Nuclear Now! Wired Magazine goes pro-nuke in a big way

[RafterMan]

This is great. A full-on nuclear power puff piece from a pop-tech magazine. Is global warming turning the tide?

"We now know that the risks of splitting atoms pale beside the dreadful toll exacted by fossil fuels. Radiation containment, waste disposal, and nuclear weapons proliferation are manageable problems in a way that global warming is not. Unlike the usual green alternatives - water, wind, solar, and biomass - nuclear energy is here, now, in industrial quantities. Sure, nuke plants are expensive to build - upward of $2 billion apiece - but they start to look cheap when you factor in the true cost to people and the planet of burning fossil fuels. And nuclear is our best hope for cleanly and efficiently generating hydrogen, which would end our other ugly hydrocarbon addiction - dependence on gasoline and diesel for transport.

Some of the world's most thoughtful greens have discovered the logic of nuclear power, including Gaia theorist James Lovelock, Greenpeace cofounder Patrick Moore, and Britain's Bishop Hugh Montefiore, a longtime board member of Friends of the Earth (see "Green vs. Green," page 82). Western Europe is quietly backing away from planned nuclear phaseouts. Finland has ordered a big reactor specifically to meet the terms of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. China's new nuke plants - 26 by 2025 - are part of a desperate effort at smog control.

...

So atomic power is less expensive than it used to be - but could it possibly be cost-effective? Even before Three Mile Island sank, the US nuclear industry was foundering on the shoals of economics. Regulatory delays and billion-dollar construction-cost overruns turned the business into a financial nightmare. But increasing experience and efficiency gains have changed all that. Current operating costs are the lowest ever - 1.82 cents per kilowatt-hour versus 2.13 cents for coal-fired plants and 3.69 cents for natural gas. The ultimate vindication of nuclear economics is playing out in the stock market: Over the past five years, the stocks of leading nuclear generating companies such as Exelon and Entergy have more than doubled. Indeed, Exelon is feeling so flush that it bought New Jersey's Public Service Enterprise Group in December, adding four reactors to its former roster of 17.

...

The more seriously you take the idea of global warming, the more seriously you have to take nuclear power. Clean coal, solar-powered roof tiles, wind farms in North Dakota - they're all pie in the emissions-free sky. Sure, give them a shot. But zero-carbon reactors are here and now. We know we can build them. Their price tag is no mystery. They fit into the existing electric grid without a hitch. Flannel-shirted environmentalists who fight these realities run the risk of ending up with as much soot on their hands as the slickest coal-mining CEO."


http://wired.com/wired/archive/13.02/nuclear.html

Could it be that some real momentum for actually solving the problem is developing?

[davepc]

1. Modern Nuclear Power should be given serious consideration

to help fix our nations energy dependency problem.

France is a good example of what nuclear power can do, being safe and cost effective.

[whistle]

2. Uranium pebbles are not any safer

[RafterMan]

3. How so?

What is your argument to support that position?

[whistle]

16. Pebble Bush Modular Reactor (PBMR) are discussed here....

<snip>

Finally, there are a number of questions associated with PBMR waste. While the amount of radioactivity present in the reactor at any time per unit of power produced would be less in PBMRs than in LWRs, the volume of spent fuel would be considerably greater, posing the familiar problem of what to do with long-lived radioactive waste. Further, the interaction of the carbon and silicon carbide-coated fuel of the PBMR with the repository environment has not been studied in any detail.

Despite the vast number of the problems relating to the waste being generated by the current crop of power reactors, the Bush administration and the nuclear industry seem set to encourage new reactor orders without a significant social debate about where the waste would be put. Yucca Mountain, even if it were to be licensed, is prohibited by law from accepting more than 70,000 metric tons of spent fuel and is unlikely to be able to accommodate vast new amounts of nuclear waste even if it were to be licensed.

In sum, Dear Baffled, I conclude that PBMR = MBRP, for which the non-mathematical explanation is: If we go ahead with the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor, society May Be in a Real Pickle.
<more>

<link> http://www.ieer.org/sdafiles/vol_9/9-4/deararj.html

[RafterMan]

21. Well, that isn't the claim

Only that the reactor itself is more safe. As for waste, I see no reason it cannot be used in the same kind of reprocessing/recycling activities that we should be doing to LWR "waste". The stuff still has over 95% of its energy left once it leaves the reactor, we know how to make use of it, yet people want to bury it in the ground.

[NNadir]

4. Safer than what?

[amandabeech]

11. I'm not sold on pebble bed reactors either, since they are proposed

to be built without a secondary containment structure. I realize that the design is considered extremely safe, but, still, I'd like some serious concrete and steel between me and those pebbles, just in case a few too many bad pebbles come in a shipment. Fermi I and Three Mile Island would have been much, much worse without one.

I don't think that I am alone in this view.

[NNadir]

19. I am not sold on pebble bed reactors because the fuel is minimally

recyclable. It's a committed "once through" system.

[RafterMan]

22. How is that?

I know it's intended as a once-through system, but is there something that prevents simply grinding up the spent fuel, putting it in a centrifuge and having another go?

[NNadir]

23. It is not impossible, but it is extraordinarily difficult.

The fuel is suspended in highly insoluble and highly temperature resistant matrix of silicon carbide. Like the so called "waste" forms proposed for Yucca Mountain, this matrix is chosen for its extreme chemical resistance, high melting point, and long term stability. This means that the pebbles will almost certainly not release their radioactive materials under almost any imaginable circumstances. But my view is that this requirement being placed on nuclear fuel, complete chemical and thermal inertness, is motivated by irrational fear rather than a rational environmental approach to energy resource utilization issues.

There has been only one instance of complete and total fuel failure in a pressurized water reactor or a boiling water reactor, and not a single person on the planet was injured by that failure. (I am of course referring to Three Mile Island.) Under these circumstances it is very difficult to argue after thousands of reactor years of experience that a new fuel form is required to make nuclear reactors safer.

These thermal and chemical properties of pebble bed fuels are of course not what one desires if one wishes to make chemical transformations as are required with reprocessing. The pebble properties will likely make the recovery of valuable fission products, unused uranium or thorium, plutonium and other actinides very, very expensive, maybe prohibitively expensive.

Often the use of materials is very much dependent on the cost of chemical processing. The element titanium is stronger, higher melting, and lighter than steel. If the World Trade Center, for instance, had a superstructure of titanium rather than steel, it most likely would have survived the September 11 attacks. Moreover the ore, titanium dioxide, is very common and is a widely used item of commerce. However the chemical processing of titanium, the reduction of the ore to the metal, is extremely expensive and involves vapor phase methods. (A new process exists that is said to have surrmounted these difficulties, but I don't know its status.) This makes the metal very expensive and limits its application to rather exotic uses like the manufacture of spy planes like the SR-71.

[NNadir]

5. Who'd have thunk it?

I'm increasingly feeling vindicated after nearly two decades in the wilderness, but on some level I'm more distressed than ever.

Of course this is good news that environmentalists are understanding that nuclear energy is NOT the enemy.

Now the bad news.

Nuclear power development is capital intensive. I have serious doubts therefore that it will be available to the United States, since the United States is, whether it's being explicitly stated or not, bankrupt. Not only that, but there is a huge (and deserved) groundswell of contempt for the United States and it is difficult to imagine that many people internationally will feel inclined to bail us out once the overt collapse has commenced.

