopes released by the Nuclear industry be identified if you are advocating a responsible Nuclear Industry?
nuclear material than nuclear power stations - the only difference is that it is dissipated in the air.
All the radioactive isotopes end up in the food chain, where it is bio-concentrated. Some portion will be consumed by humans. The longer more radioactive isotopes are leaked into the food chain from any source the more incidences of cancers will increase through ingestion. Why don't you lobby to have all radio active isotopes collected and contained whether it comes from Nuclear Industry processes or coal smoke stacks, if you are advocating a responsible Nuclear Industry?
no one said you should use depleted uranium in weapons.
But it is because it makes an ideal projectile. If this by-product of Uranium mining was not available it would not be used. Why don't you lobby to have it used as crane/lift counterweights if you are advocating a responsible Nuclear Industry?
Chernobyl was an unfortunate accident based on a set of unfortunate circumstances.
Again, an entirely predictable response. It's unfortunate but all that Nuclear fallout from the Chernobyl Nuclear power plant doesn't count. It's unfortunate but the Nuclear Industry is not responsible. You are saying that the coal industry should take responsibility for all of their C02 emissions, so you should lobby for the Nuclear industry to take responsibility for all of their radioactive isotope emissions, if you were advocating a responsible Nuclear Industry.
Why don't you use your own money for that?
I do.
unfortunately there is no way around the large amount of energy needed by industry (e.g. aluminium smelters).
The irony of this comment is that is exactly the use recommended for the electrical output of geo-thermal power stations.
Nuclear power plants do not need subsidies.
The breakdown of U.S energy research and development subsidies reported by the US DOE is roughly 60% for nuclear, 25% to fossil fuels and 15% to SUSTAINABLE energy sources.
In addition to what I mentioned above you can add the 2005 U.S energy bill provided another $13 billion dollars worth of subsidies and revocation of the Public Utilities Holding Company Act (PUHCA, by George.W.Bush, whi
Come to think of it this is a great idea for a board game, we could call it M$ Monopoly. Goes like this:
Everyone get's to be their own Microsoft. Instead of "GO!" you would have "START!", instead of "Jail" you would have "Court" and you would actually get to use goto's. Instead of Money you would have 'Bills' and instead of a dice you would throw little chairs.
The person with the most money get's paid by every other player. When you land on someone else's property, you get to sue them if you have more money or visa-versa. To win the game you are involved in the most lawsuits and have all the money.
The USA had a moratorium... Several other countries
You said old (and bad) reactor designs are replaced with newer (and safer) reactor designs I don't see evidence of that in any of the Korean reactors listed. All of those designs are pre-cursors to the AP-1000 which suffer from the flaws I listed and you listed CANDU reactors which have a notorious reputation for being difficult to operate and some serious safety issues.
In the last ten years of operation the Korean program you cited has had 193 accidents, including a serious loss of coolant accident at one reactor. That's not safe!.
So? Gold mining uses cyanide leeching.
You are attempting to divert responsibility for the externalities of Uranium mining instead of acknowledging them. How can anyone expect any improvement to the Nuclear industry while this apathetic attitude towards it's activities is so rampant.
Whilst cyanide dams are bad they don't leave radioactive mine tailing around. Acid leech mining is 'in-situ' - meaning the acid is pumped into the ground to dissolve rock, how can you seriously compare that to acid rain?
Your flippant attitude towards the nuclear industry slowly and permanently poisoning an entire continents water table simply illustrates that the pro-nuclear proponents are prepared to ignore serious failing in the Nuclear industry.
How many people died in Three Mile Island (hint: none or almost none). How many people die yearly of coal mining?
At TMI large amounts of contamination were released beyond Nuclear Industry assurances. The gamma radiation monitors on the top of the auxiliary building were not designed to measure such high concentrations and they went off the scale when the accident *began*, the release of contamination went on for several *days*. Estimates were based on thermoluscent dosimeters on the fence and Alpha and Beta emissions weren't even measured.
Because of the weather conditions it was known that emissions from TMI travelled a long way and were measured in Albany, NY. Joeseph Hendrie (former chairman of the NRC) was quoted (at the time) "We are operating almost totally in the in the blind, [Governor Thornburgh's] information is ambiguous, mine is non-existent and - I don't know - it's like a couple of blind me staggering around making decisions."
Dr Carl Johnson, an expert in radiation related diseases asked the NRC and DOE to do a survey to look for some of these elements in the respirable dust around TMI after the accident and they refused. So if the authorities *refused* to take measurements on which to base long term cancer studies can be based, how can a supposition be made about how many lives have been lost?
The nuclear industry is using tobacco industry tactics to defend their products.
What we do know is of the states highest in the list of cancer averages (within the cancer incubation period after the accident) the ones with similar population density surrounded Pennsylvania, where TMI occurred. New York, with roughly 3 times the population, topped the list, was also in the fall out zone.
As observed by the many other aspects of the Nuclear Industry the political supporters of Nuclear Power block funding attempts to find exactly that data, which allows people to say "no scientific study has been performed" on the toxic effects. Hardly a scientific approach, is it?
So it's easy for anyone to say that no-one died because of TMI because there is no gathering of data, no official study, no evidence. It's more honest to say "We don't know how many people died as a result of TMI because because no data was collected"
but when the numbers are objectively compared it shows that coal power stations is much more dangerous.
The difference is those workers chose to accept those were the risks of working in a coal mine and worked there. People affected by radi
I'll have to double check, but I don't think there's a radioactive contamination exception.
