But seriously, either way it's done, if a serious component of the economy is investing money in space based systems it's got to be a good thing and I think one will lead to the other (space elevator and space power) if it gains support.
A modular infrastructure built on both mirrors and microwave would provide a power source that is both scaleable and deployable to other areas by refocusing the mirrors and microwave array . I'd imagine that is a compelling argument against a teather based power transmission system to the military. It's an interesting idea though. Where would you deploy it? Of course there would be considerations the electric teather's mass vs the current it can carry and orbit.
Both would be a good way to introduce a hydrogen energy economy, instead of batteries, ship hydrogen, maybe even pipe it. You could focus ALOT of mirrors and microwave transmitters onto one spot if you can afford the launches, of course that would be a significant incentive to build a space elevator to deploy the infrastructure in space. I doubt it would be too hard to convert gasoline vehices to run on hydrogen, so in that regard it stacks up well for backward compatibility.
Besides, lighting up a big stadium from space would look wicked.
So,... does this mean the pentagon is admitting that the Iraq war is a war for oil? No more calling it "operation Iraqi freedom?"
Maybe Space based solar yeilds a better return on investment than conducting a war for resources?
It might be an interesting comparison.
I'm also a little curious about the atmospheric affects of beaming large amounts of energy from space.
The main problem is the chemical effect of "greenhouse gasses" allows solar energy to be trapped in the atmosphere. Human energy consumption pales in comparison to the suns output, it's the by-product (externalities) of the energy industry's activies that appear to be affecting the earths capacity to disipate heat.
At first your numbers were assumptions, now they're for commercial next generation reactors that haven't been constructed yet. That's a major inconsistency in your argument there.
The energy spent during construction of a reactor containment building is a direct reflection of the strength of the construction, how much concrete is used and the building's capacity to sustain damage.
You argue that the energy expenditure is less to construct next generation reactors and that is because there is less concrete and steel invested into the containment building making them cheaper to construct, i.e the dollar investment is a direct reflection of the strength of the containment building and the energy invested to construct it. Consider if the Chernobyl "accident" occured inside a strong containment building how much fall out could have been contained, why should we tolerate having new reactors built with any less assurance that the structure could contain such an event.
With an average 50 year lifespan on an average... I think 50 years is conservative
Your first argument is that a 1GW reactor lasts an average of 50 years, now you "think" they will last 50 years. The bottom line is you can't show me where a 1GW reactor is that has lasted 50 years because it doesn't exist, so your argument is flawed on that point alone. Additionally what I didn't mention previously is your argument assumes that your 1GW reactor operates at FULL load for it's entire life outside it's 30% downtime, which is optimistic at best. At best even coal power stations are pushing it to last 40 years and that is established, operational technology. Even the document you sent me expects only 40 years from the reactor at Forsmark.
Overall power output has gone *up* as our reactors have aged (thanks to improving technology). What makes you think they're just going to keel over tomorrow?
Then perhaps you can explain the operational characteristics of a Nuclear reactor throughout different phases of it's designed life. Tell me what happens when key components get "embrittled" towards the end of the reactor's life span.
Heh, and you criticized *me* for making up numbers -- what hat did you pull that out of? Here's a sample breakdown for you -- Vattenfall's independently audited, cradle-to-grave declaration...
...was ONE of the sources of data in the analysis from the link I provided and Vattenfall uses the same method to produce energetic calculations. So in criticising the data I got, you've criticised the data you got. But you picked the Swedish reactors, the best run in the world. I've seen their plans for a waste dump , the primary rock is GRANITE, it makes Yucca mountain look like a joke. You can dream of having a reactor program run that well in the U.S and it should be a example of what a *baseline* nuclear program would look like.
Of course you only picked construction you wouldn't mention the energetic expenditure for nuclear industry externalities have not even been estimated. Want to tell me what the energy costs are to seal up 65000 tons of depleted uranium from the enrichment process, what about the mine tailings? Still no answer from you there rei.
I don't know what you read that gave you these ludicrous numbers. "Stormsmith.nl"? You think that's some sort of credible source?
I don't even know anyone with a 10 year old laptop, so how is a 30 year laptop battery useful?
Then of course there is the toxicity of tritium, biologically very mutagenic, easily absorbed into the Gastro intestinal tract and lungs, decreased brain weight, retardation, shrinkage of male and female reproductive organs ovarian tumors, chromosomal breaks and abberations perinatal mortality. Then of course it's worse when it's organically bound to food, eaten and organically bound inside the body...