It is very, very difficult to build nuclear capacity in a climate of hyper inflation, which is what we are about to experience. The technology is well understood, reliable, and once built, cheap. But there is a hump to get over, and that's having the capital to install it.

[RafterMan]

6. I understand your skepticism, but

consider the causes of our current financial woes. The dollar devalues as the trade deficit increses, and our trade deficit increases in large part due to energy imports. So as long as the dollar is falling, energy increases in value. So investing in nuclear energy means invensting in producing a good that appreciates in value while the dollar depreciates -- not a bad deal.

Of course there are many other ways to screw up an economy, and Bush is determined to persue all of them. But he could do that no matter what energy production strategy was followed. So I'll take the sound of the public pulling its head out of its ass on the environmental cost of nuclear power as a pure win. I was deeply surprised that a co-founder of Greenpeace would switch sides on the nuclear question. If he can come over, anyone can.

[amandabeech]

7. Our energy imports are primarily petroleum and refined petroleum

products. We get some natural gas from Canada through pipelines and import a very little liquified natural gas and propane through special docks in Boston, on the Chesapeake Bay and somewhere in Georgia.

In order to make a real dent in our petroleum imports through increased use of electricity, we could go the inefficient route of electrolysing water for hydrogen, using electric vehicles and pluggable hybrids, and electrifying more and more rail lines, both commuter and intercity freight and passenger. Frankly, we don't seem to be going in any of these directions very quickly and I see very little mention of anything but hydrogen in the MSM.

[RafterMan]

8. It's not that inefficient

given that electric motors are about twice as efficient as ICEs.

Here's a comparison:
"Energy usage usually works out to about .4 kwh per mile. You can multiply this by your electricity rate to get a cost per mile. For example, if you pay $0.13 per kilowatt hour, this works out to a little over a nickel a mile. For comparison, gas at $1.75 per gallon on a 20 mpg car works out to almost $0.09 per mile."

http://www.electroauto.com/info/cost.shtml

This is of course a shill site, so their numbers are probably optimistic. But a big error is allowable, given the differential.

[amandabeech]

14. My post obviously was not clearly written.

I think that all-electrics and pluggable hybrids are terrific, and I am aware that electric motors are very, very efficient.

Have you seen the sale on E-bay of revived lithium and alkaline batteries? Just search revived. I wonder whether the technique could be used to extend the life of lithium batteries in electric/hybrid vehicles, thus lowering their operating cost and reducing hazardous waste.

It's electrolysis of hydrogen that I find to be inefficient and hydrogen to be difficult to handle. Some folks are working on catalysts, including titanium oxide, but I remain skeptical until shown otherwise.

[RafterMan]

20. Ah, I get it

Yeah -- battery vs. fuel cell, not electrical vs. gasoline. It is true that electricity -> hydrogen -> electricity is likely under 50% efficient, while electricity -> battery -> electricity is over 90%. But efficiency isn't everything -- energy density plays a big part in transportation and there fuel cells can smoke batteries by like 10-to-1.

On balance, I think you're correct that plugin hybrids make more sense now than fuel cells. But I thought your origial objection was that nuclear electrical couldn't substitute for imported hydrocarbons. Isn't that what plugin hybrids do?

[amandabeech]

24. Nuclear can substitute for some hydrocarbons, but not all, realistically.

That is my point.

Pluggable hybrids, electrified rail and perhaps some hydrogen would make a decent dent in substitution, provided that we can develop and maintain sufficient electrical power.

I believe that problems with hydrogen consist of the inefficiency of the electricity--hydrogen--electricity cycle, difficulties of storing and transporting hydrogen and/or the need for electricity and sufficient quantities of water over and above that which is necessary for the environment, industry and human and animal consumption to be present at the same spot. The proposed new type of reactor built to produce hydrogen would not solve the latter two problems.

If the problems with hydrogen could be solved and electricity would substitute entirely for petroleum in transportation and natural gas in heating, and coal and natural gas power plants could be replaced by nuclear, the number of nuclear plants required would be a very, very substantial multiple of the number (approx. 120?) we have today.

Whether public opinion, truly suitable sites, sufficient fuel in the long-term (possibly including thorium)and adequate waste storage may all turn out positively for such an enormous undertaking, I am truly skeptical.

[phantom power]

31. Nuclear energy can be used to *make* hydrocarbons

We're all familiar with using nuclear energy to make electricity, but it's just as easy to release nuclear energy and store it in the form of hydrocarbon fuels. The carbon would be taken from CO2 in the atmosphere, and so the system would be carbon-neutral: the CO2 released from burning that fuel would be taken up in the reactors to make new fuel.

[amandabeech]

47. Yes, I realize that there are processes that will produce the result

that you cite. However, I am concerned that the energy returned on the energy invested (EROEI) of this process may very well be less than one, as has been stated on other energy sites that I frequent.

If you have cites to studies that show a better energy return, I would certainly appreciate you posting them.

[phantom power]

53. no studies, but consider this:

EROEI is clearly far greater than 1 for nuclear power. And that's the important thing. What we do with that energy is up to us. We can just as easily apply the energy to making fuel, as we can to generating electricity.

The only thing that might jam up such a system, is if the industrial processes for making hycrocarbons were very inefficient, however, my understanding is that there are already known processes that operate at high efficiency. For instance, those guys with the "turkey-guts-to-diesel" process cited 80% efficiency, which seems plenty good to me.

[NNadir]

13. Well of course I hope you're right and I'm wrong but that said...

...when one has already gone bankrupt it is of little use to recognize retrospectively why one has done so.

The United States has gone from being a highly productive nation of scientists and engineers to a nation of pathetic paper shuffling ostriches with MBA's. My opinion is that our financial bankruptcy, coupled with our moral and intellectual bankruptcy, is not something that will come only if we keep on our present course without changing. It is something that has already arrived.

My sad opinion is that the outcome of the 2004 election eliminated the very last possibility of retrieving the situation.

Like I said, I hope I'm wrong, but I don't think I am...

[Massacure]

9. Inflation isn't terribly high yet. Coal prices have been high lately.

It will probably get higher with China around. Nuclear will look good again in a couple years. I just wish the U.S. would use something similar to CANDU reactors.

[KoKo]

10. Fine...but where do you store the waste? It's been a constant problem.

Do you want it in your back yard?

[RafterMan]

12. From the article

"Recycle nuclear fuel. Here's a fun fact: Spent nuclear fuel - the stuff intended for permanent disposal at Yucca Mountain - retains 95 percent of its energy content. Imagine what Toyota could do for fuel efficiency if 95 percent of the average car's gasoline passed through the engine and out the tailpipe. In France, Japan, and Britain, nuclear engineers do the sensible thing: recycle. Alone among the nuclear powers, the US doesn't, for reasons that have nothing to do with nuclear power.

Recycling spent fuel - the technical word is reprocessing - is one way to make the key ingredient of a nuclear bomb, enriched uranium. In 1977, Jimmy Carter, the only nuclear engineer ever to occupy the White House, banned reprocessing in the US in favor of a so-called once-through fuel cycle. Four decades later, more than a dozen countries reprocess or enrich uranium, including North Korea and Iran. At this point, hanging onto spent fuel from US reactors does little good abroad and real mischief at home."

There is lots more that can be done with waste, but this is a good start. Over 97% of current "waste" is U-235 or plutonium which can be used as fuel for other types of reactors with little effort. Most of the remaining volume can be also converted to electricity, albiet at higher prices.

So yes, remove all carbon pollution sources and put the price it in my back yard.

