Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Skip Peel - Mineral Consultant on July 25, 2009 at 4:05

Good article Les. Thanks. I think there are several sections that would make great excerpts to include in communications with federal legislators.

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Permalink Reply by John Kluge on July 25, 2009 at 5:14

I think we need to step back and realize a few things before we get simplistic on gas vs. coal. Mr. Kennedy spends the entire article lambasting coal and its environmental impact and glosses over gas and its impact in the last paragraph. Both fuels are hydrocarbons and both are burned to heat water to steam to drive generators. Powerplants using radioactive materials as fuel are the same. All three of these heat generating methods have both positive and negative aspects. One of the biggest negatives for gas in the past has been wildly swinging prices. Power plants take years to design and build. Power companies try to take future costs into consideration when planning and gas prices have been too volatile for long range projections. I suspect that many of the people pushing for immediate replacement of fuel coal by gas have a bit of an agenda to increase their personal wealth.
I should state here that my knowledge of coal comes from 25 years with a local mine and that I have a little land with a gas lease on it, so I see both sides of the equation. Finally, I would say that there are stupifying amounts of money involved here and we should all take that into consideration when evaluating different points of view. Good luck to us all!

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Permalink Reply by sesport on July 25, 2009 at 5:47

Mr. Kluge - Sorry, your reply button doesn't work, when I hit it my view just jumps back to the top of this page.

I thank you for your cautionary warning, but I have to ask, other than the volatile prices of ng, what drawbacks do you see to using it instead of coal fired or nuclear power? The continued push to use "clean" (cough, couch) coal would mean increased power prices to the consumer,too. In addition, the CO2 emissions (as well as other noxious "things") from coal warrant, IMHO, the switch. Same goes for nuclear ... the "noxious stuff" that must be disposed. Don't want that anywhere near me, and, if I recall correctly, neither do others where some of this "stuff" was going to be disposed.

Other than price swings, which could conceivably stabilize if ng were to garner a regular market and not be subject to mass quantities in storage, the better choice, again IMHO, for power generation, industrial use and transportation is ng.

And of course someone is going to make money from it, the corporations, the various governments, the mineral owners. Not a crime in this country to make money I don't think.

Just my take on it.

Thanks for your input & civil debate - sesport :0)

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Permalink Reply by Mac Davis on July 25, 2009 at 8:47

Waste from nuclear power plants is very small in volume. Yes, it's nasty, but it stays in place where you put it as long as you keep it out of the rain, and keep the bad guys from deliberately spreading it around.

For every pound of waste created by a nuclear power plant, a coal fired plant will produce tons of solid or liquid waste and tons of CO2 and other waste gasses. A natgas plant will produce tons of CO2 and other waste gasses.

Nuclear waste disposal is a political problem, not a technological one.

Read a little info on the article author and judge his credibility:

Robert F. Kennedy

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Permalink Reply by sesport on July 25, 2009 at 10:03

Sorry, Mac, nuclear waste disposal may be a political problem to some, but one has to question why it is such. Love Canal & 3 Mile Island incidents may be almost a generation ago now, as well as Pripyat, Ukraine, but the results are still fresh in the minds of many.

http://library.buffalo.edu/specialcollections/lovecanal/about/chron...

http://community.livejournal.com/abandonedplaces/1651741.html

That said, nuclear power generation is still even more expensive to build and the current admistration has cut funding dramatically. Even if it were funded, the cost would be passed on to consumers, don't you think? Bottom line, we have to decide which will take the smaller bite out of our pockets.

Thanks for the link, will look at it. :0)

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Permalink Reply by Mac Davis on July 25, 2009 at 19:15

I was discussing whether nuclear waste is a technological or political problem.

Love Canal was non-nuclear. However, I will admit that if you take nuclear waste, dump it in an unprotected location, then sell the property to unknowing people as home sites, it will probably have bad effects on those people. (i.e. Love Canal is irrelevant to nuclear waste disposal.)

Three Mile Island didn't release any significant amount of nuclear material and no one was harmed. It also wasn't a waste disposal problem to begin with. It may be relevant to the question of whether we should build nuclear power plants, but it has nothing to do with the question of whether nuclear waste disposal is a technological or political problem.

