Nuclear is Our Future Pro-nuclear activist group

Manager: “Why don’t you use fission? There’s more engineering experience in fission.”
Me: “We know fusion. There’s enough experience to do this.”
Manager: “I suppose. It’s so sad what happened to nuclear power. It seemed to be such a good technology.”
Me: “But it’s so dirty.”

-Exchange during a preliminary meeting on a nuclear rocket concept that we’re working on, 1999.

You can’t even imagine me saying that, can you? That last response bothered me, and taking the time to research energy policy made me angry enough to start writing.

Filed under Alternatives, Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day, Environment

Posted on January 31, 2006 by Stewart Peterson | 1 Comment »

“DOE to do NEPA’s EIS on BNFL’s AMWTP at INEEL after SRA protest”

-Link.

Unfortunately, sometimes we actually talk like that.

Filed under Activism, Clueless, Humor, Strange

Posted on January 30, 2006 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »

Post nominations here.

Filed under Humor, Site

Posted on January 30, 2006 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »

“We have obtained the assistance of those who are involved in the study of low-level radiation exposure and its causation of cancer.”

-For A Clean Tonawonda Site

Look, we can line up 15 people who think one way! That means you should, too!

Filed under Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day, Health, Radiation, Scientific Method

Posted on January 30, 2006 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »

“NASA’s Cassini space probe executed a flyby maneuver around the Earth on August 18, 1999. This space ship was traveling at record speeds, more than 10 miles per second, and carrying more than 72 pounds of radioactive plutonium on board. It was only seconds away from a possible inadvertent reentry into Earth’s atmosphere, which would have released more than 400,000 curies of radiation in a breathable/ingest able [sic] form. This could have resulted in millions of fatalities, and untold suffering for generations to come.”

-Flyby News

It’s hard to imagine a spacecraft traveling at that speed being more than a few seconds away from much of anything. It’s also hard to imagine errors in the trajectory that wouldn’t be found and corrected days beforehand.

It wouldn’t have released the material, either. Reentries have happened before, and no case that was designed to contain the material ever failed.

A curie is a unit of radioactivity, not radiation. What’s the difference? A curie measures the number of particles emitted, not their strength or what their effects are.

The material itself is designed to stay in one piece if the case is somehow breached.

See also my post on RTGs.

Filed under Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day, Health, Physics, Radiation, Safety

Posted on January 29, 2006 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »

“The required reprocessing technology has never been demonstrated even at a pilot plant scale.”

-Federation of American Scientists

The Integral Fast Reactor was most certainly a pilot plant. And sometimes, we have to do things that we haven’t done before. If we had the attitude that nothing is worth doing unless we’ve done it already, we’d still be living in caves.

Filed under Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day, Energy, Fuel Cycle, Industry Performance

Posted on January 28, 2006 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »

“The spent fuel would be difficult to handle because it stays radioactive for thousands of years and generates so much heat it must be stored for several decades before it can be handled.”

-Envocare (UK)

Then why have they been reprocessing it shortly after production for 50 years? Some British spent fuel (from older reactors known as MAGNOX) can’t be stored for long periods.

Filed under Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day, Fuel Cycle, Physics, Waste

Posted on January 27, 2006 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »

“Every day that reactors produce power, they make nearly 170 pounds of lethal nuclear waste that will remain deadly for the next 10,000 years.”

-Environmental Wrecking Group

Whereas a proposed coal-fired power plant in India would have taken 28,000 metric tons of coal and turned it into 84,000 metric tons of ash every single day (Note: those figures were from a 420-megawatt plant; the EWG is probably using a 1,000-megawatt nuclear plant as a benchmark). That never decays–except for the trace radioactive elements that would have made it more radioactive than Three Mile Island. Plus, that figure is almost certainly for once-through fuel use (3%-5% efficiency) instead of recycling (6%-99% efficiency depending on the method).

Filed under Alternatives, Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day, Fun With Statistics, Three Mile Island, Waste

Posted on January 26, 2006 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »

“OPEC does not believe nuclear energy to be a viable alternative option”

-Environment News Service

Stunning.

Filed under Alternatives, Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day, Their Actions

Posted on January 25, 2006 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »

“Like previous nuclear lobbying studies, the new study confuses costs with benefits. For example, nuclear power’s labour intensiveness relative to power sources like natural gas-fired generators, is reported as a benefit.”

-Energy Probe

I see. Creating jobs is good, being labor-intensive is bad.

Filed under Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day, Economics, Industry Performance, Non Sequitur

Posted on January 24, 2006 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »