| Sunday, December
20, 2009
Yucca Mountain Waste Disposal
http://www.damninteresting.com/
this-place-is-not-a-place-of-honor
They're really overcomplicating it. If it's buried
deep and unmarked, primitive cultures can't reach it. Advanced cultures
should know better.
Any kind of marker just draws attention and encourages
digging.
And this article points out why it's a nonissue:
http://muller.lbl.gov/TRessays/26-Witch-of-Yucca-Mountain.htm
Also, haven't the French and Japanese been disposing
of nuclear waste as long as we have? What do they do?
It seems they do this:
At that point the fuel has to be replaced in the
reactor with fresh fuel, even though there is still a substantial quantity
of uranium-235 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium-235> and plutonium
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium> present. In the United States, this
used fuel is stored, while in countries such as the Russia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia>
,United Kingdom <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom> , France
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France> , Japan <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan>
and India <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India> the fuel is reprocessed to
remove the fission products, and the fuel can then be re-used. This
reprocessing involves handling highly radioactive materials, and the fission
products removed from the fuel are a concentrated form of high-level waste
as are the chemicals used in the process. While these countries reprocess
the fuel carrying out single plutonium cycles, India <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India>
is known to be the only country in the world planning multiple plutonium
recycling schemes.[15] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste#cite_note-reprocess-14>
. This has two distinct advantages, the reprocessed fuel is rendered
unusable for weapons development, and high fuel efficiency can be achieved.
For their plutonium generating reactors, India <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India>
has realized a burn-up almost 4 times as high as the typical fuel efficiency
of normal commercial nuclear reactors.[15] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste#cite_note-reprocess-14>
And there you have it.
Mike
-- Recent novels from Michael Z. Williamson CONTACT
WITH CHAOS, Apr 09 from Baen Books BETTER TO BEG FORGIVENESS, Mar 09 from
Baen Books (mass market edition) THE WEAPON, Mar 07 from Baen Books (mass
market edition)
The amount of nuclear waste is fairly small, and
the simplest method of disposal is to stack it in glass bricks in Fort
Irwin. There are more sophisticated methods. The Yucca Mountain thing is
politics. At one point Gus Spaeth, then Clinton's Chairman of the Council on
Environmental Quality and an official White House spokesman answer to me, at
a press conference, that he was concerned that the wastes not be dispersed
by glaciers in the event of a new ice age.After 600 years the only thing
left is the actinides, and if my house is under a mile of ice I would worry
more about that than nuclear wastes...
===========
Subject: As Forest Deal Nears, New Index Maps Profit
Potential in Trees
Ridiculous !
http://blogs.sciencemag.org/
scienceinsider/2009/12/as-forest-deal.html
Dean
============
Subject: Corps of Engineers and New Orleans
In all fairness, the Corps of Engineers wanted to
repair and upgrade the levees in New Orleans and submitted a plan to do so
ten years before Katrina. But the levees are under the control of the levee
boards, not the Corps; and the plan to upgrade them was delayed by a 10-year
long lawsuit by the Sierra Club. The CoE people I worked with during some
training classes were quite bitter about being made the fall guys for that.
Mike
==
New Nuclear Construction
Jerry,
Regarding the need to get the Navy involved in
building more nuclear power plants, I would respectfully disagree. I don’t
think you understand how the Navy builds powerplants. First of all, the Navy
itself does not build the plants. They are designed by 2 national labs, near
Pittsburgh and Schnectady, that used to be run by Westinghouse and GE,
respectively, under the supervision of the Naval Reactors organization at
DOE. The ships (and the powerplants) are built by Newport News and General
Dynamics Electric Boat. The components come from a variety of suppliers
around the country. Naval Reactors oversees all aspects of the design,
construction, operation, and disposal of the power plants in these ships.
