THSCC Forums

Couple of good links relevant to this topic:

The National Debt Road Trip
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5yxFtTwDcc

I love this video. Puts a real perspective on how fast we as a country are spending cash we don't have.

Also -- Interesting article on the potential ROI of spending on energy efficiency:
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/200 ... ciency.ars

Nutshell -- $520b in efficiency spending would net $1.2 trillion savings by 2020 and would keep on giving. This program would get my nod as another thing on the list of "would rather spend billions on" than crushing cars.

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Mike Whitney
whit32@gmail.com, 919-454-5445
V10, V8, V8t, I6, I6, V6, F4t, I4, I4, I4, I4, I2, 1, 1

Mike,

I couldn't help but recall this excellent illustration about the US housing market from a couple of years ago after seeing the debt video:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2757699799528285056.

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Current stable:
2019 BMW M2 Competition slicktop 6MT
2011 BMW M3 sedan slicktop 6MT
2007 BMW 328i wagon (slushbox for now)
1975 CanAm 125MX2

This.

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Has no responsibility whatsoever.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWt8hTayupE&NR=1

I like that one too, thanks for posting

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02 Focus SVT
STF 9

MORE NUCLEAR POWER???
Wanna buy a bridge?
I worked at a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant (that is now a huge monument to what's wrong with nuclear power, just sitting there costing us taxpayers several million dollars a year, likely for ever.)
I can tell you from personal experience there is no way to utilize the high level waste for anything "medical" or otherwise, and we reclaimed enough plutonium to blow up 1/2 the world in the few years the plant operated. I wonder what the French are doing with it?
I and the government would LOVE to know how to safely and permanently dispose of the waste besides burying it somewhere or dumping it into the ocean (the eventual cleanup costs are going to make the superfund look like a kid's piggy bank).
Just because a major meltdown or loss of more than a handful of lives (yes, some died in those "minor accidents) hasn't occured in the western world YET (by the way I notice the Alaska meltdown wasn't on the list of "accidents". Oh yah, we were supposed to be sworn to secrecy about that one...) doesn't mean it won't happen, in fact it means the likelyhood has INCREASED, and continues to increase evey day.
You do know that nuclear power was pushed on us so hard by the government is because almost every one of those reactors can be quickly converted into breeder reactors to produce weapon materials?

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SPIN or WIN!
there's no glory for going slow.

gentleman, i am going to step back from this discussion as i am , well quite honestly, losing the arguement and quite badly actually.

but before i go i would like to remind you all that i am more like the average voter than most of you.

i am ill-informed of what is actually happening, i vote from emotional or percieved opinions of canidates, and i generally vote within party lines.

i will argue that it is the other guys fault all night long. particularly if the other guy is from the other party.

i fear the religous right as the downfall of freedom, just as they fear me as the downfall of society. except they are better funded and more vocal.

i, like millions of other Americans have lost faith in our electoral process and our governments ability to do what is right for all of its people.

and i refuse to believe that if the other guys had won in November that things would be any different today.

when Rush starts talking about what McCain and crew would have done to fix all this instead of what Obama and crew have done wrong, I'll drink the Kool-aide.

oh yeah, Stop the War.


and quit crushing cars.

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BenchWarmer Motorsports

another one of those damn LeMons heads

just another Chump

we are an Autocross Club Dammit............

You know Steve, I'm betting that if we could leave all party affiliations behind, ignore the recent past, dump all lobbyists and all other sources sucking money off the government only to influence government, and simply get down to the very basics...basically do a Ctrl-Atl-Del of the US Congress, that you and I and many other folks here on the board would all agree on vastly more items than we disagree on going forward about how to run this place we call the USA.

You have highlighted the larger issue well though. The question is how in the heck do we ever bridge the blame game gap (I thought for a brief moment in Jan we might have a slight chance, but that disappeared quickly), so that we can seriously come together to truly do what is right for our country's future? How the heck do we get pork barrel spending, partisan ramming voting (both of which we've seen more of in the past few months than anytime I can ever recall in my 50 years), special interest reward voting, etc, eliminated from the standard mode of operation of the Congress? When will "being a politician" become known as having true leadership ability coupled with real-world business and personal success as opposed to simply being a marketable person? Sort of like a "network news anchor" where the primary skill is reading a teleprompter well while looking nice...I don't see rewarding such skills, but man, if you're good at generating short, sweet partisan sound bites, you're quickly elevated up one side or the other of the dreaded 2-party system in this country.

Unfortunately, I have no answers for any of the above, so you and I are still in the same place we were yesterday, last week, etc. Align with the flow I suppose while honing the sight glasses well is all that comes to mind actually.

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Current stable:
2019 BMW M2 Competition slicktop 6MT
2011 BMW M3 sedan slicktop 6MT
2007 BMW 328i wagon (slushbox for now)
1975 CanAm 125MX2

I hear what you are saying. I am no fan of nuclear power, but I am willing to hold my nose under two conditions...

1. The US (federal level) settles on a place and method for long term storage. No state by state or regional solutions.
2. This is a short term (less than 100 year) solution to bridge the gap from a demand perspective between fossil fuel and renewable.

Even then, while statistics would say it's unlikely, I think we are just rolling the dice and hoping that a serious accident is not going to happen during our lifetime.

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Richard Casto
1972 Porsche 914
2013 Honda Fit Sport
2015 Honda Fit EX
http://motorsport.zyyz.com
Money can't buy happiness, but somehow it's more comfortable to cry in a Porsche than a Kia.

I just wonder what they'll come up with for the auto companies for the next three years, now that everyone who was going to buy a car then has already done it now from excess inventory under the clunker program.

