Cheney Wants to Build Nukes WITHOUT Containment Buildings

[Dems Will Win]

Chernobyl Used Graphite, So Do the New Pebble Reactors

Yes, that's right. The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight now has a brilliant new idea:

Nuclear reactors without hardened containment buildings.

The PR campaign is on, the nuclear industry has hired Stewart BRand and Patrick Moore to push the concept, the hired nuke trolls are propagandizing and Darth Cheney has allocated the R&D funds to make it happen. Cheney is even ready to place these new pebble nukes on de-commissioned Army bases--to cook up hydrogen from fossil fuel (black hydrogen as opposed to green hydrogen from water).

Given Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, part of the nuclear industry’s PR campaign is to convince a skeptical public there is a new design for a reactor that cannot melt down. This is the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor—but there are several issues the industry does not tell the public about the PBMR.

Pebble reactors work by harnessing the heat released by radioactive pebbles the size of tennis balls, which move slowly through the reactor core. It’s true they are harder to go into meltdown, but pebble bed nuclear reactors can erupt in a graphite fire. David Lochbaum of The Union of Concerned Scientists explains:

“There is no free lunch. While it may not melt down, it could catch on fire. The pebble bed is like the Chernobyl reactor in that it uses an awful lot of graphite. None of our reactors operating in the United States use graphite in the core. Graphite is just carbon. If the carbon catches on fire, it's pretty hard to put out. It's particularly hard if you're using airflow to cool the reactor, which the pebble bed does. If you have a fire and you stop the airflow, you also stop the heat removal. So you may stop the fire and start the meltdown. You may not be able to get `fireproof' and `meltdown proof’, you may have to pick one or the other.”

Unfortunately, pebble bed reactors also generate 10 times the waste for the same amount of electricity. When Stewart Brand was informed of this, he replied: “It may well be true about the pebble bed and waste. But then, okay, back to the old drawing board!" Yet Brand went right back to touting pebble reactors at the industry events he is hired to speak at.

http://www.laweekly.com/general/features/green-to-the-core-part-1/151/

Worst of all, the corporations and the government have convinced themselves that pebble nuclear reactors are “inherently safe”. So they plan to build each one without containment buildings--allowing them to add reactor module after reactor module. The truth is that PBMRs are air-cooled, so they need convection--which a containment building would hinder. The industry continues to tell the public the pebble reactors are “inherently safe”.

Yet as Edward Teller, the father of the H-bomb said, "Sooner or later a fool will prove greater than the proof even in a foolproof system."

When the Germans built a working 300 MW pebble reactor, the lack of a containment building proved to be a real mistake on May 4, 1986, when a defective fuel pebble got stuck in the feeder tube and caught fire. It is in the end impossible to assure that every nuclear pebble is perfect, with no defects, and that’s what they need to be.

The resulting graphite inferno contaminated a 2-kilometer area around the plant on the Ruhr River in Hamm-Uentrop. Germany shut the plant down permanently, citing it as “unsafe”. Pebble reactor manufacturers have yet to address the possibility of graphite fires in any of their proposals to governments. They simply ignore it.

Another real issue is a terrorist attack Any nuclear reactor is subject to one, but especially one that has no hardened containment building. The government is predicting that the War on Terror is going to last decades. Unfortunately, in mock terrorist attacks conducted by the NRC, fully half of the terror gangs succeeded in gaining control of the plant’s safety systems. If they had been real instead of mock terrorists, control of plant safety could have lead to meltdowns or releases. Recommendations for increased security have included the National Guard being deployed around each plant to restrict land, water and air access.

On September 11, 2001, Mohammed Atta himself flew United Flight 11 right down the Hudson River, thankfully passing the Indian Point power plant. If Atta had decided to descend and had rammed the jetliner into the unhardened building housing the used fuel rod pool, the resulting catastrophe would have been centered in the Hudson Valley. The lethality of the resulting fire and its smoke, laced with the radioactivity of decades worth of fuel-rods, must be understood to comprehend what the threat of a terrorist attack is all about. Obviously, building thousands of nuclear plants--what you would need to make a dent in global warming--would greatly increase the risk of terrorist attack or take-over.

Assuming we went from gasoline-powered to electric or hydrogen cars, we would need around 2,000 1 GW nuclear plants worldwide to really end the reign of fossil fuel here in the present. Yet the real carbon emission crisis lies in emerging Third World economies, which are projected to be half the increase in carbon through 2025. Thousands and thousands of dirty village diesel generators will soon be coming online, some funded by the World Bank and other agencies.

