nuclear power as the energy answer? - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

loganmule · 05-28-2007, 05:45 PM

I was watching Penn and Teller on HBO, and the topic was energy. Of particular interest was the assertion that nuclear energy is safe, and that 400 new nuclear reactors would provide all electrical energy needs for the U.S., completely eliminating our present dependence on foreign oil.

I understand that "safe" is a relative term, but we don't seem to have had any problems with nuclear facilities, with the exception of Three Mile Island, which didn't cause the death and destruction that "no nuke" people would have us believe.

Before watching the show, I naively felt that we should avoid nuclear power, but now I'm thinking we ought to take a closer look at the issue. Is there a reason why we hear politicians talk about ethanol, hydrogen and solar power as answers to the energy crisis, but no one is speaking out in favor of nuclear power? Are Penn and Teller missing something, or did they correctly call "bullshit"?

Willravel · 05-28-2007, 05:51 PM

If Penn and Teller can make the leftover nuclear material disappear, then sure. Penn and Teller aren't always right. The Walmart episode made it clear that they make up their minds, then find information to support them.

pig · 05-28-2007, 06:05 PM

i may get more into this later, but for now i'll just say that people are looking into nuclear energy very seriously. it's a tough situation; on the plus side it is an primary source of energy, not just an energy carrier. we really lack that at present outside hydrocarbon/oil and the sun. on the down side is the possibility of a catastrophic meltdown, and as will points out, the issue with the waste. not only in safely containing it, but in the question of whether to centralize (yucca mountain) and take the hit on all the hazards of transporting it, or to keep it spread out and thus have to watch it at several different remote locations. if we don't have a significant breakthrough in harnessing a primary source like solar radiation, wind or water energy or the like, we will eventually take on nuclear as a significant portion of our energy production. then the question becomes batteries or fuel cells, which is completely separate.

so, without having watched the pen and teller bit, i would say this: it is bullshit to not 'talk' about nuclear energy, because the people who make the decisions are talking about it. publicly, politicians aren't talking about it right now because it has such negative connotations. an ancilliary problem is that it takes a long time to build a nuclear facility, and with that investment you have to make use of it for a significant period of time - and live with any consequences. i would say we are hedging our bets against peak oil production and the hopes of finding a way to harness an alternative primary energy source.

filtherton · 05-28-2007, 07:10 PM

I second the pig. If only we could get over our aversion of acid rain - the world has a shit load of coal - at current consumption levels the u.s. has roughly 500 years of domestic coal left.

Really though, i think any realistic solution to any impending energy crisis will be a combination of many different means of energy production as well as a scaling back of energy consumption. You got's to check them Btu's son, fer real.

Baraka_Guru · 05-28-2007, 07:41 PM

The answer is jettisoning. We should jettison the waste into outer space. Or use a space elevator. Whatever.

seretogis · 05-28-2007, 07:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Baraka_Guru

The answer is jettisoning. We should jettison the waste into outer space. Or use a space elevator. Whatever.

Can you imagine a shuttle explosion when the shuttle is carrying tons and tons of nuclear waste? No thank you.

Baraka_Guru · 05-28-2007, 08:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by seretogis

Can you imagine a shuttle explosion when the shuttle is carrying tons and tons of nuclear waste? No thank you.

Fine... space elevator, then... gosh.

Psycho Dad · 05-28-2007, 09:09 PM

As entertaining as I find that show, I have to keep in mind that it is entertainment and it is clearly biased and thus bullshit. Stating that 400 new nuclear plants would eliminate our need for foreign oil only sounds good because many Americans would like to see nothing more than cheap gas and "them terrorist sonsofbitches" finding another way to make money.

I'm not against nuclear power so much. But 400 plants is a great number compared to what we already have.

host · 05-28-2007, 09:45 PM

A new "effort" to promote construction of new nuclear power plants in the US is an idea whose time is past:

<b>The following 3 articles support my opinion that Chinese demand for nuclear fuel will drive it's price, already on a recent skyrocketing trajectory, to a point, aggravated further by waste disposal, site security, and decontaminating plants at the end of their life cycles, along with decontamination of yet to be built new uranium ore refining/processing sites, to levels that will make it economically uncompetitive.</b>

Quote:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/29/wa...=1&oref=slogin
May 29, 2007
Uranium Windfall Opens Choices for the Energy Dept.
By MATTHEW L. WALD

WASHINGTON, May 28 — The government accumulated vast quantities of uranium when prices were very low and no one else wanted it. But now that uranium prices have increased tenfold, the government has a precious commodity — and some tough questions — on its hands.

Furious lobbying has broken out over who should end up with the prize, which will eventually end up as nuclear reactor fuel after being run through an enrichment plant. And though the material’s market value has been estimated at $750 million to $3 billion, one of the companies most vocal in making its case says it deserves the uranium — without paying a cent for it.

Up for grabs is 25 million kilograms of uranium hexafluoride that was incompletely processed at government enrichment plants when prices were very low. The enrichment plants separate uranium 235, a rare type that splits easily, in bombs or reactors, from uranium 238, which does not. When the price of natural uranium was very low, the government, in a cost-saving move, decided to skim off just the uranium 235 that was easiest to obtain.

“In the old days, they left a lot of good stuff behind,” said Julian Steyn, a uranium expert at Energy Resources International, a consulting firm in Washington.

In fact the “tailings” left after enrichment have in some cases more than half the original uranium 235 still in them. In its current form, the material is not attractive to the makers of illicit bombs, because the technology to sort the two types of uranium is cumbersome and found in just a handful of plants around the world.

The lone operating enrichment plant in this country, built by the old Atomic Energy Commission, is in Paducah, Ky. It is run by a subsidiary of USEC, a company formed in the 1990s to privatize the enrichment monopoly that the government had run since the days of the Manhattan Project.

The technology at the plant is outdated, and USEC is struggling to commercialize a more efficient system, using centrifuges, at another plant, in southern Ohio. USEC will not say what it thinks that project will cost, but it has said it does not know how it will raise the money.

USEC is arguing that the government should give it the remaining uranium as a way to ensure that any new enrichment technology that is developed is American owned.

“Essentially, it would be a win-win situation for everybody,” said Elizabeth Stuckle, a spokeswoman for the company, which runs the Paducah plant through a subsidiary, the United States Enrichment Corporation.

That solution would add uranium to the market to tamp down high prices, Ms. Stuckle said, and prolong the life of the Paducah plant and help pay for the centrifuges, whose technology the government owns and licenses to USEC. The government would collect royalties.

USEC officials say the Energy Department could transfer much of the uranium to it with the stroke of a pen. Department officials have signaled that they would appreciate guidance from Congress.

Some lawmakers on Capitol Hill say giving the uranium to USEC would reward a company that has not demonstrated fiscal responsibility.

On Thursday, several senior members of Congress asked the Government Accountability Office to evaluate the options.

“There needs to be vigorous oversight of USEC’s request for a bailout, to ensure the taxpayer’s interests are protected,” Representative John D. Dingell, the Michigan Democrat who is chairman of the House Energy and Commerce committee, said in a statement.

Mr. Dingell said Congress should consider “whether we should be allocating this $2 billion or $3 billion to children’s health insurance instead of subsidizing executives who have mismanaged their companies.”

USEC, he said, had “squandered resources on multimillion-dollar golden parachutes, stock buybacks and dividend payments that frequently exceeded their earnings.”

If the uranium is sold, it would be up to Congress to decide what to do with the income. One possibility would be to use the money to offset cleanup costs in the Energy Department’s nuclear complex.

The company denies that it has improperly handled its financial dealings and says its problems stem from the challenge of operating World War II technology that is a heavy user of electricity at a time electric bills have soared.

A Senate aide who has been briefed on the discussions said that the company’s future was uncertain and that if it were sold and broken up, the government would effectively be subsidizing some other entity.

In addition to USEC, a consortium of British, Dutch and German companies has expressed interest in the partly processed uranium for a centrifuge plant that it is building in New Mexico, using the same type of machines that have operated for years in Europe.

Congressional aides say one possibility is that the government would lend the uranium to the consortium, to be “repaid” later, when prices will presumably be lower.

Utilities that are contemplating building nuclear plants would also like some of the uranium, which would please companies that mine uranium. Assured of an adequate uranium supply, energy companies would be more likely to go ahead with constructing reactors, ensuring a long-range market for the mining companies.

There is some sympathy for that view on Capitol Hill, where some lawmakers are wary of disposing of the uranium in a way that would push down market prices and discourage investments in new mines.

<h2>The spot price is more than $120 for a pound of yellowcake, the ore form, up from less than $10 earlier in this decade. The spot market is fairly small, with more trading under long-term contracts at lower prices...</h2>

Quote:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...052801051.html
China Embraces Nuclear Future
Optimism Mixes With Concern as Dozens Of Plants Go Up

By Ariana Eunjung Cha
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, May 29, 2007; Page D01

YUMEN, China....

.....Under plans already announced, China intends to spend $50 billion to build 32 nuclear plants by 2020. Some analysts say the country will build 300 more by the middle of the century. That's not much less than the generating power of all the nuclear plants in the world today.......

