All aboard the nuclear power superjet. Just don't ask about the landing strip

[bananas]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/17/nuclearpower.climatechange

All aboard the nuclear power superjet. Just don't ask about the landing strip

Climate change and the oil crisis are being used to project atomic energy as a green panacea. In fact it is a reckless gamble

Ulrich Beck
The Guardian, Thursday July 17, 2008

Are we witnessing the beginning of a real-life satire, at once amusing and terrifying? Its theme is the smothering of the nuclear power risk by catastrophic climate change and the oil crisis. At the G8 meeting in Hokkaido last week the US president, George Bush, reiterated his plea for the construction of new nuclear energy plants. At the start of this week, Gordon Brown, announced the fast-tracking of eight new reactors and called for "a renaissance of nuclear power" in a "post-oil economy". It is as if a world that wishes to save the climate must learn to appreciate the beauty of nuclear energy - or "green energy", as Germany's Christian Democratic Union general secretary Ronald Pofalla has rechristened it. Given this new turn in the politics of language, we should remind ourselves of the following.

A couple of years ago the US Congress established an expert commission to develop a language or symbolism capable of warning against the threats posed by American nuclear waste dumps 10,000 years from now. The problem to be solved was: how must concepts and symbols be designed in order to convey a message to future generations, millennia from now? The commission included physicists, anthropologists, linguists, neuroscientists, psychologists, molecular biologists, classical scholars, artists, and so on.

The experts looked for models among the oldest symbols of humanity. They studied the construction of Stonehenge and the pyramids and examined the historical reception of Homer and the Bible. But these reached back at most a couple of thousand years, not 10,000. The anthropologists recommended the symbol of the skull and crossbones. However, a historian reminded the commission that the skull and crossbones symbolised resurrection for the alchemists, and a psychologist conducted an experiment with three-year-olds: if the symbol was affixed to a bottle they anxiously shouted "poison!", but if it was placed on a wall they enthusiastically yelled "pirates!".

Even our language fails, then, when faced with the challenge of alerting future generations to the dangers we have introduced into the world through the use of nuclear power. Seen in this light, the actors who are supposed to be the guarantors of security and rationality - the state, science and industry - are engaged in a highly ambivalent game. They are no longer trustees but suspects, no longer managers of risks but also sources of risks. For they are urging the population to climb into an aircraft for which a landing strip has not yet been built.

<snip>

[Kutjara]

1. The whole nuclear industry is just one great big...

..."fuck you" to the future. The waste problem alone is tantamount to saying "We're going to have our fun now and leave it to our great great grandchildren to deal with the consequences (or die trying). We'll be long dead by then, so who gives a shit?" If you think the national debt is giving the middle finger to our descendants, it's like a big warm mother's hug compared to nuclear power.

[Occulus]

2. That's why the Polywell could be such a big deal

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=3628428&mesg_id=3628546

[Massacure]

8. Well the fossil fuel industry is the same way and that didn't exactly stop them...

Just playing devil's advocate here. ;)

[Kutjara]

10. I guess the major difference is...

...that the fossil fuel industry is a big "fuck you" to the present and near-term future, while the nuclear industry delivers the same message for millennia to come. Between them, they give the middle finger to everything in this, and possibly the next, geological epoch.

[phantom power]

3. Has anybody asked Congress about the "landing strip" for our fossil fuel industry?

That would be the industry that currently supplies 60% of our energy, and is going to kill at least a billion people in 100 years, while our fearless leaders waste time on arguments about what symbol we're going to spraypaint on the door to a nuclear fuel repository that doesn't even need to be built?

Fucking ridiculous.

[damntexdem]

4. Hey, it'll save energy: the landing strip won't need lights at night.

It'll glow in the dark.

[Nederland]

5. Question

Why are they concerned about 10,000 years? Someone around here said that nuclear waste becomes less radioactive than the ore it was derived from in less than 500 years. Any truth to that?

[Dogmudgeon]

7. The law demands a ONE MILLION year time period

The amount of nuclear reactor waste that has a half-life of over 10,000 years is extremely small.

On the other hand, uranium itself has a 4.5 billion year half-life, and thorium isotopes have pretty long half-lives, too -- and coal burning spews that into the atmosphere at the rate of 19 tons per year per gigawatt-hour. (It's about TWICE as high for Lignite, or "Brown Coal".)

That's ONE standard sized power plant. We have the equivalent of about 2500 of these, give-or-take. And it doesn't include other toxic metals like Hg and Cd, toxic gases that turn into acid rain, and carbon dioxide.

