[mr. natural]

Such a stickler for details, aren't you gwrjr33. (I'd just like you to know this is nothing personal against Bush, I've been fighting against all previous administrations whenever and however I see stupidity displayed by our leaders.) So, OK, Bush-Cheney's energy plan talks about nuclear, and is recently piping up about conservation even. Heck, they even toss a few tid-bits of lip service to alternative energy.

The fact remains that this energy policy does little to help us as a society move from our addiction to fossil fuels (and need I spell out that natural gas is like oil drilled for -- I used the term "oil" loosely).

Close scrutiny of the National Energy Policy Report reveals that Bush-Cheney see our addiction to fossil fuels is a matter of economic & national security, and that we still plan to obtain most of the additional oil & natural gas we demand from foreign sources, not domestic.

And in order to meet this "national security" demand will likely require of us an increased military presence and/or arms sales to oppress the restless natives in foreign hot-spots. Whoopee!

The damn report highlights such necessities, specifically in it's final chapter. Well, I for one hope you don't have any children of military age anytime soon.

Anyway, back to Oz. You think that by clicking on a couple of internet web site links that you've answered any of my questions raised. Well, you haven't. I could go you tit for tat in this regard but it is imbecilic.

I especially checked out the second link you provided above, and as I tried to make heads or tails of what was written there, I was struck by the extreme lunacy of this whole charade. Can you explain anything that was written there? I can't. So, just because it's on the internet it is the be all and end all of debate and truth, eh? I'm not so easily swayed.

What about the following: "Recycling can be consummated underwater in the pressurized water reactor leaving each cannister and the 24 casks completely intact. Inciting dynamic energy polarizes the presence of Gamma and spontaneously ignites 4 inert isotopes. Invisible magnetic arc ignition radiating from spent fuel inflames the active ingredients back to original form (transforming radioactive matter into the isotopes present before fuel assemblies were placed in the reactor core)."

Well, I don't know about you but this sounds like a perpetual motion machine we've always been dreaming about. "Invisible" like magic?

And how about the following: "This new discovery"...means..."No more need to store spent fuel casks, ship out or dispose of nuclear waste, nor purchase new reactor fuel. In just 15 minutes spent nuclear reactor fuel can be recycled underwater, leaving all casks in the canister intact."

What is convieniently left out of this whole PhD exercise in human arrogance is that reprocessing makes of low-grade nuclear material into high-grade plutonium. Plutonium which is more deadly and dangerous than what begat it. It is also A-bomb weapons grade suitable material. And if I'm not mistaken we already have enough of this stuff around to kill us off several times over.

Secondly, reprocessing produces huge volumes of hard-to-handle, low-level liquid waste that has a propensity to blow up. (But for the nuclear wizard's behind the cloth that's not a concern worth detailing.)

But ultimately what irks the hell out of me is the misbegotten belief that we are smart enough to handle all this deadly explosive and radioactive waste without mishap. (One of my questions raised above, you, sir, have failed to even acknowledge.) We tend to believe in this nevernever land whereby , 1: There is always somewhere else in the world to put our wastes that won't disrupt anyone or anything else; and 2: We can guarantee the safeguarding of these waste products. For thousands of years even.

Who's fooling whom here?

I repeat: Ultimately, our energy problem has little to do with supplies and everything to do with our relentless unlimited demands. Until we fix this equation we'll solve close to nothing that needs solving.

And this, my friend, is an issue of Creation ethics you seem totally blind to even consider as relevant in your world of internet facts and figures.

So, to close on terms that you can reply to, what about our nuclear subsidies that keep this industry afloat? We have bailed nuclear out with the Price-Anderson act (our collective insurance policy), and the nuclear industry estimated $15 billion dollars we as tax paying citizens will have to cough up to pay to store this waste (nevermind the fact that by the time it ever gets built it won't be big enough to hold all the waste), or the feasibility of roughly 10,000 deliveries of nuclear waste each year passing within a half-mile radius of 50 million U.S. citizens, etc.

There is no way in hell that this industry would be economically viable in your "market" place, but that doesn't stop you from defending it. Go figure.

[ 07-18-2001: Message edited by: mr. natural ]

[elppa cam]

The DEMOCRATES had 8 freakin' years to fix everything! You know why they didn't? Because they couldn't. And blaming one man is just plain stupid.

We ALL are to blame. If you don't drive a car... or use a computer... or throw trash... or take a shower... or turn on lights in the dark... or use AC when it's freakin' hot... or any number of energy driven activities... then you CAN complain.

But what most people who complain about the ozone want... is to go about their daily business burning up energy and then have the Government fix things.

Ain't gonna happen but at the point of a gun. And in that case... you advocate the use of violence. Yuk! Who needs that.

