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At 1/1/09 10:44 PM, Conspiracy3 wrote:

Also, the concern about stealing nuclear waste isn't so much that it would be stolen during shipping, but that it would be stolen during storage. During storage they are left in concrete containers underground, with shovels and jackhammers you could probably steal the waste. To steal the waste from the shipping vehicles would require overpowering/eluding its guards.

Right now the waste is just stored right outside the plant. But once we build Yucca Mountain, it'll be stored very, very deep underground. Stealing nuclear waste from a deep underground repository in the middle of the desert next to a military base would be difficult to say the least.

I think if you were going to steal the waste, you'd want to steal it in transit, not when it's deep underground.

At 1/1/09 10:44 PM, Conspiracy3 wrote:
Also, the concern about stealing nuclear waste isn't so much that it would be stolen during shipping, but that it would be stolen during storage. During storage they are left in concrete containers underground, with shovels and jackhammers you could probably steal the waste. To steal the waste from the shipping vehicles would require overpowering/eluding its guards

Ill give you that nuclear fission reactors are rather unsafe energy. But you said earlier on that it has no future but nuclear energy has a very bright future, I am reffering to the concept of Nuclear Fusion Power Plants. In a fusion power plant uranium isn't used for fuel but instead deuterium water (Heavy Water) and the way it works is the nucleus of the Hydrogen atoms are literally fused together resulting in astronomical amounts of energy. ANd the best part is that is produces no emissions, One plant can produce LOTS of energy and it has no hazardous waste since the byproduct is unradioactive helium gas which is already in our atmosphere.

If you need more proof about the power of fussion reactions look up in the sky and stare at the sun, the sun is on huge fusion reactor and I don't have to tell you how much energy it produces. If we can produce fusion reactions on a much smaller scale than the sun, then the whole energy crisis would be over for more information look at: http://www.pppl.gov/fusion_basics/pages/
fusion_energy.html

At 1/1/09 11:36 PM, CrownRoyal306 wrote:

At 1/1/09 10:44 PM, Conspiracy3 wrote:

If you need more proof about the power of fussion reactions look up in the sky and stare at the sun, the sun is on huge fusion reactor and I don't have to tell you how much energy it produces. If we can produce fusion reactions on a much smaller scale than the sun, then the whole energy crisis would be over for more information look at: http://www.pppl.gov/fusion_basics/pages/
fusion_energy.html

The biggest problem with fusion is the amount of heat necessary to create a fusion reaction. That heat is difficult to create economically without first creating a fission reaction. Once created that heat is difficult to control.

At 1/1/09 11:48 PM, Conspiracy3 wrote:
The biggest problem with fusion is the amount of heat necessary to create a fusion reaction. That heat is difficult to create economically without first creating a fission reaction. Once created that heat is difficult to control.

Well true but that why I said it is a very real future of energy. Right now scientists are experimenting with magnetic walled reactors that force the particles away from the walls, plus I know fusion seems like a longshot but so did going would telling someone were gonna go to the moon in the 1800's.

At 1/1/09 11:53 PM, CrownRoyal306 wrote:

At 1/1/09 11:48 PM, Conspiracy3 wrote:
The biggest problem with fusion is the amount of heat necessary to create a fusion reaction. That heat is difficult to create economically without first creating a fission reaction. Once created that heat is difficult to control.

Well true but that why I said it is a very real future of energy. Right now scientists are experimenting with magnetic walled reactors that force the particles away from the walls, plus I know fusion seems like a longshot but so did going would telling someone were gonna go to the moon in the 1800's.

The difference there is that everyone in the 1800s was an idiot. Today idiots are still a majority, but there is a larger population of intelligent people.

At 1/2/09 12:17 AM, Conspiracy3 wrote:
The difference there is that everyone in the 1800s was an idiot. Today idiots are still a majority, but there is a larger population of intelligent people.

Very true. But let me ask you a question, do you ever see fusion as a affordable energy source or to you is it just nonsense?

At 1/2/09 12:23 AM, CrownRoyal306 wrote:

At 1/2/09 12:17 AM, Conspiracy3 wrote:
The difference there is that everyone in the 1800s was an idiot. Today idiots are still a majority, but there is a larger population of intelligent people.

