Nuclear Energy - I need to vent/rant

[DRBUZZ0]

You had mentioned U-234 specifically. U-234, you dishonest SOB. U-234 is an alpha emitter. Or did you forget?

Uranium 234 is an alpha wave emitter with a long lifespan, yes. I was referring specifically to 234. You claiming that I've ever said that all waste is an alpha emitter is, quite frankly, a disgusting lie.

Welcome to my ignore list. Through your straw men, lies, and misrepresentation of other people's positions, you are not worth discussing this with. I'd take a discussion with Luddite over someone like you anyday.

Someone PM me if Kevin actually says something worth addressing, m'kay? I have no desire to waste my time reading through his dishonest trash to find out myself.

What the hell does U-234 have to do with anything? U-234 is reduced by fission reactors. Well, perhaps a u-233 thorium-cycle reactor would breed some but it's bull, because the damn stuff is just about as good as U-235.

IE: IT GETS BURNED.

Not to mention. The freakin stuff does decay to daughter products like radium, radon etc etc. This is true with ALL uranium isotopes. It's the natural decay chain which is why you find these materials in minute amounts in uranium ore.

U-234 is not a waste product. U-236 maybe, but that's not a big deal anyway. U-234 absorbs neutrons. It becomes U-235. U-235 is fuel.

AND there is LESS U-234 in spent fuel than in natural uranium

 

[Lonewulf]

What the hell does U-234 have to do with anything? U-234 is reduced by fission reactors. Well, perhaps a u-233 thorium-cycle reactor would breed some but it's bull, because the damn stuff is just about as good as U-235.

IE: IT GETS BURNED.

Yeap. It was Kevin that brought it up. I brought up how U-234 was an alpha emitter. Apparently, in Kevin-speak, that means "all nuclear waste are alpha emitters". Hence why he's on my ignore list.

Not to mention. The freakin stuff does decay to daughter products like radium, radon etc etc. This is true with ALL uranium isotopes. It's the natural decay chain which is why you find these materials in minute amounts in uranium ore.

U-234 is not a waste product. U-236 maybe, but that's not a big deal anyway. U-234 absorbs neutrons. It becomes U-235. U-235 is fuel.

AND there is LESS U-234 in spent fuel than in natural uranium

Out of curiosity, what's the material that you would worry about the most in nuclear waste piles?

 

[DRBUZZ0]

Oh also... in regards to radium, radon, lead-210, bismuth-214, polonium..... All this stuff is indeed nasty as hell. It's also found in uranium ore. Not in very high concentrations, but it is found in the ore. Infact, the daughter products contribute most of the radioactivity to the uranium ore. Same deal with thorium ore.

You can find uranium ore anywhere in the world. There are some places with high concentrations, such as colorado, new mexico, parts of canada, australia and so on. You can just pick up a rock off the ground and have a big vain of uranium through it.

There's also a type of naturally-occuring uranium called "pitchblende" it's basically 100% uranium and daughter products, without being full of other rocky stuff. It's pretty rare, but it exists in large quantities in Congo. In other deposits the stuff can be found from time to time.

This is natural and it's impossible to avoid uranium-bearing rocks because they're so common. U-234 and it's daughters will be present in these in much larger amounts than spent fuel.

 

[Hindmost]

Alpha emitters are very dangerous if they can be ingested and taken up by the body or breathed in and caught in the lungs, as some can. However nothing says that all nuclear waste and all of its descendant isotopes will be alpha emitters. Beta and gamma emitters are almost certainly going to be in there too once the decay chain gets going even if they are not there at the start.

I say "almost certainly" because it's theoretically possible that every isotope in the waste just happens to have alpha emissions all the way down it's decay chain, but I'd be very surprised if it worked out that way.

Alpha emitters are confined to elements with a high atomic mass. Fission products are well known...just look at a nuclide chart and all info is there. I could only find one fission product that was an alpha emitter. Since it is high mass, the percent yield in fission is small. Some other fission products probably beta decay into something that emits alphas, however, again, the amount would be small since above a certain mass, alphas are not emitted.