Quote:

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articl...aNuke0528.html
China aims to ramp up nuke power by 20-fold
Plan boosts output by the end of 2030

Akihito Teramura
Yomiuri Shimbun
May. 28, 2007 12:00 AM
BEIJING - The Chinese government plans to boost the country's nuclear power generation capability by up to 20 times its current level by the end of 2030, a Chinese official close to the plan said Saturday.

The National Development and Reform Commission, which administers China's energy policy, aims to increase nuclear power generation to between 120 million and 160 million kilowatts, the official said during a speech. He spoke at a strategic energy forum held in Beijing, which was sponsored by the Chinese Construction Ministry.

At present, China has 10 nuclear reactors, which are capable of generating 8 million kilowatts.

China has previously announced that it wanted to increase nuclear power output to 40 million kilowatts by the end of 2020.

To attain its goal under the new plan, China would need to build in excess of 100 nuclear reactors, each capable of generating 1 million kilowatts, over 20 years.

If the plan is realized, China would become the world's largest generator of nuclear power, surpassing Japan, France and the United States.
<b>
However, China's plan to build multiple nuclear plants has prompted fears of intensified international competition for uranium, which is used as fuel for nuclear power generation....</b>

<b>Read the record of the most experienced private nuclear plant operator, NU of Connecticut:</b>

Quote:

http://www.traprockpeace.org/nuke_no...ase-excessive/
Nov 12, 2005 - Electric Customers Could Get Rebates if CT Judge Deems 456 Percent Increase Excessive

http://www.courant.com/news/local/hc...2764.story?col
l=hc-headlines-home

State Questions Nuclear Rate Hike

Electric Customers Could Get Rebates
If Judge Deems 456 Percent Increase Excessive

By GARY LIBOW
Courant Staff Writer
November 12 2005

The state’s consumer counsel Friday questioned whether the 456 percent rate
increase given Connecticut Yankee Atomic Power Co. to decommission the
Haddam Neck plant is justified.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission quietly allowed Connecticut Yankee
to increase its annual decommissioning ratepayer charge from $16.7 million
to $93 million in February. The rate increase was included in customer bills
with little fanfare.

Consumer Counsel Mary Healey said her office, the state Department of Public
Utility Control and attorney general have been fighting the “awfully high”
decommissioning charges, now estimated at approximately $831.3 million.
“Just the order of magnitude raises questions whether it was prudent or
not,” Healey said.

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, in a telephone interview Friday, said
he considers the performance of Connecticut Yankee’s management “incompetent
and outrageous.” Ratepayers shouldn’t be forced to subsidize Connecticut
Yankee’s mismanagement, he said.

An administrative judge is reviewing Connecticut Yankee’s cost estimate to
determine its validity and is expected to make a recommendation to FERC in
December. FERC typically grants the rate increase requests quickly to keep
from burdening the applicant financially while the request is deliberated.
Costs deemed excessive would be rebated.

Connecticut Yankee spokeswoman Kelley Smith said the utility, which had the
burden to prove its rate increase was prudent and justified, cites four
primary causes for the increase.

Smith said the 9/11 terrorist attacks resulted in increased security and
insurance costs. The Department of Energy’s continued failure to permanently
remove Connecticut Yankee’s spent fuel was likewise costly, she said.
Connecticut Yankee has built concrete casks to house more than 1,000
uranium-laden spent fuels. The utility claims the costs to continue to store
the rods and provide around-the-clock security continues to mount and the
federal government has not taken steps to move the contaminants off-site to
a permanent repository.

Smith also pointed to the negative impact of declines in the financial
markets during 2000-2002 that cut earnings on the decommissioning fund and
termination of the decommissioning contract with Bechtel Nuclear that left
Connecticut Yankee to complete the work itself.

If FERC determines the $93 million decommissioning price isn’t prudent,
Connecticut Yankee would be directed to issue rebates.

Blumenthal, the DPUC and other state consumer watchdogs say Connecticut
Yankee’s lengthy avoidance in measuring levels of potentially cancer-causing
Strontium-90 at its decommissioned plant will cost ratepayers millions of
dollars.

The ratepayers are customers of the nine utility companies, which include
Connecticut Light & Power Co. and United Illuminating Co., that own
Connecticut Yankee.

Strontium-90 is found in nuclear reactor waste, a by-product of the fission
of uranium and plutonium in nuclear reactors.

The federal Environmental Protection Agency considers Strontium-90 “one of
the more hazardous constituents of nuclear wastes.” Internal exposure to the
chemical similar to calcium is linked to bone cancer, cancer of the soft
tissue, and leukemia, the agency states.

Jim Reinsch, president of Bechtel Nuclear, the firm Connecticut Yankee
contracted in 1999 to decommission the site and later fired, testified under
oath that plant ownership didn’t want to test for contaminants like
Strontium-90.

When Strontium-90 was found in 2001 to have “severely contaminated” the
nuclear plant’s groundwater, Reinsch testified Bechtel informed Connecticut
Yankee of the urgent need for extensive groundwater characterization and
monitoring.

“CY would not own up to its responsibilities to determine the extent of
groundwater contamination and then develop a cost effective means to address
it and would not accept Bechtel’s recommendations for doing so,” Reinsch
stated.

Bechtel sued Connecticut Yankee for $93.5 million, accusing the utility of
grossly understating the levels of groundwater contamination making it
impossible for Bechtel to complete the job on schedule and within budget.
Connecticut Yankee counter-sued Bechtel, accusing the company of delaying
the decommissioning and failing to abide by the terms of its contract.
Bechtel, which was fired in 2003, is seeking $90 million from Connecticut
Yankee for unlawful termination.

Blumenthal said Connecticut Yankee has a moral and potentially legal
responsibility to identify contamination.

“It seems like a see no-evil, hear no-evil avoidance of responsibility,”
Blumenthal said Friday. Connecticut Yankee “had a very profound moral
responsibility to disclose any such problems, which it failed to do.”

In its 2001 groundwater report to the state Department of Environmental
Protection, Connecticut Yankee reported tests for “gamma emitting”
radionuclides and tritium were good.

Strontium does not emit gamma radionuclides, just beta, according to Haddam
resident Ed Schwing, a former member of the Citizens Decommissioning
Advisory Committee.

Connecticut Yankee stated in the 2001 report it would perform quarterly
groundwater sampling from 20 monitoring wells, with analysis including
tritium, boron and “gamma spectroscopy.”

DEP in 2001 requested that Connecticut Yankee conduct more extensive
sampling, including hard to detect radionuclides such as Strontium, Schwing
said. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission also urged Connecticut Yankee to
test more comprehensively, he said.

“Connecticut Yankee neglected the groundwater contamination issue until they were forced to do it, but kept on dragging their feet,” Schwing charges.
Mike Firsick, a DEP health physicist, said the state in 2001 told
Connecticut Yankee” to test the site for possible strontium contamination.
“Typically, if you don’t look for it, you don’t have a problem with it,”
Firsick said Friday. “I wanted [testing] to be all inclusive. Since they
were decommissioning, I wanted to make sure they would check for everything.
It was for the purpose of being thorough and complete.”

Firsick said DEP continues to closely monitor Connecticut Yankee.
“I think we have the origin of groundwater contamination well-bounded,” he
said. “There is a through review of the groundwater monitoring, reports
quarterly.”

When Connecticut Yankee states the decommissioning is completed, Firsick
said DEP plans to test the site for 18 months to ensure the environment
isn’t contaminated.

Quote:

http://www.zmag.org/zmag/articles/steinbergjulaug98.htm
Nuclear Contamination In Connecticut
Dangerous practices at the Millstone nuclear power plants

By Michael Steinberg

The end of 1997 brought a flurry of media reports in Connecticut about radioactive contamination from the state’s notorious nuclear power plants. The Connecticut Yankee nuclear plant, located about 20 miles up the Connecticut River from Long Island Sound, has been the focus of much of the attention. But the Millstone nuclear plants, located just west of New London on the Sound, have had reports of similar problems as well.

<h3>The Connecticut Yankee plant was permanently shut down at the end of 1996 after 29 years of operation.</h3> All three Millstone plants were shut down by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) after years of consistently dangerous practices. They are currently rated as worst in the nation by the NRC, and cannot be restarted without approval by the agency’s commissioners. All four plants are owned and operated by Northeast Utilities (NU), New England’s largest electrical utility. The Millstone plants comprise New England’s largest electrical generating station. Because of problems at these plants, NU is struggling for its life. Repairs at Millstone and the cost of buying replacement power cost the company over $1 billion, and forced it to post a $51.7 million loss for the third quarter of 1997.

In the fall of 1996 two workers at the shut down Connecticut Yankee plant entered an area that NU had declared decontaminated of radioactivity. Because the company was confident the area wasn’t hot, it didn’t bother to test it for radioactivity before sending the two people in. But when the two emerged they set off radiation alarms and were found to be severely contaminated. This incident forced the NRC to investigate and eventually slap NU with a hefty fine. But the story just kept getting hotter.

Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal hired nuclear expert John Joosten in April 1997 to investigate Connecticut Yankee’s radiological track record. Blumenthal didn’t want rate payers or the state to get stuck with decommissioning costs for the plant that were due to NU mismanagement.

