Let them eat radioactive charcoal (Page 1 of 2)

Ever wonder why for all the hype over world nuclear disaster, the biggest, most horrific event has not occured? Humanity is being protected by the benovolents. How fitting that since PTB have violated the free will of humanity that the favour will be repaid by circumventing any power they would have had to 'end the game' by using this most cruel and selfish method.

I just cant resist being a little sarcastic, so i'll apologize in advance for the anger it causes but not for the actual message.

Yes yes, lets all blame nuclear power, its oooh so bad and kills lots of people, lets forget all about oil wars, underground coal fires (usually started by carlessness of coal workers). Collapsing coal mines and respiration/enviroment problems associated with mining and such. Lets all build wind power (which dosnt even make sense as the power generated by them is not equal at all times so you would STILL need to have other forms of power and only have them to supplement the net. Or would you like to have your computer go on and off randomly).

All this hype about nuclear power being so darn dangerous is so darn silly its getting dangerous. If you put things into perspective nuclear power is one of the least dangerous as the area contaminated by tshernobyl was, and still is, relatively small. If you want to talk about contamination focus on the several hundread nuclear explosions and tests done by the nuclear powers. Not on a peaceful accident. Its like remebering titanic and saying all shipping is bad.

True, presently, the use of nuclear power is not the most transparent and easy to understand situations. But let me illustrate.

In tsherno, they wanted to see how long a nuclear reactor that is winding down would run. In essence, turning of all the security precautions.

Now, you take a boening 747 and see how long it will glide and take your hands off the controls. and whoopsy you kill 300 people.

When people get careless accidents happen. It is not specific to nuclear power.

And if you go to a average house in the very closest part to tshernobyl in finland. Which, granted, is a long distance away, the radiation that you measure in your basement is 40-60% ground radon and 1-2% tshernobyl.

If you go inside the normal nuclear powerplant and right next to the reactor. As close as you possibly can get without going in the reactor itself, you will measure a amount of radiation LOWER than in the average household due to the radon that is rising from the ground.

Nuclear power, at the moment. Is one of the most reasonable ways we can even hope to save parts of this planet. By starting to dissasemble the nukes and focusing heavily on 4th and 5th generation nuclear powers we can even begin to use the nuclear waste generated by normal nuke powerplants and use this waste to power these plants. By a cautious estimate i read in a finnish science magazine, if we started to dissasemble the nukes and exploit the now found uranium concentrations, we could power the entire earth for close to 50 years with the present technology and power consumption. (consumption increases but technology increases as well so its imposssible to preditct thusly its best to say what it will be on its present level.)

and this is why civilian nuclear research and power generation is so villified. Because everyone wants to gather all the uranium they can to make bombs and if civilians realise its the least harmful and least expensive way to generate power IF it is well handeled, they might actually ask why fight in iran and iraq and have 20.000 nukes when we could just have 500 nukes and use the uranium from the nukes?

Ofcourse, thats just my opinion, which is why i like democracy :P

Edit: i forgot to point out that i really hate nuclear weapon usage. They are a good deterrant but if you start dropping them on cities its no longer good for business. So no, i dont think we should use nukes, which is why we should use that uranium, which is some very powerfull stuff, for power generation. So the eggheads can find some new ways to kill each other that dosnt involve stripping the rest of humanity of a good gift

Something tells me you wouldn't sell out.

There are at the moments very safe ways to deal with radioactive waste, however, they are prohivitivly expensive. And expensive means effort. So it takes a great deal of effort to deal with it in such a way that it is safe. And for that to happen we would really have to kick some engineers in the collective arses.

There are 3 levels of radioactive waste

Low, medium, lethal (naming might wary)

Low level waste is the clothing and equipment used in a nuclear plant that never comes into contact with pure nuclear waste. It is labled as nuclear waste for some reason that i swear to god i dont understand. The normal nuclear labcoat is LESS radioactive than the labcoat you can buy at your local supermarket.

