K1052
Elite Member
Build in some overcapacity and make hydrogen for energy storage.
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Protests over wind power farms
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Build in some overcapacity and make hydrogen for energy storage.
DrPizza
Administrator Elite Member Goat Whisperer
No, his logic is fairly sound. The problem with disposal of the waste is "NIMBY!" despite that it can be safely disposed of.
100% guaranteed to turn them into wind power supporters.
I think the last estimate I heard when we were talking about nuclear in my area was something like 5 billion dollars to build a nuclear plant. Nuclear is fantastic, but it's one of those things you need to build on a very very large scale before it's even worth considering. Wiki says Hawaii's population is about 1.3 million, so basically there just aren't enough people for it to be cost effective. Nuclear is great for population dense areas like maybe southern california or the northeast around NYC.
Aren't you against drilling for oil/nat gas? I could be wrong, please forgive me if I am.
That leaves us with coal. How many people died in the US during the last decade in the coal power industry? How many in the nuclear power industry? How much environmental damage has coal power caused in the last decade? How much for nuclear?
Nuclear is by far much safer and environmentally friendly. It isn't even a fair fight between the two. As far as currently stable countries lasting into the future, I bet the nuclear warheads will be more of a threat than the nuclear waste but thats just my personal opinion.
Throckmorton
Lifer
I'm not against drilling for oil and natural gas. I'm against America drilling all our oil and natural gas now and wasting it, instead of in the future when it will be worth a lot more.
How safe is nuclear power really? Did you know Yucca Mountain is on a fault line? They discovered it in 2007. OOPS.
http://articles.latimes.com/2007/sep/25/nation/na-yucca25
You think a crude oil leak is bad? Well oil breaks down during a human lifetime. Nuclear waste doesn't. It's the gift that keeps on giving for millennia, and by causing mutations it alters the fabric of life itself. It's not just another toxic substance.
How safe is nuclear power really? Did you know Yucca Mountain is on a fault line? They discovered it in 2007. OOPS.
http://articles.latimes.com/2007/sep/25/nation/na-yucca25
You think a crude oil leak is bad? Well oil breaks down during a human lifetime. Nuclear waste doesn't. It's the gift that keeps on giving for millennia, and by causing mutations it alters the fabric of life itself. It's not just another toxic substance.
monovillage
Diamond Member
You cannot power a grid with wind and or solar power. It's just not possible, they're intermittent power. A far better idea is to pump money like China is into thorium reactor research and development.
I doubt if you can find a place in the western US that isn't "on" a fault line. A better choice would have been salt deposits in Oklahoma or Texas.
"Core samples from 250 feet below the surface showed the fault was hundreds of feet east of where scientists thought it was, and that it passed beneath the initial site for the storage pads, forcing their relocation, Benson said."
Wow, color me surprised! Scientists got something wrong!
I doubt if you can find a place in the western US that isn't "on" a fault line. A better choice would have been salt deposits in Oklahoma or Texas.
"Core samples from 250 feet below the surface showed the fault was hundreds of feet east of where scientists thought it was, and that it passed beneath the initial site for the storage pads, forcing their relocation, Benson said."
Wow, color me surprised! Scientists got something wrong!
So you are in favor of coal power? The difference between coal and nuclear is that coal's nasty shit is sent into the atmosphere to continually give us all "gifts that keep on giving". Nuclear waste is contained in very very small solids that we basically put into dry casks and stack em up on site.
I guess we could figure out how to make it into a vapor or something and spew it into the atmosphere to make it more like coal if that would make you feel better. Not to mention all the environmental and human benefits we get from mining coal just in this country...
Once you eliminate nuclear, oil, nat gas then coal is pretty much all you have left for central baseline power generation.
Texashiker
Lifer
Most people do not realize how bad burning coal really is. They watch the tv commercials about how safe coal is, and the believe it.
For those that dont know about coal and mercury, here is an example. This is what you get by burning coal - you can not even eat the fish anymore.
The waste is still there. How many tens of thousands of years for it to break down? After the next ice age or 2?
Lets say it takes 10,000 years to break down. 5,000 years from now the next dominate species comes along and says "lets open these things up and see whats inside." Or better yet the cask is damaged by some natural even and spill their contents out.
My main complaint with nuclear waste is that it takes so long to break down. We are not talking a couple of decades, or a couple of centuries, we are talking thousands of years.
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Not really a big deal. The reason they picked Yucca Mountain, as explained by Penn & Teller, is specifically because it's an area with no water. Ground water contamination is the worst possible thing that could happen, so logically they want to put nuclear waste in an area that doesn't have any ground water.
The other thing is that nuclear waste is not a liquid or a slurry. It's just solid material. This really is what nuclear waste looks like:
If there is a hardcore earthquake and it destroys the containers and nuclear waste falls out, you just pick it up and put it in another container 😉
Ironically this is what makes nuclear waste relatively safe. Slower decay means..... well.... slower decay. Some things are insanely radioactive and the decay rate is less than a day, less than an hour, or even less than a second. If you touch that material, you have cancer and rad poisoning immediately and you're totally screwed. If you're talking about something where the half life is 10,000 years, then that means it's decaying pretty damn slow and the exposure to such material is no worse than getting a chest x-ray.