Please do, and let me know if you find any specific wavier. However, I was referring to the purchase of an insurance produce with that cover and actually asking the insurance provider if that is covered. If as you believe, and I hope, the occurrence of a nuclear accident is remote there should be no harm in asking. If you are prepared to do this I will check your journal for an answer.
Ah, so now we're not only looking at the safety stats of Model-Ts, we're looking at the safety stats of OLD model Ts to figure out how safe modern cars are?
I don't think it's a fair comparison because Nuclear plant never had a 'production' model in America. They are generally individually designed so design improvements cannot be applied to subsequent Nuclear installations like a production line. So the application of technology and design improvements can only occur at new builds of a nuclear plants within their design base. Of course, a nuclear power plant is designed to last 40 years, so comparing a Nuclear plant to another Nuclear plant is the only valid comparison that can be made.
You seem like a reasonable person and while we may disagree, at least we are having a civil discourse. I think we are both intelligent enough to compare the technology for what it is without resorting to car analogies.
I've mentioned in the past, in other threads, that I'd like to build *NEW* nuclear plants, for both the purpose of eliminating dirty coal power but to eventually replace the aging nuclear plants.
And as I've mentioned in other threads, fixating on reactor technology does not resolve the issues with Uranium mining, enrichment, reactor decommissioning and spent fuel containment. The Nuclear industry is more than just the reactors.
The new plant designs are a lot more fail-safe than the old ones. We have advanced considerably in failure-mode modeling and material science since the '70s.
Whilst the AP-1000 does go some way to reducing the complexity of the reactor it does introduce new base design issues. If new failure mode modelling is to be of any use for Nuclear plant then we should have seen the identification of new ASP's in existing reactors. What we see instead is evidenced by the Davis-Besse Plant, that identification of failure-mode's can only be of any use if management is prepared to take a step back and act on the potential for failure. Clearly, maintaining the plant's income stream trumps safety and failure mode analysis is ignored if it means downtime for the plant.
So, with interest, I will observe how many basis design issues are uncovered in the first year of operation of this reactor to see if any of that new knowledge has been applied.
If anything, this is an arguement that we need to build more nuclear reactors to replace our aging ones.
If design improvements were implemented I might agree that it is necessary however (as mentioned in another thread), to save money on construction costs the AP-1000 cuts (waaay) back on concrete and steel. The result is a ratio of containment volume to thermal power below that of today's PWRs, thereby increasing the risk of containment over-pressurization and failure in event of a severe accident.
The AP-1000 incorporates none of the design changes, that would make nuclear power reactors less vulnerable to sabotage, recommended 25 years ago by an NRC chartered an industry panel. The AP-1000 incorporates none of the EPR design enhancements which appears to be the safest and most secure design among new reactor designs for PWR.
What it is, is an argument that that design improvements should be implemented, not ignored, and that the best design features of previous generation reactors (i.e. like the enhanced containment
Not completely. The nuclear reactor risks are decreasing because old (and bad) reactor designs are replaced with newer (and safer) reactor designs.
This AP-1000 installation is the first new PWR reactor installation I have heard of for a long time. So when and where were these new commercial power reactors installed?
To save money on construction costs the AP-1000 cuts (waaay) back on concrete and steel. The result is a ratio of containment volume to thermal power below that of today's PWRs, thereby increasing the risk of containment over-pressurization and failure in event of a severe accident.
The AP-1000 incorporates none of the design changes, that would make nuclear power reactors less vulnerable to sabotage, recommended 25 years ago by an NRC chartered an industry panel. The AP-1000 incorporates none of the EPR design enhancements which appears to be the safest and most secure design among new reactor designs for PWR. So how is that less risky and more safe?
Q. Why not apply ALL of the design enhancements to a new build of a PWR. A.$$$$.
So much for being fixated on better designed reactor technology, building a safe reactor cost's too much. If the AP-1000 is an example of an upgraded design then the Nuclear industry has resigned itself to even more failure.
Most modern reactors have a "negative void coefficient" meaning that the reaction slows down when cooling is stopped
You mean like Three Mile Island did, before it melted down.
Uranium mining is usually open cast mining which is much safer than other types of mining (it also requires less labour)
Usually. Then there is also the Sulfuric Acid leech mining being used in Australia when it is illegal in the U.S and Russia. It's Australia's water table being poisoned for the worlds Uranium supplies. Then there is radioactive mine tailings from that open cut mining where ever it has occurred, still waiting for that to be fixed. It's not just safety - it's harm.
Check the number of people in China that die yearly in coal mines - you will fall on you back when you see it. It is a horrible number.
Yep, it's horrible but it's also a straw-man argument that brushes over bombing a country with Depleted Uranium warheads, which is a by-product of mining and enriching uranium. I bet a horrible number of people have died, and will die, in Iraq too.
The straw-man also ignores the enrichment process which still uses CFC 114 to separate U-235 from U-238, and that leaks 1 million pounds of CFC114 into the atmosphere every year. CFC114, a greenhouse gas 20,000 times more potent than C02 still in use almost 15 years after the inception of the Montreal protocol in 1995 banning CFC-114 use. CFC 114 that attacks the ozone layer, the ozone layer that protects that algae that makes THE OXYGEN WE BREATHE.
Several countries have used nuclear generation for a long time and have impeccable safety records.
