HUGE COSTS, ANXIETY
The government and Tepco will aim to begin removing the undamaged nuclear rods from the plant's spent fuel pools next year. However, retrieval of fuel that melted down in their reactors may not begin for another decade.
The enormous cost of the cleanup and compensating the victims has drained Tepco financially. The government may inject about $13 billion into the company as early as next summer in a de facto nationalization, sources told Reuters last week.
An official advisory panel estimates Tepco may have to pay about 4.5 trillion yen ($57 billion) in compensation in the first two years after the nuclear crisis, and that it will cost 1.15 trillion yen to decommission the plant, though some experts put it at 4 trillion yen ($51 billion) or even more.
Japan also faces a massive cleanup task outside the east coast plant if residents are to be allowed to go home. The Environment Ministry says about 2,400 square km (930 square miles) of land around the plant may need to be decontaminated, an area roughly the size of Luxembourg.
The crisis shook the public's faith in nuclear energy and Japan is now reviewing an earlier plan to raise the proportion of electricity generated from nuclear power to 50 percent by 2030 from 30 percent in 2010.
Japan may not immediately walk away from nuclear power, but few doubt that nuclear power will play a lesser role in future.
Living in fear of radiation is part of life for residents both near and far from the plant. Cases of excessive radiation in vegetables, tea, milk, seafood and water have stoked anxiety despite assurances from public officials that the levels detected are not dangerous.
Chernobyl's experience shows that anxiety is likely to persist for years, with residents living near the former Soviet plant still regularly checking produce for radiation before consuming it 25 years after the disaster.
(Additional reporting by Yoko Kubota, Fredrik Dahl in VIENNA and Nina Chestney in LONDON; Writing by Tomasz Janowski; Editing by Mark Bendeich and Robert Birsel)
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84 Comments
Add CommentEvery mishap in the nuclear industry gets big play every week in the media all financed by Big Oil's anti nuclear campaign.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf they can't find something they'll photoshop another three eyed fish in a nukes cooling pond.
Actually nobody outside the plant was exposed to any significant amount of radiation. Many are and will continue to be exposed however to the massive forever toxic chemical pollution from the various Big Oil refinery and chemical plants destroyed.
Meanwhile every day Big Oil kills thousands worldwide with their filthy product. Nary a word about that in Big Oil's media outlet here at Scientific American
Actually there has been no radiation deaths associated with this accident. Why is it that nuclear has such a bad press? The safe levels of exposure I believe are set ridiculously low. Fear mongering continues to result in thousands of deaths each year from the unnecessary demonising of nuclear power & continued use of coal for power generation. Nuclear is the only viable alternative. As far as the danger of radiation is concerned, the two cities that were bombed with dirty atomic weapons, far from being abandoned, are burgeoning. There are solutions to the nuclear waste question. The problems are overstated, particularly when compared with the problems & shear waste associated with burning coal simply to generate electricity.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPray tell, which "big oil" companies are paying for these stories? Are they planting radioactive Strontium and Iodide in the Japanese countryside so people will think this $100B+ disaster is worse than it actually is? How is "big oil" paying for said propaganda? Unless you can actually follow the money, all you're doing is spouting off conspiracy theory. It's not like your case is as strong as the one against Dr. Willie Soon:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Willie_Soon
So, where's the lawsuits against "big oil" for covering up the potential of nuclear power? Where's the smoking gun? The only REAL smoking gun here are the now not-so-smoldering reactors in Japan that had been shooting off a plume of toxic and radioactive particles across the globe.
"Nuclear is the only viable alternative"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow come you guys never give PROOF to back up your statements?
No claim to be a petroleum engineer but have worked in shallow water and very deep waters (10,000'+) as a level 2 inspector. Despite the Thunder Horse debacle these deep water rigs are state of the art wonders. If you get a chance I believe N.G. did a expose' on floating rigs. Once we get that floating base launched (before the topside or production platform is finally in the water, deep in the GOM, after 3 days you can look down at the pristine water and see sea life of every kind. From coral and jellyfish to hammerheads and 100 pound Ahi tuna. If strict Q.A. is adhered to and op's are done on the clock, we can produce millions of barrels of sweet crude and thousands of natural gas without out mishap. That spill in the Gulf a few years ago was do to nothing but greed. If they would have followed the geologists and marine scientists' drilling procedure it would have never happened. It was all about money and it backfired, a blow to very good deep drilling systems and a proven system and pride of American know how and technology.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJim Kansier
New Iberia, LA
"Why is it that nuclear has such a bad press?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you need to even ask that question you must work for the nuclear industry.
Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Fukushima and fuel that stays radioactive for many decades or centuries are a few reasons. Add in that nuclear is some of the highest cost electricity produced - and THAT is why the nuclear industry has such bad press.
That and self promoting propagandizers like you.
Nuclear power power via fission or fusion is the hope for our kids and their their kids as there will come a time when the oil runs out. What happened here should be used as a lesson and not as a reason to shut down progress in this direction. Knee-jerk reactions to problems often end up poorly. Let's pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and get back to finding better and greener solutions to the energy needs of this planet.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCarlyle is right about the death rate. Excepting the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, there have been 99 'accidents' reported world wide with a majority (57) happening here in the US. But, of that number there have been exactly zero deaths in the citizen population or for the nuclear worker group.A small number when compared to other stats of things that kill us every day. For instance, gas burning autos kill about 115 US citizens each day! Where's the outrage over that I wonder?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThankfully, there have been no deaths, but all those incidents are a testimony to the fact that our LWR fleet is aging badly and was built before we had long-term data on how they would operate. These failures require additional safety and redundant systems, pushing the cost of new reactors ever higher. The disaster at Fukushima hasn't produced a detectable, widespread health hazard yet, (we'll find out the real health toll in time, so you CAN'T say there have been no ill effects this soon...) but it WILL cost TEPCO about $100B by the time the site is decontaminated and the surrounding communities relocated out of the exclusion zone. Lumping in all these costs makes nuclear power one of the most expensive sources of new power generation capacity.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTell me please, how many deaths have resulted from the use of nuclear power? Over the same time period & for the same amount of generated electricity, how many deaths have been caused using coal? Average of three thousand coal mining deaths per year in china alone.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTwenty years after the Chernobyl accident fewer than 50 deaths have resulted. The only recorded radiation deaths recorded in the entire history of the industry. Wildlife is thriving in the exclusion zone around the plant. Thousands of deaths were forecast at the time.
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2005/pr38/en/index.html
The irrationality of the antinuclear movement is symptomatic of the radical AGW supporters.
Tell me please, how many deaths have resulted from the use of nuclear power? Over the same time period & for the same amount of generated electricity, how many deaths have been caused using coal? Average of three thousand coal mining deaths per year in china alone.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTwenty years after the Chernobyl accident fewer than 50 deaths have resulted. The only recorded radiation deaths recorded in the entire history of the industry. Wildlife is thriving in the exclusion zone around the plant. Thousands of deaths were forecast at the time.
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2005/pr38/en/index.html
The irrationality of the antinuclear movement is symptomatic of the radical AGW supporters.
Ah, here you are using the "two wrongs make a right" logical fallacy using the wrong of fossil fuel pollution to cancel out the wrong that nuclear power presents:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_wrongs_make_a_right
Besides, you completely gloss over what the report states:
"A total of up to 4000 people could eventually die of radiation exposure from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant (NPP) accident..."
"...an estimated 2200 radiation-caused deaths can be expected during their[emergency workers'] lifetime."
"About 4000 cases of thyroid cancer, mainly in children and adolescents at the time of the accident, have resulted from the accident’s contamination..."
Why is it so easy to spot an agenda when one is so one-sided?
You talk about agenda? How about your prescription. Replace real base load power supply with fantasy fairy at the bottom of the garden non solutions. There is NO alternative practical base load alternative & while people like you insist that there is the real solution will be further delayed & the pollution that you rail against will not only continue, it will increase. Remember my prediction over the coming years as fairy solutions continue to fail. Do not tell me about falling solar cell costs when you have previously admitted that the production process causes very nasty pollution in unregulated China. Put the regulations in place & watch the price more than double. By the way, the predictions re Chernobyl, now about 25 years on, still have not occurred. People like you do not like these facts. What would you prefer? To be wrong with thousands less deaths than the anti nuclear predictions or the alternative? You show no sign of gratitude for the failure of predictions. The 3000 coal miner deaths per year in China preferable to nuclear is it?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCheck out this Video of one of the Oil refinery fires that resulted from the Japan Tohoku earthquake. It burnt uncontrollably for 10 days, as it was so hot that firefighters could not get close to it. Curiously NOT ONE environmental group has commented as to why a giant Oil Refinery, near Tokyo, could not withstand an earthquake far from the epicenter.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSRcaF03GEA&feature=youtu.be
End result, thousands of tons of deadly carcinogens, asbestos, heavy metals were released into the air, land and water. NO ATTEMPT or REGULATION or CLEANUP was required of the extraordinary disaster. The paid-by-oil mainstream media has so far covered up the incident.
When these giant Oil & Gas fired conflagrations occur some of the most toxic material known to man is vaporized and released into the atmosphere. Transformers filled with PCB's are converted into some of the most deadly carcinogens human civilization has ever created, like Polychlorinated dibenzofurans, 0.1 gms is a fatal dose for an adult. Heavy metals, containing Mercury, Lead, Cadmium, Arsenic, Antimony etc are vaporized and settle into agricultural land and are concentrated in livestock. Asbestos fibers are impervious to fire and are released into the atmosphere where for any person breathing the fibers are the exact size to be absorbed into the air sacs of their lungs, where they will form scar tissue, possibly leading to an untreatable cancer later in life.
