"Kim W5TIT" wrote in message
...
"Dee D. Flint" wrote in message
. com...

Dissipation will be by the inverse square law so at 1000 miles from the
plant it will have a concentration of only 1 millioneth of the
concentration
at the release site.


It's a popular thought in the environmental impact world that the
"solution
to pollution is dissolution" or something like that. And, of course,
that's
wrong. On its 1000 mile (more actually) trip to infinitesimal
measurement,
how much impact did it have along the way?


Nuclear technology is not complex. It's relatively simple in fact.


Another favorite thought. Yeah, in basis theory, the technology is not
complex. Everything on paper looks great.


Dee D. Flint, N8UZE


Kim W5TIT



The only way to eliminate all pollution is to eliminate the human race.
Since that is not a reasonable solution, it is up to people to develop
energy supplies and attach the appropriate safety requirements without the
emotional baggage caused by fear. To date, the nuclear industry has had a
much better safety record than many other industries and we have the ability
to make it even safer yet. Right now the irrational fears about nuclear
power are standing in the way of collecting the data that will prove it
either safe or dangerous and developing an appropriate energy action plan.
What data does get collected is buried on the back of the last page at the
bottom of the last column of the newspaper or doesn't even make it into the
paper unless it is something that they can sensationalize.

Dee D. Flint, N8UZE

Yeah.... the amount of methane released as a product of water treatment
facilities that take in the raw sewage as well as the methane released from
animals at farms, and of course the enivitable other form of methane common
to humans, FARTS!

Sorry in advance for this one.......
Ryan


The only way to eliminate all pollution is to eliminate the human race.
Since that is not a reasonable solution, it is up to people to develop
energy supplies and attach the appropriate safety requirements without the
emotional baggage caused by fear. To date, the nuclear industry has had a
much better safety record than many other industries and we have the
ability
to make it even safer yet. Right now the irrational fears about nuclear
power are standing in the way of collecting the data that will prove it
either safe or dangerous and developing an appropriate energy action plan.
What data does get collected is buried on the back of the last page at the
bottom of the last column of the newspaper or doesn't even make it into
the
paper unless it is something that they can sensationalize.

Dee D. Flint, N8UZE

"Dee D. Flint" wrote:

Dissipation will be by the inverse square law so at 1000
miles from the plant it will have a concentration of only
1 millioneth of the concentration at the release site. (snip)


Wind currents don't follow laws, Dee. There will be areas with much higher
concentrations, and areas with much lower concentrations, over a given
geographical area.


Dwight Stewart (W5NET)

http://www.qsl.net/w5net/

"Dee D. Flint" wrote in message .com...
"N2EY" wrote in message
...
In article , "Dee D.
Flint"
writes:

Only 31 people died from Chernobyl. Even now there has been
no increased incident of deaths from diseases that may possibly be linked
to
radiation.

Directly attributed deaths. If a pregnant woman 1000 miles away was
exposed to
high levels of windblown radiation, and her child developed leukemia at
age 2
and died as a direct result of that exposure, how does that death ever get
attributed to the Chernobyl accident?

The area where the fallout could be discerned from the normal
background measurements was relatively small.

How many square miles? How long will it be hot?


Dissipation will be by the inverse square law so at 1000 miles from the
plant it will have a concentration of only 1 millioneth of the concentration
at the release site.

I think you mean "it will have a concentration of only 1 millionth of
the concentration at *1 mile from* the release site."

If you're talking about long-term exposure from a contained source, I
agree. But when Chernobyl popped, it let off a cloud of radioactive
gas, dust and smoke that spread over a wide area. How much a specific
individual was exposed to how much and what types of radiation and
radioactive material for how long is pretty much anyone's guess.

Plus it's not just direct exposure from one incident, but overall
exposure from many sources. Suppose radioactive dust falls in a water
source, and people or animals drink the water, and ingest the
radioactive material. How chemically toxic is plutonium?

While specific deaths can't be attributed,

And that's the problem. If someone dies in a coal mine cavein or
downwind of Bhopal, it's attributed.

the overall
numbers can be assigned by simply comparing the death rate due to leukemia
in the affected zone to the death rate outside.

Ah - but what constitutes the affected zone and what constitutes
outside? How do we know the control group wasn't exposed from other
sources? Heck, there's americium in smoke detectors...

This can be done for each
cause of death that can be increased by radiation. If society wants the
data, it can be gathered.

