EU approves France's intention to build a new reactor, one of the world's largest.

[NNadir]

The European Commission announced on Tuesday that it had given the green light for the construction of a nuclear power plant in northern France.

"The European Commission has sent the French authorities a favourable opinion on the investment project for the construction of an EPR -- an ordinary pressurised water reactor with a power output of 1630 megawatts -- at the Flamanville site," the European Union's executive arm said in a statement.

The EPR (European Pressurised Water Reactor) design has been developed since the 1990s by Germany's Siemens and France's Framatome-ANP, which is part of the state-owned nucelar energy group Areva.
The EPR project is aimed at achieving the highest possible level of nuclear safety, environmental protection and economic performance, the Commission said, and uses 17 percent less fuel than the types of reactor currently operating in France. Its expected service life is 60 years.

The reactor will be the first in a planned generation of updated plants for France's ambitious nuclear industry.

France derives around three-quarters of its electricity from nuclear power, the highest ratio of any country in the world.

It has 58 reactors in standard designs of 900, 1,300 and 1,450 megawatts.

They were built under a vast programme, launched 30 years ago during the first oil crisis, aimed at weaning the country off its dependence on imported fuel.

http://www.eubusiness.com/Environ/061024113109.s3ylx82t

[marmar]

1. So are U.S. warships headed toward Marseilles right now?

:shrug:

[PAdem2]

2. We should be doing this

Now.

[acmejack]

3. I assume we can put the waste in your basement?

[NNadir]

4. Actually, I am having more of a problem with the fossil fuel waste

that is in my basement, my lungs, in the flesh of my children, in my atmosphere, my water and all over my land.

Oh wait, the only "waste" issue in the energy game is nuclear. I forgot. Excuse me, focusing on the fact that the number of people who have been injured by so called "nuclear waste" is zero over the last 50 years, and the number of people who die each year from fossil fuel waste numbers in the millions, I forgot that thinking is not a respected activity these days.

[Chemical Bill]

5. Let he who is without sin...

Or don't you drive, use electricity, or consume goods that came by truck? I would think you would stop those activities before pointing your finger at others.

Yes, I am concerned by the number of people who die from air pollution. I am concerned enough to do something about it. I hope you see fit to do the same.

Pointing out that nobody has died or been injured by nuclear waste is misleading on your part. Karen Silkwood's parents won a civil suit on her behalf because she was contaminated with enough radiation to kill her, had she not been killed in a mysterious accident on her way to deliver documents to a reporter. But even without considering Karen Silkwood, we have no way of determining if the cancers which kill many people each year are caused by the gasoline fumes they breath when they fill up, or the coal burned or radiation released upwind. When you can differentiate the causes of individuals' cancers, let me know.

BTW, this is the first entry when I googled "nuclear waste". Please take a minute to review the issue of time frame:

Nuclear Waste Disposal

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As we near the end of the century, the disposal of nuclear waste is becoming a concern. Many nuclear power plants around the world are nearing the end of their operating lives. This is particularly true in the United States where most nuclear power plants are approaching the end of the operational time period allowed in their licenses. Locally the Ginna power plant, 20 miles northeast of Rochester, on Lake Ontario, is attempting to deal with these issues. The close of the cold war has left us with radioactive waste from decommissioned nuclear missiles.

The disposal of radioactive waste from nuclear power plants and nuclear missiles is as politically intense an issue as the plants and missiles themselves. Yet the three issues have remained curiously separate in spite of their close physical ties. Few debates on nuclear power or nuclear weapons discuss the problems of waste disposal should the power plant or missile be decommissioned. Few debates on nuclear waste disposal discuss the opportunities to close nuclear power plants or get rid of nuclear weapons a disposal site would afford.

Nuclear waste can be generally classified a either "low level" radioactive waste or "high level" radioactive waste. Low level nuclear waste usually includes material used to handle the highly radioactive parts of nuclear reactors (i.e. cooling water pipes and radiation suits) and waste from medical procedures involving radioactive treatments or x-rays. Low level waste is comparatively easy to dispose of. The level of radioactivity and the half life of the radioactive isotopes in low level waste is relatively small. Storing the waste for a period of 10 to 50 years will allow most of the radioactive isotopes in low level waste to decay, at which point the waste can be disposed of as normal refuse.

High level radioactive waste is generally material from the core of the nuclear reactor or nuclear weapon. This waste includes uranium, plutonium, and other highly radioactive elements made during fission. Most of the radioactive isotopes in high level waste emit large amounts of radiation and have extremely long half-lives (some longer than 100,000 years) creating long time periods before the waste will settle to safe levels of radioactivity.

http://www.history.rochester.edu/class/EZRA/


Bill

[NNadir]

6. Googling "nuclear waste" would not substitute for knowing something

about the subject.

I have taken decades understanding the nature of the nuclear fuel cycle, which is why I understand the nature of a fuel depletion equation and you don't. You are rather presumptuous when you assume that I am even remotely interested in what you google or that I would spend thirty seconds looking at a web site you link. Neither is the nation of France interested in what you google. Neither is the nation of Bulgaria, nor China, nor India, nor Japan, nor Mexico, nor Argentina nor Finland nor any of the many countries around the world that are contemplating nuclear power because they have a commitment to the future that you can't even understand.

You haven't the remotest idea about that which you are speaking.

This fact explains why you elevate the case of Karen Silkwood - mostly Hollywood stuff - over the lives of 100's of millions of people who depend on a stable climate, including the hundreds of millions of persons living in Bangladesh, a very low lying country. (Yes, Bangladesh is talking about building nuclear power plants too, just like the Netherlands, another country that is anxiously measuring the height of the sea.) Even if you buy this Hollywood stuff, the fact is that Karen Silkwood never laid eyes on spent nuclear fuel, and was not involved in the storage or processing of so called "nuclear waste." Even the Hollywood case, were it true, makes no contention to the contrary. The script - which depended wholly on innuendo - contended she was manufacturing fuel, not handling spent fuel.

None of this takes anything away from the fact that even if ten thousand people were killed by spent fuel around the world - and the real number is still zero - it would not be comparable to a week's worth of air pollution deaths. The situation has been exhaustively analyzed and is clear immediately to rational people, although there are many irrational people who fail to make these distinctions. The entire anti-nuclear conceit depends wholly on viewing nuclear energy in isolation from its alternatives. The fact is - and everybody with an ounce of sense on the planet recognizes this - that there is no environmentally, economically and morally acceptable alternative to the use of nuclear power. Either we accept the consequences of climate change - including the risk of mass extinction of ourselves and many other species - or we use nuclear energy. There is no third path, no matter how much illiterate googling goes on. One billion websites in praise of biofuels or solar or even the more practically available option of wind power could change this fact. Energy is still measured in exajoules.

By the way France and about 50 other countries in the world will be building new nuclear capacity irrespective of how many movies you watch and what you hear on TV. France is very proud of the way that the planet is holding them up as an exemplar of a highly successful nuclear program, and well they should be. Arguably France has given the world as much chance as it has to survive climate change as it will ever have.

France's leadership aside, one of the main reasons the planet is facing this almost insurmountable risk of climate change is that there is very little critical thinking going on and way fucking too much attention to what's on television. If people did more science and watched less television, there would almost certainly be two or three thousand nuclear plants operating today.

[Chemical Bill]

7. Insulting me is not the same as winning a debate.

In a debate, you say your piece, I say mine, and either one of us changes our position or not. But please enjoy insulting me all you want.

