Re: OT: Global cooling 34 million years ago

Rich Grise wrote:
On Tue, 10 Mar 2009 04:22:49 +0000, Don Klipstein wrote:
bill.sloman@xxxxxxxx wrote:
On Mar 4, 1:31 am, Rich Grise <r...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I wonder why all warmingists seem to be against Nuclear energy - it's got
ZERO EMISSIONS! Maybe just the terror of the unknown that all ignorant
savages have?

It also has some small CO2 emissions in building the infrastructure and looking after the waste products. But at the preset time it is by far the least worst option for serious amounts of power generation.

Big problem now is that we have a supply of pure terrorists so that any nuclear reactor will have to be built to withstand a 1kt yield kinetic energy round combined fuel air bomb (a la 9/11). I know UK nuclear sites have no fly zones and I expect they do have air defences now.

Perhaps warmingists know enough physicis to be aware that nuclear
fission produces radioactive nuclear waste, which emits alpha, beta
and gamma rays. An ignorant savage like Rich may not appreciate that
these constitute emissions, but the more sophisticated may understand
that nobody has yet worked out an entirely satisfactory way of
disposing of this waste in a way that can be guaranteed not to foul
the world we leave to our children.

Decay rates of the worst species are fairly rapid. But you would still not want to stand near high level nuclear waste for a very long time.

It appears to me that this point depends on obstacles that are political more than scientific.

For example, nuclear waste can be safely dumped under a deep "Southwest
USA" salt dome.

Salt or anhydrite layers in geologically stable regions should be OK. You really don't want it to encounter any ground water for at least a few millennia.

For second place example, I consider that depths of a used-up uranium mine are good enough for safe disposal. (And I say that those saying
"not good enough" are "close enough to 'luddites' ").

An old uranium mine is the last place to put the waste. Uranium is a very common element - what is rare is to find it in economically mineable concentrations. It is the source of radon gas that escapes into homes.

Once it has been through the fuel cycle it is full of nasty neutron rich soluble radioactive hot fission products you don't want loose in the environment. Natural abundance uranium is fairly harmless - we used to demonstrate U in tap water to visitors until the suits complained. Water companies who were customers didn't like people seeing it.

Just drag the authorities and other NIMBYs kicking and screaming into the
21st century and quit using the shortcomings of 1950's technology to do
your scare-mongering.

Ask Japan (29% of its electricity is nuclear) or France (77%(!!) of its
electricity is nuclear) how they've been doing it safely and efficiently
all of this time.

Japan had one of the most insanely stupid criticality accidents ever at the Tokaimura plant in Ibaraki. Japanese people do not have accidents. Anzen-dai-ichi (roughly translated : safety is number one)

http://www.japannuclear.com/files/Criticality%20Accident%20at%20JCO%20(1999).pdf

Despite this claim the (sanitised) report of the accident makes frightening reading. They would probably have got away with it (and most likely were doing) if the fuel had been ordinary 5% enriched civil reactor grade. A full English transcript of the timeline of events is online but unchecked for technical accuracy at

http://www.isis-online.org/publications/tokai.html

Like in the UK they renamed the failing plant shortly afterwards.

Regards,
Martin Brown
.

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