Joosten’s findings were a bombshell. He revealed that in 1979, and again in 1989, NU had operated the Connecticut Yankee plant with badly damaged nuclear fuel rods. Joosten contended that the large amounts of radiation released through the cracked rods had spread contamination through the plant and beyond. Joosten also found that other unsafe practices at the plant had caused contamination of the site’s soil, parking lots, wetlands, roof septic system, silt in its discharge canal, water wells, and a shooting range three-quarters of a mile away. NU documents also reported the movement of radiologically untested materials around and off the plant site.

In a September 16, 1997 press release, Attorney General Blumenthal declared, “What we have is a nuclear management nightmare of Northeast Utilities’ own making. The goal is no longer to decommission a nuclear power plant, but rather to decontaminate a nuclear waste dump.”

The previous July NU had declared a landfill on the edge of the plant site a radioactive zone. Levels of two radioactive substances, Cobalt 60 and Cesium 137, were found to be three and six times, respectively, above federal limits. The wooded area was then fenced off and radiation warning signs were posted. But for years it had been accessomgible to the public. NU was unable to explain how the hot stuff got there.

Cobalt 60 remains dangerously radioactive for over 50 years, Cesium 137 for 300. October brought revelations of more Cobalt 60 found in contaminated soil transported from the plant—this time in 1989 to the playground of a day care center operated by the spouse of a plant employee. Governor John Rowland promised that children enrolled at the day care center at that time would be tested for radiation. But over a month later none of the families had even been contacted.

It emerged that during the 1980s and into the 1990s NU had been giving away soil, asphalt, and concrete blocks from the Connecticut Yankee site to local residents. Federal law required NU to test these materials for contamination before they left the plant site. But NU was not able to document that it had done so.....

<b>The history and legacy of nuclear processing plants and contamination and cleanup:</b>

Quote:

http://biology.clc.uc.edu/fankhauser...d/fernald.html

A TOUR OF THE
"FEED MATERIALS PRODUCTION CENTER"
<b>AT FERNALD OHIO</b>
©David B. Fankhauser, Ph.D.
Professor of Biology and Chemistry
University of Cincinnati Clermont College

Quote:

http://www.enquirer.com/fernald/stor...6_fernald.html
Fernald workers' safety threatened

BY MIKE GALLAGHER
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Radiation contamination. Sabotage. Missing and misplaced uranium. These are not make-believe scenes from a Hollywood disaster movie. They are among the real-life incidents that have occurred <b>at the Fernald nuclear cleanup site</b> since Jan. 1, 1993.

While U.S. Department of Energy officials say they are working to improve safety at the site, federal reports and other documents obtained by The Enquirer reveal a pattern of life-threatening mistakes by the company hired to clean up the former uranium processing plant.

Internal reports prepared by the cleanup contractor - Fluor Daniel of Irvine, Calif., and its subsidiary, Fernald Environmental Restoration Management Co. (FERMCO) - reveal that numerous safety rules and procedures were being overlooked or didn't exist. The documents also say there is a shortage of trained safety analysts at the site.

A six-month Enquirer investigation into Fernald has revealed more than 1,000 serious safety-related problems since Jan. 1, 1993, when FERMCO began work at the site. These include:

Seven ''criticality'' incidents, where drums of radioactive waste were stored too closely together, were caused by ''management problems'' or ''personnel error.'' Energy Department officials say the incidents could have led to explosions of nuclear material.

Almost 80 cases of workers being exposed to radiation between Jan. 8, 1993 and Oct. 10, 1995.

Fernald workers - including several handling nuclear materials - were found high on cocaine or marijuana or drunk on alcohol, but later allowed to return to work if they promised to attend substance abuse classes.

Intentional sabotage of electrical circuit breakers that could have resulted in explosions or the spread of radiation. The incidents led to FBI investigations.

Someone purposely hiding surgical gloves filled with radioactive material in a personnel radiation monitor where it endangered other workers.

Repeated failure of radiation alarms - designed to warn workers of possible exposure - due to power outages or dead batteries.

Missing or misplaced containers of uranium.

Radioactive material being shipped off-site in mislabeled drums that, in at least one case, resulted in a man being exposed to radiation.

Numerous cases of ''counterfeit'' or substandard bolts being used to hold together radioactive-containment equipment, cranes and lifts.

''Both management and line workers come to work daily fearing that they may be carried out of here with radiation poisoning or, worse yet, that a catastrophic incident could kill thousands of their fellow workers and area residents because of some stupid mistake,'' said one FERMCO senior management official who asked for anonymity, saying he would be fired if identified.

That fear is echoed by others who work at the 1,050-acre site 18 miles northwest of downtown Cincinnati.

''A couple of my buddies were contaminated last year when they were working on installing some new (pump) lines, because their bosses told them the old lines had been flushed and they hadn't been,'' one FERMCO worker said, also requesting anonymity. ''Something bad happens here pretty regularly.''

Energy Department officials, including Fernald Area Director Jack Craig, acknowledge that the site's safety record was dismal under FERMCO for the first two years (1993-94), but ''improvements are being made.

''I would certainly not characterize our safety record right now as excellent, but it is improving and we are working with FERMCO officials to fix the problems that currently exist,'' Mr. Craig said. ''We've instituted many programs and changes to deal with these problems.''

Mr. Craig also conceded that part of the safety problems at Fernald could be chalked up to Fluor Daniel - FERMCO being relative newcomers to the nuclear cleanup business....

....FERMCO President Don Ofte touted the safety record at Fernald, which includes about 4 million worker - hours without an employee being injured seriously enough to miss a work day. FERMCO has averaged 1.96 work days lost for every 200,000 employee - hours worked at the plant. That compares to 3.8 days for every 200,000 worker - hours at Energy Department sites nationwide. However, Mr. Ofte acknowledged the statistics on safe work hours do not take into account the 1,000 serious incidents reported to the Energy Department. ''They're called near misses, and we urge our people to overreport because we want to find out about these things.''

Energy Department records obtained by The Enquirer reveal that most of the safety violations and problems that have occurred at Fernald since Jan. 1, 1993 have been identified by the government as the fault of FERMCO management.

According to the records, those management problems include failure to adequately train workers, failure to properly maintain safety equipment and ignoring or failing to follow Energy Department rules to prevent explosions or radiation contamination.

But while Fluor Daniel - FERMCO officials say they work incessantly to keep Fernald safe for workers, their reports reveal serious safety problems.

For example, in November 1995, Fluor Daniel - FERMCO prepared a blue-ribbon committee report after reviewing work and procedures at Fernald, including that of the company's Safety Analysis Group, which oversees safety procedures at the site.

According to a report of that committee obtained by The Enquirer:

''The Safety Analysis Group operates as a group of independent individuals without effective communication among themselves, other departments or projects, or the external environment. Insufficient effort is being expended to seek lessons learned from others, either internal or external. There is a shortage of staff with broad experience in safety analysis work.

''The Safety Analysis Group's procedures may be inadequate to cover all aspects of the current work, and there appears to be a lack of consistent approach to performing safety analysis.''

Lee Tashjian Jr., Fluor Daniel's vice president of corporate relations, declined to comment on the problems identified in his company's report. Mr. Ofte also declined to comment about the report's findings.

Mr. Craig said he was ''concerned'' about the report and was working to improve safety conditions at Fernald. Repeated requests by The Enquirer to interview Fluor Chairman and CEO Les McCraw were denied.

Fluor Daniel, an international construction and design company, was awarded the $2.2 billion government contract to clean up Fernald in December 1992. It marked the first, site-wide nuclear cleanup contract the company has received since it entered the field.

Fluor Daniel created a subsidiary, FERMCO (Fernald Environmental Restoration Management Co.), to perform the cleanup.

Fluor Daniel had won an earlier Energy Department contract to clean up material at the government's Hanford nuclear site in Washington state, but that project was postponed indefinitely in 1993 because of a change in priorities by Energy Department officials.
Life-threatening incidents

Any safety violation on a nuclear cleanup site ''is one violation too many'' and could result in death not only for the violator, but coworkers and possibly area residents as well, said Thomas Grumbly, the Energy Department's Acting Undersecretary and former Assistant Secretary for Environmental Management, during a Nov. 27, 1995 telephone interview with The Enquirer.

Mr. Craig said nuclear site safety ''should be the No. 1 priority of everyone working there. The margin for error is very small. We consider every safety-related incident a serious one.'' Repeated requests to interview Energy Department Secretary Hazel R. O'Leary and Mr. Grumbly during the past three weeks were denied.

While acknowledging the impact any safety problem can have on a nuclear site, Energy Department officials, including Mr. Craig, say incidents of criticality and radiation contamination are feared the most because of the immediate threat to human life.

A review of the more than 1,000 incidents at Fernald detailed in Energy Department reports, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency investigation records and FERMCO internal documents, showed 78 contamination incidents have occurred at the site since Jan. 8, 1993.

Criticality incidents arise when storage drums containing radioactive waste are placed too closely together, said Gary Stegner, the Energy Department's Fernald spokesman.

