If Solar And Wind Are So Cheap, Why Are They Making Electricity So Expensive?

[bilby]

Bilby has lost any credibility.

Oh, dear.

What did I do to lose credibility?

Did I burst into a discussion explicitly about low level waste with a tirade about far more hazardous waste produced by the military, that is as relevant to the subject at hand as a tirade about napalm in a discussion on which cars burn petrol most cleanly?

Because I could see how that would cause someone to lose all credibility; It would be a monumentally dumb thing to do.

The Hanford waste continues to be a problem from the past. Liquid waste was found to be in the groundnheaded towards the Columbia river.

Fairly recently there was a tunnel collapse on old waste storage. The Hanford issues with poor waste control will go on well after we are all dead.

Same with Rocky Flats in Colorado.

Toxic liquid hazardous radioactive waste was dumped directly on the ground I many palces/

I suggest Bilby would fit right in at Trump's EPA.

https://www.yakimaherald.com/news/l...cle_6ad1417a-59dd-11e8-9c09-1be6cc316cdb.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site

http://enenews.com/radio-uranium-ta...ar-released-into-columbia-river-audio-Hanford

There is a site in Georgia I believe where the can not hunt and eat it, contamination.

Oh, thank goodness. It was you, and not I, who did that.

It must suck to be so completely incapable of concentrating on the topic at hand, or even recognising that there is more than one possible topic. You have my sympathies.

 

[steve_bank]

From your repeated reference to a reactor design that does not exist, and your statement that low level nuclear waste be treated trivial without citing studies you have no credibility with me, at least on the issue of nuclear power.Low level nuclear waste has been a known serious problem for many decades, especially with ground water contamination. Search on Rocky Flats Arsenal.

You are the promoting nuclear power. I do support nuclear power going forward, however the industry has a long history of waste problems. And not the least of which were human worker problems.

 

[bilby]

From your repeated reference to a reactor design that does not exist, and your statement that low level nuclear waste be treated trivial without citing studies you have no credibility with me, at least on the issue of nuclear power.Low level nuclear waste has been a known serious problem for many decades, especially with ground water contamination. Search on Rocky Flats Arsenal.

You are the promoting nuclear power. I do support nuclear power going forward, however the industry has a long history of waste problems. And not the least of which were human worker problems.

You appear to have a hugely inflated opinion on the question of how much of a shit I give about your endorsement of my credibility.

You also appear to be blind to the effect on your credibility of your continual conflation of the nuclear weapons industry with the nuclear power industry.

 

[skepticalbip]

From your repeated reference to a reactor design that does not exist, and your statement that low level nuclear waste be treated trivial without citing studies you have no credibility with me, at least on the issue of nuclear power.Low level nuclear waste has been a known serious problem for many decades, especially with ground water contamination. Search on Rocky Flats Arsenal.

You are the promoting nuclear power. I do support nuclear power going forward, however the industry has a long history of waste problems. And not the least of which were human worker problems.

A lot of the problems of what to do with nuclear power plant waste is actually caused by regulations. Forget the "low level" radioactive "waste" because most of that problem is because of what the regulations identify as "low level radioactive waste" - it is only by definition, not because of any actual danger. There have been many proposals of how to handle actual high level radioactive waste that are much better and safer than what regulations demand but these are not allowed. Aside from that, the greatest "problem" is spent fuel rods. These could actually be used as nuclear fuel for power production (rather than having to be stored) if the subcritical reactors you referenced earlier were allowed by regulators. Also they could be used as nuclear fuel in large power plants if the regulators had not banned the use of breeder reactors.

 

[bilby]

From your repeated reference to a reactor design that does not exist, and your statement that low level nuclear waste be treated trivial without citing studies you have no credibility with me, at least on the issue of nuclear power.Low level nuclear waste has been a known serious problem for many decades, especially with ground water contamination. Search on Rocky Flats Arsenal.

You are the promoting nuclear power. I do support nuclear power going forward, however the industry has a long history of waste problems. And not the least of which were human worker problems.