The amount of energy put out by nuclear power versus how much goes in, even factoring in all construction and takedown energy investments, isn't even comparable. A kilogram of uranium generates several GWh of energy. That's gigawatt hours. With an average 50 year lifespan on an average 1GW plant, with 30% downtime, that's a staggering 300 TWh (terrawatt hours) of power output.
Where? Show me where the 1GW Nuclear power plants that have lasted 50 years are. The core of a reactor is much bigger than 1 kilogram, it's roughly 165 tons of uranium (conservative for a 1GW reactor) consumed every 1-2 years, so lets say a standard 18 month refueling cycle of 165000 kilograms of uranium. Now let's give you your 50 year reactor and thats 33 refueling cycles which makes a total consumption of 5,445,000 kilograms of Uranium over the life of the reactor and it's just over a paltry 55 MegaWatt hours per kilogram based on your figures. Thats a far cry from the several Gigawatt hours per kilogram that you claim.
Let's assume that the construction of the plant, including the machinery to run all of the equipment needed to make the raw materials required the running of 50 large diesel engines that burn 5 gallons per hour nonstop for three years (a way overestimate), and that teardown (including disposal) is half that (again, a huge overestimate). That's 2 million engine hours, i.e. 10 million gallons of diesel power equivalent, I.e. 40 GWh. 40 GWh versus 300 TWh. How does that comparison look to you?
Well Rei, it looks like a whole bunch of poorly put together assumptions. First of all mean energetic estimates for construction of a nuclear power plant is somewhere between 11TWh and 35TWh (40-120 PetaJoules). However your energy cost for demolition (your assumtion is 20GWh) is a gross underestimate with figures around the 70TWh (240-300 PetaJoules) if deconstruction is performed safely. Just in the construction/demolition phase you have consumed 1 third of the 300TWh's you claim from the life of a brand new AP1000 reactor. Then factor the energetic costs of the dismantling and clean up of the core 5.6 - 16TWh's and it really is starting to look like a very poor energy return from your 1GW reactor.
But what about the energy costs that haven't yet been factored?
Remediation of Mine Tailings
Enrichment of fuel
Disposal of Depleted Uranium from enrichment process
Transportation of Waste
Disposal of Waste cooling water
Construction of waste containers
Construction of waste facility
Some of which don't even have figures because it's never been done, or externalised, which really illustrated how badly the Nuclear industry has failed the global community. Tritium, Radioactive Hydrogen, Carbon 14, Strontium 90, Calcium 41, Cobalt 60, Iron 55 etc etc etc all released into the Global Biosphere because the Nuclear industry doesn't have an energetically sustainable engineering solution that will contain these isotopes.
You get the same sort of numbers for ore processing and disposing of the (relatively tiny) amount of fuel you need (in this case, 50 tonnes or so (a large semi's load) over the plant's entire lifespan -- compare to the energy equivalent of 75 million tonnes of coal).
Only if you use your grossly incorrect assumptions. 165 tonnes per year is 5445 tonnes of uranium over the plant's entire lifespan!!. That's 8.4 Terrawatt hours just for the mining (5.5GigaJoules per ton), a long way from the 40GWh and 50 tonnes you claim. AND the 8.4 Terrawatt hours DO NOT include waste disposal, as you claim, AND does not include treatment of mine tailings. AND my figures are generous with the overall CONCENTRATION of ore per tonne of rock - once it falls below 0.01% there is a net energy debt with nuclear power.
The big costs in nuclear power, presently, are from regultory risk
Makes you wonder what the face of space exploration would look like today if Korolyov had survived long enough to complete the N-series launchers and actually got them to the moon.
First off, deposits of minerals
don't work in the same way a canteen works -- sip on it, and then
suddenly it runs dry. It's all about how much you're willing to pay
for it.
No it isn't it's about Net energy
return. If you put more energy into the process than you get out it
becomes pointless, you can't pay for what you don't get. Not Gigajoules,
not Terrajoules but thousands of Petajoules of energy consumed and you still
have a waste problem, you still have the energy cost's to
dismantle and of course the wasted money, social and medical
problems.
In the context of Nuclear Energy, Economics do not factor when the "Net Energy Return" does not exist .
