[areidjr]

... if we had a reasonable and safe nuke power plant program in place 25-30 years ago similar to France.

We actually did. Westinghouse licensed the same technology used in the Sates to Framatome, who built most of the plants in France.

The problem was the environmentalists that threw roadblocks in the way of the construction and licensing of the plants. I used to work for Westinghouse in the early 80s and every nuke plant I visited had protesters at the main gates. They did their best to keep things tied up in court as well. The unions also did a lot of damage as well; some trade was always on strike and the delays were financially burdensome.

We'd be much better off today had we been able build nuclear power plants the way France did.

We actually did. Westinghouse licensed the same technology used in the Sates to Framatome, who built most of the plants in France.

The problem was the environmentalists that threw roadblocks in the way of the construction and licensing of the plants. I used to work for Westinghouse in the early 80s and every nuke plant I visited had protesters at the main gates. They did their best to keep things tied up in court as well. The unions also did a lot of damage as well; some trade was always on strike and the delays were financially burdensome.

We'd be much better off today had we been able build nuclear power plants the way France did.

What do you do with the radioactive waste? Make dirty bombs?

[Blue]

What do you do with the radioactive waste? Make dirty bombs?

Fly ash sediment is pretty damn dirty. Look at the screwup at Kingston, TN.

Edit: Which isn't to far from the aborted Clinch River Breeder Reactor. However, I've heard the TVA may renew that project along with some others.

[Phil1]

'What do you do with the radioactive waste? Make dirty bombs?'

Reprocess it like France and everyone else does and the inviro crazies won't allow the US to do. Look it up.

Any waste left put in the billion dollar hole in Nevada that has already been built that the crazies won't allow us to use.

Like I said, do the country a favor and bitch slap a mush headed Greenie for drill.

Back to my original question, how many billions of dollars, barrels of oil, train loads of coal and billions of tons of CO2 and fly ash, sulfer and heavy metals would have been saved from the atmosphere and ash piles? Acid rain, acidification of fresh waters, toxins all over?

Come on Greenies time to fuss up. You have done the country and the environment a huge disservice.

[Wheatfield]

'What do you do with the radioactive waste? Make dirty bombs?'

Reprocess it like France and everyone else does and the inviro crazies won't allow the US to do. Look it up.

Any waste left put in the billion dollar hole in Nevada that has already been built that the crazies won't allow us to use.

Like I said, do the country a favor and bitch slap a mush headed Greenie for drill.

Back to my original question, how many billions of dollars, barrels of oil, train loads of coal and billions of tons of CO2 and fly ash, sulfer and heavy metals would have been saved from the atmosphere and ash piles? Acid rain, acidification of fresh waters, toxins all over?

Come on Greenies time to fuss up. You have done the country and the environment a huge disservice.

I'm quite a pro nuke advocate, a good friend of mine is quite a vocal anti nuke, so we've had the occasional lively discussion.
The best (and about the only) argument that he has come up with regarding no nukes is that with reactors supplying power, there will be a lot more uranium floating around, with the possibility of the bad people (I suppose that would be Muslim extremists nowadays) getting their hands on enough to make a bomb.

[areidjr]

I'm quite a pro nuke advocate, a good friend of mine is quite a vocal anti nuke, so we've had the occasional lively discussion.
The best (and about the only) argument that he has come up with regarding no nukes is that with reactors supplying power, there will be a lot more uranium floating around, with the possibility of the bad people (I suppose that would be Muslim extremists nowadays) getting their hands on enough to make a bomb.

I'm not aware of any nuke power plants utilizing weapons grade uranium. Typically, it is enriched to about 5%. Weapons grade is usually over 80%. So, I don't think that is really a valid reason to oppose nuclear energy.

I'm not aware of any nuke power plants utilizing weapons grade uranium. Typically, it is enriched to about 5%. Weapons grade is usually over 80%. So, I don't think that is really a valid reason to oppose nuclear energy.

You don't need it enriched to make a dirty bomb. It's pretty simple actually.

As for storage in Yucca. Look at the EPA guidelines on that and then tell me it's safe over the long haul.

And to think I actually support a nuclear program.

[areidjr]

You don't need it enriched to make a dirty bomb. It's pretty simple actually.

As for storage in Yucca. Look at the EPA guidelines on that and then tell me it's safe over the long haul.

And to think I actually support a nuclear program.

Nuclear power has been in use for a long time and how many dirty bomb attacks have there been. Anyone handling spent fuel rods is unlikely to live very long, not that that would deter a terrorist.

There are ways to safely reprocess spent fuel rods and there has been some research with encapsulating the spent fuel in glass in order to store it safely for extremely long periods, I believe in the range of thousands of years, if not longer.

There seems to be objections and/or technical obstacles to every form of energy production. I worked for 4 years in fusion energy research. It's an ideal way to produce energy, clean, efficient, very little waste and in the case of an accident, it just stops. Unfortunately, no one has been able to produce a a plasma that lasts long enough to put it to practical use.