A lot of the problems of what to do with nuclear power plant waste is actually caused by regulations. Forget the "low level" radioactive "waste" because most of that problem is because of what the regulations identify as "low level radioactive waste" - it is only by definition, not because of any actual danger. There have been many proposals of how to handle actual high level radioactive waste that are much better and safer than what regulations demand but these are not allowed. Aside from that, the greatest "problem" is spent fuel rods. These could actually be used as nuclear fuel for power production (rather than having to be stored) if the subcritical reactors you referenced earlier were allowed by regulators. Also they could be used as nuclear fuel in large power plants if the regulators had not banned the use of breeder reactors.

And as they consist of solid and heavy cylinders of metal oxides in alloy casings, they are very easy to store safely. High level waste is a valuable resource, and it has no tendency to 'leak' anywhere. Drop a rusty iron bar in your backyard, and come back in a hundred years - all the iron and iron oxides will still be within a few inches of where you left it. Uranium and other Actinides are heavier than iron, and even less inclined to move around. Burying it in Yucca Mountain type repositories is needless overkill; it's been stored safely in dry casks for many decades without ever harming a single living thing. Making it inaccessible is pointless and counterproductive.

But we were not discussing high level waste. We were discussing low level waste. Low level waste is no more hazardous than regular domestic garbage, and should be disposed of in landfill along with that other garbage. It will never hurt anybody. If someone is in a situation where they have garbage from landfill inside their body, traces of radioactivity are the very least of their problems at that point. They will likely die from disease or regular poisoning long before any radiation effects are evident. Low level waste outside your body is harmless; your skin blocks most of the radiation. You get worse radiation exposure from standing outside on a sunny day than you would buried up to your neck in low level waste.

The image of glowing green goo oozing out of rusting barrels is a nonsense based on fiction. If one gets ones information on nuclear waste from The Simpsons, then one should not be surprised to be completely misinformed.

Cue irrelevant rant about completely different kinds of waste, and/or problems due to nuclear weapons manufacturing.

Here's a link for steve_bank to ignore, or reject out of hand because it contradicts his deep seated emotional hatred of all things nuclear: https://thoughtscapism.com/2017/11/04/nuclear-waste-ideas-vs-reality/

And just in case clicking on that link is too scary in case it contaminates us all with nuclear cooties, here's a key infographic from that article:

 

[bigfield]

Veritasium puts radioactivity in context:

[YOUTUBE]TRL7o2kPqw0[/YOUTUBE]

yt;dw: We tolerate much higher doses of radiation on a regular basis.

 

[steve_bank]

From your repeated reference to a reactor design that does not exist, and your statement that low level nuclear waste be treated trivial without citing studies you have no credibility with me, at least on the issue of nuclear power.Low level nuclear waste has been a known serious problem for many decades, especially with ground water contamination. Search on Rocky Flats Arsenal.

You are the promoting nuclear power. I do support nuclear power going forward, however the industry has a long history of waste problems. And not the least of which were human worker problems.

A lot of the problems of what to do with nuclear power plant waste is actually caused by regulations. Forget the "low level" radioactive "waste" because most of that problem is because of what the regulations identify as "low level radioactive waste" - it is only by definition, not because of any actual danger. There have been many proposals of how to handle actual high level radioactive waste that are much better and safer than what regulations demand but these are not allowed. Aside from that, the greatest "problem" is spent fuel rods. These could actually be used as nuclear fuel for power production (rather than having to be stored) if the subcritical reactors you referenced earlier were allowed by regulators. Also they could be used as nuclear fuel in large power plants if the regulators had not banned the use of breeder reactors.

True. The last I read is that a lot of spent fuel rods are stored on site in water ponds.

The nuclear industry history is riddled with problems. Three Mile Island. People are afraid of nuclear power.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_repository

http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/news/brookhaven-lab-hit-radioactive-leak-article-1.751558

I have a relative at Brookhaven and a sister who lives nearby. Animal life on the grounds were contaminated by a long term leak into groundwater. Would you buy a house with kids in the family next to a nuke plant, or nukes are good but not in my backyard?

