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posted by n1 on Saturday November 28 2015, @11:45PM   Printer-friendly
from the nuka-cola dept.

Peter Thiel writes in the NYT that what's especially strange about the failed push for renewables is that we already had a practical plan back in the 1960s to become fully carbon-free without any need of wind or solar: nuclear power. "But after years of cost overruns, technical challenges and the bizarre coincidence of an accident at Three Mile Island and the 1979 release of the Hollywood horror movie "The China Syndrome," about a hundred proposed reactors were canceled," says Thiel. "If we had kept building, our power grid could have been carbon-free years ago. Instead, we went in reverse."

According to Thiel, a new generation of American nuclear scientists has produced designs for better reactors. Crucially, these new designs may finally overcome the most fundamental obstacle to the success of nuclear power: high cost. Designs using molten salt, alternative fuels and small modular reactors have all attracted interest not just from academics but also from entrepreneurs and venture capitalists like me ready to put money behind nuclear power. However, none of these new designs can benefit the real world without a path to regulatory approval, and today's regulations are tailored for traditional reactors, making it almost impossible to commercialize new ones. "Both the right's fear of government and the left's fear of technology have jointly stunted our nuclear energy policy," concludes Thiel. "Supporting nuclear power with more than words is the litmus test for seriousness about climate change. Like Nixon's going to China, this is something only Mr. Obama can do. If this president clears the path for a new atomic age, American scientists are ready to build it."


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by fritsd on Saturday November 28 2015, @11:54PM

    by fritsd (4586) on Saturday November 28 2015, @11:54PM (#269271) Journal

    Before reading the article, I searched the article for the word "waste". didn't find it.

    Now I'm obliged to read TFA grmbl...

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 29 2015, @01:06AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 29 2015, @01:06AM (#269293)

      Now I'm obliged to read TFA grmbl...

      Would you consider that to be a waste of your time?

      (pa-dum-tish)

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by snufu on Monday November 30 2015, @12:04AM

      by snufu (5855) on Monday November 30 2015, @12:04AM (#269545)

      the most fundamental obstacle to the success of nuclear power: high cost.

      The article seems to have misspelled "hazardous radioactive waste with million year halflife" as "high cost".

      It wasn't a spelling error? It was a nuclear investor pretending the biggest obstacle to nuclear power is not that there is no place to put the permanent hazardous waste? Silly New York Times, shills are for kids.

      • (Score: 1) by Gault.Drakkor on Tuesday December 01 2015, @02:11AM

        by Gault.Drakkor (1079) on Tuesday December 01 2015, @02:11AM (#269992)

        Most current reactors have 5-8% burn-up. That is most of the fuel you put in, most comes back out.

        We can solve this with re-processing and newer reactors, the newest fast-neutron reactors have 90%+ burn-up mitigating alot of the waste issue.

        And really, we have a cheap answer already: glass it and dump it into deep ocean. Water is excellent moderator. Problem goes away for 20Mill years. Problem solved. Unfortunately that would be dumping dirty fuel not pure waste. Also BANANA, think of the: sea kittens/children/whales.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 28 2015, @11:54PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 28 2015, @11:54PM (#269274)

    Yeah, right, replacing global warming with a different 40-50 million year long, deadly problem (a.k.a. nuclear waste storage) is a simple and easy step that we should undertake with a smile on our lips. And I'm not even talking about the kind of accidents that happened in the past (3-mile-island, tchernobyl, fukushima, ...) and are absolutely sure to also happen in the future.

    Goddamn industry shill should have kept his tongue, would have been better for everbody except, perhaps, his corporate masters.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Sunday November 29 2015, @12:36AM

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Sunday November 29 2015, @12:36AM (#269285) Journal

      Well - TFA says that they've reduced the highly radioactive waste from 20 tons per year, to about 20 kilos. Other waste amounts to 250 kilos, which only needs be stored for a few hundred years. But, I can't disagree with you. The records show that we are NOT disposing of the waste properly.

      http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2011/ph241/madres1/ [stanford.edu]

      Most of our waste today is in "temporary storage". And, the permanent storage isn't in such great shape - I've read a number of stories of leaking steel drums and other stupidity.

      http://enenews.com/officials-leakage-seen-on-many-nuclear-waste-drums-in-wipp-underground-we-think-the-seals-have-degraded-public-should-be-concerned-about-another-explosion-1000s-of-radioactive-drums [enenews.com]

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 29 2015, @01:51AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 29 2015, @01:51AM (#269308)

        It's not just that we're not dealing properly with the waste as it exists now. Some years ago, some US agency made public a report (I don't remember exact details about when it was produced) about how to deal *long term* with nuclear waste.

