An example of why we're all gonna die- meanwhile back in Fukushima by SignyM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Pizmo, even if we could make reactors safe, for the life of me I cannot see how to make radioactive waste safe. We can cask it and watch it for maybe a century of two... but how good have we proven to be at being vigilant? Maybe we should just mix it in synthetic opal and pump it back down the uranium mines where it came from? Sink it in the Marianas Trench? Right now, at San Onofre, there are 1000 TONS of spent fuel. What do we do with THAT??? I dunno.

There are various proposed technologies such as thorium reactors, and nuclear fusion (should we ever make it work) which produces nothing more than helium as an end-product. But this is beyond my ability to envision. I KNOW there are better visionaries out there than me... imagination was never my strong point.

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Monday, February 20, 2012 7:54 AM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

"... is there no chance" for safe nuclear power?

I realize this was directed at SignyM - but my answer is no. Aside from the waste, some of which lasts for eons (and can you guarantee safe eons?) nuclear power is implacable, and there is no room for error. Our handling of nuclear power HAS to be 100% safe, 100% of the time. If it isn't, then disaster is just a matter of time. As we have already seen. And how many nuclear accidents do you want the planet to accumulate?

I think there is a basic imbalance between nuclear power and humanity. Nuclear power is long term, and 100% capable of creating a problem at any time. Humans are short-term, pleasure driven, liable to cut corners on things that seem unlikely or look away even if just for a little bit. The expectation that humans WON'T do that - ever - when dealing with nuclear power is unrealistic.

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Monday, February 20, 2012 8:04 AM

Freedom is Important because People are Important

Quote:
The stated goals for a commercial fusion power station design are that the amount of radioactive waste produced be hundreds of times less than that of a fission reactor, that it produces no long-lived radioactive waste, and that it is impossible for any fusion reactor to undergo a large-scale runaway chain reaction. This is because direct contact with the walls of the reactor would contaminate the plasma, cooling it down immediately and stopping the fusion process. Besides which, the amount of fuel planned to be contained in a fusion reactor chamber (one half gram of deuterium/tritium fuel[12]) is only enough to sustain the reaction for an hour at maximum,[39] whereas a fission reactor usually contains several years' worth of fuel.[40] In case of accident (or intentional act of terrorism) a fusion reactor releases far less radioactive pollution than an ordinary fission nuclear plant. Proponents note that large-scale fusion power — if it works — will be able to produce reliable electricity on demand and with virtually zero pollution (no gaseous CO2 / SO2 / NOx by-products are produced).

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER

Hello,

Probably in my lifetime, if I don't succumb to violence or disease before I turn 63. Fusion power is very promising, but it is a bleeding-edge technology, and not a solution for the next twenty years. Possibly we will have found another solution by the time fusion becomes commercially viable. Possibly fusion will be a technology not for Earth, but for the Stars.

--Anthony

_______________________________________________

"In every war, the state enacts a tax of freedom upon the citizenry. The unspoken promise is that the tax shall be revoked at war's end. Endless war holds no such promise. Hence, Eternal War is Eternal Slavery." --Admiral Robert J. Henner

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Monday, February 20, 2012 9:20 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

I guess maybe the question is: WHY would we want nuclear power in the first place? It has been shown to be neither profitable (nuclear power plants would not make a profit were it not for Federal insurance, loans and subsidies) nor cheap (if one counts the cost of contamination from mining, accidents and waste disposal). The one thing it has going for it is that its carbon footprint is less than coal and oil... but usually, the people who are pushing nuclear power are also climate-shift deniers so ... what's their point anyway? Not having much imagination, I have thought myself into a dead-end (for humans, anyway).

IMHO the answer is that THE answer is not in understanding and controlling new technologies but in understanding and controlling ourselves. Again, something we've been about as successful at as nuclear power. That is where my thinking reaches a wall.

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Monday, February 20, 2012 9:20 AM

MAL4PREZ

Quote:
Originally posted by AnthonyT:

Probably in my lifetime, if I don't succumb to violence or disease before I turn 63. Fusion power is very promising, but it is a bleeding-edge technology, and not a solution for the next twenty years. Possibly we will have found another solution by the time fusion becomes commercially viable. Possibly fusion will be a technology not for Earth, but for the Stars.