(edit: getting chest x-rays are bad as well. I'm not saying x-rays are safe. I just mean that proper containment is possible and is not overly difficult)
To put it all into perspective, radioactive iodine that is given to diagnose certain medical problems has a half life of 59 days. This stuff is waaaay more radioactive than nuclear waste is.
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rcpratt
Lifer
Why do you think we want to put them in an underground repository? The dry casks are nigh indestructible anyways, though.
I must admit, however, that I haven't heard the "I'm worried about the next dominant species opening up our radioactive waste!" argument before. Creative.
Your main complaint is that you're ignorant. Spent fuel is currently stored on-site at nuclear plants. Most of those plants have been operating for 40 or so years now. They could continue to store the waste on-site for hundreds of years if they wanted to.
You're talking about spent fuel, which is indeed a solid, but that statement as a whole is completely incorrect. There is plenty of liquid/slurry high-level waste held in tanks that is waiting to be vitrified (Hanford is an interesting read). A good portion of LLW is also liquid. While the discussion on Yucca focuses primarily on the storage of spent fuel, the plan was to store other waste there as well.
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ConstipatedVigilante
Diamond Member
Texashiker, it is also possible to build reactors that re-use the waste as fuel. That puts their radioactive decay at lasting only a few hundred years or less.
Texashiker
Lifer
You were not keeping up on the Yucco Mountain debate years ago? And how we could leave signs for future generations, so they would know the area is unsafe?
I did not come up with the "next dominant species" debate, some people call them "future generations".
How long does it take the waste in question to break down?
Mankind, and especially our scientist have made so many mistakes in the past, its difficult for me to believe that anything made by man is "indestructible".
For right now the cask might be indestructible, and for the next generation or 2 they might be indestructible. But we are not talking about a couple of hundred years are we? We are talking about thousands of years.
As for the cask being underground, what is also underground? Water.
So lets see, we are storing nuclear waste in a place where is stands to do the most harm - in a water supply 3, 4 or even 5,000 years down the road.
Do you have a scientific sound source for your statement on just a few hundred years?
waggy
No Lifer
I wish the US would build more Nuclear facilities. Its far safer then coal and produces more then wind farms (though we should use wind farms too).
we have a few wind farms just south of Dekalb. there are hundreds of those things and they are HUGE! i couldn't belive how big they were until i got close. i was rather amazed.
My kids school is trying to put one up to pay for its own power. so far they have spent $300k on fucking legal cost. One idiot in town does not want it because of the birds. its annoying because its a small school (100 kids from K-8) and this would help. but spending 300k is forcing t hem to shelf the idea.
we have a few wind farms just south of Dekalb. there are hundreds of those things and they are HUGE! i couldn't belive how big they were until i got close. i was rather amazed.
My kids school is trying to put one up to pay for its own power. so far they have spent $300k on fucking legal cost. One idiot in town does not want it because of the birds. its annoying because its a small school (100 kids from K-8) and this would help. but spending 300k is forcing t hem to shelf the idea.
Isn't there a way to purify it down to solids? I would guess water would be the main solvent here, and I don't think water stays radioactive.
rcpratt
Lifer
Radioactive decay to 0.01% activity of typical MOX or LEU fuel is on the order of 10,000 years, nobody is arguing that. Your point?
Didn't we just have this discussion as to why Yucca Mountain was chosen?
rcpratt
Lifer
Dumb. There's no way a small institution like a school could make that an economically viable alternative for just a single turbine. Costs for dealing with the crazies are insane.
PottedMeat
Lifer
nothing you ever say will satisfy his requirements
PottedMeat
Lifer
according to this : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste , that's exactly what they do. evaporate the water, stabilize the components, mix with molten glass, seal in stainless steel tanks.
rcpratt
Lifer
Yes, primarily through vitrification. Ion exchange (followed by concrete mix) and Synroc technologies are also being researched.
In the meantime, though, liquid LLW has been an issue. Hanford in particular had plenty of troubles with their holding tanks not being lined properly and leaking into the groundwater.
Water can certainly be radioactive - tritium.
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waggy
No Lifer
really? they sent home a report that said that the one turbine would produce 75% of the schools power and such pay for itself within 5 years. well that was before the insane court cost and one guy was going to give the school something like 15 acres of land but said it couldn't be used for the windmill so the school turned him down.
Though i wish the idiot in charge would have spent that money on the school itself.
Texashiker
Lifer
If the earth never changed, if we never had climate change,,,,,, then things might be fine storing waste in a desert.
About 10,000 years ago the earths rotation changed just a little bit, and rains moved into the Sahara desert. Over several hundred years there was enough rain for trees to grow and animals to move into the area. Humans also moved into the area. The earths rotation turned back to normal and the Sahara changed back into a desert.
Green Sahara article - interesting read
What might be desert right now, might very well forest in a few thousand years, or even a few hundred years.
Who really knows whats going to happen tomorrow or the next day, much less 5,000 years from now.
I do not think its fair to future generations to leave poisoned capsules of nuclear waste anywhere.
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How big did you say this school was?
A windmill is easily in the 1MW range. I guess a school might use 3 phase power, so that would be 1,000,000 watt / 120v phase / 3 = 2777 amp service? That's huge! You could probably run an apartment building with that much power.
Well then I guess we'll need to move the storage containers out of Yucca and put them somewhere else when that happens. Problem solved 😎
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