So every person in Japan is eating, drinking and breathing these proven carcinogens, mutagens, endocrine disruptors, teratogens, embryotoxins and neurotoxins. The press is deliberately trying to focus on the comparatively MINOR Radioisotope emissions from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear plants in order to maintain huge Big Oil/NG revenue & graft that goes their way.
Be aware that Chevron signed $billions in LNG contracts to supply Japan with fuel to replace the shutdown Nuclear Reactors at 3X the cost that we pay for NG. $500M in LNG sales per yr to replace one reactor. And a substantial jump in the international LNG price. A price so far we Canadians have avoided paying, but make no mistake about it, Big Oil has plans for us, and WE WILL be paying 3X the cost for our NG - the going international price.
Notice Sault & Greenpeace could care less about a Mud Volcano caused by NG drilling, that releases 6 million cubic feet of mud per day, causing the evacuation of 13,000 families already & a dozen deaths and is expected to continue for another 80 yrs.
Sault deliberately misinforms the readers on the actual facts of Chernobyl, a Soviet military reactor, with no containment, that has nothing whatsoever to do with modern commercial Nuclear Power. According to Sault, the 260,000 who were kille in the Banqiao Hydro Dam failure in China means that all Hydro in the West should be immediately shutdown and banned.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisContrary, to Sault's Big Oil disinformation campaign, the Chernobyl forum concluded that their may be up to 4000 cases of thyroid cancer (the most treatable form of cancer) - not deaths. And less than 100 people were killed by the incident, unlike the millions who are killed every year due to Sault's Coal, NG & Oil fires, explosions and deadly chemical carcinogen emissions.
http://probeinternational.org/library/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Observations-on-Chernobyl-21st-Century-1.pdf
http://atomicinsights.com/2011/10/devastating-review-of-yablokovs-chernobyl-consequences-of-the-catastrophe-for-people-and-the-environment.html
http://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/chernobyl/who_chernobyl_report_2006.pdf
Know any Hollywood personality who died of radiation? No you can't. Actor Steve McQueen died of an asbestos related cancer - caused by handling asbestos pipe insulation when he was in the Navy.
Notice NOT ONE ARTICLE in Sciam on the Asbestos danger after the Tsunami/Earthquake vs hundreds on the Radiation danger. Another example of the double standard against Nuclear - those taxpayer funded Oil dollars at work.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42783963/ns/world_news-asia_pacific/t/japan-disasters-other-hidden-danger-asbestos/
It seems to me that the economies of scale that serve to minimize costs and maximize profit are exactly the concerns of scale that cause ecological disasters in regards to any energy production, coal or oil or nuclear.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI suspect that if production of solar power were ramped up or genuinely expanded to levels significant in comparison to consumption, that it to would present environmental threats if accidents happen (which they predictably do).
Perhaps a discussion of centralized vs de-centralized power production might be productive. Smaller scale but a higher number of production facilities might mean smaller scale disasters when accidents happen, while still allowing an acceptable price to consumers. (fusion promises just the opposite - larger scale production).
History has taught us that accidents and disasters will happen. They will happen repeatably. They have happen with nuclear, oil, coal, gas; and they will happen with large scale solar, and eventually with fusion generation. Even hydro power generation has had environmental damage and disaster with dams and dam failures.
What the nuclear proponents glass over is the outright lies that the nuclear entities have told the public in every single case of disaster. Lack of honesty is intentional and purposeful, and will continue. Radiation exposure cannot be effectively determined by individuals of the public, and the public knows they cannot trust nuclear entities. Disease and illness can develop slowly over extended time from a tasteless, odorless, exposure that was not felt or seen.
Radiation from the Japan disaster fell on US grasslands and entered the American food chain via grazing cattle in the Midwest. Measurable radiation was detected in the air of NJ, an estimated 6,000 miles from the source. Try driving 2,000 miles to appreciate a distance of 6,000 miles. I support wide-spread decentralized power generation by the consuming public with government investment and control of distribution as long as distribution (the grid) operates as a monopoly. Taking out the exorbitant (large scale) executive pay packages will balance the loss of "economies of scale" and corporate greed.
Afraid of nuclear power generation and expansion? you bet I am; and I will actively oppose it.
Tell them what you think, Sault!
"You talk about agenda..."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes, you have an agenda against clean energy because it is not one of your preferred technologies. You ignore its benefits and hype up its shortcomings to prove your "points". If that's not an agenda, I dont' know what is.
I agree, slap a tariff on ALL Chinese goods to make up for the lax environmental regulations and horrible human rights violations they get away with. However, if you made dirty energy ACTUALLY PAY for the damages it causes, clean energy would win hands down. If you build a nuclear reactor without cutting corners and you don't hide the price behind massive subsidies, then nuclear power is wildly expensive too.
How come when you complain about Big Oil eeevul scheme to discredit nuclear power, the McCarthyites around here don't jump all over you calling you a communist? How come they only do that when I criticize "Big Oil"?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAd hominem much? I guess that's where you retreat to when you don't have the facts on your side and you can't make a reasoned argument...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe benefit of clean energy is that when an offshore wind turbine fails, a massive "windspill" doesn't cover 100s of miles of coastline. When a solar thermal "reactor" melts down (never happened yet, so I guess solar thermal is safer vs. the 5 total or near-total meltdowns the nuclear industry has experienced so far!), all you have is scrap metal and the need to buy a new one. For the established, dirty energy sources however...well, we already know what happens with them.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNo sane person would object to clean alternative energy if it was a possibility. It is not. The energy density is not there, the reliability is not there, 24/7 will never be there. It is simply dishonest to claim otherwise. Glossing over the facts does not make them go away. Tell me for instance how you would power say New York in winter. I want numbers, not catch phrases.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHere is a starting point for you. Make it year round rather than just winter if you would prefer. Figures might be easier to obtain. You are always asking others for proof. Lets see yours.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNew York electricity consumption in 2005
(million kWh) 150,148
Percent of U.S. electricity consumption 4.1%
State rank 5
Average annual increase in New York electricity consumption 1980–2005 1.4%
U.S. growth rate 2.2%
Percent growth state rank 47
http://apps1.eere.energy.gov/states/electricity.cfm/state=ny#totalI
I know you're going to dismiss my whole scenario out of hand and ridicule it with talking points, but here goes:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1. Get as many buildings as possible to LEED Platinum. This would involve retrofits as well as district heating / cooling (geothermal heat pumps too) and combined heat and power plants in large commercial office buildings.
2. Cover the south-facing facades of buildings with solar arrays. Roofs can have a combination of arrays and green roofs.
3. Put medium-scale wind turbines on the top of the buildings where applicable. Heck, mandate that new construction has to be as close to net zero energy use as possible. And it is possible regardless of what you might think.
4. What happened to the turbines in the Hudson River? Using this "soft" hydropower could help out a lot.
5. There's plenty of offshore wind potential off Long Island. Winter is the windiest season in NY, BTW.
6. Implement congestion charges on Manhattan. Electric vehicles are exempt. Build up a robust charging infrastructure that supports V2G. The top 2-4% of the battery capacity of 500,000 vehicles (more or less) represents a VAST storage pool of energy and power supply. Modern EV batteries go through 100s of 1000s of cycles worse than this anyway due to regenerative breaking.
7. Implement strict recycling and compost separation. Take the compost and sewage to produce methane from bio-reactors.
8. If these still don't cover 100% electricity demand, we might need to keep nuclear power around for a while, or hopefully by the time coal and most natural gas plants are phased out, LFTRs or some less-risky Gen IV reactor will be ready for prime time.
This all doesn't have to happen overnight. Clean energy will scale up and dirty energy (coal first) will scale down. Where the numbers lie, I don't know exactly. However, let's see how far we can get and then adjust once we've identified the bottlenecks in a clean energy-powered economy.
Forgot run-of-river hydroelectric:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Run-of-river
Waste Biomass and other waste-to-energy technology are also promising while algea oil might be viable as well.
Enhanced Geothermal Power is also possible in several areas of New York State. Wave power generation can also be added to the mix.
That's the easiest part of the country to clean up since it's already so efficient. The whole East Coast has plenty of offshore wind potential as well as ocean power. The HARDEST part of the U.S. to clean up will be the Southeast as they don't have a lot of wind or sun (except Florida). They'll have to rely on electricity imports, biomass, and a combination of nuclear / natural gas for the portion that clean energy can't supply reasonably.
No I am not going to ridicule. Just asking for cost effectiveness. You really need to check for yourself the effectiveness of each of your proposals. I do not wish to be argumentive about it. Things like river turbines & tidal power are inherently inefficient due to the low velocity of the water & the huge infrastructure required to compensate for the low energy density plus the adverse effects that go with them.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou are very well versed on the climate arguments. I would wish that you would become versed on the energy side. Do not believe the glossy brochures. You have to delve into the details. Certainly some passive things like insulation for new buildings & in some cases retrofits have merit.
I'd have to agree with you. Sault knows climate science and maybe is genuinely trying to promote action on climate change. Unfortunately, looking at his Energy Plan he is in serious need of education on the harsh reality of Energy Economics. His plan is just a joke, not even remotely close to being feasible or effective, if I can find the time I will pick it apart item by item. But his support of LFTR development is at least promising. However, I've seen a lot of greenies claim they support LFTR, but when it comes to doling out the cash, it's NO CAN DO, like Stephen "no can do" Chu.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe sad fact is there are thousands of knowledgeable & zealous individuals promoting action on climate change, but they are so gullible and uneducated on energy technology, that they promote "clean energy solutions" that are GUARANTEED - I MEAN 100% GUARANTEED to continue or even worsen the crisis.
