gosmsgo

Cars will be in my future when I am debt free including a home and reitrement is fully funded.

Thats when I feel it would be responsible to purchase something that depreciates as quickly as an automobile does.

bmclaughlin807

You obviously have no grasp of nuclear power what-so-ever. But go ahead and spew your garbage... most other people don't, either.

Roody

So instead of insulting somebody, why don't you enlighten us? Stun us with your insight and wisdom, rather than disgust us with your name calling.

To start with, explain what should be done with the waste products that have such long half-lives. So far nobody has come even close to a solution, AFAIK.

bmclaughlin807

I never called anyone any names.

Anyway... I don't have time right now, but I'll revisit this thread this evening.

Elkhound

What do you call dismissing someone's stating his opinion as 'spewing garbage'?

If I am wrong, then correct me with facts and information, not insulting dismissal.

lyeinyoureye

There are a few techniques around, but thus far, it's cheaper to just store it than it is to look into reprocessing or transmutation or whatever else, since it's value will only increase w/ time. In other words, we could develop a program that would reduce the radioactivity/lifespan of waste, but that will cost $$$, probably more than just storing it, and, it isn't available for sale at a later point in time as Ur prices climb. In other words, the safe thing to do probably isn't the profitable thing to do, so guess which one has happened/will happen. That being said, nuclear waste storage is orders of magnitude safer than the externalities associated with more fossil fuel production now (even NG), so it's kind of a pick the lesser evil situation.

jaxgtr

I don't think that would be name calling, but more of an informal "talk to the hand" type of statement.

Thor29

Okay, so let's say that all of my reservations about alternate sources of energy prove to be unfounded. In the end, an economic system based on growth which encourages wasteful consumption and occurs on a finite planet, will eventually destroy the planet. Especially when combined with human population growth. Global warming, species extinction, the crashing of fish populations, air pollution, water pollution, toxic chemicals in our bodies etc. All of these things will continue if we succeed in replacing oil. This is not a good thing. Americans tend to be particularly blind to the environmental consequences of their way of life not because wealth leads to environmental protection as is often said, but because environmental consequences are pushed on to other countries (visit China and take a look).

By the way, there's even a recent study that shows that dams cause global warming (not to mention the impact on salmon runs, etc. or the fact that dams like Glen Canyon will eventually silt up and become useless). Here's a link: https://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0612-07.htm. This means hydropower and nuclear power are both global warming contributors (nuclear needs a large body of water for cooling). There's no such thing as a free lunch.

jaxgtr

Have you seen the environmental dumping ground China has become??? They had a truck full of benzine crash into a river and the communist gov't did not tell the people and entire villages got sick and a lot of people died. They have some of the worst pollution on the planet in China, Russia, India and countless other places, but it always seems to be the USA that gets the label as the worst environmental abuser. I just don't see it. Can it better, sure, are we the worst? Hardly.

bmclaughlin807

First off: Chernobyl was a REALLY bad combination of poor reactor design, very poor knowledge/training, and a lack of communication between shift changes.

The accident could not happen to ANY reactor in the US due to the differences in the way the reactors work. The reactor was also not built with full containment... so when the core was breached the radioactive products/gasses/debris was vented directly to the atmosphere.

If the operation staff on duty had more knowledge of how the reactor worked they wouldn't have misunderstood what was going on in the reactor and would have reacted properly, thereby eliminating the disaster.

If the shifts had communicated better at the shift change, this wouldn't have happened... it was a result of an experiment that was interrupted during the first shift... then it was restarted during the second shift... unfortunately the second shift didn't understand that the reactor was already partway through the experiment and started the detailed procedure list over from the beginning.


As far as Three Mile Island

failure by staff to follow procedures... an emergency pump that would have prevented the accident was not put back online about 2 days earlier after routine maintenance and testing. If the people working on that pump had followed the testing procedure the valves would have been opened at the end of the procedure, and the accident wouldn't have happened.

That Three Mile Island's problem became as extensive as it did was primarily caused by the lack of two direct sensors... one that would indicate the position of the pressure relief valve, the other a sensor that showed actual water level in the reactor core. Other indirect indicators were used instead, and thought sufficient. If either of these direct indicators had been in place, the problem would have been correctly diagnosed almost instantly and nobody outside of the Nuclear Power industry would have ever known that anything had happened at all.

Due to using indirect indicators of water level in the reactor and relief valve position, the situation was misdiagnosed, and operator action to correct PERCEIVED problems made the actual situation much worse... up to and including manually disabling automatic reactor safety equipment. It wasn't until the shift change several hours later that someone correctly diagnosed the situation and acted properly to correct it... by this time the reactor core was already SEVERELY damaged.

The fact that very little radiation was actually leaked into the environment was due to the fact that it was built with full containment, which, to my knowledge, all production reactors in the US are.

Reactors are designed to put themselves in a safe condition... working in Naval Nuclear Power we are taught that if we don't know EXACTLY what is going on, SIT ON YOUR HANDS.

Don't do ANYTHING.

In BOTH of these accidents, if the operators had done nothing at all the situations would not have escalated to what they did. Both situations were a very bad combination of design, lack of proper training, and a failure to follow designated procedures.

Other issues to deal with... cooling. Yes, you need a good quantity of water to cool a reactor with... that water doesn't HAVE to be fresh water... salt water works just fine... the parts of the reactor system that need fresh water are closed systems and need very little replenishment over time.

