Remember when that nut-case Moonbeam warned you about the problem of Nuclear Waste?

[Moonbeam]

Cogman: Not likely. Go look up QuantumPion's post, a few above me. 30 year, 1/2 a football field, from one reactor. Come back when you realize how many 1/2 football fields there are on this planet. (QuantumPion being someone who HAS forgotten more about nuclear power then any of us can claim, besides maybe Browntown and other nuclear engineers that float around here.)

M: Look up the size of mother's paranoia. You are dead in the water, bro.

C: Your ignoring the fact that 99% of that investment is into so called "green" products that never have, and most likely never will, show any significant ability to produce mass amounts of power. Not only that, but a lot of them wear out (precious solar and wind) leaving huge waste bi-products in their path.

M: You are ignoring your own ignorance.

C: My point is, while fusion is getting some research, it should be getting the lions share of the research funds that are being dumped into "green" power. But it doesn't? Why? because of irrational people, like yourself, that get their panties in a wad over anything with the word nuclear in it.

M: It is an 60 year old promise that's looking for another 60 years and then another after that.

C: Do you know how unlikely that is? Do you know how unlikely it is that the radioactive material leaks in the first place and how unlikely it is that it would significantly increase the concentration of radioactive material in the water table for people that actually care about it?

M: Do you know how long 100,000 years is?


C: Whats the refute to this? 99.99999% of radiation is absorbed after 100ft of water. There are several places where the oceanic floor has NOTHING on it at all (look at the area surrounding the titanic.) Think of the marina trench for example, http://www.i-am-bored.com/bored_link.cfm?link_id=47264 , you'll never see a cask again, and the effects from all the radioactive material in the world leaking out of there would do just about nothing but small localized damage (not to humans, and most likely not to any life that we will ever study or ever contributes to our food chain).

M: A captain should go down with his ship.

C: Ok, so my question is dumb because people don't realize the relative risks between arsenic and radioactive materials. Good to know.

M: Don't speak of knowing. You don't. You don't get it at all. You think that because you think you know something somebody else will care. Mothers won't have nuclear waste in their state. They don't give the slightest fuck what you think. You are a fucking pin head.

 

[Cogman]

nm, strange thing with a 4th page.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

If we are willing to tolerate anything which saddles future generations, but minimally impacts ours, then all too much is acceptable.

Nevertheless, I'm power agnostic. I'm not when it comes to costs and I don't mean just dollars. The fact is that within the lifetime of my children ever increasing energy demands will be an issue and pumping out nuclear materials faster isn't a solution.

Nuclear isn't going to cut it, any more than any other technology available today. An appeal to fusion is made. Well if we have terawatt plants coming on line, each producing more than the entire current US nuclear industry, you've got something. I'd love to see it.

Now back to reality. Nuke plants aren't going to start generating two orders of magnitude more power. It's not physically feasible.

Besides that, there's an entire infrastructure associated with power delivery from centralized sources and it's not cheap.

If I had my way we would have followed up on Carter's idea of energy independence after the oil embargo. Unfortunately people had the attitude that problems were years down the road. Eat, drink and be merry. We blew our opportunity then, and politics and industry driving our country demanded that no serious competition to current technologies came about.

I wonder what the state of solar would be if the tax breaks to conventional energy producers were given to those MIT, which some apparently feel to be "that trade school down the road", rather than a collection of very smart people who want to arrive at a practical alternative rather than making sure they not only stay within the box, but close the lid as well.

If we have access to the finest minds at the world at our academic research institutions and decide that they are crackpots based on technology they we don't even understand, we're poor stewards of our resources and I'm not talking coal or nuclear.

 

[Moonbeam]

If we are willing to tolerate anything which saddles future generations, but minimally impacts ours, then all too much is acceptable.

Nevertheless, I'm power agnostic. I'm not when it comes to costs and I don't mean just dollars. The fact is that within the lifetime of my children ever increasing energy demands will be an issue and pumping out nuclear materials faster isn't a solution.

Nuclear isn't going to cut it, any more than any other technology available today. An appeal to fusion is made. Well if we have terawatt plants coming on line, each producing more than the entire current US nuclear industry, you've got something. I'd love to see it.

