Honda Civic Hybrid rant

[SeanB]

I think you need to look at the twitter account for the US embassy in Beijing, which reports pollution levels. It can be a problem if an airport has to rely on ILS for all landings, even on a cloud free day.

[dannyf]

For particulate pollution, diesel engines have a considerate disadvantage to gas engines.

[Someone]

By that definition, a broken nuclear power plant, with its invisible radioactive emission, would be the cleanest.

To be fair coal power plants emit more radiation than nuclear plants (even after accounting for disasters), but lets not get facts in the way.

[johansen]

By that definition, a broken nuclear power plant, with its invisible radioactive emission, would be the cleanest.

To be fair coal power plants emit more radiation than nuclear plants (even after accounting for disasters), but lets not get facts in the way.

i don't think this will remain the case for long.
Isotopes matter.

[Someone]

By that definition, a broken nuclear power plant, with its invisible radioactive emission, would be the cleanest.

To be fair coal power plants emit more radiation than nuclear plants (even after accounting for disasters), but lets not get facts in the way.

i don't think this will remain the case for long.
Isotopes matter.

Capturing the fly ash and burying it, sure it'll reduce the public exposure but then we're just burying nuclear waste (which the power plants would love to do).

[gildasd]

For particulate pollution, diesel engines have a considerate disadvantage to gas engines.

If by gas you are talking about petrol (oh the silliness of calling a liquid "gas"), then you should ask yourself what happens to an Otto engine that is run at high compression with direct injection?
It becomes diesel like efficient but it also aqures diesel combustion characteristics.
One being particulates in the exhaust...

[dannyf]

To be fair coal power plants emit more radiation than nuclear plants (even after accounting for disasters),

That's why real estate at three mile island, Chernobyl and Fukushima is so sought after by the faithful,

[SeanB]

You would not like living in a coal dust dump either. the local NCP Alcohols branch will give you free coal ash if you ask for it, you just have to show up during business hours with a 5 ton truck with a cover for the ash and they will fill it for you. You can tell which way the wind is blowing in the area.

[dannyf]

You would not like living in a coal dust dump either.

Would you rather live on the sites of three mile island, Chernobyl and Fukushima?

[Someone]

To be fair coal power plants emit more radiation than nuclear plants (even after accounting for disasters), but lets not get facts in the way.

No, that was a report by the nuclear industry back in the early 70s. I think even New Zealand requires lower emissions these days. Everywhere in Europe and the US does.

ORNL, 1993:
http://web.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/colmain.html
And there are plenty more recent examples from the nuclear industry but they'll just get dismissed as biased, in which case why isn't the coal industry creating their own biased reports showing how great their technology is?

And yes the coal industry is cleaning up their act, by scrubbing their exhaust outputs they will greatly reduce their impact on people. Even with that they'll not reach the low deaths/MWh of renewables and nuclear or the lower lifecycle CO2 emissions.

You would not like living in a coal dust dump either.

Would you rather live on the sites of three mile island, Chernobyl and Fukushima?

Of those Chernobyl is the only example with ongoing contamination and exposure problems, Fukushima and Three Mile Island would be great places to live with their depressed land values care of scaremongers like you. Doses to the public at Three Mile Island and Fukushima were well controlled and not of any concern, even during the emergencies.

Any power solution will have its local impacts, you can look at the coal seam fires that have displaced people and destroyed the land beyond use, coal seam gassification displacing farmers and destroying water resources, oil refinery fires/explosions, etc etc.

The long term data continues to confirm that renewables and nuclear are far and away lower impact to the population and environment than any of the combustion based alternatives.

[dannyf]

scaremongers like you.

I am feeling good today so please allow me to be extra generous in giving your this advice: it is a lot better for you if you don't project bad intentions onto people who disagree with you.

Otherwise, you will always be where you are today.

[Someone]

scaremongers like you.

I am feeling good today so please allow me to be extra generous in giving your this advice: it is a lot better for you if you don't project bad intentions onto people who disagree with you.

Otherwise, you will always be where you are today.

You group together two locations which are entirely safe to visit and live in with the single worldwide example of a nuclear disaster that had turned the location into an uninhabitable place. Sure sounds like scaremongering.

Having an informed opinion/position I'd much prefer living in/on/near a nuclear power station (including Three Mile Island and Fukushima) in preference to living on/near any of the following:
coal/uranium/diamond/copper/zinc/gold/anything mine, quarry (and before you say it you have fewer, smaller, uranium mines for the same energy supply)
combustion power station
oil refinery or storage
petrol station (check out the health benefits of that)
rubbish dump

You might have some other priorities, but trumpeting your preconceptions about Three Mile Island and Fukushima against the known data is something you'll get called a scaremonger for.

[gildasd]

I would not have gotten as personal as "Mr Someone" but I entirelly aggree with the science.

[dannyf]

aggree with the science.

What "science"?