For traditional music companies - I guess we can only hope. The Music distribution business was a I.T business as soon as there was technology available to deal with the music. It doesn't make much sense that the 60 Billion dollar a year music industry pushes around a 600 Billion dollar a year I.T industry with lobbying and laws that stiffle innovation in software as a by-product of them trying to hang onto their outdated business model.
I can only hope that as bandwidth increases, peering technology gets better, that the I.T based music distribution model will scale to allow higher resolution Music to be available - one that allows resolution that is double or triple current cd sampling rates. Now that the media will become less of an issue, then this can be a real possibility and high quality digital music can take it's place amongst audiophiles - as well as portable music formats. This is a real hole that music companies dug for themselves persuing DRM for mp3's as they are nowhere near the quality of a cd, now they have no "Unique Selling Proposition" to the average music consumer who cannot tell the difference.
I also think the demise of the music companies will cause great leaps in the amount of artists available - and heaps more music as artists, who traditionally explore limits anyway, find new ways of reaching an audience - without being stiffled by the record companies accountants.
Even though your not the first to do it Amazon, thank you, your a big player - with any luck this is the begining of a new chapter for a new music industry - without the traditional players.
And as for the traditional music industry, I think RadioHead's song "Just" summed it up best with this lyric
You do it to yourself, you do, And that's what really hurts, Is that you do it to yourself, Just you and no one else, You do it to yourself
This all seems like a bit of a non issue. I tried ck's kernel mods and they were ok, but a kernel fork, your joking? I can understand ck had some back issues and well frankly he should get that sorted out because his health is important. If ppl are so convinced that he is onto something with his scheduler, fine, pick up where he left off.
If anything it has raised awareness about the state of play in the gui "responsiveness" arena - yes, frankly, I feel there is room for improvement when I use my fedora box but how do you measure it? I tune my kernels as best I can and am always looking for a little more.
I think that ck might have been a bit abrasive because of his back injury and that rubbed the kernel dev's up the wrong way. Don't get me wrong I think what ck has done is valuable, if not just for the code but for the fact that ck has raised awareness in this area.
Dixie Lee Ray was wrong due to political issues not technical issues
It illustrates supreme arrogance that the spokeperson for the nuclear industry got it this badly wrong that in 2007 no suitable high level waste facility exists. In reality the entire Nuclear industry is a failure peppered with incidents, accidents, mis-information and propaganda. I've read a few of your other post's outside this thread and I presume you have the capability to do your own research instead of propagating your own incorrect presumptions, indeed you said yourself...
I really need to investigate this further,
indeed, you do.
THE solution to pollution is dilution!
But seriously, there is radioactive material on the earth now, it's just widely enough dispersed to not cause anyone problems
That's just plain wrong - it dosen't work like that.
Radioactivity bioaccumulates this means that the strontium 90 gets on the grass, the cows eat the grass and concentrates it into the milk (cow gets a dose itself), the milk is powdered concentrates further and made into chocolate, you eat the chocolate and over time it bioaccumulates and after a gestation period, you get thyroid cancer. Of course it depends on what the isotope analogues, for example plutonium analogues iron, hello leukemia, radium analogues clacium hello highly malignant osteogenic sarcoma's (bone cancer). Likewise an alpha emmiter might be benign outside the body but if it gets into the body it's extremely mutagenic.
Nevermind that a coal power station subjects the surrounding area to higher radioactive particle output than nearly all nuclear power stations combined (except some of the extreme cases)
I mean do people actually read this statement and sudennly B*A*M it's true. Have you considered that this little gem is propaganda elicited by the nuclear industry in an attempt to leverage it's market position against coal? I'm not a big fan of coal but have you actually read this statement? I'm gonna gamble you are rational, so go on, read it ten times right now and see how stupid it sounds.
no, really read it 10 times
Ever quantified this peice of mis-information, at what stage of the reactors life or what part of the fuel cycle? Do you factor in the toxicity of the mining and the mine tailings?. What a bout the waste in the enrichment phase to the waste all of which only exists because of nuclear reactors.
This stuff is seriously toxic, it's not a flippant source of amusment for you to have a chuckle at those "anti-nuclear environmentalist" as you put it. The arguments against the Nuclear industry are pragmatic and concerning. It's like learning about Microsoft's activities and NOT objecting to their behaviour, the only difference is that the Nuclear industry is playing with our lives and has goverments and the military on their side to conceal their failures.
