Good Article on Nuclear Power and Middle Eastern Oil

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by The Mad Viking
Just because the proponents of the traditional power generation industry keep saying this, does not make it true. And you should not repeat their lies.

No, what makes it true is the fact that none of those can be deployed universally and in sufficient quantity to power the entire world.

[Dinner]

Viking, are you aware that in the US power companies are required to cover the cost of their spent fuel rods? Most of them are stored on site because of that reason.

[Dauphin]

A naive answer as to what to do with waste is to put it back in the mine from whence it came. Its not like its going to be more radioactive after it's been used!

If only things were that simple.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

esp, New Zeland, couldn't you over there find some nice remote islands to ruin with wind turbines, and be done with it ... IMO nuclear has too many hidden long term costs as well. While wind/solar will not be able to cure the energy needs for the whole world any time soon a relatively small country on a good position like NZ should be able to get away with the remainer of the energy needs supplied by clean sources.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Not only that, if you come up with a much better solution in the process you might be able to make million/billions out of it... it is for small and capable countries like NZ to pick up the tab for developin clean stuff.... you have the most to benefit, the giant will never be able to subdue their energy lobbies to invest a lot into green stuff. The breakthrough will most likely have to happen somewhere else.

[Seeker]

It's scary to think this, but the best way we have of dealing with toxins like radioactive waste is not concentration, that's the worst thing you can do.

It's DILUTION.

Everyday, a large amount of tritium (tonnes) falls to earth (in rain) but we aren't affected because it is dilute.

It sounds crazy, but the best thing to do with radioactive waste is to mix and dilute it (ppb level), make an ultrafine aerosol, and then spray it from high altitude, over as wide an area as possible.

No storage problem, no unrealistic expensive 'ocean subduction zone', 'space launch' fantasies.

People who fear nuclear waste are the reason why it is problem, they cause policies which concentrate it instead of sensibly diluting it.

Concentration= No
Dilution= Yes

[Dis]

you just go propose that idea in a public forum and see the response.

[Mr. Harley]

Any container with Nuclear Waste is going to deteriorate/leak after enough time. The radiation itself causes it to steadily weaken and/or become radioactive itself. Plus Yucca Mountain is not seismically stable, as pointed out by a previous poster, and it sits over a deep but fairly good-sized aquifier. Dumb a** idea.

There are two techniques for disposing of nuclear waste that are intelligent, IMHO. One is burying it under the pre-Cambrian shield up in Northern Canada - if it's been stable for over 500 million years, that's good enough for me. Plus the Native People's up there understand the issue, and would like the money. It has the added advantage that, as technology improves, the waste could be removed and reprocessed. But American contractors won't get rich off of it, and God Forbid the Canadians knuckle under to Yankee imperialism.

The other technique, which I at first was opposed to due to Green sensationalism, is vitrified Oceanic dumping aka the French. It turns out that as they vitrify it - essentially combine it with other materials to make a glass type material - they shape it into essentially a steamlined spike. Then you dump it into a subduction zone, several miles down, where it pentrates several hundred feat into the ooze.

Now understand. Your green alarmists scream we don't KNOW what kind of activity goes on in that ooze. Well, drive through some mountains and look at the shale deposits. Very damn little. Plus, instead of fossilizing they are going to be sucked into the mantle in a few tens of thousands of years. The disadvantage to that is that we may very well be disposing of some very valuble resources, also noted by Oerdin.

I saw and article in The Smithsonian back in the 70's. You have to despoil something like 1/3 of an acre (of desert, by the way, in the US all the mines are in the arid west) versus 200 plus acres for the same coal fired plant. At the time they didn't know about all the mercury coal plants were putting into the environment, we didn't discover that until the big forest fires out west starting in the 1980's where they discovered the fires were putting a sh*tload of mercury into then environment. It seems several decades of mercury, accumlated from western coal plants, had built up in the forest detrius, and when it all burned at once we got to see just how nasty coal is. BTW, the Bush administration is blocking forcing power companies from installing mercury scrubbers for over a decade. A hidden cost easily as bad as nukes.

Windpower is rough on migratory birds. It turns out that over tens of thousands of years the birds have learned to follow favorable winds, etc. Which are oftent the best places for the turbines, which can kill hundreads of birds apiece. And I have absolutely NO idea what our one poster was smoking, but hydropower from an environmental standpoint is utterly devastating.

Essentially the entire ecosystem of the river is f*cked. It increases diseases (lakes are essentially stagnant water) especially in the tropics, yields fewer fish, has less biodiversity, the list goes on. Environmentally I would prefer a modern coal fired plant - without the Mountaintop mining where the cut the top of the mountain off and dump it in the adjoining valley, uttlerly destroying forever the stream environments there - to a hydroelectric damn. If people would simply look at the facts - and require industry to build fail-safe plants which can be done (as per the previous poster mentioning pebble-bed reactors) - nuclear power is in the short term the best overall solution.

[Kuciwalker]

The other technique, which I at first was opposed to due to Green sensationalism, is vitrified Oceanic dumping aka the French. It turns out that as they vitrify it - essentially combine it with other materials to make a glass type material - they shape it into essentially a steamlined spike. Then you dump it into a subduction zone, several miles down, where it pentrates several hundred feat into the ooze.

Then you can't take the waste and reprocess it when we can efficiently extract the ~90% of usable nuclear fuel that's left in it.

edit: ah, I see you address that

Frankly, I say again just don't dispose of it. Keep it in a warehouse. If they leak fix them.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Originally posted by Dis


you just go propose that idea in a public forum and see the response.

Yes I'd dilute it all over his house and wait 50 years to see the effects...

[RGBVideo]

Frankly, I say again just don't dispose of it. Keep it in a warehouse. If they leak fix them.

Eventually, you've added so much lead to the many-times-detoriated waste container that you've used more energy in patching the container than you've gained from the original waste...

One is burying it under the pre-Cambrian shield up in Northern Canada

[Mr. Harley]

Kuci - the stuff that leaks is NASTY. That's why the Pre-Cambrian shield repository is the best solution, which of course nobody in power wants.

[Seeker]

There are ALREADY radioactive isotopes in dilute form falling on my house. Yours too. Everytime it rains.

Ever drink a glass of wine or eat a bannana?

OMFG radiation sickness!!! Those have 'high' (in ppb terms) amounts of radioactive isotopes too!!!! Call Greenpeace!

We don't need to wait 50 years to see the results of exposure to dilute amounts of radioactive isotopes, the results are all around us.

The glass-ball idea is neat....but it is still concentration. If, for whatever reason, a 'glass ball' breaks than you have a dangerous spill because of it's high concentration.

The same with just keeping it in warehouses. Accidents happen, bombs explode, trains derail, hurricanes blow, etc, 'x' can happen and you still haven't dealt with the basic, boneheaded issue: You've taken a substance that is dangerous, and concentrated it all in one spot to make it as dangerous to humans as possible. WHY?

[Mr. Harley]

Seeker - Google it and read about the idea of burying it in a repository in the Pre-Cambrian shield. That deals with all your issues, as does the vitrified subduction zone disposal - which in the final analysis dilutes it in the mantle.

[Seeker]

True, but I was thinking of the cost issue.

I'd trust the aboveground shield more, because wouldn't the trench solution depend on co-ordinating personel, geological and nautical knowedge, in an attempt to hit a 'target'? It sounds risky to me for a really large scale industrial process which is why I initially dismissed it.