|
Korean Job Discussion Forums
"The Internet's Meeting Place for ESL/EFL Teachers from Around the World!"
|
| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Should the world's nuclear power industries face greater prohibitions & legislative penalties? |
| Yes |
|
23% |
[ 4 ] |
| No |
|
41% |
[ 7 ] |
| Tough call |
|
5% |
[ 1 ] |
| Don't care |
|
23% |
[ 4 ] |
| Whazah? new-clAy-Hair ... ? yuck yuck yuck |
|
5% |
[ 1 ] |
|
| Total Votes : 17 |
|
| Author |
Message |
keane
Joined: 09 Jul 2007
|
 Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 6:56 pm Post subject: |
 |
|
| OneWayTraffic wrote: |
| A lot of ways to kill people. Why the focus on this one? Ignorance and fear. |
What "focus?" How does joining this thread and pointing out potential problems amount to focusing on nuclear energy? Don't fall in with the C/N-C Faction, like those making foolish comments above.
Further:
| Quote: |
| I've already said it is AN answer, just not THE answer. |
That implies an acceptable level of risk given a somewhat limited use overall.
| Quote: |
| And yes I do have the right to call you ignorant, as you obviously haven't studied the engineering and physics of these things in detail. I'm ignorant of a lot of the finer points myself. |
I am not ignorant on the issues I have raised. You know our storage ability goes no further than tens of years, possibly tens of thousands. This is well short of the lifespans of many of these materials. (Yes, I noted your rebuttals above.)
There are people arguing them the world over, so claiming I am ignorant is painting a very large number of people with a rather negative brush simply because they disagree with you. |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
mindmetoo
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
|
| Posted: Sun Sep 23, 2007 2:11 am Post subject: |
|
|
| keane wrote: |
| There are people arguing them the world over, so claiming I am ignorant is painting a very large number of people with a rather negative brush simply because they disagree with you. |
What is our storage ability of non nuclear chemical wastes? We produce lots of nasty waste poison. But I don't much hear you complaining about the poisons it takes make your computer's motherboard.
You have advanced civilization, you produce lots of very nasty nasty toxins that need disposal, storage. Oh well. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
SPINOZA
Joined: 10 Jun 2005
Location: $eoul
|
| Posted: Sun Sep 23, 2007 4:50 am Post subject: |
|
|
Excellent paper (from 'Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy'): http://www.ecolo.org/base/baseen.htm
| Quote: |
Nuclear waste: One gram of uranium yields about as much energy as a ton of coal or oil. Nuclear waste is correspondingly about a million times smaller than fossil fuel waste, and it is totally confined. In the USA and Sweden, spent fuel is simply stored away. Elsewhere, spent fuel is reprocessed to separate out the 3% of radioactive fission products and heavy elements to be vitrified (cast in glass) for safe and permanent storage. The remaining 97% � plutonium and uranium � is recovered and recycled into new fuel elements to produce more energy. The volume of nuclear waste produced is very small. A typical French family�s use of
nuclear energy over a whole lifetime produces vitrified waste the size of a golf ball. Nuclear waste is to be deposited in deep geological storage sites; it does not enter the biosphere. Its impact on the ecosystems is minimal. Nuclear waste spontaneously decays over time while stable chemical waste, such as arsenic or mercury, lasts forever.
|
Also, I should've responded to this earlier but forgot:
| igotthisguitar wrote: |
OneWayTraffic wrote:
And that's it. It's coal or nuclear. Which one would you rather have and why?
Dude ...
FALSE DILEMMA
|
Not every either/or choice is fallacious. There may be only two reasonable alternatives. A woman either is or is not pregnant, Satan either does or does not exist, etc.
If you claim that an argument involves false dilemma, the burden of proof is on you to show why the dilemma is false. You must identify at least one additional, relevant option which is omitted. You might wanna give matters more thought before spouting cliches like "false dilemma" that you think make you look clever, but in fact, make you look fookin stoopid. 
"Coal or nuclear" is not an either/or fallacy according to our present knowledge and aspirations for the world. We want (a) to continue the industrial way of life and (b) China, India and African nations to develop, which require a much greater amount of energy than we currently use. Solar and wind are incapable of supplying the energy required by an industrial civilization. The entire arable surface of the Earth could not produce enough biofuel to replace present oil consumption.....so whence then was the false dilemma? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
SPINOZA
Joined: 10 Jun 2005
Location: $eoul
|
| Posted: Mon Oct 15, 2007 4:42 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Pluto, elsewhere, wrote: |
With regards to nuclear waste, this is an excerpt from an article I posted a while back:
"Nuclear Dawn" The Economist]
Quote:
As part of a new multinational initiative called the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), however, America's Department of Energy is supporting a type of spent fuel reprocessing which does not separate the plutonium from other highly radioactive materials in the waste, thus making it more resistant to proliferation than traditional reprocessing. This mixture of plutonium and other radioactive elements could then be turned into fuel suitable for use in �fast� reactors. Most reactors in operation today are called �thermal� reactors, because they use a moderator to slow down the neutrons and promote fission. Fast reactors, in contrast, do not employ moderators and use much faster neutrons to produce fissions. So they can consume many of the long-lived radioactive materials that thermal reactors cannot.
