900,000 terabecquerels
9 X 10⁷ bq/g
I cannot grasp it
I'm sitting in an Oregon dawn
my head in a cloudburst
Every time the wind blows
I think of Fukushima
An arctic spring chill
is brushing my skin
and I'm breathing it in
Turning off the monitor now
Background's a little high
but not like eastern Honshu
Looking out from the coastline
I could be your little sister
We are all in a jam now
all sitting under a massive bomb
because we were not vigilant enough
to stop presidents and profiteers
who need nuclear enrichment
My sister, my brother in Japan
There was a deafening silence
and now there are numbers
too big and too intangible to grasp
yet terrible in their aftermath
900,000 terabecquerels
is 4,023 Hiroshimas
running amok over our children
Is there anyone left who
wants nuclear energy?
Photo: edmkoz
6 commentaires:
"Is there anyone left who wants nuclear energy"
Yes.
LFTR can save us.
No meltdown possibility
No nuclear weapons proliferation
Thorium is common more common than lead
Waste products are insignificant.
it can use current waste from conventional nuclear reactors and get rid of it, accelerating the radioactive decay
They would be cheap to run
Irrational hatred of anything with "nuclear" in it's name kills development of technology that has the ability to solve the world's energy problems a million times over.
Of course a nuclear accident is a horrible thing to contemplate. But a serious nuclear accident is literally not possible if you use thorium as a liquid fuel. No-one wants an accident, but nuclear power is not all bad.
a total load of crap. end nuclear. solar and wind... like germany: enough for 22 power plants. just because you make money in this industry doesn't mean we all have to live with it.
There is no reasonable argument against LFTR other than "It doesn't demonstrably work yet, because we haven't tried to build one yet, because of these design issues"
A molten salt nuclear reactor could, in theory, ACTUALLY USE CURRENT NUCLEAR WASTE FOR FUEL. Explain how this is not a good thing?
It is incredibly safe. There is simply no possibility of a meltdown, as if it loses power the molten salts could just drain away into a big tank and freeze.
With development of the engineering behind the plant, it would be the safest, cleanest and one of the cheapest forms of electrical generation out there. Of course the disaster at Chernobyl and more recently Fukushima have been terrible for the environment and everyone involved. But It would not have happened if they were using a LFTR or a generic molten salt reactor. There is simply no plausible method for a meltdown to occur, and that is a fact.
Solar power manufacturing processes damage the environment significantly; rare earth metal mining in China has caused significant environmental damage.
Your claim that all nuclear is crap is an interesting one... Geothermal energy comes from the radioactive decay of thorium and uranium, solar power and its fossil fuel/wind derivatives come from fusion of the sun, which while we didn't build the sun, is still technically a nuclear power source. If fusion power were demonstrably viable, would you support it? technically, it is nuclear, and yet there is no reasonable and intelligent argument against it other than "we don't yet know how to make it viable" Does this mean we absolutely stop investing in it? absolutely not! It is just too attractive.
Just like another form of power generation I know.
Excuse me while I dump some links with information about this and the problems that it faces at the moment, that you could perhaps take a look at and make some intelligent rebuttals on the actual concept, rather than "a total load of crap. end nuclear"
http://energyfromthorium.com/
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149197004000794
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reactor
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYxlpeJEKmw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3EGOL4J6yI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbyr7jZOllI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHs2Ugxo7-8&feature=relmfu
http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com.au/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor-stenger/lftr-a-longterm-energy-so_b_1192584.html
I'm curious as to the last part of your comment... "just because you make money in this industry doesn't mean we all have to live with it" Are you implying that I am in the nuclear industry? (because I don't) or are you talking about "you" as a general term for humanity? I, for one, would rather live with LFTR than coal/gas/dirty solar power from land-intensive rare earth mines.
Thank you for taking the time to read my comments, and if you aren't so close minded that you actually take a look at the links and learn a bit about it and the comparative advantages that it would have over other energy generation, then that would just be great.
Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors
Thorium reactors are higly pushed nowadays because they claim they can use high radioactive waste mixed with the thorium as fuel. They argue this would reduce waste, but what they don't say is that it's still waste they produce. It's a bit like the transformation debate.Norway wanted to build them but stepped away again in 2009 because of safety reasons. (German article)
http://www.taz.de/1/archiv/print-archiv/printressorts/digi-artikel/?ressort=wu&dig=2009%2F01%2F06%2Fa0090&cHash=bcba4c022f%2F
Thorrium is mixed with plutonium - still part of the nuclear field and study
http://nuclearfreeplanet.org/ccnr-facts-about-thorium-and-where-thorium-fits-into-the-decay-chain-and-the-byproducts-that-follow.html
Thorium reactors = bad news -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor
"There is a significant sticking point to the promotion of thorium as the 'great green hope' of clean energy production: it remains unproven on a commercial scale. While it has been around since the 1950s (and an experimental 10MW LFTR did run for five years during the 1960s at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the US, though using uranium and plutonium as fuel) it is still a next generation nuclear technology – theoretical."
"'Without exception, [thorium reactors] have never been commercially viable, nor do any of the intended new designs even remotely seem to be viable. Like all nuclear power production they rely on extensive taxpayer subsidies; the only difference is that with thorium and other breeder reactors these are of an order of magnitude greater, which is why no government has ever continued their funding.'"
" a 2010 National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL) report (PDF)concluded the thorium fuel cycle 'does not currently have a role to play in the UK context [and] is likely to have only a limited role internationally for some years ahead' – in short, it concluded, the claims for thorium were 'overstated'."