There certainly aren't alpha emitters all the way down the decay chain. The lowest I found was Nd 144 with a quick view of the nuclide chart.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fission_product This give the yield from thermal fission of u235...tells what percent of fission produce what stuff. More detailed info is available.

glenn

 

[Tez]

Heres a stupid question: If the US military can churn out a bunch of small reactors for ships/subs that are safe enough for people to live beside for months at sea, can't we simply install a whole bunch of them on a suitable football pitch somewhere near any given city? That could be an interim and pretty immediate way of renuclearising ourselves, the new big reactors can come in 10 years if need be.

 

[Hindmost]

Heres a stupid question: If the US military can churn out a bunch of small reactors for ships/subs that are safe enough for people to live beside for months at sea, can't we simply install a whole bunch of them on a suitable football pitch somewhere near any given city? That could be an interim and pretty immediate way of renuclearising ourselves, the new big reactors can come in 10 years if need be.

Navy plants are very expensive and not really designed for the commercial market. The cores are designed for longevity, power on demand and robustness. The plants are inefficient and really made to push the boat around--not for electricity production. One would need about 10 nimitz class reactors to equal one commercial plant's output.

The uranium is also weapons grade when the core is first installed...which would add problems.

Commercial plants are designed on ecomony of scale. No matter the size of the plant, you need 4-6 shifts of operators, I & C techs, electrical techs, engineers..etc. There is a base load of people and material...so, the more electricity produced makes the plant more profitable.

glenn

 

[DRBUZZ0]

Out of curiosity, what's the material that you would worry about the most in nuclear waste piles?

hmmm. Interesting question. I suppose I would say that stuff like plutonium and other heavy transuric stuff would be a concern if the plan for the waste is just to bury it, since that stuff has a long half-life and also is quite toxic.

However, this is also the *easiest* to address. That stuff can be burned in a fast reactor. Also, one reason I'm really into the idea of the thorium-cycle is that it all but eliminates that stuff.

But as far as true "waste" that is, stuff that isn't useful and you are limited to burrying, I guess the two big ones are Sr-90 and Cs-137. Long enough half-life that you can't just leave them in a tank for a few years to get rid of them but short enough to be dangerous. THey need to be contained for a few centuries. Also they can be uptaken into organisms.

However, they only have like a <6% yeild per fissions. Also they're not that hard to contain. They shouldn't be too hard to deal with.


Beyond that the long lived fission products like I-129 and Tc-99 are something you have to account for. But the radioactivity is so low with those it's a lot less of a concern.


If you put the fission products into some sort of synthetic glass, you end up with the intermediate ones being the problem. Leave the stuff sitting around for 200 years or so and that's mostly gone. Done properly, the others would be left, but after a couple hundred years it's just on par with uranium or thorium ore in terms of radiotoxicity. Not a biggie.


So I'd have to say Cs-137 and Sr-90 are the ones I get concerned about. But not *that* concerned.

 

[DRBUZZ0]

Heres a stupid question: If the US military can churn out a bunch of small reactors for ships/subs that are safe enough for people to live beside for months at sea, can't we simply install a whole bunch of them on a suitable football pitch somewhere near any given city? That could be an interim and pretty immediate way of renuclearising ourselves, the new big reactors can come in 10 years if need be.

In principal yes, you could do that. The issue is that such reactors really aren't designed for the same demands as a civilian power generating system.

They are small and modular, but they also use highly enriched uranium, which is expensive and generally something they don't like floating around in civilian hands. Also, each reactor would not really provide enough power unless you had multiples.

The idea however does have a lot of potential with some tweaks. There are naval reactors that don't require high enrichment (the French had used some) and the concept has been applied to small power plants for emergency use or to power remote facilities.


As far as could you crank these things out? Yes, in principal you could build them on an assembly line just like any big piece of industrial equipment. You would need to keep the size small enough that you wouldn't have to resort to special large-scale forging and fabrication methods. That's doable too. Right now we don't build reactors that way. They take a long time to build and they're done per-site. You don't have producers with six or seven being built in line at the same time. You could though. Especially if you went with the small modular design of naval reactors and just adjusted it a bit for power generation.


