Source: Page 95 of White Noise Keywords: "getting," "exactly," "problem"

From: Gregory Greenman Subject: Re: Why exactly Californians are getting screwed by power companies Date: 5 Jan 2001 Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian

jon_g@my-deja.com wrote: > In article <t59u8km2t489df@corp.supernews.com>, > "John Shafto" <john@WAMBAMNOSPAMMAN.mato.com> wrote: > > <jon_g@my-deja.com> wrote > > > No kidding. There's only one problem though... How, exactly, do > you > > > maintain a reactor core? How do you deal with the damage done to > the > > > reactor core components by continuous exposure to extremely high > levels > > > of radiation? > > I dunno. I ain't no nuclear engineer! :-) > > I would guess different materials, or replacement core components. > Here's the problem. After prolonged exposure to high levels of > radiations, existing construction materials degrade and lose their > strength and integrity. That is why these plants are saddled with a > specific, non-renewable life expenctancy. This problem is intractable > as there is no way to repair or maintain the reactor core. Look at > Three Mile Island. Intractable??!! You need to learn a little about metallurgy and you will see the problem is not intractable. It does cost some money - and it then becomes a business decision. But "intractable"? Afraid not - the embrittled components can be annealed. > > Never-the-less I said what I originally said because I have seen that > > those who are nuke engineers have come up with some ideas in the past. > Ideas which ultimately proved to not solve the problems at hand. > Otherwise those problems would have been solved, eh? > > With better funding and support (nuclear engineering is not exactly a > > booming field right now), more ideas could happen. > That funding and support exists. What do you think the DOE does with > all your tax money? It solved the problems of Yucca Mountain. > >Unfortunately, > > guys like you don't trust them to do it anymore, so very few are. > What guys like me don't trust is BS. We've seen enough of it from the > nuclear cheerleaders that we are extremely reluctant to take any claims > of great technological breakthroughs on faith. > If someone could prove that a new generation of nuclear plants were > safe, reliable and cost-effective that would end the debate. Untill > and unless that happens, nuclear power is a joke and not a very good > one. Safety can be proved. One could use reactors that are "passively safe" such as the Integral Fast Reactor [IFR] developed by Argonne National Laboratory: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/ frontline/shows/reaction/inter views/til... As Dr. Till explains to PBS's Frontline, the IFR was shown by actual experiment to be able to withstand the type of accident which caused the Chernobyl disaster. No operator intervention is necessary - the operators can walk away and the reactor safely shuts itself down. As far as proving reliability and cost effectiveness; that can only be done by operating the facility. If you require proof before you can operate the facility - then you are deadlocked. > > > Actually, now that I think about it, your house analogy is > > > interesting. What do you think would happen to houses if their > > > concrete foundations deteriorate predictably over the course of, > say, > > > 50 years? So, 50 years after a house is build, the foundation no > > > longer safely supports it. What do you do? You can't jack up the > > > whole house and re-lay the foundation. It would only be practical > to > > > tear the house down and build another one. > > No, no....you can jack the house up and replace the foundation, > Actually, I've never done this but from what I've heard, when doing > foundation repairs to houses (and typically this is only cost effective > for historical buildings or structures of special importance, is it > not?) that the foundation has to be repaired in sections because it is > not possible to jack the whole house up all at once. Depends on the size of the house - some houses have actually been moved. > >but > > the better solution would be to invent better concrete, or other > materials, > > for the foundation first. > Yeah, but if no such materials exist, what then? You see, there is > that pesky radiation problem. It has a very damaging effect on all > conventional materials. Again your knowledge of material science is obviously limited. The principal damage mechanism is neutron-induced point dislocations in crystal lattices - like in metals. How about amorphous, i.e. non- crystalline materials? > That's one of the reasons why disposal of high- > level waste is such a hassle... There's no container that can hold it > for extended periods. Radiation damage to the container is not a problem in the repository. Again, the principal radiation damage mechanism to metal - that is embrittlement - is neutron-induced. The principal components of the radiation field in the repository are alpha, beta and gamma radiation. The concern about the containers themselves is chemical - good old fashion corrosion: http://www-energy.llnl.gov/LTC TF.html There is some concern about the role radiation plays in the so-called "near-field environment", that is how the radiation affects the water and rock in the repository: http://www-energy.llnl.gov/Nea rField.html These and many other potential problems have been researched in depth, and have not precluded LLNL scientists from recommending to DOE that Yucca Mountain be opened: http://www.llnl.gov/PAO/Newsst and/articles/2000/9-29-00-kohl er.html > The current theory is to bury it in some remote, > geologically stable cave a thousand or so feet down under solid rock as > is being proposed at Yucca Mountain. The problem is that once the > waste is delivered, it cannot be moved because it will escape from the > containers that hold it. That WAS a concern - see above. [snip] > Remember how excited everyone got over that Cold Fusion thing? That > was nuclear power too but without the hassles of the traditional > fission method. Or at least it was in theory. NO - cold fusion was not nuclear power. Cold fusion was due to a couple of chemists [without training in the nuclear field] fooling themselves into thinking they were seeing nuclear reactions. [ They couldn't explain it by chemistry - so it had to be nuclear in origin by default - right?] > People (well most people anyway) aren't pissed at all things nuclear, > just a particular form of nuclear power. > > I think it might have been bad to give nukes a bad name, and stop > > efforts (only supported research, not test reactors in high population > > centers) to improve the existing technology, at least before another > > large scale replacement had been found. > The existing technology is fundamentally flawed. What gives it a bad > name is people with a vested interest in seeing it succeed trying to BS > the public into ignoring legitimate concerns. I believe the major problem is that people don't understand it - and are thus afraid. I refer to PBS's Frontline interview with psychiatrist, Dr. Robert DuPont: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/ frontline/shows/reaction/inter views/dup... [snip] > > > How about long-term waste disposal and de-commissioning costs for > > > starters? > > Starters and finishers. Those are the two big issues that need to be > > dealt with. If they could be dealt with, then nukes might not be so > > bad. > The problem is they really can't be dealt with. The first problem runs > smack up against the laws of physics and the second against simple math. The long term waste disposal problem has been dealt with. Physics is my field and I know of no laws of physics which preclude the solution of the waste problem - and most certainly simple math does not stand as an obstacle. What are you talking about? > All nuclear power isn't bad - who knows maybe when the technology > develops, fusion will be a good solution to power generation. But the > existing fission system is a dead-end. What about fusion-fission symbiotic systems? > > > >I suspect there are solutions to these problems that have not been > > > > tried. > > > Suspect all you like. If you were right, the people who solved > these > > > problems would be trumpeting their achievements from the highest > > > mountains. > > I have heard from them a time or two, going back at least ten years. > > The reason I responded to your original post was because I have heard > > some of these mountain top revelers, but very few others do because > > their ideas are no longer popular. > I think it is far more likely that these ideas simply found their way > into the same pile that all the previous, unworkable ideas on how to > solve the problems of conventional fission reactors have. There are > still quite a few reactors running in the US. No new ones have been > built in years but that's a good thing. Anyway, for the existing > plants, there is still the opportunity for some clever soul to come > along and make it work. I'm not holding my breath though. The Integral Fast Reactor of Argonne National Lab is passively safe, proliferation-resistant, efficient in materials use... See the interview with Dr. Till linked above. > > > > You mean the engineers and technicians (often federal) who know > the > > > > realities of nuclear power, and have published that reality in > > > scientific > > > > journals, but who are ignored by the public and politicos? > > > Yeah, those are the ones... the people who owe their jobs and > > > potential fortunes to trying to sell us on a concept that is > > > fundamentally flawed while trying to soft-pedal those flaws and > > > convince us that before they really become too problematic, future > > > technology will solve the problems. They tried that crap with the > long- > > > term waste-disposal issue. Back in the 1960s when they didn't know > > > what to do with this stuff, they told us not to worry. They told us > > > that by the time it was necessary to de-commission these plants, > > > scientists would have developed a method for dealing with the waste. > > > Meanwhile, the plants are now "coming of age" and, guess what? No > > > solutions are in sight. > > OK, it is fair to say that was a problem then, but don't you think > that > > something was learned? > No, actually I don't. If it had been, we'd all be hearing about it. Again - you just don't know where to listen. > >It seems to me that we now know that > > waste disposal is a problem that must be resolved first, and if that > > problem is resolved on new or upgraded plants (less or no waste), > > then we might have viable nukes again. > Yeah, but the waste problem is something that many poeple said should > be solved *before* we built the plants. But the smooth-talkers > convinced us not to worry - that a solution was inevitable and right > around the corner. LLNL tells us that it IS "right around the corner" > We shouldn't have believed them, but we did. Or > rather my parents did. I was a kid when those plants