[amandabeech]

15. I am interested in the possibility of depositing non-recyclable

radioactive materials, including machinery and housing, at the subduction zones in the oceans where one continental plate slides under another. Of course, siting would be key.

I have read that the amount of radioactivity resulting to the oceans really would be insignificant, but the hazardous materials would move toward the earth's core with the subducting plate, thus being very thoroughly disposed of.

[NNadir]

18. There are excellent means of "disposing" of "nuclear waste" but all

are wasteful.

With almost no exceptions all nuclear materials, including fission products, are potentially valuable materials. It would be a shame to throw them away because of a lack of vision.

[jpak]

33. Lack of vision is the reason why we have a "problem" with spent fuel

Nuclear power was ill-conceived from the get-go. Disposal of spent fuel was never given real consideration when federal government created the nuclear power industry in the '50's and '60's.

And why did the federal government "have" to take custody and dispose of commercially produced spent fuel?????

(cuz the nuclear industry could not afford to do it on its own - can you say taxpayer bailout???).

Furthermore, the Nuclear Waste Fund will never come close to financing the ultimate costs of disposing high-level nuclear waste. Guess who will pick up the tab?????

(cue: people who pay taxes)

And...reprosessing of spent fuel was a commercial failure in the US. Clean-up of the defunct West Valley (NY) reprocessing facility will cost taxpayers (not the nuclear industry) billions - yet another govt. bailout.

And....what happened when the feds privatized US uranium enrichment facilities????

(the private consortium rapidly went belly up and the taxpayers bought back the plants at a loss).

And...what of the federally subsidized AP-600 reactor design program????

(clue: it cost the taxpayers $250M and none were ordered by US utilities - that was money well spent now wasn't it).

And why is a Republican Senator from New Mexico attempting to subsidize uranium mining in the US?????

(cuz all the cheap easily obtained domestic uranium ore was used to produce bombs and naval reactor fuel. US uranium mines cannot compete with foreign suppliers. This is why the US nuclear industry currently imports 96% of the uranium it consumes each year)

Quiz #1....Three Mile Island was a billion dollar accident - but who paid for the clean-up????

(clue: not the utility that owned the plant - can you say rate payer rip-off???)

Quiz #2....Why does the nuclear industry need the Price-Anderson Act????

(cuz the nuclear industry could not afford to insure their "safe and clean" nuclear power plants without it)

There's a reason why no nuclear plants have been ordered in the US since 1973.

Can anyone hazard a guess why????

Good News: Bush plans to jump start the nuclear power industry with the aid of massive taxpayer subsidies (up to 50% of the cost of new nuclear power plants). Whodothunkit????

[Kolesar]

34. Coal is not without its costs

Who pays for a night in the hospital when a lung patient has an asthma attack? Such hospitalizations happen around here every summer on days when an "ozone alert" is declared.

[hunter]

35. The oil industry supports a great deal of corruption...

Nuclear power advocates such as George W. Bush expect the nuclear power industry to support similar levels of corruption, but stark realities will interfere with that plan.

Big Business in the United States is built on a foundation of "taxpayer bailouts" and wholesale corruption. In the past the United States could afford to do business this way because we were very wealthy with natural resources. You could drill an oil well in Texas or California and become an instant multi-millionaire. But those days are gone.

The U.S. nuclear industry grew out of the defense industry, otherwise known as Eisenhower's "industrial-military complex." This industry was crippled by blank check accounting practices where, if something goes wrong, there would always be a government bailout. In such an environment failures can actually be profitable for various government contractors.

Some industries in the United States, particularly those who contract with the government to "clean up" nuclear sites, are suspect too. They profit from public misperceptions of nuclear hazards. For example if mercury pollution was as easy to find as nuclear pollution (which practically screams out "Here I am!") we would have a much better picture of the relative public harm various nuclear and non-nuclear toxins cause.

Because of these problems it is very difficult to calculate the true costs of nuclear power based entirely upon the U.S. experience.

In the larger picture, it's my opinion that the United States became a "first world" nation and superpower almost entirely by accident. We were selling snake oil and the rest of the world was buying it.

But very soon now I think the United States will become just another ordinary nation of the Americas with a fragile economy and too much debt. It worries me a bit how we will deal with that. We could go down shooting.

If we are wise we will move towards a lower energy economy, and we will shift our military nuclear assets to civilian use. At some point we may find ourselves burning military plutonium in civilian nuclear power plants.

Otherwise we become yet another failed nation in Ronald Reagan's "dustbin of history."

[RafterMan]

39. You are correct

in some respects.

Guess who will foot the bill for cleaning up after the nuclear power industry? You're right -- it will most likely be taxpayers.

But who cleans up after the coal power industry? Nobody, because the pollution caused by the coal industry cannot be cleaned up. The waste is dispersed over the entire globe. It's too late to clean it up.

As for federal subsidies of reactor designs, good for them! I'm all for the federal government stepping in to facilitate greater power generation with less environmental impact, whether it's by nuclear, tidal or solar power. Who wouldn't be?

Also, tell us, what is the reason no plants have been ordered since 1973? If there's a solid scientific reason for this, let me know and I'll change my position.

[NNadir]

40. And now for some quizzes for those actually think.

Every single one of these statements is specious, because every single one of them ignores a very basic fact: The waste from coal is technically impossible to deal with in any know technical way.

Quiz: Who pays for coal waste? Answer:

The lungs of every man woman and child on the planet.

Quiz: What was the most dangerous, deadly and ill conceived power industry ever conceived on the planet?

The coal industry.

Quiz:

Why does the Price Anderson need to exist?

Because insurance companies are stupid and don't wish to collect fabulous amounts of premiums for almost no risk while they are perfectly happy to pay billions upon billions of dollars to reassemble the soon to be submerged state of Florida.

Quiz: What is the only industry that pays full cradle to grave costs for 100% of its wastes because it is the only industry for which it is technically feasible?

The nuclear industry.

What is the only industry for which the disposal of 100% of the waste in a benign way has become a political football owing to massive ignorance over a concern that two or three ranchers might get an extra cancer in the next 5000 yeaars?

The nuclear industry.

What industry is allowed to kill 4 million people a year, pays very low waste fees for radioactive and chemically toxic waste, destroys 1000's of kilometers of rivers annually, spews millions of tons of strong acids into our lakes, rivers, atmosphere and rain and pays nothing for this happy privilege?

The coal industry.

Quiz: How is that people whine, and whine and whine about "nuclear waste" the storage of which has killed zero people on the planet, and say nothing about coal waste?

Because there seems to be a religious bone in our brains that elevates dogma and cant over thinking. Given that state of affairs, our prognosis is a very, very, very, very poor one.

Ignorance gets what it deserves.

BTW: Bush's nuclear plans will never come to fruition. Like everything else Bush it's simple double speak. Were it the case that Bush were to do anything to promote commercial nuclear energy, he would finally have stumbled into doing something positive. That however, will not happen.

[jpak]

43. The nuclear industry pays 100% of the cost of spent fuel disposal????

Wrong.

The Nuclear Waste Fund will ultimately yield $28 billion from reactor operators.

Yucca Mountain will cost $50-100 billion to build and operate.

Yucca Mountain does not have the capacity to accommodate spent fuel produced in the future - another site will have to be developed at a similar cost to the taxpayers.

The Bottom Line - the nuclear industry does NOT pay 100% of the cradle to grave costs of nuclear waste disposal - not even close.

