Is there a way to attack that problem? Another set of construction materials, neutron-absorbing layers... In the long run, we would be running out of suitable locations if we just keep on moving to next location each time.
Oh, given enough time, old sites will become reusable once they've decayed enough.
Got any better ideas? Usually, you can have two out of the three "low activation by neutrons", "strong enough to build something useful out of" and "not horrendously expensive".
Chernobyl didn't happen because the safety mechanisms failed, it happened because some of them were intentionally circumvented.
So, if you want to come up with accident scenarios, think about what will happen if a reckless moron who knows exactly how to bypass the safety mechanisms tries to speed up some procedure by playing fast and loose with regulations and protocol.
For a PBR... it's graphite-moderated. Graphite burns really well, as Chernobyl demonstrated. Of course, it can't do so in the absence of oxygen, but just remember the moron I mentioned earlier.
Here's the deal: your power plant leaked radioactivity
We were talking about disposal, not accidents.
And here's another problem: If you tell the judge that the plant leaked radioactivity, you may have a very good point in his eyes, but it's absolute nonsense from a technical point of view (it's radioactive materials that are dangerous when they leak - your potatoes are going to be exposed to a few million times the radiation they're ever going to catch from a nuclear power plant when they go through the food irradiation plant).
On the other hand, if the plant really leaked radioactive materials, have fun proving where they came from (remember: no regulation, that would be unliberatarian). And who's saying that you can't harvest your potatoes (let me guess: an evil unlibertarian government agency).
For this test, a big freakin' light source (at the solar cells peak absorption wavelength) and an array of lenses to focus the light on the robots solar cells should do the trick...
Yes, fighters are the only things that can initiate an attack on bombers. However, when a bomber attacks, the unit with the best defense value is figured into a battle calculation like usual, and it might win on defense, even if it couldn't initiate the attack.
Yes, and here I think it means that the bomber just crashed. It doesn't always take hostile action to make them fall out of the sky in real life, so the phalanx probably just got lucky.;)
I think we should be mindful that this is an opinion piece published in WSJ rather than a peer-reviewed scientific journal, and that Mr. Tucker is a journalist, not a scientist.
The errors in his text don't need a scientist to spot and correct. That's the big problem.
Yes, I assumed this was an unintentional error,
Unintentional or not, it's definitely more serious than a mere typo, since he also draws the conclusion from it that U238 can be put right back in the earth anywhere you want. 1% uranium content would be pretty good uranium ore, so maybe, possibly, you can stick U238 back in old uranium mines without causing too much damage.
And how much of that need can be satisfied domestically by "reactors and particle accelerators that specialize in doing so"?
Many (if not most) isotopes used in nuclear medicine are very short-lived (half-lives of _hours_ to months). They have to be produced specifically, because by the time a spent fuel rod leaves the reactor, gets shipped to a reprocessing plant, and processed, they'll be gone.
Other industrial isotopes are usually generated by exposing certain materials to the neutron radiation of a nuclear reactor - therefore they are avaiable more quickly (not just at the next refueling) and don't need to be separated.
As evidence of that, he acknowledges fission byproducts elsewhere, as you noted in your prior point.
I found it a bit odd that he never calls these isotopes "fission products". The way the article is written makes me believe that the author thinks these isotops just appear magically out of nowhere.
It's merely background for the non-scientist reader, who likely doesn't know why U-235 and U-238 are treated differently, or even that there are different "kinds" of Uranium.
It appears to me that the author is trying to market a product (nuclear fuel reprocessing), which he doesn't really understand, to an audience that also doesn't understand it (or else they'd be pointing out all the baloney in the article). Not a good combination.
in simpler words: the fuel pump will grind itself down if you use a non-lubricating fuel: gasoline is too thin, not oily enough.
You're understating the problem quite a bit. Gasoline is actually a degreaser. It doesn't just fail to lubricate, it also removes any existing lubrication.
I did. This nonsense is almost as ridiculous as the crap that the environmentalists occasionally spout, and is doing nuclear power quite a disservice. Whoever wrote this should be sent back to school.
It doesn't address recycling of the containment facility & other structures at plant end-of-life, but those materials are safe within centuries - no need for a solution like Yucca Mountain.
1. Is claims that uranium-238 makes up 1% of Earths crust. WTF? That's enough to stop reading right there. It's 2-4 ppm in Earths crust, so the author is only, what, about five orders of magnitude off?
2. The author seems to have no clue on how much effort it takes to separate a spent fuel rod into a dozen fscking isotopes. Extracting uranium and plutonium is one thing (can be done chemically), and they can easily be re-enriched _after_ they've been extracted and purified. But extract all the other fission products that might be useful? Err... no. These isotopes are generated in reactors and particle accelerators that specialize in doing so.
3. The author claims that uranium-235 is "completely transformed into energy". WTF? We're a few decades (and a good source of antimatter) away from matter-antimatter power generation, sorry.
