THE Nuclear Power Thread pt 5 (merged)

[rattleshirt]

These things worry me because the long term effects are so unpredictable and outside my ability to compensate for...kind of like sudden methane clathrate collapse. Oh well, I'll just do as much as I can. Time to get on with it.

[EnergyUnlimited]

These things worry me because the long term effects are so unpredictable and outside my ability to compensate for...kind of like sudden methane clathrate collapse. Oh well, I'll just do as much as I can. Time to get on with it.

Overall impression from Chernobyl meltdown is that within about 25 years of massive release of radioactivity (equivalent of 300-400 Hiroshima bombs) surrounding biosphere have recovered reasonably well.

Even massive nuclear reactor accident would be next to nothing, if you compare it to runaway methane release from clathrate deposits.
All out global atomic war could also prove not worst than that.

You would miss good old time of nuclear meltdowns, if you found yourself in environment where lets say 50% of all methane hydrate is to collapse within a decade or two.

[rattleshirt]

The trouble with chernobyl recovery claims is that the "biosphere recovery" is not the same as "safe for human habitation and farming". on the clathrate collapse: yeah that is pretty much my worst nightmare. I would rather have a Yellowstone super eruption, personally.

[EnergyUnlimited]

The trouble with chernobyl recovery claims is that the "biosphere recovery" is not the same as "safe for human habitation and farming".

If you accepted lets say 10% excess of various cancers including leukemia, some malformed babies and overall life expectancy lowered by 20% or so, then you may consider Chernobyl surroundings to be safe to inhabit by humans and to farm (with radiation meters you could learn, which particular spots are no go to reduce risks further).
Naturally that would not be acceptable by something known as Western standards, but biologically humans would survive in such environment.

Nature does not care about tragedies of individuals and from her perspective everything is fine as long as statistics of population survival are favorable... and if not, then species must transform (evolution) or go extinct.

Deers survive around Chernobyl, wild boars do, plenty of birds do, so why humans could not after all?
Most of these species are about as susceptible to radiation as we are.

That is how average local environment after all out atomic war might look like.
If you are over 40, you would hardly notice a difference (not enough time to develop some nasty cancer, unlikely to breed etc).

I would rather have a Yellowstone super eruption, personally.

Nuclear winter (if it is real phenomenon, not just fear mongering, or overhyped theory) would be next to nothing comparing to winter after such eruption.
US of America would be literally obliterated with ca 2000 miles radius of total destruction zone.
Few survivors would perhaps cling to life on eastern coast, but it is not clear what they could eat for many years to come - perhaps each other.
Worldwide crops would fail, perhaps by 95% for a decade or so... perhaps by close to 100% during a worst year or two.

Be careful, what you wish for...

Anyway, as we all know Yellowstone supervulcano erupts every 600 000 years +/- few %.
Last eruption was a bit more than 600 000 years ago, so now we are a bit overdue...
Your wishes may come true soon... even you may see consequences if you are lucky/unlucky enough (delete as appropriate to fit your definition of luck).

[rattleshirt]

Yellowstone does not appear to have the total destruction radius stated above. Perhaps 200 miles not 2000. If you can survive the initial couple of years, it should, with planning, be possible to recover to what I consider an acceptable level...but then I think like Jack too much sometimes. Besides other than me who is going to be planning for such a thing?

[EnergyUnlimited]

Yellowstone does not appear to have the total destruction radius stated above. Perhaps 200 miles not 2000. If you can survive the initial couple of years, it should, with planning, be possible to recover to what I consider an acceptable level...but then I think like Jack too much sometimes. Besides other than me who is going to be planning for such a thing?

I have red articles claiming that within 2000 miles nearly all higher life forms would be gone due to breathing in fine dust leading to lung destruction.
There are fossil records supporting that scenario.
So my claim of total destruction in physical sense was misleading.

BTW,
I am still convinced that Yellowstone's blast would exceed combined power of all nuclear arsenals by an order of magnitude at least, may be more...

[rattleshirt]

ah, there's the difference-I have no intention of breathing the dust...nor of my animals doing so. regardless it is a terrifying prospect.

[EnergyUnlimited]

ah, there's the difference-I have no intention of breathing the dust...nor of my animals doing so. regardless it is a terrifying prospect.

Dust would be in air around for quite a long time, so it would not care about your intentions.

Particles in size range of few microns are also very difficult to filter off.

[dohboi]

I really do pity the modern promoters of nukes. They are facing massive problems of credibility. An earlier generation of promoters promised limitless, perfectly safe energy that would be so cheap, it wouldn't even need to be metered. Things did not quite turn out that way.

It is surprising how similar their claims are today. Good luck promoting this miserable industry. When you give up on this, maybe you can help the poor suckers trying to pomote "clean coal."

[TheDude]

Volcanoes helped create Yellowstone

The Lava Creek eruption is a prime suspect in a worldwide catastrophe that almost drove the young human race to extinction. Scientists who study DNA, the elemental building blocks of human genetics, can trace changes in human DNA back to about 600,000 years ago. At that point, there seems to be a mystical starting point to what has become today's human DNA pool. There is a theory that this 600,000-year-old bottleneck in human DNA is a fingerprint of an enormous catastrophe that occurred at that time; 95 to 99 percent of all human life died off. The few humans who survived, and it could have been as few as 5,000 on the entire planet, became the breeding stock from which the rest of us have descended.

[rattleshirt]

look I don't want yellowstone to erupt I just think that proper (excessive) planning can allow one to keep one people alive.

[SeaGypsy]

If& when the Governments of us all realize the essential facts of peak everything; epecially impending die off; should/ will they fast track nuclear decommissioning& deep burial?

After all since it can't be predicted how far down the population will fall; is this not the least we can do for the survivors& their descendants?

I would like to see the re-institution of the universal poison symbol for all nukes everywhere. The Skull& crossbones.

This is the issue where humanity crosses the line between stupidity& evil.

[edit - moved topic from PFTF Forum to Environment Forum - markl]

[Cloud9]

Can't be done and won't be done this is a bit like the dream of gun abolition. The Europeans, the Asians, the Americans will all hang onto their nuclear capability long after the lights go out. Fear drives the equation not logic.

[SeaGypsy]

What about fear for our children?

[SeaGypsy]

If we want to acknowledge future generations, the whole kit.

[vision-master]

You 1st say's the USA.

[bencole]

I'm not sure if it will be possible to fast track decommissioning, it is typically a very drawn out and expensive process due to the safety and environmental measures required. All of the irradiated reactor
components and spent fuel will also require some sort of safe long term storage arrangement. It looks like the rejection of the yucca mountain site is an indication that most radioactive waste will have to remain on site at nuclear facilities for some time.

http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/was ... ision.html

[SeaGypsy]

"a long time...."

From my reading we may as well just call it forever.

Humanity is pathetic.

[alokin]

You should not waste time to figure out what governments should do. They never do anything reasonable unless there is a real big pressure of the society, and these guys are concerned about their jobs at the moment.
Remember when Gorbachov suggested to disarm lots of the nuclear arsenal?

[gt1370a]

So you're concerned about resource constraints and die-off, and you think it would be a good idea to shut down a reliable 20% (baseload) of our electricity supply?

Under what scenario do you think it would be impossible to de-commission plants in the future? Even if we deplete oil down to 10 million barrels per day, there would be more than adequate energy and transportation fuel for critical infrastructure and services like that. Under a bad-case scenario the govt. could still organize a manhattan project to decommission plants. Only under the mad max scenario would this not be possible. If we start decommissioning now wouldn't that kind of make it a self-fulfilling prophecy? Would that be good for our "future generations"?