Yes. If the same energy, pun not intended, were given to understanding the physics involved with gathering low density energy. The sheer scale required to gather enough energy for industrial processes like aluminium smelting or to run induction furnaces & other energy intensive processes that need uninterrupted, guaranteed supply can not be brushed away. Even the products they require for the alternatives are hugely energy intensive. If those products had to be produced using alternative energy, the costs would skyrocket. There is a total reality disconnect as if wishing for something, if you wish hard enough, aided by an unending supply of taxpayer dollars, your wish must come true.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI try to encourage people to study the Carnot Cycle as a reality check. You can build a sterling engine that is powered by the warmth of your hand but because of the low temperature differential between the hot & cold sides, the energy output is tiny even though it looks quite impressive. The alternative energy schemes though better than a hand warmed engine, suffer from the same low energy intensity or density problem.
Well, just like I shouldn't believe glossy brochures, I shouldn't believe you when you say clean energy & efficiency won't work until you PROVE it to me. However, I realize the venue here and I know hardly any of us are experts on the electric grid, building retrofits, wind turbines, etc.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSince a clean energy economy hasn't been tried before, you CAN'T make pronouncements on its viability ahead of time. NOBODY knows what the learning curves will look like as clean energy scales up. NOBODY knows what technologies will come along to change the game. For example, it was just announced that the efficiency of conventional solar cells could be DOUBLED by enabling "carrier multiplication". (Look it up and just TRY to tell me I don't know what I'm talking about.)
Look, the ONLY things I've been asking for is that we remove energy subsidies and make dirty energy sources pay for the damages their pollution causes. The subsidies should be removed from dirty energy sources first as they have had the longest continuous support and clean energy should see their support sunset a few decades later to compensate. This also means getting rid of the Price Anderson Act and I don't know if conventional LWRs are commercially viable without it. LFTRs might be since their operation is inherently safer, but we need to take the loan guarantee money to build LWRs and build a research LFTR or two with it.
Aside from the unfair playing field in the energy sector, we need to encourage a plethora of clean energy sources. Some forms of water power might not be viable like you suggest, but I'm not going to take your word for it. If the numbers don't actually work out, then let's not do it. But if a clean energy source makes sense in a level playing field for the energy market, then I'm all for it.
I am not going to argue with you. I know I am wasting my time other than to say, you claim you believe in the science. Obviously only the science that suits you. In engineering, two & two always makes four. In the alternative world it seems it can make 100, no problem.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat you need to realise is that if you do not believe in things like the Carnot Cycle & its implications yet claim you do believe unquestioningly in any Peer Reviewed climate predictions or pronouncements, you demonstrate your inability to logically separate wheat from chaff. Unfortunately for the environment, you are far from alone & the environment you claim to cherish is going to suffer as a result.
Your argument that because energy sources are diffuse, they aren't practical doesn't hold water. You're over-generalizing AND you are ignoring the fact that fossil fuels are themselves really just distilled solar energy. The cycle efficiency for fossil fuels from sunshine to gas tank is less than 0.1%, so the fact that solar cells can get around 20% makes them 200x more effective at gathering solar energy (and they do it almost infinitely faster, too).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNuclear energy is diffuse too. If you count the natural energy even in just uranium ore, then you have to sift through tons of it just to find the little grains of U and then sift through all that U to get the U235 you're looking for. And if you want to look at the Carnot efficiency for Uranium from supernova explosion 5 billion years ago to today, it's even more diffuse. It all depends on where you draw your control volume and how you design the system, really.
However, the real world is only concerned with the supply of energy and how much pollution you produce to generate it. The solar flux falling on the U.S. for an hour can power it for a year or something. To generate ALL the U.S's energy needs, a 100x100 mile square of solar thermal power plants would need to be built. If you just want to talk about land area, how many square miles do the country's fossil fuel power plants take up? How much area do the mines that supply them, the waste ponds, the pipelines, refineries, processing plants, railyards etc. take up?
As for solar PV, the area calculation dosen't even matter since a great deal of it should be installed on space already in use such as roofs and facades. It will soon be just another building material, doing double duty and lowering costs for building owners / operators. It can cover most of the daytime demand while CHP fuel cells or EV batteries can handle the rest. The rest of the demand could be handled by the rest of the technologies I mentioned.
I'm just saying that we should see how far we can get with these solutions before we pronounce them DoA. YOU'RE the one who seems to think they know everything on this issue and it sounds like you have ZERO uncertainty that a 100% nuclear-powered future is the ONLY way to go. Which approach is less risky?
I was working in the solar energy field in the 1980s. That is nearly thirty years ago. The exact same things were being said then. In fact very little has changed in all that time despite billions of dollars of investment. The sun still does not shine 24 hrs a day, you still have to have backup & no viable storage system will ever do the job because even if you had six hours of sunlight every day, with inherent losses you would have to have at least six times the surface area producing power while the sun shone to give you 24 hours of power. Of course you are not going to get 6 hours of sunshine every day so you must have full backup running in the background. It just will not work. If it did, it would have become the power source of choice years ago. Do not give me the subsidies for carbon based fuel garbage either. The whole world is not America & other countries would have done it if it was viable. Those who have tried are having disastrous outcomes. As I say, if this was not so, the whole world would be rushing to adopt it. They are not & for very good reason.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWho has tried to get off carbon and what disastrous outcomes are they suffering? The fact that you think that NOTHING has changed in 30 years in one of the fastest-growing industries on the planet tells me a lot about how you and I aren't looking at the same reality.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDo you know how much farther down the learning curve we've progressed on a whole host of clean energy technologies after 30 years? Do you know that the ONLY way to really move down a learning curve is to learn by doing? This means we can't sit on our hands and say it's too hard to transition to clean energy until we actually see how far we can go down those learning curves.
Nowhere in my post did I say solar energy will provide ALL of our energy. It is the easiest to scale quickly and is set to show explosive growth. Whether the U.S. is there to lead the way or is merely cursed to follow is utterly dependent on government policy. If we want to be the world leaders that other countries expect us to be, we need to get our act together and ACTUALLY LEAD. The Market is singularly focused on moving money around in exchange for goods and services. It CANNOT set policy and it is incapable of incorporating things that cannot be monetized and sold. That's why the environment always gets the shaft in economic decisions, much to our own imperilment.
You say that some countries, or whatever have tried clean energy with disastrous results and in the very next sentence you wonder why other countries aren't trying clean energy. So, which one is it? Are clean energy approaches being tried or not? you CAN'T have it both ways.
If clean energy doesn't work, what about the numerous studies (at the bottom of this article) that says it DOES?
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/12/19/392410/grover-norquist-spreads-lies-about-renewable-energy-standards/
If dirty energy doesn't receive subsidies, then how do you explain the $40B per year outlined on this site:
http://priceofoil.org/fossil-fuel-subsidies/
Do you even consider the fact that the U.S.'s military involvement in the Middle East is another MASSIVE oil subsidy? Why in the heck would we care about a wasteland filled with crazy people if it weren't for the energy resources sitting far below the sand?
Learn by doing? Shove your hand on a hot plate. I can tell you what will happen without doing it. Clog up a river with turbines. I can tell you what will happen without doing it. Take a large surface area of sunshine, wind, wave what ever containing energy or potential energy. Concentrate it into a smaller area. What have you got? Lucky if you have half what you started with. Convert it to mechanical energy. Half again? Convert the mechanical energy to electrical energy, what are the losses? Store the energy? What about the environmental impacts?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNumerous European countries have spent huge sums.
http://www.treehugger.com/renewable-energy/largest-solar-park-in-the-world-opens-in-germany.html
That opened in 2005.
Latest one: http://inhabitat.com/abandoned-german-open-pit-mine-turned-into-worlds-largest-solar-park/solar-park-saferay/
Just look at the photo & tell me what you see.
Try getting the actual figures of the real world output of the one opened in 2005. The promoters are happy to give projections but most reluctant to talk about outcomes. The same poor outcomes have been repeated around the world with every alternative energy scheme with the exception of hydro. How much learning by doing do you think we need?
Big Oil is our friend!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI live within a couple of miles of the big Enbridge pipeline spill of 2010. Over a million gallons of oil poured, unabated into the Kalamazoo River.
While Enbridge never had much of a visible presence in the community, since the spill, they're everywhere! Giving to virtually every community organization or charity.
I'd rather they clean up the river. A year over due now.
Better yet, I'd rather they operate their pipeline with the corrosion devices TURNED ON. Thus, no spill in the first place.
The Keystone Pipeline should NOT be buried. The aquifer is more important that Big Oil Profits.
No off-shore drilling in Lake Michigan, either.
BTW, I'm not a greenie weenie.
Carlyle it would be okay to store the waste products in your backyard. I am sure that there is no problem with nuclear power except we have yet to develop a viable way to store the waste. But before you commit which I can tell you have put the thought into here are some figures that you and your generations for the next 100,000 years:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe radioactivity of all nuclear waste diminishes with time. All radioisotopes contained in the waste have a half-life—the time it takes for any radionuclide to lose half of its radioactivity—and eventually all radioactive waste decays into non-radioactive elements (i.e., stable isotopes). Certain radioactive elements (such as plutonium-239) in “spent” fuel will remain hazardous to humans and other creatures for hundreds of thousands of years. Other radioisotopes remain hazardous for millions of years. Thus, these wastes must be shielded for centuries and isolated from the living environment for millennia.[2] Some elements, such as iodine-131, have a short half-life (around 8 days in this case) and thus they will cease to be a problem much more quickly than other, longer-lived, decay products, but their activity is therefore much greater initially. The two tables show some of the major radioisotopes, their half-lives, and their radiation yield as a proportion of the yield of fission of uranium-235.
The shorter a radioisotope's half-life, the more radioactive a sample of it will be. The opposite also applies; for instance, 96% of the element Indium in nature is the In-115 radioisotope, but it is considered non-toxic in pure metal form and mainly like a stable element because its multi-trillion-year half-life means that a relatively minuscule portion of its atoms decay per unit of time.[3] The energy and the type of the ionizing radiation emitted by a radioactive substance are also important factors in determining its threat to humans.[4] The chemical properties of the radioactive element will determine how mobile the substance is and how likely it is to spread into the environment and contaminate humans.[5] This is further complicated by the fact that many radioisotopes do not decay immediately to a stable state but rather to radioactive decay products within a decay chain before ultimately reaching a stable state.
