Global Warming...New Report...and it ain't happy news

The public debate in this subject is dominated by delusion, misinformation, a bit of hysteria, and the cynical actions of a menagerie of actors ranging from European governments to the single-issue loonies who evidently find fulfillment in their zealotry.

While it is certainly true that the United States could embark on a program of massive construction of new, advanced nuclear powerplants, using their output to replace the burning of coal for electrical power, and even for the production of hydrogen as fuel for vehicles, and benefit the environment in the process, it is not a realistic possibility, given the widespread - and irrational - opposition to nuclear power in this country and others. Moreover I doubt seriously if the international Kyoto crowd would welcome such an eventuality - even if it promised to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions well below the levels envisioned in Kyoto.

The debate - as it is currently being conducted on the international stage - is dominated by side issues, irrational fears, and the narrow self-interests of governments out to use it to reduce the advantages of others more powerful than themselves. This is hardly an altruistic enterprise out to better the world - though it is carefull to cloth itself as such.

Under such conditions the United States may well be wise just to scorn the whole process and abstain from its misguided "program".

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george, I agree with your opinion; oralloy's solutions are not realistic.

I read recently that the ozone hole at the antarctica is getting smaller (and recovery by 2065), and the latest study (I believe in 1997) shows that Canada and the US produces only 15% of the damage.

Scare tactics should not be taken seriously by the US - or anybody else working to improve (and showing progress) ozone destroying carbons.

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cicerone imposter wrote:

I read recently that the ozone hole at the antarctica is getting smaller (and recovery by 2065), and the latest study (I believe in 1997) shows that Canada and the US produces only 15% of the damage.

Quote:

[According to NASA] This year's ozone hole measured 9.4 million square miles at its peak between September and mid-October, which was slightly larger than last year's peak. The size of the ozone hole in 1998, the largest ever recorded, averaged 10.1 million square miles. For 10 of the past 12 years, the Antarctic ozone hole has been larger than 7.7 million square miles. Before 1985, it measured less than 4 million square miles.

Sourxe

I don't think, they meant the ozone hole here, but I can be wrong:

Quote:

The layer of ozone in the Earth's upper atmosphere, which protects life from harmful ultraviolet radiation but which has been damaged by artificial chemicals, may take a decade or two longer to recover than previously thought, scientists reported Tuesday.

Until now, the ozone layer had been expected to return to its 1980 condition by about 2050. But at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union here, the scientists said new computer simulations suggested that continuing use of the chemicals -- chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs -- would delay the recovery until about 2065.

And "only" 15% of the damage done by USA/Canada?

Quote:

Despite a ban on producing the chemicals in industrialized countries and the ready availability of substitute chemicals, the United States and Canada still account for about 15 percent of current emissions.

"This is a somewhat surprising," Dale Hurst, a scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo., said at the meeting. "We would have expected the reservoirs of these chemicals exhausted by 2003."

source for both quotations:New York Times

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georgeob1 wrote:

While it is certainly true that the United States could embark on a program of massive construction of new, advanced nuclear powerplants, using their output to replace the burning of coal for electrical power, and even for the production of hydrogen as fuel for vehicles, and benefit the environment in the process, it is not a realistic possibility, given the widespread - and irrational - opposition to nuclear power in this country and others.

The anti-nuclear people are certainly vocal. But I don't think deep opposition is all that widespread.

At any rate, they are easy to ignore, and the legislative groundwork for building these plants has already been done.

georgeob1 wrote:

Moreover I doubt seriously if the international Kyoto crowd would welcome such an eventuality - even if it promised to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions well below the levels envisioned in Kyoto.

They don't have to welcome it. If we build the nukes and join Kyoto, they'd have to let us sell our pollution credits. All they could do is whine feebly at us.

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cicerone imposter wrote:

george, I agree with your opinion; oralloy's solutions are not realistic.

The technology works, and the legislative support for doing it has already been set up.

It is certainly more realistic than heating the planet until we resemble Venus, or transforming society to an Amish lifestyle, which I think are the only alternatives.

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oralloy wrote:

The technology works...

Fusion doesnt. And fission produces high level radioactive waste as well as plutonium. However I have a solution, which I will sell to the world, once the price is right. Smile

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Steve (as 41oo) wrote:

>fission produces high level radioactive waste as well as plutonium.

All the extremely long-lived components of the waste can be used to fuel specialized nuclear reactors.

When you separate all the fuel from the waste, what is left is only a hazard for 1,000 years.

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so would you keep it near the power generator or collect it together in major dumps? And how do you guarantee to keep it cool for 1000 years?

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Steve, They are now dumping it into the oceans - hoping they don't leak for over a thousand years.

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CAn you imagine what will happen when all sea life gets killed?

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Steve (as 41oo) wrote:

>so would you keep it near the power generator or collect it together in major dumps? And how do you guarantee to keep it cool for 1000 years?

I'd move it to one site. But I'd keep it so the various radioactive elements could be easily extracted for medical/research purposes if there were ever a need for them.