Because after all, it's you that's being poisoned as well.
I run insurance simulations all the time, and, forecast out to 10k years
Dood, you're talking about earthquake and volcanic activity containing, at the minimum 70,000 tons of plutonium with Yucca at capacity. Any damage there is going to have some serious consequences. Even if there is no "siesmically dead" areas surely you have a mountain made of granite *somewhere*.
Out of interest have you run a 10K simulation on Yucca Mountain?
If you want to "solve" the nuclear waste problem it's pretty easy:
Maybe you can go back to the '70's when Dixie Lee Ray, the head of the Atomic Energy Commission, proclaimed that the disposal of nuclear fuel would be the greatest non-problem in history and would be accomplished by 1985. Yet here we are in 2007, over twenty years past that date and with better technology but still there is no High level waste disposal site anywhere. So if the Director of the AEC could get it that badly wrong, with all the resources of the AEC, how are you going to solve it?
To answer your "think you read somewhere", if you stacked those blocks up they would go critical friend, and somehow 70,000 tons of plutonium going critical would definatley be a *bad thing* - that's how much plutonium you are talking about.
Put a fence around the pile and guards every 100 feet. Hang big signs that say "cross this fence and die".
Huh, Pluonium has a halflife of 25,000 years, I think the guards would get bored and as for the sign, well just try and imagine what language was like a mere 1000 years ago, how do you know our signs will even be understood?
I agree, Yucca Mountain is way more than good enough.
Well I guess you must know better than the D.O.E own 1982 Nuclear Waste policy Act which reported that the Yucca Mountain's geology is "inappropriate to contain nuclear waste".
That's because Yucca Mountain is made of PUMICE and there are thirty three known-active fault lines. If thats not enough Radioactive chlorine 36 has been found inside the "waterproof" mountain from atmospheric testing in the '50's. That means it has taken less than fifty years for water to make it's way into the mountain. What do you think that will do to the local water table and springs.
I don't understand how a bunch of mirrors fail to compete against coal.
Subsidies and Tax advantages given to coal and nuclear power. A proportional amount of money for R&D has not been spent on alternative energy sources, i.e solar. It's ridiculous really considering America has a bounty of alternative energy sources it can draw on.
yellow cake which is the dirt that gets refined into uranium,
Actually it's quite difficult to produce. Yellowcake is refined from soft and hard ore's, even at this stage of the fuel cycle is significantly toxic and energy intensive.
Nuclear power, though promising in terms of cutting emissions, does carry a lot of other hidden costs...
..and as yet unfactored costs. For example demolishing a decommisioned nuclear reactor has not succesfully been performed on a large scale yet. Nuclear industry proponents tout the amount of energy that can be extracted from a gram of Uranium but rarely factor the *Net Energy Return* of the Nuclear fuel cycle, associated infrastructure and the long term storage of toxic waste.
Your argument is succint and to the point, but rarley understood by Atomic industry proponents which is why you see arguments such as...
Uranium fuel is actually almost infinite. seawater etc etc
You cannot talk about these as a supply of uranium without calculating the Net Energy Return. Forget the cost, it is pointless trying to extract uranium from seawater, or any other source, when you are talking about a Net Energy cost in the thousands of Petajoule range.
Breeder Reactor.
I was a big fan of the Integral Fast Reactor, and in a way I still am. But the reality is 3rd and 4th generation reactors are a pipe dream because our material science is not advanced enough yet to produce a reactor design that will last thousands of years. If you are going to build one then do it properly and build a terrawatt scale nuclear reactor in the belly of a massive granite mountain with an attached waste facility that chomps up all your remaining plutonium or end all commercial nuclear activity altogether. As for the PBMR this reactor has some serious design flaws upon a closer examination of the design that makes them no better than Chernobyl as they age, especially if you are talking about a reactor design that last a pithy 4-5 decades.
I have nothing against nuclear research, in fact I think it's essential to design a reactor that will be able to deal with the roughly 70,000 tons of plutonium waste in America alone, but it's entirely inappropriate to talk about commisioning new nuclear power plants while the legacy radioactive waste from every stage of the fuel cycle is yet too be dealt with.
Until then it would be sensible to divert some of the huge subsidies that the Atomic industry get into developing a more sustainable energy infrastructure that has come this far without equivalent subsidies.