Any nuclear solution to global warming would thus have to replace these small diesels, which are spread out over vast regions. Many of the new nuclear reactors would need to be smaller 100 MW units, with construction of long transmission lines to all those villages and towns. After figuring in future needs and this Third World diesel village generator problem, we would need additional hundreds of big 1 GW plants and then several thousand smaller facilities spread out all over the Third World. But do we really want thousands of 100 MW reactors in places like Burkina Faso, Niger and Laos? And who would pay to construct those unprofitable transmission lines going everywhere?

Stop Cheney and the Nuke Industry from ramming through the Pebble Nukes!

[hobbit709]

1. Then the first two

should be built next door to the Crawford coward's "ranch" and Cheney's "undisclosed location"

[OneBlueSky]

2. I'm surprised to see people like Brand and Lovelock . . .

supporting nuclear power . . . it may well be a "green solution" to the energy crisis, but the long-term consequences are anything but . . .

then again, I guess we could just use all the waste for a new generation of depleted uranium weapons, huh . . . :sarcasm:

[Dems Will Win]

3. Eco-traitors Brand and Moore sold out to the nuke industry

Unknown to most, Brand is now a paid consultant to nuclear energy companies for the last several years, including PG&E, Southern California Edison and Duke Power. Another “convert” is Patrick Moore, who left Greenpeace 20 years ago, and is today paid by the so-called Clean And Safe Energy Coalition, financed entirely through the Nuclear Energy Institute.

Moore’s clients also include The Vinyl Institute, for his defense of the polluting plastic industry and he has spoken at public hearings for the timber industry, joking that “clear-cuts are just temporary meadows”.

Even though he has yet to be hired, Moore is now touting genetically-modified food in the hopes of getting a gig with Monsanto.

[acmejack]

4. Brand has lost his fucking mind

It should be patently obvious from his statements of late. I guess the PBMRs are a useful method of solving the overpopulation problem...

[The Backlash Cometh]

5. Their voters are so stupid that Cheney could go out and convince

them to stick a red hot poker up their ass.

[NNadir]

6. Thabo Mbeki plans to build 24 of these reactors.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/reactors.htm

Personally, I'm not fond of them, although I heartily approve of the idea of 4 or 5 thousand nuclear reactors.

The majority of your post is nonsense, unless you are about to announce a fool-proof system for disposing of 10 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year.

I note that 100% of the most important terrorist attacks were about oil.

[Dems Will Win]

7. You would approve of reactors in places like Niger, Mali

and Somalia? Those are the kind of Third World places where we have to replace 400,000 diesel generators that will be coming online.

How would you ensure nuclear plant safety in a place like Mali? Accident or terror?

[NNadir]

9. I absolutely would approve of reactors in Niger and Mali.

Then again, I am not of the opinion that people in Niger and Mali are less human than I am.

I'll bet there are many people in Niger and Mali who can be educated as well as people in Belgium and Switzerland. I'll bet there are children in Somalia who, nutured properly, could get PhD's in nuclear engineering at MIT. That they are not currently so educated is a function of something known as "poverty," and in part poverty is associated with poor access to clean and safe energy. Note that the concept of clean and safe energy necessarily excludes all fossil fuels. I argue that the use of any fossil fuel by any individual on the face of this planet ensures the poverty of Mali and Niger by inducing global climate change. That people routinely ignore the fact that they are clueless about how to dispose of fossil fuel waste does not make fossil fuel waste safe. That people routinely ignore the health implications of fossil fuel waste because they have direct experience with generating these wastes implies that people, especially in the West, have withered moral development, if any thing.

I note that the President of the IAEA, who has won the Noble Peace prize, along with his organization, is a rather dark skinned Egyptian. (My God! He's an Arab! Terorrist! Terrorist!)

Of course, the per capita energy demand in many African countries is less than what a Westerner uses to run a light bulb. The only way to get Westerners to care even in a remote sense about that issue is to use, in an illiterate way, buzzwords like "nuclear."

The environmental cost of various forms of energy has been systematically analyzed in the European Union and it has been found that nuclear energy is the safest and cleanest continuously available form of energy with the possible exception (in some places) of hydroelectric power. This means that this resource should be made available to all humanity. Of course, through the agency of interanational communites - the IAEA is an excellent start - we should do everything we can to minimize the inevitable risks as much as is possible, but we should avoid the, frankly evil, western middle-class notion that energy can be provided without risk. That is impossible. In fact the absurd claim that energy can be provided without risk in itself increases risk.