Despite being stored in protective containers, some radiation always will escape. If too many sources of that radiation are close to each other, a nuclear chain reaction can occur, possibly resulting in an explosion, according to Mr. Craig and Mr. Stegner.

Seven times between Sept. 22, 1993 and June 13, 1995, members of the Energy Department's Nuclear Criticality Safety Team reported criticality incidents at Fernald. The most recent incident occurred when approximately 40 55-gallon drums were moved to Building 77 and stored in a configuration that violated posted safety rules.

Another incident occurred Oct. 7, 1994, when FERMCO workers placed other drums filled with low-level waste between drums containing ''enriched - restricted'' nuclear material. Drums also were placed too closely to the area's radiation detection alarm, rendering it inoperable, according to an Energy Department report.

Criticality incidents continued to occur despite repeated warnings and violation notices issued by the Energy Department after every incident, beginning with the first one on Sept. 22, 1993.
Workers contaminated

Radiation contamination of workers has been, and continues to be, a major concern, Fluor Daniel - FERMCO and Energy Department officials agree.

While government investigators determined that most of the incidents were the result of ''management problems,'' the workers themselves sometimes were at fault.

In an Oct. 10, 1995 incident, an employee of a subcontractor was splashed with radioactive ''green salt'' (uranium tetra-fluoride) after unzipping her protective clothing because she was uncomfortable.

The woman zipped up her clothing and delayed reporting the incident for more than an hour, despite Energy Department rules that require immediate notification.

After setting off the radiation detectors that all employees are required to use when leaving a ''hot'' site, the woman was treated for what was described in the report as an ''acute and excessive'' dose of radiation. She later was fired for violating the safety rules.

Her medical condition - like that of every person who received some level of contamination at Fernald - was not disclosed in the government reports. The government does not require such information in the reports. Medical information about employees does not have to be disclosed under the federal Freedom of Information Act, and therefore was not available to The Enquirer.

On March 30, 1993, another worker, despite wearing protective clothing, contaminated his hair with radioactive dirt while working under a tank to repair a leak. The worker apparently inadvertently brushed his head against the contaminated tank.

On several occasions, workers were contaminated because they were not made to wear protective clothing while working at known radioactive sites.

For example, on Aug. 4, 1995, a worker who was told to paint areas of the boiler plant and Building 12 stepped in some wet paint. The sticky paint allowed radioactive dust to build up on the soles of his boots. He told Energy Department investigators that FERMCO officials never warned him of the dangers, according to the reports.

In another case, on March 1, 1993, a subcontractor worker welding outside Plant 9 had his boots and coveralls contaminated, despite wearing protective clothing over them, because he was working on his hands and knees in radioactive soil.

Energy Department records also blame FERMCO management for the contamination of a worker on Dec. 7, 1994. Employees digging a trench with a backhoe uncovered a sealed 5-gallon drum. One worker was directed to open the drum with a shovel. It was later determined the drum and its contents were radioactive.

Some contamination incidents remain a mystery.

On March 5, 1993, a worker's clothes were contaminated with radiation after he said he simply spread salt on icy walkways around buildings that were considered non-contaminated areas.
Other safety problems

Energy Department and FERMCO records also reveal hundreds of other safety-related incidents at Fernald.

Among the most serious, according to the records, were at least three incidents of missing or misplaced uranium or deadly hydrofluoric gas.

The most recent occurred May 26, 1995, when a worker discovered canisters of hydrofluoric gas in a trash area near Building 71. FERMCO officials said they did not know how the canisters got there.

Other incidents include a missing container of 167 pounds of slightly enriched uranium. Workers discovered the uranium missing on Sept. 30, 1994. The container was found two months later in another building.

Fernald also has had incidents of sabotage that were so serious, the Energy Department's Mr. Craig said, that the FBI became involved.

FBI agents were called to the site on Dec. 13 and 16, 1994, when workers found some circuit breakers that had been purposely disabled or damaged. The circuit breakers are designed to prevent electrical overloads that could lead to explosions, fires or the spread of radioactive contamination.

''This was obviously sabotage,'' Mr. Craig said. ''Those incidents posed very serious problems for every worker here. The FBI was called, but unfortunately they were not able to find the person or people responsible. I really don't know if the people who did it are still working here or not. The incidents did stop after the FBI came a second time.''

Another suspected case of sabotage occurred Aug. 12, 1994, when someone put surgical gloves filled with radioactive material inside the arm wells of a Personnel Contamination Monitor that workers were required to use. The monitor's alarm went off when a man used it. The man was not contaminated, but a check of the machine found the surgical gloves. Investigators never found the culprit....

....Another potentially life-threatening situation that Energy Department and FERMCO investigators have uncovered is thousands of ''counterfeit'' or substandard fasteners and bolts being used to hold together tanks containing radioactive materials, cranes, lifts, and other structures.

Energy Department investigators say such bolts don't meet the government's stringent design specifications, and are brought on-site by contractors or subcontractors.

A review of Energy Department records did not reveal any investigation that led to criminal or civil penalties against a contractor or subcontractor for supplying inferior bolts.

But records show Energy Department inspectors discovered such bolts in use on five occasions in 1995: March 24, May 4, June 28, Aug. 15 and Oct. 3.

Mr. Craig said inspectors ''are working continuously to detect counterfeit materials because of the serious consequences'' if they should fail or break. He also said that when counterfeit bolts or materials are found, ''we have them removed immediately.''

FERMCO spokesman Jack Hoopes said the company takes the problem of counterfeit materials ''very seriously'' and works with the Energy Department to try to halt their use...

Published Feb. 12, 1996.

Quote:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/20/us/20park.html
Nuclear Site Nears End of Its Conversion to a Park

By CHRISTOPHER MAAG
Published: September 20, 2006

FERNALD, Ohio, Sept. 19 - In about two weeks, the
final trainload of radioactive waste is to leave
<b>the Fernald nuclear site.</b>

The train will carry 5,800 tons of contaminated
soil in 60 railcars, just like the 196 trains
before it, which have run for seven years to a
Utah dump from this scarred, cratered patch of
land in the hills of southern Ohio.

"I never thought I'd live to see this day," said
Johnny Reising, who directs activity at the site
for the Department of Energy.

This fall, the site will open to the public as a
natural, undeveloped park following a 13-year,
$4.4-billion cleanup. That is actually a bargain.
Experts had originally estimated that cleanup
would cost $12 billion and take until 2025.

"I remember touring the site in the 80's and
thinking, 'My golly, how are we ever going to
clean this up?' " said Graham Mitchell, who
oversaw the site for the Ohio Environmental
Protection Agency for 21 years until he retired
this month.

From the time it opened in 1951 until it closed in
1989, the Feed Materials Production Center in
Fernald enriched 500 million pounds of uranium, 67
percent of all the uranium used in the nation's
cold war nuclear weapons program.

The center also created 1.5 billion pounds of
radioactive waste, Mr. Reising said. It operated
in obscurity until 1985, when neighbors discovered
that the plant's waste had polluted their air,
soil and drinking water.

The neighbors sued, and the resulting news
coverage prompted similar revelations at nuclear
facilities around the country.

The site originally included a leaky silo filled
with highly radioactive uranium sludge. At the
time it was the largest concentration of poisonous
radon gas in the world, Mr. Reising said.
Officials at the Fernald center dumped radioactive
waste into pits just 20 yards from a creek that
sits directly atop the Great Miami Aquifer, one of
the biggest and cleanest aquifers east of the
Mississippi, Mr. Mitchell said.

Rainwater carried uranium into the creek, where it
sank and contaminated 225 acres, or about 0.062
percent of the aquifer, according to figures on
the Web site of the Fernald Citizens Advisory
Board, which represented the center's neighbors
through the cleanup process.

When the Department of Energy ran out of room to
bury waste at the 1,050-acre Fernald site,
officials ordered it packed into 100,000 metal
drums, which were left outside, exposed to the
elements. Accidental releases covered 11 square
miles of surrounding farmland in radioactive dust.

"When we first visited the site, I saw workers
walking around in short-sleeve shirts, and their
arms were covered with radioactive yellowcake,"
said Lisa Crawford, president of Fresh, a citizen'
s group that fought for cleanup at Fernald.

The original plan called for moving all the
radioactive waste from Fernald to Nevada. Citizens
and regulators gradually decided the plan was so
expensive that it might never happen. "It took us
years to realize how much dirt we were actually
talking about," said Jim Bierer, chairman of the
citizens board.

In the final compromise, the federal government
agreed to move 1.3 million tons of the most
contaminated waste to storage sites in Texas,
Nevada and Arizona. Citizens agreed to place the
rest - 4.7 million tons - in a landfill at
Fernald.

Today, the waste site resembles a long, fat worm.
Filled with uranium-laced soil, building parts and
shreds of clothing, the landfill is 30 feet deep,
with another 65 feet above ground, and is
three-quarters of a mile long.

The landfill's outer wall of rock, plastic and
clay is nine feet thick and sits 30 feet above the
aquifer. It is designed to last at least 1,000
years.

