# Wind or Nuclear?



## Skull Pilot

Wind or Nuclear? - Ray Harvey - Mises Institute



> Energy is like a river; it exists in two ways: flows and stores.
> 
> When you store energy, you create a dam to capture it.
> 
> What environmentalists call "renewable energy" is really just the stored energy of the sun.
> 
> In actuality, there's no such thing as "renewable energy": all energy, even the sun, is limited.



This is a good point even if it is semantics.  even wind power is not "renewable"  Once the wind has gone past a turbine, the energy is transferred to the turbine.  that particular chunk of wind is gone not reused.



> Fossil fuels are energy stores as well  specifically, they are stored solar energy, a process that takes millions of years  and they are highly concentrated, ten times more so than, for instance, wood.
> 
> In terms of wind and raw solar energy, the flow is exceptionally diluted: solar is ten to fifty times less concentrated than fossil fuel. When you can't concentrate it, then the only way to harvest it is to use more and more land. That's the limiting factor for both sun and wind energy.
> 
> T. Boone Pickens's now-infamous plan would require 1,200 square miles for a single power plant.
> 
> Compare that to nuclear, which would require only one square mile.



here is the rub for environmentalists.  Do you want more and more acreage used for wind and solar until as far as the eye can see not one square inch of open land is left or do you want the same energy producing, greenhouse gas free energy produced at smaller unobtrusive plants that can be built almost entirely underground?



> Coal is extraordinarily abundant  we'll never run out  and pound-for-pound contains twice as much energy as wood. Coal is a concentrated storehouse of energy.



It seem counter intuitive to me to ignore the one energy resource that we own.  We are the Saudi Arabia of coal and yet we demonize its use rather than investing in ways to make coal cleaner, we have decided to make energy from coal unaffordable.



> Octane molecules in gasoline, however, are even more concentrated. In fact, they're the densest store of carbon energy we've ever discovered. Pound-for-pound, gas possesses four times as much energy as coal. There's a popular misconception today that gasoline is inefficient and wasteful. Nothing could be more inaccurate.
> 
> Gas molecules are not only by far the densest form of carbon energy we've ever discovered; they're also easy to transfer because they're fluid. These are two of the greatest reasons we've adopted gasoline.





> Nuclear, on the other hand, is something else entirely. The public hasn't even begun to grasp nuclear energy.
> 
> These are the facts:
> 
> *
> 
> A handful of uranium contains more energy than 100 boxcars full of coal.
> *
> 
> Consumption of energy creates more energy, not less.
> *
> 
> Despite years of government subsidies (regulators, for instance, have forced utility companies to buy "renewables"), these same renewables generate only about 0.9 percent of our total electricity.
> *
> 
> The most efficient solar panels currently in use (on the space station) are costly, and their conversion efficiency is about twenty percent, which is not very much.
> *
> 
> Twelve miles of solar reflectors generate about 300 megawatts, a minuscule amount. Furthermore, those reflectors must be kept squeaky clean, maintained to the hilt, or they won't work.
> *
> 
> At our current level of technology, no conceivable mix of solar, wind, or wave can meet even half the demand for energy.
> 
> If, however, wind, wave, and solar are to become more efficient, it is only science and technology  as opposed to environmentalism's plan of blasting us back into the Dark Ages  that will get them there.
> 
> We begin to know about a resource only when we begin to use it. Knowing about that resource includes a cursory calculation of its quantity.
> 
> The more we use of it, therefore, the better we become at finding it and calculating its quantity, extracting it and refining it. Thus, the more we use of a resource, the more of it we're able to find.



that last bit is part of the problem with wind and solar.  we have to wait for the diluted energy to come to us.  Here in New England,  June has been one of the cloudiest on record in the last 50 years.  Solar dependence would have left a lot of us in the dark.  we do not live in a good wind corridor here so ant power produced by wind would have to be transported here at great expense.  Or we could build small reactors to supply all the regional power we could ever want.


> This may sound counter-intuitive, but only at first: then you glimpse its awesome logic. The entire history of resource use and extraction has followed this pattern without deviation.
> 
> Boone Pickens is calling for massive subsidization of the wind-power industry.
> 
> As with ethanol and recycling and a host of other issues, you must ask yourself again, if these things are so efficient, why do they need to be subsidized? Answer: they're not so efficient.
> 
> Energies that require massive subsidization benefit absolutely no one; the only reason they need to be subsidized is that they cannot compete on the open market.
> 
> That fact alone tells you everything you need to know about them: they're simply not good enough yet.
> 
> When they are, the free market will adopt them naturally.



subsidizing only adds to our costs.  Not only do we pay higher prices for less efficient energy sources but our tax burden increases to subsidize these power sources.



> The reason wind power still won't get us very far is that transmitting this power is such a huge difficulty.
> 
> Wind is also unpredictable; it's therefore hard to integrate into an electrical grid, since grids have to maintain a voltage balance, or you'll get brownouts, blackouts, and power surges that destroy equipment by the ton.
> 
> The "grid," incidentally, refers to the entire energy infrastructure. It even includes the electrical wires that go into your house.
> 
> Grid operators spend their whole lives trying to balance supply and demand on the grid.
> 
> Energy demand changes all throughout the day, all throughout the year. In summer, for instance, demand is higher. Late at night, demand is lower.
> 
> Grid operators balance all this.
> 
> Factor in the wind, which you cannot predict more than, at most, five hours in advance, and try pulling all that wind power into a grid, and you'll begin to see how impossible the task is.
> 
> Wind needs constant backup.
> 
> "Spinning reserve" on an electrical grid refers to the amount of backup power that is sitting there, waiting to go at a moment's notice in case something goes wrong. In general, twenty percent extra power is the standard spinning reserve on the grid. Wind can indeed supplement a grid with this needed twenty percent spinning reserve, but it cannot come close to replacing fossil fuel.






> Here's what you don't see in the fine print: The vast majority of wind energy needs to be transmitted. Thus, you'll need to step up voltage to 745 kilovolts (which is a lot) so that wind doesn't lose all its energy in the transmitting process. That infrastructure alone  forget the actual windfarms  will cost billions.
> 
> We'll also have windmills covering the entire great plains. Quoting energy expert William Tucker, "If Boone Pickens's dream is realized, you'll be able to drive from Texas to North Dakota without ever being out of sight of a windmill, just as in Denmark."
> 
> That is, except for Boone Pickens's backyard. Said Pickens, "I'm not going to have the windmills on my ranch: they're ugly."
> 
> Indeed.



Again if reducing transmission distances of power is less expensive, why do we insist on putting all our energy needs on power that has to be transmitted over vast distances because it can only be produced in the most remote locations?  Is it worth the trillions of dollars it will cost?

And once again we see the hypocrisy of Pickens and his ilk.  it's fine for him to have tax payer foot the bill for his projects as long as he get the profit and doesn't have to look at a windmill out of his living room window.



> And that, in part, is why people are already objecting. Windmills are taller than the Statue of Liberty, and they're loud; the Audubon Society calls them "condor Cuisinarts."
> 
> Wind comes strongest along mountain crests. Thus the Blue Ridge Mountains, the Adirondacks, the Appalachians, and so on would all have their ridges lined with these monstrosities. Yet environmentalists object to the building of one small nuclear plant, which, compared with a windfarm, is tiny.



I still don't understand this especially when you factor in the true amount of nuclear waste produced by a reactor and not the inflated quantity the alarmists say is produced.



> Uranium generates gigantic amounts of energy in a very small space, which wind and solar combined cannot come close to. Those who say otherwise  those who are antinuclear, in other words  have brought the world 400 million more tons of coal used per year, because for thirty years now, since the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, we've been using more coal.
> 
> The meltdown of the uranium core in 1979 at Three Mile Island was so overblown by antinuclear groups that it went virtually unnoticed that the containment vessel at Three Mile Island had done its job and prevented any significant release of radioactivity.
> 
> Uranium is abundant, clean, and safe  in technological societies.
> 
> The catastrophe at Chernobyl  which, once again, sent greens groups worldwide scurrying to their soapboxes  only happened because that state-run reactor was astonishingly unsafe: in the words of Peter Huber, "You couldn't have operated a toaster oven out of it."
> 
> Few scientists disagree that the discovery of energy at the nucleus of the atom is the greatest scientific feat of the 20th century. All this talk about how we need to "discover a new form of energy" therefore misses the point: we've already done so. It's called nuclear energy. And it's amazing.
> 
> We discovered that the concentration of energy in the nucleus of the atom is 2 million times as great as energy in the shell of an atom.
> 
> There are tiny amounts of uranium residue in coal; those trace residuals have more energy potential than all the coal itself.
> 
> Chemical energy, which is everything from wood to crude oil to gasoline to coal, consists of playing with the electrons, changing their energy state. With nuclear, however, the big discovery was that there's far more energy in the nucleus of the atom. Therefore, it produces a far, far smaller "footprint."



More bang for the buck but we still would rather spend our money on the most inefficient energy rather than the most efficient.



> In fact, there's really no such thing as "nuclear waste": a nuclear reactor is refueled by its waste. In other words, almost all "waste" can be recycled. Indeed, ninety-five percent of a spent nuclear fuel rod is natural uranium, and so it can be put right back in the ground, just as it was found.
> 
> The radioactive part constitutes only about five percent, but of that, half is uranium and plutonium, and so it can be recycled as fuel  specifically mixed-oxide fuel, which is exactly what the French have been doing for twenty-five years now.
> 
> After twenty-five years, the French store all their so-called waste in one room, under La Hague, which is about the size of a basketball gymnasium.



I've posted articles that have said this very same thing about so called nuclear waste.  once again our government doesn't allow the recycling or reuse of nuclear materials so rather than benefiting from nuclear, we would rather pursue less efficient but more expensive power sources.



> Why haven't you heard this? A writer for the New Yorker magazine named John McPhee in 1974 published a highly influential book called The Curve of Binding Energy, which convinced President Jimmy Carter (et al.) that people could steal used plutonium from nuclear plants and makes bombs with it. But this is untrue. Nevertheless, solely on the basis of this detrimental misinformation, *our country now has fifty thousand tons of nuclear "waste," because our government won't allow nuclear plants to reuse it*.





> The stated policy of the Department of Energy (DOE) is "not to reprocess" a perfectly reusable byproduct  and all for absolutely no good reason. That is why Yucca Mountain is unnecessarily, and at great cost, being built in southwestern Nevada to store a nuclear "waste" that could instead be simply and efficiently reused.
> 
> Nuclear "waste" is also used for medical isotopes. Over forty percent of medicine now is nuclear medicine. Currently, we must import all our nuclear isotopes because we're not allowed to use any of our own. This is not only profligate; it's a kind of lunacy.
> 
> We're the only country in the world that doesn't reuse its nuclear byproducts. Nuclear energy is the cleanest, most efficient energy we have  by light years. Anyone who tells you differently, is flat-out wrong.



And I'll add that we'll all be flat out broke because we are pursuing the flat out wrong course on energy.


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## strollingbones

wind energy has its own set of problems and is not the solution for all areas....the northeast demands so much electricity that it buys it from canada...as does california....nuclear energy will meet the needs of more people than wind or solar...as far as enviroment...wind kills birds and bats...so you are back to solar or hydro  generated electricity....since water is going to become the new oil....hydro is out..for much of the country...so you are back to solar or nuclear....solar could be the solutuion if they can come up with batteries that can store more electricity at a time..


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## Old Rocks

It is not a choice of wind or nuclear. The real choice is continueing on the same path as we are today, or all of the above for alternative energies, including nuclear. But in order to do any of this, we must completely rebuild our grid, and make it a distributed grid that can pick up energy from a 2 kw home solar installation as well as a 10 gw nuclear plant.

Continueing the use of coal plants is not only about putting more GHGs into the atmosphere, it is also about putting more lead, mercury, and arsenic into our childrens bodys.


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## PubliusInfinitum

ROFLMNAO...

Anyone that wants to see the results of designing a culture around 'no coal' and flaccid 'alternatives' such as wind and solar, need go no farther than the Socialist Democracy of C-A-L-I-F-O-R-N-I-A...  The highly subsidized (which is not to say bankrupt) state of Delusion.

California started on this nonsense WAY BACK, with a BIG Push in the 70s, another in the 80s and of course spent a fair chunk of the 90s in the DARK!  Which of course was blamed on greed... and decidedly NOT the idiocy of chasing energy production out of the state for 30 years.

Had the US built a network of Nuclear power plants to handle the electrical load, we'd be well on our way to energy independence right now.  Who knows what alternatives would exist today, if the left had not shit the bed and essentially stopped the development of nuclear energy.

Id wager that we'd have a nuclear power train engine, which powered miles and miles of cargo from east to west, north to south... and while the diesels are highly efficient... I doubt that few could argue that the nuclear train wouldn't be more so and that the diesel presently being consumed by trains wouldn't be useful in the stores used to operate the nations trucks.

Wind and Solar are a distraction and an energy novelty...  Solar will only come to a reasonable value when Science finds the biological code to unlock it's natural potential to synthesize biological reactions of systems which serves efficiencies, well beyond our present means to capture and manipulate.

Of course nature has been working on it for a billion years and at present has only developed solar powered propulsion systems, such as that which is typing this message and these systems require the need to consume other solar driven biologics for additional energy stores.

The problem that we're facing is what it always is... and that is the intellectual means of the common leftist is simply insufficient to comprehend the problem, thus their means to find a solution is non-existant... yet here we are discussing 'Leftist solutions' as if they're even RELEVANT...  

And as long as the problem is tasked with finding a solution... the problem will only get worse and the solution will always remain, right there... the enormous elephant in the room, that nobody wants to see...

Nothing particularly complicated really... just ignore the Left and solve the problem.

Nuclear for Electricty and the rest sorts itself out fairly qucikly.

The problem is, of course; that the Left itself is preventing Nuclear development; which brings us back to that pesky elephant...


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## Navy1960

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWzy9mUxVPI]YouTube - Is Nuclear Power Worth the Environmental Cost?[/ame]

Adm. Bowman makes a much better case on this issue than I ever could in regards to the  myths associated and often put up by various environmental groups. Wind,Solar, other so called  eco-friendly technologies while  viable solutions for  small, and off-peak, and filler energy needs. They should never be seen as a overall energy solution. Fossil fuels are not going away anytime soon and the poster  was  very correct in his  comment on coal as it applies to the US stockpiles.  The US should it put efforts to use that coal in a clean manner along with the  construction of  nuclear power  plants. as well as wind and solar and other  technologies along with developing our own natural resources , our energy needs would be met for year to come.  There are many benefits in developing this sort of plan not the least of which would be ending our  nation being held hostage  by middle eastern oil barons. Those that oppose US involvement  in regions  that claim the US is there to protect it's oil interests should be the  loudest champions for  develping domestic production as well as  those  energy resources  I spoke about rather than supporting a movement that has a very narrow focus and a limited view based on an earth first  touchy feely mentality. This sort of  view will never end our dependence on foreign oil, rather  it will keep this nation hostage to OPEC for many years to come. Why you ask?  because there are simply some technologies that will not run on anything but  fossil fuels,  i.e. aviation. That is of course your willing to conceed the development of the nuclear jet engine of the 60's again, however I don't think the greenies would like that one too much.


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## Old Rocks

There are no clean coal plants in the US that even in construction. The only one that I know of that is being built now is in China. Clean coal is a myth. 

Wind is now producing in the giga-watt range in Oregon alone. Solar, as it becomes very cheap, will be a huge producer. Consider all the industrial and commercial roofs that are available. Geo-thermal has immense potential as well, at less cost than nuclear.

In the next five years I think there will be enough proof for all but the most ideologically driven that we have created a catastrophe. Global warming, and the climate change that it is causing is a reality.


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## dilloduck

Old Rocks said:


> There are no clean coal plants in the US that even in construction. The only one that I know of that is being built now is in China. Clean coal is a myth.
> 
> Wind is now producing in the giga-watt range in Oregon alone. Solar, as it becomes very cheap, will be a huge producer. Consider all the industrial and commercial roofs that are available. Geo-thermal has immense potential as well, at less cost than nuclear.
> 
> In the next five years I think there will be enough proof for all but the most ideologically driven that we have created a catastrophe. Global warming, and the climate change that it is causing is a reality.



What kind of energy do they use to create solar panels and wind turbines ?


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## Navy1960

Currently, the largest wind farm in the US &#8211; and the largest in the world &#8211; is Florida Power & Light's Horse Hollow Wind Energy Center, located in Taylor County, Texas. The Horse Hollow project operates 421 wind turbines and has a capacity of 735 megawatts

Rocks did you know that the entire capacity of wind in the Untied States is enough to serve 4.5 million homes just about equal to that of  Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station here  in Arizona that serves Approx. 4 million.  So while wind  has it's place in an overall solution , nuclear would seem to be a much better solution in terms of power generation, jobs,  and long term power generation.


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## Midnight Marauder

*Lighting's dirty little secret*: The swirly florescent bulbs that will by law be required, as incandescent bulbs are banned? Mercury. Where's it all gonna go, from the billions of these discarded? Into the groundwater! Love it!

*Wind power's dirty little secret*: It takes 4 barrels of oil per year, per wind turbine, for the gearbox. And another five barrels for the transformer below each turbine. And these turbines leak and sling this oil. Great for the groundwater!

Multiply those figures times a million, two million wind turbines planned -- and you see why oil magnates like Pickens are pushing this. They stand to sell millions of barrels of oil!

*Dirty little secret of solar*: The production of solar panels involves nitrogen trifluoride (NF3) emissions be released. NF3 is about 17,000 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. The concentration of it in the atmosphere has increased 20 fold during the last two decades by its use in manufacturing processes. The level is increasing 11 percent per year.

The weaker CO2 stays in the atmosphere up to 100 years. NF3 stays in the atmosphere for 700 years or more. 

*Dirty little secret of Hydrogen*: Water Vapor is the product of combustion. Sounds great, right? But -- Water vapor is far and away the #1 greenhouse gas. This according to the IPCC and every other scientist on both sides of the issue. It's the one thing they do ALL agree on. Hmmm...

*Dirty little secrets of Ethanol*: Yeah, it's "cleaner" if you believe CO2 is really really bad, because it does produce less when combusted. But it also produces the definite pollutant and definite poison to all living things -- CO (Carbon Monoxide) 100 times more than gasoline! Also, it takes 1,200 gallons of water to make a gallon of this crap!

*Cleaner little secret of gasoline powered internal combustion*: Today's engines put out 95% fewer emissions than their 1970 counterparts!

It's what they DON'T tell us that really winds up hurting the environment in the long haul.


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## Care4all

most nuke plants are stopped from being built by the LOCALS...within the area it is proposed to be built, NOT by environmentalists....NIMBY  Not In My Back Yard syndrome!


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## JBeukema

'clean coal' does not exist.
Nuclear power has its own problems, such as the nuclear waste.

JB's Solution?


First, we decentralize the American power grid. Each building will use any solar and wind energy it can gather. Any extra energy produced is passed into the local grid.
Each city (or sector, in the largest cities) will have its own micro-grid. This will isolate the regions in a bottom-->up system that keeps rolling blackouts from spreading in the case of failure of or damage to any part of the system. The regions gather any energy they can using whatever sources are  available to them, : wind, solar, geothermal, small hydroelectric dams...
Each state then has its own grid. Any surplus power from the lower grids are passed to the next grid up, to provide energy to any lesser grids that may experience a deficit, just as each lesser grid passes any surplus to and draws any needed energy from the levels above them. The states operate large-scale solar farms, wind farms, geothermal farms, and any other resources available to them.
The Federal grid is a series of supergrids capable of drawing surplus from and reinforcing all the lesser grids. At the national level, we construct a number of nuclear power stations. The USA is broken into a grid system that isolates each region from the others to prevent massive failures and rolling blackouts as have been seen in the past. This protects the system form failure, accidents, or attack. Each of these major grids is powered by a series of nuclear racotrs and possesses, in addition to the connections to the state grids in accordance with the system described earlier, a number of 'direct connects' to major metropolitan area in order to ensure that,. if an area experiences failure or requires additional energy beyond the capacity of the levels above it, these nuclear plants can target these regions for  power through these emergency and reinforcement systems.
The nuclear facilities are to be operated and controlled under federal supervision. The state-level systems are to be operated by the states themselves, and the lesser systems shall be controlled by any private companies which seek to invest into the primary or construct parallel systems to serve their customers
The buying and selling of additional energy shall be conducted between the parties involved (homeowners and cities, cities and regions or states, states and the fed) with prices to be determined by the free market and the negotiations of the parties involved.
Power plants fueled by fossil fuels shall be phased out over the course of 20 years (timeline to be modified as necessary) as the systems come online.
Homeowners and other parties will be rewarded with significant tax breaks for being among the first to participate, with the option to cell any excess energy they produce serving as a further incentive. Some individuals already do this with their local power companies, their homes being outfitted with solar panels.


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## JBeukema

Decentralization is usually a good thing in general. I almost always oppose the idea of placing all one's eggs in a centralized basket.​


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## AllieBaba

I live in windmill country.

They're problematic.


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## AllieBaba




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## American Horse

Our state of Indiana has lots of coal, but it isn't very clean burning.  Because of that problem Duke Energy is developing and building a carbon sequestration coal fired plant at the source of the problem, here in Indiana.  

" _&#8220;We think that greenhouse gases will be regulated, and coal gasification plants with carbon capture and sequestration technology hold tremendous promise to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and help address global climate change,&#8221; said Duke Energy Indiana President Jim Stanley. &#8220;Our goal is to make this one of the nation&#8217;s first demonstrations of capture and sequestration of carbon dioxide from a power plant.&#8221; 

The approximately 630-megawatt plant will use advanced integrated gasification combined cycle technology. The new plant will produce 10 times as much power as the existing plant at Edwardsport, yet it will emit less sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and mercury than the plant it replaces. Due to the plant&#8217;s superior efficiency, it also will emit 45 percent less carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour than the existing facility. 

Integrated gasification combined cycle technology uses a coal gasification system to convert coal into a synthesis gas (syngas). The syngas is processed to remove sulfur, mercury and ash before going to a traditional combined cycle power plant, using two combustion turbines and a steam turbine to efficiently produce electricity.   

The technology can also remove the carbon dioxide from coal during the syngas conversion process and sequester or store it in underground geologic formations. _"

But there is plenty of opposition.  The carbon would be captured, and injected into geological strata deep within the earth remaining compressed there.  The carbon would be under great pressure and remain liquefied, presumably never to escape; that is the theory.   

But the commonness of coal as a source of energy and the cheapness of open mining it provides a powerful incentive to make use of it, in spite of the opposition.  That's why the biggest drag line coal shovel in the world was built to scrape it up. If a resources is valuable but hard to get to, its value is diminished to the point of nonexistence; but coal is extremely accessible. 

The "greens" believe the carbon would escape and are attempting to prevent the plants development, the same as they did nuclear plants in the eighties.  That's why we now have a 600 acre abandoned plant which was under construction here which will remain for hundreds of years as a monument to the power of their beliefs; actually a source of great pride for them.

In these coal strata is also a lot of natural gas waiting to be converted to energy. Lots of it is piped to the surface, and burned off into the atmosphere.  In the last decade or so there have been many small "peak load" gas powered plants built and tied into the electrical grid, injecting and selling the power they produce  at times of high demand into the system, producing income for the developers of these mini power plants.  Few people are aware they are even there.

A huge power plant like our abandoned "Marble Hill" plant on the Ohio River, was too easy for the greens to focus on, and their law suits and charges of poor construction practices were unrelenting, bankrupting Public Service Indiana, which was one of the best run energy companies in the US; it was then snapped up by Cinergy, Cincinnati, Ohio, then finally Duke Energy of Charlotte, N.C.