BTW, no matter how many times you say it, I don't advocate doing nothing about air pollution from coal and other fossil fuels.

Bill

[NNadir]

8. Which fact in this "debate" do you take as an insult?

I don't consider this matter a "debate" at all.

I merely pointed out the state of affairs on the planet based on critical thinking. You spent a few minutes googling.

[Chemical Bill]

10. I'm sorry...

It would take more than a few minutes to explain how most of what you say that is directed at me is an insult, especially since it is obviously intended as an insult and you are merely being cute instead of asking that seriously.

I am happy for you that you consider me so unimportant. However, if it were in fact true, you wouldn't answer my posts.

The fact that quite a few countries are building and running nuclear reactors doesn't make them safe. The fact that I can't prove that anybody has died from nuclear waste yet doesn't make it safe. The fact that you claim to have studied this for decades doesn't mean you have provided much proof for any of your claims. Got any other facts?

Bill

[NNadir]

24. Um, the fact that nobody has died doesn't make it safe?

That's a pretty amazing definition of "dangerous," is it not?

You don't work for the people who publish the Oxford English Dictionary, I assume.

What is safe in your curious imagination? Let me guess: Ethanol.

These guys didn't find ethanol all that "safe":

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/10/21/train.fire.ap/index.html

Nor these guys:

http://homepage.mac.com/oscura/ctd/incidents.html

Nice picture of Chemical Bill's view of "safe":



These guys, 21 persons killed in an ethanol explosion and therefore outnumbering the number of persons killed by nuclear power plants by a factor of infinity didn't find ethanol "safe:"

http://www.timesdispatch.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=RTD%2FMGArticle%2FRTD_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1128769057625&path=%21news%21special%21generic4&s=1058750351796

Of course, I immediately know that you don't give a rat's ass about anyone killed by ethanol fires or explosions. You regard their deaths as a pointer toward "safety," with your curious insight to the meaning or words and language.

I note that ethanol kills and threatens in a huge proportion given the amount of energy it produces which is insignificant. Ethanol produced about 0.22 exajoules of US energy in 2004, whereas nuclear power produced 40 times as much, about 10 exajoules, or ten percent of US primary energy.

You don't know what you're talking about. If one wishes to speak, it is useful to know what words mean.

[greenparty]

34. Nadirs idea of

SAFE.(So Abundantly Full of Excrement)

[NNadir]

38. Obviously you are unfamiliar with the millions of people who die each year

from air pollution. You wouldn't be so ready with a picture of a few million particulate choked lungs.

The number of people who are known to have died from Chernobyl is much less 1000. Any idea how many people die each year from air pollution? Oh, you don't give a fuck? Not important?

You could not link a picture of a strip mine, or the failed coal ash dam that destroyed 75 miles of the Big Sandy River in Kentucky? Never heard of it? What a surprise.

You don't know what the word "safe" means. Knowing that you have problems with some of the simpler words in the English language, I won't bother to inform you what a positive void coefficient is. You never heard of it, and your level of sophistication is such that it cannot be explained to you.

Every day that coal plants operate they produce several "Chernobyls" worth of deaths, but you are indifferent, since the only energy accident that you care about is Chernobyl, and oh yes, Karen Silkwood's refrigerator. Since this is the case, you don't care what happens to hundreds of millions of people who live in low lying areas.

In fact what Chernobyl gives to everyone is knowledge of what the worst case in a nuclear accident is. In fact the Chernobyl zone today is what is known as a "viridian zone," a zone abounding with wild life because of the exclusion of humans.

Here is some other more recent picture from the Chernobyl Viridian zones:



The reactor sarcophagus is in the background.



Dr. Brenda Rodgers near lake Glyboke



Dr. A. DeWoody and Heidi Bradner in the Red Forest.

These pictures can be found on the website of the geneticist Robert Baker who has lead a research team at Chernobyl for many years:

http://www.nsrl.ttu.edu/chornobyl/pg_frame.htm

So the question is, how do these sections of the viridian zone compare with, say a strip mine in West Virginia. Any idea? You don't care? Only nuclear energy has to be perfect and you have no opinion of any other energy related disaster? Let me guess, you think that every fossil fuel disaster should be glossed over until we can all (or the rich brats among us anyway) have a biodiesel powered Volkswagen Jetta and $30,000 worth of solar cells on our roofs?

It is telling that both of the countries most effected by Chernobyl are proposing new nuclear power plants, plants that will obviously have negative void coefficients and defense in depth safety systems. This is called "learning," a concept that you must also be unfamiliar with. Why are they doing this? Because they don't want to depend on coal and natural gas. What a surprise.

In the Ukraine - where they aren't impressed by your skills at googling your way to a picture of their country - the Rovno 4 reactor - a pressurized VVER-1000 (not that you know what that means) came on line in October of 2004. Khmelnitsky-2 came on line three months earlier. They were built by a French/Russian consortion. Apparently in the Ukraine they don't give a fuck what you think about Chernobyl or your focus on Karen Silkwood's bologna sandwich.

Belarus announced it's intention to build a new nuclear power plant last month. Apparently they don't give a fuck what you think about Chernobyl either.

[Chemical Bill]

11. Karen Silkwood....

You are correct that she was handling nuclear fuel, not waste. I didn't know that you would want to admit that people have died from handling nuclear material (including in my home state), but not want that counted against the nuclear industry.

Bill

[NNadir]

12. I assume no one in your state has ever died from handling fossil fuels.

Of course, I suspect you don't give a rat's ass if anyone had.

Here's some news for you: People die every year from handling coal, refined (and unrefined) petroleum products and natural gas. That you don't read about it, don't remember it, or don't acknowledge it brings zero people who have died in this way back to life.

Karen Silkwood did not die from handling nuclear anything. She died in a car crash.

You are really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really misinformed on this case, which is hardly surprising.

The facts about Karen Silkwood's life and death are readily available. That her case has become a cause celebre for the anti-nuclear industry is better evidence than any that the argument is intellectually, morally, and factually bankrupt.

Here are the facts from those mean corporate stooges over at PBS:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/interact/silkwood.html

Don Mastick, a chemist at the Manhattan Project once swallowed nearly the (then) entire world inventory of plutonium. He lived a long and fruitful life.

http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780385319546&view=excerpt

There is zero evidence that Karen Silkwood if she had not been killed in an automobile while on Quaalude would not have done the same. She had in fact, eaten far less plutonium than Mastick had.

Of course, the myth about Karen Silkwood is that she sought to prevent a nuclear disaster perpetrated by Kerr-McGhee and that as a result Kerr-McGhee had her poisoned with Quaalude and murdered to prevent exposure to their corporate malfeasance. In this telling of the tale, Silkwood is vested with almost supernatural omniscience about nuclear engineering and deep insight to the physics and chemistry of fuel rods.

The facts of the case are somewhat more prosaic:



http://www.astonisher.com/archives/silkwood.html

As the 1979 trial progressed, the 19,000 fuel rods manufactured by Kerr-McGee for the Fast Flux Test Facility were lying in deep vaults at Hanford, along with an equal number produced by Babcock & Wilcox, the other commercial fuel supplier for the Hanford reactor. Despite evidence of numerous irregularities in Kerr-McGee fuel, the Department of Energy decided against culling the questionable fuel rods. Indeed, the department purchased several hundred rods with known defects at a reduced price because it was "determined that the defects were minor," said Leroy Rice, a quality control official at the project.