At its peak, the cleanup effort employed 2,000
workers, as many people as worked at the center
during the height of uranium production, Mr.
Reising said.

The Department of Energy spent $216 million on
buildings just to clean the site. When the
buildings were no longer needed, each one had to
be demolished, decontaminated and placed in the
landfill. The department also built a pumping
system to suck contaminated water out of the
aquifer and purify it. That process will continue
until the entire aquifer is clean, in about 2023,
Mr. Reising said.

When the site opens as a park, the landfill will
be off-limits to the public. The remaining 930
acres will include hardwood forest, prairie and
wetlands intended to recreate the area's natural
environment before European settlers arrived in
the early 1800's, Mr. Reising said.

Native bird species not seen in the area for
decades, including bobolinks and dickcissels, have
been spotted at Fernald, as have endangered
species including the Indiana brown bat and Sloan'
s crayfish. Deer wander the roads, and great blue
herons stand motionless in ponds.

Humans have started to return, too. For decades,
home values around Fernald stagnated because no
one wanted to live near a nuclear waste dump, Mr.
Bierer said.

Quote:

http://nucnews.net/nucnews/2004nn/0406nn/040604nn.htm

Senate agrees to pave over nuclear dump
Plan to entomb waste defeated; other states may have to settle

Friday, June 4, 2004
(AP)
http://web.archive.org/web/200412010...learsludge.ap/

WASHINGTON -- The Senate on Thursday agreed to ease cleanup requirements for tanks holding millions of gallons of highly radioactive waste from Cold War-era bomb making.

Senate critics said the change would leave poisonous sludge in underground tanks and risk contamination of groundwater.

An attempt to block the change failed by the narrowest of margins. Senators voted 48-48 on an amendment offered by Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., that would have stripped the provision from a defense authorization bill.

The provision allows the Energy Department to reclassify radioactive sludge in 51 tanks at a South Carolina nuclear site so it can be left in place and covered by concrete, instead of being entombed in the Nevada desert.

While the plan has been approved by South Carolina officials, it brought sharp criticism from officials in Washington and Idaho who feared the change would put intense pressure on them to agree to a similar cleanup plan at nuclear sites in their states.

The proposal also left South Carolina's two senators sharply divided.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who had put the provision into the defense bill, said it will quicken waste cleanup at the Savannah River nuclear complex near Aiken, South Carolina, by 23 years and save $16 billion. He rejected claims the waste would harm the environment.

Sen. Fritz Hollings, D-S.C., said the sludge accounts for more than half of the radioactivity in the tanks of liquid waste and endangers future generations. It's "not harmless sludge we can pour sand over and cover with concrete" as the Energy Department proposes, said Hollings.

The Savannah River tanks contain 34 million gallons of liquid waste. Sludge accounts for about 1 percent of the waste volume.

While supporters of the measure insisted it would apply only to waste at the Savannah River site, opponents said the change in nuclear waste policy would create a "clear precedent" that could force other states -- mainly Washington and Idaho where there also are defense waste tanks -- to accept less safe cleanup plans.

Cantwell, who led the push to kill the measure, accused the administration of trying to "sneak" the change in cleanup requirements through Congress by tacking it onto a defense measure in closed-door proceedings without hearings.

In an interview, Cantwell said she hasn't given up on getting the provision defeated. "I don't think the issue is over. ... It's too significant of an issue," she said. "We have more amendments." Since the House bill doesn't contain a similar measure, the issue is also likely to come up in final negotiations by a conference.

Graham's provision was put into the $447 billion defense bill during consideration by the Armed Services Committee without hearings. The House panel refused to include the changes in its version of the defense bill and, instead, called on the National Academy of Sciences to examine the Energy Department cleanup proposal.

The White House is trying "to blackmail my state to accept a lower cleanup standard," declared Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.

The tanks of nuclear waste are left over from decades of producing plutonium and highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons. A 1982 law requires that all waste from such reprocessing must be buried at a central repository planned for Nevada.

But the Energy Department argues that the residual sludge should be considered low-level waste and should not have to be removed. Instead, the department wants to cover the sludge with cement-like grout, saying that would be protective for hundreds of years.

Deputy Energy Secretary Kyle McSlarrow said Thursday the proposed treatment of the sludge is a "scientifically sound plan to empty, clean, stabilize and dispose of nuclear waste" in the tanks. He maintained it was "fully protective" of the environment.

Last year a federal judge, acting on a lawsuit by environmentalists, ruled that such an approach violates the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act. To get around the ruling, the department wants to get the law changed.

There are 177 tanks with 53 million gallons of waste at the Hanford nuclear site near Richland, Wash., and 900,000 gallons in tanks at the INEEL facility near Idaho Falls, Idaho.

Environmentalists blasted the Senate action.

It's "a cruel trick that allows the Bush administration to leave a legacy of radioactive pollution that could endanger drinking water for millions of Americans," said Karen Wayland, legislative director of the Natural Resources Defense Council, which filed the lawsuit that successfully challenged the Energy Department plan.

Robert Pregulman, executive director of the Public Interest Research Group in Washington state, said the legislation marks another attempt by the Energy Department "to weasel out of its obligation to properly clean up the radioactive mess it created at Hanford and other sites around the country."

--------

Nuclear Waste Plan Survives in Senate

WASHINGTON IN BRIEF
Friday, June 4, 2004; Page A11
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...-2004Jun3.html

The Senate yesterday narrowly blocked a challenge to an Energy Department plan to leave some radioactive waste from Cold War bombmaking operations buried in the ground at nuclear weapons sites.

By a 48 to 48 tie vote that closely followed party lines, the Senate rejected an amendment to the fiscal 2005 defense authorization bill that would have prevented South Carolina from moving ahead with such a cleanup plan at the Savannah River weapons site.

Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) warned that the Energy Department is trying to set a precedent that would undo a long-standing environmental policy that requires high-level wastes to be removed from sites and stored at a federal depository in Nevada.

"This is the latest crescendo of an administration that is trying to rewrite environmental law," Cantwell said. The Hanford Nuclear Reservation in her state was once the main factory for making weapons-grade plutonium. It now stores about two-thirds of the country's high-level radioactive waste.

A federal court in Idaho last year ruled against an Energy Department effort to leave some of the material in huge tanks...
--------

Senate Backs Redefinition of Atom Waste

June 4, 2004
By MATTHEW L. WALD
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/04/politics/04nuke.html

WASHINGTON, June 3 - The Senate voted Thursday to give the Energy Department the authority to reclassify nuclear waste so it could be left in aging tanks, some of them already leaking, rather than be pumped out for disposal elsewhere.

The vote would reverse a decision last July by a federal district court judge in Idaho who had ruled, in a suit brought by environmentalists and backed by several states, that the high-level radioactive material must be buried deep beneath the ground.

Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, had inserted language drafted by the Energy Department into a military authorization bill that would let the department reclassify wastes so they could be kept in the storage tanks at the Savannah River Site in his state.

But Senator Maria Cantwell, a Democrat from Washington, where the largest volume of nuclear waste is stored, proposed an amendment that would have deleted the Graham language from the bill. She argued that it would set a precedent for her state and Idaho, where there are similar wastes. Some of the tanks in Washington are leaking, while those in Idaho and South Carolina are not.

Adding the amendment to a military bill in wartime, and doing so at a closed committee session, amounted to "a sneaky process behind closed doors," she said. The idea should have gone through the energy committee and should have been considered in open hearings, she argued.....

loganmule · 05-28-2007, 10:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pig

i may get more into this later, but for now i'll just say that people are looking into nuclear energy very seriously. it's a tough situation; on the plus side it is an primary source of energy, not just an energy carrier. we really lack that at present outside hydrocarbon/oil and the sun. on the down side is the possibility of a catastrophic meltdown, and as will points out, the issue with the waste. not only in safely containing it, but in the question of whether to centralize (yucca mountain) and take the hit on all the hazards of transporting it, or to keep it spread out and thus have to watch it at several different remote locations. if we don't have a significant breakthrough in harnessing a primary source like solar radiation, wind or water energy or the like, we will eventually take on nuclear as a significant portion of our energy production. then the question becomes batteries or fuel cells, which is completely separate.

so, without having watched the pen and teller bit, i would say this: it is bullshit to not 'talk' about nuclear energy, because the people who make the decisions are talking about it. publicly, politicians aren't talking about it right now because it has such negative connotations. an ancilliary problem is that it takes a long time to build a nuclear facility, and with that investment you have to make use of it for a significant period of time - and live with any consequences. i would say we are hedging our bets against peak oil production and the hopes of finding a way to harness an alternative primary energy source.

Thanks for your input on this, pig. Given my own uninformed bias against nuclear power, I can understand why politicians would rather justify a $400 haircut than come out publicly in favor of going all out nuclear. As for hedging our bets with regard to energy sources, I was surprised to learn, via Wikopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power), that 20% of U.S. electricity already comes from nuclear power plants, and that we are the largest producer of nuclear power.

This is pure speculation on my part, but I suspect that if there were enough profit in it, the "real" white people, as Dave Chapelle calls them, would be pushing nuclear power as the energy answer, and would dismiss out of hand the real risks that you've mentioned to be weighed against the benefits.

jorgelito · 05-28-2007, 11:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by willravel

If Penn and Teller can make the leftover nuclear material disappear, then sure. Penn and Teller aren't always right. The Walmart episode made it clear that they make up their minds, then find information to support them.