What is needed now, like the small peak load gas fired plants, is small nuclear plants, perhaps on something of the same schemata.  The time to build them could be mere moments as compared to the huge plants which took a decade and longer making them an easy target of the green movement. The beleagured Marble Hill plant's construction continued on for 14 years. 

A mini-nuclear plant could be built, and the equipment trucked in or brought in by rail, and be in service before the greens could focus their demonstrations and lawsuits.  It would take government approval to ease that path, but it may happen yet.


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## Care4all

AllieBaba said:


> I live in windmill country.
> 
> They're problematic.



why?


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## strollingbones

a friend of mine is thinking about instaling a 5 kw windmill....reasoning is ...getting off the grid and selling power back to the electric company....right now its at the start point of testing wind speeds etc.  i am curious as to how this will go...can they purchase a 50 k windmill and make it work....make it pay for itself then turn "pure" profit.  this area has experimented with windmills...nasa put a big one in ...it was not a success...it was finally removed...i think the reason..too much wind....causing the windmill to be shut down more often than not...

Boone: Windmill City


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## ErikViking

Midnight Marauder said:


> *Lighting's dirty little secret*: The swirly florescent bulbs that will by law be required, as incandescent bulbs are banned? Mercury. Where's it all gonna go, from the billions of these discarded? Into the groundwater! Love it!
> 
> *Wind power's dirty little secret*: It takes 4 barrels of oil per year, per wind turbine, for the gearbox. And another five barrels for the transformer below each turbine. And these turbines leak and sling this oil. Great for the groundwater!
> 
> Multiply those figures times a million, two million wind turbines planned -- and you see why oil magnates like Pickens are pushing this. They stand to sell millions of barrels of oil!
> 
> *Dirty little secret of solar*: The production of solar panels involves nitrogen trifluoride (NF3) emissions be released. NF3 is about 17,000 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. The concentration of it in the atmosphere has increased 20 fold during the last two decades by its use in manufacturing processes. The level is increasing 11 percent per year.
> 
> The weaker CO2 stays in the atmosphere up to 100 years. NF3 stays in the atmosphere for 700 years or more.
> 
> *Dirty little secret of Hydrogen*: Water Vapor is the product of combustion. Sounds great, right? But -- Water vapor is far and away the #1 greenhouse gas. This according to the IPCC and every other scientist on both sides of the issue. It's the one thing they do ALL agree on. Hmmm...
> 
> *Dirty little secrets of Ethanol*: Yeah, it's "cleaner" if you believe CO2 is really really bad, because it does produce less when combusted. But it also produces the definite pollutant and definite poison to all living things -- CO (Carbon Monoxide) 100 times more than gasoline! Also, it takes 1,200 gallons of water to make a gallon of this crap!
> 
> *Cleaner little secret of gasoline powered internal combustion*: Today's engines put out 95% fewer emissions than their 1970 counterparts!
> 
> It's what they DON'T tell us that really winds up hurting the environment in the long haul.



Finally someone did something constructive - this list clearly shows what kind of challange we face when moving to more sustainable forms of energy.  

It doesn't sound too hard reducing the need for nitrogen trifluoride in creating solar panels or switch to another form of lubrication for wind turbines? Perhaps we can leave out gasoline engines, they seem pretty close to perfect as it is.


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## editec

There is no reason not to use windpower where it will give us a good return on the investment.

We are not faced with a Hobsan choice here.

Both wind and nuclear power are options we can choose and we should choose _both._


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## Care4all

editec said:


> There is no reason not to use windpower where it will give us a good return on the investment.
> 
> We are not faced with a Hobsan choice here.
> 
> Both wind and nuclear power are options we can choose and we should choose _both._



Maine plans on being all of New England's Hub for Wind Power....


Wind farm starts up - Bangor Daily News


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## Big Black Dog

I worked at a nuclear power plant for over 10 years.  Dollar for dollar I believe that nuke power is far superior to wind power.  Certainly more reliable.


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## Care4all

Big Black Dog said:


> I worked at a nuclear power plant for over 10 years.  Dollar for dollar I believe that nuke power is far superior to wind power.  Certainly more reliable.



What to do with the spent fuel is the only issue still an issue with nuke plants...otherwise, from what i am reading, newer technology makes them safer than the times of 3 mile island and Chernobyl....


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## editec

Care4all said:


> editec said:
> 
> 
> 
> There is no reason not to use windpower where it will give us a good return on the investment.
> 
> We are not faced with a Hobsan choice here.
> 
> Both wind and nuclear power are options we can choose and we should choose _both._
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Maine plans on being all of New England's Hub for Wind Power....
> 
> 
> Wind farm starts up - Bangor Daily News
Click to expand...

 
Periodically those windmills are shipped into Searsport (from Europe) from futher translport to Western Maine, so I get to see them coming down route 1 through town.

The blades (and remember one blade is only half the width of the mill when its set up) is over a block long.

So that means that the span from one blade end to the other must be about two blocks wide!

Hence the spinning blades cover a surface area larger than a football field!

They're way cool!


----------



## strollingbones

Big Black Dog said:


> I worked at a nuclear power plant for over 10 years.  Dollar for dollar I believe that nuke power is far superior to wind power.  Certainly more reliable.




posters all over the board...are going.....OOOOOOOOOOOOO thats what happened...why do you hear homer now?


----------



## Care4all

editec said:


> Care4all said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> editec said:
> 
> 
> 
> There is no reason not to use windpower where it will give us a good return on the investment.
> 
> We are not faced with a Hobsan choice here.
> 
> Both wind and nuclear power are options we can choose and we should choose _both._
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Maine plans on being all of New England's Hub for Wind Power....
> 
> 
> Wind farm starts up - Bangor Daily News
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Periodically those windmills are shipped into Searsport (from Europe) from futher translport to Western Maine, so I get to see them coming down route 1 through town.
> 
> The blades (and remember one blade is only half the width of the mill when its set up) is over a block long.
> 
> So that means that the span from one blade end to the other must be about two blocks wide!
> 
> Hence the spinning blades cover a surface area larger than a football field!
> 
> They're way cool!
Click to expand...


you know, it is windy as can be here, near the coast....you'd think it would be worth getting a windmill for the home here....don't know?

Wish we could find some source of energy to heat other than oil...


----------



## Skull Pilot

Care4all said:


> Big Black Dog said:
> 
> 
> 
> I worked at a nuclear power plant for over 10 years.  Dollar for dollar I believe that nuke power is far superior to wind power.  Certainly more reliable.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> What to do with the spent fuel is the only issue still an issue with nuke plants...otherwise, from what i am reading, newer technology makes them safer than the times of 3 mile island and Chernobyl....
Click to expand...


not really

the problem is the government does not allow the recycling of nuclear waste.

There Is No Such Thing as Nuclear Waste - WSJ.com


> *Ninety-five percent of a spent fuel rod is plain old U-238, the nonfissionable variety that exists in granite tabletops, stone buildings and the coal burned in coal plants to generate electricity. Uranium-238 is 1% of the earth's crust. It could be put right back in the ground where it came from*.



*



			Of the remaining 5% of a rod, one-fifth is fissionable U-235 -- which can be recycled as fuel. Another one-fifth is plutonium, also recyclable as fuel. Much of the remaining three-fifths has important uses as medical and industrial isotopes
		
Click to expand...

**



			France, which completely reprocesses its recyclable material, stores all the unused remains -- from 30 years of generating 75% of its electricity from nuclear energy -- beneath the floor of a single room at La Hague.
		
Click to expand...

*
So don't be fooled by the idiots who say we'll have millions of tons of nuclear waste hanging around for a millennium.

Once again, what is hindering us here is.........


The fucking government which will not allow us to recycle nuclear waste


----------



## Intense

Skull Pilot,
Navy 1960, Great presentation. Good and informative.
What is your position on Dams and Reservoirs? In relation, to Power generation? Drinking Water? Drought Reserve? Irrigation? Fire Control? Erosion Control? Flood Control? Wild Life Preservation? With advanced Technology today, what are the advantages. 

Speaking as a Former Anti Nuke, Activist, Your words are not wasted on me. I support what you say, especially on recycling spent fuel. I support the construction of large facilities, away from densely populated areas. I'm curious about your take on mini plants? 

I've seen to major outages related to the automatic shut down procedure relating to Nuke plants, and Grid issues, one in the North East, one in Florida.  Is this a hair trigger problem?  Is it a bug in the system?  Considering the Effective Reboot or Restart time of A Nuke Plant, what is currently the best back up system? Gas? Hydro? Coal?   It does seem to me that the Industry is dragging it's feet on Hydro, development.  Is that a misconception?  Why not build up on hydro too? Drought Control and flood control alone justify it.


----------



## Navy1960

After having the chance to read some of the postings  , all of which make very goof points I wanted to address this NIMBY issue when it comes to nuclear power.  While yes, a lot of communities have used the NIMBY point to stop nuclear power,  one of the largest groups opposed to nuclear power has been and still is the environmental lobby. 

Greenpeace, EDF ring a bell?  As a matter of fact these and many other environmental groups constantly keep nuclear power  in courts on everything from construction regs. to how many fish are impacted by a plants cooling process.  What really seems to make no sense is these same groups are in fact big in the promotion of  the IPCC theory of  Global Warming and the reduction of CO2. 

Greenpeace has always fought - and will continue to fight - vigorously against nuclear power because it is an unacceptable risk to the environment and to humanity. The only solution is to halt the expansion of all nuclear power, and for the shutdown of existing plants.
End the nuclear age | Greenpeace International

Serious questions of safety, security, waste and proliferation surround the issue of nuclear power. Until these questions are resolved satisfactorily, Environmental Defense cannot support an expansion of nuclear generating capacity. EDF

New nuclear power plants are unlikely to provide a significant fraction of future U.S. needs for low-carbon energy. NRDC favors more practical, economical and environmentally sustainable approaches to reducing both U.S. and global carbon emissions, focusing on the widest possible implementation of end-use energy-efficiency improvements, and on policies to accelerate commercialization of clean, flexible, renewable energy technologies.


Its time these groups no matter how noble their aims  started to walk the walk and understand that the technologies they support have a narrow band of energy capability at the moment. They WILL NOT meet current needs for any time in the forseeable future , while these technologies  wind, solar, bio-mass. do have a place in the overall scheme, they should never be considered as  the main solution to our energy needs.  Let me give you just a small example, If it takes all of the  current  installed wind generators in the United States encompassing over 160,000 acres of land to produce the same amount of energy that one nuclear power plant can produce and given the fact these nuclear plants can reprocess this fuel to the point where the  storage of waste is a non-issue the  opposition by environmental groups fails miserably.  In fact the biggest accident in US history at TMI that many of these groups are still talking about resulted in the deaths of  ZERO people.
Detailed studies of the radiological consequences of the accident have been conducted by the NRC, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (now Health and Human Services), the Department of Energy, and the State of Pa.. Several independent studies have also been conducted. Estimates are that the average dose to about 2 million people in the area was only about 1 millirem. To put this into context, exposure from a chest x&#8209;ray is about 6 millirem. Compared to the natural radioactive background dose of about 100&#8209;125 millirem per year for the area, the collective dose to the community from the accident was very small. The maximum dose to a person at the site boundary would have been less than 100 millirem.

In the months following the accident, although questions were raised about possible adverse effects from radiation on human, animal, and plant life in the TMI area, none could be directly correlated to the accident. Thousands of environmental samples of air, water, milk, vegetation, soil, and foodstuffs were collected by various groups monitoring the area. Very low levels of radionuclides could be attributed to releases from the accident. However, comprehensive investigations and assessments by several well&#8209;respected organizations have concluded that in spite of serious damage to the reactor, most of the radiation was contained and that the *actual release had negligible effects on the physical health of individuals or the environment.*
NRC: Backgrounder on the Three Mile Island Accident

Many will cite chernobyl as a reason not to build nuclear power plants but they do so with little understanding of the fact that that type of reactor was never built in the United States and as a result of poor design and poor safety measures  it resulted in an accident of epic proportions.

There are a number of major and minor differences between the RBMK and U.S. Light Water Reactors. For the purposes of this discussion, only the major differences which are relevant to the accident are highlighted.

The fuel assemblies in the RBMK are contained in individual pressure tubes, whereas one pressure vessel contains all of the assemblies in an LWR. The reason for the RBMK design is so that assemblies can be loaded and unloaded individually without shutting down the reactor. This is an advantage if the reactor is to be used for both plutonium and electricity production. LWR's must be shut down for re-fueling and therefore the fuel is kept in as long as is economical. Water acts as both coolant and moderator in LWR's so that a loss of coolant also stops the fission reaction. In the RBMK, the moderator is solid graphite and the water coolant acts as a poison. That means that the presence of water absorbs neutrons and slows the reaction. If coolant is lost or is converted to steam, reactor power may increase. This is known as a positive void coefficient and it represents a serious design flaw. Under certain operating conditions, the power can increase uncontrollably until the reactor disintegrates. This is what happened at Chernobyl. No power reactor in the U.S. can be licensed for construction or operation if it possesses this feature.

The graphite blocks are also flammable at high temperatures. A number of Soviet citizens died in the process of putting out the fire caused by the explosion.

In addition to the shielding, LWR's have an even thicker wall of steel- reinforced concrete surrounding the reactor structure. This structure, called a containment vessel, prevents radioactive release in the event of an accident. Because of this feature, no member of the public was injured or killed when the reactor core melted at Three Mile Island in 1979. The Soviet RBMK does not possess a containment vessel.

In addition to these fundamental differences in design, U.S. reactors are operated under strict regulations. Unlike Chernobyl, U.S. reactor operators are unable to disable the safety systems which prevent dangerous situations from developing. Although equipment can malfunction and operators can make errors, the design of *U.S. light-water reactors prevents these mishaps from leading to dangerous releases of radiation*
Chernobyl: RBMK vs LWR

This was several year ago, and with the advent of of even new technologies, nuclear has become even safer. and represents this nations best hope to meet it's energy needs for some time to come.


----------



## Intense

What Type of Reactor was Hanford? In fairness isn't it better to bring out the history, pluses and minuses, what is the opposition gonna bring up that may appear to discredit. What mistakes have we made and what have we learned from them.

The Columbia River at Risk:
Why Hanford Cleanup is Vital to Oregon

The desert of southeastern Washington is home to what may be the most contaminated area in the United States. For more than 40 years the U.S. Government produced plutonium for nuclear weapons at the Hanford Site. Now, with the Cold War behind us, the focus at Hanford is on cleaning up the enormous amounts of radioactive and chemically hazardous wastes produced while making plutonium.

Hanford was home to America´s first plutonium production facilities. Production began in 1944 as part of the Manhattan Project - the World War II effort to build an atomic bomb. Plutonium from Hanford was used in the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan in August of 1945.

For the next 45 years, Hanford´s primary mission was to produce plutonium for use in nuclear weapons. During that time, Hanford went through several major expansions. Eventually, the government built nine nuclear production reactors, five chemical separation plants and dozens of support facilities. Plutonium production ended at Hanford in 1990. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) manages the 586 square mile Hanford Site.

Site workers are now engaged in the world´s largest environmental cleanup project. More than 19-hundred waste sites have been identified at Hanford - ranging from small areas of surface contamination to 177 underground storage tanks that hold about 53 million gallons of highly radioactive and chemically hazardous waste. Some of Hanford´s waste will remain dangerous for thousands of years. It must be kept away from people and the environment during that time.

There is urgency to the cleanup. In many cases, the longer the delay, the more hazardous and expensive the problem becomes. Many storage facilities have exceeded their design life and are deteriorating, making it much more difficult to safely store the waste. Some of the waste poses a significant threat to workers, the public and the environment. An accident, or further spread of the contamination, could put the region´s economy at risk.

Much of the Hanford Site is free of contamination. Large areas of the site were used as safety and security buffers. However, the central plateau area has substantial problems. The plateau contains the underground storage tanks, the chemical processing plants and other plutonium facilities. Burial grounds and contaminated groundwater also pose significant cleanup challenges.

The waste in Hanford´s underground tanks presents the most urgent, complex and costly challenge. 149 of the 177 tanks have just a single wall of steel encased in concrete for containment. These tanks, which range in size from 55,000 to one million gallons, were never intended for long-term storage. The oldest of these tanks date back to the mid-1940s. Nearly 70 have leaked more than a million gallons of high-level radioactive waste to the ground. Some of this waste has reached the groundwater.
Nuclear Safety Columbia River at Risk

Power Plants
3 January 1961
The world's first nuclear-related fatalities occurred following a reactor explosion at the National Reactor Testing Station in Idaho Falls, Idaho. Three technicians, were killed, with radioactivity "largely confined" (words of John A. McCone, Director of the Atomic Energy Commission) to the reactor building. The men were killed as they moved fuel rods in a "routine" preparation for the reactor start-up. One technician was blown to the ceiling of the containment dome and impaled on a control rod. His body remained there until it was taken down six days later. The men were so heavily exposed to radiation that their hands had to be buried separately with other radioactive waste, and their bodies were interred in lead coffins. Another incident three weeks later (on 25 January) resulted in a release of radiation into the atmosphere.
24 July 1964
Robert Peabody, 37, died at the United Nuclear Corp. fuel facility in Charlestown, Rhode Island, when liquid uranium he was pouring went critical, starting a reaction that exposed him to a lethal dose of radiation.

19 November 1971
The water storage space at the Northern States Power Company's reactor in Monticello, Minnesota filled to capacity and spilled over, dumping about 50,000 gallons of radioactive waste water into the Mississippi River. Some was taken into the St. Paul water system.

March 1972
Senator Mike Gravel of Alaska submitted to the Congressional Record facts surrounding a routine check in a nuclear power plant which indicated abnormal radioactivity in the building's water system. Radioactivity was confirmed in the plant drinking fountain. Apparently there was an inappropriate cross-connection between a 3,000 gallon radioactive tank and the water system.

27 July 1972
Two workers at the Surry Unit 2 facility in Virginia were fatally scalded after a routine valve adjustment led to a steam release in a gap in a vent line. [See also 9 December 1986]

28 May 1974
The Atomic Energy Commission reported that 861 "abnormal events" had occurred in 1973 in the nation's 42 operative nuclear power plants. Twelve involved the release of radioactivity "above permissible levels."

22 March 1975
A technician checking for air leaks with a lighted candle caused $100 million in damage when insulation caught fire at the Browns Ferry reactor in Decatur, Alabama. The fire burned out electrical controls, lowering the cooling water to dangerous levels, before the plant could be shut down.

28 March 1979
A major accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant near Middletown, Pennsylvania. At 4:00 a.m. a series of human and mechanical failures nearly triggered a nuclear disaster. By 8:00 a.m., after cooling water was lost and temperatures soared above 5,000 degrees, the top portion of the reactor's 150-ton core melted. Contaminated coolant water escaped into a nearby building, releasing radioactive gasses, leading as many as 200,000 people to flee the region. Despite claims by the nuclear industry that "no one died at Three Mile Island," a study by Dr. Ernest J. Sternglass, professor of radiation physics at the University of Pittsburgh, showed that the accident led to a minimum of 430 infant deaths.

1981
The Critical Mass Energy Project of Public Citizen, Inc. reported that there were 4,060 mishaps and 140 serious events at nuclear power plants in 1981, up from 3,804 mishaps and 104 serious events the previous year.

11 February 1981
An Auxiliary Unit Operator, working his first day on the new job without proper training, inadvertently opened a valve which led to the contamination of eight men by 110,000 gallons of radioactive coolant sprayed into the containment building of the Tennessee Valley Authority's Sequoyah I plant in Tennessee.

July 1981
A flood of low-level radioactive wastewater in the sub-basement at Nine Mile Point's Unit 1 (in New York state) caused approximately 150 55-gallon drums of high-level waste to overturn, some of which released their highly radioactive contents. Some 50,000 gallons of low-level radioactive water were subsequently dumped into Lake Ontario to make room for the cleanup. The discharge was reported to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, but the sub-basement contamination was not. A report leaked to the press 8 years later resulted in a study which found that high levels of radiation persisted in the still flooded facility.

1982
The Critical Mass Energy Project of Public Citizen, Inc. reported that 84,322 power plant workers were exposed to radiation in 1982, up from 82,183 the previous year.

25 January 1982
A steam generator pipe broke at the Rochester Gas & Electric Company's Ginna plant near Rochester, New York. Fifteen thousand gallons of radioactive coolant spilled onto the plant floor, and small amounts of radioactive steam escaped into the air.

15-16 January 1983
Nearly 208,000 gallons of water with low-level radioactive contamination was accidentally dumped into the Tennesee River at the Browns Ferry power plant.

25 February 1983
A catastrophe at the Salem 1 reactor in New Jersey was averted by just 90 seconds when the plant was shut down manually, following the failure of automatic shutdown systems to act properly. The same automatic systems had failed to respond in an incident three days before, and other problems plagued this plant as well, such as a 3,000 gallon leak of radioactive water in June 1981 at the Salem 2 reactor, a 23,000 gallon leak of "mildly" radioactive water (which splashed onto 16 workers) in February 1982, and radioactive gas leaks in March 1981 and September 1982 from Salem 1.

9 December 1986
A feedwater pipe ruptured at the Surry Unit 2 facility in Virginia, causing 8 workers to be scalded by a release of hot water and steam. Four of the workers later died from their injuries. In addition, water from the sprinkler systems caused a malfunction of the security system, preventing personnel from entering the facility. This was the second time that an incident at the Surry 2 unit resulted in fatal injuries due to scalding [see also 27 July 1972].

1988
It was reported that there were 2,810 accidents in U.S. commercial nuclear power plants in 1987, down slightly from the 2,836 accidents reported in 1986, according to a report issued by the Critical Mass Energy Project of Public Citizen, Inc.

28 May 1993
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission released a warning to the operators of 34 nuclear reactors around the country that the instruments used to measure levels of water in the reactor could give false readings during routine shutdowns and fail to detect important leaks. The problem was first bought to light by an engineer at Northeast Utilities in Connecticut who had been harassed for raising safety questions. The flawed instruments at boiling-water reactors designed by General Electric utilize pipes which were prone to being blocked by gas bubbles; a failure to detect falling water levels could have resulted, potentially leading to a meltdown.

15 February 2000
New York's Indian Point II power plant vented a small amount of radioactive steam when a an aging steam generator ruptured. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission initially reported that no radioactive material was released, but later changed their report to say that there was a leak, but not of a sufficient amount to threaten public safety.

6 March 2002
Workers discovered a foot-long cavity eaten into the reactor vessel head at the Davis-Besse nuclear plant in Ohio. Borated water had corroded the metal to a 3/16 inch stainless steel liner which held back over 80,000 gallons of highly pressurized radioactive water. In April 2005 the Nuclear Regulatory Commission proposed fining plant owner First Energy 5.4 million dollars for their failure to uncover the problem sooner (similar problems plaguing other plants were already known within the industry), and also proposed banning System Engineer Andrew Siemaszko from working in the industry for five years due to his falsifying reactor vessel logs. As of this writing the fine and suspension were under appeal.

U.S. Nuclear Accidents


----------



## Intense

Again, I recognize and respect the advantages of Nuclear Power, the same way I respect Fire, or High Voltage, or a loaded gun. I'm saying be open, address issue with remedy.


----------



## Navy1960

Intense said:


> Skull Pilot,
> Navy 1960, Great presentation. Good and informative.
> What is your position on Dams and Reservoirs? In relation, to Power generation? Drinking Water? Drought Reserve? Irrigation? Fire Control? Erosion Control? Flood Control? Wild Life Preservation? With advanced Technology today, what are the advantages.
> 
> Speaking as a Former Anti Nuke, Activist, Your words are not wasted on me. I support what you say, especially on recycling spent fuel. I support the construction of large facilities, away from densely populated areas. I'm curious about your take on mini plants?
> 
> I've seen to major outages related to the automatic shut down procedure relating to Nuke plants, and Grid issues, one in the North East, one in Florida.  Is this a hair trigger problem?  Is it a bug in the system?  Considering the Effective Reboot or Restart time of A Nuke Plant, what is currently the best back up system? Gas? Hydro? Coal?   It does seem to me that the Industry is dragging it's feet on Hydro, development.  Is that a misconception?  Why not build up on hydro too? Drought Control and flood control alone justify it.




