...what do you think?
Posted by UofUlawguy (Member # 5492) on :
All I know about nuclear power I learned from C. Montgomery Burns.
Posted by Yank (Member # 2514) on :
Mmmm.... Simpsons.
No, seriously, I don't know much about this but I'd like to. Anyone?
Posted by Space Opera (Member # 6504) on :
I don't know much about it, but if I remember the section on it in school it is actually very expensive, so therefore is not seen as a viable replacement for burning fossil fuels. There is also the huge problem of what to do with the waste. We can either shut the plants down and bury them beneath concrete or bury the waste in the desert somewhere. Obviously neither one is a great idea.
space opera
PS - still workin' on your story
Posted by Yank (Member # 2514) on :
What we need is a Genetically Engineered Nuclear Waste-Eating Monster (GENWEN). I call dibs on the patent.
*feeds GENWEN expired plutonium*
Posted by Space Opera (Member # 6504) on :
Ooooh...I'm sure Russia would love to get their hands on that critter.
space opera
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
There was an interesting DOE study I came across once on the warning signs needed to protect a future civilization that doesn't know English or any other current language from opening a radioactive waste dump. They wanted to put impressive statutes and dire pictorial warnings around the entrance.
My first thought was, "yeah, like that would stop Indiana Jones."
Dagonee
Posted by Yank (Member # 2514) on :
What kind of mutations would Indiana Jones get? Would he become Super-Indy?
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
LOL, Dagonee! We studied that study in the cultural geography class I took.
Posted by Shigosei (Member # 3831) on :
Nuuuu-cleeee-aarrr Wessels!
Um, I think we need to develop fusion. The fuel's easy to come by, there's some radiation danger but no radioactive waste, and it's pretty clean fuel.
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
Don't hold your breath: a commercial fusion reactor was "about a decade away" for over 40years. Nowadays the researchers talk about one being online in a couple of decades. Looked at optimisticly, a fusion reactor would produce about half as much waste as a fission reactor.
quote:[with minor rearrangement and paraphrasing for clarity...] The nuclear waste produced by US coal plants exceeds the amount of nuclear fuel consumed by US nuclear reactors. Each ton of coal contains 1.3 parts per million (ppm) of uranium and 3.2 ppm of thorium. The combustion of 616 million tons of coal in 1982 released 1,971 tons of thorium and 801 tons of uranium into the air. Global coal consumption in 1982 (2.8 billion tons) poured 8,950 tons of thorium and 3,640 tons of uranium into the environment.
[ May 10, 2004, 10:12 PM: Message edited by: aspectre ]
Posted by Paul Goldner (Member # 1910) on :
Nuclear fission is cleaner, cheaper, and more efficient then burning fossil fuels.
Unfortunately, start up costs for power plants are expensive, and too many people who don't know anything about nuclear power think its worse for the environment then fossil fuels, and don't want the government touching nuclear power.
Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
I think the expense is mostly because they are so politically unpopular. People are afraid of anything with the word "nuclear" in the name. They changed NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance) to MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) because they had to get that pesky word out of the name.
There are some valid reasons to fear nuclear power, yet I am afraid we've done ourselves a great disservice by neglecting this energy source. It's free of greenhouse gases, so makes far less global environmental impact than fossil fuels. Yes, fusion will be far better if we can get that working. Not only because it generates less waste, but because the waste it does generate decays much more quickly into safe forms. However, in the meantime we need something to tide us over the end of the fossil fuel era. We will run out of fossil fuels. Will fusion be cheap and available by then? Who knows! Fission, though, is available now. Europe (France in particular) uses a far higher percentage of fission reactors for their electricity generation than do we, and they (with the notable exception of Chernobyl) have done so very safely.
Chernobyl is a horrific example of what can happen when nuclear power is not done right. I suppose if 10 times that number died of exposure or heat stroke during blackouts, or because they can't afford the energy to heat or cool their homes, it would still be more acceptable to society than another Chernobyl, because 1) only the poor or old people would die, and 2) fewer would die at any one location or in any given day.
But when you factor in the cost to New York City of sea level rising 18 feet from global warming, then it begins to look more attractive.
I don't understand really why people don't want us to have nuclear power plants. To my mind, the answer to safety concerns is better safety technology and stricter safety standards. More redundancy, more frequent testing and designing in a higher margin of safety. But I am a technophile, and the workings of the minds of technophobes are forever inaccessible to me.
Posted by skillery (Member # 6209) on :
Yank:
quote:Nuclear Waste-Eating Monster
It's called a fast breeder reactor. Feed it nuclear waste, and the breeder reactor converts it to much less nasty nuclear waste with a shorter half-life.
