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Author Topic: The future of electric Vehicles.  (Read 60986 times)

buickanddeere

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Re: The future of electric Vehicles.
« Reply #60 on: April 03, 2018, 04:32:19 PM »
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nuclear-waste-lethal-trash-or-renewable-energy-source/

B&D you are making some very unusual claims. What nuclear power plant facility is disposing of it's spent fuel rods by mixing with concrete and welding in steel drums?

To the best of my knowledge this was proven ineffective over 35 years ago.  The concrete and steel decompose, as did the glass composite attempt.  Dilution and containment of particles is an was an ideal approach in concept in that water seepage would not carry particles and contamination to aquifer(s).  Not one of many materials promoted and tried for this worked. 

Spent fuel rods with thorium have a 10,000 year half life. 

To suggest that storage of radioactive waste is a simple issue belies the work of a lot of serious scientists and people that certainly aren't wearing tin hats, and have serious concerns.  These include people with serious educations and no financial interests. 

If you have some good sources to back up your claims, I'd love to read them. and so would the DOE, NRA and many more.

I have no idea where where you developed the idea of mixing fuel
Rods with concrete.
   Read again . Placing used fuel bundles into steel and concrete flasks and welding them shut .
   Why are you talking about thorium?
    All isotopes have a half life and most elements have radioactive isotopes. Don’t blame me, it is the way the AllMighty made things .
  So what if the half life is 10,000 years . What is the half life of the soil around Elliot Lake ?
  Material with long half lives is rather benign and interactive . It is the isotopes with a short half life that emit alpha, beta and gamma of any concern. Short lived isotopes decay down to stable elements in just hours weeks a decades . Any idea how many rem from a fuel bundle just removed from the reactor vs the same bundle in just 250years.
   If you want radiation to worry about, check your own basement for Alpha . Naturally occurring from within the earth. No reactor required .
   

buickanddeere

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Re: The future of electric Vehicles.
« Reply #61 on: April 03, 2018, 04:36:33 PM »
The problem is here that the general public knows so little about nuclear power that telling them facts leaves them more confused then prior to the explanation.
  I bought my farm and house within sight of an operating nuclear power plant and I  don’t worry about it. I would not purchase down wind and downstream of a chemical refinery or smelter yet that doesn’t bother the majority of the same population that panic when they hear nuclear .

buickanddeere

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Re: The future of electric Vehicles.
« Reply #62 on: April 03, 2018, 04:42:18 PM »
Depends on which element or isotope you want to pick som e have very short half lives and some take 24000 years to decay to half life.

If the isotope has a half life of 24,000 years , don’t worry about it. The decays per second is too low to give any measurable dose .
  Anyone ever research how much does aircraft pilots and passengers receive? Or the locals in areas where Uranium and thorium deposits are on the surface ? http://hps.org/documents/uranium_fact_sheet.pdf

BruceM

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Re: The future of electric Vehicles.
« Reply #63 on: April 03, 2018, 06:37:23 PM »
The presently used on-site dry cask storage is a temporary measure only, since no permanent storage system exists.  No one considers this a permanent solution, not even the industry. 

Concrete and/or glass composite encapsulation methods were attempts at creating a stable watertight mass that could be safely buried for thousands of years.  The mix was to dilute the material and add mass such that heat levels were reasonable. They were some of the many failed approaches funded by the DOE,  after I was taught about them  in engineering school in 1975.

Dismissing long term hard radiation sources as a non issue is certainly a novel and original perspective.

I agree that barring a catastrophic failure, you are safer near a presently operating nuclear plant than downwind of a chemical plant, and that most toxic sources of chronic health problems are foolishly ignored.  Not so in hundreds or 1000 years when the water supply is contaminated... that's the whole point of long term storage.














buickanddeere

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Re: The future of electric Vehicles.
« Reply #64 on: April 04, 2018, 02:49:05 AM »
The presently used on-site dry cask storage is a temporary measure only, since no permanent storage system exists.  No one considers this a permanent solution, not even the industry. 

Concrete and/or glass composite encapsulation methods were attempts at creating a stable watertight mass that could be safely buried for thousands of years.  The mix was to dilute the material and add mass such that heat levels were reasonable. They were some of the many failed approaches funded by the DOE,  after I was taught about them  in engineering school in 1975.

Dismissing long term hard radiation sources as a non issue is certainly a novel and original perspective.

