Non fossil fuel propulsion

When it's nuclear it's always going to be BIG, i don't see people living near Chernobyl since 26 april 1986 yet...Reactor3/4 going critical.
when there's a catastrophe Thats it..pack your bags and that part of the planet is now of limits for just about ever, roofs can be tricky but nothing compares to nuclear fallout.

 

Chernobyl concludes that 980,000 premature cancer deaths occurred worldwide between 1986 and 2004 as a result of radioactive contamination from chernobyl

 

Nagasaki and Hiroshima are looking a lot better than lets say Detroit and it hasn't quite been forever.

 

the International AtomiEnergy Agency the UN Development Programme and the World Health Organisation put the figure at less than 50 and say eventualy about 4000 may die prematurely.

 

Really i take you back to Chernobyl , oranges and Mandarins may look similar but thats it.

 

you better keep reading if thats your figures for the night

 

And with that said "it's goodnight from me and Goodnight from Him"

 

there is no reason in the world why nuc waste transport would not be 100% safe. your attitude of do nothing won't last for ever, what happens when coal and oil run out, you won't be on here , you will be sitting in the dark or out looking for firewood. rehashing chernobyl really does not have much to do with modern and well maintained reactors. the new technologys boston outlines such as the algea derived fuels are great but how can they possibly make enough of the stuff. this has turned into a great thread, i am learning lots reading these posts and the links. so don't get pissed off mr watson, there are 2 sides to this story, enjoy reading both.

 

Spent nuclear fuel transport is probably just as safe across oceans as it is across land. The biggest threat from the fuel is that you have to provide continuous cooling. With unprocessed spent fuel, this is done in containers that must be able to be hit by a train at a crossing and survive intact.

However, transport of large quantities of unprocessed spent fuel is expensive and not really required.

For long term storage, processing the old fuel into non-leaching ceramic pellets is really the only smart choice. I base this on what France has done as they are the only country in the world that actually seem to consider real scientific arguments as to best choices.

If you are really smart, the processing extracts any remaining "good" material for re-use and only "bad" materials are put into the ceramic pellets. But wait, this is "fuel re-processing" which Jimmy Carter declared was to risky for the USA.

Once in a ceramic pellet form, bulk transport is much less risky. The pellets would still be shipped in a bunch of high integrity casks. Even if a boatload were to be lost at sea, the casks would facilitate full recovery with negligible spread of any radioactive contamination.

 

I'm no expert, but land V sea risk doesn't compute for me. Even if the material was pelletised, they they are only ceramic, and can be crushed. Nor do the pellets prevent ionising radiation after the metal containers they are in are damaged.

There are plenty of places where radioactive material can sink where no method of recovery is feasible. The Russians had a huge problem with several of their nuclear subs, and one is still rusting at the bottom of the Kara Sea.

Can you imagine a stream of radioactive particles spewing out from a sunk container for the next 2000 years ?

Just the "little" nuclear disaster in Japan has created a real mess for fishermen in the area.
"seawater may be diluting the iodine, which decays quickly, but the leak also contains long-lasting cesium-137, which can build up in fish over time. Both can build up in fish, though iodine's short half-life means it does not stay there for very long. The long-term effects of cesium are unknown."
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/04/05/501364/main20050735.shtml

Personally, I would want a lot more than bland assurances and "risk assesment" before I felt safe with my childrens and grandchildrens lives.

 

Pity that those fools who supposedly fell off roofs did not go swimming in flooded drains or some such likely activity for the "risk ignorant"... Present crop of drivers seem totally inadequate and would hopefully eliminate themselves if speed limits were increased by 20% and hefty fines imposed on those proceeding at 5kmh under that limit or slower... The accident rate would hopefully explode, removing significant volumes of traffic, and start a new industry for "haul-away operators"...

(oops sorry, this is not the "mad ideas" thread)

On Nuke waste - - - NIMBY - - - (Not In My Back Yard)

 

How do you arrive at that conclusion ? There hasn't been a 100% safe transport of anything in the last 2000 years - why is nuclear waste going to be different ?

That's a tough one all right. Firewood wont be available in enough quantity to support the populations we have right now. For some people, sitting in the dark may be preferable to liver cancer at 30 years old. Wind Solar and Tides may help a bit. Or - horror, we may have to drastically cut back our power usage to something resembling third world countries. Nuclear Fission is still 15 years away.