Until something better comes along, I believe that nuclear is a good option to replace fossil fuels. But, I don't hold out much hope that any meaningful number of nuke plants will ever be built in the USA.

[blind-bat]

Well, many people noticed it was pretty cold in their neck of the woods this winter, and inferred global warming was either a bad joke or some money making scheme--or both.

But they fail to understand that the temperature of the air mass over Artic will dictate where the jet stream flows. So if it gets warmer over the Artic means

hotter artic air mass = larger volume = move towards the equator = colder air than normal in the southern regions

[Phil1]

'You don't need it enriched to make a dirty bomb. It's pretty simple actually.'
A 'dirty bomb' is not a nuke bomb but just a spreading of material with radioactive content. Don't confuse the two. You best round up all the radioactive materials in use today by industry, hospitals and labs. Since radioactive materials are easy to detect, difficult to transport, hard to obtain, and slow in results most bad folks would probably choose other methods of doing harm like C4 or even a bio agent like the anthrax in a letter. Check out the cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima and go stand at the epicenter of our first nuke bomb in New Mexico. These sites were real dirty bombed not that long ago. The what-if dirty bomb ploy is a bogey man.

'As for storage in Yucca. Look at the EPA guidelines on that and then tell me it's safe over the long haul.'
Tell me natural gas pipe lines under cities are safe, Tell me transporting 15,000 gallons of gasoline thousands of times through cities is safe. Tell me a billion tons of CO2 in the air is safe. Tell me power lines over highways are safe. Tell me airplanes are safe. Tell me medicine is safe. Tell me trains are safe. The EPA guidelines are ultra safe guidelines. If you think about it the military has been flying nuke weapons over the US for many years. Slow moving trains (my understanding is a 30 mph speed limit) over special routes to Yucca Mtn containing crash tested containers of passive low grade radioactive waste is safer than the infrastructure we use with carbon fuels. Look to the French, what we invented, they are smart enough to use well and safely. Another bogey man. Yucca Mtn is there and pretty much completed after many many millions have already been spent.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjrRZ-9jyAM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJflu7z4QyI&feature=PlayList&p=D7022B5176585E...rom=PL&index=6

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_JhruRobRI&feature=PlayList&p=D7022B5176585E...aynext_from=PL

Interesting to hear the Greenies' grasping at straws to obstruct and block the transport and in the same breath they want no CO2 in the air. Kind of like talking out of both sides of your butt.

[Ratmagiclady]

I have to wonder how many billions of dollars, barrels imported oil, train loads of coal and atmospheric carbon could have been saved if we had a reasonable and safe nuke power plant program in place 25-30 years ago similar to France. Next time you see a Greenie, slap the $hit out of him please.

The problem is, in America, the nuclear plants were an expensive boondoggle the taxpayers subsidized for the energy industry, and which the energy industry still doesn't run at the full capacity of what they *have had all along* because it would lower the prices of the other forms of energy they also had interest in.

Meanwhile, it's dirty to get the uranium.

Nuclear power was always used by the energy industry to *block* research and funding and implementation of the greener alternatives. They just promised we'd have fusion by sometime soon. Most of the protests against nuclear plants that had effect were the people the energy industry tried to muscle them in on. The 'NIMBY's' and the people who didn't think they're safe (Who would, at this point, in a way.) Concerns of safety, waste disposal, once again kicking Native Americans off the land they were shoved onto... As always, more complicated than some say.

Though they've been 'slapping greenies' all along.

Thirty five, thirty, twenty five years was time to be dealing with *conservation* and *diversified energy sources.* Certainly there's no margin for delay now on several counts.

Nuclear does seem to have been fairly viable in Europe, and I actually have an online friend who's working on the next generation reactors, which promise to be at least a lot more efficient. But it's no magic bullet. It's expensive, for one. Can only be really used in certain places, and most of those places are where people live. A lot of them are also on geologically-unstable places, as well.

'The solutions are complex. However, feces driven subsistence farming isn't the answer when there are 6 Billion people to feed and that could double in 30 years. ' Worth repeating for sure.

I think the population issue is definitely the gorilla at this table. Another thing a lot of people are demanding we make worse when we know the world can't handle it, especially as more people want a more Western standard of living and all the energy and fertilizer use that goes into it.

Instead of anyone even considering dealing with this, we've got religious people running around already-over-populated parts of the world telling people to have babies if they don't even want to... and to not use birth control under any circumstances, even if it takes spreading disinformation.

That, at least, is something the world could do without. Easy for me to say, I suppose, but maybe pushing fertility treatments so hard isn't the way, despite an aging population bubble.

Still, what I worry is that something really nasty is bound to 'correct' that. Disease might be a factor, (I don't even want to think what *that* would look like,) or in fact, all the monkeying around with pollution and chemicals and all the rest could in fact really louse up our fertility... Something's certainly happening that way in Italy.