Furthermore, US enrichment facilities have produced 560,000 metric tons of highly toxic and corrosive depleted UF6 since WW2. The now defunct US Enrichment Corporation recently dumped an additional 140,000 metric tons of depleted UF6 into the laps of taxpayers.

In addition to spent fuel, the US nuclear industry produced tens of thousands of tons of depleted UF6 (leftovers of the enrichment process). This material is currently contained in thousands of corroding casks at federal facilities in Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee.

Is the nuclear power industry paying for the conversion and disposal of depleted UF6 (and the HF generated during conversion) ??????

Nope - not one cent.

Nuclear power = corporate welfare at its worst.

BTW: every statement in my previous post was truthful and accurate - and I stand by every single one of them.

[NNadir]

44. So many ducks, so many barrels and so little time...

Sigh...

I've got to find time for this one. It's going to be so much fun, I won't be able to stand it.

[jpak]

45. Well here's one more duck for you...

http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/mld/myrtlebeachonline/news/local/8406838.htm

50 nuclear plant operators are currently suing the DOE (re: taxpayers) for $56 billion because the DOE hasn't disposed of the spent fuel THEY produced and THEY made a profit on.

Is there anything wrong with this picture??????

$56 billion in settlements on top of the $50-100 billion to fund Yucca Mountain.

That's some duck indeed.

[NNadir]

46. OK, first duck.

I'm inclined to let the dunderheads have their absurd contentions.

Let's say for instance that this complete nonsense were correct, that it really cost $150 billion dollars to dispose of so called "nuclear waste."

(And boy is there a fat duck here...)

20% of the nation's energy has been produced for nearly 30 years. Now how many geniuses here can divide 150 billion by 30? Anyone?

I'll help because I have an excel spreadsheet and I can do this difficult calculation: It comes out to 5 billion dollars per year. That would be 20 dollars per American per year to deal with a form of so called "waste" that has (i) injured no one ever (ii) is an extremely valuable material that could easily be used again or turned into incredibly useful products if only our country were not inhabited by people who can't think.

Now, if I could stop breathing smog, as I am forced to do here in New Jersey because of midwestern coal fired power plants, shit, I'd fork over a hell of a lot more than 20 bucks a year each for myself, my wife, and my kids. Shit, I'd fork over thousands, every year, year after year after year. As it is, I could handle all of it for $80 for the four of us.

But instead, I'm asked to have Mercury in my rain, benzopyrans in my air, because of broad scientific illiteracy and the pure and clear inability of complete dunderheads to think even on the most basic terms. No wonder this country is collapsing. No wonder we are doomed.

This is a really, really funny conversation to have in a time of resource wars, wars that are being fought by the way to satiate the trivial parochial concerns of a bunch of people who often encounter their procotologists face to face during examinations.

Let's see, 5 billion dollars, 30 or 40 thousand dead in Iraq in just one year...around $140,000 per life. An interesting calculation. Why don't you go talk to one of the mothers in my town who lost her son and tell her that he wasn't worth $140,000?

You know, we could, pay for three Yucca Mountains, covering 90 years of so called "nuclear waste," for just one year of Iraq, but hey who's counting. War is fun.

We deserve what we are going to get. We really deserve it.

I'll be back with more ducks when I can supress my nausea.

[jpak]

48. Complete nonsense??? Quack!!!

This is what the State of Nevada has to say about Yucca Mountain.

http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/yucca/loux05.htm

The State of Nevada, BTW, was mugged by Congress and the Nuclear Lobby when Yucca Mountain was chosen as the site of the federal nuclear waste repository.

Political cowardice at its worst.

[NNadir]

51. The state of Nevada believes that removing mountains in West Virginia

to illuminate Wayne Newton's face and amplify his nut case voice is perfectly acceptable, even though the leachate from the holes replacing these mountains will destroy the West Virginia water, and the combustion of the removed material the rest of the planet's air, possibly for eternity.

Fuck the citizens of Nevada. No one has ever died from the storage nuclear waste and lots of people die every day from all the implications of coal.

The State of Nevada's entire shtick is driven by electricity. They are right now rushing to build coal plants that will kill many thousands of their citizens and many more citizens of other states. Why? Because morons who know nothing of geology and nothing about chemistry and nothing about energy have somehow managed to convince the citizens of Nevada that all of so called "waste" is going to (i) magically break out of its containers, (ii) magically bore through thousands of meters of rock, (iii) magically concentrate in their water supply, and (iv) magically all concentrate in their blood streams.

In fact we know a great deal about the behavior of nuclear materials over billions of years from studying the naturally occurring Oklo, Gabon nuclear reactors. As it happened, these reactors operated for many thousands of years in an area that would later become a rain forest. In these reactors, few of the radionuclides ever migrated more than a few feet - again in the rain forest.

http://www.curtin.edu.au/curtin/centre/waisrc/OKLO/Why/Why.html

In a sane world this nonsense would be seen for what it is: Magical thinking.

I don't know about political cowardice, but I sure know about intellectual cowardice, and if I've ever seen intellectual cowardice, this would be it.

It would seem that this duck consists of the argument that nuclear power is unacceptable because very stupid and poorly informed people don't like it and would rather raise their risk of injury by an astronomical factor by burning coal to illuminate the lights on Ceasar's Palace. Is this correct?

How about another duck from the deck of the diesel powered pirate ship where we happily muse about the glaciers melting outside our portholes?

Hey, but I do have a question about the last duck. How many strip mines do you think can be filled with clean safe sealing fill for 5 billion dollars a year? Where's that fill coming from? Inquiring minds want to know.

For the record, as I've stated many times on this site, I oppose the Yucca mountain project as proposed. It is a waste of perfectly good recoverable nuclear materials that can do quite a bit yet in service to the human race and thus should NOT be built. However the notion that it is unacceptably dangerous when compared to its alternatives should be, in a thinking world, beneath contempt.

[NNadir]

52. Oklo periodic table.

The situation at Oklo was without human intervention since these reactors operated billions of years before humans evolved.

[jpak]

58. The 137-Cs, 90-Sr and radio-iodine were not retained at the Oklo site

The major biologically active fission products of concern in spent fuel were mobilized and released from the Oklo site.

Not very reassuring.

Furthermore, the geology and geological history of the Oklo site bears no resemblance to the geology and geological history of Yucca Mountain.

Absolutely no one knows how long fission products will be retained by the Yucca Mountain repository or their future fate in the surrounding environment.

Again - not very encouraging.

[RafterMan]

59. Strontium 90 and Cesium 137

have half lives of about 30 years. There's almost no radiation left after < 500 years.

[jpak]

61. In the Year 2525

The good citizens of Nevada can celebrate the day when the 90-Sr and 137-Cs the 43rd president of the United States and their unselfish future-thinking fellow citizens in the 21st Century foisted upon them had decayed to insignificant levels and no longer a threat to their health and economy.

A Day for Celebration indeed.

BTW - the good citizens of Nevada will have to wait a heck of a lot longer for 239-Pu Bye-Bye Day....

[RafterMan]

62. 500 years is a manageable time

certainly not on the geological scale being discussed in the example.

Further, cesium and strontium are produced in manageable quantities -- only 0.3% of spent reactor fuel (the whole of which is currently under 2500 tons annually), or less than 20 cubic meters of waste per year if *all* the US's current electrical needs were met by nuclear power.

I agree with you that PU-239 is far too valuable to waste sitting in some mountain forever. Better to use it to produce both fuel and electricity in other reactors.