From the outset of operation in February 1980, The Hanford reactor has been powered equally by Kerr-McGee and Babcock & Wilcox fuel, said Garland Norman, The Energy Department's head of operations at The facility. So far the facility has irradiated 35,000 fuel rods without a single leak or failure, Mr. Norman said. Approximately 20,000 fuel rods have been expended and 15,000 are still in use, he said. The tests are continuing, but so far the records show the rods from the Silkwood period, 1972-1974, have been among the best Kerr-McGee performers...



...I went to Hanford expecting find confirmation of the problems alleged by Silkwood -- in fact, I went because I expected to find the problems. But as it turned out, there were none, which was a bigger story in a way.

Despite the spin-control evident below, this story was a serious blow to the Silkwood camp, for if there were no defects in the Kerr-McGee rods, then the company had no motive for her murder.

Essentially, this story revealed that the whole Silkwood nuclear safety controversy had no substance at the center. That's not to say that Karen Silkwood wasn't a good person who was tragically murdered. It's just that it probably wasn't Kerr-McGee that did it. It was probably just a plain old American psycho killer out for a good time on the highway at night.
Of course, by then the Silkwood whirlwind had shifted as many times as Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr's Whitewater Investigation of then-President Bill Clinton and taken on a life of its own as a "major motion picture," where the actual facts of the matter have no bearing.

[greenparty]

13. so nuklaar is the answer?

laughing.Cheney would pat you on the back and i guess you would herald the new mark 4reactors which are green!
They will produce H2 as part of the by-product.Aint the answer.
Diversity is what is needed and seeing we utilize about 1% of our national wind capacity and same for solar i think its time we stop subsidizing known polluting sources and try the green ones for awhile.
If the money is put into the industry the innovation and efficiencies will follow.Solar and wind work now,if they are improved they will REPLACE nuclear.We need nukes for now but on a phase out scenario.To place nukes as a permanent solution is laughable on a plain note and outright crazy if there are regular people that are serious about it.

[NNadir]

14. This is nonsense.

It has been nonsense for many decades and is simply fatal religious cant.

Nuclear energy, although it clearly does something different than solar energy - nuclear is suitable for continuous and not peak loads - is safer than solar energy: http://www.externe.info/expoltec.pdf as is seen in figure 9, as always.

In fact, solar energy is almost as safe as nuclear energy, although it is very much more expensive. If it were not just toys for rich boys, it would be of serious utility in fighting climate change, especially because it can do what nuclear power cannot do well: Meet peak loads. However the real danger of solar energy, which has yet to produce a single exajoule of energy in a single year in more than 50 years of trying, is that it generates a lot of dumb complacency on people who refuse, through denial and deliberate ignorance, to address the serious issue of climate change.

It is impossible to address climate change without appeal to nuclear energy. Even with nuclear energy, the challenge will be extraordinarily difficult. Without nuclear energy the possibility of addressing climate change is nonexistent.

Sorry if you don't like it, but that's how it is.

For the record, many billions of dollars have been spent around the world subsidizing, promoting, and researching renewable energy. For all that money there has been a disastrously poor result. Why? Because it doesn't work very well. The energy is too diffuse.

The number for the entire earth's supply of renewable electricity for instance:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/table17.xls

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/table63.xls

represents less than 2.0%.

Of course, I do recognize that one of the lame excuses for the failure of renewable energy thus far is to blame Dick Cheney, but the renewable exercise has been an international activity for some 50 years. Dick Cheney is not omnipotent. In fact on an international scale, he's something of a regrettable curiosity at best, a sort of Robert Mugabe of America.

The solar cell is 50 years old. It will never work in time or on scale to address the crisis at hand. It's not even on the energy map as a practical source of energy. Neither will wind address all but a tiny fraction of the demand. Neither will biofuels or tidal or any of the schemes-du-jour that have been failing to deliver for many decades in spite of decades of empty promises about what they "could" do.

I remind you that human history began with so called renewable energy. If it worked as well as people wish to advertise it today, there would have been no impetus to abandon it. I also note that the last time it worked, human population was well under 6 times smaller than it is now. Look around you and decide which 5 of the next 6 people you see will have to die for your renewable fantasy.

It's wishful thinking and denial to represent that throwing money at fashionable renewable schemes is either wise or enough. Whatever renewable energy can produce is, of course, welcome, but it is patently absurd to insist against all sense of reality that it is enough. It cannot knock off nuclear energy (it's not as safe anyway) nor can it accomplish the infinitely more important task of knocking off fossil fuels. (Fossil fuels, if you haven't heard, are incredibly dangerous and kill millions of poeple every year.) If there's anything that is Repuke-like, it is substituting dogma for scientific fact. Understanding the scientific facts about industrial energy begins with a concept of the exajoule, i.e. with having a concept of scale. There is not one "renewable will save us" advocate who has a sense of scale. They are all talking about demonstrator products that no one actually sees. We hear, for instance, all about the wonders of say, biodiesel, but the vast majority of people here would be unable to buy or even find any if they wanted to do so.

The world's largest scalable source of greenhouse gas free energy is nuclear energy. Twenty percent of the electricity generated on earth comes from nuclear energy, meaning that one in five people are nuclear powered. This result has been achieved with an extraordinarily low loss of live and environmental damage.

We will all, or most of us anyway, die without nuclear energy. In particular it is the only form of energy suitable for the task of phasing out coal, a critical task of immediate and overweening importance. The world as a whole has recognized this fact, and nuclear energy is picking up steam (pun intended) throughout the world. The international pace of announcements of the intention to build nuclear plants is nothing short of extraordinary, as I've been documenting here. The anti-nuclear position has been intellectually, economically, environmentally and morally discredited and is now being ignored by rational people everywhere. One hopes it isn't too late. It probably is, but we must avail ourselves of the last best hope of the human race.

[greenparty]

18. how what is?