I am sure these are lousy reasons for worrying about nuclear energy but as long as you deal with the waste products.
BTW that was my way of saying are you frigging crazy dude, We are just starting to realize the seismic problems caused by fracking, watched in horror as Japan tried insanely to preserve an area that is vital to its economy and we barely understand the going ons of where our crust and mantel meat. Yet you are ready to jump on nuclear power after the third major blowout of a generator in the last 40 years.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPlus the results of most reactors is plutonium which I can only think of about a billion people wanting to get a hold of so they can keep out giant foot print off their back. The sun is use correctly and the tides that are like clock work provide enough energy in a day to power the earth for a 1,000 years but lets stay with the methods that kill us. Way to go boss.
Maybe I am reading you wrong and we are more neighbors than I thought. I read some real intellect in the statement so before I say anymore good or bad I will go back and read your previous postings. For now I will call you brother in arms to save this bitty little space we share. I think you want to keep it too and see the folly in science like I do. I think science and religion are much closer than we are far apart and they will be the culprits that kill all of us. Thanks for the rethink, it was quite refreshing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRead and learn then spew.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAll the worlds nuclear waste now perfectly contained would fill 1% the volume of the Great Pyramid at Giza which has lasted 5000 years - less than a football field buried 40 feet deep. Not waste. It is fuel enough to power the world for hundreds of years while being destroyed in gen IV reactors like India's new 500 MW first of 5 units. Ironically that is the only way to get rid of it.
Chernobyl was an ancient Soviet nuke weapons plant destroyed in a failed weapons plutonium production experiment,TMI another 50's ancient design plant destroyed by corporate corruption, and fuku another fifties designed plant destroyed by the corruption so endemic in Japanese culture. None have anything to do with modern nuke power.
I've been reading and the French are pooping their pants, Japan is hoping to survive and we don't know enough about internal combustion yet to get more than 40 MPH. The stuff that would fill the pyramid (isn't that the largest structure in the world?) has some elements that have half lives of 100's of millions of years.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOne of our biggest concerns is nuclear terrorism not with fission but with dirty easy to make bombs requiring only fertilizer, petroleum, some kind of radioactive isotope that would be hard to predict what its half life is and a truck about the size of a U-Haul.
My other issue is between geothermal, solar, tidal and the latest developments in battery storage techniques. Added to the fantastic uses of nanotube, diamonds (they just showed entanglement), carbon composites and potential electronic and electrical properties of graphine (it can be used to create nanotubes, has 100% tunneling features, when correctly engineered is the hardest substance on earth yet as pliable as silk. And the 1993 article that popped up recently (12/2010) discussing Cyanobacterium that poops O2 during part of the day and H2 the other part and feeds on chlorophyll with an output of 3,000 percent and it is sustainable (removes the storage issues with H2 and creates a just in time delivery of the cleanest power source (H2).
I have to scratch my head when someone tells me I need to read more. I have read more than enough to understand that fission is bad news both in storage and in possible weaponizing and that we have no sure fire method to warn whatever proceeds us of how bad it is (Enter at your own risk) may not makes sense to a future species. The Giza Pyramid is at least 5,000 years old and we barely understand it what we are talking about is 100s of millions of years of half life on some of the waste products and you obviously have no sense of plate tectonics, ice ages and species extinction. Let me take back the last part you are part of the reason we are creating species extinction on par with what happened to the dinosaurs.
Now that I have said my piece grab a sheet of paper, put a dot on each of the real science I listed and then connect the dots. The only thing worse than your type is the commercials that BP is running now on how great the Gulf of Mexico is. And by the way dude or dudette I was one of the few people to suggest that dinosaurs were warm blooded and related to birds. I did that in third grade in a talk to the senior class. In 1963 Besides duck and cover what were you doing at 9?
Actually batteries, storage and movement of electricity has come a long way. One of the most novel ways of storage was announced in 2006 from a research group out of MIT and has been acquired by the military. Please read http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/sciam-belcher.html before it is off the face of the earth. There are several places that have very few days with a cloud in sight somewhat like Erie PA is only guaranteed 4 days of sun a year. The tide, geothermal and vibrations generated by the movement of traffic are available 24 X 7 and with some ingenuity could more than likely be tapped as energy sources. All mechanical processes release heat as a waste product that somewhat like our hybrid cars can directly turn that into usable energy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDistribution is the biggest issue but with a little cooperation they could be used as release valves to what seems to worry you regarding storage issues. From what I can see it is a matter of will not science and the failure to connect the dots to make it work as a cohesive system. We are sold a bag of dog doo when Shell, BP, Exxon Mobile come on the big picture and claim with out their help we are helpless. The trees and mother earth have been doing fine for eons without our benevolent service and they are starting to teach us things that we had no idea worked.
Short sighted view. How many humans died from Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and the latest one from Japan. The problem you run into is how many immediately, how many from long term effects and off course how many from genetic disorders that may not show up for many many years. And Carlyle how do you warn people or what ever finds our crap 200 million years from now, where ever tectonic movement places its parts that what glows and seems warm will kill you? We do not have a safe reliable place to put the trash out and the trash isn't as biodegradable as you all seem to think. Isn't enough we have done the damage we have done to ourselves and our families to come. Do we really need to damage species we cannot even imagine yet? We do not understand the long term effects of Nuclear fission or fusion yet and have no right to use until we better understand the consequences of our actions.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI believe the term you are looking for is the power of economies. The more overlapping systems in place the least amount of anyone of them that controls the whole system. If you look for only one form of input then you are held hostage to that one input somewhat like nuclear and hydrocarbon energies have accomplished so far.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen a power plant melts down that means the core condenses and falls through the holding structure and eventually finds its way to the ground water or the aquifer system which then creates a slightly bigger problem than frackin. You all talk like you understand how nuclear power is created but then I hear this kind of crap come out. Meltdowns do not mean the problem is over it just means more of what can be destroyed is now available. If you think I am wrong take a walk about a mile or two from the plants in Japan and drill down about a mile or two to the aqaufier and drink some of that shimmering water. Actually being at the shore the aquafier is much shallower.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisKazuhiko Kokubo, 24, and Yoshiki Terashima, 21, died at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in northeastern Japan while conducting regular checks of a reactor. The suffered multiple injuries.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe bodies were discovered last week although they were forced to undergo decontamination as a result of leaking radiation before they could be returned to their families.
"It pains me that these two young workers were trying to protect the power plant while being hit by the earthquake and tsunami," Tsunehisa Katsumata, the chairman of Tokyo Electric Power, the operator of the plant, said.
On Sunday it appeared there was no immediate end in sight to the world's worst nuclear crisis since Ukraine's Chernobyl disaster in 1986. A safety agency spokesman said it could take several more months to bring the plant under control, adding: "We'll face a crucial turning point within the next few months, but that is not the end."
Surviving staff at Fukushima continued to work around the clock in a bid to regain control over four severely damaged reactors at the six-unit plant. Radiation has been leaking since reactor cooling systems at the plant were knocked out by the tsunami, resulting in a series of partial meltdowns and explosions.
And Carlye remember rems are the gift that love to give again and again. The effect of radiation poison is long term, short term and heridically transmitted from generation to generation.
They drowned. If you do not like radiation, what do you think sunlight is? Why not ban it. Radiation is all around us. Radiation from the sun causes millions of cancer deaths & is a much greater danger to humans than the miniscule amount generated in nuclear power stations. Much more radiation is released from coal fired power stations & many more cancer deaths will result from exposure to sunlight by people in the solar industry than in the nuclear industry. Watch this space for litigation in about twenty years. I spent seven years as a sola researcher & have had numerous skin cancers removed, no doubt from excess exposure. I have had associates die from skin cancer.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBy the way, I worked in a uranium mine from 1961 to 1963, both in the open cut Mary Kathleen uranium mine & in the enrichment plant. I know of no workmate who has contracted a radiation related cancer such as thyroid cancer from the exposure we had in those days even though we had no protection & directly handled the ore, breathed the dust & also directly handled the enriched yellow cake. It is solar radiation damage I have to worry about.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe sun will cook the earth in a billion years so it is a process in movement. I am glad you survived the years mining the ore and that explains the very pro attitude. I am very against anything that burns because it is firstly inefficient and secondly puts out more crap than nuclear reactors do. So we agree on that. But I do see a use of spent nuclear fuel for dirty bombs and I see a real demand for them. I can imagine after one of our futuristic A-10s sprays its spent uranium shell all over Afghanistan and Iraq people harvesting the goods for their heroes to use.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am also aware that there is a high amount of radiation especially in a very well built house and in all the roads we walk on. With out it we would not have very much so I do appreciate it as I also appreciate CO2 and its need to feed green things.
But burning Hydrocarbons or using fission as a power source when we have enough alternatives already that do not have a huge market with terrorist or an impact in the global climate system makes more sense. Of course there are many out there that see no harm in what we have done to the mega fauna by destroying migration paths and feed back systems that assured them that they had a way to get from A to B unless they could read.
Our egocentric view of the world is ours to break is below me and from what I thought I saw in you the same. My bad, our destruction in the end but who cares the sooner we finish our species off the sooner mother earth can try another experiment that might see what modern creatures are capable of better than us.
I do see a bit of dementia from your days in the mines. But it is all in your head.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is 57 years since the first nuclear reactor was connected to a power grid, in the USSR. In all that time, the only radiation deaths from nuclear power stations was at Chernobyl. Considerably less than one hundred.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSince the first nuclear reactor was connected to a grid in 1954, approximately three million, seven hundred thousand people have died from skin cancer from exposure to sunlight. During the same time period, fifty one million people have gone blind from exposure to sunlight & tens of millions have had to have cataract operations from sunlight exposure. About 150 people per day are killed on US roads. Many other industries have high death tolls as do self inflicted poor lifestyle choices. The anti nuclear argument shows early onset dementia. If you want to save lives, argue for skin protection in the solar industry.
