American Budget Cuts

Good for you!That's refreshing to hear.

The major issues are political. Waste storage and disposal is crippled by two things:NIMBYs (Not In My Back Yard) who are irrationally terrified of having "nuclear waste" stored within 500 miles of their homes, even under a mountainThe executive order against nuclear fuel reprocessing, which is based on fears with transportation, security, and proliferation.To be perfectly honest, the Cold War, combined with the near disaster of Three Mile Island and the actual disaster of Chernobyl, scared us so badly that not even demonstrable fact can overcome the public's fear of nuclear power.A few decades of popular media telling us that "nuclear waste" will either kill you, turn you into a mutant turtle, or give you superpowers probably didn't help matters.Existing and near-term technologies can already further diminish even the few real concerns. Molten salt reactors are, quite literally, meltdown-proof, as the reaction is self-limiting (if the reaction starts to get too hot, the fuel mix expands with the heat and actually winds up stopping the reaction with no action required by operators), as one example.There are even alternative fuels - thorium is even more plentiful than uranium, easier to get, and has a better fuel life cycle that results in spent fuel that decays in a few centuries rather than millions of years - not to mention bypassing weapons proliferation concerns. From Wiki:

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Nuclear fission produces radioactive fission products which can have half-lives from less than 100 years to greater than 200,000 years. According to some toxicity studies[7] which assume that the thorium cycle can recycle actinide wastes and only emit fission product wastes, after a few hundred years the waste from a thorium reactor can be less toxic than the uranium ore that would have been used to produce low enriched uranium fuel for a light water reactor of the same power. Other studies assume some actinide losses and find that actinide wastes dominate thorium cycle waste radioactivity at some time periods in the future.

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One of the hot-button scare terms these days is the so-called "dirty bomb," which basically involves using a conventional explosive to disperse radioactive material over a large area. The intent of course is supposedly to use radiation sickness rather than an actual nuclear weapon as the killer. Of course, dispersing the nuclear material over a large area means that it becomes much less dangerous; the more dispersed, the less dangerous. Radioactive material exists in varying quantities all around us; uranium used to be used to coat pottery of all things, and even kitty litter is slightly radioactive. The threat of a "dirty bomb" is almost entirely the fear that the concept creates rather than the effectiveness of such a weapon. You could kill more people with an Uzi in a shopping mall, but radiation is more scary.Transportation of nuclear fuel (including reprocessing) is also a source of irrational fear. The casks used to transport nuclear material are designed (and tested) to withstand being struck by a freight train while burning in jet fuel (not kidding) without a breach. In any accident, you'd be more likely to be hurt by having the cask roll over you and crush you than any sort of radiological threat.Theft isn't particularly a concern either. We transport more valuable and more dangerous substances all the time, without fear. You can;t just steal some spent fuel rods and make a "suitcase nuke;" it just doesn't work that way. Even if you could get your hands on the right fissile material for making a bomb, you still need significantly complicated and specific processing and manufacturing facilities as well as specific engineering knowledge to be able to put it all together. This is a job for governments, not terrorists, and the one wonderful thing about nuclear proliferation is that governments at least are absolutely terrified to press the button, because Mutually Assured Destruction is a no-win game. The only threat with regard to nuclear weapons is to have an actual nuclear weapon stolen, which is completely irrelevant to nuclear power generation.Nuclear reprocessing attacks basically every issue from multiple vectors: by reprocessing fuel, you get a lot more power out of every kilogram of fuel. Using less fuel means less waste...and reprocessed waste is also less dangerous!Again from Wiki:

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Nuclear reprocessing uses chemical procedures to separate the useful components (especially the remaining uranium and the newly-created plutonium) from the fission products and other radioactive waste in spent nuclear fuel obtained from nuclear reactors. Reprocessing serves multiple purposes, whose relative importance has changed over time. Originally reprocessing was used solely to extract plutonium for producing nuclear weapons. With the commercialization of nuclear power, the reprocessed plutonium was recycled back into MOX nuclear fuel for thermal reactors.[1] The reprocessed uranium, which constitutes the bulk of the spent fuel material, can in principle also be re-used as fuel, but that is only economic when uranium prices are high. Finally, the breeder reactor can employ not only the recycled plutonium and uranium in spent fuel, but all the actinides, closing the nuclear fuel cycle and potentially multiplying the energy extracted from natural uranium by more than 60 times.[2] Nuclear reprocessing also reduces the volume of high-level nuclear waste and its radiotoxicity, allowing separate management (destruction or storage) of nuclear waste components.

