Modest Proposal: Solution to Global Warming

[alfredr]

Nuclear Winter!

North Korea, Iran, India, Pakistan, Israel, terrorists, former Soviet enriched uranium. One problem could solve the other.

Or maybe we could work out some of the problems of nuclear power (waste) and just burn less fosil fuels?

Or Mother Earth could have some fight in her and a couple of major vocanic eruptions with lots of ash and dust could cool us down.

Visualize Whirled Peas

[alfredr]

Nuclear Winter!

North Korea, Iran, India, Pakistan, Israel, terrorists, former Soviet enriched uranium. One problem could solve the other.

Or maybe we could work out some of the problems of nuclear power (waste) and just burn less fosil fuels?

Or Mother Earth could have some fight in her and a couple of major vocanic eruptions with lots of ash and dust could cool us down.

Visualize Whirled Peas

[Naturist Mark]

Hmmmmm ... I can't quite put my finger on it, but I think your plan has a flaw somewhere ...

[Sanslines]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by alfredr:
Nuclear Winter!

North Korea, Iran, India, Pakistan, Israel, terrorists, former Soviet enriched uranium. One problem could solve the other.

Or maybe we could work out some of the problems of nuclear power (waste) and just burn less fosil fuels?

Or Mother Earth could have some fight in her and a couple of major vocanic eruptions with lots of ash and dust could cool us down.

Visualize Whirled Peas </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Alfredr,

It was -4F yesterday morning here. I don't think we need to get any cooler. BTW, I have a snow shovel with your name on it sitting in my garage! lol

[LamontCranston]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Or maybe we could work out some of the problems of nuclear power (waste) and just burn less fosil fuels? </div></BLOCKQUOTE> Any conversation about global warming that doesn't include this in the agenda is more about the people talking than it is about global warming...

Nine Nuclear Power Plants

2 in So CA, 1 near SF
3 bordering the Great Lakes for cooling water
2 in the Northeast, 1 in Maryland
Bury the reactive waste in the Mohave Desert.

2 or 3 decades of always on clean power.
How many sooty power plants would go silent?

All we need is political will and financing.
Can the global warming crowd get that momentum going?

[waitwhat?]

i only have one problem with all of that: burying the waste in the mojave desert. you assume because a dessert is hot and barron that it has no ecosystem. is there any better way to dispose of nuclear waste? any experts on nuclear energy. i have no idea i just think it sounds wrong to bury nuclear waste in a desert ecosystem.

Two nuclear power plants in North Carolina; one at Southport near the Coast and one on the Wake County/Chatham County border near Raleigh/Cary/Apex. And there are more.

Nuclear waste is a definite problem. It doesn't break down in a few hundred years; it takes eons and then what does it do to the area it was buried in?

The solution is to get off of fossil fuels period and find something less hazardous than nuclear power......a challenge for the great minds of this planet.

Allie

[Bob S.]

If only we could do more with solar/wind/water power.

Still waiting for anti-matter engines. The cleanest fuel possible. Matter and anti-matter collide to form an explosion with no byproducts.

Cold fusion would be nice as well.

If they had more trust in space travel, we could load up some shuttles/new model space planes with some waste and shoot it into space. How about sending the Uranium to Uranus and Plutonium to Pluto?

My other futuristic solution is to create a matter/energy transporter and simply place the waste in the trasnporter and energize it without rematerializing it.

Bob S.

[Naturist Mark]

Frankly I don't think nuclear waste is quite the problem it is made out to be.

Yes it takes thousands, even hundreds of thousands of years to decay to safe levels. But it only takes a few years for the MOST dangerous levels to decline.

We have 50 years of experience in storing nuclear waste on site at nuclear power plants, and it has yet to become a problem - the problems we hear about are at very old research reactors and at closed weapon plants.

You really don't want to bury nuclear waste and forget it. You want to safely contain it and guard it so that bad people don't use it for bad purposes. You also want to be able to get at it in a few years because there are a lot of useful isotopes in it that we may want for medicine, scientific instruments and spacecraft.

There are new nuclear power technologies that are inherently much safer than even today's safe plants - such as the pebble bed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_modular_reactor) reactor.

If I were designing an National Energy Plan, accelerated development of new nuclear power plants would be a key strategy - starting with expanding existing plants (where all the environmental impact studies and community safety plans are already done) with the best new technologies.
<UL TYPE=SQUARE>
Other measures of such a plan would be<LI> General conservation measures (reduce waste, more insulation, etc.) This has the highest potential for reduction of energy use. <LI>A national net metering (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_metering) law, along with tax credits or even subsidies for small scale renewable energy production. <LI> A requirement that all new internal combustion engine vehicles be flex fuel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flex_Fuel) compatible - so they can run on ethanol and gasoline ethanol blends. In fact, every car sold in the US since 1989 can be easily converted to flex fuel use - Brazil has been doing so for years. <LI>Tax incentives and/or subsidies for electric or plug-in hybrid (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug-in_hybrid) vehicles. <LI>Rapid industrialization of cellulosic ethanol (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellulosic_ethanol) production <LI>Massive research into carbon sequestration (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_sequestration#Artificial_sequestration) and coal gasification in order to create technologies to replace current coal burning plants with power stations that do not increase atmospheric carbon dioxide. <LI>A fully implemented carbon emissions trading (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_trading) system. <LI>Large scale renewable energy production - primarily funded via the carbon trading system. <LI>Continued development of fusion energy production systems. <LI>A massive increase in basic research in new and unusual energy systems - including long shots like cold-fusion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion) , zero point energy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_point_energy) , and sonoluminescence (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonoluminescence). <LI>and more recycling. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recycling) [/list]

-Mark

[alfredr]

I have a solution for nuclear waste now, too. But it is a permanent solution which would preclude being able to recover anything useful from it in the future.