And another thing... Where's Mar's water? Did Mars ever have water? Did the Martians create an ozone hole and screw things up? Or do things just not last for ever?

Somethings don't come with an extended warranty. Stop pointing fingers and do your part.

(New water saving campaign: "Save water... Piss with someone you love.

(the preceding was somewhat tongue in cheek)

[daimoni]

Originally posted by gwrjr33:
<STRONG>

What's going on here? People say things and then when called on it they pretend it's just a figment of the imagination. I guess this is the land of Oz.

BTW, the word is "inhale".</STRONG>

Your desperation is showing.

I mis-type a single letter and "the winged monkey from Oz" hoots with glee!

Life's a little more digestible for you when you take people's words out of context, huh? It's so Easy... Nice... Pretty... Poppies... Zzzzzz.... Wake up!

No, this is reality. Welcome to it. We're here to aid in your transition and rehabilitation. We're your fellow Mac friends. We want to help. Official hug therapy will commence in T -15 seconds...

[macvillage.net]

Takes an idiot to vote for one

[mr. natural]

Originally posted by ellpa cam:
New water saving campaign: "Save water... Piss with someone you love.

Personally, I don't pee or take a dump in a porcelain bowl full of water fit to drink. I compost my humanure. But I love water sports.

[ 07-18-2001: Message edited by: mr. natural ]

[elppa cam]

Originally posted by mr. natural:
<STRONG>

Personally, I don't pee or take a dump in a porcelain bowl full of water fit to drink. I compost my humanure. But I love water sports.

[ 07-18-2001: Message edited by: mr. natural ]</STRONG>

Good one...

[gwrjr33]

Originally posted by daimoni:

<STRONG>Your desperation is showing.</STRONG>

Perhaps you read a comment I made in a different thread? What do I have to be desperate about? You said "x" and then denied you said it. Nothing more to your post to consider.

To Mr. natural:

Recycling extracts more energy from the fuel and reduces the amount and the radioactive lifetime of the wastes. It's not a perpetual motion machine. You complained about our dependence on foreign sources of energy (while also insisting that we shouldn't further exploit domestic reserves ). Why do you think Japan uses breeder reactors?

<STRONG>I especially checked out the second link you provided above, and as I tried to make heads or tails of what was written there, I was struck by the extreme lunacy of this whole charade. Can you explain anything that was written there? I can't. So, just because it's on the internet it is the be all and end all of debate and truth, eh? I'm not so easily swayed.</STRONG>

I didn't mean to use that second link. It's not at all irrelevant to this discussion and it's interesting enough. That's why I saved it (with a bunch of other links) but as you've already noted it's rather opaque. This is the one I originally wanted to link to. It's from a page called, "The Economics of Nuclear Power".

Also, James A. Lake wrote an article that was in the Washington Post a while ago. (I don't have the link. I got distracted looking for it and came up with the articles I've already referenced.)

Recycling, or reprocessing, involves dissolving spent nuclear fuel and separating out the uranium, plutonium and other materials for reuse in the reactor. The remaining fission product wastes - which remain radioactive for decades or at worst centuries, as opposed to thousands of years for uranium and plutonium - are then encased in melted glass for disposal.

In the late 1970s, the U.S. government prohibited reprocessing of commercial nuclear fuel. President Jimmy Carter signed the directive in response to concerns that recycling was not economical and fears of proliferation of nuclear materials and technology. That policy deserves to be revisited.

Three issues should be considered in choosing the ''best'' nuclear fuel cycle for the United States in the 21st century.

Economics - How does the cost of recycling spent nuclear fuel compare with the cost of using it only once? That's hard to know, in part because it's impossible to calculate the ultimate cost of a geologic repository that might have to last thousands of years, and in part because we have little experience in commercial reprocessing.

The French experience offers some answers. According to the French data, considering all factors from mining to disposal, the cost of recycling spent fuel is roughly the same as for using it once and then storing it permanently. So the economic trade-off is approximately equal.

But reprocessing has a bonus: There's up to 100 times more energy potential in nuclear fuel than is extracted in one cycle. Multiple recycling in future advanced reactors could thus offer significant advantages in sustaining low-cost nuclear fuel supplies for many generations.

Environmental impact - Is it better to directly dispose of all our spent nuclear fuel in a geological repository designed and managed to provide barriers to the release of hazardous materials for thousands of years, or to reprocess the plutonium and other fuel materials in the reactor and only dispose of the shorter-lived fission products? Certainly recycling can simplify waste disposal - relatively speaking, it's a cinch to design storage that can last for a few hundred years.

Multiple recycling, to extract the largest amount of energy from the fuel and minimize the net waste volume, would require development and deployment of a new class of fast burner reactors. This development work stopped in the United States in the late 1970s with the cancellation of the Clinch River Breeder Reactor project...