"fission materials produced from thorium are of a different spectrum to those from uranium-235, but 'include many dangerous-to-health alpha and beta emitters'."
"Tickell says thorium reactors would not reduce the volume of waste from uranium reactors. 'It will create a whole new volume of radioactive waste from previously radio-inert thorium, on top of the waste from uranium reactors. Looked at in these terms, it's a way of multiplying the volume of radioactive waste humanity can create several times over.'"
"Thorium cannot in itself power a reactor; unlike natural uranium, it does not contain enough fissile material to initiate a nuclear chain reaction. As a result it must first be bombarded with neutrons to produce the highly radioactive isotope uranium-233 – 'so these are really U-233 reactors,' says Karamoskos.
This isotope is more hazardous than the U-235 used in conventional reactors, he adds, because it produces U-232 as a side effect (half life: 160,000 years), on top of familiar fission by-products such as technetium-99 (half life: up to 300,000 years) and iodine-129 (half life: 15.7 million years).Add in actinides such as protactinium-231 (half life: 33,000 years) and it soon becomes apparent that thorium's superficial cleanliness will still depend on digging some pretty deep holes to bury the highly radioactive waste."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jun/23/thorium-nuclear-uranium
Relevant PDF: http://www.nnl.co.uk/assets/_files/documents/jan_11/nex__1294397524_Thorium_Fuel_Cycle_-_Position_.pdf
Thorium Discussion in the House of Lords « Energy from Thorium
http://energyfromthorium.com/2011/07/07/thorium-lords/
continued from above...
Sodium cooled reactors are the latest clusterf*ck of delusions foisted upon a scientific iliterate public (tho its been around for a while and failing lots in that time) -
If you paid attention to fukushima early on you would have heard of Monju - they dropped a ginormous piece of equipment in that sodium cooled fast breeder reactor - once you learn a bit more about it you realized salt cooled reactors are just a nasty piece of work...
Japan has built one demonstration FBR, Monju, in Tsuruga, Fukui Prefecture, adding on to the research base developed by its older research FBR, the Joyo reactor. Monju is a sodium-cooled, MOX-fueled loop type reactor with 3 primary coolant loops, producing 714 MWt / 280 MWe.
Monju began construction in 1985 and was completed in 1991. It first achieved criticality on 5 April 1994. It was closed in December 1995 following a sodium leak and fire in a secondary cooling circuit, and was expected to restart in 2008. The reactor was restarted for tests in May 2010, for the goal to production usage in 2013.[33] However, on August 26, 2010, a 3.3-tonne "In‐Vessel Transfer Machine" fell into the reactor vessel when being removed after a scheduled fuel replacement operation.[34] The fallen device was not retrieved from the reactor vessel until June 23, 2011.[35]
In April 2007, the Japanese Government selected Mitsubishi Heavy Industries as the "core company in FBR development in Japan". Shortly thereafter, MHI started a new company, Mitsubishi FBR Systems (MFBR), with the explicit purpose of developing and eventually selling FBR technology. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor#Japan
I think Monju has produce electricity for only a few seconds or minutes since its inception back in 1985, Monju sodium leak and fire:
On December 8, 1995, the reactor suffered a serious accident. Intense vibration caused a thermowell inside a pipe carrying sodium coolant to break, possibly at a defective weld point, allowing several hundred kilograms of sodium to leak out onto the floor below the pipe. Upon coming into contact with the air, the liquid sodium reacted with oxygen and moisture in the air, filling the room with caustic fumes and producing temperatures of several hundred degrees Celsius. The heat was so intense that it warped several steel structures in the room.[4] An alarm sounded around 7:30 p.m., switching the system over to manual operations, but a full operational shutdown was not ordered until around 9:00 p.m., after the fumes were spotted. When investigators located the source of the spill they found as much as three tons of solidified sodium.
Fortunately, the leak occurred in the plant's secondary cooling system, so the sodium was not radioactive. However, there was massive public outrage in Japan when it was revealed that Power Reactor and Nuclear Fuel Development Corporation (PNC), the semigovernmental agency then in charge of Monju, had tried to cover up the extent of the accident and resulting damage. This coverup included falsifying reports and the editing of a videotape taken immediately after the accident, as well as the issuing of a gag order to employees regarding the existence of the real tapes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monju_Nuclear_Power_Plant#Monju_sodium_leak_and_fire
This is a thorium support video, and it makes it sound like the nuclear holy grail.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=GQ9Ll5EX1jc
The thing about floride compounds is that most of them are highly toxic and corrosive. Which means that the containment vessels aren't going to last forever.
i trust my friends, long-time activists who foresaw the havoc wrought on us by fukushima. what sounds great in theory can have dangerous consequences as shown above. i will not put my childrens' and grandchild's life in the hands of the nuclear industry one minute more...
for 40 years, there has been no solution to the waste disposal problem. this will continue. every attempt to permanently bury waste has resulted in further damage. to heap nuclear toxic waste on top of nuclear toxic waste is unthinkable to me.
while all this friendly theorizing is going on, the mark 2 reactors are being relicensed for another 20 years, extending their 40 yr lifespans to 60. is there no end to this insanity? was fukushima not enough? is germany not proof that it is possible to produce the energy of 22 nuclear power plants with only solar and wind? why not take this route?
my answer: because of the need for nuclear weapons, because government money to there to be had, and because the banks want their loans back. money has always been more important than life, we know that...
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