The idea of using multiple relatively small reactors for power generation is an interesting idea. Offers a lot of advantages aside from the fact that you could fab them pretty fast. You can shut them down for refuling or inspection without shutting down the whole plant. You can scale the plant by adding more later. You can get your first watts out before you're done installing them all. If there is a problem with one, it's confined to that one.

The DOE had the idea floating in the 60's of a system like that. They even tested it in Idaho. The idea being to have four to eight 100-250 megawatt reactors, based on a slightly scaled-up design not unlike naval reactors. Quick deployment and easily expansion.

Never went anywhere though... shame.

One of my friends fathers works at the Kolls Atomic Power Laboratory. He thinks that's the way to do it. Apparently that was an idea everyone was gung-hoe about at one time. Back in the 1950's or so. Build these things somewhere, put them on rail cars and send them out. Drop them somewhere and hook up two or four or ten and hook them up to turbines or desalination stills or whatever you want. Have the thing going in a year.

Of course that might have been a bit optomistic, but not totally beyond possibility. Never happened though.


Here are some articles on this sort of thing:

http://www.adn.com/front/story/4214182p-4226215c.html

http://www.atomicinsights.com/nov95/ML-1.html

http://www.nti.org/db/nisprofs/russia/naval/civilian/flreactr.htm

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn6344-us-plans-portable-nuclear-power-plants.html

 

[Schneibster]

I refer to this post:

Which, depending on how charitable one wants to be, you either didn't read, didn't understand, or are deliberately misquoting in order to "prove you're right."

Looks to me like you were discussing fission reactor fuel waste originating in the USA at the time, and that's the kind of waste (apart from the originating in the USA bit) we have mostly been talking about.

No, it's not. The reason being, no one here is advocating building more reactors that use the once-through fuel cycle. Certainly I'm not; but apparently "tehy is talking about teh nucular!" is sufficient reason, in your mind, to outright ignore everything but that one single fact, not to mention justification for misrepresentation of what you have said and what we have said (or, less charitably, justification to lie whenever the fancy takes you).

I didn't go in to irrelevant details because the person I was conversing with, Lonewulf, did not understand the very basics of radioactivity.

Whether he did nor not is irrelevant; the point here is, YOU don't. And that's painfully obvious, just given what you say, and what you ignore. So basically you're arguing against something you don't even understand, because you're scared of it. Which is what "hysteria" means. And apparently you believe that any dirty tactic or lie is permissible in the arguments you use, as well. As I have repeatedly said, all of this is highly revealing as to your character. The truth is the truth; if it scares you, too bad. If you don't like it, too bad. Deal with it. Welcome to the real world.

You saw from a recent post, I hope, that he still thought all radioactive waste was alpha-emitting waste.

I believe he has dealt with this effectively; I see no reason to add anything other than note it has been done.

U-234 was a good example because it was easy to look up all of its descendant isotopes, and it included ones with a variety of properties (like radium and radon) that illustrated the point I was making better than any other breakdown chain I could find with a casual search.

U-234 is present in such minute quantities in reactor waste that discussing it is approximately as relevant to a conversation about nuclear power as the mating habits of the booming bittern.

Look, you've already admitted in the post I just linked to that I was basically right. Do you have any goal in pursuing this subtopic except to pick a fight?

And you lie yet again. Do try to actually READ the post, will you?

I don't see a lick of evidence there to refute. I see a lot of stating the obvious,

So, what is obvious is not evidence? That's a new one. "Evidence" is now defined, not as fact, but as some other entity that Kevin_Lowe hasn't yet delimited. Tell me, Kevin, if facts are not evidence, then what is?

and a lot of very lengthy jumps to unsupported conclusions,

So you claim; however, you've yet to point out what those "lengthy jumps" might be. The suspicion, given the number of times you've been proven to have lied on this thread, has to be that you in fact don't have any examples of such jumps to point out. You'll need to prove your claim. Oh, and by the way, be sure to avoid the obvious. That's not evidence, according to you.

but I don't see evidence.