It is not necessarily regulations, it is more 'not in my back yard'. Yucca Mountain still appears to be in limbo.

 

[bilby]

From your repeated reference to a reactor design that does not exist, and your statement that low level nuclear waste be treated trivial without citing studies you have no credibility with me, at least on the issue of nuclear power.Low level nuclear waste has been a known serious problem for many decades, especially with ground water contamination. Search on Rocky Flats Arsenal.

You are the promoting nuclear power. I do support nuclear power going forward, however the industry has a long history of waste problems. And not the least of which were human worker problems.

A lot of the problems of what to do with nuclear power plant waste is actually caused by regulations. Forget the "low level" radioactive "waste" because most of that problem is because of what the regulations identify as "low level radioactive waste" - it is only by definition, not because of any actual danger. There have been many proposals of how to handle actual high level radioactive waste that are much better and safer than what regulations demand but these are not allowed. Aside from that, the greatest "problem" is spent fuel rods. These could actually be used as nuclear fuel for power production (rather than having to be stored) if the subcritical reactors you referenced earlier were allowed by regulators. Also they could be used as nuclear fuel in large power plants if the regulators had not banned the use of breeder reactors.

True. The last I read is that a lot of spent fuel rods are stored on site in water ponds.

The nuclear industry history is riddled with problems. Three Mile Island. People are afraid of nuclear power.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_repository

http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/news/brookhaven-lab-hit-radioactive-leak-article-1.751558

I have a relative at Brookhaven and a sister who lives nearby. Animal life on the grounds were contaminated by a long term leak into groundwater. Would you buy a house with kids in the family next to a nuke plant, or nukes are good but not in my backyard?

It is not necessarily regulations, it is more 'not in my back yard'. Yucca Mountain still appears to be in limbo.

The nuclear power industry's history is 'riddled with' fewer problems than any other industry in the history of humanity.

The difference is that every little thing has been massively hyped by the people who opposed the industry. Three Mile Island was a non-event. Nobody was hurt, nor was anybody likely to be hurt.

Brookhaven's problems relate to making bombs; The military has a poor history regarding their abuse of the environment but this has exactly fuck all to do with nuclear power. Electricity generation is not about bombs, and conflating the two is a tried and tested propaganda scare tactic. It's a lie, and you should stop spreading it.

Your family is FAR safer living next to a nuclear power plant than next to any other industry.

Stop wallowing in irrational fear, and start correcting misconceptions instead of promulgating them.

Lots of people are scared by nuclear power. Lots of people are scared that homosexuality will lead to their houses being destroyed by tornadoes, too.

Should we ban homosexuality because of the irrational fears of morons?

 

[skepticalbip]

...........snip............

I have a relative at Brookhaven and a sister who lives nearby. Animal life on the grounds were contaminated by a long term leak into groundwater.

This isn't at all relevant to nuclear power plants. This mess is left overs from early (mid '40s to early '60s) weapons development programs before anything was known about radioactivity and the need for care when dealing with it.

Would you buy a house with kids in the family next to a nuke plant, or nukes are good but not in my backyard?

If the concern was radioactivity from normal operations then I would would feel much more comfortable living next to a nuke plant than a coal fired power plant. The normal emissions from a coal fired plant would trigger emergency "radiation leak" alarms all over a nuke power plant. If the concern was catastrophic failure then living on a scenic river downstream from a hydro power dam would be a much, much greater concern than living near a nuke plant.

It is not necessarily regulations, it is more 'not in my back yard'. Yucca Mountain still appears to be in limbo.

The need for such massive volume as is afforded by the Yucca Mountain site is due to regulators identifying as "low level radioactive waste" tons and tons and tons of material that is no more radioactive or dangerous than a load of laundry.

I have made many working trips to both Los Alamos and Oak Ridge. The required procedure when entering the "hot room" is to wear cap, smock, and booties. On leaving the room, the cap, smock, and booties are put into a bin (for future handling). Re-enter the room and new set of cap, smock, and booties are required. There are a lot of people using the facility so, at the end of the day, there is a lot of smocks and booties in the bin. At the end of the day, the contents of that bin must be transferred to an approved radiation containment vessel. The contents are not radioactive or the alarms would have sounded and yet regulations require that they be treated as if they are "hot". This radiation containment vessel must then be shipped off to be "safely" stored and isolated from people for eternity.

