six extra months of oil

Dont worry, we will use it all up ! I think that finds like this all over the USA will keep us minimally going for the next 10 to 20 years. Who knows what 2030 will be like though ? Maybe all cars electric and a nuclear power plant on each street corner.

Lynn

Nuclear power plants sound OK until they get near the end of their lives. When it is time to scrap it out, it is very big trouble.

We have to get the various political types to stop working at cross purposes. Carter put solar panels on the White House. Reagan took them down. What each party does, the other wants to undo.

So never shut them down.

Lynn

:>> Dont worry, we will use it all up ! I think that :>> finds like this all over the USA will keep us :>> minimally going for the next 10 to 20 years. Who :>> knows what 2030 will be like though ? Maybe all :>> cars electric and a nuclear power plant on each :>> street corner. :> :> Nuclear power plants sound OK until they get near the end of their :> lives. When it is time to scrap it out, it is very big trouble. : :So never shut them down. : :Lynn

Now, who is living in cloud cuckoo land...?

All nuclear power plants have a use-by-date when they must be decommissioned - around 50 years max. The cost of dismantling makes it economically unviable to tkae this final step so they generally just get mothballed and fenced off. In the final wash-up the cost of opting for nuclear in the first instance doesn't work out to be so attractive. Unless the cost of all phases in the life of any energy generating plant, ie. construction, operation, de-commissioning and dismantling are included in the budget, it is not accurate to say that going nuclear is more cost effective than other options.

Won't work. Lookup "radiation embrittlement" and "neutron induced swelling" with Google. Lots of reasearch on the subject. Basically, the metal in the reactor containment vessel and high pressure plumbing start to become a problem after many years of operation. I think the best than can be done is about a 60 year life. Most of what's around today was designed for 30-40 years. See section titled "Lifetime of nuclear reactors":

Incidentally, one of the advantages of a bebble bed reactor over a conventional water cooled reactor is that there's no embrittlement problem because there's no plumbing in the core.

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# Jeff Liebermann 150 Felker St #D Santa Cruz CA 95060
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When the oil runs out, wind and solar are proven woefully inadequate, and hydro is maxed out, it might be the only viable option.

Maybe we should swallow our false pride and just ask Japan and France how they're doing it.

Cheers! Rich

Yep. I wonder how the French handle their spent fuel rods...

On the other hand... some really cool catalysts might be available in spent fuel rods... Technetium-99 is a great catalyst for dehydrating alcohols... Cobalt-60 shows some promise in catalyzing the polymerization of methane to higher hydrocarbons.

References:

(better catalyst than rhenium or palladium) -- How High is High? 0.06% :(

No need to rely on America, if Americans are afraid of nuclear power...

Cheers,

Michael

They recycle them in a breeder reactor like we used to do. You can usually get a 90+% recovery on the uranium in spent fuel rods. Commercial fuel rod are only 3 to 5% uranium. It is the military fuel rods that approach 90%.

Lynn

Go Nuclear for Clean Air !

"Ironically, the French nuclear program is based on American technology. After experimenting with their own gas-cooled reactors in the 1960s, the French gave up and purchased American Pressurized Water Reactors designed by Westinghouse. Sticking to just one design meant the 56 plants were much cheaper to build than in the US. Moreover, management of safety issues was much easier: the lessons from any incident at one plant could be quickly learned by managers of the other 55 plants. The "return of experience" says Mandil is much greater in a standardized system than in a free for all, with many different designs managed by many different utilities as we have in America."

It may come to that.

Thanks,

Michael

Not surprising.

At least one very large chemical plant on the Texas Gulf Coast (who shall rename nameless) was considering building a nuclear power plant in topping configuration for their steam requirements. They currently have 400+ MW of combined cycle in topping configuration. Natural gas costs are killing their profits. After seeing the regulatory nightmare the utilities are facing for the new nukes they are now considering building several pet coke steam boilers. Very, very, very nasty emissions and hard to control (fluidized bed).

Lynn

:When the oil runs out, wind and solar are proven woefully inadequate, :and hydro is maxed out, it might be the only viable option. : :Maybe we should swallow our false pride and just ask Japan and France :how they're doing it. : :Cheers! :Rich

The vested interests associated with the nuclear industry keep pushing,pushing, all the time to encourage greater use of nuclear power as an energy source (which I admit is very efficient in operation). They know that once this option is adopted, the huge costs involved in building and running power plants will virtually guarantee that no future government will close them down, so they try to sell prospective clients only the "good" aspects of the technology. It takes many years of operation in a densely populated area to recoup the costs of building, operating and maintaining a nuclear plant so closing one before around

30 years of operation could result in huge losses - not to mention the cost of building an alternative source to replace it.