Very true. But let me ask you a question, do you ever see fusion as a affordable energy source or to you is it just nonsense?

I don't think it is nonsense I just don't think it is economically feasible with the current technology. Fusion has been successfully done, but it is by no means cost effective. The technology to make fusion cost effective isn't very far out of reach. In early developmental stages any technology is extremely expensive.

At 1/1/09 01:29 PM, glomph wrote:

Instead, a new generation of reactors will create tens of thousands of tonnes of the most hazardous radioactive waste, which remains dangerous for up to a million years. It will establish new targets for terrorists, including nuclear waste trains carrying deadly cargoes along our public rail network for decades to come. It will keep the threat of a nuclear reactor accident hanging over us and risk the proliferation of weapons-grade plutonium. And it will render the public liable for the enormous cleaning up costs.

OBJECTION!

The fact is one of these trains of waste could probably fall into the Grand Canyon and there would be no materials release. In fact there's videos on youtube showing the caskets being rammed full speed by another train. That plus the safety systems allready in place (signals, GPS, dispatchers monitoring all trains, the guard cars that accompany the shipments...) means there's not a damn thing terrorists could do with them. It's just an excuse from the greenies.

At 1/1/09 11:01 PM, Al6200 wrote:

At 1/1/09 10:44 PM, Conspiracy3 wrote:

Also, the concern about stealing nuclear waste isn't so much that it would be stolen during shipping, but that it would be stolen during storage. During storage they are left in concrete containers underground, with shovels and jackhammers you could probably steal the waste. To steal the waste from the shipping vehicles would require overpowering/eluding its guards.

Right now the waste is just stored right outside the plant. But once we build Yucca Mountain, it'll be stored very, very deep underground. Stealing nuclear waste from a deep underground repository in the middle of the desert next to a military base would be difficult to say the least.

I think if you were going to steal the waste, you'd want to steal it in transit, not when it's deep underground.

Trains Magazine had an article on Yucca Mountain a few months ago. It will be the safest area of them all. And not just because it's in the middle of nowhere, Nellus AFB and Area 51 will be nearby (in fact the long circuitous route the rail line will take is because if they tried making a straight route it would cut across the bombing range and Area 51).

As for wind and solar. The're is a place for them (and it's getting popular all right. The past few months i've seen the blades and housings for them being transported down the highway, and on 2 occasions saw an entire train of flatcars loaded with the masts). It's just not a TOTAL solution. There's no way solar and wind power could supply enough electricity for the US alone.

There shouldn't be one source to our energy policy, that's what got us in this mess in the first place.

We must diversify our sources

Wind
Solar
Oil
Coal
Nuclear
Biomass
Ethanol

And of course. Mind-power.

At 1/2/09 04:32 PM, EKublai wrote: There shouldn't be one source to our energy policy, that's what got us in this mess in the first place.

We must diversify our sources

Wind
Solar
Oil
Coal
Nuclear
Biomass
Ethanol

And of course. Mind-power.

Definitely not ethonal. When you burn ethonal you are actually losing energy because the energy needed to refine ethanol from corn is greater than the energy generated through burning it. Coal sources will run out, oil (excluding vegetable oil or whale oil) will run out. I think the best solution would be a combination of.

1. Methane
2. Wood
3. Solar
4. Wind
5. Geothermal
6. Hydroelectric
7. Human labor

When I say human labor I don't mean making humans run in hampster wheels to produce electricity. What I intend is for the energy humans normally expend to be harnessed, without the need for any change in lifestyle. For instance: Many people use excercise bikes and other machines, exercize machines can easily be converted into electrical generators. There is a new kind of cell phone that recharges itself by motion made when walking while the cell phone is in your pocket. There is a plan for a train station in Boston that would have generators powered by the force of people walking on it.

At 1/2/09 04:39 PM, KemCab wrote:

I think they should increase the funding for nuclear fusion research projects at least by at least a couple billion dollars because it's a much, much better long term solution than solar, wind, geothermal, or anything else combined.

The problem is that our energy woes are quite immediate, and we have yet to build a fusion reactor that gives off more power than it uses. It seems sort of prudent to focus on energy sources that have already been commercialized (and have proven their effectiveness), rather than try and develop a new power source for the future.