Being fixated on the reactor design and operation doesn't detract from the rest of the Nuclear industrial process. And the safety of Nuclear plants are because the radiation that workers are exposed to causes reproductive issues. So there is no actual apparent safety hazard working there, just birth defect for the workers children. Do birth defects count as safety issues?
For now, I won't go into the arguments surrounding Reactor site decommissioning and geologically stable spent fuel containment sites.
Almost all current running reactors (except RMBK) is extremely safe.
Three Mile Island safe?
Why are people looking the other way with coal power stations?
This thread is about the AP-1000 Nuclear power reactor being installed in China, not coal. I want to know why Nuclear advocates always poin
$300 million, private, no-fault insurance for each reactor site. That IS insurance for any nuclear accident.
That covers the facility and the damaged it causes to itself. As I said That doesn't apply to you getting private insurance for a Nuclear accident.
I'll explain better this time. *You* cannot go to an insurance company and purchase an insurance product that *you* can claim on in the event of a nuclear accident that covers *your* property (your land, house, car, computer, livestock etc) with radioactive fallout. Try it, get back to me with a product from an insurance company willing to insure *your* loss from a nuclear accident with a policy *you* can purchase.
For *you* to recover damages to *your* property by a nuclear accident, *you* have to fund a case in the federal court.
And it's private, so there ARE obviously companies that are willing to insure nuclear plants.
Of course. That is the purpose of the Price-Anderson act, to limit liability so investors would put money into Nuclear power. It was originally set to expire in 1967 once the industry had proved itself safe. Evidently it hasn't.
Name some other industry that would still be held responsable after paying out $9.1B for an incident.
That's what you seem to be missing. The Federal liability exemption means that the Company responsible for the plant would be able to continue to operate. Just think 'Financial Crisis' but add dead and sick/dying people and irradiated land mass. No one planed for the financial crisis and the consequence to the banking system is that the U.S government now owns the controlling interest in the banks that caused the damage through *retro-active* legislation. P-A is *pro-active* legislation in anticipation of an actual event.
For that matter, how much is an incident really likely to cause, given that a chernobyl level event is pretty much impossible?
Well an increasing trend of Accident Sequence Pre-Cursors and Licensee Event Reports (reported to the NRC) indicates an event of *any* kind is more *probable* every day especially as the reactors approach the end of their designed lifespan. So your assertion only has a basis in your opinion as opposed to any actual examination of facts based on operational characteristics of Nuclear reactors. Don't happen to live near Palo Verde by any chance? It's currently drawing the most concern from the NRC.
So, for an answer, draw a circle 1200 Square miles around Three Mile Island and figure out the potential for damage yourself, that's roughly the land mass irradiated by Chernobyl. I'd say that pretty much wipes out Pennsylvania.
The government generally gets involved LONG before that for big events. Look at superfund sites.
Exactly. The continued existence of the Price-Anderson act illustrates that professional risk assessors consider the risks involved in the Nuclear Industry too high to be financially viable, so the federal government stepped in with a remedy. The Nuclear industry would not be able to exist without the protections the P-A act afford as no sane investor would expose themselves to that level of liability.
I think you need to reread the Price-Anderson act, nuclear power plants already carry $300 million in private insurance, each.
That's because the act requires them to carry $300 million of site insurance. That doesn't apply to you getting private insurance for a Nuclear accident.
Insurance companies don't write unlimited liability policies by standard, all of my insurance policies have a maximum. Think it's $400k for my auto policy, for example.
Well that means your liability cut's in above 400K, go beyond that and the insurance no longer covers you, their liability is limited to 400K. For the Nuclear industry it's liability *ends* when the damages reach 9.1 billion, not the insurance companies liability. In other words, the Nuclear industry is the one type of business *exempt* from the way all other business is insured. Damage caused by the Nuclear industry has unlimited liability *after* 9.1 billion of damage is caused.
Ironic that the act was introduced as a temporary measure in the 1960's to be removed once the industry proved itself safe.
you're only reinforcing mine regarding nuclear power's overwhelmingly positive track record on safety when viewed over the long term.
The entire industrial nuclear cycle has to be taken into account when making that assertion. If you take the view of the last twenty years of reactor operation, you can say that that because you are examining the most trouble free portion of a reactors lifespan for the vast majority of reactors around the world. Basis design issues are mostly identified, Accident sequence precursors are known. However all that changes as the reactor enters the last ten years of it's operation.
So when you include Uranium mining, Fuel enrichment and long term containment of radioactive isotopes, the long term safety record for the nuclear industry looks increasingly pessimistic. I'm not saying they can't be fixed (given funding and political will) but along with ageing reactor design and operational issues aside, every aspect of the industrial nuclear cycle has very sobering issues attached to it when looked at pragmatically.
Personally, since it's Westinghouse, I think it's just a demonstration plant to get the US taxpayer to shell out for a whole pile of this 1970s technology and be a burden on the taxpayer for decades.
Nothing demonstration about the AP-1000, it's a full 1 Giga Watt production reactor. More than likely the chinese netizens are right and Westinghouse has found a sucker^H^H^H^H^H^Hwilling customer to shell out for the build and also the ongoing cost to uncover the basis design issues, which of course are still unknown with the AP-1000.
For that matter the accident sequence pre-cursors are also unknowns for the AP-1000 as it is an un-implemented design.
I am pretty sure the nuclear industry does not need the most significant insurance required: they are specifically limited in liability related to accidents, otherwise no private company would build one !!