I can't say for sure that the same procedure is required in all facilities that handles radioactive material but I would assume so since all fall under the same agencies. This would produce a hell of a lot of tons every year of material for which regulation requires eternal storage and so something as vast as the Yucca Mountain site.

For me, a solution would seem to be fairly logical - actually test the waste for radioactivity before declaring it "dangerous". If it isn't radioactive then there is no need to sequester it. Just wash the smocks and booties and reuse them like McDonalds workers do with their uniforms.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

True. The last I read is that a lot of spent fuel rods are stored on site in water ponds.

It's stored in water for a few years while it's hot enough (physical sense) to pose a problem.

The nuclear industry history is riddled with problems. Three Mile Island. People are afraid of nuclear power.

People being afraid of it isn't evidence that it's riddled with problems. There have been only two substantial nuclear accidents and one of those didn't even kill anybody. (And the other was due to utter folly in both the design and operation of the reactor.)

 

[steve_bank]

At the end of the day if you are pro nuke, is it ok in your bavkyard?

If it was iproposed in your neighborhood, would object in public meeting?

There are a number of regulations that across industry are probably too limiting or unnecessary.

That being said environmental regulations on contaminants usually have a science basis. When I was just a factory worker in the 70s I used to clean my hands with MEK, methyl ethyl ketone a strong solvent. It was widely used in manufacturing to clean items wirth little restrictions. Along comes OSHA who says all chemicals used in industry must be properly contained, laneled with hazarf level, and an MSD or Manufacturers Safety Data Sheet detailing risks, handling, safety.

It costs manufacturers money to comply. Industry will always complain about regulations. Up through the 70s circuit board manufacturers dumped liquid waste down the sewers. Now they are required to store it in holding tanks and have it treated. Plenty of examples I know first had. Integrated circuit manufacturers use phosgene gas.

Of course the nuke industry will complain about regulations. I expect waste regulations are based on statistical estimates based on experiment with living organisms. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were used extensively over generations to develop statistical models from residual background radiation.

Even lowest level waste like garments need to be accounted for, unless you think they should go to the local landfill.

 

[bilby]

At the end of the day if you are pro nuke, is it ok in your bavkyard?

Yes. I would happily have an SMR in my backyard. A full size GW scale power plant wouldn't fit; But I would be OK with it being built right next door.

If it was iproposed in your neighborhood, would object in public meeting?

Not only would I not protest, I would go along to press the case for constructing it, and hope to persuade my neighbours of the benefits.

There are a number of regulations that across industry are probably too limiting or unnecessary.

Probably. But Nuclear Power really takes the cake. Regulation needs to be proportionate to risk. Nuclear power regulations are wildly disproportionate.

That being said environmental regulations on contaminants usually have a science basis. When I was just a factory worker in the 70s I used to clean my hands with MEK, methyl ethyl ketone a strong solvent. It was widely used in manufacturing to clean items wirth little restrictions. Along comes OSHA who says all chemicals used in industry must be properly contained, laneled with hazarf level, and an MSD or Manufacturers Safety Data Sheet detailing risks, handling, safety.

All of which seems perfectly reasonable. The Chemical industry has a WOEFUL history of accidents, large and small, with about 3 deaths per annum in the USA (and of course vastly more in the developing world). The nuclear power industry has a total of zero deaths in the USA (or indeed in the entire world excluding the Soviet Union) in entirety of the sixty years that it has existed; It would therefore be more than reasonable to regulate nuclear power at a similar level to the level at which chemical plants are regulated.

It costs manufacturers money to comply. Industry will always complain about regulations. Up through the 70s circuit board manufacturers dumped liquid waste down the sewers. Now they are required to store it in holding tanks and have it treated. Plenty of examples I know first had. Integrated circuit manufacturers use phosgene gas.

