Motorcycle Girl in Chernobyl Dead Zone [Archive]

HL1978

07-09-2007, 08:30 PM

What really makes me furious is that nobody learnt anything at all from the Chernobyl accident. In a world where political cost is the only obstacle to clean energy (solar,wind,geothermal), some sad individuals still campaign about nuclear energy. Shame...

There are a lot more obstacles than politics or solar, wind and geothermal, such as you need areas that are appropriate for each otherwise the various technologies wont scale well (i.e. it isnt economical to run solar panels when the angle of the sun and amount of sunlight per day is not great, where sustained winds above a certain speed do not occur, where geothemic energy doesnt readily exist), the NIMBY factor, the costs both enviromental, time to recoop (particuarly when not infuenced by tax subsidies) for new solar cells, the environmental costs of solar cell construction.

You can talk about biomass (algae, corn, sugar beets etc) as being carbon neutral, but there is still environmental costs (fertilizer utilized to grow corn/sugar beets) and higher prices for foodstuffs (see the recent tortilla price increases in mexico) wich result. Algae on the otherhand is probably a better source (paritucarly the constantly agitated pond systems), but the scale required would be enormous for electrical power generation.

There are plenty of advocates for nuclear out there, though most admit it is a stopgap measure (assuming sustainable fusion occurs at somepoint in the near future and we are reffering to fission when speaking of nuclear), despite breeder reactors and other technologies to extend the use of fuel, and certainly there is a storage problem for waste and the environmental costs of obtaining the fuel plus the national security issues, but as a large scale alternative to hydroelectric (which has its own set of environmental problems) and fossil fuels (no green house gas emissions, less costs per unit of energy for fuel/capital costs compared to fossil fuels, no soot/smog for fission power) it is pretty much the only other viable option out there at this point.

Suffces to say, politics is not the only problem out there for any sort of alternative energy adoption on a wide scale.

ChrisMoses

07-09-2007, 08:36 PM

Hmmm. I did not to mean to imply that radiation builds up by itself. What I meant was that the radiation in the body stays there.

I just don't think that's correct. In order for there to be radiation, there has to be an unstable particle within the body. This can happen through inhalation, ingestion or through a lesion of the skin, but "radiation" doesn't really stay in the body, it's an energy wave that may damage tissue as it passes through (typically by burning in high doses or by DNA mutations at lower levels) but the skin is sufficiently thick to block most smaller radioactive particles. If what you say was true we should avoid the elderly like the plague because they would be virtually lethal from all of the sunlight they had absorbed in their lifetimes. Unless I'm still missing what you're saying. How does the radiation stay there, say from an X-ray?

David Orange

07-09-2007, 10:25 PM

Who's campaigning for nuclear energy, anyway?

It's all the rage now, as an "alternative" fuel like coal!

In Alabama, they just restarted the Browns Ferry nuclear plant, which has been shut down for a loooong time--over fifteen years, I'm pretty sure. And they just restarted the thing.

The long-term concern, however, is still the plant; most of the radioactive material is still sequestered in the sarcophagus. If it collapses, another large cloud of radioactive dust will be flung into the air.

"The plant" as well as "the plants." The radiation is concentrated in fruits and vegetables, according to the site, anyway.

I just don't think any nuclear plant in this age of terrorists and imbeciles is a good idea. Homer Simpson is Safety Manager for a nuclear plant, you know....

Thanks for all the responses, everyone.

David

stelios

07-10-2007, 02:42 AM

Hunter Lonsberry wrote "There are a lot more obstacles than politics or solar, wind and geothermal, such as you need areas that are appropriate for each otherwise the various technologies wont scale well (i.e. it isnt economical to run solar panels when the angle of the sun and amount of sunlight per day is not great, where sustained winds above a certain speed do not occur, where geothemic energy doesnt readily exist), the NIMBY factor, the costs both enviromental, time to recoop (particuarly when not infuenced by tax subsidies) for new solar cells, the environmental costs of solar cell construction."

Areas appropriate for incorporating solar panels, wind turbines? How about the seas? Two thirds of Earth are covered by water and if oiling platforms can withstand waves and storms so will wind tourbines or solar panels. Every denial to clean energy is purely politics/petroleum related and this can be easily proved. Just my humble opinion (shared by almost everybody I ever spoke to...)

David Orange

07-10-2007, 07:29 AM

Speaking of Nuclear Accidents, here's a little something to consider. It's on a great site that updates daily, always something new to look at.

http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2007/07/thermonuclear-oops-list.html

Enjoy. And don't forget to tell your Congressman, "We need more nukes!"

David

HL1978

07-10-2007, 07:38 AM

Areas appropriate for incorporating solar panels, wind turbines? How about the seas? Two thirds of Earth are covered by water and if oiling platforms can withstand waves and storms so will wind tourbines or solar panels. Every denial to clean energy is purely politics/petroleum related and this can be easily proved. Just my humble opinion (shared by almost everybody I ever spoke to...)

While you can put windmills of the coasts (and the same with solar panels) you would not want to put them at the same depths as oil platforms because of the costs to do so. You can put them further out to see, but there are signifigant losses for power transmission over great distances of up to 30% plus you would need a lot of transformers (i.e. you wouldnt want to power a city in the middle of america, with electrical power generated 3000 miles away, it is better to generate power locally).

Is it worth the environmental costs to cover a signifigant portion of the earth/water with solar? With no direct sunlight below the panel you can't grow anything, and I have no idea of how it would effect the oceans/currents/agae growth if they were covered in panels.

A better solution is local power generation. If you were to use solar, place it on the sides of buildings as well as the roof.

Interestingly enough methane recovery from landfills is becoming more popular method of power generation and is carbon neutral. Essentially you sink a large number of pipes into the landfill and suck out the methane.

jennifer paige smith

07-10-2007, 09:20 AM

Concentrating astronomically-lived sources of ionizing radiation into little pellets of nuclear fuel is not something that should be done where an accident can occur that would expose people who don't accept this risk to hazardous amounts of radiation or its sources. There are no lessons to be gleaned from Chernobyl that weren't already known.

Honestly, I didn't think nuclear energy was all that popular these days.

Honestly, though, the radiation in Pripyat isn't that dangerous, though only the most stubborn who ignore the danger and refuse to move still live there. It takes 500 milliSieverts of acute radiation dosage to cause radiation poisoning. 20 milliSieverts in a year is the acceptable chronic dosage limit for British nuclear workers. If you don't stay for long, this sort of dosage is easily avoidable.

Pripyat and numbers aside, I don't know enough on that account to provide any reasonable analysis. But what I can tell you is that my brother and his family live in Finland and the amout of deer that they can eat is limited because the deer are radiated and negative health effects have been noted as a result of their consumption. This is also true of some variety of fish, and other water and food sources.
Nuclear energy and nuclear contamination recognizes no politcal or geographic borders on its own. It just IS once it is produced and it radically will go where no man has gone before, whether we meant it that way or not.

In a large degree, it seems, nuclear power by-products and accidents violate the rights of people to deterrmine their own environmental wellness.

from where I stand

jennifer paige smith

07-10-2007, 09:32 AM

There are a lot more obstacles than politics or solar, wind and geothermal, such as you need areas that are appropriate for each otherwise the various technologies wont scale well (i.e. it isnt economical to run solar panels when the angle of the sun and amount of sunlight per day is not great, where sustained winds above a certain speed do not occur, where geothemic energy doesnt readily exist), the NIMBY factor, the costs both enviromental, time to recoop (particuarly when not infuenced by tax subsidies) for new solar cells, the environmental costs of solar cell construction.

You can talk about biomass (algae, corn, sugar beets etc) as being carbon neutral, but there is still environmental costs (fertilizer utilized to grow corn/sugar beets) and higher prices for foodstuffs (see the recent tortilla price increases in mexico) wich result. Algae on the otherhand is probably a better source (paritucarly the constantly agitated pond systems), but the scale required would be enormous for electrical power generation.

There are plenty of advocates for nuclear out there, though most admit it is a stopgap measure (assuming sustainable fusion occurs at somepoint in the near future and we are reffering to fission when speaking of nuclear), despite breeder reactors and other technologies to extend the use of fuel, and certainly there is a storage problem for waste and the environmental costs of obtaining the fuel plus the national security issues, but as a large scale alternative to hydroelectric (which has its own set of environmental problems) and fossil fuels (no green house gas emissions, less costs per unit of energy for fuel/capital costs compared to fossil fuels, no soot/smog for fission power) it is pretty much the only other viable option out there at this point.

Suffces to say, politics is not the only problem out there for any sort of alternative energy adoption on a wide scale.

Radically changing our lifestyles and living in the principle of Aiko(loving protection) is a viable option with a pretty long meter to measure the change. Many people are not interested in re-evaluating what they consider to be their 'rights'. Including the right to consume beyond fullness and the right to proliferate beyond productivity. Obesity and Cancer also are described using the same langage.
We can make a difference by following the instructons of O'Sensei regarding what a 'real budoka' is: One who protects the Earth, as their family.

ChrisMoses

07-10-2007, 09:56 AM

Pripyat and numbers aside, I don't know enough on that account to provide any reasonable analysis. But what I can tell you is that my brother and his family live in Finland and the amout of deer that they can eat is limited because the deer are radiated and negative health effects have been noted as a result of their consumption. This is also true of some variety of fish, and other water and food sources.
Nuclear energy and nuclear contamination recognizes no politcal or geographic borders on its own. It just IS once it is produced and it radically will go where no man has gone before, whether we meant it that way or not.

In a large degree, it seems, nuclear power by-products and accidents violate the rights of people to deterrmine their own environmental wellness.

from where I stand

Not to discount the very real dangers of nuclear energy, but currently coal power plants release more radioactive particles into the environment than nuclear power plants. With a nuclear power plant, the dangers for contamination are from accidents and storage of spent fuel. Coal has radioactive particles embedded in it and these particles can be released into the environment as a micro-ash. These particles are then introduced into the food chain. Coal also introduces other nasties like mercury, which gets eaten by fish who then get eaten by people. Like you mention in a later post, for all the poo-pooing that conservation gets, it's actually the only thing that absolutely reduces environmental contaminants. That's not to say that we shouldn't strive for better technologies, but the idea that nuclear energy is the worst kind is a bit outdated IMHO. You have to get power from somewhere, and every method has real and significant drawbacks/dangers.

HL1978

07-10-2007, 10:50 PM

Not to discount the very real dangers of nuclear energy, but currently coal power plants release more radioactive particles into the environment than nuclear power plants. With a nuclear power plant, the dangers for contamination are from accidents and storage of spent fuel. Coal has radioactive particles embedded in it and these particles can be released into the environment as a micro-ash. These particles are then introduced into the food chain. Coal also introduces other nasties like mercury, which gets eaten by fish who then get eaten by people. Like you mention in a later post, for all the poo-pooing that conservation gets, it's actually the only thing that absolutely reduces environmental contaminants. That's not to say that we shouldn't strive for better technologies, but the idea that nuclear energy is the worst kind is a bit outdated IMHO. You have to get power from somewhere, and every method has real and significant drawbacks/dangers.

Exactly, though I am not fully certain to what extent coal gassification ameliorates radioactive particles, though I am fairly certain it reduces both NOx and SO.

I am not really aware of any technology which doesnt involve any signifigant costs (with the exception perhap of algae for biomass, methane conversion, or biodiesel), though most of the newer systems dont rely on simply using ponds. None the less, the pond or ocean approach would require a tremendous amount of space to utilize.

http://www.answers.com/topic/algaculture
http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/18138/

a link on that page suggests 5000-10000 gallons of fuel can be generated per acre via algae versus 18 gallons for corn.

If those statistics are true, then corn ethanol subsidies really have no place.

jennifer paige smith

07-11-2007, 08:34 AM

Not to discount the very real dangers of nuclear energy, but currently coal power plants release more radioactive particles into the environment than nuclear power plants. With a nuclear power plant, the dangers for contamination are from accidents and storage of spent fuel. Coal has radioactive particles embedded in it and these particles can be released into the environment as a micro-ash. These particles are then introduced into the food chain. Coal also introduces other nasties like mercury, which gets eaten by fish who then get eaten by people. Like you mention in a later post, for all the poo-pooing that conservation gets, it's actually the only thing that absolutely reduces environmental contaminants. That's not to say that we shouldn't strive for better technologies, but the idea that nuclear energy is the worst kind is a bit outdated IMHO. You have to get power from somewhere, and every method has real and significant drawbacks/dangers.

I appreciate the thoughtfulness of this post.
I would like to travel on a side road in hippie land for just a second, as your points cover the main road very well.

"every method has real and significant drawbacks"
Every method that we are generally willing to consider.

There are ways of looking at your life that have deep impacts on power consumption ( and I don't mean replacing 'brown' consumerism with 'green' consumerism) We are habitually stuck in a way of looking at our relationship with this earth that is fragmented and destructive because we operate more in momentum than true intellience. We are using a tiny piece of information about power that we have gained through science, thus far, and it is fragmented and not understanding of the whole. Or worse, understanding and uncaring. Yet we wield it like god or like a child with a gun in it's hand( Or a Bjj'er with a year of aikido (:p ).) Power is responsibility. How are we going to use it.

Anyways, I gotta get down. The soap box derby is about to start and I'm standing on my vehicle.

jennifer paige smith

07-11-2007, 08:42 AM

Exactly, though I am not fully certain to what extent coal gassification ameliorates radioactive particles, though I am fairly certain it reduces both NOx and SO.

I am not really aware of any technology which doesnt involve any signifigant costs (with the exception perhap of algae for biomass, methane conversion, or biodiesel), though most of the newer systems dont rely on simply using ponds. None the less, the pond or ocean approach would require a tremendous amount of space to utilize.

http://www.answers.com/topic/algaculture
http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/18138/

a link on that page suggests 5000-10000 gallons of fuel can be generated per acre via algae versus 18 gallons for corn.

If those statistics are true, then corn ethanol subsidies really have no place.

Corn ethanol subsidies have no place.

James Davis

07-11-2007, 10:08 AM

Corn ethanol subsidies have no place.

When the corn is planted, fertilized, harvested, broken down, taken to the eth processing plant, and then to the gas station, it requires the burning of more fuel. Ethanol can't be piped; it has to be trucked.
If ethanol becomes a popular fuel, the price of corn will go crazy. So will the price of poultry, beef, pork, and dairy, as corn is a source of food in all of these industries. Soft drinks, and anything else with corn syrup in it (not to mention corn), will have to be changed or just become more expensive.

All this to create a fuel that is inferior?:crazy:

I'd never heard of the algae thing before, I'm gonna have to check that out!

jennifer paige smith

07-12-2007, 09:53 AM

When the corn is planted, fertilized, harvested, broken down, taken to the eth processing plant, and then to the gas station, it requires the burning of more fuel. Ethanol can't be piped; it has to be trucked.
If ethanol becomes a popular fuel, the price of corn will go crazy. So will the price of poultry, beef, pork, and dairy, as corn is a source of food in all of these industries. Soft drinks, and anything else with corn syrup in it (not to mention corn), will have to be changed or just become more expensive.

All this to create a fuel that is inferior?:crazy:

I'd never heard of the algae thing before, I'm gonna have to check that out!

Already, crops in foreign (to the U.S.) countries are being bought and turned into corn fields for the production of ethanol to be used domestically. Not all, but many, were previoulsy diverse crops that fed the people in the country. Now they are mono-culture crops that strip the earth of it's fertility and are succeptible to extreme pestilence.
What is our priority as a privelidged people to choose between the two? What is our responsibility as the most finacially/militarily agressive country in the world (perhaps a mild exaggeration) to allow other people their right to eat and be?
We have the luxury of time to think and time to be, still. But it won't be long until our food is turned into long road trip summer vacations and excessive trips to the grocery store etc....
When do we accept that we are smarter than this?
Food for thought.
Jen Smith

tarik

07-12-2007, 06:10 PM

I find this sort of reasoning totally absurd. I read an article in Turning Wheel ( a publication oif the Buddhist Peace Fellowship) that there is a lake in russia that is so radioactive, that if you went there and stood on its shore for 1/2 hour, you would be dead inside of a week. Radiation doesn't have a shelf life. It literally hangs around for a few thousand years. So the dosage you receive from something simple like a chest xray becomes double by the next chest xray, triple by the next, and so on, and so forth.

This violates my understanding of physics.

Radiation is not a poison like a chemical is a poison. Radiation is not contagious. You have to be directly exposed. Radiation is a transmission of energy, in exactly the same way that the sun transmits energy.

One does not get exposed to raditation and keep it in their body and become radioactive; that popular idea is a myth. All that an individual keeps from exposure to radiation is any damage the radiation causes, such as burns. What is so insidious is that certain forms of radiation can cause damage internally instead of merely the sunburn that we generally get from the sun.

You receive more radiation if you live in Denver than if you live near Three Mile Island. Radiation is to be respected, but fear of radiation is very overblown.

The power of a nuclear explosion is terribly awesome and horrible and I don't know many people in favor of such weapons and the effects of radiation and fallout should not be trivialized at all; but they also should not have been exaggerated into mythological proportions which they have in the last 60 years.

People live in Hiroshima and Nagasaki today and if you look at modern day pictures of ground zero, you might be surprised.

IMO, today's global warming, if it is human caused, can be attributed to the modern environmental movement which has actively prevented the growth and use of nuclear power in favor of burning coal and natural gas, which have significant environmental cost including the atomization of more uranium into the atmosphere each year than any nuclear power plant has ever exposed the environment to.

Now, you might imagine I'm a conservative Republican by reading this, but you'd be quite wrong. I am an advocate for factual science studied and practiced by scientists, rather than peace activists (nothing against them, just their lack of interest in real science when it occurs).

Regards,

Mark Uttech

07-14-2007, 04:26 AM

Tarik, do you care to comment on Lake Karachay? I welcome this discussion, because I think it is an important educational discussion, or could become one.

In gassho,

Mark

tarik

07-15-2007, 10:44 PM

Tarik, do you care to comment on Lake Karachay? I welcome this discussion, because I think it is an important educational discussion, or could become one.

Mayak and Lake Karachay, as well as Chernobyl are terrible tragedies, especially because they were totally unnecessary.

The designs and practices used in those facilities were already known to be extremely dangerous and were abandoned in the US and UK in the 1940's and 1950's because of our understanding of the dangers of those designs.

The Soviet Union made some very poor choices with regards to their nuclear program, selecting designs that were already known to be fatally flawed. It was a price the leadership of the time was willing to pay in their rush to catch up during the Cold War.

My commentary was mainly focussed on the common misapprehension of radioactive poisoning. The danger is in the spreading of the radioactive materials, not people or creatures that were exposed to those materials, except perhaps if they've ingested the material.

Regards,

07-16-2007, 05:50 AM

Mark Uttech

07-20-2007, 03:17 AM

07-20-2007, 06:05 AM

Thanks to Tarik and Mark Murray for your comments. I completely agree that fear of radiation is very much overblown, much like the early fears associated with AIDS. Is there a website you guys recommend where I can educate myself more as regards nuclear energy and its drawbacks? I have always considred it imperative that aikidoka continue their education to become ware of the world situation.

In gassho,

Mark

Hi Mark,

You're welcome. Glad they helped. :)

Most people have no idea how many nuclear power plants are up and running in the U.S. Check out this site for that information and more concerning each power plant:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/at_a_glance/states/statesal.html

As for education? Too many sites out there and I haven't really looked into it for a long time. Hopefully someone else has kept up and can post some links.

Here's one that talks about nuclear power. Has some interesting opinions. As far as I can tell, the facts they use seem true.

http://physicsweb.org/articles/world/14/6/2

Hope that gets you started,
Mark

tarik

07-27-2007, 11:18 AM

Sorry for the delay in responding. Here's another article concerning coal burning. There's a lot of interesting articles on the Oak Ridge National Laboratory site.

http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/colmain.html

Regards,

Neil Mick

07-27-2007, 01:57 PM

This violates my understanding of physics.

Radiation is not a poison like a chemical is a poison. Radiation is not contagious. You have to be directly exposed. Radiation is a transmission of energy, in exactly the same way that the sun transmits energy.

One does not get exposed to raditation and keep it in their body and become radioactive; that popular idea is a myth. All that an individual keeps from exposure to radiation is any damage the radiation causes, such as burns. What is so insidious is that certain forms of radiation can cause damage internally instead of merely the sunburn that we generally get from the sun.

You receive more radiation if you live in Denver than if you live near Three Mile Island. Radiation is to be respected, but fear of radiation is very overblown.

The power of a nuclear explosion is terribly awesome and horrible and I don't know many people in favor of such weapons and the effects of radiation and fallout should not be trivialized at all; but they also should not have been exaggerated into mythological proportions which they have in the last 60 years.

People live in Hiroshima and Nagasaki today and if you look at modern day pictures of ground zero, you might be surprised.

IMO, today's global warming, if it is human caused, can be attributed to the modern environmental movement which has actively prevented the growth and use of nuclear power in favor of burning coal and natural gas, which have significant environmental cost including the atomization of more uranium into the atmosphere each year than any nuclear power plant has ever exposed the environment to.

Now, you might imagine I'm a conservative Republican by reading this, but you'd be quite wrong. I am an advocate for factual science studied and practiced by scientists, rather than peace activists (nothing against them, just their lack of interest in real science when it occurs).

Regards,

Great. All very good information about radiation. But something is missing from the picture.

Tarik is right: radiation, in and of itself, is nothing to be afraid of. As you are reading this, minute particles radiation from the monitor are invading your body. You will get far more radiation from the sun than from any other source in your life, most likely.

But...and, it is a big "but..."

When you consider nuclear power (just as when you consider ANY kind of technology), you have to also consider just who is running the show, who is manufacturing and storing the nuclear power, and the waste. Nuclear power is NOT run by people with your best interests in mind: they are interested in the bottom dollar.

Nuclear power has been around since the early part of the 20th Century...when was the last time you've heard of a scientific breakthrough in nuclear storage or in reducing the waste that we've already stored? All that waste, where's it going, and what guarantees do we have of its safe storage?

I used to live in Hunter's Point, in SF. In WW2 Hunter's Point had a major role in shipbuilding for the war-effort. It ALSO had a major role in nuclear storage (all in secret of course: you'll find little about it in the headlines of the times) and in dumping toxic chemicals of all kinds into the Bay. A lot of that waste is still around, some of it in leaky containers stashed around the grounds of the Point (some of it was dumped in the Bay).

This is how the nuclear industry deals with its waste...they store it (mostly, in containers that are not up to the job) and hope that ppl will forget about it, because they have no other way to safely get rid of it...even to this day. The term "half life" refers to half the time it takes for a radioactive substance to degrade and become un-radioactive. Plutonium has a half life of about 50,000 (meaning, literally forever, in human experience). Do you really feel safe entrusting an industry motivated primarily by profit in safely storing waste that will be safe after about 100,000+ years?

But you have to give the nuclear industry credit for sheer tenacity, in getting around their little problem. Failing to come up with some sort of technology, they tried making the waste "valuable" for other uses (ie, irradiating food, which is little more than selling nuclear waste to food processing companies, so that they don't have to store it), processing it into dU ammunition, which goes very far in preserving peace in the world I'm sure :rolleyes: , or (their latest trick), simply hiring PR flacks to appear on talk shows and physics seminars about how nuclear power will be the next great fuel for the America, if not the world. It's clean power, they say. Safe, and will never run out.

Uh huh. Funny, but they said the exact, same thing, when nuclear power first came about, in the 20th Century. All this time, you'd think that they would have made some improvements (at least, in PR), by now.

But they won't, because the companies who run nuclear power do not have to research safety improvements. The NRC, the regulating body of the gov't that oversees nuclear power: has long been in that industry's pocket and so the companies have no need to invest in storage or removal technologies.

Far more cost effective to send out spokesmen and print up glossy and slick ads on how great nuclear power is. And then there's the connection btw nuclear power and nuclear weapons...

You see, one cannot seem to exist without the other. It's one reason why BushCo is so worked up about Iran acquiring nuclear power...they have long acknowledged that one often follows the other. And so, unless you think that nuclear weapons have played a positive role in international affairs, there really is only one solution, if you believe a world of peace is possible.

There was war before nuclear weapons, but in my 40+ years living, no one has yet conclusively shown me that nuclear weapons preserve peace, or that nuclear power does anything more than create more problems, than it solves.

James Davis

07-27-2007, 03:17 PM

The term "half life" refers to half the time it takes for a radioactive substance to degrade and become un-radioactive. Plutonium has a half life of about 50,000 (meaning, literally forever, in human experience). Do you really feel safe entrusting an industry motivated primarily by profit in safely storing waste that will be safe after about 100,000+ years?

Actually, it's worse than that. A half life is the amount of time it takes for half of the substance to decay. After 50,000 years, half of the Plutonium would still be radioactive. After 100,000 years a quarter of it would still be radioactive. Then an eighth, then a sixteenth, etc.

It never really goes away. Creepy.

07-27-2007, 04:46 PM

Heh, all you nuclear physicists, hold your hand up. Well, go on, people. You know that you want to. You want to be that expert on Cyberspace who knows everything. Those of you who have worked at a nuclear power plant, hold your hand up. Those who have had dealings with the NRC, go ahead.

Now that there's nary a hand up, how about some research?
For basic, basic, basic info on How nuclear radiation works:
http://science.howstuffworks.com/nuclear.htm

Got done reading that?

Next, calculate the radioactive half life of the material used in nuclear power plants. Don't know where to start? Try here. It's not that advanced.
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/nuclear/halfli2.html

Now, how about the scientific half life of plutonium instead of some wild guess?

http://www.epa.gov/radiation/radionuclides/plutonium.htm

Here's the pertinent part:
"Plutonium has at least 15 different isotopes, all of which are radioactive. The most common ones are Pu-238, Pu-239, and Pu-240. Pu-238 has a half-life of 87.7 years. Plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24,100, and Pu-240 has a half-life 6,560 years. The isotope Pu-238 gives off useable heat, because of its radioactivity. "

Oh, and just in case you really feel like researching, the half life of plutonium is a "best guess". Scientists don't even know for sure. Still, the longest guess is 24,100 years and wow, that's really close to the projected 50,000 years.

