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Massive 500 Point Drop @ the Dow
Dartful Dodger:
--- Quote from: Jdurg on September 19, 2008, 10:07:04 am ---Hate to tell you this, but "Chernobyl" is the weakest argument possible when arguing against nuclear power plants. The waste issue is a legitimate argument, but Chernobyl and Three Mile Island (TMI) are not.
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I agree, I'm not afraid of Chernobyl happening in the US.
But I'd be worried about it happening in Iran, but that's a different argument/thread.
JONTHEBOMB:
--- Quote from: Jdurg on September 19, 2008, 10:07:04 am ---Hate to tell you this, but "Chernobyl" is the weakest argument possible when arguing against nuclear power plants. The waste issue is a legitimate argument, but Chernobyl and Three Mile Island (TMI) are not.
--- End quote ---
I must admit nuclear energy is sounding better and better. Right now the only thing that bugs me about nuclear energy is it's not renewable. There is a ton of uranium left to mine, but what happens when we run out? I believe if the world heads down the nuclear power road, we will never look back. Solar, wind and other renewable energy sources will be passed by for cheap nuclear energy. Then slowly nuclear power prices will start to rise, uranium will be harder to find and we will end up in a situation similar to the oil one we are currently in. (Note: I realize we will all be long long long dead by the time we run out of uranium to mine.)
--- Quote from: wiki nuclear power ---Reprocessing can potentially recover up to 95% of the remaining uranium and plutonium in spent nuclear fuel, putting it into new mixed oxide fuel. This produces a reduction in long term radioactivity within the remaining waste, since this is largely short-lived fission products, and reduces its volume by over 90%. Reprocessing of civilian fuel from power reactors is currently done on large scale in Britain, France and (formerly) Russia, soon will be done in China and perhaps India, and is being done on an expanding scale in Japan. The full potential of reprocessing has not been achieved because it requires breeder reactors, which are not yet commercially available. France is generally cited as the most successful reprocessor, but it presently only recycles 28% (by mass) of the yearly fuel use, 7% within France and another 21% in Russia.
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I wonder if France and other countries will decide to buy the breeder reactors when they are available. I would fully support nuclear energy as a temporary solution to the energy crisis if nuclear waste is reprocessed as much as possible and any leftovers are stored properly.
--- Quote from: Jdurg on September 19, 2008, 10:07:04 am ---Christ, I go home every day and sitting in one of my cabinets is 10 grams of pure uranium metal.
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I am curious why you have 10 grams of pure uranium metal in your home. Are you an element collector?
Jdurg:
--- Quote from: JONTHEBOMB on September 19, 2008, 10:34:55 pm ---
--- Quote from: Jdurg on September 19, 2008, 10:07:04 am ---Christ, I go home every day and sitting in one of my cabinets is 10 grams of pure uranium metal.
--- End quote ---
I am curious why you have 10 grams of pure uranium metal in your home. Are you an element collector?
--- End quote ---
Bingo. ;D Hence my avatar. The avatar is of the four allotropes of phosphorus. (From left to right: White, Red, Violet, Black). That image was actually used in a textbook, and I recently sold the rights to an image of sodium metal that I took to another publisher. I've been collecting elements for about ten years now and have a sample of every single non radioactive element in its pure form. I also have the Uranium and Thorium samples, a radium based watch hand, a promethium based watch hand, some thorium oxide powder which generates radon gas in tiny amounts (more helium than radium, but it is a sample of radon), an americium button from a smoke detector, a tritium key chain, and some natural uranium ore which has miniscule amounts of other radioactive elements in there.
The elements have always facinated me because EVERYTHING in the entire universe is made out of them. It's incredible. The collection has taken quite a bit of time to amass and I've also been adding more of each sample and upgrading lower quality samples to better quality ones as funds allow. (I have a 5-gram sample of every alkali metal in their clean, shiny, unoxidized forms). I've got many of my samples uploaded various places on the web. If anybody ever wants to see a photo of one of the samples, just let me know and I'll try and get one for you.
With regards to running out of nuclear fuel, that's not a problem. There are thorium based nuclear reactors (I think many are in use in India due to the massive amount of thorium they have) which actually produce MORE nuclear fuel than they consume! At the end of each fuel cycle, the spent fuel can be removed and then the fissile products can be extracted and re-used. That basically gives us an infinite amount of nuclear material to "burn".
retrometro:
--- Quote from: danny_galaga on September 16, 2008, 01:18:25 am ---not so funny, some of the conservatives in australia want to entice people to ship their radioactive waste here. we are the oldest continent, and the most stable geologically...
edit: and politically stable too, that is an important consideration i guess...
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Why not Australia? what's in the middle of the country anyway?
SithMaster:
--- Quote from: ChadTower on September 19, 2008, 08:41:31 am ---
--- Quote from: SithMaster on September 18, 2008, 08:52:12 pm ---I just can't believe we haven't revolted yet.
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You've been revolting for quite a while now.
;D
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Darn. :applaud:
The problem with all the good ideas for generating electricity is they won't allow for the same level of price gouging as the current oil market.
Also the problem with Chernobyl isn't the nuclear fallout but the C-Consciousness.
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