Nuclear reactors cannot modulate their level of output several times per day...
That's true of solid fuel reactors. Liquid fuel reactors like LFTR can have their output follow the load.
I'm a big fan of hydro power, it's cheap, clean, and safe. The problem with hydro is that we've pretty much run out of rivers to dam. I'm sure that there are more places we could put in hydro but they are few. One example, there was a small hydro dam not far from where I grew up that was severely damaged in a flood. There's currently no plans to repair it since it's just not profitable any more.
Right now hydro is the only viable technology we have for grid level electric storage. I suspect that hydro will play a big role in load leveling for solid fuel nuclear, wind, and solar. If the tree huggers won't let us take advantage of our vast supplies of coal, natural gas, and oil then we will need to develop liquid fuel nuclear power. Otherwise we're going to exceed the load following capability of our hydro sources real quick.
The problem with liquid fuel nuclear lies primarily with the laws. Until we fix the laws we are stuck with fossil fuels. We've dammed up all the rivers that we can and the only other technology we have for load following is natural gas turbines. If we fix the laws so we can have LFTR then we won't be arguing about the carbon footprint of electric cars anymore. I do suspect we would still be arguing about the crappy range and recharge times though. I think the physics will always be against us on that one, it's real hard for electricity to compete with the wattage that comes from a gasoline pump.
You seem to believe that Obama would oppose of this and/or does not already know about it. This President will do anything he thinks he can get away with. He will grow the size of government to where it can look into every aspect of our lives. This looking into personal medical records is directly in line with socialized medical care that he's promised us.
Obama wants this, and more.
I say we need Congress to reign in the executive. Congress needs to reschedule numerous drugs to where they would not fall under such scrutiny from the federal government. Congress should consider abolishing the DEA.
I read something interesting about the DEA, they share jurisdiction with the FBI. Everything the DEA does can be done by the FBI. We don't need the DEA to enforce drug laws.
Another interesting fact, currently the DEA and FDA have to agree on rescheduling drugs. People within the FDA have been working hard to reschedule marijuana and other drugs. The DEA does not want that since reducing controls on drugs means less work for them. It appears to me that the only way to break this tie is for Congress to change the rules the DEA works under or abolish the agency.
If the dealers are a convenience for the manufacturers then would not Tesla also take advantage of this? I understand your point but if private dealers are such a benefit then Tesla would not bother with direct sales.
I believe that economies of scale come into play here, for very large auto makers independent dealers are advantageous. For small auto makers direct sales are advantageous. Should Tesla do well and sell many more cars there may come a time where direct sales do not grant them an advantage. That's just a theory.
Another theory. Existing large auto makers have to deal with a lot of legal and economic inertia that keeps them from direct sales. Tesla is free from this and may prove independent dealers to be a poor means of selling cars in the near future.
You recall correctly. I should add a disclaimer here as I do not wish to misrepresent my knowledge of the situation. I am not a nuclear engineer, I am an electrical engineer. I have some knowledge of physics, chemistry, and thermodynamic that applies to power plant operation but no intimate knowledge of Fukushima or any specific nuclear reactor, just general knowledge of how they work. With that out of the way...
Fukushima is (or perhaps more accurately, was) like most every nuclear power plant operating today. The reactor core is made of metals, which will begin to melt at somewhere around 2000C, and concrete, which will decompose at about 600C. The normal operating temperature is likely to be in the 300C to 450C range. Should cooling be lost the reactor temperature will rise. Even with the fission stopped by the control systems the fission products will still decay and produce a non-trivial amount of power. No cooling and the temperature will almost certainly rise to the point where the materials holding it together will fail.
Fukushima required active cooling to prevent this melt down. They had the primary pumps that ran off the steam from the reactors. There was emergency cooling that ran off electricity. There was most certainly a system or several for the conditions in between the two. With the primary pumps down because the reactor was not operating there was only the secondary systems operating. These needed electricity to operate. The tsunami knocked out the grid power and the on-site backup generators. What remained was battery power.
When the batteries ran out things got hot. Hot enough to disassociate water and melt most steels, over 2000C. The water not only boiled it broke down into hydrogen and oxygen. With all this stuff breaking down because of the heat the fuel would fall away from the control systems and pile up on the bottom of the reactor. It piled high enough that critical mas would be reached with the enriched uranium and some fission would occur. This makes things hotter.
This pile of hot fuel would burn through the metal and concrete until it melted and mixed with enough of that metal and concrete that it no longer had critical mass. My use of the words "runaway reactions" was a poor choice. The fission that occurs after loss of coolant didn't runaway like the "China Syndrome" myth but it was most certainly uncontrolled.
Modern reactor designs avoid this meltdown by using things like convective cooling, gravity fed cooling, unenriched fuel, and materials with more favorable thermal qualities. I've been doing some self study on molten salt reactors and there are some very nice safety features. One is a "freeze plug" that will melt and drain the liquid reactor fuel into tanks designed to prevent fission, and can be cooled with passive methods should temperatures get too high. Another safety feature is that the liquid fuel will boil away before the containment materials will melt. This is a last resort safety as we don't want radioactive gases floating into the atmosphere but this would be preferable to uncontrolled fission boiling away all the coolant and burning its way through the containment structure.
Do you love your mother? Would you allow her to die in the streets? Would you leave her in old age to die of hunger or exposure? Or would you find her a place to live out her final years in comfort? Even if that means having her live with you?
I ask this because everyone has a mother and every human has a desire to care for family. Not every person has a child to care for them in old age but even then there is almost always an extended family to care for them. Society has built structures to care for the elderly for a long time before Social Security. The difference is that the government wasn't a middleman taking a portion of the funds for administration costs.
Social Security is a drain on the system of elderly care since there must be a system of taxation to collect the funds and a system to distribute the funds. This redistribution of wealth means that some of that wealth gets distributed into the pockets of the leaches that distribute it. Remove those leaches and more people do not end up in poverty.
More wealth in the pockets of people with parents that they love means they can better care for them, rather than dump them on the government for sub-standard care.
I have an optimistic view of humanity because if I were to believe that people did not care for the elderly then I must believe that the government do not care for the elderly. The government consists of people. These people must be capable of caring for their own mothers or they could not care for another person's mother. If people will not care for their own mothers then why should I believe they will care for mine?
I believe I can care for my mother better than any government bureaucracy. I also believe I could do even better than that if the government would allow me to keep more of my money for her care.
If it's radioactive then it is fuel. It may not be high quality fuel but the decay of those radioactive elements will add to the heat output of the reactor. I recall that it's somewhere between 5% and 20% of the heat output of a contemporary nuclear reactor comes from the short and medium half life fission products. Given that nuclear reactors are already designed to contain radioactive materials for something on the order of decades it seems to make sense to put these radioactive materials into reactors. Not only is the problem contained it adds to the power output of the fuel. We do not have to bury the fission products any more. The so called "need" to bury the stuff is based on an old policy against reprocessing of fuels, which was based on an unfounded fear of diverting spent fuel towards weapons production. Policy makers, engineers, and scientists have realized that making bigger and bigger piles of radioactive junk is a real bad idea, especially if the fear is of someone getting a hold of the stuff to make weapons.
Your estimation on the cost of a nuclear reactor accident also seems to be based on old concepts and old reactor designs. The reactors at Fukishima were generation one and two designs. These required powered safety systems, enriched fuels, and are therefore prone to runaway reactions. Third and fourth generation, and even advanced second generation, reactors do not require power to shut down safely. These newer designs also do not require enriched fuel. If we put the enriched "spent" fuel from older reactors, even if diluted with the fission product "waste", into a modern reactor we'd be able to burn up that stuff and turn it into energy. New designs cannot have runaway fission like old designs. If containment is lost then fission with end. No fission means no more fission products or heat is produced. Without zirconium metals or graphite in the reactor means plain ordinary water can be dumped on the reactor without the fear of feeding or spreading a fire.
