>
> > Oh, about .10/Kwh. But, remember, a lot of my electricity is produced
in a
> > nuclear plant, so costs are relatively low.
>
> In the short or in the long run? There are children who die of cancer
because
> they were exposed to radiation while they were still in the womb.
That was documented in Hiroshima and Nagasaki (sp). But, I have not seen
any examples of that outside of high level exposures such as these.
>Research concluded that there is no safe amount of exposure for the unborn
child.
Well, that is a very tricky statement. We do indeed have no proof that low
level radiation does not cause harm. All we have is a lack of evidence that
it does. Let me quote from the official statement of the US Health
Physicist Society at
http://www.umich.edu/~radinfo/introduction/hprisk.html
In accordance with current knowledge of radiation health risks, the Health
Physics Society recommends against quantitative estimation of health risk
below an individual dose of 5 rem(1) in one year, or a lifetime dose of 10
rem in addition to background radiation. Risk estimation in this dose range
should be strictly qualitative accentuating a range of hypothetical health
outcomes with an emphasis on the likely possibility of zero adverse health
effects. The current philosophy of radiation protection is based on the
assumption that any radiation dose, no matter how small, may result in human
health effects, such as cancer and hereditary genetic damage. There is
substantial and convincing scientific evidence for health risks at high
dose. Below 10 rem (which includes occupational and environmental exposures)
risks of health effects are either too small to be observed or are
non-existent.
(1) The rem is the unit of effective dose. In international units 1 rem =
0.01 sievert (Sv)
>Even the slightest form of radiation in the womb can cause severe cancer
later on in
> life.
Or, it could prevent cancer later on in life. There is absolutely no
observed effect.
>So I hope you have 'nough sites to store the shit that results from using
nuclear power
There are a number of ways to deal with this. Let me just mention one.
First of all, high level waste can be concentrated, so that the actual bulk
amount is minimal. Then, it can be stored in MP35N* drums deep in salt
formations. Remember that the long half life stuff is not very dangerous.
Its the short half life stuff that kills you. The dose rate goes at 1/half
life. So, if the gammas and alphas produced by two sources are equivalent
in the damage they do, and one source has a 1 week half life, and the other
has a 1 billion year half life, the 1 week half life source is 50 billions
times as dangerous as the 1 billion half life source.
So, we don't have to worry about thousands of years, because most of the
dangerous stuff will decay to low activity levels in a couple of hundred
years.
Anyways, put barrels of this stuff in salt domes in geologically inactive
areas. The barrels should last thousands of years. If they don't, the
inside of the salt domes have been isolated from the porous formations for
millions of years. If this still breaks, the stuff is 2000 feet down, and
the contaminated formation would be isolated from aquifers by layers of
shale.
>and there are no accidents in future.
There doesn't have to be no accidents for it to be acceptably safe. The
safety record of nuclear power in the West far exceeds the safety record of
other industries. There has not been one death associated with commercial
nuclear power in the West.
Nuclear power has had to compare its worse case scenario (multiple safety
features all blowing out, the worst explosion possible, the worst wind
conditions possible, a containment building that didn't perform mechanically
at a fraction of design specifications and thus ruptured, to the average
scenario for other risks. The worst case nuclear power disaster is
Chernobyl, where idiots were playing games with a reactor and purposely
pushed it close to an incident repeatedly, with a reactor design that was
outdated, without any containment building. Still, the deaths that have
been caused by this accident are comparable to those seen in a commercial
jet crash.
Worst case scenario for a commercial jet is a suicidal/homicidal pilot who,
for example, takes a fully loaded plane into Yankee Stadium. How many
people would die then?
>Somewhat utopian if you ask me.
>
No, conservative risk assessment.
> No spill in the US but unfortunately there are still large amounts of oil
released into the
> environment. Nigeria (in a connection to Shell) comes to mind and wasn't
there a
> rather large spill in Siberia (Badly repaired pipelines I believe caused
it)
> last year or was it the year before? So Alaska would probably be safe for
a
> while (even with drilling going on there)
It is quite possible that companies are not as careful elsewhere as in
then States or the North Sea. But, its better than you might think. Oil
spills are a far smaller problem than CO2 emissions. While sea levels are
not supposed to rise much, maybe 0.2 meters in 50 years, the potential
change in ocean currents will be biggest risk I think.
I think global warming is a real potential problem. The only thing we can
do to minimize it is to switch to nuclear or slow the increase in energy
usage. The best way to do the latter is to tax energy.
>but still, investing in changing to
> other types of energy seems to make more sense to me in the long run.
Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, that is wishful thinking. It was like
the fusion power folks. They invested in engineering because commercial
fusion was 30 years away. That has been true for almost 50 years. In 1955,
1985 was the projected date for the first commercial fusion reactor. In
2001, its about 2031. Instead of working on the engineering during that
time, they should have worked on plasma physics.
If we want better energy sources, it is too soon to start working on
technology. Instead, we need to work more on basic sciences. Perhaps after
a few more decades of research into solid state physics, mesoscopic physics,
and material science, we can develop truly efficient, competitively priced
solar energy. Wind will have some more use, but I cannot imagine it being
more than 3%-4% of the total by 2050. Hydro is closed to tapped out in the
developed world.
Our real choices for the next 50 years are oil, natural gas, coal, and
nuclear (plus the hydro in place and some developed nations expansion of
hydro.) If we start basic research now, maybe we can start moving to a new
source in 2050.
I'd like to see that. Heck, it would be full employment for physicists.
Indeed, if nuclear power is not developed, my work in the oil and coal
business will go strong for the rest of my career.
>Even if that means changing consumer behavior through subsidation and
taxation.
Taxes can cut consumption. But, there isn't enough money in all the
treasuries of all the governments to make a change to green energy possible
in the near to moderate term.
Dan M.
*MP35N is almost a magical material with regard to hardness, ductility, and
corrosion resistance. When we did tests on it, we could not measure the
corrosion rate in a fluid, catonic potential situaition that was as bad as
we could dream up.