Its cool, you are an armchair enviornmentalist which is fine but pounding into blogs and chat boards that nuclear is the end all be all is beyond a joke.
The basic tenet of the kyoto protocol is 10% by 2010.Wind/solar/hydro. If gore was rightfully in office we would be well on the way to fulfilling what Carter wanted to do in the 70's and Reagan dismantled.If Carter's basically visionary ideas would have been implemented,we wouldnt even be having this conversation.Or the many others ive had about nuke power.There are others factors-like the oil lobby to contend with that would have made it difficult but that is one of the main challenges solar and renewables in general have always had,a lack of r&d funding and political backing.There is a reason it has taken this long to get anywhere because it took private investment to get it where it is today.Evergreen is a startup,not a federal or grant corporation.Unirac was started in a frigging garage.Uni solar and ovionics-run by stan ovshinsky- his r&d is funded by his innovations and patents in the solar field and is just now posting enough capital to have his thin film operations go full schedule production.Thats why you see the solar shingles everywhere now.
But someone saying solar is a toy and unsafe,etc,etc is nothing more than an instant flag telling me you have no idea what it is about because you have never used it.At the beginning of next year i will be fully off grid.That means i no longer utilize coal to get my power,it will be 100% solar and batteries.I live near wash,d.c..Solar is viable in all 50 states,year round and you dont have to drop a 10k dime for a system.You can start with one panel(ave.450$ for 85W) and work your way up to going offline.Took me awhile but monocrystalline panels last for 25 years,it is an investment that has already paid off in avoiding outages and food loss.Week and a half this past summer is an example.My elec.bills are now basically nothing.
Nuclear and grid power will not save you from that.Solar will.Solar is also not a regenerative cost appliance,like i said it lasts 25 years but it also eliminates consumers having to pay a fee for their power every month.It is absolute independance and a wise fiscal decision.
If you want to keep paying someone else for your power you could generate yourself,knock yourself out.
Also hesitate to even mention it but i never said we can ditch nuclear.We need it but we need to downsize it.
We have too many reactors that are being run on substandard equipment and are a risk for scram failures.RFK,jr. has been railing against indian point? for who knows how long due to a number of factors but one would be that it is in the direct flight path of an airport.You clog two outfall pipes from a reactor,let it sit for a day,you get a meltdown.Hasnt happened?lately?A plane crash could facilitate that.Think FEMA or NEST can handle that?In the shape they are in now?Gotta be kidding me.
The stakes are too high,so yes keep what we have but holy shit man,build mark 4 reactors -which will not even be operational until 2017 in utah-at the cost of a billion each?Thanks cheney,for that absolute pinnacle of visionary genious.
Invest in renewables,(the only thing solar needs is more raw silicon processing capacity to get to 2$ a W and below)decommission the unsafe reactors and get the u.s. back into the mainstream by signing kyoto.Join the rest of the world again.
Its basic common sense.And as for your sense of scale,know what that means?It equals an excuse for you to do nothing but talk.
While our enviornment is getting flushed your want to cost analyize domestic u.s. solar usage over a 25 year period vs. nuclear and bandy numbers until New York floods and La. becomes part of the Gulf of Mexico.Those national number crunching exercises and getting people to feel hopeless about renewable technology is something that oil and coal companies have worked very very hard at slinging at the public.It is there to make people feel that one person cannot make a diffrence.To shield the fact that we have never needed them and were fooled into believing we did.
They thank you for continuing their work but scale and national numbers are basically bullshit.If you look at how you yourself generate power,national tends to lose importance and you start looking at things closer,like your own neighborhood.Neighbors get curious,some change to green and after awhile a small portion of that national map turns green and eliminates the need for grey,black and glow.
All you are doing is feeding a myth.So stay with nuke all you want but for the rest of us theres progress.

[NNadir]

21. Whatever. Renewable energy is insufficient to address climate change.

In another thread, I noted that the world is contemplating over 160 new nuclear reactors, has 62 on order and 28 under construction. Why? Because nuclear power has been shown by experiment to work and to be overwhelmingly safer than the status quo. The status quo is this: We burn fossil fuels while making silly (and frankly pathetic) representations about the renewable future. In less dire times, this would be merely amusing. As the burning of fossil fuels immediately threatens all humanity and all living things, it seems pretty clear that we must act.

Finally, we are acting.

Humanity will give itself the best shot to survive global climate change irrespective of whatever fantasies uninformed people may have about the dangers of nuclear power. The fact is that the most dangerous choice in the world would be to abandon nuclear power. Everyone who is serious knows that, and in any case the matter has been decided by international consensus. I am gratified. This is the only real shot we have.

[greenparty]

22. more personal gratification

Youz factz iz imcoplete and shaped by tunnel vision.
Enjoy your nooklaer.
It isnt the future so better get used to it.
How much is a nook reeaktor again? a dozen bizzilion?

[NNadir]

28. One wonders whether such responses are supposed to sound thoughtful.

Of course, such responses have no bearing whatsoever on the important and critical tasks that face humanity.

Unquestionably though, "Green Party" rhetoric, which inherently is divorced from the reality of the real challenges faced by humanity is reduced to nonsensical predictions.

Since changing my views on nuclear power I have listened to incomprehensible, barely literate and (in the best, but rare case) partially literate objections to nuclear power, many of which predicted with certainty that the nuclear industry would fail spontaneously. As a matter of fact all of these predictions have proved about as prescient as the prediction that solar energy would provide an appreciable fraction of our energy.

Now mind you, I personally would have no objection if solar energy did produce an important fraction of the world's energy. In fact, I would greatly applaud such an outcome, since I am very much an opponent of the fossil fuel natural gas. However, like Larry Kazmerski, director of the National Renewable Energy Laboratories solar research, I do not expect any success in the solar industry to impact the need for nuclear power. The two forms of energy, at least as they are currently demonstrated, complement each other, since each does well what the other is less than optimal to do: Solar energy addresses peak loads as nuclear can't, and nuclear addresses base loads as solar can't.

Here is a rational discussion of energy in which Dr. Kazmerski is mentioned, probably not the kind that one reads in Green Party literature, but in general appeals to me very much:

https://engineering.purdue.edu/Engr/Research/Focus/Energy/EngEdge2005_Energy.pdf

In any case, your representations about the future have as much credibility as any expressed in "Green" Parties around the world: Close to zero.

Personally I would prefer it if "Green" parties would call themselves something else: How about "The Dreams Party?" Just a suggestion. It is regrettable that the important issues in the environment are obscured by the semi-literate suggestion that these parties for poorly educated middle class brats are somehow involved in environmentally rational choices. They are not.

[greenparty]

33. no they are meant

to be dismissive.Keep pimping nukes and doing nothing to fight global warming.Continue your uselessness.

[hunter]

15. Hello, my name is greenparty, and I'm an anti-nuklaar activist...

That's how we usually introduce ourselves around here.

:hi: Welcome to DU.

[Dead_Parrot]

16. *chuckle*

They will produce H2 as part of the by-product

Cool... And there's UoM researchers mucking around with revolutionary rhodium and cerium catalysts when all they had to do was hook up to a nuclear reactor. ;) (Best not to ask where their Rhodium came from, BTW.)

I assume you meant CO₂, and it's true that uranium processing and reactor construction release CO₂ in the process. As does any sort of manufacturing including PV, solar thermal, wind, wave, geothermal, artificial hips for granny and the foil on a tub of soy yogurt. The trick is to pick the least damaging:



Gives you an idea, I hope...

..And welcome to DU!

[Chemical Bill]

19. Straw man...

right up there with "you are either with us or with the terrorists".

I don't support killing people with coal either.

As for Karen Silkwood, I don't feel that a hypothetical reason for her killing is a substitute for the evidence that I have read about (as opposed to seeing in a movie). I don't feel that a hypothetical reason for her killing is necessary. Since you seem to, here's one: If she had uncovered a plutonium smuggling operation then the smugglers would have had reason to kill her. IIRC, it was five pounds of plutonium that had gone missing from US processing plants when I first heard about this in the 1980s. How much is unaccounted for now? Whatever the reason, she was poisoned with nuclear fuel, and then involved in an accident that killed her. Her car had paint from another vehicle that was never explained by the police. She was seen to have documents that went missing from her impounded car. Explain it any way you want, but she did have nuclear fuel in her refrigerator. Even if she put it there herself, which I don't believe for a second, it shows a flaw in the system that could have serious consequences. How are the terrorists supposed to get a "dirty bomb" anyway? From civilian reactors?

BTW, I like the way you use "the (then) entire world inventory of plutonium" instead of a number, as it lets you off the hook for the tiny amount it was, compared to the current world inventory. Of course, the statement you made was wrong, as there has been (a tiny amount of) plutonium found in nature, deep underground in Africa. Or do you consider something to not exist if you don't know about it?

