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U.S. Freezes All Nuclear Reactor Construction & Operating Licenses

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Darwin333 said:
but don't we have a metric shit ton of existing nuclear waste that we could use?
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Actually, around 76,000 tons of long term *fresh* waste stored in literal swimming pools on top of the reactors and stored behind sometimes chain link fences in just the USA.

Unbelievable they get away with this. But then the taxpayer subsidies and the engineering marvel seems to blind people.

It is a shame too, I dig the hell out of phyiscs, and nuclear power is a literal engineering marvel of mankind.

But in actual operation Nuke power never lived up to what the original visionary scientists of the 1950s felt would be mankinds savior to make up for the scientific sins of atomic warfare unleashed on civilization.

It is Shakespearean tragic but "in physics there is no free lunch".

I am no pacifist either, we have enough PU 239 sitting around for centuries now to recycle into nukes to blow the hell out of the planet 1000s of times over if we are so inclined in this geopolitical reality.
We all know the insane reality of this, and I do not see that changing anytime soon.

The power generation is foolhardy though.

'Nuclear power is a hell of a way to boil water' -Albert Einstein
 
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Fuck me it's like a bullshit overload. I guess that is the standard tactic of kooks, just machine-gun shoot out shit as fast and shitty as possible and that way no one can keep up. I mean if you were to make arguments or ask questions I could address them and we could have a discussion. But this...I just can't work with this. It's literally like arguing with a 9/11 truther. Not one statement you have made is even close to truth or reality. You are literally a retard.
 
I have to thank you though. It's absofuckinglutely insane kooks like you that made me the republican I am today. Just the lies upon lies upon lies, eventually it all got to me and I realized.. "wow, liberalism really is bullshit".
 
QuantumPion said:
I have to thank you though. It's absofuckinglutely insane kooks like you that made me the republican I am today. Just the lies upon lies upon lies, eventually it all got to me and I realized.. "wow, liberalism really is bullshit".
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Sorry, but the sites you are going to to refute any of my mainstream links -are the same places I get my information.

All this is out in the open for anyone to see. If you ignore the BS of "its too complicated! look away."

-besides I like a challenge when someone says its "above me". 😉

Throughout history power structures are hiding something in these cases. Topheavy industries and criminal elements always get lazy and usually will not even bother to hide shit anymore once they think no one is looking.
 
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slayernine said:
We just need to abandon the idea of nuclear power that uses solid enriched fuel and water for cooling.
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This is pseudoscience, it takes far more uranium to feed the thorium cycle producing far more waste then you "burn off" in the actual thorium reactor itself.

I debunked this industry meme just a few posts ago.

It would literally mean building reactors that make our current ones look tiny to maintain one thorium cycle. Creating far more waste.

Imagine the subsidies to build such boondoggles!

The reprocessing industry REALLY loves this, the commercial plants CEOs would LOVE all that taxpayer money to build them, and the profits to USE the power. We paid for.

WIN WIN! (for everyone but us)

This is how the industry rolls.
 
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QuantumPion said:
It's literally like arguing with a 9/11 truther. .
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I have about as much trust in the notion that the utterly incompetent Republican leadership (or government) could pull off a super secret false flag operation then humanity can actually competently and responsibly utilize nuclear power from their own actions of the past decades.

In other words none. Keep up with the "attack the messenger" and canned rhetoric from your work, it makes your credibility and your obvious conflict of interest all the more obvious comrade. 😉

How about refuting, instead of having a fit? I grow bored.



Ex-PM Slams Utility Over Japan Nuke Crisis Video
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/pm-slams-utility-japan-nuke-crisis-video-16958077

Video shows plant officials ‘freaked out’ — “At least 5 of the 7 pools at the plant were in trouble” — Fukushima Chief: “The pool at No. 1 unit is now exposed… I’m out of ideas”



This is why Nuke power is not viable, people have no clue what they even got themselves into. And were lied to about the consequences and scope.
 
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werepossum said:
I like the Canadian heavy water reactors too. Unfortunately, with our massive (though necessary) regulating bureaucracy and litigious society, the first American adopter will face a nightmare trying to get a plant built.
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Upside of the CANDU reactors is that we can conceivably burn up the entire LWR spent fuel stockpile with them and the final waste product ends up with small a fraction of the really nasty actinides. It would negate the need for a geologic repository to hold the fuel for such extraordinarily long time frames.

The DOE could simply operate the reactors themselves just for waste disposal while still generating power as a benefit.
 
spacejamz said:
hilarious that OP has not offered any viable alternatives even though multiple requests have been posted in his thread...

In his ideal world, it would probably be unicorn farts or magic rainbows...
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Almost anything would be better, the planet will soon be riddled with meltdowns from these time bombs, based on this study.

http://www.treehugger.com/energy-di...ccur-200-times-more-often-thought-report.html

Japan has already spent over 30 billion USD towards the clean up, and the final cost compensating people for the lost land, items, and clean up will be over 250 billion USD.