There is no obvious answer, but there is plenty of reason to avoid potential damage to the environment - because the natural environment is the bottom line - when it stops - we stop !

In theory, that's true. Up to now, Japans reactors were "modern and well maintained" - but then the Human Factor + Unexpected Natural Events kick in. Profit maximization reduces safety standards and procedures. "Experts" paid by the nuclear industry lull governments and citizens into comfortable acceptance of the risks etc. etc etc.

No modern business of any kind is run by the scientists and engineers who can make systems really reliable. Corporations are run by Shareholders and Accountants - and after 20 years of no problems, the "shortcut cycle" kicks in.

"Experts" gave us Cane Toads in Australia, destroyed the ecology of Canada's Great Lakes, the huge deforestation of trees occurring in Northern America from beetles - it goes on and on.

 

you make a lot of good points r watson. we will just have to see what the future brings. masalai, the drivers who travel below the speed limit are the bane of my life, i drive milk tankers 4 nights a week and am always stuck behind some idiot doing 80 in the 100 zone. the victorian government is probably to blame. 0 tolerance on speed cameras makes people to scared to do the speed limit.

 

I agree with RWATSON The real answer is conservation. But nuclear is the only way to go if the whole world aspires to unmitigated consumerism and believes that unfettered capitalism is the way to get them there, and unfortunately most do. Conservation would require that raw materials are converted to value added goods as close as possible to the source and exported to the closest market. Transporting lighter more valuable goods over shorter distances could make none fossil fuel powered vessels viable . Consider that America is the worlds largest importer of oil but what is almost never reported is that they export more than they import in value added petroleum products. It is now planned that the proposed keystone pipeline will transport crude from northern Canada to the southern states to be refined and then exported. What country buys more Amercan exports than any other by a long shot? Canada. Why would Canada not refine its own oil and then export value added? They have the refineries and technical expertise. As long as the present way of doing things benefits the powerful things are not about to change The pacific cultures developed the fastest close winded boats on the planet but they were useless to the west as they could not carry heavy trade goods nor cannon to protect them.

 

Pellets in high integrity containers do not tend to be "crushed". These high integrity containers would also have shielding to keep dose rate low enough for handling as they are loaded on the ship.

Where the containers stay intact, underwater remote operate vehicles, could be used to attach cables and disconnect tie downs. Recovery of an entire cargo would be very likely.

Even if some pellets are not contained, the selected ceramics do not dissolve and are essentially non-leaching. We still find old ceramic pottery from ancient civilizations in ship wrecks that are intact with no loss of material. Even if there is some damage to a fraction of the pellets, the pellet fragments would still be this same non-leaching non-dissolving material.

The water advantage is that water is a good radiation shield (24 inches reduces dose rates to 1/10 of the starting value) and water is good about removing heat.

Water also allows for large vessel that can handle a bunch of really heavy high integrity containers. This keep the number of shipments low and reduces odds of a problem. It also allows for more focus on protection against human idiots.

I take issue of with your "stream of radioactive particles" statement in the context of shipping spent fuel converted to ceramic pellets. You also discuss the radioactive releases from a plant accident that melted fuel as if these releases would be applicable to a problem with shipping of processed spent fuel. Why would you ever assume this to be valid.

Yes nuclear power has risks. Yes the events at Fukushima show that we did not prepare adequately for something we should have. I am completely willing to admit that there are problems. I just try to be honest with what they are and promote "smart" fixes to the extent that I can.

On the flip side, I will say that many do not really understand what they are talking about and they take things out of context and mush it all together to make things look much worse than they really are. This does not help anything and just serves to promote irrational fear. Irrational fear is a huge problem that frequently is the biggest obstacle to picking the best available choices to deal with the hard problems that we face in this industrialized society we live in.

If we really want to deal with alternate power sources on a Global level, the major countries could embark on an effort that would totally change the game. An agreement to fund co-operative (as compare to traditional competitive) research for improvements in wind, wave, geothermal, solar, and bio-fuel technology would provide useful solutions that would be better and they would come at a much accelerated pace. However, anyone that thinks that governments have any ability to rise above their own self serving motives is dreaming.