Alt fuels was Re: [AT] Gasoline $

[ken knierim]

On Wed, 2005-08-10 at 20:36, Henry Miller wrote:
> On Wednesday 10 August 2005 06:40 pm, ken knierim wrote:
> 
> > True, uranium comes from the ground and it's radioactive. When the fuel
> > is spent, seems to me there's a lot less radioactivity. But... what
> > about the stuff that's made in the reactor? Plutonium comes to mind, and
> > that is a rather toxic substance, whether or not it's radioactive. I'm
> > sure there are lots of ways of controlling things like this and I'm not
> > an expert, but there seems to be some disagreement with what to do with
> > the stuff.
> 
> Tell you what, you take a given amount of caffeine, and I'll take an equal 
> amount of plutonium.    The media likes to scare you about how bad plutonium 
> is, but the truth is different.   You need to treat it with care, but it is 
> less poisonous than Caffeine (as in your morning cup of coffee).   It is an 
> alpha emitter, so the radiation isn't strong enough to get through your skin.

OK... as I'm typing this I'm having one of my normal 3 cups of coffee
per day. Figures given for caffeine in coffee are around 80-130 mg per
cup. Let's say I have about 250 mg per day to wake up. 

>From the article Walt forwarded I have to drink 2 days' worth of coffee
to hit the 0.5 grams that is listed as the fatal dose of plutonium. I
admit that it's a lot higher level than I had thought but it's still a
level where I think I'll survive the caffeine. Not sure about surviving
without it though. :)

> 
> True you can make bombs from plutonium.   However anyone who can build a bomb 
> will have no problem making plutonium, so that is a silly worry.   (The 
> engineering to make a bomb is much harder than the engineering to make 
> plutonium)

Agreed!

> 
> As for the waste from a reactor:   It is recyclable.  Forget about putting it 
> in some 10000 year storage, you can recycle it for more power than you got 
> from it to begin with.

I believe it is recyclable and it SHOULD be recycled. Unfortunately we
have a ban on breeder reactors in this country and as a result we have a
pile of spent nuclear fuel we cannot use and a pile of waste we don't
really know what to do with (well, few folks will agree on what the
optimal solution will be). The part I find ironic is the person that put
the ban in place was trained in operating Naval reactors on submarines.
Why? (it's a rhetorical question. I believe the answers are probably
political and really don't belong here)

> 
> > The operators of the plants have to be vigilant so we don't have an
> > accident. Don't get me wrong, I think nuclear power is a great thing.
> > It's not a do-all and end-all, but if we keep the dollars here, it's
> > even better.
> 
> The worse case accident from any reasonable reactor is Three Mile Island.  
> Outside the fence there was no effect, and the effect on those inside the 
> fence is just above the statistical noise from normal background radiation 
> you get sitting on your tractor in the middle of a field.
> 
> Of course stupid designs like Chernobyl have much worse worse cases.  That is 
> why nobody else builds them.   (Even the Russians didn't build them for long)  
> At that they had to intentionally shut down all the safeties to get anything 
> to happen.   There are plenty of other industrial accidents that could be 
> much worse if they tried to make something worse.

Agreed. Mining is another area that has a lot of possible side-effects.
Fortunately a lot has been learned about each of these fields over the
last say 100 years and new designs will (or should!) continue to improve
and be safer and more cost effective. 

Now what do we do to keep fuel in our tractors? I would expect it to be
a collection of different solutions rather than a single, global
solution. We're too independent to go along with the flow. :)

Ken