Re: Supercomputing bill payers of the world, unite. Aux armes, citoyens!
- From: Morten Reistad <first@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 26 Sep 2011 23:21:34 +0200
In article <UR3gq.28059$CY4.27993@xxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Robert Myers <rbmyersusa@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 9/26/2011 3:38 AM, Terje Mathisen wrote:
Robert Myers wrote:
The only/main/chief problem is that the same breeders can also be used
to produce bomb fuel, right?
If it is a breeder it can produce bomb fuel, yes. That is the
general idea behind a breeder.
We don't have all that much choice with the fuel we want to use,
either.
Morten Reistad's learned response is impressive, but, so far as I
understand the situation, France has a large, growing, and as yet
unsolved waste problem, despite the fact that, like the UK, it
reprocesses spent fuel rods.
Yes, indeed, the reprocessing in particular is a spectacularly
dirty process, but contrary to shale oil production, strip mining
or forest burning you don't have to lay entire counties waste.
The really nasty long-term byproducts can be, and is, burnt in neutron
reactors; leaving a residual, hot slag that is lethally dangerous, but
containable in size and time. Plus a lot of low-grade waste.
There is simply no free lunch when it comes to large scale energy
production.
This residue "hot ashes" is probably the biggest proliferation risk
in the system. So reprocessing and storage must be done with military
grade security.
The problems with reprocessing are not just proliferation. It is a
dangerous and dirty business. I don't want to go look now for the
scathing reports I've read about the effects of reprocessing done in the
UK. It seems unlikely that France would be doing better.
A reprocessing plant processes the fuel for sufficient energy to
supply about 100M people. (France today supplies France, Sweden,
Finland and several smaller installations, and France supplies
power to about 1/6th of Germany; and is currencly contemplating
the second reprocession site.)
Just do the math about what the coal alternative would be in terms
of spread radioactivity, CO2, mining and supply-side waste.
The politics of environmental hazards in the US is such that Americans
do not believe that they should have to put up with any unwanted risks.
If the citizens of West Virginia are pleased to vote in judges that
will allow coal mining to lay the land and the citizenry waste, that is
their business. If wind farms off the coast of Massachusetts obstruct
the view and interfere with the desires of general aviation and
interfere with sailboat races, then the affected citizens feel under no
compulsion to give up anything at all for the common good. That's the
country I live in. As I understand things, Scandinavia is not heavily
infested with the idiosyncratic narrow-mindedness that rules America.
We are getting there.
-- mrr
.
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