Slashdot Mirror
A modular infrastructure built on both mirrors and microwave would provide a power source that is both scaleable and deployable to other areas by refocusing the mirrors and microwave array . I'd imagine that is a compelling argument against a teather based power transmission system to the military. It's an interesting idea though. Where would you deploy it? Of course there would be considerations the electric teather's mass vs the current it can carry and orbit.
Both would be a good way to introduce a hydrogen energy economy, instead of batteries, ship hydrogen, maybe even pipe it. You could focus ALOT of mirrors and microwave transmitters onto one spot if you can afford the launches, of course that would be a significant incentive to build a space elevator to deploy the infrastructure in space. I doubt it would be too hard to convert gasoline vehices to run on hydrogen, so in that regard it stacks up well for backward compatibility.
Besides, lighting up a big stadium from space would look wicked.
It might be an interesting comparison.
The main problem is the chemical effect of "greenhouse gasses" allows solar energy to be trapped in the atmosphere. Human energy consumption pales in comparison to the suns output, it's the by-product (externalities) of the energy industry's activies that appear to be affecting the earths capacity to disipate heat.
don't laugh and please mod me informative ;-)
At first your numbers were assumptions, now they're for commercial next generation reactors that haven't been constructed yet. That's a major inconsistency in your argument there.
The energy spent during construction of a reactor containment building is a direct reflection of the strength of the construction, how much concrete is used and the building's capacity to sustain damage. You argue that the energy expenditure is less to construct next generation reactors and that is because there is less concrete and steel invested into the containment building making them cheaper to construct, i.e the dollar investment is a direct reflection of the strength of the containment building and the energy invested to construct it. Consider if the Chernobyl "accident" occured inside a strong containment building how much fall out could have been contained, why should we tolerate having new reactors built with any less assurance that the structure could contain such an event.
Your first argument is that a 1GW reactor lasts an average of 50 years, now you "think" they will last 50 years. The bottom line is you can't show me where a 1GW reactor is that has lasted 50 years because it doesn't exist, so your argument is flawed on that point alone. Additionally what I didn't mention previously is your argument assumes that your 1GW reactor operates at FULL load for it's entire life outside it's 30% downtime, which is optimistic at best. At best even coal power stations are pushing it to last 40 years and that is established, operational technology. Even the document you sent me expects only 40 years from the reactor at Forsmark.
hahahahahaha that's funny rei. You really illustrate a poor understanding of the limitations of a machine such as a nuclear reactor. Maybe this single example will help you understand. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davis-Besse http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/ops-experience/vessel-head-degradation.html
Then perhaps you can explain the operational characteristics of a Nuclear reactor throughout different phases of it's designed life. Tell me what happens when key components get "embrittled" towards the end of the reactor's life span.
Of course you only picked construction you wouldn't mention the energetic expenditure for nuclear industry externalities have not even been estimated. Want to tell me what the energy costs are to seal up 65000 tons of depleted uranium from the enrichment process, what about the mine tailings? Still no answer from you there rei.
Then of course there is the toxicity of tritium, biologically very mutagenic, easily absorbed into the Gastro intestinal tract and lungs, decreased brain weight, retardation, shrinkage of male and female reproductive organs ovarian tumors, chromosomal breaks and abberations perinatal mortality. Then of course it's worse when it's organically bound to food, eaten and organically bound inside the body...
Where? Show me where the 1GW Nuclear power plants that have lasted 50 years are. The core of a reactor is much bigger than 1 kilogram, it's roughly 165 tons of uranium (conservative for a 1GW reactor) consumed every 1-2 years, so lets say a standard 18 month refueling cycle of 165000 kilograms of uranium. Now let's give you your 50 year reactor and thats 33 refueling cycles which makes a total consumption of 5,445,000 kilograms of Uranium over the life of the reactor and it's just over a paltry 55 MegaWatt hours per kilogram based on your figures. Thats a far cry from the several Gigawatt hours per kilogram that you claim.
Well Rei, it looks like a whole bunch of poorly put together assumptions. First of all mean energetic estimates for construction of a nuclear power plant is somewhere between 11TWh and 35TWh (40-120 PetaJoules). However your energy cost for demolition (your assumtion is 20GWh) is a gross underestimate with figures around the 70TWh (240-300 PetaJoules) if deconstruction is performed safely. Just in the construction/demolition phase you have consumed 1 third of the 300TWh's you claim from the life of a brand new AP1000 reactor. Then factor the energetic costs of the dismantling and clean up of the core 5.6 - 16TWh's and it really is starting to look like a very poor energy return from your 1GW reactor.