I do, however, agree that in the long run fusion is the solution.

At 1/1/09 10:17 PM, Al6200 wrote: I know that high level nuclear waste is stored in big concrete casks, so I wonder why they don't just put some sort of a tracking device on the interior of the cask - so that they know where someone is taking their stolen uranium.

The containers are sufficient to prevent the transmission of all types of radation, including gamma radiation, what makes you think radio waves would be able to be transmitted? :P

At 1/3/09 10:49 AM, dELtaluca wrote:

At 1/1/09 10:17 PM, Al6200 wrote: I know that high level nuclear waste is stored in big concrete casks, so I wonder why they don't just put some sort of a tracking device on the interior of the cask - so that they know where someone is taking their stolen uranium.

The containers are sufficient to prevent the transmission of all types of radation, including gamma radiation, what makes you think radio waves would be able to be transmitted? :P

I really ought to think more before I post : )

Anyway, I don't think it would really be that bad to just put a transmitter on the exterior of the cask. I'll admit that I don't know anything about signal analysis, so I have no clue if there would be anyway to transmit from the interior of the cask (and somehow get signals through the concrete).

At 1/2/09 06:17 PM, KemCab wrote:

At 1/2/09 05:55 PM, Al6200 wrote:

At 1/2/09 04:39 PM, KemCab wrote: I think they should increase the funding for nuclear fusion research projects at least by at least a couple billion dollars because it's a much, much better long term solution than solar, wind, geothermal, or anything else combined.

The problem is that our energy woes are quite immediate, and we have yet to build a fusion reactor that gives off more power than it uses. It seems sort of prudent to focus on energy sources that have already been commercialized (and have proven their effectiveness), rather than try and develop a new power source for the future.

The problem is that if we don't pour enough funding into the project it's not going to get anywhere. However, if we have current solutions which we can implement immediately without too much bullshit research, then we don't really have to go into trying to power our cars with vegetable oil or shit or anything like that.

I'm thinking electric cars, because the technology already exists, it's not too impractical, and it can be improved in terms of mileage and battery efficiency. Or increasing the use of mass transit in cities. It's probably a lot less waste of resources than trying to get into ethanol or hydrogen-powered cars.

I do, however, agree that in the long run fusion is the solution.

Ethanol and hydrogen aren't solutions: they are just worse problems. With ethonal you burn more energy refining the corn (unless you make ethonal from sugar cane like Brazil doez) than you get from burning the fuel. With hydrogen you use more energy splitting the water molecule than you get from burning the fuel.

At 1/3/09 12:38 PM, Conspiracy3 wrote:

Ethanol and hydrogen aren't solutions: they are just worse problems. With ethonal you burn more energy refining the corn (unless you make ethonal from sugar cane like Brazil doez) than you get from burning the fuel. With hydrogen you use more energy splitting the water molecule than you get from burning the fuel.

I can't vouch for ethanol, but the purpose of hydrogen fuel cells is to store energy, not to create it.

At 1/3/09 05:04 PM, Al6200 wrote:

At 1/3/09 12:38 PM, Conspiracy3 wrote:

Ethanol and hydrogen aren't solutions: they are just worse problems. With ethonal you burn more energy refining the corn (unless you make ethonal from sugar cane like Brazil doez) than you get from burning the fuel. With hydrogen you use more energy splitting the water molecule than you get from burning the fuel.

I can't vouch for ethanol, but the purpose of hydrogen fuel cells is to store energy, not to create it.

Energy can be more efficiently stored in batteries. however, batteries have the problem of disposal. Batteries contain many toxic chemicals that are a disaster tot he environment. Neither hydrogen or old fashioned batteries are good solutions.

There is another problem with batteries: replacement. Replacing the battery in an electric car costs about $4,000. Find a way to bring that down to, say $500 while either maintaining or improving efficiency and saftey.