It costs nuclear plant operators more to comply with regulation than the rest of their costs combined. More than half of the workers at a nuclear power plant are engaged in regulatory compliance activities.

Of course the nuke industry will complain about regulations. I expect waste regulations are based on statistical estimates based on experiment with living organisms. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were used extensively over generations to develop statistical models from residual background radiation.

Well, you expect wrong.

The most commonly used model is the Linear No Threshold (LNT) model. Under this hypothesis, it is assumed that 1Sv of exposure is equally risky if received as a single dose over a few seconds, or if received as 50mSv per year for 20 years.

This makes as much sense as saying that as a fall from the 10th floor of a building will kill you, so must walking down the 500 stairs, each 200mm high.

The LNT model MASSIVELY overestimates the risk of low doses of radiation; taking the results of high doses received almost instantaneously at Hiroshima and Nagasaki and extrapolating them using this model leads to crazy results. These crazy results are what the "environmentalist" movement have demanded be used by the nuclear industry.

Even lowest level waste like garments need to be accounted for, unless you think they should go to the local landfill.

Why shouldn't they, if they are not contaminated? Radioactivity is very easy to detect; There's no reason not to scan them and landfill the ones that are clean. Or better, launder them and use them again. And even contaminated clothing isn't sufficiently radioactive to be hazardous. People live long and full lives in places like Ramsar, where natural radioactivity is around 260 mSv/year. Why then are radiation workers limited to 20 mSv/yr? Why should we worry about a landfill that has a few old lab coats in it that would give a person who slept on them every night an additional 0.00001mSv/yr of exposure above background?

Why do such garments need to be accounted for? What's the benefit of doing that? All it achieves is to make nuclear power needlessly costly. Without saving a single life, or even preventing a single illness.

 

[bilby]

Check out this chart: https://xkcd.com/radiation/

In particular notice this in the top left corner:



Living within 50 miles of a coal power plant exposes you to more than three times as much additional radiation as living the same distance from a nuclear plant. (The equivalent of eating three bananas per yer, rather than just one for nuclear). And that's just radiation; The nuclear plant doesn't also expose you to particulates, mercury, oxides of Sulphur and Nitrogen (both as inhalation toxins and as acid rain), lead and other heavy metals, and last but not least, it doesn't emit vast quantities of greenhouse gases. By EVERY measure, it is safer and healthier to live near a nuclear power plant than a coal power plant. In both cases, radiation exposure is a non-issue (although it is MUCH higher near the coal plant); But even on that measure - the one place that you might perhaps expect coal to outperform nuclear - nuclear is clearly better.

I would have every coal power plant replaced by nuclear tomorrow if I could. If that meant building one on each side of my home, I would be more than happy. I would apply for a job there. A nuclear power plant would be a much better neighbour than the current mob - the cops shut down a meth lab a few streets away last week, and that one unregulated facility was undoubtedly more of a risk to my life than a nuclear power plant would ever be.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Let's go back to the 60s and 70s when industry could dump toxic wasre down the toilet.

There may be some specific cases, I doubt that technical and operating regulations are major impediments. It is more the licensing and environmental processes. There is a half finished site in Washington that goes back decades. The way electricity prices were going it would not have brrn profitable.

Same with a wind farm up here.

You can bet every system in a nuke plant is fault tolerant. Power systems and electronics are cheap, insignificant compared to everything else. It has been that way for a long time.

The main reason for large scale nuclear power is insulation from oil markets. Second, done properly it is better environmentally than fossil fuel.

As to Japan, it was clearly inadequate environmental analysis and inadequate protection. Added to that in the govt report a contributing factor was the Japanese culture of rigid hierarchical decision making. Early onsite initiative may have mitigated the severity.

There is a Ca coastal plant that was scrutinized after the incident.

For years I was an enginering model builder. One project I worked on was a model for a company bidding on dealing with nuclear waste. In Washington state for years, low level nuclear waste was buried in drums, and sometimes just trenches. Years later it became a problem as this stuff worked it's way to the surface. The company I was working for had designed an elaborate suite of machinery to freeze this waste with CO2 and dig it up and store it in approved waste containers. Yet the companies doing stuff like this compain that there are are these damned regulations. I wonder why?