[jpak]

63. Plutonium is not a commodity - it is a curse.

Generations of Americans yet unborn will have to "manage" wastes generated from spent nuclear fuel for centuries.

Other than self-preservation, what is the benefit to them????

None.

Reprocess spent fuel and recover the Pu for fuel???

Let's see how well that worked.

Between 1966 and 1972, the now-defunct West Valley commercial reprocessing facility processed 640 metric tons of spent fuel and recovered 1926 kg of Pu.

The AEC purchased ~900 kg of this re-Pu for $10.4 million.

In addition to Pu, the West Valley facility generated 600,000 gallons of high level waste.

The plant was abandoned by its operators because it was uneconomic to operate. Custody of the plant was handed over to the taxpayers of New York who subsequently turned it over to the DOE (re: federal income taxpayers).

As of 1996, taxpayers have spent $1.9 billion to clean up the site.

Currently the DOE is spending ~$100 million a year on West Valley - with no end in sight.

Part of that money is being spent to contain a plume of contaminated groundwater that is headed toward Lake Erie and beyond.

The ultimate cost of cleaning up West Valley is not known - estimates range from $4-8 billion.

All for $20 million worth of reprocessed Pu.

Such a deal.

DOE's MOX fuel is a fiscal black hole as well.

In 2003, the DOE requested ~$402 million for its MOX fuel program. This program is designed to blend-down weapons-grade Pu and produce MOX fuel for commercial power reactors.

The ultimate cost (to the taxpayers) of DOE's MOX program is $3.8 billion.

The DOE (taxpayers) will PAY Duke Energy hundreds of millions of dollars to modify existing reactors to accommodate and irradiate MOX fuel.

Why - because any way you cut it MOX is uneconomic - Virginia Power pulled out of the MOX program for this very reason..

Immobilizing weapons-grade Pu into ceramic materials is faster, cheaper, more secure and entails less environmental risk than the MOX scheme - but don't tell that to ChimpCo...

Finally, will the MOX program "solve" the problem of disposing weapons-grade Pu?????

Nope.

The proposed MOX fuel assemblies will contain ~20 kg of Pu. After burn-up they will contain ~15 kg of Pu (and newly created fission products).

The ultimate fate of the spent MOX assemblies is anyone's guess - but you can rest assured that it will cost the taxpayers a bundle and someone will be forced to accept it in their backyard.

The entire US MOX program is nothing but pure pork to the nuclear industry and will create more problems than it will solve.

.

[Name removed]

65. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Massacure]

66. Nuclear technology has gotten better in the last 30 years.

[Name removed]

68. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[NNadir]

69. I have just posted a list of problems in radiocesium generation to

the "What you pay with your flesh" thread. (See posts #85-91.) I'm putting them there because I want to create a central source to which I will always remember to refer. To do this I will add new writings and links to many other threads.

I hope you will enjoy these posts on technical issues connected with fission products and actinides, Rafterman.

[RafterMan]

70. Thanks

If you're still up, I posted a question about long vs. short lived cesium as a percentage of total waste that I haven't been able to answer.

Help would be appreciated.

[jpak]

74. The idea that fission products will somehow reach a magical equilibrium

is just plain wrong.

The half-life of 137-Cs is ~30 years.

137-Cs will decay to negligible values after 10-20 half-lives (20 being the most conservative criterion).

US nuclear power plants are licensed to operate for 40 years - some, however, have been recently relicensed to operate for 60 years.

Nuclear power plants discharge a portion of their fuel inventory on a annual or semi-annual basis (it depends on burn-up rates, plant design and how the plants are managed).

Even if the plant operates for 60 years (two half-lives of 137-Cs) the inventory of 137-Cs in the initial load of discharged spent fuel never "decays away". It experiences only two half-lives of Cs-137 decay - not 10-20 - and the plant continues to produce more Cs-137 year after year.

No "isotopic equilibrium" is ever attained - it is physically and mathematically impossible. Spent fuel inventories of 137-Cs, 90-Sr and 239-Pu can only accumulate over the life of a reactor.

In the real world, a continued or expanded US nuclear program will only accumulate radioactive waste and we will have to develop Yucca Mountain, after Yucca Mountain, ad infinitum...

[NNadir]

75. To understand what radioactive decay equilibrium is, one needs to

understand the radioactive decay law.

This is basic physics and basic mathematics, but I do understand that there are many people on the planet who fail to demonstrate competence in either physics or mathematics, no matter how basic they should be.

Clearly such understandings are devalued in these times, which is why we are in such desperate trouble.

[RafterMan]

76. So then time just stops?

There nothing magical here, and I don't see why you're getting so offended by simple facts.

Suppose you produce 20 cubic meters per year. It decays to safety in n years. The simplest model is to build a repository with n 20-cubic meter rooms. Add one year of waste to each room as that year goes by. When year n comes around, the stuff you dumped in the first room is now safe. Take it out and dump it wherever, putting year n's waste in that room. Repeat.

The amount of heat generated in the early years complicates the simple plan, but that would only affect the layout, not the volume.

Your equilibrium is the number of years for decay times the volume produced each year -- you will never have to store more than this amount.

[NNadir]

64. Ignoring reality with silliness will not advance the anti-environmental

argument.

This antienvironmental argument has failed to demonstrate at all that a single citizen of the state of Nevada, even one, will even be injured, much less killed between here and 2525 or at any time after.

The fact is that zero, science is being cited here. It's is only selfish and unthinking if the argument can demonstrate that someone will be injured. Such an argument would require a demonstration of a mechanism by which cesium or plutonium or any other element would find its way into a citizen of the state of Nevada at any point.

A day for celebration would be a day in which serious scientific arguments as opposed to specious little fearful religions took precedence.

Clearly an appeal to these type scientific arguments are meaningless here, because, as usual, the anti-environmentalist anti-nuclear crowd has nothing more to offer than cheap chants. They can't rely on science without treating chemical, physical and geological science much like creationists treat biology: Try to distort it to fit dogma rather than to construct realistic theory.

Anti-environmentalist anti-nucleaar activists can't demonstrate risk, because such risk is vanishingly small.

Fat duck!

[NNadir]

60. This was with ZERO human intervention.

Humans would not evolve for over a billion years after the operation of the Oklo reactors, and human they were not available to stabilize these isotopes in glasses of types that are known to have billion year stabilities. Thus the extreme stability of the Oklo system is remarkable. It shows that all this balderdash about nuclear waste is just that - balderdash. Even without human intervention the chemical and physical properties of most isotopes found in nuclear reactors keeps them from traveling very far. With human intervention, it is possible to assure that nuclear materials can be constrained in a single location for as long as one desires to do so. (This is actually the important question, is it desirable to immobilize these materials? I contend that it is not, they are too valuable and too useful - but that's my opinion.)

Pollucite, a mineral that now represents much of the world's supply of both cesium and rubidium is known to have been around for 100's of millions of years.

The DOE has in fact examined synthetic pollucite made with Cesium-137 and allowed to decay for decades. The result: Not much changed. It's pretty much exactly what it was in the first place: A fucking rock. Since the half-life of the most dangerous isotope of cesium, cesium-137 is 30.23 years, this demonstration is pretty compelling

http://emsp.em.doe.gov/EMSPprojects1996_2003/completed/55382.pdf

Overall, the Oklo site shows that anti-nuclear anti-environmental activists, as usual, don't have a clue about the things about which they shout so loudly. Like the old cliche says, "It is better to be silent and thought a fool, than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt."