Well, given that you don't call obvious fact "evidence," and haven't defined what precisely you believe "evidence" consists of if obvious facts don't fit your definition, I'm sorry, but I'll have to state that I think your definition of "evidence" has little to do with anything that might actually BE evidence as most people define it.

Calling me a liar for not thinking it's evidence is pretty cheeky.

You're right; given how you define "evidence," I'd have to say you're not a liar. I'll leave the conclusion to be drawn by others, but it seems like another obvious fact to me; of course, it's not, by your definition, "evidence."

I suppose I could put you on ignore, and certainly I see ample justification for doing so, but given that it doesn't take all that much time to refute what you say, I think I'd rather refute it than let it stand. I suppose that means I'll have to wade through more of this kak in order to get on with the conversation; so be it.

 

[DRBUZZ0]

There's something to consider with spent fuel in the United States. There has been little incentive to do much with it. Reprocessing has not happened since the late 1970's, but more importantly: The US Government gaurenteed all power plants it would take care of their spent fuel disposal.

Whether this was a bad idea or not is open for debate, but at this point the power plants had been built years or decades ago with an understanding that they just had to store their fuel for a period of time and then the government would handle the rest, no sweat. So the pools are starting to fill up and Yucca mountain is behind schedule.

It may be partially the fault of the private sector for pushing for this handout, but in any case, they've been operating like this for a while because of the policy.

 

[luddite]

Luddite "doesn't support" the big dams, but is he actively working to tear down the existing ones? Why not?

I'm not working to tear down existing nuclear plants either. Why not? Because the priority is reducing carbon emissions, and there are way too many coal plants to eliminate long before we go after anything else. Where we put our money when we replace old infrastructure is a different question, and is, by the way, the answer to Buzzo's comment about Germany being a nuclear phase-out nation. They are not closing productive reactors. They are just putting new generation money into other, equally low-carbon alternatives.

 

[luddite]

Bleh. It almost seems like this is a game to these people.

Global warming sure as hell isn't a game to me.

I appreciate that. I really do.

Lonewulf, in my experience in real life, all the nuclear proponents who push nuclear as a salvation to global warming have been pushing nuclear for decades and virtually none understand the scale of the problem. Which is why our provincial government has produced a plan that theoretically addresses global warming by reinvestment in nuclear, which will unfortunately delay closure of existing coal plants and result in overall emissions increases projected for the next 2 decades.

The only plans I've seen that even come close to getting the sorts of emissions cuts we need are promoted by environmental organizations that understand the scope of the cuts necessary. And not surprisingly, they focus on conservation/renewables. I've seen such plans for various jurisdictions and they show over and over that it's possible. What's more they usually show that it's cheaper. It's definitely faster. (And that's important because like I said delaying cuts means you have to cut even more later to get the same cuts overall).

Just a few days ago, a friend of mine showed me the OPA (Ontario Power Authority) study on which they based their conclusions that we needed to reinvest in nuclear. The big focus was operating costs, where nuclear comes out great. Buried in the study, they actually had the government's own projections which included construction and decommissioning costs and lo and behold by the governments own optimistic assumptions, wind was actually cheaper, even if you included associated storage costs. And that doesn't even include the fact that nuclear plants in Canada are basically uninsured.

Basically, the government consults with people who have been delivering reliable power for decades. They are experienced in this. They look at demand projections and plan in some reserve. They are suspicious of dispersed generation and especially intermittent sources. So given a directive to reduce emissions, they'll replace some coal with nuclear, but generally insist on leaving coal on for peak. At the very least, they'll leave coal for the shoulders and do natural gas on peak. They will say that putting any more than 20% renewables is just too risky. Some utilities demand even less renewable penetration. This is great for delivering steady, reliable power in a cheap energy world. It is irresponsible in an era of climate change.

