T. Boone Pickens' Energy Plan

[dilloduck]

It's just plain lost for the most part, I assume. Like paying a guy to dig a pit one day, and fill it the next. You produce something, but it's totally useless.

I suspect the numbers may be slightly fuzzy; for example the company I work for machines big huge chunks of metal for use in the oil pipelines. When the power dies, the CNC machines end up gouging the parts and they're scrapped. But the metal can be recycled so it's not a 100% loss, yeah. On the other hand, it still takes plenty of energy to melt that scrap part down again. Energy that could have gone to something more productive.

Just meditate on the fact you recycle and forget all about those ugly realities !

 

[Charles_Main]

I could be wrong, but something about nuclear feels wrong to me.

It could be because there has been a long running campaign to demonize Nuclear power lead mainly by environmentalists. Fact is there has only been one MAJOR nuclear accident ever, and that was in Russia. There have been some smaller scares but nothing to major. 3 mile island for example exposed the average person who was near to the same amount of radiation as about 4 medical xrays.

Now there is the issue of what to do with the waste, but much of that can be reprocessed and I think we are smart enough to come up with a way to deal with the rest. Maybe we could bury it on Bush's ranch in Crawford

 

[Ravi]

It could be because there has been a long running campaign to demonize Nuclear power lead mainly by environmentalists. Fact is there has only been one MAJOR nuclear accident ever, and that was in Russia. There have been some smaller scares but nothing to major. 3 mile island for example exposed the average person who was near to the same amount of radiation as about 4 medical xrays.

Now there is the issue of what to do with the waste, but much of that can be reprocessed and I think we are smart enough to come up with a way to deal with the rest. Maybe we could bury it on Bush's ranch in Crawford

That would be apt, lol.

Do you have a nuclear power plant by you? I live within 50 miles of two, and though as far as I know we haven't had any accidents, they were used to scare the crap out of us by our darling government as potential targets for terrorist attacks.

 

[dilloduck]

It could be because there has been a long running campaign to demonize Nuclear power lead mainly by environmentalists. Fact is there has only been one MAJOR nuclear accident ever, and that was in Russia. There have been some smaller scares but nothing to major. 3 mile island for example exposed the average person who was near to the same amount of radiation as about 4 medical xrays.

Now there is the issue of what to do with the waste, but much of that can be reprocessed and I think we are smart enough to come up with a way to deal with the rest. Maybe we could bury it on Bush's ranch in Crawford

no way--you make it, you bury it.

 

[Charles_Main]

That would be apt, lol.

Do you have a nuclear power plant by you? I live within 50 miles of two, and though as far as I know we haven't had any accidents, they were used to scare the crap out of us by our darling government as potential targets for terrorist attacks.

I had one with in 30 miles(big rock nuclear power plant), but it closed about 5 years ago. It was a big deal when they moved the fuel rods out, I believe they sold them to Canada who reprocessed them to reuse them. When I lived in Florida I lived less than 20 miles from a huge double stack one.

I am aware they were used to scare us, but the fact is those things are built pretty damn tough, I am not so sure even a jet liner hitting one would cause a major melt down or anything.

 

[Ravi]

I had one with in 30 miles(big rock nuclear power plant), but it closed about 5 years ago. When I lived in Florida I lived less than 20 miles from a huge double stack one.

I am aware they were used to scare us, but the fact is those things are built pretty damn tough, I am not so sure even a jet liner hitting one would cause a major melt down or anything.

I don't know. One of my brothers worked at one, and the horror stories about the "close" accidents were kind of scary.

 

[Chris]

It could be because there has been a long running campaign to demonize Nuclear power lead mainly by environmentalists. Fact is there has only been one MAJOR nuclear accident ever, and that was in Russia. There have been some smaller scares but nothing to major. 3 mile island for example exposed the average person who was near to the same amount of radiation as about 4 medical xrays.

Now there is the issue of what to do with the waste, but much of that can be reprocessed and I think we are smart enough to come up with a way to deal with the rest. Maybe we could bury it on Bush's ranch in Crawford

Radioactive waste - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[dilloduck]

I don't know. One of my brothers worked at one, and the horror stories about the "close" accidents were kind of scary.

Calm down---you have a much better chance getting hit by a car.

 

[Ravi]

Calm down---you have a much better chance getting hit by a car.

Probably. And if I object to swimming in a river with alligators, I get told I'll be more likely to die on I-95 than eaten by a gator.

But my choice to drive on I-95 is extremely hard to avoid. The river with the gators and the nuclear plant are not.

 

[Charles_Main]

I don't know. One of my brothers worked at one, and the horror stories about the "close" accidents were kind of scary.