The Price-Anderson Act was re-authorised to underwrite the Nuclear industry with $600 Billion of Taxpayer money (closer to a trillion if you factor the huge amount of land you are going to lose in the event of an actual accident). However this is for government loss only, insurance companies won't insure private property holders against Nuclear accidents.
Yes I do, and that is helped by living in a place where the entire ground floor is sacrificed for cooling and by having very high ceilings and overhanging eaves.
Hi again Idiomatick, I hope you don't think I'm attacking you just because I addressed some of your other points in another post. I can see you are enthusiastic about Nuclear power but I think it's important to be pragmatic about it's application.
Nuclear reactors will get more efficient.
You have to remember that once a nuclear power plant is operational it is very hard to make it more efficient than it's design intends. In some cases attempting it has serious trade-off's. i.e. Running the fuel longer produces more radioactive spent fuel whilst using nano-technology to increase the heat carrying capacity of the primary coolant loop makes new (as yet unidentified) isotopes in the cooling water further complicating disposal.
Comparing Nuclear to Wind: Nuclear converts heat to mechanical motion to electricity where-as wind converts mechanical motion to electricity. As discussed in the other post, wind also has a shorter technology development time between generations than nuclear. Implementation of the design improvements takes place at build time for a new nuclear plant, compared to at service time for an operational wind facility of similar capacity. Further, improvements to a wind generation facility can occur without taking the entire installation off-line.
So yes, nuclear reactors will get more efficient, but so will wind. The difference is that the implementation of the design improvements for a wind facility can be implemented while a wind facility is still operational as opposed to a new build for a nuclear plant.
They will be able to reuse their waste (already have that tech).
We sorta have that tech. The main issue is (and most people are thinking of an IFR refering to this tech) is the reactivity of the sodium coolant increases the build costs and accident sequence precursors are not known, subsequently the lethality of an accident increases as the reactor ages. Furthermore the Pyroprocessing stage to produce (and recycle) the fuel for it doesn't exist.
IFR is a good design though. If the coolant issues could be solved (like maybe using lead for a coolant) we would be one step closer. The remaining issues would be to have materials technology available so that the lifespan of the reactor could be made to match the waste (fissile ash) decay rate.
And we will be able to find much more in the ground. Uranium is more common than tin. Enough to last 150years I'm sure.
The issue here is that the amount of fissionable Uranium is a small fraction of the yield, that is much more U238 vs U235. Most of the easily mined 'soft-ore' uranium is gone. As most of our reactor technology is once-through we find we are in the same situation for uranium as we are for oil. If we increase our consumption, the day just comes sooner.
By then we will have something way better.
Hopefully some fusion reactors!!
Gimping what is effective now for something that may happen in 100+ years from now is silly.
It's important to spend time examining the supporting technology and infrastructure that is part of the ENTIRE nuclear process, including the political machinations that got us here. The toxicity of the mining process, heavily greenhouse gas producing enrichment process, reactors designed for 40 years only usable for roughly 3/4 of that time and no long term spent fuel containment plan are all issues that have to be resolved for any serious expansion of the nuclear industry to occur.
The lions share of energy research funding, funding that could be used to DEVELOP alternatives, is currently spent on Nuclear power. Even doubling alternative energy research budgets would only take 1/7th of the current nuclear research budget. We could quadruple alternative energy funding and still have plenty of funding to resear
The estimate you are talking about is probably based on uranium in mines that are active today (and probably other areas where the ore is similar).
With uranium mining you have to process a lot rock to get a little uranium, that is, it takes a lot of *energy* to get the ore in the first place. To put it in perspective extraction takes 2.4 gigajoules per ton for soft ores and 5.5 gigajoules per ton for hard hard ores. To get a kilogram of uranium you have to process 500 tons of hard ore because there is almost no soft ore left. These estimates assume an extremely optimistic extraction efficiency (approaching %50) and assumes you have a high grade ore. Even then you still have to factor the energetic remediation of the mine tailing. If we are to compare nuclear to wind, these are factors that have to be considered when taking about Uranium mining.
If you harvest uranium from the oceans, you get thousands of years more (it is probably technologically possible to harvest uranium from the ocean now, it is not cost competitive with regular mines).
If you are going to have a huge energy expenditure just *extracting* the fuel from the ocean, why not just extract the thermal energy from the ocean itself?
Today no-one can make any claims or any comparison between the energy efficiency of those two processes (or if there is an energy return) because both are still theory and not a measurable industrial activities. Sure it might be possible to extract wave energy to extract the uranium from the vast volumes of water you would have to process but you still don't know if it will produce a net energy deficit. Eventually you end up in the position where you could convert the wave motion (or use the extraction process energy) directly for consumption.
Jetstreams aren't feasible sources of energy. Building flying powerplants... just seems like a pretty obvious bad idea.
One of the main arguments to consider when discussing wind power vs nuclear power is that wind power technology has a short technology development time between generations and is advancing quickly where-as nuclear power has a long technology development time between generations and is advancing slowly. Additionally, wind power is also in the very early stages of technological development when compared to nuclear power and it's not feasible to have a benign small nuclear power plant on the scale of these small wind generators.
It doesn't follow that flying wind power plants is a bad idea, just and idea whose time hasn't come.
Now before you get all defensive about Nuclear, I do think there is a place for it but my position is 180 degrees out of phase with your own. Most people, who advocate Nuclear power, concentrate on reactor design and not the rest of the industrial nuclear process (mining, enrichment, long term storage).