--Anthony

A colleague of mine had his career in nuclear physics and spent quite a lot of time dealing with govt funding issues, deciding what is feasible. He doesn't have many kind words to say about fusion. It's sexy, it would be nice if it worked, but, according to him, it's a no-go from the start.

I can't recall his exact argument, but there's a few orders of magnitude between what's necessary and what can be actually achieved in some aspect of the design. I'll have to ask him next chance I get.

However, I'm less into giving up than he is. Lots of impossible things become possible when you keep at it long enough. Which is my point: the best thing we can do with the energy crisis is to get young people to study science and engineering. We need inventors.

Well, and maybe we could use some different priorities behind our decisions. We have the gawdawful unstable reactors rather than something like thorium reactors (where if you turn off the power they'd actually *stop reacting* - whoa, what an idea!) because we needed to make bombs.

Just another layer to the horror. The basic reason Fukishima and Chernobyl and TMI happened was because the military men wanted to make bombs, and they got it funded by calling it an energy source.

-----------------------------------------------
hmm-burble-blah, blah-blah-blah, take a left

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Monday, February 20, 2012 10:36 AM

Before I read these posts on the danger of nuclear power, pollution, extinctions & climate change were at the
top of my list. I've never considered overpopulation ... not since Soylent Green.

Political: I have no illusion that I am living in a democracy. TPTB have no concern for the commoner, except to use him.
When technology reaches the point that they no long need serfs, such will be "phased out."

Quote Oonjerah: "Good ideas are needed."

I just received a wonderful idea, one that many have been doing & preaching for decades: Get OFF the grid!
Make your own power and make it clean.
Continue to educate anyone who will listen.

Now I know what my lame, nearly blank, web site is for.

"All I suggest is a man hears what he wants to hear, and disregards the rest" ~Paul Simon

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Monday, February 20, 2012 11:00 AM

CAVETROLL

The design of the Hiroshima bomb was very practical. So practical in fact, that a test was not needed. They needed to test the Fat Man bomb that was used on Nagasaki because they weren't sure it would work.

Once the initiating charge in a Little Boy (gun type) bomb fires it will cause a critical mass as long as there are a sufficient amount of sub critical isotopes in the projectile and the target. It is a done deal. In a Fat Man (implosion type) bomb many different explosive segments have to detonate at the same time in order to get the right tamping to create a critical mass.

Which is the only measure of success when you are talking about bombs. How hard is it to generate an explosion? Bombs are inherently dangerous. They wouldn't be much use if the weren't.

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Monday, February 20, 2012 11:09 AM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

"A possible mechanism for the instability of U in radiation is sought in the deformations accompanying a thermal spike in solid metal. On the basis of this mechanism, the behavior of U under irradiation is predicted." 1952

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Monday, February 20, 2012 11:15 AM

RIONAEIRE

Beir bua agus beannacht

I'm done with nuclear. Before this whole thing I was sort of neutral, as in yeah it seems creepy and icky but maybe we can handle it. I no longer think we can handle it.

"A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya

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Monday, February 20, 2012 11:23 AM

GEEZER

Keep the Shiny side up

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Yes GEEZER, the field is complex. I'm glad that you're reading research material. Please continue to read it. At some point, I will tell you what I have read.

I've been reading.

It appears that thyroid problems related to radiation don't appear in less than 5 years, and sometimes not for 30.

http://www.thyca.org/refbk_kids.htm

Per the cite above, "Doses as small as 50 rads (1 rad = 1 cGy or 100 rad = 1 Gy) may cause enough damage to increase the risk of thyroid nodules and thyroid cancer, with the greatest risk occurring in patients who have received radiation doses of 200 to 2,000 cGy (or rads) to the head and neck before age 10."

The estimated one-year exposure around the reactors runs from less than 100 millirem (mrem) to over 2000 mrem.

http://www.slideshare.net/energy/radiation-monitoring-data-from-fukush
ima-area-04182011

So in one year of exposure in the most contaminated zones, you'd get a bit over 2 rem, which is equivilent to 2 rad. so you're well below the 50 rad threshold quoted above. And that assumes you're in the highest radiation zone for an entire year, which isn't the case.