Basically, the models that have served us so well in the past won't work in a post-carbon future. I have yet to see a single model, costed out and planned, for delivering the required emissions cuts in a jurisdiction to meet Kyoto commitments and beyond that included any investment in nuclear. Again, I'm not saying it can't be done. But the people who are concerned enough to do the math to try to figure out how to deal with global warming have almost no overlap with the people promoting nuclear.

So when you say global warming is a game to "these people", I need to tell you that in my experience global warming is a convenient cover for a great many nuclear proponents with no real interest or appreciation of the scope of the problem. And that's why I have an appreciation for people like you. Because I know that your commitment to nuclear stems from a commitment to dealing with global warming.

 

[DRBUZZ0]

I'm not working to tear down existing nuclear plants either. Why not? Because the priority is reducing carbon emissions, and there are way too many coal plants to eliminate long before we go after anything else. Where we put our money when we replace old infrastructure is a different question, and is, by the way, the answer to Buzzo's comment about Germany being a nuclear phase-out nation. They are not closing productive reactors. They are just putting new generation money into other, equally low-carbon alternatives.

NO! Thats not the case at all. Germany is in the process of "nuclear phase out." As such they have imposed a strict closure schedual:

http://www.uic.com.au/nip46.htm


The Biblis nucler plant is to begin shutdown early next year. It is the next one on the list to go. It has pressurized water reactors from the 1970's which had lifetime extensions and evaluations in the mid 1980's and turbine upgrades around the same time. The lifetime for the reactors is really not that limited. By most standards, they are going to not need any major overhauls for another 10 to 15 years.

But...

The utility filed an appeal to keep the plant open, citing possible generating capacity shortages and issues with meeting carbon caps in the time limitations imposed:

http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/r...man_minister_s_no_to_Biblis_A_extension.shtml

The german government has imposed strict limits on reactor energy hours, very much below the actual rated hours of the reactors.

The deal has been "set in stone" with the government working to prevent any backtracking. They wnat 50% capacity cuts by 2015.

http://news.monstersandcritics.com/...stands_by_deal_to_close_German_nuclear_plants

An "accident" got a lot of attention and was exploited by the anti-nuclear groups:
http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9595481

The energy minister called for 7 reactors to be closed imediatly... like NOW:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6973999.stm

Scientists say there is no credable danger:

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,2878030,00.html



Meanwhile... the thing few are talking about....

Germany operates dozens of multigigawatt coal power plants:
http://www.industcards.com/st-coal-germany-nw.htm

Oh but they're working on closing those too, right?

No... they have 34 coal plants which are being built or which are being granted aproval for being built. 34 NEW ones:

http://www.carbon-power.de/seite9.htm

Existing power plants in germany:



Boxberg Power Plant (brown coal): 3 Gigawatts. Capacity is currently being upgraded.

Scholven Power Plant (Bituminous coal, brown coal): 3.8 gigawatts Capacity is being upgraded. Two 1100 Megawatt boilers to be installed by 2015

Schwarze Pumpe Power Plant (Brown Coal, Lingite): 1.6 gigawatts, Currently begining a 3.5 billion euro upgrade program

Weisweiler Power Plant (coal): 1.8 gigawatts. Just finished a life-extension upgrade progect.

Voerde Power Plant (Bituminous coal): 2.26 gigawatts: Planned to be kept online for the foresable future

Walsum Power Plant (Brown coal, Bituminous coal, Slag): Currently in the midst of a plan to upgrade capacity to 4+ gigawatts, making it the largest coal burning plant in europe and second only to a plant in china in total coal burned.


Read all about it here: http://www.carbon-power.de/german_power_plants.htm


They are building coal plants in Germany like CRAZY


The new ones will have scrubbers (Oh ain't that environemtnally friendly) reducing the filth by 75-90%, leabing only 10% filth but 100% of the CO2


Okay quick question. These mega coal plants. The amount of coal that EACH PLANT burns in one single solitary 24 hour day. Would you guess that it would weight more or less than the fully loaded (hull, cargo, crew, passengers, fuel, fresh water, fxitures) net displacement of the RMS titanic, the well known 900 foot ship from 1912 that would be very large even by modern standards?


