Posted on 06/21/2016 2:26:48 PM PDT by Innovative
Now that many environmentalists and climate scientists have realized that nuclear energy is essential for addressing global warming, a coalition of environmental groups is sponsoring a multi-day March for Environmental Hope in California in support of nuclear power
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
No they really didnt.
They are still global warming nuts just continually stumbling to the next enamored “solution” until something else comes along.
And if this is the correct one, it will be no time before they change course and reject it.
DemLibs are stupider then a sack of hammers and blind to scientific reasoning. They are all just a bunch of cult followers with no brains....kind of like scuzlims....brainwashed pawns.
No nukes!
Okay, nukes.
interesting because...
after years and years and years of refusing to build any new large significant power plants (or any other infrastructure such as freeways, roads, airports, water supply, etc.)
California is now having “brown out days”... cannot supply enough power for homes
so a 10 or 12 percent cut in the state’s power supply (closing Diablo) will do WHAT to help California, specifically?
encourage folks to go solar, more wind power, less birdpoop..
we are headed back to the dark ages.. candles are at the ready. ;-]
Besides the huge influx of new residents, a major consumer of electric power is the COMPUTER INDUSTRY. Gee, I wonder what they will do when the power gets cut off? Maybe they can set up a turbine with illegal aliens running to keep it going??
3 people in a line is a “march”?
Hugh Farms of Battery Banks, solar recharged, Musk Power Baby!!
There is a small group of Green Liberals who have figured it out that Coal is much more energy inefficient compared to Nuclear.
The problem with nuclear right now is there is a serious shortage of U235 (plenty of U238 and Pu239)
Multiple tries to use Pu239 and fast neutrons in reactors have all failed.
There seems to be something special about U235 which makes reactors fairly easy and the rest very difficult.
Too bad 1/2 life of Pu239 is so long as it breaks down to U235.
To show you how easy it is to create a U235 reactor, build a sub-critical mass ball of U235, then waive your hand over it.
It will most likely go “Prompt Critical” due to the water molecules in your hand acting as a moderator and neutron reflector.
When you fall dead from the neutron flux, your hand moves away and the reaction stops.
Thorium, Plutonium and U238 all act very different and can be very hard to start/control.
Plutonium reactors can be very unstable which explains some of the reason why all the attempts have failed.
radio interview today with San Francisco’s Newsom, who now sits on the state lands commmission (for this context)...
he says his commission basically forced the shut down of the power plant by telling the utility company the slc would not renew its “easement lease giving the power plant access to the ocean water”....
meanwhile, the califonria utilities commission has refused to authorize any significant new power supplies in california for a nunber of years
and today all of southern California is experiencing “shut off your fans and air conditioners under penalty of paying 6x the normal electicity rates”
A tremendous amount of carbon based energy is consumed and pollution emitted in building, then later decommissioning, a nuclear power plant. 100% of nuclear energy ends up as waste heat in the environment. Add in a hiring pool of government school educated workers, millions of them imported from Islamic countries, you can forget about more nuclear power.
Irony much?
Pu-239 is used in naval reactors.
I am not quite sure where to start.
First, there isn’t a serious shortage of U-235. Uranium is a fairly common element and new deposits are being identified and exploited as we speak. Any shortage is the direct result of government inference in building of enrichment plants, and preventing the recycling of used reactor fuel to recover the “unburnt” U-235.
“Multiple tries to use Pu239 and fast neutrons in reactors have all failed.” This is just plain false. Fast neutron reactors have been successfully demonstrated to be as safe or safer then thermal (slow) reactors. Pu-239 created in conventional light water reactors provides an estimated 30% of the power generated near the end of core life and these reactors are safely and effectively controlled throughout core life.
The federal government has canceled development of Pu-239 breeder reactors, or deployment Mixed Oxide fuel for commercial light water reactors primarily because any non-weapons use of plutonium is “evil” in the eyes of politicians because it “might” lead to proliferation concerns (but we make deals with Iran to allow continued enrichment of U-235). Meanwhile Japan, China, Russia and France continue to develop plutonium reactors.
“Thorium, plutonium and U238 all act very different…” yep, that’s because they have different atomic structures. Thorium (Th-232) is not fissile, i.e. it cannot be made to fission without very high-energy neutrons. Similar to the process used to make Pu-239 from U-238, Th-232 can absorb a lower energy neutron and eventually form U-233, which is fissile.
The current U.S. fleet of commercial light water reactors have provided safe, clean, and cost effective power for decades. Advanced reactor types can provide clean and economical power for many more decades, IF the politicians and luddites get out of the way.
Years ago I read about the geological “problems” with Diablo Canyon (in TIME magazine I think) - probably the mid or late 1970’s. After reading the article in High School I thought “there should be some way to figure out where the faults are?”, and got interested in that specialized field.
Went to college and got my degree, worked and moved a few times in my field across the country. Ended up helping out an older guy that was one of the “grandfathers” of the technology.
Going through all the stuff in his basement and came across a slide showing “Cross-section of Faults and Bedding at Proposed Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant”!
It was pretty cool - sort of an affirmation that I had made the right career choice. (Although it is a pretty small community!) So of course, Time Magazine had it wrong, studies HAD been done and everything was fine. But headlines that say “Nuclear Plant built near Fault Line” sells better. (Oh - and one of the first things I learned in college - pretty much everywhere in California there are faults.)
Sad to hear they are shutting it down over some stupid water permit.
I knew a professional geologist... who had investigated and mapped earthquake faults in the immediate vicinity of Diablo Canyon ... one fault you could visually see its surface tracing too...
this geologist was a man of the highest integrity....
anyway, he offered to share his work with the California power plant permitting agency (the utility company was required to obtain a permit to build the power plant).
The agency heads were then (and still are, albeit of course different faces nowadays) in the complete influence (pay) of the utility corporations (in other words, one of several corrupt regulatory agencies we know about across the country). They not only refused to consider the earthquake faults evidence, they also went out of their way to apply punishment to the geologist that he should keep the info quiet, not share it with the public thru, say, the media covering the issue.
They also, incidentally, managed to dismiss the issue of nuclear waste materials...... there was then (and apparently still is) a considerable concern about how to safely store nuclear waste that remains radioactive for thousands of years..... (like, inside that Nevada mountain?)
so anyway, those were the two OBVIOUS public safety issues about issuing the permit. The quake danger they buried completely. The nuclear waste radiation danger they dealt with and dismissed in one sentence....”all radioactive nuclear waste materials will be removed from the plant site in AEC-approved trucks”
and so they issued the construction permit for Diablo Canyon.
)(disclaimer, I was not one of the opposition people, my comments only go to the corrupt political regulatory/oversight ..... which all reports indicate has remained corrupt to this day...... )
CONCLUSION: just because there's a government agency does not mean the public is being served
sometimes, the public is being screwed instead
just saying...
“Pu-239 is used in naval reactors”
Very true but as I have just recently learned, small reactors are much more stable than large ones.
This book was fascinating and from a pro-nuclear power guy.
“Atomic Accidents: A History of Nuclear Meltdowns”
More about nuclear accidents than reactor meltdowns but documents nearly every mistake from Curie to Fukushima
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