And I think solar power is a good idea. I just think nuclear is a better idea for RIGHT NOW. 20~30years from now solar will probably be the way to go. But wind power is an expensive waste of time.
Pragmatic and honest Nuclear advocacy has to start with a geological stable spent fuel containment facility, in granite, and that isn't available NOW. As to the fuel available argument, even MIT posit that any expansion of nuclear generation in the U.S is only practical using a once through fuel cycle. So before any discussion about new reactors can occur an appropriate spent fuel containment facility and transport infrastructure must be in place.
I'm not saying we shouldn't do Nuclear, but we really have to redesign the entire industrial nuclear process from the ground up so we can utilise those resources in a way that is responsible to future generations. That includes designing Nuclear power plants that have operating life spans in line with the geological time frames of the isotopes involved. Solar and Wind represent low hanging fruit in terms of technological development and most countries have really only just begun to develop and fund those resources the way Nuclear power has been developed and funded for the last 50 years.
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I'm installing Ubuntu 9.04 on a mates new machine tomorrow. I suggested he try it first and if he doesn't like it he just shell out for Windows 7.
I'm just about to upgrade my Ubuntu installation. I doubt I play the same games as you but so far most of the ones I'm interested in seem to run ok under wine (Empire at War, COD4), I'm not really a big gamer though.
Well here goes, clicking upgrade now...
The Governator is a CGI character.
So we can see all the greats in movies with crap story lines, yaa
I can't really get by without being able to lock records in InnoDB, as opposed to the whole table in MyISAM. But I think that the Falcon engine is the long term way to go.
Maybe if MySQL was GPL3 this mess might look a lot different, then again so would MySQL.
Patents, licensing, DRM, the Dark Side of The Source are they. Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny.
I said Then there is also the Sulfuric Acid leech mining being used in Australia when it is illegal in the U.S and Russia.
You responded Acid rain is a phenoma of coal burning and its effects is much worse and more difficult to contain.
I said being poisoned. Australia's Great Artesian Basin is being poisoned by in-situ acid leech mining. Why don't you lobby to have all sulfuric acid leech mining banned in all countries if you are advocating a responsible Nuclear Industry?
Your response is entirely predictable. Since we don't know which isotopes were released we have no way of identifying the cancers produced in the population by elements analoged. You want to believe that no-one died from cancers contracted by TMI fallout because it comforts you and reinforces your beliefs about nuclear power. What I actually said was;
It's more honest to say "We don't know how many people died as a result of TMI because because no data was collected".
Why don't you lobby for laws to enforce all isotopes released by the Nuclear industry be identified if you are advocating a responsible Nuclear Industry?
All the radioactive isotopes end up in the food chain, where it is bio-concentrated. Some portion will be consumed by humans. The longer more radioactive isotopes are leaked into the food chain from any source the more incidences of cancers will increase through ingestion. Why don't you lobby to have all radio active isotopes collected and contained whether it comes from Nuclear Industry processes or coal smoke stacks, if you are advocating a responsible Nuclear Industry?
But it is because it makes an ideal projectile. If this by-product of Uranium mining was not available it would not be used. Why don't you lobby to have it used as crane/lift counterweights if you are advocating a responsible Nuclear Industry?
Again, an entirely predictable response. It's unfortunate but all that Nuclear fallout from the Chernobyl Nuclear power plant doesn't count. It's unfortunate but the Nuclear Industry is not responsible. You are saying that the coal industry should take responsibility for all of their C02 emissions, so you should lobby for the Nuclear industry to take responsibility for all of their radioactive isotope emissions, if you were advocating a responsible Nuclear Industry.
I do.
The irony of this comment is that is exactly the use recommended for the electrical output of geo-thermal power stations.
The breakdown of U.S energy research and development subsidies reported by the US DOE is roughly 60% for nuclear, 25% to fossil fuels and 15% to SUSTAINABLE energy sources.
In addition to what I mentioned above you can add the 2005 U.S energy bill provided another $13 billion dollars worth of subsidies and revocation of the Public Utilities Holding Company Act (PUHCA, by George.W.Bush, whi
Sheeesh, they actually stole my idea and went back in time to make it. I'm suing!
Everyone get's to be their own Microsoft. Instead of "GO!" you would have "START!", instead of "Jail" you would have "Court" and you would actually get to use goto's. Instead of Money you would have 'Bills' and instead of a dice you would throw little chairs.
The person with the most money get's paid by every other player. When you land on someone else's property, you get to sue them if you have more money or visa-versa. To win the game you are involved in the most lawsuits and have all the money.
I know exactly what photos would be on the front.
Campaign Anticompetitive Retaliation Organized Elimination Deceptive Elimination Attempts Elimination Campaign Failure Campaign Ongoing -Exxxttteeeerrrmmmmmiiiinnnaaattteeee!!!!
You said old (and bad) reactor designs are replaced with newer (and safer) reactor designs I don't see evidence of that in any of the Korean reactors listed. All of those designs are pre-cursors to the AP-1000 which suffer from the flaws I listed and you listed CANDU reactors which have a notorious reputation for being difficult to operate and some serious safety issues.
In the last ten years of operation the Korean program you cited has had 193 accidents, including a serious loss of coolant accident at one reactor. That's not safe!.
You are attempting to divert responsibility for the externalities of Uranium mining instead of acknowledging them. How can anyone expect any improvement to the Nuclear industry while this apathetic attitude towards it's activities is so rampant.