I agree that barring a catastrophic failure, you are safer near a presently operating nuclear plant than downwind of a chemical plant, and that most toxic sources of chronic health problems are foolishly ignored.  Not so in hundreds or 1000 years when the water supply is contaminated... that's the whole point of long term storage.

  Long term storage would be in a DGR. Far below the water table in seismically stable non porous rock.
   The used fuel is too value to "get rid of".  Used PWR fuel works just fine in molten salt reactors.
  The concept of waiting for anything radioactive to decay to "nothing" is just a scare tactic from the anti nuc types. How low do you want this nuclear material to decay down to? You had better start worrying then about all the uranium naturally occurring in the soil. Don't go too near the granite counter top in the wife's kitchen , it is radioactive too. So is Aunt Mildred's false teeth and Coleman lamp angles. So are ordinary tungsten grinding wheels. 

buickanddeere

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Re: The future of electric Vehicles.
« Reply #65 on: April 04, 2018, 01:53:12 PM »
Amazing how those outside of the nuclear industry know more about it than those who have educated , trained and working in the nuclear industry for decades .
   Have you researched actual deaths caused by radiation ? Have you researched deaths by CO , H2S, lead, mercury etc?
   Explain how the residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki survive onngeoujs zero of atomic bomb blasts.
   What is so different between industrial radiation and natural background radiation . Do you know how much lung cancer is caused by Alpha particles in homes?
   Then again some people hear “nuclear” and they go into 100% denial mode and won’t even consider facts .
   

cujet

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Re: The future of electric Vehicles.
« Reply #66 on: April 04, 2018, 02:57:33 PM »
People who count on their fingers should maintain a discreet silence

LowGear

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Re: The future of electric Vehicles.
« Reply #67 on: April 04, 2018, 06:49:54 PM »
I think these last few contributions have been really informative.  I don't know anything more than I did before but I'm sure better informed.   ;D

What I really like are the arguments about solar and wind that use much the same attitude as the arguments about nuclear whether it's for or against.  Again, I warn you about the real dangers we all face.  Meats and meat byproducts (from wild caught fish to grass feed beef), dairy stuff and all sugars.  These seemingly innocent lifestyle choices almost universally have greater impact on your life expectancy than all the nuclear plants in the world.

Why is it that only the blind can clearly see?  Yes, the Tesla is a large car.  No, it's not in my price point.  I can park my 64 Morris Cooper S in just about any garage.  (That's the old hidden brag.)  That is if it were running.  (The truth.)  I've driven the BMW I3 and thought it a really nice car.  Not cheap but a really nice car with sensible proportions.

This is going to be an interesting year for cars with power cords.  We'll be making some big decisions in the next two to five years.  My favorite bumper sticker.  It was on a mature and well used Ford Bronco.  "Get In.  Set Down.  Hold on.  Shut Up.  And Listen."

Musk is an extraordinary person and has changed the course of human endeavor.  You may not care for the altered direction of the canoe nor be comfortable with the current in this new stream but Wow! what a fantastic ride.
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BruceM

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Re: The future of electric Vehicles.
« Reply #68 on: April 04, 2018, 10:13:52 PM »
I loved the photo of the generator-trailer charging the electric car.   Something like one of the Honda quiet inverter-generators combined with a super lightweight mini camper will no doubt be on the road within the next 10 years.  If you could get the engine quiet enough to sleep with, (maybe a detaching roll away muffling box) you could have 8 hrs of charging for that road trip in the back woods where no power hookups were possible, plus a pop-top lightweight trailer to sleep in. 












« Last Edit: April 04, 2018, 10:16:26 PM by BruceM »

buickanddeere

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Re: The future of electric Vehicles.
« Reply #69 on: April 05, 2018, 12:07:01 AM »

I don't have to taste shit to know it tastes bad and I can smell it when someone is shoveling like you are.