Now that I'm done ranting, Mark Uttech asked a good, valid question. Instead of trying to politicize everything, how about real answers with scientific research or facts?

Mark

Neil Mick

07-27-2007, 05:09 PM

Heh, all you nuclear physicists, hold your hand up. Well, go on, people. You know that you want to. You want to be that expert on Cyberspace who knows everything.

Big difference btw "wanting to be an expert," and arming oneself with all the facts.

Those of you who have worked at a nuclear power plant, hold your hand up. Those who have had dealings with the NRC, go ahead.

Gosh, I had no idea that the only ppl qualified to talk about nuclear energy and power are nuclear physicists. I suppose that they are the sole class of people who wouldn't be biased by who signs their checks, either...:freaky:

Oh, and just in case you really feel like researching, the half life of plutonium is a "best guess".

Scientists don't even know for sure. Still, the longest guess is 24,100 years and wow, that's really close to the projected 50,000 years.

Ah...6,500 years makes a LOT more difference than 50,000, or 100,000+ years (in terms of human lifespan), I'm sure. Remember how well Enron took care of its "valued customers (and yeah, Mark: I CAN speak as an "expert" on how well "The Smartest Guys in the Room" "took care" of us, as I was one of those lucky souls subject to their rolling-blackouts-for-profit)? Would you trust the care and safekeeping of nuclear material (fissable for 6500+ years) to an outfit like Enron??

Well, no worries, Mark: cause you already are... :eek:

Instead of trying to politicize everything, how about real answers with scientific research or facts?

Mark

Some people just cringe when the "non-experts" have their say. To hear it from Mark, everyone BUT nuclear physicists have no right to consider the risks of nuclear power at all.

I suppose that Mark would pooh-pooh the good works of Helen Caldicott, founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility. After all, what could a physician POSSIBLY know, about the dangers of nuclear power?? :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

But for the rest of us (who listen to MORE than just the so-called "experts"), this might make good reading.

www.helencaldicott.com

Fuel plan beset by fossilised thinking (http://www.nuclearpolicy.org/index.cfm/Page/Article/ID/2669)

Howard's answer to global warming is the expansion of Australian uranium mining, value-added enrichment of uranium, nuclear power for Australia and the possible storage on this continent of much of the world's radioactive waste. For his part, Beazley has announced plans to expand uranium mining. Never mind that the nuclear fuel cycle - encompassing uranium mining, milling, enrichment, reactor construction and decommissioning, and radioactive waste storage for 500,000 years - creates large quantities of global warming gases, including CO2 and CFC.

Do Howard and Beazley not know, or worse, are they choosing to ignore, that nuclear power will have grave public health consequences, bestowing, as it will, leaking, long-lived nuclear waste facilities to future generations, a legacy that will engender epidemics of genetic disease and malignancies? We need politicians with knowledge, energy and courage who will move beyond the fossil fuel and nuclear eras. Is it possible to make that leap with available technology? Yes.

A recent invention in solar power by Professor Vivian Alberts at the University of Johannesburg, which uses a micro-thin metallic film, has made solar electricity five times less expensive than solar photovoltaic cells. For the first time, solar electricity is economically feasible and cheaper than coal.

But in 2004, the Prime Minister, working with uranium and coal mining interests, devised a way to pull the rug from under the burgeoning Australian wind power industry. Some campaigners aiming to discredit wind power have links to well-known deniers of climate change.

British nuclear industry allies are also known to be connected to Australian anti-wind power groups.

Tidal power, geothermal energy, cogeneration and biomass combined with conservation are some of the resources yet to be explored by Australia. According to a Bostonian Synapse Energy Economics study, electricity conservation in the US could save 28 per cent in energy efficiency. Similar figures apply to Australia.

In other words, for the first time in human history, all electricity can be generated by a combination of renewable carbon-free and nuclear-free technologies. But the forces opposing these promising developments are very powerful and have the eye and ear of the PM and Labor leader.

We need, above all, politicians who are scientifically and medically knowledgeable, not just lawyers, business men and former humanities academics who seem not to comprehend the immensely dangerous problems threatening the survival of our children, descendants and 30,000 other species that cohabit this planet.

tarik

07-30-2007, 05:53 PM

Hi Neil,

I thought you weren't going to post? ;)

Tarik is right: radiation, in and of itself, is nothing to be afraid of.

Actually, that's not quite what I said.

But...and, it is a big "but..."

Come on now, let's not get personal. My wife likes my butt the way it is. :o

Nuclear power has been around since the early part of the 20th Century...when was the last time you've heard of a scientific breakthrough in nuclear storage or in reducing the waste that we've already stored?

There are plenty of breakthroughs that have occurred if you care to search them out. Quoting from Wikipedia (and there are plenty of other great sources):

"It was recently found by a study done at MIT, that only 2 or 3 fusion reactors with parameters similar to that of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) could transmute the entire annual minor actinide production from all of the light water reactors presently operating in the United States fleet while simultaneously generating approximately 1 gigawatt of power from each reactor."

The interesting thing about nuclear waste is that it can be reprocessed to remove contaminants and most of it reused again and again. This is done in most of the rest of the world, but not currently allowed in the United States.

Do you have any idea how much nuclear waste would be generated by a typical family of four over 20 years using an existing normal plant (leaving out the more modern ones we haven't been able to build for more than 20 years.) About enough waste to fit into a show box.

Do you know how much would be left if we were allowed to reprocess it for reuse? About enough to fit into a shot glass.

All that waste, where's it going, and what guarantees do we have of its safe storage?

The great paranoia has aided in solving that problem because it has driven people to work for years to address it. Of course, to some, there is no solution that is 'good enough'. The opposition to Yucca Mountain is a great example.

I used to live in Hunter's Point, in SF. In WW2 Hunter's Point had a major role in shipbuilding for the war-effort. It ALSO had a major role in nuclear storage (all in secret of course: you'll find little about it in the headlines of the times) and in dumping toxic chemicals of all kinds into the Bay. A lot of that waste is still around, some of it in leaky containers stashed around the grounds of the Point (some of it was dumped in the Bay).

I think we can all agree that irresponsible behavior is undesirable and should be prevented and punished. Using examples from the very infancy of the industry when this stuff was significantly less understood and during wartime and also that everyone, including the nuclear industry, now agrees was irresponsible behavior seems a bit off track, even if you are a proponent of the profit motive being ultimately a purely irresponsbile one.

This is how the nuclear industry deals with its waste...they store it (mostly, in containers that are not up to the job) and hope that ppl will forget about it, because they have no other way to safely get rid of it...even to this day.

Actually, they store it because the anti-nuclear lobby will not allow them to re-process it to make it safer or transport it to long term storage facilities. There are MANY approaches that have been considered and many of them actually are practical. Here's another one from Wikipedia:

"A more feasible approach termed Remix & Return [11] would blend high-level waste with uranium mine and mill tailings down to the level of the original radioactivity of the uranium ore, then replace it in empty uranium mines. This approach has the merits of totally eliminating the problem of high-level waste, of providing jobs for miners who would double as disposal staff, and of facilitating a cradle-to-grave cycle for all radioactive materials"

But they won't, because the companies who run nuclear power do not have to research safety improvements. The NRC, the regulating body of the gov't that oversees nuclear power: has long been in that industry's pocket and so the companies have no need to invest in storage or removal technologies.

Perhaps you should visit the websites already offered and read about the ongoing research that has been taking place for many years. Most of the ones I posted were government run research facilities.

...or that nuclear power does anything more than create more problems, than it solves.

I'm not a fan of nuclear weapons, certainly, but tell that last to Japan and France, both of whom are nearly 90% on nuclear power at this time.

Gosh, I had no idea that the only ppl qualified to talk about nuclear energy and power are nuclear physicists.
...
Some people just cringe when the "non-experts" have their say. To hear it from Mark, everyone BUT nuclear physicists have no right to consider the risks of nuclear power at all.

Facts about physics are available regardless of qualifications. I believe Mark's point was that they should be sought out, particularly when making such momentous decisions regarding human life and our ecology. Informed decisions are always best, are they not?

I suppose that Mark would pooh-pooh the good works of Helen Caldicott, founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility.

www.helencaldicott.com

I would. I believe she is well intentioned, but her facts are simply faulty, founded in emotions and junk science, and I'm frankly disappointed that an MD, who should understand the scientific method doesn't apply it.

Here's a rebuttal from a physics student who deliberately leaves out supporting references from the nuclear industry in his critical analysis and commentary.

http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/%7Elweston/nuclear.pdf

I offer it so that everyone can read both points of view and make their own conclusions.

Regards,

PSM

07-31-2007, 11:03 AM

David Orange

07-31-2007, 03:04 PM

Switching to Nuclear power would supply political parties, citezens and the government with all of their needs, with more efficiancy and ease.

You make some great points.......but why is ALL that land around Chernobyl uninhabitable now?

And you mention placing plants some miles away from population centers......about how many miles do you suggest? Where do we have enough uninhabited land (comparable to the Chernobyl waste zone) in the US to allow us to build a plant?

Anyway, they're already built in the population centers.

All it takes is ONE accident and we almost had ours in Three Mile Island.

And think of worst cases: if terrorists were to get their hands on the controls of some of our nuclear plants, what damage could they do?

Would it really be minor?

And look at the recent earthquake in Japan that damaged a nuclear reactor, releasing radioactive material into the environment.

Are we really that confident? I know some people are, but some people ride in cars without seatbelts while talking on their phones and eating donuts.

If nuclear power is so safe, we should build nuke plants in Iraq and really put an end to our inability to keep the electricity on.

David

PSM

07-31-2007, 05:27 PM

David Orange

08-01-2007, 09:30 AM

Many people seem to think that it is liable that if terrorists attacked a plant and caused a 'meltdown', that it would kill "As many as 518,000 long-term deaths from cancer." (Union of Concerned Scientists, 2004). This is simply either a lie or miscalculation, as this is 3 times the amount of deaths related to and caused at Nagasaki and Hiroshima combined.

Why is that a problem? Hiroshima and Nagasaki were attacked with the two earliest nuclear weapons on earth. Look at a chart of sizes of blast yields today. Hiroshima/Nagasaki-sized blasts are little pinheads compared to the yields of bombs developed only twenty years later. If you managed to blow up a nuclear reactor??? I don't doubt that the toll would be thousands at the very least.

So, why would terrorist even wan't to attack a target that might kill about 50 people and possibly harm a few others. When they can attack this...or this...
or...
1: A busy street
2: Amuesement parks
3: The White house/ other important buildings.

Melt down one nuke plant and you can get all of those.

And about Chernobyl, the explosion only killed about 50 people.

I know you're not saying that only fifty people were killed by the accident at Chernobyl. You're not, are you?

Does it look so unihabitable?
In addition to this, the present background level of radioactivity at Chernobyl is lower than the levels emmitted by the house I am in right now.

So you would have me believe you'd be safer living there than in the house you're in now? Would you go and live there? Why is the area closed????

My shoe is wet, you tell me it's raining....but something smells.

And about where we would put the plants, Not too sure, we could find a way, but until then lets debate about wether we should go nuclear or not. Agreed?

Debate about what? Nuke plants are all over the map, already, and they're some of the places where the US Dept. of Homeland Security has the least concern. For the same amount of money, we could put solar collectors on every home, garage, public building, parking lot and office building in the United States and have a power supply that would be constant, free from then on, decentralized, impervious to terrorist shutdowns and non-explosive.

There's nothing to debate about, though, when sheer profit-minded moguls have already put these poisonous units all across the country, pumping out waste that can't be safely handled.

David

tarik

08-01-2007, 10:29 AM

You make some great points.......but why is ALL that land around Chernobyl uninhabitable now?

I'm not so sure it's 'uninhabitable', personally, but let's say it is. How does the Chernobyl make a relevant example when it violated known safe designs and known safety procedures of the time, which were lower than today's standards?

The relevance to me is only that if you do something stupid, you can expect disastrous results. I'll certainly agree with you that if you don't build a nuclear power plant at all, you won't even have the possibility of such a disaster, but what alternative do you offer?

I like solar energy, but it isn't economically feasible on the scale required.

I like wind energy, but same same. And do you know how many birds wind farms apparently kill. Environmentalists are starting to get up in arms about that too.

Tidal energy is nice idea, but a joke unless you do it in ways that have significant environmental impact.

Geothermal is cool (hot?), but why is it ok to use nuclear energy when the planet provides it, but not when humans do? And it only works in a few locations.

Hydroelectric has lost favor because of the damage it does to river ecologies.

More coal and natural gas plants? They're part of the problem and could be considered gross polluters.

And you mention placing plants some miles away from population centers......about how many miles do you suggest? Where do we have enough uninhabited land (comparable to the Chernobyl waste zone) in the US to allow us to build a plant?

Anyway, they're already built in the population centers.

I would have no problem living near a plant, but there's so much uninhabited land in the US that this is hardly worth being entered into the argument one way or the other.

All it takes is ONE accident and we almost had ours in Three Mile Island.

I do agree, that another incident is inevitable. However, in 60+ years, the only incident of significance has occurred when people deliberately ignored known safety designs and protocols. And that incident has caused less damage and deaths than a lot of other natural and human caused disasters that I can think of that we are happy to allow and even defend in our lives.

In 2002, nearly 71,000 people were killed by automobile accidents in the US and the UK alone. Yet we don't consider banning cars even though every year they kill on a scale comparable to all the nuclear incidents in history (including the bombs) and certainly pollute more than all the nuclear power plants and nuclear bombs have done to date in history.

And think of worst cases: if terrorists were to get their hands on the controls of some of our nuclear plants, what damage could they do?

Would it really be minor?

This has been seriously considered, especially since 9/11. So let's assume that they get through all the background checks required to work at the controls of nuclear plant. I mean, anything is possible, right?

Let's also consider that the Three Mile Island incident was caused largely by human errors and that automatic safety equipment that they cannot disable is largely what prevented a disaster.

Let's also consider that lessons learned from that incident and other studies and incidents over time have caused numerous design changes and changes to safety procedures.

Go read some of the supplied references above about how a nuclear plant functions and the different kinds of accidents that can occur and what some of the safeguards there are and then you tell me, how much damage could they really do?

And look at the recent earthquake in Japan that damaged a nuclear reactor, releasing radioactive material into the environment.

Honestly, it sounds to me like an argument made based on fear rather than knowledge and an analysis of real risk factors, at least based the facts you offer as a counter point so far.

Let's look at some facts about this incident.

About 315 gallons of slightly radioactive water apparently spilled from a tank at one of the plant's seven reactors and entered a pipe that flushed it into the sea, said Jun Oshima, an executive at Tokyo Electric Power Co. He said it was not clear whether the tank was damaged or the water simply spilled out.

Officials said there was no "significant change" in the seawater near the plant, which is about 160 miles northwest of Tokyo. "The radioactivity is one-billionth of the legal limit," Oshima said of the leaked water.

I love how the AP writer put "significant change" in quotes. Obviously they're not good with numbers. There are approximately 1,101 billion gallons of water in the Pacific Ocean alone.

315 gallons of water one-billionth (about 90,000 Bq) the legal limit flushed into the sea after a 6.9 quake? Let's also give Greenpace the benefit of the doubt and also assume that their unquoted sources are correct and raise that radioactivity by 50%. Ok.. one and a half-billionth (135,000 Bq) the legal limit.

FWIW, medical patients who receive high doses of radiation for treatment of various cancers receive doses in the MANY millions of Bq (around say 250 million). So even if it were concentrated, the spilled waste didn't have enough radiation to treat cancer.

I haven't done the research, but one can probably find seawater along ocean vents that is naturally more irradiated than this.

BTW, worse quakes several years ago in India didn't even cause enough vibration to shut down some of the high tech hardened plants there, much less cause a leak. They put the buildings on rollers.

Are we really that confident? I know some people are, but some people ride in cars without seatbelts while talking on their phones and eating donuts.

I agree that one cannot account for all possible accidents, but I'd also say all current evidence suggests that the dangers are largely predictable and manageable, particularly compared to many of the alternatives.

But if you have alternatives to offer, I'm open to hearing them and lobbying for them.

I plan on adding solar panels to my house, but again, they don't work at night, aren't all that efficient, and placed in a desert or even at sea at the scale required (this is easily calculated) to meet societies needs would have a huge environmental impact that I believe is would be undesirable.

If nuclear power is so safe, we should build nuke plants in Iraq and really put an end to our inability to keep the electricity on.

Sarcasm feels good, but isn't so useful in making a real factual point.

It's not a conspiracy that prevents cheap and easily renewable electricity from succeeding. If the economies of scale are there, it will radically change the energy industry, and the industry knows it and is actively researching many more sources of cheap and easily renewable energy because they know that if it can be found, they will make that huge profit that Neil mentioned and seems to find deplorable.

The pioneers that are using bio-diesel and other sources are admirable and far sighted and may be on the cutting edge of future energy sources, but today they pay far more than the average consumer for their energy and also refuse to acknowledge the environmental impacts of their sources which are negligible today largely because the scale is minuscule.

Regards,

PSM

08-01-2007, 10:45 AM

I'm not sure about what everyone here believes about global warming, but if you'll notice, nuclear plants make the least amount of emmisons, and waste, overall. You can look above in my first post and notice these measures. Or here, for solar vs nuclear

Nuclear vs Solar

Greenhouse gas emmisions (supposibly causing global warming)
-Nuclear= 2-59 30.5 (bold = 1/2 of range #'s)
-Solar = 12-731 371.5

SO2 emmisions (Sulfur Oxides)
-N=3-50 26.5
-S=24-490 257

NOx emmisions (nitrogen Oxide)
-N=2-100 51
-S=16-340 178

NMVOC (pollution)
-N=0 0
-S=70 70

Particle matter (also pollution)
-N=2 1
-S=12-190 101

Thats an overall average of (found by finding 1/2 of range #'s)

-N=109
-S=997.1

Here is the definition of 'particle matter' as given by the EPA

"Particulate matter," also known as particle pollution or PM, is a complex mixture of extremely small particles and liquid droplets. Particle pollution is made up of a number of components, including acids (such as nitrates and sulfates), organic chemicals, metals, and soil or dust particles.

The size of particles is directly linked to their potential for causing health problems. EPA is concerned about particles that are 10 micrometers in diameter or smaller because those are the particles that generally pass through the throat and nose and enter the lungs. Once inhaled, these particles can affect the heart and lungs and cause serious health effects.

If the whole point is to try and prevent health problems caused by radiation, by switching to these so called 'natural' sources, we will create more health problems. This can be expressed in the analogy of stopping smoking, but switching to chewing tabacco.

tarik

08-01-2007, 01:31 PM

Why is that a problem? Hiroshima and Nagasaki were attacked with the two earliest nuclear weapons on earth. Look at a chart of sizes of blast yields today. Hiroshima/Nagasaki-sized blasts are little pinheads compared to the yields of bombs developed only twenty years later. If you managed to blow up a nuclear reactor??? I don't doubt that the toll would be thousands at the very least.

Melt down one nuke plant and you can get all of those.

David, now I know that you must be arguing from a position of ignorance about how a nuclear power plant functions.

Do you realize that a nuclear explosion cannot result from the materials used in a nuclear power plant?

A meltdown would be quite a disaster, but unless there was a containment breach, which is extremely unlikely, even if a plant was hit by airplanes similar to what hit the towers on 9/11, it would almost entirely mostly be an economic disaster for the company who owns the plant.

Even then, the scope of the disaster would be nothing remotely like a nuclear device set off in a populated region, which I personally think is the far more likely danger we face and need to address.

There's nothing to debate about, though, when sheer profit-minded moguls have already put these poisonous units all across the country, pumping out waste that can't be safely handled.

Your 'fact' that the waste cannot be safely handled is based on what? The accidents that have occurred?

Regards,

David Orange

08-01-2007, 01:53 PM

I'm not so sure it's 'uninhabitable', personally, but let's say it is. How does the Chernobyl make a relevant example when it violated known safe designs and known safety procedures of the time, which were lower than today's standards?

That just means the accident was easier. As time goes by, our super-safe plants will slack off. Think NASA after bunches of safe shuttle flights. Then comes the Challenger in 1986. Ooops. Tighten up for 17 years....until...was it Columbia? 2003? Ooops.

We nearly had our own meltdown at Three Mile Island. When will something worse happen? And it is not "if" but "when."

The relevance to me is only that if you do something stupid, you can expect disastrous results.

Exxon Valdez.....neglect of the levees in New Orleans....going into Iraq on the Prezzy's personal grudge.....

A nuclear event is just waiting to happen.

I like solar energy, but it isn't economically feasible on the scale required.

That's a very common statement, but if they put a third of the money into solar that they're putting into nuclear, we would all be living on free energy now. But that's the problem, isn't it? That's the real problem: our nation's energy policy, courtesy of Cheney and ENRON, does not want us having free energy or even cheap energy. The powers that be want to enrich the already-rich at our own expense--we pay for their enrichment through tax dollars, then through utility bills. So no solar and yes nukes.

I like wind energy, but same same.

Yes. Exactly the same.

And do you know how many birds wind farms apparently kill. Environmentalists are starting to get up in arms about that too.

There are wind turbine designs that don't kill birds.

I would have no problem living near a plant, but there's so much uninhabited land in the US that this is hardly worth being entered into the argument one way or the other.

But that's not where they put the plants, is it? No.

I do agree, that another incident is inevitable.

Really? Where do you suppose it will be and how many people do you really think will die (both suddenly and through slow, painful illnesses)?

However, in 60+ years, the only incident of significance has occurred when people deliberately ignored known safety designs and protocols.

But we agree that it will happen again.

...we don't consider banning cars even though every year they kill on a scale comparable to all the nuclear incidents in history (including the bombs) and certainly pollute more than all the nuclear power plants and nuclear bombs have done to date in history.

I don't agree with that. The existing nuclear waste simply hasn't gotten out yet. It will. It may take 100 or 200 years, but it's bound to get loose.

This has been seriously considered, especially since 9/11. So let's assume that they get through all the background checks required to work at the controls of nuclear plant. I mean, anything is possible, right?

In this case, highly likely and almost inevitable, given the competence of our current government.

Go read some of the supplied references above about how a nuclear plant functions and the different kinds of accidents that can occur and what some of the safeguards there are and then you tell me, how much damage could they really do?

Well, I was actually refering to terrorists commandeering a plant by force--not by infiltration. Or flying a jet into a plant, etc., etc.

Honestly, it sounds to me like an argument made based on fear rather than knowledge and an analysis of real risk factors, at least based the facts you offer as a counter point so far.

It's based on the history of profit-minded people laying waste to any and all who stand between them and greater wealth. And you agree that another accident is inevitable, so....

Let's look at some facts about this incident. (Of the Japanese nuke plant damaged in the recent earthquake)

An AP article on sfgate.com wrote:
About 315 gallons of slightly radioactive water apparently spilled from a tank at one of the plant's seven reactors and entered a pipe that flushed it into the sea, said Jun Oshima, an executive at Tokyo Electric Power Co. He said it was not clear whether the tank was damaged or the water simply spilled out.

Officials said there was no "significant change" in the seawater near the plant, which is about 160 miles northwest of Tokyo. "The radioactivity is one-billionth of the legal limit," Oshima said of the leaked water.

I love how the AP writer put "significant change" in quotes. Obviously they're not good with numbers. There are approximately 1,101 billion gallons of water in the Pacific Ocean alone.

315 gallons of water one-billionth (about 90,000 Bq) the legal limit flushed into the sea after a 6.9 quake? Let's also give Greenpace the benefit of the doubt and also assume that their unquoted sources are correct and raise that radioactivity by 50%. Ok.. one and a half-billionth (135,000 Bq) the legal limit.

I don't know when the quote came from. At first they said there was no damage, then a small leak, then a release....and the Japanese have a long history of covering up disastrous things like this. We have no way of judging (from a "company" statement) how bad this really was or how close it came to being much, much worse.

...if you have alternatives to offer, I'm open to hearing them and lobbying for them.

Yeah. Fork half the nuclear funds over to an all-out solarization of every possible building in the United States. Make every possible surface a solar collector. Provide tax credits to home owners. Create a completely decentralized solar energy system that cannot be disrupted by terrorists and which would produce virtually zero pollution (only what is involved in the original manufacture of cells that have lifespans proven to be greater than thirty years: no one knows how long they can ultimately go--whereas a nuclear plant is only good for about thirty years before it has to be permanently decommissioned). Get behind that.

I plan on adding solar panels to my house, but again, they don't work at night, aren't all that efficient, and placed in a desert or even at sea at the scale required (this is easily calculated) to meet societies needs would have a huge environmental impact that I believe is would be undesirable.

Would you rather see the Chernobyl environs as they are or with the environmental impact of having solar collectors on every house, public building, industrial site and business in the region? Give me the solar cells.

Sarcasm feels good, but isn't so useful in making a real factual point.

My point is that where there is a possibility of terrorism, nuclear plants are like holding a gun to your own head while someone else can fire it via cell phone. We can stay in Iraq fifty years and the danger of terrorism here will be as great as it is now because the terrorists aren't going to "follow us home" from iraq. They are already here.

It's not a conspiracy that prevents cheap and easily renewable electricity from succeeding.

Then why aren't Americans, even CONGRESS, able to know who even attended the meetings where Lord Cheney determined our national energy policy? We know that Enron boys were among them. We know that Enron did engage in specific conspiracy to inflate energy prices around the country even while screwing their stockholders. Do you suppose there might be somethinge else that we don't yet know?

Yes. It is conspiracy.

If the economies of scale are there, it will radically change the energy industry, and the industry knows it and is actively researching many more sources of cheap and easily renewable energy because they know that if it can be found, they will make that huge profit that Neil mentioned and seems to find deplorable.

Their best and cheapest profit is having a government that supports their plunder of the American citizens. What motive do they have to support a system that would allow each homeowner to have independent power production plus being able to charge the power company for the excess power they produce?

The economies of scale would be there if the US government put a fraction of the money on solar that they have contributed to the nuclear industry. They won't.