It should be gathered. But the results may not be pretty.

But people would rather hide behind the emotional
fear of possible problems than researching what problems will occur and the
magnitude of the problem and making an enlightened decision.

To a certain extent, I agree. But it's not all emotions - it's also a
matter of judgement, trust and education.

Look at the links Mike Coslo posted about Navajo uranium miners. Would
you work their jobs? Can you say with any degree of certainty that
none of their deaths or disease are due to exposure to uranium ore?

Most of all, will any of their deaths ever be attributed? Probably
not, because we don't know how much of that uranium went to make fuel
rods.

"Society" and "the public" were told for decades that nuclear energy
was "the future" and was safe, clean, and would be "too cheap to
meter". We were all supposed to trust the govt. and the industry, but
those folks make mistakes too. Is it any wonder people are not willing
to accept such promises at face value any more?

Perhaps the biggest problem is education. Most people have only the
vaguest ideas about how electricity works, let alone how it is
generated and transmitted. Yet they are expected to accept on faith
that nuke plants *and all the rest of the nuclear industry* are safe.
Until people are educated to how things really work, you're just not
going to get that kind of trust.

In addition, that accident
was due to an unauthorized experiment being conducted at the facility.
In
other words, rules and safety precautions were being deliberately
ignored.

Yep. Absolutely true. And I've never seen any reason given.

But these were not stupid, evil or suicidal people. They just did some
amazingly dumb things, which got out of their control. And perhaps that's
the
real lesson of Chernobyl: People will do amazingly stupid things for no
explainable reason at all. Then the rest of us are left to pick up the
pieces.

Still, stupidity can't be allowed to stop us from facing the energy needs of
the future.

It should give us pause about what technologies we use to face those
needs. For example, look at Palo Verde, the newest US nuke plant,
which became operational in the mid '80s.

How much did it cost to build per kW of capacity?
How much has it cost to run per kWH since it started up?
How much will it cost per kWH to dispose of the waste, ranging from
very low level stuff to used fuel rods?
How much will it cost per kWH to decommission when its useful life is
over?

Now compare the answers to those obtained from, say, a wind turbine
plant.

Instead one addresses the issue and error proofs and mistake
proofs the facility.

Except that it is *IMPOSSIBLE* to error proof and mistake proof
anything that involves humans. The whole history of technological
goofs proves that simple fact again and again. There is *always* a way
for people to mess things up.

Remember the Titanic? "Practically unsinkable" was the description.
OOOPS...

Titanic's sinking was due to a long chain of human errors, not
technological ones. She wasn't even new technology, and her crew was
experienced. Sister ship Olympic was the first of that class, and much
of the Titanic crew (including her captain) was simply transferred
from Olympic when Titanic went into service.

Of course people didn't stop building steamships after 1912. But
neither did they call *any* ship "practically unsinkable", either.

We can make technology safer, but it can *never* be 100% safe. So we
have to understand the risks, and utlimately decide which risks are
worth taking. And when an industry asks millions of people to live
with a certain risk, it is to be expected that different people may
not accept certain risk factors. Because it's *their* lives and
property.

But when technology is small and distributed, the effects of doing
amazingly
stupid things for no explainable reason at all are contained to a
relatively
small area and numbers of people. When technology is huge and
concentrated, the
effects can be much worse.

And the more complex the technology, the easier it is to do something
really dumb.

Nuclear technology is not complex. It's relatively simple in fact.

Old joke:

First banana: "Life is strange"
Second banana: "Oh yeah? Compared to what?"

When you say "Nuclear technology is not complex. It's relatively
simple in fact.", one has to ask "Compared to what?"

I would dare to guess that the Peach Bottom nuclear plant is far more
complex than Holtwood or Conowingo dams (all three are on the same
river, within 100 miles of here).

Nuclear power generation has been round for 50 years now. A total of 34
people have died. That's the 31 at Chernobyl and 3 in the 1950s at an
experimental government facility (where once again regulations were not
followed).

Attributable deaths.

The collapse of hydroelectric dams have affected areas as wide or wider
than
a nuclear power plant accident. And they have killed more people. I'd
much rather live next to a nuclear plant than downstream of a dam.

When is the last time a hydro dam in the USA collapsed and killed people?

Hmmm??

I don't know of a single case of such a disaster in the USA in my
lifetime.

