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OfflineSeussA
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Re: Obama wants Nuclear Power?!?! [Re: Alan Rockefeller]
    #12095355 - 02/25/10 01:07 PM (14 years, 2 months ago)

> Just read the whole thread.  It is very interesting and I learned a lot.

Do you want a gold star to put next to your name?

> Next time I will read the thread before posting.

I wasn't replying to the whole thread, I was replying to your claim that fission based nuclear power is "the only practical clean energy solution ever invented."  I did go back and read the post you were replying to, along with a few posts before that.  Did I misread your intent?  Perhaps you were trying to be sarcastic?  I guess that is why I included the question marks, to show my uncertainty.


--------------------
Just another spore in the wind.

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OfflineDJ_avocado
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Re: Obama wants Nuclear Power?!?! [Re: Seuss]
    #12098160 - 02/25/10 08:13 PM (14 years, 2 months ago)

Recently I've been having my mind blown away by new ideas.  First it was JUrassic Park, then in my botany class today, we talked about energy.  What I came to understand is that all energy comes from bonds that are broken.  It happens in all cells, in all forms, where ever there is movement or an action taking place.  I also found out that the sun is green.  Someone please correct me because I feel very decieved.  Apparently, plants are green and some algae blue-green, because that is the spectrum in which the sun DOESN'T have.  Which, if you grow plants, makes sense because plants feed off of the other wavelengths. ( Blue-ish and red-ish)

But I digress...

I spoke to my proff. after class and we talked about nuclear energy.  I told her that fact about bananas and she didn't believe me.  I think that fact needs a LOT of explaining.  If you eat a banana every day for a year, the 3.6 mrem of radiation in your body, is not the same amount that is in your body from the 2mrem in the atmosphere from testing.

But I digress..

She told me that the sun is producing energy, much like a nuclear reaction.  The radiation is normal and natural though, even in our our bodies, isotopes of carbon(carbon 14 I think), are used to produce energy and release radiation.  Meaning that all things emit radiation of some form.

Maybe I am against nuclear because I don't trust it.  I fear that there will be mistakes that just aren't worth it, but only time will tell.  As of now though, I only care about the aina (Land), not about energy for everybody... maybe cause I don't use a lot besides a 1000w HPS..

I know that we need energy, and that it will probably come from nuclear, but I'm expecting it to cause more harm than good in the long run. Just one question...what do nuclear plants use as fuel?  Anything? Renewable?  Maybe I AM just afraid of the unknown...

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OfflineScavengerType
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Re: Obama wants Nuclear Power?!?! [Re: pothead_bob]
    #12099845 - 02/26/10 01:57 AM (14 years, 2 months ago)

OK, lets recap with a quote from the vid clip I posted earlier:
In Historic Vote, Vermont Poised to Shut Down Lone Nuclear Reactor
Quote:

Guest intro:
The man who first sounded the alarm bell on Vermont Yankee is a nuclear engineer. His name is Arnie Gundersen. Two years ago he was appointed to an oversight panel to study the plant. He and his wife Maggie are contracted consultants to the Vermont legislature. Arnie Gundersen was a nuclear industry executive for many years before blowing the whistle on the company he worked for in 1990, when he found inappropriately stored radioactive material.
...
AMY GOODMAN: Why are you recommending a no vote?

ARNIE GUNDERSEN: My recommendation is based on a couple things. The plant has had a long history of problems. We had a transformer fire, which was quite dramatic and well publicized, and then we had the cooling towers collapse, and then we also have lost some nuclear fuel. By “we,” I mean Vermont Yankee. And now we have a tritium leak that has gone undetected for probably a year.

On top of those mechanical problems, there are some other problems. Entergy is planning on spinning off this old plant and five other old plants into junk bond-rated company called Enexus. And there’s concern that there won’t be enough working capital to maintain the plant and enough capital to dismantle the plant when it’s due to shut down.

And then the last piece is the fact that the Entergy has not told the truth to the Public Service Board, at least three times. They were fined $51,000 in 2003, $82,000 in 2004. And for Vermont, those are big deal numbers. And now, of course, they’ve, over a period of about eighteen months, told the Public Service Board and me on the Public Oversight Panel that they had no underground pipes. That, of course, was proven wrong with the tritium leak.




