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Natural Science Forum / Physics / General Physics / July 2008Nuclear power
“Greenpeace has always fought - and will continue to fight - vigorously against nuclear power because it is an unacceptable risk to the environment and to humanity. The only solution is to halt the expansion of all nuclear power, and for the shutdown of existing plants.” http://www.greenpeace.org/international/campaigns/nuclear Patrick Moore, one of the founders of Greenpeace, had this to say, “In the early 1970s when I helped found Greenpeace, I believed that nuclear energy was synonymous with nuclear holocaust, as did most of my compatriots. That's the conviction that inspired Greenpeace's first voyage up the spectacular rocky northwest coast to protest the testing of U.S. hydrogen bombs in Alaska's Aleutian Islands. Thirty years on, my views have changed, and the rest of the environmental movement needs to update its views, too, because nuclear energy may just be the energy source that can save our planet from another possible disaster: catastrophic climate change.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/14/AR2006041401209.html Wind power and solar generation can’t hack it. So what are the alternatives to nuclear/hydrocarbon power plants? Brownouts and blackouts on a regular basis The surest way to a low standard of living is energy poverty Let us examine the waste balance sheet of a coal-fired vs. a nuclear power plant. A 1,000 Megawatt coal-fired power plant produces solid wastes at a rate of 1,800 pounds per minute that includes 19 toxic metals such as arsenic carcinogens such as benzopyrene 30 pounds of sulfur dioxide per second As much nitrous oxide as 200,000 automobiles 50 times the radioactive emissions of an average nuclear power plant Each (short) ton of coal contains 50 grams of Uranium 129 grams of Thorium According to NCRP Reports No. 92 and No. 95, population exposure from the operation of 1000-MWe nuclear and coal-fired power plants amounts to 490 person-rem/year for coal plants and 4.8 person-rem/year for nuclear plants. Thus, the population effective dose equivalent from coal plants is 100 times that from nuclear plants. Highly radioactive daughter particles amount to 3% (by volume) or about .2 cubic meters from a year’s production from a 1,000 Megawatt Light Water Reactor (LWR) power plant. In that 3% you have the following significant radionuclides with their half lives. Gases Kypton-85 10.7 years Xenon-133 5.3 days Solids Strontium-90 28.1 years Molybdenum-99 66.7 hours Iodine-131 8.1 days Cesium-137 30.2 years Cerium-144 285.0 days After 30 half lives a radioactive material is deemed safe. Picking the longest lived, Cesium-137 at 30.2 years, 30x30.2=906 years. We are not talking about Yucca Mountain here; that is for wastes from nuclear weapons production. What about the remaining 97%? They can be immediately reused as nuclear fuel. We recycle paper and not nuclear fuel? In 1977, that gem of a president Jimmy Carter canceled the Barnwell, South Carolina, reprocessing plant then nearing completion because of an exaggerated danger of terrorists stealing our nuclear fuel and chemically separating the plutonium from the uranium in order to build nuclear weapons with it. They should live so long trying. France, Germany, Japan, and Russia continued with their reprocessing facilities and have assured themselves sources of readily available nuclear fuel for the foreseeable future. I am sure that the terrorist would never consider stealing from them.~ [Footnote .~ is the emoticon for irony] My point? Start building nuclear reactors as fast as you can. --Mike Jr “Greenpeace has always fought - and will continue to fight - vigorously against nuclear power because it is an unacceptable risk to the environment and to humanity. The only solution is to halt the expansion of all nuclear power, and for the shutdown of existing plants.” http://www.greenpeace.org/international/campaigns/nuclear Patrick Moore, one of the founders of Greenpeace, had this to say, “In the early 1970s when I helped found Greenpeace, I believed that nuclear energy was synonymous with nuclear holocaust, as did most of my compatriots. That's the conviction that inspired Greenpeace's first voyage up the spectacular rocky northwest coast to protest the testing of U.S. hydrogen bombs in Alaska's Aleutian Islands. Thirty years on, my views have changed, and the rest of the environmental movement needs to update its views, too, because nuclear energy may just be the energy source that can save our planet from another possible disaster: catastrophic climate change.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/14/AR2006041401209.html Wind power and solar generation can’t hack it. So what are the alternatives to nuclear/hydrocarbon power plants? Brownouts and blackouts on a regular basis The surest way to a low standard of living is energy poverty Let us examine the waste balance sheet of a coal-fired vs. a nuclear power plant. A 1,000 Megawatt coal-fired power plant produces solid wastes at a rate of 1,800 pounds per minute that includes 19 toxic metals such as arsenic carcinogens such as benzopyrene 30 pounds of sulfur dioxide per second As much nitrous oxide as 200,000 automobiles 50 times the radioactive emissions of an average nuclear power plant Each (short) ton of coal contains 50 grams of Uranium 129 grams of Thorium According to NCRP Reports No. 92 and No. 95, population exposure from the operation of 1000-MWe nuclear and coal-fired power plants amounts to 490 person-rem/year for coal plants and 4.8 person-rem/year for nuclear plants. Thus, the population effective dose equivalent from coal plants is 100 times that