Doing something about gerrymandering would be useful, but they would still find ways around the law. The easiest, most direct approach would be term limits. Let senators run for 2 terms and representatives run for 3. That way no one could stay in office for more than 12 years. Then you could finally get rid of the congress critters who have been in for over 20 years and are fighting to keep the status quo. It would also make it more difficult/expensive for a particular industry to buy out a large portion of congress. At the very least would could have congress run by a different industry every 6 years. That may help with some improvement.
Long term geologic disposal will not make nuclear economically un-viable. Currently the money is being set aside to take care of disposal. If opponents would stop hampering the progress on Yucca Mountain it could be open by now and the cost would be significantly less. But why should we waste a perfectly good resource? There are multiple processes possible to separate out the different components of the waste (not just the old fashioned UREX and PUREX cycles that everyone complains about). Go ahead and separate out the Cs and Sr. Separate out all of the actinides. Separate out the noble metals. Suddenly the disposal cost is less (even with the cost of separation) and you have viable product streams.
Though there are problems with both solutions, both are better than the free market approach. I don't know where Bob Inglis gets his idea that any free market type approach will help our energy problem. The solutions that you mention do help to include the hidden costs of fossil fuel usage into the market price. A free market would never include this cost. New technologies are also developing that will help to lower our emissions and get us off fossil fuel, but they are currently more expensive than existing technologies. New technologies always cost more and someone has to pay the early adopter fee. If we really want people to adopt the new technologies then subsidies will help to encourage more people to begin to make the switch. The more people that switch, the less need there will be for subsidies in the future.
I'm not sure if any power generation reactor can be 100% resistant to meltdown.
There really is such a thing, they are the graphite moderated, gas cooled reactors. They have low power densities, but high efficiencies. The way that they are designed convective cooling is sufficient to keep them from melting down. And even if the UO2 melts, the carbon that coats each little sphere (TRISO particle) will not melt, thus all the melted fuel will stay contained in their own little sphere until they cool and become just as they were before the accident.
If you want a passively safe design, this is it. These types of reactors have been used to generate electricity at 48% efficiency, plus they can be used to provide process heat for industry or they can make hydrogen plus additional electricity on the side. The other advantage of this design is that a TRISO particle is also its own waste form. The graphite is stable and won't decay away for millions of years, even under the worst geologic conditions. In this way the utilities pay for the cost of disposal with the purchase of fuel. The technology has already been built and run, lets go back to it.
Dismantling costs are covered (in large part) by the utilities. Believe it or not, utility companies actually are somewhat responsible and have trust funds set aside to cover the cost of decomissioning. Even with this fund and paying for a fee to cover waste disposal, nuclear reactors still bring in the money. Yes the government does help cover insurance costs, but this has more to do with there being so few plants. Imagine how much car insurance would be if there were only 120 cars and everyone was forced to carry $500,000 coverage.
This is a gross over-generalization of what is happening in Fukushima. They did have a backup plan for when the power went down. They had a plan for when that backup power down, they even had a plan for when the backup power's backup power went down. They planned for backup cooling. Using ocean water was part of the plan. The basic and obvious failure modes were planned for, and they worked wonderfully for the first hours after the earthquake and tsunami. The problem is the lack of planning for such a large earthquake and tsunami that caused such widespread damage to the whole countries infrastructure. This is where the planning failed. It was never imagined that it would take so long to get offsite power to the reactors or that so much equipment would be water damaged.
I do agree that working under the assumption of "that's never going to happen" (when recent history shows that it could) was stupid and got them in a lot of trouble, much of which probably could have been mitigated, if not prevented.
It needs to be modified or dropped. I don't think most people realize exactly what the scale means, the media certainly doesn't. The classification as a 7 simply implies that the disaster has widespread consequences. It is a bad accident, but just because it is a 7 along with Chernobyl does not mean that there are any similarities between the two accidents. The area around Fukushima will be cleaned up long before Chernobyl will.
