No, i look forward to SCO suing microsoft as well, because they might have ported linux kernel code into windows as the screenshots of Microsoft/GNU/Linux BASH show.
Microsoft is one of SCO's shareholders, they have been funding SCO since the 80's. SCO is a proxy, so that the press is SCO vs IBM and I haven't seen anything that suggests Microsoft has exited the SCO board.
You write software to fit the need. Nasa invented the "Agile" approach with Gemini and Mercury, but I doubt any of those guys would have to argue with their management about the need for descope in the middle of an iteration. Software is a malleable form of engineering and a number of approaches can be bought to bare to make it fit for purpose. Your appetite for risk and the impact of that risk is part of the process that decides what that is. After all how many software projects even have risk and issue logs even before we start to talk about formalized processes that double the amount of skilled people you require.
Software for military sub's reactor and civillian avionics are at least two places I can think of that require a high degree of scrutiny, there are certainly a lot more lives at stake. NASA have their own goals and objectives and this is how their processes are implemented.
Start a Softwareproject like that without having it properly planned or the right people involved and your project will go over budget
Well, that's true but it also comes down to application. If you can't afford to get it wrong because people will die, then you engineer it to a high degree of accuracy. If you can't afford to get it right because you need to launch a business then that is a risk you take.
If you are producing a lot of documentation and operational contracts then your project management will have enough milestones and checkpoints to understand *how long it will take* before you are over budget and if you are performing your objectives within budget because coming in under-budget might also mean you didn't plan well enough. Sometimes it's better to ask for extra budget, but only once - and you better deliver.
It was a great article, and it's premise that writing software well is an education that seems to take for ever to permeate makes a lot of sense but fortunately the other great thing about it is it can also be about the people you meet and the things you create. You can use modern software development techniques to produce good quality software that is fit for purpose, like a game for example, that doesn't have to be engineered to a high degree of accuracy. It that case it's better to engineer the process to be fun so people will be more productive because writing software isn't easy.
There was no indication in the article how much accuracy was a requirement for the launch control software.
In the same way our generation is facing a carbon legacy from previous generations, future generations will face a radioistope legacy that they will be forced to solve. Consider these facts:
Right now peer reviewed science shows us that the current Nuclear power industry does not provide a Net Energy return simply because of the energetic inputs from mining and the energetic inputs to decommission the reactor. Peer reviewed science surrounding the net energy return of the entire Nuclear industry when viewed from a systemic level is well known and discussed. When examined as a whole more energy goes into the Nuclear Industry than what can safely come out.
Addressing the issue of 70,000 tons of Pu-239 currently stored in reactor sites around America and indeed the world is imperative, simply because it's irresponsible for our generation to foist this issue onto later generations.
There is no geologically sound Nuclear waste dump in operation so it's totally inappropriate to discuss building a new reactor facility until a proper containment facility is available. Even doing that, just the infrastructure project to simply move the spent fuel to a storage facility will probably take 30 years to complete as it is an enormous undertaking. Yucca mountain is not a suitable site because it is made of pumice and geologically active evidenced by recent aftershocks of 5.6 within ten miles of a repository that is supposed to be geologically stable for at least 500000 years. The DOE's own 1982 Nuclear Waste policy Act reported that the Yucca Mountain's geology is inappropriate to contain nuclear waste, and long term corrosion data on C22 (the material to contain the Pu-239 and mitigate the ingress of water - yet another Yucca problem) is just not available. There is some promising work in storing spent nuclear fuels in crystaline strctures that don't leech into water tables but not that works on an industrial scale yet.
Third and fourth generation reactors are a pipe dream because our material science is not advanced enough yet to produce a reactor design that will be in service for thousands of years to avoid using up most of the energetic yeild of the reactor on reactor disposal. I was a big fan of the Integral Fast Reactor, because it burned weapons grade plutonium and DU and we desperately need to stop DU being used as a munition. Maybe one day we will be able to build reactors properly and have appropriate social and management systems that prevent the kind of accidents we have seen but that day is not here yet.
Nuclear power is energy intensive *after* the energy has been produced simply because our technology - especially material sciences - are not adequate to produce a Nuclear reactor that has a life span that matches the geological time frames of the fuel. This exposes to all the issues associated with de-commissioning reactor sites every 4 decades or so.
If you look at it realistically the only way forward for the nuclear industry is a well thought out project to redesign the entire industry as a long term solution, a much better legacy for future generations than a long term problem that will last a minimum of 25,000 years for the first half life pu-239 to decay. The would require a re-engineering of the entire economy to achieve a safe nuclear industry that had a safety culture that is embedded and cost hundreds of billions of dollars. That not going to happen because the nuclear industry has demonstrated they can't blame themselves for problems and consistently fail to improve. It's more realistic to beleive that accellerators will be built on the sites and most of the spent fuel destroyed before any breeder or burner reactors are ever constructed.