You know I have long thought that had the people that supported  technologies such as nuclear and those that opposed it sat down and  actually came up with a plan to environmentally  implement them you would not have much of an issue with them.  For example, you asked me about Dams, my answer would depend on where you wanted to put the Dam.  I know that sounds a little wishy washy , but while I am in favor of hydro, it needs to be tempered with some deference to the  natural flow of rivers and  wetlands  as we have seen these natural settings actually are set up as engines  to help  us as is the case  with hurricanes on the gulf coast.  So while I think hydro has it's place , I do feel that there are many places that Dams can be built where the impact would be beneficial for everyone.  We have seen such as in Ak. what happens with farming communties when someone shuts down a dam project to search for a woodpecker  that no one has seen for 40 years, this  sort of thing seem to me to be a little much especially if it impacts so many people. 

I am a firm supporter of large nuclear generating stations for large metro area's in conjunction with a  program that places mini-reactors in smaller communties, as well as  a distributed grid that employs wind, and solar. I firmly support  a smart grid to direct power where it is needed and a national power gird where   power is a commodity and can be used from the smallest  solar  panel to the largest nuclear power plant.  I am highly in favor of developing these nuclear facilities in less populated areas and in conjunction with a central reprocessing  program that has  regional reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel. I think these mini-reactors have great promise  and in fact several companies have them in operation in Japan. Rather than have a facility that will occcupy  several thousand acres  with cooling towers and  a thirst for vast amounts of cooling water. You will have a very small facility about the size of the local wal-mart and with reprocessing  that in 10 years  produces no more waste than what you can put in a school lunch box. 

I have long thought that our nation should explore the possibilty of  slat water De-Stalinization  for this nations drinking water needs. Now I'm sure someone someplace  will have an issue with this, but IMHO it makes a lot of sense to explore doing this for our drinking water needs and  try and offset the  current demand from lakes, and underground sources. 

In my opnion the best back-up to nuclear is  actaully 3 three things, one is natural-gas as this nation has an abundant supply of natural gas, two wind and solar in combination, and a method by which we can use the vast amonts of coal this nation has.  What strikes me most about coal is this nations reserves are vast and to not use it seems to be a shame.  It's my belief that every effort should be made to find a way to fire coal as an energy source in a clean and safe way. I think  no matter what your postiion on Global Warming  the end result can only be positive for our nation in terms of  pollution, jobs, and  our furture. 

The bottom line here though is that people need to pay deference to others opinions on matters such as these and by working together we can all come up with solutions that work. It's only when we  decided that it's our way or the highway is when we all lose.  I believe that both sides the environmental side and the  commerce side both suffer from this and  they both seem to be knocking their heads against a wall. When it would seem if they developed soloutions in conjunction with one another we all win.  I can envision sitting in one of those meetings and basically the first thing we all agree on is we disagree on the following *laughs*  okay now let's move on.


----------



## Navy1960

Intense said:


> Again, I recognize and respect the advantages of Nuclear Power, the same way I respect Fire, or High Voltage, or a loaded gun. I'm saying be open, address issue with remedy.



Let's address these issues head on, first  I recognize the fact that nuclear is not a power source that is 100% safe  by any means. Then again, I do think you would be hard pressed  to find  many  power sources  coal, natural gas, wind, and even solar  that did not suffer from accidents.  I also recognize that a lot of these facilites are  old such as the case with Handford, which you know and I know was  not a commercial facility and was used by the Federal Govt. to produce weapons grade  material for bombs  including the one dropped on Japan.  I am not by any stretch of the imagination approving of the way the Hanford  site was managed. However the site also hosts a  commercial reactor called the Columbia Generating station 

In the year 2000, WPPSS changed its name to Energy Northwest, and later the plant's name was changed from WNP-2 (Washington Nuclear Power unit number 2) to Columbia Generating Station. Of the five commercial reactors originally planned by WPPSS for the State of Washington, this reactor was the only one completed (WNP-1 may yet be completed but WNP-4 and WNP-3 and WNP-5 were abandoned).

The reactor has performed well and provides Washington with 9% of the state's electrical generation capacity.[1] With the 1992 retirement of Oregon's Trojan Nuclear Power Plant, it is the only commercial nuclear power reactor remaining in the Pacific Northwest. The nearest operating reactor is the Diablo Canyon Power Plant in central California. The plant's sole reactor is a General Electric Type 5. The plant had a new Westinghouse Electric turbine-generator installed in 1999, which brought its output rating to 1,250 MWe.

The Columbia Generating Station features six low-profile fan-driven cooling towers. Each tower cascades warmed water, a byproduct of water heat exchanging with steam after leaving a turbine, down itself and subsequently cools the warmed water via a combination of evaporation and heat exchange with the surrounding air. Some water droplets fall back to earth in the process, thereby creating a hoar frost in the winter. At times, the vapor cloud from the cooling towers can reach 10,000 feet (3 km) in height and can be seen at a great distance. Replacement water for the evaporated water is drawn from the nearby Columbia River.


While I won't go into a  tit for tat  record on industrial accidents  as it relates to technologies  I will point you to one just to show you that nuclear power is not the only industry that suffers from these accidents. 

Sherman County authorities have identified the victim of Saturday's wind turbine accident as Chadd B. Mitchell, a 34-year-old Goldendale, Wash., man.

Sheriff Brad Lohrey said Mitchell worked for the turbine's German manufacturer, Siemens. Winds at the time of the accident were about 25 mph, Lohrey said.

Mitchell died when a wind turbine on the not-yet-opened Klondike III wind farm east of the town of Wasco snapped in half. A second worker, Bill Trossen, of Minnesota, was inside the 242-foot-tall shaft. He was taken to an area hospital and was later released. Trossen's age and hometown were not available Monday morning.
Authorities identify victim of wind turbine accident as 34-year-old Goldendale, Wash., man - OregonLive.com: Breaking News Updates

All of these  illustrate a few things to me, one is the need to be  focused on safety issues on whatever energy production method it is. The other is to put a focus on the closure of these old nuclear facilites as new ones are brought online and additional cleanups of the sites that they were one.  I am of the opinion that as these sites age, it's important for this nation to replace them and when I say replace  I am talking about add capacity where needed and close the ones you replace. A simple yet effective method of accident reduction.


----------



## Intense

Navy1960 said:


> Intense said:
> 
> 
> 
> Skull Pilot,
> Navy 1960, Great presentation. Good and informative.
> What is your position on Dams and Reservoirs? In relation, to Power generation? Drinking Water? Drought Reserve? Irrigation? Fire Control? Erosion Control? Flood Control? Wild Life Preservation? With advanced Technology today, what are the advantages.
> 
> Speaking as a Former Anti Nuke, Activist, Your words are not wasted on me. I support what you say, especially on recycling spent fuel. I support the construction of large facilities, away from densely populated areas. I'm curious about your take on mini plants?
> 
> I've seen to major outages related to the automatic shut down procedure relating to Nuke plants, and Grid issues, one in the North East, one in Florida.  Is this a hair trigger problem?  Is it a bug in the system?  Considering the Effective Reboot or Restart time of A Nuke Plant, what is currently the best back up system? Gas? Hydro? Coal?   It does seem to me that the Industry is dragging it's feet on Hydro, development.  Is that a misconception?  Why not build up on hydro too? Drought Control and flood control alone justify it.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> You know I have long thought that had the people that supported  technologies such as nuclear and those that opposed it sat down and  actually came up with a plan to environmentally  implement them you would not have much of an issue with them.  For example, you asked me about Dams, my answer would depend on where you wanted to put the Dam.  I know that sounds a little wishy washy , but while I am in favor of hydro, it needs to be tempered with some deference to the  natural flow of rivers and  wetlands  as we have seen these natural settings actually are set up as engines  to help  us as is the case  with hurricanes on the gulf coast.  So while I think hydro has it's place , I do feel that there are many places that Dams can be built where the impact would be beneficial for everyone.  We have seen such as in Ak. what happens with farming communties when someone shuts down a dam project to search for a woodpecker  that no one has seen for 40 years, this  sort of thing seem to me to be a little much especially if it impacts so many people.
> 
> I am a firm supporter of large nuclear generating stations for large metro area's in conjunction with a  program that places mini-reactors in smaller communties, as well as  a distributed grid that employs wind, and solar. I firmly support  a smart grid to direct power where it is needed and a national power gird where   power is a commodity and can be used from the smallest  solar  panel to the largest nuclear power plant.  I am highly in favor of developing these nuclear facilities in less populated areas and in conjunction with a central reprocessing  program that has  regional reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel. I think these mini-reactors have great promise  and in fact several companies have them in operation in Japan. Rather than have a facility that will occcupy  several thousand acres  with cooling towers and  a thirst for vast amounts of cooling water. You will have a very small facility about the size of the local wal-mart and with reprocessing  that in 10 years  produces no more waste than what you can put in a school lunch box.
> 
> I have long thought that our nation should explore the possibilty of  slat water De-Stalinization  for this nations drinking water needs. Now I'm sure someone someplace  will have an issue with this, but IMHO it makes a lot of sense to explore doing this for our drinking water needs and  try and offset the  current demand from lakes, and underground sources.
> 
> In my opnion the best back-up to nuclear is  actaully 3 three things, one is natural-gas as this nation has an abundant supply of natural gas, two wind and solar in combination, and a method by which we can use the vast amonts of coal this nation has.  What strikes me most about coal is this nations reserves are vast and to not use it seems to be a shame.  It's my belief that every effort should be made to find a way to fire coal as an energy source in a clean and safe way. I think  no matter what your postiion on Global Warming  the end result can only be positive for our nation in terms of  pollution, jobs, and  our furture.
> 
> The bottom line here though is that people need to pay deference to others opinions on matters such as these and by working together we can all come up with solutions that work. It's only when we  decided that it's our way or the highway is when we all lose.  I believe that both sides the environmental side and the  commerce side both suffer from this and  they both seem to be knocking their heads against a wall. When it would seem if they developed soloutions in conjunction with one another we all win.  I can envision sitting in one of those meetings and basically the first thing we all agree on is we disagree on the following *laughs*  okay now let's move on.
Click to expand...


Well Spoken, Not only do we need to consider concerns, we need to validate and weigh them honestly and in a timely way. Seems much of the tome by doing nothing we create crisis. Too much infrastructure is stressed. Little room for necessary maintenance.


----------



## Intense

Navy1960 said:


> Intense said:
> 
> 
> 
> Again, I recognize and respect the advantages of Nuclear Power, the same way I respect Fire, or High Voltage, or a loaded gun. I'm saying be open, address issue with remedy.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Let's address these issues head on, first  I recognize the fact that nuclear is not a power source that is 100% safe  by any means. Then again, I do think you would be hard pressed  to find  many  power sources  coal, natural gas, wind, and even solar  that did not suffer from accidents.  I also recognize that a lot of these facilites are  old such as the case with Handford, which you know and I know was  not a commercial facility and was used by the Federal Govt. to produce weapons grade  material for bombs  including the one dropped on Japan.  I am not by any stretch of the imagination approving of the way the Hanford  site was managed. However the site also hosts a  commercial reactor called the Columbia Generating station
> 
> In the year 2000, WPPSS changed its name to Energy Northwest, and later the plant's name was changed from WNP-2 (Washington Nuclear Power unit number 2) to Columbia Generating Station. Of the five commercial reactors originally planned by WPPSS for the State of Washington, this reactor was the only one completed (WNP-1 may yet be completed but WNP-4 and WNP-3 and WNP-5 were abandoned).
> 
> The reactor has performed well and provides Washington with 9% of the state's electrical generation capacity.[1] With the 1992 retirement of Oregon's Trojan Nuclear Power Plant, it is the only commercial nuclear power reactor remaining in the Pacific Northwest. The nearest operating reactor is the Diablo Canyon Power Plant in central California. The plant's sole reactor is a General Electric Type 5. The plant had a new Westinghouse Electric turbine-generator installed in 1999, which brought its output rating to 1,250 MWe.
> 
> The Columbia Generating Station features six low-profile fan-driven cooling towers. Each tower cascades warmed water, a byproduct of water heat exchanging with steam after leaving a turbine, down itself and subsequently cools the warmed water via a combination of evaporation and heat exchange with the surrounding air. Some water droplets fall back to earth in the process, thereby creating a hoar frost in the winter. At times, the vapor cloud from the cooling towers can reach 10,000 feet (3 km) in height and can be seen at a great distance. Replacement water for the evaporated water is drawn from the nearby Columbia River.
> 
> 
> While I won't go into a  tit for tat  record on industrial accidents  as it relates to technologies  I will point you to one just to show you that nuclear power is not the only industry that suffers from these accidents.
> 
> Sherman County authorities have identified the victim of Saturday's wind turbine accident as Chadd B. Mitchell, a 34-year-old Goldendale, Wash., man.
> 
> Sheriff Brad Lohrey said Mitchell worked for the turbine's German manufacturer, Siemens. Winds at the time of the accident were about 25 mph, Lohrey said.
> 
> Mitchell died when a wind turbine on the not-yet-opened Klondike III wind farm east of the town of Wasco snapped in half. A second worker, Bill Trossen, of Minnesota, was inside the 242-foot-tall shaft. He was taken to an area hospital and was later released. Trossen's age and hometown were not available Monday morning.
> Authorities identify victim of wind turbine accident as 34-year-old Goldendale, Wash., man - OregonLive.com: Breaking News Updates
> 
> All of these  illustrate a few things to me, one is the need to be  focused on safety issues on whatever energy production method it is. The other is to put a focus on the closure of these old nuclear facilites as new ones are brought online and additional cleanups of the sites that they were one.  I am of the opinion that as these sites age, it's important for this nation to replace them and when I say replace  I am talking about add capacity where needed and close the ones you replace. A simple yet effective method of accident reduction.
Click to expand...


I visited a few towns near The Trojan plant in Oregon and Washington in Sept. 1981, and a few times after that. It had a close call, with being flooded out by the Columbia River after one of the Mt. St. Helens Eruptions. 

I knew Diablo Canyon real well, including the back country in 81 & 84. I visited the containment pool once, for a short visit on my way to the St Lois Obispo Mens colony.   Ever been to Montana De Oro State Park, south of Morro Bay? Beautiful country.

In relation to Safety First I Totally Agree. Need to be vigilant about even Bureaucracy and execution corrupting that. At times We can be Our Own Best Friend, and at times We Can Be Our Own Worst Enemy. 

Are You familiar with the plan Con Ed had back in the Sixties To pump Water from the Hudson into a Artificial Reservoir during the night, and drain the water powering turbines during the high peak times? Is there merit behind the concept? 

Marist Environmental History Project The Storm King Project.

Or

http://harvardforest.fas.harvard.edu/publications/pdfs/HFpubs/paper19.pdf Black Rock

Whats your take on this? 

Spinning wheels, or real expectation?


----------



## Tech_Esq

strollingbones said:


> wind energy has its own set of problems and is not the solution for all areas....the northeast demands so much electricity that it buys it from canada...as does california....nuclear energy will meet the needs of more people than wind or solar...as far as enviroment...wind kills birds and bats...so you are back to solar or hydro  generated electricity....since water is going to become the new oil....hydro is out..for much of the country...so you are back to solar or nuclear....solar could be the solutuion if they can come up with batteries that can store more electricity at a time..



Solar has more problems than that. The PE cells are not all that efficient yet. They are a lot better than they used to be, but still far from what they should be to produce power at the level we need them to.

We are close to solving the problem you mentioned though. Eestor is ready to change the world starting in the 4th quarter of this year. Read my thread on "A Game Changer in Sight." The Eestor, EESUs would be able to store all the energy captured by a solar plant and make a solar plant generate with the evenness of a coal plant. 

The only issue is the photo electric cell inefficiency.


----------



## KittenKoder

Compared to all the people who die from our current forms, all the drawbacks of the options idiots are pushing like drugs on people, and fact that radiation is unavoidable ... nuclear is the only solution to reduce ... everything.


----------



## Intense

KittenKoder said:


> Compared to all the people who die from our current forms, all the drawbacks of the options idiots are pushing like drugs on people, and fact that radiation is unavoidable ... nuclear is the only solution to reduce ... everything.




We still need back ups capable of maintaining the grid in the event of an unscheduled shut down. Nukes are very slow in coming back on line. Two Weeks?


----------



## KittenKoder

Intense said:


> KittenKoder said:
> 
> 
> 
> Compared to all the people who die from our current forms, all the drawbacks of the options idiots are pushing like drugs on people, and fact that radiation is unavoidable ... nuclear is the only solution to reduce ... everything.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> We still need back ups capable of maintaining the grid in the event of an unscheduled shut down. Nukes are very slow in coming back on line. Two Weeks?
Click to expand...


So ... thousands of lives a year is a better price than having to actually update some of the technology? Or if we switch to one of the "green" solutions we have sky rocketing electric bills and have to destroy a lot of wildlife ... all just to avoid a 1% chance of something serious happening?


----------



## rdean

Very few suggestions.  Some things that are actually being worked on:

Hyperion Reactor - about the size of a small shed.  One charge can last 5 to 7 years.  A single reactor can power 20 to 30 THOUSAND homes at a cost of about 200 dollars per year.  The reactors are typically buried.  They can never overheat because overheating causes them to shut down.
They have been used by university students for more than 40 years and are used on many nuclear powered ships.  They have a long history of safety.  I believe a company in Colorado has submitted a request to the US government to mass produce them.  Customers are already lining up.

One expected use for the reactors:

In the Mountains in the western part of the United States lie the largest oil deposits in the world.  Possibly 3 to 5 times the entire amount of oil in the Middle East.  The difference is the oil in the Middle East is lying in discrete pools that are easily accessed.  In the US, the oil is tied up in shale.  Some mountains are actually so soaked in shale oil; lighting strikes will cause the mountain to smoke.  To released the oil, water heated to a high temperature is required, ergo, the Hyperion Reactor.  

Another are the oil sands of Canada.  Those don't stop at the US/Canadian border, but, once into the US, the sands lie far underground beneath solid rock.  They use an angled type of drilling (the name escapes me), but there are oil wells being drilled every other week in the Northern United States.

NASA has mapped winds all over the world.  Wind turbines are noisy and large and if they fail, the blades, the size of a house, can fly three quarters of a mile.  This is why location is very important.  Also, putting several in a row can disrupt winds enough to probably disrupt weather.  However, if put in the right location, they are a viable option.  There are 6 thousand heavily machined parts in a single turbine.  There are idle machinist and machines in Detroit.

Hybrid cars are coming out that, during normal city driving can get close to 300mpg.  For highway driving, it drops down to 100, but still great.

Bullet trains are being built in Europe that run faster than 100kph and consume 30% less energy.

To do these things takes education.  Only 6% of scientists, according to recent polls, are Republican.  I am afraid that anything we try to do, they will try to block.  That has me worried.  Too many of them think &#8220;God will take care of us&#8221;, if only we could get rid of those pesky gays and feminists.


----------



## KittenKoder

RDean ... you are lucky you have leftwing slogans, because you don't seem to think about what you hear enough to make any real decisions.


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## Karateka

Nuclear - only it sounds like it's time for people to be more informed instead of reactionary and hysterical as soon as "nu...' comes out for discussion.


----------



## KittenKoder

Karateka said:


> Nuclear - only it sounds like it's time for people to be more informed instead of reactionary and hysterical as soon as "nu...' comes out for discussion.



That's the problem, they keep bringing up two examples of accidents that really do not apply to modern technology. They fear radiation yet so easily forget that every time they enter the sun they are getting "lethal" doses of it. Most of our household appliances give off radiation. Our own bodies give off radiation ... radiation is natures energy.


----------



## rdean

KittenKoder said:


> Karateka said:
> 
> 
> 
> Nuclear - only it sounds like it's time for people to be more informed instead of reactionary and hysterical as soon as "nu...' comes out for discussion.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> That's the problem, they keep bringing up two examples of accidents that really do not apply to modern technology. They fear radiation yet so easily forget that every time they enter the sun they are getting "lethal" doses of it. Most of our household appliances give off radiation. Our own bodies give off radiation ... radiation is natures energy.
Click to expand...


Most of our household appiances give off radiation?  Every time we enter the "sun"? Our bodies give off radiation?

Household appliances to be deemed "safe" and receive certification have to go through and pass EMC testing.  This requires running that piece of equipment in a copper wire cage and measuring emissions if it has any type of microwave or certain types of electronics.  

If it is made to be sold overseas in the European Market, no control panel can have a component that operates at higher then 24Volts.  

Who enters the "sun"?  

Our bodies give off "radiation"?  You mean heat?

I have slogans, not really sure what you have?  Hope it isn't contagious.


----------



## Intense

KittenKoder said:


> Intense said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> KittenKoder said:
> 
> 
> 
> Compared to all the people who die from our current forms, all the drawbacks of the options idiots are pushing like drugs on people, and fact that radiation is unavoidable ... nuclear is the only solution to reduce ... everything.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> We still need back ups capable of maintaining the grid in the event of an unscheduled shut down. Nukes are very slow in coming back on line. Two Weeks?
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> So ... thousands of lives a year is a better price than having to actually update some of the technology? Or if we switch to one of the "green" solutions we have sky rocketing electric bills and have to destroy a lot of wildlife ... all just to avoid a 1% chance of something serious happening?
Click to expand...


No Kit, You misunderstand what I'm saying. Remember the last two big blackouts? I'm saying that we have to have enough conventional Plants on line to Survive an accidental shut down of Nuke Plants. It is an automatic process that is not reversible. It takes weeks to come back on line, once shut down. Nuke plants need conventional Plants to start them up, too. Diablo ran off of the Morro Bay Plant if I remember right.


----------



## GHook93

Here is the break down of our energy sources:



> Keep Our Fuel Mix Diverse
> Coal - 49%
> Natural Gas - 19.9%
> Nuclear - 19.4%
> Hydropower - 6.9%
> Non-hydro-renewable (Solar, wind, biomass) - 3.1%
> Oil - 1.6%



*Hydro, Wind and solar*: We are all tapped out on Hydro, but most will acknowledge that hydro doesn't populate the air, water or emit CO2. Keeping it at 7% is good.
But look at Solar, Wind and Biomass (the so called clean renewable energies) they hit piss poor 3%.  Not sure why year round sunny states like NV, AZ, CA, OK, TX, NM etc don't utilize more solar sources. Or why windy states like IL, WY, OH, etc don't use more wind power. I mean there is no reason we can't bump up that 3% to 25%! 

*Nuclear: *Nuclear is at an embarrassing 20%! Nuclear admits nuclear waste (which can be recycled, just ask the Frogs/Franks)! But it admits no pollution or CO2. Call it the liberal fear tactic of 3 mile island (even there were no deaths or injuries). There is no reason that nuclear should be bumped up to at least double. Right now America has 104 Nuclear reactors! With no new reactors allowed since 1979, even though the atomic commission received 1,000s of applications to build them around the country. 
There is no reason nuclear's percentage is not doubled.

Nuclear power in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

*Recap: 7% hydro, 25% Wind and Solar, 40% Nuclear = 72%*

*Natural Gas:*
Quick question, which 3 countries have the largest amount's of natural gas (and not the gas coming out of Shogun's mouth)? America, Canada and Russia.

Natural Gas is the considered the cleanest of the fossil fuels. That last 28% should be consist of Natural Gas.
NaturalGas.org

The Loser - *Coal: *
Yes we have a ton of it. But its the dirtest fossil fuel. It produces the most CO2. If we can replace why don't we? The Clean Coal solution should good, but watch the 60 minutes story on Clean Coal and coming fromt he Coal industry itself, switching to clean coal would cost well over $1 trillion dollar and take more than a decade to get 50% of it done. These were the coal executives saying it.


