What Do We Think About Climate Change

Discussion in 'All Things Boats & Boating' started by Pericles, Feb 19, 2008.

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  1. safewalrus
    Joined: Feb 2005
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    Location: Cornwall, England

    safewalrus Ancient Marriner

    With some seven nuclear plants within two miles of me neither of my two heads have ever complained - don't need any lights either - the way we glow!!
     
  2. the1much
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    the1much hippie dreams

    i'd rather be next to the plant where they have all kinds of watching eyes,,,,,unlike 2/3rds of their dumps
     
  3. Aethelwulffe
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    Aethelwulffe Junior Member

    I'd like to hear what plants in the US or Europe someone considers to be sub-standard and why, and exactly...in engineering terms... how radiation of radioactive material can/will escape from it. Those that would like to believe they have a case for this, in all the years of yelling "deathtrap!" have yet to provide a scenario that can lead to this.

    Kind of like any line of ignorance, superstition, or fearmongering, you can tell all the world that ghosts exist, you can get your cousin to agree that you all saw one, but you still cannot produce one or come up with either evidence or even a plausible testable theory based in other science of what one might be.

    For someone to prove they have ground to stand on, all they have to do is provide directions/map to that ground. The directions will gladly be followed and the landmarks documented. If the ground is there, you will have gained a dedicated convert to your side. This attitude has altered my life several times. A successful year is one in which one of my more basic assumptions about the universe I live is is challenged and debunked. I can then feel like I have learned and grown. I feel like while I will never achieve much on the grand scheme, I will still have the pride of knowing I always moved forward.
     
  4. masalai
    Joined: Oct 2007
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    masalai masalai

    To my mind, it is not the plant per-se, but the disposal afterwards of active waste products....
     
  5. tinhorn
    Joined: Jan 2008
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    Location: Massachusetts South Shore.

    tinhorn Senior Member

    I'm afraid that's not the point. Anarchists hiding behind green banners and feel-good smokescreens stir up the populace with their fearmongering, and then tie up projects with frivolous lawsuits. I've seen it even on a local small-town level. Some local prick real estate attorney (with a wife on the city council and tens of millions of dollars of properties) has created a high-sounding activist group in my small town that can be counted on to oppose any significant housing development here. Step back, and it's easy to see the con job, but if I golfed with this dude, attended the same Rotary Club meetings, and got a few good investment tips from him, I'd probably get myself sucked into his ********, too. (Funny, his wife claimed to know nothing about "his" investments, and so could be trusted to vote PURELY in the best interests of the city. Hahahahaha! And people BOUGHT it!)

    It's all smoke and mirrors, friend. Smoke and mirrors.
     
  6. tinhorn
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    tinhorn Senior Member

    Yup, more fear-mongering. My region was one of three finalists several years ago for a long-term storage facility. I got involved, and could find nothing wrong with the proposed storage here. (Deep basalt tunnels, backfilled with concrete as the waste was stored.) A geologist I chatted with at one meeting disagreed with me - he said that the salt flats were better suited. He said they were self-healing. A tunnel would close in on itself, sealing the waste forever.

    I think there are safe methods of long-term storage available to us, but then if we actually RESOLVED the dilemma, what would college professors and unemployable activists do?
     
  7. the1much
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    the1much hippie dreams

    the problem with the waste,,,is your counting on a private company to do it the right way,,,kinda like the counting on the oil industry to do their job right.,,,,in maine when i opened my boat shop,,you have to hire a company ( there was 3 in maine) to remove your waste,,,but,,,,,the state also made you sign a piece of paper saying that if the company (which has been approved by the state) didnt dispose of the material the right way,,,and was later found,,,that i had to pay my part(x number of $'s for every drum) for the clean up,,,,which,,,was WAY higher then to have it taken away in the first place,,,,but anywho,,,,,why do ya think the state would do that?,, think they had confidence in a company to do it right,,,and didnt want to pay the bill, for approving a dumb@ss private company?.,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,same thing goes for nuclear waste to,,,,,a privately owned company is in charge,,,,,,and we all know a company wouldnt take short cuts to boost profits.,,,,,,,,,just like tinz council woman making some extra income for her husband.now dont worry,,,,agreeing that companies DO take short cuts wont mean your in the fear from all the mongering group,,hehe ;)
     
