Lazy8 wrote: 
I'm not engineery enough to know whether this whole Thorium thing is just hippie-fied nukes (they eat nuclear waste and poop MatchLight™ Brand charcoal briquets)  or if it's really the answer. And if it is the answer, how long and why not sooner? Any information sites out there you care to vouch for?

kurtster wrote:
There is a broad range of estimates of the eventual death toll from Chernobyl, from the direct count of accident fatalities (64) to Greenpeace's hysterical claims of 200,000, all the way up to the hyperbolically silly numbers from Greenpeace Russia's Alexey Yablokov (985,000 from cancer between 1986 and 2008, a number no one but activists puts any credibility in).

The breathless claim that Chernobyl will be uninhabitable for "20,000 years" might be true for, say, the reactor core—but not the current 30 km radius keep-out zone.

Clearly the old Soviet RMBK reactors are dangerous, but even for this design only one of 17 built has failed. It has to be done carefully but it can be (and, around the world, has been) done safely

In the case of nuclear energy it's record of deaths/kWh generated is far better than coal or petroleum. In the case of fossil fuels it isn't a question of risk but of certainty: burning them is raising the CO2 level in the atmosphere. The end result of that chemistry experiment won't be known for some time, but it can't be consequence-free.

 kurtster wrote: 
As always, its all about the Benjamins.

 gypsyman wrote: 
I too agree, that nuclear can be safe.  But I have to keep the fact that human error is a major factor in arguing against it.  The other major factors against it are the disposal of the waste, the short (30 to 40) year life span of the reactors and the expense of decommisioning a plant which runs into the billions upon billions of dollars.  And that's if everything goes right.

Growing up, I was a proponent of nuclear power.  In the past 20 years I have come to not be in favor of it.  The turning point was when the first efforts of consolidating waste were undertaken.  The country was divided into 5 groups of 10 states.  Our group, the so called Great Lakes compact drew straws and Michigan was to be first to host storage of waste.  They refused and it was then put on Ohio.  The Ohio solution was to store it in the salt mines under Lake Erie.  Yep, someone had the bright idea to put the world's largest supply of fresh water at permanent risk of contamination.  The failure of getting these compacts to agree on how and where led to Yucca Mountain.  Yucca Mountain has turned into a multi billion dollar boondogle which has since been abandoned as the solution, leaving us again with no solution.

Then there are the enrichment sites.  We have one here in southern Ohio, at Portsmouth / Piketon.  There is also the Hanford Site in Washington state where the same type of reactors as in Chernobyl exist, the carbon graphite design.  Somewhere I recall hearing about LILCO's problems with decommissioning nuclear plants near NYC, where they had to reapply for operating permits because the costs of decommissioning were too expensive.

I've watched first hand the problems with keeping our local reactor going, Davis Besse.  The problems are endless, with contractor problems, shoddy work, and corrosion the biggest issue IIRC.  All these concerns plus the fact that reactors must be located next to water for cooling.  We have had two level seven events in 25 years, Chernobyl and Fukushima.both of which have had global implications.

Petroleum based energy has its problems, but they are localised and relatively short term, plus nature does deal with it rather easily.  Petroleum must be viewed as the bridge to something better.  Fission is not the permanent solution, nor is wind or solar.  Fusion is an eventual permanent solution and we already have Thorium.  The US has already cut its greenhouse gas emmisions back farther than the demands of the Kyoto protocols. 

Petroleum is not evil, nor is it the end all.  Building more fission reactors is the ultimate kicking the can down the road solution, a lose lose solution.

It is interesting to use the poor safety record of using fossil fuels as a reason to further pursue nuclear energy as an alternative.  There is another way to look at the same data.  If we cannot trust energy companies and their employees to safely maintain oil and gas and obviously we can't, then what makes us so sure we can trust energy companies and their employees to safely implement and maintain nuclear power plants where the repercussions of accidents are so much greater?

Natural gas leaking from well off Louisiana coast

 gypsyman wrote: 
What do you think the hold up is with developing nuclear fusion?  I remember this same topic coming up in the late 1970s even before Three-Mile Island.

 gypsyman wrote: 
I agree 100%. It is dangerous, but if we would put the money into research and training  that we put into the military to invade/protect petroleum providing countries, we could do it and there wouldn't be so many kids killed in the military.

On a side note, we should use some of that $$$ for desalination research so we don't have to go to war with China when they are forced to invade Russia to get uncontaminated water(which is why so many American jobs became outsourced to countries with no environmental regulations in the first place). 2/3 of the world is water, why don't we(and China, etc) develop the technology to remove salt from water? How hard can that be?

OK, I scare myself when I start making sense. Pops has had his breakfast, so I'm going to try to for awhile.

Well, actually I need to go to the grocery store when they open at 6 AM.

 gypsyman wrote: 
Never doubted that, how much faith do you have in NO human error ever taking place again or that companies will adhere strictly to safety in construction and maintenance of these plants and not cut corners? The question is not whether the technology is safe on the drawing board, it is whether humans can be trusted to implement and maintain a technology that can cause so much mass destruction when not properly built and maintained not to mention waste storage.  How much faith do you have in humans to achieve this needed perfect record?  I will give my 2, not much.

