A utopian but nonetheless interesting discussion

[zwzsg]

The waste is not just the nice rods of spent fuel. It's also every piece of concrete, every iron tube and shielding, that ever was in close proximity to the reactor. There is low amount of highly radioactive material, and a large amount of lightly radioactive material.

[FireStorm_]

Yes. When I was younger I was surprised to find out that a typical toxic nuclear waste barrel did not contain glowing green goo, but more likely was filled with, for instance, contaminated protective clothing from plant workers. In other words it could be full of (potentially) lethal overalls and rubber gloves.

In the beginning a lot of those barrels where dumped in sea, and I imagine that might still happen, because asking the Russians to store some barrels for you under their soil isn't cheap (and stuff leaks into the sea often anyways). I believe abroad storage is how most European countries deal with their nuclear waste problem atm.
Imagine bunkers filled with seemingly endless rows of barrels...

edit:
I though about it, and I should have said "lab-coats" and "medical/hospital personnel" instead of "overalls" and "plant workers" because I think that is far more likely.

[scifi]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-NA9gM49qU

Not utopian at all, more like realistic about how grim our future is.
(end of human civilization about how we know it either by climate change or economic failure)

We cant sustain our way of life atm, there has to be a revolution of some kind, and that i agree with him.(that was the point of the interview) how do we change the economic/social paradigm we are stuck now.

[FireStorm_]

Just watched it. Mentioning of the importance of infrastructure-stored-energy grabbed my attention again, the same with the posted Oxford interview with Musk. After I had watched the latter, I also watched this ted talk which I thought was interesting in that regard.

[smoth]

We cant sustain our way of life atm, there has to be a revolution of some kind

revolution is a childish notion. every time I read someone post about this I rofl. Maybe it is possible somewhere like syria or whatever but not here where we have such an active military and police. With such a LARGE area of land, there is no way you can have a real revolution in either the USA or Russia. The powers have themselves really nestled in at least the Chinese are not as naive we are to believe such a thing is even possible

[KingRaptor]

If it's waste you're worried about (or really even if it isn't), get an integral fast reactor. Bunch of advantages including no nuclear proliferation risk and greater safety with liquid sodium cooling, but the key one is this: it can use existing nuclear waste as fuel (reputedly to the point of making uranium mining unnecessary for several centuries), extracting almost all of the energy in the original uranium (compared to <5% for once-through reactors), and the final waste (fission products, with no actinides) becomes less radioactive than the original uranium ore in a few hundred years.

If you're curious about IFRs, there's a book advocating them here. I haven't read all of it yet, but it seems fairly decent (would be a lot happier with more footnotes).

[FireStorm_]

@ smoth
Consider he is just using a word different than you normally would.
(I tent not to use 'revolution' since I think it's basicly rapid evolution, so no distinction there in my book )

I must say though, he seems to do a bit of fear mongering in the beginning, and I'd say that is why he chose the word revolution, to put emphasis on the little time he believes there is to do things. But also to put his points in historical context I think.

Looking past those 2 things, I don't think I heard much funny stuff.

[FLOZi]

We cant sustain our way of life atm, there has to be a revolution of some kind

revolution is a childish notion. every time I read someone post about this I rofl. Maybe it is possible somewhere like syria or whatever but not here where we have such an active military and police. With such a LARGE area of land, there is no way you can have a real revolution in either the USA or Russia. The powers have themselves really nestled in at least the Chinese are not as naive we are to believe such a thing is even possible

The same was said of Egypt not too long ago - the 10th largest armed forces in the world in the 15th most populated country in the world.

[smoth]

386,700 sq miles = egypt
3.794 million sq miles = usa
6.602 million sq miles = russia
3.748 million sq miles = china

sure. add to the fact that I cannot speak for others.. but the NDAA put a nip on the OCCUPY movement.. a movement where NO ONE lost lives. The government can officially disappear you if they want. The fact that in china people were posting THIS: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-22478620 to avoid disappearance by suicide and I don't know about Russia.. too much propaganda in the states about them.

Stateside drones have been used to track down private citizens: http://rt.com/usa/fbi-drones-over-usa-653/

etc.

it would take a great deal to overthrow this level of government. from what I watched on AJE most of the egyptian protests were in urban areas etc the usa could always just blow a bunch of protestors up and blame it on a terrorist. not to rip into my own country here but it is the one I know the most about.

[pintle]

We cant sustain our way of life atm, there has to be a revolution of some kind

revolution is a childish notion. every time I read someone post about this I rofl. Maybe it is possible somewhere like syria or whatever but not here where we have such an active military and police. With such a LARGE area of land, there is no way you can have a real revolution in either the USA or Russia. The powers have themselves really nestled in at least the Chinese are not as naive we are to believe such a thing is even possible

The same was said of Egypt not too long ago - the 10th largest armed forces in the world in the 15th most populated country in the world.

Some dude with a massive beard (called Karl) once said "You will never have a revolution on a full stomach".

