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description= An independent scientist s observations on society, technology, energy, science and the environment. Modern science has been a voyage into the unknown, with a lesson in humility waiting at every stop. Many passengers would rather have stayed home. - Carl Sagan;
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n alternative scenario which can deliver the equivalent greenhouse gas emissions mitigation shown to be accurate in a quantitative way within a comparable timeframe and within a comparable cost it will not be inexpensive and it will not happen overnight but i have yet to see any scenario which can honestly do the same job faster and cheaper when some real quantitative analysis is applied written by luke weston october 15 2009 at 12 45 pm posted in uncategorized tagged with anthropogenic climate change australia energy systems nuclear energy politics conspiracy at three mile island with one comment i wrote this in response to a comment over at brave new climate shameless plug but i thought it was quite a nice little post so as not to waste it i ll re post it ps sorry about my lack of blog activity lately sometimes real life seems to eat up my time extra apologies especially if you ve posted comments that the software has kept from being posted pending manual moderator approval and therefore your comments haven t been getting through ah the old three mile island conspiracy theory the notion that there were enormous amounts of radioactivity released and people who experienced acute radiation poisoning that was somehow covered up let s look for a moment at the chernobyl disaster when the chernobyl disaster happened we didn t see the soviet premier calling up reagan to tell him all about this catastrophic accident and large release of radioactivity did we of course they tried to keep it a secret so how did we in the industrialised world find out about the chernobyl accident and this large release of radioactivity we found out about it when all the radiological sensors and alarms started going off at the forsmark nuclear power plant in sweden as another example we all know today that it is possible if you live in an area of relatively uranium rich geology for significant amounts of radioactivity in the form of radon to leach into your basement naturally from the surrounding rock but how was this radon issue first discovered it was discovered when a person employed at a nuclear power station in the united states kept setting off the radiological sensors when he arrived at work every day those incidents show you just how sensitive the detectors and monitors used at facilities like nuclear power plants are in the modern world if there is some sort of massive release of radioactivity into the atmosphere it is impossible to hide it or to cover it up if this massive release of radioactivity at tmi isn t just a myth then you would have recorded clear evidence of it on every bit of photographic film for miles around after the accident all such photographic film was collected and analysed by kodak and no such evidence was found there are many other nuclear power plants in pennsylvania and neighbouring states which aren t too far away from tmi they would have recorded real evidence of a large cloud of radioactivity in the environment if it was really present to that extent you d record real evidence of it anywhere where photographic film is stored or used you d record it at every nuclear power plant or anywhere else where radioactive materials are stored or used where health physics controls are implemented you d record real evidence of it anywhere where medical or industrial x ray images are made you d record it anywhere where radioactivity is used for scientific or medical purposes you d record it everywhere where particle detectors are used for physics experiments you d maybe even detect it on every old duck and cover civil defence radiological detector that someone might have had laying around as an unpleasant relic of history but no such real physical recorded evidence to support the theory was ever recorded anywhere people went looking for it but it wasn t there there are people who claim they got sick as a result of the three mile island accident who claim that they exhibited symptoms consistent with acute radiation poisoning and massive doses of ionising radiation there are also people who claim that they have been made sick by witches who put a curse on them once upon a time upon hearing these stories we d have them tell us the identity of the witch so the witch could then be tortured and murdered based on these stories there are people who tell stories about how they ve been beamed aboard the extraterrestrial flying saucer and sexually molested by the aliens but once again as with the above examples there are mere stories but there is no actual real evidence that stands up to scientific enquiry shortly after the tmi accident people like helen caldicott went and gathered up local residents and described to them the scary sounding symptopms of acute radiation poisoning from acute exposure to massive doses of ionising radiation and implied that that s what would happen to them with that kind of fear and stress it s no surprise that we can see mass hysteria and we can see people who say that they think they might be starting to exhibit those symptoms that they ve been told about but instruments and detectors and photographic films and thermoluminescent dosimeter crystals aren t subject to fear panic and mass hysteria and they recorded nothing a common claim of tmi conspiracy theorists such as caldicott is that longer lived radionuclides such as cs 137 sr 90 pu 239 or pick your favourite moderate to long half life well known reactor produced radionuclide were released into the environment at tmi not just short lived gaseous fission products but if such nuclides were released you could go and take some soil from tmi and physically show the evidence of such release because those radionuclides would still mostly be there they can show us real undeniable physical evidence today if that hypothesis is true but that evidence is never forthcoming written by luke weston october 3 2009 at 12 06 pm posted in uncategorized rethinking nuclear power with 8 comments abc unleashed has recently featured an article by environmentalist geoffrey russell rethinking nuclear power it s worth reading i like the idea of closing down uranium mines and using existing stocks of mined uranium efficiently uranium mining is far less environmentally intensive than mining coal of course but it s basically inevitable that all mining is fairly environmentally intensive and it s always an appealing prospect if we can mine less material whilst still maintaining our energy supplies and our standards of living of course i have to admit when i first saw geoff s claim that we could completely eliminate uranium mining i was skeptical so i took a more detailed look a nuclear reactor which is efficiently consuming uranium 238 and driving a relatively high efficiency engine typically a brayton cycle gas turbine will require approximately one tonne of uranium input for one gigawatt year of energy output this high efficiency use of u 238 could be best realized something like an ifr or a liquid chloride salt reactor the latter is essentially the fast neutron uranium fueled variant of a lftr this figure of one tonne of input fertile fuel per gigawatt year is also comparable for the efficient use of thorium in a lftr there are about one million tonnes of already mined refined uranium in the world just sitting around waiting to be put to use which is termed so