Nuclear Power . . .

[Stunt]

Originally posted by: Steeplerot

Originally posted by: Genx87

Originally posted by: Steeplerot
yeah, the government does a great job...look at iraqi war, look at your local government. yeah right.

I think your best bet is to move to an island in the middle of the Ocean.

and naive people like you would make our world on big ocean.

Am I naive to suggest nuclear too Steeplerot?

 

[daclayman]

"Wind turbines remove energy from the air and change local weather patterns, though we haven't deployed them on a wide enough scale to experience anything really bad yet."

I would think a bunch of skyscrapers in a large metropolitan area would make more of an impact on the wind, though that impact would still be miniscule. I do realize that skyscrapers don't take energy from wind, they just reroute and funnel it down the streets.

I've been a nuker since I was young; the trade-off of nucular (heheh...) waste is a non-issue. We can bury the 1%, no biggie. We'll have figured out nuclear fusion in a few decades anyhoo. What I can't figure out is why Precedent Moron is endorsing nucoolar power AND praising France. GE must have promised an a$$load of money for the Republican party.

 

[CaptnKirk]

Originally posted by: rahvin

Originally posted by: CaptnKirk
No, Raython lost their shirts on the last couple that are being finished

Huh ? Where did the reference to Raytheon come in - we haven't even built a Nuke here in the US in over 22 yerars.

Personal information. Washington Constructors purchased the heavy contracting division of Raytheon which was in the process of completely construction of a couple of nuclear reactors and basically lied about how over budget and how complete the projects were. Washington Group ended up declaring bankrupcy (losing their ability to bond on a project we were teamed with them on) and a result and sued Raytheon to take the projects back.

Hanford Reactor

Yep, Bechtel -

Washington Group is the chief Hanford subcontractor for Bechtel National, which is in charge of designing, building and testing Hanford's top-priority glassification project through 2011. The facility is supposed to convert at least 10 percent of the site's 53 million gallons of radioactive tank wastes into glass by 2018.

That's not a contract to build a new power plant - it's a glassification and clean-up of the old Hanford Weapons plant in
Eastern Washington on the Columbia river, an old, old weapons grade production facility.
The Fed's shut it down back in 2001.
Since 1943
Hell - that thing's 3 months older than I am !

 

[cquark]

Originally posted by: Steeplerot
get a grip you people are gambling with very long term effects and taking big buisnesses word for safety...dumb.

I'm not relying on big business's word for safety--I'm relying on my own understanding of nuclear physics and engineering.

 

[Genx87]

Originally posted by: Steeplerot

Originally posted by: Genx87

Originally posted by: Steeplerot
yeah, the government does a great job...look at iraqi war, look at your local government. yeah right.

I think your best bet is to move to an island in the middle of the Ocean.

and naive people like you would make our world on big ocean.

What does it matter to you? You are far away from everybody. Apparently you think everybody is out to get you. The further you stay from us the better it will be for you.

 

[cquark]

Originally posted by: daclayman
"Wind turbines remove energy from the air and change local weather patterns, though we haven't deployed them on a wide enough scale to experience anything really bad yet."

I would think a bunch of skyscrapers in a large metropolitan area would make more of an impact on the wind, though that impact would still be miniscule. I do realize that skyscrapers don't take energy from wind, they just reroute and funnel it down the streets.

Cities have a large environmental impact, changing the weather patterns around them in measurable ways. However, instead of removing energy from the atmosphere, they add to it with the waste heat they add.

Here's an article about how Phoenix's growing population changes local temperatures:

Copyright 1998 Phoenix Newspapers, Inc.
THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC
September 25, 1998 Friday, Final Chaser

'ISLAND' SIZZLE; GROWTH MAY MAKE VALLEY AN INCREASINGLY HOT SPOT By Steve Yozwiak, The Arizona Republic

You think the Valley of the Sun is hot now? Stick around another generation and feel the heat with twice as many people.

Phoenix area temperatures could continue to increase - perhaps as much as 15 to 20 degrees above historic averages - as buildings, roads and parking lots march across former croplands and virgin desert.

Phoenix is becoming the quintessential example of what scientists call an urban heat island. Imagine a huge dome of air over the city - hottest at its center and cooler at its edges. As development spreads, increasing amounts of asphalt and concrete soak up the sun's radiation during the day. Those artificial surfaces then release heat at night more slowly than irrigated farmland or natural desert soils.

This retained heat means higher electric bills, more smog, higher wind velocities, more water usage - and more deaths. Yet experts predict it may be decades before the increased heat and its effects discourage most people from moving here.

"As long as Phoenix grows, there's little doubt that it will get warmer," said Robert Balling, director of the Office of Climatology at Arizona State University.

It was Balling who a decade ago documented a curious trend, one that explains why people here don't keep their windows open at night as often as they once did.