In addition I believe the damage from the failure of Fukishima is overblown. It seems to me that the desire to contain the radioactive materials from the damaged power plant is counter productive, they are putting more people at risk than they have to by this policy. I believe they should work on a method of controlled release of the materials into the ocean. The ocean is already radioactive, adding a little bit more can't hurt. Hastily constructing containment pools, and piling up soluble radioactive materials, is just asking for that crap to get released into the environment in the next earthquake, storm, or tsunami.
Maybe they need to find a few old oil tankers, fill them up with all the radioactive crap, float them out to the deepest ocean crevice that they can find, and sink them. What doesn't get diluted on the way down in an unfathomable amount of seawater will get buried in sediment.
First, as a general rule I don't shop at Wal-mart. Would the people that shop there pay for their children's education? Sure, because the alternative is to have the children stay at home. I also believe that there is a means to both not have these people pay for their education and not have to have the government pay for it either. There are groups out there that are willing to educate these children for free. How do I know this? Because people in the USA already pay for children all over the world to get educated. Charities of all kinds would come forward to educate these children if the parents were truly unable to pay for their child's education.
If you are asking if these parents that shop at Wal-mart would even bother to send their children to school then that is another matter. Social norms in neighborhoods are powerful motivators. Where it is socially acceptable for children to skip school it will happen, even public education cannot fix that. Take the crime ridden hell holes in America as examples of this. These places already have public education. If the parents allow their children to go feral then even schools provided at no cost to the parents cannot fix this. The children will have to want to go to school and the parents will have to allow it.
I have also read my history. The US Department of Education did not exist until 1979, and it's predecessor organization did not exist until 1953. For nearly two centuries this federation did not have federally funded schools. State funded schools likely did exist before this but even then private schools existed on the land that would become the USA for hundreds of years. I recall that the Civil War was well documented because a large portion of the soldiers on both sides wrote letters. These were foot soldiers, not officers, writing letters. To do that they had to know how to read and write.
These Civil War soldiers grew up on farms before electricity and the internal combustion engine. They had enough time, resources, and motivation to go to school. Lots of them went to school. This was before public education. If they could and would send people to school then I believe we can do that now.
That was then, this is now. Computers are cheap, books are cheaper. Between internet, TV, radio, and telephones we have plenty of opportunity for people to communicate and learn from each other. Getting an education does not mean going to school. Kids love to learn. Give kids access to a library and they will read. Even kids sitting in front of a TV can still learn so long as what they are watching is interesting and has some factual content to it. People love to teach kids. I've seen retired people that will volunteer at libraries, schools, churches, wherever so they can teach kids.
What has happened to the USA education level since the creation of the US Department of Education? Has it improved? No, it hasn't. We did better before public schools. I believe we can do better after we get rid of them.
Yes, I do assume that both parents and government wish to indoctrinate children. Perhaps indoctrinate is a bit strong of a word but it works. The problem I see is that you assume the government and the parent have parity in reaching children. The government have resources that a parents cannot obtain. The government has the power to tax and take the resources of the parents.
What the government also has is the power to take children from parents they find unfit. The government has the power to arrest. The Obama administration is arguing right now that a German couple cannot claim government abuse by their home government because the German government requires children attend state approved schools.
This is where I see our own government going, they have stated this quite plainly in immigration court, parents do not have the right to opt out of government school. If the government can compel attendance then when keeps them from dictating the content of that education?
Government schools have been teaching children that their parents will lie to them. Parents will, after hearing what goes on at school, will tell them that the government is lying to them. How are children supposed to determine which is true? If the parents speak too loudly then the government can take the children from them. This is what the German government has tried to do, and this is what the Obama administration is okay with them doing.
I used to believe as you did, that we as a society are obligated to teach the next generation. That the best way to do this was through government funded schools. I no longer believe this because government schools are by definition a monopoly. A monopoly is inherently bad because without competition quality inevitably declines. We need government out of education and allow private schools to compete for the minds of children and the funds of their parents.
Why should the parents compromise? It's their children. These parents are morally and legally responsible for the education and behavior of their children, the government has no such obligation. The government should never be forcing parents to have their children exposed to ideas that they disagree with. I say this because as much as parents might want to raise little clones of themselves we have so called "educators" turn other people's children into clones of themselves, or drones for their view of society.
We have teachers telling children to turn their parents into police if they own guns, or smoke marijuana, or even smoke tobacco. These "educators" are raising a generation of little sheep taught to ignore their parents, because they are uncaring idiots, and listen to the government, because Big Brother knows best.
I'm sure that not all public education fits within the dystopia I described. I'm sure that there are some very good teachers out there that want to create some very educated children that listens to their parents. What happens in private schools is that we know that we will have teachers doing this because the parents can fire those teachers any time they want. Public school teachers do not see that dynamic because they answer to administrators, and they answer to unelected bureaucrats, which answer to elected officials every two to four years.
In private schools we get top notch education tomorrow. By compromising with public education we might get something close after five election cycles.
As for cost, the argument that children will not get educated because the parents cannot afford school, I've seen these solutions in other nations. A charity tells parents that we will educate your children for free, we just need your permission to do so. As an incentive the charities will even provide free lunch to these children. These charities are usually formed by religious organizations but they don't have to be. If you believe that people in the USA won't throw piles of money at private schools to teach poor children their view of the world then you have not seen the amount of money spent by not only churches but also political organizations for education of all kinds.
This works, in my mind, because the parents will always have the option to send their children to one school or another, or not to school at all and teach them at home. Imagine that, people having the choice to get free education from private charities, pay for education from private schools, or home schooling. No taxes need be collected and the government need not get involved at all.
We might need to have the government involved but only in extreme situations of abuse or abandonment. That becomes a matter of law enforcement mostly. The government will have to figure out what to do with the children if family of some sort does not come forward. That gets into a whole different issue of foster care which is also all messed up because of government.
After all, why manufacture cars with a top speed of 150-200mph when the maximum legal speed limit is 70mph?
Because they are fun to drive. Because public speed limits do not apply on my private property. Because I want one. Because I might find a need to get an injured person to the hospital at a rate faster than 70MPH. Because of all kinds of reasons.
How about this one, because there will be a cottage industry of people that will remove these mechanical limits on cars. People that want to speed habitually will find a way to do so.
I want to ask every politician that proposes a new law one question, how do you propose to enforce this?
How are these speed limiters going to be shown to be active and functional in vehicles? What means are going to be used for testing? I suspect the means, if people are exceeding the speed limit then they will be stopped and ticketed. How is that different than now? Perhaps I am missing an important detail. I'd like the people advocating for this law to enlighten me on what it is that I may have missed.
If it really bothers you that much to pay that small social security amount each month, then stop whining and get a raise. That's the entrepreneurial spirit, or whatever.
Getting a raise does not address the issue that I pay Social Security and I'll never get it back. There won't be a Social Security when I retire because the federal government will not have the resources to pay it out.
Are we going to let them die on the streets? No, we are going to take care of them, so you will be taxed either way.
People taking care of other people does not mean taxes. There are other social structures to care for the elderly if the government does not. Too many people have become accustomed to government programs "solving" all our problems that these people cannot imagine any other solution except more government.
Do you think that if we did not have public schools that all our children would be uneducated? Of course not. People would solve this problem on their own without government encouragement or intervention. Public schools are a relatively recent social development. People were educated before public schools. I believe we'd be more educated without them.
Same goes for the care of the elderly. I believe we'd be better off without so called "social security".
Do parents have the absolute right to determine how their children are educated, even if the education they choose teaches things that are demonstratably factually wrong on many levels?
Yes.
I have the right to speak freely. That right includes telling my children what I believe. If the state can decide what is "fact" and teach that to my children then I am no longer their parent, the state has taken them from me.
An example. I was taught the "fact" in school that the right to keep and bear arms was a "collective" right. That the Second Amendment to the US Constitution gave the right of the states to raise militias. The state deemed that as "fact" and decided that even private schools were required to teach it. The government can demonstrate this as "fact" because the government courts have upheld that "fact". Thankfully more recent court rulings found this "fact" was no longer true, that individuals retain the right to arms outside of service in the militia.
I do not want a government determining what the "facts" are. That is because in my opinion, and I will honestly declare this as my opinion only and not a fact, that my rights come from God. No government can give me rights, they can only infringe upon them.