        If it was simply buried and marked off limits, people in just a thousand years (or just 15 ....) might think "Whoa! Something interesting! Lets dig here!!". People in 2000 years might not be able to read (or understand) our writing, even if the symbols survived the time and even if the storage site held up to the centuries.

        I read the whole, 400-something page report, prepared by highly considerate, very reputable and presumably also intelligent people from many fields. Their best (!!!!) recommandation was "Found a religion to protect the storage site. It probably won't work either, but it has the best chances compared to _everything_ else". There are some religions that were in current use for a few thousand years, although most religions during that timeframe have come and gone.

        That's the best that the US government (surely a most powerful institution), during an earnest attempt, is coming up with? An at best 50-50 chance for the first 5000 years?? And we're talking about keeping that stuff safe for at least 40 million???

        Just imagine how something would have needed to be designed by a sentient dinosaur in the attempt to keep *us* from meddling! That's *exactly* the kind of problem we're talking about here. And it's just not solvable, because *nothing* could keep us out, ever. Hell, the timeframe we're talking about there's major evolution happening, and the continents move!

        Even if it's only 20kg a year (each, for 100+ new reactors!), that is not how a responsible person deals with his predecessors. "Just 20kg a year" is how you belittle (and then ignore) a problem that cannot be solved. What an act of ultimate egotism.

        Of course, we could prevent a single, large depot by diluting the junk into the oceans .... oh, I forgot, we stopped doing that recently becaus it was poisoning ourselves.

        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by tibman on Sunday November 29 2015, @02:51AM

          by tibman (134) Subscriber Badge on Sunday November 29 2015, @02:51AM (#269320)

          If you are worried about the kids getting into the cookies, i suggest a very high shelf. A lagrange point might work.

          --
          SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
          • (Score: 3, Insightful) by snufu on Monday November 30 2015, @12:36AM

            by snufu (5855) on Monday November 30 2015, @12:36AM (#269553)

            Unfortunately there is no such thing as an infallible rocket. If an explosion rained only cookie debris, it wouldn't be a problem.

        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Sunday November 29 2015, @06:47AM

          by sjames (2882) on Sunday November 29 2015, @06:47AM (#269370) Journal

          So, we process the waste properly before we bury it. Then in 1000 years when they dig it up, they'll wonder why we buried such a rich treasure trove of useful and stable elements. If we don't dig it up ourselves to recycle it, that is.

          In the 200 years it will take for the 20 Kg to become safe, the warning signs will be perfectly readable.

          Meanwhile, the CO2 we're spewing today will still be active in the environment in 200 years.

        • (Score: 1, Flamebait) by jmorris on Sunday November 29 2015, @06:40PM

          by jmorris (4844) on Sunday November 29 2015, @06:40PM (#269477)

          Seriously. Stop being a spaz for a minute and try thinking. This stuff ain't some dark magic, it is just radioactive. Now radioactive stuff follows rules, if it is really nasty it is because it isn't going to last long. The really unstable isotopes will all be gone in a few hundred years and the rest can sit quietly down a dark mine shaft until somebody needs them. If they can dig down to em they better know what is what because they have to know a fair about reality to safely get down that far. So stop with the bad scifi bull. If we really wanted to be rid of the stuff we could just make good dense glass pellets, encase those in iron and launch them off a railgun into the sun. We don't do that because everybody involved understands we are still children playing with the big toys and in another hundred years we will almost certainly want to reuse that stuff as we understand it a little better.