  8. tinhorn
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    tinhorn Senior Member

    That's a valid point, alright. I'd have faith in the military after seeing the job they've done across the state line destroying old, unstable mustard gas and all kinds of scary nasty stuff stored barely underground since WWII. They've had to work with leaking containers and all manner of potential disasters. But I don't think we want the military moving into civilian ventures.

    I live near a "nuclear reservation". Don't know what all secret stuff they do there, but it was where research took place for the first atomic bombs. I would trust those government contractors to move the waste. Heck, those companies deal with it every day, and I bet they'd be under close scrutiny every inch of the trip. You'd certainly need escorts, so it wouldn't be like one truck driver, or one dispatcher, could pull a fast one. In the 20+ years I've lived here, I've read of a few minor incidents, but never read of anything endangering the public. And the transport plans of 20 years ago called for massive, indestructible containment packages.

    Damn. Mustard gas, unstable secret chemical weapons, and nuclear materials. And I'm downwind from both sites. I'd maybe get nervous if I thought about this more.
     
  9. tinhorn
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    tinhorn Senior Member

    You had WASTE?! Tsk, tsk. I just made weights. Y'know, a plastic bucket full of resin and gelcoat and small 'glass scraps to put in the back of pickups in winter. I never had any waste. Even acetone turns into a solid when it absorbs enough catalyzed resin, and is the perfect addition to weights.

    Sometimes the pickup weights market would nosedive and I'd have to dispose of surplus inventory. But there was no problem throwing inert plastic products into the dumpster.
     
  10. the1much
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    the1much hippie dreams

    the scary thing tinz,,,is they DO move it by truck,,,1 truck at a time,,no escort,,they TRY to do it by rail because its safer,,,but,, 90% of the time they move it by truck,,,everyday trucks,,nothing special bout them,,and no escorts,,,,,,they did a discovery channel thing on it a few months ago.
    and i used to get "picked up" once a month,,,and always had a barrel each, and starting on 2cnd barrel by the time they emptied me.,,,,i had a little too much to use as weights,,,,,that and was "watched" all the time,,,,so it was jus easier doing it the RIGHT way,,hehe ;)
     
  11. the1much
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    the1much hippie dreams

    it isnt the resins,,,once the resin is kicked off,,it isnt hazardous anymore,,,only if its not kicked,,,,,the waste was your paint and reducers,,,,which had to be separated,,,paint in 1 55gal barrel,,reducer in the other,,,then 1 for used acetone,,,then pay someone to take it,,and worry bout how much its gonna cost ya in the future.
     
  12. Aethelwulffe
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    Aethelwulffe Junior Member

    What do you mean "it's not the point"? I was making a comment abouthow anyone that wants to give an example of exactly how some particular nuclear power plant can go all melty...or exactly where a ghost hides during the day will prove either or both concepts.
    What does your statement have to do with my post?

    As far as the applicable comment to my last

    "To my mind, it is not the plant per-se, but the disposal afterwards of active waste products...." you can refer to several posts concerning fuel recycling, but I will re-iterate here. Spent fuel recycling is a process by which the high-level "waste" is re-processed back into fuel. There is no such thing as "high-level waste". There is only "un-reprocessed fuel". When you have spent fuel, you can recover 95% of it's volume bck into usable fuel. The other 5% has actually been lost due to matter-energy conversion. Why do we not do this? Because the same process that can let a nuclear power plant run on a single re-processed batch of fuel for a century is the same that is used to enrich material for nuclear weapons. Since we have no international standard that will allow for re-processing, and treaties banning such reactors, we have this mess of nuclear waste that for POLITICAL REASONS ONLY we ship around on RARE occasions. Funny thing is, folks that have absolutely no real engineering knowlege on the subject (funny, can anyone here tell me what a reactor basal group is, or the difference between a rickover and a RBMK?) have such strong opinions that they do not want shaken. They could at any time spend an hour in Wikipedia actually learning about reactors themselves, and not about dogma that others who cannot aswer simple questions about nuclear science have espoused about reactors.