Probably because low level waste is harmless unless you plan to eat it, so it could and should just go into landfill along with all the other garbage.

Regulations above those that apply to the disposal of ordinary household garbage are pointless for low level waste, and achieve nothing to improve the safety of humans, or to protect the environment. Those regulations exist for the sole purpose of discouraging the use of nuclear technology by making it more expensive than it should be.

If you are eating garbage with low level waste in it, radioactivity is the least of your concerns.

When the wind and rain spreads this radioactive crap around, we may well end up eating it as it enters the ecosystem and water, air and land. So the old, "Let's just dig a trench and bury it" was a short sighted and lazy way of doing things. The last thing you want to find out is that a plutonium processing plant buried it's radioactive crap in rusty barrels and let that be a problem for somebody else in the future. Imagine anybody daring to object to this moronic manner of dealing with radioactive waste! Part of the fun was that stuff just dumped into trenches was being dug up by prairie dogs and was spread around. Dumb asses! And I don't mean the prairie dogs.

 

[bilby]

Probably because low level waste is harmless unless you plan to eat it, so it could and should just go into landfill along with all the other garbage.

Regulations above those that apply to the disposal of ordinary household garbage are pointless for low level waste, and achieve nothing to improve the safety of humans, or to protect the environment. Those regulations exist for the sole purpose of discouraging the use of nuclear technology by making it more expensive than it should be.

If you are eating garbage with low level waste in it, radioactivity is the least of your concerns.

When the wind and rain spreads this radioactive crap around, we may well end up eating it as it enters the ecosystem and water, air and land. So the old, "Let's just dig a trench and bury it" was a short sighted and lazy way of doing things. The last thing you want to find out is that a plutonium processing plant buried it's radioactive crap in rusty barrels and let that be a problem for somebody else in the future. Imagine anybody daring to object to this moronic manner of dealing with radioactive waste! Part of the fun was that stuff just dumped into trenches was being dug up by prairie dogs and was spread around. Dumb asses! And I don't mean the prairie dogs.

Oh for fucks sake.

If you are not going to read my posts, don't bother responding to them with your ill informed knee-jerk emotional crap.

Low level waste is less harmful than household garbage. IF wind and rain are spreading garbage around and you end up eating it, traces of radioactivity are the least of your problems. The garbage will kill you long before you need to worry about radioactivity.

Plutonium processing plants were military installations with no relationship whatever to nuclear power. None still operate, as there is a world oversupply of plutonium, which is not used in commercial power reactors*. Waste containing plutonium is not low level waste, and conflating high and low level waste is as intellectually dishonest as conflating making bombs with making electricity.

Imagine if someone disposed of rusting barrels of mustard gas in a landfill with your household waste. That thought experiment should fill you with terror at the way empty shampoo bottles are handled - after all, shampoo and mustard gas are both chemicals, so they are exactly the same, right?





*Some mixed oxide fuel reprocessed from spent fuel rods contains traces of plutonium; No such facility has ever stored plutonium containing waste in barrels, rusty or otherwise, and such facilities cannot reasonably be referred to as 'plutonium processing plants'

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

At the end of the day if you are pro nuke, is it ok in your backyard?

If it was proposed in your neighborhood, would object in public meeting?

There are a number of regulations that across industry are probably too limiting or unnecessary.

That being said environmental regulations on contaminants usually have a science basis. When I was just a factory worker in the 70s I used to clean my hands with MEK, methyl ethyl ketone a strong solvent. It was widely used in manufacturing to clean items wirth little restrictions. Along comes OSHA who says all chemicals used in industry must be properly contained, labeled with hazard level, and an MSD or Manufacturers Safety Data Sheet detailing risks, handling, safety.

It costs manufacturers money to comply. Industry will always complain about regulations. Up through the 70s circuit board manufacturers dumped liquid waste down the sewers. Now they are required to store it in holding tanks and have it treated. Plenty of examples I know first had. Integrated circuit manufacturers use phosgene gas.

