X-Message-Number: 20652 From: Date: Wed, 18 Dec 2002 18:43:31 EST Subject: Beating a dead nucleas --part1_193.1296cb2a.2b326223_boundary Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit >I am against the actual fission power plants using chain reaction fission, because they are: >- Too costly (30 years to amortize) Artificial costs from regulatory delays and lack of mass production. >- Too long to build (more than 10 years) Where? Not Japan, it's closer to three years. >- They are too good targets for megaterrorism. It would be easy to kill people by blowing up a hydropower dam or even oil storage tanks (during a temperature inversion). How would a terrorist kill anyone by attacking the meter-think containment shell of a nuclear plant (other than by using a nuclear weapon)? As you'll recall, someone did fire antitank rockets into a French reactor shell a few years ago... with no effect. >- Protection against terrorism, real or assumed, turns the society into a dictatorship system Absolutely true... but that's happening anyway. >- World uranium reserves can't sustain a large general use without fuel reprocessing and/or breeders. True. >- If spent fuels are reprocessed, a small part, may be .01 percent is released in the environment. This is sufficient to form a major hazard, taking into account the biological selective concentration in the food chain (the problem is not iradiation, it is contamination). I think assuming that .01 percent of the fuel rods leaves the reprocessing center is a bizarre assumption... but it may well be true at the Russian centers. >- They are energy inefficient and need to be built and operated nearly as much oil energy as they produce from fission. Not even close... you must be using Manhattan Project efficiency figures. The only problem with laser isotope separation nowadays is that it's too easy and energy-efficient. >- This is a 19th century technology: A water boiller fitted with an exothic thermal source. Well, MHD would be nice... while we're at it, why don't we wish for Moon rockets? --part1_193.1296cb2a.2b326223_boundary Content-Type: text/html; charset="US-ASCII" [ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=20652