Re: OT: Nuclear Waste (Was Re-Marketing Ada)

From: Robert I. Eachus (rieachus_at_comcast.net)
Date: 11/19/03 

Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 15:01:30 -0500

Dmytry Lavrov wrote:

> Are everyone who think so complete dumbs or idiots or what?It's NOT
> increases radioactivity on planet surface or anywhere.Like saying that
> golfstream produces radioactivity because there's lots of uranium and
> other isotopes in water moved by it.

No, there is a big difference. There are a lot of short half-life
radioactive materials caught in coal beds. The uranium, thorium, or
other long-half life materials in the "underlayment" the level that the
coal forms on top of, have decay chains that include radon and other
gases. These propagate upwards then are stopped by the coal layers.
Coal is plastic in-situ, so cracks in the coal heal, and the gases get
trapped. Then the radon or whatever decays further, and these longer
half-life atoms are metallic, and bind to the coal--until it is burned.

A coal burning power plant (assuming bituminous, not antracite coal)
puts more moderate half-life isotopes in the atmosphere than an
equivalent nuclear power plant produces. (Note, puts into the
atmosphere, vs. produces. These are the "high-level nuclear wastes" in
storage pools that get discussed. And of course, the nuclear reactor
burns up natural uranium in a way that bypasses the normal decay chains
entirely.

> Only idiots think so.Many peoples died after Chernobil,and that was
> relatively small plant,only one reactor have been melted,and only
> sevral precents of isotopes was spreaded in the gaseous form,wind
> moved in opposite direction to town(forest was die at direction of
> wind,even that plants are quite resistant,many times more resistant
> than humans).Strange,but peoples that like += also like
> radioactivity.Should be correlation...mutation....

The reactor design at Chernobyl was an RMBK graphite moderated reactor,
and did not have a containment building. (The only similar reactor that
I know of in the US was in Hanford, Wash. There was also a UK plant at
Windscale.) Graphite-moderated power reactors are really designed to
product plutonium for nuclear weapons. Commercial BWR or PWR reactors
are designed to "burn-up" as much as possible of the nuclear fuel,
including any plutonium produced. This is simple economics--the more of
a fuel load that gets used, the longer between refuelings and the lower
the cost of the actual fuel. There are other reactor types, including
HTGRs, MSRs, AGRs (UK), CANDU (Canada) and LMFBRs (mostly in France
right now). LMFBRs are dangerous both due to the negative void
coefficent and the coolant (liquid sodium metal). MSRs (molten salt
reactors) and BWRs (boiling water reactors) are just the opposite and
much safer.

> Not. Get some uranium, put into capsule, and fix on ..one well known
> point on your body...

How about I make it into dinner plates instead? Uranium is used to add
an orange color to some ceramics. Or a few dozen tons of armor on an
M1-A1, A2, or A3 Abrams tank? Or wear a wristwatch with a radium or
tritium dial? Or use a smoke detector with an americinium radiation source?

The real answer to all of these is not much happens. Even the brighest
of radium-dial wristwatches subjected the wearer to about as much
radiation damage as 15 minutes of direct sunlight. As for the Abrams
tank crews, they are subjected to LESS radiation than crews of other
tanks--Chobbam armor is a very good X-ray barrier.

You are exposed to about five rads a year from natural sources. If you
live at high-altitude or in a granite building, that number goes up.
Nuclear industry workers tend to get a significantly lower dosage. To
make it easier to monitor for leaks with geiger counters nuclear
facilities are generally built of things like sandstone, concrete, and
aluminium to minimize the background count. In fact, the first
detection of the Chernobyl disaster in the West was when some employees
were entering a nuclear reactor in, I think Sweden. The fallout in the
area would normally have been indetectable, if it weren't for the
designed in low-background. As it was the radiation detector went off
when some workers entered with muddy boots.

> Nuclear bomb are equivalent to several kg's of waste. Do you want
> nuclear war?

No.

> Or for you there's no difference between nuclear war and
> non-radioactive weapons because they works like coal-fired power?

Nonsense. First, there are "clean" nuclear weapons, and dirty nuclear
weapons. But whichever type, there is a large burst of "prompt"
neutrons and X-rays and the only shielding someone too near the blast
will have may be air. Early nuclear weapons had fairly high amounts of
fissile material in them, and the Bikini Bravo device had large amounts
of tritium and was very "dirty". (Read Lapp, Ralph E., "The Voyage of
the Lucky Dragon", Haper & Brothers Publishers, New York, 1958, for more
details. AFAIK, the US never made a similar device--the Bikini Bravo
result was much greater than expected, and "H-bombs" using Li6D as a
fusion fuel did not need uranium outer layers.) Nuclear weapons today
have a very low amount of fallout, for possibly no other reason than to
reduce cost and weight. Doesn't mean they should be used, in fact they
shouldn't be...

Nuclear weapons have been obsolete for about a dozen years. During the
Gulf War the US developed special bunker-destroying precision-guided
weapons that are much more effective against nuclear hardened sites than
nuclear weapons, and do much less "collateral" damage. I wish I could
say that the US uses these weapons solely because of the reduced risk to
civilians. But efficiency in destroying the actual target is a major
reason for the switch to "smart" weapons.

> Are we again need small nuclear war to become more-or-less careful?

I hope we don't. Right now there is a significant threat of just that
with North Korea. If the PRNK tries to use nuclear weapons I expect the
US reponse to be overwhelming--and non-nuclear. Notice the tries--it is
no secret the US is deploying an anti-ICBM system in Alaska. 

-- 
                                           Robert I. Eachus
100% Ada, no bugs--the only way to create software.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: CANDU reactor questions
    ... plutonium from elsewhere (such as dismantled nuclear weapons) they ... energy needs using various fuel sources in which a U-235-only fuel cycle ... These aren't *all* uranium reserves, because they consider, as usual, only ... doesn't happen in reactors using fast neutron reactor ...
    (sci.energy)
  • My~ giup VC ve^` nguye^n tu+? na(ng khi VC chi.u cho My~-Nga thu ho^`i highly enriched uranium
    ... US-Russian operation removes HEU from Vietnamese research reactor. ... pounds of highly enriched uranium, the key ingredient for a nuclear ... US team led by officials from the National Nuclear Security ... Under a "complex agreement, Vietnam ...
    (soc.culture.vietnamese)
  • @@ JEW media sycophants & 36% HEU - IRAN told the truth, yet JEW keeps lying @@
    ... Nuclear bomb tester at Lawrence Livermore ... or that they had under construction a uranium ... Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons, ... "Traces of bomb-grade uranium found two years ago in Iran came from contaminated ...
    (soc.culture.iranian)
  • @@ IRAN told the truth, yet JEW keeps lying @@
    ... Nuclear bomb tester at Lawrence Livermore ... or that they had under construction a uranium ... Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons, ... "Traces of bomb-grade uranium found two years ago in Iran came from contaminated ...
    (soc.culture.iranian)
  • Re: LIBBY DOESNT DO CHENEYS JAIL TIME!
    ... because a nuclear Iran would be a threat to Iraq. ... nuclear weapons programme. ... enrichment of uranium. ...
    (rec.sport.golf)