I support reactor research but not commercial nuclear power. I don't hide the fact that I don't like the constant failure of the Nuclear Industry because their failure
It's ridiculous to think greenpeace, hippys in combi vans, hicks in pick up trucks or any other NIMBY has any influence at all as all of their concerns are addressed in Section C.9. The process and economics involved in proposing and building a Nuclear Reactor is complex.
Especially when you consider there has been a bunch of GenIII reactors proposed. Only approved reactor types can be sited and the companies who propose them can apply for compensation for construction delays(2005 US Energy Act, SEC 600 onward). It's an excellent way for oil and coal utilities to legally defraud ratepayers as the original act that prevented that behaviour, a part of the new deal called PUCHA, was repealed there in the end of the 2005 Act. Under the Act, IIUC, each operator can claim up to $500,000,000 per site in construction delays.
Once the stuff that is wanted from the mine is carried away the stuff left over is now more radioactive than the original dirt.
It's an interesting point.
I find it difficult to believe that uranium mining would leave the soil more radioactive than it was to begin with.
It brings elements that have been in place in the earth for millions of years. Once you disturb them and put them on the surface of the earth is where the problem begins..
Uranium is radioactive and removed from the soil. What is left behind should be LESS radioactive that what was there before.
Indeed, but Uranium is not the only radio-isotope there, radon gas comes with it which is a heavy water soluble gas, as I mentioned.
Uranium mining does not create more radioactive material since nothing has yet undergone fission.
I know, it was in place in the earth and now it is dug up as a by-product of the Uranium mining. Radon gas, now leaking out of the mine tailings, flows over the land to the lowest point where there is usually a water source and then sinks into the water. It's parallels what nutty nukkers complain about when the coal industry emits radio-isotopes in coal fly ash from their stacks, since nothing has yet undergone fission. Well you get a lot of that sort of effluent from uranium mining.
It's an appealing, if energy intensive method. Why not a proper waste storage facility and allow time to do the work? Work around uranites look like a promising method to lock these materials up so they don't leech into the water table. Second best there is granite and bentonite clays, IIUC.
Oh, I agree. US plant are twice the storage density of Japanese plants, SONGS across the pacific was a massive concerns. That's the main reason I see construction of geological spent fuel facilities as a priority.
I thought you might be interested in the allegations of illegal fuel rod storage going on at Fukushima and the claims from civil engineers that the No4 cooling pool should have had adequate structural integrity to survive the ground acceleration from a 9 earthquake.
Coal power kills more people per YEAR than Nuclear power has ever killed, total.
Radio-isotope contamination causes transgenic disease and genetic aborations in many species including human beings. Deaths from nuclear power can also be looked at statistical reductions in the rate of pregnancies that fail to come to full term, produce fatal mutations when they do. These elements in the food chain will be causing problems for many generations. Perhaps you should look into understanding how these isotopes interact with metabolisms to get an understanding of how nuclear *will* continue to kill long after our arrogant generation is long dead.
Of course we could also just confront your statement as an out right construct enabled by the IAEA having publishing interdiction powers over the WHO. Information from those sources is biased by an organization who's charter is to promote nuclear power. Are you suggesting that the IAEA should operate outside its charter by allowing information out that doesn't support nuclear power?
And the nuclear waste problem only exists because America refuses to use waste reprocessing.
You may not be aware that Carter's order was repealed by Reagun, that tired thinking is as obsolete as a plutonium economy. America isn't reprocessing nuclear fuel because it is expensive and not cost effective. Even if it was the supporting reactor technology does not exist despite funding to create it in the US' 2005 Energy Act - check SEC 600 onwards if you don't believe me.
Stop taking the fuel out of the reactor and dumping it in a hole in the ground.
Well you nutty nutty nukkers really don't understand that geologic stable spent fuel facilities are the things the Nuclear Industry needs to remain viable. You think some new reactor technology will save it or suddenly make it economically viable. In the meantime our generation imposes it's decision on generations to come who will look at us like the bunch of incompetent arrogant ditherers we actually are.
Fortunately we will be too dead to be concerned with the consequences.
Thank you for another great posting. Perhaps you have seen this status of Fukushima No4 spent fuel cooling pool. This is the thing that has made me crap my pants about Fukushima from day one. Hope you find it interesting.
As opposed to the incumbent 18th century technology (coal / oil) which obliterates all coastal zones on the planet as a matter of normal operation.