Radioactive waste is a huge problem, particularly in small, densely populated countries. Despite the fact that glassification of nuclear waste (synroc) has been around for 30 years, There has only recently been one proposal to adopt it because of the high cost involved.

The UK, for example, has been pressuring successive Australian governments for at least 10 years to accede to requests to accept and store nuclear waste from their nuclear plants. Because we have large unpopulated areas in the outback with stable geomorphology, we are seen as a pushover for this function. Once we had agreed to take the UK waste (the foot in the door) we would then be pressured to accept waste from other European countries. Australia will not be used as a waste dumping ground for other nuclear nations....

Rich Grise wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@example.net:

Well, if/when I want to put a solar panel on my roof and a PacWind vertical wind turbine in my yard, I certainly won't call you for advice... =:-o

The barriers to tossing chunks of synroc into salt domes where they will be safe for many millions of years are political.

Chunks of synroc can also be dumped into depleted uranium mines. Security requirement to prevent terrorists building a "dirty bomb" are greater for exhausted uranium mines than for salt domes however, since a salt dome merely requires plugging a roughly-mile-deep borehole and concrete is cheap. Monitoring against terrorists drilling down a mile should be cheap.

- Don Klipstein ( snipped-for-privacy@misty.com)

Hey, if it works for you, go for it!

Do they provide enough energy to charge up your electric car for a trip to, say, work, or maybe to the store?

Thanks, Rich

Rich Grise wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@example.net:

Once I make up my mind to do something, one way or another it gets done ;)

I've seen reports on such setups that do.

I can't set it up here becasue the HOA doesn't allow it ("it's ugly"), but I'm pretty sure this is not going the be the last place I ever live, and I'm hoping that family economics and the Univers will allow me to have the last (retirement) place built costom (modest/compact size, very low maintenance, as energy etc. independent as possible using a mix of passive cooling/heating, thermomechanical, water-related, and other "alternative" designs and widgets, and so on) (I of course am also compelled to mention xeriscaping and using native local plants as much as possible to reduce maintenence and maintenence-costs of landscaping). I've been working on ideas ("mental plans") and a few sketches/diagrams for a while now. Climate is the key factor. All of this has to be adjusted for climate, of course. I'm planning to live somewhere warm and dry, tho', which makes passive cooling *much* easier, because, when I lived in So. California, I was actually comfortable up to about 94-96 deg when the humidity was 12% or lower. Northern climate are more challenging (and rough on arthritis), and hot'n'humid climates are also rough, becasue passive cooling is much less efficient (for me at least) in high humidity.

ANyhoo, getting back to the eelctric car/solar panel connection, I had seen 2 or three programs about it, can't recall what they are - maybe a quick Google will turn something up, lessee... eh, kind of amish-mash, found this:

This was my google search: car&start=30&sa=N

I think the most recent program was on the Discovery Channel, either that or Nat Geo, or History Channel. I can't recall, sorry. But the show did mention electric cars being "refuled" by solar panels on a home's roof, and that the car had a 30 mile operating radius, although that's either being improved, or is greater in other cars (sorry, I can't recall). I don't recall these being related to the program, btu I found them while searchign on other stuff related to what I'm writing here:

4.html 2.html (I ignored the Tesla, as IMO $100,000 for a car is just plain stupid.) Big problem with electrics so far is 25MPH top speed - even in the neighborhoods here, if you go 25, you'll get run down/over... Ohters:

Anyhoo, point is, a solar panel could be used to "refule" - naturaly, ti'd work better where there is enough bright light, but *anythin* is like that, i.e. each individual has to draw up theri own cost:benefot analysis. I'm not claiming it's The Absolute Solution, because ther eis no such thing - it's just somethign for peole to think about, especially as teh electric cars become more capable, and soalr panels become mroe efficient and less expensive.

Meanwhile, there is a sort of engine that uses a small gasoline-powered engine to charge a battery, such that the car supposedly gets 100MPG (and that is without pluggign it into the wall - jsut running in the car's internals) although according to the site I saw, an 8-passenger vehicle still can "only" get around 70 MPG (as though that's insignificant =>:-/ ) I seem to have not bookmarked it, though :p

But I did find this:

FWIW...