were built. But > even a kid knows that you solve problems before you start the process > that is going to create them. Time for a history lesson. A large amount of nuclear waste was generated during the Manhattan Project. At the time, they didn't stop to consider the solution of the nuclear waste problem - they had a war to fight. The nuclear waste problem was with us in 1945 even before the first power plant was built in 1957. We HAD to solve the nuclear waste problem for the military waste that was already on hand before any commercial waste was generated. Whatever solution was found for the military waste, would also suffice for the commercial waste. > >I am not even sold on the > > idea myself yet, my only complaint is when we flat refuse to consider > > something because of past problems. > Some people will categorically oppose all nuclear power in any form but > those people are the minority. If you could demonstrate a nuclear > power generations design that was safe, reliable and generated no > radioactive waste, you could buy and sell Bill Gates a dozen times over. How about safe, reliable, and generated radioactive waste, the longest lived component of which had a half-life of 30 years. The Argonne Integral Fast Reactor fits that bill. > >Past performance is not indicative > > of future performance. Arguing that some technology was bad in the > > 50s-70s does not make it bad for evermore. > Well, if the technology itself was fundamentally flawed from the > beginning, how can it ever be anything but fundamentally flawed? You ASSUME the fundamental flaw - then use that to prove your assertion. Science and logic don't work that way. > Look at cigarettes. Over the years, various efforts have been > undertaked to allow people to smoke without all the pesky side- > effects. To a one, they have all failed. The reason is that the act > of smoking is inherently dangerous... just as generating electric > power in existing fission plants is inherently dangerous. Let's look at some facts instead of all this unsubstantiated supposition. From the School of Public Health at the University of Michigan: http://www.umich.edu/~radinfo/ introduction/radrus.html The yearly radiation dose to the typical American is 360 mrem. Of that, 300 mrem is due to purely natural causes. Of the man- made radiation, most of the radiation exposure is attributable to medical and dental procedures. The entire nuclear fuel cycle, which includes mining, enrichment, reactor operation.... yields an exposure of less than 1 mrem. So less than 1/3 rd of 1% of your radiation exposure is due to nuclear power. The vast majority of your radiation exposure is purely natural in cause. Is nuclear power in the same league as smoking when it comes to public health - I don't think so. > > > > Sure, these things all make sense as well, and they are being > > > researched. > > > > Unfortunately what has stopped them are two basic things. Present > > > > enviro-friendly technologies are not efficient enough to > consistently > > > > supply the demand. > > > That's not quite true. Look at what Enron is doing. > > A customer of mine works for Enron, he is here in SD investigating > > wind potential. We get plenty of wind, but the problem is transmission > > and distribution. I have spoke with him about it several times. > > He recenty offered me a 10Kw used/reconditioned generator for > > my house .. :) > Really? How much? Did it some with some sort of power storage/battery > system to provide continuous power even when the wind isn't blowing? > Some people think that we'll eventually get away from large power > generation facilities completely. They argue that it is more efficient > for homes to become more and more self-reliant electrically. I don't > know if it will happen or not but it is an interesting idea. > > > > Second, because of publically regulated monopolies > > > > who produce power in the conventional ways, and also transmit, and > > > > distribute that power, the smaller power generators are not able > to > > > > afford to do it. > > > What about "deregulation"? > > A great idea, and one that I really hope continues, but I hear blame > for CA > > high power prices being blamed on it. This makes me worry that the > > ignorant popular myths are going to slow it down, or give big corps > the > > support they need to stop it were it will give them competition. When > > they tell people, "See what happens with deregulation, higher prices", > > it is easy for them to get popular support to stop it. > Which is exactly what I believe the utilities are trying to do. > They've created this mythical crisis in an attempt to jack up rates and > de-rail de-regulation. They liked things the way they were where they > could generate the power, carry it to homes and businesses and then > sell it without competition. I reackon they'll go to some significant > trouble to get things back to the way they were. The problem here in California was the way the legislature "de-regulated". They truly deregulated the power producers - they can charge what the market will bear for their power. The cost to the electric customers was capped - it is still regulated by the California Public Utilities Commission. In the middle are the electric utilities - PG&E and Southern California Edison. They had to buy power at free-market rates, and sell it at state-regulated rates. This was obviously a prescription for problems. [snip] Dr. Gregory Greenman Physicist

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