----------



## Tech_Esq

Intense said:


> KittenKoder said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Intense said:
> 
> 
> 
> We still need back ups capable of maintaining the grid in the event of an unscheduled shut down. Nukes are very slow in coming back on line. Two Weeks?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> So ... thousands of lives a year is a better price than having to actually update some of the technology? Or if we switch to one of the "green" solutions we have sky rocketing electric bills and have to destroy a lot of wildlife ... all just to avoid a 1% chance of something serious happening?
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> No Kit, You misunderstand what I'm saying. Remember the last two big blackouts? I'm saying that we have to have enough conventional Plants on line to Survive an accidental shut down of Nuke Plants. It is an automatic process that is not reversible. It takes weeks to come back on line, once shut down. Nuke plants need conventional Plants to start them up, too. Diablo ran off of the Morro Bay Plant if I remember right.
Click to expand...


France is 100% nuclear, how do they do it? I'm thinking if the French can do it, it's just possible, we might be able to figure it out too.


----------



## Intense

Tech_Esq said:


> Intense said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> KittenKoder said:
> 
> 
> 
> So ... thousands of lives a year is a better price than having to actually update some of the technology? Or if we switch to one of the "green" solutions we have sky rocketing electric bills and have to destroy a lot of wildlife ... all just to avoid a 1% chance of something serious happening?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> No Kit, You misunderstand what I'm saying. Remember the last two big blackouts? I'm saying that we have to have enough conventional Plants on line to Survive an accidental shut down of Nuke Plants. It is an automatic process that is not reversible. It takes weeks to come back on line, once shut down. Nuke plants need conventional Plants to start them up, too. Diablo ran off of the Morro Bay Plant if I remember right.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> France is 100% nuclear, how do they do it? I'm thinking if the French can do it, it's just possible, we might be able to figure it out too.
Click to expand...


I don't know. Do you know how they power up during start up.


----------



## GHook93

Tech_Esq said:


> Intense said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> KittenKoder said:
> 
> 
> 
> So ... thousands of lives a year is a better price than having to actually update some of the technology? Or if we switch to one of the "green" solutions we have sky rocketing electric bills and have to destroy a lot of wildlife ... all just to avoid a 1% chance of something serious happening?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> No Kit, You misunderstand what I'm saying. Remember the last two big blackouts? I'm saying that we have to have enough conventional Plants on line to Survive an accidental shut down of Nuke Plants. It is an automatic process that is not reversible. It takes weeks to come back on line, once shut down. Nuke plants need conventional Plants to start them up, too. Diablo ran off of the Morro Bay Plant if I remember right.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> France is 100% nuclear, how do they do it? I'm thinking if the French can do it, it's just possible, we might be able to figure it out too.
Click to expand...

They are not 100% nuclear but 87% and they make a killing on exporting power across Europe. We should take note and go nuclear like them. The rest I believe is all nature sourcs (wind, hydro and solar).

Nuclear power in France - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


----------



## Intense

Need to work on reprocessing spent fuel, for two reasons I can think of. 
1).  It makes sense to recycle it and conserve. The French have laid it out plainly.
2).  Why have it laying around waiting for bad things to happen to it and us.  

Is there a down side to reprocessing?


----------



## Old Rocks

Tech_Esq said:


> Intense said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> KittenKoder said:
> 
> 
> 
> So ... thousands of lives a year is a better price than having to actually update some of the technology? Or if we switch to one of the "green" solutions we have sky rocketing electric bills and have to destroy a lot of wildlife ... all just to avoid a 1% chance of something serious happening?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> No Kit, You misunderstand what I'm saying. Remember the last two big blackouts? I'm saying that we have to have enough conventional Plants on line to Survive an accidental shut down of Nuke Plants. It is an automatic process that is not reversible. It takes weeks to come back on line, once shut down. Nuke plants need conventional Plants to start them up, too. Diablo ran off of the Morro Bay Plant if I remember right.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> France is 100% nuclear, how do they do it? I'm thinking if the French can do it, it's just possible, we might be able to figure it out too.
Click to expand...


France has a health care system that gives the French people the highest longevity among the large nations. Maybe we can copy that, also.


----------



## Old Rocks

Navy1960 said:


> Currently, the largest wind farm in the US  and the largest in the world  is Florida Power & Light's Horse Hollow Wind Energy Center, located in Taylor County, Texas. The Horse Hollow project operates 421 wind turbines and has a capacity of 735 megawatts
> 
> Rocks did you know that the entire capacity of wind in the Untied States is enough to serve 4.5 million homes just about equal to that of  Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station here  in Arizona that serves Approx. 4 million.  So while wind  has it's place in an overall solution , nuclear would seem to be a much better solution in terms of power generation, jobs,  and long term power generation.



*Not for long.*


Oregon wind farm could be world's largest - Portland Business Journal:

The Oregon Energy Facility Siting Council gave its approval of the site of a wind farm billed to be the largest in the world. 

The Shepherd's Flat Wind Farm, which would span Gilliam and Morrow counties in north-central Oregon, is proposed to have 303 wind turbines with a peak capacity of 909 megawatts -- instantly doubling the state's current wind-generated capacity of 889 megawatts, making it one of the largest wind farms in the country.


----------



## Intense

Old Rocks said:


> Navy1960 said:
> 
> 
> 
> Currently, the largest wind farm in the US  and the largest in the world  is Florida Power & Light's Horse Hollow Wind Energy Center, located in Taylor County, Texas. The Horse Hollow project operates 421 wind turbines and has a capacity of 735 megawatts
> 
> Rocks did you know that the entire capacity of wind in the Untied States is enough to serve 4.5 million homes just about equal to that of  Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station here  in Arizona that serves Approx. 4 million.  So while wind  has it's place in an overall solution , nuclear would seem to be a much better solution in terms of power generation, jobs,  and long term power generation.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> *Not for long.*
> 
> 
> Oregon wind farm could be world's largest - Portland Business Journal:
> 
> The Oregon Energy Facility Siting Council gave its approval of the site of a wind farm billed to be the largest in the world.
> 
> The Shepherd's Flat Wind Farm, which would span Gilliam and Morrow counties in north-central Oregon, is proposed to have 303 wind turbines with a peak capacity of 909 megawatts -- instantly doubling the state's current wind-generated capacity of 889 megawatts, making it one of the largest wind farms in the country.
Click to expand...


What is the projected Maintenance Cost? 1 Yr, 5 Yr, 10 Yr. What is the life expectancy of a single turbine? May work, but I suspect it's gonna cost. There are issues with pollution too.


----------



## Intense

Question for 

Skull Pilot
& 
Navy1960

If We have the Technology, the Capability, and Resources capable to Reprocess spent fuel rods, and International Cooperation to collect, from the outside, Isn't it More Environmentally Responsible for Us to do it? Why is FAS so against GNEP? Anybody want to play Devil's advocate?  Translation / legitimate perspective from both sides of the issue . Deep Concerns?

Found this Link on FAS Web-Site.   Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP)

The Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) is a Bush administration plan managed by the United States Department of Energy.  GNEP plans to reverse decades of domestic nuclear policy by promoting the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel for use in nuclear power reactors.  Reprocessing creates plutonium, the same material that is used in making nuclear weapons; therefore GNEP will increase the amount of nuclear weapon material available for use or potential theft or sale.  GNEP also promises states purchasing US reactor fuel that the US will "recover" this fuel when it has been spent.  This will bring more radioactive waste into our country, where there is no permanent repository available, and will create potential environmental hazards or terrorist targets when this material is transported.

Links:
FAS information on GNEP

U.S. Department of Energy information on GNEP


----------



## rdean

Intense said:


> Question for
> 
> Skull Pilot
> &
> Navy1960
> 
> If We have the Technology, the Capability, and Resources capable to Reprocess spent fuel rods, and International Cooperation to collect, from the outside, Isn't it More Environmentally Responsible for Us to do it? Why is FAS so against GNEP? Anybody want to play Devil's advocate?  Translation / legitimate perspective from both sides of the issue . Deep Concerns?
> 
> Found this Link on FAS Web-Site.   Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP)
> 
> The Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) is a Bush administration plan managed by the United States Department of Energy.  GNEP plans to reverse decades of domestic nuclear policy by promoting the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel for use in nuclear power reactors.  Reprocessing creates plutonium, the same material that is used in making nuclear weapons; therefore GNEP will increase the amount of nuclear weapon material available for use or potential theft or sale.  GNEP also promises states purchasing US reactor fuel that the US will "recover" this fuel when it has been spent.  This will bring more radioactive waste into our country, where there is no permanent repository available, and will create potential environmental hazards or terrorist targets when this material is transported.
> 
> Links:
> FAS information on GNEP
> 
> U.S. Department of Energy information on GNEP



Bush was kinda strange.  At the same time he was pushing for "nuw cue lar" power, as he put it, he was cutting funding for education.  Republicans think you can McGiver a nuclear power plant from a glow in the dark plastic Jesus, some hairspray, a few wires and a matchbook with only one match.  It's more complicated than that.  You can't use a kitchen inspector to inspect a nuclear power plant either.

Funny Republicans turn to science, which they clearly don't believe in.  Want help from scientists, who they say have no common sense.


----------



## Navy1960

Intense said:


> Question for
> 
> Skull Pilot
> &
> Navy1960
> 
> If We have the Technology, the Capability, and Resources capable to Reprocess spent fuel rods, and International Cooperation to collect, from the outside, Isn't it More Environmentally Responsible for Us to do it? Why is FAS so against GNEP? Anybody want to play Devil's advocate?  Translation / legitimate perspective from both sides of the issue . Deep Concerns?
> 
> Found this Link on FAS Web-Site.   Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP)
> 
> The Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) is a Bush administration plan managed by the United States Department of Energy.  GNEP plans to reverse decades of domestic nuclear policy by promoting the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel for use in nuclear power reactors.  Reprocessing creates plutonium, the same material that is used in making nuclear weapons; therefore GNEP will increase the amount of nuclear weapon material available for use or potential theft or sale.  GNEP also promises states purchasing US reactor fuel that the US will "recover" this fuel when it has been spent.  This will bring more radioactive waste into our country, where there is no permanent repository available, and will create potential environmental hazards or terrorist targets when this material is transported.
> 
> Links:
> FAS information on GNEP
> 
> U.S. Department of Energy information on GNEP




I will try an answer this for you,  most reprocessing facilites use the  PUREX method to reprocess  spent nuclear fuel and in fast cycle reactors  it can produce  as a byproduct  weapons grade material. So FAS claims that GNEP by and large  because it advocates  the expansion of reprocessing is a violation of the nonproliferation treaty. the problem with this is that most  LWR  Light Water Reactors  of which all US commercial reactors are  would have to refuel many many more times on average than they do now to produce such material. In fact in ths PUREX method this fuel can be reprocessed again and then reused such as it is with russian weapons grade material  that is currently being used in US commerical reactors. 

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wj4kFP8t3Xc]YouTube - Josh Explains Nuclear Fuel Reprocessing[/ame]

The United States has established a number of cooperative arrangements to pursue technical cooperation on this proposal. On February 16, 2006 the United States, France and Japan signed an "arrangement" to research and develop sodium-cooled fast reactors in support of the GNEP. The United States has established action plans for collaboration with Russia, Japan and China

Fission of the nuclear fuel in any reactor produces neutron-absorbing fission products, and because of this it is necessary to reprocess the fuel and breeder blanket from a breeder reactor if one is to fully utilise its ability to breed more fuel than it consumes. The most common reprocessing technique, PUREX, is generally considered a large proliferation concern because such reprocessing technologies can be used to extract weapons grade plutonium from a reactor operated on a short refuelling cycle. For this reason, the FBR closed fuel cycle is often seen as a greater proliferation concern than a once-through thermal fuel cycle.

However, to date all known weapons programs have used far more easily built thermal reactors to produce plutonium, and there are some designs such as the SSTAR which avoid proliferation risks by both producing low amounts of plutonium at any given time from the U-238, and by producing three different isotopes of plutonium (Pu-239, Pu-240, and Pu-242) making the plutonium used infeasible for atomic bomb use.

 In short what this means is that the technology exists to reprocess this  spent fuel without producing material that can be considered weapons grade and  while GNEP may be seen as sort of a cumbersome first step it's my opinion that these reactors especially the mini reactors and on long fuel cycles with worldwide  standards as it applies  to safety and  fissil material handling then we will be able to proceed  in a safe manner that everyone in general can be happy with.


----------



## JBeukema

tiered, decentralized system ​


----------



## Intense

Thank You for the Effort. Very well spoken. SSTAR,as you describe it would seem the right direction. 
To establish accountability, joint-partnerships, acceptable procedures and standards only adds to the safety and protection. Standards change, as awareness increases, so it sounds like a good starting point. It would be nice for FAS to contribute in a positive was rather than obstruct and divert funding. One would think they would want to be a part of it, advise and consent, whatever.   N.Korea, Iran, Pakistan, probably of more concern, yet I don't think we have much influence there. Still the potential for accident or theft, rises over time.  Then again I sure Hope Prez. Obama's sense of equal distribution does not extend to Weapons Grade Plutonium.


----------



## KittenKoder

Intense said:


> Tech_Esq said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Intense said:
> 
> 
> 
> No Kit, You misunderstand what I'm saying. Remember the last two big blackouts? I'm saying that we have to have enough conventional Plants on line to Survive an accidental shut down of Nuke Plants. It is an automatic process that is not reversible. It takes weeks to come back on line, once shut down. Nuke plants need conventional Plants to start them up, too. Diablo ran off of the Morro Bay Plant if I remember right.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> France is 100% nuclear, how do they do it? I'm thinking if the French can do it, it's just possible, we might be able to figure it out too.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> I don't know. Do you know how they power up during start up.
Click to expand...


TE beat me to it, but no, they don't rely on "conventional" plants and most don't take "two weeks" to start up, the time between a forced shut down and start up is greatly influenced by inspections, not mechanical requirements. You do need to look into how they operate a little more.


----------



## GHook93

Old Rocks said:


> Tech_Esq said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Intense said:
> 
> 
> 
> No Kit, You misunderstand what I'm saying. Remember the last two big blackouts? I'm saying that we have to have enough conventional Plants on line to Survive an accidental shut down of Nuke Plants. It is an automatic process that is not reversible. It takes weeks to come back on line, once shut down. Nuke plants need conventional Plants to start them up, too. Diablo ran off of the Morro Bay Plant if I remember right.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> France is 100% nuclear, how do they do it? I'm thinking if the French can do it, it's just possible, we might be able to figure it out too.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> France has a health care system that gives the French people the highest longevity among the large nations. Maybe we can copy that, also.
Click to expand...




There are a few dozen other threads where this argument can go!


----------



## Intense

KittenKoder said:


> Intense said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Tech_Esq said:
> 
> 
> 
> France is 100% nuclear, how do they do it? I'm thinking if the French can do it, it's just possible, we might be able to figure it out too.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I don't know. Do you know how they power up during start up.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> TE beat me to it, but no, they don't rely on "conventional" plants and most don't take "two weeks" to start up, the time between a forced shut down and start up is greatly influenced by inspections, not mechanical requirements. You do need to look into how they operate a little more.
Click to expand...


We take 2 weeks, remember the big black out in the North East, and the one in Florida, I'm just referring to what is, not what could be. Nukes don't simply turn on an off with a flick of the switch. Restarting is a process. During this process, the grid needs to be stable. These shut downs were a glitch, that I'm sure was looked at.  No offense intended. There are also issues with phase syncronization when coming into the grid. 

Kit, I'm not blasting Nuclear Power, Done safely, I will support it.  I recognize that we are grossly under powered. The solution is years away. Natural Gas and Hydro compliment the Grid too, and also have their own advantages.  They should not be abandoned.  

I'm also trying to learn.  Navy 1960 has been very helpful.  Why not check into reprocessing spent fuel, and if it checks out for you, support that too.  It seems to make allot of sense.

Love that Avatar.  It's one of my favorites.


----------



## JBeukema

Intense said:


> We take 2 weeks, remember the big black out in the North East, and the one in Florida, I'm just referring to what is, not what could be. Nukes don't simply turn on an off with a flick of the switch. Restarting is a process. During this process, the grid needs to be stable. These shut downs were a glitch, that I'm sure was looked at.  No offense intended. There are also issues with phase syncronization when coming into the grid.



My proposed system would put an end to such rolling blackouts.


----------



## Intense

Yeah, In "Anthem" they used candles. Am I close?


----------



## JBeukema

Intense said:


> Yeah, In "Anthem" they used candles. Am I close?


----------



## Navy1960

Intense said:


> Thank You for the Effort. Very well spoken. SSTAR,as you describe it would seem the right direction.
> To establish accountability, joint-partnerships, acceptable procedures and standards only adds to the safety and protection. Standards change, as awareness increases, so it sounds like a good starting point. It would be nice for FAS to contribute in a positive was rather than obstruct and divert funding. One would think they would want to be a part of it, advise and consent, whatever.   N.Korea, Iran, Pakistan, probably of more concern, yet I don't think we have much influence there. Still the potential for accident or theft, rises over time.  Then again I sure Hope Prez. Obama's sense of equal distribution does not extend to Weapons Grade Plutonium.



You know when I was responding to your post I was reminded of  Rickovers works with commercial nuclear reactors with the US Navy. It reminded me that when Rickovers group formulated  most of the standard used  for  reactor  construction as it applies to safety they did not keep it as a national security measure , in fact they released all their data to set up standards world wide. It' my opinion when it comes to setting standards for these reprocessing  facilities as it applies to weapons grade material should be  set down and agreed to by the IAEA. Only problem with that is you know an I know that there are memebers that have interests that they sometimes back door.  Let's face  it  nations like Iran and N. Korea could never possibly  develop weapons without outside help from the very members who belong to multiple treaties.  This material should be heavily monitored  and kept out of the hand of irresponsible  individuals,  I believe the best way to do that is to devise methods such as I mentiod above  to render this material inert  and unsable  as weapons material and force these nations who wish to develop to build  large scale fast  reactors that cannot be hidden, that way it will be obvious what they are up too and it cannot be  hidden under the guise of commercial nuclear power.  These types of individuals  IMO have with their behavior denied  human beings especially here in the United States  a technology that could have advanced our energy needs  much more than they are now.


----------



## Intense

Navy1960 said:


> Intense said:
> 
> 
> 
> Thank You for the Effort. Very well spoken. SSTAR,as you describe it would seem the right direction.
> To establish accountability, joint-partnerships, acceptable procedures and standards only adds to the safety and protection. Standards change, as awareness increases, so it sounds like a good starting point. It would be nice for FAS to contribute in a positive was rather than obstruct and divert funding. One would think they would want to be a part of it, advise and consent, whatever.   N.Korea, Iran, Pakistan, probably of more concern, yet I don't think we have much influence there. Still the potential for accident or theft, rises over time.  Then again I sure Hope Prez. Obama's sense of equal distribution does not extend to Weapons Grade Plutonium.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> You know when I was responding to your post I was reminded of  Rickovers works with commercial nuclear reactors with the US Navy. It reminded me that when Rickovers group formulated  most of the standard used  for  reactor  construction as it applies to safety they did not keep it as a national security measure , in fact they released all their data to set up standards world wide. It' my opinion when it comes to setting standards for these reprocessing  facilities as it applies to weapons grade material should be  set down and agreed to by the IAEA. Only problem with that is you know an I know that there are memebers that have interests that they sometimes back door.  Let's face  it  nations like Iran and N. Korea could never possibly  develop weapons without outside help from the very members who belong to multiple treaties.  This material should be heavily monitored  and kept out of the hand of irresponsible  individuals,  I believe the best way to do that is to devise methods such as I mentiod above  to render this material inert  and unsable  as weapons material and force these nations who wish to develop to build  large scale fast  reactors that cannot be hidden, that way it will be obvious what they are up too and it cannot be  hidden under the guise of commercial nuclear power.  These types of individuals  IMO have with their behavior denied  human beings especially here in the United States  a technology that could have advanced our energy needs  much more than they are now.
Click to expand...


Agreed. It would seem that FAS is lacking in the Faith Department, and doubting, obstruct, and delay. Let's Hope that they are gifted with Vision. The Courage to improve upon and effectively contribute.  "What If" mentality helps in preparing for contingents, it should help preparation and structure, Keep development sober, It should not obstruct without cause, for long anyway. 

You are a great help. Thanks for taking the time.


----------



## Navy1960

Not a problem Intense,  I have always felt that while we all may disagree on methods from time to time, and  on those methods at times people get heated. In the end people can come together and  take the best of  their ideas to find solutions for most problems. This can apply to a lot of the issues that people debate these days.  while I can never be accused of being a fan of the current cap and trade legislation  *laughs*  I do feel that a goal of energy independence  and clean energy has many benefits. What I feel is that our nation can combine these things  such as a stimulus with energy construction and then you will have a real energy solution and real long term stimulus.  This is sort of a side note here, but it take's people to clean up these sites like Hanford , can you imagine if we had a  program of  new nuclear power consturction assiciated with reprocessing,  and programmed deconstruction  and clean up of old sites , how many people would be working in those industries?  That same kind of solution can apply to grid construction too.  One other thing I have long thought about and that is  if we plan and it looks like we are  to construct large scale wind farms then, they should  done in conjunction with an overall energy plan and not as a seperate replacement for  let's say nuclear but rather  to augment it.  Then we will really have something there,.


----------



## KittenKoder

Intense said:


> KittenKoder said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Intense said:
> 
> 
> 
> I don't know. Do you know how they power up during start up.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> TE beat me to it, but no, they don't rely on "conventional" plants and most don't take "two weeks" to start up, the time between a forced shut down and start up is greatly influenced by inspections, not mechanical requirements. You do need to look into how they operate a little more.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> We take 2 weeks, remember the big black out in the North East, and the one in Florida, I'm just referring to what is, not what could be. Nukes don't simply turn on an off with a flick of the switch. Restarting is a process. During this process, the grid needs to be stable. These shut downs were a glitch, that I'm sure was looked at.  No offense intended. There are also issues with phase syncronization when coming into the grid.
> 
> Kit, I'm not blasting Nuclear Power, Done safely, I will support it.  I recognize that we are grossly under powered. The solution is years away. Natural Gas and Hydro compliment the Grid too, and also have their own advantages.  They should not be abandoned.
> 
> I'm also trying to learn.  Navy 1960 has been very helpful.  Why not check into reprocessing spent fuel, and if it checks out for you, support that too.  It seems to make allot of sense.
> 
> Love that Avatar.  It's one of my favorites.
Click to expand...


Thanks. But my point wasn't is making you look a fool, I have a few scratching posts already. But there are plants that don't have that problem. One of our biggest flaws with nuclear here is there is no support for it, financially, that does anything to help progress it. Our plants, though very safe and well maintained, are still behind in technological standards simply because too much fear stops them from funding the upgrades and advancements needed. There is a lot that we are behind on as a country, nuclear is one we are seriously lagging in.


----------



## Old Rocks

Here in Oregon we just produced 2 gigawatts for an hour, solely from wind. That is enough to power both Seattle and Portland.


----------



## KittenKoder

Old Rocks said:


> Here in Oregon we just produced 2 gigawatts for an hour, solely from wind. That is enough to power both Seattle and Portland.



You're joking ... right? Seattle? We use that for our science center alone.


----------



## mdn2000

wind or nuke, simple, you have to have nuke to build wind and wind cannot produce the power to build wind so its nuke.


----------



## Intense

Wind has a long way to go before you can even consider it.


----------



## RadiomanATL

Nuclear or wind?

How about a third option.


Nuclear wind.