So the link between Fukushima and thyroid nodules in the local children seems pretty thin.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

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Monday, February 20, 2012 11:31 AM

Freedom is Important because People are Important

Quote:
WHY would we want nuclear power in the first place?

Hello,

You can have as much power as you want, wherever you want, for as long as you want, without relying on anything going on outside the reactor for years at a time. And it's cleaner than coal or oil. That's the allure of Fission.

The downside, obviously, is what happens when everything goes horribly wrong. I think Fukushima is the worst things have ever gone, with Chernobyl in 2nd place.

Fusion would have a similar upside without the downside. But we are a generation away from being ready to do it.

Here is an interesting article about solar vs nuclear power. Of course, it doesn't delve heavily into the primary concern with solar power, which is energy storage- a more challenging problem than capturing the energy to begin with.

http://wtgblog.com/nuclear-vs-solar-can-renewable-energy-ever-be-cost-
effective-to-compete/

--Anthony

_______________________________________________

"In every war, the state enacts a tax of freedom upon the citizenry. The unspoken promise is that the tax shall be revoked at war's end. Endless war holds no such promise. Hence, Eternal War is Eternal Slavery." --Admiral Robert J. Henner

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Monday, February 20, 2012 11:52 AM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

I ran across an article a few weeks ago where they indicated they had discovered a mathematical formula that calculated how to stabilize any instabilities in fusion reactors, to keep the fuel from accidentally touching the walls and killing the reaction. But drat, I can't find the reference. In any case, somebody is working on it.

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Monday, February 20, 2012 12:04 PM

Freedom is Important because People are Important

Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
I ran across an article a few weeks ago where they indicated they had discovered a mathematical formula that calculated how to stabilize any instabilities in fusion reactors, to keep the fuel from accidentally touching the walls and killing the reaction. But drat, I can't find the reference. In any case, somebody is working on it.

Hello,

I remember that the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel contained the single most complementary thing God ever said about mankind... though it was said in the context of us doing something wrong. I've always remembered it. I can't recall God ever saying anything about humans that was as complementary as that. In fact, I'm not entirely sure he ever said anything complementary about humans since. I'll have to check.

Anyhow, here's what he/she/it said: "They are one people and have one language, and nothing will be withholden from them which they purpose to do."

Which is like when my Dad says, "Son, you can do anything you put your mind to" only on the scale of the ultimate father.

ETA: Perhaps more accurately, "Egads! My Son can do anything he puts his mind to! Must intervene!"

--Anthony

_______________________________________________

"In every war, the state enacts a tax of freedom upon the citizenry. The unspoken promise is that the tax shall be revoked at war's end. Endless war holds no such promise. Hence, Eternal War is Eternal Slavery." --Admiral Robert J. Henner

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Monday, February 20, 2012 3:22 PM

FREMDFIRMA

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
How does one stop an runaway train? I suspect the drive towards nuclear power is linked to nuclear weapons. You can't make a practical bomb out of uranium, you need plutonium. And plutonium doesn't come from nature, it is only made in nuclear reactors. So India, China, the USA, Britain, and France ... all possessing nuclear weapons... seem to be committed to nuclear power. Obama has very quietly increased funding to Los Alamos, not as nuclear weapons lab but as a warhead production facility. Yep, he wants to make more bombs.

Ayep, that's pretty much it, and also some of the original waste products and the need to dispose of em was also a major factor in water flouridation don't forget - but this is why TPTB have no interest in safer, cleaner reactor types which don't make bombs.

My iron in this is actually religious in nature, but practical as well, one dovetails with the other mosta the time in my beliefs - but I have a strong aversion to the notion of using the fire we stole from the gods as a power source when we can't really understand or properly control it, and I have MASSIVE issues with using it as a weapon on each other.

As for alt-energy, DT said it best, it's raining soup and we're standing out there with forks - ain't a matter of the tech, it's a matter of a different type and style of thinking that our hidebound establishment doesn't seem capable of.

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.

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Monday, February 20, 2012 3:58 PM

RIONAEIRE

Beir bua agus beannacht

Lets hope someone invents spoons soon.

"A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya

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Sunday, May 20, 2012 8:12 PM

I am bumping this thread for a couple of reasons.

I am still very vague on the processes of nuclear power.
How to keep it controlled; how to lose control, and what happens then.