Posted by Richard Berg (Member # 133) on :
Others have already said it. Nuclear power is a much better choice than coal.
Posted by Alexa (Member # 6285) on :
I just don't want to deal with any giant spiders.
Posted by Bokonon (Member # 480) on :
Nuclear is still a non-renewable energy source. If we replaced all our current power plants with nuclear plants, we'd by ourselves a couple of centuries, but we'd just be putting our great-(*)-grandchildren into the same bind we are heading towards today.
We should go fission, but not stop alternate fuel source research.
-Bok
Posted by Bokonon (Member # 480) on :
Actually, don't breeder reactors create MORE nasty nuclear waste, albeit with much shorter half-lifes? Breeders are used to create weapons-grade nuclear material, right?
-Bok
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
A breeder reactor produces large quantities of pretty much harmless (when properly taken care of) substances, and a small quantity of weapons grade substances, from an input of a large quantity of very harmful material.
[ May 11, 2004, 11:55 AM: Message edited by: fugu13 ]
Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
Bok, it's non renewable, the same as fossil fuels, which have done good service for a century now. Fusion is also non-renewable, when once we turn all the hydrogen of all the world's oceans into helium. All energy sources are ultimately non-renewable. All are useful for a time only, or at a certain level, and then we must find new and different ones. Can we afford to skip over fission seeing how there is not yet a single fusion power plant in operation? When will there be one? Will it be in time? We really don't know. I think we need to take another look at fission power plants. The new generation is safer than ever before. When people flip the switch and there is no electricity there, their priorities may change. Witness the complete change of attitudes of Californians after a few rotating blackouts.
Posted by Yank (Member # 2514) on :
The problem with radiation is that it creates monsters that go *bump* in the night.
Posted by Stan the man (Member # 6249) on :
A carefully constructed fission plant can last for over 25 years. I'm not sure about commercial plants. Radiation.....the shielding placed around American designed reactors keeps levels down to almost nothing. The old Soviet design however......... Not going there.
Nukes are Mucho Expenso. They are about half the cost of a nuke powered carrier, if not more than half. The government designs the shielding for a specific max allowable. However, because the government overdoes so much, there is almost no radiation leakage.
Posted by Yank (Member # 2514) on :
I'm told that your computer monitor gives off more radiation than a power plant. Is this true?
P.S.- I was bumping the thread, not making an opinion statement.
[ May 12, 2004, 06:29 PM: Message edited by: Yank ]
Posted by Stan the man (Member # 6249) on :
I knew that Yank, and it was funny. I was replying to the other's. I operate a nuke plant so it is a small personal thing for me. It is a fun job. I own machinery larger than conversion vans (does hulk impression of bulging muscles. Doesn't have bulging muscles). An it gets exciting at times.
Just the other day we had a pump (one that was not an important part of our plant) eat itself. It had just decided to give up. OOOOH yeah, it was great watching my supervisor running up the stairs screaming "get the hell away! It's gonna kill us all!"
It didn't. It just had a temper tantrum. So we shut her down. And she now lays in pieces all over the deck. We'll get to work on it later when the parts come in.
Anyway, I like the idea of going into fusion power as a new source. It just isn't feasable right now to contain it. And ya probably do get more radiation from a computer screen than ya do a nuke plant. I know I get more from the sun. Don't forget that we ourselves naturally give off a very very very vewy small doseage of radiation.
Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
An MRI specialist doctor once told me that the highest occupational radiation exposure in the U.S. was airline pilots and flight attendants. They spend so much time above the thickest part of the atmosphere that they get more cosmic ray exposure from space. I thought that was interesting.
Posted by Stan the man (Member # 6249) on :
I knew there was a reason I hated flying.
Posted by ssywak (Member # 807) on :
Except what do you do when it's time to close down the nuclear plant? Where do you put the pieces? What do you do with the spent fuel rods? So far, the best we can think of is to hide them in the ground in the Nevada desert. For over 10,000 years.
My favorite nuclear plant story: Shoreham, Long Island. After LILCO decided to cancel the project (putting a nuclear power plant in one of the most densely poplated counties in the country, with a severe transportation bottleneck in the case of an emergency, and build it on sand, no less), they wanted to "just try it out."
I repeat: the project was CANCELLED. The powerplant had never seen a single radioactive element. It was pefectly "clean" (from a radiation point of view). They could dismantle it, and dispose of it using traditional methods.
So, what do you do? You fire it up! You dirty it up! You make it so that there is no proper way to decommision the plant, except for ENCASING IT IN CONCRETE FOR 10,000 YEARS! All for what? To prove that your design would have worked if only the %^#^% NIMBY jerks in Suffolk county would have let you?