I think that This one quote from that article speaks volumes to a lot of the real issues that I have been insisting to you all along. I'm not sure you actually listened to or read the transcripts. It's all there in the bold, decomp problems, other weird financial shit I never even thought of, missing fuel, leaks of radioactive material into drinking water. Fuck dude, this is shit even I thought was beyond a realistic concern with private nuclear companies.

I mean, you think yucca mtn is an incident. Look at how this nuke plant is behaving about it's problems, what are going to be the issues when the corporate sector has an incident? Will they lie to protect the bottom line?

The inability of a utility to bear the loss of one of it's largest power suppliers at the moment is not a reflection of the superiority of the plants. It is a logistical nightmare for the utilities to decommission a plant because of the fact that it leaves a massive hole in the grid supply. This is not a testament to it's cost effectiveness or ability to produce power, but of it's real scale of operation.

Further I am concerned that with the possibility that some of the other reactors whom are going up for approvals for extensions may be even somewhat similar to this one, a plant that actually is so bad it looks like the cartoon satire in comparison to the one from the Simpsons. These are the nuclear plants you were just holding up as examples of how safe nuclear power was.

When I heard you explain the regulatory structure in the US the first time I did not misunderstand. However, other countries have more lax nuclear regulation, Existing and operating plants, higher rate costs and in some places lower construction costs. However, nowhere in the world has a financial institution backed this kind of risk without a guarantee. If this is the case, it would stand to reason that this regulatory change in the US will not likely yield a new flow of investment.


Also:
Quote:

pothead_bob said:
And if reprocessed, the figure drops to hundreds.



Quote:

pothead_bob said:
Where did you get the 'couple hundred years' figure from?



WTF?


--------------------
"Have you ever seen what happens when a grenade goes off in a school? Do you really know what you’re doing when you order shock and awe? Are you prepared to kneel beside a dying soldier and tell him why he went to Iraq, or why he went to any war?"
"The things that are done in the name of the shareholder are, to me, as terrifying as the things that are done—dare I say it—in the name of God. Montesquieu said, "There have never been so many civil wars as in the Kingdom of God." And I begin to feel that’s true. The shareholder is the excuse for everything."
- Author and former M6/M5 agent John le Carré on Democracy Now.
Conquer's Club

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Offlinepothead_bob
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Re: Obama wants Nuclear Power?!?! [Re: DJ_avocado]
    #12100331 - 02/26/10 06:52 AM (14 years, 2 months ago)

Quote:

I spoke to my proff. after class and we talked about nuclear energy.  I told her that fact about bananas and she didn't believe me.  I think that fact needs a LOT of explaining.  If you eat a banana every day for a year, the 3.6 mrem of radiation in your body, is not the same amount that is in your body from the 2mrem in the atmosphere from testing.




A quick google search will clear up any doubt you have about the radioactivity of bananas.  You do realize bananas have potassium in them don't you?  Well, some of that potassium is potassium-40, a naturally radioactive isotope.  No, that 3.6 mrem is not the same as the 2 mrem from testing - it's nearly twice as much.  The unit, rem, measures dose equivalent to the person.  It makes account for the type of radiation: be it alpha, gamma, or beta.  Now, depending on where in the body the exposure is, and what type of radiation it is, it will have different effects, but focus on the big picture here.

Whether you're eating bananas or ingesting fallout particles doesn't matter - the two sources are virtually insignificant.  The majority of your exposure comes from cosmic rays and the earth's crust.  Did you ever hear of radon problems in peoples' basements?  That can be dangerous, but it's a completely natural radiation source from the earth.  Do you smoke?  Smoking is  a HUGE source of radiation.  A person who smokes 30 cigarettes a day has been estimated to receive as high as 8,000 mrem a year of exposure.  Compare that 8,000 mrem to the 2 mrem you get from nuclear fallout.  My whole point is, there are much more significant sources of radiation than that from nuclear power or nuclear fallout.


--------------------
No knowledge can be certain, if it is not based
upon mathematics or upon some other knowledge
which is itself based upon the mathematical
sciences.
  -Leonardo da Vinci (1425-1519)

Speak well of your enemies.  After all, you made them.