.

<STRONG>What is convieniently left out of this whole PhD exercise in human arrogance is that reprocessing makes of low-grade nuclear material into high-grade plutonium. Plutonium which is more deadly and dangerous than what begat it. It is also A-bomb weapons grade suitable material. </STRONG>

Plutonium is a already product of our current fission method.

[ 07-19-2001: Message edited by: gwrjr33 ]

[Millennium]

Seems I've been away too long...

Mr. Natural, you fascinate me. You claim to think in the short term, the long term, and the super-long term, but if you really do this, then you've yet to master the fine art of putting two together, for you offer only short-term solutions.

The fact is, we do not need an energy plan. We need three of them: one to alleviate the problems in the short term, one to prevent their recurrence in the long term, and one to ensure continued success in the super-long term.

Conservation is a good idea in the short term (and yes, in the end conservation is exactly what you're advocating, though I get the distinct and depressing feeling that you don't even realize this). However, it cannot work viably in the long term. The reason: population growth. You can't very well stem that, unless you're willing to murder people for it, and that will eventually counteract any conservation efforts that are made. Need I remind you that despite all the conservation efforts California has made, this is their third energy crisis in as many years?

So thinking long-term, we do need to increase our energy output. And we need to do it with a better source than coal, or we'll eventually end up right back at this situation, even ignoring the environmental impact. Most truly-renewable energy sources, however, are impractical except at certain locations; for example, you wouldn't want to put a wind farm in a valley (where mountains become depressingly efficient windbreaks), or a hydro plant in the middle of the Mojave desert, or a solar farm in Alaska where the lengths of day and night vary so widldy. Fission power is, I believe, the most reasonable step. Reprocessing is a key to that, as it allows us to get much more power out of the same fuel, and what little waste comes from reprocessing becomes harmless in only decades, rather than eons. That's still a long time, of course, but it's a far cry from the 100,000 years it will take current nuclear waste to degrade.

Super-long-term, however, we need something even better. There are risks associated with fission, after all. For this, I say fusion power research is the solution to not just one, but two major problems. First of all, it uses a renewable resource: simple hydrogen (well, actually, two isotopes thereof, but these are still easy to find or synthesize).

Second, there's a field of research that might interest you, called the fusion torch. The idea is using a star-hot flame or fusion reactor to dispose of waste (not just nuclear waste, although this would work too). In such an inferno, any matter is reduced to its component atoms; this is why we have to use magnetic fields to hold fusion reactions (any material container would simply be destroyed, and if a fusion reaction gets out of its container it simply dissipates; safer than a meltdown but still problematic). Anyway, these atoms could then be sorted out, using a device similar to a modern-day mass spectrometer. Those materials could then be used again in other things. In other words, a way to recycle literally anything. Including previous nuclear waste, and including old fusion reactor parts (which do eventually become radioactive themselves). That should be of interest to you, no?

[gwrjr33]

As to the speed with which we could bring new nukes on line there was a good article in the WSJ this week. Seems there are a number of nukes that were begun but never finished. Completing those would eliminate siting problems since all the necessary approvals have already been made. In Alabama the TVA has one reactor that was 90% complete before construction was stopped 16 years ago. The other reactor was 60% complete.

[mr. natural]

This has become an exercise in futility.

To gwrjr33: When one doesn't reply to any of my questions as regards the hidden but real costs of nuclear power, I can only assume it is because you can not?

I keep trying to refute your points but you pointedly side-step any of mine.

Please answer me this: Would this power industry stand a snowball's chance in hell of an open "market" pricing scheme if it weren't for all the Federal subsidies and gerry-rigging of regulations?
(You know what I am talking about so don't pretend as if you don't -- a simple Yes or No will suffice. But I will give you one hint: Price-Anderson.)

Millenium: I agree with one point of yours only.
The following: "The fact is, we do not need an energy plan. We need three of them: one to alleviate the problems in the short term, one to prevent their recurrence in the long term, and one to ensure continued success in the super-long term."

(Obviously, one wouldn't site windmills in a valley, nor a dam in the mojave, etc. When it comes to energy production I am in favor of decentralized, site specific energy production and usage. Small scale solar, wind, hydro, etc; all of which could tie in very nicely with micro fuel cell technology. I am also in favor of vastly increasing the energy efficiency of our manufactured products -- which we have managed nicely without really even trying, but we could be doing so much more in this regard. I am in favor of a national train system like they have in Europe. I am in favor of better community planning than the sprawl we have. And, sure, all of this slightly visionary, but visions become reality if we only lend them our efforts. It's a matter of choice, and by my reckoning we are choosing all the wrong visions.)

Yet this is not something this administration or any previous one has managed to fashion. My long standing objection still stands.