The geology of the Yucca mountain site and the Oklo site and Yucca Mountain are indeed quite different, because Oklo has had billions of years with millions of tons of water flowing through it. In fact the moderator that started these reactors was nothing more than ground water which ran through the operating reactor for thousands and thousands and thousands of years, unrestrained by anything.

Now, since the invention of the Internet I have been exposed quite a bit to the poor thinking and scientific distortions of the antinuclear anti-environmental set, and from what I can tell from when I wade through this tripe, almost all of the anti-Yucca mountain balderdash is accompanied with a "what-if" scenario in which the desert around Nevada suddenly becomes a rain forest. Except for being endowed with the ability to punch their way out of glass, dynamite their steel containers, and drill through thousands of meters of rock, and then strolling across the desert, nuclear materials - conceded even in the mindless anti-nuclear set - require the intervention of water to get anywhere. Now we have Oklo, a fossil reactor that IS in a rain forest and has been so for hundreds of millions of years. No special effort was made to keep the isotopes responsible for most of their radioactivity. What happened over the last billion years since the reactor shut down because of fuel depletion? Nothing. Nothing at all.

The fact is that antinuclear anti-environmentalists cannot be convinced by facts though. This is a religion, and nothing else. They wax romantically about all kinds of dunderhead scenarios but when you ask them to demonstrate an example of a case where anything like what they claim has actually happened, there is no response. No one has ever died from the storage of commercial so called "nuclear waste" and it is very likely that the numbers of such persons who die in the next million years from stored nuclear materials will probably be much, much less than a single person a century on average.

Antinuclear activists all want to pretend - while many of them, the most immoral among them, advocate for the filthy and truly dangerous fuel coal - that somehow nuclear wastes are going to crawl up out of holes thousands of meters deep, roll across the environment, seek people out, kick down their doors and force them down their throats. This is simply magical thinking.

I have acrophobia: I am afraid of heights, especially when I am on ladders. This has nothing to do with the safety of ladders though. I am not calling for the banning of ladders because I am afraid of them myself. I recognize that with just a little safety training most people on the planet can use ladders quite well. The fact is that my safety and well being, and indeed the safety and well being of all persons on the planet, is very much dependent on the ability of people to use ladders safely.

Now, being familiar with irrational fears I am inclined to have a certain, albeit slight, sympathy for people with an irrational - might we even say "highly neurotic" - fear of radiation. Their petty and pathetic fears however have absolutely nothing to do whether the use of radioactive materials can be safely used and benefit humankind, any more than my fear of ladders has anything to do with the usefulness and safety of ladders. I am as appreciative of house painters as I am of nuclear engineers. In both professions, they know what they're doing and I don't think we ought to award any right to comment on their work to people who know ZERO about their work and it's risks.

Early in January I did some interesting calculations of the consequences of one of these magical dreamed up worst case scenarios that antinuclear anti-scientific types like to prattle on about, as if all extremely improbable events must be confronted as if they were certainties. In this case I explored what would be the effect of 100% of the world's inventory of radiocesium somehow magically escaped into the environment. I partially wrote up these results to publish them in the External Cost of Energy thread, as part of an intended series of discussions of the chemistry, physics, and technology of each commonly found nuclear material. I will try to finish that writing, and establish that series. I will attempt to find the time to do this in part with new writing, and in part by posting links to other fun threads that crop up, hydra-like, around here.

[NickB79]

50. How many sea walls can you build with that money?

I'd imagine that it it wouldn't exactly be cheap to try to save coastal US cities from a 16-ft sealevel rise when the West Antarctic Ice Sheet lets go due to global warming in a few decades. Nor would it be cheap to deal with food shortages as climate change alters weather patterns over the Great Plains or brings droughts to the Western US. Like it or not, nuclear power is one of the only ways we CURRENTLY have to supply world power demands on a large scale. Hopefully they will be able to get solar, biomass, and wind power outputs increased substantially in our lifetimes, but until then we are stuck with nuclear. When you compare nuclear power and it's "waste problems" with the waste problems a few centuries of burning cheaper coal and oil has given us, nuclear power doesn't look nearly that problematic.

[jpak]

54. I disagree

Global PV production is currently >800 MW per year and growing exponentially (~27% per year over the last 5 years).

http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/2004/indicator12.htm

Global wind turbine capacity is currently >39,000 MW and growing at ~16% per year. Global wind turbine capacity is expected to exceed 80,000 MW by 2006.

http://catf.vizonscitec.com/Index/594C2DC8E580F05288256BB3007088C9!OpenDocument

http://www.windpower-monthly.com/WPM:WINDICATOR

You can go on-line this very minute and order a pre-engineered PV and/or wind turbine package that will provide a portion or all of your household electricity. You can do this today - not 10 or 20 years in the future.

In contrast to wind and PV, growth of global nuclear capacity is moribund and is expected to sharply decline over the next decade.

http://www.worldwatch.org/press/news/1999/03/04/

One notable country planning expansion of its nuclear power program, however, is Iran - a country ChimpCo threatening to attack because they dared to create a "peaceful" indigenous nuclear fuel cycle.

I can guarantee if the Good Mullahs were deploying PV arrays, wind farms and roof-top domestic hot water heaters instead of purloined uranium gas centrifuges and Russian-designed nuclear power reactors - no one would care.

And... let us not forget that the 9/11 commission reported that unidentified California nuclear power plants were on Al Qeda's original 9/11 target list, and that both of the hijacked airliners that impacted into the WTC overflew the Indian Point nuclear power plant unchallenged.

Is OBL planning to strike American windfarms or any one of the 200,000 roof-top PV arrays on American homes?

I seriously doubt it.

Furthermore, the at least one of latest generation of US designed nuclear reactors will be more vulnerable to 9/11-style attacks than existing plants. One of the cost-saving features of the AP-600 reactor is the lack of a robust containment structure employed by older plant designs. Granted this was designed before 9/11, but in a post-9/11 world vulnerability of any energy system to terrorist attacks is a serious consideration that cannot be ignored.

Unfortunately coal will be the fuel of choice for most US utilities for the foreseeable future. Environmental considerations aside, coal-fired power plants are simply much cheaper to build and operate than new nuclear capacity (~$1400 per kW for coal vs. $3-4000 per kW for new nuclear capacity).

Does this mean we have to put up with more particulate, CO2, NOx, SOx and Hg emissions in the future???

Not necessarily.

Integrated gasification combined-cycle (IGCC) coal fired power plants promise substantial reductions in coal use and CO2 emissions (thermal efficiencies for IGCC plants are ~40-45% compared to ~30% for older coal plants) and near zero emissions of particulates, SOx, NOx and Hg. Some designs claim to eliminate CO2 emissions as well. Several IGCC plants are now in operation or construction world-wide.

IGCC would not eliminate the environmental impact of coal mining and ash disposal but it would substantially reduce it.

A perfect world? Nope - but a more preferable world than a Fascist Nucular Amerika (IMHO).

[Name removed]

55. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Name removed]

56. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[jpak]

57. There are several coal-fired IGCC plants in operation world-wide

The first was the experimental Cool Water project in California (1984-1989) the next was the demonstration Pinon Pine project in Nevada.

Currently 2 commercial US IGCC plants are in operation.

The 262 MW Wabash River plant in Indiana.

The 250 MW Polk Power Station in Florida.

There are at least 2 in Europe...

The NUON plant in the Netherlands and the ELCOGAS plant in Spain.