Of course the nuke industry will complain about regulations. I expect waste regulations are based on statistical estimates based on experiment with living organisms. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were used extensively over generations to develop statistical models from residual background radiation.

Even lowest level waste like garments need to be accounted for, unless you think they should go to the local landfill .

What they did with these sorts of things at a plutonium processing plant in Washington states was, dig a trench and bury them. That is what my project was about. A display model of machines meant to freeze the earth and the waste items, dig them up, and dispose of them. Possibly even properly.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Probably because low level waste is harmless unless you plan to eat it, so it could and should just go into landfill along with all the other garbage.

Regulations above those that apply to the disposal of ordinary household garbage are pointless for low level waste, and achieve nothing to improve the safety of humans, or to protect the environment. Those regulations exist for the sole purpose of discouraging the use of nuclear technology by making it more expensive than it should be.

If you are eating garbage with low level waste in it, radioactivity is the least of your concerns.

When the wind and rain spreads this radioactive crap around, we may well end up eating it as it enters the ecosystem and water, air and land. So the old, "Let's just dig a trench and bury it" was a short sighted and lazy way of doing things. The last thing you want to find out is that a plutonium processing plant buried it's radioactive crap in rusty barrels and let that be a problem for somebody else in the future. Imagine anybody daring to object to this moronic manner of dealing with radioactive waste! Part of the fun was that stuff just dumped into trenches was being dug up by prairie dogs and was spread around. Dumb asses! And I don't mean the prairie dogs.

Oh for fucks sake.

If you are not going to read my posts, don't bother responding to them with your ill informed knee-jerk emotional crap.

Low level waste is less harmful than household garbage. IF wind and rain are spreading garbage around and you end up eating it, traces of radioactivity are the least of your problems. The garbage will kill you long before you need to worry about radioactivity.

Plutonium processing plants were military installations with no relationship whatever to nuclear power. None still operate, as there is a world oversupply of plutonium, which is not used in commercial power reactors*. Waste containing plutonium is not low level waste, and conflating high and low level waste is as intellectually dishonest as conflating making bombs with making electricity.

Imagine if someone disposed of rusting barrels of mustard gas in a landfill with your household waste. That thought experiment should fill you with terror at the way empty shampoo bottles are handled - after all, shampoo and mustard gas are both chemicals, so they are exactly the same, right?





*Some mixed oxide fuel reprocessed from spent fuel rods contains traces of plutonium; No such facility has ever stored plutonium containing waste in barrels, rusty or otherwise, and such facilities cannot reasonably be referred to as 'plutonium processing plants'

Sure, eat, drink and breathe low level radiation all you want. Yep, that and the natural radiation in our environment and low level radiation found in coal ash, what's a little more? It can't possibly be additive, can it? What?! Properly deal with this waste when one creates it! Why would we want to do that? Spread it around and forget it. Bilby says it's OK to do so.

 

[Peez]

Oh for fucks sake.

If you are not going to read my posts, don't bother responding to them with your ill informed knee-jerk emotional crap.

Low level waste is less harmful than household garbage. IF wind and rain are spreading garbage around and you end up eating it, traces of radioactivity are the least of your problems. The garbage will kill you long before you need to worry about radioactivity.

Plutonium processing plants were military installations with no relationship whatever to nuclear power. None still operate, as there is a world oversupply of plutonium, which is not used in commercial power reactors*. Waste containing plutonium is not low level waste, and conflating high and low level waste is as intellectually dishonest as conflating making bombs with making electricity.

Imagine if someone disposed of rusting barrels of mustard gas in a landfill with your household waste. That thought experiment should fill you with terror at the way empty shampoo bottles are handled - after all, shampoo and mustard gas are both chemicals, so they are exactly the same, right?