Since World War II, when many Phoenix residents still slept on porches outdoors, average summertime lows have broken through the comfort zone. They've risen more than seven degrees over the past half century, from a balmy 73 degrees to more than 80 degrees.

What happened over 40 years was a tenfold increase in the Valley's population, from 150,000 residents to more than 1.8 million people when Balling completed his study in 1984.

Since then, the Valley's population has grown half again to nearly 2.8 million. It is expected to pass 4.6 million by 2020, and 7.3 million by 2050, according to Tom Rex, research manager for ASU's Center for Business Research.

Interestingly, average daytime summer highs in Balling's study remained about the same - hovering between 102 and 104 degrees. This relative constant is due to the wind's dispersal of the sun's energy during the day. Is this still the case? Balling isn't sure, having switched his study to global warming.

A compilation of National Weather Service data by The Arizona Republic shows that both the average summertime highs and lows in the past decade have increased slightly.

But Balling said the data cannot be accurately compared, since the location of the Weather Service monitoring station at Sky Harbor International Airport was switched in 1994. The new location records temperatures 2 degrees cooler than the old location, and still the averages are higher, said Craig Ellis, Weather Service meteorologist.

To find out more precisely what is happening, a team of federal investigators from the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Aeronautic and Space Administration recently began a study of the heat island effect in 10 U.S. cities, including Phoenix.

"What we want to do is provide information to decisionmakers - city councilmen, mayors, city planners, even health officials," said Dale Quattrochi, senior research scientist at NASA's Global Hydrology and Climate Center in Huntsville, Ala.

"We're trying to understand how we as people living in cities can actually modify the urban environment ... the overall heat island effect," said Quattrochi, who will be a featured speaker Oct. 14 at a Tucson forum, Hot Topics-Cool Solutions, aimed at finding ways to keep cities cool.

Quattrochi estimated that Phoenix temperatures likely will increase as much as 15 degrees, and possibly up to 20 degrees, over historic averages the next several decades.

In Atlanta, one of the most studied heat islands, researchers found that storms skipped over the city and left downwind rural areas with more rain. In Sacramento, scientists have detected swings in temperature of more than 50 degrees between buildings and nearby wooded areas.

Besides Phoenix, Atlanta and Sacramento, the federal research project involves Tucson, Salt Lake City, Houston, Chicago, Los Angeles and Nashville, and Baton Rouge, La.

Wil Orr, director of the Sustainability and Global Change Program at Prescott College, called human-caused climate change "civilization's defining issue."

"If we want this region to be economically competitive in the future, we need to do everything we can to reduce the impacts on the environment," said Orr, who has identified heat island impacts in the simplest of actions.

Flipping a light switch, for example, creates more heat inside the home, which must be cooled by an outside air-conditioning unit. The more the air-conditioner works to keep the inside cool, the more hot air it dumps outside, Orr said. Likewise, a car takes in relatively cooler air and releases it as hot exhaust.

Some of the solutions, therefore, also involve simple actions, scientists said, such as buying cooler compact fluorescent light bulbs, driving less, planting trees (and in the right places), using lighter colors on walls, roofs and pavements that reflect heat, rather than retain it.

One computer study by the University of California-Berkeley showed that summertime temperatures in Los Angeles could drop up to nine degrees, simply by covering buildings and roads with light-colored surfaces. Other scientists, however, question if covering surfaces in all light colors may prove too glaring or ugly for some tastes.

That same study showed that, by reducing heat, the amount of smog also could be reduced by up to 10 percent - the equivalent of removing more than 3 million cars from the road.

Here in the Valley, the Salt River Project estimates that for every degree increase in temperature, the utility's 610,000 residential customers pay $3.2 million to $3.8 million extra per month in cooling costs, or about $5 to $7 per customer per month.

How hot can it get before the Valley's quality of life is compromised? Maybe there is no limit, said ASU's Balling, who is among the world's most skeptical of scientists when it comes to human influence on global warming.

"I'm sure that in the next century, the technology curve will stay out ahead of the warming curve, and the majority of people in the city will live quite comfortably. We should withstand most heat stress incidents, because the car is air-conditioned, the house is air-conditioned and the office is air-conditioned," he said.

"I don't think it's going to be a limiting factor at all. I do not believe people are going to stop moving to Phoenix because it's too darn hot here."

 

[CaptnKirk]

waste is a non-issue. We can bury the 1%, no biggie

Read the Hanford data - they're looking at 53 million gallons of radioactive tank waste.
The conversion job is to change it into a stable silica glass substance.
That's one site out of hundreds.

 

[Genx87]

Originally posted by: CaptnKirk
waste is a non-issue. We can bury the 1%, no biggie

Read the Hanover data - they're looking at 53 million gallons of radioactive tank waste.
The conversion job is to change it into a stable silica glass substance.
That's one site out of hundreds.