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The fears over nuclear power are irrational, driven by idiots like Greenpeace and frightened lay NIMBYs, and now terrorism hysteria. The simple fact is that nuclear power harms the environment far less than coal, oil, solar, and hydroelectric generation, is more reliable than hydro, solar, wind, or wave, can be used in more areas than solar, wind, hydro, wave, and geothermal, has enough easily-retrievable fuel to account for even modern energy usage growth far into the future...I can go on here.If we could overcome the stigma against nuclear power, we could solve the energy crisis within a matter of decades (they do take a little while to build, after all). A set of standardized reactor designs could cut the building costs (as well as permits) significantly. There have even been small, community-sized reactors designed for mass production. They're the size of a single-wide trailer roughly, can power a medium sized community by itself for a period of a few years, the fuel is inaccessible without specialized tools and isn't weapons-grade anyway, and you basically just send it back to the manufacturer to have the fuel restocked when necessary. Can you imagine the effectiveness of that kind of power generation in disaster-struck areas like Haiti? Plentiful power available within just a few days?Aside from the molten-salt reactors, everything I've talked about is available right now, not tomorrow. Most of it is already widely in use in other countries, like France. With fossil fuel reaching its peak, we need to start the switch to nuclear now...unless someone designs a working, net-positive fusion generator tomorrow, fission is the way of the future.

I agree. Sad that using radioactive material that produces even more radioactive material that is caustic and poisonous for thousands of years, is our last viable option. We have no choice. The rest of the world is going there and we must too. Sadly today we now know the tremedous cost of human folly on our environment and ourselves for the sake of our appetite for energy. And the stupidity of believing any corporation or company that makes money off of such industries as being safe and cheap and good for everyone. The tree hugging environmentalist decades ago are being vindicated at the same time a whole new generation of people are being told we are being naive and having irrational fears.

Thorium isn't economic. That's why the US has no thorium reactors.I think they have them in India, where they have more thorium than uranium.I think we should be at least researching thorium reactors for two reasons. First, to get ahead. Second, because apparently we can use thorium reactors to incinerate nuclear waste --- you can put nasty evil nuclear waste in and get low-grade nuclear waste out.Please don't ask me any technical questions about this, this is just what I understand to be true. I may be wrong, and I wouldn't really understand if I'm right, so more research is needed.

I live in Nevada and I would still say that you might as well stick it in Yucca Mountain. I have reservations about that, but they are purely economic, they aren't because I believe that radioactive waste can creep up on me and rape me while I sleep.Yeah, I wish that nuclear reactors didn't produce nuclear waste, but really how paranoid about it should we be?

And all this time I thought it was Extraterrestrial Aliens. Ever hear the phrase, "I'm from the Government, I'm here to help."Seriously though, everyone here has a point. We know it is a reality we must live with. But hundreds or even thousands of nuclear plants dotting the country gives me cause for concern. A handful of plants nah, but think of all the idiots out there with the potiential on some level to fuck something up. Be it at a plant, or storage, or transport level. Think of all that waste. Think of the human factor. Now whos being paranoid?

Yes. I believe that it was originated with Ronald Reagan --- and delivered to farmers. Yes, farmers. Those guys. Who would then and would now scream blue murder if the government stopped helping them. How much time do you spend being concerned about the radioactive isotopes and carcinogens you breathe that are emitted as the result of burning coal?I haven't either, I must admit, but then I'm not the one who's worried. My own plan is to die age 60 of a heart attack.

Look at this article! As many of you know, I am the union steward at my store. I am watching the company brazenly bring in entry level workers and attempt to cut the hours, benefits, and health care that we in the union have fought long and hard to acquire. I fear that unless there is an economic recovery by 2013 (the date of our next contract renegotiation) we will lose our position entirely.