Now back to reality. Nuke plants aren't going to start generating two orders of magnitude more power. It's not physically feasible.

Besides that, there's an entire infrastructure associated with power delivery from centralized sources and it's not cheap.

If I had my way we would have followed up on Carter's idea of energy independence after the oil embargo. Unfortunately people had the attitude that problems were years down the road. Eat, drink and be merry. We blew our opportunity then, and politics and industry driving our country demanded that no serious competition to current technologies came about.

I wonder what the state of solar would be if the tax breaks to conventional energy producers were given to those MIT, which some apparently feel to be "that trade school down the road", rather than a collection of very smart people who want to arrive at a practical alternative rather than making sure they not only stay within the box, but close the lid as well.

If we have access to the finest minds at the world at our academic research institutions and decide that they are crackpots based on technology they we don't even understand, we're poor stewards of our resources and I'm not talking coal or nuclear.

You are talking to linear thinkers. I fear the tremendous holistic sense you make is wasted on them. They have not learned critical thinking and perspicacity for them is magical thinking.

 

[piasabird]

Nuclear power plant plans usually include enough storage for 10 - 30 years. They build them with on-site storage because there is no place else to store it and it is almost impossible to move it.

Some plants have underground pipes that are leaking into the ground toxic by-products.

 

[K1052]

Nuclear power plant plans usually include enough storage for 10 - 30 years. They build them with on-site storage because there is no place else to store it and it is almost impossible to move it.

Some plants have underground pipes that are leaking into the ground toxic by-products.

Plants are built with spent fuel pools because the fuel assemblies are extremely hot for a number of years after they are taken out of the reactor. A increasing number of the older plants have moved on to dry cask since nobody expected the fuel to sit on site this long.

Small tritium leaks that pose no actual health hazard.

 

[Zorkorist]

If we are willing to tolerate anything which saddles future generations, but minimally impacts ours, then all too much is acceptable.

Nevertheless, I'm power agnostic. I'm not when it comes to costs and I don't mean just dollars. The fact is that within the lifetime of my children ever increasing energy demands will be an issue and pumping out nuclear materials faster isn't a solution.

Nuclear isn't going to cut it, any more than any other technology available today. An appeal to fusion is made. Well if we have terawatt plants coming on line, each producing more than the entire current US nuclear industry, you've got something. I'd love to see it.

Now back to reality. Nuke plants aren't going to start generating two orders of magnitude more power. It's not physically feasible.

Besides that, there's an entire infrastructure associated with power delivery from centralized sources and it's not cheap.

If I had my way we would have followed up on Carter's idea of energy independence after the oil embargo. Unfortunately people had the attitude that problems were years down the road. Eat, drink and be merry. We blew our opportunity then, and politics and industry driving our country demanded that no serious competition to current technologies came about.

I wonder what the state of solar would be if the tax breaks to conventional energy producers were given to those MIT, which some apparently feel to be "that trade school down the road", rather than a collection of very smart people who want to arrive at a practical alternative rather than making sure they not only stay within the box, but close the lid as well.

If we have access to the finest minds at the world at our academic research institutions and decide that they are crackpots based on technology they we don't even understand, we're poor stewards of our resources and I'm not talking coal or nuclear.

We're not saddling future generations, but enabling them with cheap, virtually unlimited, power.

It's Nuclear Power that has been saddled with tremendous regulatory and legal restrictions.

As has been explained to you earlier in this thread, Nuclear Waste storage is not a problem. The leaking is not a problem.

The only real problem is folks like you and Moonbeam that either do not understand, or are spreading FUD.

-John

 

[theamericans075]

uh, why don't you just bury radioactive waste and use the heat it generates as an artificial geothermal plant, it's win-win!

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

We're not saddling future generations, but enabling them with cheap, virtually unlimited, power.

It's Nuclear Power that has been saddled with tremendous regulatory and legal restrictions.

As has been explained to you earlier in this thread, Nuclear Waste storage is not a problem. The leaking is not a problem.