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Offlinepothead_bob
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Re: Obama wants Nuclear Power?!?! [Re: pothead_bob]
    #12100400 - 02/26/10 07:33 AM (14 years, 2 months ago)

I read your article and frankly I'm not impressed.  I'll ask you again - Where will you get the power from?????  Let me re-post this for you:

Quote:

Nuclear power is one of the most highly regulated and safe industries around.  Here's some interesting info for you:  In the world, between 1970 and 1992, there were 6,400 on-the-job deaths in coal-fired power plants, 1,200 on-the-job deaths in natural gas power plants, and 4,000 deaths to the GENERAL PUBLIC caused by hydro-electric power station disasters.  Nuclear power plants experienced 39 on-the-job deaths.




By the way, those coal-fired power related deaths are only on the job.  Let's not forget about the health problems inflicted upon the general public by the pollution. 

But you throw all that under the bus and complain about a tritium leak that didn't even make any significant impact on the nearby Connecticut river.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermont_Yankee_Nuclear_Power_Plant

The tritium hasn't even been measured at all in the River or in any drinking water supply, contrary to your accusation.  http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2010/02/radioactive_tritium_leaking_fr.html

But boo-fucking-hoo over the insignificant tritium leak.  Let Vermont shut the plant down and enjoy a 20-30% electricity cost increase since the plant accounts for 35% of their electrical power.  Not too mention all the health problems that come from REAL POLLUTION should they replace the power with a coal-fired plant. 

And good job, like any anti-nuke, blowing the 'missing fuel' thing out of proportion.  The fuel was never 'missing'.  It was in the spent fuel pool all along.  The fuel wasn't accounted for due to a record keeping mistake, which happened due to transfer of ownership of the plant.  http://safecleanreliable.com/07152004.htm

I mean, really, how does anybody who knows anything about nuclear power think highly-radioactive material can go missing?  You'd be fucking vaporized if you tried to remove spent fuel from the site, short of having some heavy equipment to shield you from it.  With all the security there, there's no way someone can take fuel out of the pool and slip away undetected.  You would need a small army and big-time equipment.

Yes, they lied and I don't condone them lying.  I think it makes the whole industry look bad and it's great that one guy blew the whistle, but there's immoral people in all walks of life.  You can't possibly dismiss the nuclear power industry's impeccable safety record and incredible potential for clean and reliable power over such a minuscule incident. 


Quote:

I mean, you think yucca mtn is an incident.




No, I don't think yucca mtn is an incident.

Quote:

The inability of a utility to bear the loss of one of it's largest power suppliers at the moment is not a reflection of the superiority of the plants. It is a logistical nightmare for the utilities to decommission a plant because of the fact that it leaves a massive hole in the grid supply.




What is your point?  How would a fossil-fired plant be any different?  Or do you think Vermont will be putting up a 650 MW wind farm? :lol:

Quote:

Further I am concerned that with the possibility that some of the other reactors whom are going up for approvals for extensions may be even somewhat similar to this one, a plant that actually is so bad it looks like the cartoon satire in comparison to the one from the Simpsons. These are the nuclear plants you were just holding up as examples of how safe nuclear power was.





You come up with one practically insignificant example and now you extend it to ALL PLANTS UP FOR LICENSE EXTENSION?  Prove it to me that all the other plants are having similar problems.  Or why don't you open your eyes and realize that this ONE plant had some problems and it is now BEING SHUT DOWN AS A RESULT?  If the other plants aren't having problems, why should they be shut down?

Quote:

When I heard you explain the regulatory structure in the US the first time I did not misunderstand. However, other countries have more lax nuclear regulation, Existing and operating plants, higher rate costs and in some places lower construction costs. However, nowhere in the world has a financial institution backed this kind of risk without a guarantee. If this is the case, it would stand to reason that this regulatory change in the US will not likely yield a new flow of investment.




Your logic is flawed.  Once again, the loan guarantees are just that, A GUARANTEE.  The utility is still the one making the loan payments and building the plant.  How is that not a new flow of investment?

Quote:

Also:

    Quote:
    pothead_bob said:
    And if reprocessed, the figure drops to hundreds.


    Quote:
    pothead_bob said:
    Where did you get the 'couple hundred years' figure from?


WTF?




If you think that is somehow conducive to your argument then you didn't understand one or either of those quotes.  In the first quote, I was referring to the amount of time fuel remains radioactive for.  It drops from thousands of years to hundreds of years if it is reprocessed.  That doesn't mean that the people who reprocessed the waste would have to wait hundreds of years to get their investment back.  They would be paid to take the waste and paid again when the resell it as new fuel.  They would be left holding onto a very small percentage of unusable waste, but they would still have been paid for their part in the fuel cycle.