Just think every 10 to 20 years another one of these, and this isn't event he worst it could be.
 
K1052 said:
Upside of the CANDU reactors is that we can conceivably burn up the entire LWR spent fuel stockpile with them and the final waste product ends up with small a fraction of the really nasty actinides. It would negate the need for a geologic repository to hold the fuel for such extraordinarily long time frames.

The DOE could simply operate the reactors themselves just for waste disposal while still generating power as a benefit.
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CANDU were a good stab at creating a economic sustainable cycle. Still didn't live up to anything like promised to fund them -you cant beat physics.
 
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Steeplerot said:
Actually, around 76,000 tons of long term *fresh* waste stored in literal swimming pools on top of the reactors and stored behind sometimes chain link fences in just the USA.

Unbelievable they get away with this.
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They wanted to bury it in Yucca Mountain, which is right next to a radioactive testing area where no one can live already anyway...at least until the dems destroyed it and forced the reactors to store all the waste on site.

The Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository was to be a deep geological repository storage facility for spent nuclear reactor fuel and other high level radioactive waste, until the project was defunded by Nevada Senator and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in 2010. It was to be located on federal land adjacent to the Nevada Test Site in Nye County, Nevada, about 80 mi (130 km) northwest of the Las Vegas Valley. The proposed repository was within Yucca Mountain, a ridge line in the south-central part of Nevada near its border with California.

In the 2008 Omnibus Spending Bill, the Yucca Mountain Project's budget was reduced to $390 million. Despite this cut in funding, the project was able to reallocate resources and delay transportation expenditures to complete the License Application for submission on June 3, 2008. Lacking an operating repository, however, the federal government owes to the utilities somewhere between $300 and $500 million per year in compensation for failing to comply with the contract it signed to take the spent nuclear fuel by 1998.[10]
During his 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama promised to abandon the Yucca Mountain project.[11] After his election, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission told Obama he did not have the ability to do so.[12] On April 23, 2009, Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) and eight other senators introduced legislation to provide "rebates" from a $30 billion federally managed fund into which nuclear power plants had been paying, so as to refund all collected funds if the project was in fact cancelled by Congress.[13]
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_repository
 
cybrsage said:
They wanted to bury it in Yucca Mountain, which is right next to a radioactive testing area where no one can live already anyway...at least until the dems destroyed it and forced the reactors to store all the waste on site.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_repository
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Yucca mountain is a poor long term geographic spot, regardless of the political pissing match surrounding it.

This http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_Craton

^ Is more like the area we need to think about.

Oldest big plate we got on the crust of Earth, stable, and tough you could say.

The rockies are a very young area.
 
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Steeplerot said:
Yucca mountain is a poor long term geographic spot, regardless of the political pissing match surrounding it.
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This is simply not true:

In March 2005, the Energy and Interior departments revealed that several U.S. Geological Survey hydrologists had exchanged e-mails discussing possible falsification of quality assurance documents on water infiltration research.[30] On February 17, 2006, the Department of Energy’s Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management (OCRWM) released a report confirming the technical soundness of infiltration modeling work performed by U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) employees.[30] In March 2006, the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works Majority Staff issued a 25 page white paper "Yucca Mountain: The Most Studied Real Estate on the Planet." The conclusions were:[30]
  • Extensive studies consistently show Yucca Mountain to be a sound site for nuclear waste disposal
  • The cost of not moving forward is extremely high
  • Nuclear waste disposal capability is an environmental imperative
  • Nuclear waste disposal capability supports national security
  • Demand for new nuclear plants also demands disposal capability
EPA's rule
EPA published in the Federal Register a final rule in 2009. The new rule limits radiation doses from Yucca Mountain for up to 1,000,000 years after it closes. Within that regulatory time frame, the EPA has two dose standards that would apply based on the number of years from the time the facility is closed.
For the first 10,000 years, the EPA would retain the 2001 final rule’s dose limit of 15 millirem per year. This is protection at the level of the most stringent radiation regulations in the U.S. today. From 10,000 to one million years, EPA established a dose limit of 100 millirem per year. EPA's rule requires the Department of Energy to show that Yucca Mountain can safely contain wastes, considering the effects of earthquakes, volcanic activity, climate change, and container corrosion, over one million years. The current analysis indicates that the repository will cause less than 1 mrem/year public dose through 1,000,000 years.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_repository

You get more dosage than that from the sun alone.
 
Steeplerot said:
CANDU were a good stab at creating a economic sustainable cycle. Still didn't live up to anything like promised to fund them -you cant beat physics.
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We wouldn't be building them primarily for the purpose of electricity generation, so their overall economy is much less of a concern. They can destroy a large percentage of the LWR waste easily and without intensive reprocessing.

In exchange for our business the Canadians could also cut us in on a geologic repository in the Canadian Shield (far preferable geologically to Yucca Mountain).
 
K1052 said:
a geologic repository in the Canadian Shield (far preferable geologically to Yucca Mountain).
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We agree on this. It is the best spot on the globe, preferably though it would tossed into Jupiter or something.