Compare that to the x million of tons a year gas and coal put into the atmosphere

 

[Steeplerot]

Originally posted by: Stunt

Originally posted by: Steeplerot

Originally posted by: Genx87

Originally posted by: Steeplerot
yeah, the government does a great job...look at iraqi war, look at your local government. yeah right.

I think your best bet is to move to an island in the middle of the Ocean.

and naive people like you would make our world on big ocean.

Am I naive to suggest nuclear too Steeplerot?

anyone who thinks they can blindly trust a governing body or a profit driven corporate entity with that many peoples lives and our childrens futures are being straight up reckless.

show me safe energy source I am all for it, but nuke plants are literally a nitemare waiting to happen.

no matter how many fancy terms and safeguards, our best and finest minds in nasa can't even keep our space program running..please. and you buy this stuff?

 

[cquark]

Originally posted by: CaptnKirk
waste is a non-issue. We can bury the 1%, no biggie

Read the Hanover [sic] data - they're looking at 53 million gallons of radioactive tank waste.
The conversion job is to change it into a stable silica glass substance.
That's one site out of hundreds.

They aren't attempting to reprocess the Hanford waste; reprocessing refers to nuclear transformations, not sealing the stuff in glass (vitrification.) They're attempting to vitrify it then bury it for thousands of years, while we simply don't have the technology to seal a site securely for time periods of that magnitude.

 

[Genx87]

Originally posted by: Steeplerot

Originally posted by: Stunt

Originally posted by: Steeplerot

Originally posted by: Genx87

Originally posted by: Steeplerot
yeah, the government does a great job...look at iraqi war, look at your local government. yeah right.

I think your best bet is to move to an island in the middle of the Ocean.

and naive people like you would make our world on big ocean.

Am I naive to suggest nuclear too Steeplerot?

anyone who thinks they can blindly trust a governing body or a profit driven corporate entity with that many peoples lives and our childrens futures are being straight up reckless.

show me safe energy source I am all for it, but nuke plants are literally a nitemare waiting to happen.

Stop driving your car and typing on your computer. The risk is too great!
And anybody who reads your drivel can attest that you are a nightmare that has happened.

 

[Steeplerot]

I dont drive nor would I support saudi terrorism by owning a car.

 

[Genx87]

Originally posted by: Steeplerot
I dont drive nor would I support saudi terrorism by owning one.

Then stop typing on your computer. It is dangerous, there is radiation coming from your monitor and your computer requires us to burn more coal that increases the green house effect.

If you are lucky your house may not be buried in water from the melting ice caps and since the ozone is now gone you cant leave or you risk death from skin cancer down the road.

 

[Steeplerot]

my monitor is lcd

 

[cquark]

Originally posted by: Steeplerot

Originally posted by: Stunt

Originally posted by: Steeplerot

Originally posted by: Genx87

Originally posted by: Steeplerot
yeah, the government does a great job...look at iraqi war, look at your local government. yeah right.

I think your best bet is to move to an island in the middle of the Ocean.

and naive people like you would make our world on big ocean.

Am I naive to suggest nuclear too Steeplerot?

anyone who thinks they can blindly trust a governing body or a profit driven corporate entity with that many peoples lives and our childrens futures are being straight up reckless.

Once again, I'm not trusting them. I know how modern nuclear plants work.

no matter how many fancy terms and safeguards, our best and finest inds in nasa can't even keep our space program running..please. and you buy this stuff?

The space shuttle and nuclear power have little to do with each other. You going to be stuck making irrational, environmentally dangerous decisions and labeling concepts that you don't comprehend "fancy terms" until you actually learn the basic physics of modern nuclear plants.

 

[CaptnKirk]

Originally posted by: Genx87

Originally posted by: CaptnKirk
waste is a non-issue. We can bury the 1%, no biggie

Read the Hanover data - they're looking at 53 million gallons of radioactive tank waste.
The conversion job is to change it into a stable silica glass substance.
That's one site out of hundreds.

Compare that to the x million of tons a year gas and coal put into the atmosphere

Hey Mr. Stubborn - do you realize that China alone puts out 20 times what we do on our worst day - & they're not gonna change anything.

and . . .

We could easily cut the coal/gas waste by 90% just by making those plants comply with todays enviromental regulations -
which they have been given a 'get out of jail free card' on by the Bush Administration, because of their commitment to PROFIT and not compliance.

 

[Genx87]

Originally posted by: Steeplerot
my monitor is lcd

Still burning those fossil fuels to power it!

 

[Steeplerot]

sure, all abord for "unsinkable" power plants then...yeah right.