[Parallax]

I think the population issue is definitely the gorilla at this table. Another thing a lot of people are demanding we make worse when we know the world can't handle it, especially as more people want a more Western standard of living and all the energy and fertilizer use that goes into it.

Instead of anyone even considering dealing with this, we've got religious people running around already-over-populated parts of the world telling people to have babies if they don't even want to... and to not use birth control under any circumstances, even if it takes spreading disinformation.

That, at least, is something the world could do without. Easy for me to say, I suppose, but maybe pushing fertility treatments so hard isn't the way, despite an aging population bubble.

Still, what I worry is that something really nasty is bound to 'correct' that. Disease might be a factor, (I don't even want to think what *that* would look like,) or in fact, all the monkeying around with pollution and chemicals and all the rest could in fact really louse up our fertility... Something's certainly happening that way in Italy.

I think it is a pretty safe bet that that is what will happen. If necessary Mother Nature will resolve the over population issue all on her own, and it won't be pretty.

[Ratmagiclady]

I think it is a pretty safe bet that that is what will happen. If necessary Mother Nature will resolve the over population issue all on her own, and it won't be pretty.

Yeah.

We've got a saying about the world: "Change or be changed."

Refusal to adapt is certainly something people may do. Certainly not something I would recommend if we'd prefer 'pretty.'

Sometimes I do wonder about people spending billions on fertility treatments and trying to make LBGT people have unprotected straight sex, while children go hungry and unwanted. But I have some idea how hard it is to try and get in the way of the instincts of those who associate having offspring with superior status, divine favor, and prosperity.

I do wonder if the fertility tech is actually masking a problem with how much we *toxify* our fairly-delicate reproductive systems. It doesn't take much in the way of endocrine disruptors to mess someone up in one way or another, let me tell you. These systems are complex and interactive, and not necessarily evolved for what some people 'want' in the conditions under which we structure our modern lives.

[shooz]

As to the OP?

Ball of Confusion
-The Temptations-

The shoe does fit!....

'You don't need it enriched to make a dirty bomb. It's pretty simple actually.'
A 'dirty bomb' is not a nuke bomb but just a spreading of material with radioactive content. Don't confuse the two. You best round up all the radioactive materials in use today by industry, hospitals and labs. Since radioactive materials are easy to detect, difficult to transport, hard to obtain, and slow in results most bad folks would probably choose other methods of doing harm like C4 or even a bio agent like the anthrax in a letter. Check out the cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima and go stand at the epicenter of our first nuke bomb in New Mexico. These sites were real dirty bombed not that long ago. The what-if dirty bomb ploy is a bogey man.

'As for storage in Yucca. Look at the EPA guidelines on that and then tell me it's safe over the long haul.'
Tell me natural gas pipe lines under cities are safe, Tell me transporting 15,000 gallons of gasoline thousands of times through cities is safe. Tell me a billion tons of CO2 in the air is safe. Tell me power lines over highways are safe. Tell me airplanes are safe. Tell me medicine is safe. Tell me trains are safe. The EPA guidelines are ultra safe guidelines. If you think about it the military has been flying nuke weapons over the US for many years. Slow moving trains (my understanding is a 30 mph speed limit) over special routes to Yucca Mtn containing crash tested containers of passive low grade radioactive waste is safer than the infrastructure we use with carbon fuels. Look to the French, what we invented, they are smart enough to use well and safely. Another bogey man. Yucca Mtn is there and pretty much completed after many many millions have already been spent.

YouTube - Crash test

YouTube - Spectacular 100mph Train Crash Test

YouTube - Rocket Powered Train Inpact Test

Interesting to hear the Greenies' grasping at straws to obstruct and block the transport and in the same breath they want no CO2 in the air. Kind of like talking out of both sides of your butt.

Hey Phil, we are actually on the same side. I was just playing devil's advocate. But 1 million years? How safe is it really if it's regulated for ONE MILLION YEARS?

As for the Yucca Mtn. requirements

http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/6424ac1caa800aab85257359003f5337/78...f!OpenDocument

EPA is required to set standards consistent with the findings and recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and satisfy a July 2004 court decision to extend the standards' duration. The Yucca Mountain standards are in line with approaches used in the international radioactive waste management community. The final standards will:

* Retain the dose limit of 15 millirem per year for the first 10,000 years after disposal;
* Establish a dose limit of 100 millirem annual exposure per year between 10,000 years and 1 million years;
* Require the Department of Energy (DOE) to consider the effects of climate change, earthquakes, volcanoes, and corrosion of the waste packages to safely contain the waste during the 1 million-year period; and
* Be consistent with the recommendations of the NAS by establishing a radiological protection standard for this facility at the time of peak dose up to 1 million years after disposal.


Human exposure to radiation varies from natural sources, such as radon and ultraviolet radiation from the sun, and other sources, such as medical X-rays. The average annual radiation exposure from both naturally occurring and manmade sources for a person living in the United States has been estimated to be 360 millirem per year.