Basically, my point is that the nuclear industry is unable to guaranty the safety of their operations for the hundreds of thousands of years that their products, byproducts, and waste will be what is agreed to be very dangerous by (I'm sure) even your researchers. Our and other governments have gone ahead with the programs anyway. I think that that is morally indefensible.

I agree that we need to stop using fossil fuels. I have tried to make the point that if the government put the same effort and support behind biofuels that we put behind nuclear power (let alone the Iraq war) then biofuels would be used by everyone in the country within 5 years. You seem to not be interested in this, which is your prerogative.

Bill

[hunter]

20. I oppose any unnecessary expansion of agricultural lands.

Most commonly discussed biofuels are very damaging to the environment. The true "wastelands" of this world are lands converted to industrial scale agriculture. The places where things like corn, soybeans, sugar cane, rapeseed, and oil palms are grown are the true deserts of this planet. There is no place quite so dead as a field of herbicide and insecticide drenched GM soybeans.

Many biofuels are a bad thing, and it has already been demonstrated that these environmentally harmful biofuels are the ones our government most strongly promotes.

[NNadir]

23. Um, she didn't have nuclear "fuel" in her refrigerator.

She had contamination with a few decays per second of plutonium.

You don't understand the case and you are relying on innuendo and a cartoonish hollywood version of the case.

I do not agree for a remote second that nuclear products will be "very dangerous" for "hundreds of thousands of years." Again, you have no idea what you are talking about.

I have long argued that all energy involves risk - including by the way, biofuels which kill millions of people every damn year, not that you know anything about the subject or give a shit.

http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/84/7/editorial30706html/en/index.html

Nuclear energy doesn't have to be perfect to be better than every thing else. It simply has to be better than every thing else, which it is.

Biofuels, as it happens, are slightly better than fossil fuels in their risk, mostly because they are partially carbon neutral.

In the European ExternE report comparing the external costs of energy, in fact, which you have not read because it is beyond you, the external cost of wood burning is actually shown to be worse in many cases than natural gas - and natural gas sucks.

http://www.externe.info/expoltec.pdf (See figure 10.)

Figure 10b shows why wood is particularly unsafe as a fuel - particulates, in a word, fucking air pollution, not that you give a flying fuck about air pollution.

You'd rather agonize about some fucking rock buried half a mile underground, even though it has been scientifically verified that many geological structures exist that are stable for billions of years, such as those at the Oklo reactors - about which you also know zero. You know what? You're not just risking your own life, but that of my kids, and all of the people I love. Don't expect me to be impressed by what you do and do not regard as moral. In matters of ethics you are about as clueless as you are about the events surrounding Karen Silkwood.

Actually the real risk of biofuels is that they will never be sufficient to address more than a tiny portion of the world's energy demand - at least while the world has 6 billion people on its surface. Thus they serve as a lightening rod for a type of ignorance that leads to doing nothing about climate change. I don't suppose that you Bill, have been on the planet for very long - at least I hope that explains your particularly unsophisticated outlook. If you had been on the planet for a long time, you would know that people have been trotting out this biofuels nonsense for many decades and every year fossil fuel use increases. If biofuels were a viable strategy they would be available, massively now. They are not. It's still a subject for breathless websites using the word "could." Bullshit.

Your representations about Karen Silkwood are more bullshit. What are you trying to claim, that she was going to make a nuclear weapon out of her contaminated balogna sandwich? Jesus Christ... You don't know what the fuck you're talking about. There is no proof that she was murdered at all. It's all supposition. I have demonstrated quite clearly that no documents supporting her allegations were found in her possession, either in her life time or after her death. There is no evidence that a crime was committed and the alleged "motive" for her murder is pure hollywood fancy, which you pick up and regurgitate in an exercise devoid of critical thinking. Maybe she was loaded on 'ludes and drove off the road after tiring herself out because of an imagined risk she thought she was facing. It's not like she was a health physicist or a physicist of any type. She was an assembly worker.

Nor did she have, "nuclear fuel" in her refrigerator. She had detectable traces of plutonium metal. There is a huge difference between a fuel rod and a few atoms of plutonium. Since plutonium can be detected almost on a scale of atom by atom, this is hardly news. Find out what the fuck a nanocurie is and get back to me, OK?

I am very happy to announce that nobody on the fucking planet who matters is trying to stop nuclear energy as a result of your efforts to make a fetish of the Silkwood case. Nobody gives a shit about Greenpeace trust fund kids babbling about their favorite renewable consumerist schemes and representing them as "alternatives" to nuclear energy. On the contrary the commitment to nuclear energy is surging on a planetary scale.

As far as I can tell there is not one person on this planet who is trying to stop renewable energy. In fact people around the world can't shovel subsidies at renewable energy fast enough. It's a popular scheme for promoting denial, the continued use of fossil fuels and complacency: Hand over a few billion bucks to a company like ADM or "solar-scam-du-jour" and then go back to business as usual. Except...except...climate change is real. It's not happening in some futuristic lah-lah land inhabited by Greenpeace freaks and clowns. It's happening now. Thus the fact that renewable energy is still - with the exception of hydroelectric power and to a far more limited extent, some wind power - a trivial contributor to the world's energy balance, after decades of blather about what it "could" do.

Because serious people have recognized these facts, because the options are very limited, because there is no technical solution for fossil fuel wastes that is possible because of mass density effects, the world is turning to nuclear energy. The world, again, doesn't give a flying fuck about your opinion of the subject, nor a flying fuck about the opinion of JohnWxy, or a flying fuck about the opinion of JPak or Bananas or any other character of this ilk. You guys can post all sorts of pictures and posters and lab results and 20 kw installations and it will still mean nothing, because renewable energy does not function on an exajoule scale. Not one of you ever produces a post of this nature without the word "could" strewn over half the sentences. That might all be fine if there was no crisis, but there is a crisis, and you don't have a clue about how to address it.

Oh and Billy boy, don't try to pretend that you know what a logical fallacy is either. You don't.

[hankthecrank]

25. Well I care what he says.

I care what JohnWxy says, I care what JPak says and I care Bananas says.

So I do have a clue to bad.

I'm not taking my toys and go home.

I'm still going to post

I guess that make me a no one

[NNadir]

26. I'm sure you do.

I'll add you to the list of people who don't have a clue about the scale of climate change and who cannot begin to grasp risk based analysis, the fact that all energy involves risk but that nuclear had extraordinarily low risk.

People in this class were important a few decades ago in creating the situtation that has led to the great catastrophe of climate change. Of course, in the 1970's these people had a shred of credibility because the industrial practice of nuclear energy was untested and new. However it is three decades later and the risks and benefits of nuclear power are well understood from practice.

The risk of doing nothing through permanent and unyielding and uncritical appeal to all kinds of magical suppositions about biofuels, solar and other similar industrially unimportant energy sources is very great, which is why the world has rejected the anti-nuclear argument. We simply can't take the enormous risk of doing nothing but talk.

I'm sure you know that I don't care what you think.

[hankthecrank]

27. Very Good Makes my day

Well we all still get a vote. So I'm still working to get Nuclear plants closed near me.

You have a nice day now!

[NNadir]

30. Yes we all get a vote.

I am working to make my party, the Democratic Party, more effective at addressing an issue which is dear to its heart, environmental sustainability, especially with the most important issue to affect humanity, climate change.