You are missing what I am trying to say so I will try to be politer because you have shown the same and it appears that we are both stubborn men so lets agree where we can and then address why I have my concerns. You state that you worked in the mines that the ore is derived from and considering how rare a metal it is I can see a low threshold for cancer or other side affects. There is probably more radiation in common cement than the dirt you dug.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI also agree that when it works nuclear power is cleaner and greener than any other power source being used by most countries today. In France I believe they depend on 70% of nuclear energy. In the states I believe the number is 20% and that can be attributed mostly to Jimmy Carter rejecting a proven and production method of reprocessing the used fuel. In fact sans Nagasaki, Hiroshima and Chernobyl the death rates are rather low. I found one where the guy decided to feed the reactor he did it incorrectly and cooked himself well done. I also was very intrigue with the Project Orion in the 50's and 60's especially since my father worked with a lot of the players and I was born in La Jolla and lived in Point Loma where much of the work was carried out. But when JFK succeeded in the NTBT all above ground explosions were off the table and our best shot of interstellar space travel went to hell in a hand basket. Before even Nixon could get his grimy hands on it.
My issues are we are still fission based, we have no way to warn people or other creatures 200 million years from now that the heat they may be feeling is not good for them. Also in 200 million years I don't think you can guarantee a tectonic plate shift that would say here is a good place to put the Giza size pile of the waste. You have yet to answer that question or how to keep even the minor radioactive material away from terrorist that would love to get their hands on and as discussed earlier create a very cheap dirty bomb.
I have presented you with a plethora of real science that could be put in place today and remove the need for combustion based energy and do it safely. So before you evade the answer again please check into diamond seeding, 100% tunneling attributes of graphine, Buckeyballs being tied together, H2 production with JIT delivery and the custom tipping of viruses that can do anything with the army currently creating flexible batteries today. I eagerly await your response and expect answers not sidesteps or more dogma.
May I suggest you read: http://www.niauk.org/hot-topics.html
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlso
Liquid Metal and Gas-Cooled Fast Reactors
http://www.nei.org/keyissues/newnuclearplants/small-reactors/
Liquid metal or gas-cooled fast reactor technologies hold the promise of distributed nuclear applications for electricity, water purification and district heating in remote communities. Fast reactors also could provide sustainable nuclear fuel cycle services, such as breeding new fuel and consuming recycled nuclear waste as fuel, and could support nonproliferation efforts by consuming material from former nuclear weapons, thus eliminating them as a threat.
Finally, nothing is risk free but I am convinced that nuclear is the way forward to provide cheap, abundant & clean energy without covering vast areas in low density energy collection & concentration systems that will require greater resources in steel, aluminium & numerous other resources to build & still offering poor energy security.
So even being a Carbon Based object you would prefer to go with answers that are multisided blades, expensive both monetary, and military based resolutions meaning if we don't get it China or Russia will and there will be war like you can't imagine rather than take the an abundant, creative, multiuse particle that has already been proven to do the things I talked about and you hope the refuse will be reused in a valiant way as man has always done. We do have a crevasse and I see social suicide on your side. I will read your links but tell me if we could start tomorrow to only burn/oxidize H2 into H2O it would be a worse solution than creating radioactive isotopes that last 200 million years in some cases. You have yet told me how we protect what comes after us from our deadly addiction and that means that either morality or ethics do not mean anything to you. I thought better so please convince me I am wrong.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think you must be much younger than I am if you have already forgotten the 100,000 instantly killed in 45 based on a decision of a man who had not finished college. Because once Pandora's box is opened it cannot be closed. I guarantee Mother Earth is running out of patience and we have been remodeled more than once.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOne side of the equation. At least a million on both sides saved. Far fewer deaths than lost in one night of fire bombing with conventional weapons. All mass killing weapons are abhorent but this response is typical of the tactics used by the anti nuclear power protesters. Forgot to mention the fact that both the Japanese cities bombed have thriving populations. According to the alarmists, they should be nuclear deserts for eternity.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYour non solution will leave millions of people in poverty. Is that moral or ethical? Mankind has learned to cope with new technology. Everything developed from the spear on through has been used for both construction & destruction. Should we go back to the caves? Put out all the man made fires? Certainly that is where the Green philosophy would lead us.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHave you followed the growth of Carbon based products from seeded diamonds to graphine based computers to custom tipped viruses to H2 delivered in JIST. I want humans to live and leave an earth for after we are extinct. You still have not answered how you protect a species that discovers our shit (hot shit) and cannot translate our warning that it is poisonous for 200 million years. Please answer that and I will listen. If you are ignorant of the science I keep pointing you too let me know I will make sure it is in your face and readable. Dude if we can't communicate in English how on earth are you going to warn beings in the future that don't read any of our current languages assuming they even have eyes. Please I have asked you repeatedly for answer because that is the fatal flaw in your nuclear world!! Please don't be myopic or egocentric be a citizen of this planet.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSome simple info that took about two minutes to find but keep in mind what we call civilization is less than 8,000 years.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNuclear Waste
Nuclear waste is produced in many different ways. There are wastes produced in the reactor core, wastes created as a result of radioactive contamination, and wastes produced as a byproduct of uranium mining, refining, and enrichment. The vast majority of radiation in nuclear waste is given off from spent fuel rods.
A typical reactor will generate 20 to 30 tons of high-level nuclear waste annually. There is no known way to safely dispose of this waste, which remains dangerously radioactive until it naturally decays.
The rate of decay of a radioactive isotope is called its half-life, the time in which half the initial amount of atoms present takes to decay. The half-life of Plutonium-239, one particularly lethal component of nuclear waste, is 24,000 years.
The hazardous life of a radioactive element (the length of time that must elapse before the material is considered safe) is at least 10 half-lives. Therefore, Plutonium-239 will remain hazardous for at least 240,000 years.
There is a current proposal to dump nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, Nevada.
The plan is for Yucca Mountain to hold all of the high level nuclear waste ever produced from every nuclear power plant in the US. However, that would completely fill up the site and not account for future waste.
Transporting the wastes by truck and rail would be extremely dangerous.
For a more detailed analysis of the problems of and risks incurred by the plan, see Top Ten Reasons to Oppose the DoE’s Yucca Mountain Plan
Repository sites in Australia, Argentina, China, southern Africa, and Russia have also been considered.
Though some countries reprocess nuclear waste (in essence, preparing it to send through the cycle again to create more energy), this process is banned in the U.S. due to increased proliferation risks, as the reprocessed materials can also be used for making bombs. Reprocessing is also not a solution because it just creates additional nuclear waste.
The best action would be to cease producing nuclear energy (and waste), to leave the existing waste where it is, and to immobilize it. There are a few different methods of waste immobilization. In the vitrification process, waste is combined with glass-forming materials and melted. Once the materials solidify, the waste is trapped inside and can't easily be released.
Now some more of me. The Great Lakes are around 10,000 years old about the same age as the Polar Bears who made some major modifications to live off pack ice and hunt seals and walruses. My concern and you for some reason seem oblivious to it is that cultures come and go. Perhaps the best way to transmit information is through myths because if it was 8 tracks we would all be dead.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSome of the products from a nuclear reactor and let's just suppose for a moment that for some reason civilization doesn't make it (it is only about 8,000 years old currently and we are still making best guesses on some of the hieroglyphics.) And lets agree that some of the particles produced from nuclear fission have half lives of 200 million years. What is your plan for not killing a creature you haven't met or know how to communicate with?
I firmly believe that if we take advantage of H2 on demand in a prolific and sustainable method (Please read http://www.scientificamerican.co/article.cfm?id=hydrogen-production-comes-natu&posted=1
Which discusses H2 production in a highly prolific and sustainable way with a 3000 to 1 return rate that feeds on chlorophyll is more dangerous than nuclear power. Also regarding storage and massive returns on little input the custom tipping of viruses (award of the year in 2006 at SCIAM) but hard to find now but here is a link http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/sciam-belcher.html/ The US Military has already put this technology into place as batteries and it also has LED potential, input, output and storage capabilities on objects thinner than a piece of paper.
I am all for using nuclear energy on the moon where there is only solar wind at best and perhaps some tidal forces to play with and I would develop Orion type vehicles to explore our solar system in week long junkets leaving the nuclear waste in the vacuum of space.
But to keep using what can be easily weaponized, hard to secure and very poisonous at variable rates of exposure and no way to warn what may come while the crap is still hot makes no sense to me. And I happen to like humans and believe that a lot of people have been sold Kool Aide when it comes to HydroCarbon, Clean Coal and Nuclear energy as the only answers to our energy needs. I think people are just to lazy to connect dots or consider consequences. On the latter part of that statement I simply point to our habit of starting wars because the cost will be small.
I understand your point of view & that it is based on the best of motives as are in fact the vast majority of posters on this forum. Those who think mankind is nothing more than an unfortunate plague & look forward to the demise of our species are the truly delusional & possibly even to be feared. I do not mind if they simply fail to breed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI regard the expenditure of finite resources like coal, oil & gas for electrical generation, when much of the load could be taken up by present nuclear technology with the promise & even some demonstration, of even better technology that can indeed re process & extracts further energy from what at present is nuclear waste. The potential in fact is there to supply the whole world’s electrical energy requirements for 100 years with no further uranium mining. Already the plutonium from decommissioned nuclear weapons has been turned into electrical power. Sure it would be great if renewable could do the job of supplying the needs of present industrial nations as well as for those who aspire to a better life that only abundant cheap energy can provide. It is simply not possible. Huge areas of land & sea would have to be devoted to collecting the energy. Vast resources of steel, cement, aluminium & other resources would have to be devoted to it & we still would have to run the carbon based power stations. I believe we can provide for the legitimate aspirations of people today & in the future while leaving a much less toxic legacy & greater hydrocarbon resources for future generations.