Ditto on circumcision.

Another point: that's 400 new terrorist targets.

host · 05-29-2007, 12:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by loganmule

Thanks for your input on this, pig. Given my own uninformed bias against nuclear power, I can understand why politicians would rather justify a $400 haircut than come out publicly in favor of going all out nuclear. As for hedging our bets with regard to energy sources, I was surprised to learn, via Wikopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power), that 20% of U.S. electricity already comes from nuclear power plants, and that we are the largest producer of nuclear power.

This is pure speculation on my part, but I suspect that if there were enough profit in it, the "real" white people, as Dave Chapelle calls them, would be pushing nuclear power as the energy answer, and would dismiss out of hand the real risks that you've mentioned to be weighed against the benefits.

well, loganmule, I shared how I've come to an informed opinion that we in the US cannot justify the monetary and environmental costs of expanding nuclear power generating capacity, yet, in spite of my information offering, you posted that you were uniformed as to your own bias against nuclear power.

A lack of encouragement from you, notwithstanding, I'll share what I've learned about $400 haircuts, as well:

Quote:

The New York Times > Fashion & Style > You Paid How Much for That ...
November 21, 2004. You Paid How Much for That Haircut? By ALEX KUCZYNSKI ... And each minute cost about $10: Mr. Pita charges $800 for a haircut. ...
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/21/fa...rint&position=

Most Expensive Hairstylists - Forbes.com
If you can even get an appointment with Orlando Pita, owner of Orlo, in New York City, you will be expected to cough up $800. His clients include Madonna ...
http://www.forbes.com/lifestyle/2006...4featb_ls.html

Rocky Mountain News - Denver and Colorado's reliable source for ...
Think a $400 haircut is out of line? Check out the most expensive hairstylists, according to Forbes.com:. • $800: Orlando Pita, Orlo Salon, New York ...
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drm...528927,00.html

so....in a campaign where image is everything, the "haircut" seems an average priced, reasonable "investment".

....what do you think that it must have cost to purchase a phony Texas "ranch"....a prop, in order to give the impression that the candidate wasn't born in New Haven, CT....Connecticut, which his grandfather represented as a US senator, where his grandmother lived until she died, in Greenwich, in 1991, near NY City...where his mother was born...? He later attended Yale U. for four years, after attending Phillips Academy in Andover, MA for four years, where he was a cheerleader, and later, after graduating from Yale, in New Haven, the city of his birth, and then attended Harvard in Cambridge, MA, for 3 years...in Massachusetts, where his father was born....

You make a joke about the rather routine political campaining circumstances of a candidate who is worth more than $30 million....money that he earned, against all odds, after a modest beginning as the son of a North Carolina textile mill worker....a mill worker father who rose early to teach himself the math skills he believed would make him promotable into a mill supervisory position, and the son, unlike his father, later graduating college on a scholarship, earning a batchelors degree in "textile science", and then still later, becoming a successful trial lawyer....running for president of the US, and in that process, getting billed $400 for the hair cutting services of a Beverly Hills hair stylist who came to the busy candidate, for his convenience, to cut his hair to optimize his appearance in front of TV cameras and "in person" appearances....

You make a joke that isn't even funny....especially when compared to the spectacle of a Phillips, Yale, and Harvard educated, New England native from a "blue blood" family, attempting to pass himself off as a Texas rancher, to such an extreme that he paid a high six figures amount for a phony "livestockless" ranch, and who speaks with a phony Texas "drawl" that he sure didn't "pick up" in the four years he attended high school waving his pom poms and shouting out his "Cheers" at Phillips Academy football games, or during his 7 combined years of attendance at Yale and Harvard....

Baraka_Guru · 05-29-2007, 05:00 AM

One of the major non-environmental issues of nuclear power is that most projects run horrifically over budget. As is the case in Ontario, previous projects ran over budget by billions of dollars. From what I understand, this is a common problem around the world. Nearly every new nuclear project will likely run millions of dollars over budget, many of which will be abandoned, therefore adding to the strain of integrating the technology into our lives. A balanced approach to energy is certainly the way to go. Surveys of Ontario have revealed an incredible yet virtually untapped resource: wind. There are belts of incredibly forceful wind in this province. If we were only to harness that, it would generate a substantial amount of energy. Let's not rule out run-of-the-river technology as well. All of this potential is just sitting there. Why don't we consider these as well?

tecoyah · 05-29-2007, 05:15 AM

Nuclear Power certainly has its place in the energy puzzle, but should we replace Oil dependence with Nuclear dependance......we accomplish nothing in the long run. In my opinion we need to develop a combination strategy which uses technological understanding to develop more capable renewable energy sources, and work toward a more localized energy economy.

http://www.energyinnovations.com/sunflower250.html

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006...nal_wind_t.php

http://www.gaiam.com/retail/SolarLiv...d=off-the-grid

pig · 05-29-2007, 06:58 AM

well, the other thing to consider folks is that you never get anything for free. for instance, i'll be honest and say that i'm not up on the literature on this subject, but i've always wondered what impact, if any, large scale deployment of wind farms would have on local weather conditions.

host: india and china are always the major factor on the subject of energy...as well as the environmental impact (globally) of energy production and use. of course, with multinational cooporations being so popular, the lines get a little blurry...but that's where the projected growth is, no question about it. in the absence of another primary energy source, i suspect we'll increase our use of nuclear by some percentage, and use not only the nuclear energy itself but the secondary thermal energy as well.

shakran · 05-29-2007, 07:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by willravel

If Penn and Teller can make the leftover nuclear material disappear, then sure. Penn and Teller aren't always right. The Walmart episode made it clear that they make up their minds, then find information to support them.

Precisely. If you watch the disability episode, it's disgusting. They parody people who are crippled with that iron lung bullshit, then claim the ADA hurts the disabled- - the VAST majority of disabled people would disagree with that.

Nuclear power is safe until it's not - but the trouble is that an unsafe nuclear incident will render potentially hundreds of square miles uninhabitable for tens of thousands of years. That's not the kind of thing we should be screwing around with, frankly.

Superbelt · 05-29-2007, 08:29 AM

Nuke plants in North America particularly have been notororiously expensive and have overruns because each plant gets designed almost from the ground up, on an individual basis.
France picked one design and built it everywhere for decades at a time, vastly lowering the cost.
They also had a centralized fuel and waste depot as well as a school for nuclear engineers etc.
That is what you get with a nationalized nuclear grid that supplies over 75% of the countries power.

In the US we had an every company for itself system where the costs plans and services were not shared across the board to defray costs.

Another problem is reprocessing. We don't do it as part of our anti-proliferation policies within the civilian nuclear power sector. So all that potentially recoverable nuclear material is just sent to waste removal. Up to 95% of the uranium and plutonium can be recovered. Actual recovery is much lower (~30%), but at least it is something.

Also, Nuclear Plants aren't some magical independent energy source. Every Nuke plant is tethered to a dedicated COAL power plant that fuels the fission process.
While I am on the subject of Coal, A similar Coal Powerplant creates 100 times the nuclear emissions as an actual nuclear powerplant. Trace amounts of Uranium and Thorium are released in the burning process, and this adds up over time.

Then, of course is our completely retarded system of dealing with the nuclear waste.

Nuclear has a place as it already does power 1/5 of this nation. I would only want to see development of the nuclear generation industry restarted if we adopt at least partially the French nationalized system.

Anything less is wasteful and dangerous.

dksuddeth · 05-29-2007, 09:28 AM

when elitist ted kennedy allows a windfarm off the coast of his Massachussetts home, i'll consider his argument for cleaner energy valid. Until then, he needs to STFU.

filtherton · 05-29-2007, 10:05 AM

Who said anything about ted kennedy? Are you seriously pinning the validity of wind energy to ted kennedy?

host · 05-29-2007, 10:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dksuddeth

when <b>elitist</b> ted kennedy allows a windfarm off the coast of his Massachussetts home, i'll consider his argument for cleaner energy valid. Until then, he needs to STFU.

dksuddeth, don't you have it backwards? Hasn't Kennedy conducted his representation of the people of Massachusetts, in the US Senate, with a decidedly populist agenda? If Kennedy is not a populist politician, who...in your opinion is? If Kennedy is, as you wrote...an "elitist", who, in your opinion, isn't?

Quote:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv...emk092990b.htm
Why Ted Kennedy Can't Stand Still

By Rick Atkinson
Sunday, April 29, 1990; Page W11

......AMONG HUMAN VIRTUES, Kennedy rates loyalty very high. For nearly 30 years, he has been a faithful standard bearer for the very young and very old, for immigrants and refugees, for blacks and American Indians and blue-collar workers. For the most part, these constituencies have repaid the allegiance. An Ebony poll in 1988 found that the magazine's black readers trusted Kennedy more than any other white American. "We've always found him to be a consistent champion," adds NAACP chief Washington lobbyist Althea T.L. Simmons. Thomas R. Donahue, secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO, says, "I think Kennedy really represents the best expression of somebody on the Hill who's worried about people issues and worker issues and is doing something about it."....