--------------------
No knowledge can be certain, if it is not based
upon mathematics or upon some other knowledge
which is itself based upon the mathematical
sciences.
  -Leonardo da Vinci (1425-1519)

Speak well of your enemies.  After all, you made them.

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Offlinedrewmandan
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Re: Obama wants Nuclear Power?!?! [Re: DJ_avocado]
    #12100842 - 02/26/10 09:42 AM (14 years, 2 months ago)

Quote:

DJ_avocado said:
Recently I've been having my mind blown away by new ideas.  First it was JUrassic Park, then in my botany class today, we talked about energy.  What I came to understand is that all energy comes from bonds that are broken.  It happens in all cells, in all forms, where ever there is movement or an action taking place.  I also found out that the sun is green.  Someone please correct me because I feel very decieved.  Apparently, plants are green and some algae blue-green, because that is the spectrum in which the sun DOESN'T have.  Which, if you grow plants, makes sense because plants feed off of the other wavelengths. ( Blue-ish and red-ish)

But I digress...

I spoke to my proff. after class and we talked about nuclear energy.  I told her that fact about bananas and she didn't believe me.  I think that fact needs a LOT of explaining.  If you eat a banana every day for a year, the 3.6 mrem of radiation in your body, is not the same amount that is in your body from the 2mrem in the atmosphere from testing.

But I digress..

She told me that the sun is producing energy, much like a nuclear reaction.  The radiation is normal and natural though, even in our our bodies, isotopes of carbon(carbon 14 I think), are used to produce energy and release radiation.  Meaning that all things emit radiation of some form.

Maybe I am against nuclear because I don't trust it.  I fear that there will be mistakes that just aren't worth it, but only time will tell.  As of now though, I only care about the aina (Land), not about energy for everybody... maybe cause I don't use a lot besides a 1000w HPS..

I know that we need energy, and that it will probably come from nuclear, but I'm expecting it to cause more harm than good in the long run. Just one question...what do nuclear plants use as fuel?  Anything? Renewable?  Maybe I AM just afraid of the unknown...




It sounds like either your prof doesn't know what he's talking about, or you grossly misunderstood what he said, or both.

As for the sun being green, that's not entirely true. The peak of the sun's blackbody spectrum is in green, but it also emits tons of radiation in red and blue, which is why it looks white, not green. White = red + green + blue. Understand?

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InvisibleGI_Luvmoney
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Re: Obama wants Nuclear Power?!?! [Re: drewmandan]
    #12109463 - 02/27/10 05:29 PM (14 years, 2 months ago)

I thought solar energy peaks in the yellow part of the spectrum, or is it green-yellow or yellow-green?  Why do they consider indigo to be a separate color?  It looks like blue-violet to me.  It makes more sense to say the spectrum is made up of only primary and secondary colors, but a tertiary color?

Some people compare the fusion process we're trying to do on earth to the fusion process in the sun.  I read somewhere that 1 ton of the sun material at the center of the sun produces only 5 watts of power, so it would take 20 tons to power one 100 watt light bulb.  Here on earth we're trying to produce fusion using the most popular process which fuses deuterium and tritium (there are other processes) to generate energy.  This has been done with the H bomb, but we're trying to develop a controlled process, typically using magnetic confinement or shooting deuteride/tritide mixtures with lasers.  Hydrogen isotopes are easy to fuse.  The problem is producing more power than what is put in.

Quote:


The pressure at the center of the sun ranges from 3.4 × 10^8 atm to 2.25 × 10^11 atm depending upon the source.




http://hypertextbook.com/facts/1997/MarinaTreybick.shtml

1 atm = 1 atmosphere or 101325 Pascals or about 14 psi or 760 mm of pressure.


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Edited by GI_Luvmoney (02/27/10 05:32 PM)

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InvisibleGI_Luvmoney
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Re: Obama wants Nuclear Power?!?! [Re: GI_Luvmoney]
    #12109654 - 02/27/10 06:06 PM (14 years, 2 months ago)

Here's an insteresting article about the sun.
http://www.ucolick.org/~jones/sun.pdf


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InvisibleGI_Luvmoney
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Re: Obama wants Nuclear Power?!?! [Re: GI_Luvmoney]
    #12125693 - 03/02/10 03:40 AM (14 years, 2 months ago)

Obama's Nuclear Power Breakthrough
The same critics remain, but their arguments have been proven wrong or become outdated.