        • (Score: 1) by jandjmh on Monday November 30 2015, @03:07AM

          by jandjmh (5436) on Monday November 30 2015, @03:07AM (#269578)

          If it weren't so stupid to irretrievably discard stuff that we might want someday, just drop it into a subduction zone in the ocean. But as others have pointed out, the most dangerous elements decay the fastest. In a couple hundred years the glassified lumps won't be that deadly. In thousands of years, the lumps of glass could probably serve as a footrest and only increase your cancer risk some small amount over your lifetime.
          Now, let's assume another dark age descends, and all knowledge of modern science disappears. So the medieval peasants wandering the forsaken deserts of what used to be Nevada (tell me again why they are there, with no good farming prospects) find some intriguing signs. They figure they'll dig up some of the goodies left behind by the ancients. Months, maybe years of digging thousands of feet, they eventually find - lumps of glass - with no discernible use or special merit. But, these are determined folk, so they bring a few hundred of them up to the surface. Now they have a big pile of glassy lumps. They might still be kind of warm. Maybe there's something inside. Apply big hammer to one. Break it into lots of little pieces. Nope - nothing of interest. At this point our hardy and determined diggers leave, very disappointed, and go somewhere more interesting. A few of them, decades later, may die of cancer. That is, if living in this medieval world that no longer remembers what radiation is has not killed them from disease or accident.
          Compared to the risk of continuing to pump carbon into the atmosphere in a great experiment to see just how much we can alter the Earth's climate, and how many billions we can kill by starvation and war if the sea levels rise and flood the coastal areas where a large fraction of all people live -
          You are living in fantasy land (or really scientifically illiterate) if you think the waste is truly the worse risk.
          It's not even a significant risk.

    • (Score: 4, Informative) by MikeRo on Sunday November 29 2015, @01:23AM

      by MikeRo (1436) on Sunday November 29 2015, @01:23AM (#269298)

      You do realize that if a coal-fired power plant had to meet current US nuclear plant regulations it would not be approved? Most coal-fired plants release more radioactivity into the environment than any nuclear plant.

      Look at the damage caused by coal mining and using it to produce power then compare it to all nuclear accidents to date. Even allowing for the difference in power produced, I suspect coal would lose by a mile.

      Coal should have been shut down years ago. Would have been if people stopped equating nuclear power with nuclear weapons.

      • (Score: 2, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 29 2015, @02:00AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 29 2015, @02:00AM (#269310)

        Yes, I do realize that.

        But you're basically arguing "Well, coals is even worse than nuclear, so lets go nuclear" ? Why not do the full monty and be *done* with all that waste, instead of just wasting a little less for much, much longer?

        And don't tell me it can't be done. That clown wants to build 100+ new nuclear reactors for the US and fuel them. The money involved here would also buy a shitload of wind turbines, wave generators, solar electric and solar thermal. Enough? I don't know, but it may be possible.

        Germany, a well-industrialized nation, produced up to 60% of its electricity (for a single day) from renewables in 2015. They're not done yet, by far, of course. But if they could achieve that, 100% for every day doesn't sound so outlandish anymore, at least to me.

        • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 29 2015, @02:49AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 29 2015, @02:49AM (#269319)

          Don't fall for the fallacy of "Germany can do it, so can everyone else". They can produce renewable energy, but then they need to bring in the balance from outside Germany. Great for them, but that doesn't work for the countries outside Germany because only "dirty" production can keep up that demand. It isn't so impressive if all their doing is outsourcing their energy production.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 29 2015, @04:18AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 29 2015, @04:18AM (#269338)

          But you're basically arguing "Well, coals is even worse than nuclear, so lets go nuclear" ?

          And what's wrong or illogical about that? We're doing lots of coal right now. If we stopped doing coal and replaced it with nuclear, wouldn't that be an improvement? You agree that coal is worse than nuclear right? The problem is that unless there is a massive contraction in the demand for energy renewables can't cut it. It's the old choice: agrarian society, global warming, or nuclear power. Choose one. Germany is a red herring. As someone else mentioned, all Germany is really doing is outsourcing their energy production. You say that it isn't so outlandish to get 100% every day, until you realise that something has to provide base load power for the grid, and renewables because of their generally fickle nature and our lack of practical and efficient energy storage technology can't do it. What happens to your solar plants at night and on cloudy days? What about your wind turbines when the wind doesn't blow? Wave generators on calm seas? Something has to pick up the slack at those times, and in Germany what they actually do is buy dirty power from their neighbours.

        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 29 2015, @04:55AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 29 2015, @04:55AM (#269346)

          Any long term solution will include some nuclear, be it fission or fusion. Renewables by their nature are too variable. You need a solidly dependable baseline of power generation, best solutions currently are hydro and nuclear. Energy storage solutions for renewables bring their own problems such as the toxic metals needed.

          Don't discount a viable solution because of fear.

          • (Score: 3, Interesting) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Sunday November 29 2015, @06:10AM

            by fido_dogstoyevsky (131) <axehandleNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Sunday November 29 2015, @06:10AM (#269362)

            Don't discount a viable solution because of fear.