4. The author completely ignores waste produced by activation.
Whoever wrote this should stick to writing financial articles and stay the heck away from anything remotely technical.
That is wrong. *Any* water cooled reactor could potentially have a steam explosion and any such reactor, with a sufficiently stupid design, could have a Chernobyl type accident.
No. It have a steam explosion, but it won't develop a raging graphite fire, due to the lack of graphite.
The ONLY lesson to be learned from Chernobyl is that a tin roof over a bad rector design isn't a good combination.
And, most importantly, that deliberately circumventing safety systems is a bad idea.
Reactors like (eg.) the Pebble Bed reactor have no unstable state. Even if some lunatic director goes berserk in the reactor control room he can't cause a meltdown.
When is the last time you read about a major radiological disaster at a nuclear power plant?
Would you accept a nuclear fuel processing plant? Then here's a juicy one, an actual criticality event that sustained a chain reaction for a couple of hours:
You don't seem to understand how to profit from a nuclear plant. You need to be either against building it at all, or for having it built in your backyard. Why? If it gets built, you only get the tax revenue if it is in your backyard. If it blows up, your backyard is toast even if the plant was in your neighbors backyard.
Thus, I do not support significant scaling back of our energy use - most of it really isn't excess, but is required to maintain our present living standard. Reducing energy consumption would require scaling it back very significantly, and I do not want to see that happen.
That sounds very much like regurgitated conservative propaganda. _Especially_ in the US, there's a significant savings potential that would only minimally (if at all) affect the present living standard - in fact, it might even improve it (since after the investment has paid for itself, there's more money available to save/spend/whatever).
The main reason why people aren't doing it already is the initial investment - even if it pays for itself in two or three years.
We can definitely try to trim consumption down where possible, by using more energy efficient machines and technologies (such as those nifty insulated houses that leak very little heat). But in the end, this is still a drop in the ocean.
Cutting the energy required to heat (and cool!) your house by 50% or more is a drop in the ocean? Do you have any idea how much energy is spent on heating and cooling?
Aside from that, every day that a plant is offline is another million dollars that the plant is not making.
These factors are very strong incentives for corporations to keep their nuclear power plants operating in tip-top condition with no problems.
Or cover up any problems so they can keep them online as long as possible.
Their economic interest dictates three things: Avoid fines. Maximize online time. Do both for as little money as possible. How these are achieved depends on the management.
This argument keeps surfacing, but coal plants do not concentrate these radioactive materials to dangerous levels. Remember that radioactivity is one of those problems where, if you spread the problem enough, the problem disappears.
So we should just go back to dumping all radioactive waste in the oceans? That's one helluva dilution factor right there.
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Oh, given enough time, old sites will become reusable once they've decayed enough.
So don't use steel.
Got any better ideas? Usually, you can have two out of the three "low activation by neutrons", "strong enough to build something useful out of" and "not horrendously expensive".
Chernobyl didn't happen because the safety mechanisms failed, it happened because some of them were intentionally circumvented.
So, if you want to come up with accident scenarios, think about what will happen if a reckless moron who knows exactly how to bypass the safety mechanisms tries to speed up some procedure by playing fast and loose with regulations and protocol.
For a PBR ... it's graphite-moderated. Graphite burns really well, as Chernobyl demonstrated. Of course, it can't do so in the absence of oxygen, but just remember the moron I mentioned earlier.
Are you as concerned with the equilibrium of life and the earth when you get the flu and go bleating for antibiotics? Or are you pro-bacteria?
Don't blame the poor bacteria for the work of viruses.
And here's another problem: If you tell the judge that the plant leaked radioactivity, you may have a very good point in his eyes, but it's absolute nonsense from a technical point of view (it's radioactive materials that are dangerous when they leak - your potatoes are going to be exposed to a few million times the radiation they're ever going to catch from a nuclear power plant when they go through the food irradiation plant).
On the other hand, if the plant really leaked radioactive materials, have fun proving where they came from (remember: no regulation, that would be unliberatarian). And who's saying that you can't harvest your potatoes (let me guess: an evil unlibertarian government agency).
For this test, a big freakin' light source (at the solar cells peak absorption wavelength) and an array of lenses to focus the light on the robots solar cells should do the trick ...
Dude, you're not a Slashdot geek... your microwave isn't in the same room as your PC.
Wait ... are you saying that given the choice of putting another computer in your computer room, or a microwave, you chose the microwave?
Yes, and here I think it means that the bomber just crashed. It doesn't always take hostile action to make them fall out of the sky in real life, so the phalanx probably just got lucky. ;)
The errors in his text don't need a scientist to spot and correct. That's the big problem.
Yes, I assumed this was an unintentional error,
Unintentional or not, it's definitely more serious than a mere typo, since he also draws the conclusion from it that U238 can be put right back in the earth anywhere you want. 1% uranium content would be pretty good uranium ore, so maybe, possibly, you can stick U238 back in old uranium mines without causing too much damage.
And how much of that need can be satisfied domestically by "reactors and particle accelerators that specialize in doing so"?
