On Jan 2, 12:17 pm, Tom Adams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Dec 28 2007, 2:49 pm, Phil Randal <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Dec 28, 12:30 pm, Kooiti MASUDA <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > > And here is
> > > Jan Willem Storm van Leeuwen
> > > Nuclear power - the energy balance
> > > energy insecurity and greenhouse gases
> > > athttp://www.stormsmith.nl/.
>
> > > Ko-1 M.
>
> > See also David Fleming's "The Lean Guide to Nuclear Energy".
>
> >http://www.theleaneconomyconnection.net/nuclear/index.html
>
> > It's largely based on Storm's work.
>
> > My own reading of publicly available IAEA data is that nuclear
> > electricity cannot make anything other than a token difference, and
> > that the resources wasted following the nuclear path could be better
> > used elsewhere.
>
> > I confess to being ill at ease over nukes, partly, I suspect, a gut
> > reaction to the over-zealousness of its current proponents.
>
> > The late Alvin Weinberg, had this to say back in 1972:
>
> > "We nuclear people have made a Faustian bargain with society. On the
> > one hand, we offer -- in the catalytic nuclear burner -- an
> > inexhaustible source of energy. . .
>
> > But the price that we demand of society for this magical energy source
> > is both a vigilance and a longevity of our social institutions that we
> > are quite unaccustomed to."
>
> > (Science, July 7, 1972)
>
> > He continued:
>
> > "We make two demands. The first, which I think is easier to manage, is
> > that we exercise in nuclear technology the very best techniques and
> > that we use people of high expertise and purpose. . . .
>
> > The second demand is less clear, and I hope it may prove unnecessary.
> > This is a demand for longevity in human institutions. We have
> > relatively little problem dealing with wastes if we can assume always
> > that there will be intelligent people around to cope with
> > eventualities we have not though of. If the nuclear parks that I
> > mention are permanent features of our civilization, then we presumably
> > have the social apparatus, and possibly the sites, for dealing with
> > our wastes indefinitely. But even our salt mine may require some
> > surveillance if only to prevent men in the future from drilling holes
> > into the burial grounds.
>
> > Eugene Wigner has drawn an analogy between this commitment to a
> > permanent social order that may be implied in nuclear energy and our
> > commitment to a stable, year-in and year-out social order when man
> > moved from hunting and gathering to agriculture. Before agriculture,
> > social institutions hardly required the long-lived stability that we
> > now take so much for granted. And the commitment imposed by
> > agriculture in a sense was forever; the land had to be tilled and
> > irrigated every year in perpetuity; the expertise required to
> > accomplish this task could not be allowed to perish or man would
> > perish; his numbers could not be sustained by hunting and gathering.
> > In the same sense, though on a much more highly sophisticated plane,
> > the knowledge and care that goes into the proper building and
> > operation of nuclear power plants and their subsystems is something we
> > are committed to forever, so long as we find no other practical source
> > of infinite extent."
>
> > and
>
> > "In exchange for this atomic peace [referring to no recent nuclear
> > bomb use] we had to manage and control nuclear weapons. In a sense, we
> > have established a military priesthood which guards against
> > inadvertent use of nuclear weapons, which maintains what a priori
> > seems to be a precarious balance between readiness to go to war and
> > vigilance against human errors that would precipitate war. Moreover,
> > this is not something that will go away, at least not soon. The
> > discovery of the bomb has imposed an additional demand on our social
> > institutions. It has called forth this military priesthood upon which
> > in a way we all depend for our survival.
>
> > It seems to me (and in this I repeat some views expressed very well by
> > Atomic Energy Commissioner Wilfred Johnson) that peaceful nuclear
> > energy probably will make demands of the same sort on our society, and
> > possibly of even longer duration."
>
> > John Gofman wryly noted that
>
> > "If we can predict the social future for generations, including civil
> > strife, international strife, revolutions, psychoses, saboteurs of all
> > stripes and types, hijackers of whatever bizarre or mundane motives,
> > psychopathic personalities of all types, and all criminality, then
> > nuclear power is acceptable, according to Dr. Weinberg's requirements.
>
> > John Gofman wryly noted at the time:
>
> > "If we can predict the social future for generations, including civil
> > strife, international strife, revolutions, psychoses, saboteurs of all
> > stripes and types, hijackers of whatever bizarre or mundane motives,
> > psychopathic personalities of all types, and all criminality, then
> > nuclear power is acceptable, according to Dr. Weinberg's
> > requirements."
>
> >http://www.ratical.org/radiation/CNR/Moratorium.html
>
> > There seems to be a complete lack of consideration of these moral and
> > ethical issues by today's nuclear proponents.
>
> > When the pro-nuke brigade starts earnestly and seriously discussing
> > Weinberg's "Faustian Bargain" I'll start to take them seriously.
>
> > But not until then.
>
> > Phil
>
> Well, France made that Faustian bargain a couple of decades ago.
>
> Here a status report on France's efforts to cheat the Devil:
>
> http://www.mrs.org/s_mrs/sec_subscribe.asp?CID=7392&DID=201055&action...-
> Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
The whole nuke waste thing is fasinating. I can't find a web site
that covers the topic well.
France has so far not committed to any burial. All their waste is in
retrievable storage at research labs. They may process the waste to
reduce it's radiation, particularly the long-lived radiation. I get
the impression that they may be able to reduce need for isolation from
the biosphere from 300K years (the worst case) to 1K years, but I am
really not sure about the potential here.
The US has already buried some (military) waste, but I am not sure if
they buried waste with the longest period of toxicity/radiation, may
be the shorter term stuff. There is some US funding for
transmutation research, but I think the funding is tiny in relation to
France.
The French waste program has been a political success so far. Burial
was perhaps even less tenable in France than the US because of the
long standing political tension between Paris and the rest of France
(dating back at least as far as the civil war after the French
Revolution). In 1991, the French funded combination research labs/
storage facilities that were a success because the research labs
brought lots of funding to the localities that accepted them along
with the waste storage.
The French transmutation/partition/toxicity research program seems to
be a masterful mix of science and politics that addresses the issue of
nuclear waste, at least in the short run. Makes the US approach look
ham-handed.
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