NeoConMan Posted May 13, 2009 Share Posted May 13, 2009 From World Nuclear News May 8, 2009 It already was dumped, but the long-running Yucca Mountain waste disposal plan now is officially "terminated" in the Department of Energy (DOE) 2010 budget request. Although energy secretary Steven Chu requested $197 million for the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, the money only is enough to keep the office ticking over and liaise with regulators who are examining the license application for the project. The DOE said under its budget proposal: "All funding for the development of the Yucca Mountain facility would be eliminated, such as further land acquisition, transportation access and additional engineering." "The FY2010 budget request ... implements the Administration's decision to terminate the Yucca Mountain program while developing nuclear waste disposal alternatives." The department plans to establish what it called a “blue-ribbon” commission to evaluate options for the country to meet its commitment to manage high-level military wastes as well as used nuclear fuel on behalf of nuclear power utilities. The panel will give recommendations, the DOE said, "would form the basis for working with Congress to revise the statutory framework for managing and disposing of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste." Many observers have wondered what such a panel would uncover that many millions of dollars of research failed to find. Elsewhere in the budget, waste-related requests were made for research into nuclear fuel cycle options. Some $192 million — about half of all of nuclear power's proposed funding — would go to research and development which will "provide a sound basis for any future decision on the U.S. nuclear fuel cycle." Currently the U.S. uses the “once-through” fuel cycle where nuclear fuel would be disposed of after one use. Other leading nuclear countries like France, Japan, Russia and the U.K. use reprocessing to varying degrees in order to extract re-usable parts of used nuclear fuel and reduce the volume of waste. Reprocessing is not allowed in the U.S. after a decision made in the 1970s, but it is possible that its benefits — particularly in waste volume reduction — could see reprocessing make a comeback in a new U.S. fuel cycle philosophy. So much for energy plans that make sense. Your electric bill and your taxes just went up - no matter where you live in the USA... This is not politics, this is real world stupidity. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cookieman15061 Posted May 13, 2009 Share Posted May 13, 2009 true dat Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AXE® Posted May 13, 2009 Share Posted May 13, 2009 By the Connecticut River in Cobalt Connecticut. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Californiaman Posted May 13, 2009 Share Posted May 13, 2009 Maybe we can bail them out. Just thinking out loud. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rocketman Posted May 13, 2009 Share Posted May 13, 2009 Read this. Also, I'm banking on this (from June 2008 issue of Discover Magazine)... Plasma physicist Eric Lerner has a dream: a form of nuclear energy so clean it generates no radioactive waste, so safe it can be located in the heart of a city, and so inexpensive it provides virtually unlimited power for the dirt-cheap price of $60 per kilowatt—far below the $1,000-per-kilowatt cost of electricity from natural gas. It may sound too good to be true, but the technology, called focus fusion, is based on real physics experiments. Focus fusion is initiated when a pulse of electricity is discharged through a hydrogen-boron gas across two nesting cylindrical electrodes, transforming the gas into a thin sheath of hot, electrically conducting plasma. This sheath travels to the end of the inner electrode, where the magnetic fields produced by the currents pinch and twist the plasma into a tiny, dense ball. As the magnetic fields start to decay, they cause a beam of electrons to flow in one direction and a beam of positive ions (atoms that have lost electrons) to flow in the opposite direction. The electron beam heats the plasma ball, igniting fusion reactions between the hydrogen and boron; these reactions pump more heat and charged particles into the plasma. The energy in the ion beam can be directly converted to electricity—no need for conventional turbines and generators. Part of this electricity powers the next pulse, and the rest is net output. A focus fusion reactor could be built for just $300,000, says Lerner, president of Lawrenceville Plasma Physics in New Jersey. But huge technical hurdles remain. These include increasing the density of the plasma so the fusion reaction will be more intense. (Conventional fusion experiments do not come close to the temperatures and densities needed for efficient hydrogen-boron fusion.) Still, the payoff could be huge: While mainstream fusion research programs are still decades from fruition, Lerner claims he requires just $750,000 in funding and two years of work to prove his process generates more energy than it consumes. “The next experiment is aimed at achieving higher density, higher magnetic field, and higher efficiency,” he says. “We believe it will succeed.” Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AXE® Posted May 13, 2009 Share Posted May 13, 2009 This one of the babies I helped design for welding the dry canister containers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FirstMeasure Posted May 13, 2009 Share Posted May 13, 2009 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FirstMeasure Posted May 13, 2009 Share Posted May 13, 2009 www.altenergy.org Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Homz Posted May 13, 2009 Share Posted May 13, 2009 Ahhh come on it's not that dangerous. U235 only has a half life of 4billion years. Might make a good topping on Ice cream. Don't really care about Yucca mtn., I'm just being a smart a$$. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rocketman Posted May 13, 2009 Share Posted May 13, 2009 Well we should invest in alternative energies. I'm all for it! Unfortunately, nothing viable from a technical point of view is going to be available in the near future. Until then, nuclear energy is the safest and most effective means to produce energy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlackHawk233 Posted May 13, 2009 Share Posted May 13, 2009 S.o.l.a.r Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KSG_Standard Posted May 13, 2009 Share Posted May 13, 2009 S.o.l.a.r what about n.i.g.h.t.? Just asking... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlackHawk233 Posted May 13, 2009 Share Posted May 13, 2009 Crap, uhh. If you mean what happens when we go into the night, we make china turn on their solar panels. I say solar and that Solar wind theory are our best bets. Just my opinion, I like future. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KSG_Standard Posted May 13, 2009 Share Posted May 13, 2009 We can't have a breakthrough in solar and wind, until there is a huge breakthrough in battery/storage technology...I LOVE dead dinosaur juice...makes my Big Block Avalanche go fast... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
