Making mountains out of meltdowns (in Japan)
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All power is nuclear if you trace it back to its source. I just don't see the advantage of centralized power generation, when solar, wind and tidal are so abundant. Solar is not expensive, it is just over-priced while we go through the dark ages of nuclear-based petroleum. Have you ever heard the argument about overcast days and it being dark at night as an argument against solar. What is petroleum other than decayed plant material. Those plants were grown by solar energy and that energy was stored in the oil. And that solar energy came from our primary nuclear generating station which is the sun. So oil is a battery made of nuclear/solar generated biomass. In ten years we will go from 12 to 20 percent solar efficiency to near 80 percent efficiency. We have the knowledge and basic technology and the time lag is just a function of going through the phase of engineering refinement. The length of the lag will be moderated by the roadblocks raised by political conservatism. However, conservatism will fall harder than the Berlin wall as the floodgates of pent up energy demand and the rising price of oil collide. May not happen in my life time, but it could also happen in less than 10 years.
The problem with nuclear is the problem of trusting overly complex system to fallible humans and the vagaries of nature.
Also when designing for solar don't do your calcs solely on the energy created. Make sure your solar designs also use the panels to shade the roofs and walls of the buildings you are air conditioning and take full advantage of the passive solar savings. And use water systems to cool your panels and feed/that warm/hot water into your hot water heaters. Do your calcs on such integrated systems and I will listen to the results.
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Hi Roger, While I basically agree with you, we know that there is no free lunch. Off the Big Island (the island of Hawaii), some are considering the feasibility of heat exchange in a deep trench adjacent to the coast line. Sounds good, but I wounder about the environmental impact? How is the energy transmitted up the island chain? Is that kind of investment susceptible to earthquakes, and tsunamis? Before we jump, solid research needs to be done. In the mean time it appears that the US at least, might need to expand proven Nuclear technology. In any case IMO we should eventually move off the Nuclear standard, unless it can be made safer, and disposal taken care of.
There is the joke about the first moon lander vehicle, that it was built by the lowest bidder.:) I wonder what happened to Kevin Costner's oil clean up device in the Gulf disaster.
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Hono, If you want to do heat exchange, UPS me a cooler of onshore Hawaiian breeze and I will return it filled with some of our 114 degree desert air flavored with smoke from our forest fires.
I am not too worried about nuclear disaster here. The local newspaper printed a diagram showing a 48-mile evacuation zone around the Palo Verde Nuclear plant in case of disaster. Luckily I am 49 miles away so I have no worries.
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@unknownuser said:
Luckily I am 49 miles away so I have no worries.
And hopefully the wind never flows on your side
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OK, Frenchy you do have a point, but at least I don't have to worry about Tsunami.
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Our only nuclear plant (producing around 40-45% of the power needs of the nation) is about 100 kms away from me (and the wind generally blows in another direction) so I am not worried about tsunamis either.
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@gaieus said:
Our only nuclear plant (producing around 40-45% of the power needs of the nation) is about 100 kms away from me (and the wind generally blows in another direction) so I am not worried about tsunamis either.
Well, tsunami is the only thing that could shake things up in my godforsaken city. Otherwise we´re at the serious risk of dying of boredom
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Since retirement, I occasionally watch court TV. Whenever the party the Judge is going to rule against begins their nervous smiles, the Judge will always tell them to wipe the smile off their faces, then bring down the gavel down against them. No nuclear power in Hawaii yet (unless you count the Navy berth in Pearl Harbor), but all of our power plants (at least on the island of Oahu) are next to the ocean, or water connected and close by the ocean. If a Tsunami hits us, those that are not inundated will be without power for a long while.
Mean while more bad news for Japan.
@unknownuser said:
Radioactive strontium detected in seabed
Radioactive strontium has been detected for the first time on the seabed near the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
Tokyo Electric Power Company says it found strontium-89 and -90 in the seabed soil. The company conducted a survey on June 2nd about 3 kilometers off the coast at 2 locations, some 20 kilometers north and south of the nuclear complex.
The substances pose a serious health risk because they can accumulate in the bones if inhaled, which could cause cancer.
Up to 44 becquerels per kilogram of strontium-90 were detected, which has a half-life of 29 years.
The substances had been detected before in soil on land and in seawater following the nuclear accident in March.
A member of the government's Nuclear Safety Commission, Shigeharu Kato, says more examination should be carried out to find out if or how the substances can accumulate in marine life.
