Comments | zhai: (без темы)

zhai

(Untitled)

Apr 17, 2006 19:04

Interesting article via nalroth from the author of Greenpeace advocating embracing nuclear power to avoid global catastrophic climate change:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/14/AR2006041401209.html

politics, environment

Comments 10

jamesaach April 17 2006, 23:29:51 UTC

FYI: Stewart Brand, the founder of The Whole Earth Catalog mentioned in the linked article above, has also endorsed a thriller novel of nuclear power by a longtime industry insider (me). This story serves as a lay person's guide to the good and the bad of this power source. (There's plenty of both). The book is available at no cost to readers at http://RadDecision.blogspot.com - and they seem to like it, judging from their comments on the homepage.

zhai April 17 2006, 23:56:31 UTC

Er, wow. I assume you found this journal by doing Google blogsearches for the article? Rather clever, if so. I take it, though, if this is a thriller novel about a nuclear power plant disaster, you disagree with Patrick Moore's article? And it seems that Stewart Brand's endorsement of public acceptance of nuclear power rather runs at odds with endorsement of a technothriller positing its dangers...

jamesaach April 18 2006, 01:27:52 UTC

Ah -- You've caught the gist of the problem - how do you write a book about the real world of nuclear power (mostly good, some bad) and hold the readers interest without having a catastrophe? (Especially if you want to interest the more general reader). I think I've walked that tightrope successfully, but you'll have to read it and see.

In short, I agree in general with Mr. Moore and Mr. Brand that any realistic future energy policy has to at least give strong consideration to nuclear energy and not dismiss it out of hand. I'd add (and they might too) that there are other alternatives as well. There are costs involved with each and every power source, from nuclear to windmills. There's no free lunch. We seem to lose sight of that as a society sometimes.

zhai April 18 2006, 01:32:15 UTC

I agree, rather entirely, with all of your comments here... and thank you for posting them, I wasn't sure if you were reading notifications or just posting messages. ;) I will definitely take a look at the book. Congratulations on completing it, and receiving good response. =)

eggsniper April 18 2006, 02:20:18 UTC

I like telling people that I've seen a live (test, sub-critical) reactor with my own eyes while it was glowing blue. That and the hunk of plutonium the size of my fist I had to check periodically, once while the target room of the linac that it was in was still so irradiated my Geiger counter was pegged.

Never got sick, but it may be a good thing that I never plan to breed and won't have to find out there was some damage after all :-P

That one meeting of the American Nuclear Society I went to didn't address climate change, though I do recall they were pushing for that big new storage site in Nevada. Also, along the lines of this, we could have built lots of positron accelerators and burned our spent fuel (while generating more energy than we used) and reduce the half-life of that stuff by an order of magnitude or so.

zhai April 18 2006, 14:46:45 UTC

I'm sure you suspected that I had you in mind when I posted the link. =) thejoj has questions / considerations below... what's your take on the waste disposal part of this?

thejoj April 18 2006, 07:10:02 UTC

(Please correct me if I'm at wrong at any point in this discussion ( ... )

zhai April 18 2006, 14:45:20 UTC

You bring up some really good points, of course... I don't pretend to know the right answers to any of them, though I am going to reply to Egg's comment above and point him down here to see if he can provide insight on nuclear waste management -- he was our resident nuke at RPI and knows all about that stuff ( ... )

eggsniper April 18 2006, 15:03:15 UTC

I'm not sure about the 40 years to 1/1000 radioactivity, but it sounds reasonable. But you wouldn't want the stuff reaching ground water at that point either. It's not just spent fuel they're burying, it's also various parts and assemblies (mostly from the core vessel) that have been irradiated, and that stuff wouldn't take too long to cool down ( ... )

Agreed eggsniper April 18 2006, 14:51:32 UTC

To be fair, a fusion reactor would irradiate its parts just like a fission reactor, creating a good deal of stuff that would need to be stored away safely for a time . . . but a reasonable time. Also of course the ideal reaction isn't the only one happening, but still there is minimal radioactive waste created. Oh, and deuterium is perfectly stable, just rare (0.015%).