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

[Demon Buddha]

Todd Rich wrote:
> 
> Just a note here.  I've read your other response downthread. Your 
> advocacy of the ostrich solution 

	What solution is that and how is that way?


> Just be aware that what 
> you are choosing is a path that will lead to us poisoning ourselves with 
> ever increasing speed...

	Elaborate, please.
> 
> 
> On Sun, 7 May 2006, Demon Buddha wrote:

> 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.

	I'm aware of the basic shortcomings of the reactor, and it underscores 
the problems I cited as being primarily one of humanity and not of 
technology.  That's my only main point.  There are several thousand 
years of precedent of just how poorly some people will behave.  Back in 
the "good old days" when the worst that would result was a few hundred 
thousand people dead and no real material effect on future generations, 
it wasn't asuch a big deal in terms of longer term outlooks (as in 
generations, centuries, millenia, or longer periods).  How long will the 
thousands of square miles around the Chernobyl reactor be uninhabitable? 
  Are you suggesting that all the death, maiming, and other suffering is 
really worth this?  Would you say that those who have suffered from the 
decisions of others would not have preferred differing outcomes; to not 
have been regarded so shabbily, as so much fodder for some ill-defined 
goal (curiosity?  Power?  Glory?)?  It's so very easy to sit 9000 miles 
away and say "accidents will happen".  Were the lives of your own family 
and friends oozing out of them from their pores, you might feel 
differently... or perhaps not.  I don't have any answers, but I do have 
a few choice questions.

> Yes systems can fail.  However systems can be inherently safe too, so 
> that the worst case scenario is acceptable.

	To whom?  To those that suffer most greatly when things run amok, or to 
those at some comfortable distance?  I'm not being pedantic here, nor 
sarcastic or mean spirited.  I'd really like to know how you define 
"acceptable".  For all I know, I may learn something new.
> 
> 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.

	Once again, the technology isn't necessarily the problem, but as you 
note people are very clever and their intentions are not always so 
friendly.  for example, last I read there are some 19 or 29 ex-soviet 
nuclear warheads that are unaccounted for.  How likely is one to end up 
in the East River to be lit off?  Not very likely at all, but not quite 
impossible, either.  That might be OK for me if it happens because I 
live in Philadelphia, but how happy will all the people in NYC be? 
Actually, many of my best friends live there, so I wouldn't be too happy 
about it, either.  As I said, I don't have the answers, but many 
questions.  I actually believe that in fact you are right in principle, 
but America is far too lax a place, generally speaking, for me to be 
confident in our ability to run 200 nuclear facilities safely, but 
perhaps I am being too harsh.

> Of course there are no free rides.  If you are talking thermodynamic 
> free ride,

	That is precisely what I was referring to.

  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.

	Well, the anti-nuke contingent is a single-minded, junk science 
addicted contingent.  But there is also plenty of precedent to justify 
their opinions.  America is a nation that hates accountability above all 
things, and without serious penalties for doing the wrong things in the 
construction and operation of a nuclear facility, how can we trust that 
we would not have our own Chernobyl?  I'm not saying that it will 
happen, mind you.  I'm talking about PERCEPTION.  If the perception is 
that nuclear is unsafe, the industry will be fighting an uphill battle.
> 

> The additional heat is a cost of living.  Thermodynamics.

	Well, you do have a point there. :)

> No, there is no 'cure' to heat production other than killing about 6-7 
> billion people.

	ONly 5 billion would be very helpful.