Black Holes!

It's going to have to be a bigger one then the ones that seem to exist in just about every clothes dryer and eats one sock of every pair, but if our technology can create them in clothes dryers, surely we can create one that could be used to dispose of nuclear waste.

Don't you just love it when you can use one problem to solve another? First, nuclear proliferation can solve global warming; and now lost socks can solve nuclear waste disposal.

[missouriboy]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">If they had more trust in space travel, we could load up some shuttles/new model space planes with some waste and shoot it into space. How about sending the Uranium to Uranus and Plutonium to Pluto? </div></BLOCKQUOTE>Why not just send it all into the center of the Sun? The ongoing thermonuclear holocaust there would consume anything we could ever send it, in a microsecond without even blinking. Like a whale swallowing a gnat.

[NudePete]

The problem is that our fossil fuel emissions might be too clean right now. Instead, if we sent up lots of soot particulates in addition to the megatons of CO2 that we pump out currently, that would help to stop the sunlight from reaching the earth - cooling it down "nuclear winter" style.

Of course it might be it a bit hard to breath, see, keep clothes clean, etc.

[shomymojo]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Naturist Mark:
Frankly I don't think nuclear waste is quite the problem it is made out to be.

Yes it takes thousands, even hundreds of thousands of years to decay to safe levels. But it only takes a few years for the MOST dangerous levels to decline.

We have 50 years of experience in storing nuclear waste on site at nuclear power plants, and it has yet to become a problem - the problems we hear about are at very old research reactors and at closed weapon plants.

You really don't want to bury nuclear waste and forget it. You want to safely contain it and guard it so that bad people don't use it for bad purposes. You also want to be able to get at it in a few years because there are a lot of useful isotopes in it that we may want for medicine, scientific instruments and spacecraft.

There are new nuclear power technologies that are inherently much safer than even today's safe plants - such as the pebble bed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_modular_reactor) reactor.

If I were designing an National Energy Plan, accelerated development of new nuclear power plants would be a key strategy - starting with expanding existing plants (where all the environmental impact studies and community safety plans are already done) with the best new technologies.
<UL TYPE=SQUARE>
Other measures of such a plan would be<LI> General conservation measures (reduce waste, more insulation, etc.) This has the highest potential for reduction of energy use. <LI>A national net metering (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_metering) law, along with tax credits or even subsidies for small scale renewable energy production. <LI> A requirement that all new internal combustion engine vehicles be flex fuel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flex_Fuel) compatible - so they can run on ethanol and gasoline ethanol blends. In fact, every car sold in the US since 1989 can be easily converted to flex fuel use - Brazil has been doing so for years. <LI>Tax incentives and/or subsidies for electric or plug-in hybrid (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug-in_hybrid) vehicles. <LI>Rapid industrialization of cellulosic ethanol (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellulosic_ethanol) production <LI>Massive research into carbon sequestration (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_sequestration#Artificial_sequestration) and coal gasification in order to create technologies to replace current coal burning plants with power stations that do not increase atmospheric carbon dioxide. <LI>A fully implemented carbon emissions trading (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_trading) system. <LI>Large scale renewable energy production - primarily funded via the carbon trading system. <LI>Continued development of fusion energy production systems. <LI>A massive increase in basic research in new and unusual energy systems - including long shots like cold-fusion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion) , zero point energy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_point_energy) , and sonoluminescence (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonoluminescence). <LI>and more recycling. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recycling) [/list]

-Mark </div></BLOCKQUOTE>....Mark.. http://oakhurstonline.com/icon/applause.gif...you have convinced me...I'm In...now for a politician or two who will push for this... http://oakhurstonline.com/icon/laugh.gif

[nunne]

One of the primary reasons no nuclear plant has been built in the United States for over 30 years is that we have 103 nuclear plants, and every one of them has a different design. Thus, when something goes wrong or a part wears out, there can be no interchange of parts.

France has been relying upon nuclear fuel for many years. Early on, they designed one or two model plants and built all their plants according to those designs. It has worked out well for them. (Still have the issue of disposal.)

If the US could establish a design for some small plants (400 to 500 mWs) they could be placed at various locations around the country or built as 3 or 4 units in one location. It would help to resolve issues of transmission and reduce the cost of construction.

The NRC is now considering license applications for two new plants. Guess what? They are for 2000 mW size plants, and both have different designs. Go figure.