(all the more reason to build a space elevator to get crap up safe asap)
 
Steeplerot said:
I live in the center of one of the most densely populated cities in the USA (or the world) in a very foggy geographical area.

Funny how I got called a luddite a few posts back when you all are dead set on keeping the unsustainable, uneconomic status quo of 19/20th century tech to uphold a corrupt corporate monopoly.

Put some clothes on conservatives, your naked hypocrisy is showing -and its not pretty.

You all literally are arguing to have MASSIVE government and unaccountable private industries hold the power and trust of life or death for your families on a massive scale and the future generations of your whole states and economies over your head.

Small government! LOL "rugged individualists" my ass.
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There you go again, thinking that everyone should be just like you because you do it....logistics and reality be damned...
 
Steeplerot said:
Statements like this show you know nothing of the difference in ionizing radiation.

You might as well compare a apple seed to a dump truck of watchmaker arsenic.
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😀

I have a degree in nuclear engineering and have built more than one nuclear power plant. I also operated a few nuclear power plants.

Next up, Steeplerot will explain to Mike Tyson that Mike knows nothing about boxing!


EDIT: To help you out, I found this:

The unit of equivalent dose is the sievert (Sv). The old unit of measure is the rem. - 1 Sv = 100 rem.

Each member of the world population is exposed, on average, to 2.4 mSv/yr of ionizing radiation from natural sources.
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http://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/about/what_is_ir/en/index2.html

What is the Sievert?
In an effort to express, in a given unit, the risk of the occurrence of deferred effects associated with all possible exposure situations, physicists developed an indicator known as the "effective dose", of which the unit of measurement is the sievert (Sv), named after the Swedish physicist who was one of the pioneers in the protection against ionising radiation. The effective dose is calculated on the basis of the dose (expressed in Gy) absorbed by the various exposed tissues and organs, while applying weighting factors which take into account the type of radiation ( a, b, g, X, neutrons), the means of exposure (external or internal) and the specific sensitivity of the organs or tissues (cf. table). By definition, the effective dose, expressed in Sv, can only be used to assess the risk of the occurrence of stochastic effects in man, and cannot be used either for acute effects nor for the effects on fauna and flora.


Does travelling at night reduce the dose of radiation that one might receive?

No. Cosmic radiation comes from throughout our Galaxy. It is both constant and isotropic (identical in all directions), and thus independent of the Earth's rotation.

Though the particles produced by solar flares originally come from the direction of the sun, the earth's magnetic field thoroughly modifies their distribution across the planet's surface. Areas on the "night side" can be more exposed than other areas located on the "day side".
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http://www.sievert-system.org/WebMasters/en/questions.html


The Earth, and all living things on it, are constantly bombarded by radiation from outside our solar system. This cosmic radiation consists of positively-charged ions from protons (about 90% of it) to iron nuclei. The energy of this radiation can far exceed that which humans can create, even in the largest particle accelerators (see ultra-high-energy cosmic ray). This radiation interacts in the atmosphere to create secondary radiation that rains down, including x-rays, muons, protons, alpha particles, pions, electrons, and neutrons.
The dose from cosmic radiation is largely from muons, neutrons, and electrons, with a dose rate that varies in different parts of the world and based largely on the geomagnetic field, altitude, and solar cycle. The cosmic-radiation dose rate on airplanes is so high that, according to the United Nations UNSCEAR 2000 Report (see links at bottom), airline flight crew workers receive more dose on average than any other worker, including those in nuclear power plants. Airline crews receive more cosmic rays if they routinely work flight routes that take them close to the Earth's north pole at high altitudes, where this type of radiation is maximal.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionized_radiation#Cosmic_radiation
 
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cybrsage said:
😀

I have a degree in nuclear engineering and have built more than one nuclear power plant. I also operated a few nuclear power plants.

Next up, Steeplerot will explain to Mike Tyson that Mike knows nothing about boxing!
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Yeah I already gave up and added him to my ignore list. 😛

What field do you work in?
 
slayernine said:
Has anyone here heard about thorium and thorium molten salt nuclear reactor technology.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2vzotsvvkw



This stuff is the future of nuclear energy, scratch that it is the future of energy. We just need to abandon the idea of nuclear power that uses solid enriched fuel and water for cooling.
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The thing is that in about 10 years in some areas Solar will about the same price as Nuclear. Safer when deployed as well.

If we started building Thorium nuclear plants they'd be done by the time solar became cheap enough to be an alternative to nuclear.

Additionally France, with the help of many other contributing nations, is building a Fusion Reactor Prototype.

http://www.iter.org/


Thorium is an interesting technology that should've been pursued earlier instead of extending the life of uranium fueled fission plants.
 
blankslate said:
The answer lies in the question of what is being subsidized.
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No no, go back and read his post. He was talking about electric power in rural areas in both cases. His liberal meme-generator produced two contradictory statements and he didn't realize it, haha.
 
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