In the 1950's and 1960's, many people would have questioned the use of nuclear reactors in places like China, India, Mexico, etc. In fact nuclear reactors now operate in all of these countries, and have done so without the loss of life, including the outbreak of nuclear war. (On the other hand the use of oil has not proceeded without the outbreak of oil wars, including wars using dangerous napalm.) The changes that are coming in places like China and India have everything to do with there being people with access to enough resources to do something other than wait for grain from Western Relief Agencies. This was not always the case.

I approve of the use of nuclear power not because it is risk free but because it is risk minimized. I object strongly to the notion that only white westerners and honorary white Japanese should have access to nuclear energy.

[Dems Will Win]

11. And do you approve of reactors without containment buildings?

Just asking.

By the way, I do not approve of nuclear power in the Third World, as I don't trust the NRC or other country's governments to keep it safe here in the First World. We must phase out this wasteful, polluting technology in the First, Second and Third Worlds as soon as possible without wrecking economies.

Even France's program is a disaster, polluting the North Sea from their processing plant at La Hague and now the Champagne province from a new radioactive waste dump right in the middle of France.

How do you feel about the impact of radioactivity from uranium mines on indigenous peoples around the world? Is that OK with you? Disease and death that must be borne for the good of electricity consumers? Yes, coal is bad too--let's get rid of both fossil fuel and nuclear fuel.

I could give you the list of peoples affected in Africa and elsewhere by uranium tailings and wind-blown dust.

[NNadir]

14. Your questions all consist of the logical fallacy of Begging the Question

Since I routinely engage people making all of your arguments, I routinely reference the series of logical fallacies on which they depend. Here are some of the more routinely used ones: Begging the Question. http://www.fallacyfiles.org/begquest.html Appeal to Authority. http://www.fallacyfiles.org/authorit.html Argumentum ad hominem http://www.fallacyfiles.org/adhomine.html Black and White fallacy http://www.fallacyfiles.org/eitheror.html

The title of this thread consists of the "guilt by association" fallacy. This one has been commonly used in this forum, almost always by evoking Dick Cheney. http://www.fallacyfiles.org/guiltbya.html

Actually, Dick Cheney did not invent the pebble bed reactor, nor is he the main driving force behind its adoption. He does not currently control events in South Africa.

For technical reasons having little to do with safety, I am not fond of pebble bed reactors. I am fond of the reactors that constitute the majority of the 440 nuclear reactors now operating, BWR's and PWR's. They have been an extraordinary success.

Your contention that France has been a nuclear disaster is without merit. The mere fact that you make such a statement is evidence that you don't know what you are talking about. France has one of the best carbon intensities in the first world. The arguemnt is much, much, much, much stronger that the United States has been a fossil fuel disaster. That you make unsupported claims about the alleged French nuclear disaster while completely ignoring the US fossil fuel disaster is telling.

[Pooka Fey]

23. Off topic, but thanks for these links...this subject is on my study list.

I just put "Nonsense: A Handbook of Logical Fallacies" by Robert J. Gula on my Amazon wish list. :-)

[Dems Will Win]

8. Finite Barrier to Nuclear Power: The Amount of High-Grade Uranium Ore

Trying to reduce carbon by building thousands of new nuclear power plants would clearly put us on the wrong road to planetary survival.

Here’s why. There is only so much high-grade uranium ore so far found on Earth, and its price has soared in recent years from $7 to $30 a pound, with some analysts predicting $110 a pound within 5 years. At current rates of use, all the known high-grade reserves are used up in a few decades. Having many new plants, producing for example 50% of the world’s electricity rather than 16%, means that the reasonably priced high-grade stuff will be used up in less than a decade. Then we are stuck with refining and enriching low-grade ore, containing the vast majority of uranium on Earth.

It turns out that with low-grade, we would have to mine 5 times as much ore, transport 5 times more, and process 5 times more--all done with fossil fuel for 30 to 40 years to keep the plants going. Uranium processing also releases tons of CFCs into the atmosphere, a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Plus all nuclear plant construction would be accomplished with fossil fuel.