I agree that too many people are in denial and falsely complacent in regards to the scope of this accident. It is terrible what is going on over there and I am sorry for the many people's lives that are affected. But I am also getting upset by the blatant lies that are being put out in the media. Even though both Fukushima and Chernobyl accidents are level 7 that is the extent of the similarities. The primary radiation in the areas surrounding Fukushima comes from Iodine. This is a short-lived isotope that will be gone in a couple of months. There are not going to be the international problems that came from Chernobyl. Yes we do need to be alarmed by what is going on in Fukushima, but the hysterics by the anti groups and the denial by the pro groups don't serve anyones purpose. This is just like politics. You have the radicals on the left and right that each tell a different story, but the actual truth is somewhere in the middle.
I can understand your lack of faith in corporations and government. However, the one thing that brings me hope about the nuclear industry is the people who work in it. Most of the people who work in the industry are passionately in favor of nuclear energy. They recognize the negative image that nuclear energy has in the public's mind and they know that any slip-up will further impede the development of nuclear power. This leads most of the workers to do everything they can to work with integrity and to work to ensure that accidents don't happen.
Who has said that the evacuation of the area around Fukushima is going to be decades long. The increase in the status from a 5 to a 7 is based on the amount of radioactivity released, it is not a comparison to Chernobyl. The big difference here is that the isotope that was released was Iodine with a half-life of 8 days. This is still bad news for those who are around the area and it sucks that they have to be displaced, but in a couple months the area will be fine again. There has not been the widespread release of longer lived radionuclides that was seen in the Chernobyl accident. Global effects from Fukushima are going to be minimal, unlike Chernobyl.
I will admit that even though I am pro-nuke I get upset by all the people that blow this accident off as nothing. We need to fully recognize the effects that it has had and see what we can learn from it. But as a pro-nuke I am also getting seriously pissed-off at all the fear-mongering that is going on in the media. Even with this event being raised to a 7, we still need to keep the actual damage in perspective.
150-200 years is a long time. I believe that widespread use of renewable energy will be viable in the future, the technology just isn't mature/affordable enough right now. I am not sure why there is this idea that the next energy source we deploy has to be valid for the next 1000 years. We can run nuclear for the next 200 years, and remember, the United States isn't even 200 years old. In 200 years we don't know what the technology will be. Even if we pick a "technology of the future" right now, anything we build won't be in use 200 years from now.
Nuclear is a great choice for right now. It is a mature technology, it is tested, and it has the capacity to meet our energy needs for the next 60-120 years (1-2 generations of plants). In 60 years we can reevaluate technology again and see what makes the most sense. Building new nuclear plants right now doesn't mean that we are committing to nuclear plants for 1000 years.
Pebble bed and prismatic reactors can incorporate a variety of fuels. I have read research papers where recycled LWR fuel has been used in them. It is true that the TRISO fuel is not easy to recycle, but it does make a great waste form. We could take all of our current waste, recycle it, and turn it into VHTR fuel. After this stuff is burned up then it is already in its final waste form.
I am not an expert on failure risk analysis on these reactors, but those that I have talked to don't seem concerned. If the helium leaks out you will not have a deflagration fire (the temperatures aren't high enough) but you could get oxidation. Oxidation of graphite is a problem since it produces CO2 and the carbon will gas itself away. If all the carbon were to do this, the fuel is still contained within a SiC core which will prevent release of major fission products. However, it is unlikely that all of the carbon will volatilize. If the reactor loses the helium then opening all the valves will allow for natural convection to cool the fuel. With all reactions stopped it won't take long for the reactor to cool below the graphite oxidation temperature. Thus it is unlikely that enough graphite will will lost to expose the SiC layer, let alone the fuel.
Yes, the reactor temperature immediately after a scram is about 1270K, but I don't know how quickly that drops. I know that power levels drop quickly I just don't know what the heat profile does. I am not sure about the combustion danger in a prismatic VHTR (my area of interest is nuclear waste). From what I have read, combustion doesn't seem to be a major concern. When the reactor scrams the heat generation rate drops quickly. If depressurization occurs, indicating a breach in the reactor vessel, it seems that the failure mode would be to open up all the valves and allow the air to come in and let convective cooling happen. Graphite is thermally conductive and so I wouldn't expect the surface temperatures to remain above 850K for very long (I believe that 850K is the oxidation temperature of the graphite). You have me interested in this, I am going to have to do some research.
The major problem with Chernobyl was the combination of graphite and water. The using graphite seems to be a smart way to go. I really like it from a waste containment perspective, if SiC and ZrC are used in conjunction with it. I completely agree with you by being freaked out by the thought of molten salt reactors. I think that there are much better options available.