Entrenched oligarchy and military power are not the prime factors, more the apathy of the populace, who lack motivation to threaten their comfortable lifestyle.

Greed, laziness, self interest and fear stop revolutions. The history I have read would imply that a heavily armed government may discourage, but does not prevent revolutions.

Calling revolution childish is like calling politics childish. Yes, anarchids on the internet crying for a revoultion (without any solid agenda to implement, merely wanting to SMASH THU STATE) are shallow and vacuous, but I do not accept that the notion of political or social revolution is childish. I don't see Marx, Ghandi, Washington et al to be childish.

It is possible to have social and political revolutions taking place, without "all the revolutionaries" lining up to combat "all the police/state intelligence services". Describing major social/political change in such simplistic terms could be perceived of as being childish.

[gajop]

AFAIR in the case of thorium there is less transuranic waste (and lots of U232 itself), but that tends to be unstable so it already has a comparatively (decades to centuries) short half-life. For safe waste storage however the big problems are caused by the long-term radioactive materials and thorium cycles still produce plenty of those, protactinium being one.

Breeder reactors are not necessarily linked to thorium reactors, and in general there seems to be an interest to create reactors which use nuclear waste from other, older reactors (e.g. Bill Gates talk at TED: text video).

And as far as thorium reactors go:

LFTRs are cleaner: as a fully recycling system, the discharge wastes from a LFTR are predominantly fission products, most of which have relatively short half lives compared to longer-lived actinide wastes.[59] This results in a significant reduction in the needed waste containment period in a geologic repository. After 300 years the radiotoxicity of the thorium fuel cycle waste is [/b]10,000 times less than that of the once through uranium/plutonium fuel cycle waste.[6]

That's pretty good, I'd be content with a factor of 100 even.

To get a fair comparision you would have to wait the 20.000 or whatever years until the waste is no longer radioactive, and compare then.

There's obviously no way to wait 20k years to calculate all the deaths of today's nuclear waste, but you are just assuming there will be.

If even the experts can not find a solution "with their mind" then how can the average person do anything else but decide "by heart"?

They have solutions, and they have presented them to us, supporting them by facts. It's our responsibility to look at the facts before deciding on the best solution, and tbh there's a lot of easy-to-grasp material out there.

lightly radioactive material.

I can't comment on that. I've no idea how that gets handled or how big of a problem that is, and I haven't heard it mentioned before. Can you provide links?

@scifi:
watched it 25mins in and it's quite boring, same as his previous talk, touching mostly the organizational/managerial aspects of the problem and not providing any technical solutions (there are so many big issues with solar, including storage, distribution and cost)

PS: seems kingraptor has beaten me in mentioning some of the more innovative nuclear reactor designs

[smoth]

Calling revolution childish is like calling politics childish.

being that most of the people calling for revolution seem to think it is fun and exciting like they are being part of something by destroying the something that already exists without realizing the something that will replace it will eventually be just as bad if not worse. The "endless waltz" etc as described by a certain cartoon or as my history prof used to say "revolution, war, peace, repeat" or something to that effect.

I think politics are childish because there is always the douche who wants to control errythang wining over the guy who just want to try and setup a somewhat fair system of government. I hate people, I hate entitlement, I hate greed and I hate how people are so adamant about doing as little as possible to get by. I just cannot stand the people who talk about revolution as though it somehow will really make things better. AFAIK russai, usa, china would do 9001 times better if we stopped our perpetual dickwagging contest, stopped delivering aide and selling weapons and focused on making our people happier. Whatever it is a side tangent...

Oh and carters reasoning for burying the reactors.. he didn't want people getting a hold of the nuclear materials and making nukes.. LOL GOOD JOB! In general I side with the environment to a large degree. I don't like hydro electric because that water flow most of the time has a reason to exist. of course when we are talking about replacing coal, and nuclear we are looking at stuff on the scale of this http://www.businessinsider.com/chinas-t ... ion-2010-6

Our earth is more fragile than we think. we have this really great thing going here and I am hoping we will take care of her.

[scifi]

being that most of the people calling for revolution seem to think it is fun and exciting like they are being part of something by destroying the something that already exists without realizing the something that will replace it will eventually be just as bad if not worse.

Since when revolution means war and overtrowing goverments.

If anything i meant reforming the economic system from within our own political system witch is totaly possible to do, and to be frank the only way to do it. I never talked about extremism come on.

Raising peoples awareness about todays problems and alowing them to do more wise decisions on the election day and demanding acoutability from politicians is the only way to move foward tbh.

[gajop]

being that most of the people calling for revolution seem to think it is fun and exciting like they are being part of something by destroying the something that already exists without realizing the something that will replace it will eventually be just as bad if not worse. The "endless waltz" etc as described by a certain cartoon or as my history prof used to say "revolution, war, peace, repeat" or something to that effect.

Revolution doesn't necessarily lead to a system just as bad or worse. We've had a revolution in my country and I honestly think it did far more good than harm.

