I "admit" nothing of the sort -- I proudly consider the time I spent w/ a US reactor vendor as part of their team to handle outside contacts one of the more interesting parts of my career.
Actually, as has come to fore and your other posting so sadly decries, there is a very prominent return. At least two applications have been filed within the last six months. I know of several other utilities that are seriously looking and expect several more filings this year.
And yes, for this thread for the time being, I'm letting the four-year olds have the candy bar...
Yeah, if you consider 20Ktons low yield. It did wipe out the city. As to how much radioactive waste it created vs Chernobly, I'm actually not sure about that, one way or the other. Chernobly was such a half assed hell hole to begin with that it was easy to just walk away from it instead of rebuilding it.
The uranium used in commercial reactors is enriched to a whopping 2 or
3%. Before those rods go into the nuke, you could hold them in your hand. Weapons grade uranium like that used at Hiroshima is what's highly enriched, which is to 80 or 90%.
snipped-for-privacy@optonline.net wrote in news:a1469d1f-a867-4a0a-8ed5- snipped-for-privacy@h11g2000prf.googlegroups.com:
well,they were air-burst,not ground burst,which digs a lot of dirt up and spreads it.I'm not so sure about "higher altitude",as nukes usually are detonated at around 3-5 thousand feet.
And they VERY rarely get released.That's the important part.
actually,those early nukes were very dirty,as they didn't know enough to fine-tune the amount of fissionables so that ALL the fissionables actually fissioned.IOW,they wasted a lot of uranium and plutonium to be sure the bombs would fission.
No, I've seen the effects stupid people can have on even the simplest operations. Plus, I can't at this moment think of a single incident at a nuclear power facility that wasn't caused by stupidity. Not even one single incident caused by an actual materials or design failure runs through my mind.
and how do you guarantee a stupid person in the future wouldnt create a disaster.
one tech looking for air leaks caused a electrical fire in the control cables....
top of reactor core nearly ate thru, one and i believe it was around the great lakes, a water deflector came loose and blocked cooling water, the nearly brand new reactor nearly melted down and was permanetely shut down and encased in a oncrete vault.
how many old reactors have been shut down, disassembled and the ground cleaned up, core sent for proper disposal?
I believe you actually _do_ get your science out of popular mechanics/ science mags.
Next you will be looking for the flying car, George Jetsons jet car, Fast Than Light Flight, etc. All of them are in the popular mags. Predictions? Only in your mind.
He's right. I spent many an afternoon in my Grandpa's basement and down at the library, reading old Popular Science magazines and actual real scientific journals, and the 'too cheap to meter' claim was a common sales pitch. Note well that 'too cheap to meter' /= 'free'. It just means they claimed you would pay for the hookup and a monthly flat fee, which would have been a hell of cost savings for them, in those mechanical meter, manually read, pre-computer days.
Nobody actually believed it, though.
(BTW, Popular Science, 100 years or so ago, WAS an actual science journal. Articles for laymen didn't appear till late 30s or 40s, and they still had actual science content on a regular basis well into the
60s, when they went strictly gee-whiz new-tech and home improvement.)
Fermi II, IIRC. 1967. Described in a sensationalist book 'We Almost Lost Detroit. No idea how accurate the book was.
Not very many, so far. I think NRC and the Navy just got around to dismantling the R&D reactors for the original nuke sub program a couple of years ago. The earliest commercial reactors are just now reaching end-of-life, and many got their licenses extended (according to the papers) by doing upgrades and reinspections. Commercial ones that are offline permanently are mothballed in place, if the newspaper reports are accurate.
They really do need to move all those old fuel rods to a centrally located real deep hole, sooner rather than later. I'm sure the taxpayers will end footing most of that bill. After a century or so, the stainless cylinders inside those concrete casks will start to deteriorate.
They put a lot of thought into the 'keep out' markers for Yucca Mountain and similar sites. Granite and gold for durability, supposed to still be legible in 10k years. Multiple languages, as well as diagrams showing atomic structure of the stored materials, that will hopefully mean something to anyone still around then. (presuming no current languages will still be spoken.) ISTR they also buried markers around the perimeter in some way that would call attention to itself to any prospectors, in case the above-ground markers got stolen or recycled as grave markers or something.
Of course, if some calamity produces a general societal collapse and loss of all historical records, and a reversion to a barely literate agrarian economy led by local Jefes and Shamans, the dump sites may become very holy places.