The tablets that you are looking for do exist. Asus has the Eee Slate which has a 12" screen and runs Windows 7. They are also coming out with the Eee Transformer. This is a 10" Android tablet that docks into a keyboard and can be used as a laptop. They keyboard also has a battery in it that will double the tablets battery life. Toshiba is also coming out with an Android tablet that will have an available dock. The Transformer and Toshiba Tablet have HDMI outputs for hooking up to larger monitors. You can also use blue tooth keyboards with them. The Toshiba Tablet also has full sized USB ports that may be able to support USB keyboard/mouse. The iPad is severely limited, but there are many offerings coming out that show great potential.
Quick correction. I am not sure about shut-down temperatures in the Prismatic VHTR and if they are/are not high enough to cause graphite fires in the presence of oxygen. The statement I made came from looking at spent fuel (a project I am working on right now). Spent fuel in storage is safe from graphite fires and can be safely stored in oxygen environments.
The Pebble Bed reactor design does have problems, that is why I am more of a fan of the prismatic VHTR design. With the prismatic design you have fuel stacked in long cylindrical compacts that can be placed in a reactor much like current fuel rods are packed and placed. Research is also being done on the VHTRs to allow them to use a Brayton cycle system to generate electricity. This allows the hot gas to directly turn the turbine. This means that there is no water to create steam and all associated problems with that. Air incursion creating fire is also not an issue. The thermal density is so low that the temperatures in an uncooled reactor will not get high enough to cause combustion, even in the presence of air. The single loop system does not pose the same contamination threat as BWRs since the helium does not carry any heavy fission products as well as water does.
Early US TRISO designs had problems with pebble cracking, erosion, densification, kernel migration, and a host of other problems. Manufacturing procedures have greatly improved and tests have shown that TRISO particles are capable of almost 20% burn up with virtually no failure (much less than 1 in a million). Is this design perfect and completely fool-proof? No. Anyone who claims that a design is fool-proof is either ignorant or a lier. However, with a prismatic VHTR reactor the probably of catastrophic failure is very remote.
A lot of the safety of the pebble bed design comes from the TRISO fuel particles that it uses. In the even of an accident like the one at Fukushima there would be no concern over the fuel melting down since the power density is so low and the melting point of graphite is so high there is no possible way for the fuel to melt down. These particles can be used in any sort of a Very High Temperature Gas Cooled Reactor, of which the gas cooled pebble bed and prismatic designs are both very attractive options. The helium atmosphere in the core cools and helps to inhibit the ignition of a graphite fire.
The problem with the pebble bed reactors of releasing Cs and Sr are both due to the design of the TRISO particle. The TRISO particle has a silicon carbide (SiC) layer that provides structural stability as well as stopping for most fission products. Unfortunately there are a few fission products (Cs, Sr, Ag especially) that are able to pass through the SiC in significant quantities. There is research going on to investigate the use of zirconium carbide (ZrC) in addition to SiC in the TRISO particle. The addition of this layer provides many benefits, including the ability to stop fission products that SiC can't stop.
As a side note, TRISO particles also make a great waste form. Graphite doesn't dissolve readily in any natural environment and would be able to remain intact for millions of years.
The problem with the reactors was not the SCRAM. The idea is if you have to SCRAM the reactor you use grid power to maintain cooling. In the even of losing grid cooling you have back up diesel generators. In the event of losing the back up diesel generators the plant has steam driven pumps that can keep the reactor cool. The steam for the pumps comes from the water boiling off the reactor. There is plenty of heat left there to boil water and steam will be produced. After the earthquake and tsunami the plant operated as it should have. There was no power so they had an event called a station black-out, meaning the control room was without power. But there were battery packs that was able to provide power to key systems. The problems started when the batteries died. One of the biggest problems is that running the steam pumps requires the valves between the reactor and the Wetwell to be opened (Google for pictures of the the GE Mark I design. The Wetwell is the torus that goes around the reactor). The valves that go between the reactor and the Wetwell were designed to fail closed. When power was lost the valves failed closed and the steam pump could no longer provide cooling.