And there are several larger plants in the works in the US and EU.

IGCC is not pie-in-the-sky - it is here today.

[NNadir]

67. Really? And they have lower emissions that nuclear power plants?

How about a link?

The power ratings you have given for these two plants cited have less than half the power output than a single nuclear power plant. How much money is available to build oh, let's say, 800 of these power plants to satisfy the morbid nonsense of our fear inspired scientifically illiterate anti-nuclear pro-coal crowd?

There are 30 nuclear power plants under construction in the world today and 45 additional ones in late stages of planning. This is almost 40,000 MW of new capacity. Between 200 and 300 new nuclear plants are being proposed.

Please show me how many of these carbon belching plants are being built. Enough to match the nuclear case? Where is the groundswell of support for these coal plants.

Please demonstrate how many strip mines will be sealed up and how much acid leachate will be contained and how many ash dumps will be closed by these operations and demonstrate the technology. On your way down to Antarctica to cry crocodile tears on melting glaciers, please pause to tell me where the carbon dioxide from these plants is going. After all, even if these plants, are 100% efficient, which no amount pretense and dancing can make them, the energy value of the very best high grade coals is only 30,000 kJ/kg. This means that even at 100% efficiency these plants are burning 8 tons of coal per second and they're very small plants, tiny in fact.

You can't tell me where the carbon dioxide is going?

I didn't think so.

By the way, after those nasty glaciers get out of the way, what do you think the strip mining potential of Antarctica will be?

[amandabeech]

71. Would you please list the valuable fission products or other

nuclear materials, besides the obviously recyclable plutonium and uranium? I am curious as to what other materials could be used and for what.

What about uranium mining tailings? Are there usable materials left behind?

[RafterMan]

72. You might find this interesting

http://nucleartimes.jrc.nl/Doc/Rodriguez.pdf

The specifics, particuarly the economics, of transmutation might fairly be considered a little sci-fi at this point, but please note Table 1 on page 2 as an indicator of the volume of various wastes. The rest of the paper gives some indication of what might be done with the remainder.

When you look at those percentages, keep in mind that the annual volume of wastes is currently under 2500 tons per year, so you can do the multiplication and get a sense of how much waste needs to be dealt with on an annual basis.

Here is a table listing the various radioactive elements produced in fission, with their suitability for transmutation: http://www.ieer.org/sdafiles/vol_8/8-3/transm.html . It's more comprehensive, including the more rare elements. Be sure to remember that the elements listed under "None" for transmutation potential do not occur in equal frequncies, though.

[NNadir]

73. I will be addressing all of this on the External Cost thread. Short list:

Actinides besides plutonium and uranium: Americium (already in wide use in smoke detectors), curium (as an energy source) and californium (already in wide use as a neutron source.) The technological demand for these isotopes, however, is not yet matched by their supply, but most surely they will be.

Technetium, ruthenium, palladium, rhodium, cesium (particularly isotope 135), Xenon (all isotopes), promethium-147, and strontium-90 would all constitute the most valuable materials from among the fission products. Many other constitutents of spent fuel could have important technological uses, but the elements listed are the most valuable in the short term, by which I mean the next 50 years. Strontium-90 has already been used in certain batteries incuding those in pacemakers. Promethium has been used to make lighted signs.

Japan already has a program to recover the precious metals ruthenium, rhodium and palladium from spent fuel. They expect revenues in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Note that the annual world supply of the extremely important technological metal rhodium is exceeded by the quantity found in so called "nuclear waste."

[NNadir]

17. Actually waste rains down on my home constantly.

It's called mercury. There is also cadmium, lead and, well, uranium in this mix. It all comes from midwestern coal fired plants. It's a constant problem and there is no solution.

This waste is very much in my back yard. I would gladly keep spent nuclear fuel rods in my back yard instead, since spent fuel rods have never hurt anywhere at any time anywhere in the United States, or, as far as I can tell, anywhere else. They are safe. The mercury from the coal plants is not, not that anyone cares about the dangerous problem. They are too busy thinking about the "problem" which is not dangerous at all.

Sometimes I seriously think that the waste raining down on my home is responsible for our increasing national stupidity. Mercury is a known neurotoxin.

[SHRED]

25. Nuclear power is a negative energy source

When you define energy units in terms of all the energy used to build, mine, and maintain a plant then they are negative energy producers.

A nuclear plant will never produce the energy equal to the energy needed to create, feed, and maintain them.

Why is this so hard for you nerds to figure out?

[NNadir]

26. References? Calculations on your own?

I'll bet you don't have any.

Why is it so hard to understand that repeating myths without data is not just dumb, but that it is also dangerous and immoral?

Nuclear energy, which is, by the way, the primary form of energy in the universe as a whole, saves lives.

Repeating a lie over and over does not make it true and the claim that nuclear energy is a net energy loser is a lie so absurd, so bereft of even a modicum of factual basis, it is astounding that anyone could repeat it.

I am no longer surprised though at the power of lies and misrepresentions, given the war in Iraq, and so much else. All I can say is what I say lots of cases when confronted by doublespeak: We deserve what we are going to get.

[Wells]

27. Screw you, nuclear power advocates !!

It is disturbing that the only way nuclear power advocates will ever change their position is the one which leaves them personally, permanently unconscious via nuclear accident.

I must object to the article's claim, "efficiently generating hydrogen would end our hydrocarbon addiction - dependence on gasoline and diesel for transport".

Hydrogen has too small an energy density to be an applicable fuel for use in heavier vehicles: trucks, trains, ships and airplanes.

And if you think General Motors fuel cell prototypes, the AUTOnomy, Hywire and Sequel are even remotely practical, then you're drinking the Kool-aid. Their computerized, radio signal-controlled steering, braking and accelleration are dangerously prone to breakdown. Their 'in-wheel' electric motors lack shock absorption and exposure to the elements are similarly prone to breakdown. These cars are the worst LEMONS General Motors has ever produced.

The Plug-in Hybrid outperforms Hydrogen in every way, especially their 'under-reported' major advancement in vehicle safety design, longevity, and positive affects on land-use and development patterns that reduce our dependency on long-distance motorized travel. Hybrid advancement cuts into corporate profits from financing, insuring, auto and fuel sales, maintenance, parking, etc. Hybrids battery packs can be recharged at home. Hydrogen must be generated at corporate outlets. So naturally, Herr Bushler abandoned Al Gore's Hybrid R&D for Hydrogen fuel cell nonsense hyped ad-nauseum.

I will agree with the article's use of the words 'addition' and 'dependency', but hydrogen and nuclear power are merely new forms of the same. Screw you, nuclear power advocates!

[NNadir]

28. References? Calculations on your own?

I didn't think so.

Dogma, dogma, dogma, dogma and then more dogma, now sprinked with some pixilated insults.

Is this supposed to pass for thinking?

I have long been on record here, BTW, as opposing hydrogen fuels for automobiles, which I regard as a completely silly idea.

I do however support nuclear power.

One of the hallmarks of anti-nuclear people is that they seem to have very scattered brains. They often talk about nuclear power generation in contexts that have little to do with it. The attachment of hydrogen fueled cars and nuclear power in this unreferenced and incoherent response is characteristic of that curious tendency.

Hydrogen is useful for what it has always been useful, as an important industrial intermediate for captive use. (Millions of tons of it are used for such purposes right now.) To the extent that hydrogen is available to effect hydrogenations of carbon dioxide and other hydrogenatable substances, it is useful for making fuels. This is quite different than stating whatever it is that you are talking about.

