For those of you who don't know how your energy comes to you, a primer is in order to understand this thread. Most centralized power companies create a flow of electrons by spinning turbines run on steam power. Copper coils and magnets kick out a flow of electrons that reach your meter and turn on your blender, TVs, arc welders etc. 1. So the vast majority of American electric power comes from simple steam-turbine technology. Did you know that nuclear power plants only heat water to steam? As Einstein said, using radiation is a hell of a way to just boil water. Here's how it works: And here's what happens when things go wrong boiling water this way: And did you know that the waste produced by boiling water with radiation contains huge amounts, metric tons that pile up each year, of the deadliest substance known to mankind? Radioactive plutonium. It has a half-life of 24,000 years and a full life of around 200,000 years. That means it continues killing with carcinogenic potency for hundreds of thousands of years. How long do you suppose our current ramschackle proposals for containing it will be closely monitored? [Hint: no civilization has ever lasted for more than a couple thousand years intact and functioning at a capacity to pull that off]. Another way of boiling water to run simple electric turbines is to burn coal or oil. They come with their own set of problems... Did you know we have other ways of getting steam to run turbines? 1. Geothermal [Poor Japan had plenty but bought the used-car salesman's pitch that "nuclear is cheaper". How much is Tokyo Japan worth really...its groundwater is hopelessly radioactive now for thousands of years...bad place to raise the kids..]. 2. Solar thermal. Here's how each works: For decades and decades we have known that we have cleaner, cheaper ways of creating electricity from steam turbines. However, geothermal and especially solar thermal are so cheap to produce that people heavily invested in the tricky [and therefore easier to corner and monopolize profits] ways of producing steam from radiation and carbon mining, refining and burning, that sabotage has reigned for quite a long time. When a new patent would spring up, BigNuke or BigCarbon moguls would buy it up and put in in a vault or shred it, never to see the light of day. If a research lab found a way to harness solar steam, it had a funny way of burning down in the middle of the night. Odd how often that happened back in the day. Fast forward to today. The ugly, dirty, smelly and deadly twin sisters BigNuke and BigCarbon, still have a way of keeping their beautiful stepsisters locked in the dungeon...with a new twist. Today the ugly girls are engaged in starting up shell companies to "prove the cleaner, cheaper steam doesn't work!". Given the zeal and tenacity to which these ugly girls have kept the competition away from the consumer, it wouldn't be a huge stretch of the imagination to deduce that they might be tempted to take government loans, design a stupid or weak system to fail [see the central-tower type solar thermal plants], and then declare a victory for themselves? The quote at the top reflects what Iowans know: that if your state is asked to host a new nuclear power plant, your taxpayers are going to shoulder the hazard insurance, mitigation and cleanup costs. How much is Des Moines worth really? Have you seen the exclusion zone around Chernobyl that will be in place forever? And it was a fraction of the damage at Fukushima's four-reactor meltdown. The entire nation of Japan may never recover from this unfathomable disaster. Does your state have a plan to store the metric tons of the deadliest substance known to man, forever? Can you keep it from your groundwater, crops or kids' drinking fountains? [they can't in Japan] Draw the same circumference around the site proposed for the nuclear plant drooling to open near you. Crunch the numbers and see if nuclear power really is cheaper in your sun-soaked region than solar thermal? Do you prefer to keep blowing off the tops of mountains in West Virginia to extract smudgy, greenhouse coal to burn in preference to free sunshine or geothermal steam? Steam is all we're talking about folks. We should decide what ways to create steam are acceptable and which aren't..
Except that nuclear has no place within the planet's ecosystems or economies...and you know it. Taxcutter. Ironic. Do you realize how much we spend in hidden taxes on subsidizing nuclear power? And like I said before, what price tag can you put on this?:
Even Fukushima went forty years of trouble free service until hit by a record force of nature. Japan, like the US was too lazy to open a central, highly secure repository for spent fuel rods. Everything has its downsides, Geothermal is very site limited and tends to be (on a $/Mw(e)-hr basis) very maintenance-intensive. Those dissolved minerals crud everything up. Wind requires massive storage and a steady supply of crazed daredevils to keep them up. You can clean coal up quite a bit but zero 4emissions is unrealistic.
I have read several geothermal sites that say geothermal generation can be used just about anywhere with todays drilling technology. I don't like nuclear...it kills people. Other than that we should balance the cost with the environmental damage. And use what works best where the power is being generated.
Agreed. But the thing is that usually where people settle and live is where the sun shines most of the time. Why not get free energy most of the time and only use other sources like carbon when a backup is needed? Certainly geothermal potential abounds out West. Just look at this map of US geothermal potential. And think: Yellowstone.....see any steam-turbine potential there?
