Potential Consequences of Large-Scale Earth Hour Participation

[Cyrus]

Ok fine, let's send them to live in a hut in africa, where the only pollution they give off will be from their farts.

 

[Moonbear]

Nice straw man argument. Of course everyone knows about the green movement. What people DON'T know generally are the figures. For example, I didn't know until a couple years ago about government studies that claim that electronics in standby may contribute into the double digits to our power consumption. Quantitatively, people are very much in the dark.

What does that have to do with turning your lights off for an hour? I didnt know Earth hour was about giving figures on what power is being used by what. They must have missed the flyers on that one? So you got information a couple years ago, that has what to do with Earth hour?

I agree with Cyrus here. Nothing about Earth Hour educated anyone about REAL ways they can conserve energy (definitely nothing in all the news reports about not leaving computers in standby mode). All anyone talked about was turning lights out for an hour to raise awareness, but nobody provided anything for them to actually be aware of.

 

[DaveC426913]

If those people lack the brain capacity to see that turning off your lights for an hour won't do anything, I seriously doubt they can make any other rational decisions when it comes to energy policy. There just a bunch of wacked out hippies who want a cause and its something they can easily do for an hour to feel like they 'did something', when in fact they did absolutely nothing.

How about inspiring their kids? The kids don't know it was just a stunt.

 

[Cyrus]

Nothing like giving kids bad information, eh!?

A whole new generation of brainwashed hippies. Not only will they turn off the lights, they will think competition is a bad thing because in life, everyone is a winner! Hooray!

How about giving them actual honest to goodness information?

 

[vanesch]

The problems that I see with nuclear power are that first, we live in an age of terrorism where the proliferation of nuclear materials is unwise.

I didn't know we lived in "an age of terrorism"! I thought it was only a few scaremongers that used to say so in order to accomplish their agenda. But in any case this claim (one of the famous anti-nuclear activist lies ; the other three are: it's dangerous, there's no fuel left, and we don't know what to do with the waste) is wrong: it is much more difficult to make a nuke by *stealing* fuel from a power plant than to make one all by oneself, for many reasons. As to "dirty bombs" there is already enough radioactive material around to make some.
I think there has been done much more terrorism with chemical explosives than with nuclear material, but that has never inspired people to stop the whole chemical industry. Also, the most spectacular terrorist attack has been done with airplanes. Have we stopped using airplanes now ?

So if the argument "terrorists could use it" has any meaning, then we should stop all airplanes, stop all chemical processing, ... stop all the technical means that have already proven to be misused by terrorists, before stopping technology that has never been used by terrorists.

Next, there is no perfect system, so security at nuclear facilities will eventually be compromised. The more reactors that we have, the sooner and more frequent will be the security or controls violations.

Sure. Point is, we start from very very low. All this is fear mongering.

Also, whether or not the reactors themselves are or can be made failsafe, most people will not believe or accept this claim.

This is indeed the main difficulty: so many lies have been told for so long a time concerning nuclear power, that people now prefer to cause real ecological disasters and cling to their false beliefs, rather than accept that they've been told fairy tales and take on a real solution.

Which brings us to the most significant reason why nuclear power will not be the solution to our energy needs: We couldn't possibly build the plants quickly enough for the contribution to be significant in the immediate future. Given the long life of these projects, the complexities and political difficulties in finding acceptable locations, and the rate at which the price of energy makes alternatives more and more practical and viable, nuclear will never be the solution.

I don't think so. France switched to full nuclear in about 20 years time, 30 years ago. So this should be entirely possible right now. As to the costs, the Iraq war has cost the US in about 5 years the price of about 500 new nuclear power plants, which would have converted the US into full nuclear concerning electricity production (the US has now about 100 (old) nukes which produce about 20% of the electricity). Of course the industry would have had needed a bit more time to produce them.

Concerning alternatives, I am not against them, only, they are, for the moment, REAL fairy tales. The day that they are serious competitors, and can produce electricity in large quantities at competitive prices, I'm all for it - but then "reducing electricity consumption to save wind or sunshine" wouldn't make any sense either. So, or these alternatives are serious, in the near future (I don't think so, in the *near* future) and then there's no reason to reduce consumption, or they aren't and then we shouldn't take them seriously. Because in that case, the problem with taking them seriously, like Germany, is that at a certain point, you are confronted with reality, and you NEED electricity. So you quickly build coal power plants, as did the Germans. 27 of them.

The only country that was serious about it and achieved something, Denmark, really tried very hard for the past 20 years, and, with a lot of difficulties, they arrive at about 16-20% production by wind energy and a little help from their neighbors catching up all the irregularities. And then, Denmark is about ideally placed with their offshore windparks.

So, compare: France: 1976-1996: 20 years, from about 1% nuclear to about 80% nuclear, and helps half or Europe with it.
Denmark: 1986 - 2006: 20 years, from about 0% wind to about 16% wind, and a lot of difficulties.

What's the real solution here ?

For the record, I don't trust that this industry can be properly regulated. I know too much about how real systems work to fall for that one! There is too much at stake.

I don't think so. First of all, the nuclear industry knows how ticklish people are concerning nuclear, so they know that if they have one major failure, then that puts in doubt their entire sector.

But second, one should stop thinking of a failing power plant as a doomsday machine. Even a failing power plant with a major release of radioactive stuff is not worse than any other regional problem, and has, in the long run, not more effects than things we accept every day, like car accidents, pollution from conventional power plants, from traffic,...