The government can demonstrate something is factually true or false all they like, that does not give them the authority to impose these facts on my children. My children are my responsibility alone, the government has no right to take that responsibility from me.
There are so many examples of the government getting facts wrong that I believe that public education is a serious threat to liberty. The government believed it factual that people could be property, that "separate but equal" was even possible, that women were incapable of voting responsibly, and that alcohol was the source of all our nation's problems.
I will admit freely that private education can make for some seriously misinformed and screwed up kids. I'll take that over giving the government a monopoly on educating my children.
Let's not forget that the government once deemed it illegal to teach evolution.
It would never be built in today's world, especially not after Chernobyl and Fukushima.
Which is really sad because this is like saying we can't build jet airplanes because steam locomotives have a tendency to explode. Your arguments about systems cooled with water or liquid metals have nothing to do with liquid salt cooled systems.
MSRs do not operate under "very high temperatures". 600 - 800C is cool by the standards of producing common products like glass, aluminum, and petrochemicals. MSRs do not operate under high pressures like current solid fuel fission reactors. MSRs do not require the use of molten metals for cooling, it's an option but not encouraged for the reasons you gave. The problems with other fission reactor designs do not apply to MSR, just like exploding locomotives have nothing to do with keeping a jet airplane flying.
Your claim of not enough neutrons contradicts that from what I've read from people that have studied this for a living. They also gave diagrams, charts, numbers, and lengthy explanations that are convincing to someone like me. I'm no nuclear engineer but I am an electrical engineer. I studied enough chemistry, physics, and thermodynamics to see that these people seem to know what they are talking about and that you do not.
Couple people get 10 years for malicious mischief and felony destruction of state property, and those cameras stay untouched.
Then explain to me how destroying cameras in the UK has become a new form of recreation? They've got destruction of government cameras down to a science.
With suspended cameras they hang an old tire from it, fill the bottom with gasoline, and put a match to it. The flames will crack lenses, boil away electronics, and make a general mess of things. Cameras closer to the ground are generally treated to baseball bats and pry bars. Ones out of reach from ladders or bats, or a potential for bodily harm from burning, get pelted with paintballs.
Given a large enough population, and enough cameras, and you will reach the statistical certainty that cameras will be destroyed by someone that doesn't give a shit. Unless the people responsible meet swift and sure punishment word will spread that it's open season on cameras. Which is precisely what happened in the UK.
Okay, I'll mention U-238. U-238 takes one neutron to turn into Pu-239, one more neutron to fission. The result of that fission produces, on average, somewhere between two and three neutrons. That means there is enough neutron flux to keep the fission of U-238 going and still fission the actinides. With enough time and neutrons those transuranics will either fission or decay. The fission of these transuranics will produce more neutrons which contributes to the flux that fissions other atoms. The decay of the transuranics means that they turn into something like U-238, Pu-239, or something else that is either fissile or fertile.
The high neutron flux needed to burn actinides damages reactor structures, piping, containments etc. and activates them with neutron capture producing isotopes like Co-60 which makes decommissioning at end-of-life a big headache, assuming nothing breaks bad due to neutron embrittlement meantime.
Next time I see a nuclear engineer I'll tell them that molten salt reactors are shit, because nojayuk said so. I'll tell them that the successful tests of molten salt reactors were all just made up by the US government to distract them from the aliens from outer space landing in the Arizona desert, or something.
On second thought I think I'll take the word of engineers and scientists that work on this stuff for a living instead of taking the word from some random person on the internet.
Removing its spent fuel, which contains deadly plutonium, is an urgent task.
I won't claim to be an expert on nuclear waste but I can read Wikipedia like everyone else. Plutonium is taken up very slowly by the human body, it's radiation cannot penetrate the skin, and the half life is so long that it's nearly stable. I'm not saying it's something you'd want to play with, but calling the plutonium on site of the Fukushima some sort of urgent task is exaggeration.
The plutonium created in any modern fission reactor is very small. They are specifically designed to burn it up as fast as it is created. Plutonium is only a real hazard if it is airborne, which should not happen unless these people decide it's a good idea to take concrete saws to the mess to cut it up into smaller pieces. Or if they eat it. If the workers are eating the corium then the cesium and other nasty stuff in that will kill them before the plutonium will.
Also, if we turn this over to the Japanese government who are they going to have work on the site? So TEPCO fires all the people there and the government goes looking for out of work nuclear power experts from where now? Yep, the same people working on it now will be working on it then.
This would be just like when the TSA took over airport security in the USA. All those security people were given fancy new uniforms, and now collect a pay check from the government instead of the airport, doing the same thing they were before. The incompetence from the TSA comes from the people that they chose to hire, and those people came from the pool of those willing to do airport security.
Where would the Japanese government find a pool of people willing to work at Fukushima? From the pool of people that work there now. Changing who pays the bills is not going to fix this.
I fail to see how to create the economic incentives other than through government action, and taxation seems to me the best bet.
Energy is a commodity. The electricity that runs your computer does not know or care where that electricity came from. Whether it comes from wind or coal that computer works just as well. When the government subsidizes wind power ALL electricity gets cheaper, it all ends up on the same grid and gets used by the same devices. Every dollar that government spends to subsidize wind power the coal burners rejoice, it means to them that more people can afford to buy their product, electricity.
(BTW, I don't see the problem with your hybrid wind/natural gas generation. There's a market for the power, and every joule produced by the windmills is another that isn't produced by burning fossil hydrocarbons.)
No, every joule produced by wind means more carbon burned. Natural gas boilers can produce electricity at near 50% efficiency. The back-up natural gas generators required for when the wind does not blow produce electricity at near 25% efficiency. For wind power to reduce carbon emissions from the gas/wind hybrid system the wind would have to blow half the time, and do so when the power is needed, and that just does *NOT* happen.
Everywhere it's been tried wind power will increase carbon output. Backup natural gas is not near as efficient as base load natural gas. Adding wind power increases the variability of the electric grid, and therefore increases the cost.
The only way to encourage less carbon output is to find the technology that produces electricity cheaper than carbon sources. Taxes do not and can not change that. Electricity is a commodity, subsidizing one source of electricity subsidizes all of them. Taxing coal produced electricity raises the costs to wind produced electricity. The wind may be free but the banks that make the loans to pay for those windmills still need to be paid. Raise the price of electricity and people buy less electricity, less electricity sold means less profit for the windmill owners, less profit and the loans take longer to pay off. That means less profit for the windmill owners and fewer people willing to take the risk in building more of them.
To change this dynamic the real cost of wind power has to be lower than that of coal. Do that and the utilities will buy more windmills, because it means more profit. Taxing coal to subsidize wind just means the utilities put up just enough windmills to keep the government happy, not enough to actually reduce their carbon output.
You can talk about internalizing the externalities all you like but that does not change the economics. To make a dent in coal power the government would have to tax coal power to the point that electricity prices would double or triple. No one that wants to stay in elected office is going to vote for that.
I learned something very interesting about zirconium. I don't remember when this was but I found the properties of this element very fascinating and it has come back to mind with this article. You see zirconium is a metal that is nearly transparent to neutrons. Because of this property, and other properties that metals have, it is used to make the fuel rods in all fission reactors today.
Using zirconium makes sense. Just like we use glass in light bulbs we use zirconium in nuclear fission reactors. A light bulb is not very useful unless the light can escape from the filament but no barrier exists to protect the filament from damage. We use zirconium to contain the fission fuel and also allow the neutrons that sustain the fission to reach the fuel contained in the other rods.
Zirconium has another very interesting property, it burns when exposed to steam. So, in every fission reactor we have today we place zirconium tubes filled with nuclear fuel in some very hot water. If the ability to cool this water is lost then the water begins to boil. The zirconium ignites. The tubes containing the nuclear fuel burns away. The nuclear fuel falls away from the control mechanisms and piles up at the bottom of the reactor vessel.