According to a 2003 study by Jan Willem Storm van Leeuwen and Philip Smith, when it is all added up, the high-grade ore nuclear fuel cycle produces only three times fewer greenhouse gases than modern natural-gas power stations. Low-grade uranium ore would make the carbon trade-off negligible. Nuclear is not greenhouse gas-free.

http://www.stormsmith.nl/

As for solutions to carbon emissions, a combination of plug-in electric cars, wind, solar, hydroelectric, tidal current power, conservation, and natural gas to replace coal can cut those 10 billion tons per year in half in time to avoid the worst of global warming--then we keep replacing fossil fuel from there.

Go see the movie by Gore, he shows how without nukes.

Of course we should also go on a war footing on energy, but dangerous nukes are no longer needed.

[NNadir]

10. I don't put much credibily in Storm van Leeuwen.

I'm familiar with his arguments and I personally think they are without merit.

I note that the nuclear industry could easily sustain prices of thousands of dollars per kg for fuel, since fuel is not the main cost driver for nuclear power. One kg of fully fissioned uranium contains about 81 trillion joules. One gallon of gasoline contains about 132 million joules. Thus if uranium cost $2000/kg, it would be the equivalent of gasoline at 0.3 cents per gallon.

I have referenced many times on this website directly from the scientific literature, detailed descriptions of piloted methods for recovering the 3 to 5 billion tons of uranium in the ocean. There is a series of 15 papers on the subject in Ind. Chem. Eng. Res. on this subject.

As for your rote recitations of the renewable/wind/solar/(and so on) mantra, it's cute, but it doesn't deliver. Everywhere this mantra has been tried to be practically applied, it's lead to burning more coal. I have a thread currently in this forum about the wonderful plans of Germany, a nation that elected to give lip service to phasing out nuclear power while giving lip service to this mantra. The article is about Germany's plans to build 8 huge coal plants. I object to coal. It is dangerous, deadly, harmful and not susutainalbe. Personally I think the electric car/solar/wind mantra is a form of denial and avoidance of reality. This kind of denial is killing people.

Natural gas, by the way, is a very, very, very, very, very dangerous fuel. The appeal to this fuel is basically a do nothing strategy. Last I looked, natural gas, methane, was one of the most potent greenhouse gases known. The laws of chemistry have not changed to make its oxidation product into a solid material that can be contained in a few thousand cubic meters as is the case with fission products. The oxidation of methane still gives off carbon dioxide.

In the meantime we know from experimental data that fission products can be contained in geological formations for billions of years. Moreover, nuclear energy is one of the rare forms of energy where a theoretical maximal accumulation of wastes exists. It can be shown without appeal to authority, by direct calculation, that depending on power level, every radioactive material produced asymptotically approaches a fixed maximum. I note that this is not the case for wastes generated by making steel, or wastes generated from the processing of silicon. This is probably why the European Union's external cost study concluded that nuclear energy is safer than solar PV energy.

[Dems Will Win]

12. You personally? Is this because you cannot cite

a peer-reviewed study refuting Storm van Leeuwen--as there is none?

You also seem to admit that without getting uranium from sea water--which would be very energy-intensive--the world WOULD run out of high-grade uranium ore within a decade if there were thousands of nukes.

Is that true, or am I blowing graphite smoke up my own sleeve?

By the way, Denmark will soon be at 20% wind power (installed capacity), so it proves it can be done.

I agree with you about coal. Bush and Cheney want to build 100 plants in the US.

Your turn...

[NNadir]

13. Look, I've been over this thousands of times.

If you look at the references in Storm van Leeuwen's papers, most of them are to Storm van Leeuwen. I have pointed this out many times in this forum.

The anti-nuclear position which I identify with the pro-coal position, shares many features and the same tired arguments. Here are a few familiar features: The anti-nuclear argument is self referential. Storm van Leeuwen refering to Helen Caldicott referring to the Greenpeace website referring to Storm van Leeuwen is not particularly satifying. The anti-nuclear position that nuclear power is dangerous always attempts to examine nuclear power in isolation. To an man and to a woman, people making the "nuclear power is dangerous" argument refuse to answer the question "Dangerous compared to what?.

The question "Dangerous compared to what?" can be answered quantitatively. This is the effort of the externE project in fact, which I have probably referenced thousands of times in this forum. My original post on the subject can be found in my journal, along with many of my other arguments. Of particular interest should be the graphic showing from where our energy comes and where it goes. (If that doesn't scare the shit out of you, as well as disabuse you of fantasies about the grand renewable future, I can't help you.) The practice of the ExternE project (www.externe.info) should be an on-going effort of all humanity for all time, since it is well understood that reasonable approaches can only be set in motion after measurement. Without measurement there is no such thing as science. Technological decisions cannot be made without measurement.

