quote:Nevertheless, that doesn't invalidate my main point that nuclear reactors are not inherantly unsafe technology.
Wasn't some of the evidence for your main point that two of the worst nuclear disasters in human history, Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, occurred because of extremely unusual risk factors in a riskier-than-usual situation in the first place?
If that wasn't the case, then isn't your point if not invalidated at least weakened? I mean, I say that as someone who supports expanding nuclear power in the United States, only because I think the batch of problems that come with it are better than the batch of problems we have with our current power makeup. But it is incredibly dangerous, and when bad things happen, they're s@#t-hits-the-fan bad at best.
Chernobyl is one thing; but Three Mile Island was a tempest in a teapot. Your average coal plant releases more radiation in a week of ordinary running. (Yes, coal plants put radiation into the air; they burn carbon, which has radioactive isotopes.) If that's your standard of shit hitting the fan, you need to get a grip, calm down, and then panic and demand the immediate cessation of all coal power production.
Actually, my point was specifically that things are worse by our current standard, but that nuclear power does still have its dangers. That [i]any[i] generation of power for hundreds of millions of people will have dangers of some sort.
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The fact that the current plants produce waste that lasts thousands of years is the one thing that sets me against nuclear power (well, besides the fact that nuclear plants and nuclear waste storage gets disproportionately placed in poorer areas). If you can get over this hurdle (and I think third...or is it forth...generation nuclear power claims to do just this), then I'm all for nuclear power.
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We could build breeder reactors and get less waste while getting more fuel than we started with.
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We have a perfectly good nuclear storage facility here in Nevada that is already built! Yucca mountain.
I've been to the facility and toured it, and it is world class. The dangers that opponents warn of are absolutely non-existant. I've seen what they store the waste in, and these things are durable. They said they could be shot, dropped off the Empire State Building, and even be in the middle of a bomb blast and NOTHING would penetrate these things.
The way opponents make it sound is that we just store it in these metal barrels with a radiation sign on the side and throw it in some dark cave in Yucca mountain.
The facility is already built. We've spent $10 billion on it. For Nevada it would be a HUGE boost to the state economy.
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quote:Originally posted by Geraine: We have a perfectly good nuclear storage facility here in Nevada that is already built! Yucca mountain.
I've been to the facility and toured it, and it is world class. The dangers that opponents warn of are absolutely non-existant. I've seen what they store the waste in, and these things are durable. They said they could be shot, dropped off the Empire State Building, and even be in the middle of a bomb blast and NOTHING would penetrate these things.
The way opponents make it sound is that we just store it in these metal barrels with a radiation sign on the side and throw it in some dark cave in Yucca mountain.
The facility is already built. We've spent $10 billion on it. For Nevada it would be a HUGE boost to the state economy.
The biggest arguments I've seen against using Yucca aren't so much the facility itself (though Nevada isn't thrilled), but from transportation. Most opponents fear what would happen if thousands of tons of nuclear waste start zooming all over the country.
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quote:Originally posted by Geraine: The dangers that opponents warn of are absolutely non-existant.
Yeah, no, this actually happened.
quote:In September 2007, it was discovered that the Bow Ridge fault line ran underneath the facility, hundreds of feet east of where it was originally thought to be located, beneath a storage pad where spent radioactive fuel canisters would be cooled before being sealed in a maze of tunnels. The discovery required several structures to be moved several hundred feet further to the east, and drew criticism from Robert R. Loux, then head of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, who argues that Yucca administrators should have known about the fault line's location years prior, and called the movement of the structures “just-in-time engineering.”[11][12] In June 2008, a major nuclear equipment supplier, Holtec International, criticized the Department of Energy's safety plan for handling containers of radioactive waste before they are buried at the proposed Yucca Mountain dump. The concern is that, in an earthquake, the unanchored casks of nuclear waste material awaiting burial at Yucca Mountain could be sent into a "chaotic melee of bouncing and rolling juggernauts".[13] Loux resigned from office in October 2008 amid discontent that he had increased salaries for himself and other employees beyond authorized levels after one employee left.[14]
blog1491 post664 pottery Yeah, I saw this. I cannot understand what is taking so long to do an analysis of the interior of the BOP (which I am sure is the unknown issue here). Cant they ultra-sound it ?? Although to build an ultra-sound device that can withstand 5000 ft deep pressure may be a bit of a challenge.... Having said that, I also feel that the current flow is small, compared to the potential flow if they screw-up this option. This is a BAD one guys...........