Having the reactor SCRAM in an earthquake event is the prudent thing to do. Depending on the damaged caused by the earthquake you may not want to delay that decision. If all is well you can bring the reactor back to a low power state, if not full power. More modern designs are a lot more forgiving and are able to 72 hours before any kind of intervention is needed. The reactors at Fukushima only had about 12 hours in them, max.
The technology developed in the 80's could have been deployed much sooner and there are designs of plants that are approved (some of which have even been built). There is even new technology that could have been retrofitted on the old reactors to make them safer. The major problem is that it is so hard to build a new plant that we are continuing to milk these old plants for all that they are worth. Lets forget about renewing licenses on old plants and build some new ones. The reactor design in Fukushima is the old GE Mark I. This is the original BWR design from GE. Reactor 1 went online in 1971 and was scheduled to be decommissioned at the end of the month. GE later developed the Mark II, Mark III, Mark IV, Mark V, and Mark VI reactors. In these designs even the entire containment system underwent a couple of complete redesigns. Subsequently GE has developed the ABWR and SBWR reactors. Japan is even running some of the ABWR designs. Saying that the 1980s technology wouldn't have been build until 2030 does not reflect the reality of the situation. BWRs have undergone radical redesign since the Fukushima reactors have been built.
Part of the advantage of spraying the salt water into the air is that the salt acts as nucleation sites for raindrops to form. Thus you get cloud cover to block the incoming sun plus you decrease the energy needed to precipitate the water back out of the air. I am against climate engineering, but I think that this is one of the better climate engineering ideas proposed.
This is exactly what I have been screaming for a while. I am so afraid that our zeal for the environment will completely destroy the economy. I am an environmentalist and am all for protecting the environment but if the economy collapses who is going to be able to afford all of this new green technology? It is sad that so many influential people are missing out on that point.
Just because it is the path that America went down doesn't mean that it is the best path for other nations to follow. We can now see the problems that have occurred because of our dependence on oil, both in terms of foreign wars and environmental impact.
I think that the argument against giving them gas-powered cars is valid. With all of the environmental clean-up efforts going on that would be the complete opposite of helpful. However, that said, there are other technologies that would be useful to them.
I think that India would be a perfect market for electric cars. Electric cars are not big in America because the average American's commute exceeds the range and speed requirements for the average electric car currently in production. However, in a country like India where most of the population hasn't had cars, electric cars could provide a good standard of living increase while still meeting all of their needs and not using more of the worlds oil and while not contributing to CO2 production.
What would really be nice is more transparency in the bills that get passed. It seems to me that when legislation to set auto emission standards is over 600 pages long that there is a problem. The United states was founded on a constitution that was 4440 words and now we have a code of federal regulations that is over 75,000 pages (Christopher Lee, The Washington Post, July 8, 2003).
I'm just saying it would be nice if the law were a little more succinct so that we could see the details of the laws getting passed.
Economically speaking, the world may be better off with Gore having lost. While I am well aware of the global climate changes happening, much of what is driving the climate change is also driving economies. Many politicians with environmental agendas are calling for pollution reductions that are beyond the limit of current technologies or beyond the financial limit of companies to implement in the given time. Many of the costs of compliance to new environmental regulations is being passed to the consumers. The question then becomes, how long can an economy support that kind of price inflation.
I will agree that we need to do whatever we can to reduce our emissions and to conserve our resources and limit how much we waste. However, is the collapse of world economies worth the strict policies that are trying to be implemented, especially when many of them have high costs for little environmental gain. I personally believe that if economies collapse then we will actually increase our emissions because no one can afford the new technologies.
The other cost that needs to be considered is long term costs to the environment. At first glance some of the new technologies seem to be the answer, but many of them are only delaying the problems. One example is solar power. It is great in the fact that there are no emissions that are caused by using a panel, but what about the disposal of all the panels when they start wearing out? What about the chemicals used to produce them? Then there is the issue of their efficiency. For the US to produce 20% of its power from solar panels it would require an area the size of the state of New Jersey filled with solar panels, that is just for 20%.
I agree that we need to do something about our emissions, but political leaders who have strong feelings about environmental issues but who lack the foresight to see potential problems should not be elected. They should continue to raise awareness though, as Mr. Gore has done.
