Posted on 08/07/2004 4:12:04 PM PDT by MadIvan
As mvpel stated, I am currently exposed to much higher levels of radiation here in Arizona than I was on the nuclear submarine. Does this answer your question?
It's worse than that. If the average nuke emitted as much radiation as the average coal-fired power plant, it would have to be shut down. There's just no established radiation standard foor coal plants.
Bingo! The coal fired electric plants in merry old England spew at least 800 pounds of uranium into the atmosphere every day, and no one says boo. Uranium is distributed all through the crust, a little of it nearly everywhere. If you work in a granite faced building, you are soaking up measurably more radiation than the man in the steel building.
Chernobyl be damned, it was nothing more than a jumped up version of the graphite pile Enrico Fermi set up under the stands of a Chicago stadium, with nothing resembling a real containment building, and even then it took a third shift tech with no adult supervision to ramp it up to test level to make it blow.
Three Mile Island, no one outside the perimeter fence was exposed to as much additional radiation than they would have received by flying to Denver. I helped build a plant in NC, Shearon Harris, and these babies are tough. NRC man told me the design was to withstand an impact from a 747, that being worst case scenario when it was only dreamed of as an accident, and having been there, I don't doubt it would. We have new designs that don't require constant coolant flow to keep from meltdown, so forget even TMI.
Want a hydrogen economy for transportation, clean up big city air? Takes electricity to crack water into hydrogen and oxy. If we burn hydrocarbons to make the juice to crack out the hydrogen, where the hell is our net gain? Same applies to electric cars, where does the electric come from, and by the way, what do we do with a ton or so of highly toxic battery material when it needs replacing every few years?
Storage, WHY? If the spent fuel is hot enough to be hazardous, and it is, it is a better source than any ore on Earth, recycle it. Too expensive, someone said? The French, not having been blessed with the peanut farmer, have done it for years. Hurts my soul to admit the French are brighter than we are on anything, but they got this right. Once again, we are being held back by an executive order issued to get a treaty with a country that NO LONGER EXISTS!
I pray my grandchildren will not have to bow towards Mecca five times a day to keep from freezing, but there are days I despair of just that.
If the aggregate in your concrete is principally granite, you'll be getting a higher dose. I should finally get around to writing a Linux driver for my geiger counter and get it plugged in to graphing software...
Uranium prices have fallen because of reduced demand and a political decision to buy enriched uranium from recycled Russian warheads. When the stockpiles of recycled warhead uranium dwindle, the price will likely bump up. Likewise, if the power industry revives in some fashion, the economics will change.
Reprocessing is not inexpensive. Capital investment in reprocessing plants can be significant. If the demand for the product you're producing is down, that will tend to discourage development. But NOTHING is going to happen here on that front until the EO that Carter put in is rescinded.
Actually, the very best option is a closed fuel cycle like the IFR that was being developed at Idaho. Raw materials go in the front door of the plant, electricity comes out on the lines, reprocessing occurs inside, and every few years an aspirin-sized tablet of non-reprocessable waste comes out the back end. Clinton canceled that one (of course).
Do you know offhand if they're doing Pu MOX in CANDU or other compatible reactors? I remember when it was proposed, but didn't catch news of whether they'd gone ahead with it.
With all the vilification of Bush's Texas oil connections, this makes you wonder who's actually in the pocket of the fossil energy industries, doesn't it?
You bet we will!!! It'll use up too much of the freakin' sunlight!!!!< /smirk>
I'm sure they will come up with something more irrational than that.
But since Geiger counters have only been around about 50 years, there probably hasn't been time to get a Linux driver written for them yet.
The last I heard of the program, which at the time was called the Parallex Project, was that test fuel samples were to be irradiated in the Chalk River test reactor starting near the end of 2000. I don't know if that ever started. Even if it did, there will be a period of time to accumulate the desired flounce, then a fairly extensive program of PIE for the irradiated specimens. The draft EIS addressing the use of MOX in CANDU systems was, as I recall, reasonably positive.
I notice "they're" at it again:
Today's headlines, everyone I've seen, has been like "4 Killed in accident at Japanese NUKE plant".
Only when getting down aways, does it state that it was a STEAM leak that scalded them to death, and NO radiation was involved.
An honest headline (and how many papers would THAT sell?) would be "4 Killed by Steam Leak at Power Plant". that, however, does not serve the anti-nuke agenda.
In reality, the burning of coal releases more radiation than nuclear power stations. The fact is that coal form in the ground, and in its process of formation, absorbs some radioactive elements.
LOLOLOLOLOLOL
Actually, I do not think we would be here without the natural background radiation. IMHO, it helped "push" evolution.
Well, along with some atmospheric and solar events blowing away various protective layers I would say that it clearly helped push mutation and natural selection.
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