Link please, no just kidding

I can see how that would be scary, but I would point out we have about 100 plants in operation today. seems like if near accidents happened often, we would have had more Real accidents by know, but who knows.

Have you ever read about that thing they are trying to build in the UK.

I keep forgetting what it is called, but basically as I understand it, it uses plasma, to heat and pressurize hydrogen inside a chamber to the point that is actually creates a small version of a star inside the chamber.

The scientists working on it say it will take them 50 years and Trillions of dollars to perfect, but that when they do it will solve all our energy problems, Producing vast amounts of nearly free, totally clean, and they say safe energy.

It is a self sustaining process, meaning once they start it, it produces all the power it needs to keep going, and plenty extra to power us.

I will have to look it up again, because I can't remember the name, but If it is really viable, I think we should organize a massive international effort to get if going sooner than 50 years from now.

 

[Ravi]

lol, there's a movie about it with Val Kilmer called The Saint.

 

[Charles_Main]

lol, there's a movie about it with Val Kilmer called The Saint.

you mean this movie

Movie Habit: Review of The Saint (1997), **

I don't think that movie was about what I am talking about judging by what the review says, but I could be wrong.

 

[Foxfyre]

Nuclear is quite likely the answer to the dramatically increasing demand for energy as third world countries join the rest of us. And as for safety, you could work in a nuclear plant or live in the shadow of one at considerably less risk than you sustain just living your evreyday life.

Today's nuclear power technology, by any and every measure, provides the best safety performance and lowest risk of workplace accidents among all commonly utilized power sources. Nuclear power plants are not at risk from terrorist attacks: They do not offer exponential damage opportunities and they are the most fortified installations in the nation.

It is safe to say neither the general public nor government officials understand many or any of these facts. Their lack of understanding is primarily the result of an extremely successful fear campaign waged by anti-nuclear activists 30 years ago. In addition, the news media has inaccurately reported accidents and mishaps at nuclear power plants.


Our Radioactive World

We live in a radioactive world--this has been true since the beginning of time. Background radiation in the natural environment was much greater in the past than it is today, as all nuclear material decays naturally. The world is less radioactive today than at any time in the past ... and man has evolved and prospered through it all.

Each day we are exposed to naturally occurring radiation from rocks in the Earth's crust, outer space, our atmosphere, radon gas, smoking, and even each others' bodies. Every plane flight we take into the upper atmosphere increases our exposure to radiation.

In the end, it appears we will voluntarily accept all of this radiation but will resist any manmade radiation--no matter how harmless--to which we are exposed.


Radiation Sources

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) calculated in 2003 the primary sources of radiation in daily life:

Radon radiation in average household 200 millirems
Living a mile high in Denver 81 millirems
Natural radiation in the human body 39 millirems
Atmospheric radiation from outer space 31 millirems
Mammogram 30 millirems
Chest x-ray 10 millirems
I did not list the highest and lowest sources of radiation to which we are regularly exposed. The highest is the 1,400 millirems received by a person undergoing medical tests for gastrointestinal problems. The lowest is the less than one millirem experienced by a person living near a nuclear power plant.

The average U.S. citizen receives 360 millirems per year according to EPA, from a combination of the sources listed above.


Energy Risks

In 1998 a Swiss study looked at 13,914 severe accidents, including 4,290 in the energy industry, between 1969 and 1996. This included both Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. Even including those two highly publicized incidents, the study determined that among conventional energy sources--coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear--nuclear power was by far the safest.

The second safest power source, natural gas, has a fatality rate 10 times higher than nuclear power. The Swiss report, "Comprehensive Assessment of Energy Systems Severe Accidents," published by the Paul Scherrer Institute in 2003, concluded that in the production of a full year of a trillion watts (terawatt-year) of energy--which might require many years to produce, as all of Canada takes 15 years to generate a terawatt-year--fatalities expected from the various potential energy sources are:

Nuclear 8 fatalities
Natural Gas 85 fatalities
Coal 342 fatalities
Oil 418 fatalities
My friend and colleague Dr. Bernard Cohen of the University of Pittsburgh pioneered the concept of risk as equated to lost life expectancy as a result of human activities. For instance, one can take all the deaths resulting from automobile accidents in America and, based on a life expectancy of 70 years, calculate the lost years of life, divide it by the driving population, and get the lost life expectancy due to the automobile.

On this basis Cohen compared the relative risk of nuclear power to other activities. He used an increased risk of premature death of one chance in a million as a standard. His calculations indicate that if one lived at the boundary of a nuclear power plant for five years, there would be an increased risk of premature death from nuclear radiation of one in a million. That risk would decline significantly as one moved further away from the plant.