from nuclear plants. Highly radioactive daughter particles amount to 3% (by volume) or about .2 cubic meters from a year’s production from a 1,000 Megawatt Light Water Reactor (LWR) power plant. In that 3% you have the following significant radionuclides with their half lives. Gases Kypton-85 10.7 years Xenon-133 5.3 days Solids Strontium-90 28.1 years Molybdenum-99 66.7 hours Iodine-131 8.1 days Cesium-137 30.2 years Cerium-144 285.0 days After 30 half lives a radioactive material is deemed safe. Picking the longest lived, Cesium-137 at 30.2 years, 30x30.2=906 years. We are not talking about Yucca Mountain here; that is for wastes from nuclear weapons production. What about the remaining 97%? They can be immediately reused as nuclear fuel. We recycle paper and not nuclear fuel? In 1977, that gem of a president Jimmy Carter canceled the Barnwell, South Carolina, reprocessing plant then nearing completion because of an exaggerated danger of terrorists stealing our nuclear fuel and chemically separating the plutonium from the uranium in order to build nuclear weapons with it. They should live so long trying. France, Germany, Japan, and Russia continued with their reprocessing facilities and have assured themselves sources of readily available nuclear fuel for the foreseeable future. I am sure that the terrorist would never consider stealing from them.~ [Footnote .~ is the emoticon for irony] My point? Start building nuclear reactors as fast as you can. --Mike Jr =========================================== Or return to this: http://www.sonofthesouth.net/union-generals/indians/indian-village.htm The picture was taken in 1891 near the pine ridge Indian Reservation when the great Einstein was 12 years old and this was scrapped 50 years earlier. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/interactive/animations/rocket/index.shtml What's the difference between the Amish and Greenpeace? http://www.martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/oct2006/amish4.jpg None. > Greenpeace has always fought - and will continue to fight - > vigorously against nuclear power because it is an unacceptable risk to > the environment and to humanity. [snip crap] GreenSleaze is against everything beyond mud huts and slit latrines. Mystics are baffled by the obvious yet possess a complete understanding of the nonexistent. If you want to live like a hunter-gatherer you must kill off approximately 6.3 billion people. Have at it. Chernobyl is green Eden revisited, albeit with lots of chromosome fragmentation - and we all know what God thinks about evolution. Go to a Renaissance Faire. How many participants show up as toothless wretched stinking peasants with a 30-year lifespan? God's dominion of poverty, hunger, disease, filth, and death is always substituted with nobility and silk-clad priests with whips. Were you planning to be a noble or a priest? > My point? Start building nuclear reactors as fast as you can. Nonsense. Do what the *stooopid* tell you to do. How can so any people be wrong?  SignatureUncle Al http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/ (Toxic URL! Unsafe for children and most mammals) http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/lajos.htm#a2 > > “Greenpeace has always fought - and will continue to fight - > > vigorously against nuclear power because it is an unacceptable risk to [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > How can so many > people be wrong? How can so many people be wrong? Because good people say nothing to counter other people telling the big lie. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Lie Keep speaking up Uncle Al. --Mike Jr. > -- > Uncle Alhttp://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/ > (Toxic URL! Unsafe for children and most mammals)http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/lajos.htm#a2 > How can so many people be wrong? Because good people say nothing to > counter other people telling the big lie. Likely because the vast majority of them are totally ignorant in subjects like physics and engineering. > Keep speaking up Uncle Al. I'll second that suggestion! True environmentalists realize that the currently proposed "alternative energy" ideas make even a dent in the demand for energy sources power the major energy demand. Coal polutes, as does oil. Both kill more people in a year than nuclear energy does since the time when the first modern nuclear power reactors went on-line producing electricity. Europe is today so far advanced in nuclear power generation, that it make the US appear to be functioning at a level somewhere between the "Bronze Age" and the "Iron Age". Consequently, I beleive that the US should make it a national goal requiring that within 20 years, 90% of our electrical energy should be produced by nuclear. Transportation requires a modified solution, but the availability of inexpensive nuclear generated electricity will greatly aid the likelyhood of electrically powered automobiles, although their will remain a need for fossil fuels to heavy equipment and aircraft. Part of the solution will be to revise the media orientation. One solution would be to require all college liberal arts students to complete at least 3-semesters studying and mastering introductory courses in the hard physical sciences and or an engineering subject. The should generally apply to all journalism and communications majors. Mush courses like "environmental engineering" would not earn college credits, since they are no substitute for at least a fundamental level knowledge in the hard sciences. Relize that it is graduates in these majors that tend to shape opinions of the uneducated through their voices in the media. I rarely disagree with