THSCC Forums

Joe your Quote is not a very good example of radioactive waste, you quote one isotope of plutonium there are twenty isotopes of plutonium two of which have a half life of 80 million years both decay at a higher energy than 241. But that is really not relevent because only a miniscule amount of plutonium is created by fission, if any at all. Elements and their isotopes around atomic weights of 90 and 131 are the most frequently created atomic wastes. Strontium lodges in the thyroid and causes cancer, just the type our Chief Justice had. There are hundreds of elements created during fission and each element has from ten to twenty isotopes Many Are injurious to humans either through radioactive decay or actual heavy metal posions. Don't minimize what they can do, to keep nuclear power safe it must be Very Closely Regulated or the Genie will ecsape, as it did in Chernoble. People still can't live near that place.
We have no known way to dispose of the waste. Firing it into the sun is one answer but that drives the cost into astronomical proportions.
Nuclear power can be safe and efficient, and it can also be Pandora's box.
Bernie (ex reactor operator)

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2004 C5(415whp,390ft/lbs),
1997C5,1997Trans Am, 1986 C4,
1990 Miata, 1976 MGB,1997 Protege, 1989 MR2

It's not an example of waste, it's an example of how much we know about the behavior of radioactive materials. That said, something with a half life of 80 million years is safe enough to keep around the house in gram quantities--from a radiological standpoint, at least. You'd die of heavy metal poisoning long before the radioactivity got you. Heavy metal poisoning isn't dangerous enough to stop us from clamping lead on our wheels.
It doesn't. Strontium is chemically close enough to calcium that it gets taken up by bones. Iodine 131 is what concentrates in the thyroid, but the cancers it causes are 99% survivable. Chernobyl, which released a lot of Iodine 131, has to date resulted in 9 deaths from thyroid cancer. This risk is largely averted if you take iodine tablets to saturate your thyroid in the event of a release of radioactive iodine. The thyroid regulates blood calcium levels, which is probably where you got confused.

Thing is, we use Strontium 89 as both a radiotracer and to treat metastatic bone cancers because the bone tumors gobble up calcium (and therefore Strontium) faster than they should, and the radioactive Strontium kills them. The Strontium 90 that showed up in kids' bones out west was a byproduct of atmospheric nuclear weapons testing, not nuclear power generation.

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1988 Plymouth Reliant

I think some people must have stayed at a Holiday Inn Express....

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02 Focus SVT
STF 9

Yeah really. I thiught Bernie was just a cool old guy with a Vette. Now I find out he's into nuclear fission!

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Vincent Keene
'06 Ford Mustang GT (track rat)
'15 Dodge Charger R/T (yeah, it's got a HEMI!)
'07 Ford Fusion SE (205,000 miles and counting)
'98 Chevy Z-24 (retired)
'93 Acura Integra (Team SWB 24HOL Car)

It's a lot more difficult than deep sea fission, I hear.

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1988 Plymouth Reliant

have you guys seen the Ford project where they put a clutch on the drive shaft of a truck and when slowing down the clutch would engage a pump that pumped air into a tank. this pressure helped slow the truck and it created 50,000psi in the tank which was then used to propel the truck forward during accelleration. they claimed the system was 80% effecient! it reduced real world fuel consumption by over 60%.

a moving car is a shitton of kinetic energy and we piss it away as heat everytime we brake. efficiently capturing that would be huge in itself.

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also as far as nuclear waste, most countries (especially in europe) recycle/refine waste over adn over until its less radiactive than a banana (which is a bit radioactive because it has a lot of potassium). its only us silly americans that are too cheap to pay to refine it again so we just throw it in the ground half spent.

Does sound dangerous to anyone else?