Nuclear reactor fuel is nothing to trifle with, but the utter lack of concern for non-reactor radiological risks is astounding. And dangerous.

--p!

[bananas]

11. The National Academy of Sciences recommended one million years

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain

<snip>

Radiation standards

Original standard

EPA established its Yucca Mountain standards in June 2001.<23> The storage standard set a dose limit of 15 millirem per year for the public outside the Yucca Mountain site. The disposal standards consisted of three components: an individual dose standard, a standard evaluating the impacts of human intrusion into the repository, and a groundwater protection standard. The individual-protection and human intrusion standards set a limit of 15 millirem per year to a reasonably maximally exposed individual, who would be among the most highly exposed members of the public. The groundwater protection standard is consistent with EPA's Safe Drinking Water Act standards, which the Agency applies in many situations as a pollution prevention measure. The disposal standards were to apply for a period of 10,000 years after the facility is closed. Dose assessments were to continue beyond 10,000 years and be placed in DOE's Environmental Impact Statement, but were not subject to a compliance standard. The 10,000 year period for compliance assessment is consistent with EPA's generally applicable standards developed under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. It also reflects international guidance regarding the level of confidence that can be placed in numerical projections over very long periods of time.

Court of Appeals finds standard Non consistent with NAS recommendations

Shortly after the EPA first established these standards in 2001, the nuclear industry, several environmental and public interest groups, and the State of Nevada challenged the standards in court. In July 2004, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit found in favor of the Agency on all counts except one: the 10,000 year regulatory time frame. The court did not rule on whether EPA’s standards were protective, but did find that the time frame of EPA’s standards was not consistent with the National Academy of Sciences’ recommendations.

EPA's proposed revised rule

EPA proposed a revised rule <24> in August 2005 to address the issues raised by the appeals court. The new proposed rule limits radiation doses from Yucca Mountain for up to one million years after it closes. No other rules in the U.S. for any risks have ever attempted to regulate for such a long period of time. Within that regulatory time frame, the EPA has proposed two dose standards that would apply based on the number of years from the time the facility is closed. For the first 10,000 years, the EPA would retain the 2001 final rule’s dose limit of 15 millirem per year. This is protection at the level of the most stringent radiation regulations in the U.S. today. From 10,000 to one million years, EPA proposes a dose limit of 350 millirem per year. This represents a total radiation exposure for people near Yucca Mountain that is no higher than natural levels people live with routinely in other parts of the country. One million years, which represents 25,000 generations, includes the time at which the highest doses of radiation from the facility are expected to occur. EPA's proposal requires the Department of Energy to show that Yucca Mountain can safely contain wastes, even considering the effects of earthquakes, volcanic activity, climate change, and container corrosion over one million years. As noted in the above section labelled "Opposition", the current analysis indicates that the repository will cause less than 1 mrem/year public dose through 1,000,000 years.

<snip>

[Nederland]

12. Thanks

Is there any truth to what Pigwidgeon said above? Are coal fired plants actually worse than nuclear plants when it comes to radiation?

[Nihil]

13. Yes (to both questions).

Now multiply that out by the number of coal-fired plants compared to
nuclear plants and find out why people sometimes get a bit heated
about the double standards applied to power generation.

[XemaSab]

6. Arrr, maties!

[NNadir]

9. In fact - although you don't give a rat's ass about dangerous fossil fuel waste from aircraft -

this idea was the basis for Alvin Weinberg's molten salt reactor.

Weinberg was one of the most brilliant physicists of the 20th century.

You weren't.

There is NOT ONE fundie anti-nuke who was ever a brilliant physicist, even among 7th graders.

As it happens, I have yet to hear from ONE shit for brains anti-nuke about how many brazillions of of people died from aircraft <em>ballast</em> from crashed aircraft, because in order to be a dumb fundie anti-nuke one has to have a special talent for selective attention.

There is no evidence whatsoever that stupid little radiation paranoids know anything about technology, but if pointing out that aircraft, including those that crashed into the World Trade Center, keeps the dumb fundie anti-nukes off of aircraft, that would be a good thing.

They really shouldn't be let out of their boxes.

DUCK FUNDIE!!!! THERE GOES A GAMMA RAY!

So fundie, what's your position on jet exhaust? Delicious or not?

How about jet fuel terrorism?

Every hear of any?

No?

Couldn't give a rat's ass about dangerous fossil jet fuel terrorism?

Why am I not surprised?

[Javaman]

14. man, you are one angry fellow. nt