Mankind is currently way too stupid to be allowed to use nuclear power as a long-term solution. Think of that the next time you see some schmuck in a Hummer or some suburb-rated 4WD SUV. He's eating your future.
--Steve
Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
We should put the waste on rockets and shoot it into the sun. Or try to get into the mantle of the earth. I think the Sun is the better way to go.
But yes that is the big problem. There actually are plutonium breeder reactors that can use the waste from other reactors after it has been processed. But we aren't allowed to recycle spent nuclear fuel right now because of a stupid act of congress. It all has to go in the ground. And the real problem is all of the unscrupulous people who would like to get their hands on that waste to make it into weapons.
But overall I'm pro nuclear power and think we should be building more plants instead of gradually decommisioning the ones we've got. Electric cars don't do any net good on the environment if they are consuming electricity coming from coal burning power plants, no mater how clean they can make the coal emisions, you are still contributing to the green house effect.
AJ
Posted by Dan_raven (Member # 3383) on :
If our leaders can't agree on how to pronounce Nuclear Energy, do we really want them in charge of creating it?
Posted by Mabus (Member # 6320) on :
Banna, it's precisely those breeder reactors we're not allowed to use that would need to be used to make weapons (other than dirty bombs and primitive bombs like the Little Boy). Which is why we're not allowed to use them. Now, maybe that's an adequate reason and maybe it's not, but it's not a completely nonsensical policy.
Posted by Black Mage (Member # 5800) on :
I like swords.
Welcome to Corneria.
Posted by AvidReader (Member # 6007) on :
According to my dad, very little of the nuclear waste is dangerous. Most of it is the little paper suits they wore in the reactor to keep radioactive dust from settling on their skin and burning them. Since the plant switched to cloth suits, there's only a fraction of the waste there used to be.
Also, 10,000 is the time for uranium to decay. Most of what's left in the rods isn't uranium. The point of fission is to break it in half. So mostly you have cobalt. That'll decay down into iron or something silly, but it releases a huge gamma ray doing it. It's the gamma rays from the cobalt that are actually dangerous and need to be put away safely. I forget the half life, but it's more like 60 years.
So since we've already blown up nuclear bombs in the Nevada desert and contaminated the site, why not bury some cobalt bits under Yucca Mountain? What difference does it make now? The place has already been irradiated.
Boy was I off! The half life of cobalt is only 5 something years. It must have been 60 to not be dangerous anymore. Half Life of Cobalt
(edited for link)
[ May 14, 2004, 07:29 PM: Message edited by: AvidReader ]
Posted by ssywak (Member # 807) on :
Avid,
You're kidding, right?
The only waste is these little, paper suits?
The "spent" uranium-loaded fuel rods remain radioactive for ten-thousand years or more after they have done their job providing a fission source. They have to be stored in giant steel and concrete casks, or in huge pools of water, in order to control the radiation they give off. You can't store too many of them together, or too closely, because they start to cascade, and you get a dangerous increase in energies.
(It's neither a government-sponsored "All is well" report, nor a chicken-little "We're all going to die!" diatribe)
Plus, I've done some research into this very issue, so I'd say the report is pretty factual. And I can say, without a moment's hesitation, that they are not just storing little paper suits in those things.
[ May 14, 2004, 11:49 PM: Message edited by: ssywak ]
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
Uh, you don't store them in water. Water increases the likelihood of a reaction.
Posted by ssywak (Member # 807) on :
quote:The spent fuel is typically stored near the reactor in a deep pool of water called the spent fuel pool.
Posted by Stan the man (Member # 6249) on :
ssywak is right about the water. I have talked to a few civilian plants about this (they were trying to hire me).
no it does not increase the likelihood of a reaction necessarilly (sp?). However, my memory of reactor physics is escaping me after that much, as I am just a lowly mechanic. I don't operate the reactor at all.
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
Well, it does reduce critical mass, but apparently that can be compensated for:
Moderators (not website moderators, silly) slow the reactions down, causing an apparent reduction in critical mass (or, looking at it another way, increasing the critical mass needed to actually hit, well, critical mass). Boron, Graphite and heavy water are used for this. The water in the storage pools is, to my knowledge, not deuterium (heavy water).
But we're just splitting atoms here, the bigger question remains unanswered.
Posted by Stan the man (Member # 6249) on :
Ya know ssywak, I just looked up yer profile. ME Huh? I'm shootin fer the same thing as soon as I get the time to start working on it. Oh and tutoring. I need to find a math tutor.