Medium is the equipment that comes in contact with radioactivy (the actual classification is a bit more complex) and is generally harmful only if you stay around it for extended periods of time. This is perhapse the most annoying category as it really isnt reusable or recyclable in any sensible way. But there are ways to deal with it without causing much damage as it is so low in its radioactivity it can be usually remelted and reused in stuff like ship hulls if possible. Still, keeping in mind that in any modern homes, even if you do take into account the fact that all the radioactivity in the air caused by nuclear detonations and all the uranium in fire alarms and so on. Over 50% of the radioactivity comes from ground radon (this is, assuming that you dont live in a high rise building) So if the amount of recycled medium radioactive metal that is placed into normal metal is low enough, the rise of radioactivity in the normal house will be a few percentage points at the most (still far far less than taking one airplane trip)

Now high/lethal radioactivity is what is really interesting, this is the actual uranium and so on. This, if as they do now, stored into the rock will remain dangerous for millions of years, despite what some scientists claim. And as such should not be dumped so carelessly. In a million years, if enough of this gets into groundwater you will see a slight increase in cancer rates but even then the increase is low, however, it is high enough to warrant a better action regarding nuclear waste as opposed to sticking it in the ground.

There are ways that you can handle with radioactive waste. If you take the average uranium rod that has been "half spent" and use it to increase the radioactivity of another rod you en up with one rod of depleted uranium and one rod of high potent uranium. Now, as we all know, DU is not the nicest of substance. However, it is no longer radioactive enough to be dangours. The reason it is dangerous is because it is a very very highly dangerous heavy metal (think... lead) And when it impacts a tank it catches fire and turns into uranium oxide, which while not being radioactive, will cause ALOT of damage to your cells and cause many many interesting sideffects that will be lethal.

So the danger in this is not radioactivity, its the fact that it is so easily flamable. So disposal of depleted uranium is far far easier as the contamination to ground water is no longer an issue in the same severity as with normal uranium. One way to deal with this is to simply build storehouses, and deal with it as we deal with other dangerous highmetals. Collect it up and stick it in some storage house somewhere (ofcourse, away from homes or cities as is with all the WMD that we store). And unless it spontaniously catches fire the damage will be very small. And if you really nuke a DU storehouse, the least of your worries will be the DU downfall, it will be the radioactivity. So, unless someone really nukes or otherwise destroyes that storehouse, if it is well build will last for many years. It wont even be dangrous to animals because its not edible. Only if it catches fire.

At the moment there are a million and 1 ways to deal with radioactive waste (high radioactive specifically). There are ways to make it so it isnt radioactive anymore and turn it into metals that arnt even DU. The real issue is to get the political and financial backing to actually take this issue with the seriousness that it warrants without causing panic.

As i said, its not the civilian nuclear usage that is so dangerous, its the military, that is just some f*cked up shit. To be frankly honest.

The reason i am trying to "promote" nuclear power is that fact of the matter is that at the rate we are going now, oil and coal and renevables will not be able to hold up, much less increase the overall energy production. And that leaves nuclear, fusion, wind, solar, tidal, groundheat, and a few other not so well known. Fusion is commercially 20-50 years away, wind is laughable as is solar (not a steady enough production to stop power outages). Ground is not feasible in most countries and tidal is a very good option but is also season dependant so could only fill in the gaps. The only way we can do it now is to burn something or use nuclear.

And logically, as long as we want electricity, and living in western society, we obviously do want electricity. Nuclear becomes the only option that is a good and feasible solution. And as i can already say that nuclear will become a huge "in" thing again. It will be very popular and most countris will start rebuilding nuclear plants, simply because nothing else on a large enough scale is anywhere near as cost effective. And as long as we follow this economic pattern then nuclear will be built. So instead of fighting against something that i know very well will not be stopped. I am fighting to get it out of the hands of the people who dont take it seriously and place it in the hands of people that do.

In the US, the amount of corruption is so incredibly high that i am suprised not one of the nuclear plants has blown up yet (3 mile was close). But US is not generally a good example on what is smart and what isnt smart. Tho the same thing will happen everywhere if people are not carefull (same goes for russia).

But the problem with carelessness is not tied into nuclear, its tied into everything. While a nuclear plant blowing up on its own is a really really bad thing. If a petrochemical plant blows up the damage is equally as bad. Think of the water contamination that happened in china a while back.

