Green Energy Naysayers
Oodain
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Joined: 30 Jan 2011
Age: 34
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Location: in my own little tamarillo jungle,
seems liquid salt is becoming more and more feasible, the ZEBRA battery (not the one described above) is already installd in cars but that battery required 2-3 days to melt if it ever solidifies and it operates at several hundred degrees.
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//through chaos comes complexity//
the scent of the tamarillo is pungent and powerfull,
woe be to the nose who nears it.
Solar plants in the middle of the desert, wind turbines at sea or large tundra areas makes sense, solar and wind fields in agricultural land in a world with a food shortage is like selling your TV to buy a DVD player.
Economically speaking and in the current situation you are probably correct.
However, when it comes to risks, I would take a couple of exploding wind turbines over a nuclear reactor meltdown any day of the week.
I think most people would, however the fear of nuclear reactors melting down is a lot like fear of flying. Nobody is denying that reactors blow up and planes crash, however statistically you are more likely to electrocute yourself with a sex toy in the middle of Times Square than die on a plane or in a nuclear meltdown. With increased use of nuclear power, you'd also get more research and thus better and safer plants.
seems liquid salt is becoming more and more feasible, the ZEBRA battery (not the one described above) is already installd in cars but that battery required 2-3 days to melt if it ever solidifies and it operates at several hundred degrees.
Corrosion and growing hairs is still a problem
ruveyn
Oodain
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Joined: 30 Jan 2011
Age: 34
Gender: Male
Posts: 5,022
Location: in my own little tamarillo jungle,
even in the antimony magnesium based ones running at 57 degrees celcius?
as far as i gather the reactance problems would be far greater in "pure" sodium reactors running at upwards of a 1000 degrees celcius.
as for growing hairs, will read up on it as i truth be told hadnt heard about the problem till now.
_________________
//through chaos comes complexity//
the scent of the tamarillo is pungent and powerfull,
woe be to the nose who nears it.
Oodain
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Joined: 30 Jan 2011
Age: 34
Gender: Male
Posts: 5,022
Location: in my own little tamarillo jungle,
ah
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//through chaos comes complexity//
the scent of the tamarillo is pungent and powerfull,
woe be to the nose who nears it.
Kjas
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Joined: 26 Feb 2012
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Location: the place I'm from doesn't exist anymore
It's not fear, just risk management.
When something like that happens there are dire environmental and social repercussions for decades to come.
While better and safer plants would probably happen, as it is, most plants which have had meltdowns, have been in that position due to cutbacks in funding, laying people off, bad safety procedures and bad upkeep of the plant itself.
It's the margin for human error like we have already seen which causes me concern.
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John_Browning
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The power plants would still have to talk to each other somehow to manage the power grid. Also making a reactor blow would require a team of physicists and engineers to reshape some fuel rods and attach specially made wires and explosives to it. In short, that would require a fission device inside the thing, as well as technicians that know how to turn a wrench in the core and a few weeks minimum to do it. Reactors are more stable than that without substantial modification, so Chernobyl-like disasters are as bad as it gets.
Those things do blow from time to time, but not how you describe. The fuel would have to be mixed with an oxidizer to make it explode more than burn fast.
If sommeone ever did that, not only would they cinch the Darwin award for that year, but they'd earn themselves a place in the history books!
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"Gun control is like trying to reduce drunk driving by making it tougher for sober people to own cars."
- Unknown
"A fear of weapons is a sign of ret*d sexual and emotional maturity."
-Sigmund Freud
John_Browning
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Location: The shooting range
Or more likely, people in rural areas would try to get non-game birds to fly though it like a bug zapper from space.
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"Gun control is like trying to reduce drunk driving by making it tougher for sober people to own cars."
- Unknown
"A fear of weapons is a sign of ret*d sexual and emotional maturity."
-Sigmund Freud
I was thinking more along the lines of a release of radioactive isotopes through a hydrogen explosion or something along those lines. Fission of a nuclear reactor is way beyond most terrorists, for now at least.
That is because nobody has yet blown a tanker (we're talking a huge amount of the stuff) in an act of terrorism. Opening the fuel tanks to the atmosphere and blowing some conventional explosives might be enough. Even if the blast were not completely devastating, oxygen would be consumed for a large radius, possibly suffocating thousands
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Opportunities multiply as they are seized. -Sun Tzu
Nature creates few men brave, industry and training makes many -Machiavelli
You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do
Oops, I should have thought of that. I must have a nefarious mind to think of these things
Even coal could be targeted; not necessarily the power plants, but coal mines. A coal mine fire can burn for hundreds of years, make large areas unstable and prone to bursts of toxic superheated gases.
ruveyn
If this is directed at my "hydrogen explosion" description, I just want to clarify, I was not referring to hydrogen bomb thermonuclear weapons, but an explosion of pressurized gas within a nuclear reactor that releases isotopes over a large area, and with enough force, perhaps even the rods held within could be thrown hundreds of meters (such as what happened at Chernobyl)
_________________
Opportunities multiply as they are seized. -Sun Tzu
Nature creates few men brave, industry and training makes many -Machiavelli
You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do
Joker
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Joined: 19 Mar 2011
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Location: North Carolina The Tar Heel State :)
ruveyn
But they do have nuclear wepons well at least Faux news thinks they do.
Possibly. Or low yield dirty bombs which can render a portion of a city unihabitable for 10 or 20 years. Look at Chernobyl. Nothing went critical their, but the place is unlivable for humans. Abdul, Ibrihim, Faisil, Achmed, Faraq and Mustapha very likely have the makings for dirty radiological bombs.
ruveyn
ruveyn
But they do have nuclear wepons well at least Faux news thinks they do.
Possibly. Or low yield dirty bombs which can render a portion of a city unihabitable for 10 or 20 years. Look at Chernobyl. Nothing went critical their, but the place is unlivable for humans. Abdul, Ibrihim, Faisil, Achmed, Faraq and Mustapha very likely have the makings for dirty radiological bombs.
ruveyn
There are actually a fair amount of squatters living in the Chernobyl area, and in Pripyat. I have also read that the wildlife in the area, due to little human activity, is flourishing, at least in comparison to the pre-accident environment
_________________
Opportunities multiply as they are seized. -Sun Tzu
Nature creates few men brave, industry and training makes many -Machiavelli
You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do
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