Nor is it likely to be fashioned by any governmental adminstration. For the underlying question I am struggling to answer, as we all should be but are not, is a question of personal ethics or philosophy. I.E.: What right do we have to misuse and abuse this worldly Creation not of our making for the sake of an economy which can account for the poisoning of the earth as as part of the GNP, but ultimately leaves us poorer, sicker, less free, and concievably broken and dead if the worst that nuclear power has to offer us happens. And although we may not have personally seen the worst, enough has already leaked out in the world to sway any senseable human from desiring to see any more let loose.

This is what I meant when I said: Ultimately, our energy problem has little to do with supplies and everything to do with our relentless unlimited demands. Until we fix this equation we'll solve close to nothing that needs solving.

And obviously, population growth is a part of this question. But I also fully expect that if we insist on putting the fate of human beings at risk with these hubristic dreams of ours, and specifically with regard to this Promethean Fire of nuclear power, than Nature (which includes us -- we are not after all Gods) will furnish the necessary act of God or human stupidity that will cause us all to rue our arrogance. And when, not if, this happens our human population problem will be moot. (Nature has many disguises and means at her disposal and for anyone with eyes to see Nature's punishments for our trangressions of limits are evident everywhere one's cares to look.)

We foolishly believe that we are in control. And with the right knowhow we can solve anything. This amounts to the claim of a God and we are certainly not Gods. It is a conceit of the highest order and we are already paying dearly for it.

To ground my argument, let us return to the reality of nuclear power. I have already pointed out that nuclear power wouldn't be a viable source of energy if it were left to stand without the Federal subsidies we so generously offer it. But I will list here as many as I can: There is Price-Anderson (our insurance policy capping of claims in case of accident), our Federally funded R&D of nuclear technology, our giving away of mineral royalties on federal lands (where uranium is mined), our Federally mandated responsibility to cover all costs of waste disposal (conservatively estimated $15 billion just to build Yucca Mtn.), not to mention the SuperFund costs of clean-up associated with private contracted companies since gone bankrupt which processed the uranium into usable fuel. And the cost to us as taxpayers of all this regulatory gerry-rigging in order to allow private nuclear power utilities to sell this electricity at a reasonable price? It is uncalculable but it has to be in the upper billions of dollars range.

What follows is a very specific set of numbers for those of you so inclined to live and die by such mind numbing facts, but my real purpose in this three card monte game I'll get to after the facts.

At Hanford Reservation, a U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE) facility with nine nuclear reactors to process uranium into weapons-grade plutonium (which has since been shut down), it is estimated (by the DOE) that 121 million gallons of high level radioactive waste has leaked or been dumped into the ground. At this site alone the DOE spends $1.1 billion a year just maintaining and safeguarding this closed facility. As to cleaning it up, it will cost $210 billion for Hanford, and at least $1 trillion to clean up all the nuclear weapons sites in the U.S. (One should also assume that these figures are only going to keep going up as they continually do.)

Given this well documented record of fact you all are still apparently willing to let the government (which is comprised of humans like you & me, the same types who oversaw Hanford) assume both the responsibility and cost for insuring new reactors, R&D funding, oversight of their operation, as well as building storage facilities, shipping, storing, and maintaning any and all waste products which occur and to do so without mishap? And under your rosy scenario, only for a few decades (which might add up to a hundred years or so after we are finished burning up all our reprocessed fuel -- when is that or do we just keep on going once we start down this road?).

Personally, I love this world too damn much to feel that any of this nuclear gamble is worth this risk. There are alternatives (and I've put my money where my mouth is with a pair of solar PV arrays, a windmill, a car that already beats the recently proposed new mid-size range fuel avg., high energy efficient appliances, etc., and I'm not done trying to do better when the market offers me such choices).

But obviously, I'm just a crank-pot who doesn't understand how the real world works, whose facts are crooked, whose brain is incapable of critical thought, and ridiculously believes that we can do so much better than we are presently doing or even preparing to do.

So, to end this absurd & futile soliloquy, I'll depart with a quote which best summarizes all the above:

"We must achieve the character and acquire the skills to live much poorer than we do. We must waste less. We must do more for ourselves and each other. It is either that or continue merely to think and talk about changes that we are inviting catastrophe to make."
Wendell Berry

That's all folks.

[daimoni]

Mr. Natural,
I make a pretty ungainly cheerleader, but I just have to say again...

Right On, Brother!

Maybe some of these misguided souls can copy and paste your words into a document for later review once they develop a bit? They should be thanking you. As I do.

Time to shovel this thread back into the compost...

And that's all for me.

[ 07-20-2001: Message edited by: daimoni ]

[bood69]

What happened to all the smart liberals that used to frequent MacNN?