In the end, i am still of the firm opinion that we should invest in fusion research, build wind, solar, tidal and ground where ever feasible and cover the rest with fission until fusion becomes viable. Conver farmland to grow hemp and use hempoil and mix that with gasoline. Start promoting hybrid cars and promote energy efficiency. But even if all that happens the energy consumption of this planet will not go down unless someone is willing to force 2-4 billion people to live in stoneage. I would rather risk that 10.000 years from now someone will have to think of something to do with that uranium waste than watch society start to crumble as demand for electricity rises and ability to supply that demand decreases.

But overall, we both care for the same thing, keeping people healthy and alive, even if we believe the method of doing that is different.

Hkelukka, I think you have fission and fusion mixed up- which is easy to do.

Fusion is the process we have been using right along, fission is the process that is still only a promising alternative.

Just so other readers are not confused.

You mentioned the corruption of the US in these affairs, and you are quite right.

It's likely my info and opinions have been colored by using the worst possible examples in how a nation should approach these issues.

I'll grant you that.......

So l'd like to offer what I'd consider some of the more realistic alternatives to atomic power.

You mentioned geothermal energy- that would top my list of under-explored and under-exploited technology.

If done properly, this could be an excellent option, and provide more than enough energy, for individual homes at least.

Next on the list would be hydrogen.

To use an example, I will apply this to transportation.

Hybrid vehicles are an improvement, certainly, but I think it's a "stopgap"
technology and should only be a temporary solution.

Because hybrids still employ a conventional gasoline or diesel piston engine.

You may or may not be aware, Bush proposed a while back to begin to exploit more hydrogen extraction.

But guess what?
His proposal was not for extraction of hydrogen from water, by electrolysis,
but for extracting it from petroleum!!!!

This is ludicrous and it's so obvious this is because he is an "oil man" that anyone could have said "come ON, gimme a break!"

If we MUST continue using internal combustion engines, the I think we should be using a cyclical type engine, such as a Wankel engine (rotary),
and NOT a reciprocating piston engine
simply because a vast amount of energy is wasted in the piston/connecting rod assemblies changing direction several times per second.

And that rotary engine could be fueled
by hydrogen derived from a built-in electrolysis device.

Water is the fuel, water is the waste product.

It would likely have to be distilled or highly purified water to keep engine deposits to a minimum- but how much cheaper and safer is that than gasoline refinement?

Once burned and recombined, the vapor could be returned to the water holding tank. It would be a lesser amount than what was consumed, but can you imagine a self-refilling tank?

That would be truly awesome!

Methane is another option, and there are numerous sources of it.

Recently they have discovered ways to extract it from deep ice in certain parts of the world- I only know a little about this one.

While not as perfect and clean as hydrogen, I think methane holds some real promise.

As far as safety regarding a hydrogen or methane production facility, the big risk is handling, just like atomic.

But, there would only be clean explosions in the event of mis-handling, no residual radiation OR  significant  other types of pollution.

By applying these alternatives on a mass scale, we'd be able to power a turbine for electricity production.

This can be done.
None of this is fantasy.

To come back to your comparison, Hkelukka, what price are we willing to pay....... money, or more lives?

That is the question that is all too often answered by people in the positions of power, who usually don't have a clue about the real risks involved, or a concern for anyone but themselves and their crony peers.

Something has to change
and change soon- for there to be any hope for our survival as a species (yes I know a 3D species :-)
 
Thanks for enduring my rant lol    J

Well you know what they're gonna do, right? Use nuclear power to split hydrogen from water, then use hydrogen to power fuel cells, then send electricity from the fuel cells to gas stations to run the pumps for gasoline-electric hybrids. Nuclear engineers keep their jobs, fuel cell industry blooms, OPEC stays happy, and people think they're saving the planet. I'm not serious.

Nuclear power is pretty crude if you think about it. Just some hot rocks stuck in water to boil off steam  that drives turbines which turn the generators. Most of the "exotic" technology goes into making sure there isn't a meltdown. Maybe there are more sophisticated ways that don't rely on steam, like using nuclear radiation to induce phosphorescent glow in some material sandwiched between solar cells. We do need new truly exotic technology that surpasses nuclear. Aliens, where are you? Gimme gimme gimme.