As part of normal operation Nuclear power plants are authorized by the NRC to release radioactive gasses, produced in the reactor core, into the environment. In abnormal operation people are evacuated from the area.
No, nuclear power isn't perfect, but we don't have a generation technology that is.
So we agree that coal and nuclear produce the same levels of damage in different ways.
So pick a mix that does the least damage as a matter of normal operation, and keep working towards things that are better.
Then let's invest heavily in solar, wind and geothermal.
I have no objection to the continual development of nuclear technology but the reality is our management systems, where people are involved, are simply not mature enough for us to run them safely, let alone profitably. You nukkers always talk about some new reactor technology but fail to focus on the core reason we have reactor accidents in the first place, facility management. *EVERY* nuclear accident has had this as a factor. Windscale,Lake Karachay, TMI, Chernobyl and Fukushima. It is time for you guys to face the reality that we simply do not have management systems that will run them without an accident every other decade and that cleaning up the mess the nuclear industry has made is as urgent as geologically sound spent fuel storage facilities.
And even if we did, we don't have the materials technology to keep a reactor going any more than 40 years, and that reduces the EROEI of a nuclear plant making them pointless anyway. All the rubbish about capacity factors and energy density are irrelevant compared to tearing these things down at the end of their service life, even if they run perfectly without a single accident.
Nuclear power looks great when you have a superficial look at it, as you learn more you start to ask questions and then the nutty nukkers call you 'anti-nuclear'. I *used* to think that nuclear power would save the world, then I educated myself about it and discovered that it is a pointless bad idea.
Nuclear power is great, if you don't know much about it.
Think about environmental damage vs energy output. How many megawatts comes from how much destruction when considering coal vs nuclear? Carbon sequestration coal? Breeder reactor nuclear?
or the EROEI of nuclear and it's *net* energy output compared to the damage.
I think the P and GP both have points, and the debate is going to be won based on quantitative merits on specific system configurations rather than qualitative statements about general power architectures.
Thank you. I think it's important to talk about the social aspects because they are too often ignored. Nuclear power has long been sustained via the Price-Anderson act which, if repealed, would collapse the nuclear industry overnight from the sheer weight of liabilty. Nuclear power is the only industry that needs legislative constructs to survive and these were supposed to be temporary measures when they were introduced.
Nuclear power is falling apart for many reasons, the most telling being that Wall st just thinks it's a bad, overly risky,investment.
Btw, fun fact.. Guess who's putting in most money lobbying against nuclear and pushing for solar?... Oil-companies..
Because they get a taxation benefit even if they *don't* build it. 2005 Energy Act SEC 600 onwards. IIRC SEC 625-638 lays out exactly how the oil and coal industry can help themselves to the nuclear industry's milkshake. That's why it's hilarious watching you guy point fingers at hick and hippies in combi vans and yell "NIMBYs" as if they can affect the placement of a multi billion reactor facility. You nutty nutty nukkers and your silly silly sayings!!!
And for your further information funds exist in the same act to develop hydrogen and electricity generating nuclear plants which hasn't been touched. I guess oil and coal industry doesn't want nuclear sniffing around their monopoly.
Radiation levels are higher on the beaches of Rio than at the Chernobyl site itself.
From the sun or from fallout from a nuclear reactor? Radio-isotopes can be absorbed into the body - you should learn the difference between internal and external radiation exposure. External radiation from the sun causes tans and skin cancer, internal exposure from organically bound radio-isotopes causes tumors.
You are aware that many people have refused to leave Chernobyl and have been living there since 1986 right?
Ghosts in a zombie city, very sad that you would cite their suffering as an argument to why it isn't occurring. Do many children live there?
The 70s are gone and so with it the flower children.
Flares, I wore them once, I didn't get laid, I'm not wearing them again.
In particular, it's worth noting that there is a rupture disk here precisely to prevent the reactor pressure vessel from experiencing a catastrophic rupture and that the vessel was leaking enough that it might not have even reached a high enough pressure to break the rupture disk.
Interesting, perhaps you found the ASME report. As I said to you before that was the first design basis issue in implementations of that GE reactor, it started leaking at 70psi.
I know that if I were designing this thing, I'd have most plumbing passing through the shell of the PCV fail first (especially anything for venting the interior of the PCV).
If you were designing this, you would be sperm;)
Or that one or more components were designed to fail first. Or that the part of the PCV which was overpressurized (the "dry well") eventually vented to the part that wasn't (the "wet well").
Or perhaps the gate pair seals for the spent fuel cooling pools in this reactor were situated in such a way that they leaked water over the top of the PCV. This was the second known design basis issue with this reactor type and that they would leak water when power was lost. It was also known that they would produce hydrogen in this state, and it did explode. The hydrogen density must have been high to puch holes in concrete like that.