And speaking of long term environmental impacts, what about thousands of
square miles that are supposedly affected by acid rain from burning
coal??
What about the miles of coast and ocean that have been contaminated by
oil
spills?? The long term effects could be quite significant.

Sure. But not as significant as the effects of radioactive materials that
take millennia to break down.

Not proven.

And that's the problem. We do not know the long term effects of the
release of radioactive stuff into the environment. Particularly the
effects of the release of elements like plutonium, which do not occur
naturally at all.

Millennia worth of acid rain could conceivably be just as
harmful as the time taken to breakdown radioactive materials. Why? Because
even though the acid rain dissipates, it keeps on coming down year after
year.

I think you're grasping at straws, Dee. The acid from acid rain will
break down far faster than many radioactive debris will decay.

Consider just one spent fuel rod from a nuke plant like TMI. How long
before it is harmless?

Let it be reprocessed and recycled and it's not a problem.

You're avoiding the question. How many years?

As I understand it, (correct me if I'm mistaken on this) such a rod
starts out as contains uranium, plutonium and some other fission
products . Reprocessing extracts the usable uranium to make new rods
- but the plutonium and other fission products are not usable in
current technology power reactors. Plutonium can and is used in
weapons, however, which is why the Bush administration is so
interested in other countries' nuke programs. Like Iran.

IIRC, there's only one operational reprocessing plant in the world,
and it's in France. And there are far more spent rods than it will
ever be able to handle. On top of which, the rods which do result are
more expensive than new ones.

When you add in the cost per kWH of reporcessing rods, what happens to
the above cost evaluation?

So if an honest evaluation and comparison of long term effects, deaths,
environmental impacts, etc is done and the same standards applied across
the
board, then it would indeed be necessary to shut down all oil, coal, and
hydroelectric plants.

I'd like to see such a comparison.

I would too. It is exactly the type of data that we as a society need to
make informed decisions about our energy future. Right now we are stuck
with people's emotional reactions. I should have said "...it would probably
be necessary..."

Ah - but you made the statement up front that nuclear would win the
comparison. That sort of thing makes folks distrust the industry that
much more.

My point was that people are refusing to even consider the
dangers of other means of power generation.

I'm not one of them.

Personally I don't care to sit in the dark and
shiver.

It's not a binary problem.

It's getting close to that in California although shivering will be mild
(except perhaps up in the mountains) as it isn't a severe climate.
California has built no new power plants of any kind in 10 years. They
can't get any of them (fossil fuel, hydro, or nuclear) past the
environmental requirements in the state. Population continued to grow and
they had brown outs and blackouts. Their solution was to buy it from out of
state. Well that hasn't worked either. The rates are simply too high and
the state can't afford it.

How much do they pay per kWH, residential?

Costs are being absorbed by the state government
instead of being passed to the users and it's wrecked the state budget. It
looks like those contracts will be canceled and California will be right
back to their brown outs and black outs.

Because they made some really dumb decisions about "deregulation".
They treated electricity as if it were the same as any other commodity
- which it isn't.

Now let's take a look at serious industrial accidents. A prime example
is
the chemical plant in Bhopal. 3,000 people died immediately when that
happened. As many as 10,000 people have died from long term effects of
exposure to the gas released since it damaged their lungs and other
organs.
No one is shutting down the chemical industry.

The chemical industry in India does not have anywhere near the safeguards
of
the chemical industry in the USA.

And as horrible as the Bhopal disaster was, the gas dispersed and will
break
down. How long will TMI be radioactive?

TMI has been contained so it will not impact the surrounding residents.
Long term radiation exposure thus becomes a non-issue.

WHOA!

That's *ENTIRELY* the issue!

As long as TMI is contained, it poses no hazard. Just like there was
no need for lifeboats on the Titanic until it hit the iceberg...

How long must it be contained? Decades? Centuries? Millenia?

How long can the containment building be expected to stay tight, while
its radioactive contents decay?

Who gets to pay for that containment and monitoring?

Will there *ever* be a way to safely dismantle it?

Yet some chemicals are as
persistent in the environment as nuclear materials.

Some examples, please?

A process can be developed to break down any chemical compound. PCBs, for
example, were specifically designed to be inert and nonreactive, yet they
can
be broken down into their components quickly. But there's no way to speed
up
nuclear decay.

Yes you can speed up radioactive decay by reprocessing and reusing the spent
fuel.

But not waste products like irradiated equipment.