Once the nuclear fuel piles up high enough fission will occur. Dumping water on the fuel at this point moderates the fission, that is bounce any escaping neutrons back at the fuel to increase the fission rate, and creates more steam to burn away the zirconium. But not dumping water on the fuel means some very dangerous elements, ones that are solid at any lower temperature, boil away. What needs to be done is to dump enough water on the fire so that the zirconium and other stuff in the pile stops burning. At some point the mess that was once fuel rods melts enough metal and concrete in the reactor floor, and mixes with it, that fission stops.
I don't mention all of this to scare people away from nuclear fission power. I mention this to point out that the technology we use in nuclear fission right now is very stupid. We need nuclear fission power. What we need is nuclear power that does not require zirconium in contact with hot water.
I have my own theory. First we need to set the stage. One of two things is true, either human activity causes global warming or it does not. Either way we have two choices, either we choose to reduce carbon output or we choose not to. We are assuming that global warming would suck for us, if we assume otherwise then the point is moot. If global warming does not suck then we have nothing to argue about.
If human activity causes global warming and we do nothing then bad things happen. Floods, famine, etc.
If human activity cause global warming and we stop carbon output then energy prices rise. More expensive energy means less food, because we need energy to grow, transport, cook, refrigerate, and process food. This also means less heat, more people freeze to death. In general things suck.
If human activity does not cause global warming, and we reduce carbon output, then we get less food, less medicine, floods, famine, etc. Basically we get double suck, no benefit from reducing our carbon, and all the problems.
If human activity does not cause global warming, and we do not reduce carbon output then we get all the benefits of carbon based energy and none of the problems.
Let's go back to the suck that is human caused global warming and we do nothing. We'd have a robust economy, cheap energy, plenty of medicine and food. We'd also have "climate refugees" where people flee from the famines, floods, etc. but there would also be people in places with enough food, water, medicine, and shelter that it would not suck so much. We'd still have resource wars, poverty, etc. but we've always had those and always will.
Therefore the best we got is to continue burning carbon fuels and hope that human activity does not cause global warming.
I suppose there is another option. We get our cheap energy and still reduce carbon output. That means nuclear power. We have no other technology that has a cost that is as low as coal, is as plentiful as coal (perhaps more plentiful), and has a carbon output as low (and likely lower than) solar, wind, and hydro.
Okay, one other option. We find some other technology that is even better than nuclear fission power. That means betting our lives on finding that technology before the suck that is global warming begins. I'm not willing to take that bet.
How about we ask the scientists where their paycheck does not depend upon the theory of human caused global warming to weigh in?
This is like asking the lawyers, physicians, statisticians, accountants, etc., etc. that work in the tobacco industry to tell me about the dangers of smoking cigarettes. Any climate scientist that denies the existence of man made global warming is not going to be a climate scientist for very long. There is rarely any money in climate science unless one takes the view of man made global warming.
TV networks are not going to pay people to come onto TV to tell everyone that everything is fine. Governments are not going to hire scientists that advocate for less government regulation. There just is not many people willing to hire a climate scientist that deny man made global warming.
Oil and gas companies will hire scientists that deny man made global warming, it's in their interests to do so. I'm not suggesting that these scientists are changing their minds based on who pays them. I'm saying that birds of a feather flock together, people with a common interest in a certain viewpoint will find each other jobs.
If you want to convince me on the science then you need to find someone with an economic interest in the truth, not in either side on this debate. I used to think we could find such people in fields like meteorology, geology, and astronomy. These people would have to have a history of being right for anyone to trust them in the future. The problem is that man made global warming is a theory that relies on so many variables, and relies on such long time frames, that no one can be proven true or false. We're talking about decade or century long trends. Anyone hired now with a theory will be retired before their theory can be proven or falsified.
What you gave me is a government website advocating for more government regulation. Meh. Of course the government will advocate for more government, that's just what they do.
This blows my mind. THE WORLD CONSUPTION OF FOSSIL FUELS IS BUILT ON ECONOMICS. people don't burn fossil fuels because it's fun, they burn them because they need to burn them to participate in their local economies. Shifting economic incentives could be all that's needed to make an enormous long term difference.
I agree. The problem is that too many people are trying to legislate the economic incentives. This is doomed to fail. We need to make burning fossil fuels more expensive than a carbon free alternative, we need to do this by some other means than taxation.
What we have now in nations that try to encourage reduced carbon output is to take taxes, usually from increased taxes on carbon producing energy, and giving that money to "green" energy producers. This is done because "green" energy is more expensive than carbon based energy. If "green" energy was cheaper then we would not need tax support structures for these energy sources to exist, people would just move toward it naturally.
Much of this expense from "green" energy is that it is unreliable. I saw a lecture on Youtube pointing out that when siting a windmill farm a primary concern is where the natural gas pipes are. Erecting power lines is expensive, therefore no one is going to put up wires unless they have some guarantee that they are going to carry power all the time. When the wind does not blow the natural gas is burned to produce electricity. This means inefficient peak power turbines, not efficient combined cycle power.
So the government gives a subsidy for windmills. Windmills are built, power lines go up, and gas turbines are placed nearby. The wind blows, power is produced. When the wind stops (and it will stop) the turbines are powered up and natural gas is burned. The people that got the subsidy to put up the windmills use that money to buy more natural gas. Subsidies on "green" energy is a subsidy on ALL energy. Giving people money for "green" power means more carbon is released.
The more money we give to so called "green" energy means more money spent to release carbon.
This cycle will continue until technology in energy that does not rely on fossil fuels advances to a point where it is cheaper than fossil fuels. Taxes won't fix this. Subsidies won't fix this. We cannot legislate technology into existence.
If you want to shift economic incentives toward a long term solution then we need to do that with something other than government subsidy. Of all the energy sources available to us right now the cheapest are coal and nuclear. If we want to reduce carbon output then we need more nuclear power. Anything else does not make economic sense.
The greatest hurdle right now to nuclear power in the USA is government regulation. There are people willing to put all kinds of money into nuclear power but no one in government seems serious enough about reducing carbon output to actually issue a license to build a new nuclear power reactor.
That along with increased aerosol pollution from southeast Asia has conspired to slow down the rate of temperature rise.
So, the solution to global warming is air pollution. Got it.
Also, what global temperature is ideal? What environment are we supposed to preserve? The climate has changed in the past, and it will change in the future. At some point in the past the place I sit now was, if I remember my history correctly, under one mile of ice. At some other point in history it was under several hundred feet of water. It was a grass land. It was a desert. Now where I sit is a consistent 80 degrees and 45% humidity, because that is how I like it. In the winter it gets to 68 degrees and 35% humidity. For that to happen within my budget means I burn natural gas. That means more CO2 in the atmosphere.
That CO2 means plants have to do less work to grow, that means more food, that means better food for less money. More CO2 mean more plants can grow in places that they could not before. That could mean growing oranges and bananas in what is now the Sahara Desert. I like oranges and bananas. After those trees have matured we can cut them down so I can get wood. I like wood.
Keep going with this planting of trees and we can grow nuts. I like nuts. By burning the fossil fuels we produce an atmosphere conducive to getting wood and sacks of nuts. If we spread our seeds through Africa we could grow all kinds of fruits and veggies. If that means melting ice caps then we get more rain, which means more fresh water for the trees, and more for us to drink.
If we stop our CO2 output then where I sit could revert back to the mile thick ice, or the saltwater lakes, or the desert. I like the grassland where I live now. More CO2 means I keep it. If I have to raise some dust to keep the temperatures in check then I can do that too.
We'll have forests in Sahara in no time. And after northern Egypt goes under water we can ship out the wood and nut sacks real cheap.
I'm only halfway joking here. Who knows what will come from increasing CO2. I pretty sure more CO2 means more plant growth, and that's a good thing, because food eats plants.
As I recall there was a shortage of people both qualified and willing to pilot aircraft for USAF. The biggest problem was that people could not pass the vision test. This changed once laser corrected vision was approved for pilots. After that there was a surplus and USAF didn't have a problem filling slots. Again, this is just what I recall.
Now it appears that the shortfall does not come from those unable (due to vision) but now from people unwilling. I don't suppose that USAF brass has some sort of approved surgery for that?
Slashdot Mirror
Nuclear reactors cannot modulate their level of output several times per day...
