On Saturday 04 February 2006 22:30, Stephen A. Lawrence wrote:
> Steven Krivit wrote:
> > My sources...atomic energy researchers in France and Canada say we have
> > 80 years of uranium left. I don't know where the "peak" is.
>
> That agrees with what I believe I've read elsewhere. HOWEVER...
>
> ... That's just U235, and unless I miss my guess, it's without
> reprocessing to recover usable fuel from the "spent" fuel rods.
>
> The fact that it glosses over is that, with sensible handling, the
> available fuel would last centuries, which should certainly be enough
> time to figure out something better!
>
> First of all, simple reprocessing can extend that 80 year number
> greatly, but it's politically unacceptable due, IIRC, to the ease with
> which the process can be subverted to make bomb-grade enriched uranium.
> The United States, in particular, does _not_ reprocess its spent fuel
> (someone please correct me if I'm wrong about this). I'm not sure where
> Eurupe stands on this issue.
>
> Far more to the point, breeder reactors could extend that number by
> perhaps a factor of 100 by allowing us to burn the U238 rather than just
> burning the U235 and hence throwing away 99% of the fuel, completely
> unused, as we do today. But safe and effective breeder reactors have
> not been developed, AFAIK, and most likely never will be, because they
> are scary and politically completely unacceptable: the fuel they
> produce when they convert the U238, unless I am mistaken, is plutonium.
> And _that_ is the fuel of choice for bombs.
>
> So, the upshot is that we have enough uranium in the ground to last us
> centuries, but the technologies which would enable us to use it
> efficiently are currently "untouchable" and are likely to remain that
> way. In consequence we'll never actually be able to use more than
> perhaps 1% of the available uranium, and we'll just throw away the rest,
> sealing it up in caves as a "problem" rather than burning it as a
> "solution". And this situation seems unlikely to change.
>
> Anyway, I will be happy to stand corrected on any of this.
>
> > At 06:44 AM 2/3/2006, you wrote:
> >> We haven't had any new nuclear power plants built in many years.
> >> Since any notion of NIMBYism is to be rejected ( despite overwhelming
> >> political
> >> evidence that it is real), the clear answer is THAT URANIUM HAS PEAKED!
> >> The same goes for the rich Cape Cod elitists who don't want wind
> >> turbines
> >> off their coast. Clearly, saving birds is paramount.
> >>
> >> Why build nuclear power plants when we know that uranium is running
> >> out? Surely, the situation is no different than the fact that the US
> >> hasn't built a new
> >> refinery since 1976 - Obviously, everyone knew - 30 YEARS AGO - that
> >> we were running out of oil and refineries were a waste of time.
> >>
> >> Obvious too, is the fact that everyone knows that coal/ shale/
> >> thermal pyrolysis treated garbage will never give us significant sources
> >> of oil. What are
> >> Pennsylvania and Montana thinking, when they to spend billions for
> >> this? Those estimates of centuries worth of coal aren't to be taken
> >> seriously.
> >> Anyone who thinks otherwise needs a reality
> >> check..............................
And to all the above. The ugly reallity is that the logical conclusion of all
this 'discourse' over what is or is not 'acceptable', to play devils
advocate, is that we run out, construct nothing because we are all afraid of
the nut cases among us and have not the political will to do anything about
them, and starve. In the cold. In the dark. Lose five sixths of our
population to: disease.....crime....wars over what is left....starvation
that brings on all the above....mass migrations to southern lands where
warmth abides but food does not....wars among the new 'noble classes'
and the new 'caste system'. You do not for one moment that the present
inequalities among humans will even themselves out voluntarily and
altruistically do you? Do you really believe that your certainties about the
capacity of the human race for evil amongst themselves will
suddenly...disappear!! ..in the face of the greatest tragedy in the history
of our species? Do you think for one moment that the end of energy resources
will not lead to monopoly control in resource areas and tribute levied and
medieval fealty demanded to the owners by the devine right of the appointees
of God or Allah or Marduk or whoever to govern the world by the fact of
possession of those resource areas? Do you not think that Monarchies which
have never died in the world, and who grew up in environments of limited
resource will not again flourish, sprouting with sickening speed the
trappings of royalty complete with castles full of whores and servants and
fields full of slaves.............you? You the slave, not you the 'count' or
'squire' , or 'esquire', or his 'excellency'!