But what about the energy costs that haven't yet been factored?
Remediation of Mine Tailings
Enrichment of fuel
Disposal of Depleted Uranium from enrichment process
Transportation of Waste
Disposal of Waste cooling water
Construction of waste containers
Construction of waste facility
Some of which don't even have figures because it's never been done, or externalised, which really illustrated how badly the Nuclear industry has failed the global community. Tritium, Radioactive Hydrogen, Carbon 14, Strontium 90, Calcium 41, Cobalt 60, Iron 55 etc etc etc all released into the Global Biosphere because the Nuclear industry doesn't have an energetically sustainable engineering solution that will contain these isotopes.
Only if you use your grossly incorrect assumptions. 165 tonnes per year is 5445 tonnes of uranium over the plant's entire lifespan!!. That's 8.4 Terrawatt hours just for the mining (5.5GigaJoules per ton), a long way from the 40GWh and 50 tonnes you claim. AND the 8.4 Terrawatt hours DO NOT include waste disposal, as you claim, AND does not include treatment of mine tailings. AND my figures are generous with the overall CONCENTRATION of ore per tonne of rock - once it falls below 0.01% there is a net energy debt with nuclear power.
Makes you wonder what the face of space exploration would look like today if Korolyov had survived long enough to complete the N-series launchers and actually got them to the moon.
A PBMR's design failure's only come into thier own when introduced on a commercial scale.
No it isn't it's about Net energy return. If you put more energy into the process than you get out it becomes pointless, you can't pay for what you don't get. Not Gigajoules, not Terrajoules but thousands of Petajoules of energy consumed and you still have a waste problem, you still have the energy cost's to dismantle and of course the wasted money, social and medical problems.
In the context of Nuclear Energy, Economics do not factor when the "Net Energy Return" does not exist .
couldn't see Tool there.
I can only hope that as bandwidth increases, peering technology gets better, that the I.T based music distribution model will scale to allow higher resolution Music to be available - one that allows resolution that is double or triple current cd sampling rates. Now that the media will become less of an issue, then this can be a real possibility and high quality digital music can take it's place amongst audiophiles - as well as portable music formats. This is a real hole that music companies dug for themselves persuing DRM for mp3's as they are nowhere near the quality of a cd, now they have no "Unique Selling Proposition" to the average music consumer who cannot tell the difference.
I also think the demise of the music companies will cause great leaps in the amount of artists available - and heaps more music as artists, who traditionally explore limits anyway, find new ways of reaching an audience - without being stiffled by the record companies accountants.
Even though your not the first to do it Amazon, thank you, your a big player - with any luck this is the begining of a new chapter for a new music industry - without the traditional players.
And as for the traditional music industry, I think RadioHead's song "Just" summed it up best with this lyric
You do it to yourself, you do, And that's what really hurts, Is that you do it to yourself, Just you and no one else, You do it to yourself
You do it to yourself
Isn't the next version getting wifi and a camera?
If anything it has raised awareness about the state of play in the gui "responsiveness" arena - yes, frankly, I feel there is room for improvement when I use my fedora box but how do you measure it? I tune my kernels as best I can and am always looking for a little more.
I think that ck might have been a bit abrasive because of his back injury and that rubbed the kernel dev's up the wrong way. Don't get me wrong I think what ck has done is valuable, if not just for the code but for the fact that ck has raised awareness in this area.
About forking time too.
I guess you get the government you deserve.
It illustrates supreme arrogance that the spokeperson for the nuclear industry got it this badly wrong that in 2007 no suitable high level waste facility exists. In reality the entire Nuclear industry is a failure peppered with incidents, accidents, mis-information and propaganda. I've read a few of your other post's outside this thread and I presume you have the capability to do your own research instead of propagating your own incorrect presumptions, indeed you said yourself...
indeed, you do.
That's just plain wrong - it dosen't work like that. Radioactivity bioaccumulates this means that the strontium 90 gets on the grass, the cows eat the grass and concentrates it into the milk (cow gets a dose itself), the milk is powdered concentrates further and made into chocolate, you eat the chocolate and over time it bioaccumulates and after a gestation period, you get thyroid cancer. Of course it depends on what the isotope analogues, for example plutonium analogues iron, hello leukemia, radium analogues clacium hello highly malignant osteogenic sarcoma's (bone cancer). Likewise an alpha emmiter might be benign outside the body but if it gets into the body it's extremely mutagenic.
I mean do people actually read this statement and sudennly B*A*M it's true. Have you considered that this little gem is propaganda elicited by the nuclear industry in an attempt to leverage it's market position against coal? I'm not a big fan of coal but have you actually read this statement? I'm gonna gamble you are rational, so go on, read it ten times right now and see how stupid it sounds.
no, really read it 10 times
Ever quantified this peice of mis-information, at what stage of the reactors life or what part of the fuel cycle? Do you factor in the toxicity of the mining and the mine tailings?. What a bout the waste in the enrichment phase to the waste all of which only exists because of nuclear reactors.
This stuff is seriously toxic, it's not a flippant source of amusment for you to have a chuckle at those "anti-nuclear environmentalist" as you put it. The arguments against the Nuclear industry are pragmatic and concerning. It's like learning about Microsoft's activities and NOT objecting to their behaviour, the only difference is that the Nuclear industry is playing with our lives and has goverments and the military on their side to conceal their failures.
Because after all, it's you that's being poisoned as well.
Dood, you're talking about earthquake and volcanic activity containing, at the minimum 70,000 tons of plutonium with Yucca at capacity. Any damage there is going to have some serious consequences. Even if there is no "siesmically dead" areas surely you have a mountain made of granite *somewhere*.
Out of interest have you run a 10K simulation on Yucca Mountain?
Maybe you can go back to the '70's when Dixie Lee Ray, the head of the Atomic Energy Commission, proclaimed that the disposal of nuclear fuel would be the greatest non-problem in history and would be accomplished by 1985. Yet here we are in 2007, over twenty years past that date and with better technology but still there is no High level waste disposal site anywhere. So if the Director of the AEC could get it that badly wrong, with all the resources of the AEC, how are you going to solve it?
To answer your "think you read somewhere", if you stacked those blocks up they would go critical friend, and somehow 70,000 tons of plutonium going critical would definatley be a *bad thing* - that's how much plutonium you are talking about.
Huh, Pluonium has a halflife of 25,000 years, I think the guards would get bored and as for the sign, well just try and imagine what language was like a mere 1000 years ago, how do you know our signs will even be understood?That's because Yucca Mountain is made of PUMICE and there are thirty three known-active fault lines. If thats not enough Radioactive chlorine 36 has been found inside the "waterproof" mountain from atmospheric testing in the '50's. That means it has taken less than fifty years for water to make it's way into the mountain. What do you think that will do to the local water table and springs.
Actually it's quite difficult to produce. Yellowcake is refined from soft and hard ore's, even at this stage of the fuel cycle is significantly toxic and energy intensive.
Your argument is succint and to the point, but rarley understood by Atomic industry proponents which is why you see arguments such as...
You cannot talk about these as a supply of uranium without calculating the Net Energy Return. Forget the cost, it is pointless trying to extract uranium from seawater, or any other source, when you are talking about a Net Energy cost in the thousands of Petajoule range. I was a big fan of the Integral Fast Reactor, and in a way I still am. But the reality is 3rd and 4th generation reactors are a pipe dream because our material science is not advanced enough yet to produce a reactor design that will last thousands of years. If you are going to build one then do it properly and build a terrawatt scale nuclear reactor in the belly of a massive granite mountain with an attached waste facility that chomps up all your remaining plutonium or end all commercial nuclear activity altogether. As for the PBMR this reactor has some serious design flaws upon a closer examination of the design that makes them no better than Chernobyl as they age, especially if you are talking about a reactor design that last a pithy 4-5 decades.I have nothing against nuclear research, in fact I think it's essential to design a reactor that will be able to deal with the roughly 70,000 tons of plutonium waste in America alone, but it's entirely inappropriate to talk about commisioning new nuclear power plants while the legacy radioactive waste from every stage of the fuel cycle is yet too be dealt with.
Until then it would be sensible to divert some of the huge subsidies that the Atomic industry get into developing a more sustainable energy infrastructure that has come this far without equivalent subsidies.
Sounds like a cheap way to dispose of waste plutonium, lets build heaps of them bigger and faster.