That's true of solid fuel reactors. Liquid fuel reactors like LFTR can have their output follow the load.
I'm a big fan of hydro power, it's cheap, clean, and safe. The problem with hydro is that we've pretty much run out of rivers to dam. I'm sure that there are more places we could put in hydro but they are few. One example, there was a small hydro dam not far from where I grew up that was severely damaged in a flood. There's currently no plans to repair it since it's just not profitable any more.
Right now hydro is the only viable technology we have for grid level electric storage. I suspect that hydro will play a big role in load leveling for solid fuel nuclear, wind, and solar. If the tree huggers won't let us take advantage of our vast supplies of coal, natural gas, and oil then we will need to develop liquid fuel nuclear power. Otherwise we're going to exceed the load following capability of our hydro sources real quick.
The problem with liquid fuel nuclear lies primarily with the laws. Until we fix the laws we are stuck with fossil fuels. We've dammed up all the rivers that we can and the only other technology we have for load following is natural gas turbines. If we fix the laws so we can have LFTR then we won't be arguing about the carbon footprint of electric cars anymore. I do suspect we would still be arguing about the crappy range and recharge times though. I think the physics will always be against us on that one, it's real hard for electricity to compete with the wattage that comes from a gasoline pump.
You seem to believe that Obama would oppose of this and/or does not already know about it. This President will do anything he thinks he can get away with. He will grow the size of government to where it can look into every aspect of our lives. This looking into personal medical records is directly in line with socialized medical care that he's promised us.
Obama wants this, and more.
I say we need Congress to reign in the executive. Congress needs to reschedule numerous drugs to where they would not fall under such scrutiny from the federal government. Congress should consider abolishing the DEA.
I read something interesting about the DEA, they share jurisdiction with the FBI. Everything the DEA does can be done by the FBI. We don't need the DEA to enforce drug laws.
Another interesting fact, currently the DEA and FDA have to agree on rescheduling drugs. People within the FDA have been working hard to reschedule marijuana and other drugs. The DEA does not want that since reducing controls on drugs means less work for them. It appears to me that the only way to break this tie is for Congress to change the rules the DEA works under or abolish the agency.
If the dealers are a convenience for the manufacturers then would not Tesla also take advantage of this? I understand your point but if private dealers are such a benefit then Tesla would not bother with direct sales.
I believe that economies of scale come into play here, for very large auto makers independent dealers are advantageous. For small auto makers direct sales are advantageous. Should Tesla do well and sell many more cars there may come a time where direct sales do not grant them an advantage. That's just a theory.
Another theory. Existing large auto makers have to deal with a lot of legal and economic inertia that keeps them from direct sales. Tesla is free from this and may prove independent dealers to be a poor means of selling cars in the near future.
You recall correctly. I should add a disclaimer here as I do not wish to misrepresent my knowledge of the situation. I am not a nuclear engineer, I am an electrical engineer. I have some knowledge of physics, chemistry, and thermodynamic that applies to power plant operation but no intimate knowledge of Fukushima or any specific nuclear reactor, just general knowledge of how they work. With that out of the way...
Fukushima is (or perhaps more accurately, was) like most every nuclear power plant operating today. The reactor core is made of metals, which will begin to melt at somewhere around 2000C, and concrete, which will decompose at about 600C. The normal operating temperature is likely to be in the 300C to 450C range. Should cooling be lost the reactor temperature will rise. Even with the fission stopped by the control systems the fission products will still decay and produce a non-trivial amount of power. No cooling and the temperature will almost certainly rise to the point where the materials holding it together will fail.
Fukushima required active cooling to prevent this melt down. They had the primary pumps that ran off the steam from the reactors. There was emergency cooling that ran off electricity. There was most certainly a system or several for the conditions in between the two. With the primary pumps down because the reactor was not operating there was only the secondary systems operating. These needed electricity to operate. The tsunami knocked out the grid power and the on-site backup generators. What remained was battery power.
When the batteries ran out things got hot. Hot enough to disassociate water and melt most steels, over 2000C. The water not only boiled it broke down into hydrogen and oxygen. With all this stuff breaking down because of the heat the fuel would fall away from the control systems and pile up on the bottom of the reactor. It piled high enough that critical mas would be reached with the enriched uranium and some fission would occur. This makes things hotter.
This pile of hot fuel would burn through the metal and concrete until it melted and mixed with enough of that metal and concrete that it no longer had critical mass. My use of the words "runaway reactions" was a poor choice. The fission that occurs after loss of coolant didn't runaway like the "China Syndrome" myth but it was most certainly uncontrolled.
Modern reactor designs avoid this meltdown by using things like convective cooling, gravity fed cooling, unenriched fuel, and materials with more favorable thermal qualities. I've been doing some self study on molten salt reactors and there are some very nice safety features. One is a "freeze plug" that will melt and drain the liquid reactor fuel into tanks designed to prevent fission, and can be cooled with passive methods should temperatures get too high. Another safety feature is that the liquid fuel will boil away before the containment materials will melt. This is a last resort safety as we don't want radioactive gases floating into the atmosphere but this would be preferable to uncontrolled fission boiling away all the coolant and burning its way through the containment structure.
Do you love your mother? Would you allow her to die in the streets? Would you leave her in old age to die of hunger or exposure? Or would you find her a place to live out her final years in comfort? Even if that means having her live with you?
I ask this because everyone has a mother and every human has a desire to care for family. Not every person has a child to care for them in old age but even then there is almost always an extended family to care for them. Society has built structures to care for the elderly for a long time before Social Security. The difference is that the government wasn't a middleman taking a portion of the funds for administration costs.
Social Security is a drain on the system of elderly care since there must be a system of taxation to collect the funds and a system to distribute the funds. This redistribution of wealth means that some of that wealth gets distributed into the pockets of the leaches that distribute it. Remove those leaches and more people do not end up in poverty.
More wealth in the pockets of people with parents that they love means they can better care for them, rather than dump them on the government for sub-standard care.
I have an optimistic view of humanity because if I were to believe that people did not care for the elderly then I must believe that the government do not care for the elderly. The government consists of people. These people must be capable of caring for their own mothers or they could not care for another person's mother. If people will not care for their own mothers then why should I believe they will care for mine?
I believe I can care for my mother better than any government bureaucracy. I also believe I could do even better than that if the government would allow me to keep more of my money for her care.
If it's radioactive then it is fuel. It may not be high quality fuel but the decay of those radioactive elements will add to the heat output of the reactor. I recall that it's somewhere between 5% and 20% of the heat output of a contemporary nuclear reactor comes from the short and medium half life fission products. Given that nuclear reactors are already designed to contain radioactive materials for something on the order of decades it seems to make sense to put these radioactive materials into reactors. Not only is the problem contained it adds to the power output of the fuel. We do not have to bury the fission products any more. The so called "need" to bury the stuff is based on an old policy against reprocessing of fuels, which was based on an unfounded fear of diverting spent fuel towards weapons production. Policy makers, engineers, and scientists have realized that making bigger and bigger piles of radioactive junk is a real bad idea, especially if the fear is of someone getting a hold of the stuff to make weapons.
Your estimation on the cost of a nuclear reactor accident also seems to be based on old concepts and old reactor designs. The reactors at Fukishima were generation one and two designs. These required powered safety systems, enriched fuels, and are therefore prone to runaway reactions. Third and fourth generation, and even advanced second generation, reactors do not require power to shut down safely. These newer designs also do not require enriched fuel. If we put the enriched "spent" fuel from older reactors, even if diluted with the fission product "waste", into a modern reactor we'd be able to burn up that stuff and turn it into energy. New designs cannot have runaway fission like old designs. If containment is lost then fission with end. No fission means no more fission products or heat is produced. Without zirconium metals or graphite in the reactor means plain ordinary water can be dumped on the reactor without the fear of feeding or spreading a fire.
In addition I believe the damage from the failure of Fukishima is overblown. It seems to me that the desire to contain the radioactive materials from the damaged power plant is counter productive, they are putting more people at risk than they have to by this policy. I believe they should work on a method of controlled release of the materials into the ocean. The ocean is already radioactive, adding a little bit more can't hurt. Hastily constructing containment pools, and piling up soluble radioactive materials, is just asking for that crap to get released into the environment in the next earthquake, storm, or tsunami.