anything that Uncle Al posts, other than I would prefer to see him help educated the readers rather than simply posting "in your face facts" and calling others "stoopid"! There is a vast difference between stupidity and ignorance. What Al does is to employ and educational technique employed in a last ditch attempt to turn failing students around by insulting them face-to-face with the doors closed. I am not sure that it provides any benefits in elevating the knowledge level of Usenet reader, and in many cases will be counter-productive. I know that Al is a very bright and well educated guy, and rarely posts inaccurate information, if ever. I'm also a curmudeon, but in other ways, which differentiates me from being labeled a bastard or an a.shole. I try to relate and explain the underlying basics concepts in my posts in a hope to educate. For example, physics teaches very precise and exact method to produce a absolutely correct answer. Engineering, on the other hand, teaches that the implimentaion of physics to practical problems always involves some sort of a trade- off. The World Trade Center was a trade of between economics and structural stability, as is often encounter with catastrophic bridge failures, Engineering alway involves taking calculated risks. The same considerations apply to nuclear power generation. Here the trade off is to consider the worst consequnces of a catastropic failure vs. the benefits of eliminating the atmospheric contamination resulting from the use of fossil fuels vs. the lives and the mining of these fuels vs. the potential lives that would be lost if a nuclear plants were to suffer a catastropic disaster. If you are capable of evaluating the risk-benefit trade-off based on numbers, not arm waving hysterical fears, then you are qualified to comment on the topic. If not, it is wise to keep you mouth shut and concentrate on learning the underlying facts. Harry C. Harry C. On Jul 5, 3:47 pm, "hhc...@yahoo.com" <hhc...@yahoo.com> wrote: > > How can so many people be wrong? Because good people say nothing to > > counter other people telling the big lie. [quoted text clipped - 17 lines] > requiring that within 20 years, 90% of our electrical energy should be > produced by nuclear. Agreed. > Transportation requires a modified solution, but the availability of > inexpensive nuclear generated electricity will greatly aid the [quoted text clipped - 44 lines] > comment on the topic. If not, it is wise to keep you mouth shut and > concentrate on learning the underlying facts. Policy isn't made by people who understand the numbers. They have staffers who talk to the experts who then recommend the proper course. I expect no more. My beef is with all the scientist and engineers who are supposed to know better who choose not to speak up. No excuse for that. --Mike Jr > Harry C. > > Harry C. > On Jul 5, 3:47 pm, "hhc...@yahoo.com" <hhc...@yahoo.com> wrote: >> [quoted text clipped - 74 lines] > engineers who are supposed to know better who choose not to speak up. > No excuse for that. Have you watched this newsgroup over the last 15 years? Those scientists and engineers are tired. Even I have given up and, if you knew me, is significant; I'm usually the last one who keeps trying to prevent messes. /BAH /BAH > On Jul 5, 3:47 pm, "hhc...@yahoo.com" <hhc...@yahoo.com> wrote: > [quoted text clipped - 75 lines] > course. I expect no more. My beef is with all the scientist andengineerswho are supposed to know better who choose not to speak up. > No excuse for that. Well, that's a 30 way street though. Since electrical engineers, mechanical and aerospace engineers have been telling the idiots in both physics and nuclear power and coal power for so long now, that nuclear power and coal power have little to do with engineering, that's why we're building all these digital screens, hybrid computers, optical computers, A.I. systems, Laser Disks, fiber optics, PV Cells, GPS and WWW outlets. and robots for you idiots. > --Mike Jr > [quoted text clipped - 7 lines] > > - Show quoted text - >>> “Greenpeace has always fought - and will continue to fight - >>> vigorously against nuclear power because it is an unacceptable risk to [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > How can so many people be wrong? Because good people say nothing to > counter other people telling the big lie. How come so many people believe in an afterlife? > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Lie > [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] >> Uncle Alhttp://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/ >> (Toxic URL! Unsafe for children and most mammals)http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/lajos.htm#a2 > >>> “Greenpeace has always fought - and will continue to fight - > >>> vigorously against nuclear power because it is an unacceptable risk to [quoted text clipped - 7 lines] > > How come so many people believe in an afterlife? Must be all those liberals who would rather feel good then be right. --Mike Jr. > >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Lie > [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > >> Uncle Alhttp://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/ > >> (Toxic URL! Unsafe for children and most mammals)http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/lajos.htm#a2 >>> How can so many people be wrong? Because good people say nothing to >>> counter other people telling the big lie. >> How come so many people believe in an afterlife? > > Must be all those liberals who would rather feel good then be right. "DR. WEINBERG: I believe that there is no point in the universe that can be discovered by the methods of science. I believe that what we have found