Chernobyl was not a waste disposal problem, either. It's irrelevant to the question of nuclear waste disposal, too.

You can debate whether we should build nuclear power plants, but nuclear waste disposal is a political question, not a technological one.

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Permalink Reply by sesport on July 25, 2009 at 19:50

Mac - Again, one would/should wonder why it's a political question. One might hazard a guess that technological problems with the reactors and human error in the past, and the results (especially in the Ukraine), would warrant political caution, IMHO, when it comes to waste disposal. As you yourself stated, keep it out of the rain & keep it from being spread around. Not exactly a postivie endorsement for nuclear waste.

I further pointed out that the cost of building nuclear plants is also a factor.

thanks for your thoughts - :0)

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Permalink Reply by sesport on July 25, 2009 at 21:11

Here it is, it was on the bottom of my bookmark stack somewhere.

http://www.nei.org/keyissues/nuclearwastedisposal/policybriefs/adva...

Looking at this information, there are numerous technological issues ... the disposal of this "stuff" is seriously regulated.

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Permalink Reply by Mac Davis on July 25, 2009 at 22:57

Thank God it's seriously regulated. We need to stop kidding ourselves about nuclear waste and store/dispose of it properly. We should really stop talking about "disposal" and get real and admit that we need to safely and securely "store" it, not "dispose" of it.

1) Pick a secure military location in a sparsely populated area. Area 51 sounds like a good choice. You're always going to need some high security military storage or operating area in the country.

2) Build some sort of enclosures that will keep the water away from it. Not too difficult in Nevada. Cover the enclosures with enough dirt to make them reasonably resistant to bomb attacks, 911-style suicide pilots, etc.

3) Use multiple enclosures so you don't put all your toxic eggs in one basket.

4) Put up signs, have defense zones around the facility. Kill anyone who manages to get past the outer zones and gets to the inner zone, either on the ground or in the air.

The total volume of nuclear waste is small compared to all the coal waste and other waste we create now. There's not that much of it to store.

Problem solved.

Use the same area for anything else the government needs to store securely, such as Warehouse 13, Indiana Jones's lost ark, and alien spacecraft.

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Permalink Reply by sesport on July 26, 2009 at 5:41

Mac - Getting that waste to a disposal/storage site requires that it be transported. Technical issue. It isn't getting good reviews.

http://nuclearlie.org/docs/testimony.pdf

thanks :0)

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Permalink Reply by Max on July 26, 2009 at 8:10

Some people like the nuclear waste and the jobs it creates. My brother worked as a Field Superintendent for B&W Nuclear and when they went in to refuel a reactor, the Boilermakers would come out of the wood work just to get on the shutdown. They had to first attend school and training, three days, (in air conditioning), then sport special suits and equipment, (3 hours to suit-up), then go in and perform what work was needed. They could only stay in the 'hot zone' for 15 minutes and then had to go to the De-cam room for the rest of the day. Some of them soon learned to obtain lead sheeting material so they could shield their Personal Radiation Dose meters so they could stay the whole length of the job without 'burning out'. If I remember right, a person could be exposed to 10 rads a day, but had to leave after a total accumulation of 150 rads. It was very easy to be overexposed, depending on what task you were asked to perform. Most of the journeymen would be maxed out after the first week, while the apprentices usually got to stay for a couple of weeks, then they had to school and train a whole new bunch. The company caught several of the men that shielded their radiation meters and the men had to sign statements drawn up by company lawyers to what they had done. My brother said that it would take you a week to change a flat tire if you had to do what was required if it was radioactive. A lot of the workers said they didn't care about the dangers, or the exposure to the radiation, they just couldn't imagine something they couldn't see as being a hazard. One of the foreman's on one shutdown told my brother that one boilermaker said, 'if you had a machine gun blasting away at me while I was in there, I wouldn't be here sucking up this gravy', he was one of the ones that got caught shielding his meter.

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Permalink Reply by sesport on July 25, 2009 at 10:50

So, Robert, are you making a statement that you're pro the continued use of coal as the fuel of choice for power generation & industry? Difficult for me to determine your position on this.

Thanks for clarifying - :0)

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