[Bruce_the_vii]

Is thorium fueled breeder nuclear reactors. They'll produce electricity at 5 or 6 cents a kilowatt hour for as long as our species will be around.

I always took an interest in technology and knew about breeder reactors but what I didn't realize is all the reporting on them hid the fact the problem was solved long ago. There's an old research reactor called the Shippingport reactor that was a smaller and light water reactor that actually breed fissil material. Problem solved. In the future the price of uranium will rise but thorium / plutonium fueled reactors will make their own fuel. Thorium is plentiful.

The problem of reprocessing plutonium gets caught up in the nuclear proliferation problem. This is not going away but dictators around the third world will continue to get their hands on nuclear technology anyway. Nuclear plants do not leave behind much waste if you extract the plutonium. A nuclear economy like Ontario leaves behind a small urn of material per citizen over the life time of the citizen, about as much as your cremation ashes. It decays to low radioactivity in 400 years. There actually even uses for the stuff. In the future plutonium reprocessing plants will improve and 100 years from now they should be rather swish. At this time one problem is there is not that much waste to be reprocesses, not a commercial plant size anyway.

Cars will be electric as well. Probably a track in the road that is electrified will emerge. Cost at the drive shaft will be 25 cents a litre equivalent.

All this noise and subsidizing wind and solar is besides the point. It's just politicians taking a shine to being very virtious and saving the planet ( but not saving you any money).

[Patrick_Ross]

Frankly, there are a number of issues at play:

First off, a small urn approximate to the size of cremation ashes, when multiplied by six billion people, gets to be a pretty massive volume of waste. Continue to multiply this in accordance with the reproduction of the world's current population, and with a growing global population, and that is a lot of little radioactive urns that need to be disposed with somehow.

It would be necessary to develop hydro-, solar- and wind-electrical resources just to cut back on this waste. Not to mention the need to "back-up" the nuclear plants whenever they need to be taken offline for maintenance.

Furthermore, there are the potential security risks posed by nuclear power. Take, for example, the case of the Indian Point nuclear reactors in New York state. They have been skimping on security measures there for years. The American Nuclear Power Association has managed to get a number of their cronies appointed to the regulatory commission, and loosened security requirements in order to allow the consortiums running these nuclear plants to cut costs by cutting security.

Many whistleblowers working in the field of securing nuclear reactors have been silenced and terminated, and nuclear reactors are becoming very vulernable soft targets for terrorists.

[Banff]

Wouldn't it be best to just bury people ...decomposed they may be a good fossil fuel source .

[Patrick_Ross]

Well, there are the problems associated with burning hydro carbons (and keep in mind that they go beyond just climate change).

Then, there's the problem of finding a place to bury six billion people, considering that interring a body usually accompanies constructing some sort of permanent monument to their existence.

That would take up a lot of space.

[Bruce_the_vii]

I would think nuclear plants are good targets for terrorists and nuts. Why the Ontario nuclear sites are better gaurded is beyond me. At major oil refineries there are company fire fighters waiting in their trucks. They sit there for years at a time. There should also be armed gaurds with armered vehicles at these huge nuclear sites.

[Patrick_Ross]

There actually are, Bruce. The problem is that they are underequipped, undertrained, they aren't trained in counter-terrorist tactics, and there aren't enough of them.

I'm sure a lot of Americans would be alarmed to find out that our nuclear plants and refineries are more secure than theirs, considering what they think of Canadian security.

[Bruce_the_vii]

6 billion urns per generation for the 400 years of radioactivity is about 4 cubic miles

[Patrick_Ross]

Did you calculate that?

That also assumes the global population stabilizes at 6 billion people.

Which it probably won't.

[Bruce_the_vii]

I saw the Astronomer Royal in Britain talk about these things. He said the sun has about 4 billion years to go. He said 4 billion years is further from us than we are from the amebia -- so it's unimaginable what things will be like.

[Patrick_Ross]

In the July issue of Playboy, a particular writer describes how France deals with their nuclear waste from their reactors: apparently, they encase it in glass, then bury it in a lead vault several meters underground. Apparently, geiger counter readings taken from the surface read at 1/200 the radiation produced by a jetliner.

I still think that Solar, Wind and Hydro electricity will be important resources to develop, but Nuclear energy is still a very good option, especially in light of the French method of containing the waste.

[Bruce_the_vii]

By the way Patrick I don't have statistics but I've read a couple of reports about how much of the Third World has got it's fertility rate under control. Africa and Arabia were averaging six children per family but this is now largely in the past. Nevertheless the 21st Century may not have Great Wars but rather have a huge struggle with bring prosperity to 6 billion.

[Patrick_Ross]

It depends where you look, really. As an agregate number, this may well be the case. However, in Africa (particularly southern Africa), fertility rates remain extraordinarily high. Newer, lower rates in China, India and the Middle East have offset this to a degree, but the fertility rate in Africa is still enough to keep the total population climbing.

Interestingly, an interview in the same magazine suggested that a declining population actually poses a threat to the environmental movement, as it threatens the economic prosperity that the environmental movement has always needed in order to be effective.

It's worth considering.

[Bruce_the_vii]

Some people try to make a great mystery out of a declining population. This idea that prosperity would decline because of shrinking population is the type of pronoucement they make. Probably creating growth is the bigger challenge than a shrinking population. Historically the Black Death was actually the end of the Dark Ages as once the population declined the employment level was higher and so the economy picked up.

[Patrick_Ross]

Well, a declining population, so far as I know, really only presents an economic challenge for about three generations or so, until the population stabilizes. In the meantime, I can see there being some room for some real havoc: elderly folks retiring with no one to fill their jobs, as well as potentially exerting greature pressure on vital social safety net programs.

Or, that could merely be an overly apocalyptic view of the future. At least I hope so.


Another interesting point about nuclear energy: a lot of committed environmentalists are saying that the attitude toward nuclear energy is going to be a serious challenge for the environmental movment, particularly in North America.

[sasquatch2]

Bruce_the_vii

$1:

Some people try to make a great mystery out of a declining population. This idea that prosperity would decline because of shrinking population is the type of pronoucement they make. Probably creating growth is the bigger challenge than a shrinking population. Historically the Black Death was actually the end of the Dark Ages as once the population declined the employment level was higher and so the economy picked up.

Actually the Dark Ages (400 AD-800AD)followed the Roman warming (200BC-400AD) and witnessed the first incidence of plague..."Justinians Plague. That cold wet stormy period lake other is maked with disease, crop failure and general disruptions. The LITTLE ICE AGE saw the many pandemics of BLACK DEATH, social upheavels such as witch-burnings, the reformation and at the end revolution. It is the general opinion of science that the plagues were so fatal because the population was malnourished........witches were blamed for plagues and crop failures.....hence the witch hunts.

Solar and wind are expensive and unreliable, and fail to produce a viable power source. The eco-freaks have shit in their own nests because of their decades long opposition to nuclear energy......

The proper agenda is to dismiss CO2 AGW as a hoax and work to reduce dependancy on petrolium, curtail genuine polution such as NOX< SOX> Mercury etc......Organic farming is a recipe for famine.