While PCBs can be broken down, it's not being done due to cost. Save
with PVC. Same with other chemicals.

Actually, some disposal of those chemicals is being done. PCB
transformer oil in particular.

So sorry to say, your long term environmental arguments just don't hold
water. There's lots of things that can affect even wider spread areas
and last just as long.

Perhaps we should discuss the half life of plutonium?

Again preprocess and reuse.

For what - weapons? Are there any operational US power reactors that
will run on plutonium?

And again you've avoided the question - what's the half life of
plutonium?

And if you're going to discuss dangerous industrial processes, consider
this:
The most dangerous common form of mechanized transportation in use today
in the
USA are privately owned motor vehicles. Every year and a half, about as
many
Americans die on US highways as died in the entire Vietnam war. Airlines,
trains, buses and ships are far safer, yet few people refuse to drive or
ride
in a car compared to other modes. Why?


1. Convenience
2. It's what they are used to
3. Each feels they are in control so it can't happen to them.

Sure. But they are CHOOSING what risks they take.

Just because we do something doesn't mean it's rational.

True - and the opposite is true.

Mankind is a
rationalizing animal. We will find justifications for our wants and desires
and fears whether there is any basis in fact for them or not.

And that goes as much for the folks who support nuclear power as those
who oppose it. You say you'd rather live next to a nuke plant than a
hydro dam, but can you point to a single case in the past 50 years
where a US hydro dam failed and killed people?

73 de Jim, N2EY

Oh really.... Are you including "our side" or both sides in the war?


--
Ryan, KC8PMX




And if you're going to discuss dangerous industrial processes, consider
this:
The most dangerous common form of mechanized transportation in use today
in the
USA are privately owned motor vehicles. Every year and a half, about as
many
Americans die on US highways as died in the entire Vietnam war. Airlines,
trains, buses and ships are far safer, yet few people refuse to drive or
ride
in a car compared to other modes. Why?

73 de Jim, N2EY

In article , "Ryan, KC8PMX"
writes:

Oh really.... Are you including "our side" or both sides in the war?


Hmmm... I wrote:

"Every year and a half, about as many Americans die on US highways as died in
the entire Vietnam war."

While it's clear to me that Americans are meant, perhaps it would be clearer to
all if I wrote:

"Every year and a half, about as many Americans die on US highways as Americans
died in the entire Vietnam war."

How's that?

73 de Jim, N2EY


And if you're going to discuss dangerous industrial processes, consider
this:
The most dangerous common form of mechanized transportation in use today
in the
USA are privately owned motor vehicles. Every year and a half, about as
many
Americans die on US highways as died in the entire Vietnam war. Airlines,
trains, buses and ships are far safer, yet few people refuse to drive or
ride
in a car compared to other modes. Why?

In article , Dick Carroll
writes:

Strictly speaking, there is no pollution-free method of obtaining
significant amounts of power.

Actually there is, it's just that they have no serious following in the
circles
where it might matter enough to move things along at a rate which would
actually make them viable, available options. Some of them are

Wind
Tidal action
Hydrogen
Solar

Geothermal
Biomass

What is mostly needed is the emphasis toward development of the alternates.

It would be interesting to know how many trillions of dollars have been poured
into nuclear power research since the end of WW2, and compare that to what has
been spent on renewables.

While the isntalled base is fossil fuel, at affordable prices, and the
pollution
doesn't overwhelm us, not that much is lilely to change. It isn't for lack of
possibilities. You could easily generate all your own power now, it's just
much
cheaper to buy it from a utility which probably burns coal to generate it.
You
can get engines which will run on used vegetable oil or almost any other type
of
fat. But few of us will as long as the corner gas station is handy and not
outta sight pricewise.

There's also efficiency considerations. More efficient lighting methods and
insulation can make big differences. The effect of requiring an efficiency
rating of 12 on new air conditioners instead of 10 is enormous at the power
plant.

Looks to me like development of hydrogen is the way to go. It's THE most
plentiful fuel on the planet, is absolutely non-polluting since combusting it
recombines it with oxygen to form water, from which some of the hydrogen can
again be extracted.

But where do we get the hydrogen to begin with? It does not occur by itself
naturally on earth in significant quantities.

To extract hydrogen from water requires electrolysis, which requires
electricity. The energy available from the extracted hydrogen is no greater
than the electrical energy required to extract it.

Extraction from methane (natural gas) leaves you with a lot of carbon to
dispose of. And you might as well burn the methane.