David

David Orange

08-01-2007, 02:10 PM

I'm not sure about what everyone here believes about global warming, but if you'll notice, nuclear plants make the least amount of emmisons, and waste, overall. You can look above in my first post and notice these measures. Or here, for solar vs nuclear

Surely, you're talking about the emission produced in the one-time production process: you can't be claiming that using solar cells on a day-to-day basis causes these emissions.

So you produce pollution while making solar cells, but after that they work free for twenty to thirty to fifty--100 years???? We don't know. But we do know that solar cells can go twenty to thirty years, operating continuously and producing zero emissions or pollution of any kind. So your figures sound like more industry slanted misinformation.

Many years ago, the electric power powers built a demo "solar home" to show how much less efficient solar is than other energy sources (possibly coal, possibly nuke). Here's how they did it: they took a mobile home--the least possible energy-efficient structure available--and used photovoltaic cells to power space heaters--the most energy-intensive form of home heating. It made solar energy look ridiculous.

Of course, photovoltaic is not the only or even the main use of solar energy. Number one is having an energy efficient home--like a monolithic dome:

http://www.monolithic.com

with good insulation and weatherproofing. Second is to heat air directly with solar energy--not convert the solar to electricity and then use space heaters to heat the air.

Then, for energy efficiency, live close to work, commute with more than one person in the car, drive an energy-efficient car and be efficient in its use.

But still, your analysis doesn't even address the radioactive elements produced in nuclear plants that, when they get into the environment, will dwarf every other kind of pollution known to humanity.

David

David Orange

08-01-2007, 02:15 PM

Do you realize that a nuclear explosion cannot result from the materials used in a nuclear power plant?

A meltdown would be quite a disaster, but unless there was a containment breach, which is extremely unlikely, even if a plant was hit by airplanes similar to what hit the towers on 9/11, it would almost entirely mostly be an economic disaster for the company who owns the plant.

Yet, what happened at Chernobyl???

It can't happen here....it can't happen here....

surely.

Even then, the scope of the disaster would be nothing remotely like a nuclear device set off in a populated region, which I personally think is the far more likely danger we face and need to address.

Yet it would be bigger and deadlier than anyone wants to admit.

Your 'fact' that the waste cannot be safely handled is based on what? The accidents that have occurred?

It's based on the nature of the nuclear waste, the nature of human beings, the nature of the profit motive and the political power motive. If you think this waste is being handled properly, think again. It's being handled the easiest and cheapest way the companies can get by with doing it. It's a recipe for disaster.

David

tarik

08-02-2007, 10:48 AM

Yet, what happened at Chernobyl???

It can't happen here....it can't happen here....

surely.

I agree. It can't. Surely. Do you know what happened at Chernobyl? What caused it? What could have prevented it? What kind of fail safes exist to prevent it (even in US plants of those days) and how they could possibly fail? I submit that you have no idea except for the theory that it is possible.

Yet it would be bigger and deadlier than anyone wants to admit.

Based on what science? Offer me some real numbers, some real risk factors? The literature actually goes deep into the various dangers and issues and yet your arguments don't even touch on a discussion of them.

Equating a nuclear meltdown with an atomic bomb tells me you don't know the science. Any explosion that does occur in a nuclear plant will not be a nuclear explosion.

It's based on the nature of the nuclear waste, the nature of human beings, the nature of the profit motive and the political power motive. If you think this waste is being handled properly, think again. It's being handled the easiest and cheapest way the companies can get by with doing it. It's a recipe for disaster.

You suggest moving money out of nuclear research and into solar. However, the ~600 million that was spent in 1999 (compared to the 327 million spent on renewable energy research) was almost ENTIRELY spent on research for how to safely deal with nuclear waste with only about 30 million (10% of what was spent on renewable energy) spent on researching new nuclear plants.

The waste research has been highly successful as using modern techniques, an average family of 4 over 20 years will generate only about enough low-level waste to fit into a shot glass and we know of numerous methods to dispose of it that will have minimal environmental impact. The remaining high-level is able reprocessed to be used again and the low-level waste has a much short time of danger to humanity, measured in the hundreds of years instead of thousands.

The technology has been successfully exported, and is proven, however, in the US, we are not allowed to reprocess current industrial waste in such a fashion because environmentalist organizations such as Greenpeace and the Sierra Club won't allow the building of the necessary facilities nor even any attempts to safely dispose of existing waste which includes the dangerous elements you describe. IOW, we know how to reduce it and yet we are not allowed, because of political considerations.

Let me ask you this, how is it profitable for a company to pay the immense fines that are levied environmental contamination is discovered, particularly in light of public reaction?

How is it profitable for a company to allow a meltdown, which as extremely UNLIKELY as it is to cause environmental problems would basically cost them billions when they have to mothball the plant?

Now I certainly favor many of your suggestions for solar power, but I also know that it isn't as realistically practical as economical as leading proponents want it to be, and it's not because of any conspiracy as you suggest. However,

http://www.energy.gov/news/4503.htm

It's only beginning because my understanding is that efficiency needs to climb much higher to for solar power to become truly practical, but it's already happening, even in the evil Bush government. It just takes time. In the meantime, what will we do? because I am pretty sure that it's not actually in the suggested 2015 time frame that this stuff will become affordable on a production scale.

Should we keep burning coal and throwing billions of tons of uranium waste into the atmosphere? Additionally, this is a bigger theoretical contributor to global warming than pretty much any other single factor, yet we're building MORE of these plants.

I, for one, prefer the open market, with appropriate regulations for public safety where necessary. Nuclear energy is one of the most highly regulated systems, for obvious reasons, and it should be.

While I agree with many of the issues you bring up on the nature of human motivation and the need for renewable energy research, your preference for moving this topic to political and fear based arguments and lack of interest in understanding the scientific realities of nuclear energy suggest that this is a fruitless conversation for both of us.

Perhaps we should leave it and go back to discussing aikido which we seem to come closer to agreeing on although I confess, I usually haven't posted in the threads you have and I'm not sure I agree that aiki is found in a toddler's movements although I keep watching my daughter for signs of it while we play. :cool:

Regards,

Neil Mick

08-02-2007, 12:03 PM

Hi Neil,

I thought you weren't going to post? ;)

Hey Tarik...I thought that YOU didn't "get into these online debates?" :p Looks as if you and David are going for a 30-rounder. :o

Tarik is right: radiation, in and of itself, is nothing to be afraid of.

Actually, that's not quite what I said.

No, but that's what you implied...

Come on now, let's not get personal. My wife likes my butt the way it is.

OK, if you're gonna beat me up with PUNS, now...*rolling up gi-sleeves:

Nuclear power has been around since the early part of the 20th Century...when was the last time you've heard of a scientific breakthrough in nuclear storage or in reducing the waste that we've already stored?

There are plenty of breakthroughs that have occurred if you care to search them out.

Well, I COULD come back with, “Well, that just one opinion,” if I were feeling snarky. But I’m not, so let’s move on.

OK, fine. Plenty of breakthroughs in reducing waste, I'll grant (altho, I wonder if it's really "plenty"). But what about long term (as in, 10's of thousands of years) storage?

Nary a peep.

All that waste, where's it going, and what guarantees do we have of its safe storage?

The great paranoia has aided in solving that problem because it has driven people to work for years to address it. Of course, to some, there is no solution that is 'good enough'. The opposition to Yucca Mountain is a great example.

That's right...no solution IS "good enough." You can develop the highest possible nuclear technology and state-of-the-art storage facilities, and you still have problems.

Know why? It's not in the labs of the scientists; nor is it in the actual operation of the plant (at least, not at first). It's in the hands of the corporation which holds the keys, the fellows whose first concern is in the bottom line.

And this is my central point to responding. The technology has long been in the hands of corporations who have proven that they don’t care about safety concerns. They'll leap over OSHA, shortcut around safety guidelines, use cheap and unsafe materials if it cuts the cost. And then there's the economic racism to consider: ie, where they decide to build the plants.

I think we can all agree that irresponsible behavior is undesirable and should be prevented and punished. Using examples from the very infancy of the industry when this stuff was significantly less understood and during wartime and also that everyone, including the nuclear industry, now agrees was irresponsible behavior seems a bit off track, even if you are a proponent of the profit motive being ultimately a purely irresponsbile one.

Great. Let's just forget all about the past, focus upon the present. The trouble is that the past is leaking into the ground: and the present seems to be run by the same people...only with a better PR firm.

Actually, they store it because the anti-nuclear lobby will not allow them to re-process it to make it safer or transport it to long term storage facilities. There are MANY approaches that have been considered and many of them actually are practical.

Riight. It's all the fault of the anti-nuclear lobby that's held back the science of the glories of nuclear power.

Now, where have I heard this song before? :crazy:

Perhaps you should visit the websites already offered and read about the ongoing research that has been taking place for many years. Most of the ones I posted were government run research facilities.

Perhaps I should. I'll admit I'm a little behind the research on the latest.

But, working in the classifieds department of a major newspaper for more than 5 years taught me a lot about attempted scams. You see, most scams are not new...just a new spin on an old game.

You start to see patterns after awhile. Global warming, nuclear power, GMO's, NAFTA...all these issues follow a pattern, within public discourse. As these issues enter into the national dialogue, PR firms and lobbyists work overtime to spin the "good news" that is coming down the pike (BTW, the term "junk science" emerged from those same PR firms.

Remember how GMO's were going to solve world hunger, a few years' ago? Or how NAFTA would create jobs and enforce environmental reg's? All lies, spun from PR machines.

Now, we have the "experts" telling us how nuclear power will be the next "big answer" to the power-question.

Uh huh. Maybe...anything's possible. But, I imagine that many of those "experts" are more interested in the wishes of their employers, than they are in saving the planet. Call me cynical, but fool me once....well, to quote Bush's misquoting...we won't get fooled again!

I'm not a fan of nuclear weapons, certainly, but tell that last to Japan and France, both of whom are nearly 90% on nuclear power at this time.

And this means that they're doing the right thing, because countries ALWAYS operate in their own self-interest...uh huh.
When Japan meets its next major earthquake, we'll talk. Till then, we can only hope that I'm wrong.

Facts about physics are available regardless of qualifications. I believe Mark's point was that they should be sought out, particularly when making such momentous decisions regarding human life and our ecology. Informed decisions are always best, are they not?

They are, but this...

Heh, all you nuclear physicists, hold your hand up. Well, go on, people. You know that you want to. You want to be that expert on Cyberspace who knows everything. Those of you who have worked at a nuclear power plant, hold your hand up. Those who have had dealings with the NRC, go ahead.

Instead of trying to politicize everything, how about real answers with scientific research or facts?

sounds more like an exhortation to just "shut up and listen" to the so-called experts, rather than debate the issues (and BTW, Mark: the ones I REALLY worry about are those who attempt to de-politicize what are very political questions).

I suppose that Mark would pooh-pooh the good works of Helen Caldicott, founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility.

www.helencaldicott.com

I would. I believe she is well intentioned, but her facts are simply faulty, founded in emotions and junk science, and I'm frankly disappointed that an MD, who should understand the scientific method doesn't apply it.

It’s been awhile since I’ve read Caldicott’s books (over 20years). Perhaps she IS off in her recent writings: certainly worth a look.

Here's a rebuttal from a physics student who deliberately leaves out supporting references from the nuclear industry in his critical analysis and commentary.

http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/%7Elweston/nuclear.pdf

I offer it so that everyone can read both points of view and make their own conclusions.

A rebuttal, which by his own definition, is incomplete. I would definitely be interested in Caldicott’s reply…but for now, this is secondary source material, at best.

When he publishes it, well: that’s a different story.

Neil Mick

08-02-2007, 12:21 PM

First of all, Nuclear power plants are not as dangerous as you'd think. There are two types of uranium, a weapons grade type with a very short half life, and a non volitile type with a very long half life. The type used in power plants is, naturally, the non volitile type. The only thing that this type of uranium can do is make water steam. Thats it. It is also a common misconception that if someone tries to blow the plant, it will cause a radical volitile, explosion of deadly radiation that will kill everything on its path. At Cherynobl, the only people who died or were affected in a negative way were those inside the plant and those in the immidiate area. As a matter of fact, research shows that those were were out of the killzone actually benefitted.

Source?

There is a theory called hormesis that is accepted by society and you may not even know it. Ever heard of drinking a small amount of wine can help you? Getting 15 minutes of sun a day will cause vitamin c to produce in your body, but if you get too much, you get a sunburn. The same is true with radiation. A certain amount helps you, a little more doesnt affect you at all, and too much harms you.

This is not an accepted theory by the general scientific community.

Hormesis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis)

Radiation hormesis is the theory that ionizing radiation is benign at low levels of exposure, and that doses at the level of natural background radiation can be beneficial. This is in contrast to the linear no threshold model which posits that the negative health effects of ionizing radiation are proportional to the dose. The scientific consensus is not to accept radiation hormesis, despite a few papers to the contrary. The disagreement arises partly because very low doses of radiation have relatively small impacts on individual health outcomes. It is therefore difficult to detect the 'signal' of decreased or increased morbidity and mortality due to low-level radiation exposure in the 'noise' of other effects.

Radiation hormesis has been rejected by both the United States National Research Council (part of the National Academy of Sciences)[1] and the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (a body commissioned by the United States Congress).[2] In addition, the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Ionizing Radiation (UNSCEAR) wrote in its most recent report [3]

Until the [...] uncertainties on low-dose response are resolved, the Committee believes that an increase in the risk of tumour induction proportionate to the radiation dose is consistent with developing knowledge and that it remains, accordingly, the most scientifically defensible approximation of low-dose response. However, a strictly linear dose response should not be expected in all circumstances.

The people outside of the blast zone during Hiroshima, etc... have benefitted! they have longer life spans, healthier bodies, etc...

And the study where you learned this fact is,,,,?

Ever been to a radiation spa? They have a few all over the world, even in the USA. They are natural areas of extremely high amounts of radiation, easily 100 times over the amount for recommended exposure by the government. People have gone for treatment and have had disease and ailments removed at a rapid rate.

Uh huh. In googling "radiation spa," I only found about 40 hits...NONE of them having to do with places that offer therapeutic treatments with radiation.

But hey! Send me $20 and you can have a sample of my patented "Instacure-all Radiation Pellet!" (TM)

:hypno: :hypno: Two doses a day will cure anything! :hypno: :hypno:

Warts, rabies, excess facial hair, acne, too many teeth, excess bloodclotting...:freaky:

So, does this mean we should try to eradicate all radiation from the world? The funny thing is, our own bodies produce more radiation that that of the granite in Grand central Station.

Come on...fess up: this is a joke post, right? I can spot em a mile away... ;)

Switching to Nuclear power would supply political parties, citezens and the government with all of their needs, with more efficiancy and ease.

Yeah, nuclear power is our next great savior. Just ask any rep that they send you...he'll readily agree! :rolleyes:

PS (BTW, the term "junk science" originally emerged from those same PR firms to discredit the scientific findings that they didn't like.

It all came down to the "precautionary principle" advocated by unbiased scientists and safety advocates, versus the "acceptable risk" principle advocated by the lobbyists, corporations and their scientist lackeys.

In short, the precautionary principle uses the same reasoning as when you cross the street...ie, it's better to look both ways before crossing. Acceptable risk suggests that the precautions are overblown, that we really can play "closer to the red-zone" if we like.

I highly recommend "Trust Us, We're Experts," (http://www.prwatch.org/books/experts.html) for more).

David Orange

08-02-2007, 12:35 PM

I agree. It can't. Surely. Do you know what happened at Chernobyl? What caused it? What could have prevented it? What kind of fail safes exist to prevent it (even in US plants of those days) and how they could possibly fail? I submit that you have no idea except for the theory that it is possible.

That and my lawman friend, named Murphy. Again, I point you to NASA, the most redundantly "safe" agency in the US, not operated for profit and with no reason to cut corners. Yet they have had two really major disasters. My theory is not that "it's possible" but that we are bound for some kind of major disaster involving an explosion at a plant, a release of radioactive material, an accident with waste or some other kind of deadly event that will happen because of financial greed and short-sightedness.

Based on what science? Offer me some real numbers, some real risk factors? The literature actually goes deep into the various dangers and issues and yet your arguments don't even touch on a discussion of them.

Yeah. I didn't read all the risk factors for shuttle flights, either. Of course, if we "read the literature," we would have believed that the Iraqis would greet us with flowers and thanks when we invaded. And if that literature were true, Iraq would now be suitable for nuclear power plants.

Equating a nuclear meltdown with an atomic bomb tells me you don't know the science. Any explosion that does occur in a nuclear plant will not be a nuclear explosion.

I didn't say it would be a nuclear explosion or equate a meltdown with a nuclear bomb. My point was that, as nuclear bombs have grown in yield, nuclear plants are also far more heavyweight than they used to be and "safeguards" notwithstanding, far more dangerous.

You suggest moving money out of nuclear research and into solar. However, the ~600 million that was spent in 1999 (compared to the 327 million spent on renewable energy research) was almost ENTIRELY spent on research for how to safely deal with nuclear waste with only about 30 million (10% of what was spent on renewable energy) spent on researching new nuclear plants.

And for the same money, they could have outfitted thousands of buildings with solar equipment that would still be producing free and non-polluting electricity, heat and hot water. There's no need to "research" how to deal with the waste from solar energy uses.

The waste research has been highly successful as using modern techniques, an average family of 4 over 20 years will generate only about enough low-level waste to fit into a shot glass and we know of numerous methods to dispose of it that will have minimal environmental impact. The remaining high-level is able reprocessed to be used again and the low-level waste has a much short time of danger to humanity, measured in the hundreds of years instead of thousands.

Yeah....if we can just keep it out of terrorists' hands for hundreds of years....and if we can just keep it from being released by some natural disaster or profit-caused accident.....Officer Murphy is shaking his head. Only hundreds of years, huh???? Officer Murphy has his head in his hands.

Let me ask you this, how is it profitable for a company to pay the immense fines that are levied environmental contamination is discovered, particularly in light of public reaction?

Compared to the profits they've raked in through monopolies and having successfully prevented people from getting off the grid in the mega-thousands? Compared to the corporate welfare they've received for decades and are slated to receive for the long-foreseeable future? And then you have to figure in what executive is gambling that all this wil hit the fan after he's leapt with his golden parachute....

Now I certainly favor many of your suggestions for solar power, but I also know that it isn't as realistically practical as economical as leading proponents want it to be, and it's not because of any conspiracy as you suggest.

????

Once you put the cells up, there is no more cost, no more pollution, very little maintenance and a lifespan of at least thirty years and probably more like 100 years. There are no moving parts.

How is "free" and "non-polluting" and "permanent" anything but realistically practical? What do they use for every satelite in orbit? What do they use on the space shuttle? It's all solar-powered and they have never found a lifespan for the cells. They just go on and on and on.

Now what but a cabal of thieves, led by Dick'em Cheney and Ken Lay would have led the populace to believe that photovoltaic cells are not "realistically practical"?

It's only beginning because my understanding is that efficiency needs to climb much higher to for solar power to become truly practical...

Again, you manufacture it and from then on it provides free electricity that produces no pollution and will go on, even on cloudy days, for decades at the very least. Even at 10%, that's a deal. But the current efficiency is around 25% and as you point out, it's going up. But it's highly practical now.

....it's already happening, even in the evil Bush government. It just takes time. In the meantime, what will we do? because I am pretty sure that it's not actually in the suggested 2015 time frame that this stuff will become affordable on a production scale.

No, it was actually around 1975.

But when you consider that a great deal of "evil" comes from utter stupidity, there's no need to put quotes around the "evil" in "the 'evil' Bush government." If Dub and Dick'em were making their money from solar energy, you would be reading this headline today:

"Bush Urges Congress to Support Solar Advancement Initiative
plan would fire nuclear missiles at sun to boost efficiency of sun's output"

Should we keep burning coal and throwing billions of tons of uranium waste into the atmosphere? Additionally, this is a bigger theoretical contributor to global warming than pretty much any other single factor, yet we're building MORE of these plants.

Ever heard of net metering? If you have solar cells on your house and you generate more electricity than you're using, the excess feeds back into the power grid, your meter runs backward and the power company can actually end up paying you. That cuts down on coal-generation of electricity. That's a system that cannot be disrupted or exploited by terrorists. If you had such systems on every house, public building, industrial site and business in the US, (even at 25% "efficiency") how much coal use would that prevent?

But, no. That's not as practical as building a multi-billion-dollar highly-poisonous plant that will have to be shut down in about 30 years. Those photovoltaics would still be converting sunlight into electricity decades later.

I, for one, prefer the open market, with appropriate regulations for public safety where necessary. Nuclear energy is one of the most highly regulated systems, for obvious reasons, and it should be.

And it's an absolutely unnecessary market, but it's the one Dick'em and Dub will subsidize and support because you can charge the common man for his electricity that way and if he gets solar cells, you can't charge him anymore.

While I agree with many of the issues you bring up on the nature of human motivation and the need for renewable energy research, your preference for moving this topic to political and fear based arguments and lack of interest in understanding the scientific realities of nuclear energy suggest that this is a fruitless conversation for both of us.

Yeah. I know. When you stack the poisonous-for-millenia nuclear material (and the potential for terrorist use and attack) against clean, free, permanent energy, and the poison wins, it's crazy to think it could be because of politics of paid-off government officials. It makes more sense to go with the poison because the clean, free and permanent source isn't practical.

David

David Orange

08-02-2007, 02:01 PM

Offer me some real numbers, some real risk factors? The literature actually goes deep into the various dangers and issues and yet your arguments don't even touch on a discussion of them.

What are the risks of a "properly inspected" bridge collapsing while full of afternoon traffic? What are the risks of a US Federal Government agency approving a drug for weight loss or arthritis without recognizing that it will cause heart attacks?

You see, the literature deals with these risks on an abstract level assuming that everyone who's supposed to do something will actually do it and will do it honestly and fairly.

But we see that they don't.

The people responsible for nuclear safety are unlikely to be "better" than those who oversaw the safety of the space shuttles or those who inspected the bridge in Minneapolis.

Why pack our country with closets full of the deadliest poisons known to humanity at all?

But to do it and claim that alternatives just don't really exist is insane.

David

Neil Mick

08-02-2007, 02:16 PM

And another thing you failed to address in your response to me, Tarik (I nearly missed it): you just pooh-pooh'd Helen Caldicott offhand, without addressing the central thesis.

So far, both David and my arguments lay mostly in distrust of the regulatory bodies and the companies operating the power plant.

But, you totally fail to consider the environmental impacts of mining and milling the stuff:

URANIUM MINING AND THE NUCLEAR FUEL CHAIN (http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/%7Elweston/nuclear.pdf)

Uranium mining is referred to in industry jargon as the "front end" of the nuclear industry. This is because uranium mining is commonly regarded as the first link in the nuclear fuel chain, even though it is preceded by exploration. The nuclear fuel chain is the sequence of interdependent opera-tions involved in producing nuclear weapons, uranium ammunition, fuel for nuclear electricity generation, and radioactive isotopes for medical and industrial purposes. Civil and military aspects of the fuel chain are so inter-dependent that it is impossible to completely separate them. However, some medical and industrial radio-active isotopes can be produced by particle accelerators, which are not based on uranium fuel and not connected to nuclear power generation and nuclear weapons production.

Whether regarded primarily civil or military, the nuclear fuel chain requires conversion of uranium from one chemical form to another and transportation involving great distances. The nuclear fuel chain is more technically complex, capital intensive, time consuming, and dangerous than the production process for other forms of energy. These attributes of the nuclear fuel chain are the reason why there is no nation that operates its nuclear industry entirely within its own borders. The few nations possessing the resources (natural, financial, and human) to do so have chosen not to for many reasons, not the least being to minimize local risks such as contamination from uranium mining and weapons testing.

Uranium mining cannot take place without catastrophically effecting the immediate surrounding environment. Wastes produced from uranium mining include: overburden material, ore grading too low to be milled, pit and mine shaft water, runoff from precipitation, and dust. Uranium mills are usually located close to uranium mines to minimize ore transport costs. Thus, uranium mill wastes are usually near uranium mines.

Uranium miners can die of cancer and contract serious lung diseases as a direct result of working in uranium mines. Further, in many places in the world uranium mining, like mining of many other minerals, takes place on land that was traditionally used by Indigenous people. This has often been the cause of serious conflict.

Uranium milling is the removal of uranium from ore, accomplished by crushing the rock, grinding it down to a fine sand, and mixing it with large amounts of water and chemicals.

There is usually at least twice as much liquid waste produced in the milling process as tailings. Accidental release of the liquid and solid wastes from their retention barriers is common. Liquid wastes have a greater impact on the surrounding environment than solid wastes as they can carry contamination great distances via streams, rivers and lakes. The radio-nuclei and heavy metals in the wastes can accumulate in plants and animals downstream to levels thousands of times the surrounding water concen-tration. This contamination can eventually find its way to people.

I noticed that you also failed to respond to the wondrous byproducts of nuclear waste (putting nuclear proliferation aside for the moment): irradiated food (offering up an entirely unnecessary sterilization technology, but definitely a new means for nuclear waste to get foisted off to the Dept of Agriculture); and my big fave weapon promoting peace...that fuzzmaker of weapons categories: "depleted" uranium (or dU). Is it a nuclear, or conventional, weapon? Ah, the circles that the US govt likes to dance, around THAT one...

But putting that quandary aside for a moment, there is a causal link between use of dU and a rise (6-9x) in leukemia rates, in Iraq. And don't hold your breath on waiting for the Pentagon to recompense the victims...they're still trying to deny the effects of Agent Orange, in US vets.

It seems to me that if we want to get rid of nuclear weapons or misuses of nuclear waste (as I think dU is), then it's only logical that we need to stop producing it. Which, until fusion reactors come about (if they ever will. I think they're a pipedream...pardon the pun), can mean only one thing.

tarik

08-02-2007, 06:18 PM

No, but that's what you implied...

What I intended to convey was that fear of radiation is overblown. And it is. Very.