In short, we HAVE a known technology that can solve cleanly for the next few centuries our energy problems without causing major (global) ecological problems, at a competitive rate, and for ideological reasons, and because of unproven phantasms spread by fear mongers, we refuse to use it, and go whining in our corner about how we don't know how to generate power without pollution, and we should all deprive ourselves from this and that, and reduce our consumption with 5 or 10%. This, to me, is silly irrational behavior with a dangerous side to it.

 

[Cyrus]

vanesch, what is proposed in terms of nuclear waste disposal, and how long does it take before it becomes at a 'safe' level?

Funny thing, I actually flew past three mile island last week on my flight to PA.

Can we put those barrels of nuclear waste in some hippies homes?

 

[vanesch]

vanesch, what is proposed in terms of nuclear waste disposal, and how long does it take before it becomes at a 'safe' level?

The standard solution (already studied by now for more than 20 years) is deep geological disposal (at depths from 200 - 700 meters underground). The idea is that the confinement of the geological layers is going to last for millions of years, but one studies eventual transport mechanisms that could bring some of the material to the biosphere before decay. Of course, you need to study carefully the geology and all the chemistry that goes with it, but there's by now a large body of knowledge on all this.

There are different "time scales" in nuclear waste, because of the different decay times of the different components. Also, the waste depends upon the kind of reactor we use. For the moment, we use "reactors with thermal spectrum" but "fast reactors" are the future.

I'll give you the numbers for a typical PWR. (pressured water reactor)
When used fuel is removed it is highly radioactive, because there are a lot of short-lived, highly active fission products. It is so active that it needs even some cooling or it gets hot. So the best thing to do is to keep it for a few years (typically 4 years) in a pool.

After that period, the activity has lowered quite a lot, and the material becomes more easily manageable (although still extremely radioactive).
After that, you can do several things. You can "can" it as "waste" (the open cycle). Or you can reprocess it, because only about 5% of enriched fuel has actually been "burned".

One considers that a component has become "safe" when it reaches the radiotoxicity level of the original uranium ore. That's a definition like any other, but it gives good orders of magnitude.

The spend fuel consists of 3 kinds of material:
- the fission products, the actual "ashes": they are by far the most active, but they decay fast: after about 300 - 400 years, this (essential) part is "safe".

- the minor actinides (americium, neptunium,...): unwanted side effects of a thermal spectrum: they are produced in small quantities, but they remain active on a scale of about 10 000 years, then they are "safe".

- the plutonium: partly unwanted, partly "new fuel", it is the nastiest component in the waste, and becomes "safe" only after 100 000 years.

Now, fuel reprocessing will take out the plutonium (that's what is done now) to re-use it as fuel. One COULD take out the minor actinides too, but doesn't know what to do with it for the moment, so one doesn't.

So as of now, unreprocessed fuel needs storage for at least 100 000 years, while reprocessed fuel from a thermal spectrum will only need 10 000 years.

However, in a fast reactor (which doesn't generate much, and can even burn, minor actinides), and can burn on plutonium, after reprocessing, the only thing that will remain is essentially the fission products. So there, the storage time needed is only 300-400 years. One can reprocess and reuse all of the plutonium, and the eventual small quantity of minor actinides, as fuel.

Reprocessed waste takes on the form of a solid solution in glass, put in a stainless steel container, of which the survival is estimated to be longer than 1000 years. In geological disposal, this means that the fission products don't matter, but that the actinides and the plutonium migration needs to be studied. However, it really seems that these things don't migrate a lot in the right geological layers. So even a dissolved container and glass wouldn't give a problem in the long run.

In the mean time, until permission is granted to do such actual disposal, the canisters are kept in temporary storage sites, where they can stay as long as one likes. In fact, the longer we keep them, the less active they are, and the closer we can pack them in the repository. So one usually thinks of keeping them 50 years (or longer) before putting them underground.

So:
- unprocessed fuel (still full of burnable material - so a real waste): 100 000 years
- reprocessed fuel from thermal power plant: 10 000 years
- reprocessed fuel from thermal power plant or from fast reactors, with removal of minor actinides, which can burn in fast reactors: 300 - 400 years.

After that, the waste is not "dangerous" anymore. Now, of course it is continuous decay: even after 200 years, the fission products are not very active anymore.

ANY of these schemes work out all right in deep storage. But of course, the shorter the needed period, the more sure we are of the predictions that nothing will go wrong.

 

[Moonbear]

vanesch, what is proposed in terms of nuclear waste disposal, and how long does it take before it becomes at a 'safe' level?

Considering what problems we have in this state with mine subsidence (collapsing of old coal mines), filling them up to stabilize the ground above them might be a win-win situation. The pollution from the coal dust coming out of those mines is a more real health hazard than burying radioactive waste that deep below the ground.

 

[DaveC426913]

This thread seems to have drifted.

 

[Cyrus]

Yeah, were actually talking about things that could make a difference instead of hippie nonsense. Whew close one!

Quick turn off your lights! Together, we can change! If only they left their lights on, they might have had a bright idea.

http://www.usmm.net/p/lightsout.jpg

Actually, this thread is exactly on topic. This kind of nonsense is a direct side effect of stunts like Earth hour.

 

[turbo]

We have Earth Hour(s) on our back country road whenever there is a wind storm or ice storm. It's not voluntary, though.

 

[lisab]

We have Earth Hour(s) on our back country road whenever there is a wind storm or ice storm. It's not voluntary, though.

A few years ago, we had 6 Earth Days after an ice storm ! Sigh. It sucked, actually.