Here, for instance, is some things one can more or less make a stab at meausring: The number of persons killed by air pollution. The number of persons killed by oil wars. The number of persons killed by extreme climatic events. The number of persons killed by the storage of spent nuclear fuel.

I've been over and over and over and over and over Denmark in this forum. I have noted many, many, many times the Denmark is part of an existing grid that is fueled, in part, by nuclear power. If Germany and Sweden shut their nuclear plants tomorrow, Denmark would have to endure some periods of darkness when the wind isn't blowing and/or burn coal. I note that 20% is still not 100% in any case.

I have not agreed with you on anything. I have merely noted that if the price of uranium rises high enough, the resource is essentially unlimited.

[struggle4progress]

19. Denmark is a net EXPORTER of energy. And Danish per capita ..

.. use of electricity, as well as Danish per capita CO2 emissions, are about half that of the US -- and this while enjoying a standard of living that does not differ materially from that of the US, as measured by the HDI.

So your prediction of Danes freezing in the dark if nuclear plants were shut down seems questionable.

Since the US is responsible for well over 20% of global anthropogenic CO2 emissions, our adoption of Danish efficiencies would reduce global anthropogenic CO2 emissions by about 10% -- not at all negligible. The singlest biggest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions is probably just plain old wastefulness in the US.

[Dead_Parrot]

20. Energy, not electricity

Minor point: Denmark exports lots of of oil and gas, which more than offsets imports of electricity. They imported 5PJ, or about 1.4TWh of electricity last year - not much in terms of a percentage, but clearly not everybody can do that. It's also worth bearing in mind that this is a net figure, but I don't have the seperate import & export figures for last year.

You're right about the Danes not pissing it away like the US does, though. :)

[struggle4progress]

21. From IAEA compilation of electricity statistics:

Electricity Exports
Year Data Source Value Notes
2003 U.S. DOE (2005) 15.60 TWh (provisional)
2002 U.S. DOE (2005) 11.10 TWh -
2002 Eurostat (2004) 11.01 TWh -
2002 IEA (2005) 11.01 TWh -
2002 World Factbook (2005) 11.10 TWh -
2001 U.S. DOE (2005) 8.78 TWh -
2001 Eurostat (2004) 8.77 TWh -
2001 IEA (2004) 8.77 TWh -
2001 World Factbook (2004) 8.77 TWh -
http://www.iaea.org/inis/aws/eedrb/data/DK-elex.html

Electricity Imports
Year Data Source Value Notes
2003 U.S. DOE (2005) 7.00 TWh (provisional)
2002 U.S. DOE (2005) 8.90 TWh -
2002 Eurostat (2004) 8.94 TWh -
2002 IEA (2005) 8.94 TWh -
2002 World Factbook (2005) 8.90 TWh -
2001 U.S. DOE (2005) 8.20 TWh -
2001 Eurostat (2004) 8.20 TWh -
2001 IEA (2004) 8.20 TWh -
2001 World Factbook (2004) 8.20 TWh -
http://www.iaea.org/inis/aws/eedrb/data/DK-elim.html

[Dead_Parrot]

22. Yeah, I saw that...

You'd think they'd manage to be a bit more up to date than 2003, wouldn't you? Ho hum.
I missed out the link to the 2005 breakdown, which wasn't helpful of me :dunce: This is where the 5PJ came from, and nicely reflects the increasing renewables & reduced coal.

[NNadir]

24. So Denmark shuts off the grid on days when the wind doesn't blowing?

Are you unfamiliar with the concept that wind power is intermittent, or are you simply drawing out even more silly red herrings? Do you and your friends still insist that there are Danish border agents on those days separating the nuclear electrons from Sweden (more than 50% of them) from the renewable, hydroelectric, electrons?

Of course, in flying around with red herrings, avoiding the subject at hand, mystification and all of the usual clap trap associated with "let's talk about Denmark as nirvana" game, we will compare Denmark to the United States and not to France.

Well you will.

I will compare Denmark, oil exporting nation, with France:

Per capita carbon dioxide emissions in the environmental "we only run our lights when the wind is blowing" Denmark: 10.94 tons of carbon dioxide per person as of 2003.

