Nuclear Revival Rekindles Waste Concerns
January 19, 2008 By ANGELA CHARLTON, Associated Press Writer
The pool storage area where spent nuclear fuel tanks are unloaded in baskets, and placed under 4 meters of water to lower their temperature, as part of the treatment of nuclear waste, is seen at the Areva Nuclear Plant of La Hague, near Cherbourg, western France, Tuesday, Dec. 18, 2007. Silent and sealed in steel cylinders thrust underground, 15 years worth of high-level nuclear waste from the world\'s most nuclear-energized nation lie in wait beneath a jutting tip of Normandy. (AP Photo/Francois Mori)
(AP) -- Thousands of canisters of highly radioactive waste from the world's most nuclear-energized nation lie, silent and deadly, beneath this jutting tip of Normandy. Above ground, cows graze and Atlantic waves crash into heather-covered hills.
Content from The Associated Press expires 15 days after original publication date. For more information about The Associated Press, please visit www.ap.org .
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Next gag: political systems last half a century in Europe as a mean value. European states also destroy themselves in wars twice a century. Who will grasp the waste, which is such a fantastic material for dirty bombs?
Besides waste...
Nuclear powerplants are said to withstand the impact of an airliner. But not of a warplane. Pity, since warplanes do unexpected things from time to time.
India, Pakistan, North Korea, South Africa, Argentina, Brazil built nuclear bombs (or had begun to) using waste from nuclear powerplants bought overseas. Still willing to export nuclear powerplants? Libya, Algeria, and most Gulf states want to buy.
Safety: At France's Blayais, just plain luck avoided the core to melt as nearly all cooling pumps were flooded by the river. Could have been an opportunity to know if the shell really contains the explosion of the molten core.
Availability: Uranium is far less abundant than oil (comparing energy, not mass). Prices have already skyrocketed, leading to wars in ore extracting countries. And yes, more ores have been seeked, but few found.
CO2: nuclear electricity is not the sole alternative to coal an oil! And what about the safety record of geothermy, for instance? Better than Chernobyl in any aspect.
Dr. R.W. Bussard has built a number of prototype reactors, the last one dubbed the WB-6. It was this sixth prototype that produced very positive results, with usion rate 100 000 times higher than any previous attempts to date. The prototype produced a short-cicuit due to a less-than-perfect construction(not enough funds), and it melted away before the technology could be demonstrated in front of a peer review panel.
A seventh prototype(WB-7) has been built and is now in the fine-tuning phase. By may 2008 we will have peer reviewed POSITIVE results, as we already had a working prototype.
Note that the following thread ws created in Jun 2007, and there is no mention of the project having resumed, as production picked up at end of 2007.
http://tinyurl.com/3cgwwk
But here is another forum that states recent developments in the project.
http://tinyurl.com/3xyxvg
You can find out everything about polywell IEC fusion(Bussard reactor) here
http://talk-polywell.org
I wonder what the protester s's solutions are? What are they REALLY trying to do, by preventing deep repositories while allowing just-under-the surface (temp?) storage to go on?
On a cynical moment, I would say the protesters are financed by callous nuclear operators and their gov insiders and backers, orchestrated the whole thing to show the public that they are trying to do something, while the whole filthy and dangerous nuclear waste goes on. It's a lot cheaper than rigorous engineering solutions!
Same goes for Greenpeace's protest of whales hunting. Financed by the whalers themselves. Dutifully protests are made each year, while thousand whales end up dead meat like clock work.
And that's if you actually wanted to dispose of the "waste". For now we should hang onto it; it's valuable fuel for breeder reactors if we go that route(we haven't so far, because new fuel is still ridiculously cheap).
The death toll due to coal is around a million per year; that puts nuclear energy somewhere around ~100 times safer than coal. If you look at western Europe or the US in isolation that margin is much higher still. Why are the green morons making such much noise regarding nuclear power; shouldn't they be it's biggest supporters?
OK, I'll bite. There's no cause for your wild optimism. It's a viable area of research, nothing more.
The rate of the reaction needs to be scaled up by about a billion times or so for ignition. It's a virtual certainty that obstacles will be encountered along the way. Our lack of knowledge of such obstructions is more likely a symptom of ignorance, as they were for tokamaks and ICF and a handful of other approaches.