I thought I'd read thru this again and link it to friends & family.

. . . . .The worst and most frequent consequence of paranoia is that it's self-fulfilling.

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Monday, May 21, 2012 6:05 AM

Freedom is Important because People are Important

Hello,

The simplest way I can put the issue of nuclear reactors is this:

One type of reactor is designed so that it is inherently on and unsafe, and something must happen to shut it off/make it safe. If the thing that shuts it off/makes it safe breaks, then you have a catastrophe.

The second type of reactor is designed so that it is inherently off and safe, and something must happen to turn it on/make it unsafe. If the reactor breaks, it shuts off and goes safe.

For reasons that can only be the result of economy (because nobody would do it otherwise) people seem to enjoy building the first type of reactor, and they seem to enjoy situating it on uncertain terrain.

People often enjoy discussing nuclear power as a spark of the Gods which we are incapable of controlling. In fact, I feel that nuclear power is the victim of human greed and laziness- which means that humans are the victim of human greed and laziness. We know very well how to build safer reactors. It's simply that we do not do so.

It's too much trouble and too expensive.

So, I must concede that perhaps it is best to invest in energy types that accommodate our nature.

--Anthony

Note to Self:
Raptor - women who want to control their reproductive processes are sluts.
Wulf - Niki is a stupid fucking bitch who should hurry up and die.
Never forget what these men are.
“The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.” -Thomas Szasz

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Monday, May 21, 2012 6:07 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
I am still very vague on the processes of nuclear power.
How to keep it controlled; how to lose control, and what happens then.

OOJERAH

I think you got the idea that a nuclear power plant is just a giant water-boiler.
Nuclear fission in a reactor vessel creates heat
The heat boils water
Steam is taken off the top and turns a turbine
(The turbine turns a dynamo which creates electricity)
Steam is re-condensed, cooled and returned back to the nuclear fission area (the reactor vessel)

There are differences in design but ALL nuclear reactors follow this scheme,
whether they use uranium, plutonium, or thorium (experimental)
whether they are graphite-moderated (like Chernobyl) or boiling water (like Fukushima) or pressurized water (like the French reactors)

So hang on to the general idea of a water-boiler, and you will have gotten 90% of what goes on at the engineering -level. A giant tea-kettle.

-------------

As to what happens at the fission-level, it's complicated even for me, and I'm a chemist. Since most reactors use uranium, I'll stick with that.

Uranium tends to break down (decay) all by itself. When it does, it splits into smaller fragments and releases neutrons and the resulting fragments are hot.

If another uranium atom happens to be nearby and absorbs that neutron, it becomes a little too heavy for stability and decomposes too, releasing more neutrons and the resulting fragments are hot.

I think you can see that this could get out of hand rather quickly if one uranium atom causes more than one uranium atom to decompose. (Example: One begets two which begets four which begets eight. This is an example of "positive feedback").

What happens EXACTLY depends quite literally on how physically close the uranium atoms are next to each other, how many there are, and whether anything is between them to absorb neutrons. If the uranium is pure and it's packed tightly and there is nothing between them, it goes off like a bomb. In fact, that's how they make uranium fission bombs.

If the uranium is far apart, there is a lot of stuff in-between the atoms, each uranium atom decays on its own timetable.

But for nuclear reactors, they like to keep the uranium ticking along at a rate where one uranium atom prompts just one more to decay. In other words, its balanced on a knife-edge. It COULD accelerate into runaway fission. That's why its so important to keep the configuration correct: the fuel rods in place, the moderators (control rods) between them. Once the fuel rods break and the fuel pellets fall to the bottom in one nice happy close pile, all hell breaks lose.

Kinda stupid to built it that way, huh?

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Monday, May 21, 2012 9:55 AM

Years ago, shortly after WWII, physicists and utilities engineers got together. They
had a big conference on alternative power plants, you know, to get past building a
huge dam wherever more power was needed. They had a number of good ideas and
they also kicked around nuclear power. Like basic designs, how to make them danger-
ous or a little bit safer. Toward the end of the conference, they all had a good laugh
about nuclear power, saying, "No one would be this stupid!"