myspace.com/jessenoah Posted May 13, 2009 Share Posted May 13, 2009 Im seriously thinking about moving to canada or england.................. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeRom Posted May 13, 2009 Share Posted May 13, 2009 How about wave energy? I know it's not a new idea. It has been around for decades but there are new ways to do it. In fact, in a project funded by the Navy there is going to be a test done in the Detroit river which uses water currents and the vortices produced to drive, I don't know what they're called, fins mounted on springs ... that will convert mechanical energy into electricity. Great idea. No big ol ugly wind turbine farms. No reliance on solar power, which here in Michigan isn't really gonna work so good. No nuke waste. And Power will last for as long as water is flowing. I suspect there isn't going to be any one solution anyway but I like solutions that are the least intrusive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ninety1vee Posted May 14, 2009 Share Posted May 14, 2009 well, i'm glad it got shot down. it's bad enough there's still radiation out here from all the testing, but then they wanted to haul in a bunch of nuclear waste by freight and truck through my city. no thanks, i'll pass we should just put it all in some remote place in alaska... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pippy Posted May 14, 2009 Share Posted May 14, 2009 It's difficult to come up with something clean, green, reliable and cheap to produce. I think I'm correct in saying that my 'homeland' - Scotland - produces a surplus of energy largely owing to the fact that they invested heavily in hydro-electric schemes. There is no shortage of rainfall in Scotland so far..... They have also recently been building large-area wind-turbine farms such as those shown in firstmeasure's pictures. The country can hardly be described as 'Densely Populated'. With the amount of sunshine you get I'd have thought there would be more companies trying to produce solar-panels that were more economical to manufacture and more efficient ways to store the potential energy received. Perhaps the Oil and Gas companies could be approached for scientific funding?... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TommyK Posted May 14, 2009 Share Posted May 14, 2009 Yup, that oughta bring a safe, clean, non-CO producing, cheap form of energy generation to a screeching halt. Thank-you O. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TommyK Posted May 14, 2009 Share Posted May 14, 2009 Im seriously thinking about moving to canada or england.................. Sorry to disappoint you, but the USA is the last bastion of freedom .... real freedom on this planet. With all due respect to our friends north of the 49th and only real friend on the Eurasian tectonic plate, socialist policies make those countries, in my opinion, less desirable places to call 'home'. But, give O enough time and we'll be right there with 'em. Just give 'im a could years. Just wait and see. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EVOL! Posted May 14, 2009 Share Posted May 14, 2009 Well we should invest in alternative energies. I'm all for it! Unfortunately' date=' nothing viable from a technical point of view is going to be available in the near future. Until then, nuclear energy is the safest and most effective means to produce energy. [/quote'] But the big question still remains - what do you do with the radioactive waste? No one wants it in their back yard. Are you going to propose the government claim eminent domain and just dump the waste where it wants? Here is a "far out", forward thinking idea that this country has not done - why don't we really invest in some R&D and maybe in 10yrs we can have some solid technology ready for mass use? I know. Crazy, isn't it? We did build the atomic bomb, the automobile, and put a man on the moon. Not like we have a history of global changing innovation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pippy Posted May 14, 2009 Share Posted May 14, 2009 We did build the atomic bomb' date=' the automobile, and put a man on the moon. Not like we have a history of global changing innovation. [/quote'] Actually, the first 'car' was French. Cugnot steamer 1769. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EVOL! Posted May 14, 2009 Share Posted May 14, 2009 With Fusion there is no radioactive waste. It really is the future along with possibly Hydrogen Fuel cells' date=' other alternative energies are all good as well but the costs need to be sensible a solar array or wind turbine or biomass boiler are not much help to anyone with pay back periods of 25years plus.[/quote'] That's my point. We don't have fusion yet, but it is doable so why not invest in it? Hydrogen has come a loooong way in the last 10 years. Why not invest in it? Seems to me we have had a short sighed problem in the States the last 20 years and with the global issues we face we cannot afford to continue this way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pippy Posted May 14, 2009 Share Posted May 14, 2009 A solar array or wind turbine or biomass boiler are not much help to anyone with pay back periods of 25years plus. This is the big problem with the newest technologies - payback period. Until, say, solar panel units are produced in such vast numbers so as to bring down cost-per-unit few people will want to buy one. Until a vast number of people want to buy them few companies will want to produce them. Even with relatively old-ish technology there are problems; I was looking to replace my 150-year-old Victorian single-glazed sash-windows with double glazing. Because of the 'abnormal' (as compared with modern-day windows) size of our frames - we have a pair of three-panel bay-windows eight feet high and proportionately wide - the double-glazing units would have to be a special-order. No problem? The payback-period with regards fuel-bill savings gained against initial purchase price was calculated to be "...around the 40 year mark..." We didn't go ahead with the plan. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NeoConMan Posted May 14, 2009 Author Share Posted May 14, 2009 You'd be amazed how little waste is left over from nuclear fuel if it is reprocessed. Why don't we do THAT? What little waste is there is in casks that would take a skilled and well-equipped crew a long time to liberate. The public is so out of touch with the basic fundamentals of physics that we are nowhere near fully utilizing 50 year old nuclear technology to its potential. To think all this pipe-dream baloney being pushed as "green" is the answer is nothing short of foolishness and folly. We use gas and coal because it makes sense economically, nothing else even comes close. Solar is for low current demand only, high current industrial loads (even air-conditioning) will not function with it. Wind power has a host of problems far beyond a utilization of less than 10% in many instances, and if you add all these green (EXPENSIVE) sources together that rarely provide their advertised output, you've capitalized about 2% of our total need. The real world is full of ugly truths that 95% of Americans have no clue of. Should we develop these technologies? Absolutely. We simply need to be more realistic in our expectations - and their frighteningly high cost. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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