Maybe they need to find a few old oil tankers, fill them up with all the radioactive crap, float them out to the deepest ocean crevice that they can find, and sink them. What doesn't get diluted on the way down in an unfathomable amount of seawater will get buried in sediment.
First, as a general rule I don't shop at Wal-mart. Would the people that shop there pay for their children's education? Sure, because the alternative is to have the children stay at home. I also believe that there is a means to both not have these people pay for their education and not have to have the government pay for it either. There are groups out there that are willing to educate these children for free. How do I know this? Because people in the USA already pay for children all over the world to get educated. Charities of all kinds would come forward to educate these children if the parents were truly unable to pay for their child's education.
If you are asking if these parents that shop at Wal-mart would even bother to send their children to school then that is another matter. Social norms in neighborhoods are powerful motivators. Where it is socially acceptable for children to skip school it will happen, even public education cannot fix that. Take the crime ridden hell holes in America as examples of this. These places already have public education. If the parents allow their children to go feral then even schools provided at no cost to the parents cannot fix this. The children will have to want to go to school and the parents will have to allow it.
I have also read my history. The US Department of Education did not exist until 1979, and it's predecessor organization did not exist until 1953. For nearly two centuries this federation did not have federally funded schools. State funded schools likely did exist before this but even then private schools existed on the land that would become the USA for hundreds of years. I recall that the Civil War was well documented because a large portion of the soldiers on both sides wrote letters. These were foot soldiers, not officers, writing letters. To do that they had to know how to read and write.
These Civil War soldiers grew up on farms before electricity and the internal combustion engine. They had enough time, resources, and motivation to go to school. Lots of them went to school. This was before public education. If they could and would send people to school then I believe we can do that now.
That was then, this is now. Computers are cheap, books are cheaper. Between internet, TV, radio, and telephones we have plenty of opportunity for people to communicate and learn from each other. Getting an education does not mean going to school. Kids love to learn. Give kids access to a library and they will read. Even kids sitting in front of a TV can still learn so long as what they are watching is interesting and has some factual content to it. People love to teach kids. I've seen retired people that will volunteer at libraries, schools, churches, wherever so they can teach kids.
What has happened to the USA education level since the creation of the US Department of Education? Has it improved? No, it hasn't. We did better before public schools. I believe we can do better after we get rid of them.
Yes, I do assume that both parents and government wish to indoctrinate children. Perhaps indoctrinate is a bit strong of a word but it works. The problem I see is that you assume the government and the parent have parity in reaching children. The government have resources that a parents cannot obtain. The government has the power to tax and take the resources of the parents.
What the government also has is the power to take children from parents they find unfit. The government has the power to arrest. The Obama administration is arguing right now that a German couple cannot claim government abuse by their home government because the German government requires children attend state approved schools.
This is where I see our own government going, they have stated this quite plainly in immigration court, parents do not have the right to opt out of government school. If the government can compel attendance then when keeps them from dictating the content of that education?
Government schools have been teaching children that their parents will lie to them. Parents will, after hearing what goes on at school, will tell them that the government is lying to them. How are children supposed to determine which is true? If the parents speak too loudly then the government can take the children from them. This is what the German government has tried to do, and this is what the Obama administration is okay with them doing.
I used to believe as you did, that we as a society are obligated to teach the next generation. That the best way to do this was through government funded schools. I no longer believe this because government schools are by definition a monopoly. A monopoly is inherently bad because without competition quality inevitably declines. We need government out of education and allow private schools to compete for the minds of children and the funds of their parents.
Why should the parents compromise? It's their children. These parents are morally and legally responsible for the education and behavior of their children, the government has no such obligation. The government should never be forcing parents to have their children exposed to ideas that they disagree with. I say this because as much as parents might want to raise little clones of themselves we have so called "educators" turn other people's children into clones of themselves, or drones for their view of society.
We have teachers telling children to turn their parents into police if they own guns, or smoke marijuana, or even smoke tobacco. These "educators" are raising a generation of little sheep taught to ignore their parents, because they are uncaring idiots, and listen to the government, because Big Brother knows best.
I'm sure that not all public education fits within the dystopia I described. I'm sure that there are some very good teachers out there that want to create some very educated children that listens to their parents. What happens in private schools is that we know that we will have teachers doing this because the parents can fire those teachers any time they want. Public school teachers do not see that dynamic because they answer to administrators, and they answer to unelected bureaucrats, which answer to elected officials every two to four years.
In private schools we get top notch education tomorrow. By compromising with public education we might get something close after five election cycles.
As for cost, the argument that children will not get educated because the parents cannot afford school, I've seen these solutions in other nations. A charity tells parents that we will educate your children for free, we just need your permission to do so. As an incentive the charities will even provide free lunch to these children. These charities are usually formed by religious organizations but they don't have to be. If you believe that people in the USA won't throw piles of money at private schools to teach poor children their view of the world then you have not seen the amount of money spent by not only churches but also political organizations for education of all kinds.
This works, in my mind, because the parents will always have the option to send their children to one school or another, or not to school at all and teach them at home. Imagine that, people having the choice to get free education from private charities, pay for education from private schools, or home schooling. No taxes need be collected and the government need not get involved at all.
We might need to have the government involved but only in extreme situations of abuse or abandonment. That becomes a matter of law enforcement mostly. The government will have to figure out what to do with the children if family of some sort does not come forward. That gets into a whole different issue of foster care which is also all messed up because of government.
How about we don't do that because it would be very ineffective if driving down an incline.
After all, why manufacture cars with a top speed of 150-200mph when the maximum legal speed limit is 70mph?
Because they are fun to drive.
Because public speed limits do not apply on my private property.
Because I want one.
Because I might find a need to get an injured person to the hospital at a rate faster than 70MPH.
Because of all kinds of reasons.
How about this one, because there will be a cottage industry of people that will remove these mechanical limits on cars. People that want to speed habitually will find a way to do so.
I want to ask every politician that proposes a new law one question, how do you propose to enforce this?
How are these speed limiters going to be shown to be active and functional in vehicles? What means are going to be used for testing? I suspect the means, if people are exceeding the speed limit then they will be stopped and ticketed. How is that different than now? Perhaps I am missing an important detail. I'd like the people advocating for this law to enlighten me on what it is that I may have missed.
If it really bothers you that much to pay that small social security amount each month, then stop whining and get a raise. That's the entrepreneurial spirit, or whatever.
Getting a raise does not address the issue that I pay Social Security and I'll never get it back. There won't be a Social Security when I retire because the federal government will not have the resources to pay it out.
Are we going to let them die on the streets? No, we are going to take care of them, so you will be taxed either way.
People taking care of other people does not mean taxes. There are other social structures to care for the elderly if the government does not. Too many people have become accustomed to government programs "solving" all our problems that these people cannot imagine any other solution except more government.
Do you think that if we did not have public schools that all our children would be uneducated? Of course not. People would solve this problem on their own without government encouragement or intervention. Public schools are a relatively recent social development. People were educated before public schools. I believe we'd be more educated without them.
Same goes for the care of the elderly. I believe we'd be better off without so called "social security".
Do parents have the absolute right to determine how their children are educated, even if the education they choose teaches things that are demonstratably factually wrong on many levels?
Yes.
I have the right to speak freely. That right includes telling my children what I believe. If the state can decide what is "fact" and teach that to my children then I am no longer their parent, the state has taken them from me.
An example. I was taught the "fact" in school that the right to keep and bear arms was a "collective" right. That the Second Amendment to the US Constitution gave the right of the states to raise militias. The state deemed that as "fact" and decided that even private schools were required to teach it. The government can demonstrate this as "fact" because the government courts have upheld that "fact". Thankfully more recent court rulings found this "fact" was no longer true, that individuals retain the right to arms outside of service in the militia.
I do not want a government determining what the "facts" are. That is because in my opinion, and I will honestly declare this as my opinion only and not a fact, that my rights come from God. No government can give me rights, they can only infringe upon them.