Whilst cyanide dams are bad they don't leave radioactive mine tailing around. Acid leech mining is 'in-situ' - meaning the acid is pumped into the ground to dissolve rock, how can you seriously compare that to acid rain?
Your flippant attitude towards the nuclear industry slowly and permanently poisoning an entire continents water table simply illustrates that the pro-nuclear proponents are prepared to ignore serious failing in the Nuclear industry.
At TMI large amounts of contamination were released beyond Nuclear Industry assurances. The gamma radiation monitors on the top of the auxiliary building were not designed to measure such high concentrations and they went off the scale when the accident *began*, the release of contamination went on for several *days*. Estimates were based on thermoluscent dosimeters on the fence and Alpha and Beta emissions weren't even measured.
Because of the weather conditions it was known that emissions from TMI travelled a long way and were measured in Albany, NY. Joeseph Hendrie (former chairman of the NRC) was quoted (at the time) "We are operating almost totally in the in the blind, [Governor Thornburgh's] information is ambiguous, mine is non-existent and - I don't know - it's like a couple of blind me staggering around making decisions."
Dr Carl Johnson, an expert in radiation related diseases asked the NRC and DOE to do a survey to look for some of these elements in the respirable dust around TMI after the accident and they refused. So if the authorities *refused* to take measurements on which to base long term cancer studies can be based, how can a supposition be made about how many lives have been lost?
The nuclear industry is using tobacco industry tactics to defend their products.
What we do know is of the states highest in the list of cancer averages (within the cancer incubation period after the accident) the ones with similar population density surrounded Pennsylvania, where TMI occurred. New York, with roughly 3 times the population, topped the list, was also in the fall out zone.
As observed by the many other aspects of the Nuclear Industry the political supporters of Nuclear Power block funding attempts to find exactly that data, which allows people to say "no scientific study has been performed" on the toxic effects. Hardly a scientific approach, is it?
So it's easy for anyone to say that no-one died because of TMI because there is no gathering of data, no official study, no evidence. It's more honest to say "We don't know how many people died as a result of TMI because because no data was collected"
The difference is those workers chose to accept those were the risks of working in a coal mine and worked there. People affected by radi
Please do, and let me know if you find any specific wavier. However, I was referring to the purchase of an insurance produce with that cover and actually asking the insurance provider if that is covered. If as you believe, and I hope, the occurrence of a nuclear accident is remote there should be no harm in asking. If you are prepared to do this I will check your journal for an answer.
I don't think it's a fair comparison because Nuclear plant never had a 'production' model in America. They are generally individually designed so design improvements cannot be applied to subsequent Nuclear installations like a production line. So the application of technology and design improvements can only occur at new builds of a nuclear plants within their design base. Of course, a nuclear power plant is designed to last 40 years, so comparing a Nuclear plant to another Nuclear plant is the only valid comparison that can be made.
You seem like a reasonable person and while we may disagree, at least we are having a civil discourse. I think we are both intelligent enough to compare the technology for what it is without resorting to car analogies.
And as I've mentioned in other threads, fixating on reactor technology does not resolve the issues with Uranium mining, enrichment, reactor decommissioning and spent fuel containment. The Nuclear industry is more than just the reactors.
Whilst the AP-1000 does go some way to reducing the complexity of the reactor it does introduce new base design issues. If new failure mode modelling is to be of any use for Nuclear plant then we should have seen the identification of new ASP's in existing reactors. What we see instead is evidenced by the Davis-Besse Plant, that identification of failure-mode's can only be of any use if management is prepared to take a step back and act on the potential for failure. Clearly, maintaining the plant's income stream trumps safety and failure mode analysis is ignored if it means downtime for the plant.
So, with interest, I will observe how many basis design issues are uncovered in the first year of operation of this reactor to see if any of that new knowledge has been applied.
If design improvements were implemented I might agree that it is necessary however (as mentioned in another thread), to save money on construction costs the AP-1000 cuts (waaay) back on concrete and steel. The result is a ratio of containment volume to thermal power below that of today's PWRs, thereby increasing the risk of containment over-pressurization and failure in event of a severe accident.
The AP-1000 incorporates none of the design changes, that would make nuclear power reactors less vulnerable to sabotage, recommended 25 years ago by an NRC chartered an industry panel. The AP-1000 incorporates none of the EPR design enhancements which appears to be the safest and most secure design among new reactor designs for PWR.
What it is, is an argument that that design improvements should be implemented, not ignored, and that the best design features of previous generation reactors (i.e. like the enhanced containment
This AP-1000 installation is the first new PWR reactor installation I have heard of for a long time. So when and where were these new commercial power reactors installed?
To save money on construction costs the AP-1000 cuts (waaay) back on concrete and steel. The result is a ratio of containment volume to thermal power below that of today's PWRs, thereby increasing the risk of containment over-pressurization and failure in event of a severe accident.
The AP-1000 incorporates none of the design changes, that would make nuclear power reactors less vulnerable to sabotage, recommended 25 years ago by an NRC chartered an industry panel. The AP-1000 incorporates none of the EPR design enhancements which appears to be the safest and most secure design among new reactor designs for PWR. So how is that less risky and more safe?
Q. Why not apply ALL of the design enhancements to a new build of a PWR. A.$$$$.
So much for being fixated on better designed reactor technology, building a safe reactor cost's too much. If the AP-1000 is an example of an upgraded design then the Nuclear industry has resigned itself to even more failure.
You mean like Three Mile Island did, before it melted down.