 

[Steeplerot]

Originally posted by: Genx87

Originally posted by: Steeplerot
my monitor is lcd

Still burning those fossil fuels to power it!

are you trying to make a point? say it then.

if you are trying to make me out to be a hypocrite becasue I use the exsisting power grid in our modern society save your childish banter

 

[Stunt]

Originally posted by: Steeplerot
anyone who thinks they can blindly trust a governing body or a profit driven corporate entity with that many peoples lives and our childrens futures are being straight up reckless.

show me safe energy source I am all for it, but nuke plants are literally a nitemare waiting to happen.

We trust government and companies with our lives everyday. Every manufacturing plant, every piece of industry has risks, and we have proceedures to significantly reduce the risk.

For example, your car most likely has a safety factor of 2 when it comes to calculating allowable force. An elevator uses safety factors of 10 or more. (ie. can hold ten times what it says).

With risk comes more than reasonable measures to reduce this risk. I trust the companies who build our jets, cars, elevators, buildings with my life everyday. You cannot get away from this, and yes I have to blindly trust them...it's part of living.

These organizations will indeed ensure maximum safety, and it's too bad you do not trust this as 20% of power is already developed by the facilities you denounce.

I am all for a safe source of energy too, but the feasibility of this is totally irrational and we must live with these tradeoffs as others have suggested.

By not advocating nuclear, you are not helping wind and solar any, you indeed are helping coal. I don't know how you can support coal over nuclear, just look at the numbers: 50% coal, and there's lots more of that stuff in the US. I suggest sucking it up and support nuclear until you can suggest a better alternative.

 

[cquark]

Originally posted by: cquark

Originally posted by: CaptnKirk
waste is a non-issue. We can bury the 1%, no biggie

Read the Hanover [sic] data - they're looking at 53 million gallons of radioactive tank waste.
The conversion job is to change it into a stable silica glass substance.
That's one site out of hundreds.

They aren't attempting to reprocess the Hanford waste; reprocessing refers to nuclear transformations, not sealing the stuff in glass (vitrification.) They're attempting to vitrify it then bury it for thousands of years, while we simply don't have the technology to seal a site securely for time periods of that magnitude.

It's also worth noting that while the Hanford site is a huge mess, it's not useful to bring up Hanford in a discussion of modern nuclear plants. Hanford was created to manufacture plutonium for nuclear bombs in wartime at a point in history when we didn't understand the dangers of radioactivity very well. It's simply not representative of the waste generated by a modern nuclear power plant.

 

[Steeplerot]

that's fine that we have to trust whoever, regardless the choice is ours how much MORE trust they get needlessly becasue a few corporations have millions to sink into a "anti-enviromentalist" agenda to make profit.

They want to make billions on these plants then they need to get off their ass and make something that can't ruin our planet.

 

[NeenerNeener]

Originally posted by: Steeplerot
does it blow up? melt down etc? yes or no? if it can then I want no part of it IMO...

They say a lot of stuff "can't" happen but it always inevitably does.

you all are funny bobbing your heads in trust like your getting ready to cruise in the "unsinkable" titanic, all aboad!

I work at a company called General Atomics. I'm in the fusion energy research division, but another division makes modular nuclear fission reactors. They are supposed to be safe from meltdown and are already being used all over the world. Don't worry so much about the "blowing up" part. An "Atom Bomb" requires such specialized unique construction, I say there's practically no chance of a nuclear power plant creating a nuclear explosion. We have come a long way from Three Mile Island. The only thing to worry about is the fissionable material, and the waste disposal. There have been a lot of advents in the technology of these things as well.

 

[CaptnKirk]

Originally posted by: cquark

Originally posted by: CaptnKirk
waste is a non-issue. We can bury the 1%, no biggie

Read the Hanover [sic] data - they're looking at 53 million gallons of radioactive tank waste.
The conversion job is to change it into a stable silica glass substance.
That's one site out of hundreds.

They aren't attempting to reprocess the Hanford waste; reprocessing refers to nuclear transformations, not sealing the stuff in glass (vitrification.) They're attempting to vitrify it then bury it for thousands of years, while we simply don't have the technology to seal a site securely for time periods of that magnitude.

Isn't that what I said ? Glassification = conversion job is to change it into a stable silica glass substance.

and I had fixed the typo . . . Handford, Wa, USA National Park Come and watch us glow.

 

[cquark]

Originally posted by: Steeplerot
that's fine that we have to trust whoever, regardless the choice is ours how much MORE trust they get needlessly becasue a few corporations have millions to sink into a "anti-enviromentalist" agenda to make profit.

While you're right that corporations produce serious environmental problems, they're here to stay and must be included in any realistic discussion of solving our environmental problems. Jared Diamand has some interesting things to say about the relationship of environmentalists and large corporations, as well as about the different environment impact of various corporations, in his recent book Collapse.