Per capita carbon dioxide emissions in "we don't believe in burning coal" France: 6.80 tons per person.

Why, one wonders, does Denmark do so poorly compared to France.

Sweden: 6.27 tons per person.

Why, one wonders does Denmark do so poorly compared to Sweden?

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/tableh1cco2.xls

As for what has happened since 2003, the wind nirvana in Europe is waking up with a hangover. In this context let's look at what's happening in the European wind arena, with an extra special look at those Danish electricity exports:

In 1998, Norway commissioned a study of wind power in Denmark and concluded that it has "serious environmental effects, insufficient production, and high production costs."

Denmark (population 5.3 million) has over 6,000 turbines that produced electricity equal to 19% of what the country used in 2002. Yet no conventional power plant has been shut down. Because of the intermittency and variability of the wind, conventional power plants must be kept running at full capacity to meet the actual demand for electricity. Most cannot simply be turned on and off as the wind dies and rises, and the quick ramping up and down of those that can be would actually increase their output of pollution and carbon dioxide (the primary "greenhouse" gas). So when the wind is blowing just right for the turbines, the power they generate is usually a surplus and sold to other countries at an extremely discounted price, or the turbines are simply shut off.

A writer in The Utilities Journal (David J. White, "Danish Wind: Too Good To Be True?," July 2004) found that 84% of western Denmark's wind-generated electricity was exported (at a revenue loss) in 2003, i.e., Denmark's glut of wind towers provided only 3.3% of the nation's electricity...

...Denmark is just dependent enough on wind power that when the wind is not blowing right they must import electricity. In 2000 they imported more electricity than they exported. And added to the Danish electric bill are the subsidies that support the private companies building the wind towers. Danish electricity costs for the consumer are the highest in Europe...

...Despite their being cited as the shining example of what can be accomplished with wind power, the Danish government has canceled plans for three offshore wind farms planned for 2008 and has scheduled the withdrawal of subsidies from existing sites. Development of onshore wind plants in Denmark has effectively stopped. Because Danish companies dominate the wind industry, however, the government is under pressure to continue their support. Spain began withdrawing subsidies in 2002. Germany reduced the tax breaks to wind power, and domestic construction drastically slowed in 2004. Switzerland also is cutting subsidies as too expensive for the lack of significant benefit. The Netherlands decommissioned 90 turbines in 2004. Many Japanese utilities severely limit the amount of wind-generated power they buy, because of the instability they cause. For the same reason, Ireland in December 2003 halted all new wind-power connections to the national grid. In early 2005, they were considering ending state support. In 2005, Spanish utilities began refusing new wind power connections. In 2004, Australia reduced the level of renewable energy that utilities are required to buy, dramatically slowing wind-project applications. On August 31, 2004, Bloomberg News reported that "the unstable flow of wind power in their networks" has forced German utilities to buy more expensive energy, requiring them to raise prices for the consumer.

A German Energy Agency study released in February 2005 after some delay stated that increasing the amount of wind power would increase consumer costs 3.7 times and that the theoretical reduction of greenhouse gas emissions could be achieved much more cheaply by simply installing filters on existing fossil-fuel plants. A similar conclusion was made by the Irish grid manager in a study released in February 2004 : "The cost of CO2 abatement arising from using large levels of wind energy penetration appears high relative to other alternatives."

http://www.aweo.org/ProblemWithWind.html

The bold and the italics are all mine.

Meanwhile Europe goes on building coal plants, except in France, where they don't believe in using coal. Not one word of protest originates here, even as we all whine about global climate change.

Why one wonders. Why does no one worry about new coal plants? Where are the protests?

[struggle4progress]

25. Didja post in the wrong place? US energy waste IS a major source of CO2

and efficiencies could provide significant reductions.

Whining that Americans don't protest Europeans enough is just silly, since such American protest of Europeans would accomplish nothing worthwhile: it would make more sense for us to direct political energy at our own emissions first ...

[NNadir]

26. I am pointing out that Denmark is irrelevant to the case, like your post.

Let me help you with my thinking, since as usual, you are incapable of comprehending it and respond with silly red herrings and platitudes.


I have zero confidence that I will achieve anything but the reproduction of more diversions and irrelevant comments, but I will do this nonetheless noting, as usual, your participation in this thread is a silly attempt to change the subject.