----------



## Intense

RadiomanATL said:


> Nuclear or wind?
> 
> How about a third option.
> 
> 
> Nuclear wind.



That will cut down the need too!


----------



## JBeukema

RadiomanATL said:


> Nuclear or wind?
> 
> How about a third option.
> 
> 
> Nuclear wind.


yeah, that would suck


----------



## RadiomanATL

buncha pussies.


----------



## GHook93

Old Rocks said:


> There are no clean coal plants in the US that even in construction. The only one that I know of that is being built now is in China. Clean coal is a myth.



I saw on 60 minutes that there was one small clean coal plant built in the US decades ago and it wasn't built to stop global warming!

Nevertheless, from the 60 minutes report. I believe they stated switching over 50% of the coal plants would take 10 years and cost trillions of dollar! Does sound promising!


----------



## JBeukema

Is it spending or investment?


What is the long-term outcome of such an undertaking, if undertaken?


----------



## mdn2000

A wind farm will never produce the energy needed to manufacture windmills. Hence windmills are counter productive. Anything that is counter productive contributes to global warming. 

The environuts solutions destroy the planet at a faster rate than burning coal in old dirty coal plants.


----------



## JBeukema

mdn2000 said:


> A wind farm will never produce the energy needed to manufacture windmills. Hence windmills are counter productive. Anything that is counter productive contributes to global warming.
> 
> The environuts solutions destroy the planet at a faster rate than burning coal in old dirty coal plants.


You're pretty stupid, aren't you?

You just said that everything contributes to global warming because nothing can ever sustain itself.

and then used that to attack wind energy


----------



## mdn2000

JBeukema said:


> mdn2000 said:
> 
> 
> 
> A wind farm will never produce the energy needed to manufacture windmills. Hence windmills are counter productive. Anything that is counter productive contributes to global warming.
> 
> The environuts solutions destroy the planet at a faster rate than burning coal in old dirty coal plants.
> 
> 
> 
> You're pretty stupid, aren't you?
> 
> You just said that everything contributes to global warming because nothing can ever sustain itself.
> 
> and then used that to attack wind energy
Click to expand...


Apperently not as stupid as you are, you got 19000 posts and your asking the noob a question, thats rich.

So your saying wind farms can produce enough energy to produce windmills, what did you do think that up in your tiny little head cuz that is not what the facts are.


----------



## Annie

Skull Pilot said:


> Wind or Nuclear? - Ray Harvey - Mises Institute
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Energy is like a river; it exists in two ways: flows and stores.
> 
> When you store energy, you create a dam to capture it.
> 
> What environmentalists call "renewable energy" is really just the stored energy of the sun.
> 
> In actuality, there's no such thing as "renewable energy": all energy, even the sun, is limited.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> This is a good point even if it is semantics.  even wind power is not "renewable"  Once the wind has gone past a turbine, the energy is transferred to the turbine.  that particular chunk of wind is gone not reused.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Fossil fuels are energy stores as well  specifically, they are stored solar energy, a process that takes millions of years  and they are highly concentrated, ten times more so than, for instance, wood.
> 
> In terms of wind and raw solar energy, the flow is exceptionally diluted: solar is ten to fifty times less concentrated than fossil fuel. When you can't concentrate it, then the only way to harvest it is to use more and more land. That's the limiting factor for both sun and wind energy.
> 
> T. Boone Pickens's now-infamous plan would require 1,200 square miles for a single power plant.
> 
> Compare that to nuclear, which would require only one square mile.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> here is the rub for environmentalists.  Do you want more and more acreage used for wind and solar until as far as the eye can see not one square inch of open land is left or do you want the same energy producing, greenhouse gas free energy produced at smaller unobtrusive plants that can be built almost entirely underground?
> 
> 
> 
> It seem counter intuitive to me to ignore the one energy resource that we own.  We are the Saudi Arabia of coal and yet we demonize its use rather than investing in ways to make coal cleaner, we have decided to make energy from coal unaffordable.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> that last bit is part of the problem with wind and solar.  we have to wait for the diluted energy to come to us.  Here in New England,  June has been one of the cloudiest on record in the last 50 years.  Solar dependence would have left a lot of us in the dark.  we do not live in a good wind corridor here so ant power produced by wind would have to be transported here at great expense.  Or we could build small reactors to supply all the regional power we could ever want.
> 
> 
> subsidizing only adds to our costs.  Not only do we pay higher prices for less efficient energy sources but our tax burden increases to subsidize these power sources.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Again if reducing transmission distances of power is less expensive, why do we insist on putting all our energy needs on power that has to be transmitted over vast distances because it can only be produced in the most remote locations?  Is it worth the trillions of dollars it will cost?
> 
> And once again we see the hypocrisy of Pickens and his ilk.  it's fine for him to have tax payer foot the bill for his projects as long as he get the profit and doesn't have to look at a windmill out of his living room window.
> 
> 
> 
> I still don't understand this especially when you factor in the true amount of nuclear waste produced by a reactor and not the inflated quantity the alarmists say is produced.
> 
> 
> 
> More bang for the buck but we still would rather spend our money on the most inefficient energy rather than the most efficient.
> 
> 
> 
> I've posted articles that have said this very same thing about so called nuclear waste.  once again our government doesn't allow the recycling or reuse of nuclear materials so rather than benefiting from nuclear, we would rather pursue less efficient but more expensive power sources.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Why haven't you heard this? A writer for the New Yorker magazine named John McPhee in 1974 published a highly influential book called The Curve of Binding Energy, which convinced President Jimmy Carter (et al.) that people could steal used plutonium from nuclear plants and makes bombs with it. But this is untrue. Nevertheless, solely on the basis of this detrimental misinformation, *our country now has fifty thousand tons of nuclear "waste," because our government won't allow nuclear plants to reuse it*.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The stated policy of the Department of Energy (DOE) is "not to reprocess" a perfectly reusable byproduct  and all for absolutely no good reason. That is why Yucca Mountain is unnecessarily, and at great cost, being built in southwestern Nevada to store a nuclear "waste" that could instead be simply and efficiently reused.
> 
> Nuclear "waste" is also used for medical isotopes. Over forty percent of medicine now is nuclear medicine. Currently, we must import all our nuclear isotopes because we're not allowed to use any of our own. This is not only profligate; it's a kind of lunacy.
> 
> We're the only country in the world that doesn't reuse its nuclear byproducts. Nuclear energy is the cleanest, most efficient energy we have  by light years. Anyone who tells you differently, is flat-out wrong.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> And I'll add that we'll all be flat out broke because we are pursuing the flat out wrong course on energy.
Click to expand...


Nuclear and learning to 'recycle' it.


----------



## JBeukema

an ad hom and a strawman in on shot

Well, we know better than to ever take _you_ seriously


----------



## mdn2000

JBeukema said:


> an ad hom and a strawman in on shot
> 
> Well, we know better than to ever take _you_ seriously




Did my fact stump you or did you decide you best figure out what the hell the truth is.


----------



## JBeukema

you don't even see why what you said was retarded, do you?


----------



## mdn2000

JBeukema said:


> you don't even see why what you said was retarded, do you?



so it did stump you, just checking


----------



## Polk

Wind or nuclear? Why the option? Why not both?


----------



## mdn2000

Polk said:


> Wind or nuclear? Why the option? Why not both?



because nukes produce, wind power uses

I know thats real complicated but Nukes are so powerful they are profitable and Wind is so weak you have to have a power source much, much, larger than the wind farms are able to produce.

See if you had only wind power, its so weak and puny you would not be able to provide power to industry, lets say the only industry to power was the industry that makes windmills, the power coming from a windmill could not power that industry.

If it was solely Nuclear power you could power an industry any where in the entire world.

Try an experiment, blow on your hand, as hard as you can, thats the same power as the strongest wind against the giant windmills that weigh more than 200 tons.

Now take your hand, turn on the stove, and put your hand on the stove, see the difference in energy, if your stove is gas your had cant take that type of energy, its just too strong, but you can blow on your hand all you want and nothing happens.

I hope that is stated simple enough.


----------



## JBeukema

Nuclear energy is a finite resource

relying on it is just repeating what we just did with oil


nuclear is a transitional fuel source only


----------



## Polk

mdn2000 said:


> Polk said:
> 
> 
> 
> Wind or nuclear? Why the option? Why not both?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> because nukes produce, wind power uses
> 
> I know thats real complicated but Nukes are so powerful they are profitable and Wind is so weak you have to have a power source much, much, larger than the wind farms are able to produce.
> 
> See if you had only wind power, its so weak and puny you would not be able to provide power to industry, lets say the only industry to power was the industry that makes windmills, the power coming from a windmill could not power that industry.
> 
> If it was solely Nuclear power you could power an industry any where in the entire world.
> 
> Try an experiment, blow on your hand, as hard as you can, thats the same power as the strongest wind against the giant windmills that weigh more than 200 tons.
> 
> Now take your hand, turn on the stove, and put your hand on the stove, see the difference in energy, if your stove is gas your had cant take that type of energy, its just too strong, but you can blow on your hand all you want and nothing happens.
> 
> I hope that is stated simple enough.
Click to expand...


If that was true, no one would be building wind power plants.


----------



## mdn2000

Polk said:


> mdn2000 said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Polk said:
> 
> 
> 
> Wind or nuclear? Why the option? Why not both?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> because nukes produce, wind power uses
> 
> I know thats real complicated but Nukes are so powerful they are profitable and Wind is so weak you have to have a power source much, much, larger than the wind farms are able to produce.
> 
> See if you had only wind power, its so weak and puny you would not be able to provide power to industry, lets say the only industry to power was the industry that makes windmills, the power coming from a windmill could not power that industry.
> 
> If it was solely Nuclear power you could power an industry any where in the entire world.
> 
> Try an experiment, blow on your hand, as hard as you can, thats the same power as the strongest wind against the giant windmills that weigh more than 200 tons.
> 
> Now take your hand, turn on the stove, and put your hand on the stove, see the difference in energy, if your stove is gas your had cant take that type of energy, its just too strong, but you can blow on your hand all you want and nothing happens.
> 
> I hope that is stated simple enough.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> If that was true, no one would be building wind power plants.
Click to expand...


Thats not a very good arguement, its not an arguement at all. You ever consider that someone may be making a fortune making windmills than forcing taxpayer to buy them. 

You dont know what your talking about.


----------



## Intense

mdn2000 said:


> Polk said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> mdn2000 said:
> 
> 
> 
> because nukes produce, wind power uses
> 
> I know thats real complicated but Nukes are so powerful they are profitable and Wind is so weak you have to have a power source much, much, larger than the wind farms are able to produce.
> 
> See if you had only wind power, its so weak and puny you would not be able to provide power to industry, lets say the only industry to power was the industry that makes windmills, the power coming from a windmill could not power that industry.
> 
> If it was solely Nuclear power you could power an industry any where in the entire world.
> 
> Try an experiment, blow on your hand, as hard as you can, thats the same power as the strongest wind against the giant windmills that weigh more than 200 tons.
> 
> Now take your hand, turn on the stove, and put your hand on the stove, see the difference in energy, if your stove is gas your had cant take that type of energy, its just too strong, but you can blow on your hand all you want and nothing happens.
> 
> I hope that is stated simple enough.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> If that was true, no one would be building wind power plants.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Thats not a very good arguement, its not an arguement at all. You ever consider that someone may be making a fortune making windmills than forcing taxpayer to buy them.
> 
> You dont know what your talking about.
Click to expand...


Doesn't Whirlpool have deal with the Fed's on Windmills? I can't find anything on it.


----------



## Care4all

i know the nuclear power plants in florida have some deal with the government to charge my parents for the electric company's new power plant they are building for their future prospective customers, which is ABSOLUTE BULL CRUD!

MY dad said the electric company should give him shares in their company stock so he could benefit from the profit the nuke plant will make down the road off of their new customers using the nuke plant my dad was forced by law, to pay for....


----------



## Polk

mdn2000 said:


> Polk said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> mdn2000 said:
> 
> 
> 
> because nukes produce, wind power uses
> 
> I know thats real complicated but Nukes are so powerful they are profitable and Wind is so weak you have to have a power source much, much, larger than the wind farms are able to produce.
> 
> See if you had only wind power, its so weak and puny you would not be able to provide power to industry, lets say the only industry to power was the industry that makes windmills, the power coming from a windmill could not power that industry.
> 
> If it was solely Nuclear power you could power an industry any where in the entire world.
> 
> Try an experiment, blow on your hand, as hard as you can, thats the same power as the strongest wind against the giant windmills that weigh more than 200 tons.
> 
> Now take your hand, turn on the stove, and put your hand on the stove, see the difference in energy, if your stove is gas your had cant take that type of energy, its just too strong, but you can blow on your hand all you want and nothing happens.
> 
> I hope that is stated simple enough.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> If that was true, no one would be building wind power plants.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Thats not a very good arguement, its not an arguement at all. You ever consider that someone may be making a fortune making windmills than forcing taxpayer to buy them.
> 
> You dont know what your talking about.
Click to expand...


Your argument is that wind power was invented in the hopes that the government would subsidize it? Holy shit that's dumb.


----------



## Niccoli

I stand that the only real power source available is nuclear. Wind and Solar could only supplement but never replace our energy needs. Not even hydro power could thought that should definitely remain a supplement.
I see 3 problem with nuclear. The obvious danger of it, which could really be remedied simply by taking care of corruption. The Navy has shown that they are quite reliable. 
2, if it were to be completely implemented, as in 100% energy source there would be a few new things to deal with. For example if cars became nuclear powered, the obvious problem would be car crashes. Though that isn't as applicable at this time.
3, thermopollution. This is where the enviromentalist come in. Nuclear plants warm an extraordinary amount of water, and this would lead to global warming.


----------



## Intense

Niccoli said:


> I stand that the only real power source available is nuclear. Wind and Solar could only supplement but never replace our energy needs. Not even hydro power could thought that should definitely remain a supplement.
> I see 3 problem with nuclear. The obvious danger of it, which could really be remedied simply by taking care of corruption. The Navy has shown that they are quite reliable.
> 2, if it were to be completely implemented, as in 100% energy source there would be a few new things to deal with. For example if cars became nuclear powered, the obvious problem would be car crashes. Though that isn't as applicable at this time.
> 3, thermopollution. This is where the enviromentalist come in. Nuclear plants warm an extraordinary amount of water, and this would lead to global warming.




1). Recycle the Fuel. That will add to safety.

2). Stick to Plants. Leave the cars alone with Nuke power.

3). Give me a break.

4). Talk to Navy1960 about it. He's had some good posts on this subject.


----------



## Intense

Polk said:


> mdn2000 said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Polk said:
> 
> 
> 
> If that was true, no one would be building wind power plants.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Thats not a very good arguement, its not an arguement at all. You ever consider that someone may be making a fortune making windmills than forcing taxpayer to buy them.
> 
> You dont know what your talking about.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Your argument is that wind power was invented in the hopes that the government would subsidize it? Holy shit that's dumb.
Click to expand...


Short sighted. Like The DNC. Like Obama.


----------



## Niccoli

Intense said:


> 1). Recycle the Fuel. That will add to safety.
> 
> 2). Stick to Plants. Leave the cars alone with Nuke power.
> 
> 3). Give me a break.
> 
> 4). Talk to Navy1960 about it. He's had some good posts on this subject.



I agree with this but the point is the enviromenatlist won't like it, and the locals won't like it. With out proving to them that we can 1. make it better, or 2. prove to them that theyre idiots, then we probably won't get much further with nuclear


----------



## JBeukema

I repeat:

Has anyone estimated how long our nuclear fuel supplies in the US could last if we used it as our primary source of energy?

Nuclear is a finite resource, just like oil. Therefore, unless it will last until Sol goes red giant, it is a transitional/supplemental energy source only


----------



## Intense

Niccoli said:


> Intense said:
> 
> 
> 
> 1). Recycle the Fuel. That will add to safety.
> 
> 2). Stick to Plants. Leave the cars alone with Nuke power.
> 
> 3). Give me a break.
> 
> 4). Talk to Navy1960 about it. He's had some good posts on this subject.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I agree with this but the point is the enviromenatlist won't like it, and the locals won't like it. With out proving to them that we can 1. make it better, or 2. prove to them that theyre idiots, then we probably won't get much further with nuclear
Click to expand...


My favorite is Hydro, it all combined only goes so far. I was Anti-Nuke, in a big way. Getting past the misinformation is part of the problem. I would prefer to see the plants in more remote locations where evacuation is more realistic, should things go wrong. We need to keep a minimum of Reliable Sources besides Nuclear. We cannot ignore Nuclear any more.


----------



## Navy1960

Nuclear, is a bridge technology that will sooner rather than later, remove this nation from slavery to foreign sources of energy. What do I mean by bridge technology?, well what it will provide is a safe , clean, and  yes, consistant  level of employment until such time as new technologies can be developed  that enhance it or replace it.  Technologies such as wind and solar  are still in their  infancy and while they will and can act  as supplimental sources of energy for this nations energy in the near term. They cannot at the moment  totally replace  this nations energy needs. An all encompassing energy plan that includes  Nuclear reprocessing facilities, in addition to residential solar in sun belt states, as well as wind technology will not only be a massive job creation  vehicle, but finally remove this nation from its slavery to OPEC and  it's funding terrorist organizations from the  gas pump. 

While many people think that coal is a nasty word, we should pause, for a moment  and  understand that this nation has  one of the largest coal reserves in the world.  If we developed Nuclear,  (see bridge technology) this will allow time and money for the development of a real "clean coal " solution , and one that would use the resources we have here in this nation, and actually employ Americans in the processs. 

While environmentalists mean well in some cases , it's is my humble opinion that we can and do have the technology to develop our own resources in a safe and clean manner. We need to apply a little common sense to this issue rather than "doom and gloom"  and agenda based  solutions that do not have the interests of the the American people in mind and end up solving nothing.  Let me give you and example, environmental groups do their best to stop coal production in this nation, and  then tout  how much they have accomplished, however, all they do is send that production to China and India where there are no limits.  If we applied a little more common sense to this issue, and environmentalists worked with the energy community,  then we could and should develop a  clean safe solution and that solutions best hope is nuclear at the moment.  If it's good enough for France, Japan, Germany, then it should be good enough for this nation. 

In March 1999, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) reversed its own policy and signed a contract with a consortium comprised of Duke Energy, COGEMA, and Stone & Webster (DCS) to design and operate a Mixed Oxide (MOX) fuel fabrication facility. Site preparation at the Savannah River Site (South Carolina) began in October 2005.[citation needed]

The Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, announced by the secretary of the Department of Energy, Samuel Bodman, on February 6, 2006, is a plan to form an international partnership to reprocess spent nuclear fuel in a way that renders the plutonium in it usable for nuclear fuel but not for nuclear weapons. The Department of Energy reversed these plans in July of 2009, under the Obama administration

Senators at the hearing asked about the feasibility of nuclear waste reprocessing, and whether Congress should make more loan guarantees available to the industry as it seeks financing for new plants.

As he has in several recent hearings, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., expressed support for the Yucca project, and challenged Klein over the prospect that nuclear waste would remain at sites in 39 states if the Nevada site is not built.

"Spent nuclear fuel sitting in pools and in dry casks at nuclear plants all over America, is that what you are planning on?" McCain asked Klein.

"Yes," Klein responded.

In his testimony, Fertel said that if the Obama administration slows or stops progress at Yucca Mountain, the secretary of energy should reduce the fees that nuclear utilities pay into a special repository construction fund.

The fund, fed by assessments on consumers, contains more than $20 billion; but Congress has limited spending from it. The fee raises about $750 million a year, but Fertel suggested it be scaled back to no more than what Congress decides to spend from year to year.

NUCLEAR COMMISSION: Radioactive waste storage is revised - News - ReviewJournal.com


----------



## PLYMCO_PILGRIM

I am for increased offshore drilling, opening up anwar, building and connecting wind farms to the grid, building more new nuke plants, creating and connecting vast solar arrays, and giving tax deductions to private citizens for installing solar paneling and solar water heating in their homes.

Oh and Geothermal is cool too.


----------



## Navy1960

PLYMCO_PILGRIM said:


> I am for increased offshore drilling, opening up anwar, building and connecting wind farms to the grid, building more new nuke plants, creating and connecting vast solar arrays, and giving tax deductions to private citizens for installing solar paneling and solar water heating in their homes.
> 
> Oh and Geothermal is cool too.



Speaking of the tax incentives for solar, there are big ones at the moment, however those tax breaks don't begin to cover the costs of solar. Imagine  for a moment  had this nation not spent 750 Billion Dollars on a Stimulus that went bascially nowhere and perhaps directed that money for a time period to allow American homeowners tax breaks to purchase Solar panels for their homes. What would the result be?, more jobs perhaps, lower energy cost perhaps?


----------



## JBeukema

JBeukema said:


> I repeat:
> 
> Has anyone estimated how long our nuclear fuel supplies in the US could last if we used it as our primary source of energy?
> 
> Nuclear is a finite resource, just like oil. Therefore, unless it will last until Sol goes red giant, it is a transitional/supplemental energy source only


no?


----------



## Navy1960

Steve Fetter, dean of the University of Maryland's School of Public Policy, supplies an answer:
If the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) has accurately estimated the planet's economically accessible uranium resources, reactors could run more than 200 years at current rates of consumption.


Two technologies could greatly extend the uranium supply itself. Neither is economical now, but both could be in the future if the price of uranium increases substantially. First, the extraction of uranium from seawater would make available 4.5 billion metric tons of uranium&#8212;a 60,000-year supply at present rates. Second, fuel-recycling fast-breeder reactors, which generate more fuel than they consume, would use less than 1 percent of the uranium needed for current LWRs. Breeder reactors could match today's nuclear output for 30,000 years using only the NEA-estimated supplies.
How long will the world's uranium supplies last?: Scientific American

This article does not take into consideration reprocessing (MOX)  or  Govt. stockpile releases  of spent nuclear fuel in casks  for  reprocessing that adds to that supply.


----------



## Old Rocks

*Solar need not be expensive. *

Yang

Intellectual merit: Achieving the predicted efficiency over 60% from the third generation solar cells based on Intermediate Band (IB) has been troublesome due to the defects and low light absorption by Self-Assembled Quantum Dots (SAQD) via the Stranski-Krastanov (S-K) growth mode. The nature of the SAQDs fabricated by the S-K mode is randomness in size and position. This randomness broadens the IB structure formed between p- and n-junctions, which reduces the absorption at a given spectrum, reducing the efficiency. Another problem in applying SAQDs for solar cells is the difficulty in realizing defect-free layers of high concentration of dots when the stacking of SAQDs is more than ~20 layers. In order to overcome the problems related with controls of size and site, and the defects in the SAQD-stacks, this project will develop low cost and direct in-situ patterning processes to guide the self-assembly of uniformly sized, multi-stacked SAQDs for high efficiency solar cells. Interferential irradiation of high power laser pulses will be employed to create thermal modulations on surface in order to produce defect-free, uniform and ordered nanoscale patterns on surfaces. Atomistic understanding will be pursued on the patterning processes and the stacking SAQDs more than 50 layers. The atomistic optimization, using in-vacuum Scanning Tunneling Microscopy (STM), will provide ways to scale-up the arrays of desired sizes and shapes of SAQDs. In particular, the project will study how the size and periodicity influence the electronic structure of IBs formed by SAQDs. In-situ optical characterizations will be used to analyze optical defects, the correlation between IB structure and the properties of QD arrays such as size and density so that the patterning and growth processes maximize the efficiency of QD-based solar cells. Gained insight will be used to fabricate SAQD-based solar cells with target efficiency over 50%
Award#0854313 - Ordered Array of Uniformly Sized Quantum Dots for High Efficiency Solar Cells


----------



## Old Rocks

Directoryaintable plastic solar cells using quantum dots
From PESWiki
Jump to: navigation, search
Paintable plastic solar cells are in development that could provide power beyond that of the advanced photovoltaic cells today
Directoryaintable plastic solar cells using quantum dots - PESWiki


----------



## mdn2000

Old Rocks said:


> Directoryaintable plastic solar cells using quantum dots
> From PESWiki
> Jump to: navigation, search
> Paintable plastic solar cells are in development that could provide power beyond that of the advanced photovoltaic cells today
> Directoryaintable plastic solar cells using quantum dots - PESWiki



Another link, I have read a half dozen of your links, each one disagreed with the point you made Old Crock.