Here's a clue:

Oh yeah they also have wind and solar power. They're looking at getting that up to like 12% by 2020. That's an ambitious gaol. They might get it though. They only spent 8.1 BILLION US dollars on solar and wind power IN A SINGLE YEAR in 2006.



That would mean 20% of the energy would come from "Renewables" but of course, most of that is hydroelectric energy which was already in existence beforehand.

I mean, come on. The fact that they're dumping carbon like that and all they can talk about is the nuclear energy phaseout? It sounds to me like the German government is trying to scapegoat a group for their problems by blaming everything from fires to contaminating the precious purity of the beloved fatherland on them!


CHRIST NOT AGAIN!

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Now that's a lie. Thank you, Kevin_Lowe, for showing your true character.

You had mentioned U-234 specifically. U-234, you dishonest SOB. U-234 is an alpha emitter. Or did you forget?

Actually I did misinterpret your response now I read it a second time, probably because only assuming that you thought all waste was alpha emitting made any sense of your remarks.

Allow to withdraw my previous comment and substitute this: You did not think all waste was alpha emitting waste, you just missed the point completely to a degree I find baffling.

 

[DRBUZZ0]

Lonewulf, in my experience in real life, all the nuclear proponents who push nuclear as a salvation to global warming have been pushing nuclear for decades and virtually none understand the scale of the problem.

Scale of the problem? Scale of the problem??? Scale of the problem????

This is a 14 terawatt problem. In ten years it will be an 18 terawatt problem. If we institute some extreme consevation measures we may only end up with a 16 terawatt problem. Hell, if we really work out collective asses off, we may even keep it at a 14 terawatt problem.

That is a huge problem. That's massive.

A single coal-fired power plant produces enough CO2 in a year that if you wanted to sequester it, you know how much you'd need? If you compressed the CO2 down to it's most dense form, which would actually take more energy than the plant produces, you would be left with a block of dry ice 1000 feet long by 1000 feet deep by 50 stories high. That's dry ice! If you compressed it into a high pressure liquid you'd need more than twice that much space.

And that would still take more energy than you create.


There are dozens of plants which each day burn so much coal that they would fill a bowl stadium to the rim in less than a week. A single freakin plant!

This is simply massive... almost incomprehensably so. Wind farms are not going to fix this.


In reality, nothing will *fix* this, but there is one thing that can signifficantly midigate it, at the very least.,

The only plans I've seen that even come close to getting the sorts of emissions cuts we need are promoted by environmental organizations that understand the scope of the cuts necessary.

No... by organizations who live in a fantasy world where if you cut demand by 10% we're golden. Based on poulation increases and economic expansion aline, we could cut energy use by 1/3 and we're still up ◊◊◊◊ creek

And not surprisingly, they focus on conservation/renewables. I've seen such plans for various jurisdictions and they show over and over that it's possible. What's more they usually show that it's cheaper. It's definitely faster. (And that's important because like I said delaying cuts means you have to cut even more later to get the same cuts overall).

Renewables? Delaying does mean more cuts, yes. And you can build a windmill in a short period of time. It may take a nuke plant a few years but it can crank out gigawatts. All of the US produces less energy from all the wind farms built in the past twenty years than two of the nuclear plants.

Just a few days ago, a friend of mine showed me the OPA (Ontario Power Authority) study on which they based their conclusions that we needed to reinvest in nuclear. The big focus was operating costs, where nuclear comes out great. Buried in the study, they actually had the government's own projections which included construction and decommissioning costs and lo and behold by the governments own optimistic assumptions, wind was actually cheaper, even if you included associated storage costs. And that doesn't even include the fact that nuclear plants in Canada are basically uninsured.

You want to talk about optomistic projections? Yeah, wind is cheaper, below a certain point

Christ "uninsured"? What more does one need to trust this? We have thousands of people right now who's lives depend on nuclear reactors while they sit in a location unknown to the rest of the world under thousands of feet of ice cold salt water. How much safer does can it get?

