On Sat, 19 Mar 2011 17:33:31 -0700 (PDT), bpnjensen
wrote:

On Mar 19, 5:21*pm, Bill Smith wrote:
On Sat, 19 Mar 2011 19:35:55 -0400, Joe from Kokomo
wrote:











On Sat, 19 Mar 2011 15:11:08 -0400, Joe from
wrote:

On 3/19/2011 1:55 PM, Bill Smith wrote:

Melting down a nuke plant was supposed to be Armageddon, but it
simply hasn't tuned out that way.

Sudden death by "Armageddon"? Maybe not...more likely slow, lingering
deaths. Just today (3/19), they said Iodine 131 was discovered in
Tokyo's city water supply. It ain't over until it's over. And with the
half-life of some of that nasty waste, it may not be over for 50,000
years or so.

On 3/19/2011 4:10 PM, Bill Smith wrote:

* Did you read the links provided, especially the one about Chernobyl?

I did not say "sudden death" nor did I imply it. I agree, it ain't
over 'til it's over, but there's certainly no point in getting
hysterical.

We agree that there is no sense in getting hysterical. However, when you
use the word "Armageddon", "A decisive or *catastrophic* conflict", IMHO
you certainly -did- imply sudden death.

*Fine, I should have chosen a better term. Sue me. :-)

The point I wished to make is that as severe as accidents like
Chernobyl are, it's not as bad as some would portray it. A million
deaths? Nonsense.

Nonsense? Well, please explain why an authority no less than the
Ukrainian government pegs the death count from Chernobyl at 500,000.
Just cuz these deaths occur over time rather than all at once, does not
mean the people are any less dead.

Did you read the link provided from the World Health Organization?

Compare cost/benefit ratios in terms of both lives
and money, of all the ways there are to make the power we need, and
nuclear power is looks pretty good, all things considered.

I like electricity as much as the next person, but the victims of
Chernobyl would beg to differ with you...and maybe there are a even some
Japanese that are having second thoughts.

P.S. Any thoughts on what we do with the highly toxic waste that will be
around for 50,000 years or so? Do we have enough rugs to sweep it under?

You didn't read the fourth link did you. It's rather long and
involved, but it's a new design that deals with the problems faced by
conventional pressurized water plants.

It operates at a higher temperature but a lower pressure. It's sodium
cooled so there aren't the corrosion problems associated water in a
plant. The secondary side gas is CO2 which drives a turbine with no
condenser so no cooling towers or large body of water like an ocean
are required. Water vapor (which is a significant greenhouse gas) from
conventional systems puts a lot heat into the environment, this plant
doesn't.

It has a *reprocessing facility which recovers unused fuel from spent
fuel elements and makes new ones from it. Spent fuel elements only
exhaust about 20% of the fuel in them, so there is a large amount of
it ready to be recovered at plants around the world. Fission products
from the spent fuel are formed into rods and placed as a ring around
the inner core and left there as the reactor operates in it's next
cycle for the life of the fuel, about a year. The elements,
principally Cesium 137 and Iodine 131, are broken down by radiation
into smaller elements which are either stable or have short half lives
with lower energy emissions. These can be safely shipped and stored
with existing technology like we do with low level waste. This process
has been proven in the laboratory to work.

It eliminates shipping dangerous and toxic materials that can be used
for bomb making because anything useful is consumed on site. Build one
next door to an existing plant and use up all that fuel that's been
just sitting there for decades. A plant like this could run for years
on what's there.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Bill Smith

Thorium reactors have solved most of these problems for awhile now.

How many are in operation? I'm well aware of thorium as a reactor
fuel, but it doesn't solve the problem of decades worth of spent fuel
we have to get rid of somehow. using the uranium and plutonium that's
just lying there and reducing the high level waste seems a worthy
reason to build burner reactors.

Bill Smith