As it stands, Bussard's approach to fusion is further from achieving ignition than focus fusion, tokamaks and ICF.
In particular, ICF has already shown energy amplification into several hundred times the laser beam energy. It is no longer a matter of technical feasibillity, but of finding the right engineering solutions to make it a workable power source. 1% efficient lasers aren't going to cut it; diode lasers show promise, as do ion-drive. Repition rates for the lasers needs to be in the serveral hundred times per second range for cost effective power.
Sorry to hear that. Just to show Big monies run the world these days. As long as they make a lot dough and sit on top of everyone else's head, the world can go hang.
Yes. And you still need another 1000 000 000.
How would you know? It's an enormous assumption to think that just because you've derived some scaling laws at 1/1000 000 0000th the required rate it will hold true all the way up to ignition ; with no new complications arising along the way.
It's more likely that the apparant lack of obstacles is an indication of ignorance rather than an actual lack of obstacles, as is usually the case.
Continued research appears to be funded so we'll find out soon enough.
Bio-fuel is Soylent Green. Don't burn food for fuel. Even depauperate cultures burn cow dung rather than eat it.
Neil Farbstein
President
Vulvox Nanobiotechnology Inc.
protn7@att.net
516-921-5058
http://vulvox.tripod.com
Neil Farbstein
President
Vulvox Nanobiotechnology Inc.
protn7@att.net
516-921-5058
http://vulvox.tripod.com
"If you look at -snip- in isolation that margin is much higher still."
Well, that's a logical fallacy, I'm afraid. Because we can't look at anything in isolation.
Chernobyl was a massive and tragic disaster, and it was inevitable.
Because we human beings are imperfect, you see. We make mistakes even when we are trying VERY hard not to.
Remember Murphy's Law?
What worse mistakes will we make from inevitable laziness, stupidity, carelessness or because of the Law of Unintended Consequences?
An organization as disciplined as the US Navy can operate a Nuclear Reactor with some claim to reliability.
Nobody else is that disciplined.
Buildings get built by the lowest bidding contractor: errors happen due to mis-communication, somebody puts in the wrong number of rebar rods per square foot in concrete footings... it just goes on and on.
So maybe we should exercise some common sense. Rather than juggling nuclear hot potatoes, we should stick to something less dangerous.
We need energy. That's obvious.
So, how about something that doesn't explode, costs less to build, and is easy to insure?
Concentrating Solar plants ! Already online for twenty years at Kramer Junction.
Works just fine, doesn't explode. Another Concentrating Solar plant was just built in Nevada with more in the planning stages.
Tidal Power in the Gulf. Wind Power in Texas.
Geothermal Power in YellowStone.
It's a super-volcano, for crying out loud ! Extracting heat from it is a GOOD thing !
Now, Geothermal anywhere but YellowStone might cost quite a bit to drill that first geothermal tap, but given the cost of building a Fission plant... it sure looks cheap by comparison !
To store the power overnight or for windless days, either use the power right away to desalinate seawater for sale, or electrolyze that seawater and store the hydrogen to use at night.
Tell me, why should "Green" advocates support Nuclear power when there are so many cheaper and cleaner alternatives?
Energy sources like solar, wind, wave are impractical, because it takes more energy to produce the equipment than can ever be returned from the equipments use. The only way to make something like solar, effective, is to reduce the energy requirement and locate it in an area with constant sunlight. Even then, the solar panels will never return the energy used to make them.
Nuclear is a clean, safe energy source. Spent fuel can even be reprocessed and used again, as done by Sellafield in UK.
Modern nuclear power stations pretty much eliminate the one hazard that can cause accidents like Chernobyl, namely, humans.
Add to this, modern reactors are more efficient, using less fuel and obtaining the same energy outputs.
Side effects of nuclear fission reactors include the possiblility of hydrogen production from the reactor coolant, or even using the nuclear waste itself.
Mass produced hydrogen, as a side effect of nuclear fission, would be a cheap fuel source for transporation. It would also elimiate ALL pollution from running those motor vehicles, as Hydrogen engines produce pure water as a byproduct, which itself has further use where water is in short supply.
EnvironMENTALists need to get on board with Nuclear power, because it's the very best way NOT to pollute the environment.
A pragmatic and safe solution.