Japans Nuclear Situation - check this out.

[jcx]

[youtube:14r75k0o]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MognnB0g56Y[/youtube:14r75k0o]

I'm always right... just listen when i speak...

And its the worst nuclear accident ever! Give it a few weeks and the news will tell you that.

[badflash]

I'll bet you a six pack that this is nothing compared to Chernobyl.

[rfeiller]

whether you win or lose it won't matter to those that will suffer and maybe die because of it.

[jcx]

I'll bet you a six pack that this is nothing compared to Chernobyl.

I can't troll a man who bets in beer - your on!
But how much plutonium did Chernobyl have?

[jackalope]

I have mixed feelings about nuclear power. On the surface, it's a fairly clean way to make electricity. No CO2 emissions. And despite a few very notable exceptions, including the current crisis in Japan, it's pretty safe too. The problem for me is how to deal with the waste on a long term basis. Haven't seen any acceptable plan for that yet, despite lots of smart people working on the problem for a very long time. The Yucca Mountain waste site is over and done with, leaving us with no permanent place to put the stuff. Right now, it's all stored on-site at all the various facilities around the country until a permanent solution can be found.

It bugs me that 500 years or 1000 years from now folks may still be having to deal with nuclear waste generated by us today. Here in Washington State, we've had leakage of waste from the Hanford Reservation going directly into local aquifers, which will reach the Columbia River in a few more years. We were told this would never be possible, yet it happened anyway. The best engineering in the world is no match for human complacency over time. There were various accidental air releases too, along with the usual government coverups, and a mess of ongoing lawsuits by a few thousand downwind families with increased rates of cancer.

The Hanford site is considered the world's largest environmental cleanup project, costing taxpayers an average of $2 billion a year since 1988, and employing 11,000 workers. They hope to be finished with the cleanup by 2040 or so. 53 million gallons of high-level liquid radioactive waste was stored in 177 supposedly leak-proof tanks. About a third of those tanks leaked anyway, despite all the expensive engineering, and now it's estimated that there's about 270 billion gallons of contaminated groundwater as a result. Aside from the liquid waste, the site also holds 25 million cubic feet of solid radioactive waste, including plutonium (half-life 24,100 years,) that needs to be dealt with as well. Sad to say, but Hanford has set a pretty poor example of how large scale nuclear waste has been handled in this country so far. Needless to say, nuclear power isn't very popular in this state any more. Maybe we should hold off on any new reactors in this country until we've solved the ongoing waste problem.

Gary

I say we ought to put NASA to work doing something useful. Collect all the spent fuel rods and wastewater, put it into a huge tanker rocket and point it toward the sun .... as it nears the sun (it won't even get all the way there because of the heat!), it will be destroyed and won't even be a blip on the radoiactive radar! It would be much safer if it were on the other side of the Van Allen Radiation Belt than on our side of it! Worried about cooling? Outer space is plenty cold enuff to keep the rods cooled until they reach their destination! Maybe some of our politicians and talking heads that promoted this very dangerous technology could ride along as good-will ambassadors! Despite what Ann Coulter and all the other lefties say, radiation is NOT good for you! Hanford, Three Mile Island, Chernoble, Fukushima and any other Nuke Plants should never have been built. The same goes for the one built in Montesano,Wa, which cost the taxpayers billions in investor bailouts and is being maintained at the expense of the taxpayers, not the investors! Congress gave the investors a pass, and we, our children, and grandchildren, great-grandchildren, etc., etc., ad nauseum will have to pay for those money-pits - Hanford, TMI and Montesano! (I used to live in WA, and worked for some of the contractors who made millions from their cost-plus contracts. They hired people who never went to the site except for the obligatory introduction, they bought huge numbers of equipment that they didn't need, parked them in special parking lots until after the bailouts, then brought them back to Seattle, Tacoma, Spokane, Portland, etc. and sold them back to the manufacturers at cut rates ...... not more than an hour or two on each machine - no Congressional investigations to worry about!)

Any time the Gov't says it can't happen, expect it to happen; anytime the Gov't says we won't go to war, expect us to invade another country; anytime the Gov't says something is good and safe, expect more diseases and cancers; anytime the Gov't says something is unhealthy for you, expect it to be a helpful, healthful Vitamin, Mineral, or Food Supplement. End of rant .............. for now!

[jcx]

Thermal vents in the ocean make like 100,000 times the amount of energy we use a day.
Well too late now, Radiated glass of milk anyone?
er

[gosmith]

I'd almost forgotten about the WPPSS (Washington Public Power Supply System otherwise known as Whoops) projects which included the now mothballed Montesano reactor which never produced a single watt of power. I believe this boondoggle still holds the record for the single largest municipal bond default that ever happened in this country. Thirty years later, 15 percent of our power bill still goes to pay off the billions in debt and interest. Classic case of sleazy wall street corprocats, crooked contractors, and a bunch of utility goons and burro-crats run amok.

I was surprised to learn that WPPSS is still in business. They just changed their name to Energy Northwest and now build and operate commercial wind farms and solar parks. They also still operate the one remaining nuke plant in this state, the Columbia Generating Station, which is located (where else?) at Hanford. It uses the same identical design as the one in Japan. They recently applied to the NRC for a 20 year license renewal to keep the plant operating.

As for launching the waste into space, I believe there was a proposal to do that at one time. Aside from being extremely expensive, there were deep concerns about a Challenger type disaster with a shuttle load of radioactive waste. Talk about one hell of a dirty bomb.

Ann Coulter a leftie? Hmmm. Haven't heard of any lefties, righties, or any other sane person saying that nuclear radiation is good for you. Sounds like maybe some good candidates to help out with the cleanup over in Japan.

Gary

[badflash]

The French decided to use the technology we invented, but were not allowed to use. They recycle their spent fuel. Storing it is a really bad idea. Shooting nuclear waste into space is a bad idea. Most of what is in spent fuel is actually valuable, and is made artificially because we don't recycle the fuel.

Over 60% of the fuel is still there when the fuel bundle can no longer be used, Radioactive cobalt and many other by products are used for waste water treatment and radiography of people (radiation treatments) as well as industrial X-Rays. Yes, radiation can be used to kill cancer as well as cause it.

If fuel is recycled, most of the bad stuff that everyone worries about can go right back into the reactor, just add more uranium. The stuff that can't be sold or stuck back in can be mixed with molten glass. This stuff is stable and can't leach into ground water.

We live in a radiation environment. There is a threshold for somatic effects. What happened in Japan is horrible, far worse than anyone planned on. Even so, I'll wager that only the workers will suffer any health effect. Time will tell.

What are the alternatives to nuclear? You think any of them don't have down sides that are just as dangerous?

[jcx]

[youtube:3r2dvi09]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qN3B-KjZ7vk[/youtube:3r2dvi09]

[gosmith]

I tend to agree with Badflash to a certain extent. There is nothing inherently evil about nuclear energy. These days, we simply can't afford to ignore any source of energy, especially if it can help keep us from being held hostage by foreign oil merchants while also reducing greenhouse emissions. If we can recycle some of the waste, find a way to safely store the rest, engineer power plants that keep the public as safe as possible, and find a way to fund it that puts investors on the hook rather than taxpayers, then why shouldn't we use it? Having said that, we still have a long way to go in finding long term waste storage solutions that will meet the most lenient industry minimum standards of 10,000 years at 15 millirem max exposure outside the facility boundaries, let alone the National Science Foundation's recommendation for 1,000,000 years after a facility has closed. Quite a legacy to leave to our descendants, but doable if we want it.

Gary