Basically, the government consults with people who have been delivering reliable power for decades. They are experienced in this. They look at demand projections and plan in some reserve. They are suspicious of dispersed generation and especially intermittent sources. So given a directive to reduce emissions, they'll replace some coal with nuclear, but generally insist on leaving coal on for peak. At the very least, they'll leave coal for the shoulders and do natural gas on peak. They will say that putting any more than 20% renewables is just too risky. Some utilities demand even less renewable penetration. This is great for delivering steady, reliable power in a cheap energy world. It is irresponsible in an era of climate change.

20% on renewables is not "too risky" it's more like "Not going to make nearly a big enough difference." Coal will not "peak" in my lifetime or my grandkids. Unfortionately we have enough of the filthy stuff to last damn near forever.

And as far as "Distributed generation" the fact that germany is building multi-gigawatt coal plants... sure doesn't sound like distributed. Or that texas wants five more mega-large coal plants.

 

[luddite]

This page has a very informative graphic at the bottom; leading importers of wheat. Note the "developing countries" segment. Note that it is most of 75 million metric tons. The question here is, what happens to those countries if agriculture becomes local? Where will they get those calories from? And how many people live there? Then take a look at corn. Consider also that corn is livestock feed.

The amounts we're talking about here feed more than half the people alive today. That's over three billion people. Think about the implications of that statement, and then think about how that food gets to where it's being eaten. I may be an optimist claiming that only a billion people will die.

I found this so utterly unconvincing that I thought I must have gotten the link wrong. There is no implication in this article even that the "developing countries" listed rely on the wheat imported. They have "limited production potential", but that's of wheat. They are probably growing our bananas and pineapples and could easily feed themselves.

Livestock feed is another issue. The global demand for meat has been growing even per capita. I can point you to numerous articles that describe the resulting environmental devastation, quite unrelated to the energy inputs, which are huge. Nor is there a nutritional advantage. In fact I've seen studies that show that we could even fuel our cars on ethanol if we just gave up meat. Not that I'm advocating this. But it's a pretty silly reason to give for anyone starving. Feed them the corn directly instead of the beef and you can support several times the number of people.

I've previously sent you links about what happens when agriculture goes local and organic. The answer: not much. Production drops slightly overall, but actually goes up in many places, especially in developing countries. And where local self-sufficiency is promoted over export crops, we might even expect a reduction in hunger.

Actually, reading this article I got quite the opposite idea. Most countries historically were able to feed themselves. Productivity has generally gone up. And yet because of the focus on export crops, many productive countries have problems with hunger or malnutrition while being net exporters of food. Our greatest disservice to them may well be making them rely on imported energy-intensive and subsidized crops. Because even though they could grow their own food, if supply is suddenly cut off for whatever reason, they are now more vulnerable.

In fact the real threat is contained in the first sentence of the article:

Exports are crucial for the U.S. wheat industry

But it is my expectation that even if the U.S. wheat industry collapsed entirely, there would be virtually no deaths. It would be painful and unpleasant, but not apocalyptic in the way you describe.

And the claim that 1 billion would drop dead also relies on the premise that none would die under your alternative plan. And I'm afraid that's where I really disagree. Maintaining an international food dependence based on export agriculture on the premise that we'll somehow meet all our energy needs through nuclear, down to transportation and shipping, all in the next decade or two, that's putting people's food supply in a lot more danger than suggesting they might want to start growing some of their own.

 

[luddite]

NO! Thats not the case at all. Germany is in the process of "nuclear phase out." As such they have imposed a strict closure schedual:

Sorry, I thought I had read otherwise. Obviously I don't support closing nuclear plants while building coal plants.

 

[luddite]

And as far as "Distributed generation" the fact that germany is building multi-gigawatt coal plants... sure doesn't sound like distributed. Or that texas wants five more mega-large coal plants.