But Cohen found the very same risk of premature death occurs to the individual who:


rides 10 miles on a bicycle;

rides 300 miles in an automobile;

rides 1,000 miles in an airplane; or

lives two months in Denver.


Three Mile Myth

Any discussion of nuclear power safety inevitably turns to Three Mile Island, considered the worst--and only--nuclear power failure in the United States. Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) addressed Three Mile in his outstanding 2004 book, A Brighter Tomorrow: Fulfilling the Promise of Nuclear Energy:

"... few realize that even though 90 percent of the fuel rods ruptured, the accident was a non-event from a radiation standpoint. The maximum exposure to the nearest member of the public was little more than a third of the [Nuclear Regulatory Commission's] annual limit for the public. And no worker exceeded the commission's current annual limit for occupational exposure."

Domenici also recounts the amazing health record for sailors living on nuclear submarines during the past 50 years. "In the Navy's nuclear submarines, the sailors who live and work within yards of operating reactors receive less whole body radiation while underway than while at home and exposed to natural background radiation."


Safe Technology

Polls show the public accepts far greater risk in their everyday lives, without concern, than the risks they are exposed to with nuclear power. Perhaps some of the remaining unnecessary fears will be assuaged by the next true evolution of reactor design: "pebble bed reactors" that use thousands of ceramic-coated, tennis ball-sized spheres of graphite and uranium.

These reactors are designed so that the chain reaction cannot heat the mass above 1,600 degrees Celsius, at which point the temperature of the mass will fall. The ceramic coat will not melt at temperatures below 2,000 degrees Celsius. Thus no meltdown can occur, making the reactor inherently safe, rather than safe as a result of external safety systems.

Nuclear power plants do not offer an attractive target to terrorists. In 2003, the Electric Power Research Institute performed a simulated air and ground terrorist attack, concluding that no parts of a Boeing 767-400, when crashed into a reactor, would penetrate the containment building or the spent fuel storage pool. As for attack by land, nuclear plants are relatively unattractive targets because of high security and low explosion potential.

While the risk of anything occurring never reaches zero, nuclear safety should not be on any rational person's list of things to lose sleep over.
Analysis: Nuclear Power Is Safest Energy Source, Studies Show - by Jay Lehr - The Heartland Institute

 

[Charles_Main]

"... few realize that even though 90 percent of the fuel rods ruptured, the accident was a non-event from a radiation standpoint. The maximum exposure to the nearest member of the public was little more than a third of the [Nuclear Regulatory Commission's] annual limit for the public. And no worker exceeded the commission's current annual limit for occupational exposure."

yep, the problem is to many people saw the china syndrome and made the mistake that Hollywood was being factually accurate

 

[Chris]

Nuclear power is not needed. It creates a nuclear waste problem. From Wiki....

Radioactive wastes are waste types containing radioactive chemical elements that do not have a practical purpose. They are sometimes the products of nuclear processes, such as nuclear fission. However, industries not directly connected to the nuclear industry can produce large quantities of radioactive waste. It has been estimated, for instance, that the past 20 years the oil-producing endeavors of the United States have accumulated eight million tons of radioactive wastes.[1] The majority of radioactive waste is "low-level waste", meaning it contains low levels of radioactivity per mass or volume. This type of waste often consists of used protective clothing, which is only slightly contaminated but still dangerous in case of radioactive contamination of a human body through ingestion, inhalation, absorption, or injection. In the United States alone, the Department of Energy states that there are "millions of gallons of radioactive waste" as well as "thousands of tons of spent nuclear fuel and material" and also "huge quantities of contaminated soil and water".[2] Despite these copious quantities of waste, the DOE has a goal of cleaning all presently contaminated sites successfully by 2025.[2] The Fernald, Ohio site for example had "31 million pounds of uranium product", "2.5 billion pounds of waste", "2.75 million cubic yards of contaminated soil and debris", and a "223 acre portion of the underlying Great Miami Aquifer had uranium levels above drinking standards".[2] The United States currently has at least 108 sites it currently designates as areas that are contaminated and unusable, sometimes many thousands of acres[3][2] The DOE wishes to try and clean or mitigate many or all by 2025, however the task can be difficult and it acknowledges that some will never be completely remediated, and just in one of these 108 larger designations, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, there were for example at least "167 known contaminant release sites" in one of the three subdivisions of the 37,000-acre (150 km²) site.[2] Some of the U.S. sites were smaller in nature, however, and cleanup issues were simpler to address, and the DOE has successfully completed cleanup, or at least closure, of several sites.[2]

High level waste (HLW) is produced by nuclear reactors. It contains fission products and transuranic elements generated in the reactor core. It is highly radioactive and often thermally hot. LLW and ILW accounts for over 95% of the total radioactivity produced in the process of nuclear electricity generation. The amount of HLW worldwide is currently increasing by about 12,000 metric tons every year, which is the equival to about 100 double-decker busses or a two-story structure built on top of a basketball court.[9]