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Doing something about gerrymandering would be useful, but they would still find ways around the law. The easiest, most direct approach would be term limits. Let senators run for 2 terms and representatives run for 3. That way no one could stay in office for more than 12 years. Then you could finally get rid of the congress critters who have been in for over 20 years and are fighting to keep the status quo. It would also make it more difficult/expensive for a particular industry to buy out a large portion of congress. At the very least would could have congress run by a different industry every 6 years. That may help with some improvement.
Long term geologic disposal will not make nuclear economically un-viable. Currently the money is being set aside to take care of disposal. If opponents would stop hampering the progress on Yucca Mountain it could be open by now and the cost would be significantly less. But why should we waste a perfectly good resource? There are multiple processes possible to separate out the different components of the waste (not just the old fashioned UREX and PUREX cycles that everyone complains about). Go ahead and separate out the Cs and Sr. Separate out all of the actinides. Separate out the noble metals. Suddenly the disposal cost is less (even with the cost of separation) and you have viable product streams.
Though there are problems with both solutions, both are better than the free market approach. I don't know where Bob Inglis gets his idea that any free market type approach will help our energy problem. The solutions that you mention do help to include the hidden costs of fossil fuel usage into the market price. A free market would never include this cost. New technologies are also developing that will help to lower our emissions and get us off fossil fuel, but they are currently more expensive than existing technologies. New technologies always cost more and someone has to pay the early adopter fee. If we really want people to adopt the new technologies then subsidies will help to encourage more people to begin to make the switch. The more people that switch, the less need there will be for subsidies in the future.
I'm not sure if any power generation reactor can be 100% resistant to meltdown.
There really is such a thing, they are the graphite moderated, gas cooled reactors. They have low power densities, but high efficiencies. The way that they are designed convective cooling is sufficient to keep them from melting down. And even if the UO2 melts, the carbon that coats each little sphere (TRISO particle) will not melt, thus all the melted fuel will stay contained in their own little sphere until they cool and become just as they were before the accident.
If you want a passively safe design, this is it. These types of reactors have been used to generate electricity at 48% efficiency, plus they can be used to provide process heat for industry or they can make hydrogen plus additional electricity on the side. The other advantage of this design is that a TRISO particle is also its own waste form. The graphite is stable and won't decay away for millions of years, even under the worst geologic conditions. In this way the utilities pay for the cost of disposal with the purchase of fuel. The technology has already been built and run, lets go back to it.
Dismantling costs are covered (in large part) by the utilities. Believe it or not, utility companies actually are somewhat responsible and have trust funds set aside to cover the cost of decomissioning. Even with this fund and paying for a fee to cover waste disposal, nuclear reactors still bring in the money. Yes the government does help cover insurance costs, but this has more to do with there being so few plants. Imagine how much car insurance would be if there were only 120 cars and everyone was forced to carry $500,000 coverage.
This is a gross over-generalization of what is happening in Fukushima. They did have a backup plan for when the power went down. They had a plan for when that backup power down, they even had a plan for when the backup power's backup power went down. They planned for backup cooling. Using ocean water was part of the plan. The basic and obvious failure modes were planned for, and they worked wonderfully for the first hours after the earthquake and tsunami. The problem is the lack of planning for such a large earthquake and tsunami that caused such widespread damage to the whole countries infrastructure. This is where the planning failed. It was never imagined that it would take so long to get offsite power to the reactors or that so much equipment would be water damaged.
I do agree that working under the assumption of "that's never going to happen" (when recent history shows that it could) was stupid and got them in a lot of trouble, much of which probably could have been mitigated, if not prevented.
It needs to be modified or dropped. I don't think most people realize exactly what the scale means, the media certainly doesn't. The classification as a 7 simply implies that the disaster has widespread consequences. It is a bad accident, but just because it is a 7 along with Chernobyl does not mean that there are any similarities between the two accidents. The area around Fukushima will be cleaned up long before Chernobyl will.
I agree that too many people are in denial and falsely complacent in regards to the scope of this accident. It is terrible what is going on over there and I am sorry for the many people's lives that are affected. But I am also getting upset by the blatant lies that are being put out in the media. Even though both Fukushima and Chernobyl accidents are level 7 that is the extent of the similarities. The primary radiation in the areas surrounding Fukushima comes from Iodine. This is a short-lived isotope that will be gone in a couple of months. There are not going to be the international problems that came from Chernobyl. Yes we do need to be alarmed by what is going on in Fukushima, but the hysterics by the anti groups and the denial by the pro groups don't serve anyones purpose. This is just like politics. You have the radicals on the left and right that each tell a different story, but the actual truth is somewhere in the middle.