Solar (photovoltaic) panels and wind power will always be fringe power sources. The bulk of our nation's energy production will need to come from a cheap, replenishable source. My bet's on nuclear fusion (which uses hydrogen, the most common element in the universe). The trick to making it work is to make the reaction sustainable (which is harder than it sounds-the longest sustained reaction lasted .5 seconds and generated 16.1 MW). The only byproducts of the reaction are helium, an inert gas and tritium (a hydrogen isotope with a half-life of 12 years). There is no chance of a runaway reaction as nuclear fusion requires precise conditions and any disruption to those conditions would shut the reaction down. There is concern over radioactivity, but mainly from the reactor's components. They would remain very radioactive for 50 years and treated as low-level waste for another 100 (compared to the thousands to millions of years with fission by-products). In 300 years, they'd be as radioactive as coal ash. (Source: Wikipedia-Fusion Power)

At 1/1/09 11:48 PM, Conspiracy3 wrote: The biggest problem with fusion is the amount of heat necessary to create a fusion reaction. That heat is difficult to create economically without first creating a fission reaction. Once created that heat is difficult to control.

So the fundamental problem with fusion power is "engineering is hard"?

At 1/3/09 12:38 PM, Conspiracy3 wrote: Ethanol and hydrogen aren't solutions: they are just worse problems. With ethonal you burn more energy refining the corn (unless you make ethonal from sugar cane like Brazil doez) than you get from burning the fuel.

I think you're wrong. Ethanol is the immediate solution to a transportation infrastructure based around liquid fuel. Cellulosic ethanol - fuel produced by agricultural / industrial waste like corn stalks left in the field or sawdust from a sawmill, or even switchgrass in fallow fields - holds promise for a huge net energy gain because this energy is going unharnessed currently. Traditional ethanol produced from corn is still a net energy gain, dependent on economies of scale. Ethanol promises better energy gains than petroleum in the future. Consider the amount of energy put into drilling in Alaska or in the North Sea. Cheap, easy oil is gone - we've drilled Pennsylvania and the Balkans all to hell. Petroleum is becoming more energy intensive every day, and ethanol: less.

Just because a fledgling tech might not be immediately economical isn't reason to abandon the technology. We used to tap into the ground, find oil, and fill buckets of it for lighting. We used more coal BTU for BTU to get oil in the 1860s because oil was advantageous, net energy gain or loss be damned. Likewise, even if / when ethanol is a net energy loss, we're able to use renewable green energy to produce ethanol which is advantageous compared to burning more petro.

The reason cellulosic ethanol or biodiesel is the future for transportation use is because we have the technology today to do it. Any modern car will run E85 with a $400 conversion kit atop your injectors. It's a liquid fuel that we'll be able to use in our existing infrastructure. We do it already. Ethanol is also a fuel we'll be able to produce at home, meaning some insulation from international politics / markets. Locally E85 is nearly a $1 cheaper per gallon, and while you'll see a ~25% decline in fuel economy, the fuel's octane is actually in the 105-110 range, making it a better fuel than petro.

Nuclear, fission or fusion, isn't really conceivable as a future fuel source. Firstly, fission has proved dangerous. Not while operating (although, sure, it can be), but when dealing with the spent fuel. It's also a huge obstacle in terms of nuclear proliferation worldwide. Inconsistency between what we say and what we do. Nuclear power also directly contributes to the proliferation of weapons in the same way the dairy industry contributes to veal. Fusion may be safer operation-wise, but it still does not replace petro as a liquid fuel for transportation use. We'll be able to generate electricity from alternative renewable sources, but electric automobiles are still a joke. Meanwhile, we have the ability to reduce consumption of petro now via ethanol production. Maybe it's just a bridge to a future source that holds more promise. Till then.

At 1/4/09 11:59 PM, TimeLordX wrote: Solar (photovoltaic) panels and wind power will always be fringe power sources. The bulk of our nation's energy production will need to come from a cheap, replenishable source. My bet's on nuclear fusion (which uses hydrogen, the most common element in the universe). The trick to making it work is to make the reaction sustainable (which is harder than it sounds-the longest sustained reaction lasted .5 seconds and generated 16.1 MW). The only byproducts of the reaction are helium, an inert gas and tritium (a hydrogen isotope with a half-life of 12 years). There is no chance of a runaway reaction as nuclear fusion requires precise conditions and any disruption to those conditions would shut the reaction down. There is concern over radioactivity, but mainly from the reactor's components. They would remain very radioactive for 50 years and treated as low-level waste for another 100 (compared to the thousands to millions of years with fission by-products). In 300 years, they'd be as radioactive as coal ash. (Source: Wikipedia-Fusion Power)

First, the irony of your "fail safe fusion" plant. People say the same thing about fission because of the multitude of safeguards, yet we've seen them fail. And did you really just favorably compare the waste from fusion to coal ash? Didn't coal ash just create one of the largest manmade environmental disasters state-side, since, well. um? (Pick your favorite. Do Three Mile Island for extra irony points.)