This is a tough subject. You need what is economic for the area you live in. Japan “needs” nuclear. There is no other way. It’s not like Japan has a vast amount of area to put things. What sucks is here in the states. We have an opportunity to exploit our resources, BUT, we have opposition… Here where I work (Gov’t) we used to have oil and gas auctions on Federal land. We don’t have that anymore due to the stupid hippies who throw so much red tape that we don’t even conduct the auctions anymore. It’s so bad that we want to put wind turbines in the valleys and gorges, but the stupid hippies stop it because it may hurt migratory animals or nesting birds or whatever they can find. We have the opportunity to actually use better means, but the radical left puts a stopper on all progress… We “had” a nuclear plant, but now go with dams. Now, we have problems with fish not finding the ladders to go up stream and seals decimating salmon numbers before they can get up stream… and guess who is screaming about that?
Japan is a VOLCANIC island nation, sitting atop the world's 2nd or 3rd [forget which] largest geothermal resources. They actually were/are selling geothermal energy outside country and using the expensive and deadly nuclear within. Wow. Who needs used car salesmen when you have nuclear lobbiests camping out at the highest levels in governments across the world?
These images and the post are a LIE Those birth defects have nothing to do with Chernobyl. The United Nations even slammed the organization that published them as a fraud organization looking to receive donations for their personal gain. You have been warned about those images repeatedly. Those images are pre-1970 era.... anyone wonder about the black and white? I know the Russians could not afford the cameras. Anyways, Chernobyl happened in the mid 1980's. Here is the best energy policy for the U.S.A. 1. No solar farms in deserts... only a moron does this. It costs water to clean them and you lose too much power in transmission. The costs are ridiculous. Instead you fit solar on buildings in mass throughout cities where energy is actually used. 2. Modern Nuclear Power. The new reactors produce 4 times more power, use a fraction of the fuel, are completely safe (cooling is not an issue with water tower gravity used nowadays) and they cool much faster, and the waste is minimal. 3. NATURAL GAS!!!! We have enough for 100 years. 4. Hydro, GeoThermal, etc... where it is locally present is fine. GeoThermal has real operational issues for reasons previously stated. The plants cost ALOT to maintain. 5. Coal supplement until we get Nuclear, Solar, Natural Gas up to speed. Then we export the crap out of it. It's not rocket science, but it is nuclear science!
The images on the OP are not a lie. And your strawman is seen for what it is. Those images were posted on the Children of Chernobyl website and the UN told them if they did not take them down, they would stop funding for continued treatment of kids like them affected by radiation from Chernobyl. This happened just weeks after the Fukushima event. Odd timing to suddenly change a website and lodge such a heavy protest from the UN eh? Dont' think for a minute that readers here are under the impression that the UN isn't stuffed to the gils with pro-nuclear lobbiests or other arm-wrenching entities. Those pictures had been on that website for YEARS before Fukushima happened. And these are some of the more eye-friendly ones. Horrors far worse than this were on display for the world to see before Fukushima made nuclear lobbiests freak out and demand "soft-cancer" and "mental retardation" only photos of kids there. Shame on you HB Surfer. How dare you defile the memories of those children who died and who are dying from that horrific nightmare! The thing is, that potential was always there. They just were told not to use it because "nuclear would be better". Only it isn't. And Tokyo itself is paying the price for buying the old "nuclear is fine" lobby singsong...thank you very much HB Surfer et al.
Silhouette, We have seen you recycle and reproduce the same fraudulent photos on this site before. I have debunked it in the past and as you did not listen then, I am sure you will not listen now. Anyways.... the photos are not the result of Chernobyl. They were taken far prior and are of other birth defects. There were certainly birth defects from Chernobyl, there were deaths. Old Nuclear Power Plants can be dangerous. They should be decommissioned. But, we should be building the new modern plants that are far superior and pretty much bullet proof when it come to meltdowns or events. I am guessing you do not wish to be educated on modern nuclear plants. Best of luck with the propaganda.
Educate away. Are you talking about the "pretty much" "bullet proof" design where there are water tanks on the roof that in case of a power outage, trickle down water for a maximum of 72 hours to keep the fuel core from meltdown? Good luck selling a way of boiling water, whose costs just for permitting far exceed the construction of an entire solar thermal or geothermal steam turbine plant of equal MW capacity, lock stock and barrel, including permits..because they don't pose heinous threat to civilization as we know it just from one little bad day at the plant.. No, no there weren't! You said so! It's impossible to have children look like the OP from Chernobyl...why...those caregivers for those kids HAD to make up photos right? They didn't have any authentic kids to post on that site that looked bad enough to get funding...right? You can't have it both ways Surfer. Either kids were horribly disfigured and died from rampant cancer or they weren't. Why would the folks from Children of Chernobyl have to make up poster-kids if you say they existed? What was the UN on about anyway, threatening to pull their funding if they didn't remove those years-long photos from their website...just weeks after Fukushima's 4-way meltdown? Why then? Why just those photos when you yourself agree there surely would have been kids that looked the same or similar to those?