[Someone]

Fukushima and Three Mile Island would be great places to live with their depressed land values care of scaremongers like you.

That just demonstrates your incredible ignorance and stupidity. Large areas around Fukushima are still closed to general access because they have not been decontaminated completely. While parts are okay, there are hot spots everywhere. No-one can live there because they would have to carry around radiation detection equipment all the time, and couldn't let their children play outside in case they stumbled on one of those spots. Children are always playing on the ground and getting dirty, and much of that dirt contains high concentrations of things like caesium.

Their local authorities are taking a rightly cautious approach and only letting people back into the areas where they are certain it is safe, large is relative as the currently closed area is 250 square km which is similar in size to the permanently closed areas around larger coal power plants in Australia.

So far the hot-spots have almost all been concentrations of rainwater which around any source of air pollution would be concentrating dangerous material, short lived radiation just happens to be cheap and quick to measure so they're getting found and dealt with quickly. There were no ejections of fission products (unlike the mess at Chernobyl) so the cleanup and decontamination is a slow and safe process, some areas may remain closed for decades but those areas will be small. In many respects the disaster had fortuitous conditions which reduced the area affected and the severity of the effects, with the majority of the contamination being diluted into the ocean.

Even when they have finally cleaned it up hardly anyone will go back. You would pretty much screwed if you bought land there because there would be no community, no services for you to rely on. Those people have been living away for so long now that they have moved on with their lives. They have new jobs, new businesses, new homes, new schools, new friends and new communities. Those towns in the exclusion zone are never going to recover to their previous levels. Most of the property people left behind has decayed to the point where it needs to be thrown away or pulled down, and most of their pets died.

People have already returned to the cities, towns, and properties in the areas deemed to be safe. Some towns in the areas that remain closed will never return/recover but land use changes occur after major disasters, its not something unique to nuclear disasters.

[Someone]

Nuke-u-like fans tend to ignore the actual effect of the disaster, and instead focus on carefully selected stats like the low number of deaths. Sorry, but there are real dangers around Fukushima, and real suffering and loss for the former residents.

Feel free to pick another metric and discuss that but while the public perception of nuclear power is that it is dangerous, discussing the safety in terms of human health or lives is an excellent measure.

[Someone]

So far the hot-spots have almost all been concentrations of rainwater which around any source of air pollution would be concentrating dangerous material, short lived radiation just happens to be cheap and quick to measure so they're getting found and dealt with quickly.

Actually a lot of it is in the soil. Even the stuff in rainwater is a massive problem because children and animals tend to get it on and inside them. Much of the contamination is things like caesium, which is definitely not a short term danger.

Yes it ends up in the soil, from rainwater, and will dilute over time or be remediated. The caesium 137 is the remaining threat to health in the contaminated areas and has a half life long enough it cant be simply left to decay unless we want to wait a few hundred years with the area cordoned off (might be an option in larger countries such as Australia and Russia). The effort is underway from the Japanese government and industry to address the contamination and remediate it, they are going to try and reclaim the land and it should end up a good example of how such disasters can be handled.

Compare this sort of contamination against persistent organic pollutants or heavy metal pollution which is expensive and slow to measure but just as dangerous, they have similar distribution and remediation methods but dont get picked up as problem sites because there arent people out there looking for them.

People have already returned to the cities, towns, and properties in the areas deemed to be safe. Some towns in the areas that remain closed will never return/recover but land use changes occur after major disasters, its not something unique to nuclear disasters.

Actually many of the residents outside the exclusions zones are currently looking to settle with TEPCO for the total value of their homes and possessions, as they have no intention of returning. How can anyone expect them to after such a long time, and when much of the community has already moved on? The younger people got jobs elsewhere or moved far away to protect their children. That means that many businesses are no longer viable, and there are not enough people to look after the elderly any more. Thus the elderly cannot move back either.

I don't really care if other major disasters cause land use changes (nice euphemism, BTW). We have a choice about how to generate our electricity and nuclear is a bad one, simple as that.

I can understand people wanting to move away and/or receive compensation, similar situations occur in Australia after major bushfire disasters. Cities and residences are not static, land use changes through various influences. But my point is that almost the entire land area affected in the Fukushima disaster should be returned to its prior usable condition within a decade or so, the towns may have moved on but its not an uninhabitable waste land left behind.

Contrast this to the remediation that bulk mining operations typically employ.

All industrial activities have some side effects and risks that come with them, we can cherry pick examples of all sorts of specific incidents or be guided by some generalised metrics that try to reveal like for like comparisons and make decisions from there. I'll continue sharing the well regarded research showing lower burdens to society from renewable and nuclear power and you can believe what you like.

[gildasd]

Personally I see nuclear as the transition between hydrocarbon based energy and fully renuables.
I tend, as a baseline to disagree we people who insist on having everything now, this just scares away the silent majority that wants a cleaner Earth but who is also very resistant to sudden change.

