[TheForge] OT: nukes etc. WAS:Hellooooooo!

[debmiller at fuse.net]

You said it!
Boy I didn't really intend to ignite a firestorm, really!
Ray
Cincinnati

---- Todd Rich <torin at panix.com> wrote: 
> 
> Just a note here.  I've read your other response downthread. Your advocacy 
> of the ostrich solution leads me to belive you don't care about this, it 
> is just a chance to rant at humanity.  Just be aware that what you are 
> choosing is a path that will lead to us poisoning ourselves with ever 
> increasing speed...
> 
> 
> On Sun, 7 May 2006, Demon Buddha wrote:
> 
> (snip)
> > with nukes can be tied to profit motives.  OTOH, the Soviet morons didn't do 
> > a whole lot better with their centrally controlled nuclear programs.  The 
> > events at places such as Chernobyl and Chelyabinsk serve of shining examples 
> > of state owned possibilities.  The USA is not exempt, either.  I audited a 
> > class with a guy at CCNY, Mishio Kaku, and he went through all these nuclear 
> > disasters from the 40s through the 60s.  We've had plenty and the results 
> > were not so pretty, though they were pretty well hushed up to the public eye.
> >
> Just a point here about Chernobyl, since it gets brought up a lot in 
> discussions like this.  Chernobyl was built in the 70s using a design that 
> was abandoned by the US in the late 40s/early 50s as inherently unsafe.
> 
> (snip)
> > 	I agree that it can, as long as nothing extraordinary happens.  But 
> > what happens with the extraordinary occurs?  1000 years is a very long time 
> > when your environment is posioned.  A few thousand square miles surrounding 
> > Chernobyl are in pretty sad shape these days and aren't going to get better 
> > any time soon.  Do you think that these risks are really worth it?  I don't 
> > care how well you design a system, it can fail.
> 
> Yes systems can fail.  However systems can be inherently safe too, so that 
> the worst case scenario is acceptable.
> 
> For example, I'm assuming you have cast iron at least once in your life. 
> Can you melt 1kg of iron to cast in any possible scenario where your fuel 
> is 10 grams of charcoal?  Even with liquid oxygen added in, you just don't 
> have the calories available.  Several of the new designs are like that. 
> They have just enough fuel in them to do their job of heating water. 
> Remove all regulation an it runs normally.  There are other safer designs 
> that if you remove the regulation it shuts off.  It takes quite a bit of 
> work to get them to work, and if everything isn't just right it shuts 
> down.  Failure modes are safe.  True you could get somebody to walk in and 
> sit on the fuel and pick up a fatal dose, but if you are basing your 
> opposition to them on that, you really are out on a limb.
> 
> >> If you are worried that it will be too long, we can make thorium 
> >> reverberatory nuclear furnaces.  Basic concept is a particle accelerator 
> >> pointed a a pile of thorium.  When it is on, it produced more energy than 
> >> needed to keep powering the acclerator.  When you want to shut it down, you 
> >> turn off the acclerator.  The waste it produces, while hotter than the 
> >> convention fuel cycle is much shorter lived, plus you can use the high 
> >> level waste produced from a conventional fuel cycle as fuel, burning it up.
> >
> > 	Sounds promising, but are there any hidden costs?  Rather, what ARE 
> > the hidden costs.  There are no free rides.
> >
> Of course there are no free rides.  If you are talking thermodynamic free 
> ride, it is a simple, well understood controlled conversion of matter to 
> energy.  As far as financial, it costs a fair amount to build and maintain 
> particle accelerators, but given it turns modertate to short lived highly 
> radioactive waste into fuel/energy even if it is run at a net negative 
> cost, it is still money well spent. However we don't seem to want to do it 
> in this country.  We'll just have to watch India develop the technology. 
> THEY are doing it now.
> 
> >> It has the added benefit of not producing isotopes that are easily turned 
> >> into weapons grade nuclear material.
> >> 
> >> Switching from coal to nuclear would also have added benefits of 
> >> dramatically reducing the amound of CO2 dumped into our atmosphere.
> >
> > 	But we'd still be introducing plenty of additional heat into the 
> > atmosphere.  I suspect that such schemes will only encourage an ever growing 
> > habit of wastefulness, people feeling they now have a free ride situation on
> 
> The additional heat is a cost of living.  Thermodynamics. It is happening 
> now. The only way to avoid this is to kill off the entire human race. 
> Even then the next animal will evolve and the cycle will start all over 
> again.  Eventually you wind up with the heat death of the universe even if 
> every living thing in the universe is killed.
> 
> > their hands.  There's too much historical precedent to let me think 
> > otherwise.  The only cure for that is through pricing and we're too used to 
> > whining about such things so that legislators cave and make pricing controls 
> > illegal.
> 
> No, there is no 'cure' to heat production other than killing about 6-7 
> billion people.
> 
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