How long does a nuclear accident last for? 72 hours? Pretty stupid way of boiling water, when we can do it harmlessly with the sun or already boiled from the geothermal vents.
I think HB Surfer nailed it but curious why the op keeps posting this stuff in political current events, maybe the science and tech or environment forums would be appropriate
Why, so people won't see it?...lol... HB Surfer nailed nothing. He admitted there were kids at Chernobyl destroyed by cancers there..then went on to say the pictures "had to be fakes". For years? When he admits there were kids same or simliar to these? And why suddenly did those pictures have to come off their website, just weeks after Fukushima, or they would lose funding? People arent' stupid. In case you haven't heard: green energy is a current events topic. The OP cites a situation current in Iowa, whose leaders are questioning, with good reason, the financial viability of boiling water with a nuclear reactor instead of some other way that is cheaper to both investors and consumers...
Not a current event. The member posting the OP has been here long enough to know better. This is abusing the most frequented sub-forum for the sake of boosting thread exposure. Mods, please move to a more appropriate forum.
definition of event e·vent (-vnt) n. 1. a. Something that takes place; an occurrence. b. A significant occurrence or happening. See Synonyms at occurrence. c. A social gathering or activity. 2. The final result; the outcome. 3. Sports A contest or an item in a sports program. 4. Physics A phenomenon or occurrence located at a single point in space-time, regarded as the fundamental observational entity in relativity theory. a speech by Obama on a new solar plant would be a event a television special on National Geographic channel would be a event on ongoing discussion of pseudo science is not a event anyway it has been reported, up to the mods now
Just like the pictures of the children of Chernobyl..you want the discussion to go away to some dungeon where nobody will see it. Sorry, green energy and states' concerns over the hidden [taxpayer subsidized] collosal costs of pure-carbon or most particularly nuclear steam turbines, are real concerns and really current ones and ongoing... Iowa may want something different. I notice something happened to the link in the OP. Here's the new one that may work for a little while longer.. > http://timesrepublican.com/page/con...utility-step-up-lobbying-on-nuclear-bill.html March 21,2012 is fairly recent. And given that nuclear industry is busy day in and day out trying to shove these fiscal nightmares, not to mention radioactive, down states' throats as we sit here today, it's as current as current events get. Here's what the Iowa Senator had to say again from the OP: . Wouldn't you UN-blackmailer types like to see this discussion disappear like the pictures of the children of Chernobyl had to in order for them to still get "quiet funding" from the UN while nuclear lobbyiests ply their trade unfettered...
Same link as last post...until it fails to function also... See, what the nuke schills are up to is they want consumers to pay for their permitting and construction costs ahead of time, whether or not they want to. And whether or not they want a nuclear plant near them. This is advanced-taxpayer subsidy. After all, when your pile of crap steam boiler takes billions of dollars to permit alone, you're going to have to grab those subsidizers by the collar and hold them up against the wall just to get your project off the ground. Sure, Obama et al have lost a few hundred million gambling on what they thought were legitimate solar companies starting up. But that's nothing compared to the armed robbery going on with nuclear.
I could post all kinds of terrible pictures of body parts of people killed in auto accidents, but that certainly wouldn't be validation for getting rid of cars.
Except that car accidents don't spread across tens of thousands of square miles and remain deadly to people within that range for hundreds of thousands of years. **** And when you consider that all nuclear plants do is boil water, and that we have numerous other ways to do so, only a MADMAN would promote nuclear steam turbines over other benign steam turbines.
While I appreciate the OP's desire to move to a clean energy source, I understand that the use of unrelated images to make one's point is disingenuous. Also there are other posts made by the OP about other comments, in this thread, that are simply not true. Rather than using falsities to make a point about solar power, much in the same way the OP uses non factual statements about Harvey Milk to push an anti gay agenda, I would suggest an honest and open dialogue. Continuing to use nonsense in support of a position, IMO, is a loser.
Wow, strawman much? Children sick and dying have to be paid for. They are part of the financial equation. Part of the mitigation of deciding which type of steam turbines are affordable and which aren't. Also fair game for the topic in that line of logic are. 1. Groundwater pollution. 2. Crop and arable land pollution [Fukushima devastated Japan's] and losses. 3. Climate change and freak-weather cleanup expenses. 4. Mining and waste costs.
The above issues are real, honest and concerning. I'm not a big fan of nuclear power but understand that use of it will be necessary, in some locals, until safer and cleaner sources are reasonably cost effective. Hopefully your strawman reference wasn't directed at me.