            It isn't fear of reactor accidents*. It isn't fear of handling the waste. It isn't fear of technology. It is, however, fear of what the people running the industry might do to fubar the planet.

             

            *Accidents, not incidents caused by incompetence or greed.

            --
            It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 29 2015, @11:33PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 29 2015, @11:33PM (#269540)
              I wonder why people are so afraid of the heavily concentrated waste from nuclear power, as opposed to the waste from coal plants. You may not die a spectacular death from radiation poisoning from coal plants (although there's also a lot of radioactivity from coal exhaust) but you'll be dead just the same. And burning coal the way we are isn't fubaring the planet?! Again, agrarian society, global warming, or nuclear power. The first choice I believe cannot be achieved on a global scale without massive death and destruction as society contracts violently in order to accommodate the vastly reduced productivity of society. The second choice will again result in massive death and destruction as the effects of global warming change the planet. The last choice I think is the only one where destruction on a huge scale can be avoided.
        • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Monday November 30 2015, @05:07PM

          by urza9814 (3954) on Monday November 30 2015, @05:07PM (#269792) Journal

          And didn't we just have an article here on Soylent a few days ago about all the environmental damage being caused by mining for the rare earth metals that are needed to produce solar panels? Not very clean either. And a higher toll in human life per unit of energy produced than *Chernobyl alone* -- largely due to people falling off of rooftops building out all of those thousands of small, isolated generation sites.

          Concentrated solar isn't a bad option though. It's just distributed photovoltaic that sucks.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 29 2015, @05:10AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 29 2015, @05:10AM (#269351)

        you using the word "release" then it might be correct to say that a coal power plant is more radioactive then a nuke power plant.
        however the difference is that coal can only oxidize if it has access to atmospheric oxygen, thus it needs to be open and connected to the environment, hopefully though some sulpher etc. filters.
        A nuke on the other hand is designed to be as closed to the environment as possible. Most of the radioactivity escapes when they open the lid to "replace" (sounds like they do something to them and then put them back) the nuclear poison-generation rods.
        It is obvious that open nuclear reactors, like Chernobyl or the multiple ones in japan are magnitudes of order more radioactive then any coal-oxidizing power plant.
        100 Sieverts is nothing to sneeze at .. at least not for very long and that's what you CANNOT get from using coal alone!
        least we not forget, that some coal has more radioactive impurities then other mining sites.
        no blanket statement is possible here except that the dangers of nuclear power are well kept under a blanket.
        -
        ofc americans being the best and brightest civilization on the plant and the only one using two nuclear bombs to actually kill people could never admit that the path of using nuclear power to fuel their capitalistic way-of-life is dangerous and hazardous ...

        • (Score: 4, Touché) by sjames on Sunday November 29 2015, @06:52AM

          by sjames (2882) on Sunday November 29 2015, @06:52AM (#269371) Journal

          Personally, I'd rather deal with 100 Kg of hydrogen cyanide sealed up in canisters than 2 g of it dispersed into the air I am currently breathing.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 29 2015, @05:20AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 29 2015, @05:20AM (#269352)

        this is rubbish.
        if you weight the amount of radioactivity going INTO a coal power plant and already present in the coal and then measuring the radioactivity that comes out then it is equal amounts. 1 unit of radioactivity in equals 1 unit of radioactivity out. a coal power plant doesn't generate radioactivity rather it is the mining that liberates it from the ground.

        a nuke generates MORE radioactivity. if we put in 1 unit of radioactive uranium then we get 100 units of radioactivity coming out. if you measure on a global scale, planet wide-scale, then nuclear power plants contribute to a net GAIN of radioactivity! btw "radioactivity" is bad and nothing we want more off.

        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday November 29 2015, @08:16AM

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday November 29 2015, @08:16AM (#269382) Journal

          a nuke generates MORE radioactivity. if we put in 1 unit of radioactive uranium then we get 100 units of radioactivity coming out. if you measure on a global scale, planet wide-scale, then nuclear power plants contribute to a net GAIN of radioactivity! btw "radioactivity" is bad and nothing we want more off.

          Which as sjames already pointed out [soylentnews.org], is nearly irrelevant particularly since on a global scale, you will measure more radioactivity coming from coal burning plants than nuclear plants (radiation exposure is far more important than what radioactivity you create). Your simplistic analysis also ignores two other things: the work done by the creation of that radioactivity (nobody is just creating radioactivity for no reason at all) and the short term nature of that radioactivity (which destroys radioactivity).