The only real problem is folks like you and Moonbeam that either do not understand, or are spreading FUD.

-John

Let me put this in these terms then.

You have an increasing expenditure of money in order to operate your business. You are making predictions based on knowns to make estimates of future needs.

You realize that in order to meed those, you will have to increase revenue significantly. I mean a lot.

So someone has a pet method for doing this. He estimates that if all obstacles are removed that his plans will produce ten million extra dollars a year.

That's a positive thing. Unfortunately the shortfall has already been estimated to be closer to a billion per year and that the other conventional options won't help.

Now most people would understand this, but Mr. Radium really really likes his plan and continues pushing it, complaining that it's just regulation and people not liking his shoes or something.

The bottom line is this. Nuclear is NOT virtually unlimited, without expending huge amounts to make it so. I've not found fault with the estimates I've come across predicting current production and future needs. Indeed the numbers I've considered is what would be needed if we were a highly frugal society. We're not.

Nuclear is not a genie in a bottle. It's a technology inadequate for the task all other considerations put aside, unless you know of a way to cheaply bring three new plants on line every other day and most likely three or four times that.

What relaxation of regulation will address that issue?

 

[Zorkorist]

When we bury the waste, it is spent, as far as I know. (And that is just guessing). It may be radioactive as hell, but I don't think it can boil water any more.

-John

 

[Zorkorist]

Let me put this in these terms then.

You have an increasing expenditure of money in order to operate your business. You are making predictions based on knowns to make estimates of future needs.

You realize that in order to meed those, you will have to increase revenue significantly. I mean a lot.

So someone has a pet method for doing this. He estimates that if all obstacles are removed that his plans will produce ten million extra dollars a year.

That's a positive thing. Unfortunately the shortfall has already been estimated to be closer to a billion per year and that the other conventional options won't help.

Now most people would understand this, but Mr. Radium really really likes his plan and continues pushing it, complaining that it's just regulation and people not liking his shoes or something.

The bottom line is this. Nuclear is NOT virtually unlimited, without expending huge amounts to make it so. I've not found fault with the estimates I've come across predicting current production and future needs. Indeed the numbers I've considered is what would be needed if we were a highly frugal society. We're not.

Nuclear is not a genie in a bottle. It's a technology inadequate for the task all other considerations put aside, unless you know of a way to cheaply bring three new plants on line every other day and most likely three or four times that.

What relaxation of regulation will address that issue?

That's twice you have quoted ridiculous numbers like we need 3 nuclear power plants to come on line per day.

May I ask you to show your work? Or at the very least explain your absurd claim.

-John

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

That's twice you have quoted ridiculous numbers like we need 3 nuclear power plants to come on line per day.

May I ask you to show your work? Or at the very least explain your absurd claim.

-John

I posted to a link earlier in this thread. It's the MIT fellow who worked on a catalyst that allows more effective storage of solar energy.

 

[TruePaige]

I posted to a link earlier in this thread. It's the MIT fellow who worked on a catalyst that allows more effective storage of solar energy.

Why don't you tell us how many solar energy panels it takes to match the effectiveness of one modern nuclear plant?

I will never understand how some of you advocate one energy source to give us energy independence but can't look at using a variety of domestic power sources to fill the gaps.

 

[Moonbeam]

Why don't you tell us how many solar energy panels it takes to match the effectiveness of one modern nuclear plant?

I will never understand how some of you advocate one energy source to give us energy independence but can't look at using a variety of domestic power sources to fill the gaps.

Somebody who will never understand means they really don't want to, so we will leave it at that.

 

[Deudalus]

Honestly, I think you guys are paranoid about the possible implications that nuclear waste might have 1000 years from now.

Look at how far technology has come in just the past 40 years. Not only that but realize we are learning more at a faster rate every single day.

Do you really think that 1000 years from now we are still going to be stuck sitting here wondering what to do with nuclear waste?

I'd bet my life (if I could live that long) that less than 100 years from now we'll have a very simple process that turns nuclear waste into drinking water.

 

[alphatarget1]

Honestly, I think you guys are paranoid about the possible implications that nuclear waste might have 1000 years from now.