If you are waiting for a fatal nuclear accident to cause nuclear power advocates to lose their minds and become as stupid as anti-nuclear activists, you will certainly have to wait quite a long time. It's been almost twenty years since anyone anywhere was killed in a nuclear accident, and even this case was under rather unique and unusual circumstances.

Now, what will it take to get anti-nuclear activists to give a rat's ass about climate change or the four million deaths each year from air pollution? We certainly couldn't use some process involving sight or insight, since anti-nuclear religionists seem not to have any. I don't expect that the total collapse of the atmosphere would make any difference either, since that is already happening and not a single anti-nuclear twit seems to give a rat's ass.

What will it take? I actually don't care. I don't expect any of these people to come to their senses. What I will do, however, is point out the hollowness of their specious babbling.

[hunter]

29. Tokaimura criticality accident, Japan, September 30, 1999

You said, "It's been almost twenty years since anyone anywhere was killed in a nuclear accident," which isn't true, so you might want to qualify that statement a bit.

Meanwhile the coal power industry kills and maims thousands of people who don't even work in that industry, but nobody is really keeping score.

And I often wonder -- if somebody falls off a roof installing solar panels, is that a solar power accident? If they fall off a windmill, is that a wind power accident? No, it's an unremarkable everyday sort of accident.

The general population is afraid of nuclear power because it is bad magic. There is also good magic. The first guys who played with fire were certainly accused of using bad magic, and it probably took quite a long time before fire was accepted into everyday life as a good but dangerous magic.

This is also related to the "bee in the car" phenomena. That's when somebody wrecks their car because they are distracted by a bee. Our natural instincts tend to see a bee sting as a greater danger than a car wreck, even though this is only the case when a person is very allergic to bees.

The criticality accident in Japan involved bad magic so it is much more remarkable than other sorts of accidents, even very grim accidents like chemical plant or refinery explosions, which are much more common.

Take out the bad nuclear magic, and the Tokaimura accident is very much like any other industrial chemical plant accident.

The consequences of other non-nuclear chemical plant accidents have been much, much worse. (Think Bhopal for one extreme...)

A description of the Tokaimura accident is here:

http://www.jaif.or.jp/english/news/1999/1209-1.html

Criticality Accident in Nuclear Heartland of Japan

On September 30, around 10:35 a.m., the Japan's first nuclear criticality accident occurred at a fuel conversion facility in Tokai-mura, Ibaraki Prefecture. The accident occurred in the Conversion Test Facility of JCO Co., Ltd. Tokai Works when uranyl nitrate solution made by dissolving triuranium octaoxide (U₃O₈) in nitric acid was being poured into a precipitation tank.

Usually, JCO Co., Ltd. Tokai Works was doing a job to convert enriched uranium hexafluoride (UF₆) into uranium dioxide (UO₂) powder and deliver it to fuel fabrication companies, as a part of fuel manufacturing processes for nuclear power plants of boiling water reactors (BWRs).

The Conversion Test Facility where the accident occurred is not a fuel conversion facility for ordinary nuclear power plants, and was handling uranium of higher enrichment (up to 20% permitted) as compared with nuclear fuel for power plants (3 to 5% enrichment). The highly enriched fuel being processed was for experimental fast reactor Joyo of Japan Nuclear Cycle Development Institute, and its enrichment was 18.8%

[NNadir]

36. You are right. I am wrong. There have been no fatal reactor accidents

involving radiation however in over twenty years, which would have been a better way of stating the loss of life costs of nuclear energy. Some nuclear power plant workers, also in Japan, were recently killed by a steam explosion in a turbine feed line, but this sort of accident can occur in any kind of power plant, nuclear or otherwise. (We heard about it though because it was in a nuclear plant and not in a coal or gas plant.)

I have been aware of this criticality accident, and I'm sure I've referred to it on this board, if not recently. I have also excluded Uranium mining accidents in my statement, and though I am not immediately aware of any such fatal accidents, I'm sure there have been some.

This type of accident would be comparable to a fatal refinery fire as opposed to an explosion resulting from gasoline leaking from a car.

The Tokaimura accident, as your link makes clear, resulted from an attempt to create a rather exotic non-standard fuel, specifically a breeder fuel. I'm sure that as a result of this accident, better training and superior procedures will be implemented for unusual programs.

Criticality accidents have historically been an important type of accident in nuclear weapons manufacture and weapons assemblers have been killed as a result. One of the best means of preventing nuclear proliferation is to make such an accident more likely rather than less likely. In order to make nuclear criticality accidents more likely, one requires a nuclear plant.

I need to make this clear because I am often misinterpreted on this score: I do not claim that nuclear energy is harmless. I merely state repeatedly that it is safer than any of its alternatives.

[Wells]

30. Blah blah blah

Look here NNadir, Your own egocentric advocacy for nukular power prevents you from comprehending my point. The article led with the author's contention that nuclear power would reduce dependence upon petroleum. I countered that claim by pointing out hydrogen's low energy density prevents its use for heavier vehicles, and followed with other impracticalities hydrogen presents for smaller vehicles. I could add more shortcomings and drawbacks of hydrogen, but you're not interested. Increasing nuclear energy will not solve most problems related to energy/transportation dependency.

Waste your time touting nukular power. Bush gives you a gleaming smirk for your effort. But, I will not put up with your hydrogenatable atmospheric blah blah blah.

[NickB79]

32. Nuclear power can produce more than hydrogen

Numerous synthetic fuels can be produced harnessing the energy of nuclear power, as I'm sure NNadir can more accurately describe to you. And did you miss where NNadir STATED that he's against hydrogen power for fueling vehicles?

[NNadir]

37. I'm not impressed.

Your comments are without merit, but you are more or less correct in one sense when you state that I am not interested in hearing them.

You have clearly never heard, for instance, of DME, in spite of the fact that many hundreds of thousands of pages and papers have been written on the subject.

Here is one example: Energy & Fuels 2003, 17, 836-841, from the special issue of that journal (just chock full of hydrogenations BTW) called "High Quality Transportation Fuels." The article to which I refer, written by Japanese Chemists, is entitled "Optimization of the Temperature Profile of a Temperature Gradient Reactor for DME Synthesis Using a Simple Genetic Algorithm Assisted by a Neural Network."


The only way to possibly respond as you have done to the nuclear option is to be ignorant of it. If you are happy with this state of affairs, I certainly have little reason to interfere. Blah, blah, blah away; I really don't give a rat's ass what you think.

[ChemEng]

38. Listen up, goober....

Once you have produced power, you can make whatever you want. Think power converted to hydrogen which is then used to make synthetic gasoline from renewable carbonaceous material. I think in the short run however, just replacing coal-fired power plants would be a good beginning. Save the coal for chemicals...

[Dogmudgeon]

41. Wells, you're shadow boxing

What NNadir has been proposing and what you're miffed about are two entirely different things.

And we've been all over the hydrogen thing like flies on a cow patty.

Maybe you need a time-out. Relax, smell the roses, and read some of NNadir's postings. They're enlightening, they're entertaining, and they're a lot more educational than reading all the "kill the pedophiles" posts.

Save the ranting for when you have no heat in the house and FEMA won't give you any extra food ration coupons even though you have a child seriously ill with the flu and an elderly person dying from bacterial dysentary.

--p!

[NNadir]

42. Thanx for the kind words. N/T.

[ChemEng]

49. kick! n/t