This is a thread about nuclear power, first of all. This is not a thread about Denmark, although there has been a subthread turning it into one. This is also not a thread about energy efficiency, although it - like all nuclear power threads - touches heavily on the issue of carbon emissions and carbon efficiency.


I advocate the use of nuclear energy to replace coal first, and oil and natural gas as well. This, as I frequently point out, is from a consideration of the external costs of different types of energy.

I always note that the form of fossil fuel energy most readily amenable to being replaced by nuclear energy is coal energy. This is because, as is well known to people who actually understand energy - and obfuscated by those who think environmental problems are solved by prayer and chanting "conservation, solar, wind, biofuels, conservation, wind, biofuels..." interminably - coal is a form of energy that is used to provide constant base load power at high capacity loading. This is precisely the niche that nuclear energy currently fits so well.

So it is a no brainer that nuclear and other fossil fuels and some hydroelectric power are the only forms of energy that compete with coal.

Usually somewhere in my presentation of this case, which is obvious, some fool starts talking about wind power. Although I generally support wind power, although I am incapable of being oblivious to its problems, I routinely point out that wind is not suitable to replace coal, since coal is always used to provide base load capacity.

Then, not hearing a word I said, or being so poorly intellectually armed as to be incapable of comprehending it, someone says, "Denmark."

The usual import/export/carbon efficiency bullshit about the irrelevant topic of the wonderful Danes and their wonderful country all plays out and we are still left with the base case: Coal cannot be displaced in a greenhouse neutral way by anything but nuclear energy.

But let's cover all the red herrings designed to avoid that reality.

Nobody opposes energy efficiency. Nobody opposes renewable energy really, unless they are asked to pay exorbitant prices to get it, i.e. if some middle class twit is demanding that some other person be impoverished or stay impoverished to get it. These concepts have been around for nearly half a century now, and they have chipped away in tiny ways. With all the good will toward this strategy, one is surprised it has not done more, but at least it has done something. In fact carbon efficiency has been getting better and better for decades, but the fact remains that carbon emissions - unacceptable carbon emissions - are rising. You can look it up.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/tableh1co2.xls

But anybody who thinks that renewables and efficiency are enough is simply intellectually, educationally and morally limited. The matter is serious and chanting the renewable/conservation rosary won't help.

[struggle4progress]

27. If you consider Denmark irrelevant, why do you discuss it in #13?

You devoted a paragraph to Denmark. I responded to that.

[Dead_Parrot]

29. Probably because you raised it in #12

Denmark's solution is fairly unique to Denmark: That an oil & gas exporting country is choosing to invest in renewable power is laudable, even amazing, but it needs to put in the perspective: Here is a country where the wind is almost constant (trust me, I've worked there and it's a bitch) and they have the ability to tap into Norway's huge hydro, Swedens nukes or even Germany's coal power plants when the wind drops. It's possible that the Danes could crank their renewable energy use up to 100% of grid power, with a trillion or so thrown at wave & tidal and occasional heavy reliance on massivley re-developed Norwegian hydro schemes.

Denmark happens to sit next to countries with massive hydro potential - the only renewable with GW applications - which makes it fairly unique (shamelessy waving my adopted flag, New Zealand is another). You can't apply the same rules to places like the US, UK, China or India because the geography just isn't right.

[Dead_Parrot]

32. Ahem, not you...

...DWW. I must stop posting while on hard drugs. :evilgrin::blush:

[struggle4progress]

33. Dems Will Win might be surprised to be accused of being a sock-puppet

[Dead_Parrot]

34. ...And possibly a little miffed...

Oops. :)

[NNadir]

30. I am responding to another person who changed the subject.

This is an example of why all anti-nuclear people share the same form of ignorance.

The anti-nuclear position depends on irrelevant fantasy, from denial of the fact that wind is not suited to replace coal to the fact that solar is only suitable to displace gas.

You, by the way, still are not on the subject. Your entire schtick is red herrings, because you wish to divert attention from the fact that you are a coal boy. You have no understanding of how bad coal is; you don't care who or how many it kills; and you oppose the only reasonable alternative to it.

Coal.

[amandabeech]

15. NNadir, have you changed your mind about reprocessing

and AFR/IFR? You haven't mentioned either in this thread.