[knorke]

I thought this was about technical revolution not political revolution.
---
As others said there is lots of lightly to medium radioactive waste beside the highly radioactive material. These tales of "and it only needs this football sized thingy to provide power for XY years and can even be reycycled" are misleading in that regard.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactiv ... tive_waste

But there is also the idea that in the future some people might try to drill for some water and accidentally hit a forgotten ancient underground nuclear waste depot.

Thing is there are no such depots that you could ever forget about: The depots for highly radioactive material are all "temporary" and requite constant maintenance.
Or the material is simply stored inside the plants which will only work for so long.

Storing low power waste is not solved either.
Even the salt mines in germany are failing after only ~30 years and leak water etc.

[smoth]

who says someone would accidentally drill into them IIRC it is pretty easy to blow shit up these days?

[scifi]

I thought this was about technical revolution not political revolution.
---
As others said there is lots of lightly to medium radioactive waste beside the highly radioactive material. These tales of "and it only needs this football sized thingy to provide power for XY years and can even be reycycled" are misleading in that regard.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactiv ... tive_waste

But there is also the idea that in the future some people might try to drill for some water and accidentally hit a forgotten ancient underground nuclear waste depot.

Thing is there are no such depots that you could ever forget about: The depots for highly radioactive material are all "temporary" and requite constant maintenance.
Or the material is simply stored inside the plants which will only work for so long.

Storing low power waste is not solved either.
Even the salt mines in germany are failing after only ~30 years and leak water etc.

Exactly.
Radioactive waste stays radioactive for years to come, not to mention the materials used to store the radioactive stuff wears down over the years requiring constant watch and supervision.

Now fusion thats a whole different matter if i recall correctly the only waste product of fusion is a helium nucleus, which is harmles?

So we still have that to take into consideration, stuff can still go boom, but theres little waste involved.

[raaar]

it's hard to have revolutions on stable developed countries where the people have a decent standard of living. Mostly due to apathy and/or fear of losing part of what they already have.

The key is in the votes. In europe and the US people have been voting center or right for decades. The parties involved have grown big, corrupted and lost their aim.

The elite in western countries has learned to allow opposition parties and mass demonstrations as long as the status quo isn't threathened....if it is, they'll start showing their ugly face. But if the difference in economic power (both between individuals and small groups and large countries and regions) grows, it'll become riskier to change the status quo. Some countries like greece or portugal could (and should have) gone for a sharper debt reduction. As it is they're stuck..The longer people wait, the more likely it is for a breakout to get a forceful response. The outcome of "revolutions" depends on international response as well.

If people wake up and decide to vote for smaller emergent political parties, left or right, things might change.. Despite some shortcommings some have the aim and the consistency over time that is lacking in the parties that have been in close to power for decades and the social-network driven movements that come and go.

Personally i think the key is in economical planning, both public and private. There has been a push for private planning and ownership, especially since the fall of the soviet union, and progressively shrinking the role of the state. They think state planning is mostly worse than that of private groups. This isn't necessarily true. People hope private groups sort it out in a free and secure environment but that's a possible outcome, not the logical one. They can get big monopolies that stagnate and resist change and/or many small scattered groups that fail to provide efficient means of production or push in too many different directions.

Egypt is an example: they got revolution and democracy, but it wrecked the country's economy. The muslim brotherhood kinda failed and the main reason seems lack of economic planning and execution. The people were also too impatient, revolting again after only one year.

In my opinion this is what is happening to energy as well. We could already be relying massively on electric cars, trains and ships, maybe even aircraft, based on renewables. But states governments are stepping aside and the big private energy and transportation companies are comfortable "milking the cow" they built around fossil fuels.

[hoijui]

@gajop & KingRaptor:
again: technical solutions alone are no solutions. if it costs a lot to build this stuff, and it does not generate enough profit, or say.. even more profit then the "normal" nuclear power plants, then it will not be built, and thus.. obviously, is not a solution, but a mere virtual thing.
as long as bill gates does not build sufficiently many of them himself, or does get the technology profitable enough, it is not a solution.
now i don't know if it is theoretically impossible to make them more profitable then the old plants, but it definitely can't be more profitable at the current state of knowledge, or else they would already be stomped out of the ground in masses.

revolution to me means something like:
deleting the system of believes that explains a set of experiences, and create a new system of believes that explains them (and possibly additional ones). these believes can be ones of an individual, or the basis of a society. and i agree with the other guy that said, it does not happen on full stomach. this is probably the explanation why capitalism never broke down completely so far. everyone that has power is interested in keeping it. capitalism is the biggest system we have, and if too many people in the wrong places would suffer, there could be a revolution. thus basically everyone with power in the world, will do his best to keep the current system running. the best example is probably china.

[zwzsg]

Now fusion thats a whole different matter if i recall correctly the only waste product of fusion is a helium nucleus, which is harmles?

You seem to have completely missed the point we were just discussing. Shall we go round and round?