Capitol Hill Blue Forums Science and Technology Health, Medicine & the healing Sciences Fukushima - The Elephant in the Room

Haven't seen any "alternative energy" systems that work. Period. Let alone on the scale needed to supply the U.S. with its energy needs, sans spinning reserves . And if you have to have these, why not use the potential ?

And lets not forget electrical power isn't a commoditity, or a physical object. Its "potential"; only valuable when used to perform some task creating current flow. Its also ephemeral. No matter how much "energy" is generated - regardless of source - it bleeds away over time/distance. IPOF, the higher the starting potential, the greater the losses. All one needs do to "prove" this for themselves is walk under a UHV line.

Far better, IMO, to generate "potentiall" close to where it can be exploited. Even better would be to do so with multiple pants offer extreme redundancy in the smallest footprint for the cheapest initial and operating cost with the greatest safety factor technology affords. >Mech

[b]Head of NM resource protection office resigns[/b] Jim Davis resigned after the department secretary and deputy secretary removed the state's hazardous waste bureau from Davis' division, which handled the generation of hazardous waste and its storage and disposal. Davis' oversaw both Sandia and Los Alamos and the nuclear waste repository in southeastern NM. Wonder if we'll ever find out why Davis resigned? Be interesting to see if anything develops from Davis' resignation.

So Mechanic, I think I might be having a little UHV experience myself while standing underneath that humumgous blanket statement
Once I got out from underneath it I started to see a little more clearly, at least I think so?

When you say you are advocating for alternative energy systems, yes?

So if I understand correctly are you really just saying that CENTRALIZED energy production is wasteful and largely unecessary?

I can agree with that. We should have mainstream electrical generation (straight from the free cold fusion reactor) on every rooftop. Shortest transmission distances, fewest conversion losses, eliminate a whole lot of wasteful digging, transportation, pollution, middlemen, and regulation.

It's the Libertarian Dream! (Corporatist energy barons might not like it, though).

Thank you...thank you SO MUCH.
My experiences are similar.
Yeah sure, nukes are big, bad and evil.
A lot of that also applies to other aging technology.

The AMERICAN way to deal with that is to improve the technology, or at least I thought it was...used to be that way when I was growing up.

In my chosen field we're always trying to come up with ways to improve the end user experience. Sometimes that struggle leaves a lot of big losers in its wake but that's the price you pay if you want to come up with something worthwhile which lasts.

Television as we knew it in our youth (NTSC analog) was based on 1930's ideas. For the next seventy years we put up with it, gussied it up, made the old 21 inch RCA "x-ray special" pictures tubes go away so Junior wouldn't be getting a chest
X-ray every time he sat down to watch Popeye...we put a lot of lipstick on that pig but the day came when we finally realized it was time to make a drastic change for the better.

Digital HD television (ATSC) dragged us, some of us kicking and screaming, into the new era.

I think what's needed with nukes is for the industry to figure out a way to establish awareness of a new era, and consumers need to be educated and informed of the new technology.
I see tons of glamour ads for energy companies. We've all seen the "smartly dressed" bubble headed blonde walking around the graphics that show how nice those oil and gas people really are, we've seen lots of ads that tell us what "the new natural gas done for us today" and we've seen those weird disco era commercials for some Canadian nuclear energy company with the crummy 8-bit diagrams.

But not ONCE have I ever seen a single commercial that explains pebble bed reactors or the potential promise of thorium, and that's because the nuke industry is so heavily invested in these aging BWR's that they couldn't possibly think of moving in a new direction.

Maybe that's because it's a whole lot more money involved?
We're not talking about throwing out the old CRT TV set in favor of a new 42 inch plasma, we're talking about nuclear reactors. You can't just toss them out and even if you do, what do you about the costs?

Not a whole lot other than EAT them I suppose.
But my point is, do we want to continue with this aging design, do we want to continue supporting construction of even MORE of these dinosaurs?

We've retired the glorious old space shuttle, but I'm under the impression that we're moving to a new public-private partnership with commercial space ventures, and we're moving toward possible Mars missions, the end of the shuttle might be premature because it leaves us with almost nothing but we're not abandoning space travel altogether, we're looking for new ways to do it.

As immovable and unreasonable the anti-nuke crowd is, I sense an equal amount of the same thing in the nuke industry.
No one talks about thorium, it even got crickets here.
No one talks about ANY other reactor design.

With the US nuke industry it's either the water boilers or it's nothing. They're content to just keep the whole thing in Homer Simpson territory forever.

Good one Checks. I have often thought of our aging reactors as akin to driving down an interstate in a 1964 VW bug. It will likely get you there eventually but if there is a crash there will be problems. Wouldn’t you rather be driving a 2011 Acura? Or even a Ford Fusion (I couldn’t resist that)

So sure there are problems with the current global nuclear plants. But modern designs and technologies are eons ahead of our aging light water reactors. Money is a problem as big plants are indeed costly, as well as public perception and no power source is problem free. If we want electricity and have a growing population the power has to come from somewhere. And fossil fuels are not an answer in my book.

I like your idea of smaller plants such as the Toshiba 4s or also Thorium reactors. I especially like the idea of small reactors cracking hydrogen from water to power fuel cells for automobiles. This will take education, reasoned thinking, and level heads. And there are indeed the waste issues that must and can be dealt with.

I ain’t holding my breath on any of this.

I’m still trying to find those X-Ray Specs I read about in the comic book ads. Have those finally been developed?

'
It's all well and good to say that technology will solve all these problems, but it is in the wrong thread---it should be in the "magical thinking" thread. · · ·

For decades the whiz-kid brigade has been saying that new technology---already in the pipeline---will make nuclear power safe; and over and over down through the decades there have been accidents and disasters.

The fundamental fact is that complex systems break down---period. Economies, human societies, our own bodies and nuclear power will never function without breakdowns once they reach a certain level of complexity. Add human greed, stupidity and incompetence into the mix and you have a recipe for unparalleled disasters---which you might have noticed if you had been paying attention for the past hundred years.

Numan, do you know what happens when a pebble bed reactor breaks down?