That's my point.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Which, depending on how charitable one wants to be, you either didn't read, didn't understand, or are deliberately misquoting in order to "prove you're right."

No, it's not. The reason being, no one here is advocating building more reactors that use the once-through fuel cycle. Certainly I'm not; but apparently "tehy is talking about teh nucular!" is sufficient reason, in your mind, to outright ignore everything but that one single fact, not to mention justification for misrepresentation of what you have said and what we have said (or, less charitably, justification to lie whenever the fancy takes you).

It seems to me that you are trying to have it every way at once here. You at first denied that fission waste was signficantly dangerous for any great length of time, and now when you have had to backtrack because it turned out not to be the case, it turns out that all along you were talking about something else and anyone who thought differently is lying.

I think that rather than getting into a dudgeon you should clarify exactly what you are advocating.

Whether he did nor not is irrelevant; the point here is, YOU don't. And that's painfully obvious, just given what you say, and what you ignore. So basically you're arguing against something you don't even understand, because you're scared of it. Which is what "hysteria" means. And apparently you believe that any dirty tactic or lie is permissible in the arguments you use, as well. As I have repeatedly said, all of this is highly revealing as to your character. The truth is the truth; if it scares you, too bad. If you don't like it, too bad. Deal with it. Welcome to the real world.

I believe he has dealt with this effectively; I see no reason to add anything other than note it has been done.

U-234 is present in such minute quantities in reactor waste that discussing it is approximately as relevant to a conversation about nuclear power as the mating habits of the booming bittern.

And you lie yet again. Do try to actually READ the post, will you?

I'm not going to bother further. This has turned into a particularly silly ad hominem attack, where you have latched on to something you can misinterpret and are trying to use it to run down my character as a substitute for defending the rest of your position.

So, what is obvious is not evidence? That's a new one. "Evidence" is now defined, not as fact, but as some other entity that Kevin_Lowe hasn't yet delimited. Tell me, Kevin, if facts are not evidence, then what is?

So you claim; however, you've yet to point out what those "lengthy jumps" might be. The suspicion, given the number of times you've been proven to have lied on this thread, has to be that you in fact don't have any examples of such jumps to point out. You'll need to prove your claim. Oh, and by the way, be sure to avoid the obvious. That's not evidence, according to you.

Well, given that you don't call obvious fact "evidence," and haven't defined what precisely you believe "evidence" consists of if obvious facts don't fit your definition, I'm sorry, but I'll have to state that I think your definition of "evidence" has little to do with anything that might actually BE evidence as most people define it.

You're right; given how you define "evidence," I'd have to say you're not a liar. I'll leave the conclusion to be drawn by others, but it seems like another obvious fact to me; of course, it's not, by your definition, "evidence."

I suppose I could put you on ignore, and certainly I see ample justification for doing so, but given that it doesn't take all that much time to refute what you say, I think I'd rather refute it than let it stand. I suppose that means I'll have to wade through more of this kak in order to get on with the conversation; so be it.

Schneibster, you don't get to state the obvious five times and then help yourself to a ridiculous conclusion. That's all your rant did.

Evidence has to be evidence for something. Writing out a very basic primer on economic interconnectedness is evidence of something, but it's not evidence for the very specific and very silly claim that we must build nuclear power systems or a billion people will die.

You would need a lot of well-researched and supported numbers to back a claim like that, and my guess is that getting them would be a major undertaking for a well funded research group. As claims to predict the future go it is inane, even by the standards of a web forum that regularly deals with inane attempts to predict the future.

 

[luddite]

No... by organizations who live in a fantasy world where if you cut demand by 10% we're golden. Based on poulation increases and economic expansion aline, we could cut energy use by 1/3 and we're still up ◊◊◊◊ creek

The organizations I'm talking about target conservation of at least 1/3 in the short term. At least 50% in the medium term. I've seen proposals as high as 80% in the long term. That's overall, not per capita. Obviously it requires public commitment too. And as I've said before, I think these kinds of short and medium term cuts will be necessary independent of the question of where we get the generation from. We're out of time.