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 29 2015, @12:51PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 29 2015, @12:51PM (#269424)

            i remember when they argued on the intrrnet wayyyy back then that the extra co2 emissions from a fee more coal plants wouldnt be noticably measurable ... on a global scale ... fsst forward a few generation. and voila no more global warming but too many babies with three eyes and two heads...

      • (Score: 2) by SacredSalt on Sunday November 29 2015, @04:02PM

        by SacredSalt (2772) on Sunday November 29 2015, @04:02PM (#269438)

        You do realize that uranium, thorium, and MOX fuel don't come out of the ground all ready to go, right? This is what uranium mining looks like when simple things go wrong... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Rock_uranium_mill_spill [wikipedia.org]

    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday November 29 2015, @03:03AM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday November 29 2015, @03:03AM (#269323) Journal

      Yeah, right, replacing global warming with a different 40-50 million year long, deadly problem (a.k.a. nuclear waste storage) is a simple and easy step that we should undertake with a smile on our lips.

      It's not a serious problem, especially when spilling mercury creates a more serious problem with an unknown half life, but probably longer than the universe has currently existed.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 29 2015, @06:43AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 29 2015, @06:43AM (#269369)

      It seems counter-intuitive, but even with the accidents, nuclear power is statistically less harmful than traditional sources of power.

      • (Score: 2) by SacredSalt on Sunday November 29 2015, @04:05PM

        by SacredSalt (2772) on Sunday November 29 2015, @04:05PM (#269439)

        That depends upon if you believe their statistics or not. Do you honestly believe the death toll from Chernobyl was 43 and total deaths from exposure will number less than 4000>?

  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Sunday November 29 2015, @12:30AM

    by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Sunday November 29 2015, @12:30AM (#269282) Homepage Journal

    there is a problem in that they use heavy water and so produce a great deal of plutonium. But there is one design feature I'd like to see in other reactors: rather than removing the entire core when it is spent, the CANDU pushes short pieces of rod through horizontally. This leads to more of the fuel being burned. In American reactors only the central part of the core is completely spent.

    I understand Thorium reactors don't product Plutonium. We have all these Uranium reactors because the Cold War needed so much plutonium just in case we wanted to put an end to all life on Earth forever, but not we have plenty of bombs should we need to solve that particular problem.

    There are technological ways we can dispose of our nuclear waste but what we don't have is the political will to actually do so.

    --
    Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
    • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 29 2015, @01:07AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 29 2015, @01:07AM (#269296)

      Plutonium is not a problem. It is a positive you fucking faggot.

      I bet you are opposed to men marrying female children.

      Colorado mountain man did nothing wrong.

      Nor did Hans Reiser.

      • (Score: -1, Troll) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday November 29 2015, @01:40AM

        by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Sunday November 29 2015, @01:40AM (#269304) Journal

        Christ, Fizzbuzz, do you ever give up? Or think about anything other than sticking your microscopic, syphilitic dick into a girl young enough to be your granddaughter? One of these days someone is going to trace your IP and all hell will break loose on your end. Kono rorikon domome...

        --
        I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 29 2015, @11:19AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 29 2015, @11:19AM (#269402)

        It's not big and it's not clever.

    • (Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday November 29 2015, @01:33AM

      by frojack (1554) on Sunday November 29 2015, @01:33AM (#269301) Journal

      The problem is they are just as big and costly to build as any other reactors, actually more costly to build because heavy water is a rather poor at slowing neutrons (modration) that it requires a lot of it, which means a very large containment vessel.

      Smaller and cheaper reactors probably make more sense these days than they did in the 60s. There are actually a LOT of good designs for smaller reactors:

      http://www.nei.org/Issues-Policy/New-Nuclear-Energy-Facilities/Small-Reactor-Designs [nei.org]

      The NuScale models are nice because they can be factory built and trucked to the installation site. The problem is they seem more concerned with their patent pool than with their spent fuel pools. And they don't expect anything to go on line until 2023.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_small_nuclear_reactor_designs [wikipedia.org]

      The problem with small reactors is cost per megawatt. But the advantage is that you can put them underground close to cities, and not have to build expensive long distance high tension lines.