When the engineers got back to their dam sites, they repeated the stuff about nuclear
power so their conies could have a good laugh too. But their bosses overheard this,
asked for copies of their notes, and presented plans for nuclear power to their bosses.
The big bosses decided this was a great idea, small power plants that could be built
anywhere and had the added benefit of producing plutonium. The word went out: "Let's
DO it!"

And here were are!

(I just made that up.)

. . . . .The worst and most frequent consequence of paranoia is that it's self-fulfilling.

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Thursday, May 24, 2012 8:43 AM

Japan utility ups estimate of radiation released in Fukushima disaster =>
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/05/24/world/asia/japan-nuclear-disaster/

Tokyo (CNN) Japan's largest utility said Thursday that more radiation than previously
thought was released into the atmosphere in March 2011, in the days after the nuclear
disaster that followed an earthquake and tsunami.

TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Co.) estimates about 900,000 terabecquerels of radioactive
materials were released between March 12 and March 31, according to Japan's Kyodo news
agency.

This is more than the estimates issued by the Nuclear Safety Commission of Japan or the
government's nuclear safety agency, the news agency said . . .

. . .
=========================
I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. ~Charles R Swindoll

If I have to react to others all the time, then they own my mind more than I do.
If I let others tell me how to feel, I lose my ability to choose happiness.
If I let others tell me who I am, I've vacated self-definition.
Finally, I realized how foolish I was to give others such

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Thursday, May 24, 2012 7:33 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Eisenhower launched an 'Atoms for Peace' program to spread nuclear technology around the globe.

If that has whetted your appetite, the entire speech is found here: http://www.atomicarchive.com/Docs/Deterrence/Atomsforpeace.shtml

But the gist of the proposal is this:

It is not enough to take this weapon out of the hands of the soldiers. It must be put into the hands of those who will know how to strip its military casing and adapt it to the arts of peace.

The United States knows that if the fearful trend of atomic military build up can be reversed, this greatest of destructive forces can be developed into a great boon, for the benefit of all mankind.

The United States knows that peaceful power from atomic energy is no dream of the future. That capability, already proved, is here--now--today. Who can doubt, if the entire body of the world's scientists and engineers had adequate amounts of fissionable material with which to test and develop their ideas, that this capability would rapidly be transformed into universal, efficient, and economic usage.

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Thursday, May 24, 2012 8:14 PM

Ike was an idealist, I think, a general, not a scientist.

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Thursday, May 24, 2012 9:20 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Well, there are all sorts of interpretations as to what he was trying to accomplish, from the naive to the Machiavellian. And I imagine there are all sorts of reasons why various countries thought it was a good idea at the time.

What is true though is that you can't have a practical atom bomb without plutonium, and you can't have plutonium without nuclear reactors. So countries with nuclear ambitions MUST at the very least have reactors.

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

Below is a list of countries with nuclear power and the percent of power that comes from nuclear power plants.

Argentina 5.0%
Armenia 33.2%
Belgium 54.0%
Brazil 3.2%
Bulgaria 32.6%
Canada 15.3%
China* 1.9%
Czech Republic 33.0%
Finland 31.6%
France* 77.1%
Germany 17.8%
Hungary 43.3%
India* 3.7%
Iran <0.1%
Japan 18.1%
South Korea (ROK) 34.6%
Mexico 3.6%
Netherlands 3.6%
Pakistan* 3.8%
Romania 19.0%
Russia* 17.6%
Slovakia 54.0%
Slovenia 41.7%
South Africa 5.2%
Spain 19.5%
Sweden 39.6%
Switzerland 40.9%
Taiwan 20.7%
Ukraine 47.2%
United Kingdom* 15.7%
United States* 19.3%

Israel* appears to have (a) nuclear reactor(s) solely for the purpose of having nuclear weapons. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_Israel
North Korea*’s one fully functional reactor is only intermittently operated for power. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea_and_weapons_of_mass_destructi
on

Now France* has probably the most complete nuclear material management program and even then they are stuck with burying tons of high-level radioactive waste.

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

And here is the list of countries in the nuclear club:

United States
Russia
United Kingdom
France
China
India
Pakistan
North Korea
Israel

ANYWHO, nuclear power AND nuclear weapons are now both widespread technologies, and Eisenhower had a lot to do with giving them a good running start.

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Friday, May 25, 2012 2:51 AM