This climate of fear concerning all things nuclear, if pursued to its
logical end, leads to just that! If the same view and fear was present in
all the nations of the world, that is! But then there is the shepherds
philosophy!
On the other hand, there are other countries in the world with a
completely different world view. Take China who is going full speed ahead to
develope nuclear power, and Tian-An-Men and a quick burial under a bag of lye
for all who oppose it. If we cannot bring ourselves out of our funk in time,
we will have yet again proved ourselves weak and unable to govern ourselves.
Others may and will be quite capable of subjugating us one way or another.
Especially after we begin to die of exposure and starvation and disease in
large numbers.
In reality though, we are a people asleep who appear to be temporarily
misguided by self appointed pseudo intellectuals who have usurped our ability
to think for ourselves. They are able to do this because, like Lenin said,
a well fed populace never become revolutionaries. How about when we are less
well fed. Do a thought experiment. I said THOUGHT experiment: say you had
an imaginary dog, a large one; and say this dog was very well behaved and
never bit anybody or chased a cat or fought with another dog; and say you
had several of these in a fenced yard; you fed them from a common trough
that was always full and watered them from a common watering device that also
was always full; now take away half of the water and half of the food and
do this for a week; then two weeks; now take away half of each again for
another two weeks; and so on; just how long, ask yourself, will the dogs
in the closed pen in this adiabatic system behave well with one another?;
how long before a 'pecking order' becomes clearly evident?; how long before
it becomes DEADLY evident?; and how long before there is only ONE dog
left?; and is THAT DOG the one that YOU would have chosen as the survivor
having observed this imaginary tragedy and imaginary crime of your own
imagining unfold before your dreamstate eyes, fantasy week after fantasy days
until the ultimate sad conclusion? Such is the nature of man!
We have the ultimate arrogance if we think that by withholding our
discoveries of a technology available to anyone with the will and the way, we
will stop all uses of these technologies world wide. We have the ultimate
lake of judgement if we think that we will be forever able to peacefully stop
these countries from pursuing nuclear energy in the face of shortages,
inequalities, opportunistic foreign politicians and businessmen, etc.
Ultimately it will come down for arguments of force. How many men and women
in the so called 'civilized' countries will have to come home in boxes to
maintain the profitability of the oil and other fossil energy merchants? How
many before politics here begin to change? They are changing now, silently
with each fillup of three dollar a gallon gasoline. They are changing now,
silently with each thousand dollar a month heating bill for common two
bedroom houses in middle America.
The politics of renewable energy is a barren promise that will have its
deadly veracity proven by the population dynamics of Malthus. Which product
will we make with our biomass: food to prevent starvation and then freeze to
death; or energy to keep us warm so we can starve and rot in warm houses;
or a varying amounts of both so SOME of us, the old and sick among us, the
low paid among us, can both starve and freeze while the affluent new upper
classes literally dine on our corpses.
No, there are poor countries in other parts of the world that have already
had enough of this and they are reaching for nuclear power as fast as they
can get it. The only way to stop them is for our young men and women to
militarily take over and occupy the entire world. Unfortunately for the
United States, its ability to do this is long past. Its military is
'volunteer'. That means if an emergency happens, it will melt away literally
overnight. We can yell at Iran. The Europeans can yell at Iran while they
whisper at Korea and hide from China and pretend to not see Israel. Just
like the Americans do! The world knows how strong the Europeans really are!
They ran out of Lebanon twenty years ago. They were deathly afraid of little
Serbia who they appeared secretly allied with. They now cringe before Syria
when a manufactured 'cartoon crisis' resulted in the burning of western
embassies with the connivance of the local authorities. This shows blatant
weakness in the face of an enemy, yes!, an enemy. These enemies look for
signs like this as an acknowedgement of weakness and as an invitation to
attack and conquer.
We can no more hold back the use and developement of nuclear power in this
world than we can individually stand on a seashore and hold back the tide!
All the sickening arguments over terrorism and fallout and radiation are
going to happen anyway. Only the crap that damages us will now come from
abroad, and that will be the only difference.
What we can do is crash build breeder reactor technology in our country.
We can guard it all we want. We have the uranium. When we do this we will
have so much energy it will be too cheap to meter! Only politics will have
to change. And change it will when stagflation, ruination, poverty and
despair overtake enough Americans and fill them with a terrible rage.