Carlye,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI actually like humans and I am glad I am one and I am glad I am one at this point in time and space. But thanks for the complement. All living creatures leave their mark and the following (the next species to occupy the space)creatures usually use their (The extinct creature's)waste to build new niches from. What I don't think you are thinking about are time scales. Neanderthal was a very successful hominid lasting over 250,000 years and for most species that is a considerable amount of time. Homo Sapiens (us) have been recognized to have been around between 100,000 and 1,000,000 years based on who you believe.
We unfortunately have an uncanny ability to over-modify our environment to the extent that we are currently in what is on parallel to the extinction of the dinosaurs. The good news is over the last 50 or so years we have become aware of this problem and a lot of people are working very hard to find answers to this and some of the cures I have read are worse than the disease. But I would say that removes the we are a cancer on the earth claim you made.
I have studied nuclear power for a great part of my life. In fact I won a science fair ribbon for my design and ability to describe a working reactor. I too thought that nuclear power was a great answer and if we ever get fusion down there may be hope. But fission and hydrocarbon burning are both riddled with issues and between to two fission has problems I don't think we can solve.
If you have studied plate tectonics then you are aware of how much the land masses of the earth have moved. If you have studied climatology you understand that Ice Ages are a function of time since the joining of the America's. Also when the earth gets hit by something the size of Mt. Kilimanjaro every 200 million years the earth goes through some nasty rearrangement.
What I am trying to say is that we have a short time on this planet and Nuclear Power leaves waste that stays hot for 100s of millions of years. We have no method I know of to warn what ever creature comes across these hot zones to stay away and you have yet to answer that question. I hope you read the article on H2 production it was discovered in 1993 and to date it is the best answer for energy on demand. Also the ability to custom tip viruses is alchemy for real. So please read those articles and please, please let me know how to warn the creatures that find our hot radiated waste to stay away. That is the crux of the issue. Yours truly David.
Study C60. Very strange stuff with very strange features. It is much more interesting than plutonium. Also study some of the work with Graphine. Both the Nobel Prizes and the fact that it allows tunneling 100% of the time. Then best part of carbon is it is the hardest material in the world when bonded correctly and soft as silk if need be and can have both features at the same time. I am not delusional just better read from what you said, that is an answer one gives when stuck in a corner.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am not against continued research David & perhaps a new technology will emerge. Based on experience to date I have little faith in the future of fusion. Certainly based on the only present technology being persued. The sheer scale of plasma containment required seems to rule out ever being able to manufacture small single city scale plants. What I do object to is continuing to construct multi million dollar renewable power installations that on previous experience as well as simple engineering principles & using a pocket calculator can be shown to be doomed to failure.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo be viable & responsible towards future generations I believe we have to move towards breeder reactors & the re cycling of nuclear waste. Plutonium in diffuse form where it can not be used for weapons by the way is not a health danger. You can carry a kilogram of pure plutonium in your pockets without endangering your health. The wavelength of its radiation is so short it can not penetrate your skin. Only if it is powdered & inhaled is it a health problem.
In the mean time, I believe we should be moving in an orderly way, from hydrocarbon use to nuclear. If a new technology emerges in future, we can in turn move to that. I feel it is inexcusable to waste hydrocarbon based fuels where nuclear could save these resources for the future.
We agree don't burn HydroCarbons. We don't agree on burning H2 which produces non radioactive H2O. I have asked you as to how we warn creatures 200 million years from now they are in a hot zone and for example I use the what if we put the information on an 8 track player. It is impossible to anticipate living organisms 200 million years from now and a lot of what comes from fission has that long of a life time. So please address that. I can tell you based on the study of evolution, climatology, tectonics and interplanetary collisions it will not be us. We may have another 1,000,000 years on earth but we will go extinct and based on our love of war the owner of the hot stuff will probably have lost all concepts of current history, language and customs so we can't just put a sign up that says it is not a good ideal to be here.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOne of the advantages of a dirty bomb is that it doesn't have to be that dirty to clear the area of population so even low level isotopes can be disguised to look like something evil and with the right half lives look dirty for a long time.
Now I have pointed you to several real science areas that need funding and research but they work, they are clean, the only one that I would even consider oxidizing (burning) is H2 which again produces only H2O and has been proven to be a very (if not the most efficient) element to burn as far as percent of energy produced.
Instead of thinking of your next come back have you read the articles and caught the points. Let me list them for you again:
1) Entanglement of Diamonds (announced 2 weeks ago)
2) Chemical bonding of Buckeye Balls (announced 2 months ago)
3) Prolific and sustainable production of H2 and O2 by bacteria with a 3,000 percent of return on input (chlorophyll)
4) The ability to cheaply create single layers of graphine (Last years Nobel Prize)
5) The ability of graphine to allow tunneling 100% of the time (was in SCIAM about 3 years ago)
6) The ability to create Nanotubes from graphine (announced about 1 or 2 months ago)
7) Diamond Seeding where a grain size diamond is enclosed in a high pressure environment of carbon lade gas which at completion develops diamonds (for industrial use) of about 2 K size.
8) Custom tipping of viruses (in use currently by the army) to create an array of devices including LED, touch screen, storage and batteries that would create computers thinner than a sheet of paper.
As far as burning H2 I would hope that we are able to create workable fuel cells before we come close to fusion based reactors.
Breeder reactors do exactly that. They create plutonium which is highly fissionable and highly desired by any country trying to develop a nuclear weapon. We have shown over the last 60 years that the genie will not go back into the bottle and to encourage any more if it is social suicide.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUntil we as a race learn to play nice with each other we should leave the proven problem of fission alone and look at alternatives such as discussed in the previous article. There are places on the earth that provide sun light suitable for heating 99% of the year. We have more than enough water to take advantage of tidal power and we have a ring of fire that encircles the earth that would make geothermal energy a cake walk.
Additionally we have started to realize how plants work and have found ways (using Si (god knows why) vs C) to generate electricity. Nuclear power was a nice idea until the draw backs and the fall out started. We need to pursue Nuclear as much as we need to pursue hydro carbon because in either case we lose and so does momma earth. She gets angry if you play too long with the wrong toys and will wipe the earth of people if we don't learn to play by her rules. I am going to leave you with a little ditty I wrote a while back that in a perverse way is a salute to your persistence.
An Answer to Cancer
====================
If I called men a cancer on the earth, it would be a lie.
If I cried change your ways or you will die.
You would look at me and ask why?
We men claim it is our time since our birth.
We must accept that god's chosen always inherit the Earth.
And this is why I can only say
“It is true you own it now but there will be a day.”
The Earth grows bored, She is very old.
The time will come, maybe hot, probably cold.
We will perish and waste away.
The scars we leave will tell of out stay.
Rocks may keep a secret or two.
Some future Cancer will see us new.
Stadiums, churches, WalMart and TV
They will not see our Reality.
Their god and ours are as different as night and day.
Enjoy your time during your stay.
Enjoy your time, give thanks and pray!
This is your time, your day.
=====================================
I don't think we are cancer I just think we don't think.
David, I am an old man & while conversing with you on this string over recent days, have driven alone for nearly 1000 miles to deliver a car for my daughter who lives in a remote mining town. I flew home tonight. I will go through your links & comments & research the points you have covered. Many of the things you mention I have knowledge of though not necessarily the latest. On diamonds I read about a year ago that they had developed a technique where a diamond surface could be deposited on steel machine tools. I have followed developments in Buckeye Balls & Nanotubes since they were first discovered. There have been numerous claims about bacteria producing hydrogen. In fact there is an aquarium plant called oxygen weed where you can see a stream of bubbles being released as the plant converts Co2 into carbon & oxygen also. What tends to be ignored with all the claims is that the feedstock is ultimately produced from solar energy. A forest in good growing conditions only produces 1800 lbs of wood per year. You can not extract more energy from a system than it contains. In fact you always get considerably less. Otherwise perpetual motion would be commonplace. With things like algae or bacteria they have to convert a nutrient created by solar energy into oil or gas etc. It does not matter how you dice it, huge areas have to be devoted to produce the feedstock for worthwhile scale production & also for the ponds or tanks. Then the products have to be extracted & refined. As I say though, I will go through your posts again over the coming week as I get more time.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNuclear power costs virtually the same running at full capacity as at reduced capacity. Therefore the excess capacity during low demand could be used to split water into hydrogen & oxygen through hydrolysis on a very large scale.
By the way, there are the remnants of a naturally occurring nuclear reactor in Africa. Mankind evolved in Africa. Inhabitants of the planet millions of years hence will be adapted to live in the environment into which they evolve. Even worrying about saving coal or oil on that time scale is pointless as the present reserves will have been mostly subducted & burned naturally anyway. Even today there are huge underground coal fires not ignited by man. Naturally exposed coal faces can be ignited by lightning, volcanic activity & a number of other mechanisms. Sorry this is rather disjointed.
Cheers, Carlyle.
P.S. Just read your latest post. Mankind has vastly advanced its awareness of Earths uniqueness. Character limit out.
Late night where I live in Australia David & I have had a big day. I will enjoy to swap views with you later. Enjoyed your last post. Take my screen name from an ancestor. The poet Thomas Carlyle. Most famous for his book The French Revolution. His politics was a little too right wing I am afraid but a man of his times.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI will give you time to relax after the trip. Sounds like we may be of the same age. My youngest daughter is 33 and sons (twins) 31 and I am up to 5 grand kids so far ( I don't even want to say how old the oldest is). I so agree with you on burning carbon and for a long time thought nuclear was a good way to go but watching the current science and the truths that won't stay down no matter how hard big business tries I think we have better alternatives.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe fuel for the bacteria that poops H2 and O2 prolifically (3,000 times out per unit of fuel in (chlorophyll)) still amazes me that it has sat since 1993 and just raised its ugly head again last December.