Look at how far technology has come in just the past 40 years. Not only that but realize we are learning more at a faster rate every single day.

Do you really think that 1000 years from now we are still going to be stuck sitting here wondering what to do with nuclear waste?

I'd bet my life (if I could live that long) that less than 100 years from now we'll have a very simple process that turns nuclear waste into drinking water.

You'd never know what happens in 1000-10000 years. Maybe humanity will fight a great war and most people would die, along with our civilization, languages, etc. Some survivors may end up stumbling onto Yucca Mountain and wonder - hey, this stuff is sealed so well there must be treasure inside. They open the casks and the survivors die instantly.

I think people put too much blind faith in science and technology... It's like people expecting the economy to grow by 2-3% every year. Can't really have infinite growth with finite resources.

 

[K1052]

Honestly, I think you guys are paranoid about the possible implications that nuclear waste might have 1000 years from now.

Look at how far technology has come in just the past 40 years. Not only that but realize we are learning more at a faster rate every single day.

Do you really think that 1000 years from now we are still going to be stuck sitting here wondering what to do with nuclear waste?

I'd bet my life (if I could live that long) that less than 100 years from now we'll have a very simple process that turns nuclear waste into drinking water.

Actually we already have that. IIRC, both the Russians and Chinese have heavy water reactors that can burn up spent fuel and use the heat for domestic steam generation and desalination.

When the DOE de-prioritized Yucca Mtn they suggested more productive alternatives like fast neutron reactors and fission-fusion hybid plants as superior avenues of waste disposal to geologic internment.

 

[K1052]

You'd never know what happens in 1000-10000 years. Maybe humanity will fight a great war and most people would die, along with our civilization, languages, etc. Some survivors may end up stumbling onto Yucca Mountain and wonder - hey, this stuff is sealed so well there must be treasure inside. They open the casks and the survivors die instantly.

I think people put too much blind faith in science and technology... It's like people expecting the economy to grow by 2-3% every year. Can't really have infinite growth with finite resources.

Yucca was going to be marked in a similar manner to WIPP.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_Isolation_Pilot_Plant

Since 1991, the United States Department of Energy has been working with a team of linguists, scientists, science fiction writers, anthropologists and futurists to come up with such a warning system. The markers, called "passive institutional controls", will include an outer perimeter of 32, 25-foot-tall granite pillars built in a four-mile (6 km) square. These pillars will surround an earthen wall, 33 feet (10 m) tall and 100 feet (30 m) wide. Enclosed within this wall will be another 16 granite pillars. At the center, directly above the waste site, will sit a roofless, 15-foot (4.6 m) granite room providing more information. The team intends to etch warnings and informational messages into the granite slabs and pillars. This information will be recorded in the six official languages of the United Nations (English, Spanish, Russian, French, Chinese, Arabic) as well as the Native American Navajo language native to the region, with additional space for translation into future languages . Pictograms are also being considered, such as stick figure images and the iconic "The Scream" from Edvard Munch's painting. Complete details about the plant will not be stored on site, instead, they would be distributed to archives and libraries around the world. The team plans to submit their final plan to the U.S. Government by around 2028.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Why don't you tell us how many solar energy panels it takes to match the effectiveness of one modern nuclear plant?

I will never understand how some of you advocate one energy source to give us energy independence but can't look at using a variety of domestic power sources to fill the gaps.

Define "effectiveness" and then I can provide an answer. As to the second part I suggest that you go back to the Oil Embargo and look how we filled in the gaps. We didn't. We just did more of the same, and if we do not have a serious effort to develop new technologies now we will find that stopping gaps means hitting a dead end. That's shortsightedness.

The nuclear industry is mature. It might be tweaked a bit, but no one is going go get major gains. That is not true with solar. Dow has come up with a solar shingle which has ten percent effectiveness. Far more likely than a leap in any centralized power scheme would be a doubling of efficiency and a way to shingle all new homes for the additional cost of a few thousand dollars. Using Dow's numbers, that means 80 to 160% of the energy needs for that home would be met. There's no technological reason why it could not be higher.