Typical Nike industry Vested industry Spin doctoring. Just because you have Drunk the cool aide and been brain washed, does not mean everyone else has.

       https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_equivalent_dose             
       Considering the cost to mankind in illness, injuries and death in all the known energy sector.  Nuclear still has the best safety record of all.
    Why let nuclear bombs be a deterrent to nuclear reactors ?  People fear arson, forest fires or building fires. Yet they don't think twice about the same fire on a cigarette , camp fires, home furnace or inside an engine.   
      Reminds me of my Great Uncle who refused to switch from horses to tractors. Or my Amish neighbours who know that us English are going to h#ll for "being of the world" and using technology. 
     Some paraphrased quotes here. "Hear now this, O foolish people, and without understanding; which have eyes, and see not; which have ears, and hear not . Understanding cannot be forced on someone who chooses to be ignorant."
    Still haven't heard back on what your plans are to stop this terrible  nuclear radiation from natural occurring sources.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Background_radiation

LowGear

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Re: The future of electric Vehicles.
« Reply #70 on: April 05, 2018, 02:18:15 AM »
I'm thinking nuclear is about over.  Unless these much smaller plants catch on there simply won't be much new construction or planning for the big ones that are now filling in where an alternative just wasn't a real consideration a few years ago.  Now that solar and wind are getting cheaper nuclear just isn't in consideration.
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BruceM

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Re: The future of electric Vehicles.
« Reply #71 on: April 05, 2018, 03:08:04 AM »
I agree Casey, no matter what the enthusiasts say, the nuclear power industry has shot itself in both legs with cost (and time) of construction and service life.  Not one nuclear plant has ever built built on time and projected costs have always been fantasy figures.  Westinghouse was the last big US nuclear plant builder and they just went bankrupt.

The good point B&D made  is that the true health risks and other costs of other power plants aren't great either...but that's why the rest of the world has been shifting to wind and solar ASAP.

I do like nuclear molten salts-  but I prefer "fusion at a distance" (solar) as the way to do that at least here in the SW.
Much more the kind of thing I would trust the better than average Joe to build and operate.  We all get cavalier about things we work with daily for a long time, it's just the way our wetware works. 

China has the first large modern design fission molten salt system scheduled to be on line around 2024. We'll see how that works out for them, though it will be difficult to get real cost and operation data from China.  Using spent fuel rods would be great but every single promise of such a thing in the last 50 years has so far proven to be vaporware; and the NRC has not approved a single fuel reprocessing plant in the US. 

Continuing operation of our existing nuclear plants to the end of their safe service life seems both likely and wise at this point.

I just hope safety oversight won't get lax.   Our Palo Verde plant upwind of me in AZ has had a long history of bad marks on NRC safety inspections and long delays in making corrections. There were some questions raised from retired NRC experts in the last year over a failed backup generator (blew up on testing) where they continued operations anyway and eventually got an NRC "exemption" despite clear rules that 2 regularly tested, backup generators to run the cooling pumps are required or the plant must start shut down procedures.

M61hops

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Re: The future of electric Vehicles.
« Reply #72 on: April 05, 2018, 09:43:59 AM »
I would like to have an electric car that I could charge from solar panels on my carport roof or from the Listeroid on a cold night.  A Chevy Volt would work for me but I keep hoping that they will make a van or mini-van version and I'd be all in on that one.  I don't have to drive very far or often most of the time so would only run a few hundred gallons of gas per year through a Volt engine.  Almost bought a used Prius a while back and was going to double or triple the battery pack until I saw how many computers run the car so I'm holding off.  The truth is I'm driving the wood burning stove of the automotive world, MB240D and 300D's and they will probably last me the rest of my life.  I'm content to be a Luddite and would be happy to have Amish neighbors!  I doubt that if the entire life cycle cost of any Nuclear Waste making Station is considered the amount of power it made won't cover the costs imposed on present and future generations.  A giant swindle on the human race by the military industrial complex.  And yes, I liked what George Carlin says.  I think somebody might notice when the Pacific Ocean is dead, the background radiation where I live has doubled to 45CPM since Fukushima and I consider myself lucky that it's so low so far.  Can anybody on this site tell me if Oz has noticed any extra radiation?  I've considered moving there to flee Fukushima but I'm not sure it's worth the bother at 63.  If I was younger and wanted to have kids I'd head South for sure.  I need to re-roof the barn and I'm thinking maybe the 35 year shingles are a waste of money!   Leland
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oldgoat

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Re: The future of electric Vehicles.
« Reply #73 on: April 05, 2018, 03:09:21 PM »
I think a trip to google to find out the types of radiation emitted and the dangers thereoff would take some of the fire out of the discussion.

BruceM

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Re: The future of electric Vehicles.
« Reply #74 on: April 06, 2018, 04:32:27 AM »
At present, the solar-molten salt storage approach looks promising and there are quite a few 100 megawatt scale molten salt projects around the world working since 2009.  No new tech for the generation plant, it's still a steam turbine, so water use is still an issue.

www.solarreserve.com/en/technology/molten-salt-energy-storage