When I studied the pros and cons of a H2 driven world both combustible and fuel cell the only issue that was a problem was storage. When I see a way to deliver just in time H2 and O2 is the waste product I get a little POd.
I have watched Carbon nano tubes, diamonds, composites and variations of graphine for over 20 years and again the acquisition has been the issue but one of the Nobel prizes last year was how easy it is to get the Graphine almost like sharpening a pencil.
Anyway read the information and we can talk. I am so glad you are not a know it all kid (I was a little worried) so I look forward to our discussions and hope to learn from you. I love mankind but we seem to forget all species get their time on earth and while we are here it is ours to enhance or destroy but in the end Momma Earth always wins and in a billion years it will not matter as the sun boils the water off this beautiful planet.
Happy new year and I must say driving a 1,000 miles to deliver a vehicle is a kind of love I admire. God Bless and get some rest.
BTW if you want to know who killed Nuclear Power in the US it was none other than Jimmy (I can screw anything up) Carter when he killed a program that was in place and working and reducing nuclear waste to plastic encrusted cylinders that could not be separated at any reasonable cost or use. He did that to stop Nuclear Power as a whole and it was very successful. I had no love for that man. I am not right or left I tend to move towards Common Sense and they do not have an active party in place anywhere I know of. It is hard to find fanatics when it comes to common sense.
Information on Bio Fuel & Nuclear.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have spent considerable time reading research papers. Nothing I have found is any where near being capable of producing bio fuel economically. I have not found anything convincing about producing H2O2. Hydrogen Peroxide. Also I have found reports of outlandish claims being made in order to obtain funding. This was also the case when I was involved in the solar industry & research back in the ‘80s. This explains the frequently never heard again claims like the 3000% returns you reported reading about.
Another point is that solar to vegetative mass is only 3% efficient. Then only a fraction of that mass can be converted to energy. Massive harvesting, filtering & processing. To replace the world’s liquid fuel with bio fuel would require 10% of the world’s deserts to be covered with algae ponds. It is proposed that nutrients be pumped from city sewage systems. This is ridiculous. Water is not cheap to pump. It must be remembered that one cubic meter of water weighs one tonne. There is also the little matter of water evaporation rates measured in many feet per year in desert areas. Not to mention the environmental effects.
http://www.aquafuels.eu/attachments/079_Merged%20reports%20-Taxonomy_Biology%20&%20Biotechnology.pdf
the one and only energy source for growth of algae is incoming light energy that is transformed with an efficiency of around
3% into biomass. Under absolutely optimized conditions in terms of temperature, light intensity, mixing and
CO2 supply, higher photosynthetic efficiencies of up to 7% may be achieved
It is quite possible to utilize Nuclear Power, which emits almost no greenhouse gases, to provide the vast majority of an entire country's need for electricity. The French Nuclear Power program is the exemplar of this. In France, Nuclear Power provides 77% of the nation's need for electricity (the remainder being Hydroelectricity). France generates a surplus of electricity which it exports to neighbouring countries at a profit. It does this while costing the dismantling of its reactors and disposing of its waste products in the price of the power it generates.
http://nuclearinfo.net/Nuclearpower/FullSummary
I don't agree with the H2 O2 piece but I do not believe in bio fuel as an answer to anything and a good way to create starvation. You do not address tidal water which works like a clock and with a ratcheted system could be controlled both in and out. Ted Taylor of the Project Orion came up with a unique use of small ponds of water and convection based on Freeman Dyson's notes and that was in the 60's.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisChlorophyll is found in all green things that take CO2 and poop O2 including remains of any farming and pumps are nice but as a rule water flows so pumps are not always necessary only redirection to turbines that are one time cost of production and then cost of maintenance. H2 burns clean and its only pollution is H20 which can be reused through simple convection. If we want to address CO2 that is merely an issue of temperature which I believe is about 2,000 degrees F with O2 and C as the out put with the C being in the form of graphine which leads back to the uses of carbon previously mentioned. What all these methods lack is the need to find a way to warn a species not likely human in about 100,000,000 years that the area is hot and will kill you or mutate you in an unpredictable way.
I take it you made it home okay and I wish you a happy new year. But please please remember that without the Rosetta stone and a creature that can understand it you have no way of warning another species (or hominid) of the nasty death they face. As a rule excluding the Jews (gotta respect a 5,000 year culture) most cultures are good for about 1 to 2 thousand years top and usually (especially democracies) about 300 to 500 years old.
As I said in an earlier posting I use to think nuclear was the way to go. I even won awards for my understanding of it but after 3 mile Island, Chernobyl, the fires in New Mexico last year near White Sands, the disaster of at least 3 total meltdowns in Japan last year after the 9.1 earthquake and resulting tsunami (part of the problem was the pond was deep enough until the ground raised 3 meters which Oh Oh led to release of retained nuclear waste). I have lost my love for nuclear. J. Carter actually did a lot of damage in the 70's because the US had developed a way to deal with waste, it was in production and good ole JC (I really did not like him as a president if you can't tell), nixed it.
So here is the question you refuse to answer Carlyle how do we warn those that come after us? I need a good answer and it seems you keep avoiding it. Please, pretty please. Otherwise I love your postings.
Any future beings would have to be smarter than us surely, in which case they will easily navigate their way through man made or naturally occurring hazards :)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWith reference to tidal power, even the greatest tidal heights in the world only give a height variation of about fifty feet during the highest tides. That is equivalent to 22.2 lbs of pressure per square inch. Remember it takes about six hours to reach this potential. Regardless of the energy capture method whether by turbine or weight displacement, the facilities to capture worthwhile quantities of energy are huge. Remember also that in most places tidal ranges are much less than 50 feet. If it was so simple there would be tidal facilities everywhere. Those that have been built have had disappointing results coupled with massive costs to build & maintain.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThree hundred & thirty gallons per minute falling fifty feet has the capacity to generate 5 horsepower if you recovered 100% of the potential energy. The actual recovery would be much less. One thousand horsepower would require nearly four million gallons per hour or in 24 hours 95 million gallons & remember that is at 50 feet & 100% efficiency. How many thousand horsepower does a city need? The figures are astronomical. Halve the tide height & double the quantities. This assumes you capture & store these vast quantities at the top of the tide but then you also have to have an area that can take the discharge, 50 feet lower. You have to subtract the depth of your storage facility from the 50 feet remember. Ideally it should only be an inch deep or less. Using flotation like giant super tankers would require a large fleet to service a city. In practice merely capturing the energy by flotation or displacement over the tidal cycle is much worse. It can never work & you do not have to spend hundreds of millions to prove it will not work.
You are a good engineer but you missed the key word ratcheted system. Also we have geothermal and that surrounds the world and again is steady state and if it blows there are issues but not radiation with a half life of 100,000,000 million years.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI understood the issue of area of tide but with a ratchet system you wait for low or high points before opening and closing creating a much bigger bang for the buck. Additionally it is world wide and we can even use similar ideas with rivers. I am asking you two things now. First get out of your box it is like gravity to your imagination. Secondly please, please answer me how we warn the species in 100,000,000 years they just stepped into hot doodoo. We have a rough idea of where the plates will be baring any cosmic collision but they have a nasty habit of showing up about every 200,000,000 years on average so even the best plate guess will be useless and we have no ideal how pole rotation effects the plates so my problem is still a trash issue which I have not heard your answer to. I will check back to see if I missed a note.
Do remember since we do not know what will lead to our extinction except it is a guarantee of all species we cannot assume what replaces us will have eyes, hands or the ability to read or listen to any type of warning. With that in mind I am all ears (ours still work) as to how you warn the future of the problems we have caused.
That is the most ridiculous statement I ever heard. We will probably be replaced by cock roaches, ants, rats and coyotes and in your country monster roos or gigantic platypuses. Why would you ever assume we will be replaced by something more intelligent than us. We are a genetic freak that lacked big teeth, strong muscles, enough body hair to deal with weather changes. Hell Elephants and Whales have more going for them and they can't read. We are intelligent because we are genetically lacking.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou need to be able to warn a creature that if more intelligent can read our languages and with the death of written material quickly approaching (everything is going digital) they will have to be able to decode ones and zeroes that are probably encrypted as part of the copy write and your are assuming they have the correct power and reading utensil at hand. Try harder that is weak. (I would have loved to listen to Bohr and Einstein I bet it was as bad as this).
David, it does not matter whether you use a ratchet or any other mechanical system that will ever be devised. You are still working with the potential energy between two heights over a 12 hour cycle & by the way, no energy at the bottom of the tide. The figures I gave you only picked the high tide point. At half tide the potential is only half as much, quarter tide only a quarter etc. To think there is some mechanical method of recovering more than the potential energy in any system is mistaken
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOn the nuclear issue you consistently ignore the fact that waste can be contained. I gave you the examples of naturally occurring nuclear reactions that occurred in Africa. They even created plutonium. The radioactivity has been naturally contained for hundreds of millions of years & has posed no threat to humanity. The fear of radioactivity is irrational. The belief in wind & tide & solar that sweeps the laws of physics under the carpet is also irrational. While you continue to argue that some invention will give a higher return than the potential energy in the system, I am sorry but this amounts to belief or faith & not science. I see no point in continuing.