called depleted uranium according to one source the exact worldwide inventory of depleted uranium is 1 188 273 tonnes 1 the total electricity production across the world today is about 19 02 trillion kwh 2 therefore total worldwide stocks of depleted uranium used efficiently in fast reactors could provide every bit of worldwide electricity production for about 550 years that s not forever but it s a surprisingly long time and that s just depleted uranium stocks not including the stocks of heu and plutonium from the arsenals of the cold war and not including the large stockpile of uranium and plutonium that exists in the form of used lwr fuel i know some thorium proponents aren t going to like this but there s a strong case to be made here that uranium 238 based nuclear energy has a clear advantage over thorium simply became of these huge stockpiles of already mined uranium for which there exists no comparable thorium resource already mined the 3 200 tonnes of thorium nitrate at nts is tiny compared to the uranium waste stockpile but they re both really useful energy resources which can replace the need for more mining any type of breeder or burner reactor utilising 238 u or 232 th as fuel requires an initial charge of fissile material to kindle it however this requirement for fissile material is quite small and personally i think the inventories of heu and weapons grade plutonium recovered from the gradual dismantlement of the arsenals of the cold war are perfectly suited to this purpose destroying those weapons materials whilst putting them to a valuable use then again with the means to completely replace the use of coal and fossil fuels in a way that requires very little or no uranium mining i really hope the rest of the world keeps buying that iron and copper and bauxite alternatively we re going to have to start developing a more technologically based economy in this country to make up the reduction in exports of these commodities perhaps developing and selling reactor technology developing uranium enrichment technology such as silex is of limited usefulness because the relatively inefficient thermal neutron fission of 235 u and hence the need for enrichment will not supply any large portion of world energy demand in a sustainable fashion over the long term the small amount of 235 u in nature is of limited significance over the long term alternatively perhaps a shake up of agriculture using extensive desalination to supply fresh water requirements might be used to replace australia s income from coal and uranium i m not sure tip o the hat to barry at brave new climate for pointing out this article 1 http www wise uranium org eddat html 2 from the world factbook 2008 ed jokes about the integrity of cia s intelligence aside written by luke weston may 3 2009 at 8 56 am posted in australia fast reactors ifr integral fast reactor lftr nuclear energy nuclear fuels uranium mining tagged with australia fast reactors ifr integral fast reactor lftr nuclear energy nuclear fuels uranium mining a bit of an apology leave a comment i ve been a little busy lately and you may have noticed the absence of many new posts more regrettably though is that there seem to be a large number of comments accumulating in the pending comment moderation queue and they haven t been posted so if you ve been trying to post comments without success this is why and i will make sure they re all posted now unless there are any i really insist on moderating but that s unlikely i will have to try experimenting with the wordpress settings regarding spam filtering and automatic comment approval a little bit written by luke weston may 3 2009 at 8 16 am posted in uncategorized looking for a particular graphic with 7 comments dear readers there s a certain image that i ve seen when browsing the web before which i found useful i m trying to find this image again but haven t seen any success in finding it again it s a pie chart which shows the physical composition of typical used lwr nuclear fuel showing a breakdown of x uranium y zircaloy cladding z hardware w fission products and so forth this was notable in that it included the portion of the fuel element s mass which is the cladding and hardware not just the uranium oxide fuel matrix itself does anybody recognise the graph i m referring to and know where to find it online regards written by luke weston march 25 2009 at 12 52 am posted in uncategorized the argument from appeal to hatred of howard with 5 comments here s a comment i received recently in the context of talking about nuclear power remember john howard sold his soul to gw bush why would yoy sic trust anything he supports we see this occasionally in discussions about nuclear power it s the appeal to hatred of howard an argumentative technique similar to a kind of contemporary derivative of the good old fashioned argumentum ad hominem that goes something like this i john howard was actively interested in investigating the use of nuclear power in australia and was open to the idea ii of course everybody obviously knows that howard is literally pure immoral evil and he feasts on babies or something iii ergo nuclear power is bad you sometimes have the persuasive appeal to hatred of the gop or hatred of bush or something similar it works in exactly the same way written by luke weston march 11 2009 at 12 54 pm posted in uncategorized burning money with solar power in victoria again with 4 comments it has been announced this week that the victorian government will promote renewable energy by spending 100 million to establish a new regional solar power station subject to the federal government matching its commitment premier john brumby will announce both initiatives today focusing on the plan for a 330 gigawatt hours per year solar plant with the capacity to power the equivalent of 50 000 homes all right more kumbaya and rainbows and sunshine courtesy of brumby this proposed new solar power station will supposedly generate 330 gigawatt hours of electrical energy per year the age article originally mentioned a 330 gigawatt plant but they later caught the egregious mistake and edited it how much energy is that in 2006 loy yang unit a in victoria generated 15 995 gwh of electrical energy sent to the grid in doing so it emitted 19 314 994 tonnes of co 2 equivalent and a whole lot of other environmentally and aetiologically nasty dangerous toxic waste such as fly ash so 2 and no 2 as well that s just one example of one of the coal fired generators of course therefore this proposed solar power station is generating about 1 88 percent of that one single coal fired generating station how much will this plant cost we don t know the article doesn t say nor does brumby s original press release we don t know how much it costs and i doubt brumby knows either promote renewable energy by spending 100 million to establish a new regional solar power station subject to the federal government matching its commitment ok we know that it costs at least 200 million there is actually a convenient benchmark which we can use to make an estimate of how much the whole project will actually cost and that is the 420 million solar energy installation planned by solar systems for northwestern victoria this is another expensive solar energy project that the victorian government just loves to talk about as a poster child for their clean green ways the solar systems project with 154 mw of nameplate capacity will generate 270 gwh per annum and will cost 420 million dollars if we assume that the newly proposed 330 gwh annum installation might cost about the same for a given amount of capa...
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