The existing civilian engineering companies are
generally capable of building most of the new nuclear power plants that are
being proposed, but there are some significant limitations with regard to
(1) experienced manpower, (2) nuclear qualified suppliers for things like
pressure vessels, process equipment, piping, valves, and electronics
(including software), and (3) qualification of seemingly mundane issues like
pouring nuclear-grade concrete. The Navy cannot do anything about any of
these issues. It would NOT be a good idea to try to really push the
construction of a large number of new plants because we are not prepared to
build them properly, and if we don’t do this correctly, we will certainly
have more cost overruns (if we are lucky), and maybe some “interesting
events” (if we are unlucky).
The biggest issue that needs to be overcome is the
legal obstacles raised by NIMBYs and enviros. It is possible for a local
government to prevent a plant from being built if it will not issue a simple
local building permit. And state permitting of water usage, thermal
discharges, transmission corridors, and other non-nuclear aspects can also
be used to delay plants. Environmental impact statements consider everything
anyone could ever think about that could be affected by the plant, but there
are invariably some critters or flowers that don’t get mentioned, and
therefore they can be used to delay. We have erected a system of
consultation in this country that tries to ensure that there is a wide
consensus of agreement before something like this gets built, and opponents
have learned how to manipulate it to increase costs so much that the
proponents eventually give up. The windmill people are learning about this,
as well.
What we really need is a long-term commitment with
steady construction and improvement of new designs, so that we can develop
long-term education and training programs and support a supplier network
that produces quality components. I fear that this sort of thinking is not
in the psyche of our leaders, though. I have built, operated, and maintained
Navy nukes, and designed, constructed, ;licensed, and regulated commercial
plants, so I have some experience with these matters.
Ralph Caruso
==
New nukes: Building vs Inspecting
Subj: New nukes: Building vs Inspecting
It turns out that the Army Corps of Engineers builds
no levees, berms, etc. and that the Navy builds no reactors.
The Army Corps of Engineers and the Supervisor of
Shipbuilding, Conversion and Repair of the Naval Sea Systems Command are
contracting and supervisory bureaucracies. The actual work is done by
civilian contractors. (The Navy still has a few shipyards of its own, but
they only do overhaul and repair, not new construction.)
The reason Naval reactors have such a well-deserved
reputation for safety is that the late Admiral Hyman Rickover inculcated,
right from the start, a ferocious culture of conservative design and
meticulous inspection that has pretty much survived to this day. The Admiral
was not a pleasant person to work with, let alone for. He became erratic
towards the end; he probably should have retired several years before he
was, finally, forced out. Some of his design decisions were questionable,
and his team did not always catch all the shipbuilders' mistakes as early as
they should have; see, for example, Patrick Tyler's _Running Critical_, the
story of the botched 688 ("Los Angeles" class) submarine construction
program. But his obsession with reactor safety has endured.
I speculate that there's a quite straightforward and
inexpensive way to copy something like the Rickover safety culture: just as
an officer serving in Naval Reactors knows that he might some day be serving
in one of the ships he inspects, assign to each civilian power reactor, and
to each levee, berm and dam, a resident inspector who lives, with his
family, in government-furnished quarters right next to the structure
(downwind, for reactors; downstream, for dams) he is responsible for
inspecting.
Rod Montgomery==monty@starfief.com
When I said give the project to the military I
meant make them responsible for it. As in building Minuteman. I should have
been more careful. What I don't want is new entitled bureaucracies. Inspect
not build works.
==
Subject: Building nuke plants
Jerry,
Back in the day I was part of the Navy's nuclear power
program, and I agree with you that we would be well ahead of the game to
scatter nuke plants around. You say Corps of Engineers and the Navy as
builders, but the Navy plants in those days were built by Westinghouse,
General Electric and Combustion Engineering.
So you need agencies who can handle supervision of
mega-contractors building big, expensive things. Army COE and USN could fill
that role for your vision, and the folks would be happy with the outcome I
believe.
jim dodd
LCDR Jim Dodd, USN (Ret.) San Diego
===========
Subj: Before we make a Science Court, should we not
make a Science Grand Jury?