I can understand your lack of faith in corporations and government. However, the one thing that brings me hope about the nuclear industry is the people who work in it. Most of the people who work in the industry are passionately in favor of nuclear energy. They recognize the negative image that nuclear energy has in the public's mind and they know that any slip-up will further impede the development of nuclear power. This leads most of the workers to do everything they can to work with integrity and to work to ensure that accidents don't happen.
Who has said that the evacuation of the area around Fukushima is going to be decades long. The increase in the status from a 5 to a 7 is based on the amount of radioactivity released, it is not a comparison to Chernobyl. The big difference here is that the isotope that was released was Iodine with a half-life of 8 days. This is still bad news for those who are around the area and it sucks that they have to be displaced, but in a couple months the area will be fine again. There has not been the widespread release of longer lived radionuclides that was seen in the Chernobyl accident. Global effects from Fukushima are going to be minimal, unlike Chernobyl.
I will admit that even though I am pro-nuke I get upset by all the people that blow this accident off as nothing. We need to fully recognize the effects that it has had and see what we can learn from it. But as a pro-nuke I am also getting seriously pissed-off at all the fear-mongering that is going on in the media. Even with this event being raised to a 7, we still need to keep the actual damage in perspective.
150-200 years is a long time. I believe that widespread use of renewable energy will be viable in the future, the technology just isn't mature/affordable enough right now. I am not sure why there is this idea that the next energy source we deploy has to be valid for the next 1000 years. We can run nuclear for the next 200 years, and remember, the United States isn't even 200 years old. In 200 years we don't know what the technology will be. Even if we pick a "technology of the future" right now, anything we build won't be in use 200 years from now.
Nuclear is a great choice for right now. It is a mature technology, it is tested, and it has the capacity to meet our energy needs for the next 60-120 years (1-2 generations of plants). In 60 years we can reevaluate technology again and see what makes the most sense. Building new nuclear plants right now doesn't mean that we are committing to nuclear plants for 1000 years.
Pebble bed and prismatic reactors can incorporate a variety of fuels. I have read research papers where recycled LWR fuel has been used in them. It is true that the TRISO fuel is not easy to recycle, but it does make a great waste form. We could take all of our current waste, recycle it, and turn it into VHTR fuel. After this stuff is burned up then it is already in its final waste form.
I am not an expert on failure risk analysis on these reactors, but those that I have talked to don't seem concerned. If the helium leaks out you will not have a deflagration fire (the temperatures aren't high enough) but you could get oxidation. Oxidation of graphite is a problem since it produces CO2 and the carbon will gas itself away. If all the carbon were to do this, the fuel is still contained within a SiC core which will prevent release of major fission products. However, it is unlikely that all of the carbon will volatilize. If the reactor loses the helium then opening all the valves will allow for natural convection to cool the fuel. With all reactions stopped it won't take long for the reactor to cool below the graphite oxidation temperature. Thus it is unlikely that enough graphite will will lost to expose the SiC layer, let alone the fuel.
Yes, the reactor temperature immediately after a scram is about 1270K, but I don't know how quickly that drops. I know that power levels drop quickly I just don't know what the heat profile does. I am not sure about the combustion danger in a prismatic VHTR (my area of interest is nuclear waste). From what I have read, combustion doesn't seem to be a major concern. When the reactor scrams the heat generation rate drops quickly. If depressurization occurs, indicating a breach in the reactor vessel, it seems that the failure mode would be to open up all the valves and allow the air to come in and let convective cooling happen. Graphite is thermally conductive and so I wouldn't expect the surface temperatures to remain above 850K for very long (I believe that 850K is the oxidation temperature of the graphite). You have me interested in this, I am going to have to do some research.
The major problem with Chernobyl was the combination of graphite and water. The using graphite seems to be a smart way to go. I really like it from a waste containment perspective, if SiC and ZrC are used in conjunction with it. I completely agree with you by being freaked out by the thought of molten salt reactors. I think that there are much better options available.