The fishery ministry conducted separate surveys. It did not find radioactive strontium in fish and seafood samples taken off the coast of Ibaraki and Chiba prefectures. Both are located south of the Fukushima plant.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011 08:54 +0900 (JST)
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@unknownuser said:
When we installed the panels on our house roof I had the expectation that we could allow them to sit there without a worry or care and to generate electricity during daylight hours for the next twenty-five years when the guarantee runs out. That they ought to be exposed to unshaded sunlight was obvious, but my early discovery that in order to achieve maximum output they need also to be rinsed periodically was an early lesson in the maintenance of solar panels. I have been more recently surprised that these two points are not fully appreciated by everyone, not even some "experts."
A really interesting report from this guy in SolCal who thought PV cells on his roof was "a great idea"
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You have a new provocative avatar
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Looks like someone shot tomcat
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@unknownuser said:
You have a new provocative avatar
Yes, however it's no more provocative than this image below is it...?
Towards the end of the last century. my family drove around English roads and up and down motorways in our cars, with an English version of this sticker in the back window. I remember it was really cool to have this sticker- even more cool if you had the one that was in German! "Atomkraft? Nein Danke!". How provocative was that?! Britain was still very mistrusting of Germany in the 60's and 70's, and this sticker represented so much more than just being anti-nuclear. It represented moving forward. Britain united with the rest of Europe. A new age. That was my interpretation of it in those days anyway. I was only a boy.
We made such a fuss over nuclear in the 1960's and 1970's. A nuclear scientist, to the intellectual middle classes was someone to have deep mistrust in. We were fed terrible images of the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, all driven by a deep fear of the cold war- which was at its peak. My sister would for years have nuclear 'nightmares' and would often cry herself to sleep, because largely my parents were so prominent in the British anti-nuclear movement and would fill her head with propaganda. We actually almost had an all out nuclear war in 1979- but it wasn't a republican who was going to press that big strike button, it was sweet old democratic President Carter.
In the 1980's we demonstrated about the nuclear train. (Where did that go or end?). The nuclear train even crashed once. We're still here. There were mass demonstrations in Germany, where the green movement was strong. I was a member of the British green movement in the early 1980's. I was a young fallible 16 year old, who listened too much to others rather than making my own opinions. I became highly irritated with the green party, partially because they were doing there best to "kick out the anarchists" (but mainly because at heart, they were the vacuous upper middle-class). The greens found anarchists most distasteful, because essentially anarchists were marxists. Marxism didn't bode well with middle class green ideals. Then in about 1982/3 I was sitting outside a pub during local elections, when this guy walks up to me donning a badge of a green flower with an A in the middle of it. "I'm a green anarchist" he said. It was obvious that the greens had found kudos by posing as anarchists. And those who thought they were anarchists, but weren't and were actually middle class environmentalist posers, found a way to make themselves more acceptable to the dying left, the dregs of socialism, who were slowly watching the collapse of the Soviet Union. There was a burgeoning green 'new age' growing, and those who didn't carry on with their Marxist roots (like myself), joined this new age movement. Suddenly the accolade of being labeled an "anarchist", a 'free thinker' and especially to pose as a 'green anarchist' was just too tempting, too elitist to ignore.
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So "reactive" by anti-fusion
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@unknownuser said:
Looks like someone shot tomcat
Don't worry Rich, he'll return in some shape or another...soon!
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I should point out that my avatar comes from this blog;
It's a Swedish site, but is run by many nuclear physicists from around the world, and is worth a visit as a believer or not.
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@unknownuser said:
Seems your forum is a small forum by the number of members
It's not 'my' forum.
...and seeing the amount of hysteria around over nuclear (your silly scaremongering comments don't exactly help either do they?
), what do you honestly expect? -
It was just a word play between a personal history and a physical description
Seems your forum is a small forum by the number of members
and this video on the their blog a very optimistic one
[flash=560,349:1p1x3ycd]http://www.youtube.com/v/ITwuq4MFQlY?version=3[/flash:1p1x3ycd]
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@unknownuser said:
It was
and this video on the their blog a very optimistic one
Where are all the dead bodies? Have they hidden them? Apparently you get more carcinogens in your lungs everyday by frying sausages! (another myth perhaps?)
It's not the best of sites/blogs anyway. It's far too "too many people on the planet" malthusian nonsense for my liking. I just used their logo for my avatar.
Spiked.org is a far better, more balanced read.
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Sorry I don't want take these so beautifull white workclothes for restore these inconsequential energy!
Non merci
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