Sorry, had to comment. My father, a graduate of Carnegie-Mellon, both undergrad and masters programs, spent his entire life in the field of nuclear energy, and is the co-holder of several patents on design and construction of nuclear reactor containment and containment suspension systems (post Three-Mile Island). His designs are in use world-wide, including the Czech Republic, Germany, South Korea, and three in the US - Palo Verde, Seabrook, and Sequoyah. He has emphatically stated over the years that the next step towards petroleum independence must be nuclear energy. His comments regarding the safety of nuclear energy generally note that continued research in physics and careful application are paramount. Moreover, the step after that would need to be to nuclear fusion, not fission, but, as of yet, it is too expensive, and has only been accomplished on a very small and as yet unreliable scale. The investigations of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl incidents return a solid, irrefutable fact - that human error on the part of the administrators of these plants, not the technology, was the primary cause of failure - although in the case of the Russians, the execution of the technology may have also been a factor.

Just trying to put things in perspective.  

 Lazy8 wrote: 

Oh ?  And how many have died or will yet die as a result of Chernobyl ?  Chernobyl is unihabitable for the next 20,000 years.  The EU still has policies in place that deal with ongoing contamination across Europe, far away from the site.

I fail to see how the risks of petroleum based energy outweigh the risks of fissionable nuclear power.

kurtster wrote:
What is the "half-life" of "nuclear damage"?

This metaphor is meaningless. Isotopes have half-lives, sometimes big, scary numbers—hundreds of thousands of years, like calcium-41, a naturally-occuring isotope you have in your teeth. But the longer the half-life the less likely an isotope is to decay. Unless you know the decay products it tells you nothing; Carbon-14 gives off beta radiation when it decays; this is stopped by a few millimeters of air.

Which is more likely to kill you? That's easy—petroleum. By many orders of magnitude. More people died in the train derailment in Quebec than have died in the entire history of the nuclear power industry in North America.

So if our only two immediate choices are petroleum or dirty nuclear fission, which way to go ?

The half life of petroleum damage is a little shorter than nuclear.  Seems like a no brainer.

and pipelines vs rail ?  another no brainer.

 miamizsun wrote: 

Looks like they are going to be PWR.  Is that what you meant?

 sirdroseph wrote: 
do we know what type of nuclear?

it matters

regards

I forgot to mention this when Obama made his climate change speech but my wife just now reminded me when she was talking about alternative energy possibilities for us. On a personal level, I was reminded of what I perceive is a possible environmental danger encroaching upon our safe zone.  Excerpt from the speech:

"Here at Georgetown, I unveiled my strategy for a secure energy future. And thanks to the ingenuity of our businesses, we're starting to produce much more of our own energy. We're building the first nuclear power plants in more than three decades — in Georgia and South Carolina."

Yay, one more potential mass disaster zone created that we are the epicenter of.....yay.

i'm on the way out and i haven't looked at this yet

there's video and an infographic

One giant leap for mankind: £13bn Iter project makes breakthrough in quest for nuclear fusion, a solution to climate change and an age of clean, unlimited energy

An idyllic hilltop setting in the Cadarache forest of Provence in the south of France has become the site of an ambitious attempt to harness the nuclear power of the sun and stars.

It is the place where 34 nations representing more than half the world’s population have joined forces in the biggest scientific collaboration on the planet – only the International Space Station is bigger.

The international nuclear fusion project – known as Iter, meaning “the way” in Latin – is designed to demonstrate a new kind of nuclear reactor capable of producing unlimited supplies of cheap, clean, safe and sustainable electricity from atomic fusion.

 DaveInVA wrote: 
A furnace exploded and it's international news?

With all due respect to the one dead guy, why doesn't the death of dozens of coal miners trigger an international hysteria every time it happens?

Explosion at French nuclear site kills 1

interesting article about disaster training.

During WW2, the Japanese lost a lot of warships to relatively minor damage because of their very poor damage-control procedures, training and leadership.  The above article seems to indicate that this lack of preparedness for things going wrong is still with them.

 nuggler wrote: 
Nope.  This fire is the first of the next wave of Al Qaeda low budget terrorist attacks. 

First they sneak across the border, go straight to Ohio and buy their new weapon of mass destruction and head back south with their new weapon and a bag of marshmallows.  The marshmallows are only present to provide an excuse for them transporting their new weapon of mass destruction.  


Forest jihad: How Australian wildfires 'could fuel Al Qaeda armies of one'


Obama must act now and cut down all the trees and pave over everything making America fireproof.  Then we need licenses and security checks to buy bic lighters and matches.  If one buys matches and lighters, they should be required to buy cigarettes at the same time so as to insure tobacco tax revenue due to falling consumption of cigarettes due to higher taxes.  Purchasers of lighter fluid must sign affidavits that they actually have barbeques at home and/or require them to buy charcoal at the same time.  This helps to keep the charcoal industry working and is a good use for all the trees that have been cut down.

Obama care has set forth the ability of governemnt to mandate citizens to purchase things whether they want them or not.  The commerce clause guarentees this right of government to force citizens to buy stuff or go to jail if they don't.  We can hire more IRS agents to insure compliance and guarentee that citizens are guilty until proven innocent.  Tax court is exempt from the presumption of innocence.

Next we  ...