so far, an impersonal universe in which it is not particularly directed toward human beings is what we are going to continue to find. And that when we find the ultimate laws of nature they will have a chilling, cold impersonal quality about them. I don't think this means [however] there's no point to life. Usually the remark is quoted just as it stands. But if anyone read the next paragraph, they would see that I went on to say that if there is no point in the universe that we discover by the methods of science, there is a point that we can give the universe by the way we live, by loving each other, by discovering things about nature, by creating works of art. And that -- in a way, although we are not the stars in a cosmic drama, if the only drama we're starring in is one that we are making up as we go along, it is not entirely ignoble that faced with this unloving, impersonal universe we make a little island of warmth and love and science and art for ourselves. That's not an entirely despicable role for us to play". > >>> How can so many people be wrong? Because good people say nothing to > >>> counter other people telling the big lie. [quoted text clipped - 20 lines] > make a little island of warmth and love and science and art for ourselves. > That's not an entirely despicable role for us to play". Group hug! > > >>> How can so many people be wrong? Because good people say nothing to > > >>> counter other people telling the big lie. [quoted text clipped - 22 lines] > > Group hug! I'm radioactive. The carbon in my body contains measurable C-14 from my food. I'm more radioactive than the cooling water from a nuclear power plant, but less than the fly ash waste from a coal-fired plant. Would you hug me? Tom Davidson Richmond, VA > > > >>> How can so many people be wrong? Because good people say nothing to > > > >>> counter other people telling the big lie. [quoted text clipped - 34 lines] > Tom Davidson > Richmond, VA Uh, no. But don't take it personally. :-) --Mike Jr See Power to Save the World by Gwyneth Craven, 2007, Knopf. > >>> “Greenpeace has always fought - and will continue to fight - > >>> vigorously against nuclear power because it is an unacceptable risk to [quoted text clipped - 7 lines] > > How come so many people believe in an afterlife? Sam, I owe you a better answer than quips. Some questions are open to scientific investigation, others are not, at least nobody has yet formulated a testable hypothesis that puts the question, for instance of an afterlife, into the realm of scientific inquiry in a satisfactory way. One choice is to not believe in any hypothesis that cannot be scientifically investigated. That is, to assume that the hypothesis is false. When I was an undergraduate I choose to minor in English Lit., partially because the female scenery was more plentiful and appealing in the English department than over in physics. Sorry, I was young back then. In one course, we studied Sartre and existentialism. As you probably know, existentialism "posits that individuals create the meaning and essence of their lives, as opposed to it being created for them by deities or authorities or defined for them by philosophical or theological doctrines." Jean-Paul Sartre struck me as singularly unhappy man. I decided not to embrace the French existentialist philosophy. After all, who would want to embrace a philosophy that leads one to a sense of profound lack of purpose and despair? I mean, besides Jean-Paul Sartre? For me, the key was to understand the distinction between those questions that are answerable by science and those that are, currently, not. I am always open to the fact that more and more questions become answerable by science; I have no sacred cows. My middle son is 13 years old. He tells me about a subculture named "Emos" who dress in black and see no meaning in life. My advice was to tell them, "If it makes you happy ...". He laughed. So take the position that you only believe in things that can be scientifically proved, if it makes you happy.... --Mike Jr. > >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Lie > [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > >> Uncle Alhttp://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/ > >> (Toxic URL! Unsafe for children and most mammals)http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/lajos.htm#a2 > Go to a Renaissance Faire. How many participants show up as toothless > wretched stinking peasants with a 30-year lifespan? God's dominion > of poverty, hunger, disease, filth, and death is always substituted > with nobility and silk-clad priests with whips. UNCLE AL!!! What a truly wonderful concept! I want to have your love-child! I'm going to stop taking showers about 30 days before the next Renaissance Faire! [...] > France, Germany, Japan, and Russia continued with their reprocessing > facilities and have assured themselves sources of readily available [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > > My point? Start building nuclear reactors as fast as you can. Things have changed a bit since your research. There is now a virtually unlimited supply of hot air thanks to widespred access to the internet so Sirling engines are a much better investment today. Sue... > --Mike Jr > [...] > [quoted text clipped - 12 lines] > Sirling engines are a much better investment > today. Nice. > Sue... > > > --Mike Jr > “Greenpeace has always fought - and will continue to fight - > vigorously against nuclear power because it is an unacceptable risk to [quoted text clipped - 79 lines] > > --Mike Jr -------------------- why is no one talking about fusion ???!!! Y.Porat ---------------------------------- |
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