randform was a bit on the sites
Unfortunately the laptop crash problem is still unresoved and blogging will stay retarded. Before the crash I edited already two posts.
This here is the first post it is about comments on nuclear energy which I left on other blogs. Moreover it gives a motivation why I wrote the second post which is an overview over the posts on nuclear energy on randform. (please see below)
comments on Azimuth:
The blog Azimuth is a new blog about the science of climate change and other related science issues which are of interest to the blog owner John Baez. The blog intends also to establish an archive/wiki/forum with scientific facts about climate science. It is supposedly going to be opened on Sep. 27. I was commenting on a blog post on Azimuth where guest blogger Charlie Clingen explained how one could find ways to answer the question: “How long would uranium last”.
Charlie Clingen made for his calculations of how long would uranium last (if I understood correctly) the assumption that nuclear energy production would mainly consist of nowadays ways to produce nuclear energy. It is quite undisputed that the abundance of Uran 235 (which is used to a great extend in nowadays reactors) at the current price is very limited. Overall the opinions/assessments on how much the Uran is limited are differing only between a few decades. Charlie Clingen gave one answer (10 years), the rather pro-nuclear world nuclear association currently (August 2010) says 80 years. The main point in this discussion is however not the exact number of years – also if this is an interesting question – but more that due to this fact NEW NUCLEAR TECHNOLOGY is underway and I tried to explain this here on randform…over the years.
In my first comment to the blog post of Charlie Clingen I thus basically gave an overview of the blog posts on randform which deal with (new) nuclear technology and I would like to repeat this here on randform in a little more detail, in order to make the line of argumentation (hopefully) a bit more clear and in order to have a quick-link to the posts. The below previous post thus contains an overview over the nuclear energy posts on randform.
So what were the other comments about?
The second comment was more a less an argument why nuclear BREEDER technology could be expected to be more important than extracting uranium from seawater.
In this post and the following I repreated that breeder technology bears a lot of problems and risks, in particular it very probable bears an increase in the production of plutonium. Plutonium has a very long half life (about 24,200 ys) and is already chemically very toxic. Moreover it can be used for nuclear bombs.
Where I had (maybe too briefly) explained that even thorium sites will most probable use plutonium for efficiency reasons (like this is planned in India), again from World Nuclear (Indias Plans for the Thorium cycle):
This Indian programme has moved from aiming to be sustained simply with thorium to one ‘driven’ with the addition of further fissile uranium and plutonium, to give greater efficiency.
The last comment on Azimuth was apart from the above also a reply to a comment about a new reactor design called Travelling Wave Reactor which is according to wikipedia a thermal breeder. I tried to find more technical information on that type of reactor. However what I found was not much, the whole concept seemed to me very futuristic. And yes in case you had that suspicion – my last blog post was made in reference to that Traveling wave reactor comment. I didn’t want to make it that blatant but now I make it that blatant. And no – I am not going to file a patent for a circular traveling nuclear wave reactor…;)
comments on we-make-money-not-art:
The other comments were on the blog we-make-money-not-art – a blog which is dedicated to
art/design/newmedia. On that blog the blog owner Régine Debatty made an interview with Oliver Goodhall, a recent Design interactions graduate from the RCA, London, who does nuclear awareness art projects. The blog post was provocatively titled: Nuclear Is Good, What will it take to convince you? and sentences like:
“science have failed to assuage the public’s unscientifically-based fears and sometimes irrational concerns over nuclear energy.”
couldn’t be left like that. Last but not least the overview of nuclear science on randform provides scientific facts which lead to rational arguments against nuclear energy production.
In particular I wrote:
…there is a purely scientific debate (like about the risks) on one side and an emotional and political debate on the other side. It is important to make the difference between those visible.