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Vincent Keene
'06 Ford Mustang GT (track rat)
'15 Dodge Charger R/T (yeah, it's got a HEMI!)
'07 Ford Fusion SE (205,000 miles and counting)
'98 Chevy Z-24 (retired)
'93 Acura Integra (Team SWB 24HOL Car)

Joe, your right, I did mix the two elements up...... I stayed at that Holiday Inn forty years ago!!!! But the fact still remains that while gram and milligram amounts of radioactive elements are what your talking about, Thats not what your getting from power generating reactors or breeder reactors. perhaps there are some reasearch reactors that do produce what your talking about I don't know because I've been away from it for so long.
Alternate energy sources was the topic...... Not medical use of radio Isotopes.
The spent reactor core or the USS Skate lies in a burial vault at MIT, it is more than twenty feet below the suface of the ground and snow has not laid on that ground since it was put there in the FIFTIES.
Strontium 90, Iodine 131 and caesium 137 ARE all products of nuclear fission, And Not just nuclear weapons testing, Any time fissionable material is involved in a sustained chain reaction (fission) whether its in a bomb or a power generating reactor. All manner of Elements and their isotopes are formed. The reason we don't see these things in our atmosphere is the fact that the nuclear power generating facilities have been relatively accident free, here in this country. But the more you use it the more potential it has for incident. Its just not that safe that you can write it off as safe energy. Its only as safe as the people who operate it. the people in Chernoble were not safe!!!! Nor were the ones in Three Mile Island.

I'm going to end this by saying this is a discussion by two people with too much time on their hands.... I'm recovering from major surgery..... Joe whats your excuse?????

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2004 C5(415whp,390ft/lbs),
1997C5,1997Trans Am, 1986 C4,
1990 Miata, 1976 MGB,1997 Protege, 1989 MR2

Direct-injection diesels have fuel pressures of 12,000psi. Is that a big deal?

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Rich
http://www.v8mongrel.com/

I am quite literally watching paint dry.

I'm not writing it off as completely safe energy, I'm just saying that in comparison to fossil fuels it is vastly, vastly safer, and not just in the US. Just this spring a refinery explosion killed 15 people in Texas. Only 50 coal miners died in the US last year. The biggest nuclear disaster in the US was TMI, which resulted in no deaths, no injuries, and no illnesses. If you look at accidents like Chernobyl, you've got to also look at Russian and Chinese oil, NG and coal operations which kill in excess of a thousand annually. When you factor in environmental trainwrecks like the Valdez/Prince William sound spill, the refinery fires of the first gulf war, and the horrific air pollution of most Chinese cities, nuclear is clean as a whistle in comparison. We hold nuclear power to a standard that other industries could never hope to meet, and we're still not satisfied even though we go right on burning coal, oil, and natural gas.

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1988 Plymouth Reliant

Over four times that pressure "sounds" significant to me.

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Vincent Keene
'06 Ford Mustang GT (track rat)
'15 Dodge Charger R/T (yeah, it's got a HEMI!)
'07 Ford Fusion SE (205,000 miles and counting)
'98 Chevy Z-24 (retired)
'93 Acura Integra (Team SWB 24HOL Car)

there's also a big difference between fluid at 12,000 psi and air at 12,000 psi.

Take a liter of diesel at 12,000 psi and raise it to atmospheric pressure (14.7 psi) and what do you have? About 1 liter of diesel.

Take a liter of air at 12,000 psi and raise it to atmospheric pressure and what do you have? 816 liters of air.

If you don't think the difference is significant, then I can suggest some experiements that will convince you otherwise.

Still, the air compressor method of recovering energy is interesting (though just like friction braking, compressing air generates heat).

Scott

So the incompressability of fluid helps. Cool. I was just thinking that a busted container of 12,000 psi diesel would suck ass a whole lot more than one fuel of air. I imagine that with 12,000 psi behind it, the fluid would do some major damage. Waterjet cutters that will cut plate steel like butter run at 20-50K psi. Sure that is concentrated, but a pinhole leak in direct injection diesel would still (I would guess) have no trouble making a light work of sheet metal. What would air do if it developed a leak?

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Rich
http://www.v8mongrel.com/

What about a larger failure...non pin hole like? Imagine having a standard size air pig in you back seat filled to 150PSI. What would happen to you if it had a catastrophic failure? Can you say bomb? Now imagine a larger container with 50,000 PSI in a car accident.

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Vincent Keene
'06 Ford Mustang GT (track rat)
'15 Dodge Charger R/T (yeah, it's got a HEMI!)
'07 Ford Fusion SE (205,000 miles and counting)
'98 Chevy Z-24 (retired)
'93 Acura Integra (Team SWB 24HOL Car)

I believe that Mythbusters found that it isn't a bomb like in the movies, it just becomes a rocket. And by rocket, I don't mean NASA, but a body that's moved by pressure.

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Has no responsibility whatsoever.