The tablets that you are looking for do exist. Asus has the Eee Slate which has a 12" screen and runs Windows 7. They are also coming out with the Eee Transformer. This is a 10" Android tablet that docks into a keyboard and can be used as a laptop. They keyboard also has a battery in it that will double the tablets battery life. Toshiba is also coming out with an Android tablet that will have an available dock. The Transformer and Toshiba Tablet have HDMI outputs for hooking up to larger monitors. You can also use blue tooth keyboards with them. The Toshiba Tablet also has full sized USB ports that may be able to support USB keyboard/mouse. The iPad is severely limited, but there are many offerings coming out that show great potential.
Quick correction. I am not sure about shut-down temperatures in the Prismatic VHTR and if they are/are not high enough to cause graphite fires in the presence of oxygen. The statement I made came from looking at spent fuel (a project I am working on right now). Spent fuel in storage is safe from graphite fires and can be safely stored in oxygen environments.
The Pebble Bed reactor design does have problems, that is why I am more of a fan of the prismatic VHTR design. With the prismatic design you have fuel stacked in long cylindrical compacts that can be placed in a reactor much like current fuel rods are packed and placed. Research is also being done on the VHTRs to allow them to use a Brayton cycle system to generate electricity. This allows the hot gas to directly turn the turbine. This means that there is no water to create steam and all associated problems with that. Air incursion creating fire is also not an issue. The thermal density is so low that the temperatures in an uncooled reactor will not get high enough to cause combustion, even in the presence of air. The single loop system does not pose the same contamination threat as BWRs since the helium does not carry any heavy fission products as well as water does.
Early US TRISO designs had problems with pebble cracking, erosion, densification, kernel migration, and a host of other problems. Manufacturing procedures have greatly improved and tests have shown that TRISO particles are capable of almost 20% burn up with virtually no failure (much less than 1 in a million). Is this design perfect and completely fool-proof? No. Anyone who claims that a design is fool-proof is either ignorant or a lier. However, with a prismatic VHTR reactor the probably of catastrophic failure is very remote.
A lot of the safety of the pebble bed design comes from the TRISO fuel particles that it uses. In the even of an accident like the one at Fukushima there would be no concern over the fuel melting down since the power density is so low and the melting point of graphite is so high there is no possible way for the fuel to melt down. These particles can be used in any sort of a Very High Temperature Gas Cooled Reactor, of which the gas cooled pebble bed and prismatic designs are both very attractive options. The helium atmosphere in the core cools and helps to inhibit the ignition of a graphite fire.
The problem with the pebble bed reactors of releasing Cs and Sr are both due to the design of the TRISO particle. The TRISO particle has a silicon carbide (SiC) layer that provides structural stability as well as stopping for most fission products. Unfortunately there are a few fission products (Cs, Sr, Ag especially) that are able to pass through the SiC in significant quantities. There is research going on to investigate the use of zirconium carbide (ZrC) in addition to SiC in the TRISO particle. The addition of this layer provides many benefits, including the ability to stop fission products that SiC can't stop.
As a side note, TRISO particles also make a great waste form. Graphite doesn't dissolve readily in any natural environment and would be able to remain intact for millions of years.
The problem with the reactors was not the SCRAM. The idea is if you have to SCRAM the reactor you use grid power to maintain cooling. In the even of losing grid cooling you have back up diesel generators. In the event of losing the back up diesel generators the plant has steam driven pumps that can keep the reactor cool. The steam for the pumps comes from the water boiling off the reactor. There is plenty of heat left there to boil water and steam will be produced. After the earthquake and tsunami the plant operated as it should have. There was no power so they had an event called a station black-out, meaning the control room was without power. But there were battery packs that was able to provide power to key systems. The problems started when the batteries died. One of the biggest problems is that running the steam pumps requires the valves between the reactor and the Wetwell to be opened (Google for pictures of the the GE Mark I design. The Wetwell is the torus that goes around the reactor). The valves that go between the reactor and the Wetwell were designed to fail closed. When power was lost the valves failed closed and the steam pump could no longer provide cooling.