      --
      No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by sjames on Sunday November 29 2015, @07:05AM

        by sjames (2882) on Sunday November 29 2015, @07:05AM (#269374) Journal

        CANDU is big and expensive, but has the advantage that loss of coolant is also loss of moderator and so it's a lot harder to melt down. IIRC it can use mixed actinide fuel, so it works well with cheaply reprocessed fuel.

        Looking at that page, LWR is the same tech we've been using for decades. RBMK is the Chernobyl design, so I'd suggest not building that.

        There are a number of safer designs out there, but that page doesn't list them.

    • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 29 2015, @03:03AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 29 2015, @03:03AM (#269322)

      Colorado mountain man did nothing wrong.

      Nor did Hans Reiser.

  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Covalent on Sunday November 29 2015, @12:57AM

    by Covalent (43) on Sunday November 29 2015, @12:57AM (#269289) Journal

    Nuclear is the future. What people don't realize is that we're all getting a dosage of both radiation and significant heavy metal poisoning from coal burning. The number of people killed by coal dwarfs that killed by nuclear. It's like smoking vs. shark attack: one kills tons of people slowly and the other kills a few in a gruesome way. But which are people more afraid of?

    We should all be terrified of coal and relatively ambivalent about nuclear. But we are precisely the opposite. It's sad really because we could have significantly mitigated, if not eliminated, climate change had we dealt with this in the 70s.

    --
    You can't rationally argue somebody out of a position they didn't rationally get into.
    • (Score: 5, Informative) by SacredSalt on Sunday November 29 2015, @03:22PM

      by SacredSalt (2772) on Sunday November 29 2015, @03:22PM (#269435)

      Seriously, why are we even having this discussion? You guys clearly know little about uranium, thorium, copper, silver and gold mining. I wont get into coal mining - its outside my knowledge base, even though I very familiar with the processes used, but I'm not as familiar with the breakdown of its waste supply. I know much about the problems of waste from mining uranium, thorium, copper, silver and gold.

      Because I don't want to type 200 pages, I'm going to limit this to three aspects you can easily research yourself to see I am forthright. For those that didn't have rocks for jocks in college, Uranium, radium, and thorium tend to occur in the same conditions that produce good finds of copper, silver, and gold. This isn't an absolute truth, but it is a general truth. You mine one, you generally get a bit of the other, and vice versa. Your choices in going after these elements include deep mining, strip mining, and liquid injection. Your end results are always, and this is without fail: Huge quantities of contaminated water that disperses into the ground water, rivers, and lakes over enough time. Liquid injection looks better on the surface, but its a permanent FU to ground water. Even from the richest mines, you end up with hundreds of tons of materials that are not really what you are after. It still contains problem elements, and its now brought to the surface where those problem elements catch the wind, wash away with water...etc There is no way around this -- even with liquid extraction techniques it still ends up being a factor both at the mining site, and subsequent processing sites. These problems are also present at most "point of development" sites for gold, silver, and copper, and in the refining process. You like your shiny toys, there is a cost -- you like something with copper -- part of that cost is radiation being released, part of it is dioxin produced in the process. You like that silver or gold ring? Yeah. Uranium, and thorium processing gets into whole new realms of bad.

      Bottom line -- mining for uranium and thorium is a hell of a lot worse than mining for coal. The waste is a hell of a lot worse than using coal. The radiation released is a hell of lot worse than mining for coal. -- AND some of these issues also crop up in coal mining. If anyone really needs an explanation beyond this its because of what doesn't usually exist in that coal. Coal poisons our rivers and oceans eventually through acidification, but its not that impressive for global warming despite claims that have been made as it eventually settles into the oceans. The bigger problem is acidification of our water and livestock.

