THE Nuclear Power Thread pt 5 (merged)

[meemoe_uk]

>We're here to discuss and answer questions, not to be rigid like robots. And putting up immature membase pictures is not a good way to treat members or to guide the topic back to where you think it should be.
Nice to see we've got someone with some principle here. I see you've been here since 2006. Longer than me. ** Rest of post deleted due to flaming of moderation, please take up any serious complaints re. moderation via PM. sjn **

[dorlomin]

Tsunami off England today.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... NWALL.html

Only 2 feet high, but caused by an undersea landslide. Scary stuff !!!

Gas

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristol_Channel_floods,_1607
Now where is HinkleyPoint now?

[dorlomin]

Mocking gasmon, hes a big boy he can deal with it.
Using a disabled young girl as an object of ridicule? Beneath contempt.

[dohboi]

The fire has now been declared the largest in state history at over 100,000 acres and it is still only 3% contained.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2015481785_apuslosalamosfire.html

[tsakach]

More weirdness near Ft Calhoun:
Unknown bomber explodes levees near Ft Calhoun

An investigation is underway in attempt to determine who used explosives to blow up levees upriver and east of Fort Calhoun Nuclear Station around 10:00 Friday morning. The levee explosions come less than a week after workers punctured the aqua-dam, recently erected to help protect the nuclear station from rising waters, sending thousands of tons of flood waters into the nuclear plant area.

"Someone went in and basically breached that levee, blew it up," Wilber told reporters for KETV.

"So, the water that was pooling there is now basically flowing back down."

County officials reported that a half-mile stretch of Vanmann #30 levee near Desoto Bend was mechanically excavated and then lowered by using explosives Friday morning but they did not know who was responsible according to KETV News.
People in the Fort Calhoun area heard explosions and then realized the levees were being exploded. They phoned Emergency Management Coordinator Jeff Theulen on Friday morning, wanting to know why levees were being blown up.

http://www.examiner.com/human-rights-in-national/unknown-bomber-explodes-levees-near-ft-calhoun

http://www.ketv.com/missouri-river-flooding-extended-coverage/28421608/detail.html

Citizens blow up private levee

A local levee board blew a hole in a private levee about 14 miles northwest of Council Bluffs to let pooling water back into the Missouri River, Pottawattamie County officials said.

The explosion Friday along the Vanmann #30 levee came during the worst flood season on the Missouri in more than a half-century.

It spurred a handful of calls asking what in the world was going on.

County authorities were a bit peeved. Private citizens blowing up their own private levees isn't illegal, but some warning for the county would have been nice, Wilber said.

“Everybody is on a fine edge right now,” said Wilber, who also serves as the county's flooding spokesman.

“If you are going to blow a levee in Pottawattamie County, one would think we'd be notified,” Wilber said. “I don't know if we could have stopped them or not.”

The situation started when the levee board decided to increase the height of the levee after the corps released its flood inundation maps in May.

“We responded to our citizens' pleas to raise our levee,” said Lyle McIntosh of the levee board. “We raised it two to three feet ... to protect against a higher rise.”

But on Saturday, an upstream levee near Missouri Valley broke, and “our levee became a bathtub.”

McIntosh said the board had pleaded with local and national agencies for help before it blew the barrier down to its previous height.

“Our levees are being tested as never before,” Wilber said. “No one wants to be surprised right now.”

http://www.omaha.com/article/20110701/NEWS01/110709972/1040


WTF they blew up the levees?

[mattduke]

10 mile evacuation underway.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zosA6pPH_E

[tsakach]

In 2006 OPPD began to temporarily store spent fuel rods above ground in mausoleum-like concrete structures outside the Ft Calhoun nuclear plant.

"There's really no plausible scenario that could cause the canisters to open up and leak," OPPD's nuclear projects manager at the Fort Calhoun plant, Bernard Van Sant, says confidently. Van Sant said he personally believes on-site storage here is so safe that a permanent disposal site elsewhere isn't necessary.

A 200 inch stainless steel dry-cask storage vessel holds 32 assemblies of spent nuclear fuel rods. Two stainless steel lids are welded into place to prevent radiation leaks.


A dry-cask storage facility located at Ft Calhoun. Spent fuel storage at Ft Calhoun is currently submerged in the Missouri river.

"When the Fort Calhoun station was designed, the pool used to store spent fuel was never intended to be a permanent storage site. The same is true for the dry cask storage facility we use. It was not designed with the intent to be a permanent solution," Jones said.

http://www.enterprisepub.com/news/article_c622e2ac-55a5-5c14-b1b2-d8adfe92484a.html

[pup55]

If an evacuation was issued, why hasn't anyone in the supposed evacuation area been evacuated? I am in that area RIGHT NOW...still plenty of people here. Hwy 30 is closed so they can install flood barriers, it should be opened back up tomorrow. The plant has been offline since April 9th. the top of the spent fuel rod storage is at 1036 feet...the river is at 1006.

per the link above.

[pup55]

http://www.ketv.com/video/28046257/detail.html

Here it is. This young midwestern lady is not glowing in the dark. The evacuation is about the flood and has nothing to do with the plant.