As it happens, all political parties are in themselves compromises and effectively include disparate views. The Repukes for instance, have to reconcile their religious fundamentalist groups with their libertarian groups. They have to reconcile religious dogmatism with a wing of their party that wants little or no interference with private decisions. The two philosophies are incompatible and happily the Repuke party is being torn apart by this conflict. The libertarians are recognizing that we, the Democrats, are less intrusive than the Repukes. Libertarians are leaving the Repuke party in droves. Now mind you, I don't like libertarians any more than I like you. While I might agree with libertarians on a few things, like drug laws and the inappropriateness of effectively having a "Big Brother" type of government, mostly I think that libertarians are intellectually unworthy of respect. But I'll be happy to have the vote of any libertarian who votes for Webb or Tester for the Senate.

Regrettably, but not insurmountably, we have an anti-science anti-rational wing in our party, much as the Repukes have one in theirs. Their dogma fascinated wing is represented by the fundies in the Repuke's case, and ours is represented by the "renewable energy will save us" crowd in our party, the "Greenpeace" wing. They, the "Greenpeace" types, are represented by a subset of posters here at E&E, in which I include you. But you are less representative and less important that you think you are.

I assure you that there are many Democrats who favor nuclear power - because it is the rational approach - and many of them have written here publicly. Every once in a while I get a nice private note from Democrats who do not post much but who nonetheless kindly take their time express their appreciation for my views. I'm sure there are many other Democrats who know that I am right, which of course, I am. I often express hostility and often exhibit arrogance on this site - but in the vast majority of cases I also appeal to reason, data and scientific principles. In fact the main reason that I am a Democrat is that I believe that the Democrats are a party where people who appeal to reason, data, and scientific principles can feel comfortable. You seldom hear Democrats who argue against evolution for instance and you seldom find Democrats who deny the reality of global climate change.

That said, I know there are many people who are pro-nuclear who are not Democrats, because historically - at least since the 1970's - anti-nuclear sentiment has been more popular among Democrats than among Repukes. However, the case is changing. Why? Because opposition to nuclear energy is irrational. It is intellectually disreputable. We are a rational party. We look at the facts more often than the Repukes do.

Now, I do not believe that renewable energy is irrational either. Expanding renewable energy is certainly more rational than continuing to rely on natural gas, oil and coal. But it isn't even close to rational to argue that renewable energy is enough. I have continually referred here to issues of scale. Why? Because I want our party, when we take power - and we will - to have the best chance it can have at saving the world.

Believe it or not, I welcome any energy that renewable energy can bring. I have never opposed a wind plant, or argued against a solar installation, or demanded that a biofuels facility be shut. I actually like biodiesel, in part because of the efforts that a person here made to educate me on the subject. On the other hand, I am not willing to place the future of my family in the hands of very confused people who think these tiny efforts, a few percent of our diesel needs from biodiesel, 0.22 exajoules of ethanol in gasoline, etc, are enough. Nor am I willing to squander my countries resources on special interest goose chases like corn fed ethanol. Ethanol plants are dangerous and environmentally dubious, but they will never, ever under any circumstances be as dangerous as a coal mine or an oil refinery. The fact that they are not as dangerous as a coal mine, however, or an oil refinery, doesn't mean that they deserve an infinite subsidy. We need to make rational choices about what to subsidize. We have to get a big bang for our buck, because the Repukes have more or less bankrupted our country. I'm happy to let the distilleries stay, so long as they do not consume more oil than they replace and they pull their own financial weight, or at least the vast majority of it. On this score there is some controversy, but I am willing to accept that it is a scientific consensus that ethanol provides a small energy benefit. But it's not enough. If someone makes cellulosic ethanol work and economic, I'm for it. If every sewage outfall pipe can have a biodiesel algae processing loop included, I would have no objection.

But I'm an old man. I've heard it all before. What's more, I've looked into the claims in some detail, which is how I got where I am. I'm not some rube ready to buy the Brooklyn Bridge because of my political party has a few members who think that global climate change can be solved with a few solar cells on the roofs of consumerist brats living in McMansions or by Arnie's hydrogen powered Hummer. I've been hearing this crap my whole damn life and I'm tired of pathetic foolishness of those who agitate to shut nuclear plants with big unfulfilled promises about what renewable energy could do. This isn't the time for "could do;" this is very much the time of "must do." In every fucking case where fools succeed at this environmentally dubious effort of shutting nuclear power plants, we end up burning more fossil fuels. That is not morally acceptable.

Now, I don't like you any more than you like me. I don't think you're particularly well informed and I think your analytical skills are poor. That said, I do think that you are right about some things, like land use. You have never written a word here about urban sprawl with which I disagree. With this in mind, even though I have very little intellectual respect for your overall position, I'm willing to accept a coalition with you until the Repukes are removed from office. If Roosevelt could sit with Stalin, I can sit with you. But like the entire nation of France, I really don't give a flying fuck about your attempts to stop nuclear power. They aren't going anywhere. The anti-nuclear movement is toast, and the reason is environmental. Global climate change is real.

Oh, and just in case your about to make sweeping statements about your giant vote - since I know you like to come here and claim to speak for all Democrats in rural areas - here is an account of some Iowa Democrats who help make me feel increasingly comfortable in my party, not that I have ever felt uncomfortable with my party - the irrational wing of it aside:

http://www.upi.com/Energy/view.php?StoryID=20061020-041832-8032r

Earlier this month, state lawmakers, the Hawkeye Labor Council and the mayor of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, rallied at the state's only nuclear plant for a reversal of a decades-long drought in civilian nuclear growth in the country.

The plant's owner, FPL Energy, is part of the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, which organized the rally and relies on most of its funding from the nuclear industry's lobby, the Nuclear Energy Institute, The Gazette in Cedar Rapids reported.

The Progressive Policy Institute, a nonprofit policy branch of the Democratic Leadership Council -- a coalition of "New Democrat" politicians -- released a report Oct. 16 that included new nuclear plants as part of the formula to cut "an addiction to carbon-based fuels that endangers America's national security, economic vitality, and environmental health."

I am supporting Al Gore for President, as I have done continuously since he rose to national prominence discussing the most important issue ever to face the human race. I expect that Mr. Gore will need to be deliberately ambiguous about nuclear power's role, because, let's face it, your wing of the party, while waning in influence, still exists. A successful politician always leaves himself lots of wriggle room and I have to live with that. But I have no doubt that Mr. Gore is rational even if you are not. I note that Mr. Gore's father was very involved in his political career - and Democrats and liberals lead the way to the development of nuclear power - with ORNL, for a long time and still an important center of nuclear energy research. Probably Mr. Gore accompanied his father on visits to that laboratory when he was a child. He might have even met the late, great Alvin Weinberg, certifiable genius, and tireless advocate for nuclear energy.

The TVA, which has just restored the Brown's Ferry reactor, is called the Tennessee Valley Authority. The son of a Tennessee Senator, Mr. Gore can hardly be, therefore, a nuclear ignoramus reflective of our more embarrassing wing of the party. I'm quite sure that privately he is aware of what nuclear energy can do. I'm sure that Al Gore can read the statistics about France as well as I can.

You have a nice day too. Why don't you take that nice biodiesel/ethanol powered tractor out for a spin in the grand renewable world? It will keep your head from exploding.

[NNadir]

35. Here's a little picture for you to contemplate further to my other post.

The short guy in the center right, next to Marilyn Monroe's boyfriend, is Alvin Weinberg, then the director of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and one of the primary movers in the Pressurized Water Reactor technology that has become a world standard. (Dr. Weinberg is also the inventor of the Molten Salt Reactor.) The woman on the left is Marilyn Monroe's boyfriend's wife. The tall man on the right standing next to the great Dr. Weinberg is Al Gore Sr., father of the 2000 President-elected.