...to be sure, the US Senate is a "millionaire's club", and Kennedy is one of the millionaires....but to call him an "elitist", in view of the positions that he has taken during his career,

Quote:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv...emk092990b.htm

...."It's true that he's nothing if not persistent," says one senior Bush administration official. "Eventually he will succeed in a lot of these issues."

But on others, the jury is still out. In the 1980s, Kennedy tried to modify the liberal agenda by shifting costs away from the federal treasury to businesses; his most ambitious effort in this vein involves mandatory, employer-financed health insurance, a proposal which thus far -- to Kennedy's great frustration -- has failed to muster sufficient political support. He also acknowledges responsibility for creating and sustaining some of the liberal social programs -- CETA is one example -- that eventually collapsed in failure. During the Reagan presidency, Kennedy at times was reduced to rear-guard skirmishing in a futile effort to slow the conservative Republican juggernaut. .....

....seems a simplistic and misinformed way to describe the senior senator from Massachusetts.

Willravel · 05-29-2007, 11:13 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dksuddeth

when elitist ted kennedy allows a windfarm off the coast of his Massachussetts home, i'll consider his argument for cleaner energy valid. Until then, he needs to STFU.

Strom Thurmond is a racist, but that has nothing to do with anything.

pig · 05-29-2007, 11:33 AM

will,

was as racist, was a racist...ole strommy strom is pushing up daisies these days bro.

i didn't even touch the ted kennedy thing...dk... sometimes you kind of amuse me with the tangents man. its kind of like host repeating the testimony in all the bush threads...but at least i understand why he does that.

seretogis · 05-29-2007, 12:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pig

will,

was as racist, was a racist...ole strommy strom is pushing up daisies these days bro.

i didn't even touch the ted kennedy thing...dk... sometimes you kind of amuse me with the tangents man. its kind of like host repeating the testimony in all the bush threads...but at least i understand why he does that.

His point is that some of the people who push for "clean" energy refuse to allow it to block the view from their million-dollar mansions. Wind farms are not pretty, and if they don't want it in view from their palatial estates, why would we want it in view from our third floor apartment windows? Rather, why would any of us have an issue with how "pretty" it is, or isn't, if it is a reasonable source of alternative energy?

Kadath · 05-29-2007, 01:04 PM

It's not just millionaires who take the NIMBY stance. It's as old as man.

pig · 05-29-2007, 01:47 PM

seretogis,

i understood the jist of what dk was saying, i just don't think it has jackshit to do with the lack of public debate about nuclear energy, in anything more than a strongly tangential fashion. personally, i could less than a shit about what ted kennedy does, and i feel i have a reasonably good idea as to why nuclear isn't being talked about publicly. i'm more interested in perspective on new energy technology in general. i did a quick search of the thread and found 1 and only 1 reference to ted kennedy. maybe there is one buried in host's links...?

seretogis · 05-29-2007, 02:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pig

i'm more interested in perspective on new energy technology in general.

Geothermal, wind, wave/hydroelectric, and solar forms of energy production are all valid, feasible, and should be pursued by individuals and companies who find it economically feasible to do so. Unfortunately though, these methods are generally at least immediately less economical when compared to cheaper / dirtier forms of energy. Once the cost goes down and efficiency goes up, I think we will see more and more people with solar panels on their roofs and perhaps even wind turbines in their backyards -- that is, unless city councils, neighborhood groups, and others cry and shout about it being an "eyesore."

Quote:

Originally Posted by pig

maybe there is one buried in host's links...?

Most of us will never know..

ubertuber · 05-29-2007, 04:01 PM

One reason the "dirty energy" is cheap is that the companies who produce don't have to assume the costs of the dirtiness directly. If environmental cleanup/protection were mandatory, some things that are currently cheap would no longer be so attractive, economically speaking.

Baraka_Guru · 05-29-2007, 05:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Superbelt

Nuke plants in North America particularly have been notoriously expensive and have overruns because each plant gets designed almost from the ground up, on an individual basis.
France picked one design and built it everywhere for decades at a time, vastly lowering the cost.
They also had a centralized fuel and waste depot as well as a school for nuclear engineers etc.
That is what you get with a nationalized nuclear grid that supplies over 75% of the countries power.

France's nuclear program was a knee-jerk reaction to oil price spikes in the '70s. They now face the challenges of dealing with all the waste products they're producing from all those plants. This requires developing deep mines for storage that will happen over thousands of years.

I would like to look more into this, but I've initially uncovered an article that suggests that wind power is actually on par with nuclear in terms of cost, and in some cases, it's less expensive. Even the nuclear industry has admitted as much.

When you consider the initial costs, operation costs, and disposal costs, nuclear energy perhaps isn't as cheap as it may seem. Check it out.

loganmule · 05-30-2007, 06:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by host

well, loganmule, I shared how I've come to an informed opinion that we in the US cannot justify the monetary and environmental costs of expanding nuclear power generating capacity, yet, in spite of my information offering, you posted that you were uniformed as to your own bias against nuclear power.

A lack of encouragement from you, notwithstanding, I'll share what I've learned about $400 haircuts, as well:

so....in a campaign where image is everything, the "haircut" seems an average priced, reasonable "investment".

....what do you think that it must have cost to purchase a phony Texas "ranch"....a prop, in order to give the impression that the candidate wasn't born in New Haven, CT....Connecticut, which his grandfather represented as a US senator, where his grandmother lived until she died, in Greenwich, in 1991, near NY City...where his mother was born...? He later attended Yale U. for four years, after attending Phillips Academy in Andover, MA for four years, where he was a cheerleader, and later, after graduating from Yale, in New Haven, the city of his birth, and then attended Harvard in Cambridge, MA, for 3 years...in Massachusetts, where his father was born....

You make a joke about the rather routine political campaining circumstances of a candidate who is worth more than $30 million....money that he earned, against all odds, after a modest beginning as the son of a North Carolina textile mill worker....a mill worker father who rose early to teach himself the math skills he believed would make him promotable into a mill supervisory position, and the son, unlike his father, later graduating college on a scholarship, earning a batchelors degree in "textile science", and then still later, becoming a successful trial lawyer....running for president of the US, and in that process, getting billed $400 for the hair cutting services of a Beverly Hills hair stylist who came to the busy candidate, for his convenience, to cut his hair to optimize his appearance in front of TV cameras and "in person" appearances....

You make a joke that isn't even funny....especially when compared to the spectacle of a Phillips, Yale, and Harvard educated, New England native from a "blue blood" family, attempting to pass himself off as a Texas rancher, to such an extreme that he paid a high six figures amount for a phony "livestockless" ranch, and who speaks with a phony Texas "drawl" that he sure didn't "pick up" in the four years he attended high school waving his pom poms and shouting out his "Cheers" at Phillips Academy football games, or during his 7 combined years of attendance at Yale and Harvard....

As is reflected by the times of our respective posts, host, I had not seen yours until I had posted my own response to pig. As you pointed out, and what I have since come to learn, is that cost and safety are big issues, which get massaged one way or another when profit motive and politics are added in to the mix.

As for the reference to the $400 haircut, I was simply making the point that coming out in favor of nuclear power would be a political "gotcha" on the order of what happened with Edwards and the "I feel pretty" video. Personally, I think it's sad that the future of a good candidate can hinge on inane crap, as opposed to that individual's substantive positions on critical issues and real character. I'd trade Edwards (or just about anyone else) for Bush in a heartbeat. All of the current crop of presidential candidates are at great expense presenting carefully crafted images of themselves to the public. Edwards simply had the misfortune to be caught putting his makeup on, in a manner of speaking. And in the end, we get the politicians we deserve...sorry, now my cynicism is showing and I'm OT.

MexicanOnABike · 05-30-2007, 09:08 AM

"the stone age didn't end when the world ran out of stones"

If it's not safe, we should really start looking at other methods of energy. Look up free energy. I recently saw a show on this and it's pretty amazing what they can do with it. If the world could stop looking at how to make the most money from this, we would see a big change.

05-28-2007, 05:45 PM	#1 (permalink)
loganmule Junkie Location: midwest	nuclear power as the energy answer? I was watching Penn and Teller on HBO, and the topic was energy. Of particular interest was the assertion that nuclear energy is safe, and that 400 new nuclear reactors would provide all electrical energy needs for the U.S., completely eliminating our present dependence on foreign oil. I understand that "safe" is a relative term, but we don't seem to have had any problems with nuclear facilities, with the exception of Three Mile Island, which didn't cause the death and destruction that "no nuke" people would have us believe. Before watching the show, I naively felt that we should avoid nuclear power, but now I'm thinking we ought to take a closer look at the issue. Is there a reason why we hear politicians talk about ethanol, hydrogen and solar power as answers to the energy crisis, but no one is speaking out in favor of nuclear power? Are Penn and Teller missing something, or did they correctly call "bullshit"?

