Reply #86: erg

[Mike Briggs]

This forum format is really annoying. I keep getting errors when making a post, with my entire long-winded response disappearing into the ether. Here goes again, being much shorter, and copying to the clipboard in case it once again disappears.

"What "environmental disaster" from mining Uranium has ever approached the level of mining disasters that routinely accompany the mining of coal. Just from a mass balance perspective, it's very clear that it is easy to do much less mining damage per watt using Uranium than any other source of energy, including oil."
Based on a mass balance in which you only count the mass of the U-235, or of all of the mass mined? The problem is that U-235 is so rare that it requires mining many many orders of magnitude more material to get enough U-235.

Yes, it is safer than coal mining. I'm not opposed to nuclear power, as you seem to have concluded. I prefer it by far over coal - I just don't think it should be our primary focus as an energy and fuel provider as it is NOT as perfect as you are presenting it to be.

" submit that Iraq had billions, Libya had billions plus Dr. Khan's schematics and did not produce a nuclear weapon. Even with these resources we now know they did not come close. Are you claiming that terrorists will be able to accomplish the following: Build a shielded separation plant with robotic controls, manage a separation (Purex, pyroprocessing or electrofining) buying both the equipment and the necessary reagents, surreptitiously transport the waste of these separations, purchase remotely controlled machine tools capable of making pits, purchase the requisite explosives and the equipment to mold them sensitively, the electronics to provide a precise detonation sequence, beryllium shielding to redirect neutrons, and a team of people willing to deliver the completed weapon. I have a strong suspicion that someone somewhere might notice."
That's an unrealistic argument for many reasons. First, terrorists wouldn't need robotic controls - sure, exposure to the plutonium would likely kill those working on it - but, terrorist groups seem to have a plethora of volunteers willing to die for their cause. Are you suggesting that someone who is willing to blow himself up in a car or plane would not be willing to give his life to see his group make a nuclear weapon that could take out tens or hundreds of thousands of people?

North Korea has nukes. Pakistan made them. Iran and Libya are close. The electronics necessary are easier and easier to come by. Some terrorist groups have huge amounts of money funneled into them. It's simply not the unlikely scenario you are claiming.

"Finally you will note that consistently in my posts I have called for fissioning plutonium in the presence of Thorium. I am NOT an advocate of the manufacture of plutonium. I am a Thorium cycle advocate. If you are a nuclear physicist, you will surely understand the profound difference. I DO advocate the burning of existing plutonium in nuclear reactors since burying it under a mountain somewhere is a surefire means of making it available to people for many thousands of years."
I agree with that logic, but I don't think it's at all realistic to think that any form of nuclear power could provide the bulk of our energy and fuel in the US. No new plants have been commissioned in quite a while - there's a reason for that.

"I do indeed have a knee jerk negative reaction to diesel engines operating on fuel consisting of heavy alkanes. I like diesel engines operating on low molecular weight ethers. Environmentalists have argued everywhere that heavy alkane burning engines degrade air quality."
Uh, biodiesel is NOT an alkane. It is an ester, and burns far far cleaner than any alkane. Throw on a DPF and NOx adsorbing catalyst, and it's incredibly clean. Decaying plant matter gives off considerably more emissions than a biodiesel powered vehicle with those catalysts would.

" What do we do if the diesel fields are subject to extreme drought in the Midwest or if the flows at the Colorado River near the Imperial Valley become too low to irrigate our Sonoran ponds? Pray for rain? We can of course buy corn and algae from Bangladesh in a pinch, but what does it mean, in environmental and economic terms to get it to our Midwestern fuel plants? "
That's why our focus is on growing algae off of waste streams which have a plentiful supply of water. If those waste streams for some reason suddenly have no water, it would only be because we humans suddenly have no water to drink , which means we'd all be dead anyway. SO sure, if there were a drought so severe that there were no water for us to drink, we wouldn't be able to grow algae off of our waste streams. We'd be dead anyway, but let's still chalk that up as a drawback - if we all die of drought, we couldn't produce biodiesel for our cars.

We're not saying nuclear power should be abandoned - just that it should not be perceived as the best option available.