Wind or Nuke, 

Solar or Nuke,

Nuke wins hands down, only the ignorant can even consider wind, solar, geothermal or any other crazy green idea.

You cannot run industry on green energy, it is too weak, for the amount of resources it takes to create windmill or solar panel or even maintain a geothermal plant you get a negative return. You cannot supply heavy industry with a fraction of the power needed to produce the raw materials to even begin building green energy, and that will never change, not in the next century. 

The environuts and global climate kooks are literally promoting that faster destruction of the earth, we literally have to increase the rate we are using fossil fuels 10,000% to meet the demands of green energy. 

So ironic that the proposed solution uses more energy than just getting our energy straight from fossil fuel.

The idiots, the morons, the ignorant, let me give you a great analogy to see if it helps you understand.

Take a chain and hook it up to the front of your car, attach the chain to your neighbors car, that is green energy, great huh, you are using no fossil fuel, you are not polluting, you never ever need to buy gas again.

Sure you cant use your car at night, but if you had a solar car that would not work at night either, so either way you are still dependent on someone else, with a chain or a solar panel Old Crock is still sucking me dry, the neighbor pays so that Old Crock can say he is using green energy.


----------



## Old Rocks

*Once again you prove yourself beyond stupid, Mdn. From the Scientific American;

*A Plan to Power 100 Percent of the Planet with Renewables: Scientific American


----------



## KittenKoder

Old Rocks said:


> *Once again you prove yourself beyond stupid, Mdn. From the Scientific American;
> 
> *A Plan to Power 100 Percent of the Planet with Renewables: Scientific American



 Did you read the article?


----------



## mdn2000

Old Rocks said:


> *Once again you prove yourself beyond stupid, Mdn. From the Scientific American;
> 
> *A Plan to Power 100 Percent of the Planet with Renewables: Scientific American



Old Crock, you know I read the article, I pointed out that you did not read the article in the other thread, I will bumb that thread to the top so you cannot continue to ignore it.

The article does not state that this can be done, the article states the opposite. Not one expert thinks even 1% of the earths energy can come from renewables. 

There is not such thing as a renewable, you got to use fiberglass, takes energy to make fiberglass, more energy than all the "so called renewables" create on the sunniest day.

So how much energy does it take to make one ton of this magical renewable fiberglass, for that matter explain how fiberglass is renewable?


----------



## KittenKoder

mdn2000 said:


> Old Rocks said:
> 
> 
> 
> *Once again you prove yourself beyond stupid, Mdn. From the Scientific American;
> 
> *A Plan to Power 100 Percent of the Planet with Renewables: Scientific American
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Old Crock, you know I read the article, I pointed out that you did not read the article in the other thread, I will bumb that thread to the top so you cannot continue to ignore it.
> 
> The article does not state that this can be done, the article states the opposite. Not one expert thinks even 1% of the earths energy can come from renewables.
> 
> There is not such thing as a renewable, you got to use fiberglass, takes energy to make fiberglass, more energy than all the "so called renewables" create on the sunniest day.
> 
> So how much energy does it take to make one ton of this magical renewable fiberglass, for that matter explain how fiberglass is renewable?
Click to expand...


Another reason there is no such thing as "renewable" ... energy cannot be created.


----------



## Old Rocks

mdn2000 said:


> Old Rocks said:
> 
> 
> 
> *Once again you prove yourself beyond stupid, Mdn. From the Scientific American;
> 
> *A Plan to Power 100 Percent of the Planet with Renewables: Scientific American
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Old Crock, you know I read the article, I pointed out that you did not read the article in the other thread, I will bumb that thread to the top so you cannot continue to ignore it.
> 
> The article does not state that this can be done, the article states the opposite. Not one expert thinks even 1% of the earths energy can come from renewables.
> 
> There is not such thing as a renewable, you got to use fiberglass, takes energy to make fiberglass, more energy than all the "so called renewables" create on the sunniest day.
> 
> So how much energy does it take to make one ton of this magical renewable fiberglass, for that matter explain how fiberglass is renewable?
Click to expand...


Like hell you have read the article. Once again you prove yourself to be a lying dumbass. Here is the concluding statement in the article.

"A decade ago it was not clear that a global WWS system would be technically or economically feasable. Having shown that it is, we hope the global leaders can figure out how to make WWS power politically feasable as well. They can start by committing to meanful climate and renewable goals now"

A Path to Sustainable Energy by 2009

How to get all energy from wind and and solar

Scientific American, November 2009 issue


----------



## Kingpin

I've understood thet wind energy isn't very cost effective, whereas nuclear energy has a byproduct which is deadly for tens of thousands of years!


----------



## JD_2B

The problem is not with using nuclear energy, it is with government oppression in regards to sustainability.

1- YES people DO steal spent uranium. It DOES happen. This is not some kind of massive lie.. but people steal all sorts of things to make bombs with, so whatev..  Increase security camera usage then. How often to people actually USE nuclear bombs? There ya go. Its just an all around power thing.. and I mean political not nuclear, lol

2- There are many other ways of getting sustainable energy, without using all sorts of ground and land space, besides wind and solar. I swear, you just compared apples and oranges in your OP, because why? You want to somehow prove that nuclear energy is Da' Bom' ??? <scuse my pun!>
Ever heard of entire villages being generated by their own fecal waste? How about underground copper coils? And dont get me started on the original problem, which is a massive lack of water. Water is not exactly renewable, but is can be a sustainable resource if we stop eating so damned much meat, and recycling rain water that falls on our rooftops by the use of rain cystines, and green roofs. 

I am sick of all the hype about nuclear power.. It may be a good power source, but it is a terrible "waste" source for us, and the bottom line is that the US is leaving a MASSIVE carbon footprint by not reusing the byproducts, and also by claiming ignorance to the many many other means at our disposal for sustainability.


----------



## Polk

The biggest problem with nuclear power is funding. Companies aren't will to invest the startup capital to build the plants.


----------



## Si modo

Polk said:


> The biggest problem with nuclear power is funding. Companies aren't will to invest the startup capital to build the plants.


Historically, they haven't because of the ignorant fear-mongering by the left toward nuclear energy.  Ohhhhhhh, bad radiation, bad nuclear.  

The left are their own worst enemies.


----------



## JD_2B

Polk said:


> The biggest problem with nuclear power is funding. Companies aren't will to invest the startup capital to build the plants.



Considering the sizable pricetag that they have to pay for, and the bond just to get the permit to start up a plant that contains hazardous materials, is gosh..a total of about 5 and a half billion dollars?? Not to mention insurance which ends up being over a billion dollars as well. 

Dont blame Corporate America for that shit.


----------



## mdn2000

> YES people DO steal spent uranium. It DOES happen. This is not some kind of massive lie.. but people steal all sorts of things to make bombs with, so whatev.. Increase security camera usage then. How often to people actually USE nuclear bombs? There ya go. Its just an all around power thing.. and I mean political not nuclear, lol



This statement does not make sense, What are you talking about, fuel rods from commercial reactors? Spent Uranium? By that definition there is no danger, its spent. So if your talking about what is called a spent fuel rod from a US reactor than you are bit confused, this has never happened, doubtful if it ever will happen. Even if it did, it would be impossible to open up the cask without the set from Dr. No.

Funding, the only thing that hurts funding is government interference and Lawyers. As long as the government is in the hand of the corporations than we will continue to see the government giving money to the corporations that build windmills. 

You know who is getting rich besides Al Gore, companies like ExxonMobil, AIG, Dupont, Dow, OcciChemical, GE, any corporation that owns a mine like the one in California that is the only source for Boron, cant make windmills without basic materials like minerals/elements that are mined. 

So the Lawyers and government will stop nuclear by taking money from the middle class of america and giving that money to corporations who in return hire the politicians for 100k a pop speeches. Meantime we pay higher taxes, higher electric bills, higher food prices, more expensive clothes. Everything is going up, further we will never have the energy needed to run heavy industry, no heavy industry and we will continue our decline, we are on our way to being a third world.

You young people can look forward to poverty and famine.


----------



## KittenKoder

Okay, some facts about nuclear that many seem to just not get:

It's "waste" can be used, as a matter of fact they have seen a huge increase in demand for such recently with a new way to use it. That small amount which cannot be used is actually less dangerous than having a huge windmill topple onto your house. 

As for funding, there are already plants ready, built and up to date. All they need is the "okay" not the funding, to power up.


----------



## Intense

JD_2B said:


> The problem is not with using nuclear energy, it is with government oppression in regards to sustainability.
> 
> 1- YES people DO steal spent uranium. It DOES happen. This is not some kind of massive lie.. but people steal all sorts of things to make bombs with, so whatev..  Increase security camera usage then. How often to people actually USE nuclear bombs? There ya go. Its just an all around power thing.. and I mean political not nuclear, lol
> 
> 2- There are many other ways of getting sustainable energy, without using all sorts of ground and land space, besides wind and solar. I swear, you just compared apples and oranges in your OP, because why? You want to somehow prove that nuclear energy is Da' Bom' ??? <scuse my pun!>
> Ever heard of entire villages being generated by their own fecal waste? How about underground copper coils? And dont get me started on the original problem, which is a massive lack of water. Water is not exactly renewable, but is can be a sustainable resource if we stop eating so damned much meat, and recycling rain water that falls on our rooftops by the use of rain cystines, and green roofs.
> 
> I am sick of all the hype about nuclear power.. It may be a good power source, but it is a terrible "waste" source for us, and the bottom line is that the US is leaving a MASSIVE carbon footprint by not reusing the byproducts, and also by claiming ignorance to the many many other means at our disposal for sustainability.



Hey We could Kill all of the Carbon Dioxide Emitting Plant and Animal Organisms starting Right now , let's do it for Al !!!!!  Sun Light is a Polutant Too Right!!!!!  Try to not make it Too Easy for The Totalitarian Take Over Of The Planet!!!!!


----------



## mdn2000

> I am sick of all the hype about nuclear power.. It may be a good power source, but it is a terrible "waste" source for us, and the bottom line is that the US is leaving a MASSIVE carbon footprint by not reusing the byproducts, and also by claiming ignorance to the many many other means at our disposal for sustainability.



Plenty of threads in energy have disproved this entire statement, I look forward to you posting, there really is a lot you can respond to, maybe you can pick up the ball that Old Crock dropped.



> YES people DO steal spent uranium. It DOES happen. This is not some kind of massive lie



Spent Nuclear fuel from a commercial reactor in the USA has used only 3-5% of its energy. I wonder how a theif would steal a fuel rod and protect himself from radiation, just one second next to one fuel rod would evaporate the theif. It would not make him sick, he would simply disappear.

The problem with people are they have no understanding of the vast differences in the power of nuclear compared to all other sources combined. Nukes smoke everything, massive amounts of endless energy.

As far as water goes, a nuke uses less than windmills must be built, that takes energy and massive amounts of water, the _E Glass Furnace_ will use more water in one year than a nuclear power plant uses in 40 years. 

Nuclear power plants have multiple closed loop systems which recycle water.

Anyhow I dont see anyone posting anything that even comes close to being an arguement that supports the wild claims made by the green energy crowd.

One ton of fiberglass, how much energy is used to make one ton of energy and what are the types that must be used. 

If the green energy supporters will not and cannot answer that simple question than green energy is without a doubt too expensive, too polluting, massively subsidized, and very weak, profiting the very rich, profiting the politicians.


----------



## Old Rocks

mdn2000 said:


> YES people DO steal spent uranium. It DOES happen. This is not some kind of massive lie.. but people steal all sorts of things to make bombs with, so whatev.. Increase security camera usage then. How often to people actually USE nuclear bombs? There ya go. Its just an all around power thing.. and I mean political not nuclear, lol
> 
> 
> 
> 
> This statement does not make sense, What are you talking about, fuel rods from commercial reactors? Spent Uranium? By that definition there is no danger, its spent. So if your talking about what is called a spent fuel rod from a US reactor than you are bit confused, this has never happened, doubtful if it ever will happen. Even if it did, it would be impossible to open up the cask without the set from Dr. No.
> 
> Funding, the only thing that hurts funding is government interference and Lawyers. As long as the government is in the hand of the corporations than we will continue to see the government giving money to the corporations that build windmills.
> 
> You know who is getting rich besides Al Gore, companies like ExxonMobil, AIG, Dupont, Dow, OcciChemical, GE, any corporation that owns a mine like the one in California that is the only source for Boron, cant make windmills without basic materials like minerals/elements that are mined.
> 
> So the Lawyers and government will stop nuclear by taking money from the middle class of america and giving that money to corporations who in return hire the politicians for 100k a pop speeches. Meantime we pay higher taxes, higher electric bills, higher food prices, more expensive clothes. Everything is going up, further we will never have the energy needed to run heavy industry, no heavy industry and we will continue our decline, we are on our way to being a third world.
> 
> You young people can look forward to poverty and famine.
Click to expand...


Mdn, once again you prove your massive ignorance beyond doubt. 

First, there are many sources of boron throughout the world. However, the nation that has the most reserves of boron, and is actively mining and exporting it, is Turkey. We are second in reserves.

Second, here in the US and in Europe, we make a fiberglass that does not use boron.


----------



## Old Rocks

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=23774&Cr=nuclear&Cr1

Illicit trafficking, theft of nuclear materials &#8216;a persistent problem,&#8217; UN agency reports

12 September 2007 &#8211; Illicit trafficking, theft and loss of nuclear and other radioactive materials remain &#8220;a persistent problem,&#8221; according to the United Nations agency entrusted with pre-empting nuclear and radiological terrorism and preventing proliferation. 
More than 250 incidents involving unauthorized possession and related criminal activities, theft or loss of nuclear or other radioactive materials, and other activities such as unauthorized disposal of radioactive materials were reported to the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Illicit Trafficking Database (ITDB) last year, of which 150 occurred in 2006 and the rest mainly in 2005. 

&#8220;Information reported to the ITDB shows a persistent problem with the illicit trafficking in nuclear and other radioactive materials, thefts, losses, and other unauthorized activities,&#8221; the latest ITDB report said. 

Of the 150 incidents that occurred in 2006, 14 involved unauthorized possession and related criminal activities and can be described as illicit trafficking, containing such factors as illegal possession, movement, or attempts to illegally trade in the materials.


----------



## KittenKoder

Old Rocks said:


> Illicit trafficking, theft of nuclear materials a persistent problem, UN agency reports
> 
> Illicit trafficking, theft of nuclear materials a persistent problem, UN agency reports
> 
> 12 September 2007  Illicit trafficking, theft and loss of nuclear and other radioactive materials remain a persistent problem, according to the United Nations agency entrusted with pre-empting nuclear and radiological terrorism and preventing proliferation.
> More than 250 incidents involving unauthorized possession and related criminal activities, theft or loss of nuclear or other radioactive materials, and other activities such as unauthorized disposal of radioactive materials were reported to the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Illicit Trafficking Database (ITDB) last year, of which 150 occurred in 2006 and the rest mainly in 2005.
> 
> Information reported to the ITDB shows a persistent problem with the illicit trafficking in nuclear and other radioactive materials, thefts, losses, and other unauthorized activities, the latest ITDB report said.
> 
> Of the 150 incidents that occurred in 2006, 14 involved unauthorized possession and related criminal activities and can be described as illicit trafficking, containing such factors as illegal possession, movement, or attempts to illegally trade in the materials.



 This is worse than gunpowder? Coal? Oil? Etc. being stolen how?


----------



## Kingpin

What will our descendants think of us if we bury radioactive waste that is deadly for thousands of years?

Carbon 14 has a halflife of about 12,000 years!


----------



## Si modo

Old Rocks said:


> Illicit trafficking, theft of nuclear materials &#8216;a persistent problem,&#8217; UN agency reports
> 
> Illicit trafficking, theft of nuclear materials &#8216;a persistent problem,&#8217; UN agency reports
> 
> 12 September 2007 &#8211; Illicit trafficking, theft and loss of nuclear and other radioactive materials remain &#8220;a persistent problem,&#8221; according to the United Nations agency entrusted with pre-empting nuclear and radiological terrorism and preventing proliferation.
> More than 250 incidents involving unauthorized possession and related criminal activities, theft or loss of nuclear or other radioactive materials, and other activities such as unauthorized disposal of radioactive materials were reported to the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Illicit Trafficking Database (ITDB) last year, of which 150 occurred in 2006 and the rest mainly in 2005.
> 
> &#8220;Information reported to the ITDB shows a persistent problem with the illicit trafficking in nuclear and other radioactive materials, thefts, losses, and other unauthorized activities,&#8221; the latest ITDB report said.
> 
> Of the 150 incidents that occurred in 2006, 14 involved unauthorized possession and related criminal activities and can be described as illicit trafficking, containing such factors as illegal possession, movement, or attempts to illegally trade in the materials.


And, for those with less sloth, if one looks at the details of the incidents involving weapons grade materials, only one in a 13-year period occured in the USA.  We have excellent controls of radionuclides here in the USA.


----------



## KittenKoder

Kingpin said:


> What will our descendants think of us if we bury radioactive waste that is deadly for thousands of years?
> 
> Carbon 14 has a halflife of about 10,000 years!



They will likely mistaken it for the stuff that naturally occurs in nature as it is. Nuclear material is mined as well, it's refined like oil ... but it's safer and easier to mine than coal.  Hint: Almost everything in your house has high levels of radiation, they just aren't lethal.


----------



## Skull Pilot

Kingpin said:


> What will our descendants think of us if we bury radioactive waste that is deadly for thousands of years?
> 
> Carbon 14 has a halflife of about 10,000 years!



95% of spent fuel rods can be recycled and reused as fuel

nuclear fuel rods only contain about 5% "burnable' uranium.  when the amount in a fuel rod falls below that amount, the rod must be replaced but the uranium left can be reused.


----------



## JD_2B

mdn2000 said:


> I am sick of all the hype about nuclear power.. It may be a good power source, but it is a terrible "waste" source for us, and the bottom line is that the US is leaving a MASSIVE carbon footprint by not reusing the byproducts, and also by claiming ignorance to the many many other means at our disposal for sustainability.
> 
> 
> 
> Plenty of threads in energy have disproved this entire statement, I look forward to you posting, there really is a lot you can respond to, maybe you can pick up the ball that Old Crock dropped.
Click to expand...


I see now that spent fuel rods can be reused for fuel. That's great. If only we were actually _doing_ that, lol



> YES people DO steal spent uranium. It DOES happen. This is not some kind of massive lie
> 
> 
> 
> Spent Nuclear fuel from a commercial reactor in the USA has used only 3-5% of its energy. I wonder how a theif would steal a fuel rod and protect himself from radiation, just one second next to one fuel rod would evaporate the theif. It would not make him sick, he would simply disappear.
> 
> The problem with people are they have no understanding of the vast differences in the power of nuclear compared to all other sources combined. Nukes smoke everything, massive amounts of endless energy.
> 
> As far as water goes, a nuke uses less than windmills must be built, that takes energy and massive amounts of water, the _E Glass Furnace_ will use more water in one year than a nuclear power plant uses in 40 years.
> 
> Nuclear power plants have multiple closed loop systems which recycle water.
> 
> Anyhow I dont see anyone posting anything that even comes close to being an arguement that supports the wild claims made by the green energy crowd.
> 
> One ton of fiberglass, how much energy is used to make one ton of energy and what are the types that must be used.
> 
> If the green energy supporters will not and cannot answer that simple question than green energy is without a doubt too expensive, too polluting, massively subsidized, and very weak, profiting the very rich, profiting the politicians.
Click to expand...



OK First of all, you are not looking at the other options available. I agree, green-pushers of sustainable energy should not be pushing for wind turbines and solar paneling. Those suck, as far as how much wattage they produce. 

However, a simple copper coil buried in the ground in your backyard can power your entire home, costs in the ballpark of ten grand, and pays itself off in a couple of years. 

A shit well that generates enough heat to run a turbine, can also generate enough power for several modern square blocks of residential, improved property. In some other countries, a village of people will just bring their buckets of shit to the well and dump them in themselves. This is the most energy efficient way to do it also. 

Then, people can recycle and reuse water also. Rain cystines are one of the cheapest, energy efficient way of doing it. You just install a rain gutter all the way around the house, direct it down a pipe on one side that leads to a big barrel, which holds the water. At the bottom of that barrel, a pipe is lead from the barrel to the sprinkler system. This could be done for less than a thousand dollars, and again, pays itself off in about a year!

Green Roofs are a lot more expensive to get going, but also add insulation to the roof tops of buildings and homes, drastically reducing the need for extra air conditioning and heating. Also, some businesses are using green roofs as a beautiful natural retreat or break area for their employees and customers. This also conserves water, because it encourages water that lands on the roof to not simply run off, ending up in the storm drains, but to nourish plant life, which increases the amount of plant life (that would have been there if that building had not been made) that can contribute to the rain cycle. 

Bees are in trouble, also. I think it would help if companies with green roofs would also have beehives and lots of flowering plants. The Bee populations have dropped to nearly half of what they were a couple of decades ago. This is really bad news!!

Ack.. But my point was that there are many many ways to conserve and reuse water and resources, and plenty of highly effective ways to capture sustainable energy sources..


----------



## VodkaIce

Wind Power is excellent where Wind is Plentiful (laughs) ...

Element 115 (gravity A-Wave) though considered to be CT, I think not, but another government black project perhaps.  I am hedging this is the way to go.

Noteworthy is Marjorie Hecht's statement that NUCLEAR WASTE is a misnomer, and is a fallacy.  She further interjects the following:

..."The spent fuel from nuclear power plants is actually a precious resource: About 96% of it can be recycled into new nuclear fuel. No other fuel source can make this claim&#8212;wood, coal, oil, or gas. Once these fuels are burned, all that&#8217;s left is some ash or airborne pollutant by-products, which nuclear energy does not produce."

url: 21st Century Home Page
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles 2008/Nuclear_waste.pdf

There's an excellent diagram which depicts how this recyling process would work.


----------



## VodkaIce

We have seen Free Energy in many forms:

Wind

Water

Nuclear Power

Solar and so forth ...

but Element 115 (gravity A-Wave) is truly FREE .... We need to bring this forward.


Some periodic table had this information about element 115:

The most important attribute of this heavier, stable element is that the gravity A wave is so abundant that it actually extends past the perimeter of the atom. These heavier, stable elements literally have their own gravity A field around them, in addition to the gravity B field that is native to all matter. 

No naturally occurring atoms on earth have enough protons and neutrons for the cumulative gravity A wave to extend past the perimeter of the atom so you can access it. Now even though the distance that the gravity A wave extends past the perimeter of the atom is infinitesimal, it is accessible and it has amplitude, wave length, and frequency, just like any other wave in the electromagnetic spectrum. Once you can access the gravity A wave, you can amplify it just like we amplify other electromagnetic waves. 
And in like manner, the gravity A wave is amplified and then focused on the desired destination to cause the space/time distortion required for practical space travel. 

This amplified gravity A wave is so powerful that the only naturally occurring source of gravity that could cause space/time to distort this much would be a black hole. 
We're amplifying a wave that barely extends past the perimeter of an atom until it's large enough to distort vast amounts of space/time.

Did anyone watch Bob Lazarus, was it on Nova?  But he offers tons of information on this topic matter, and why call it CT, when it can become pure science.