They are standing in the control room of an Oak Ridge National Laboratory Nuclear reactor.

[greenparty]

32. And im sure by now you know

That some here dont care what YOU think.Keep pimping nukes and do nothing to clean up the mess weve created since the industrial revolution.
Every new post i read just explains how utterly full of shit you are.

[NNadir]

36. Actually what I think has become the world standard.

I certainly am not interested - except for the purpose of having some fun - in comments from the intellectual hinterlands.

You were here earlier today telling us how nuclear energy is not the future, the typical inattention to reality that one automatically associates with Green Party denial. It's rather like a Repuke position that, say, climate change is not real, or that evolution is a matter of scientific debate. "Nuclear power is dying!" I love it! This is great!

Such an assertion, that nuclear power is not the future is on the same Orwellian level as "War is Peace," "Black is White," "Up is down," and oh what was that other one? Oh yeah, I remember! "Bush is Gore."

In fact highly educated people around the world are working tirelessly to build new nuclear reactors, develop new fuel cycles, and further assure that the external cost of nuclear energy remains better than all of its alternatives. These are people who have worked hard at highly demanding work, the mastery of physics, of vector calculus, at materials science. Of course, I expect you to call that "pimping" and to make assertions about the generalized vague assertions industrial revolution, but let's face it, you're in a Green Party, and such membership automatically has implications about your level of intellectual sophistication and comprehension of reality. If you're so convinced that industrial practice is so pernicious over there in the Green Party, why the fuck are you stating it on a computer? Isn't there a cave wall you can carve it on? Oh, I forgot. None of this applies to you. To subsidize your lifestyle the fucking Nigerians should be impoverished, not you. Your role is to offer up your moral superiority, and of course, I expect that you believe that the Nigerians should appreciate your willingness to do so.

Let's face it, you don't join the Green Party if your educational level is such that you can contemplate neutron diffusion theory. You join the Green Party if you can't think, if you're intellectually lazy. You spell "nuclear" "nukklar" and think that this is witty and that it substitutes for thought out analysis. You don't join the Green Party if you give a shit about the lives of South Africans, or Namibians, or Bengalis, or Indonesians. You join the Green Party if you live in the western world, preferably with a trust fund to pay for your indulgences, and have a vested interest in assuaging guilt for a piggish lifestyle through the mechanism of posturing.

I'm sure that you don't get out much over there in the Green Party, and clearly you have little connection with world events in your perceptually deprived state, but here is the status of the world nuclear program in an easy to read table: http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/reactors.htm So much for the death of nuclear power. Do you care to revise your statement that "nukkkkklar" is not the future? Are you bright enough to do so? No? I thought as much.

My interest is addressing global climate change and addressing the existence of a population on this precious planet beyond the it's long term carrying capacity. I insist that these concerns be addressed through ethical means. Your interest, on the other hand, is in repeating your personal fantasies in spite of the fact that after fifty years of big talk, things like solar energy have yet to produce a single exajoule on the planet in a single year. Personally, I long for a world where the planetary energy demand is far less than 470 exajoules but it ain't happening in this decade. I support all efforts to see that it does happen except tolerating vast poverty. In my conception poverty breeds most ignorance although clearly, as the existence of the Green Party so clearly demonstrates, it does not follow that all ignorance is bred by poverty. Some ignorance is bred by wealth. It is also my perception that many of the world's environmental problems derive from ignorance. It is well known for instance that those populations that are growing the fastest and at the least sustainable rate are precisely those where ignorance is enforced through poverty. The lowest status women in the world, for instance - the women with the least access to contraception and physical control of the their own bodies - are those who are the poorest.

Practically every week, sometimes several times a week, I have been here announcing yet another new reactor being built in yet another part of the world. As I noted elsewhere, more than 160 new nuclear reactors are in various states of development, all of those the result of the generalized success of the 442 reactors now in operation. All of this activity throughout the world is representative of the fact that thankfully there are a vast number of people who are vastly smarter than you are. Whatever tiny pockets of confusion such as your ideology represents that may still exist apparently can easily be overwhelmed those willing to do more subtle and reflective analysis. The application of reflective thought is finally, after a long descent, rising. Because I know that the achievement of an end to poverty can only come through access to energy, I am heartened by these events.

I have been agitating for the wider use of nuclear resources for energy purposes for more than 20 years. For a long time, it was a lonely place. Everything I have been saying in these past decades has now achieved a level of scientific consensus that frankly, surprises me in the suddenness of its adoption. I was definitely losing hope in and for humanity. I couldn't believe how such a state of affairs as the ridiculous view that nuclear energy was more dangerous than its alternatives, a bit of nonsense that is so obviously an affront to reason, could possibly exist. Now that my views are broadly accepted throughout the world, I feel vindicated, and I am particularly enjoying sticking in to Green Party types who have done so much damage to the world with their pedestrian and poorly thought out consumerist middle class ideology. For this reason I'm so happy that you showed up. Welcome to DU!

Frankly such myopia as is represented by the bankrupt anti-nuclear position, particularly in the face of so much human suffering and deprivation, with the earth's atmosphere in a serious state of decay, is morally detestable. It speaks well for the future - whatever opportunity for a future that may still exist - that Green Party ideology has been rejected throughout the world.

They are going to be building nuclear reactors in Bangladesh, and in South Africa, and in Nigeria and Romania, and in the Ukraine, and in Belarus, and in Indonesia, and in Argentina, and in Chile and in India and there isn't a fucking thing you can do about it, white man.

[hunter]

9. Nuclear waste is a much lesser concern than fossil fuel waste.

The extraordinary thing about nuclear waste is that it is produced in such small quantities that it is reasonable to think about total containment. Such containment is impossible with fossil fuels. Coal is the worst offender, even in terms of radioactive waste products. A normally operating coal fired power plant emits many sorts of radioactive pollutants. What's worse, the coal plant emits pollutants such as mercury that have a half-life of FOREVER. For pollutants with very long half-lifes, or non-radioactive pollutants, you always have to think in terms of sequestration by natural processes. "Half life" really doesn't matter.

From a non-human standpoint the harmful effects of radioactive waste are astonishingly small. As humans we see certain radioactive pollutants as very harmful because they increase the odds of any individual human suffering cancer or birth defects. But these pollutants generally have a very small impact on the overall environment because they do not significantly increase the deathrates of non-human species. Think of it this way -- if you are a rabbit or a songbird you are much more likely to get eaten by a predator than to die prematurely as a result of nuclear contamination.

The supreme irony here is that billions of people are probably going to die as the direct consequence of our use of fossil fuels; especially our use of coal. If the United States and other industrial nations had stopped burning coal in the 'sixties and early 'seventies this environmental catastrophe might have been avoided.

As a former anti-nuclear activist, this weighs heavily on my own conscience. We were right about many things, the nuclear industry was dangerous, and habitually secretive, but we were wrong about the fundamental thing. We did worse by trying to do good. We would have done better if we'd put as much effort into fighting coal as we did nuclear power.

[Nihil]

17. Me too ... every word. (n/t)

:thumbsup:

[Porcupine]

37. That's a lot of post there, almost like a full time job......

along with all the other posts that you've put up the last few days. I admire your dedication and lack of any other life. I note that you have over 10k posts. I suspect virtually all promote or support nuclear power.