However it is all irrelevant, the operators were criminally negligent because they did not take adequate steps to ensure power was maintained to this reactor installation so as to avoid exposing those issues. There is no mystery here. The collusion you yourself complained of, that was exposed in the official report into the accident, that led to the accident. Sea wall was not raised to account for new knowledge, additional generators could have been installed, they could have run those reactor at a lower output. So many opportunities to avoid this accident.
As for your unsubstantiated claims that the facility was to be decommissioned, evidence is emerging that Reactor 4 was actually being upgraded along with disturbing allegations of illegal fuel rod storage. That really undermines your argument that seawall upgrades wern't neccessary. On the good news front though I see that the amount of mox fuel rods in the No.4 reactors are down from 1300 to 400 and we are finally seeing the board of Tepco being brought to justice after avoiding charges of negligence for so long.
Wow, 7000 return and 100,000 still can't - gee you really got me there. For the people around Chernobyl though? Perhaps they don't deserve our empathy because, well, they were soviet's back then.
I don't have to explain shit.
Perhaps you don't know? So here is a explanation of the global danger that Fukushima reactor 4 still poses to all of us e.v.e.r.y.d.a.y. and the nature of a plutonium fire. It really shows the regard the Japanese government has for the residents of Fukushima.
Coal mining also disrupts the water table and does far more damage over all. Nuclear has far less waste also. A waste that can be managed where coal waste is dispersed around the planet.
Yep, totally agree, coal is extremly damaging. What has that got to do with permanently polluting an entire water table with radioactive isotopes?
As for managing nuclear waste perhaps this article from the science section of National Geographic Magazine will help put it into perspective for you.
You nutty nukkers always point to some other tragedy and ignore the ongoing tragedy that the people that used to live around Chernobyl and Fukushima cannot go home. The Tsunami was a horrible tragedy made worse by the fact that the people that used to live there can't rebuild because a nuclear reactor spilled radioactive isotopes everywhere. Those fortunate enough not to have their homes destroyed also can't go home.
How many hundreds of thousands of people are affected? You guys carry on as if those people don't even exist and it's just callous. How would you like being evacuated from everything and everyone you knew with little or no warning then told you can't go home. One day you have a life, next day it's gone. If you live near a nuclear power plant that's the risk you live with e.v.e.r.y.d.a.y. I doubt your anonymous rhetoric would survive very long if you were confronted by the evacuees of such places. Would you explain to them how bad coal is?
If a nuclear power plant explodes, the community around that reactor cannot return.
Clearly we are not going to stop using energy and I'd say nuclear is a far cleaner option than coal/oil
Yes, it's bad, I agree. What has the damage coal does to the environment have to do with people who have been physically evacuated from their homes?
That facts are evident: nuclear power is a technical marvel that destroys the communities around it when it fails.
As opposed to coal which fucks up areas thousands of miles away with acid rain, carbon, strip mining and land destruction, and if you believe greenhouse gases which contributes to global warming!
Uranium mining is really bad as well. It uses acid leach mining which pollutes water tables. Mega litres of sulfuric acid pumped underground and stored above ground containing radio active isotopes. It's such a destructive form of mining it is illegal in Russia and The United States.
Switch to traditional uranium mining methods and that process creates massive amounts mine tailing that realease huge amount of highly water soluable radon gas that also pollutes water tables. Sure it's in peoples basements, that doesn't mean you should breate it or drink it.
Moving on to enrichment that process releases huge amount of CFC114 which is an extremely potent greenhouse gas. So you are looking at land destruction proportional to the amount of plants you are fueling. Both coal and nuclear are destructive to the land in different ways. Both are really bad options that come from a time when we didn't know as much.
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No, i look forward to SCO suing microsoft as well, because they might have ported linux kernel code into windows as the screenshots of Microsoft/GNU/Linux BASH show.
Microsoft is one of SCO's shareholders, they have been funding SCO since the 80's. SCO is a proxy, so that the press is SCO vs IBM and I haven't seen anything that suggests Microsoft has exited the SCO board.
Can't someone kill this zombie process
No, it's maintained by systemd now.
No, Gemini and Mercury were the programs that taught NASA that they needed a requirements based approach instead of agile.
Yes it was, in conjunction with IBM under Bill Tindall according to NASA history Howard W. "Bill" Tindall started with Mercury and Gemini ground software and later made a significant contribution to the quality of the Apollo on-board software. It wasn't called "Agile" back then however the contribution of quality were Agile components like iterations and time boxes. That's why I referred to "Agile" with it's collective name - capital "A" instead of "agile".
We learned from killing a few people and blowing up a bunch of rockets that we needed a better design approach.
So point to the specific incidents where a software problem killed people in NASA's space programs.
There is no software on the planet that is more scrutinised and more meticulously developed than software for spacecraft.
You write software to fit the need. Nasa invented the "Agile" approach with Gemini and Mercury, but I doubt any of those guys would have to argue with their management about the need for descope in the middle of an iteration. Software is a malleable form of engineering and a number of approaches can be bought to bare to make it fit for purpose. Your appetite for risk and the impact of that risk is part of the process that decides what that is. After all how many software projects even have risk and issue logs even before we start to talk about formalized processes that double the amount of skilled people you require.
Software for military sub's reactor and civillian avionics are at least two places I can think of that require a high degree of scrutiny, there are certainly a lot more lives at stake. NASA have their own goals and objectives and this is how their processes are implemented.
Start a Softwareproject like that without having it properly planned or the right people involved and your project will go over budget
Well, that's true but it also comes down to application. If you can't afford to get it wrong because people will die, then you engineer it to a high degree of accuracy. If you can't afford to get it right because you need to launch a business then that is a risk you take.
If you are producing a lot of documentation and operational contracts then your project management will have enough milestones and checkpoints to understand *how long it will take* before you are over budget and if you are performing your objectives within budget because coming in under-budget might also mean you didn't plan well enough. Sometimes it's better to ask for extra budget, but only once - and you better deliver.
It was a great article, and it's premise that writing software well is an education that seems to take for ever to permeate makes a lot of sense but fortunately the other great thing about it is it can also be about the people you meet and the things you create. You can use modern software development techniques to produce good quality software that is fit for purpose, like a game for example, that doesn't have to be engineered to a high degree of accuracy. It that case it's better to engineer the process to be fun so people will be more productive because writing software isn't easy.
There was no indication in the article how much accuracy was a requirement for the launch control software.
In the same way our generation is facing a carbon legacy from previous generations, future generations will face a radioistope legacy that they will be forced to solve. Consider these facts:
Right now peer reviewed science shows us that the current Nuclear power industry does not provide a Net Energy return simply because of the energetic inputs from mining and the energetic inputs to decommission the reactor. Peer reviewed science surrounding the net energy return of the entire Nuclear industry when viewed from a systemic level is well known and discussed. When examined as a whole more energy goes into the Nuclear Industry than what can safely come out.
Addressing the issue of 70,000 tons of Pu-239 currently stored in reactor sites around America and indeed the world is imperative, simply because it's irresponsible for our generation to foist this issue onto later generations.
There is no geologically sound Nuclear waste dump in operation so it's totally inappropriate to discuss building a new reactor facility until a proper containment facility is available. Even doing that, just the infrastructure project to simply move the spent fuel to a storage facility will probably take 30 years to complete as it is an enormous undertaking. Yucca mountain is not a suitable site because it is made of pumice and geologically active evidenced by recent aftershocks of 5.6 within ten miles of a repository that is supposed to be geologically stable for at least 500000 years. The DOE's own 1982 Nuclear Waste policy Act reported that the Yucca Mountain's geology is inappropriate to contain nuclear waste, and long term corrosion data on C22 (the material to contain the Pu-239 and mitigate the ingress of water - yet another Yucca problem) is just not available. There is some promising work in storing spent nuclear fuels in crystaline strctures that don't leech into water tables but not that works on an industrial scale yet.
Third and fourth generation reactors are a pipe dream because our material science is not advanced enough yet to produce a reactor design that will be in service for thousands of years to avoid using up most of the energetic yeild of the reactor on reactor disposal. I was a big fan of the Integral Fast Reactor, because it burned weapons grade plutonium and DU and we desperately need to stop DU being used as a munition. Maybe one day we will be able to build reactors properly and have appropriate social and management systems that prevent the kind of accidents we have seen but that day is not here yet.
Nuclear power is energy intensive *after* the energy has been produced simply because our technology - especially material sciences - are not adequate to produce a Nuclear reactor that has a life span that matches the geological time frames of the fuel. This exposes to all the issues associated with de-commissioning reactor sites every 4 decades or so. If you look at it realistically the only way forward for the nuclear industry is a well thought out project to redesign the entire industry as a long term solution, a much better legacy for future generations than a long term problem that will last a minimum of 25,000 years for the first half life pu-239 to decay. The would require a re-engineering of the entire economy to achieve a safe nuclear industry that had a safety culture that is embedded and cost hundreds of billions of dollars. That not going to happen because the nuclear industry has demonstrated they can't blame themselves for problems and consistently fail to improve. It's more realistic to beleive that accellerators will be built on the sites and most of the spent fuel destroyed before any breeder or burner reactors are ever constructed.
