To make it easier to deal with it, the spent fuel is stored at the nuclear power plant for one year in cooling ponds filled with water. After one year 90 % of the radioactivity has diminished
Where does the 90% of radioactivity go?
(Forgive me my ignorance)
Also, can you clear something up for me. Is there a reason why they can't drop nuclear waste into live volcanoes (or equivalent)? My reasoning is that the lava is connected directly to the huge lake beneath the crust and thence would go the waste and the problem.)
(Again, forgive my ignorance.) Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
It has been suggested that nuclear waste could be disposed of at subduction zones (where a tectonic plate slips under another) as then the waste would get puched into the Earth's mantle, melted into the magma down there, and would take millions of years to resurface through volcanic activity, at which point it wouldn't be more radioactive than the surrounding magma. Nothing is 'mere'. — Richard P. Feynman
If radiation can be disspiated to safe levels, and in human timescales, by deflecting particles or somesuch, then....
(Second comment) Ach. If a volcano belched radioactive magma the radioactive particles would...er...fly through the magma and out into the atmosphere where they could affect us? How far do they travel? What stops them? How does water trap radioactivity but magma not? My ignorance....oh ouch! Help! Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
On your first comment, "radioactive water" may mean water with radioactive atoms in it (tritium, half-life 12yr, instead of hydrogen) or water with radioactive substances dissolved in it.
If radiation from the environment or from solutes makes water radioactive, then its trituim will, in its turn, radiate away and produce Helium and heat. Otherwise, the main effect of irradiating water is simply to heat it up, as Starvid says. Nothing is 'mere'. — Richard P. Feynman
I'm missing some basic knowledge about radioactive particles. In fact, I'm the kind of ignoramus who can't understand how people live in Hiroshima coz I thought the land was irradiated and radioactive particles have half-lives in the hundreds of thousands of years.
Any links or sage advice you could pass my way to help me become a bit less ignorant? Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
The powerful eruption of such an enormous volume of lava and ash injected significant quantities of aerosols and dust into the stratosphere. Sulfur dioxide oxidised in the atmosphere to produce a haze of sulfuric acid droplets, which gradually spread throughout the stratosphere over the year following the eruption. The injection of aerosols into the stratosphere is thought to have been the largest since the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883, with a total mass of SO2 of about 17 million tons being injected--the largest volume ever recorded by modern instruments (see chart and figure).
Didn't I just say that Tritium (radioactive hydrogen) has a half-life of 12 years?
I think I may need to write a diary on radioactivity just so everyone knows what we're talking about. Your questions are really useful so keep asking, that way i'll know what needs to be explained. Nothing is 'mere'. — Richard P. Feynman
So, another question. First, the context. I am anti-nuclear for the simple reason that I think once we worked out how to get down out of trees, the next thing we should have done was learn how to build treehouses, fireproof them, then hook up some solar and wind. Add a suitable toilet-to-cesspit system, then lay back and eat more bananas. And make love on the funky leafbed we made one afternoon. Monkey junior can play on the ground with the other monkeys.
So I am in a minority (I would love to see car exhaust pumped directly back into and through the car before venting through super-filters into the atmosphere. See how many people still think their car journey is worth it when they have to breathe the smog they're creating instead of farting it out all over pedestrians and cyclists.)
So, I have not followed the details of the nuclear debate. However, I have a friend who is much more practical than me. He is a fervent believer in nuclear power.
"You don't understand," he said to me one night in the pub. "The next wave of nuclear power, they're already working on it. They take the waste and fire it back into the process, down long tubes, there is no waste."
And, in the long term (e.g. when the next volcano blows up and extinguishes sunlight for a few years), I agree that nuclear power will help humans--and plants, and animals--survive underground.
So, anyway. My question is: what is this new system he is talking about? Does it exist? When will it bee ready? What are its drawbacks? Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
A lot of the problems with nuclear technology have to do with nuclear weapons proliferation. Some of the better energy-production technology has high risk of proliferation (e.g., produces plutonium as a byproduct).
[P.S. the thing wit the paragraphs was involuntary and is now corrected] Nothing is 'mere'. — Richard P. Feynman
The paragraph swapping was excellent. I'm serious. The danger (for me, who would like to learn the language) of keeping the paragraphs on their respective sides, is that I will tend to read one and then go to the other for reference. I imagine a lot of readers would go for their prefered language and perhaps glance across occasionally. But flipping randomly (and I especially liked that it didn't happen at the beginning. Get the flow going first, and then whang!, hey! I'm reading spanish, no english, no ingles, no espanol, hey, I'm reading two languages! That was the effect on me, anyway.)
Plus there was a relevant news story attached. Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
So I don't disagree on that, I am saying that the reason breeder reactors are not more widely used is that <gasp> they can be used to proliferate. Nothing is 'mere'. — Richard P. Feynman
The real reason breeders aren't widespread is cheap uranium.
Nope. Much of that cloud will circle the Earth in the stratosphere and then slowly rain down.
how people live in Hiroshima coz I thought the land was irradiated and radioactive particles have half-lives in the hundreds of thousands of years.
Radioactive isotopes have all kinds of half-lifes. Those produced in the explosion of the Hiroshima nuclear bomb typically had shorter half-lifes. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
This has been going on for decades with very little incident. Most people don't know about it.
The process kills bacteria which would otherwise grow rapidly in the ground meat because of the large surface area and contact with the air.
This didn't arise in the past because people either had freshly ground beef done by the butcher, or did it themselves at home. It is probably a good thing that most people don't know much about how food is processed in the current industrialized prepared food sector, they stop eating. Policies not Politics ---- Daily Landscape
Fortunately, I went veggie years ago.
I do try to persuade people not to poison themselves, but, as they say, good luck with that.
with very little incident
I'm sure Bushco's FDA will let us know the moment they discover any problems! :/
Americans are blatantly, astonishingly unhealthy. I mean you can SEE it. Too many causes to sort out.
Some things you don't have to try out to know you don't want to do them. Irradiation is one of them. The Fates are kind.
The truth is I don't believe this. Not because killing bacteria is bad, but because I do not trust the people managing the operations and because I know with certainty I cannot trust the government to monitor it. I write from the US so you know what I am saying is true.
When someone seeks to introduce novel and dangerous proceedures, I believe the burden of proof of safety is on them, not the victims.
I know this differs from the conventional view that it is the victims' job to prove how they have been killed. The Fates are kind.
What do radiation detectors pick up in these cities today? Traces of fallout from atmospheric testing.
Take a look at the studies done on these populations by the Radiation Effects Research Foundation. The findings are quite surprising. The cancer rate among the survivors is 6% higher than among the control population, and there have been no findings of birth defects or mutations in the first generation of children born to the survivors.
But the water stays clean. Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
SFR is located 55 metres below the bottom of the sea and is accessed from a tunnel opening on the edge of the vast man-made cooling lagoon outside Forsmark nuclear power plant (in which it's damn nice to bath in the summer as the water is 30 degrees hot).
Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
Thanks for the constructive criticism. :) Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