To get what we all want, a green lush Earth, we have to be pragmatic.
Yes nuclear as it is done today is not the best, but the hydrocarbon option is far worse.
A bit like flying has a few spectacular accidents, but is still, by far, the safest mode of transport.

Even in a Honda Civic Hybrid.

[dannyf]

Yes nuclear as it is done today is not the best, but the hydrocarbon option is far worse.

I think it depends critically on what you judge as "bad".

Nuclear is the clear and only feasible / sustainable power source in the foreseeable future. That doesn't mean that our portfolio of power sources has no room for hydrocarbon sources, even if you consider "carbon emission" to be bad - a highly debatable point in my perspective.

That also means that there is room for renewable sources like wind and solar, two highly non-sustainable (from a utilities' and economic point of view) sources.

[SirNick]

Possibly a stupid question:  Why not build nuclear reactors in the ocean?

[gildasd]

As a ship's engineering watch officer (in training), I get to see first hand how shit hydrocarbons are in the distribution, extraction and refining process.
so quite frankly, even if you burn it in an open pit in a national park that's relatively clean.

But I really don't want to bore with 500 page demonstration, just read the MARPOL rules, INDG exerts for hydrocarbons and the IMO OILPOL convention.
This should take you about two months between reading and basic correlation work.
And if you still are interested, enrol, it's a great career.
However, this is still only what we are supposed to do, not what the bad apples are doing.

So uranium, even if  it was 10x more polluting per kilo before being used, is still far cleaner, debating this is not worth my time.

As for solar and wind being non economic, it all depends on how good your utilities are and your priorities.
In Belgium we have nearly "too much" solar, so much so that on sunny week day, our nuclear power plants have to take cores "offline". This process is essential wasting energy.
This means that, until we can store this energy, it costs the state cash if more people install more capacity.
Wind on the other hand, is in our case an widely distributed industrial process that is relatively constant over a wide area. What this means is that our utilities "throttle" windmills to produce a certain power within the wind's capacity. It's far removed from just dumping all the power that many roofs set in a near random pattern into the grid.
But you need modern high capacity utilities that many third word countries lack.

As for climate change, our ships have measured water/air temp by the ton hours over million of nautical miles and looged for the last 100 or so years on giant machines with a minimum of 25 years of near constants. Our engines burn DFO and HFO by the ton hour. Even the CO2 content of water is important because it affect corrosion, especially in our boilers.
This is in fact the biggest scientific climate dataloging experiment to date.
It makes the biggest scientific projects look like hamster toys.
Yet our data closely matches theirs.

So for my industry we hit peak oil around 96/98 HARD.
We are cleaning our power plants fast because we won't be able to use them soon if we don't.
Global warming is happening, it far worse than the 97% are saying and most importantly it's pushing our operating costs up, and that's we we doing something about it (saving polar bears is just a consequence).

[dannyf]

most importantly it's pushing our operating costs up,

Sounds like you should shoulder the burden of global warming, not us shouldering it for you.

[gildasd]

most importantly it's pushing our operating costs up,

Sounds like you should shoulder the burden of global warming, not us shouldering it for you.

Overall maybe. But by ton of CO2 per ton cargo/km, we are by far the best.
What'd is really stupid is using cross country trucks and planes for anything but the highest value cargo (like that kit and pcb I'm waiting for).
Everything else should be ships, canals and trains.

[SirNick]

We had a local politician on the radio this morning, gearing up for an election next month.  "The science is inconclusive" ... "we need to consider the cost / benefit analysis" ... "the issue is about government control"  Yada yada.  IMO, whether science has proven global warming or not is almost irrelevant -- it's more of a distraction than anything else.

The fact remains that there are multiple negative consequences to burning fossil fuels, and that should be enough to interest us in cleaner energy production -- whether that be personal transportation, or providing power to a regional electric grid.  It seems as simple as "pollution is bad" so we should try to avoid it as much as possible.  If that slows down the rate at which the climate changes also, great.  If not, well it's still in our best interest anyway, so what do we have to lose?

At least in my neck of the woods, there are too many people that do have something to lose if we move away from oil, so there's a strong opposing force to what should be a common sense shift in paradigm.  So, politically, someone pulls the pin on the "climate change isn't real" grenade, throws it into the discussion, and lets the resulting FUD cloud the real issue.  The unfortunate part is, there are enough people willing to fight over that pointless debate that the distraction works regardless of which side you stand on.

[dannyf]

It seems as simple as "pollution is bad" so we should try to avoid it as much as possible.

There are countless worthy things that we do NOT pursue, for a variety of reasons.

For example, there is a measurable probability that you can be killed by a 1 million ton rock falling from the space. Does that mean that you should only purchase a vehicle designed to withstand such a scenario? Probably not.

Each of us is in the risk-taking business every single day. Sometimes we make the decision to take certain risks, based on our perceived risks / reward (cost benefit analysis). Sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn't.

The only way for you to not take risks is to not live.