05-28-2007, 05:51 PM	#2 (permalink)
Willravel ... a sort of licensed troubleshooter. Location: Behind the brick wall, inside the gray room, at the black desk. Blog Entries: 14	If Penn and Teller can make the leftover nuclear material disappear, then sure. Penn and Teller aren't always right. The Walmart episode made it clear that they make up their minds, then find information to support them. __________________ "So long as governments set the example of killing their enemies, private citizens will occasionally kill theirs." Elbert Hubbard

05-28-2007, 06:05 PM	#3 (permalink)
pig pigglet pigglet Location: Locash	i may get more into this later, but for now i'll just say that people are looking into nuclear energy very seriously. it's a tough situation; on the plus side it is an primary source of energy, not just an energy carrier. we really lack that at present outside hydrocarbon/oil and the sun. on the down side is the possibility of a catastrophic meltdown, and as will points out, the issue with the waste. not only in safely containing it, but in the question of whether to centralize (yucca mountain) and take the hit on all the hazards of transporting it, or to keep it spread out and thus have to watch it at several different remote locations. if we don't have a significant breakthrough in harnessing a primary source like solar radiation, wind or water energy or the like, we will eventually take on nuclear as a significant portion of our energy production. then the question becomes batteries or fuel cells, which is completely separate. so, without having watched the pen and teller bit, i would say this: it is bullshit to not 'talk' about nuclear energy, because the people who make the decisions are talking about it. publicly, politicians aren't talking about it right now because it has such negative connotations. an ancilliary problem is that it takes a long time to build a nuclear facility, and with that investment you have to make use of it for a significant period of time - and live with any consequences. i would say we are hedging our bets against peak oil production and the hopes of finding a way to harness an alternative primary energy source. __________________ You don't love me, you just love my piggy style Last edited by pig; 05-28-2007 at 06:08 PM..

05-28-2007, 07:41 PM	#5 (permalink)
Baraka_Guru Dracologist Super Moderator Location: Toronto, Canada Blog Entries: 89	The answer is jettisoning. We should jettison the waste into outer space. Or use a space elevator. Whatever. __________________ Humankind cannot bear very much reality. —"Burnt Norton," Four Quartets, T. S. Eliot

05-28-2007, 09:09 PM	#8 (permalink)
Psycho Dad Mulletproof Location: Some nucking fut house.	As entertaining as I find that show, I have to keep in mind that it is entertainment and it is clearly biased and thus bullshit. Stating that 400 new nuclear plants would eliminate our need for foreign oil only sounds good because many Americans would like to see nothing more than cheap gas and "them terrorist sonsofbitches" finding another way to make money. I'm not against nuclear power so much. But 400 plants is a great number compared to what we already have. __________________ Don't always trust the opinions of experts.

05-28-2007, 07:10 PM	#4 (permalink)
filtherton A poor man's version of a rich man. Location: In the land of ice and snow.	I second the pig. If only we could get over our aversion of acid rain - the world has a shit load of coal - at current consumption levels the u.s. has roughly 500 years of domestic coal left. Really though, i think any realistic solution to any impending energy crisis will be a combination of many different means of energy production as well as a scaling back of energy consumption. You got's to check them Btu's son, fer real.

05-29-2007, 05:00 AM	#13 (permalink)
Baraka_Guru Dracologist Super Moderator Location: Toronto, Canada Blog Entries: 89	One of the major non-environmental issues of nuclear power is that most projects run horrifically over budget. As is the case in Ontario, previous projects ran over budget by billions of dollars. From what I understand, this is a common problem around the world. Nearly every new nuclear project will likely run millions of dollars over budget, many of which will be abandoned, therefore adding to the strain of integrating the technology into our lives. A balanced approach to energy is certainly the way to go. Surveys of Ontario have revealed an incredible yet virtually untapped resource: wind. There are belts of incredibly forceful wind in this province. If we were only to harness that, it would generate a substantial amount of energy. Let's not rule out run-of-the-river technology as well. All of this potential is just sitting there. Why don't we consider these as well? __________________ Humankind cannot bear very much reality. —"Burnt Norton," Four Quartets, T. S. Eliot

05-29-2007, 05:15 AM	#14 (permalink)
tecoyah Illusionary	Nuclear Power certainly has its place in the energy puzzle, but should we replace Oil dependence with Nuclear dependance......we accomplish nothing in the long run. In my opinion we need to develop a combination strategy which uses technological understanding to develop more capable renewable energy sources, and work toward a more localized energy economy. http://www.energyinnovations.com/sunflower250.html http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006...nal_wind_t.php http://www.gaiam.com/retail/SolarLiv...d=off-the-grid

05-29-2007, 06:58 AM	#15 (permalink)
pig pigglet pigglet Location: Locash	well, the other thing to consider folks is that you never get anything for free. for instance, i'll be honest and say that i'm not up on the literature on this subject, but i've always wondered what impact, if any, large scale deployment of wind farms would have on local weather conditions. host: india and china are always the major factor on the subject of energy...as well as the environmental impact (globally) of energy production and use. of course, with multinational cooporations being so popular, the lines get a little blurry...but that's where the projected growth is, no question about it. in the absence of another primary energy source, i suspect we'll increase our use of nuclear by some percentage, and use not only the nuclear energy itself but the secondary thermal energy as well. __________________ You don't love me, you just love my piggy style

05-29-2007, 08:29 AM	#17 (permalink)
Superbelt This vexes me. I am terribly vexed. Location: Grantville, Pa	Nuke plants in North America particularly have been notororiously expensive and have overruns because each plant gets designed almost from the ground up, on an individual basis. France picked one design and built it everywhere for decades at a time, vastly lowering the cost. They also had a centralized fuel and waste depot as well as a school for nuclear engineers etc. That is what you get with a nationalized nuclear grid that supplies over 75% of the countries power. In the US we had an every company for itself system where the costs plans and services were not shared across the board to defray costs. Another problem is reprocessing. We don't do it as part of our anti-proliferation policies within the civilian nuclear power sector. So all that potentially recoverable nuclear material is just sent to waste removal. Up to 95% of the uranium and plutonium can be recovered. Actual recovery is much lower (~30%), but at least it is something. Also, Nuclear Plants aren't some magical independent energy source. Every Nuke plant is tethered to a dedicated COAL power plant that fuels the fission process. While I am on the subject of Coal, A similar Coal Powerplant creates 100 times the nuclear emissions as an actual nuclear powerplant. Trace amounts of Uranium and Thorium are released in the burning process, and this adds up over time. Then, of course is our completely retarded system of dealing with the nuclear waste. Nuclear has a place as it already does power 1/5 of this nation. I would only want to see development of the nuclear generation industry restarted if we adopt at least partially the French nationalized system. Anything less is wasteful and dangerous.

05-29-2007, 09:28 AM	#18 (permalink)
dksuddeth Junkie Location: bedford, tx	when elitist ted kennedy allows a windfarm off the coast of his Massachussetts home, i'll consider his argument for cleaner energy valid. Until then, he needs to STFU. __________________ The conspiracy of ignorance masquerades as common sense.

05-29-2007, 10:05 AM	#19 (permalink)
filtherton A poor man's version of a rich man. Location: In the land of ice and snow.	Who said anything about ted kennedy? Are you seriously pinning the validity of wind energy to ted kennedy?

05-29-2007, 11:33 AM	#22 (permalink)
pig pigglet pigglet Location: Locash	will, *was* as racist, *was* a racist...ole strommy strom is pushing up daisies these days bro. i didn't even touch the ted kennedy thing...dk... sometimes you kind of amuse me with the tangents man. its kind of like host repeating the testimony in all the bush threads...but at least i understand why he does that. __________________ You don't love me, you just love my piggy style

05-29-2007, 01:04 PM	#24 (permalink)
Kadath Muffled Location: Camazotz	It's not just millionaires who take the NIMBY stance. It's as old as man. __________________ it's quiet in here

05-29-2007, 01:47 PM	#25 (permalink)
pig pigglet pigglet Location: Locash	seretogis, i understood the jist of what dk was saying, i just don't think it has jackshit to do with the lack of public debate about nuclear energy, in anything more than a strongly tangential fashion. personally, i could less than a shit about what ted kennedy does, and i feel i have a reasonably good idea as to why nuclear isn't being talked about publicly. i'm more interested in perspective on new energy technology in general. i did a quick search of the thread and found 1 and only 1 reference to ted kennedy. maybe there is one buried in host's links...? __________________ You don't love me, you just love my piggy style

05-29-2007, 04:01 PM	#27 (permalink)
ubertuber spudly Location: Ellay	One reason the "dirty energy" is cheap is that the companies who produce don't have to assume the costs of the dirtiness directly. If environmental cleanup/protection were mandatory, some things that are currently cheap would no longer be so attractive, economically speaking. __________________ Cogito ergo spud -- I think, therefore I yam

05-30-2007, 09:08 AM	#30 (permalink)
MexicanOnABike Location: up north	"the stone age didn't end when the world ran out of stones" If it's not safe, we should really start looking at other methods of energy. Look up free energy. I recently saw a show on this and it's pretty amazing what they can do with it. If the world could stop looking at how to make the most money from this, we would see a big change. __________________ █ █ Movie Reviews - Ratings longest thread ever!