OK, if you're gonna beat me up with PUNS, now...*rolling up gi-sleeves:

;)

Well, I COULD come back with, "Well, that just one opinion," if I were feeling snarky. But I'm not, so let's move on.

You just did. It's more than one opinion.

OK, fine. Plenty of breakthroughs in reducing waste, I'll grant (altho, I wonder if it's really "plenty"). But what about long term (as in, 10's of thousands of years) storage?

Nary a peep.

Clearly you did not actually read the material. Yes, breakthroughs in a variety of approaches that can reduce the waste to similar levels found in mines where we're getting the radioactive material in the first place.

That's right...no solution IS "good enough."

For you.

Perhaps I should. I'll admit I'm a little behind the research on the latest.

I'd love it if you argued from a position of scientific research. I'd love it if you demonstrated that the science I've offered in links was not true. But neither you and David have offered many measurable facts, just feelings, sarcasm, and snarkiness (to use your own term).

Instead you immediately attack politicians, scientists, propagandists, resort to "Murphy's Law", and so on. Easy targets all because your right, there is corruption and bad actors involved in all these industries.

Maybe you're right, I'm willing to consider it and take your points seriously when you offer them, but I don't see the same in return. You offer no actual refutation of the actual science, of the numbers, of the procedures put in place and you make

But, working in the classifieds department of a major newspaper for more than 5 years taught me a lot about attempted scams. You see, most scams are not new...just a new spin on an old game.

You start to see patterns after awhile.

This is called arguing by changing the subject.

When Japan meets its next major earthquake, we'll talk. Till then, we can only hope that I'm wrong.

They had a 6.9 last week.

When he publishes it, well: that's a different story.

His sources ARE published. Take them seriously; refute them directly if you care to.

So, does this mean we should try to eradicate all radiation from the world? The funny thing is, our own bodies produce more radiation that that of the granite in Grand central Station.

Come on...fess up: this is a joke post, right? I can spot em a mile away...

This is true, but misleading the radioactivity of granite is so variable depending on it's origin. Exposure to employees who spend an average 8 hours/day in Grand Central station are exposed to about 120 mrem/year.

Sleeping next to someone for 8 hours/day exposes you to 2 mrems which comes to 730 mrems/year assuming you sleep beside your partner every night.

It's a silly comparison since I can find measurements of the radioactivity of granite that are higher than the human body as well, but it certainly makes the point that radiation is not a thing to be feared irrationally.

Another interesting example would be that commercial airline pilots get far more radiation exposure than people who work in the nuclear industry. But let's not let facts into the discussion.

It's not the 'most poisonous thing known to mankind', although it is perhaps the most reviled thing in the modern day. We seem to have a guilty conscious.

I noticed that you also failed to respond to the wondrous byproducts of nuclear waste (putting nuclear proliferation aside for the moment): irradiated food (offering up an entirely unnecessary sterilization technology

Neil, I didn't bother to respond because you cannot show me a single qualitative or quantitative study that demonstrates that 'irradiated' food is a problem. When you can, we have a basis for a discussion.

But putting that quandary aside for a moment, there is a causal link between use of dU and a rise (6-9x) in leukemia rates, in Iraq.

Who did the work? That must be really amazing science there, particularly considering that the WHO has yet to find (although they're still expecting it and looking for it) an increased rate of leukemia in relocated Chernobyl refugees.

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2005/pr38/en/index.html

They did manage to find a causal link to some additional cases of thyroid cancer, about 9 of which were fatal. It's tragic, but hardly the horror that I'm led to believe by your and David's reactions.

Where is your outrage for the 40+ thousand victims of automobile accidents that occur every year? Wouldn't public transit prevent those deaths, and also reduce the pollution that contributes to global warming?

That may sound sarcastic, but honestly, I'm very interested in knowing why we are outraged by a technology that by the worst numbers available has killed fewer people than are killed every year by transportation that could be made safer.

Regards,

tarik

08-02-2007, 06:39 PM

I didn't say it would be a nuclear explosion or equate a meltdown with a nuclear bomb. My point was that, as nuclear bombs have grown in yield, nuclear plants are also far more heavyweight than they used to be and "safeguards" notwithstanding, far more dangerous.
Hmmm... you said :
Why is that a problem? Hiroshima and Nagasaki were attacked with the two earliest nuclear weapons on earth. Look at a chart of sizes of blast yields today. Hiroshima/Nagasaki-sized blasts are little pinheads compared to the yields of bombs developed only twenty years later. If you managed to blow up a nuclear reactor??? I don't doubt that the toll would be thousands at the very least.

Yep.. sounds like what you said to me.

????

Once you put the cells up, there is no more cost, no more pollution, very little maintenance and a lifespan of at least thirty years and probably more like 100 years. There are no moving parts.

How is "free" and "non-polluting" and "permanent" anything but realistically practical? What do they use for every satelite in orbit? What do they use on the space shuttle? It's all solar-powered and they have never found a lifespan for the cells. They just go on and on and on.

This is a fallacious argument. There are no free lunches. The economy of solar power is not where it's at due to government or industry blockage. I know that's a popular thing to say, but it just isn't true.

Current practical lifespan is about 25-30 years before the panels break due to corrosion or produce power levels low enough that they need to be replaced. They do need maintenance and they do need to be replaced about as often as a roof does.

Manufacture of the panels is also one of the dirtiest industries around (I'm in the periphery of it in the computer field) and there is a worldwide shortage of silicon that is restricting growth.

Comparing the efficiency of panels used in orbit with terrestrial models is another mistake. Commercial production currently produces at best 20% efficiency for most terrestrial panels. Better experimental technology certainly exists, but is not yet available commercially and there is no definite date as to when it will be available.

You talk about the government keeping us down, yet when I put solar panels on my home, the government will rebate me nearly half the cost or more. I just don't see the same conspiracies that you do. If you like Murphy's law so much, perhaps you should look at Occam's Razor.

Yeah. I didn't read all the risk factors for shuttle flights, either.

I didn't realize you were opposed to the shuttle program.

Of course, if we "read the literature," we would have believed that the Iraqis would greet us with flowers and thanks when we invaded. And if that literature were true, Iraq would now be suitable for nuclear power plants.

David, that is pure bs and a meaningless way to argue. You are saying nothing of value to your get your point across.

The people responsible for nuclear safety are unlikely to be "better" than those who oversaw the safety of the space shuttles or those who inspected the bridge in Minneapolis.

The great thing if there's anything about TMI was that it failed to meltdown despite human foolishness because of the design of the plant. Fail safes were in place that could not be disabled by humans for the very reasons and concerns you mention.

Why pack our country with closets full of the deadliest poisons known to humanity at all?

I maintain that they are not the deadliest. I offer proof (go read the material in the links and refute it if you wish).

But to do it and claim that alternatives just don't really exist is insane.

I quite agree, that would be insane. I've not suggested it. In fact, you seem to be insisting that only your alternative is acceptable.

Regards,

Neil Mick

08-02-2007, 08:07 PM

Clearly you did not actually read the material. Yes, breakthroughs in a variety of approaches that can reduce the waste to similar levels found in mines where we're getting the radioactive material in the first place.

Yes, clearly. Guess what? I've got a life outside of this computer; with only 24 hours in a day to use, not counting sleep.

Does this mean that my opinion is null and void, on the subject?

I believe I made the point of my lack of reading, quite readily. No need to get touchy...

That's right...no solution IS "good enough."
For you.

Yeah...for me, and for many, many others who are not quite "convinced" by the latest round of experts. Nooooo, we made NOT have read all the wondrous discoveries, suspect as we are by all the dubious claims in the past, but please!

Hurt us not...for we mean you no harm. :p

I think you miss the point of the debate, here. I'm not trying to "prove you wrong:" merely to add to the equation (as I pointed out, from the beginning).

I'd love it if you argued from a position of scientific research. I'd love it if you demonstrated that the science I've offered in links was not true. But neither you and David have offered many measurable facts, just feelings, sarcasm, and snarkiness (to use your own term).

Ah. This is what I believe is called "scientific elitism." My concerns about the industry are null and void, unless I present scientific data.

Hmm.

Instead you immediately attack politicians, scientists, propagandists, resort to "Murphy's Law", and so on.

"Murphy's Law???" :confused: I never mentioned Murphy's Law.

Easy targets all because your right, there is corruption and bad actors involved in all these industries.

Nice of you to finally acknowledge that. There now, THAT wasn't so hard, was it?

Add a little corruption in this industry, a few small mistakes, and it ultimately means problems with many factors higher than corruption in normal industries.

Maybe you're right, I'm willing to consider it and take your points seriously when you offer them, but I don't see the same in return.

Garbage, Tarik...I owned up that my knowledge is hazy...what more do you want?? A book report?

You offer no actual refutation of the actual science, of the numbers, of the procedures put in place and you make

That's right, because I am not "refuting" the science: I'm adding to it. Sorry you feel so defensive about my additions.

But, working in the classifieds department of a major newspaper for more than 5 years taught me a lot about attempted scams. You see, most scams are not new...just a new spin on an old game.

You start to see patterns after awhile.

This is called arguing by changing the subject.

This is called mislabelling a build-up.

When Japan meets its next major earthquake, we'll talk. Till then, we can only hope that I'm wrong.
They had a 6.9 last week.

Proving my point, exactly. Thank you.

Nuclear crisis in Japan as scientists reveal quake threat to power plants (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article2096238.ece)

The world’s biggest nuclear power station stands directly above an active earthquake faultline, which provoked an atomic spill this week, seismologists revealed yesterday.

In 2005, fearing the effects of a large quake, a group of residents fought to have Kashiwazaki’s license to build a new reactor revoked. The Tokyo High Court rejected the plaintiffs’ claim

(because they couldn't provide enough scientific data, no doubt)

that an active fault ran under the station, concluding that what the residents thought was an active fault “did not even amount to a fault and could not cause a quake”.

Close enough...he challenged them on their grasp of understanding physical reality.

Hmm...yes, a pattern IS emerging...

Atomic experts said yesterday that the discovery may dramatically challenge the safety of the entire atomic energy supply in Japan and that as many as a third of the country’s 55 nuclear power stations might have to be suspended until they were made sufficiently quake-proof to be restarted.

Oh, but it's all good! We'll just quake-proof em, and everything will be hunky dory! Why, every San Franciscan can TELL you that quakeproofing is 100% guaranteed, against earthquakes, right?

[quote=Neil]When he publishes it, well: that's a different story.
His sources ARE published. Take them seriously; refute them directly if you care to.

Really, Tarik: you should read my comments a little more closely. I said, When he publishes it," meaning, when he publishes the work...not the sources.

By his own contention, it's a work in progress. Something like this should be published in a scientific journal: give Dr. Caldicott a chance to rebut. It's unfinished, by his own admission.

Sleeping next to someone for 8 hours/day exposes you to 2 mrems which comes to 730 mrems/year assuming you sleep beside your partner every night.

Hmm...wonder what Deborah will say when I break the news... :blush:

Another interesting example would be that commercial airline pilots get far more radiation exposure than people who work in the nuclear industry. But let's not let

Anyone else's but your

facts into the discussion.

It's not the 'most poisonous thing known to mankind', although it is perhaps the most reviled thing in the modern day. We seem to have a guilty conscious.

Neil, I didn't bother to respond because you cannot show me a single qualitative or quantitative study that demonstrates that 'irradiated' food is a problem. When you can, we have a basis for a discussion.

You see? You choose to ignore a line of discussion because you require a specific factoid for the discussion to proceed. Hello? I didn't say that it was a "problem:" I said it was "unnecessary."

But since your eyes will hurt unless I pull out the right factoid, here ya go:

"Report on the Examination of the Results Obtained by National Institute of Nutrition(NIN), Hyderabed and Bhahba Atomic Research Centre(BARC), Bombay of their studies on the Effects of Freshly Irradiated Wheat on Lymphocytes in Vitro from Malnourished Children, the Cytology of Bone Marrow of Rats and Mice, Meiotic Chromosomes in Male Mice, Germ Cell Survival in Male Mice and Rats and Dominant Lethal Mutations in Rats and Mice." (http://takafoir.taka.jaea.go.jp/dbdocs/001004001048.html)

That's one. I found lists for more, but they were not linked (ie, online, and therefore I don't include them).

But that's the point, isn't it? Unless I find scientific evidence that food irradiation could be problematic: well there's no point at discussion anymore, is there?

How sad. :(

Who did the work? That must be really amazing science there, particularly considering that the WHO has yet to find (although they're still expecting it and looking for it) an increased rate of leukemia in relocated Chernobyl refugees.

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2005/pr38/en/index.html

They did manage to find a causal link to some additional cases of thyroid cancer, about 9 of which were fatal. It's tragic, but hardly the horror that I'm led to believe by your and David's reactions.

dU does not = Chernobyl.

Different isotopes...hello?

So, let me see if I have this down correctly. The gist of your argument is that if I cannot provide CONCLUSIVE PROOF that the dU is DIRECTLY TIED to increase of leukemia in Iraq: well then I must assume that the dU has nothing to do with it...even tho the increases coincide with the US invasion (and...I believe, there were spikes in leukemia rates in Gulf War 1, if wikipedia is to be believed.

Following the first gulf war, scientists at the Basra hospital and university have monitored the incidence of leukaemias and other malignancies among children in the Basra area, and of congenital malformations in newborn children. The data for the period 1990–2001 show an incidence increase of 426% for general malignancies, 366% for leukemias and of over 600% for birth defects, with all series showing a roughly increasing pattern with time. These data, being the largest set of epidemiological data available for the Iraqi population, have received considerable attention; and since it reported a very large increase in those pathologies which are known or strongly suspected to be related to uranium poisoning, it has been natural to consider the possibility that such increase had indeed been caused by depleted uranium contamination.

(admittedly, the data isn't conclusive)

I dunno, Tarik: you set too high a bar for open discussion. But, we can agree to disagree. As I said, I just came on here to add an aviso...I really wan't expecting a Spanish Inquisition! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zO68fUMWx3g&mode=related&search=)

Where is your outrage for the 40+ thousand victims of automobile accidents that occur every year?

In the forum entitled, "Cars: the Greatest Invention Since the Paintbrush. Safe, Reliable, and Your Best Friend"

Wouldn't public transit prevent those deaths, and also reduce the pollution that contributes to global warming?

Right with you, 100%. But, I believe this is referred to as...

wait for it...

Changing the subject.

http://www.clicksmilies.com/s1106/aetsch/cheeky-smiley-006.gif (shazam!) http://www.clicksmilies.com/s1106/aetsch/cheeky-smiley-006.gif

That may sound sarcastic, but honestly, I'm very interested in knowing why we are outraged by a technology that by the worst numbers available has killed fewer people than are killed every year by transportation that could be made safer.

Regards,

Because the potential deaths of this technology, misused, would far outweigh the deaths of other technologies.

We have an epidemic of cancer throughout the world, and that's only increasing. Must I pull out scientific studies to prove that there's a causal link btw our use of nuclear technology: or will you accept that there is empirical evidence to suggest a likely link btw the two.

Even scientists begin with intuition.

tarik

08-04-2007, 08:32 AM

Yes, clearly. Guess what? I've got a life outside of this computer; with only 24 hours in a day to use, not counting sleep.

Does this mean that my opinion is null and void, on the subject?

I believe I made the point of my lack of reading, quite readily. No need to get touchy...

I'm not touchy at all, I'm picky. We all have the right to our opinions, Neil. Personally, I am interested only in informed opinions that can be backed up with facts.

I'm ok with opinions not agreeing with mine, because, even when backed up with facts, we can disagree about how to do things and I can respect that contrary opinion. But when not backed up with facts, you're right in guessing that I don't respect that opinion.

Talk to me another day with another person, and you might find me apparently arguing against nuclear power, but what I'm really arguing against is arguments that are made that assert incorrect facts and a currently weighing of assessed risk made without the real data to back it up.. just, as you put it "intuition".

I'll leave it to you to conclude, if you even care to, where my opinion lies.

Yeah...for me, and for many, many others who are not quite "convinced" by the latest round of experts. Nooooo, we made NOT have read all the wondrous discoveries, suspect as we are by all the dubious claims in the past, but please!

I apologize, Neil, if this offends you, but I honestly don't respect opinions that refute known factual data without offering hard data to back it up. It's how hard science works and I am a scientist, by training, if not by profession.

Hurt us not...for we mean you no harm. :p

Yet harm is done in the name of junk science all the time. Do you need concrete examples? I certainly don't doubt that you intend no harm and certainly I don't.

I think you miss the point of the debate, here. I'm not trying to "prove you wrong:" merely to add to the equation (as I pointed out, from the beginning).

Why do you think I posted in the first place? Why do I bother to post again?

Ah. This is what I believe is called "scientific elitism." My concerns about the industry are null and void, unless I present scientific data.

If this is elitism, I can live with it, yes. Refute scientific data with more scientific data, if you want to make any impression on me (or many who may be reading this).

Garbage, Tarik...I owned up that my knowledge is hazy...what more do you want?? A book report?

No, just opinions backed with facts, not intuition. All of your fears are prevalent in the nuclear industry (I know people in the industry) and motivates them to work hard to find ways to address them.

That's right, because I am not "refuting" the science: I'm adding to it. Sorry you feel so defensive about my additions.

Critical, not defensive. Huge difference. You add to science by performing science.

Oh, but it's all good! We'll just quake-proof em, and everything will be hunky dory! Why, every San Franciscan can TELL you that quakeproofing is 100% guaranteed, against earthquakes, right?

Hard to say. Seems to be working in India, but only time will tell exactly how much folly this is.

But since your eyes will hurt unless I pull out the right factoid, here ya go:

"Report on the Examination of the Results Obtained by National Institute of Nutrition(NIN), Hyderabed and Bhahba Atomic Research Centre(BARC), Bombay of their studies on the Effects of Freshly Irradiated Wheat on Lymphocytes in Vitro from Malnourished Children, the Cytology of Bone Marrow of Rats and Mice, Meiotic Chromosomes in Male Mice, Germ Cell Survival in Male Mice and Rats and Dominant Lethal Mutations in Rats and Mice." (http://takafoir.taka.jaea.go.jp/dbdocs/001004001048.html)

That's one. I found lists for more, but they were not linked (ie, online, and therefore I don't include them).

Good try, but you should read your research. I did. It's an comparative examination of NIN results with BARC's results and attempts to repeat it and ultimately a scientific refutation of their conclusion. It even includes some acknowledgment from NIN that they made specific errors in their method. IOW, their research was successfully refuted and accepted. The results were found to be statistically insignificant (unable to demonstrate danger from irradiated food).

It's how science works, my friend. ;)

But that's the point, isn't it? Unless I find scientific evidence that food irradiation could be problematic: well there's no point at discussion anymore, is there?

Pretty much.

Because the potential deaths of this technology, misused, would far outweigh the deaths of other technologies.

I just don't see the facts to back up that opinion. Honestly.

I'm not defending dU, but data remains inconclusive on dU. Here's the results of an ongoing Kosovo study. http://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/pub_meet/en/Report_WHO_depleted_uranium_Eng.pdf

We have an epidemic of cancer throughout the world, and that's only increasing. Must I pull out scientific studies to prove that there's a causal link btw our use of nuclear technology: or will you accept that there is empirical evidence to suggest a likely link btw the two.

Yes, you must, because my research tells me that much less than 1% of the radiation we are exposed to in this world comes from our use of nuclear technology outside of the medical field. Inside the medical field, about 15% (x-rays, CAT scans, and how we TREAT cancer), 3% from consumer products such as tobacco. That leaves almost 82% is from natural sources (terrestrial, cosmic, internal, etc.).

Even scientists begin with intuition.

Yep, and they back it up with studies and establish facts.

Gotta run, I have a weekend seminar.

Regards,

Neil Mick

08-05-2007, 03:04 PM

I'm not touchy at all, I'm picky. We all have the right to our opinions, Neil. Personally, I am interested only in informed opinions that can be backed up with facts.

I'm ok with opinions not agreeing with mine, because, even when backed up with facts, we can disagree about how to do things and I can respect that contrary opinion. But when not backed up with facts, you're right in guessing that I don't respect that opinion.

Tarik,

There are all kinds of discussion. We could well be sitting around the dojo together chatting, or even in a bar or over lunch, discussing nuclear power.

In those circumstances, would you just get up and say, sorry: but you don't have the science to back you up. Until you do, I'm not willing to discuss this.

Would you just stop talking, perhaps leave the room? Should I rush over to the dojo office, perhaps spend hours studying before I can express an opinion...in a conversation where NEITHER of us are scientists (as, you seem to exhibit a tendency to confuse actual science, with a discussion that only involves scientific data. Important, key even: but not the only aspects to consider)??

To me, it DOES sound as if you're employing a measure of "scientific elitism." As you probably know, I'm all for documenting claims, backing opinion with facts, but you ignore that some facts are not as easily attanable as others, due to the skewed nature of scientific inquiry in this field.

There are also other factors to consider, such as the difficulty in assessing actual cause and origin of a given affliction. Cancer takes awhile to develop, and more often than not, the group responsible--be it from mining uranium, dU, lax governmental safety protocols or just living downwind from a power plant--will likely disavow any connection.

And then you have government regulatory agencies not doing their job. In short, there is much more to the story, than simple laboratory results. And if you cannot accept that scientific data gives an incomplete picture, then you cannot accept the whole picture.

So far, I know of no qualitative analyses or statistical data that measures the effects of politics on scientific data (and yes, Tarik: I CAN easily document political interference on scientific data).

(what would you call one unit of political interference? A "Teller," named after Edward? :crazy: Hey, I think I'll patent that one...it's catchy "It could be seen that the governmental report on nuclear energy suffered from 6.54 Tellers worth of political interference..." ;) ).

Until then, or until you accept this fact, your assessments will always be incomplete.

Gotta run, I have a weekend seminar.

Hope you had a good seminar. I'm still recovering from the flu. Hope to get back to the mat, on Monday.

tarik

08-06-2007, 12:59 AM

Tarik,

There are all kinds of discussion. We could well be sitting around the dojo together chatting, or even in a bar or over lunch, discussing nuclear power.

In those circumstances, would you just get up and say, sorry: but you don't have the science to back you up. Until you do, I'm not willing to discuss this.

Would you just stop talking, perhaps leave the room?

No. What I'd say is what I've said. If you want me to take your opinion seriously, back it up with real data. I require the same on the mat, FWIW.

Should I rush over to the dojo office, perhaps spend hours studying before I can express an opinion...

Neil, I never said you couldn't express your opinion. I just told you the criterion I apply to take it seriously. What you do with that knowledge is up to you.

As you probably know, I'm all for documenting claims, backing opinion with facts, but you ignore that some facts are not as easily attanable as others, due to the skewed nature of scientific inquiry in this field.

There are also other factors to consider, such as the difficulty in assessing actual cause and origin of a given affliction. Cancer takes awhile to develop, and more often than not, the group responsible--be it from mining uranium, dU, lax governmental safety protocols or just living downwind from a power plant--will likely disavow any connection.

I ignore none of that Neil. I may not be a professional scientist, but I was trained as a scientist through college and I understand hard science, and where the burden of proof lies.

So far, I know of no qualitative analyses or statistical data that measures the effects of politics on scientific data (and yes, Tarik: I CAN easily document political interference on scientific data).

An absolute fact. It happens on every sides and so I read data from as many sources as practical before drawing any conclusions. I know how to usually distinguish good scientific arguments from bad. It's a learned skill, but is always being polished.

Until then, or until you accept this fact, your assessments will always be incomplete.

You're making a lot of assumptions about what I accept. Including the assumption that my assessments are ever complete.

Hope you had a good seminar. I'm still recovering from the flu. Hope to get back to the mat, on Monday.

I had an incredible seminar. Hope you're feeling better soon.

Regards,

David Orange

08-06-2007, 10:34 AM

I may not be a professional scientist, but I was trained as a scientist through college and I understand hard science, and where the burden of proof lies.

Proof of what?

We know that nuclear material is inherently dangerous and deadly.

We know that if it escapes a nuclear plant, it's bad. Want to argue thousands over hundreds of thousands? Want to argue hundreds of years (generations) over thousands of years? On a human scale, that's quibbling. The fact is, release of nuclear material from a nuclear plant is tragic.

Now, your argument seems to be that we can be trusted with it. We don't want any nuclear reactors in the unstable world of Iraq, Iran or Palestine, but Ottumwa, Iowa is OK.

But I don't accept Exxon or Enron or Alabama Power or Tokyo Electric Power Company or any other monopolists on earth as trustworthy to operate a nuclear plant.

That's the argument. We've seen what can happen with a nuke plant gone bad. Whether it's a little worse or not quite as bad (or even significantly less bad), it's too bad.

You have faulted photovoltaics because they only last 30 years (your estimate--not mine). But what's the useful life of a nuclear power plant? About thirty years. And what's the difference in cost?

It should be blindingly clear that photovoltaics alone would be a hands-down winner over nuclear plants. At least when the photovoltaics wear out, they don't have to be isolated for a thousand years.

Right now in Iraq, the US government keeps building and rebuilding the same old centralized power generation facilities and stringing lines throughout the city.

For a fraction of that money, they could have put photovoltaics on every house in Baghdad and they would now have more hours of electricity per day than the centralized stations are providing. And that kind of system would be impervious to terrorist disruption--unlike the current system (terrorism being why they have to keep rebuilding it).

Added all up, there's every reason we should have gone heavily into photovoltaics and non-electric uses of solar energy and every reason we should not go any further with nuke plants. Even the "shortage of silicon" is a thin little argument when you look at what's required to get uranium.....

David

tarik

08-06-2007, 10:47 AM

Proof of what?

You don't listen well.

The fact is, release of nuclear material from a nuclear plant is tragic.

Yep, already said that.

But I don't accept Exxon or Enron or Alabama Power or Tokyo Electric Power Company or any other monopolists on earth as trustworthy to operate a nuclear plant.

The fact that you had to name more than one company or organization demonstrates your fallacious logic even in the face of their lack of trustworthiness. Very convincing.