----------



## VodkaIce

Here is an IDEA - I think it would generate JOBS and WEALTH to this country, but first we have to get rid of the Rockefeller foundation and the International Monetary Banking systems.

Revisit all those PATENTS, to which the government BURIED.

Examples of FREE ENERGY PATENTS:

U.S. patents (#3,811,058, #3,879,622, and #4,151,431) have so far been awarded for motors that run EXCLUSIVELY on permanent MAGNETS, seemingly tapping into energy circulating through the earth's magnetic field. 

The first two require a feedback network in order to be self-running. 

The third one, (as described in detail in "Science & Mechanics" magazine, Spring 1980), requires critical sizes, shapes, orientations, and spacings of magnets, but NO feedback. Such a motor could drive an electric generator or reversible heatpump in one's home, YEAR ROUND, FOR FREE. [Complete descriptive copies of U.S. patents are $3.00 each from the U.S. Patent Office, 2021 Jefferson Davis Hwy., Arlington, VA 22202; correct 7-digit patent number required. Or try getting copies via your local public or university library's inter-library loan dept..]


----------



## VodkaIce

If I ever get a hold of bunch of money, I have a list of PATENTS that I would revisit.


----------



## Old Rocks

Si modo said:


> Old Rocks said:
> 
> 
> 
> Illicit trafficking, theft of nuclear materials a persistent problem, UN agency reports
> 
> Illicit trafficking, theft of nuclear materials a persistent problem, UN agency reports
> 
> 12 September 2007  Illicit trafficking, theft and loss of nuclear and other radioactive materials remain a persistent problem, according to the United Nations agency entrusted with pre-empting nuclear and radiological terrorism and preventing proliferation.
> More than 250 incidents involving unauthorized possession and related criminal activities, theft or loss of nuclear or other radioactive materials, and other activities such as unauthorized disposal of radioactive materials were reported to the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Illicit Trafficking Database (ITDB) last year, of which 150 occurred in 2006 and the rest mainly in 2005.
> 
> Information reported to the ITDB shows a persistent problem with the illicit trafficking in nuclear and other radioactive materials, thefts, losses, and other unauthorized activities, the latest ITDB report said.
> 
> Of the 150 incidents that occurred in 2006, 14 involved unauthorized possession and related criminal activities and can be described as illicit trafficking, containing such factors as illegal possession, movement, or attempts to illegally trade in the materials.
> 
> 
> 
> And, for those with less sloth, if one looks at the details of the incidents involving weapons grade materials, only one in a 13-year period occured in the USA.  We have excellent controls of radionuclides here in the USA.
Click to expand...


Would we, or any other nation, admit it if someone actually managed to get a few kilos of weopons grade material?

Just one bomb is one city, somewhere.


----------



## Old Rocks

JD, Sanyo now produces a solar cell rated at 23%.  Q-dot technology should start at about 40% and go up from there. We still need electriciy, and wind and solar are the easiest way for an individual to produce it for themselves. Combined with conservation measures, such as the passive geo-thermal, passive solar, and use of energy efficient appliances and lighting, and you become a net producer, rather than a consumer.


----------



## mdn2000

Old Rocks said:


> mdn2000 said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> YES people DO steal spent uranium. It DOES happen. This is not some kind of massive lie.. but people steal all sorts of things to make bombs with, so whatev.. Increase security camera usage then. How often to people actually USE nuclear bombs? There ya go. Its just an all around power thing.. and I mean political not nuclear, lol
> 
> 
> 
> 
> This statement does not make sense, What are you talking about, fuel rods from commercial reactors? Spent Uranium? By that definition there is no danger, its spent. So if your talking about what is called a spent fuel rod from a US reactor than you are bit confused, this has never happened, doubtful if it ever will happen. Even if it did, it would be impossible to open up the cask without the set from Dr. No.
> 
> Funding, the only thing that hurts funding is government interference and Lawyers. As long as the government is in the hand of the corporations than we will continue to see the government giving money to the corporations that build windmills.
> 
> You know who is getting rich besides Al Gore, companies like ExxonMobil, AIG, Dupont, Dow, OcciChemical, GE, any corporation that owns a mine like the one in California that is the only source for Boron, cant make windmills without basic materials like minerals/elements that are mined.
> 
> So the Lawyers and government will stop nuclear by taking money from the middle class of america and giving that money to corporations who in return hire the politicians for 100k a pop speeches. Meantime we pay higher taxes, higher electric bills, higher food prices, more expensive clothes. Everything is going up, further we will never have the energy needed to run heavy industry, no heavy industry and we will continue our decline, we are on our way to being a third world.
> 
> You young people can look forward to poverty and famine.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Mdn, once again you prove your massive ignorance beyond doubt.
> 
> First, there are many sources of boron throughout the world. However, the nation that has the most reserves of boron, and is actively mining and exporting it, is Turkey. We are second in reserves.
> 
> Second, here in the US and in Europe, we make a fiberglass that does not use boron.
Click to expand...


I know where the sources of Boron are, only two, glad you caught that, and as you know that was pointed out in other threads by other users. So what type of fiberglass does not use Boron, where is the plant, what is the furnace, how much energy and of what types of energy does the furnace use. If you know there are two sources of Boron than obviously you read and know more than you disclose. 

Boron was "sucker bait", a simple hook to see if Old Crock intentionally hides information that is detrimental to Old Crock's unsubstantiated claims.

One thing Old Crock is not stating is all the fiberglass produced for windmills is using Boron, can not make fiberglass without Boron. 

The most important thing Old Crock has not stated that the supply of Boron is very limited, maybe enough for a hundred years but if consumption keeps increasing at the present rate we will run out of Boron much sooner. I am not exactly sure on the 100 supply, I have only seen one source for that information so I take that with a grain of salt.

There are also other chemicals used in fiberglass production that Old Crock must know about, maybe not, Old Crock has shown himself to be very poor at supporting his position so its possible Old Crock knows of Boron simply from another users thread. So tell us Old Crock which other chemicals are in high demand in the manufacturer of fiberglass.

So which plant is making fiberglass without boron, what do they replace the boron with, and more importantly the biggest question that is always ignored because the answer is the truth and the truth is too damaging,

How much energy and which types does it take to produce one ton of fiberglass, if you cannot answer this simple question than you do not know what you are talking about.

VodkaIce, I am sure all those things are nice ideas but they are very expensive.

A coil that costs ten thousand dollars is not repaid in 2 years, further if we were not getting ripped off for the price of electricity we would not need the coil. I work extremely hard to keep my electric bill at the 120 a month mark, I cannot conserve any more. I use a so little electricity its sick, one light at the most, I never use a dryer, I hang my clothes out to dry. I have a small house. 

I cannot use less energy, no way no how, I already conserve, most people do. 

The answer is not to conserve, we alread do that, we are the example the world should follow. 

The answer is huge amounts of energy, only one source for massive amounts of cheap energy, that is NUCLEAR power.

If we do not go Nuclear today there is no tomorrow, Nuclear power can fuel research, Nuclear power will save us money so we can invest in tomorrow. So that we can build better homes, so that we can research.

Windmills and Solar are a joke, with smart meters to turn off our electricity the government will be able to deny us power so that what little industry is left will have power, that is the future with solar and wind. 

No industry, no jobs, no people, no children, no grandchildren, and this is what OLD CROCK wants, to kill all the people, the environuts hate people, they want a world without people.

They want the USA to suffer famine, they want us to suffer disease, the LIBERALS want us all to suffer because they hate our history, the LIBERALS say the ugliest nastiest things because they hate us.

Without massive amounts of Nuclear energy you all should just start smoking pot, forget about starting families, just drink and get drunk, get nice and high and have fun, forget about a future because there is no future.

We have outsourced food production to the point in the near future we will be at the complete mercy of the United Nations and the Third world, if they decide we starve its our fate.

Green energy is making politicians rich beyond our wildest dreams, Al Gore will be a billionaire, all from green energy and policies started while he was vice president.

The environuts are polluting the planet and using the resources faster and faster, and they know it, at least the smart ones, they are happy with this because liberals beleive the USA must suffer like Ethiopia and Somalia. 

I really am begning to hate liberals, they are content to kill the future for my children.


----------



## Si modo

Old Rocks said:


> Si modo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Old Rocks said:
> 
> 
> 
> Illicit trafficking, theft of nuclear materials &#8216;a persistent problem,&#8217; UN agency reports
> 
> Illicit trafficking, theft of nuclear materials &#8216;a persistent problem,&#8217; UN agency reports
> 
> 12 September 2007 &#8211; Illicit trafficking, theft and loss of nuclear and other radioactive materials remain &#8220;a persistent problem,&#8221; according to the United Nations agency entrusted with pre-empting nuclear and radiological terrorism and preventing proliferation.
> More than 250 incidents involving unauthorized possession and related criminal activities, theft or loss of nuclear or other radioactive materials, and other activities such as unauthorized disposal of radioactive materials were reported to the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Illicit Trafficking Database (ITDB) last year, of which 150 occurred in 2006 and the rest mainly in 2005.
> 
> &#8220;Information reported to the ITDB shows a persistent problem with the illicit trafficking in nuclear and other radioactive materials, thefts, losses, and other unauthorized activities,&#8221; the latest ITDB report said.
> 
> Of the 150 incidents that occurred in 2006, 14 involved unauthorized possession and related criminal activities and can be described as illicit trafficking, containing such factors as illegal possession, movement, or attempts to illegally trade in the materials.
> 
> 
> 
> And, for those with less sloth, if one looks at the details of the incidents involving weapons grade materials, only one in a 13-year period occured in the USA.  We have excellent controls of radionuclides here in the USA.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Would we, or any other nation, admit it if someone actually managed to get a few kilos of weopons grade material?
> 
> Just one bomb is one city, somewhere.
Click to expand...

That's an IAEA report.  Their investigations.  You don't like your own source, now?


----------



## Si modo

Old Rocks said:


> JD, Sanyo now produces a solar cell rated at 23%.  Q-dot technology should start at about 40% and go up from there. We still need electriciy, and wind and solar are the easiest way for an individual to produce it for themselves. Combined with conservation measures, such as the passive geo-thermal, passive solar, and use of energy efficient appliances and lighting, and you become a net producer, rather than a consumer.


Source?  (Especially for the quantum dot prediction, but be thorough and back up all of your claims.)


----------



## VodkaIce

Nukes are a non-issue when compared to scalar weaponry.


----------



## mdn2000

Over a dozen permits have been submitted for new nuclear power plants. 

None in California.


----------



## JD_2B

Old Rocks said:


> mdn2000 said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> YES people DO steal spent uranium. It DOES happen. This is not some kind of massive lie.. but people steal all sorts of things to make bombs with, so whatev.. Increase security camera usage then. How often to people actually USE nuclear bombs? There ya go. Its just an all around power thing.. and I mean political not nuclear, lol
> 
> 
> 
> This statement does not make sense, What are you talking about, fuel rods from commercial reactors? Spent Uranium? By that definition there is no danger, its spent. So if your talking about what is called a spent fuel rod from a US reactor than you are bit confused, this has never happened, doubtful if it ever will happen. Even if it did, it would be impossible to open up the cask without the set from Dr. No.
> 
> Funding, the only thing that hurts funding is government interference and Lawyers. As long as the government is in the hand of the corporations than we will continue to see the government giving money to the corporations that build windmills.
> 
> You know who is getting rich besides Al Gore, companies like ExxonMobil, AIG, Dupont, Dow, OcciChemical, GE, any corporation that owns a mine like the one in California that is the only source for Boron, cant make windmills without basic materials like minerals/elements that are mined.
> 
> So the Lawyers and government will stop nuclear by taking money from the middle class of america and giving that money to corporations who in return hire the politicians for 100k a pop speeches. Meantime we pay higher taxes, higher electric bills, higher food prices, more expensive clothes. Everything is going up, further we will never have the energy needed to run heavy industry, no heavy industry and we will continue our decline, we are on our way to being a third world.
> 
> You young people can look forward to poverty and famine.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Mdn, once again you prove your massive ignorance beyond doubt.
> 
> First, there are many sources of boron throughout the world. However, the nation that has the most reserves of boron, and is actively mining and exporting it, is Turkey. We are second in reserves.
> 
> Second, here in the US and in Europe, we make a fiberglass that does not use boron.
Click to expand...


I think we know who the conspiracy theorist is here..  I swear.. Talks about moving towards the third world, poverty and famine, and then listing all the companies that are "in on it"?? LMAO!! Wow..


----------



## mdn2000

Jd2b, just dumb to be, 



> I think we know who the conspiracy theorist is here..  I swear.. Talks about moving towards the third world, poverty and famine, and then listing all the companies that are "in on it"?? LMAO!! Wow



I have seen you obsessing and stalking my posts, you must like real men, just to get your juices going I am 6' 2", 210 lbs, caucasion, middle aged, tough, mean when I need to be, albe to protect a little vixen such as yourself. You should actually read all my posts, I have used Old Crocks own sources to show the twins old crock and chrissy to be morons. Seriously, if you think my posts have fault point it out and I will respond, you dont need to chase all my posts and just be bitchy.

Moving towards the third world, can you explain. Conspiracy, so what, that is what it is, do you think conspiracys cannot exist, that is being naive.

Jd2b, my ex fiance called herself tobe. anyhow let me address an error on your part, you mistook a press release for an article.

http://www.usmessageboard.com/energy/93857-100-alternative-energy-worldwide-by-2030-a.html#post1706537



> Awesome!! Maybe we should be fund-raising or lobbying.. =) Great Article, OR!!



Old Crock is great at putting his foot in his mouth, you should really look at how I have exposed Old Crock. Not one person has come to Old Crock's defense but you did, in this case old crock found what is a press release by stanford university, this press release went out to thousands of donors and major newspapers. This is not an article, it just states that two professors published a study. The press release is advertising, marketing, a tool to make money for the university, That study is not availalbe, parts are but the whole study is not being released. There is a reason, the study is incomplete and contains faulty information, these two knucklehead professors have published bogus work in the past that is lacking critical facts and data. 

I love old crock, he is my best freind, every source he uses is a source that proves old crock is wrong. old crock thinks there is global warming and green energy is the solution

I say okay, you can have global warming, and I than prove that there is no such thing as "green energy", I do this with the sources old crock provides. Old Crocks sources also show that so called green energy is very expensive extremely polluting and unreliable.


----------



## PLYMCO_PILGRIM

I want to make a comment based purely off the question in the title,  Wind or Nuclear?

Why not both?  .


----------



## mdn2000

PLYMCO_PILGRIM said:


> I want to make a comment based purely off the question in the title,  Wind or Nuclear?
> 
> Why not both?  .



Because wind is too weak of a source for power.

Because wind is extremely expensive.

Already in California, Nevada, and Arizona in the summer months electrical rates go rise to 300$ or more a month. Arnold just authorized Edison to raise rates higher, Arnold just authorized the Dept. of Water to raise the price of water by 20%.

Water uses electricity to pump the water, water uses more electricity in california than all other users combined. 

Raising the price of water is solely do to the increased use of wind power. 

Why not use both, because wind power is very expensive and the power output is next to nothing.

Also its not a matter of one or the other, all wind farms require a 100% back-up, in california we experience wind-farm black outs that last over a month hence every wind-farm requires 100% back up. 

Wind does not put the present energy producers out of business, green energy provides a market for traditional energy, old power producers will have to supply green energy with not only 100% back-up but they will supply the power to the industry that builds green energy power plants.

Its not a choice of one or the other, its simply we are giving trillions to corporations, we are giving a new market to traditional fossil fuel.


----------



## Old Rocks

Si modo said:


> Old Rocks said:
> 
> 
> 
> JD, Sanyo now produces a solar cell rated at 23%.  Q-dot technology should start at about 40% and go up from there. We still need electriciy, and wind and solar are the easiest way for an individual to produce it for themselves. Combined with conservation measures, such as the passive geo-thermal, passive solar, and use of energy efficient appliances and lighting, and you become a net producer, rather than a consumer.
> 
> 
> 
> Source?  (Especially for the quantum dot prediction, but be thorough and back up all of your claims.)
Click to expand...


*Here are three sources among a very great many to back up what I posted. Note that the people at Voxtel are only claiming a possible efficiency of about 40%, whereas the people at the Golden, Colorado energy lab state that 65% is theoretically possible.*

SANYO :: News :: SANYO Develops HIT Solar Cells with Worldâs Highest Energy Conversion Efficiency of 23.0%

May 21, 2009 
Tokyo, May 22, 2009----SANYO Electric Co., Ltd. (SANYO) announced today that it has broken its own record for the worlds highest energy conversion efficiency*2 in practical size (100 cm2 or more) crystalline silicon-type solar cells, achieving a efficiency of 23.0%*3 (until now 22.3%) at a research level for its proprietary HIT*1 solar photovoltaic cells.

Beaverton firm will produce cheaper quantum dots | Oregon Business News - OregonLive.com


The high cost of quantum dots, $5,000 per gram at the low end, has been a barrier for two decades. Dots are conventionally made by a chemist one batch at a time. 

Voxtel invented a continuous system that automatically pumps out dots in large quantities, and even works with materials more environmentally friendly than those before. Their target is around $10 per gram with the capacity to fabricate kilograms of dots per week from a single production line. It takes about a tenth of a gram to make a square foot solar panel.

FuturePundit: Quantum Dots May Boost Photovoltaic Efficiency To 65%

We have shown that solar cells based on quantum dots theoretically could convert more than 65 percent of the sun's energy into electricity, approximately doubling the efficiency of solar cells," Nozik said. The best cells today convert about 33 percent of the sun's energy into electricity.


----------



## Old Rocks

PLYMCO_PILGRIM said:


> I want to make a comment based purely off the question in the title,  Wind or Nuclear?
> 
> Why not both?  .



No reason at all. In fact, I have advocated that. The only reason that nuclear would be in a lessor role is because it is damned expensive power compared to wind and geothermal, at present.


----------



## Old Rocks

mdn2000 said:


> Jd2b, just dumb to be,
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I think we know who the conspiracy theorist is here..  I swear.. Talks about moving towards the third world, poverty and famine, and then listing all the companies that are "in on it"?? LMAO!! Wow
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I have seen you obsessing and stalking my posts, you must like real men, just to get your juices going I am 6' 2", 210 lbs, caucasion, middle aged, tough, mean when I need to be, albe to protect a little vixen such as yourself. You should actually read all my posts, I have used Old Crocks own sources to show the twins old crock and chrissy to be morons. Seriously, if you think my posts have fault point it out and I will respond, you dont need to chase all my posts and just be bitchy.
> 
> Moving towards the third world, can you explain. Conspiracy, so what, that is what it is, do you think conspiracys cannot exist, that is being naive.
> 
> Jd2b, my ex fiance called herself tobe. anyhow let me address an error on your part, you mistook a press release for an article.
> 
> http://www.usmessageboard.com/energy/93857-100-alternative-energy-worldwide-by-2030-a.html#post1706537
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Awesome!! Maybe we should be fund-raising or lobbying.. =) Great Article, OR!!
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Old Crock is great at putting his foot in his mouth, you should really look at how I have exposed Old Crock. Not one person has come to Old Crock's defense but you did, in this case old crock found what is a press release by stanford university, this press release went out to thousands of donors and major newspapers. This is not an article, it just states that two professors published a study. The press release is advertising, marketing, a tool to make money for the university, That study is not availalbe, parts are but the whole study is not being released. There is a reason, the study is incomplete and contains faulty information, these two knucklehead professors have published bogus work in the past that is lacking critical facts and data.
> 
> I love old crock, he is my best freind, every source he uses is a source that proves old crock is wrong. old crock thinks there is global warming and green energy is the solution
> 
> I say okay, you can have global warming, and I than prove that there is no such thing as "green energy", I do this with the sources old crock provides. Old Crocks sources also show that so called green energy is very expensive extremely polluting and unreliable.
Click to expand...


----------



## Old Rocks

Si, read the second article on the manufacturing process for the Qdot panels. Ink jet printing.


----------



## KittenKoder

Old Rocks said:


> PLYMCO_PILGRIM said:
> 
> 
> 
> I want to make a comment based purely off the question in the title,  Wind or Nuclear?
> 
> Why not both?  .
> 
> 
> 
> 
> No reason at all. In fact, I have advocated that. The only reason that nuclear would be in a lessor role is because it is damned expensive power compared to wind and geothermal, at present.
Click to expand...


Not really, the costs of nuclear have been puffed up by those who fear it mindlessly. The reality is it's cheaper than anything effective or available. Mostly because of the less space and mining operations, but also because they can now recycle the spent cells and the inert material can supplement production lines as a source for raw materials. Really, nuke is a win-win but the fear-mongers () just keep standing in the way.


----------



## Liability

The OP question is a false dichotomy.

What's wrong with a nuclear wind?


----------



## mal

Liability said:


> The OP question is a false dichotomy.
> 
> What's wrong with a nuclear wind?



When I have the Spicy Green @ Dos Chile Verdes...

That's EXACTLY what I get!

Peelin' Muffukin' Paint!



peace...


----------



## JD_2B

mdn2000 said:


> Jd2b, just dumb to be,
> 
> BLAH BLAH FUCKING BLAH...
> 
> 
> I love old crock, he is my best freind, every source he uses is a source that proves old crock is wrong. old crock thinks there is global warming and green energy is the solution
> 
> I say okay, you can have global warming, and I than prove that there is no such thing as "green energy", I do this with the sources old crock provides. Old Crocks sources also show that so called green energy is very expensive extremely polluting and unreliable.



You are a damned stupid sonof a bitch if you think that sustainable energy is a waste of energy to make. 

That is just retarded.. Now I am sure that, by your description, you are tall, hot, and a fine good piece of ass, but still- that is just retarded. 

You do realize that your claims of it costing so much energy to produce these contraptions, does not AT ALL account for the fact that the energy generated over the lifetime of say, a wind turbine, lol, will absolutely diminish the relatively meager amount of energy that it took to originally build, do you not?

Stop sucking all of the intelligence out of the discussion, and out of Old Crock's ego, and try for a minute to just think about it. MMMKAY???

A recycling plant clearly takes a massive amount of power to create. OK. Gotcha. BUT it also tremendously reduces the amount of land space that we fill up by dumping garbage out. Also, over the lifetime of a recycling center in San Diego, the landfill's methane gases are captured and reused to power 90% of the recycling plant. That alone is 10 Megawatts. 

Miramar Landfill | Environmental Services

You just CANT say that these implementations of sustained energy usage is somehow harmful to the environment. It is NOT making you look hot.. its only showing us all how dumb you are. 

OK Heres another example.. A miniature wind turbine can be bought for 400 dollars. It is about 36 inches tall and can light a whole house, year round, for years to come. Are you seriously going to tell me that this little "turbine baby" is impacting the environment in a negative way, now?? 

Get REAL. And stop calling everyone names.. and don't compare me to your ex fiance. I would have dumped your ass too.