      When you process uranium, you are generally stripping out the thorium, radium, and then eventually going after only the uranium element(s) you want. If its another element you want, same problems. This produces massive quantities of unnaturally enriched radioactive waste. Why does this matter? Well, lets use *my* community as an example -- I live in a suburb of St Louis, and my other home is in Weldon Spring -- both of them are now so contaminated to the point I have to list that hazard before I can sell, half of the people I went to high school with didn't need an invitation -- they were DEAD, and the incidence of birth defects (including my own children) is very high. How did we get here? In 1939 the US Navy approached Mallinckrodt about the possibility of enriching uranium to power submarines. This led to some early work on casting, to the first criticality in the US (which was at Chicago), and eventually to the Manhattan project and very large scale processing of nuclear materials at a Mallinckrodt Facility in downtown St Louis, and another in Weldon Spring, Missouri. By *secret* government agreement DOE/Mallickrodt dumped their waste in North County St. Louis. This is unnaturally enriched material that is primarily, but not exclusively thorium, radium, and barium sulfate. The cancer clusters, autoimmune disease clusters, infant mortality clusters, and birth defect clusters in the areas of contamination (6 sites -- 4 disposal, 2 manufacture) are so overwhelmingly damning as to be beyond any possibility of anything else causing the problems. When there are 20 houses on your block and you know 16 people who *died* from brain cancer, its pretty hard to dismiss. So if you want to talk about waste with someone who knows what it REALLY is all about, please, contact me, and I'll happily talk to you while I am still *alive* -- which may or may not be much longer. In Weldon Spring - they used an unlined quarry for the waste, and its migrated very far off site.

      Now we have moderately enriched fuel. It still needs to go through another horrible waste producing process to get to something useful - either gaseous diffusion separation or laser separation. There is something else they are trying, and its slipping my mind at the moment. You end up with a mess of chemical nasties from this, including my personal favorite childhood plaything uranium hexafluoride. If you want to go on to weapons manufacture, you end up having to process this another several further steps leading to tons upon tons of waste being produced. If you want a thorium reactor, you still need to turn this into uranium to get it initiated. So you still are not getting away from very many of these issues other than breeder reactors can use a *tiny fraction* of the waste that is produced now to generate power.

      If you want to continue down this asinine course of logic of continuing with nuclear power. The safety history of breeder reactors (everywhere they have been tried) is truly awful. Who knows how many accidents were covered up on top of. So you have a public that believes our worst accident was TMI, and it was NOT. You have a shady government who thinks nothing of allowing waste to be dumped and produced in residential neighborhoods (the list I could give is too long to type out). You have a university system deeply in bed with corporate nuclear and government nuclear, and we should trust these people why? These are the same people that covered up our (worst that I know of) accidents at Santa Susana, partial meltdowns at Oakridge, probable partial meltdown at Sandia, and numerous research reactor failures. These are the same folks who want to multiply the level of "safe" radiation exposure to "pick a number for X" ... These are the same folks who think nothing of calling dumping tritium and strontium contaminated water a "controlled release" and try to pass the radiation is good for you line. They still haven't picked up their waste from the 40's, and you are trusting them do this right now, why? Seriously, this is like trusting a junkie to guard your stash of morphine and oxycodone.

      The waste isn't all from the plant, and even what comes out of your best plant is pretty nasty. All waste eventually goes to water. Its not possible to do otherwise and store it on this planet. I cannot believe that anyone in the tech crowd would even remotely consider this a sane idea.

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by SacredSalt on Sunday November 29 2015, @04:15PM

        by SacredSalt (2772) on Sunday November 29 2015, @04:15PM (#269440)

        http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-20140613-column.html [latimes.com] They list 3 accidents, people who worked there talked about 10 separate events that would all merit the 6oclock news today if these folks conducted tins honestly.

        However, I want to turn you attention to key phrase from the first accident. http://www.theacorn.com/news/2014-10-16/Front_Page/A_last_remaining_survivor_recalls_field_labs_nucle.html [theacorn.com] Pace said the Atomics International management promised to release information to the public, but that the first account of the accident didn’t occur until almost two months later when an article appeared in the Van Nuys Valley News.
        The newspaper ran what apparently was a sanitized press release from Atomics International, an account of the incident that differed greatly from Pace’s first-hand experience.
        “No release of radioactive materials to the plant or its environs occurred and operating personnel were not exposed to harmful conditions,”

        You know why those phrases sound familiar? Its the same ones used for every other accident. Deny, minimize, finally admit, and then claim its harmless or you can't prove where the harm came from. Its the same lies over and over again.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 29 2015, @05:03PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 29 2015, @05:03PM (#269453)

        thank you for first hand info!

    • (Score: 2) by chewbacon on Monday November 30 2015, @02:42AM

      by chewbacon (1032) on Monday November 30 2015, @02:42AM (#269573)

      To paraphrase a previous contributor (here or on the green site, I can't remember): every time we nod to a tree hugger and say, "You're right, we have to do something about this. There is this thing called nuclear power," they plug their ears and go "NOOO! PLANET MURDERER! I CAN'T HEAR YOU! LA LA LA LA LA!!!" He's abso-fucking-lutely right.