By WILLIAM TUCKER

President Obama's announcement last week that the federal government will support new nuclear reactors through loan guarantees has reinvigorated the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Sierra Club, Ralph Nader's Public Citizen and other opponents of nuclear energy. Their objections to this proven technology—which already generates about 20% of our electricity—have barely changed since the 1970s. But most of their arguments have either been proven wrong or become outdated. Here's a rundown:

• Nuclear isn't safe. The 1979 Three Mile Island accident—in which a faulty cooling valve led to a meltdown without injuring anyone—occurred when computer technology had barely penetrated the U.S. industry. In the 1970s, each reactor was an island unto itself. Industry officials barely communicated. The valve that failed at Three Mile Island had failed nine times previously, yet nobody said a thing about it.

Today, thanks to the Price-Anderson Act, first adopted in 1957 and amended several times since, each of America's 104 reactors is now on the hook for $100 million in damages for an accident at another reactor ($10 billion coverage in all). You can bet they talk to each other. Accidental "scrams" and safety outages have been reduced to nearly zero. Our entire fleet is up and running 90% of the time. That's why, even though nuclear constitutes only 11% of generating capacity, it provides 20% of electricity.

• Nuclear is too expensive. Building a 1,500-megawatt reactor will cost around $5 billion, which seems expensive until you compare it to everything else. The equivalent capacity in wind power would easily cost $4 billion because you have to build 4,000 windmills at $1 million apiece plus hundreds of miles of transmission lines and an almost equal capacity of natural gas generators to back them up when the wind doesn't blow.

Building zero-emissions coal plants that capture the carbon dioxide and bury it underground will probably cost more, but nobody really knows because it's never been done. Only natural gas is cheaper to build, but that's because 95% of the cost is in the fuel. (With nuclear it's only 26%.) Natural gas prices fluctuate. Would anyone care to predict what the price of natural gas will be in 25 years?

• A hijacked jet liner crashing into a reactor would cause a nuclear holocaust. Go to YouTube and search "plane crashing into wall." You'll see a video of an F-4 fighter jet hitting a concrete containment wall at 500 miles per hour. The plane simply disappears. The wall barely budges. Nuclear opponents argue that a jumbo jet would have a greater impact, but the laws of physics say it would be about the same. A jet is a hollow metal tube. Even at the speed of a bullet (700 mph) it could not penetrate a concrete containment wall.

• We haven't figured out what to do with the waste. Basically, there is no such thing as nuclear waste. The reason we have the controversy over the Yucca Mountain storage facility is because we gave up fuel reprocessing in the 1970s. Reprocessing reduces the volume of spent fuel—already remarkably small—by 97%. The French reprocess and store all their high-level waste from 30 years of producing 70% of their electricity beneath the floor of one room in their La Hague plant.

• We can't reprocess because that will lead to nuclear proliferation. The conceit of the 1970s was that if we isolated plutonium in an American reprocessing plant, some foreign terrorist would steal it to make a bomb. Half a dozen countries have since built nuclear bombs, none of them with stolen American plutonium. North Korea built its own reactor. Iran has been enriching uranium. France, Japan and Russia all reprocess and no one has stolen their plutonium. Reprocessing American fuel has nothing to do with nuclear proliferation.

• The nuclear revival is being forced on America by the powerful nuclear industry. There is no American "nuclear industry." Westinghouse is now owned by Toshiba. Areva is French. GE partners with Hitachi but is running in last place. Only three of the 33 proposed American reactors are GE designs. The biggest new international competitor is South Korea, which just won a $20 billion contract to build four reactors in the United Arab Emirates. China is building four Westinghouse AP1000 reactors, even though its design has not yet been approved by our Nuclear Regulatory Commission. When the first new reactors are built here, 70% of the parts will come from abroad.

We've essentially fallen 10 years behind the rest of the world in nuclear technology, but the Obama administration's decision to support nuclear will finally get the ball rolling. Within a decade we may very well catch up with the rest of the world in developing the energy technology of the 21st century.