Having the reactor SCRAM in an earthquake event is the prudent thing to do. Depending on the damaged caused by the earthquake you may not want to delay that decision. If all is well you can bring the reactor back to a low power state, if not full power. More modern designs are a lot more forgiving and are able to 72 hours before any kind of intervention is needed. The reactors at Fukushima only had about 12 hours in them, max.
The technology developed in the 80's could have been deployed much sooner and there are designs of plants that are approved (some of which have even been built). There is even new technology that could have been retrofitted on the old reactors to make them safer. The major problem is that it is so hard to build a new plant that we are continuing to milk these old plants for all that they are worth. Lets forget about renewing licenses on old plants and build some new ones. The reactor design in Fukushima is the old GE Mark I. This is the original BWR design from GE. Reactor 1 went online in 1971 and was scheduled to be decommissioned at the end of the month. GE later developed the Mark II, Mark III, Mark IV, Mark V, and Mark VI reactors. In these designs even the entire containment system underwent a couple of complete redesigns. Subsequently GE has developed the ABWR and SBWR reactors. Japan is even running some of the ABWR designs. Saying that the 1980s technology wouldn't have been build until 2030 does not reflect the reality of the situation. BWRs have undergone radical redesign since the Fukushima reactors have been built.
Part of the advantage of spraying the salt water into the air is that the salt acts as nucleation sites for raindrops to form. Thus you get cloud cover to block the incoming sun plus you decrease the energy needed to precipitate the water back out of the air. I am against climate engineering, but I think that this is one of the better climate engineering ideas proposed.
Maybe we will get lucky and if the Treasury keeps putting high tech processing into the bills they may actually end up being worth their face value.
This is exactly what I have been screaming for a while. I am so afraid that our zeal for the environment will completely destroy the economy. I am an environmentalist and am all for protecting the environment but if the economy collapses who is going to be able to afford all of this new green technology? It is sad that so many influential people are missing out on that point.
Just because it is the path that America went down doesn't mean that it is the best path for other nations to follow. We can now see the problems that have occurred because of our dependence on oil, both in terms of foreign wars and environmental impact. I think that the argument against giving them gas-powered cars is valid. With all of the environmental clean-up efforts going on that would be the complete opposite of helpful. However, that said, there are other technologies that would be useful to them. I think that India would be a perfect market for electric cars. Electric cars are not big in America because the average American's commute exceeds the range and speed requirements for the average electric car currently in production. However, in a country like India where most of the population hasn't had cars, electric cars could provide a good standard of living increase while still meeting all of their needs and not using more of the worlds oil and while not contributing to CO2 production.
What would really be nice is more transparency in the bills that get passed. It seems to me that when legislation to set auto emission standards is over 600 pages long that there is a problem. The United states was founded on a constitution that was 4440 words and now we have a code of federal regulations that is over 75,000 pages (Christopher Lee, The Washington Post, July 8, 2003). I'm just saying it would be nice if the law were a little more succinct so that we could see the details of the laws getting passed.
Economically speaking, the world may be better off with Gore having lost. While I am well aware of the global climate changes happening, much of what is driving the climate change is also driving economies. Many politicians with environmental agendas are calling for pollution reductions that are beyond the limit of current technologies or beyond the financial limit of companies to implement in the given time. Many of the costs of compliance to new environmental regulations is being passed to the consumers. The question then becomes, how long can an economy support that kind of price inflation.
I will agree that we need to do whatever we can to reduce our emissions and to conserve our resources and limit how much we waste. However, is the collapse of world economies worth the strict policies that are trying to be implemented, especially when many of them have high costs for little environmental gain. I personally believe that if economies collapse then we will actually increase our emissions because no one can afford the new technologies.
The other cost that needs to be considered is long term costs to the environment. At first glance some of the new technologies seem to be the answer, but many of them are only delaying the problems. One example is solar power. It is great in the fact that there are no emissions that are caused by using a panel, but what about the disposal of all the panels when they start wearing out? What about the chemicals used to produce them? Then there is the issue of their efficiency. For the US to produce 20% of its power from solar panels it would require an area the size of the state of New Jersey filled with solar panels, that is just for 20%.
I agree that we need to do something about our emissions, but political leaders who have strong feelings about environmental issues but who lack the foresight to see potential problems should not be elected. They should continue to raise awareness though, as Mr. Gore has done.