Radioactive byproducts - even ones that last hundreds instead of thousands of years - are unacceptable today. The waste presents the same, identical problems as fission. I have a bridge to sell to anyone who thinks Yucca Mountain will be a permanent solution. Similarly "permanent" storage sites are leaking waste across the globe. I also sincerely doubt the technical differences between fusion and fission will have any difference regarding proliferation.

You can call solar and wind "fringe," I think they're an opportunity at a drastically different form of energy production. One that takes production away from plants and onto the homes of Americans across the country. Revamping America's infrastructure by putting energy production into the hands of consumers and small businesses (vis a vis today's oligopolies) would do wonders in terms of increasing our personal stakes in energy efficiency, lowering and insulating costs, and preventing things like huge, regional outages during storms or other disasters.

At 1/5/09 11:48 AM, RedSkunk wrote:

stuff

The fact is that regardless of what advantages are made in the technology the simple fact remains that the energy used to refine ethanol is greater than the energy created burning it. Ethanol could be a way to store energy, but not a way to generate energy (for instance, if you charge a battery the electricity you put into the battery is greater than the energy created when using the battery because of inefficiencies in the technology, but batteries are still useful.) A nuclear reactor cannot be put into a car, so the energy to refine ethanol could be generated by a nuclear power plant, and then the ethonal is used in a car. However, I still don't think ethanol should be made from corn simply due to food shortages and the large amount of land needed to make any significant amount of ethanol.

This doesn't mean that you should abandon using ordinary organic matter for fuel. During decomposition many combustible gasses, such as methane, are released without any need for any energy to be added. That methane can be burned as fuel. This is already being effectively done on a large scale (several factory farms use manure to run generators, a dump in San Fransisco uses organic waste for methane.) This is a much more effective use of organic compounds as fuel than refining it into ethanol as the processing is very simple. The organic waste can be left in a large container, and the methane would collect above the waste. Once it has fully decomposed the remaining waste can be used as fertilizer.

At 1/5/09 07:41 AM, Elfer wrote:
So the fundamental problem with fusion power is "engineering is hard"?

As I remember my course in physics, fusion requires a high energy density. Thus high temperature (extremely high) and high density of matter.

I'm not realy sure how far they've gotten, but it's really difficult to do fusion without the destroying stuff around. I thought they only mannaged fusion uptill now in the atom bombs, but that's incontrollable.

Be glad fusion doesn't occur in attainable temperature areas. we would blow our land away while producing iron.

There are ways to get around every one of those issues... Take the floating windmill concept from that Norweigan company, and put it in the ocean, just like they are. Solves every problem. :)

At 1/5/09 12:28 PM, RedSkunk wrote:

At 1/4/09 11:59 PM, TimeLordX wrote: Solar (photovoltaic) panels and wind power will always be fringe power sources. The bulk of our nation's energy production will need to come from a cheap, replenishable source. My bet's on nuclear fusion (which uses hydrogen, the most common element in the universe). The trick to making it work is to make the reaction sustainable (which is harder than it sounds-the longest sustained reaction lasted .5 seconds and generated 16.1 MW). The only byproducts of the reaction are helium, an inert gas and tritium (a hydrogen isotope with a half-life of 12 years). There is no chance of a runaway reaction as nuclear fusion requires precise conditions and any disruption to those conditions would shut the reaction down. There is concern over radioactivity, but mainly from the reactor's components. They would remain very radioactive for 50 years and treated as low-level waste for another 100 (compared to the thousands to millions of years with fission by-products). In 300 years, they'd be as radioactive as coal ash. (Source: Wikipedia-Fusion Power)

First, the irony of your "fail safe fusion" plant. People say the same thing about fission because of the multitude of safeguards, yet we've seen them fail. And did you really just favorably compare the waste from fusion to coal ash? Didn't coal ash just create one of the largest manmade environmental disasters state-side, since, well. um? (Pick your favorite. Do Three Mile Island for extra irony points.)