*Some mixed oxide fuel reprocessed from spent fuel rods contains traces of plutonium; No such facility has ever stored plutonium containing waste in barrels, rusty or otherwise, and such facilities cannot reasonably be referred to as 'plutonium processing plants'

Sure, eat, drink and breathe low level radiation all you want. Yep, that and the natural radiation in our environment and low level radiation found in coal ash, what's a little more? It can't possibly be additive, can it? What?! Properly deal with this waste when one creates it! Why would we want to do that? Spread it around and forget it. Bilby says it's OK to do so.

Can you please put some numbers to that?

Peez

 

[skepticalbip]

Oh for fucks sake.

If you are not going to read my posts, don't bother responding to them with your ill informed knee-jerk emotional crap.

Low level waste is less harmful than household garbage. IF wind and rain are spreading garbage around and you end up eating it, traces of radioactivity are the least of your problems. The garbage will kill you long before you need to worry about radioactivity.

Plutonium processing plants were military installations with no relationship whatever to nuclear power. None still operate, as there is a world oversupply of plutonium, which is not used in commercial power reactors*. Waste containing plutonium is not low level waste, and conflating high and low level waste is as intellectually dishonest as conflating making bombs with making electricity.

Imagine if someone disposed of rusting barrels of mustard gas in a landfill with your household waste. That thought experiment should fill you with terror at the way empty shampoo bottles are handled - after all, shampoo and mustard gas are both chemicals, so they are exactly the same, right?





*Some mixed oxide fuel reprocessed from spent fuel rods contains traces of plutonium; No such facility has ever stored plutonium containing waste in barrels, rusty or otherwise, and such facilities cannot reasonably be referred to as 'plutonium processing plants'

Sure, eat, drink and breathe low level radiation all you want. Yep, that and the natural radiation in our environment and low level radiation found in coal ash, what's a little more? It can't possibly be additive, can it? What?! Properly deal with this waste when one creates it! Why would we want to do that? Spread it around and forget it. Bilby says it's OK to do so.

Can you please put some numbers to that?

Peez

There apparently is no "safe" level for those who refuse to recognize that radiation is everywhere and natural. They must fear and avoid bananas like they would eboli. I have to wonder how they would manage to live if they ever learned that there is arsenic (deadly shit) in every glass of water they drink even if they only drink bottled water.

 

[bilby]

Oh for fucks sake.

If you are not going to read my posts, don't bother responding to them with your ill informed knee-jerk emotional crap.

Low level waste is less harmful than household garbage. IF wind and rain are spreading garbage around and you end up eating it, traces of radioactivity are the least of your problems. The garbage will kill you long before you need to worry about radioactivity.

Plutonium processing plants were military installations with no relationship whatever to nuclear power. None still operate, as there is a world oversupply of plutonium, which is not used in commercial power reactors*. Waste containing plutonium is not low level waste, and conflating high and low level waste is as intellectually dishonest as conflating making bombs with making electricity.

Imagine if someone disposed of rusting barrels of mustard gas in a landfill with your household waste. That thought experiment should fill you with terror at the way empty shampoo bottles are handled - after all, shampoo and mustard gas are both chemicals, so they are exactly the same, right?





*Some mixed oxide fuel reprocessed from spent fuel rods contains traces of plutonium; No such facility has ever stored plutonium containing waste in barrels, rusty or otherwise, and such facilities cannot reasonably be referred to as 'plutonium processing plants'

Sure, eat, drink and breathe low level radiation all you want. Yep, that and the natural radiation in our environment and low level radiation found in coal ash, what's a little more? It can't possibly be additive, can it? What?! Properly deal with this waste when one creates it! Why would we want to do that? Spread it around and forget it. Bilby says it's OK to do so.

Look, this is a science forum.

A bear minimum respect for factuality is expected in your posts; If you want to spew the same old bullshit, which is a toxic blend of lies, disinformation, and conflation of irrelevant and unrelated topics, then go do it elsewhere.

Right now, you are acting like a creationist in a discussion of the development of antibiotic resistance in Staphylococcus - you clearly haven't got a clue, don't want to know, and would rather nobody else knew either, because you prize your emotional attachment to the lies you have been told by people you trust, and have zero plan to look honestly at anything that might disagree with them.

Go be stupid somewhere else.