Mr. Tucker is author of "Terrestrial Energy: How Nuclear Power Will Lead the Green Revolution and End America's Energy Odyssey," published in October by Bartleby Press.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703787304575075413484405770.html


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InvisibleGI_Luvmoney
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Re: Obama wants Nuclear Power?!?! [Re: GI_Luvmoney]
    #12125694 - 03/02/10 03:41 AM (14 years, 2 months ago)

To the global warming believers:  Remember, if there is a nuclear melt down, you asked for it.


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OfflineDJ_avocado
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Re: Obama wants Nuclear Power?!?! [Re: GI_Luvmoney]
    #12126966 - 03/02/10 10:59 AM (14 years, 2 months ago)

Help me understand.

No such thing as nuclear waste? Please dumb this down and explain a little for me, please.

I liked that sun article.  :thumbup:

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Re: Obama wants Nuclear Power?!?! [Re: DJ_avocado]
    #12127012 - 03/02/10 11:08 AM (14 years, 2 months ago)

The man is being a bit disingenuous with that comment.  What he means is that if the nuclear waste is reprocessed, the majority of the waste is converted into fresh fuel which can be stuck back into the reactor to get more power out of it.  There is still waste left over, but much less of it (only 3% of the original waste) and it presents much less problems because it decays faster.  That's because the longest-lived isotope - pu-239/pu-240 - is removed from the waste and reused.  The waste goes from being dangerously radioactive for tens of thousands of years to only being dangerously radioactive for a few hundred years.


--------------------
No knowledge can be certain, if it is not based
upon mathematics or upon some other knowledge
which is itself based upon the mathematical
sciences.
  -Leonardo da Vinci (1425-1519)

Speak well of your enemies.  After all, you made them.

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InvisibleGI_Luvmoney
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Re: Obama wants Nuclear Power?!?! [Re: pothead_bob]
    #12128518 - 03/02/10 03:21 PM (14 years, 2 months ago)

Yep.  Natural uranium is mostly U238 which isn't fissionable by slow neutrons.  It has to be enriched so you have at least 3% U235 which is fissionable by slow neutrons.  A lot of the U238 is converted into Pu239 which is also fissionable by slow neutrons and can be used in a reactor.


--------------------

Edited by GI_Luvmoney (03/02/10 03:27 PM)

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Offlinepothead_bob
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Re: Obama wants Nuclear Power?!?! [Re: GI_Luvmoney]
    #12128579 - 03/02/10 03:32 PM (14 years, 2 months ago)

I'm sure he does mean that, but despite that fact, there will still be a (very small) amount of actual waste left that will require storage - a fact which he mentions in his diatribe.  But, that aside, the guy is pretty spot on and his words are a great rebuttal to the cookie-cutter leftist fools like Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow who ignorantly hold onto old wives tales that originated in the sixties.  It simply amazes me to see these supposed 'environmentalists' blast the only real solution to greenhouse gas reduction as well as a plethora of other pollutants released by fossil fuel power plants.


--------------------
No knowledge can be certain, if it is not based
upon mathematics or upon some other knowledge
which is itself based upon the mathematical
sciences.
  -Leonardo da Vinci (1425-1519)

Speak well of your enemies.  After all, you made them.

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OfflineSeussA
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Re: Obama wants Nuclear Power?!?! [Re: GI_Luvmoney]
    #12128740 - 03/02/10 04:02 PM (14 years, 2 months ago)

Deleted... trying to be nice.


--------------------
Just another spore in the wind.

Edited by Seuss (03/02/10 04:04 PM)

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InvisibleGI_Luvmoney
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Re: Obama wants Nuclear Power?!?! [Re: pothead_bob]
    #12128753 - 03/02/10 04:04 PM (14 years, 2 months ago)

A lot of people without much science education automatically assume scientists are all righteous and free of corruption, which isn't always true.  Science needs debate and democracy, which is opposed by a lot of the leftist corrupt environmentalists.  Al Gore is a good example, but he isn't a scientist.


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InvisibleGI_Luvmoney
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Re: Obama wants Nuclear Power?!?! [Re: Seuss]
    #12128758 - 03/02/10 04:05 PM (14 years, 2 months ago)

It is correct.


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OfflineSeussA
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Re: Obama wants Nuclear Power?!?! [Re: GI_Luvmoney]
    #12132658 - 03/03/10 05:27 AM (14 years, 2 months ago)

> It is correct.