That's the argument. We've seen what can happen with a nuke plant gone bad. Whether it's a little worse or not quite as bad (or even significantly less bad), it's too bad.

Comparative analysis is not meaningless just because you say it is.

You have faulted photovoltaics because they only last 30 years (your estimate--not mine). But what's the useful life of a nuclear power plant? About thirty years.

Incorrect. The licensing of a plant is 30 years. There's discussion of increasing that to 60. Each facility actually has anywhere from 2-6 electrical generating plants. They could easily last a significantly longer and shutdowns are usually for economic or political reasons. Did you know that Chernobyl still had one plant operating into the 21st century providing power to a large region of the Ukraine?

It should be blindingly clear that photovoltaics alone would be a hands-down winner over nuclear plants.

It should be blindingly clear that these decisions are not either/or types of things, however much you want them to be. My arguments are not against photo-voltaics, they are for examining economic and scientific realities. We might be able to argue the economics, but it's clear that you reject some pretty basic facts right up front.

Regards,

David Orange

08-06-2007, 01:06 PM

We might be able to argue the economics, but it's clear that you reject some pretty basic facts right up front.

I reject the notion that the demand for electricity justifies building nuclear power plants.

With the resources of photovoltaics for electricity, and solar air-and-water heating, a vast portion of electrical demand could be met. Then the best answer is a patchwork of coal, hydro-electric and wind. There is no justification for nuclear and no place for nuclear energy generation on earth as long as humans occupy the planet.

Of course, if the nuclear industry gets its way, human occupation of the planet may be a short-term impediment.

David

tarik

08-06-2007, 01:32 PM

HL1978

08-06-2007, 02:49 PM

I reject the notion that the demand for electricity justifies building nuclear power plants.

With the resources of photovoltaics for electricity, and solar air-and-water heating, a vast portion of electrical demand could be met. Then the best answer is a patchwork of coal, hydro-electric and wind. There is no justification for nuclear and no place for nuclear energy generation on earth as long as humans occupy the planet.

Of course, if the nuclear industry gets its way, human occupation of the planet may be a short-term impediment.

David

David, while I agree with you to some extent, with regards to home use, you have to consider industrial/commercial energy needs.

As I pointed out earlier, the amount of land which is useful for PV is somewhat limited (angle of the sun, number of daylight hours, solar intensity see http://nooutage.com/ArraySizWS.htm for solar isolation maps ), and I am curious about the environmental impact of doing so (covering the ground with them would be necessary to supply industrial needs, arguably you could use solar collectors and boil water to spin turbines with lower costs). For home use, it certainly would be useful in some parts of the country, and would certainly supplement use in residential/commercial buildings, but current technology coupled with various location factors (the previously mentioned, intensity, number of hours, angle of the sun) would not be able to meet our current energy needs.

With a silicon shortage, any serious PV production is years off as it takes several years to get up and running a new silicon plant, and electronics manufacturers have traditionally outbid solar manufacturers for silicon.

What alternatives do we have to nuclear that don't require a large cost to the environment? Many of the alternative energy technologies aren't practical for all parts of the country. To say otherwise and not consider industrial use, is wishful thinking.

David Orange

08-07-2007, 09:16 AM

[QUOTE=Tarik Ghbeish;185692]A bold assertion not supported by the proffered science (by you). You could argue caution, but you don't really argue that, you argue the inevitability of our destruction by such a course with nothing to factually back it up other than Murphy's Law.QUOTE]

And you choose to sit beneath the sword of Damocles, which depends not on your own truthfulness, but that of known liars.

The "proffered science" depends on an ideal setting--not a greed-motivated realm where gamblers take a big chance that it won't screw up before they get away. We have many examples of such: Ken Lay, Richard Scrushy, the guys at WorldCom, etc., etc., etc.

If the world were confined to the strictures of science, your bet would be a safe one.

Even in areas ruled almost entirely by science (NASA, for instance), we have tremendous tragedies caused by the inevitability of a lapse in vigilance. A severe nuclear "accident" on US soil is therefore guaranteed.

David

David Orange

08-07-2007, 10:04 AM

David, while I agree with you to some extent, with regards to home use, you have to consider industrial/commercial energy needs.

If every home and office building (plus the industrial sites) were outfitted with photovoltaics, much of the "consumer" demand for electricity could be eliminated, leaving the rest for industrial use.

As I pointed out earlier, the amount of land which is useful for PV is somewhat limited ...I am curious about the environmental impact of doing so...

I don't much support use of vast tracts of land for PV farms. I support use of every rooftop and building surface available. This would so reduce the demand for home use that we could reduce coal-generation and still meet industrial demand.

...current technology coupled with various location factors (the previously mentioned, intensity, number of hours, angle of the sun) would not be able to meet our current energy needs.

Maybe "energy demands" would be a better way to phrase that. Many Americans live in huge houses and air condition them day and night. They drive huge cars vast distances every day to work because they choose to live far from their work. And they air condition the house while they're at work. All that kind of thing is "demand"--not need--and it drives most of the shortages and problems we're dealing with today: oil, gas, water, clean air, electricity, time, crime, arable land, and on and on.

Living close to work is just common sense. If you had a factory, where do you put your raw materials? Close to where you're going to use them! What sense does it make to live far out from your necessary source of income? And why air condition a huge house all day when you're not even there?

So it's living close to work (or working close to home), in a reasonably-sized house with good insulation, energy-efficient appliances, and a generally conservative approach to life. It seems to me that "conservatives" are the biggest opponents of these kinds of measures, too. Which is typical in this backward society where people are cultivated to do the very things that are worst for their own self-interest and needs. And that results in nuclear power plants dotting the landscape.

With a silicon shortage, any serious PV production is years off as it takes several years to get up and running a new silicon plant, and electronics manufacturers have traditionally outbid solar manufacturers for silicon.

Is the silicon shortage as severe as the uranium shortage? I don't think so. But somehow, we manage to find uranium. And long start-up time is never considered a negative for a nuclear plant. It's all a matter of how we're convinced to think about it.

Remember the Kyoto Accords? Bush dumped those as soon as he walked into office, supposedly because America couldn't "afford" to implement them. Care to guess how many times over we've spent that much money on the "war" in Iraq? And what do we have to show for that? Not even one city--Baghdad--has reliable electricity and our needs and infrastructure here at home are languishing.

What alternatives do we have to nuclear that don't require a large cost to the environment?

There is no alternative that has a worse effect on the environment than nuclear. Every "positive" about nuclear looks great until the day nuclear material is released. And then you have a Chernobyl, with vast uninhabitable regions all around that clean, efficient plant.

Many of the alternative energy technologies aren't practical for all parts of the country. To say otherwise and not consider industrial use, is wishful thinking.

To say that nuclear is practical for any part of the country is wishful thinking. It's a hope and crossed fingers.

And one other thing: remember how fast the Soviet Union collapsed? It went down like the Twin Towers. One minute it was there, then it was gone.

If something like that should happen to the US, who would then end up in control of all those plants? Who would "supervise" and "regulate" them? Who would "ensure" that waste was properly handled and transported and that dumps remained undisturbed?

David

HL1978

08-07-2007, 03:43 PM

If every home and office building (plus the industrial sites) were outfitted with photovoltaics, much of the "consumer" demand for electricity could be eliminated, leaving the rest for industrial use.

I don't much support use of vast tracts of land for PV farms. I support use of every rooftop and building surface available. This would so reduce the demand for home use that we could reduce coal-generation and still meet industrial demand.

I am in agreement for the most part, however, it is not an appropriate solution for all areas of the country (nor even population centers like northern Europe). For areas closer to the equator, not only is there a more intensity due to the angle of the sun (more direct angle maximizes solar collection), but the number of hours that the sun is visible during the day is far more consistent. You have to consider the elliptic as well. Contrast this to northern population centers, like Boston, NYC, Chicago, Seattle etc
See the solar isolation charts I cited earlier. This brings about energy storage problems (batteries have all sorts of issues and the need for energy from the grid during the winter) Further you have to consider weather. Is a place like Seattle, with rain about 150+ days a year and a fairly northern location going to produce enough solar power to meet its needs? Energy generation from some source other than solar is required, just to meet consumer needs.

Maybe "energy demands" would be a better way to phrase that. Many Americans live in huge houses and air condition them day and night. They drive huge cars vast distances every day to work because they choose to live far from their work. And they air condition the house while they're at work. All that kind of thing is "demand"-]not need--and it drives most of the shortages and problems we're dealing with today: oil, gas, water, clean air, electricity, time, crime, arable land, and on and on.

Living close to work is just common sense. If you had a factory, where do you put your raw materials? Close to where you're going to use them! What sense does it make to live far out from your necessary source of income? And why air condition a huge house all day when you're not even there?

So it's living close to work (or working close to home), in a reasonably-sized house with good insulation, energy-efficient appliances, and a generally conservative approach to life. It seems to me that "conservatives" are the biggest opponents of these kinds of measures, too. Which is typical in this backward society where people are cultivated to do the very things that are worst for their own self-interest and needs. And that results in nuclear power plants dotting the landscape.

Perhaps on your next visit to japan, you should visit the Miraikan's exhibit on Environmentally Symbiotic Housing. It presents a lot of interesting ideas. Energy conservation and living within ones own means are definitely a good thing, you won't find me saying otherwise. I myself work from home, though the government requires me to come into work 1 hour a week, which is a waste of gasoline, office space, and my time.

Is the silicon shortage as severe as the uranium shortage? I don't think so. But somehow, we manage to find uranium. And long start-up time is never considered a negative for a nuclear plant. It's all a matter of how we're convinced to think about it.

I believe uranium is currently trading for $110 a kg(you could certainly argue the environmental costs are higher if you wish) while polysilicon is trading around $250 a kg. Prices are supposedly going to drop to $40 in a few years. It would make an interesting comparison to see how much power each kg of material could provide over its lifetime and the environmental impact of the use/refinement of each.

The silicon shortage could be cured through building more manufacturing, but the efforts in order to cover housing/buildings etc with PV would be immense. Further, PV recycling is in its infancy at the moment. The scales involved are enormous. From an economic standpoint, I am curious if subsidies would inhibit widespread adoption.

Most of PV isn't too bad for landfill as it is encased in plastic/glass, however, because PV systems are widely dispersed, and because each system has relatively small amounts of semiconductor material per cell, recycling PV will be a challenging task. IEEE hopes that industry will learn from computer recycling efforts.

Remember the Kyoto Accords? Bush dumped those as soon as he walked into office, supposedly because America couldn't "afford" to implement them. Care to guess how many times over we've spent that much money on the "war" in Iraq? And what do we have to show for that? Not even one city--Baghdad--has reliable electricity and our needs and infrastructure here at home are languishing.

I don't think many can commend the president on his environmental policies, but as I remember from civics, the legislative branch ratifies treaties, so it is a bit disengenious to blame the president. As I recall the vote was a bipartisan 95-0 to not sign Kyoto.

That being said however, the president clearly has other means to implement environmental policies via executive orders or through EPA policy etc. I would personally raise CAFE standards much higher myself, which can be done with todays cars through the adoption of both diesel and turbo diesel technology.

There is no alternative that has a worse effect on the environment than nuclear. Every "positive" about nuclear looks great until the day nuclear material is released. And then you have a Chernobyl, with vast uninhabitable regions all around that clean, efficient plant.

To say that nuclear is practical for any part of the country is wishful thinking. It's a hope and crossed fingers.

And one other thing: remember how fast the Soviet Union collapsed? It went down like the Twin Towers. One minute it was there, then it was gone.

If something like that should happen to the US, who would then end up in control of all those plants? Who would "supervise" and "regulate" them? Who would "ensure" that waste was properly handled and transported and that dumps remained undisturbed?

David

You are asumming a worst case scenario for environmental damage (I believe the actual "uninhabitable" areas are around 20 square miles for Chernobyl). This does not seem in line with the safety record of both US, Japanese, and European designed plants.

As far as I recall, from both Chernobyl and the accident in japan (not the recent one mind you), 31 people died as an immediate result of the accident and fighting the resulting fire (28 from radiation injuries, two from non-radiation blast injuries and one due to a coronary thrombosis), 14/134 people who were diagnosed with acute radiation exposure have since died, though it is unclear if it is as a result of radiation or not. 2 people died in the japan accident in 1999. We have no idea how many actually died from Chernobyl, just like we have no idea how many have died from burning coal (pollution, radiation, mercury exposure, fine particulates etc), as well the the environmental impact from acid rain etc.

Bringing up the former USSR raises and interesting point. What has happened since its collapse? Have there been more accidents? Has here been more proliferation of materials? As far as I am aware nothing has occurred outside of Hollywood fantasy. With modern designs, the plants themselves would simply shut down with no outside involvement aka inherently safe design.

President Carters concerns about proliferation, have limited the US from reusing uranium. As other posters have noted, doing so greatly mitigates risk from nuclear waste. It certainly doesn't solve the problem, but makes it far more easy to deal with. See http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/feb07/4891
where the space at Yucca mountain could be increased 100x because of reprocessing.

As a side note, according to CBS (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/04/06/60minutes/main2655782.shtml), France has the cleanest air in europe, and an impeccible safety record.

I have faith in my fellow engineers.

tarik

08-10-2007, 12:00 AM

And you choose to sit beneath the sword of Damocles, which depends not on your own truthfulness, but that of known liars.

You name my offered sources liars without bothering to research who they are, who funded them, and actually expending the effort to legitimately refute them using objective language and reproducible methods.

In reality, David, we're not even having the same conversation. You're interested in the politics and rhetoric of (anti)nuclear power while I'm interested in the science and economics and the real tradeoffs. Enough that I've studied something about them.

If the world were confined to the strictures of science, your bet would be a safe one.

Safer than you can imagine. Frankly, I'm all for alternative sources of energy, but I'm absolutely against propping up any industry (yes, including the nuclear one) beyond what is required to protect us. Using all rational measures I have looked into recently, nuclear is inevitably a part of the solution in the near term, in my estimation, as much as you seem to fear it.

A severe nuclear "accident" on US soil is therefore guaranteed.

What does the science (not politics) tell us a severe accident means? I have a reasonable idea and it does not scare me.

Regards,

Neil Mick

08-10-2007, 05:01 PM

You're interested in the politics and rhetoric of (anti)nuclear power while I'm interested in the science and economics and the real tradeoffs.

Sorry, Tarik: but you're dodging. You dodged in debating with me: and you're dodging in debating with David.

Yes, you're right (in one sense): the politics and rhetoric of nuclear power IS a somewhat different conversation than economics and (as you like to see it) so-called "real" tradeoffs. And yet, the damage that a poorly designed, or a shoddily run plant (or, simply built on LIES or misinformation) would cause, cuts across both discussions.

It's very telling, for instance, how you mentioned that Japan had an earthquake where a plant has been built RIGHT ON THE FAULTLINE, and yet you deigned not to pursue the details further. Quite curious, for someone who is "interested in the data."

Nuclear crisis in Japan as scientists reveal quake threat to power plants (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article2096238.ece)

YOU might have ignored the subtext of the interactions btw the authorities and concerned citizens...but I didn't (and, I imagine, neither did many readers, either):

The revelations of Kashiwazaki's geological weakness dealt a massive blow to the credibility of the Tokyo High Court and to the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology — the government- affiliated body whose survey showed the fault to be about 15km (nine miles) from the plant.

In 2005, fearing the effects of a large quake, a group of residents fought to have Kashiwazaki's license to build a new reactor revoked. The Tokyo High Court rejected the plaintiffs' claim
that an active fault ran under the station, concluding that what the residents thought was an active fault "did not even amount to a fault and could not cause a quake."

When, low and behold! Along comes a quake! :eek: And what do you know? The High Court REJECTED the plaintiff's claims for the same root reasons that you're rejecting David's and my argument. Funny how that always seems to work that way when we're talking profit, doesn't it?

But we might as well be talking about ANYTHING produced commercially, with few longterm health studies published to assess the risks. Cellphones, for instance: AFAIK, there are few studies out there that conclusively illustrate the longterm health risks (if, indeed, there are any...which I believe that there are) in holding a small, micorwave-emitting rectangle to your head for approx 1-3 hours/day over 20+ years' time (and what do you want to bet that the cell phone companies have their PR departments frantically working to avoid this very thing?

I remember reading somewhere that paint company lobbyists were arguing as late as 1995 that lead paint had no effect on children..even though that debate is long, long past. No sense in NOT trying to beat a dead horse...eh, Tarik?)

In sum, then, scientific data MAY be objective, but anyone who understands statistics knows that anyone can interpret ANYTHING from statistics--ESPECIALLY if they have motive. Certainly Tepco had a profit motive: and one can assume that the High Court had political (read: profit) motive to ignore the concerns of the residents.

OK, so you don't want to debate the possible risks of nuclear power, sans hard empirical data? Fine. But the rest of us know the sort of game you're playing...the NRC & friends have been playing it for a long, long time.

tarik

08-10-2007, 06:41 PM

Sorry, Tarik: but you're dodging. You dodged in debating with me: and you're dodging in debating with David.

What am I dodging, a discussion of the empirical data and results? You and David have made specific statements about the non-political results of nuclear science and I have refuted them with actual research data.

It's very telling, for instance, how you mentioned that Japan had an earthquake where a plant has been built RIGHT ON THE FAULTLINE, and yet you deigned not to pursue the details further. Quite curious, for someone who is "interested in the data."

Neil, you must have missed my earlier posts in this thread where I listed specific numbers and data concerning the incident in Japan and offered a comparative analysis. They are still present to be read. You keep accusing me of not addressing issues I have addressed. You are either not reading my posts completely, or you doing some 'dodging' of your own.

Nuclear crisis in Japan as scientists reveal quake threat to power plants (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article2096238.ece)

YOU might have ignored the subtext of the interactions btw the authorities and concerned citizens...but I didn't (and, I imagine, neither did many readers, either):

I read the article weeks ago. It's says little of substance other than that people are upset. I am not surprised to hear about more public hysteria around nuclear science, particularly in Japan. Tell me, did they deliberately choose to not mention the actual level of contamination caused, or was it just an oversight?

In sum, then, scientific data MAY be objective, but anyone who understands statistics knows that anyone can interpret ANYTHING from statistics--ESPECIALLY if they have motive.

Neil, I totally agree. That's why I try to read the data for myself. You have already demonstrated and even stated that you're too busy and that you do not. In fact, I have invited on more than one occasion to read the data and offer a different interpretation. Who's dodging what?

OK, so you don't want to debate the possible risks of nuclear power, sans hard empirical data? Fine. But the rest of us know the sort of game you're playing...the NRC & friends have been playing it for a long, long time.

Neil, you seem to be engaging in rhetoric and expecting the same in return. I'm not interested.

I almost accused you of intellectual dishonesty, but I sincerely believe that you believe what you are stating, so instead I have to conclude that you are being willfully ignorant based on the following types of exchanges:

Clearly you did not actually read the material. Yes, breakthroughs in a variety of approaches that can reduce the waste to similar levels found in mines where we're getting the radioactive material in the first place.

Yes, clearly. Guess what? I've got a life outside of this computer; with only 24 hours in a day to use, not counting sleep.

Garbage, Tarik...I owned up that my knowledge is hazy...what more do you want?? A book report?

You offer no actual refutation of the actual science, of the numbers, of the procedures put in place and you make

That's right, because I am not "refuting" the science: I'm adding to it. Sorry you feel so defensive about my additions.

I have invited you to read the science and refute the data on more than one occasion, but you accuse me of dodging issues? There is a specific process to "add to science" and your comments don't attempt to actually add anything.

Instead you attempt to refute things by stating that those who have accomplished them are liars. That's a meaningless argument, particularly since you don't even know the names of the scientists you are accusing, since you refuse to read their research and to establish them as liars. Your examples of liars only mean something about those specific individuals and what they specifically lied about. I don't recall any of them being accused of lying about nuclear science.

On numerous occasions I have offered links to peer reviewed research or hard data supporting my current opinions, but you have offered nothing that is peer reviewed except for a single study you clearly did not read before submitted it since it supported my position concerning the safety of radiation.

I am ready to declare this conversation pointless since you have established in your own words that you have solid opinions based on "hazy" knowledge and admittedly don't actually have the time to make that less "hazy" by reading anything that might be peer reviewed and critically accepted by the scientific community.

Instead of accusing anyone of being "liars", or of "dodging" issues, or "game playing", I have been honest and forthright about my opinion and my sources.

Given our time on the mat together and our shared desire for certain solutions to other political problems to come to fruition, I have offered you the benefit of the doubt, that you are sincere in your beliefs and a willing debater, but I am not receiving the same in return. I know I am dodging nothing, but I now think you are doing it in spades.

Honestly, Neil, for someone who purports to be interested in the peace process, your approach here to debating issues leaves a lot to be desired. Frankly, I'm disappointed.

Regards,

Neil Mick

08-10-2007, 08:03 PM

Whoah, there, Tarik-san: let's just tone down the rhetoric.

Sorry if you got ruffled when I accused you of being evasive...but please,

I have invited you to read the science and refute the data on more than one occasion, but you accuse me of dodging issues? There is a specific process to "add to science" and your comments don't attempt to actually add anything.

Look, Tarik, you're not getting it. I'm NOT refuting the data...but neither is this "science." Let's be clear...this is a "discussion" about "scientific issues."

If I were arguing with you about the properties of radiation, that's one thing. We could play dueling studies, and cite results from this or that experiment.

But nuclear power involves more than just raw data. Nuclear power is also about the misuse of the contract btw private corporations and the people they serve.

We could well be talking about the history of the Hetch Hetchy plant (SF): as it is comparative. But it's a tangent, never mind...

What am I dodging, a discussion of the empirical data and results? You and David have made specific statements about the non-political results of nuclear science and I have refuted them with actual research data.

No...this is untrue. You have refuted our statements because of a LACK of research data. You dismissed them, because we do not offer data, ourselves.

Is this not true?

Neil, you must have missed my earlier posts in this thread where I listed specific numbers and data concerning the incident in Japan and offered a comparative analysis.

Perhaps I did. This is not a cross-examination. And I'm wondering why you're getting so defensive...:confused:

They are still present to be read. You keep accusing me of not addressing issues I have addressed. You are either not reading my posts completely, or you doing some 'dodging' of your own.

Or...you are not including enough of an uncertainty towards how the nuclear industry will be affected by the energy-wolves who control it now.

OK, you argue that it's apples and oranges. Fine.

I read the article weeks ago. It's says little of substance other than that people are upset. I am not surprised to hear about more public hysteria around nuclear science, particularly in Japan. Tell me, did they deliberately choose to not mention the actual level of contamination caused, or was it just an oversight?

Sorry you missed the point of the article. Please, allow me to elaborate...the High Court, in effect, assured the residents that their fears were unfounded. Lacking substance, because their facts were in error. In essence, their "science" was off.

Get it now...? If not, then let's move on.

You see, Tarik...all I wanted was this:

In sum, then, scientific data MAY be objective, but anyone who understands statistics knows that anyone can interpret ANYTHING from statistics--ESPECIALLY if they have motive.

I totally agree.

some acknowledgement, that there's more than just data, to the equation.

Thank you.

But here you go off the rails:

Instead you attempt to refute things by stating that those who have accomplished them are liars.

Sorry, but you're confusing me with David. I didn't call nuclear scientists, "liars."

That's a meaningless argument, particularly since you don't even know the names of the scientists you are accusing, since you refuse to read their research and to establish them as liars. Your examples of liars only mean something about those specific individuals and what they specifically lied about. I don't recall any of them being accused of lying about nuclear science.

:confused: :confused: huh? :confused:

On numerous occasions I have offered links to peer reviewed research or hard data supporting my current opinions, but you have offered nothing that is peer reviewed except for a single study you clearly did not read before submitted it since it supported my position concerning the safety of radiation.

Um...that was my point. That there is more to nuclear power, than just arguing statistics. But you seem to want to draag me to your battlefield...

Not really interested.

I am ready to declare this conversation pointless

Fair enough. Thank you for an interesting discussion. :straightf

Guilty Spark

08-11-2007, 01:21 AM

I think that means you win Neil ;)

For those of you against nuclear power, how do you feel about submarines and aircraft carriers powered by nuclear?

Also what was the final verdict with motocycle girl. Did she make up the trip?

tarik

08-11-2007, 10:19 AM

Neil,

It has been interesting to encounter another side of you.

It seems that you attribute a lot of emotional stuff to my responses. Perhaps it's the nature of online discussion that it can be more difficult to ascertain the other persons intent than it is in person.

Anyway, thanks for the experience.

Regards,

David Orange

08-20-2007, 08:29 PM

For those of you against nuclear power, how do you feel about submarines and aircraft carriers powered by nuclear?

Also what was the final verdict with motocycle girl. Did she make up the trip?

Grant, it looks like the girl made up the "part" of her story about riding through the nuclear wasteland "alone" on a motorcycle. She did make the trip, in a car, with other people and the wasteland really is there. Also, no one has disproven anything she said about the accident, the radiation released, the zone affected, the uninhabitability of the area, the inedibility of the food or the danger of the soil.

As to military ships powered by nuclear reactors, it still seems a very bad idea. Depending, partly, on who runs the ships. Any idea of how many nuclear reactors now reside at the bottom of the sea on wrecked or decommissioned boats? More than a couple. Any idea how many soviet ships went down due to nuclear disasters onboard? At least one. Any idea how many US nuclear weapons have been lost and never recovered (broken arrows)????

http://www.atomicarchive.com/Almanac/Brokenarrows.shtml

"Since 1950, there have been 32 nuclear weapon accidents, known as "Broken Arrows." A Broken Arrow is defined as an unexpected event involving nuclear weapons that result in the accidental launching, firing, detonating, theft or loss of the weapon. To date, six nuclear weapons have been lost and never recovered."

It has been suggested that American nuclear reactors are safer than soviet ones because of the financial risks a free-market corporation would face due to an accident, but..... This just in:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070820/ap_on_re_us/nuclear_secrets;_ylt=AizT5b674QYwMMQRK30nDs6s0NUE

Quote:
David Orange wrote:
Yet, what happened at Chernobyl???

It can't happen here....it can't happen here....

surely.