blog1477 post238 188 rinkrat61 "I driller oil wells for 22 years and I have never heard of 10 in. interior diameter drill pipe. Drill collars that go directly on top of the drill bit may be up to 10 in. outside diameter but they only have a 3 in inside diameter. Drill collars are typically 10,8,and 6 in. O.D. Drill pipe makes up most of the drill string and it is typically 5in. O.D. the casing ranges in sizes. Any casing 20 in or larger is only for surface casing and is rarely set deeper than a few hundred feet. Depending on the depth of the well there is typically 3 strings of casing cemented into the well and the production casing is NEVER more than 9 5/8 in inside diameter. Most wells have 5 1/2 in production casing."
quote:We have a perfectly good nuclear storage facility here in Nevada that is already built!
Ok, good.
quote:I've seen what they store the waste in, and these things are durable. They said they could be shot, dropped off the Empire State Building, and even be in the middle of a bomb blast and NOTHING would penetrate these things.
Allowing for propaganda, splendid.
quote:The way opponents make it sound is that we just store it in these metal barrels with a radiation sign on the side and throw it in some dark cave in Yucca mountain.
Yes.
quote:For Nevada it would be a HUGE boost to the state economy.
Whoa, stop right there! What the devil has that got to do with anything?! The US does not produce energy to benefit the economy of Nevada, thanks kindly! This is possibly the worst argument ever for nuclear energy; please don't make it.
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Well, for the industry as a whole sure. As an argument to get Nevada to stop protesting the use of Yucca, it's great argument. And if Yucca is essential to the future of nuclear power in the United States, then it becomes part of the larger argument as well.
I'd say it's really a tailored argument to one state that happens to have more importance than most others in the wider context of the discussion. Which of course isn't to say that there are other solutions that make Yucca unimportant, but, in the past it has been a pretty important idea.
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
Currently, teams of scientists, linguists, and anthropologists are struggling to properly identify Nuclear Waste burial sites. It sounds simple at first... until you consider the half-life of this crap will far out live any facility or structure that contains it, the memory of what it was, or our descendants' ability to read the warnings on the labels, leaving us Neglectful Precursors to our own descendants. As an added twist, future archaeologists might successfully decode the labels, just to brush off our warnings as the superstitious ramblings of an ancient, underdeveloped culture. Damn Interesting has an article on the process.
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quote:If the oil can't be stopped, the underground reservoir may continue bleeding until it's dry, Simmons suggested.
The most recent estimates are that the leaking wellhead has been spewing 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons, or 795,000 liters) of oil a day.
And the oil is still flowing robustly, which suggests that the reserve "would take years to deplete," said David Rensink, incoming president of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists.
"You're talking about a reservoir that could have tens of millions of barrels in it."
At that rate, it's possible the Gulf oil spill's damage to the environment will have lingering effects akin to those of the largest oil spill in history, which happened in Saudi Arabia in 1991, said Miles Hayes, co-founder of the science-and-technology consulting firm Research Planning, Inc., based in South Carolina.
Why not just drill a dozen holes and pump the hell out of it? Sure it's a longer term strategy, but it'd be better than years and years of the status quo.
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I suspect that, if the idea of recovering the current well is given up, there are several options available, probably involving some sort of controlled explosives to remove the path to the surface.