I support reactor research but not commercial nuclear power. I don't hide the fact that I don't like the constant failure of the Nuclear Industry because their failure
NIMBY accusations are a complete ad hom argument when they are made. The placement of Nuclear facilities is governed by a Suitability Criteria that is an act of law.
It's ridiculous to think greenpeace, hippys in combi vans, hicks in pick up trucks or any other NIMBY has any influence at all as all of their concerns are addressed in Section C.9. The process and economics involved in proposing and building a Nuclear Reactor is complex.
Especially when you consider there has been a bunch of GenIII reactors proposed. Only approved reactor types can be sited and the companies who propose them can apply for compensation for construction delays(2005 US Energy Act, SEC 600 onward). It's an excellent way for oil and coal utilities to legally defraud ratepayers as the original act that prevented that behaviour, a part of the new deal called PUCHA, was repealed there in the end of the 2005 Act. Under the Act, IIUC, each operator can claim up to $500,000,000 per site in construction delays.
The taxpayer is the one that is being ripped off.
Much better.
Once the stuff that is wanted from the mine is carried away the stuff left over is now more radioactive than the original dirt.
It's an interesting point.
I find it difficult to believe that uranium mining would leave the soil more radioactive than it was to begin with.
It brings elements that have been in place in the earth for millions of years. Once you disturb them and put them on the surface of the earth is where the problem begins..
Uranium is radioactive and removed from the soil. What is left behind should be LESS radioactive that what was there before.
Indeed, but Uranium is not the only radio-isotope there, radon gas comes with it which is a heavy water soluble gas, as I mentioned.
Uranium mining does not create more radioactive material since nothing has yet undergone fission.
I know, it was in place in the earth and now it is dug up as a by-product of the Uranium mining. Radon gas, now leaking out of the mine tailings, flows over the land to the lowest point where there is usually a water source and then sinks into the water. It's parallels what nutty nukkers complain about when the coal industry emits radio-isotopes in coal fly ash from their stacks, since nothing has yet undergone fission. Well you get a lot of that sort of effluent from uranium mining.
It's an appealing, if energy intensive method. Why not a proper waste storage facility and allow time to do the work? Work around uranites look like a promising method to lock these materials up so they don't leech into the water table. Second best there is granite and bentonite clays, IIUC.
Would you mind explaining your rationale?
I think of nuclear energy as borrowed energy.
From future generations - completely agree.
I think we'll have to repay it in transmuting the waste into stable isotopes. Fortunately, it looks as though renewable energy will be up to the job.
Do you mean using renewables to transmute transuranics?
Oh, I agree. US plant are twice the storage density of Japanese plants, SONGS across the pacific was a massive concerns. That's the main reason I see construction of geological spent fuel facilities as a priority.
I thought you might be interested in the allegations of illegal fuel rod storage going on at Fukushima and the claims from civil engineers that the No4 cooling pool should have had adequate structural integrity to survive the ground acceleration from a 9 earthquake.
Coal power kills more people per YEAR than Nuclear power has ever killed, total.
Radio-isotope contamination causes transgenic disease and genetic aborations in many species including human beings. Deaths from nuclear power can also be looked at statistical reductions in the rate of pregnancies that fail to come to full term, produce fatal mutations when they do. These elements in the food chain will be causing problems for many generations. Perhaps you should look into understanding how these isotopes interact with metabolisms to get an understanding of how nuclear *will* continue to kill long after our arrogant generation is long dead.
Of course we could also just confront your statement as an out right construct enabled by the IAEA having publishing interdiction powers over the WHO. Information from those sources is biased by an organization who's charter is to promote nuclear power. Are you suggesting that the IAEA should operate outside its charter by allowing information out that doesn't support nuclear power?
And the nuclear waste problem only exists because America refuses to use waste reprocessing.
You may not be aware that Carter's order was repealed by Reagun, that tired thinking is as obsolete as a plutonium economy. America isn't reprocessing nuclear fuel because it is expensive and not cost effective. Even if it was the supporting reactor technology does not exist despite funding to create it in the US' 2005 Energy Act - check SEC 600 onwards if you don't believe me.
Stop taking the fuel out of the reactor and dumping it in a hole in the ground.
Well you nutty nutty nukkers really don't understand that geologic stable spent fuel facilities are the things the Nuclear Industry needs to remain viable. You think some new reactor technology will save it or suddenly make it economically viable. In the meantime our generation imposes it's decision on generations to come who will look at us like the bunch of incompetent arrogant ditherers we actually are.
Fortunately we will be too dead to be concerned with the consequences.
Nuclear does kill a lot of people.