Usually. Then there is also the Sulfuric Acid leech mining being used in Australia when it is illegal in the U.S and Russia. It's Australia's water table being poisoned for the worlds Uranium supplies. Then there is radioactive mine tailings from that open cut mining where ever it has occurred, still waiting for that to be fixed. It's not just safety - it's harm.
Yep, it's horrible but it's also a straw-man argument that brushes over bombing a country with Depleted Uranium warheads, which is a by-product of mining and enriching uranium. I bet a horrible number of people have died, and will die, in Iraq too.
The straw-man also ignores the enrichment process which still uses CFC 114 to separate U-235 from U-238, and that leaks 1 million pounds of CFC114 into the atmosphere every year. CFC114, a greenhouse gas 20,000 times more potent than C02 still in use almost 15 years after the inception of the Montreal protocol in 1995 banning CFC-114 use. CFC 114 that attacks the ozone layer, the ozone layer that protects that algae that makes THE OXYGEN WE BREATHE.
Being fixated on the reactor design and operation doesn't detract from the rest of the Nuclear industrial process. And the safety of Nuclear plants are because the radiation that workers are exposed to causes reproductive issues. So there is no actual apparent safety hazard working there, just birth defect for the workers children. Do birth defects count as safety issues?
For now, I won't go into the arguments surrounding Reactor site decommissioning and geologically stable spent fuel containment sites.
Three Mile Island safe?
This thread is about the AP-1000 Nuclear power reactor being installed in China, not coal. I want to know why Nuclear advocates always poin
That covers the facility and the damaged it causes to itself. As I said That doesn't apply to you getting private insurance for a Nuclear accident.
I'll explain better this time. *You* cannot go to an insurance company and purchase an insurance product that *you* can claim on in the event of a nuclear accident that covers *your* property (your land, house, car, computer, livestock etc) with radioactive fallout. Try it, get back to me with a product from an insurance company willing to insure *your* loss from a nuclear accident with a policy *you* can purchase.
For *you* to recover damages to *your* property by a nuclear accident, *you* have to fund a case in the federal court.
Of course. That is the purpose of the Price-Anderson act, to limit liability so investors would put money into Nuclear power. It was originally set to expire in 1967 once the industry had proved itself safe. Evidently it hasn't.
That's what you seem to be missing. The Federal liability exemption means that the Company responsible for the plant would be able to continue to operate. Just think 'Financial Crisis' but add dead and sick/dying people and irradiated land mass. No one planed for the financial crisis and the consequence to the banking system is that the U.S government now owns the controlling interest in the banks that caused the damage through *retro-active* legislation. P-A is *pro-active* legislation in anticipation of an actual event.
Well an increasing trend of Accident Sequence Pre-Cursors and Licensee Event Reports (reported to the NRC) indicates an event of *any* kind is more *probable* every day especially as the reactors approach the end of their designed lifespan. So your assertion only has a basis in your opinion as opposed to any actual examination of facts based on operational characteristics of Nuclear reactors. Don't happen to live near Palo Verde by any chance? It's currently drawing the most concern from the NRC.
So, for an answer, draw a circle 1200 Square miles around Three Mile Island and figure out the potential for damage yourself, that's roughly the land mass irradiated by Chernobyl. I'd say that pretty much wipes out Pennsylvania.
Exactly. The continued existence of the Price-Anderson act illustrates that professional risk assessors consider the risks involved in the Nuclear Industry too high to be financially viable, so the federal government stepped in with a remedy. The Nuclear industry would not be able to exist without the protections the P-A act afford as no sane investor would expose themselves to that level of liability.
That's because the act requires them to carry $300 million of site insurance. That doesn't apply to you getting private insurance for a Nuclear accident.
Well that means your liability cut's in above 400K, go beyond that and the insurance no longer covers you, their liability is limited to 400K. For the Nuclear industry it's liability *ends* when the damages reach 9.1 billion, not the insurance companies liability. In other words, the Nuclear industry is the one type of business *exempt* from the way all other business is insured. Damage caused by the Nuclear industry has unlimited liability *after* 9.1 billion of damage is caused.
Ironic that the act was introduced as a temporary measure in the 1960's to be removed once the industry proved itself safe.
Um, why am I a troll for those comments. I was not trolling.
The entire industrial nuclear cycle has to be taken into account when making that assertion. If you take the view of the last twenty years of reactor operation, you can say that that because you are examining the most trouble free portion of a reactors lifespan for the vast majority of reactors around the world. Basis design issues are mostly identified, Accident sequence precursors are known. However all that changes as the reactor enters the last ten years of it's operation.
So when you include Uranium mining, Fuel enrichment and long term containment of radioactive isotopes, the long term safety record for the nuclear industry looks increasingly pessimistic. I'm not saying they can't be fixed (given funding and political will) but along with ageing reactor design and operational issues aside, every aspect of the industrial nuclear cycle has very sobering issues attached to it when looked at pragmatically.
Indeed!
Nothing demonstration about the AP-1000, it's a full 1 Giga Watt production reactor. More than likely the chinese netizens are right and Westinghouse has found a sucker^H^H^H^H^H^Hwilling customer to shell out for the build and also the ongoing cost to uncover the basis design issues, which of course are still unknown with the AP-1000.
For that matter the accident sequence pre-cursors are also unknowns for the AP-1000 as it is an un-implemented design.