AP
They don't build them like they used toThis approach could extract far more energy from a given amount of nuclear fuel while at the same time reducing the volume and toxicity of nuclear waste. Proponents of fast reactors reckon that most of the remaining waste would need to be stored for only a few centuries, perhaps, rather than hundreds of thousands of years, once the most radioactive elements had been separated out. According to the Nuclear Energy Institute, a lobby group in Washington, DC, this could mean that America would need only one nuclear-waste repository. In the long term, a fleet of fast reactors could use nuclear fuel so efficiently that �for all practical purposes, the uranium would be inexhaustible,� says William Hannum, a nuclear physicist who used to work at America's Argonne National Laboratory.
I don't know where we are with fast reactor technology, but this certainly seems promising. Storing nucear waste for 300 years, then reusing it. Certainly beats 20,000 years. |
See also....
| The Management of Nuclear Waste wrote: |
This is one in a series of briefing notes prepared by SONE, in consultation with scientists and engineers, on controversial energy topics. Arguably, none of these has generated more myths and scare stories than nuclear waste. This briefing sets out the facts and puts them in perspective. It explains the nature of nuclear radiation and of the waste created by nuclear operations, how these wastes have been handled for more than 50 years and what now needs to be done to cope with a surprisingly small residue.
In the process, the briefing demonstrates:
1. there is no technical problem in handling various kinds of nuclear waste in the short, medium or long-term.
2. after 500-600 years the radioactivity of the most irradiated waste will have decayed to the relatively harmless levels found in nature in the form of uranium.
3. nuclear operations are responsible for only a tiny part of the radioactivity or radiation we experience in our daily lives � and up to 140 times less than is created by medical treatments.
4. the extent to which nuclear�s so-called �Green� opponents have used nuclear waste as a scare tactic to try to stop the development of nuclear power, even though it emits next to no greenhouse gases; this begs the question as to whether or not they are serious about trying to contain climate change. |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Pluto
Joined: 19 Dec 2006
|
| Posted: Mon Oct 15, 2007 7:38 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Oh well, my guesstimate was off by 200-300 years. It still shouldn't be hard to find a place to store the waste. The amount of waste really isn�t that much from a nuclear power plant; only 3 cubic meters per annum (citation needed.) That is not a lot of waste, compared with coal or gas/oil. Even if the entire grid of North America were powered by nuclear energy, a waste repository of maybe 100 acres should be sufficient. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
ontheway
Joined: 24 Aug 2005
Location: Somewhere under the rainbow...
|
| Posted: Mon Oct 15, 2007 7:54 am Post subject: |
|
|
Coal and Nuclear are not the only choices. This would make it a false dilemma.
Other choices include: solar, wind, hydro, geothermal and conservation, among the large array of options. Most of our consumed energy is wasted due to irrational taxation and subsidization policies, so in a free market, conservation could eliminate the need for most of the energy currently consumed.
The fact that the choice between coal and nuclear is a false dilemma, because they are not the only alternatives and perhaps both could be eliminated from the final mix, does not mean they should be excluded from consideration either.
All options must be included in a rational marketplace solution. Only the free market can sort out the problem in a safe, pollution free manner.
All shortages are a result of socialism.
All pollution is a result of socialism (other than accidents). |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
SPINOZA
Joined: 10 Jun 2005
Location: $eoul
|
| Posted: Wed Oct 17, 2007 12:45 am Post subject: |
|
|
| ontheway wrote: |
Coal and Nuclear are not the only choices. This would make it a false dilemma.
Other choices include: solar, wind, hydro, geothermal and conservation, among the large array of options. |
The burden of proof now that you've made the claim that coal/nuclear is a false dilemma is on you to demonstrate how the large array of options satisfy our requirements of (a) maintaining, expanding our industrial way of life, (b) lifting poor countries out of poverty, (c) meeting vastly expanded demand for energy in the future. Nuclear geeks would be very happy to see any scientific evidence in favor of renewables having anything greater than the extremely minimal role (2% of world electricity compared to 17% nuclear) it has.
Therefore, coal/nuclear is not a false dilemma at the moment, assuming we do not wish to abandon (a), (b) or (c) or all three. Just because other options exist, it doesn't follow that they are to have significance and support the false dilemma argument.
Renewables put into much needed perspective
| Quote: |
| Most of our consumed energy is wasted due to irrational taxation and subsidization policies, so in a free market, conservation could eliminate the need for most of the energy currently consumed. |
How much is most? And we need examples of wasted energy due to the reasons you give.
| Quote: |
| All options must be included in a rational marketplace solution. Only the free market can sort out the problem in a safe, pollution free manner. |
Cooperation between nation states is what we need (and what is happening - see the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership). Free market competition isn't necessarily the best way all the time and tackling climate change, tackling investing trillions into religious oil states who show their gratitude by oppressing their people, calling us Satan and wanting to kill us needs the multinational, intergovernmental cooperation of superior humanity.
| Quote: |
All shortages are a result of socialism.
All pollution is a result of socialism (other than accidents). |
What ever. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
|
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