Many (if not most) isotopes used in nuclear medicine are very short-lived (half-lives of _hours_ to months). They have to be produced specifically, because by the time a spent fuel rod leaves the reactor, gets shipped to a reprocessing plant, and processed, they'll be gone.
Other industrial isotopes are usually generated by exposing certain materials to the neutron radiation of a nuclear reactor - therefore they are avaiable more quickly (not just at the next refueling) and don't need to be separated.
As evidence of that, he acknowledges fission byproducts elsewhere, as you noted in your prior point.
I found it a bit odd that he never calls these isotopes "fission products". The way the article is written makes me believe that the author thinks these isotops just appear magically out of nowhere.
It's merely background for the non-scientist reader, who likely doesn't know why U-235 and U-238 are treated differently, or even that there are different "kinds" of Uranium.
It appears to me that the author is trying to market a product (nuclear fuel reprocessing), which he doesn't really understand, to an audience that also doesn't understand it (or else they'd be pointing out all the baloney in the article). Not a good combination.
My memory might be a bit hazy, but weren't fighters the only unit that could attack bombers in-flight?
Actually, the bombers probably just crashed on their mission to drop a $1M bomb on a $10 tent. Just look at Afghanistan.
Okay, I finally got the joke at the second reading.
Hello? i has been around for quite a while now, you know.
You're understating the problem quite a bit. Gasoline is actually a degreaser. It doesn't just fail to lubricate, it also removes any existing lubrication.
I did. This nonsense is almost as ridiculous as the crap that the environmentalists occasionally spout, and is doing nuclear power quite a disservice. Whoever wrote this should be sent back to school.
It doesn't address recycling of the containment facility & other structures at plant end-of-life, but those materials are safe within centuries - no need for a solution like Yucca Mountain.
1. Is claims that uranium-238 makes up 1% of Earths crust. WTF? That's enough to stop reading right there. It's 2-4 ppm in Earths crust, so the author is only, what, about five orders of magnitude off? ... no. These isotopes are generated in reactors and particle accelerators that specialize in doing so.
2. The author seems to have no clue on how much effort it takes to separate a spent fuel rod into a dozen fscking isotopes. Extracting uranium and plutonium is one thing (can be done chemically), and they can easily be re-enriched _after_ they've been extracted and purified. But extract all the other fission products that might be useful? Err
3. The author claims that uranium-235 is "completely transformed into energy". WTF? We're a few decades (and a good source of antimatter) away from matter-antimatter power generation, sorry.
4. The author completely ignores waste produced by activation.
Whoever wrote this should stick to writing financial articles and stay the heck away from anything remotely technical.
Nope, it's the electromagnetic force (which repels the positively charges nuclei) that needs to be overcome.
No. It have a steam explosion, but it won't develop a raging graphite fire, due to the lack of graphite.
How simple such a cleanup is can be seen from examples like the accidents in Goiania, Istanbul and Samut Prakarn.
And, most importantly, that deliberately circumventing safety systems is a bad idea.
Reactors like (eg.) the Pebble Bed reactor have no unstable state. Even if some lunatic director goes berserk in the reactor control room he can't cause a meltdown.
No, but possibly a nice graphite fire.
When is the last time you read about a major radiological disaster at a nuclear power plant?
Would you accept a nuclear fuel processing plant? Then here's a juicy one, an actual criticality event that sustained a chain reaction for a couple of hours:
http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/TOAC_web.pdf
The problem is important in any area where a less-than-perfect screen is used to detect a rare event in a population.
Such as "Who's a terrorist?"?
OK fine lets build it in YOUR backyard not mine.
You don't seem to understand how to profit from a nuclear plant. You need to be either against building it at all, or for having it built in your backyard. Why? If it gets built, you only get the tax revenue if it is in your backyard. If it blows up, your backyard is toast even if the plant was in your neighbors backyard.
That sounds very much like regurgitated conservative propaganda. _Especially_ in the US, there's a significant savings potential that would only minimally (if at all) affect the present living standard - in fact, it might even improve it (since after the investment has paid for itself, there's more money available to save/spend/whatever).
The main reason why people aren't doing it already is the initial investment - even if it pays for itself in two or three years.
We can definitely try to trim consumption down where possible, by using more energy efficient machines and technologies (such as those nifty insulated houses that leak very little heat). But in the end, this is still a drop in the ocean.
Cutting the energy required to heat (and cool!) your house by 50% or more is a drop in the ocean? Do you have any idea how much energy is spent on heating and cooling?
Aside from that, every day that a plant is offline is another million dollars that the plant is not making.
These factors are very strong incentives for corporations to keep their nuclear power plants operating in tip-top condition with no problems.
Or cover up any problems so they can keep them online as long as possible.
Their economic interest dictates three things: Avoid fines. Maximize online time. Do both for as little money as possible. How these are achieved depends on the management.
So we should just go back to dumping all radioactive waste in the oceans? That's one helluva dilution factor right there.