Waste? Storage is the most cost effective at the moment... but who's to say that it will always be 'waste' material? Maybe scientists will find another use for it. Also, radioactive waste produces heat. Heat can be used to produce electricity (even relatively low temps). Theoretically you could put waste in a sealed chamber underground and use it as a heat source for power generation.

I think for the foreseeable future nuclear power would have much lower environmental impact than our current coal or petroleum based power generation...

bmclaughlin807

His point was that we offload a lot of production and such to China... and hence leave THEM to worry about the environmental problems caused... as per your post.

bmclaughlin807

Maybe if you'd included facts and information in your post I wouldn't have resorted to 'insulting dismissal'.

Hell, if you'd labeled your post as being your opinion I wouldn't have responded in such a way.

Rather you make statements framed as fact which have little or no basis in reality.

The whole post reeks of hysteria.

lyeinyoureye

The planet will be here for a very long time. Trust me, there's no way we could do crap to it. We may end up wiping out even more species, including ourselves, but we can't do **** to the planet.

Yes, damning rivers will release copious amounts of Methane due to decaying crap underneath. I think one of the SAm countries was pretty pissed about this wrt Carbon trading. That being said, clear cutting the area before a damn was built would do a ton to alleviate these emissions, and harvesting of the submerged trees in current damns was also being investigated.

No, nuclear power plants do not require damns to run. They do require a significant amount of something for cooling, which can be water, but they don't need that much water.

wahoonc

The US and Great Britain as well as most of the current first world countries have been where China is today, as far as pollution, we have just cleaned up our act a bit. If not for the crass consumerism and the pure greed of the American public (and others) China probably wouldn't be in as bad a shape as it is today. IIRC the numbers 85% of the products (excluding food stuffs) that the American family purchases is made in China.

Aaron

cooker

Environmental problems are due to consumption and the USA is the biggest consumer. The point of the comment you were responding to was that globalization imports the product while exporting the pollution.

Elkhound

Go stand on the shores of the Caspian Sea and you will see what sort of environmental devastation a non-consumerist society can wreak.

Sir Bikesalot

Did you know that coal burning releases tons of radioactive waste directly into the environment? Yes, coal contains naturally occurring uranium deposits (as well as mercury and other toxic compounds). I'd rather live next to a nuclear reactor that can confine and store the waste safely than next to a coal burning plant that spews it straight into the air.

And by the way, the current generation of nuclear reactors are so much more efficient that the waste amount has really been reduced significantly. For example the amount of waste generated by a family of four during their lifetime is something like a thimble-full.

cooker

What sort of devastation?

djkenny

the answer in my opinion is getting people to do what a lot of people on this list does...ride your bike fr trips 5 miles or less in the least, unless a handcap makes the next way to get around the most used...

2nd, mass transit

3rd, commerce uses the majority of fuel driven cars on alternative sources...bio, vegtable, solar, air

one of the problems with cars is that is takes TREMENDOUS energy to MAKE a car. Nearly 40% of a car's total pollution emitted is at time of manufacturing. Anyone who buys a new Prius that had a 10 yr car with plenty of use left...is not helping our environment. Period.

bmclaughlin807

I disagree. This statement assumes that the car that is replaced goes immediately into a junk pile somewhere.

It doesn't. It's put on the market and sold to someone else.

This means that either a new car doesn't have to be produced for that person buying the used car, or it's replacing another, probably even older, more polluting, and less fuel efficient vehicle.

It also sends a message to car manufacturers that people WANT cars that are more fuel efficient and better for the environment, and thus encourages them to make more. Which results in the cost for the technology coming down, and research into bettering the technology to go up.

Sounds like a win-win situation to me.

gerv 

The car of the future might be determined by some of these points you make. This vehicle will certainly not need to be your "home away from home". You will use it for trips, most probably trips between 4 and 30 miles. Outside those ranges, other modes of transport (bikes, buses, trains, scooters, feet....) might be preferred.

A good side-effect will be the vast quantity of cars (I believe I read somewhere there are currently more cars than people in the US...) will be reduced.

These vehicles will be smaller. They will run on fuels sources that are scarce and expensive. Many will not consider the expense worth the effort.

People will start walking and biking. This will create a sense of well-being that will allow society to flourish... who knows?

gerv 

Found a copy in my library and read it this morning.

ZOOM: The Global Race to Fuel the Car of the Future

https://books.google.com/books?id=1UcfHAAACAAJ

A couple of quotes from this book says it all for me:


"Even Henry Ford's Model T got better fas mileage a century ago than today's average new car!"


"The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, calculate that America spent $30 billion to $60 billion a year safeguarding Middle Eastern oil supplies during the 1990s, even though its import from that region totaled only about $10 billion a year."

I enjoy their conclusion that the price of gasoline needs to be adjusted to the true cost of the resource. How else can any other fuel source compete?


"The International Energy Agency, a sober intergovernmental outfit not known for jumping on green bandwages... suggests that China's vast hydroelectric potential holds the key [to fueling a surging demand for cars in China]. The agency projects that the country's big dams... will run at a load factor of only 40 percent or so due to the lack of energy storage capacity, especially in the rainy season. However, if the load factor is increased to 70 percent, then all that extra power, which would other just be wasted, can be use to make hydrogen via simple and cheap electrolysis(which splits water into hydrogen and oxygen by applying electricity). That would be enough hydrogen to fuel 37 million cars by 2010 and 56 million by 2020..."

Another fact is that in China, as well as the growth of auto sales, electric bikes are a hot item.


Zoom is a great read...

Of course, none of this will reduce the traffic I have to endure as I plug away on my bike trying to get to work each day.