[dohboi]

http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/07/11/265445/after-fracking-ban-france-turns-to-offshore-wind-but-a-nuclear-phase-out-sacre-bleu/

Energy Minister Eric Besson announced on radio Europe 1 the launch of a study on Friday on the country’s energy mix by 2050, with options including a complete exit from nuclear production, a cut in the share of nuclear to 50 percent and a progressive reduction of total electricity production in France.

“We will study all possible scenarios for what we call the energy mix,” he said. “It will be done with total objectivity, in full transparency, without avoiding any scenario (…) including the scenarios of a nuclear exit.”

An energy ministry official told Reuters one scenario would consider a total exit from nuclear by 2050, or even 2040.

My emphases.

That the French are even considering leaving nukes sends a huge message to the rest of the world about how untenable and dangerous this technology is. Pro-nukers, most of who otherwise despise everything about France and the French, have pointed to the large French dependence on nukes as proof that nukes are the perfect (and fashionable!!) solution to all problems in the world.

Now they will have to find another pro-nuke poster-child--Japan? Err, no. Russia? Oops. Iran, perhaps?? Hmmmm.

(And, no, turning away from nukes does not necessarily mean turning toward coal, so you can put your black-and-white glasses back in your pockets: http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/07/11/264873/germany-phase-out-of-nuclear-power-low-carbon-economy/)

[AgentR11]

While its nice to show the German example, and I do think they can pull it off; they also have the perfect combination of social, behavioral, climatological, and population density/infrastructure to make it work.

France will have a tougher time making a clean exit of nuclear sans coal. It wouldn't be unreasonable to suspect that the study is being done in this fashion to inform the public of what it would take for them to exit nuclear fission. My bet is that their public will find it unacceptable.

[Cog]

France would be stupid to reject nukes. Nuclear power is the only way through the bottleneck.

[dohboi]

Thanks for the response, cog.

Did you notice, though, that wind does blow and sun does shine in and near France?

In fact there is a little thing called the Sahara just a few hundred miles away that has vast open spaces with lots and lots of sunshine.

But, I know it can be very difficult for some people to think about more than one thing at a time, and you seem to have hit on your one thing to think about, and you're stickin' to it.

[peeker01]

ok, let's think this through. france gets 78% of it's electricity from nukes. they cost hundreds
of billions of dollars to build. they make no co2. there have been no fatalities. no serious
incidents.

because there was a cooling system failure in japan, in a 9.0 earthquake on a fault line, the
government of france wants to "surrender" their nukes.

replace them with what? windmills? solar panels? natural gas from russia?

2050 is a long way from now. all the crooks trying to attract the green vote will be gone.
all the greens will be burned for fuel in a post peak french world.

why am i even wasting my time thinking about france?

[Cog]

Good point peeker. Most of the nuclear fear mongers never consider the real life consequences of their "Lets get rid of all those evil nukes" proclamations. Nuclear power has proven to be safer than any other power source devised by man.

[GoIllini]

Thanks for the response, cog.

Did you notice, though, that wind does blow and sun does shine in and near France?

In fact there is a little thing called the Sahara just a few hundred miles away that has vast open spaces with lots and lots of sunshine.

But, I know it can be very difficult for some people to think about more than one thing at a time, and you seem to have hit on your one thing to think about, and you're stickin' to it.

Solar and wind are uneconomical. Why run the country on sustainable peasant technology when you can run it on sustainable modern technology? At worst, Chernobyl and Fukushima will be radioactive for 300 years- 10 half lives of Cesium and Strontium- and displace economic activity from a few hundred square miles. Nuclear has taken up a tiny fraction of the land that wind and solar have already taken up while generating hundreds of times more energy.

There will be more accidents, but chances are that our grandkids will live and work in Pripyat, vacation on the Bikini Atoll, and perhaps our great great grandchildren will hear about Fukushima as they walk through the nature preserve Japan was able to set aside and wonder, "They really had a nuclear disaster here?" kinda like how we wonder about slag dumping 200 years ago in the northeast as we walk through a quiet woods and think nothing of it other than as a historical footnote.

The fact is that every year, 3% of the radioactivity from longer-lived fission products goes away. Yes, it is important to keep Pu-239 out of our drinking water- that's why France reprocesses its waste so it becomes 100% radiologically safe after 500 years- but nuclear is a very land-cheap way of generating electricity. And it doesn't kill birds and contaminate the desert with heavy metals like PV solar.

[dohboi]

Tell that to the folks around Fukushima, which even the officials are now saying will take decades to clean up.

I love how, while France embraced nukes, they were the smartest people on the planet. But now that, in the face of overwhelming direct evidence that it is fatally toxic industry, they turn away from it, they are silly, idiotic, thoughtless...not worth wasting one's time even thinking about.

How quickly things can change for the ideologically blinkered!

[GoIllini]

How quickly things can change for the ideologically blinkered!

Pot calling kettle black.

[dohboi]

"Chernobyl and Fukushima will be radioactive for 300 years- 10 half lives of Cesium and Strontium- and displace economic activity from a few hundred square miles."

Well, thanks for at least being that honest. Too bad if you happen to live in those 'few hundred square miles' which may just happen to include millions of people.

It just stuns me that people are still promoting this toxic industry in the face of the still unfolding catastrophe.

Shameless, really.

[peeker01]

oops.....tried to edit.....pushed the wrong button