From: Chuck Kuecker (ckuecker@mcs.net)
Date: Fri Jun 01 2001 - 13:34:52 MDT
At 10:53 AM 6/1/01 -0700, Marie Tobias wrote:
>I agree the book "We almost lost Detroit" is chilling... I beg to differ
>about Brown's Ferry, which survived not because it's design proved
>viable, but simply because after an amazing chain of stupid mistakes,
>starting with the design, running through maintenance, and ending in
>pitiful management, a dedicated team of engineers and technicians
>hand pumped water through the core to prevent the ultimate crisis.
>Thank God! we don't build plants like that anymore!!!
"Hand pumped"? I gather you mean they manually routed power to the cooling
pumps. I don't think that any kind of hand operated pump would suffice in a
multimegawatt nuke...
>As for the cost of nuclear, I think it sad that nobody has mentioned
>the legacy of virtual genocide committed against Native Americans
>who live near the mines the government ramrodded onto their space.
>The results of radioactive mine tailings and heavy metal contamination
>has rendered many western reservations nearly uninhabitable. Those
>tribes that bore the brunt of our hunt for uranium, now suffer a legacy
>of birth defect, soaring cancer rates, and remarkably high infant
>mortality (even above and beyond that of other tribes.)
If this is true, it should be publicized loudly by the people involved -
recent history has shown the govt. forced to pay large sums to people
injured in nuclear testing and experiments - these people should qualify
easily. Where are the Native American activists on this?
>I think an ethanol economy is an awesome idea... it's renewable, you
>can make it from any organic matter, if you use natural organics (lawn
>and tree clippings, kelp, reeds and rushes, farming byproducts, waste
>paper, and organic city refuse (a terrible problem in of itself), you end
>up with no (read 0) green house gas net increase, it's got a high oxygen
>content, and burns very clean with virtually no soot or contamination,
>and you can use it in virtually every kind of powerplant from fuel cells,
>to cars, to large scale power station. It's safer than gasoline, with none
>of the environmental costs associated with fossil fuels, and it's even a
>fuel you can make at home (that bothers the hell out of certain business
>folks.) Actually this is good, because you can scale production right
>down to local municipality, and that makes communities energy safe
>and independent, and eliminates the cost of fuel transport (this is one
>more reason that energy cartels hate ethanol.)
Don't forget that private production of ethanol, at least in the US, is
regulated by the BATF - you need a federal license to make more than a few
gallons a year of fuel-quality alky. You may also be required to poison the
product (denature) in order to avoid moonshining charges.
>I also agree that nuclear looks excellent off planet, by far the best way
>to go for energy sources on the moon and mars. I still find myself a bit
>squeemish about waste handling, the serptitious use of waste for nukes
>by our government (who by the way has a devastatingly bad rep for
>the improper use, storage, and handling of nuclear materials), and the
>messy process of decomissioning reactors (and despensing with the
>contaminated building materials and reactor site.)
Anywhere where the Sun's flux is less than what's available at Earth's -
possibly as far out as Mars' orbit, nuclear is about the only way to get
dependable energy in space. We should be putting research into nuclear
propulsion for deep space craft, also. A perfect subject to be tackled at a
Lagrange point space station...keep the nasty stuff away from satellite
orbits...
>We need to look at all the cost/benefits when picking a viable energy
>source... producing nuclear power for pennies isn't cheap if you're up
>to your eyeballs in government subsidized cleanup messes, and eco
>disasters that take your tax dollars to fix. We need to be asking neither
>the environmental extremists, nor the businesses with a vested money
>interest, but nonaffiliated scientists who are experts in this field. Ask
>them what makes good sense, and what is economically, socially, and
>enviornmentall viable in the long term. Then compare that against other
>good alternatives.
Sadly, many scientists have thrown in with the greens and the mindless
anti-nukes. The ones who will publicly support nuclear energy are usually
downplayed as being in the pay of Big Energy by the greens.
>We need to walk away from fossil fuels soon... they are problematic.
>That, and in the end we have much better use for all that carbon. We
>need to bring high tech to the third world so they can circumvent the
>first world's eco-blunders. We need to ask hard questions about the
>trade-off between economic viability, environmentally sound use, and
>the growing need for energy that scales with the demand of our ever
>increasing technology.
Amen to that! Fossil fuels are going to run out someday, and they have much
more utility as feedstocks for chemical and plastic production for now.
Renewable fuels, especially ethanol, need to get divorced from govt. price
supports, though, before we can make a realistic assessment of energy costs.
Chuck Kuecker
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