  • (Score: 2, Offtopic) by frojack on Sunday November 29 2015, @01:01AM

    by frojack (1554) on Sunday November 29 2015, @01:01AM (#269291) Journal

    Like Nixon's going to China, this is something only Mr. Obama can do.

    Oh gawd, what is the world going to do without our Lord and God Obama!!???

    The whole article has such a slant that it disparages every point it was trying to make.

    --
    No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
    • (Score: 2, Informative) by Decker-Mage on Sunday November 29 2015, @01:29AM

      by Decker-Mage (5745) on Sunday November 29 2015, @01:29AM (#269300)

      This was relegated to the political sphere before even one technical issue was pointed out. Not worth the bother trying to discuss it at all.

      --
      -- "To know the world one must construct it." - Pavese
      • (Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 29 2015, @01:50AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 29 2015, @01:50AM (#269307)

        "Although a member of the Libertarian Party, Thiel donates overwhelmingly more political contributions to Republicans."

        Read the editorial. It is nonpartisan. Obama is the only one who can do anything, because he is not up for reelection.

      • (Score: 2) by jmorris on Sunday November 29 2015, @06:44PM

        by jmorris (4844) on Sunday November 29 2015, @06:44PM (#269480)

        Because there ARE no technical issues, only political ones. We know how to build much safer nuke plants than the ones we have in service now, operating far beyond their original design life btw, purely because politics forbids even replacing the existing capacity with safer designs for fear that we would build even more of those instead of wasting money harvesting unicorn farts. Since the problem is political, only a political discussion leading to a political solution makes sense.

    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 29 2015, @01:43AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 29 2015, @01:43AM (#269306)

      Recognize the name Peter Thiel? He's a libertarian, not an Obama worshipper.

      This is simply an appeal to a sitting second term President who can do some things without worrying about reelection.

      • (Score: 2) by n1 on Sunday November 29 2015, @11:20AM

        by n1 (993) on Sunday November 29 2015, @11:20AM (#269403) Journal

        He claims libertarian status, spends his money on republicans, and his public statements and companies he's involved in suggests he's really a neoconservative trans-humanist technocrat.

        One word labels which are only valid as a self-identifier are not useful, his actual positions and business dealings are far more valid. I can call myself a capitalist, communist, socialist, conservative, liberal, libertarian or anarchist... Doesn't mean my ideology has anything to do with the overly simple and widely accepted definitions of those things. It does mean that I know how to appeal to various social groups, depending on what part of my philosophy i wish to emphasize or imply a strong affinity for, to enable the acquisition of wealth, status, power.

  • (Score: 4, Funny) by ilPapa on Sunday November 29 2015, @03:05AM

    by ilPapa (2366) on Sunday November 29 2015, @03:05AM (#269325) Journal

    They're not going to be happy until we're all living in vaults or fighting death claws.

    --
    You are still welcome on my lawn.
    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by n1 on Sunday November 29 2015, @11:26AM

      by n1 (993) on Sunday November 29 2015, @11:26AM (#269405) Journal

      That could be the least of our problems:

      He also likes the globalisation of digital culture because it makes the banking overlords hard to attack: "You can't have a workers' revolution to take over a bank if the bank is in Vanuatu,"

      [...]Thiel is also on the board of advisers of something called the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence. From its fantastical website, the following: "The Singularity is the technological creation of smarter-than-human intelligence. There are several technologies ... heading in this direction ... Artificial Intelligence ... direct brain-computer interfaces ... genetic engineering ... different technologies which, if they reached a threshold level of sophistication, would enable the creation of smarter-than-human intelligence."

      Guardian article [theguardian.com] same as the one linked to in a comment below.

      • (Score: 2) by ilPapa on Sunday November 29 2015, @08:58PM

        by ilPapa (2366) on Sunday November 29 2015, @08:58PM (#269517) Journal

        Transhumanists scare the bejeebus out of me.

        --
        You are still welcome on my lawn.
  • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 29 2015, @06:58AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 29 2015, @06:58AM (#269373)

    I groaned when I saw this in Slashdot. I'm groaning worse now. Fuck you Hugh Pickens.

  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 29 2015, @09:09AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 29 2015, @09:09AM (#269389)

    He's not exactly a nice guy, gives me the creeps. http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2008/jan/14/facebook [theguardian.com]