The government can demonstrate something is factually true or false all they like, that does not give them the authority to impose these facts on my children. My children are my responsibility alone, the government has no right to take that responsibility from me.
There are so many examples of the government getting facts wrong that I believe that public education is a serious threat to liberty. The government believed it factual that people could be property, that "separate but equal" was even possible, that women were incapable of voting responsibly, and that alcohol was the source of all our nation's problems.
I will admit freely that private education can make for some seriously misinformed and screwed up kids. I'll take that over giving the government a monopoly on educating my children.
Let's not forget that the government once deemed it illegal to teach evolution.
They'd be cooking the food and serving the beer.
It would never be built in today's world, especially not after Chernobyl and Fukushima.
Which is really sad because this is like saying we can't build jet airplanes because steam locomotives have a tendency to explode. Your arguments about systems cooled with water or liquid metals have nothing to do with liquid salt cooled systems.
MSRs do not operate under "very high temperatures". 600 - 800C is cool by the standards of producing common products like glass, aluminum, and petrochemicals. MSRs do not operate under high pressures like current solid fuel fission reactors. MSRs do not require the use of molten metals for cooling, it's an option but not encouraged for the reasons you gave. The problems with other fission reactor designs do not apply to MSR, just like exploding locomotives have nothing to do with keeping a jet airplane flying.
Your claim of not enough neutrons contradicts that from what I've read from people that have studied this for a living. They also gave diagrams, charts, numbers, and lengthy explanations that are convincing to someone like me. I'm no nuclear engineer but I am an electrical engineer. I studied enough chemistry, physics, and thermodynamics to see that these people seem to know what they are talking about and that you do not.
Couple people get 10 years for malicious mischief and felony destruction of state property, and those cameras stay untouched.
Then explain to me how destroying cameras in the UK has become a new form of recreation? They've got destruction of government cameras down to a science.
With suspended cameras they hang an old tire from it, fill the bottom with gasoline, and put a match to it. The flames will crack lenses, boil away electronics, and make a general mess of things. Cameras closer to the ground are generally treated to baseball bats and pry bars. Ones out of reach from ladders or bats, or a potential for bodily harm from burning, get pelted with paintballs.
Given a large enough population, and enough cameras, and you will reach the statistical certainty that cameras will be destroyed by someone that doesn't give a shit. Unless the people responsible meet swift and sure punishment word will spread that it's open season on cameras. Which is precisely what happened in the UK.
And for Ghu's sake don't mention thorium.
Okay, I'll mention U-238. U-238 takes one neutron to turn into Pu-239, one more neutron to fission. The result of that fission produces, on average, somewhere between two and three neutrons. That means there is enough neutron flux to keep the fission of U-238 going and still fission the actinides. With enough time and neutrons those transuranics will either fission or decay. The fission of these transuranics will produce more neutrons which contributes to the flux that fissions other atoms. The decay of the transuranics means that they turn into something like U-238, Pu-239, or something else that is either fissile or fertile.
The high neutron flux needed to burn actinides damages reactor structures, piping, containments etc. and activates them with neutron capture producing isotopes like Co-60 which makes decommissioning at end-of-life a big headache, assuming nothing breaks bad due to neutron embrittlement meantime.
Next time I see a nuclear engineer I'll tell them that molten salt reactors are shit, because nojayuk said so. I'll tell them that the successful tests of molten salt reactors were all just made up by the US government to distract them from the aliens from outer space landing in the Arizona desert, or something.
On second thought I think I'll take the word of engineers and scientists that work on this stuff for a living instead of taking the word from some random person on the internet.
Removing its spent fuel, which contains deadly plutonium, is an urgent task.
I won't claim to be an expert on nuclear waste but I can read Wikipedia like everyone else. Plutonium is taken up very slowly by the human body, it's radiation cannot penetrate the skin, and the half life is so long that it's nearly stable. I'm not saying it's something you'd want to play with, but calling the plutonium on site of the Fukushima some sort of urgent task is exaggeration.
The plutonium created in any modern fission reactor is very small. They are specifically designed to burn it up as fast as it is created. Plutonium is only a real hazard if it is airborne, which should not happen unless these people decide it's a good idea to take concrete saws to the mess to cut it up into smaller pieces. Or if they eat it. If the workers are eating the corium then the cesium and other nasty stuff in that will kill them before the plutonium will.
Also, if we turn this over to the Japanese government who are they going to have work on the site? So TEPCO fires all the people there and the government goes looking for out of work nuclear power experts from where now? Yep, the same people working on it now will be working on it then.
This would be just like when the TSA took over airport security in the USA. All those security people were given fancy new uniforms, and now collect a pay check from the government instead of the airport, doing the same thing they were before. The incompetence from the TSA comes from the people that they chose to hire, and those people came from the pool of those willing to do airport security.
Where would the Japanese government find a pool of people willing to work at Fukushima? From the pool of people that work there now. Changing who pays the bills is not going to fix this.
Sorry folks, this is the best we got.
I fail to see how to create the economic incentives other than through government action, and taxation seems to me the best bet.
Energy is a commodity. The electricity that runs your computer does not know or care where that electricity came from. Whether it comes from wind or coal that computer works just as well. When the government subsidizes wind power ALL electricity gets cheaper, it all ends up on the same grid and gets used by the same devices. Every dollar that government spends to subsidize wind power the coal burners rejoice, it means to them that more people can afford to buy their product, electricity.
(BTW, I don't see the problem with your hybrid wind/natural gas generation. There's a market for the power, and every joule produced by the windmills is another that isn't produced by burning fossil hydrocarbons.)
No, every joule produced by wind means more carbon burned. Natural gas boilers can produce electricity at near 50% efficiency. The back-up natural gas generators required for when the wind does not blow produce electricity at near 25% efficiency. For wind power to reduce carbon emissions from the gas/wind hybrid system the wind would have to blow half the time, and do so when the power is needed, and that just does *NOT* happen.
Everywhere it's been tried wind power will increase carbon output. Backup natural gas is not near as efficient as base load natural gas. Adding wind power increases the variability of the electric grid, and therefore increases the cost.
The only way to encourage less carbon output is to find the technology that produces electricity cheaper than carbon sources. Taxes do not and can not change that. Electricity is a commodity, subsidizing one source of electricity subsidizes all of them. Taxing coal produced electricity raises the costs to wind produced electricity. The wind may be free but the banks that make the loans to pay for those windmills still need to be paid. Raise the price of electricity and people buy less electricity, less electricity sold means less profit for the windmill owners, less profit and the loans take longer to pay off. That means less profit for the windmill owners and fewer people willing to take the risk in building more of them.
To change this dynamic the real cost of wind power has to be lower than that of coal. Do that and the utilities will buy more windmills, because it means more profit. Taxing coal to subsidize wind just means the utilities put up just enough windmills to keep the government happy, not enough to actually reduce their carbon output.
You can talk about internalizing the externalities all you like but that does not change the economics. To make a dent in coal power the government would have to tax coal power to the point that electricity prices would double or triple. No one that wants to stay in elected office is going to vote for that.
I learned something very interesting about zirconium. I don't remember when this was but I found the properties of this element very fascinating and it has come back to mind with this article. You see zirconium is a metal that is nearly transparent to neutrons. Because of this property, and other properties that metals have, it is used to make the fuel rods in all fission reactors today.
Using zirconium makes sense. Just like we use glass in light bulbs we use zirconium in nuclear fission reactors. A light bulb is not very useful unless the light can escape from the filament but no barrier exists to protect the filament from damage. We use zirconium to contain the fission fuel and also allow the neutrons that sustain the fission to reach the fuel contained in the other rods.
Zirconium has another very interesting property, it burns when exposed to steam. So, in every fission reactor we have today we place zirconium tubes filled with nuclear fuel in some very hot water. If the ability to cool this water is lost then the water begins to boil. The zirconium ignites. The tubes containing the nuclear fuel burns away. The nuclear fuel falls away from the control mechanisms and piles up at the bottom of the reactor vessel.