So you've taken the vast majority of new construction off the grid forever.

Those terawatt's of additional energy needed? What additional? It's already been accounted for.

That leaves centralized power use for high energy density applications.


I suppose that "nuclear" is just plain sexy sounding. All you do is toss some neutrons around and BAM! Instant energy. If it were that simple then that would be it. It's not.

So unless you expect a Mr. Fusion to come around in your lifetime, we ought to be doing something significant (Apollo, Manhattan significant) now, or by the time some of you retire the younger generation will be looking at you in the same way as you do your parents for "stealing" Social Security or worse.

 

[K1052]

Since coal and ng are in significantly more limited supply than the fuel for nuclear plants and both include the release of undesirable elements into the environment; nuclear is the last man standing for base load generation that we can build now.

 

[Moonbeam]

Since coal and ng are in significantly more limited supply than the fuel for nuclear plants and both include the release of undesirable elements into the environment; nuclear is the last man standing for base load generation that we can build now.

Since water and sun are available in almost unlimited supply we don't need to poison the earth with coal gas or nuclear. Nor do we need to totally upgrade our electrical transmission system since much will be on site. It is such a better approach that only the religiously brainwashed nuclear nuts won't see it.

 

[chucky2]

So when everyone plugs their plug in cars (multiple) in at night to charge for the morning commute/next day activities, everyone's watching TV/on the PC, and it's 20F and gray for the next week in Chicago, how exactly are the solar panels going to be meeting all those energy needs, today?

Chuck

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

So when everyone plugs their plug in cars (multiple) in at night to charge for the morning commute/next day activities, everyone's watching TV/on the PC, and it's 20F and gray for the next week in Chicago, how exactly are the solar panels going to be meeting all those energy needs, today?

Chuck

They aren't and no one said they would. Any particular comprehensive plan has to take such things into account, but there's more to it than a bad week in Chicago. The current grid can be maintained and improved and excess power brought in to areas which are deficient. Excess energy during better days can be stored.

This isn't a"when in danger when in doubt run in circles scream and shout" problem. That would be the ever increasing demand for power which cannot be met by conventional means. No, that's wrong. It's a "think rationally" kind of thing.

 

[K1052]

Since water and sun are available in almost unlimited supply we don't need to poison the earth with coal gas or nuclear. Nor do we need to totally upgrade our electrical transmission system since much will be on site. It is such a better approach that only the religiously brainwashed nuclear nuts won't see it.

As the one constantly championing hugely expensive and unrealistic solutions I don't think you should be calling anyone brainwashed.

 

[chucky2]

They aren't and no one said they would. Any particular comprehensive plan has to take such things into account, but there's more to it than a bad week in Chicago.

I'm from Chicago, and living in that area. Before the fairy fart pushers get the corrupt politicians and unions around here to start multi-$Billion efforts on some new push, I want to see hard numbers that skeptics of said solutions cannot refute before signing up to pay for them. So, excuse me for disagreeing with you, but, for me (and the few Million around Chicagoland), No, there's not more to it than a bad week in Chicago. And, just as an FYI, that's a normal every day week in Chicagoland (and all across the Midwest/Northern East/Northern West) during the winter months...

The current grid can be maintained and improved and excess power brought in to areas which are deficient.

Except for plants needing to be retired, in which case there's not a deficiency of power, but, a complete lack of it when the plant is mandated to be shut down.

Excess energy during better days can be stored.

Really, stored for a whole metropolitan area? That much storage available instantly on-demand should the sun not shine, or tetonic activity cut off the source of steam for something like geothermal? That much storage that is less polluting to make and recycle than nuclear? That's a whole lot of batteries.....

This isn't a"when in danger when in doubt run in circles scream and shout" problem. That would be the ever increasing demand for power which cannot be met by conventional means. No, that's wrong. It's a "think rationally" kind of thing.

I'm glad you realize this, now, can you get out of the way of the only realitistic solution - nuclear - so in 10 years an actual available solution is ready for the next 40-50 years that can meet all demand while future technology is discovered/made realistically available?

Thanks.

Chuck