You also see no point in the economics of scales meaning a lot of of little things can add up to a big whole. I am not saying you can get more power out than what you put in. I am saying you can get a lot of energy by using the waste that comes out.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou knock the ratchet idea without even thinking it through so think of this. Their is a high mark and a low mark. When the water is at the low mark you release what is held in containment and reap the power held in and then you reset the ratchet and put the wall or what ever you use to contain the tidal pool and don't let the water back in until it hits the high mark. Then you are able to gather the full force of energy at once and there is a lot of tidal area on this planet (25%). The point is twice a day each site uses the force of the tide to generate electricity and it is almost free because all you are doing is setting a ratchet to keep the containment controlled. BTW this has potential with sewage and any other gravity driven source. It works both directions in that when you let the tide out you put the lock or whatever you want to call it up and it is in place until the tide is high again.
With the ring of fire we have a built in source of heat that can generate thermal driven turbines at no cost as long as the Earth has a mantle and a crust and plate tectonics. THAT IS AS CHEAP AND SAFE AS IT GETS. Why not tap into this and to some degree gulf streams etc.
Just the effort it takes to gather enough fissile material from ore is on the border of ridiculous when there is so much more coal and carbon available to work on the science discussed such as nano-tech (networks, computers, composites, conductive, semi-conductive and non conductive. The proof of what graphine is possible of and now how easy it is to obtain (2 Nobel prizes). It has been shown to have tunneling at 100% of the time and again can be developed in to nanotubes and other low energy products. Carbon Composites that out perform anything iron, titanium or any other metal can do and can be used in ceramics or composite form with the malleability of silk and harder than steel.
Then diamonds you touched on a minor feature of applying diamonds to metal to create hard drills but there is a company that takes a small diamond seed, places it in a high density carbon based environment and you have diamond particles with a size of about 2 karats. And just last week it was reported that scientist have been able to use entanglement between diamonds which is a great first step to quantum computing.
You also see no point in the economics of scales meaning a lot of of little things can add up to a big whole. I am not saying you can get more power out than what you put in. I am saying you can get a lot of energy by using the waste that comes out.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou knock the ratchet idea without even thinking it through so think of this. Their is a high mark and a low mark. When the water is at the low mark you release what is held in containment and reap the power held in and then you reset the ratchet and put the wall or what ever you use to contain the tidal pool and don't let the water back in until it hits the high mark. Then you are able to gather the full force of energy at once and there is a lot of tidal area on this planet (25%). The point is twice a day each site uses the force of the tide to generate electricity and it is almost free because all you are doing is setting a ratchet to keep the containment controlled. BTW this has potential with sewage and any other gravity driven source. It works both directions in that when you let the tide out you put the lock or whatever you want to call it up and it is in place until the tide is high again.
With the ring of fire we have a built in source of heat that can generate thermal driven turbines at no cost as long as the Earth has a mantle and a crust and plate tectonics. THAT IS AS CHEAP AND SAFE AS IT GETS. Why not tap into this and to some degree gulf streams etc.
Just the effort it takes to gather enough fissile material from ore is on the border of ridiculous when there is so much more coal and carbon available to work on the science discussed such as nano-tech (networks, computers, composites, conductive, semi-conductive and non conductive. The proof of what graphine is possible of and now how easy it is to obtain (2 Nobel prizes). It has been shown to have tunneling at 100% of the time and again can be developed in to nanotubes and other low energy products. Carbon Composites that out perform anything iron, titanium or any other metal can do and can be used in ceramics or composite form with the malleability of silk and harder than steel.
Then diamonds you touched on a minor feature of applying diamonds to metal to create hard drills but there is a company that takes a small diamond seed, places it in a high density carbon based environment and you have diamond particles with a size of about 2 karats. And just last week it was reported that scientist have been able to use entanglement between diamonds which is a great first step to quantum computing.
You refuse to address how do we warn the species (meaning more than one probably 10 to 20 between now and the one billion year window before the sun starts to boil off all our water). I do not want to create any industry that cannot be controlled adequately to keep terrorist from making dirty bombs, I do not trust industry as a whole and I think the more we act like mother earth the longer we will get to enjoy our short stay. Didn't your mother teach you not to play with fire. But if we discover real fusion I will be glad to discuss nuclear energy again. Until then it is pandora and I want to put it back in the box.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou know what I miss most about Australia besides some family members (yeah we had some bad ones in my family too) is the Paul Hogan show. That had to be one of the funniest shows I ever saw and no one seems to remember it. I hope you laughed a little at his genius and I guess we shall part ways because I really do not like nuclear power since the death of Project Orion and I think we are leaving poison for future species that don't speak or use language and don't understand signs with lines through them. It has been a pleasure and love your family. Any man who would drive 1,000 miles (not kilometers)is a person I have respect for. We just look at the world differently.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAll I can tell you about myself is that I once came on board at a medical imaging company that was taking 90 seconds to capture an image. I looked at the code for about 5 minutes, made one change and it captured the images in 5 seconds. I have been notorious of doing such things so I am pretty sure I am not as stupid as you imply. I just like to look at things outside of the box. Which is why I was a little surprised you thought something more intelligent than us would replace us.
ooops must have been shampooing and did the repeat thing. My bad.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI do not think you are stupid. I do think you have found a red herring peg on which to hang your anti nuclear hat. The future generations or even species warning system argument. As for the ratchet system, no matter how you configure it, you can not get more energy out over the tide cycle than the potential energy between the high & low sides of the cycle & we can not build marine infrastructure on the scale required without vast consumption of resources out of all proportion to the benefits. A simple barge filled with water so that it only just floats, on a cable around a wheel will gather the energy going up & coming down but the amount of energy is still limited by time & height differential. On average 12 hours per cycle. Six up & six down. Then there is the disruption of the environment that would be caused on the scale required. The other advances you mention re carbon are marvellous & some will lead to advances in energy technology. Perhaps an orbiting tether or space elevator or power generation via a long tether cutting the earth’s magnetic field for power generation. Perhaps one day manufacturing on the moon but for the foreseeable future, if we are concerned about waste & pollution, we only have one base load option.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOne thing I learned from Benoit Manderbolt is that when you start to look at real boundaries the amount of space becomes almost boundless. I believe that fractals held a lot of answers and I am sad that Manderbolt died before his outlook was justified. I think in the end we will find that we live in a universe that is a fractal based singularity that falls in on itself like a good Escher picture.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI understand where you come from my father is of the same school of thought. I always look at the economies of scales and the more little things used add up to big answers. Think of all the wasted heat/energy of a busy highway and then think of how hybrid cars work on the heat of the brakes on the car. Now imagine all the cars on the road. If we think of energy as a non symmetric system of allocation rather than something tied to a clock there is so much waste to pull from that we only need to learn to be more pithy with what we use.
My red herring of warning future societies is much more important than you give it. But that is so very true of what I hear called the white man's burden. We are a very stubborn race and have only spent a dash of time on this beautiful planet. We will be replaced and whatever comes next will be replaced and until about 5 billion years from now when the earth is turned to toast there may be many many different life forms to come. Keep in mind 90% of living matter is under the earth. But you have been a gift to this race which is special in itself. I chose to be a gift to the planet and that is much more esoteric and includes all the herrings including the red ones.
Dont mind a bit of red myself. Bottle or cask. :) Re waste heat. Look up Carnot Cycle.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAll heat engines are governed by the Carnot Cycle. These two URLs give a basic description. The second one allows you to enter two temperatures, for example 100F on the hot side & 32F on the exhaust side & tells you the theoretically possible percentage of energy that can be recovered. You have to read a little further to see the real world possible recovery & work out just how much you can recover after converting heat to mechanical energy & then again to electrical or other. Similar rules of physics apply to hydro & other energy forms
http://tinyurl.com/7twuoxu
http://tinyurl.com/b83yc
I have used tinyurl.com to reduce the many line lengths of the original URLs. Very handy tool.
Thanks for the ear. What I always remember is as a kid I was a motor head and was impressed with BHP and how much gas is chewed up. When I had my first car it had a Police Interceptor Engine at 352 CI which after strait piping, low input and re-attaching the secondaries had about 400+ HP and ate 1 gallon of gas for every 5 miles I drove it. In the 2000's I had about 350 HP and used 1 gallon of gas for every 30 miles I went. What it taught me is that we can keep making things more efficient and powerful at the same time. I also live in PA and 3 mile island blew my mind the same as the BP blow out in the Gulf of Mexico did, because as we learned to get more from less we failed to learn to fix things when they broke. I have issues with religion and science for similar reasons. They get more effective but forget to keep up with the ethics and morality that goes with the awareness. It is why I get hung up on the sign and the repercussions and tend to fall back on the more natural things we can fix when we break them.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI lived in PA for a while and have driven through the mountains that don't go out and I have also seen grain elevators blow up. The things that will bite you come from left field but when science outpaces the fixes and the plan B's I worry. Nuclear Power is a genie that has a lot of good but I am afraid man is not capable of handling the bad side yet. I am very much against burning anything containing carbon so we agree on that and I really believe we need to focus on the ideal of using the cheaper more plentiful elements which to me are H, HE, O, Fe, S, C, Si,Fe and N. China will soon be the soul source for rare earth and as said earlier it takes a lot of ore to get Ur and Pu is like liquor in that we take what the good lord gave us and try to make it better or as I like to call that Original Sin. Carlyle you have taught me a lot and I thank you I hope I passed something back to you. I hope your family loves you as much as my does and I hope you confuse them as much as I do mine.
Actually I share many of your concerns & experiences. My first car was a ‘34 Ford V8. 5 miles per gallon was a good trip. Also the family love, support & confusion. Overall, though I often despair at human behaviour, I am optimistic. With global communication today we tend to hear all the bad news of wars, floods, droughts, famine & disease that in previous times we were blissfully unaware of. In my opinion humanity is progressing slowly to a better & more just future despite the setbacks. I find no comfort from religion but love nature. Looking forward to future space & other scientific discoveries including advances in particle physics, though my understanding of many of these fields is very limited I love reading about them. Perhaps confirmation of the Higgs boson this year.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy regards & best wishes to you & yours for the coming year.
Carlyle.