I agree. It can't. Surely. Do you know what happened at Chernobyl? What caused it? What could have prevented it? What kind of fail safes exist to prevent it (even in US plants of those days) and how they could possibly fail?

According to that article, it almost did. Looks like my "theory" that it could happen is more than imagination:

"KNOXVILLE, Tenn. - A three-year veil of secrecy in the name of national security was used to keep the public in the dark about the handling of highly enriched uranium at a nuclear fuel processing plant — including a leak that could have caused a deadly, uncontrolled nuclear reaction."

So much for fail-safes, huh? And so much for the superior US handling of nuclear matters compared to the soviets, huh?

"The leak turned out to be one of nine violations or test failures since 2005 at privately owned Nuclear Fuel Services Inc., a longtime supplier of fuel to the U.S. Navy's nuclear fleet."

So this private company was not controlled by the risk of financial repercussions from a failure. And they didn't tell the public about their mishandling of nuclear material or the potential for "a deadly, uncontrolled nuclear reaction."

"In 2004, the government became so concerned about releasing nuclear secrets that the commission removed more than 1,740 documents from its public archive — even some that apparently involved basic safety violations at the company, which operates a 65-acre gated complex in tiny Erwin, about 120 miles north of Knoxville."

I wonder if any of those documents involved Browns Ferry nuclear plant, which just reopened in Alabama? Wonder if they involve any plants near your[/] family?

And I wonder if, just maybe, there is [i]worse going on that they aren't telling us about????

You'd better believe there is....though there's nothing we can do about it. Except oppose any new nuclear plants.

David

jennifer paige smith

08-24-2007, 08:09 AM

Grant, it looks like the girl made up the "part" of her story about riding through the nuclear wasteland "alone" on a motorcycle. She did make the trip, in a car, with other people and the wasteland really is there. Also, no one has disproven anything she said about the accident, the radiation released, the zone affected, the uninhabitability of the area, the inedibility of the food or the danger of the soil.

As to military ships powered by nuclear reactors, it still seems a very bad idea. Depending, partly, on who runs the ships. Any idea of how many nuclear reactors now reside at the bottom of the sea on wrecked or decommissioned boats? More than a couple. Any idea how many soviet ships went down due to nuclear disasters onboard? At least one. Any idea how many US nuclear weapons have been lost and never recovered (broken arrows)????

http://www.atomicarchive.com/Almanac/Brokenarrows.shtml

"Since 1950, there have been 32 nuclear weapon accidents, known as "Broken Arrows." A Broken Arrow is defined as an unexpected event involving nuclear weapons that result in the accidental launching, firing, detonating, theft or loss of the weapon. To date, six nuclear weapons have been lost and never recovered."

It has been suggested that American nuclear reactors are safer than soviet ones because of the financial risks a free-market corporation would face due to an accident, but..... This just in:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070820/ap_on_re_us/nuclear_secrets;_ylt=AizT5b674QYwMMQRK30nDs6s0NUE

Quote:
David Orange wrote:
Yet, what happened at Chernobyl???

It can't happen here....it can't happen here....

surely.

According to that article, it almost did. Looks like my "theory" that it could happen is more than imagination:

"KNOXVILLE, Tenn. - A three-year veil of secrecy in the name of national security was used to keep the public in the dark about the handling of highly enriched uranium at a nuclear fuel processing plant — including a leak that could have caused a deadly, uncontrolled nuclear reaction."

So much for fail-safes, huh? And so much for the superior US handling of nuclear matters compared to the soviets, huh?

"The leak turned out to be one of nine violations or test failures since 2005 at privately owned Nuclear Fuel Services Inc., a longtime supplier of fuel to the U.S. Navy's nuclear fleet."

So this private company was not controlled by the risk of financial repercussions from a failure. And they didn't tell the public about their mishandling of nuclear material or the potential for "a deadly, uncontrolled nuclear reaction."

"In 2004, the government became so concerned about releasing nuclear secrets that the commission removed more than 1,740 documents from its public archive — even some that apparently involved basic safety violations at the company, which operates a 65-acre gated complex in tiny Erwin, about 120 miles north of Knoxville."

I wonder if any of those documents involved Browns Ferry nuclear plant, which just reopened in Alabama? Wonder if they involve any plants near your[/] family?

And I wonder if, just maybe, there is [i]worse going on that they aren't telling us about????

You'd better believe there is....though there's nothing we can do about it. Except oppose any new nuclear plants.

David

Yeah, and maybe nuclear power and EARTHQUAKES don't mix, either. Call me koo-koo, but does this sound safe to you? Having lived through some flipping big earthquakes ( Loma Prieta 1989, etc... ) I can tell you of the violent, impersonal activity of the earth and the inconsequence of 'strong' buildings. This power plant www.ksby.com/Global/story.asp?S=6797790 was built before they knew that there was a huge fault underneath. When that sucker blows we'll talk about safety and whose 'fault' is it. We've all just ducked our heads and have hoped for the best. Sounds like crappy martial arts to me.

As usual,David 'The Christian' Orange get's my vote.

jennifer paige smith

08-24-2007, 08:24 AM

/www.aikiweb.com/forums/showthread.php?t=12841&page=2

David Orange

08-24-2007, 09:12 AM

Yeah, and maybe nuclear power and EARTHQUAKES don't mix, either. Call me koo-koo, but does this sound safe to you? Having lived through some flipping big earthquakes ( Loma Prieta 1989, etc... ) I can tell you of the violent, impersonal activity of the earth and the inconsequence of 'strong' buildings.

I sat through some scary times in Japan 1990-95 and was there when the Kobe earthquake hit (not in Kobe, fortunately). In that earthquake, skyscrapers fell over like trees! Some had the bottom few floors collapse like pancakes and the buildings dropped straight down two or three floors, crushing whomever and whatmever was in there! 5,000 people died from fires while they were trapped for several days in the wreckage.

This power plant www.ksby.com/Global/story.asp?S=6797790 was built before they knew that there was a huge fault underneath. When that sucker blows we'll talk about safety and whose 'fault' is it. We've all just ducked our heads and have hoped for the best. Sounds like crappy martial arts to me.

I remember my teacher in college, Ed Passerini, talking about the Diablo Canyon plant back in the 70s, when it was still an evil gleam in the devil's eye. Ed, by the way, built the world's first solar-powered car, back about 1977, and has continued experimentation along that line ever since:

http://www.speedace.info/bluebird_1977.htm

As for Diablo Canyon, I wrote a song about it back in the day. The chorus goes:

"And they broke Jackson Browne's wrist when they arrested him.
They broke the wrist of Mrs. Betty Price.
They broke the wrist of an old man whose name was Leonard Green.
When it comes to gold, their hearts are cold as ice!"

And the wrist-breaking really did happen, including Jackson Browne!
Apparently, the police were using something like kotegaeshi to make people sitting down in the protest crowd get up and move. These people, never having experienced this kind of thing, didn't know how to move, so their wrists broke!

As usual,David 'The Christian' Orange get's my vote.

I appreciate your vote, but I do want to stress that I'm not taking any position based purely on religion and especially NOT to oppose anyone due to a perception that they might be of a different religious persuasion than myself.

I respect everyone who is sincere and do not oppose anyone's religious faith or expression as long as it doesn't involve killing anyone or denying them their human rights!

Thanks and Best Wishes to All!

David

jennifer paige smith

08-25-2007, 10:50 AM

I appreciate your vote, but I do want to stress that I'm not taking any position based purely on religion and especially NOT to oppose anyone due to a perception that they might be of a different religious persuasion than myself.

I respect everyone who is sincere and do not oppose anyone's religious faith or expression as long as it doesn't involve killing anyone or denying them their human rights!

Thanks and Best Wishes to All!

David

Hello,
I certainly don't take you that way, but it probably is a good thing to say because some people might.

My 'nickname' and vote weren't really meant to be literal, but were intended to be spirited and friendly.Kind of like a mexican wrestling team. I think you know that, though:) .
I was thinking last evening that i hoped you didn't mind the liberty I took with your name.
My feelings surrounding issues of faith and religion sound similar to what you have said above.

It might be significant to mention that my Uncle was a supervisor of a nuclear power plant ,San Onofre, for many years.
So many directions in one family, huh?
Kind of like this aikido family we have on line here.

It is important to note that the conditions that create Liquifaction are being researched in California because we have similar conditions to Kobe.
(www.es.ucsc.edu/~es10/fieldtripEarthQ/Damage1.html)

tarik

08-25-2007, 05:39 PM

It has been suggested that American nuclear reactors are safer than soviet ones because of the financial risks a free-market corporation would face due to an accident, but..... This just in:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070820/ap_on_re_us/nuclear_secrets;_ylt=AizT5b674QYwMMQRK30nDs6s0NUE

Quote:
David Orange wrote:
Yet, what happened at Chernobyl???

It can't happen here....it can't happen here....

surely.

According to that article, it almost did. Looks like my "theory" that it could happen is more than imagination:

"KNOXVILLE, Tenn. - A three-year veil of secrecy in the name of national security was used to keep the public in the dark about the handling of highly enriched uranium at a nuclear fuel processing plant — including a leak that could have caused a deadly, uncontrolled nuclear reaction."

Let's quote something from later in the article also:

Some 35 liters, or just over 9 gallons, of highly enriched uranium solution leaked from a transfer line into a protected glovebox and spilled onto the floor. The leak was discovered when a supervisor saw a yellow liquid "running into a hallway" from under a door, according to one document.

The commission said there were two areas, the glovebox and an old elevator shaft, where the solution potentially could have collected in such a way to cause an uncontrolled nuclear reaction.

"It is likely that at least one worker would have received an exposure high enough to cause acute health effects or death," the agency wrote.

Comparing this incident with something like Chernobyl is rather like comparing a car nearly hitting a pedestrian with a 50 car pileup on the interstate and using that as an argument against the technology.

So much for fail-safes, huh? And so much for the superior US handling of nuclear matters compared to the soviets, huh?

No one was actually injured, right? Sounds like something worked to prevent the incidents from escalating.

FWIW, had Chernobyl built a containment building, a requirement in the rest of the world, the explosion would not have contaminated the environment. Finally, as horrible as the event was, I find this interesting:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_accident
Fauna and vegetation

After the disaster, four square kilometres of pine forest in the immediate vicinity of the reactor turned ginger brown and died, earning the name of the "Red Forest", according to the BBC.[28] Some animals in the worst-hit areas also died or stopped reproducing. Most domestic animals were evacuated from the exclusion zone, but horses left on an island in the Pripyat River 6 km from the power plant died when their thyroid glands were destroyed by radiation doses of 150-200 Sv.[29] Some cattle on the same island died and those that survived were stunted because of thyroid damage. The next generation appeared to be normal.[29]

In the years since the disaster, the exclusion zone abandoned by humans has become a haven for wildlife, with nature reserves declared (Belarus) or proposed (Ukraine) for the area. Many species of wild animals and birds, which were never seen in the area prior to the disaster, are now plentiful, due to the absence of humans in the area.[28]

And I wonder if, just maybe, there is worse going on that they aren't telling us about????

You'd better believe there is....though there's nothing we can do about it. Except oppose any new nuclear plants.

It's impossible to prove that something doesn't exist. When you have the evidence, I'll be listening with interest.

Regards,

David Orange

08-25-2007, 06:13 PM

It's impossible to prove that something doesn't exist. When you have the evidence, I'll be listening with interest.

Let's hope the "proof" leaves us around and able to talk and listen.

Regards.

David

tarik

08-26-2007, 10:22 PM

Let's hope the "proof" leaves us around and able to talk and listen.

Isn't that the essence of our different points of view, that I'm confident that we will be, and that you are not? ;)

Regards,

David Orange

08-27-2007, 11:52 AM

Isn't that the essence of our different points of view, that I'm confident that we will be, and that you are not? ;)

Sure, but you seem to be confident in the "engineering" and the "science" of the whole enterprise without sufficient consideration that the engineering and science are then placed in the hands of corporate corner-cutters. Dilbert's boss is ultimately in charge.

So I think it's just a matter of time before we have the equivalent of Chernobyl in the US.

Sadly.

David

tarik

08-27-2007, 12:33 PM

Sure, but you seem to be confident in the "engineering" and the "science" of the whole enterprise without sufficient consideration that the engineering and science are then placed in the hands of corporate corner-cutters. Dilbert's boss is ultimately in charge.

Given that much TMI and Chernobyl occurred largely because of human error and that much of the engineering and science since have gone into developing systems that have fail safes that reduce, or where possible, eliminate the ability of human error being able to lead to a meltdown; then yes, I do have some confidence. But I have also already acknowledged the fallibility of human beings and that, basically, "shit happens".

So I think it's just a matter of time before we have the equivalent of Chernobyl in the US.

However, given how few people died in Chernobyl and how the environment around Chernobyl is already recovering in remarkable ways (impossible according to some), and given that the fact that over a dozen natural reactors have been discovered in recent years that ran off and on for several hundred thousand years in less than ideal environmental conditions with respect to groundwater and environmental contamination and that the environment appears not the worse for it, I'd say that while I'm concerned that something might occur, I'm not all that freaked out about the consequences compared to what we're doing in many other areas instead, that, IMO, have a far more significant consequences.

Regards,

David Orange

08-27-2007, 03:36 PM

I do have some confidence... But I have also already acknowledged the fallibility of human beings and that, basically, "shit happens".

But "radioactive shit" we can do without. When we know it's likely to happen, why set it up?

How much of the US are we prepared to cordon of for...how many years? Is the area around Chernobyl habitable again? How long before it is?

We could afford the Kyoto Accords better than we can afford that.

David

David Orange

08-25-2011, 06:50 PM

...I'm not all that freaked out about the consequences compared to what we're doing in many other areas instead, that, IMO, have a far more significant consequences.

How do you feel about the current consequences in Fukushima, Tarik--and the outlook for the future?

Best.

David

David Orange

08-25-2011, 08:19 PM

This violates my understanding of physics. ...IMO, today's global warming, if it is human caused, can be attributed to the modern environmental movement which has actively prevented the growth and use of nuclear power in favor of burning coal and natural gas, which have significant environmental cost including the atomization of more uranium into the atmosphere each year than any nuclear power plant has ever exposed the environment to.

I wonder if that's still true, considering what has been spewing out of Fukushima for the past several months....

Also, I don't think the environmental movement has really been "in favor" of burning coal and gas. Everyone knows those things aren't good, but it's sort of like, Do you prefer that your kids not play with matches or that they not play with welding torches?

As Fukushima shows, when it goes bad, it goes much worse than bad.

David

David Orange

08-25-2011, 08:49 PM

First of all, Nuclear power plants are not as dangerous as you'd think...Nuclear bombs explode, Nuclear power plant simmer water, causing steam. Nuclear power plants create more energy for society, extremely lower amounts of waste per plant (compared to coal).

I think we'll have to recalibrate your scale, after Fukushima. I think the whole situation just reversed.

In the USA right now, we currently have 101 Nuclear plants. they supply about 20% of our power. How many coal plants do we have? If we switched to nuclear power, we could spend less money on energy, have more, and, believe it or not, it would be better for the air and less maintenance.

Still think that?

So far, there have only been 2 Nuclear power plants around the world that have malfunctioned (exploded). Think about 2, vs the thousands of plants that affect people and cause more pollution, extra waste and less efficiancy.

What a difference a day makes, huh? Now we have SIX (6) reactors blown off the charts and the radiation is growing at an incalculable rate.

As you can see, Nuclear Plants output the least amount or so called harmful materials, while providing the most power.

(But, just in case of an explosion, these plants should probably be placed a certain mileage away from society)

Like, maybe...on the moon?

David

08-25-2011, 09:14 PM

I think we'll have to recalibrate your scale, after Fukushima. I think the whole situation just reversed.
Still think that?
What a difference a day makes, huh? Now we have SIX (6) reactors blown off the charts and the radiation is growing at an incalculable rate.
Like, maybe...on the moon?
David
Make a percentage of risk that is a calculable choice then.
Now we have coal fired electrical plants spewing mercury into the water and Sulfur Dioxide into the air, poisoning the world.

Now add in all the people who want to go home at 5:00 and plug in their "green cars" as they walk in and turn on their air conditioners and think they are saving the planet... as the coal fired plants serve them electricity.
We have Windmills that are killing the raptor population (including about a hundred bald eagles a year in the US alone).
What the hell kind of plans are these? Everything is a trade off.
It may sound great on the tee vee, but it's no plan. We don't have a plan, we haven't through effective solutions yet. We have air craft carriers and Subs running on Nuclear power for 30 years. We can do it right, if we tried.
No real argument from me either way, Dave. I'm hopeful someone comes up with more effective solutions.
All the best
Dan

David Orange

08-25-2011, 09:26 PM

I'm not so sure it's 'uninhabitable', personally, but let's say it is. How does the Chernobyl make a relevant example when it violated known safe designs and known safety procedures of the time, which were lower than today's standards?

Hmmmmm........looks like "today's standards" weren't very high after all, were they? A nuclear plant on an earthquake fault line, and within the known elevation of tsunami destruction....

That's some pretty pathetic standards, don't you think?

The relevance to me is only that if you do something stupid, you can expect disastrous results.

How about if you do several stupid things and propel them through several decades of corporate lies....

Uh, oh! Here comes the the plutonium!

I'll certainly agree with you that if you don't build a nuclear power plant at all, you won't even have the possibility of such a disaster, but what alternative do you offer?

My alternative? Maybe a world without plutonium exposure????

I like solar energy, but it isn't economically feasible on the scale required.

Two points: the Fukushima disaster dwarfs the economies you rely on; and I think you've confused "required" with "sold". Humanity has to recognize that too much of a good thing is not good anymore.

Geothermal is cool (hot?), but why is it ok to use nuclear energy when the planet provides it, but not when humans do? And it only works in a few locations.

Geothermal is solar--not nuclear. Of course, it's "nuclear" at the sun, but that's a whole different meaning than refinement of radioactive fuels on earth. Geothermal is, essentially, solar.

I would have no problem living near a plant, but there's so much uninhabited land in the US that this is hardly worth being entered into the argument one way or the other.

First, that's a luxury that Japan does not have; second, it's not a luxury that the US has, either; third, even from a plant about 10,000 miles away, we're getting radiation in the US. The meaning? There's no place big enough to put a nuke plant to make it safe.

I do agree, that another incident is inevitable. However, in 60+ years, the only incident of significance has occurred when people deliberately ignored known safety designs and protocols. And that incident has caused less damage and deaths than a lot of other natural and human caused disasters that I can think of that we are happy to allow and even defend in our lives.

Well, you've been proven right at least that another "incident" was inevitable. Will you also agree that yet another incident is also inevitable? It is. As long as we have nuclear plants, there will be more accidents. And when we know that, can we really call these "accidents"?

No. It's all negligent homicide.

This has been seriously considered, especially since 9/11. So let's assume that they get through all the background checks required to work at the controls of nuclear plant. I mean, anything is possible, right?

Let's also consider that the Three Mile Island incident was caused largely by human errors and that automatic safety equipment that they cannot disable is largely what prevented a disaster.

Let's also consider that lessons learned from that incident and other studies and incidents over time have caused numerous design changes and changes to safety procedures.

First, Terrorists don't have to get a job in a nuclear plant. The could just drive right up to most American plants and shoot their way in.

Second, the main human error is simply to build a nuclear plant to begin with. And automatic safety equipment did not help in Fukushima. Besides, now, they think that the earthquake itself fractured the reactor containment vessels--not the "hydrogen explosions". So, already, your arguments are falling down.

Third, the numerous "design changes" and "changes to safety procedures" left us with a nuclear plant on a fault line within reach of tsunamis....and Fukushima is not the only plant built this way. And all these "upgrades" for safety didn't stop them from putting spent fuel rods on the roof of the vulnerable reactor buildings....

Really, if people understood just how flimsy our nuclear safeguards are....all nuclear plants would be shut down tomorrow.

Go read some of the supplied references above about how a nuclear plant functions and the different kinds of accidents that can occur and what some of the safeguards there are and then you tell me, how much damage could they really do?

Why don't you tell me? Somehow I doubt that your supplied references mentioned any of the factors that destroyed four reactors at Fukushima. Did they?

Honestly, it sounds to me like an argument made based on fear rather than knowledge and an analysis of real risk factors, at least based the facts you offer as a counter point so far.

Still so certain about that?

BTW, worse quakes several years ago in India didn't even cause enough vibration to shut down some of the high tech hardened plants there, much less cause a leak. They put the buildings on rollers.

It's just a matter of Time, Tarik. Nature will produce the necessary Perfect Storm.

I agree that one cannot account for all possible accidents, but I'd also say all current evidence suggests that the dangers are largely predictable and manageable, particularly compared to many of the alternatives.

Sadly, it's been the anti-nuclear people who have "predicted" the disasters and the nuclear plant operators' "management" has been mostly restriction of information.

Sarcasm feels good, but isn't so useful in making a real factual point.

I don't know about that. Sometimes, sarcasm is the only way to tell the real truth when corporate money machines whip up their own PR reality. Of course, sarcasm can't stand up to the billions of dollars the corporations pour into standing up their lies...but once a few of those lies are knocked down, people might at least understand the truth of the sarcasm.

It's not a conspiracy that prevents cheap and easily renewable electricity from succeeding. If the economies of scale are there, it will radically change the energy industry, and the industry knows it and is actively researching many more sources of cheap and easily renewable energy because they know that if it can be found, they will make that huge profit that Neil mentioned and seems to find deplorable.

Are you read to deal with the truth now, Tarik?

It is corporate conspiracy that props up nuclear power and spreads BS about the alternatives.

The pioneers that are using bio-diesel and other sources are admirable and far sighted and may be on the cutting edge of future energy sources, but today they pay far more than the average consumer for their energy and also refuse to acknowledge the environmental impacts of their sources which are negligible today largely because the scale is minuscule.

And that's because corporate interests have lobbied the lawmakers to favor nuclear and coal. It's not one or the other. Those two industries are both trying to assassinate the alternatives. It's taken a world-spanning nuclear tragedy to blow a hole in that crap. Maybe now we can get down to real economies instead of corporate cut-out "economies".

David

David Orange

08-25-2011, 09:30 PM

I'm not sure about what everyone here believes about global warming, but if you'll notice, nuclear plants make the least amount of emmisons, and waste, overall.

I think Fukushima has melted your argument down and it's now burning it's way toward China....

David Orange

08-25-2011, 09:40 PM

David, now I know that you must be arguing from a position of ignorance about how a nuclear power plant functions.

No. I think I have the basics pretty well within my grasp.

Do you realize that a nuclear explosion cannot result from the materials used in a nuclear power plant?

As I've said so many times, I know that a nuclear plant won't go off like a nuclear bomb, but they can "explode". And that's quite bad enough.

A meltdown would be quite a disaster, but unless there was a containment breach, which is extremely unlikely, even if a plant was hit by airplanes similar to what hit the towers on 9/11, it would almost entirely mostly be an economic disaster for the company who owns the plant.

Extremely unlikely? It appears that we've had four (4) containment breaches since you wrote that. So which of us misapprehended the facts? And do you really think that TEPCO has been the worst victim of this disaster?

Even then, the scope of the disaster would be nothing remotely like a nuclear device set off in a populated region, which I personally think is the far more likely danger we face and need to address.

Well, sure, the people of Fukushima were not incinerated, but their homes are now gone, for all intents and purposes, and within weeks you will see a much larger "forbidden zone" in Japan...so it seems that this kind of disaster was and remains "far more likely" than a nuclear bomb incident. Don't you think?

Your 'fact' that the waste cannot be safely handled is based on what? The accidents that have occurred?

No, it's based on how they actually handle nuclear waste. And I said that before I knew they were storing spent fuel rods on top of reactor buildings.

But now it turns out that the exposed spent fuel danger was actually dwarfed by how they were handling the "live" stuff.

Still, I say it cannot be handled safely for the full span of centuries it will take to render the waste truly "harmless".

Best.

David

tarik

08-28-2011, 04:33 PM

Hi David,

Quite a rant there. I do understand where you are coming from, why you think that your position is vindicated, and why you care so much. I care as well. However, I have to say that from my point of view, your response is clearly rooted in fear [of radiation]. For me, what is happening at Fukushima merely reinforces and validates my prior research and point of view, notwithstanding that this incident is a tragedy.

Let me explain.

To date, how many people have died as a direct consequence of the Fukushima meltdowns? None. That would, to be clear, be the number zero (0). Even if some die, this matches the risk estimates by the RSS that there will be no detectable deaths (ie: acute radiation poisoning, an incredibly rare disease) in 98 our of 100 meltdowns. (ref: http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter6.html). It's rare enough that it has not happened in 45+ years in the US.

20,000+ dead or missing due to the quake and tsunami, but not a single person killed by acute radiation sickness from Fukushima, not even the so called 'doomed' heroic workers that the media said were going to die in weeks or months, but now don't discuss at all.

Here is a report of the radiation exposure of those 'doomed' workers: "by 13 July, of the approximately 6700 personnel tested so far, 88 personnel have received between 100 and 150 mSv, 14 have received between 150 and 200 mSv, 3 have received between 200 and 250 mSv, and 6 have received above 250 mSv" (ref. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_effects_from_Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster).

To understand what this means actually requires some reading and research, which I will provide, but I will summarize here. The lowest dose that can be clearly linked to increased cancer risk is 100mSv. This means that, so far, 111 people currently have an increased cancer risk (not a death sentence).

What is that risk, BTW? The average risk (it does vary by region) for getting cancer is approximately 20%; the resultant increase in risk from the meltdowns in about one half a percent (0.5%). BTW, only about 1 in 140 fatal cancers are estimated to be caused by radiation, and the primary source of that radiation is generally our friend, the sun. "One blistering sunburn in childhood or adolescence more than doubles a person's chances of developing melanoma later in life. A person's risk for melanoma also doubles if he or she has had five or more sunburns at any age." (ref. http://www.skincancer.org/facts-about-sunburn-and-skin-cancer.html).