The Price-Anderson Act was re-authorised to underwrite the Nuclear industry with $600 Billion of Taxpayer money (closer to a trillion if you factor the huge amount of land you are going to lose in the event of an actual accident). However this is for government loss only, insurance companies won't insure private property holders against Nuclear accidents.
An AP-1000 is a descendant of the AP-600. The AP-600 is a 600 Mega Watt reactor and the AP-1000 is a 1 Giga Watt reactor.
I dunno, Queensland is pretty hot to me.
Sounds like a Queenslander.
You have to remember that once a nuclear power plant is operational it is very hard to make it more efficient than it's design intends. In some cases attempting it has serious trade-off's. i.e. Running the fuel longer produces more radioactive spent fuel whilst using nano-technology to increase the heat carrying capacity of the primary coolant loop makes new (as yet unidentified) isotopes in the cooling water further complicating disposal.
Comparing Nuclear to Wind: Nuclear converts heat to mechanical motion to electricity where-as wind converts mechanical motion to electricity. As discussed in the other post, wind also has a shorter technology development time between generations than nuclear. Implementation of the design improvements takes place at build time for a new nuclear plant, compared to at service time for an operational wind facility of similar capacity. Further, improvements to a wind generation facility can occur without taking the entire installation off-line.
So yes, nuclear reactors will get more efficient, but so will wind. The difference is that the implementation of the design improvements for a wind facility can be implemented while a wind facility is still operational as opposed to a new build for a nuclear plant.
We sorta have that tech. The main issue is (and most people are thinking of an IFR refering to this tech) is the reactivity of the sodium coolant increases the build costs and accident sequence precursors are not known, subsequently the lethality of an accident increases as the reactor ages. Furthermore the Pyroprocessing stage to produce (and recycle) the fuel for it doesn't exist.
IFR is a good design though. If the coolant issues could be solved (like maybe using lead for a coolant) we would be one step closer. The remaining issues would be to have materials technology available so that the lifespan of the reactor could be made to match the waste (fissile ash) decay rate.
The issue here is that the amount of fissionable Uranium is a small fraction of the yield, that is much more U238 vs U235. Most of the easily mined 'soft-ore' uranium is gone. As most of our reactor technology is once-through we find we are in the same situation for uranium as we are for oil. If we increase our consumption, the day just comes sooner.
Hopefully some fusion reactors!!
It's important to spend time examining the supporting technology and infrastructure that is part of the ENTIRE nuclear process, including the political machinations that got us here. The toxicity of the mining process, heavily greenhouse gas producing enrichment process, reactors designed for 40 years only usable for roughly 3/4 of that time and no long term spent fuel containment plan are all issues that have to be resolved for any serious expansion of the nuclear industry to occur.
The lions share of energy research funding, funding that could be used to DEVELOP alternatives, is currently spent on Nuclear power. Even doubling alternative energy research budgets would only take 1/7th of the current nuclear research budget. We could quadruple alternative energy funding and still have plenty of funding to resear
With uranium mining you have to process a lot rock to get a little uranium, that is, it takes a lot of *energy* to get the ore in the first place. To put it in perspective extraction takes 2.4 gigajoules per ton for soft ores and 5.5 gigajoules per ton for hard hard ores. To get a kilogram of uranium you have to process 500 tons of hard ore because there is almost no soft ore left. These estimates assume an extremely optimistic extraction efficiency (approaching %50) and assumes you have a high grade ore. Even then you still have to factor the energetic remediation of the mine tailing. If we are to compare nuclear to wind, these are factors that have to be considered when taking about Uranium mining.
If you are going to have a huge energy expenditure just *extracting* the fuel from the ocean, why not just extract the thermal energy from the ocean itself?
Today no-one can make any claims or any comparison between the energy efficiency of those two processes (or if there is an energy return) because both are still theory and not a measurable industrial activities. Sure it might be possible to extract wave energy to extract the uranium from the vast volumes of water you would have to process but you still don't know if it will produce a net energy deficit. Eventually you end up in the position where you could convert the wave motion (or use the extraction process energy) directly for consumption.
One of the main arguments to consider when discussing wind power vs nuclear power is that wind power technology has a short technology development time between generations and is advancing quickly where-as nuclear power has a long technology development time between generations and is advancing slowly. Additionally, wind power is also in the very early stages of technological development when compared to nuclear power and it's not feasible to have a benign small nuclear power plant on the scale of these small wind generators. It doesn't follow that flying wind power plants is a bad idea, just and idea whose time hasn't come.
Now before you get all defensive about Nuclear, I do think there is a place for it but my position is 180 degrees out of phase with your own. Most people, who advocate Nuclear power, concentrate on reactor design and not the rest of the industrial nuclear process (mining, enrichment, long term storage).
Pragmatic and honest Nuclear advocacy has to start with a geological stable spent fuel containment facility, in granite, and that isn't available NOW. As to the fuel available argument, even MIT posit that any expansion of nuclear generation in the U.S is only practical using a once through fuel cycle. So before any discussion about new reactors can occur an appropriate spent fuel containment facility and transport infrastructure must be in place.
I'm not saying we shouldn't do Nuclear, but we really have to redesign the entire industrial nuclear process from the ground up so we can utilise those resources in a way that is responsible to future generations. That includes designing Nuclear power plants that have operating life spans in line with the geological time frames of the isotopes involved. Solar and Wind represent low hanging fruit in terms of technological development and most countries have really only just begun to develop and fund those resources the way Nuclear power has been developed and funded for the last 50 years.