----------



## mdn2000

JD_2B said:


> mdn2000 said:
> 
> 
> 
> Jd2b, just dumb to be,
> 
> BLAH BLAH FUCKING BLAH...
> 
> 
> I love old crock, he is my best freind, every source he uses is a source that proves old crock is wrong. old crock thinks there is global warming and green energy is the solution
> 
> I say okay, you can have global warming, and I than prove that there is no such thing as "green energy", I do this with the sources old crock provides. Old Crocks sources also show that so called green energy is very expensive extremely polluting and unreliable.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> You are a damned stupid sonof a bitch if you think that sustainable energy is a waste of energy to make.
> 
> That is just retarded.. Now I am sure that, by your description, you are tall, hot, and a fine good piece of ass, but still- that is just retarded.
> 
> You do realize that your claims of it costing so much energy to produce these contraptions, does not AT ALL account for the fact that the energy generated over the lifetime of say, a wind turbine, lol, will absolutely diminish the relatively meager amount of energy that it took to originally build, do you not?
> 
> Stop sucking all of the intelligence out of the discussion, and out of Old Crock's ego, and try for a minute to just think about it. MMMKAY???
> 
> A recycling plant clearly takes a massive amount of power to create. OK. Gotcha. BUT it also tremendously reduces the amount of land space that we fill up by dumping garbage out. Also, over the lifetime of a recycling center in San Diego, the landfill's methane gases are captured and reused to power 90% of the recycling plant. That alone is 10 Megawatts.
> 
> Miramar Landfill | Environmental Services
> 
> You just CANT say that these implementations of sustained energy usage is somehow harmful to the environment. It is NOT making you look hot.. its only showing us all how dumb you are.
> 
> OK Heres another example.. A miniature wind turbine can be bought for 400 dollars. It is about 36 inches tall and can light a whole house, year round, for years to come. Are you seriously going to tell me that this little "turbine baby" is impacting the environment in a negative way, now??
> 
> Get REAL. And stop calling everyone names.. and don't compare me to your ex fiance. I would have dumped your ass too.
Click to expand...


no it wont, windmills are a negative, period, you my little vixen, must look into what types of energy and how much of each type is required to make one ton of fiberglass. Start a google search, you will find it painfully difficult to find such a simple answer. 

270 tons of fiberglass for one windmill if you look at Vespa which is the number one windmill in America. That is the weight of just the fiberglass, further when the wind does not blow an engine is required to spin the blades, thats so birds dont land on the blades, shit on the blades, and unbalance the tons and tons and tons of fiberglass, too much eagle shit destroys the balance and hence destroys the contraption.

You want to talk about intelligence in the conversation, despite our little tit for tat flames of one another, you have shown intelligence, Old Crock has not.

Imagine claiming Old Crock claiming to work in a steel foundry, stating it is pure electric, posting a source to support your claim, and that source says natural gas is used. That is pretty dumb no matter who you are.


----------



## PLYMCO_PILGRIM

Old Rocks said:


> PLYMCO_PILGRIM said:
> 
> 
> 
> I want to make a comment based purely off the question in the title,  Wind or Nuclear?
> 
> Why not both?  .
> 
> 
> 
> 
> No reason at all. In fact, I have advocated that. The only reason that nuclear would be in a lessor role is because it is damned expensive power compared to wind and geothermal, at present.
Click to expand...


Finally we agree on something 

Someone else was claiming wind is way too expensive but I still think we should persue both, in addition to solar power.


----------



## mdn2000

PLYMCO_PILGRIM said:


> Old Rocks said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> PLYMCO_PILGRIM said:
> 
> 
> 
> I want to make a comment based purely off the question in the title,  Wind or Nuclear?
> 
> Why not both?  .
> 
> 
> 
> 
> No reason at all. In fact, I have advocated that. The only reason that nuclear would be in a lessor role is because it is damned expensive power compared to wind and geothermal, at present.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Finally we agree on something
> 
> Someone else was claiming wind is way too expensive but I still think we should persue both, in addition to solar power.
Click to expand...


Wind is too expensive, I said that, one ton of fiberglass, how much energy and what types does it take? That is the answer, you cannot use wind power to make steel, steel needed to make windmills, so how is a windmill renewable. 

The cost, when compared to nuclear power is atronomical, that is being seen across the country right now, we shut down 35 nuclear plants, some are being replaced, some being replaced by wind power, this is why electrical rates are over 300$ a month in Los Angeles, add your water bill that is direct cost of electricity and people are paying more than 400$ for electricity.

This is nothing more than Marxism, the government dictating the type of power that will be used, in Michigan the democrat governor states she will remake the industry in Michigan to be a green industry, Marxist dictate what jobs are created.

Green Energy is too expensive, the cost of everything is the price of going green, from expensive food, to lack of jobs, to education, to the cost of electricity, the high price is a direct cost of the Marxist dictating green.


----------



## Intense

One thing We rarely here talked about in reference to Alternative is, Cost of upkeep, maintenance, and repair, not to mention life expectancy. There are breakthroughs, and that is good, still We are being at best, misinformed, and at worst, out right lied to. Solar Cells for example, vary widely in value, by type. Let the buyer beware.


----------



## Andrew2382

In Massachusetts, USA, the 130-turbine Cape Wind project will generate 
over 400 megawatts of electricity - enough for 400,000 homes. Thats 130 wind turbines

The Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station, commonly referred to as Palo Verde Power Plant is a nuclear power plant located in Tonopah, Arizona, about 45 miles (80 km) west of central Phoenix, and is currently the largest nuclear generation facility in the United States, averaging over 3.2 gigawatts (GW) of electrical power production in 2003[1] to serve approximately 4 million people. Arizona Public Service. 

Currently we consume the equivalent of 19,343 billion KWh of total energy in this country (if you convert all the petroleum and natural gas to its electric energy equivalent using 2006 data). That means we need to produce 437 billion KWh of new energy each year. That is equivalent to 50 Giga Watts (GW) of new electric production capacity.

Let's put this into perspective. This is equivalent to:

* Building 50 new nuclear plants each year.
* Building 40,000 3 Mega Watt (MW) wind generators each year.
* Installing 150 GW of solar cells.

(I am assuming that wind production is 40% or max capacity and that solar cells produce power for 8 hours per day at rated capacity.)

Let's look at the cost of the three alternatives:

* Nuclear - $5 billion per plant (1 GW) = $250 billion per year
* Wind - $7.5 billion per 1 GW rated capacity = $375 billion per year
* Solar - $10.5 billion per 1 GW rated capacity = $525 billion per year


----------



## Old Rocks

mdn2000 said:


> JD_2B said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> mdn2000 said:
> 
> 
> 
> Jd2b, just dumb to be,
> 
> BLAH BLAH FUCKING BLAH...
> 
> 
> I love old crock, he is my best freind, every source he uses is a source that proves old crock is wrong. old crock thinks there is global warming and green energy is the solution
> 
> I say okay, you can have global warming, and I than prove that there is no such thing as "green energy", I do this with the sources old crock provides. Old Crocks sources also show that so called green energy is very expensive extremely polluting and unreliable.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> You are a damned stupid sonof a bitch if you think that sustainable energy is a waste of energy to make.
> 
> That is just retarded.. Now I am sure that, by your description, you are tall, hot, and a fine good piece of ass, but still- that is just retarded.
> 
> You do realize that your claims of it costing so much energy to produce these contraptions, does not AT ALL account for the fact that the energy generated over the lifetime of say, a wind turbine, lol, will absolutely diminish the relatively meager amount of energy that it took to originally build, do you not?
> 
> Stop sucking all of the intelligence out of the discussion, and out of Old Crock's ego, and try for a minute to just think about it. MMMKAY???
> 
> A recycling plant clearly takes a massive amount of power to create. OK. Gotcha. BUT it also tremendously reduces the amount of land space that we fill up by dumping garbage out. Also, over the lifetime of a recycling center in San Diego, the landfill's methane gases are captured and reused to power 90% of the recycling plant. That alone is 10 Megawatts.
> 
> Miramar Landfill | Environmental Services
> 
> You just CANT say that these implementations of sustained energy usage is somehow harmful to the environment. It is NOT making you look hot.. its only showing us all how dumb you are.
> 
> OK Heres another example.. A miniature wind turbine can be bought for 400 dollars. It is about 36 inches tall and can light a whole house, year round, for years to come. Are you seriously going to tell me that this little "turbine baby" is impacting the environment in a negative way, now??
> 
> Get REAL. And stop calling everyone names.. and don't compare me to your ex fiance. I would have dumped your ass too.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> no it wont, windmills are a negative, period, you my little vixen, must look into what types of energy and how much of each type is required to make one ton of fiberglass. Start a google search, you will find it painfully difficult to find such a simple answer.
> 
> 270 tons of fiberglass for one windmill if you look at Vespa which is the number one windmill in America. That is the weight of just the fiberglass, further when the wind does not blow an engine is required to spin the blades, thats so birds dont land on the blades, shit on the blades, and unbalance the tons and tons and tons of fiberglass, too much eagle shit destroys the balance and hence destroys the contraption.
> 
> You want to talk about intelligence in the conversation, despite our little tit for tat flames of one another, you have shown intelligence, Old Crock has not.
> 
> Imagine claiming Old Crock claiming to work in a steel foundry, stating it is pure electric, posting a source to support your claim, and that source says natural gas is used. That is pretty dumb no matter who you are.
Click to expand...


Mdn, you dumb ass, they do not spin the blades on a windless day. The mills just set there with blades not moving. 

No, Mdn, dear old asshole, I did not claim that natural gas was not used in a steel mill. Someone stated that coke had to be used to smelt steel and iron. I pointed out that almost all modern mills use electricity to smelt the steel and iron. And I work in a steel mill, not a foundry.

And windmills are doing very well for themselves. In fact, the only thing holding back the installation of more mill is the production rate of the turbines. And, of course, the present credit crunch, which is coming to an end as we post. Here in Oregon, we see many of them put in every day. The windmills will provide over 10% of our electricity in the very near future. They are, at present, supplying about 7%, up from 5.4% before July.


----------



## Old Rocks

*Andrew, you have brought up some good points concerning the cost of nuclear. If we could build for the prices that France and Japan builds, perhaps nuclear would be price competative. However, our experiance here in the US is that the people that have built our nuclear plants have gone far, far over budget. The article below is a good summery of what is happening at present.

From what we have done here in Oregon, your prices for wind are a bit high. However, off coast installations are significantly higher. Also, many of the present large units are 5 mw units.*



Nuclear Power Education - Cost of Nuclear Power.

Construction Costs 
Construction costs are very difficult to quantify but dominate the cost of Nuclear Power. The main difficulty is that third generation power plants now proposed are claimed to be both substantially cheaper and faster to construct than the second generation power plants now in operation throughout the world. The Nuclear Industry says its learned the lessons of economy-of-volume demonstrated by the French Nuclear Program, and that these will be employed for the new power plants. Westinghouse claims its Advanced PWR reactor, the AP1000, will cost USD $1400 per KW for the first reactor and fall to USD $1000 per KW for subsequent reactors. They also claim these will be ready for electricity production 3 years after first pouring concrete. A more technical description is here. Proponents of the CANDU ACR and Gas Cooled pebble bed reactors make similar or stronger claims. However the first wave of new plants in the USA are expected to cost over $3500 per KW of capacity. Additional costs increase the price even more. 

The General Electric ABWR was the first third generation power plant approved. The first two ABWR's were commissioned in Japan in 1996 and 1997. These took just over 3 years to construct and were completed on budget. Their construction costs were around $2000 per KW. Two additional ABWR's are being constructed in Taiwan. However these have faced unexpected delays and are now at least 2 years behind schedule. 

Meanwhile the Chinese Nuclear Power Industry has won contracts to build new plants of their own design at capital costs reported to be $1500 per KW and $1300 per KW at sites in South-East and North-East China. If completed on budget these facilities will be formidable competitors to the Western Nuclear Power Industry. 

Given the history of Nuclear Plant construction in the U.S.A., the financial industry sees the construction of the new generation of reactors as a risky investment and demands a premium on capital lent for the purpose. The Energy Bill recently passed by the US Congress assumes this risk and provides production credits of 1.8 cents per KW-Hr for the first 3 years of operation. This subsidy is equivalent to what is paid to Wind Power companies and is designed to encourage new nuclear reactor construction in the USA. 

If the AP1000 lives up to its promises of $1000 per KW construction cost and 3 year construction time, it will provide cheaper electricity than any other Fossil Fuel based generating facility, including Australian Coal power, even with no sequestration charges. This promise appears to have been unfulfilled. The cost of the first AP1000 is expected to be over $3500 per KW.


----------



## Old Rocks

mdn2000 said:


> PLYMCO_PILGRIM said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Old Rocks said:
> 
> 
> 
> No reason at all. In fact, I have advocated that. The only reason that nuclear would be in a lessor role is because it is damned expensive power compared to wind and geothermal, at present.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Finally we agree on something
> 
> Someone else was claiming wind is way too expensive but I still think we should persue both, in addition to solar power.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Wind is too expensive, I said that, one ton of fiberglass, how much energy and what types does it take? That is the answer, you cannot use wind power to make steel, steel needed to make windmills, so how is a windmill renewable.
> 
> The cost, when compared to nuclear power is atronomical, that is being seen across the country right now, we shut down 35 nuclear plants, some are being replaced, some being replaced by wind power, this is why electrical rates are over 300$ a month in Los Angeles, add your water bill that is direct cost of electricity and people are paying more than 400$ for electricity.
> 
> This is nothing more than Marxism, the government dictating the type of power that will be used, in Michigan the democrat governor states she will remake the industry in Michigan to be a green industry, Marxist dictate what jobs are created.
> 
> Green Energy is too expensive, the cost of everything is the price of going green, from expensive food, to lack of jobs, to education, to the cost of electricity, the high price is a direct cost of the Marxist dictating green.
Click to expand...


Electricity does not care how it is generated or to what use it is put to. So could electricity from windmills smelt steel? After all, we have already, with just the units we have on line, generated, for one hour on a particulary windy day, enough electricity from our windmill farms to supply both Seattle and Portland.   

Any nuclear plants that are being shut down are being shut down for other reasons than Windmills.

And get off the Marxist kick. It makes you look even dumber.


----------



## Old Rocks

*Here are some figures from the wind industry. Like the nuclear site, they also point out the past failures.*


http://www.awea.org/faq/cost.html

Using typical gas project financing terms instead, the cost also drops even if the developer owns the project, to 3.69 cents/kWh. Costs in all cases assumed use of the federal production tax credit.

Wiser and Kahn set out to examine the proposition, long advanced by members of the wind industry, that wind projects would be cheaper if they could take advantage of the lower-cost financing available to large electric utilities. In general, they said, that appears to be true, although they caution that utility investment analysis methods may not be completely accurate and may overstate the savings that could be attained.

Their comparison is based on a 50-MW wind farm with an installed cost of $1,000/kW, a 30% capacity factor, and operations and maintenance (O&M) expenses of 0.65 cents/kWh.


----------



## Old Rocks

Intense said:


> One thing We rarely here talked about in reference to Alternative is, Cost of upkeep, maintenance, and repair, not to mention life expectancy. There are breakthroughs, and that is good, still We are being at best, misinformed, and at worst, out right lied to. Solar Cells for example, vary widely in value, by type. Let the buyer beware.



Do you think this has not been the case in nuclear?

What is "whoops" and how did it come to refer to one of the biggest municipal bond defaults in history?


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


The Washington Public Power Supply System (WPPSS) was formed in the 1950s to make certain that the Pacific Northwest had a constant source of electrical power. The Packwood Lake Dam was the first project undertaken by the WPPSS, and ran seven months past the completion date; this first project by WPPSS foreshadowed its future incompetence in public works. 

The idea to use clean, cheap nuclear power became popular in the 1960s and WPPSS saw an opportunity to meet growing consumption demands in the Northwest. It planned a system of five nuclear power plants that would be financed by a public issue of bonds and repaid with sales from the plants. The bonds were issued, but the robust sales that WPPSS had intended never materialized. 

The biggest problems were endemic cost overruns, sloppy management and outright idiocy. An example of WPPSS's problems involved a pipe hanger, essentially a bracket to hold pipes in place, that was redesigned and rebuilt no less than 17 times, costing more with each revision. Contractors, long accustomed to government efficiency, overcharged and under-delivered in almost every category. This caused safety inspectors to call for more stringent rules, which were implemented mid-construction by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. As a result of the tougher regulations, much of what had been built needed to be torn down and redesigned.   

At the beginning of the 1980s, only of the five WPPSS plants was nearing completion. By this time, nuclear power had been reexamined and was found to not be as clean as was originally thought. Some cities boycotted nuclear power from the plants before the facilities were even up and running. The cost overruns reached the point where more than $24 billion would be required to complete the work, but recouping funds would be a tricky matter because of less-than-promising sales. Construction halted on all but the near-completed second plant; the first plant was once again being redesigned. WPPSS was forced to default on $2.25 billion worth of municipal bonds.


----------



## JD_2B

Andrew2382 said:


> In Massachusetts, USA, the 130-turbine Cape Wind project will generate
> over 400 megawatts of electricity - enough for 400,000 homes. Thats 130 wind turbines
> 
> The Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station, commonly referred to as Palo Verde Power Plant is a nuclear power plant located in Tonopah, Arizona, about 45 miles (80 km) west of central Phoenix, and is currently the largest nuclear generation facility in the United States, averaging over 3.2 gigawatts (GW) of electrical power production in 2003[1] to serve approximately 4 million people. Arizona Public Service.
> 
> Currently we consume the equivalent of 19,343 billion KWh of total energy in this country (if you convert all the petroleum and natural gas to its electric energy equivalent using 2006 data). That means we need to produce 437 billion KWh of new energy each year. That is equivalent to 50 Giga Watts (GW) of new electric production capacity.
> 
> Let's put this into perspective. This is equivalent to:
> 
> * Building 50 new nuclear plants each year.
> * Building 40,000 3 Mega Watt (MW) wind generators each year.
> * Installing 150 GW of solar cells.
> 
> (I am assuming that wind production is 40% or max capacity and that solar cells produce power for 8 hours per day at rated capacity.)
> 
> Let's look at the cost of the three alternatives:
> 
> * Nuclear - $5 billion per plant (1 GW) = $250 billion per year
> * Wind - $7.5 billion per 1 GW rated capacity = $375 billion per year
> * Solar - $10.5 billion per 1 GW rated capacity = $525 billion per year




Actually, wind only costs abut 3 billion dollars per one GW of actual wind harvested energy. Technically, it is only said to be one billion per one GW, but since they only run at about 30% capacity, the cost is tripled.

Michael Hammond, Are wind farms just hot air.?

Wind Power: Can We Get to 300 GW by 2030?

A nuclear power plant costs between 4 and 10 billion per one GW.. 

Meltdown or Mother Lode: The New Truth about Nuclear Power, Part 3

The Nuclear Green Revolution: Texas Wind not Competitive with Nuclear

Solar kinda sucks.. I am not a fan of going big with solar..  Actually, I think that the UK is going a little overboard with the wind thing, even. 

 I would also add in there that since people can also buy their own windmills, for a relatively inexpensive cost now, then the need for the governments to build these wind farms actually decreases dramatically, also, increasing the amount of energy the average home can get from sustainable sources.


----------



## mdn2000

Old Rocks said:


> mdn2000 said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> JD_2B said:
> 
> 
> 
> Mdn, you dumb ass, they do not spin the blades on a windless day. The mills just set there with blades not moving.
> 
> No, Mdn, dear old asshole, I did not claim that natural gas was not used in a steel mill. Someone stated that coke had to be used to smelt steel and iron. I pointed out that almost all modern mills use electricity to smelt the steel and iron. And I work in a steel mill, not a foundry.
> .
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Old Rocks said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> mdn2000 said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Old Rocks said:
> 
> 
> 
> I have worked in two steel mills. Both were fired with electricity. In fact, most melting of the primary source, ore or scrap, or any combination of those, are done in electric furnaces today.
> 
> http://www.stahlwerk-thueringen.de/files/File/2704_besu_engl.pdf
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> Now to quote Old Crock's source, showing once again that Old Crock never reads his own sources which shows Old Crock has knows nothing about energy and even less about the fairy tale "green energy".
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The smelting shop
> The electric arc furnace is charged with two containers of recycled steel per cycle; the
> furnace needs approx. 50 minutes to convert this material into 120 metric tons of
> molten steel. The furnace works on the direct current electric arc furnace principle. An
> electric arc is generated between a graphite electrode with a diameter of 750 mm and
> the bottom of the furnace which functions as the anode. This energy, supplemented by
> natural gas/oxygen burners, is used to smelt the scrap
> 
> Before rolling, the beam blanks - both our own as well as those from external suppliers
> - are placed in a natural gas fired pusher furnace where they are heated to a temperature
> of approximately 1,200 °C.
> 
> 
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> So there you have it, no iron smelting plant exists that uses only electricity, hence the fairy tale of green energy being sustainable in the future is pure fantasy.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Stupid ass, the steel is smelted with electricy, Doooodeeee....... said nothing at all about the reheat process that is done before the rolling.
> 
> The slabs are created using electricity, the slabs are later put into a reheat furnace to be heated to the correct rolling temperature for the rolling process.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Nice way to walk backwards there Old Crock, you stated in response to me that steel was made with electricity, we were speaking of windmills, you posted a source proving this, you claimed no gas was needed, your source proved you wrong.
> 
> Click to expand...
Click to expand...


----------



## mdn2000

JD_2B said:


> Andrew2382 said:
> 
> 
> 
> In Massachusetts, USA, the 130-turbine Cape Wind project will generate
> over 400 megawatts of electricity - enough for 400,000 homes. Thats 130 wind turbines
> 
> The Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station, commonly referred to as Palo Verde Power Plant is a nuclear power plant located in Tonopah, Arizona, about 45 miles (80 km) west of central Phoenix, and is currently the largest nuclear generation facility in the United States, averaging over 3.2 gigawatts (GW) of electrical power production in 2003[1] to serve approximately 4 million people. Arizona Public Service.
> 
> Currently we consume the equivalent of 19,343 billion KWh of total energy in this country (if you convert all the petroleum and natural gas to its electric energy equivalent using 2006 data). That means we need to produce 437 billion KWh of new energy each year. That is equivalent to 50 Giga Watts (GW) of new electric production capacity.
> 
> Let's put this into perspective. This is equivalent to:
> 
> * Building 50 new nuclear plants each year.
> * Building 40,000 3 Mega Watt (MW) wind generators each year.
> * Installing 150 GW of solar cells.
> 
> (I am assuming that wind production is 40% or max capacity and that solar cells produce power for 8 hours per day at rated capacity.)
> 
> Let's look at the cost of the three alternatives:
> 
> * Nuclear - $5 billion per plant (1 GW) = $250 billion per year
> * Wind - $7.5 billion per 1 GW rated capacity = $375 billion per year
> * Solar - $10.5 billion per 1 GW rated capacity = $525 billion per year
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Actually, wind only costs abut 3 billion dollars per one GW of actual wind harvested energy. Technically, it is only said to be one billion per one GW, but since they only run at about 30% capacity, the cost is tripled.
> 
> Michael Hammond, Are wind farms just hot air.?
> 
> Wind Power: Can We Get to 300 GW by 2030?
> 
> A nuclear power plant costs between 4 and 10 billion per one GW..
> 
> Meltdown or Mother Lode: The New Truth about Nuclear Power, Part 3
> 
> The Nuclear Green Revolution: Texas Wind not Competitive with Nuclear
> 
> Solar kinda sucks.. I am not a fan of going big with solar..  Actually, I think that the UK is going a little overboard with the wind thing, even.
> 
> I would also add in there that since people can also buy their own windmills, for a relatively inexpensive cost now, then the need for the governments to build these wind farms actually decreases dramatically, also, increasing the amount of energy the average home can get from sustainable sources.
Click to expand...


If a person could by a windmill and run the house I am all for it. Nothing wrong with that. 

I have posted specifically addressing commercial power sources. 

Nuclear is so unbelievable, the power is astronomical, all the wind power that exsits today can not match a third of the power at Palo Verde, speaking of Palo Verde it should be noted that there are three power plants that make up this facility, each rated a bit over 1 gigawatt, added up they equal three. 

Solar, nobody addresses the water used by solar, a tremendous amount of water is needed at a solar farm. How much does it cost to pump all that water in the middle of the desert, more electricity than the solar farm produces.

Nukes are the way to go, AP1000 by westinghouse is the future, that is why China is buying them. Actually China is increasing its electrical capacity and it aint wind, its nuke and hydro as well as coal, oil, and gas. China needs all the energy it can get to make fiberglass for windmills, 270 tons for one windmill. 270,000,000 tons of fiberglass just in Oregon, talk about increasing C02. Oregon alone is destroying the world.


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