Thanks for that.
Probably about as much time as I spend worrying about the ravages of same said byprods from smoking marijuana. I just said nuclear power plants where expensive and not safe. And that wind/solar and wave technology is cleaner. You know your typical tree hugging hippy shit. I do grok what everyone is saying though.

Are you aware of the environmental harm caused by the manufacture of semiconductors, particularly large semiconductors like solar power cells on the scale of commercial power production?

Hi AZPaul3 Curiously you don't share the data for those numbers and calculations. The US gov buys the equipment, and some of it is used (whether that use is appropriate or not is not part of this discussion).But most of that equipment ends up rusting away. Here's an example:Page not found | Modern Ruins

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AMARC, the Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Center, 1999

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Outside Tuscon, Arizona in the Sonora Desert is AMARC, the Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Center. Here the U.S. Air Force mothballs planes until they either need them again or it's time to salvage them for parts. Whenever the U.S. sells surplus planes to foreign governments part of the sales pitch is that there will always have a ready supply of spare parts. Some are turned into pilotless drones and used for missile target practice.

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Most of the use is in practice -- make work for the military people.The rest of you post is too laden with emotion to be taken seriousl.Enjoy.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
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Rebel American Zen Deist
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Hi Dr Adequate, If you include the cost of waste cleanup\disposal then the picture changed. The US is currently looking at an extremely costly long term storage for spent uranium fuel -- one that needs to hold it's integrity for billions of years, not easy, never been done & likely to fail, imho (too many variables).Decay chain - WikipediaBut I'm not sure thorium itself is better: ²³²Th has a half-life of 14.1 billion years, but the largest half-life of all the following isotopes is ²²⁸Ra at 5.75 years, so the products of the decay should be undetectable in ~10 half-lives or ~60 years. Not bad, hardly any storage\disposal cost by comparison. All you need to worry about is the original thorium that needs to be re-refined to concentrate it into new fuel as it becomes to depleted for use.When I worked as a municipal civil engineer (long ago in the dark ages) there were two methods of making paper, sulfate and sulfite. One was cheaper, if you just considered production, but the streams where the waste was dumped were stinky and dead downstream. The other system was significantly cheaper to clean up but only cost a little more for production.If you tax companies to cover the cost of disposing of their unmanaged wastes (like McRat wrappers) then the cost efficiency equations change.I also remember driving south from California into Mexico and being appalled at the amount of litter along the roads - my first thought was "why don't these people clean up this mess" ... but as I got further south the mess dissipated - as the Americans traveling south used up their "resources" to create waste petered out. A lesson in cultural differences.Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : added link

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we are limited in our ability to understand
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Rebel American Zen Deist
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to share.

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Hi Phat, And rallies are being held in other states: we had one in RI.When I was young I was hopeful that unions would no longer be necessary, as the same protections would be made available for everyone by law.This was also back in those days when they were predicting that the increase in US productivity would mean lots of leisure time for working people in the future.Sadly these are not so.Enjoy.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
Rebel American Zen Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.

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Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)

I would think you would applaud this level of prudence. You do know there are still 90 of these beasts still in service and, if the DoD has its way they will remain in service until the 2030s, a full 80 years after production ceased.You call it "make-work" as some kind of derogatory. It is actually quite effective to be able to service, train and modify the remaining B-52s in service to do their jobs when needed. That is what the "bone yard" is for. And since each inch of the skin is covered with anti-corrosives and the insides sealed and flooded with gases you could hardly call this "rusting away".If you bothered to do some research into this facility it is credited with saving us taxpayers 100s of millions of dollars a year while maintaining the quick return to operational readiness of their stock should we, the nation, deem it necessary.But it is "military" and so, in your view, it is evil. Again the agenda regardless of the reality. Nice way to avoid responding to the millions of "fuck 'ems" you want to hand the people of this country.

Hello Rahvin, No I was not aware of the environmental harm caused by making semiconductors. But I can almost guess they are being made in China lol. I know, I know thats not the point. But your NIMBY comment earlier was spot on. Have a great week end.