You promote poison. Plutonium is poison that doesn't go away and can be controlled by central governments as a club over their populations. Likewise the operation and control of nuclear reactors. The governments of all of those countries now have a source of unending terror they can use on their populations and neighbors. Centralized power generation promotes central control of populations. Ask any Iraqi or Georgian.

Unethical operators can play havoc with all of us little people by turning the switches of central power plants on and off at will. They played that game on us in California and it was no fun.

Decentralized power, such as solar, wind and biofuels, cannot be turned off by a central authority. It resists widespread outages by disaster or design. It is more resiliant and that's why the Pentagon is buying solar and wind plants for military bases.

Conservation is even more effective. Good thermal design and super-efficient appliances and lighting means it takes very little power to keep essential services operational.

[Nihil]

39. Ease up there ... no need to start eating our own ...

> You promote poison. Plutonium is poison that doesn't go away

Exactly the same can be said about those supporting coal-fired
generation (whether explicitly or implicitly) as those poisons
don't go away either.

> Conservation is even more effective. Good thermal design and
> super-efficient appliances and lighting means it takes very little
> power to keep essential services operational.

I don't recall a single post by Hunter or NNadir that suggests that
conservation is a Bad Thing and certainly nothing along the lines of
build nuclear power stations *instead* of conserving (as you appear
to be implying).

> Unethical operators can play havoc with all of us little people ...

You are exactly right. The unethical operators will do this wherever
they can whether the power is from nuclear or coal or hydro-electric.
Self-sufficiency (both from increase efficiency and from small-scale
generation) is the answer to the greedy operators, not the abandonment
of one form of generation for another that is still under the control
of the same unethical people.

I am also for decentralized power, such as solar, wind and biofuels,
wherever it is possible to do so. I will still however support nuclear
over coal-fired generators as the latter are by far the bigger threat
to life - in real life, not just on paper in odd models of worst-case
failures - and there will always be a need for industrial power demands
that simply cannot be met by renewables.

[greenparty]

41. uh may want to recheck

Take a look at that guys posts and you will see hes basically a nutjob.Be careful who you side with as all ive seen is republican tactics and crazy-speak from nadir.
That said if there is someone else who is a sane proponent of nuke,thats cool we need it but i think what grid advocates miss is that the pricing for renewables is going to drop and be competitive with nuke, gas and coal.Over time it will be cheaper and due to its portability,will be chosen over NGC.Wind is already getting there per W.Solar has gone up because of the silicon problem (ave 4$a W) but renewables arent weak producers.Utilizing all of our class 4 and 5 windzones in the U.S. would take care of 1/6th of our power consumption demand and that is based on 2001 numbers and that is being extremely conservative.This is a link from NREL which is our national lab for renewables,govt.funded,non-partisan.Its a science outfit.
http://www.nrel.gov/wind/wind_potential.html
Wind alone is a massive producer and if you tandem that with solar,were talking taking whole states off grid.
Green energy,for a very long time has gotten absolutely avalanched by every sector trying to convince everyone that it cannot handle the load,its inefficient,on and on.People even within the industry,without thinking, bad mouth it and perpetuate the myth.This is a very concerted,controlled and orchestrated effort by oil and coal to discredit renewables and it has worked magnificently.Its a very old undertaking that started really at the beginning of the industrial revolution and automation but they have had very good reason to do this.Green energy is going to replace them and they know it.Back in the 17-1800's alot of the lamps that lit the streets of certain cities were semi-green.Hydrogen sulfide(swamp gas) was piped in and what was burned in those lamps.Through political horseshit and "safety" issues,those lamps were replaced with whale oil,heating oil and then electricity once the grid was hooked up.Over time the fact was lost that cities used to light their own streets for free.It changed over so private interest could reap monthly contract deals.Grid power is a lie and a big one.
Also dont see why going green isnt a direct assault on the coal industry.Nuke produces only a small portion of my states energy,the rest is coal.My area is powered by a coal plant 14 miles away.By me going to solar i have pretty much eliminated my monthly payments to those shitbags.That is a direct assault on coal and takes away 100 bucks a month they used to get.x that by the rest of the people who live near me and that plant closes down due to zero revenue.Regardless,even if it was nuke i would want to go green because i dont believe i should be paying other people to produce my power.Its an independance thing but another problem in this area is really shitty service.No exaggeration,if the wind gets over 15 mph here,wham,outage.Could be 1 minute or an hour ,you never know.2 years ago we had a major storm that killed power for a week and a half.You had to go to the next state to find A-D batteries and good luck finding ice.On average people lost 150$ in food per household.That is over 500,000 homes.No reimbursements.Tough shit,deal with it.
At that point i only had two panels,i was lucky it saved my food and allowed me the news per the radio/a light but i got a ton of calls because i was the only one in my area that had a light on.Blackouts and outages are great advertising for solar.2 families are now building up a system like i have and eventually that will be another 200 bucks taken away from coal in favor of reliable electric service.When i have everything done i will be on the annual solar tour for my state and am talking with the organizers to be on it for 2007.Should have all my 125's up by this spring.
Nuke cant provide any of that and is an extra incentive solar and wind has over grid-tied resources.
Also for remote applications the grid is not even an option.The amount to string lines is astronomical if they are not planned corridors.
So many limitations and like i said when renewables are W competitive,regular people outside DIY and green circles will start to see all of the flaws.
All they need to know and be assured of is a price competitive option.
How much and how many?

[hunter]

42. It doesn't cost money to hit the "Enter" key twice!

Or perhaps you are conserving electrons...

:P

Where did you get the money to go solar?

Most people in the world (who I might add have much less impact on the environment than the vast majority of U.S. citizens) don't have anything to "conserve." If they fall any lower on the economic scale they simply die. They are not really impressed when you spend money on solar panels, it doesn't make their world a better place in any way.

You want to make an impact?

Donate your land to the Nature Conservancy or similar organization, get rid of your cars, move to a small apartment in the city, don't buy anything more than you need, and become a vegetarian.

Otherwise you are just another piggish U.S. citizen using much more than your fair share of the world's resources. It really doesn't matter if you have solar panels or not.

BTW "Hydrogen Sulfide" is an incredibly toxic gas, most notable for it's rotten egg smell at very low concentrations. At higher concentrations one's sense of smell is overwhelmed, and then it often kills.

The other common lighting gasses were "city gas," a very toxic mix containing Carbon Monoxide made by the destructive distillation of coal or wood. Many gas plant sites abandoned when electricity came into use are still incredibly toxic because the wastes they produced (some with half lives of FOREVER!) were simply dumped nearby.

BTW, "nutjob" doesn't really do me justice. (I'm confused by the replies to my #9.) If you are going to call people names, put some creativity into it! (I'm especially fond of Russian sorts of profanity.)

[Throckmorton]

29. NO, but you can put it in my yard.

In a nice dry cask facility, maybe under my driveway, so that decay heat melts the snow.

My basement is too full of stuff to fit it there.

[NNadir]

31. I think I have room for a Sr-90 powered RTG in my crawlspace.

I'd love to have one.

I'd never thought about a cask under the driveway. It might work.

[Nihil]

40. Educate me

How much heat is released by a safely encapsulated waste cask?
Enough to feel warmth?

If heat does escape safely, would it be correct to assume that it is
not accompanied by radiation?

If the above are answered positively, why is there not more of a drive
to use the casks as low-level heat sources via a simple heat-exchanger
circuit?