In a Yahoo energy group a couple of years ago, there was discussion of the uranium content of the tailings from mining phosphorus. Phosphorus is one of the three main components of chemical fertilizer which are nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. Immense quantities of phosphorus have been mined in Florida and other southeastern states. All the mine waste contains a little uranium which is now exposed to the elements in piles all over the mining area. With this low-grade source, the mining has already been done, saving an energy-intensive step. What other valuable minerals are involved, I can't recall.

As you have pointed out, NNadir, many coal deposits also contain traces of uranium and perhaps thorium, IIRC. In the same Yahoo group, there was a discussion of scraping uranium deposits off the interior walls of coal plant equipment that comes into contact with waste products. Have you heard of this?

[NNadir]

16. I have not changed my mind about reprocessing.

I believe in reprocessing on environmental grounds. I believe that we should begin reprocessing on a massive scale in order to provide for future generations, but, if we ignore future generations, we will simply use cheaper virgin uranium.

The argument for reprocessing is difficult to make in a culture that focuses only on internal costs, and not external costs however. The charging of external costs is really an area of action for government and public policy. It needs to be enacted by law. I would favor a law that demands that spent nuclear fuel be reprocessed, the plutonium isolated and ultimately fissioned, the minor actinides reserved, and the fission products separated for use and (potentially) disposal.

Nuclear reprocessing needs to be a part, too, of any program that seeks to control and/or eliminate nuclear weapons. The reason is that recycling, especially multiple plutonium recycling, makes available large quantities of plutonium isotopes that are far less suitable for weapons than is plutonium-239. One can never uninvent nuclear weapons, unfortunately, and it would be a lie to say that isotopic dilution makes the construction of nuclear weapons impossible. All plutonium isotopes are fissionable to some extent with fast neutrons. However, as a practical matter, plutonium denaturing makes nuclear weapons far more difficult to assemble, far more difficult to conceal, far less long lived, makes them give far lower yields, and makes them far more difficult to use. Again the issue is about risk minimization. Risk elimination with respect to nuclear war is impossible at this point and has been so since 1945. I do note, humanity's vast number of other fuck ups notwithstanding, not one incident of nuclear war has occurred since 1945, a good record for almost 61 years. I do worry that the loss of memory about what nuclear war is may lead to tragedy somewhere at some time, but not as much as I worry about the risk of global climate change.

I favor the complete ultimate fissioning of all isolated uranium including U-238, so called "depleted uranium." Such a policy demands that some fast fission spectrum reactors ultimately be commercially available, particularly if one wishes to recover all of the energy associated with minor actinides like neptunium, americum and curium. I think the IFR may have been a useful device in this context, and I'm sorry that it wasn't built, but I fully concede that in 1994, when it was cancelled, it was difficult to make an economic case for it. The price of uranium was at historical lows. We had several thousand fewer reactor-years of experience, and the issue of global climate change was far more esoteric than it is right now. Many of the assumptions informing the IFR debate were untested in 1994, but in 2006, 2007 and 2020 - should that year exist - the idea should be re-evaluated.

Of course, the work that has been done on the IFR thus far is not lost. The project can be revived at any time. Competent nuclear engineers work all around the world. The Gen IV nuclear program will explore a larger subset of new types of nuclear reactors however. The IFR is only one member of a vast number of possible reactors. I am confident that the international consensus on new reactor types will lead to fruitful results.

[amandabeech]

17. Thank you for the excellent summary.

It really adds to this thread, and should be repeated often.

Personally, I find the idea of reprocessing U-238 DU very compelling. I don't like the idea of this stuff laying around battlefields for indefinite periods of time. If we were to put it to use generating electricity, perhaps we would be less inclined to use it as a conventional weapon or be more inclined to clean it up afterwords.

[BattyDem]

18. The first thing that popped into my head was, "Is he insane?"

When I realized what the answer was, this idea made sense. :(

[Endangered Specie]

28. IMO the 'immediate' future of nuclear here will be Gen III plants...

by those I mean ones like:
EPR (essentially a complete revision of PWR)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Pressurized_Reactor
ABWR (an equivalent revision to BWR)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Boiling_Water_Reactor

Call me old fashioned but I don't keep up with the many new 'exotic' (gen IV) designs out there, for my money (and safety) Id much prefer these, which are based off reactors which have been running essentially without any problems (Three Mile Island being a PWR, but then again no one was killed) for the last 30 some years all over this country. Experience counts, Light Water Reactors are by far the most common and most understood in the world.

[Javaman]

31. Fine, then build them in dickhead chaneys backyard. what a fucking fool.nt