Incidentally, this exposure level for the Fukushima workers is about the same as residents of Ramsar, Iran (and other similar places in the world) who frequent the radioactive hot springs there and are exposed to as much as 260mSv in a year. Interestingly, the cancer rates there are about 35% below average, which merely demonstrates clearly that radiation is statistically not a primary cause for cancers, in general.

Let's address the land. Land declared contaminated by nuclear incidents is based upon the following standard: "This level corresponds roughly to doubling or tripling the average lifetime dose that would be received from natural radiation and medical X-rays, or 2 to 5 times as much extra radiation as would be received by the average American from moving to Colorado. It is still 4 to 10 times less than the natural radiation received by people living in some areas of India and Brazil. Studies of these people have given no evidence of health problems from their radiation exposure." What is also not talked about is that even in the worst cases, 90% of this land can be cleaned using fire hoses and by plowing. So standards are so incredibly cautious, they are almost absurd. As disastrous as Chernobyl was, had Chernobyl had a containment chamber, people would still be living there and we may have never heard of the incident.

What it all boils down to is how does our use of technology increase risk and shorten (or lengthen) our lifespan. NRC's well researched numbers demonstrate a loss of life expectancy (average across the entire population) of 0.04 days if all of our electricity was generated by nuclear power. Even using the UCS (Union of Concerned Scientists, nuclear opposition group) different numbers, we can arrive at a loss of life expectancy of 1.5 days. This just edges out the dangers of eating a tablespoon of peanut butter (which contains a toxin that causes liver cancer) each day and is still orders of magnitude less dangerous than bycicles, automobiles, and coal power, all of which are considered worth the cost to our lives because of the ways that they improve our lives. BTW, UCS's numbers predict that we would have had 5-6 meltdowns in the US alone by now, and we haven't had one. This may be why UCS has transformed over the last 20+ years from a nuclear opposition group to an industry watchdog group.. because they too realize that the science didn't bear out their original positions.

Incidentally, living near a coal fired plant results in a significantly higher exposure to radiation than living near a nuclear plan. Radiation from coal burning, which concentrates uranium and thorium and ejects some into the atmosphere and the slurry heaps is not regulated. In addition to the air pollution, coal is vastly more dangerous. When comparing lives lost, or more accurately, life expectancy lost (in days), "for nuclear accidents to be as dangerous as coal burning, we would have to experience a meltdown every 5 days." (ref: http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter6.html).

Finally, to address a few more of your comments/questions.

1. Fukushima was NOT a modern design. It was a 40+ year old design that should have been retired a couple of years ago and replaced by the more modern designs I previously mentioned.

2. Human incompetence notwithstanding, it took the largest earthquake in Japanese history (one of the largest ever measured) to cause the meltdowns, not human errors.

3. The technology and ability to handle the waste safely exists, but there is no political will to do the right thing. Nuclear plants are forced to store fuel on the grounds because unanticipated politics have stopped the planned disposal processes and parked fuel waste on site. Politics that have created the ticking time bomb, instead of solving it.

Geothermal is solar--not nuclear. Of course, it's "nuclear" at the sun, but that's a whole different meaning than refinement of radioactive fuels on earth. Geothermal is, essentially, solar.

Sorry, David, but geothermal energy is NOT solar energy, it is largely nuclear. It results from energy stored from the formation of the planet, natural radioactive decay, and volcanic activity, not from absorbing solar radiation.

I offer the following links for you all to do your own reading and research.

http://www.amazon.com/Nuclear-Energy-Option-Alternative-90s/dp/0306435675
(Written by an academic, not a corporate scientist. You can read this online at: http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/index.html - an excellent book that tries to reduce complex science into laymens terms and also examines the data from opponents to nuclear power of the day).

If you're busy, the really good chapters are the ones on How dangerous is Radiation? (chapter 5) and Understanding Risk (Chapter 8) are excellent, but the whole book is worth a good read.

Days of Lost Life Expectancy: http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/lostlife.gif

If you like to get more technical, you can review the following stuff:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Background_radiation

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste

http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/colmain.html

http://skepticalswedishscientists.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/radiation-dose-chart.png

http://lowdose.energy.gov/images/ig_pics/027_dose-ranges-sievert.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2f/Fukushima7.png

http://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/radiation/health-effects/rad-exposure-cancer.html

http://www.ucsusa.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_effects_from_Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster

There are tons more that are easy to find.

Best,

dps

08-28-2011, 05:08 PM

This post is in no way intended to make frivolous the serious nature of the situation in Japan but directed at David Orange's rant.

It is like most of his political posts, wrought with lack of understanding and lots of exaggeration. His posts reminds me of this;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AOspwNxjtE

dps

tarik

08-28-2011, 05:48 PM

Tenyu

08-29-2011, 12:02 AM

Introducing <<< Pluto-kun! (http://youtu.be/RTNKFHQexSI?t=5m38s) >>>

I recommend watching the preceding expert testimonies.

For much needed comic relief - Takashi Uesugi (http://youtu.be/-uE3sYMq0xI)

David Orange

08-30-2011, 10:44 AM

Sorry about the grammatical and spelling errors, my post was off the cuff and it's now past the deadline for editing it. Re-reading it shows a number of such errors, but fortunately, none that render any of the data inaccurate.

I suppose that, technically, all you said was "sort of" accurate--like "a nuclear plant cannot explode..."

Ever since this incident began, we've been told that it wasn't serious, that the releases were low level, that the cores hadn't melted, no containment had been breached....

Yet as time goes by, all those statements are revealed as false and, in many cases, intentionally misleading.

We've seen all kinds of assurances melt away as time passes and the disaster gets steadily worse.

Since you told me a nuclear plant can't explode and that reactor containment vessels will protect us, we've seen reactors explode and containment vessels breached. You say "It took a huge earthquake..." but whose idea was it to build that thing on an earthquake fault? And in reach of tsunamis? What can you call that except human error?

People (especially acting in the nterests of corporations and salesmen) are not smart enough to operate nuclear power plants. Whatever safeguard you think exists, nature and human folly will eventually combine to destroy them.

Now you tell me there were "no deaths" in the Fukishima incident, making the tsunami and earthquake far worse in effect.

But radiation kills over time and you won't go wrong by betting that we'll see scores of deaths from this incident over the next couple of years.

I'll grant you know a lot about the subject, but, unfortunately, nature has shown the most important parts of what you've said here to be wrong.

Or maybe you'd like to spend a few weeks in the Fukushima exclusion zone with your motorcycle? Send us some pics?

None of the nuclear apologists here have accepted that challenge so far. I wonder why?

David

Tenyu

08-30-2011, 06:42 PM

There's a huge fallacy in Tarik's argument, which not to be disrespectful does sound like a well-crafted TEPCO public relations release. The effects of normal external background, solar, and x-ray radiation can't be compared to internal deposition of radioactive hot particles which the Japanese and Americans have been inhaling and ingesting since the beginning of the accident.

From wiki, "the intensity of radiation passing through any unit area (directly facing the point source) is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the point source."

Duration of exposure also needs considered. Once you leave an area of external radiation, there's no more radiation. Once you inhale a hot particle of cesium in your lung it will be destroying the cells and DNA of localized lung tissue for the rest of your life and continue releasing radiation long after you've been converted into ashes.

I haven't been able to find the report from a few months back, but TEPCO said there were around 10 or 20 workers at the site who were missing and they couldn't account for. This doesn't mean any or all of them are dead or alive but their whereabouts have never been mentioned since. TEPCO said a worker died couple weeks ago from leukemia (link (http://jen.jiji.com/jc/eng?g=eco&k=2011083000421)) whether excessive radiation had anything to do with that we obviously can't know. But we do know both workers and their doctors have said their official exposure rates are far less than what they're actually getting so they can report under the 250 ms limit and continue working.

Perhaps only a million Japanese will die of cancer from the accident, luckily for them as much as 80% of the fallout has gone over the Pacific with a certain percentage of that reaching the states. We probably won't be seeing many cases of severely deformed babies in Japan unlike Chernobyl because they'll almost all be aborted. Video on abortions. (http://youtu.be/r2dghS1otAw)

David Orange

09-02-2011, 09:20 AM

2. Human incompetence notwithstanding, it took the largest earthquake in Japanese history (one of the largest ever measured) to cause the meltdowns, not human errors.

"The risk that an earthquake would cause a severe accident at a U.S. nuclear plant is greater than previously thought, 24 times as high in one case, according to an AP analysis of preliminary government data. The nation's nuclear regulator believes a quarter of America's reactors may need modifications to make them safer."

"...shaking from the largest earthquake to hit Virginia in 117 years appeared to exceed what the North Anna nuclear power plant northwest of Richmond was built to sustain."

http://news.yahoo.com/quake-risk-reactors-greater-thought-071301249.html

Let us not talk falsely, now. The hour is getting late...

tarik

09-03-2011, 10:40 PM

There's a huge fallacy in Tarik's argument, .... The effects of normal external background, solar, and x-ray radiation can't be compared to internal deposition of radioactive hot particles which the Japanese and Americans have been inhaling and ingesting since the beginning of the accident.

No fallacy there, Tenyu. Radiation is radiation. The difference between ingesting in and external exposure as a problem is entirely due to the ongoing dangerous exposure. There is nothing in the data I shared that ignores that. All radiation exposure is considered by duration, and the risk calculations, had you actually read them, discuss that.

I haven't been able to find the report from a few months back, but TEPCO said there were around 10 or 20 workers at the site who were missing and they couldn't account for.

All the current reports of dead workers are due to non-radioactive causes.

But we do know both workers and their doctors have said their official exposure rates are far less than what they're actually getting so they can report under the 250 ms limit and continue working.

We KNOW this?

Perhaps only a million Japanese will die of cancer from the accident, luckily for them as much as 80% of the fallout has gone over the Pacific with a certain percentage of that reaching the states. We probably won't be seeing many cases of severely deformed babies in Japan unlike Chernobyl because they'll almost all be aborted. Video on abortions. (http://youtu.be/r2dghS1otAw)

We don't know how many people will die of cancers from the accident. One million is certainly possible, but only epidemiological studies will validate that. Only time will really reveal that. I personally don't think it will happen, but I don't know.

Best,

tarik

09-03-2011, 11:10 PM

David,

You threw a volley of accusatory comments and questions at me in half a dozen posts and I am willing to answer a few of those questions, but frankly, you clearly lack the desire to process the scientific data I (and others in other threads) have already offered, or even in disagreeing with me, you would not have made many of the statements you have made. Some of the data I offered even comes from the UCS, a nuclear opposition group of academic scientists.

I suppose that, technically, all you said was "sort of" accurate--like "a nuclear plant cannot explode..."

I'll simply assume that your zeal and concern for the Japanese people are what cause to make statements that one might otherwise interpret as deliberate lies or misinterpretations intended to be provocative. IOW, I'll assume you actually believe that I said that (and yes, I know the post that you are referring to).

You argue convincingly for humanity, and it's clear that you care about them. I do also. However, when it comes to stuff like this, I don't make my decisions based upon appeals to emotion, and hysteria generating comments about what's going to happen next. I rely upon data. In the absence of data, I will happily take an abundance of precaution.. but we are not operating with a paucity of hard data.

People (especially acting in the nterests of corporations and salesmen) are not smart enough to operate nuclear power plants. Whatever safeguard you think exists, nature and human folly will eventually combine to destroy them.

Now you tell me there were "no deaths" in the Fukishima incident, making the tsunami and earthquake far worse in effect.

And yet, you do not deny it.

But radiation kills over time and you won't go wrong by betting that we'll see scores of deaths from this incident over the next couple of years.

Scores. This is the most accurate thing that you have said.

I'll grant you know a lot about the subject, but, unfortunately, nature has shown the most important parts of what you've said here to be wrong.

Let me make this really simple for you (since you obviously refuse to read even the academic research I offered). Electricity and industrialization are one of the strongest reasons for our extended lifespans in the developed countries of the world. Everywhere they are prevalent, humanity, on average, has increased, if not their maximum lifespan, their average lifespan by more than 30 years.

So even based upon historical data, the deadliness of coal is worth the price humanity pays for it. How much does it pay?

For every single death that occurs due to our dabbling with nuclear power generation, coal cause 4025 deaths. Oil, 900 deaths. Even hydroelectric has a higher number (35). Even if a million people die due to the meltdowns at Fukushima, the ratio doesn't change very much at all. As I mentioned before, to catch up, we would have to have a meltdown every five days. The calculations and how they were made are present in the links I already offered for you to criticize or demonstrate wrong. Feel free because real science always welcomes such analysis.

Every incident that occurs validates your opinion, but it also validates mine, because I never asserted that incidents will not happen, or that companies are not corrupt, or that cheating does not happen. It's simple.. in terms of human life, I assert that the price is worth paying, because there is no alternative that costs less in terms of human lives.

Enjoy your life, David. No one else can.

David Orange

09-07-2011, 02:41 PM

Tenyu. Radiation is radiation. The difference between ingesting in and external exposure as a problem is entirely due to the ongoing dangerous exposure. There is nothing in the data I shared that ignores that. All radiation exposure is considered by duration, and the risk calculations, had you actually read them, discuss that.

All the current reports of dead workers are due to non-radioactive causes.

We KNOW this? (workers' official exposure lower than actual exposure)

We don't know how many people will die of cancers from the accident. One million is certainly possible, but only epidemiological studies will validate that. Only time will really reveal that. I personally don't think it will happen, but I don't know.

I don't dispute any of your figures but I do dismiss the context they are considered in and the results of such consideration.

It's just haggling over the price of sold-out virtue.

Will it be a million deaths or only 750,000? I've read that a million deaths or more have resulted from Chernobyl.

The point is, these four fractured nuclear reactors continue to spew nuclear core material into the environment. There is nothing good about this in any way. The best estimates are that this condition will continue for decades. Unless it gets worse. And the black mark made by the point is that it is already worse and it's getting worser.

Still, it won't be the end of the world, will it? Isn't that your point? The scattered material isn't that dangerous. It won't cause that much harm. But you and Katherine seem to have taken a "snapshot" evaluation of the problem and used the earliest corporate accounts of the matter as actual truth.

But given the current situation, rational people have to ask, regardless of what the corporations and governments claim, how many such places as Chernobyl and Fukushima can we take? How many more should we accept?

Have you read about the New Madrid fault and what has happened in previous quakes there? Have you heard what's been reported about the North Anna plant, in Virginia?

http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2011/09/02/officials-admit-concealing-north-anna-nuclear-fuel-bunker-damage-feds-launch-core-damage-inspection-67151

And they've had problems already with tritium leaking into the groundwater.

I think we can expect five more blow-ups like Fukushima within the decade. What if New Madrid blows two or three different plants at the same time?

Nuclear power is inherently unsafe and it cannot be controlled by human beings against the ravages of nature.

That's the true truth.

David

David Orange

09-07-2011, 03:26 PM

You threw a volley of accusatory comments and questions at me in half a dozen posts and I am willing to answer a few of those questions, but frankly, you clearly lack the desire to process the scientific data I (and others in other threads) have already offered, or even in disagreeing with me, you would not have made many of the statements you have made. Some of the data I offered even comes from the UCS, a nuclear opposition group of academic scientists.

As I just posted, it's not your data. It's the context within which you consider those data and analyze them--the profit paradigm. Nuclear plants cannot even be fully safe if designed and built by scientists for scientific purposes, designed to withstand every contingency. But for-profit companies can place reactors in clusters on fault lines, within reach of tsunamis, and store the used fuel rods in tanks on the roof! They can and have allowed underground pipes to leak nuclear material into the ground. They can and have had leaks and spills.

Chernobyl highlighted human error in operation of the plant and there are claims that over a million people have died because of it.

Fukushima highlighted human error in design and location of the plant. It proved that nuclear plants can and indeed do "explode".

North Anna shows that there is serious potential for multiple similar incidents here in the United States, specifically the clusters of plants in the New Madrid region.

You are giving me streams of numbers relating to theoretical operation of plants within limited parameters. I'm telling you that those parameters do not relate to the real world over time. The risks rise exponentially with the dimension of time. So that is why I say your statements are "sort of" accurate, like "a nuclear power plant cannot explode..."

I'll simply assume that your zeal and concern for the Japanese people are what cause to make statements that one might otherwise interpret as deliberate lies or misinterpretations intended to be provocative.

It's not just the Japanese people. It's the human race, as well as the animal kingdom and the natural dignity of the earth. I hope my explanation above shows why what appears to be distortion is actually truth. Time distorts every original item. I'm simply applying physical time to every theoretical premise you present. The deliberate lies on this subject come from the corporate profit interests and their vested supporters, including the governments of the world. Fukushima is much worse than they have presented. And the best they know is that the actual radiation is off the scale of their instruments. They refuse to apply better instruments, for some reason--or at least to report the more accurate readings. You know that's going on, don't you?

IOW, I'll assume you actually believe that I said that (and yes, I know the post that you are referring to).

Oh. You mean the one where you said something like, "The fact that you believe that a nuclear power plant can explode shows just how little you understand?"

That post?

You didn't say that?

Anyway, I think we can see whether I have any comprehension of this subject. So I take the leisure of tweaking your nose with it.;)

A surfeit of data does not equal understanding if analyzed under unreal suppositions. The fact is, nuclear power plants are not and cannot be made safe for human surroundings.

You argue convincingly for humanity, and it's clear that you care about them. I do also. However, when it comes to stuff like this, I don't make my decisions based upon appeals to emotion, and hysteria generating comments about what's going to happen next. I rely upon data. In the absence of data, I will happily take an abundance of precaution.. but we are not operating with a paucity of hard data.

No, we're just operating with voluminous data framed within false parameters and limited to what the corporate and government interests will admit.

But leaving emotion out of it, to quantify things, how many domestic nuclear accidents of the level of Fukushima do you think Japan can experience and remain a country? Four more? Ten more?

And how many such accidents (of Fukushima severity) can we contain in the US and still consider ourselves to be benefitting from nuclear power?

And yet, you do not deny it. (that there were no deaths in the Fukushima incident).

No, the explosion may have killed some. The tsunami killed some. But the type of release we see at Fukushima will kill people gradually and over a long time. How long? Any guesses?

Now, that's the current condition. There may yet be some event from this multiple meltdown that could release much more concentrated bursts of radiation that will kill people in bunches or expulsions of radioactive materials that will kill more quickly over a very long period of time. The fact that several people have not died quickly does not mean much. We can look five to ten years down for the early long-term effects. And I'll bet we'll see sobering numbers by the one-year mark.

Scores. This is the most accurate thing that you have said.

Scores over the next two years? I'd say 200 to 400 directly linked to this, just wildly guessing.

But what about beyond that, Tarik? It's going to multiply after that, year after year, even as the plant continues to leak material into the environment. So more material will be affecting people and the number will multiply exponentially.

How many such things can Japan survive?

Let me make this really simple for you (since you obviously refuse to read even the academic research I offered). Electricity and industrialization are one of the strongest reasons for our extended lifespans in the developed countries of the world. Everywhere they are prevalent, humanity, on average, has increased, if not their maximum lifespan, their average lifespan by more than 30 years.

I'm sure we'll appreciate those extra thirty years as we thread our way among the exclusion zones.

For every single death that occurs due to our dabbling with nuclear power generation, coal cause 4025 deaths. Oil, 900 deaths. Even hydroelectric has a higher number (35).

You're comparing technologies thousands of years old with something that's only been going a few decades. Nuclear power plants have only begun to explode. I predict five more (at least) in the coming decade.

Even if a million people die due to the meltdowns at Fukushima, the ratio doesn't change very much at all. As I mentioned before, to catch up, we would have to have a meltdown every five days.

To catch up fast, we would. But the deaths generate slowly from nuclear, so their impact is far greater in later years. We only need a few more for the global environmental impact to become intolerable for intelligent people. And we could get five in one day (or many more than that) if (when) the New Madrid fault move again.

Every incident that occurs validates your opinion, but it also validates mine, because I never asserted that incidents will not happen, or that companies are not corrupt, or that cheating does not happen. It's simple.. in terms of human life, I assert that the price is worth paying, because there is no alternative that costs less in terms of human lives.

And I simply point out that you're using very short-term data and that the numbers are about to go off your scale.

David

Enjoy your life, David. No one else can.[/QUOTE]

Tenyu

09-23-2011, 09:34 AM

Introducing <<<Pluto-san! (http://youtu.be/P-4YJfwF1MQ)>>>

Sounds like Tarik. :p

tarik

09-29-2011, 12:23 PM

I haven't responded earlier because I have vastly more important things going on in my life and it's pretty clear that there isn't much of anything to discuss. This is likely my last post on this matter.

The thing about true believers is that they only accept data that matches their belief system and instead of attacking the data itself, they primarily attack those who convey it. A true believer doesn't need proof, they just need to offer meta-arguments (the profit motive and the obvious fact that one can and will always find people who cheat, even in a regulated environment like the nuclear industry) as their proof. They find individual incidents and extrapolate those in an unscientific attempt to use anecdotal evidence as if it were as valid as statistical analysis.

A true believers "proof" is invariably supported by people who are seldom credible scientists who have published papers that manage to create debate in the scientific community. Instead, the "scientist" is invariably someone who is "blacklisted" for their point of view and has to resort to "alternative" sources to get the word out. Makes for a great movie making material, and I'm sure that there might even be a few anecdotes to demonstrate that this is always true and should not be questioned the way a true believer questions the credibility of accepted science. A true believer relies upon sources that sounds logical and agrees with their point of view.

A true believer often resorts to mocking, teasing, insulting, appeals to emotion (usually fear) and attacking the credibility of anyone who speaks up and disagrees with them, sometimes in a very charming manner. There is little point in arguing with a true believer, because facts cannot change their mind.

My conclusion, David is that you are likely a true believer. The alternative is that you have a deliberate agenda and are resorting to deliberate lies in order to attack me or otherwise discredit me, but really, I believe that you are sincere in your beliefs and simply unable to accept any data that might call them into question.

The data I put forth is not mine, so discrediting or mocking me cannot change it. I can only offer my own conclusions for other readers who have not yet made up their own minds, so that they can read through the material (and please read both sides) and decide for themselves.

As I just posted, it's not your data. It's the context within which you consider those data and analyze them--the profit paradigm.

Great example. You don't question the data, but you question it's context which is simply double speak for questioning the data. If you weren't a true believer and you really wanted to get to the bottom of this, you'd read the science and apply your doubts to it and see if those doubts were considered or not. Then you could attack the science, but that's hard work for the true believer. Clearly you didn't read my sources as I provided sources that include PURELY academic research (without a for-profit motive) and and also analyzed data collected by actual scientists who are against nuclear power.

So this merely demonstrates that you don't need to read the science to dismiss it, because it couldn't possibly have analyzed it in the context of which you speak. Clearly false to anyone who read the references. This is an example of true believer type behavior.

Nuclear plants cannot even be fully safe if designed and built by scientists for scientific purposes, designed to withstand every contingency.
...
You are giving me streams of numbers relating to theoretical operation of plants within limited parameters. I'm telling you that those parameters do not relate to the real world over time. The risks rise exponentially with the dimension of time. So that is why I say your statements are "sort of" accurate, like "a nuclear power plant cannot explode..."

Again, obviously you didn't read the link on risk assessment. You'd get a failing grade in school, but at least your rhetorical skills are strong. Your assertion that everyone in favor of nuclear power asserts that nuclear power plants are "fully safe" is a straw man you create because it is easy for you to attack it. Until you read the science. Again, if you read the sources, that is not the claim; the claim is that it is safer than other sources of energy, and that claim is backed up by actual data, which includes considerations that you again assert were not made. Again, attacking the profit motive is not a sufficient argument, particularly since I provided sources that are not solely created by the for-profit industry. In fact, I included a source that also analyzes real data estimates provided by anti-nuclear energy scientists, who have a strong motive to offer data that might make predictions that would validate your point of view (and yet still doesn't as their predictions OVER TIME have been demonstrated as incorrect). Attack the data, if you wish.

Chernobyl highlighted human error in operation of the plant and there are claims that over a million people have died because of it.

Claims, yes, but claims that are currently not accepted as likely correct results in peer reviewed scientific journals.

I'll just chalk up your misquote of what I said here as a true believers re-interpretation instead of a deliberate lie and refer anyone reading to go look at the top of this thread at the real quote in context. I assume that your own laziness is what led you to make such a quote without verifying it.

It's not just the Japanese people. It's the human race, as well as the animal kingdom and the natural dignity of the earth.

The natural dignity of the earth? The earth which has had meltdowns in it's natural history before humans every got involved? The earth that has driven 99% of KNOWN species to extinction, vastly more than humankind has directly impacted?

Well, I grant that the earth has that human quality of dignity, perhaps, but playing this up as if humans were somehow special in our destruction (and/or protection) of the planet is overblown. We have a responsibility to protect the planet is we wish to have a chance to not join that 99%, but the odds are not in our favor, regardless of anything we choose to do or not do.

I hope my explanation above shows why what appears to be distortion is actually truth. Time distorts every original item. I'm simply applying physical time to every theoretical premise you present. The deliberate lies on this subject come from the corporate profit interests and their vested supporters, including the governments of the world.

Your assertion is that the data do not consider applying the obvious dimension of time to it's considerations. Again a demonstration that you didn't read the sources provided and you just made another assumption. And you won't read it, because that would require you to understand and analyze data that you already don't agree with, and instead of taking it in and analyzing or refuting the data on it's merits, you must keep this discussion as a meta-argument. You cannot cite reliable sources, and the meta-argument is that there is a world-wide conspiracy. Very convincing.

Oh. You mean the one where you said something like, "The fact that you believe that a nuclear power plant can explode shows just how little you understand?"

That post?

You didn't say that?

No, I didn't. Great example of a true believer twisting fact to their own ends. Very passive aggressive. Just change a few words makes it clear what you thought I wrote, instead of what I actually wrote. Or else you're deliberately lying. In fact, the very fact that a month ago you did accurately quote me and now you're changing the quote makes me wonder. Is this really how you interpreted what I wrote? Or is this a deliberate lie to discredit me and show how I was wrong about something, so therefore I must be wrong about the rest of what I have presented? It's passive aggressive either way. I do hope it isn't how you train. I would readily admit that I'm wrong, if it were so. I've publicly done so before. In this case, if you go back and read the actual quote and what I was actually discussing, one can see that what I said has been interpreted in a new manner. I leave motive to the observer.