    Want an example of someone that had totally uninformed opinions and yet eventually changed them? Try a founding father of Greenpeace:

    www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/14/AR2006041401209.html

    Low level waste, BTW, are items and parts used in the "radioactive environment" in the reactor...which is not to say that they are necessarily radioactive at all. How radioactive is low level waste? LESS SO THAN THE ASH EXHAUST FROM A COAL POWER PLANT! If coal plants had to follow the same guidelines as Nuke, THEY COULDN'T EXIST! They emit MEGATONS of the same material that nukes ship out in a single tiny barrel to go to a special incinerator. All the real nuclear waste barrels ever produced fit inside the perimenter of a football field, and much of that is re-processable fuel. Coal plants on the other had, as their fuel contains 1 ppm uranium, 2.5 ppm thorium and lots and lots of heavy metals, are emitting HIGH LEVEL WASTE! ATOMIZING IT FOR YOUR PLEASURE! I live next to a coal plant. Aside from the barge traffic and the soot and acid rain, it's disgusting with all the settling ponds and crap. I would trade it for a nuclear plant any day.

    Want an example of idiocy? You will find articles like this:

    http://archive.greenpeace.org/nuclear/reactor/turkey/index.html

    It will go on and on about how nukes are an immenient danger to humanity. These guys have had two generations to show just how this can happen. They could easily get the power of mainstream science on their side if they could just do this. All they have to do is show us a diagram of a particular plant in existence, show us how it can emit all this dangerous radiation or radioactive material, and then we well rally to their side...immediately. Instead, since they are not sharing this knowledge of exactly how one of these "disasters" can take place. They like the fact that Chernobyl went up- a reactor built in the earliest era behind the iron curtain with absolutely no sort of safety engineering, budget, trained workers, or proceedural transparency. They do not ever mention that it took 20 years to kill 32 people, mostly firefighters that did not know they were in a reactor chamber, ordered in by soviet politicos. Three mile island broke down, cause it had design issues, but it could not have ever released any material. Modern reactors have clad fuel or a bebblebed reactor system, and so many redundancies that if something goes wrong, the reactor CAN'T stay at critical mass. You could not get the thing to melt down if you got in there with a sledge hammer and a shovel and TRIED to screw it up.
    It may all be smoke and mirrors, because that is the only tactic that works with joe average.
     
  13. Aethelwulffe
    Joined: Jun 2008
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    Aethelwulffe Junior Member

    acetone does not turn into a solid. It is a volatile. It is just evaporating.

    Might I suggest switching to denatured alcohol for some uses involving skin? Othewise, evaporation of acetone is not a big thing. It has a half-life of 22 days in the atmosphere. You only have to report a spill of 5000 lb or more. Many folks assume it is some really bad stuff due to it being so good at what it does. I used to. But if you don't huff a lot of it, it's no biggie.

    You can send your cured plastics to a waste-to-energy plant. They emit CO2, but they are much cleaner than coal!
     
  14. the1much
    Joined: Jul 2007
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    Location: maine

    the1much hippie dreams

    hehehe,,,,see,,,,proves my point on "sides" 1 side WAY to the left,,,points fingers at the FAR right,,hehe :D
    until 1 side says,,ya,,they got a point there,,and the other side says,,ya,,you have a point too,,,,will there EVER be a solution,,,hehehehe ;)
     

  15. the1much
    Joined: Jul 2007
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    Location: maine

    the1much hippie dreams

    acetone evaporates,,but also seeps into your skin and goes straight to your liver,,,,denatured isnt AS bad,,,but is still not good for your body,,,all these things need to be used with gloves and EYE protection.,,, and denatured alcohol is the BEST thing to use to wipe down ya boat with,,,and to remove overspray on new paint.
     
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