Transuranic waste (TRUW) as defined by U.S. regulations is, without regard to form or origin, waste that is contaminated with alpha-emitting transuranic radionuclides with half-lives greater than 20 years, and concentrations greater than 100 nCi/g (3.7 MBq/kg), excluding High Level Waste. Elements that have an atomic number greater than uranium are called transuranic ("beyond uranium"). Because of their long half-lives, TRUW is disposed more cautiously than either low level or intermediate level waste. In the U.S. it arises mainly from weapons production, and consists of clothing, tools, rags, residues, debris and other items contaminated with small amounts of radioactive elements (mainly plutonium).

Under U.S. law, TRUW is further categorized into "contact-handled" (CH) and "remote-handled" (RH) on the basis of radiation dose measured at the surface of the waste container. CH TRUW has a surface dose rate not greater than 200 mrem per hour (2 mSv/h), whereas RH TRUW has a surface dose rate of 200 mrem per hour (2 mSv/h) or greater. CH TRUW does not have the very high radioactivity of high level waste, nor its high heat generation, but RH TRUW can be highly radioactive, with surface dose rates up to 1000000 mrem per hour (10000 mSv/h). The United States currently permanently disposes of TRUW generated from nuclear power plants and military facilities at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.[10

[edit] Long term management of waste
The timeframe in question when dealing with radioactive waste ranges from 10,000 to 1,000,000 years[15], according to studies based on the effect of estimated radiation doses[16]. It is worthwhile noting that state of the art only allows geological considerations for such long periods. Researchers suggest that forecasts of health detriment for such periods should be examined critically[17]. Practical studies only consider up to 100 years as far as effective planning[18] and cost evaluations[19] are concerned

 

[Skull Pilot]

There is nothing gimicky about wind power. The Danes already get 20% of their power from wind. Pickens has invested $10 billion dollars of his own money in it, because he is a smart businessman and a patriotic American. But the most important thing he is doing is raising the awareness of the American people to the greatest security threat this country faces. A threat that is a thousand times more important than "terrorism." God bless T. Boone Pickens.

pickens is being disingenuous when he says that solar and wind will reduce our dependence on foreign oil. he knows it, why don't you see it?

His plan is solely for the production of electricity. The vast majority of the US does not heat their homes with electricity, or drive electric cars so do tell me how will his windmills reduce our dependence on foreign oil?

Now if we retool the entire US to run on electricity which means retofitting almost every building in the US with electric heat then we might believe ol' Pickens but that is not what he is saying is it?

 

[india577]

Who cares how much interest this Pickens guy has in natural gas or windmills? If using methods such as natural gas and windmills will give America freedom from the oil dependence of the Middle East as well as not need to "possibly" damage our precious National Parkland in Alaska, then who cares how much interest Pickens has in the methods that are used. It goes without question that someone who is a Billionaire would support the best ideas of the future. As far as I can see Obama wants to tie our hands behind our backs and deliver us on our faces at the feet of the Middle East. Good luck people.

 

[garyd]

The Danes have been working at it for thirty year in a country only slightly larger tha Rhode Islands and they've got all the way up to 20%. Forgive me if I am more than a little bit sceptical about wind farming as a primary power source for the grid. The best step the government can take to get more wind generation up and running is to give individuals a tax write of for adding wind turbines to the roof of their homes. In many areas you could add 20 or 30% to the local power grid in five years without significantly increasing the number of power plants.

 

[Midnight Marauder]

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. Most "alternatives" are actually worse for the environment than fossil fuels.

But.... that's a dirty little secret of the enviroNazi movement.

 

[Care4all]

The Danes have been working at it for thirty year in a country only slightly larger tha Rhode Islands and they've got all the way up to 20%. Forgive me if I am more than a little bit sceptical about wind farming as a primary power source for the grid. The best step the government can take to get more wind generation up and running is to give individuals a tax write of for adding wind turbines to the roof of their homes. In many areas you could add 20 or 30% to the local power grid in five years without significantly increasing the number of power plants.

Just an fyi...

I had read that putting a wind turbine on the roof is a NO NO!

The Shaking of the wind mill blades will deteriorate the sound foundation of your home.

It has to be put on to a very high tower, separate from your home.

the other thing you probably should consider, is that because America is bigger than the netherlands and has a great deal of vast, opened, space....we have more opportunity than the Danes have, regarding the capturing of the power from wind.

Most of the sunbelt, would be better off with Solar power on their homes in my opinion...and those of us in a windy area with alot of open space property, with wind mills.

Care