X-Message-Number: 20652
From: 
Date: Wed, 18 Dec 2002 18:43:31 EST
Subject: Beating a dead nucleas

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>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?


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