I am perhaps particularly aware of the notion of the
Grand Jury right now, 'cause I'm currently serving on one. 8-)
And I beg forgiveness, if my harping on Herman Kahn's
notion of "Second-Order Agreement" is becoming tiresome.
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/2008/Q2/mail520.html#Kahn
>>...2nd-order agreement is agreement about =what the
argument is about=. "If A and B have achieved it, either should be able to
explain it to C and each should be willing to accept the other’s
explanation." ...<<
The job of a Grand Jury in the Criminal Law is to
decide exactly with what (if anything) the defendant is to face trial. Only
after the Grand Jury has framed a bill of charges -- the indictment -- can
the defendant be brought to trial to face those charges. Once the indictment
is handed up, the prosecution is restricted to trying the counts in the
indictment. The defense, for its part, knows that it needs to defend only
against those counts.
Similarly, it seems to me that reaching second-order
agreement on what the scientific argument is about is a necessary
prerequisite for bringing a scientific controversy to any sort of formal
trial. Otherwise, we end up with the kind of never-ending arguments we're
getting now, especially before Congressional Committees: "Well, maybe
evidence X for Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) is questionable, but that
doesn't matter, because there's Y, Z, ..." and then, when the questioning
turns to Y, the AGW enthusiast goes "Well, maybe evidence Y for AGW is
questionable, but that doesn't matter, because there's X, Z, ...", etc.
Rod Montgomery==monty@starfief.com
Something of the sort is needed, but first is
needed an agreement that we need a way to dispatch scientific disputes that
doesn't involve lawyers pounding on the table.
============
Controlling energy usage by controlling the price of
energy
Hello Jerry,
I note that every so often you get the suggestion that
energy usage can be controlled by controlling the price. Just drive up the
price, by force of law, and people will behave 'properly'. Today your
correspondent Jeffrey was the latest to make this recommendation.
A data point. A year or so ago, we had a spike in the
price of gasoline and it went up to $4 +/- a gallon. Tax remained around
$0.50/gal, depending on the specific state and city. People started
modifying their behavior, exactly as predicted. This all occurred to the
sound of screams of outrage, primarily, but not exclusively, from the
liberals (progressives) who, among their more benign suggestions,
recommended the prosecution and imprisonment of oil company executives,
price controls, congressional hearings, and nationalizing the entire energy
industry. Other more progressive progressives recommended more violent
actions be taken to stop the outrageous price gouging by the evil oil
companies. Women, children, and minorities bore the brunt, of course. The
point being that $4/gal gas was enormously destructive to everything and
everybody.
Prior to this event, and on multiple occasions since,
those same progressives have recommended that the MINIMUM price of gasoline
be controlled at the $4/gal range and that the price be escalated regularly.
Why? To force people to 'behave properly' and restrict their consumption of
gasoline.
Now you may ask, why is $4/gal gasoline an unmitigated
evil in one instance and a glorious boon to humanity in general and the
country specifically in another instance? Hint: In one instance the
government gets the filthy lucre and in the other the oil companies are the
beneficiaries. I leave it to you to decide which is the 'good' $4/gal and
which is the 'bad' $4/gal.
Bob Ludwick
==
: Alternative energy sources
Dr. Pournelle,
I don’t think there are many who visit your site that
have any objections to alternative energy sources. The objection comes in
response to our government trying to force economically costly solutions on
an unwilling public. I find it curious that Jeffrey advocates increasing gas
taxes as an example of “free-market incentives”. As for “the shift from
horse and buggy to the automobile”, William Taft did not have a “cash for
carriages” program.
The US has coal. It has natural gas. It has oil. It
has the ability to build nuclear plants. We live in the most energy-rich
nation on earth:
<http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?
FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_id=
01feb68b-ef57-4748-8f5c-d88c0e7d6bd5>
If free-market solutions were actually allowed in this
country, we would have cheap, plentiful energy. Instead, our leaders are
obsessed with tilting at windmills.
Steve Chu
===========
All states are equal. But some are more equal than
others.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn
/content/article/2009/12/19/AR2009121900797_pf.html
Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb) will vote for the health care
bill, after the Democrats sweetened the pot for his state.
From the article: "Nelson secured full federal funding
for his state to expand Medicaid coverage to all individuals below 133
percent of the federal poverty level. Other states must pay a small portion
of the additional cost."
All states are equal. But some are more equal than
others.
Also note that state insurance regulation is now as
dead as the dodo. From the article: "Instead of a public option, the final
product would allow private firms for the first time to offer national
insurance policies to all Americans, outside the jurisdiction of state
regulations."
And note that insurance companies will be allowed to
spend 20% of premiums any way they want. From the article: "And all
insurance companies would be required to spend at least 80 cents of every
dollary (sic) they collect in premiums on delivering care to their
customers." In legislation, "at least" sets a cap. It would be interesting
to see what fraction of each premium dollar is currently spent on delivering
care: I suspect that it is greater than 80%.
--John
It is plain contempt of the Constitution of course.
=============
What's at stake
Dr Pournelle
"What's at stake is the whole future of the American
experiment of putting freedom and liberty ahead of security and welfare. "We
believe that each man is the best judge of his own interest." That's what's
at stake. This may be the last opportunity for that view of the world."
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/2009/Q4/view601.html#Friday
Well said, sir. Best statement of the conflict that I
have seen.
Thank your correspondent Jeffrey for the link to the
data sources at realclimate.org.
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/2009/Q4/mail601.html#Friday I
am exploring the raw data.
I do not know why the climate scientists chose Fortran
90 to write their models, but I would like to hear their reasons. When I
worked as a programmer and systems analyst, we abandoned Fortran in all its
flavors, because program development using Fortran could not be efficiently
managed. That is, you could not scope a project (in number of lines of code)
with an acceptable margin. You could with ADA or C. But that was 20 years
ago. Maybe they got a handle on that with Fortran 90.
Me? I would have chosen SAS. SAS's syntax is arcane,
but it is the best language available for statistical work. It is the only
statistical package that supports large datasets (>10,000 records). Or it
was when I was in the bizz. Since the mid-90s, SAS has supported SQL. I do
not know if Fortran 90 supports SQL.
I used to run SAS for DOS on a 386 networked to an IBM
3330 that held our datasets and ran SAS for OS/MVS. I was the project
statistician. When I found points of interest in a run, I used the mainframe
SAS to download a subset of the data to my PC where I ran it through ad hoc
programs I coded on the fly for special analyses. This was before SQL was
available. Had it been available, I could have done the same analyses
(modeling) without the ad hoc coding. SAS SQL facilitates near-realtime
modeling.
Live long and prosper
h lynn keith
In the 1970's FORTRAN was what you used, and most
of those models began then. It used to be that a Supercomputer program was
about 120,000 lines of FORTRAN. That would compile...
============
There is still an England, at least for the moment
There may not always be an England, the way things are
going, but there is still one now.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-
1236632/Your-commuter-carriage-awaits-
The-Queen-catches-train-journey-
Sandringham-Christmas.html
Try to imagine Barack Obama doing that. Taking a
public train, on a scheduled run, on prepurchased tickets. Minimal
disturbance for security, minimal security personnel, minimal fuss, and a
young commoner allowed to approach freely.
The only interpretation I can put on this is that Her
Majesty Elizabeth II either KNOWS, in her heart, that she has nothing to
fear from her subjects, or she knows, in her heart, that the crown of the
British Empire comes with a target blouse, and wearing the target in public
is In The Job Description.
We used to have Presidents who understood at least the
latter.
John
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