I don't think keeping it cool will be much of a problem. Just give it its normal stay in a pool of water, then store it however the scientists want it stored.

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cicerone imposter wrote:

Steve, They are now dumping it into the oceans - hoping they don't leak for over a thousand years.

They who?

We sure aren't doing that in the US.

Right now it's at the reactor sites, but it will probably be headed to an Indian reservation in Utah in the near future.

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The French use nuclear power for more than half of its electricity needs.

However, since there is so much opposition to building more oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico and on the East Coast, what makes anybody think that a NEW nuclear power plant will be accepted anywhere in the United States?

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oralloy wrote:

cicerone imposter wrote:
Steve, They are now dumping it into the oceans - hoping they don't leak for over a thousand years.

They who?

We sure aren't doing that in the US.

The Army had admitted [three years after Norwegian scientists published a report] that it secretly dumped 64 million pounds of nerve and mustard agents into the sea, along with 400,000 chemical-filled bombs, land mines and rockets and more than 500 tons of radioactive waste - either tossed overboard or packed into the holds of scuttled vessels.

source: various media, e.g. KRT Wire

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Well, the people in the US responsible for that debacle really should be brought to trial for causing pollution which has probably sickened millions and killed thousands.

I suggest Nuremberg as the site where they should be tried. Nuremberg, as everyone knows, is where the German killers were brought to Justice.

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oralloy wrote:

cicerone imposter wrote:
Steve, They are now dumping it into the oceans - hoping they don't leak for over a thousand years.

They who?

We sure aren't doing that in the US.

Right now it's at the reactor sites, but it will probably be headed to an Indian reservation in Utah in the near future.

Some while back I said I had a solution to the problem of radioactive waste. I think now is the time to reveal to the world for the very first time what my proposal entails. As oralloy says, the technical problems of nuclear fission are solved, with the exception of a truly satisfactory resolution for the waste. As it is not physically possible to destroy it, I propose dumping it in the s...

no not sea

SUN.

All you have to do is get the stuff safely into space, then give it a gentle nudge towards our nearest star. Gravity will do the rest. And as the sun is one giant nuclear furnace, a tiny amount of man made radioactive waste is not going to upset the apple cart.

However, as one or two of you might have noticed, there is a small matter of getting several hundred tonnes of highly radioactive and extremely dangerous material safely into space. The Russians have already suggested we use their rockets, but even using the best rocket technology money can buy, the thought of a catastrophic accident involving several tonnes of radioactive waste falling back to earth is somewhat sobering.

So, what I propose is to build a space elevator. You simply take the well packaged material, load it onto a specially designed vehicle, put that on the elevator and send it upwards on the lift until its out there floating all by itself. You only have to give it a little nudge and it will fall into the sun.
Bye bye radionucleides, welcome to truly clean green and plentiful nuclear power.

Did I miss anything? What will the elevator look like? Well think of a giant rope stretching from the surface of the earth into geo stationary orbit and beyond. It will just hang there believe me. You dont? Well take a look at this Smile

http://www.zadar.net/space-elevator/#home

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Steve,thats a good,but totally impractical idea.
Right now,using the shuttle for your plan is the most practical idea.
Yes,there is a risk,but there would be a risk with any method of ridding ourselves of the waste.

The question is,do the benefits outweigh the risk?

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I deliberately set up the idea of the space lift as if it seems fanciful. But its not. Arthur C Clarke said it would be built 50 years after we stopped laughing. Now revised to 25 years. New materials, in particular carbon nanotube technology with extraordinary strength/weight ratios makes the practicality another step nearer.

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oralloy wrote:

Steve (as 41oo) wrote:
>fission produces high level radioactive waste as well as plutonium.

All the extremely long-lived components of the waste can be used to fuel specialized nuclear reactors.

When you separate all the fuel from the waste, what is left is only a hazard for 1,000 years.

Not true. There are a host of long-lived nuclides produced by fission that are not themselves suitable as fuel in a secondary process. Separating the fissionable U-235 and the several fissionable Plutonium isotopes from spent fuel will yield more useful power for a given quantity of long-lived high level waste, but it will not eliminate it entirely.

Launching high level wastes into the sun has been discussed, but not very seriously. It is heavy stuff and the enterprise would be expensive. The desisive issue though is the possibility of a launch accident which could spread the stuff over a large area.

The most interesting possibility - for me at least - is dumping the waste material in suitably designed low drag containers into the ocean in certain deep (25,000+ feet) subduction zones in the western Pacific Ocean. The descending ogive would dig a fairly deep hole, and in certain areas that have been studied extensively the sedimentation rate is over a meter per year. Thus the material would be buried beneath the ocean floor with a steadily increasing thickness of cover. More importantly, it will be driven into the molten sublayer below the earth's crust by the action of the colliding plates -- not to appear again for a few eons, by which time the hazard is gone.

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I think george's idea has merit.

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Global Warming...New Report...and it ain't happy news

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