A surfeit of data does not equal understanding if analyzed under unreal suppositions. The fact is, nuclear power plants are not and cannot be made safe for human surroundings.

Q.E.D. You obviously didn't read a any of my sources or your attack of the data would be different.

And how many such accidents (of Fukushima severity) can we contain in the US and still consider ourselves to be benefitting from nuclear power

I already gave out those numbers and a source to go study if they were arrived at in a reasonable manner. We already know you won't read it, so here we go again. To have the same statistical impact on human loss of lifespan as energy derived from coal, we would have to have a meltdown every 5 days or so.

Nuclear power plants have only begun to explode. I predict five more (at least) in the coming decade.

That's a fascinating prediction. According to my previous post, scientists from the UCS offered up their own oppositional data that makes estimates that assert we should have had 5-6 full meltdown level incidents in the US [b]alone[b] by now (after 70+ years of nuclear energy usage). We haven't had even one. How is it that your predictions are so much more accurate than the predictions of scientists who are against the use of nuclear power, yet who's predictive data is also demonstrably incorrect?

True believers at best rely upon pseudo-science to reinforce their belief system and they easily allow every factual point upon which they have been demonstrated incorrect fall aside and be ignored because it's irrelevant to their fundamental truth.. or else they deny whole heartedly being wrong.

Tenyu's sources are interesting and worth reading and watching, however, they make all the same kinds of true believer mistakes in their attempts to analyze and critique the data. They are highly critical of data that does not agree with their beliefs, but accept without critique or analysis, the data that agrees with them. Also, some of the sources have credentials from educational institutions that have been demonstrated as fraudulent (and closed down) or themselves have their own "profit" motive. These things should not alone invalidate the proffered data, although it does raise the question of why this is ok for people on one side of an argument to suggest conflicts of interest and not on the other?

Of course, genuinely fraudulent credentials and conflicts of interest should be raised, but the best thing to do is to step aside from attacking the sources and study the actual data, looking for incorrect assumptions and the kinds of predictions that accurate data should be able to make. Observe the predictions. Then make your own decisions.

Regards,

genin

09-29-2011, 01:53 PM

Any argument where one abuses logic and resorts to things like strawmans or attacking the source, is a losing one. However, there still may be an underlying truth with hasn't been properly examined.

The two major nuclear disasters (in Chernobyl and Japan) were both caused by human stupidity. Chernobyl caused by a safety test that didn't need to be run in the first place, then being done incorrectly. And in Japan...well...building a nuclear plant where tsunami's strike---which is equally as idiotic. Ever wonder why Homer Simpson's job was as a hapless nuclear safety engineer? There's truth even in satire!

My problem with nuclear energy is the same that I have with the space program. It's really expensive, and it has been demonstrated that humans do not possess the aptitude to prevent catastrophic disasters from occurring (and I'm talking things that should be preventable with basic common sense).

You're telling me the NASA rocket scientists didn't think objects traveling at 5,000 mph might damage their shuttle's skin???? And nuclear scientists didn't think building a powerplant in an earthquake AND tsunami zone was a bad idea??? I don't need to resort to strawman's in order to point out the significant flaws in that line of thinking.

tarik

09-29-2011, 02:35 PM

Any argument where one abuses logic and resorts to things like strawmans or attacking the source, is a losing one. However, there still may be an underlying truth with hasn't been properly examined.

I disagree that the underlying issues haven't been or won't be properly examined, but I agree that it's important that they be addressed. Have you ever tried to slog through the post-mortem analysis of a major disaster? It's tedious, but necessary if we want to learn.

The two major nuclear disasters (in Chernobyl and Japan) were both caused by human stupidity. Chernobyl caused by a safety test that didn't need to be run in the first place, then being done incorrectly. And in Japan...well...building a nuclear plant where tsunami's strike---which is equally as idiotic. Ever wonder why Homer Simpson's job was as a hapless nuclear safety engineer? There's truth even in satire!

My problem with nuclear energy is the same that I have with the space program. It's really expensive, and it has been demonstrated that humans do not possess the aptitude to prevent catastrophic disasters from occurring (and I'm talking things that should be preventable with basic common sense).

I agree that these two incidents could have been prevented or else the impact reduced had a very few different decisions been made. On the other hand, even with the terrible results that have resulted, less damage has been done to humanity and the environment than has been caused by our other primary sources of energy by every measurable datum.

You're telling me the NASA rocket scientists didn't think objects traveling at 5,000 mph might damage their shuttle's skin???? And nuclear scientists didn't think building a powerplant in an earthquake AND tsunami zone was a bad idea??? I don't need to resort to strawman's in order to point out the significant flaws in that line of thinking.

That kind of critique is important. Pointing out flaws is quite different (and quite helpful) than asserting without compromise that humans cannot safely operate nuclear power plants or a space program. I would ask safe compared to what?

I think you'll find that both programs, largely because of cautious oversight, despite stupid mistakes (which are always easier to see in hindsight) have still resulted in a safer track record than coal or oil (or Russia's early space program which had a shocking cost to life), and if you look at the analysis, it's safer by ORDERS of magnitude.

Regards,

David Orange

09-29-2011, 03:16 PM

David Orange

09-29-2011, 03:53 PM

The thing about true believers is that they only accept data that matches their belief system and instead of attacking the data itself, they primarily attack those who convey it. A true believer doesn't need proof, they just need to offer meta-arguments (the profit motive and the obvious fact that one can and will always find people who cheat, even in a regulated environment like the nuclear industry) as their proof. They find individual incidents and extrapolate those in an unscientific attempt to use anecdotal evidence as if it were as valid as statistical analysis.

Who says "statistical analysis" is "valid" anyway, Tarik?

The three types of lies, after all, are 1) lies; 2) damned lies; and 3) statistics.

Really, you should re-read your analysis of the True Believer and see if it doesn't apply to yourself.

You assured me that not only can a nuclear plant NOT explode, but that my belief that it can shows how little I understand the subject. Yet when a plant indisputably explodes (three times), you dismiss it entirely and you and Katherine both attempt to explain it away because it doesn't fit in your True Believer's profile of the nature of nuclear power. Sorry, chap, but you are flat out mistaken and your efforts to evade that fact only make your position worse.

A true believers "proof" is invariably supported by people who are seldom credible scientists who have published papers that manage to create debate in the scientific community.

an irrelevant comment. My proof is that both Chernobyl and Fukushima plants exploded. Your response is like the Black Knight from Monty Python, when King Arthur tells him, "I just cut your arm off!" He cries, "No, you didn't!" then tries to minimize it with "It's only a flesh wound!"

A true believer often resorts to mocking, teasing, insulting, appeals to emotion (usually fear) and attacking the credibility of anyone who speaks up and disagrees with them, sometimes in a very charming manner. There is little point in arguing with a true believer, because facts cannot change their mind.

Again, an excellent description of your own approach here, belittling me for saying that a nuclear plant could explode. And you and Katherine (and others) have subtly played the "fear" card yourselves by presenting the phantasm of "how would we meet our awesome energy demands without nuclear power?" That's nothing but a presentation of fear. And the facts clearly have done nothing to affect your perspective.

My conclusion, David is that you are likely a true believer. The alternative is that you have a deliberate agenda and are resorting to deliberate lies in order to attack me or otherwise discredit me, but really, I believe that you are sincere in your beliefs and simply unable to accept any data that might call them into question.

Tarik, you can question all you want, but Fukushima continues to spew radiation and it continues to build up in the locations where it goes. Yet you continue to minimize it. It's not "only a flesh wound." It's far more serious than a dispute over data: your karma has officially run over your dogma.

The data I put forth is not mine, so discrediting or mocking me cannot change it.

Yet you mocked me for saying a nuclear plant could explode and now you're in the unenviable position of having to explain away the three recent explosions. And you haven't even addressed the many plants where tritium is leaking from corroded underground piping. And you haven't addressed the very serious threat of all the nuclear plants existing in the area of the New Madrid fault system. But you also continue to mock and belittle with phrases like True Believer. Make no mistake, bud. I'm a True DISBELIEVER and no theoretical data is going to convince me that 1) Fukushima did not explode or 2) that the result of the explosions at Fukushima are not extremely serious, with dire long-term consequences to come.

I can only offer my own conclusions for other readers who have not yet made up their own minds, so that they can read through the material (and please read both sides) and decide for themselves.

And I can only encourage those same readers to take a good look at the ongoing crisis in Fukushima and consider the effects of the recent earthquakes in the US, producing shaking much stronger than the plants were designed for. So they didn't crack open this time? Why would anyone imagine that "this time" was either "the last" time or "the strongest" these plants will face? Budo thinking requires us to prepare for the WORST possible. Our nuclear industry (worldwide) has prepared us for a rather flimsy version of the most MEDIUM "likely" conditions. And that can only amount to stupidity considering the consequences when (not if) they are mistaken.

Great example. You don't question the data, but you question it's context which is simply double speak for questioning the data.

Which is double speak for in fact I did directly address the data. In epidemiology, scientists consider four possible causes of an apparent conclusion from data:
1) the conclusion can be the result of CHANCE
2) the conclusion can result from BIAS
3) the conclusion can result from CONFOUNDING
4) the conclusion is TRUE

Much of the data and conclusions from the nuclear industry are based on BIAS, selecting the conditions and outcomes from a narrow theoretical range which has been proven utterly unreliable in both Japan and in the US (with our recent earthquakes).

Much of the justification for the risks is based on CONFOUNDING the danger with the "need" or "demand" for more energy as if this were an absolute value that cannot be changed and which must be met either with nuclear or with coal (following extensive fudging of the economics of those sources against solar and other soft energies).

And the nuclear industry calls it CHANCE when nature serves up conditions that exceed the design limits of the plants they have built on earthquake fault lines.

So no plants blew in our recent US earthquake? It doesn't mean that no damage was incurred and that they plants can still endure an equal or greater force in the future.

If you weren't a true believer and you really wanted to get to the bottom of this, you'd read the science and apply your doubts to it and see if those doubts were considered or not.

Tarik....WTF????

Fukushima BLEW UP. It is spewing radiation to this moment. What are your data supposed to tell me?

I'm saying that another plant WILL explode (several more, in fact) and you expect me to forget that because your theoretical data (already disproven in reality) say that "it can't happen here."

It can and it will.

Then you could attack the science, but that's hard work for the true believer.

Not when the "science" is attacking itself and melting down as we speak....

Clearly you didn't read my sources as I provided sources that include PURELY academic research (without a for-profit motive) and and also analyzed data collected by actual scientists who are against nuclear power.

When the data contradict real, observed events....what are you talking about? It's simply bad science at that point.

So this merely demonstrates that you don't need to read the science to dismiss it, because it couldn't possibly have analyzed it in the context of which you speak. Clearly false to anyone who read the references. This is an example of true believer type behavior.

Again with the belittling and mocking. But you're standing in front of an exploded nuclear plant and telling me 1) that it didn't explode; 2) that the radiation it's spewing is not dangerous (even as it continues to accumulate in the environment) and 3) that what "didn't happen" in this case also "won't happen again"!

I'm just pointing out that your data obviously does not relate in any real way to the facts that have been observed and that for that reason alone they can be considered false and irrelevant.

And the rest of what you say, I don't have time to read at the moment. But having glanced at it, I've seen nothing that explains away the dire facts of what continues to happen at this moment.

David

David Orange

09-29-2011, 04:00 PM

...these two incidents could have been prevented or else the impact reduced had a very few different decisions been made. On the other hand, even with the terrible results that have resulted, less damage has been done to humanity and the environment than has been caused by our other primary sources of energy by every measurable datum.

So two (2) incidents within the very brief period in which nuclear power has existed have failed to equal the damage caused by other energy sources that have been used for thousands of years?

That's convenient if nuclear damage stops right now and we never have another nuclear plant melt down.

Does that sound likely?

Apparently, your data tells you that it is likely, but aren't those the same data that told you a nuclear plant "cannot explode"?

Fukushima is still spewing and we have not begun to see the results of that contamination.

And earthquakes are still coming.

Unfortunately, I don't see these facts as boding well for your arguments. And that's doubly sad because they bode very badly for the future of humanity on the contaminated earth.

David

David Orange

09-29-2011, 07:34 PM

Hmmm. As to my predictive powers....looking back for the exact wording of Tarik's statement about nuclear plants blowing up and just how well I understand the subject, I find that over four years ago, I said this:

... I point you to NASA, the most redundantly "safe" agency in the US, not operated for profit and with no reason to cut corners. Yet they have had two really major disasters. My theory is not that "it's possible" but that we are bound for some kind of major disaster involving an explosion at a plant, a release of radioactive material, an accident with waste or some other kind of deadly event that will happen because of financial greed and short-sightedness.

I think Fukushima well fits the bill on all these points, while Tarik, effectively, said that such a thing could not happen (not to mention his assessment of the earthquake-caused incident at another Japanese plant mentioned earlier in this thread).

Now I'm warning that US plants built on earthquake fault lines will begin failing within the next decade. It doesn't matter whether you listen to me or not, whether you believe me or not. It's coming.

David

tarik

09-29-2011, 08:46 PM

You assured me that not only can a nuclear plant NOT explode, but that my belief that it can shows how little I understand the subject. Yet when a plant indisputably explodes (three times), you dismiss it entirely and you and Katherine both attempt to explain it away because it doesn't fit in your True Believer's profile of the nature of nuclear power. Sorry, chap, but you are flat out mistaken and your efforts to evade that fact only make your position worse.
...
Yet you mocked me for saying a nuclear plant could explode and now you're in the unenviable position of having to explain away the three recent explosions.

Since you conveniently refuse to look up the exact wording and context of my original statement, I'll provide it here. It's from post 49 of this thread:

Why is that a problem? Hiroshima and Nagasaki were attacked with the two earliest nuclear weapons on earth. Look at a chart of sizes of blast yields today. Hiroshima/Nagasaki-sized blasts are little pinheads compared to the yields of bombs developed only twenty years later. If you managed to blow up a nuclear reactor??? I don't doubt that the toll would be thousands at the very least.

Melt down one nuke plant and you can get all of those.

David, now I know that you must be arguing from a position of ignorance about how a nuclear power plant functions.

Do you realize that a nuclear explosion cannot result from the materials used in a nuclear power plant?

My tone here is neither mocking nor belittling, it was a factual correction about your comparison of a meltdown with a nuclear explosion. If you find it belittling or mocking when someone points out ignorance of facts, it says more about you than me. If you wish to imply malicious intent on my part, you have a lot more work ahead of you.

I also never stated that no kind of explosion cannot occur. That would certainly be a ridiculous statement since we already had examples of explosions at Chernobyl and for anyone who understands anything about reactor design; the necessary pressurized containment is a recipe for potential explosions. Yet none of these are, will be, or were in the Fukushima incident, nuclear explosions, something you were clearly referring to and which I addressed.

And you and Katherine (and others) have subtly played the "fear" card yourselves by presenting the phantasm of "how would we meet our awesome energy demands without nuclear power?" That's nothing but a presentation of fear. And the facts clearly have done nothing to affect your perspective.

I don't believe that it's playing on fear to state the measurable, undisputed (even by the anti-nuclear energy lobby) data that clearly demonstrates that the human cost of nuclear energy is less than that of oil and coal, EVEN taking into account the tragedies of Chernobyl and Fukushima. The science discusses this in detail, including how the calculations were derived. If you want to attack this convincingly, I'm a willing student, but if all you have to offer is condemning the science as "lies, damn lies, and statistics" and the examples of Chernobyl and Fukushima, which actually fit comfortably within the predictions of that science, then you have offered nothing convincing.

But you also continue to mock and belittle with phrases like True Believer.

I'll accept that. It was my intent to characterize your behavior, not mock you, but of course I should have seen how this would be used. I certainly don't retract it, because your response merely fits my characterization. You have good intent, but your method is faulty.

I'll point out that again, you have made multiple posts attacking me personally and talking dismissively about the science produced by the "nuclear" industry, ignoring the actual offered material and the fact that it includes data from anti-nuclear activists, and analysis by independent academics who are not involved or funded by industry.

Clearly there is nothing more here to discuss.

Regards,

David Orange

10-01-2011, 06:01 PM

Since you conveniently refuse to look up the exact wording and context of my original statement, I'll provide it here. It's from post 49 of this thread:

I'm not sure really, who made the statement. And the one you quote is not the one I referenced. However, let's look at some of the points.

I said:
"If you managed to blow up a nuclear reactor??? I don't doubt that the toll would be thousands at the very least. Melt down one nuke plant and you can get all of those."

Note that I specified "If you managed," meaning by intentional effort to blow up a plant in nuclear fashion.

And you said:
"David, now I know that you must be arguing from a position of ignorance about how a nuclear power plant functions. Do you realize that a nuclear explosion cannot result from the materials used in a nuclear power plant?"

Hmmmmmmmm. Really? Isn't that what happened at Chernobyl, though? That was a nuclear explosion.

And at Fukushima, core material was found miles from the plant. I don't think you can say there definitely was no "nuclear explosion" there, either. More than one of those reactor containments was breached. And as the nuclear material burns down into the earth, I'm not sure you can say that an explosion of ground water into steam would not be a "nuclear" event. Certainly, the idea that the Fukushima incident was a "hydrogen combustion" is pretty lame at this point.

My tone here is neither mocking nor belittling, it was a factual correction about your comparison of a meltdown with a nuclear explosion. If you find it belittling or mocking when someone points out ignorance of facts, it says more about you than me. If you wish to imply malicious intent on my part, you have a lot more work ahead of you.

I don't think your comments rise to the level of "malicious" any more than mine do, but you seem to take my comments far more personally than I take yours. I am far from happy that Fukushima has "vindicated" many of my statements on this thread. But I am amused at how wrong it has proven many of the pro-nuclear advocates who posted so certainly here. The only question is whether those people will now admit their error.

I also never stated that no kind of explosion cannot occur. That would certainly be a ridiculous statement since we already had examples of explosions at Chernobyl and for anyone who understands anything about reactor design; the necessary pressurized containment is a recipe for potential explosions. Yet none of these are, will be, or were in the Fukushima incident, nuclear explosions, something you were clearly referring to and which I addressed.

I think Chernobyl was definitely a nuclear explosion and I believe that Fukushima may well have been some kind of nuclear explosion. The reactors were breached and core material was blasted into the environment. Unfortunately, the corporate and governmental lies we have been given prevent much real knowledge of what happened.

In any case, I still believe that, were malicious people to gain control of a major nuclear reactor, they could produce a nuclear explosion that would leave no doubt. They could intentionally do what was done by stupidity at Chernobyl. And they could do it here in the US. But no matter where they did it, it would have dire effects the world over.

I don't believe that it's playing on fear to state the measurable, undisputed (even by the anti-nuclear energy lobby) data that clearly demonstrates that the human cost of nuclear energy is less than that of oil and coal, EVEN taking into account the tragedies of Chernobyl and Fukushima.

No, you play the fear card by insisting that we have to have nuclear or we'll all be deprived of the energy we have to have. You present a spectre of lack if we don't put nuclear plants all over the world. But it's a lack of something we never had before, so why must we have it now? That's the fear you guys are pushing.

And as I've said, the two events at Chernobyl and Fukushima are only the beginning. You're comparing the first two major (publicly acknowledged) incidents in a still-young industry to a history of hundreds and thousands of years for other energy sources. Only a few more nuclear accidents will prove what a misguided comparison that is. Now we have aging plants all over the world, built on fault lines and in other vulnerable situations, in former Soviet territories, in nations with disintegrating economies, apart from operational stupidity (like putting spent fuel rods on top of the containment buildings, which seems to be a common practice). So we have only begun to see the folly of design, placement, construction and operation and the potential for major destruction (if only through contamination) that the nuclear industry promises.

It takes a True Believer to insist that this stuff even can be safe over a few hundred years.

If you want to attack this convincingly, I'm a willing student, but if all you have to offer is condemning the science as "lies, damn lies, and statistics" and the examples of Chernobyl and Fukushima, which actually fit comfortably within the predictions of that science, then you have offered nothing convincing.

Well, it's almost impossible to convince a True Believer that their cherished belief is flawed. And I did not condemn "the science" as "lies, damned lies and statistics." I just pointed out that "statistics" is one of the best ways to tell a lie. And, really, it's daft to try to even use statistics beyond a theoretical point in this question. Statistics, in this application, is good for discerning fairly subtle gradations of effects. With a major disaster like Chernobyl or Fukushima, it's pointless. We're given "statistics" based on "data" of highly questionable validity. The radiation at Fukushima pegs out at the very top of the available meters' range and we're given that top number as the maximum level of radiation onsite. And you accept that and argue that the highest readings from those very low-range meters are the legitimate highest levels of radiation at the plant? You disregard statements that a million or more deaths resulted from Chernobyl, but how do you know? You've read something? Could you quote it? What is the real number you accept? And why do you imagine that those statistics are based on valid data? And further, how many more deaths can we expect from Chernobyl alone? There is still contamination in Germany and France from that incident. What about other parts of Russia? Why would you imagine that there won't be many, many more deaths from that incident over many decades to come? That incident is still not over. We don't even know how long the containment dome there will hold that material. And we actually know almost nothing of the truth from Fukushima. So how can you say that "Chernobyl and Fukushima...fit comfortably within the predictions of that science"?

Could it be True Belief speaking? Could it be that the true situation has been tailored to fit corporate predictions?

I'm afraid you are the one who has offered "nothing convincing".

David Orange wrote:
"But you also continue to mock and belittle with phrases like True Believer."

I'll accept that. It was my intent to characterize your behavior, not mock you, but of course I should have seen how this would be used. I certainly don't retract it, because your response merely fits my characterization. You have good intent, but your method is faulty.

Tarik, I should not have to point out that the True Believer is one who wants to spread his belief in support of the new thing. Nature, the Earth, the Tao are from eternal sources. They have always worked, they have never stopped working and they need no supplement from such dangerous sources as you Truly Believe we must add. My belief requires no action at all. The True Believer is the one who supports a new action. So while you may have "good intent" or you may have some profit motive, by characterizing me as the True Believer, you show that your thinking is exactly reversed from reality. Of do you understand that and intentionally reverse the truth?

I'll point out that again, you have made multiple posts attacking me personally and talking dismissively about the science produced by the "nuclear" industry, ignoring the actual offered material and the fact that it includes data from anti-nuclear activists, and analysis by independent academics who are not involved or funded by industry.

Clearly there is nothing more here to discuss.

No, Tarik. I have not "attacked" you personally. I've tweaked you mostly in very good humor because reality has proven my predictions (and thus supports my further predictions) while it has shown your claims to be quite shaky. You shouldn't take that personally, but you also shouldn't cling so stubbornly to your shaky position. And you shouldn't resort to mocking and belittling by pointing a finger at me while your other three fingers point back at you.

And as I've said, I have no dispute with the theoretical science behind the nuclear industry. I've simply shown how that theory breaks down over time in the real physical environment of the earth and in the profit-motivated reality of human society. Time and physical reality will definitely destroy all the safeguards that theory approves as sufficient. The profit-motivated corporate application of that theory will only accelerate the rate at which it breaks down.

Therefore, I can accept "the science" as virtually perfect. But the fact is that, in actual application, it is bound to fail and the results of a failure of that type are too damnable to accept.

I'm afraid there is still much to discuss, but only, of course, if one has the courage to face it.

Cheers.

David

Tenyu

10-02-2011, 06:30 PM

David,

Chernobyl and Fukushima were hydrogen explosions, they undergo a different reaction than a nuclear explosion of an atomic bomb. The local physical destruction of a 'traditional' atomic bomb is significantly greater than a hydrogen 'bomb'. But the visual aspect belies the true extent and damage of radioactive fallout as the Japanese government has already admitted Daiichi equivalent to 168 Hiroshimas. Considering official numbers have been as little as 10% of the real numbers, it wouldn't surprise me if Daiichi were actually 1680 Hiroshimas in terms of radionuclide contamination and deposition of land and sea.

David Orange

10-02-2011, 09:58 PM

Tenyu

10-03-2011, 11:11 AM

Tenyu's sources are interesting and worth reading and watching, however, they make all the same kinds of true believer mistakes in their attempts to analyze and critique the data. They are highly critical of data that does not agree with their beliefs, but accept without critique or analysis, the data that agrees with them. Also, some of the sources have credentials from educational institutions that have been demonstrated as fraudulent (and closed down) or themselves have their own "profit" motive. These things should not alone invalidate the proffered data, although it does raise the question of why this is ok for people on one side of an argument to suggest conflicts of interest and not on the other?

Of course, genuinely fraudulent credentials and conflicts of interest should be raised, but the best thing to do is to step aside from attacking the sources and study the actual data, looking for incorrect assumptions and the kinds of predictions that accurate data should be able to make. Observe the predictions. Then make your own decisions.

Regards,

Tarik,

Here's a timely response (http://youtu.be/6dznCa9FIic) to the irony of your post. Feel free to debunk any of Gundersen's statements on his website (http://fairewinds.com/) in the same manner provided in the Pluto-san link.

excerpts from latest update:

In the 1990′s [...] I brought some safety concerns forward to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and they were ignored. And in the process, discovered a very cozy relationship between the regulator and the people that they were attempting to regulate. It went to congressional hearings with John Glenn and in the congressional hearings the Chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said this: "It is true. Everything Mr. Gundersen said was absolutely right. He performed quite a service." Nothing changed after that hearing. What he said to Congress had no affect on the way the agency was behaving.

There is an excellent journalism piece out and it is in the Austin Chronicle. It is investigative journalism at its very best and it is called, "Will Shill For Nukes." The author of it discovered that an industry group, NEI, the industry trade organization, was writing opinion pieces and they were then giving those opinion pieces to professors around the country and asking those professors of nuclear engineering at universities around the country, they were asking those professors to put those in the local newspapers. Well, quite a few professors obliged.