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"And into the Valley of Death rode the Six Hundred Horsemen of the Apocalypse." "Four Horsemen. You've mixed Revelations with Charge of the Light Brigade."
Even NOAA's probably*lowball estimate of 5,000barrels per day is more than sufficiently appalling. The crude oil slick already covers an area nearly equivalent to a circular degree... ...a 3740square-mile / 9680square-kilometre KillingField.
* Blog1477, Comment105, Point3
(Just got curious about the appearance of a circle doubled in area. The first circle I posted is for a spill that is half the size of the ExxonValdiz spill, a milestone that will be reached ~2:30amCentralStandardTime on 17Apr10.)
posted
Actually, this raises an interesting question for me. The oil naturally sits down under the surface under pressure. We have fault lines in the Caribbean and have even occasionally had a little earthquake. How come we've never naturally had a rupture at an oil field? If nature's doing something that protects the fields on its own, maybe we could figure out what that is and adapt it?
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AvidReader: Oil occurs and remains squeezed between layers of rock at high pressure deep beneath the surface. Earthquakes don't let it up to the surface because earthquakes don't break the giant layers of rock above the oil.
To get at oil, we drill all the way down through those layers of rock and put a pipe that the oil escapes up (since there's now a place to release the pressure). Since there's now a hole to the surface, oil will come out whether we're there waiting for it or not, until the hole is effectively closed off.
In other words: there's nothing special 'nature' does to protect oil except keep it deep underground, and if we want to be able to get it out from deep underground, this sort of thing will continue to be possible.
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quote:Scientists studying video of the gushing oil well have tentatively calculated that it could be flowing at a rate of 25,000 to 80,000 barrels of oil a day. The latter figure would be 3.4 million gallons a day. But the government, working from satellite images of the ocean surface, has calculated a flow rate of only 5,000 barrels a day.
BP has resisted entreaties from scientists that they be allowed to use sophisticated instruments at the ocean floor that would give a far more accurate picture of how much oil is really gushing from the well.
“The answer is no to that,” a BP spokesman, Tom Mueller, said on Saturday. “We’re not going to take any extra efforts now to calculate flow there at this point. It’s not relevant to the response effort, and it might even detract from the response effort.”
posted
Good grief, why is BP the one making the decision whether or not scientists can measure on the ocean floor?
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quote:Originally posted by fugu13: Earthquakes don't let it up to the surface because earthquakes don't break the giant layers of rock above the oil.
How weird. With the plates rubbing against each other, I assumed you got damage all the way down. But then I suppose lava would be a normal after effect of one, and it's not.
I hope someone comes up with something brilliant soon. Posts: 2283 | Registered: Dec 2003
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AR: they probably do cause damage a long way down. Damage, however, does not equal to opening up paths directly to the surface that are several inches wide.
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quote:I am guessing they want to use BP equipment and resources to do it.
There really ought to be a provision for government control over such resources in the event of such a catastrophe. Even if it were absolutely clear that BP, Transocean, and Halliburton did nothing wrong whatsoever, I don't think they ought to be the ones calling the shots. It's not their coastline and coastal-dependent economy that's facing ruination for the next few years (at minimum) or so.
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Somehow I doubt that putting bureaucrats with zero experience in drilling and capping oil wells in charge of the operation would help matters.
However, the government and most especially the public should have full access to all information concerning the leak in real time. That includes all executive discussions and all engineering discussions, all legal discussions and all public relations discussions, all videos and other recorded data, etc as in 100%. With the proviso that any official armchair quarterbacking should be saved for the post-mortem and the ensuing law suits.
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Blayne Bradley
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posted
Remember that corporations are people now and can take the 5th!
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Why do you assume they are bureaucrats with 0 experience? Why can't there be experts, technicians, and those who have drilled and capped wells but who are not now nor ever hope to be in the employ of a particular oil company, placed in charge of overseeing the safety and honesty of the industry--so that it meets minimum standards that society requires?