And most current vehicles can operate on it with little
modification needed beyond storage. The issue of volatility is actually
pretty
much a non-issue, considering the volitility of gasoline.

Gasoline evaporates but hydrogen would have to be stored under significant
pressure.

Again, it's the
insalled base of fossil fuels that would have to be reworked. That's a lot of
service stations to alter. And a lot of politics to rework. Not gonna happen
anytime soon. No, I haven't forgotten the Hindenburg. Different era,
different technology.

Recent tests have shown that what caused the Hindenburg disaster was that the
fabric covering was extremely flammable. Analysis of fabric scraps and the
famous film has shown that the skin caught fire first, and ignited the gas
inside.

Hydrogen isn't an energy source. It's really just a storage method.

There are considerable wind generation facilities in Western areas, though,
and
I recall driving past a huge solar collector field out there somewhere. .I
think
it was in southwestern Arizona where the sun shines daily.

And there have been conceptual plans for large tidal action generators for a
long time, without any hard plans to move on them AFAIK.

Enormous initial cost is why.

73 de Jim, N2EY

In article k.net, "Dwight
Stewart" writes:

"Len Over 21" wrote:

The FIRST Tacoma Narrows bridge was designed
WITHOUT sufficient thought about sparse, elegant-
looking minimal structures acting as airfoils during high
winds. At the time of construction, the first Tacoma
Narrows bridge was the third-longest single span in the
world. It was open for nearly a year and developed
such severe oscillation (as a result of the airfoil effects)
that it was dubbed "Galloping Gertie." :-)

The high winds in the Narrows region proved too
much for it in the 1940s just before WW2 and it went
into catastrophic structural oscillation. It was rebuilt a
decade later and has remained standing for half a
century. Tacoma Narrows bridge is a major passageway
for vehicular traffic from the Kitsap County to the
Tacoma city region but, at two lanes each way, has
become too crowded for modern traffic. A third Narrows
bridge, adjacent to the second, is planned to begin
construction in the near future. The second Tacoma
Narrows bridge still retains a little windsock at each end
and warning signs about High Winds affecting both
bicyclists and pedestrians. Every once in a while a high-
box trailer will begin fish-tailing while crossing and may
temporarily disrupt traffic, all due to high winds.

Good grief, Len. You sound like a tour guide.

Blame Gig Harbor then. :-) They have a tiny micro-museum there, only
three rooms, one of which featuring the Narrows bridges. Free entrance.

Actually, we lived in Tacoma
for about four years (mid-70's) before heading overseas to Germany and lived
in Bremerton for about a year and a half just a few years ago. I've drove
across that bridge many, many, times. When we lived in Tacoma, we used to
walk our dog on the beach under the bridge occasionally (on the side
opposite Tacoma - a fairly popular spot for nude and topless sunbathers at
that time). We used to park at the observation point on that side of the
bridge (there was a plaque there with much of the information you gave
above).

Never inspected the plaque (my dentist scraped it off...). Things have
changed more since construction on the highways leading up to the
Tacoma side has been completed.

The bridge was much more interesting in the mid-70's. At that time, the
side walls were cross-crossed metal strips allowing for a fairly
unobstructed view of the surrounding area and water below. In addition, the
roadway surface was open grating, allowing one to look straight down to the
water directly below the bridge. Today, the side walls are solid steel
plates and the roadway grating has been replaced with asphalt.

Really? Then its been remodeled since the 70s. Wife and I have
driven over it many a time also, but we can see the Narrows on both
sides from a compact wagon. Bridge roadway is both grating and
concrete now with what appears as non-slip asphalt surfacing?

What I think more interesting is the western side of the Narrows
bridge with three HV lines spanning the Narrows in a single run, each
about a mile in length. No catenaries, just the lines. They've been
there for years surviving many a windstorm. Easy to see them from
the bridge.

We'll have to cease talking territorially here, Dwight. This newsgroup is
only for railroading, gunnery, east-coasties-pumping-their-hoagietowns,
and general demeaning denigrations of no-coders by mighty macho
morsemen pounding their, er, keys. :-)

LHA

"Len Over 21" wrote:

(snip) We'll have to cease talking territorially here, Dwight. (snip)


Agreed. This newsgroup eats up too much of my time even without the side
discussions.


Dwight Stewart (W5NET)

http://www.qsl.net/w5net/