The article I cited was comparing levels of RADIOACTIVITY-nothing else. Also, if you look at the sequence of events at TMI, you'd see that in spite of everything that went wrong, the failsafes WORKED! They prevented a total meltdown of the reactor core of TMI-2 and contained the melted portion of the reactor core. The other reactor, TMI-1 remains in operation to this day.

Radioactive byproducts - even ones that last hundreds instead of thousands of years - are unacceptable today. The waste presents the same, identical problems as fission. I have a bridge to sell to anyone who thinks Yucca Mountain will be a permanent solution. Similarly "permanent" storage sites are leaking waste across the globe. I also sincerely doubt the technical differences between fusion and fission will have any difference regarding proliferation.

How many "Yucca Mountains" are there? As far as I know there's only the one.

You can call solar and wind "fringe," I think they're an opportunity at a drastically different form of energy production. One that takes production away from plants and onto the homes of Americans across the country. Revamping America's infrastructure by putting energy production into the hands of consumers and small businesses (vis a vis today's oligopolies) would do wonders in terms of increasing our personal stakes in energy efficiency, lowering and insulating costs, and preventing things like huge, regional outages during storms or other disasters.

Do you have any idea how much that would cost in terms of raw materials? Not to mention maintenance costs. The power they generate might be suitable for small homes and isloated locations (like islands), but what about large urban areas? A solar plant or a wind farm large enough to power a city the size of new york (for example) would cover hundreds of square acres and cost more in terms of raw materials than a fusion plant with the same generating capacity.

Yucca Mountain
Radioactive waste
Three Mile Island

Okay, here's my piece:

Wind and solar are becoming more practical. Most of the trouble with photovoltaic energy is that it's mostly thermal output instead of electrical; we are constantly searching for new materials and methods to solve this problem. Furthermore, solar and wind are far more practical when you break it down to a localized level and network it, rather than the national conglomeration of energy we know today.

Clean coal: no such thing. One look at a coal miner will tell you that. Yet we continue to derive most of our energy from coal. Solar and wind ease the burden.

Oil: hybrids help, but electricity doesn't come from magic. This is an issue of its own. Biodiesel also helps, except we're getting it from all the wrong places, and thinning our food supply in the process.

Natural gas: Still pollutes, just not as badly.

Nuclear: Lots of electricity, but always the hazard of fallout. Doesn't help America's "under-the-rug" habit in terms of waste disposal.

Hydrogen fuel: 100% clean (if derived from water instead of methane), but still impractical due to the energy requirements of electrolysis. (Solar electrolyzing plants?)

Fusion: for some reason we can't get it right, but it's still worth looking into.

Perpetual energy: Still likely a ways off, although there is promise in emerging technologies and unconventional thinking.

Overall point: it's not about whether the source is practical, at least not from the environmentalist's point of view. It's about restoring the natural balance before we take a cliffdive. And to the naysayers out there, I'm sure you're familiar with the expression "better safe than sorry."

I think I'm done.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_turbin e#Vertical_axis

Vertical axis windmills can be very small, small enough to be affixed atop a lamp post, and require similar maintenance to other generators.

At 1/5/09 03:50 PM, RubberTrucky wrote:

At 1/5/09 07:41 AM, Elfer wrote:
So the fundamental problem with fusion power is "engineering is hard"?

As I remember my course in physics, fusion requires a high energy density. Thus high temperature (extremely high) and high density of matter.

I'm not realy sure how far they've gotten, but it's really difficult to do fusion without the destroying stuff around.

So as I mentioned, the problem is "engineering is hard." We already have devices (called "fusors") that are relatively simple and can produce small fusion reactions, just not in a way that can be harnessed for energy. We're working on larger reactors right now. The technology is coming, just not for a while.

Be glad fusion doesn't occur in attainable temperature areas. we would blow our land away while producing iron.

That's really only a concern in runaway reactions with unlimited fuel. There's ways of rate limiting reactions to make them safer.