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Martyn Wheeler
AXing Kit's '05 Mazda 3, #29 HStock
(when The Gonzo Symphonic allows)

I cringe at just quoting this part, but I do have to point out something here. The last few elections don't seem to uphold your "theory" that the religious right are better funded or more vocal (much less both). I mean they've been pummeled in recent elections, so something isn't right with what you're saying.

And at the risk of being yelled at for picking on certain posters, it sounds like someone needs to get more educated about what's been going on in the last ten to fifteen years in nuclear energy circles. See, we're educating more nuclear engineers than are retiring from their jobs, which means lots of them sitting around with nothing to do. So they've been doing a lot of research, at least, on ways to solve all the problems brought up so far. And there are answers out there. Some still need significant money spent, but it's within reach.

I'll add to, that the other significant problem nobody wants to talk about is population growth. We're running out of planet in terms of resources. If we keep adding humans to the planet at this kind of rate there's no way we'll have enough renewable resources to sustain us all...EVER.


--Donnie

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My Blog

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing

It looks like the spent waste can be reprocessed and used again. I don't know how much of the problem this solves, but it looks like cost was the determining factor in not doing it. However, based on the chart it looks like other countries are still reprocessing it.

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In need of car.

I don't think so. I'm more than willing to pay $25 a year apiece to several organizations to represent my opinions and meet with the reps. Better to do that with someone that can actually get facetime than send an email that an intern will just put into the circular file and send out a canned response reply.

:shrug:

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Has no responsibility whatsoever.

I tend to agree with Chuck on the Control Alt Delete. The only problem is that doing that does nothing to take the money interests out of the system and that no matter what good intentions people have going in, they very soon get corrupted by the system. Not always in the "go to jail" kind of corruption but their "Mr Smith Goes to Washington" kind of idealism gets sacrificed to the God of I need to get re-elected.

Wes, you can give your $25 to some organization who will support your interest, but someone else is giving $25 to one that is antithetical to your beliefs, and someone else on each side is giving $50. I also agree with Chuck that if we took all the BS out of this thread many of us would agree on more issues. I don't have a solution, I am a bit cynical about it because I see more of the doing something so they get more power or to try and make the other party not succeed rather than push to make America succeed - OK, so maybe it would not succeed the way they want it but succeed. This is both parties - not Dems (see Pelosi) or Republicans (see Boehner) Hopefully, this country will pull itself up as we always have and survive.

rant off

Might look that way, but trust me, that's light years away from the truth.
A fuel rod array becomes too "weak" to use economically and/or to produce fission reaction when about 75% of the fissionable Uranium and Plutonium has been converted to waste. At that point the rods are removed and replaced by a fresh array. This is a typically done about once per year. These rods are extremely radioactive and produce a great deal of heat. They must be immediately transfered to a "swimming pool" full of boron laced water that is circulated and cooled constantly. Should the cooling or pumps fail, or the pool suddenly empty, it would be a matter of minutes to hours before the rods melted, and the pool contents become critical (go BOOM!). When we (Nuclear Fuel Services, West Valley NY) were reprocessing fuel, the spent rods, after cooling for about two years on site were shipped to us in huge casks on RR cars. (We all should realize by now the poor condition of the nation's rail lines by the number of train wrecks) The casks were unloaded into our pool to cool for about another two years before considered safe to reprocess. The bright blue glow of that pool was both frightening and erily beautiful to see!
I can explain how the purex process of reprocessing works in detail (I was a process control lab chemist there, we tested process samples to be sure a criticality didn't occur and the process was proceding properly and to account for all the fissionable products), but let's cut to the chase: The process reclaimed physically a very small amount of reusable product and hundreds of gallons of high level liquid waste and hundreds of pounds of solid low level waste. The liquid waste went into 500,000 gallon tanks burried 20' deep in the ground, the solid waste went into a GIGANTIC burial pit. The high heat and radiation broke down equipment about as fast as you could replace it, so unsalvagable/unrepairable. no longer useful equipment was also given a decontamination wash and burried as well. Once ANYTHING came thru the inner gate it could not leave again. They buried vehicles and even a couple of the RR cask cars. When I left we had nearly filled 2 of the high level liquid waste tanks and were getting ready to install a 4th one, there always had to be an empty tank at the ready in case ( or depending on who you talked to, when) one should spring a leak. That tank field was so "hot" radiactively that we were not allowed to get any closer than 100 yds of it even for a brief time and so thermally hot that snow never covered it even tho it was in the heart of the WNY snow belt! The ground over it was more sterile than a hospital! That liquid will remain that radioactive and deadly for the next hundreds of thousands of years! Even if the half-lives of the actinides were as little as 10 years, that stuff would not be safe to be around for centuries.
Donnie, I actually do keep up with all the proposed solutions to the waste, but I haven't seen any ideas that wasn't just pushing the disposal problem off onto future generations (deep burial/glass encapsulation etc) or prohibitively unrealistically expensive (shooting it into the sun), and extremely dangerous for anyone to run such operations (robot operators are totally unrealistic given the environment. We had 6 hot cells with a pair of remote manipulators in each. We had at least two cells down because of broken manipulators constantly, and recall once where the plant had to shut down processing because all our manipulators were broken so we could not process the high level samples.
If anyone wants to hear what really went on there (Like MUFs, fissionable materials unaccounted for), and the underlying real costs and dangers of nuclear power ask me when you see me.

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SPIN or WIN!
there's no glory for going slow.

Chuck, that plant was shut down in 1972. Is there any chance that progress has been made in recycling those materials in the past 36 years?

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In need of car.