Thank you for another great posting. Perhaps you have seen this status of Fukushima No4 spent fuel cooling pool. This is the thing that has made me crap my pants about Fukushima from day one. Hope you find it interesting.
As opposed to the incumbent 18th century technology (coal / oil) which obliterates all coastal zones on the planet as a matter of normal operation.
As part of normal operation Nuclear power plants are authorized by the NRC to release radioactive gasses, produced in the reactor core, into the environment. In abnormal operation people are evacuated from the area.
No, nuclear power isn't perfect, but we don't have a generation technology that is.
So we agree that coal and nuclear produce the same levels of damage in different ways.
So pick a mix that does the least damage as a matter of normal operation, and keep working towards things that are better.
Then let's invest heavily in solar, wind and geothermal.
I have no objection to the continual development of nuclear technology but the reality is our management systems, where people are involved, are simply not mature enough for us to run them safely, let alone profitably. You nukkers always talk about some new reactor technology but fail to focus on the core reason we have reactor accidents in the first place, facility management. *EVERY* nuclear accident has had this as a factor. Windscale,Lake Karachay, TMI, Chernobyl and Fukushima. It is time for you guys to face the reality that we simply do not have management systems that will run them without an accident every other decade and that cleaning up the mess the nuclear industry has made is as urgent as geologically sound spent fuel storage facilities.
And even if we did, we don't have the materials technology to keep a reactor going any more than 40 years, and that reduces the EROEI of a nuclear plant making them pointless anyway. All the rubbish about capacity factors and energy density are irrelevant compared to tearing these things down at the end of their service life, even if they run perfectly without a single accident.
Nuclear power looks great when you have a superficial look at it, as you learn more you start to ask questions and then the nutty nukkers call you 'anti-nuclear'. I *used* to think that nuclear power would save the world, then I educated myself about it and discovered that it is a pointless bad idea.
Nuclear power is great, if you don't know much about it.
Correction: The amount of mox fuel rods in the No.4 reactor's cooling pools are down from 1300 to 400
You can see that when it fails it obliterates the communities around it.
The mod trolls are out, doing their best to keep people thinking for themselves about comments like these. Oh you shrill shill nukkers!!
Think about environmental damage vs energy output. How many megawatts comes from how much destruction when considering coal vs nuclear? Carbon sequestration coal? Breeder reactor nuclear?
or the EROEI of nuclear and it's *net* energy output compared to the damage.
I think the P and GP both have points, and the debate is going to be won based on quantitative merits on specific system configurations rather than qualitative statements about general power architectures.
Thank you. I think it's important to talk about the social aspects because they are too often ignored. Nuclear power has long been sustained via the Price-Anderson act which, if repealed, would collapse the nuclear industry overnight from the sheer weight of liabilty. Nuclear power is the only industry that needs legislative constructs to survive and these were supposed to be temporary measures when they were introduced.
Nuclear power is falling apart for many reasons, the most telling being that Wall st just thinks it's a bad, overly risky,investment.
Btw, fun fact.. Guess who's putting in most money lobbying against nuclear and pushing for solar?... Oil-companies..
Because they get a taxation benefit even if they *don't* build it. 2005 Energy Act SEC 600 onwards. IIRC SEC 625-638 lays out exactly how the oil and coal industry can help themselves to the nuclear industry's milkshake. That's why it's hilarious watching you guy point fingers at hick and hippies in combi vans and yell "NIMBYs" as if they can affect the placement of a multi billion reactor facility. You nutty nutty nukkers and your silly silly sayings!!!
And for your further information funds exist in the same act to develop hydrogen and electricity generating nuclear plants which hasn't been touched. I guess oil and coal industry doesn't want nuclear sniffing around their monopoly.
Anther puppet for environmentalists...
Radiation levels are higher on the beaches of Rio than at the Chernobyl site itself.
From the sun or from fallout from a nuclear reactor? Radio-isotopes can be absorbed into the body - you should learn the difference between internal and external radiation exposure. External radiation from the sun causes tans and skin cancer, internal exposure from organically bound radio-isotopes causes tumors.
You are aware that many people have refused to leave Chernobyl and have been living there since 1986 right?
Ghosts in a zombie city, very sad that you would cite their suffering as an argument to why it isn't occurring. Do many children live there?
The 70s are gone and so with it the flower children.
Flares, I wore them once, I didn't get laid, I'm not wearing them again.
Study the facts before you spew out your garbage.
As you should before spewing your rhetoric.
In particular, it's worth noting that there is a rupture disk here precisely to prevent the reactor pressure vessel from experiencing a catastrophic rupture and that the vessel was leaking enough that it might not have even reached a high enough pressure to break the rupture disk.