For fission, what really matters is the neutron cross section of the isotope in question at the energy levels of the neutrons in question.  To make a blanket statement, such as "Natural uranium is mostly U238 which isn't fissionable by slow neutrons" is misleading.  Although true, it is barely fissionable (i.e. has a low probability of fission) by fast neutrons and is not a viable fuel source for fission with either slow or fast neutrons.

You go on to say that "A lot of the U238 is converted into Pu239" which again is more or less correct, but misleading (or incomplete). I say more or less correct because U238 is not transmuted directly into Plutonium; instead U238 captures a neutron turning into U239.  U239 undergoes beta decay becoming Neptunium-239 which again undergoes beta decay to become Plutonium-239.  It is also inaccurate to claim "a lot of the 238 is converted".  Depending upon the energy level of the reactor, Pu240 is also produced.  The harder one runs the reactor, the more Pu240 you get.  Unfortunately, Pu240 is very 'hot' and much more difficult to utilize that Pu239.


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Re: Obama wants Nuclear Power?!?! [Re: Seuss]
    #12132945 - 03/03/10 08:01 AM (14 years, 2 months ago)

U-238 is fissionable but not fissile.  Fissile isotopes are ones which have a low enough critical energy that the absorption of a zero velocity neutron alone will cause fission.  The binding energy of the stationary neutron alone will cause the nucleus to become unstable and fission.  Popular fissile isotopes include U-233, U-235, Pu-239 and Pu-241.  U-235 is the only one that occurs in nature, while the others must be created in a reactor.  Fissionable isotopes are ones that require more energy than the binding energy of the incident neutron to fission - in other words, they require the neutron to be traveling at a minimum speed. 

So it's true that U-238 cannot be fissioned by slow neutrons at all.  The neutron must have an energy greater than about 0.6 MeV.  This is the reason why U-238 cannot be used for bomb-making.  You need fissile fuel to make a bomb so that it will continue the nuclear reaction when detonated. 

There is more to the story.  After fission occurs, neutrons are released in addition to the byproduct isotopes.  It's these neutrons that go on to cause other fissions.  On average, a U-235 isotope will release 2.068 neutrons per fission.  This means a fission of U-235 can, in theory, lead to the fission of two more isotopes.  U-238 has a similar release of neutrons per fission, however it is only the neutrons that are above the threshold energy that can cause fission of more U-238.  This is why it is impossible to build a reactor with fissionable material alone.  After you account for the fact that a certain fraction of those high-energy neutrons are absorbed inside the reactor, there is never enough high energy neutrons left to sustain the reaction. 

While fissionable material alone is not useful for nuclear fuel, that's not to say it isn't valuable in the fuel cycle.  For example, the CANDU reactors operate on natural, un-enriched uranium.  They can do this because they are moderated with heavy water (deuterium instead of hydrogen -- D20 instead of H2O).  The heavy water has a very low cross section and doesn't slow down the neutrons too much, which means that there are more fast neutrons available for fissioning U-238.  Still not enough to run the core on U-238 alone, but the small percentage of U-235 present in natural uranium is sufficient to make up the difference of the neutron deficit. 

I wouldn't say that Pu-240 is particularly 'hot' in comparison with Pu-239.  Its half-life is on par with Pu-239.  There are much 'hotter' by-products like americium-241.  I think it is easily utilized for fuel-making purposes since it is a fissionable isotope.  It even has a higher fission cross-section than U-238, but I couldn't find the number of neutrons released per fission, so I could be wrong.  To my knowledge, though, the only thing it's not useful for is bomb-making due to it's high rate of spontaneous fission.  As for fuel, though, while in the reactor, Pu-240 can actually absorb a neutron and become Pu-241, which is a very useful fissile isotope.


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No knowledge can be certain, if it is not based
upon mathematics or upon some other knowledge
which is itself based upon the mathematical
sciences.
  -Leonardo da Vinci (1425-1519)

Speak well of your enemies.  After all, you made them.

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InvisibleGI_Luvmoney
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Re: Obama wants Nuclear Power?!?! [Re: pothead_bob]
    #12135496 - 03/03/10 03:42 PM (14 years, 2 months ago)

They typically use U238 neutron shields in dirty H bombs.  When the H bomb goes off the U238 fissions.


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