Once the nuclear fuel piles up high enough fission will occur. Dumping water on the fuel at this point moderates the fission, that is bounce any escaping neutrons back at the fuel to increase the fission rate, and creates more steam to burn away the zirconium. But not dumping water on the fuel means some very dangerous elements, ones that are solid at any lower temperature, boil away. What needs to be done is to dump enough water on the fire so that the zirconium and other stuff in the pile stops burning. At some point the mess that was once fuel rods melts enough metal and concrete in the reactor floor, and mixes with it, that fission stops.
I don't mention all of this to scare people away from nuclear fission power. I mention this to point out that the technology we use in nuclear fission right now is very stupid. We need nuclear fission power. What we need is nuclear power that does not require zirconium in contact with hot water.
We need molten salt reactors.
I have my own theory. First we need to set the stage. One of two things is true, either human activity causes global warming or it does not. Either way we have two choices, either we choose to reduce carbon output or we choose not to. We are assuming that global warming would suck for us, if we assume otherwise then the point is moot. If global warming does not suck then we have nothing to argue about.
If human activity causes global warming and we do nothing then bad things happen. Floods, famine, etc.
If human activity cause global warming and we stop carbon output then energy prices rise. More expensive energy means less food, because we need energy to grow, transport, cook, refrigerate, and process food. This also means less heat, more people freeze to death. In general things suck.
If human activity does not cause global warming, and we reduce carbon output, then we get less food, less medicine, floods, famine, etc. Basically we get double suck, no benefit from reducing our carbon, and all the problems.
If human activity does not cause global warming, and we do not reduce carbon output then we get all the benefits of carbon based energy and none of the problems.
Let's go back to the suck that is human caused global warming and we do nothing. We'd have a robust economy, cheap energy, plenty of medicine and food. We'd also have "climate refugees" where people flee from the famines, floods, etc. but there would also be people in places with enough food, water, medicine, and shelter that it would not suck so much. We'd still have resource wars, poverty, etc. but we've always had those and always will.
Therefore the best we got is to continue burning carbon fuels and hope that human activity does not cause global warming.
I suppose there is another option. We get our cheap energy and still reduce carbon output. That means nuclear power. We have no other technology that has a cost that is as low as coal, is as plentiful as coal (perhaps more plentiful), and has a carbon output as low (and likely lower than) solar, wind, and hydro.
Okay, one other option. We find some other technology that is even better than nuclear fission power. That means betting our lives on finding that technology before the suck that is global warming begins. I'm not willing to take that bet.
How about we ask the scientists where their paycheck does not depend upon the theory of human caused global warming to weigh in?
This is like asking the lawyers, physicians, statisticians, accountants, etc., etc. that work in the tobacco industry to tell me about the dangers of smoking cigarettes. Any climate scientist that denies the existence of man made global warming is not going to be a climate scientist for very long. There is rarely any money in climate science unless one takes the view of man made global warming.
TV networks are not going to pay people to come onto TV to tell everyone that everything is fine. Governments are not going to hire scientists that advocate for less government regulation. There just is not many people willing to hire a climate scientist that deny man made global warming.
Oil and gas companies will hire scientists that deny man made global warming, it's in their interests to do so. I'm not suggesting that these scientists are changing their minds based on who pays them. I'm saying that birds of a feather flock together, people with a common interest in a certain viewpoint will find each other jobs.
If you want to convince me on the science then you need to find someone with an economic interest in the truth, not in either side on this debate. I used to think we could find such people in fields like meteorology, geology, and astronomy. These people would have to have a history of being right for anyone to trust them in the future. The problem is that man made global warming is a theory that relies on so many variables, and relies on such long time frames, that no one can be proven true or false. We're talking about decade or century long trends. Anyone hired now with a theory will be retired before their theory can be proven or falsified.
What you gave me is a government website advocating for more government regulation. Meh. Of course the government will advocate for more government, that's just what they do.
This blows my mind. THE WORLD CONSUPTION OF FOSSIL FUELS IS BUILT ON ECONOMICS. people don't burn fossil fuels because it's fun, they burn them because they need to burn them to participate in their local economies. Shifting economic incentives could be all that's needed to make an enormous long term difference.
I agree. The problem is that too many people are trying to legislate the economic incentives. This is doomed to fail. We need to make burning fossil fuels more expensive than a carbon free alternative, we need to do this by some other means than taxation.
What we have now in nations that try to encourage reduced carbon output is to take taxes, usually from increased taxes on carbon producing energy, and giving that money to "green" energy producers. This is done because "green" energy is more expensive than carbon based energy. If "green" energy was cheaper then we would not need tax support structures for these energy sources to exist, people would just move toward it naturally.
Much of this expense from "green" energy is that it is unreliable. I saw a lecture on Youtube pointing out that when siting a windmill farm a primary concern is where the natural gas pipes are. Erecting power lines is expensive, therefore no one is going to put up wires unless they have some guarantee that they are going to carry power all the time. When the wind does not blow the natural gas is burned to produce electricity. This means inefficient peak power turbines, not efficient combined cycle power.
So the government gives a subsidy for windmills. Windmills are built, power lines go up, and gas turbines are placed nearby. The wind blows, power is produced. When the wind stops (and it will stop) the turbines are powered up and natural gas is burned. The people that got the subsidy to put up the windmills use that money to buy more natural gas. Subsidies on "green" energy is a subsidy on ALL energy. Giving people money for "green" power means more carbon is released.
The more money we give to so called "green" energy means more money spent to release carbon.
This cycle will continue until technology in energy that does not rely on fossil fuels advances to a point where it is cheaper than fossil fuels. Taxes won't fix this. Subsidies won't fix this. We cannot legislate technology into existence.
If you want to shift economic incentives toward a long term solution then we need to do that with something other than government subsidy. Of all the energy sources available to us right now the cheapest are coal and nuclear. If we want to reduce carbon output then we need more nuclear power. Anything else does not make economic sense.
The greatest hurdle right now to nuclear power in the USA is government regulation. There are people willing to put all kinds of money into nuclear power but no one in government seems serious enough about reducing carbon output to actually issue a license to build a new nuclear power reactor.
That along with increased aerosol pollution from southeast Asia has conspired to slow down the rate of temperature rise.
So, the solution to global warming is air pollution. Got it.
Also, what global temperature is ideal? What environment are we supposed to preserve? The climate has changed in the past, and it will change in the future. At some point in the past the place I sit now was, if I remember my history correctly, under one mile of ice. At some other point in history it was under several hundred feet of water. It was a grass land. It was a desert. Now where I sit is a consistent 80 degrees and 45% humidity, because that is how I like it. In the winter it gets to 68 degrees and 35% humidity. For that to happen within my budget means I burn natural gas. That means more CO2 in the atmosphere.
That CO2 means plants have to do less work to grow, that means more food, that means better food for less money. More CO2 mean more plants can grow in places that they could not before. That could mean growing oranges and bananas in what is now the Sahara Desert. I like oranges and bananas. After those trees have matured we can cut them down so I can get wood. I like wood.
Keep going with this planting of trees and we can grow nuts. I like nuts. By burning the fossil fuels we produce an atmosphere conducive to getting wood and sacks of nuts. If we spread our seeds through Africa we could grow all kinds of fruits and veggies. If that means melting ice caps then we get more rain, which means more fresh water for the trees, and more for us to drink.
If we stop our CO2 output then where I sit could revert back to the mile thick ice, or the saltwater lakes, or the desert. I like the grassland where I live now. More CO2 means I keep it. If I have to raise some dust to keep the temperatures in check then I can do that too.
We'll have forests in Sahara in no time. And after northern Egypt goes under water we can ship out the wood and nut sacks real cheap.
I'm only halfway joking here. Who knows what will come from increasing CO2. I pretty sure more CO2 means more plant growth, and that's a good thing, because food eats plants.
As I recall there was a shortage of people both qualified and willing to pilot aircraft for USAF. The biggest problem was that people could not pass the vision test. This changed once laser corrected vision was approved for pilots. After that there was a surplus and USAF didn't have a problem filling slots. Again, this is just what I recall.
Now it appears that the shortfall does not come from those unable (due to vision) but now from people unwilling. I don't suppose that USAF brass has some sort of approved surgery for that?