Interesting, perhaps you found the ASME report. As I said to you before that was the first design basis issue in implementations of that GE reactor, it started leaking at 70psi.
I know that if I were designing this thing, I'd have most plumbing passing through the shell of the PCV fail first (especially anything for venting the interior of the PCV).
If you were designing this, you would be sperm ;)
Or that one or more components were designed to fail first. Or that the part of the PCV which was overpressurized (the "dry well") eventually vented to the part that wasn't (the "wet well").
Or perhaps the gate pair seals for the spent fuel cooling pools in this reactor were situated in such a way that they leaked water over the top of the PCV. This was the second known design basis issue with this reactor type and that they would leak water when power was lost. It was also known that they would produce hydrogen in this state, and it did explode. The hydrogen density must have been high to puch holes in concrete like that.
However it is all irrelevant, the operators were criminally negligent because they did not take adequate steps to ensure power was maintained to this reactor installation so as to avoid exposing those issues. There is no mystery here. The collusion you yourself complained of, that was exposed in the official report into the accident, that led to the accident. Sea wall was not raised to account for new knowledge, additional generators could have been installed, they could have run those reactor at a lower output. So many opportunities to avoid this accident.
As for your unsubstantiated claims that the facility was to be decommissioned, evidence is emerging that Reactor 4 was actually being upgraded along with disturbing allegations of illegal fuel rod storage. That really undermines your argument that seawall upgrades wern't neccessary. On the good news front though I see that the amount of mox fuel rods in the No.4 reactors are down from 1300 to 400 and we are finally seeing the board of Tepco being brought to justice after avoiding charges of negligence for so long.
Yeah, and people are happily moving back that were evacuated from Fukushima now. http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/f...
Wow, 7000 return and 100,000 still can't - gee you really got me there. For the people around Chernobyl though? Perhaps they don't deserve our empathy because, well, they were soviet's back then.
I don't have to explain shit.
Perhaps you don't know? So here is a explanation of the global danger that Fukushima reactor 4 still poses to all of us e.v.e.r.y.d.a.y. and the nature of a plutonium fire. It really shows the regard the Japanese government has for the residents of Fukushima.
Coal mining also disrupts the water table and does far more damage over all. Nuclear has far less waste also. A waste that can be managed where coal waste is dispersed around the planet.
Yep, totally agree, coal is extremly damaging. What has that got to do with permanently polluting an entire water table with radioactive isotopes?
As for managing nuclear waste perhaps this article from the science section of National Geographic Magazine will help put it into perspective for you.
Some environmentalists are so stupid!
You nutty nukkers always point to some other tragedy and ignore the ongoing tragedy that the people that used to live around Chernobyl and Fukushima cannot go home. The Tsunami was a horrible tragedy made worse by the fact that the people that used to live there can't rebuild because a nuclear reactor spilled radioactive isotopes everywhere. Those fortunate enough not to have their homes destroyed also can't go home.
How many hundreds of thousands of people are affected? You guys carry on as if those people don't even exist and it's just callous. How would you like being evacuated from everything and everyone you knew with little or no warning then told you can't go home. One day you have a life, next day it's gone. If you live near a nuclear power plant that's the risk you live with e.v.e.r.y.d.a.y. I doubt your anonymous rhetoric would survive very long if you were confronted by the evacuees of such places. Would you explain to them how bad coal is?
If a nuclear power plant explodes, the community around that reactor cannot return.
Clearly we are not going to stop using energy and I'd say nuclear is a far cleaner option than coal/oil
Yes, it's bad, I agree. What has the damage coal does to the environment have to do with people who have been physically evacuated from their homes?
That facts are evident: nuclear power is a technical marvel that destroys the communities around it when it fails.
As opposed to coal which fucks up areas thousands of miles away with acid rain, carbon, strip mining and land destruction, and if you believe greenhouse gases which contributes to global warming!
Uranium mining is really bad as well. It uses acid leach mining which pollutes water tables. Mega litres of sulfuric acid pumped underground and stored above ground containing radio active isotopes. It's such a destructive form of mining it is illegal in Russia and The United States.
Switch to traditional uranium mining methods and that process creates massive amounts mine tailing that realease huge amount of highly water soluable radon gas that also pollutes water tables. Sure it's in peoples basements, that doesn't mean you should breate it or drink it.
Moving on to enrichment that process releases huge amount of CFC114 which is an extremely potent greenhouse gas. So you are looking at land destruction proportional to the amount of plants you are fueling. Both coal and nuclear are destructive to the land in different ways. Both are really bad options that come from a time when we didn't know as much.
You can see that when it fails it obliterates the communities around it.