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Because someone would have to pay them, and oil companies pay better than the US government does.
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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quote:Originally posted by aspectre: Somehow I doubt that putting bureaucrats with zero experience in drilling and capping oil wells in charge of the operation would help matters.
However, the government and most especially the public should have full access to all information concerning the leak in real time. That includes all executive discussions and all engineering discussions, all legal discussions and all public relations discussions, all videos and other recorded data, etc as in 100%. With the proviso that any official armchair quarterbacking should be saved for the post-mortem and the ensuing law suits.
so the government should not be able to do anything until the deeds are done? nobody can step in and say, for instance, bp has to switch out their crappy kickbacks dispersant?
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quote:Somehow I doubt that putting bureaucrats with zero experience in drilling and capping oil wells in charge of the operation would help matters.
If that were the only other option, I would be against it. However, the status quo is currently: the folks who very well may have done it are the ones handling it, and they're turning down requests to investigate the current extent of the damage.
I don't particularly care if that's the right decision to make, it's an obvious drastic conflict of interest, and it shouldn't be permitted.
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As frustrated as I am with how long it's taking to solve the problem, I have to wonder what the government would do differently if they took over.
So far as blame goes, I put the preventative blame on the government, but as far as the solution goes, I don't know what people think should have been done differently, or for that matter, what the government would do differently if they pushed BP out of the way and took over tomorrow.
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I agree that with no adequate research and no plan there's not much that anyone could have done different. But I still got a chuckle out of this:
quote: Republican Strategist Mary Matalin -- who herself toured the damage by boat Sunday -- said the White House should cease "saying they have their boot on the neck of BP. They don't have a ballet slipper on the neck of anybody."
posted
I am just laughing at the conservative socialists out there demanding that "President Obama take over the oil rig and do something." You know that the moment President Obama does anything to supplant BP as lead of the effort it will be hailed as "yet another socialist move by Obama. First he took over banking, then GM, then health care, and now the Oil industry."
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That's pretty thankful. The oil could have continued pumping out for quite a long time if this had not worked, and nobody would have been able to do anything about it.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Darth_Mauve: I am just laughing at the conservative socialists out there demanding that "President Obama take over the oil rig and do something." You know that the moment President Obama does anything to supplant BP as lead of the effort it will be hailed as "yet another socialist move by Obama. First he took over banking, then GM, then health care, and now the Oil industry."
I don't think they are arguing that at all. To me the argument is that Obama has been ignoring what is happening and has not sent support to the states affected by the spill. The spill is BP's fault, but that does not mean that the states are unaffected. Fishing, tourism, and other industries are affected by the spill. States have been asking the government to step in and help in the efforts, but feel that so far they have not received the support they need. If the President started to help with the clean up effort, I'm sure President Obama would be applauded for it.
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quote: To me the argument is that Obama has been ignoring what is happening and has not sent support to the states affected by the spill. ... States have been asking the government to step in and help in the efforts, but feel that so far they have not received the support they need.
If bobby jindal is one of those making this argument, I am going to laugh my head off for obvious reasons.
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quote:To me the argument is that Obama has been ignoring what is happening and has not sent support to the states affected by the spill.
Is this the case? I don't think it is.
So far as I can tell, the argument is something like "People jumped on President Bush because of the extremely poor federal response to Hurricane Katrina. Well, President Obama's response is the same as President Bush's and this situation is the same." To put it another way, I'm not seeing much coherent thought or reasonable arguments. Just continuations of efforts to defend one of President Bush's obvious screw ups and attempts to somehow vaguely say that President Obama is doing a bad job without going into any specifics.
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Whether he is or not is irrelevant. While I think Mr. Jindal's idea of a barrier island is nonsense (It would take years to get it completed) there are other things that can be done to help out.
You can cry hypocrisy, but that doesn't change the fact that the states need help down there.
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