China embraces the atom By Frederick W Stakelbeck Jr
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March 04, 2006
With domestic energy demand expected to increase steadily over the next several decades and with a precipitous decline in domestic production from existing oil and natural-gas fields, China finds itself at an unavoidable "energy crossroads" that will define its growth, influence and prosperity for years to come.
Recognizing the potential consequences associated with any protracted energy shortage, Beijing has embraced nuclear power as a solution. According to the China National Nuclear Corp (CNNC), the government body responsible for much of the country's nuclear-power program, China plans to invest US$48 billion to build 30 nuclear reactors by
2020. Currently, the country has nine reactors in operation with another two under construction at a combined cost of $3.2 billion. (more)
Let a Thousand Reactors Bloom Explosive growth has made the People's Republic of China the most power-hungry nation on earth. Get ready for the mass-produced, meltdown-proof future of nuclear energy. By Spencer Reiss
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. China may halt production of liquefied coal: official June 10, 2007
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which is rich in coal but poor in petroleum and gas, may put an end to projects which are designed to produce petroleum by liquefying coal, an official with the country's top economic planning agency has said. The consideration came after evaluation of the nation's limited energy resources and its econological environment, a deputy director of the industry department of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) told a seminar on China's fuel ethanol development, held in Beijing on Saturday. "Liquefied coal projects consume a lot of energy, though the successful industrialization of liquefied coal could help reduce the country's dependence on petroleum," said the official who declined to be named. The Chinese government said earlier it would invest more in developing alternative energy resources including biomass fuel and liquefied coal to substitute petroleum during the 11th Five-Year Program (2006-2010) period, amid concerns over the country's growing dependence on petroleum. (more) ..... elsewhere I recall China's official abandonment of this technology as it requires enormous amounts of water. Already scarce water is more precious for human consumption and for agriculture.
Ban on use of corn for ethanol lauded By Le Tian (China Daily) Updated: 2007-06-22 06:47
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China's policy not to use basic food crops, especially corn, to make biofuel as a substitute for petroleum is a "sound decision", a Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) official said yesterday.
"Such a decision by such an important world player as China is likely to accelerate the second-generation technology for production of ethanol fuel from non-food crops - through conversion of biomass," Abdolreza Abbassian, Commodity Analyst and Secretary of FAO's Intergovernmental Group for Grains, told China Daily.
The UN food body official's remarks came shortly after China imposed a moratorium on projects making ethanol fuel from corn and other basic food crops. The importance of corn in China's food economy has prompted the government to ask companies to switch to non-basic food products such as cassava, sweet potato and cellulose to make ethanol fuel.
"Food-based ethanol fuel will not be the direction for China," said Xu Dingming, vice-director of the Office of the National Energy Leading Group, at a seminar on China's ethanol fuel development in Beijing on Saturday. (more)
It goes without saying that China is charging ahead on all fronts to develop hydroelectric power, wind farms, coal bed methane, solar power and more I can't remember for the moment.
I'll lay you odds that Hallerburton is also _against_ the Yucca mountain project. From his reasoning in this thread, he probably figures it is too dangerous to store there while ignoring the danger of having it scattered in sites all over the country.
It has been repeatedly pointed out to you that it _was not_ hyped that way by scientists. You are still believeing in comic book style writing. They also predicted we could run cars on water, take vacations in space...etc.
How many pairs of 'x-ray' glasses did you buy as a kid before you realized they were fake?
A quick google search turns up that this alleged "promise" is apparently based on one line from a speech made to a group of scientific writers by the head of the Atomic Energy Commission in
1954, as reported by the NY Times. This link will put it all into perspective for you.
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"Our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter," he declared. ... "It is not too much to expect that our children will know of great periodic regional famines in the world only as matters of history, will travel effortlessly over the seas and under them and through the air with a minimum of danger and at great speeds, and will experience a lifespan far longer than ours, as disease yields and man comes to understand what causes him to age."
If you take that in context, it's far from clear that he was even speaking specifically about nuclear power, unless you believe he also meant nuclear power was going to extend human lifespan, end famine and make air travel effortless. And even if he meant nuclear power, as opposed to science in general, it was clearly totaly speculation, not specific promises made to anyone to "sell" them on nuclear power.
Take a look at all the other speeches made in that time- frame of the 50's which made it clear that no one seriously promised nuclear power was anywhere close to being free.
But this does show how loons seek to take ANYTHING out of context and blow it all out of proportion to reality to support their cause.
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