Posted by ssywak (Member # 807) on :
Yep. Mechanical Engineer. You should definitely give it a go.
Trig & Algebra! I took math courses in college dealing with triple integrals, curl functions, and God-knows-what else. 98% of what I use on a daily basis is trigonometry & algebra. I force myself to do an integration once a year just to keep those particular neurons in condition.
Posted by Stan the man (Member # 6249) on :
When I get to NY for instructor duty I plan on attending RPI. The navy has a hook up with them for nuke trained personnel.
Posted by littlemissattitude (Member # 4514) on :
I'd actually feel a lot better about nuclear power if they could manage to not build the plants practically on top of earthquake faults (Diablo Canyon, near San Luis Obispo) or right next to the freeway (San Onofre, between Los Angeles and San Diego). I mean, if you've got a good arm, you could stand on the shoulder of the southbound lanes and hit the containment buildings at San Onofre with a rock. I think that makes it pretty vulnerable.
This is why I am a bit nervous about nuclear power plants:
quote:The Santa Susana Sodium Reactor Experimental (SRE) was a small sodium-cooled experimental reactor built by Southern California Edison and Atomics International at Santa Susana, near Moorpark in Ventura County. It came on line in April 1957, began feeding electricity to the grid on July 12, 1957, and closed February 1964. This reactor used sodium rather than water as a coolant and produced a maximum of about 7.5 megawatts (electric). It was considered as the country's first civilian nuclear plant. On July 26, 1959, the SRE suffered a partial core meltdown. Ten of 43 fuel assemblies were damaged due to lack of heat transfer and radioactive contamination was released. For more info about the plant, go to: http://www.nuclearwitness.org/03_calif_nukes/03_santa/01_santa_timeline.htm The plant has subsequently been dismantled.
(From: "Nuclear Energy in California", at this site )
I lived within sight of the installation where this reactor was all during the time it was in operation. When the partial meltdown and its release of contamination occurred, nobody bothered to tell anyone who might be affected by it. Gee, thanks, guys. I didn't know anything about it until a few years ago - and my family was good friends with a man who worked up there and lived up the street from us.
[ May 15, 2004, 12:54 PM: Message edited by: littlemissattitude ]
Posted by Stan the man (Member # 6249) on :
ouch. site under construction and a link that doesn't work.
Posted by AvidReader (Member # 6007) on :
I don't know anything about the sodium based coolant system, but assuming it used the same containment building as everyone else in the US, they did tell everyone who was effected: the plant workers.
A meltdown means the operators have screwed up. They have a big gooey mess, the NRC breathing down their necks, and a financial disaster. That's it. It doesn't do anything better or worse reaction wise than it did before. However, it is really hot and really radioactive. It needs to be stored for a while and being liquid makes that difficult. Not impossible, just difficult.
I don't know if I could find a schematic of the containment building for you online and I'm half afraid to try. Basically, there's a giant concrete shell sitting around the reactor on all sides. As I said in the 9/11 accountability thread, my dad mentioned long before 9/11 that a plane could fly into the reactor and not do more than cosmetic damage.
The other thing to remember is there's two different chain reaction designations. Critical mass means you have enough uranium to sustain a chain reaction. Point super critical means you have enough to blow up. A power plant has critical mass. Trying to rig it for point super critical would take some serious doing. You'd either have to bring in your own uranium to add, in which case why would you bother, or try to salvage enough uranium from the pool. As I said before, fission splits the atom in half. You don't have a lot of uranium left when you're done.
Basically, power plants have been designed so that anyone with enough firepower to destroy it has better things to do with their time. It's much easier to hit the transfer stations to disrupt power. Not to mention cheaper.
Posted by littlemissattitude (Member # 4514) on :
The link works now. Excuse me for being human. As far as the link within the quote - I'm not responsible for that, it was part of the quote and that's all.
And as far as only the workers being affected by the partial meltdown - I beg to differ. Radioactive contaminants were released into the environment. That means everyone in the surrounding area could have potentially been affected, and should have been notified. It isn't like the facility was secret or anything - it was reported in the Britannica Book of the Year the year it was constructed, so the existence of the facility was not classified. This secrecy crap just pisses me off no end. Especially since I was a very small child at the time, and vulnerable to the effects of radiation. I have a thyroid malfunction that can probably be traced to that accident, and I don't appreciate the attitude that it's just a cost of doing business.
Edited for punctuation.
[ May 15, 2004, 01:00 PM: Message edited by: littlemissattitude ]
Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
I just wanted to mention that I will do online math tutoring. Asking me to work math problems is like asking a dog to go for a walk.
I think the only reason so many people don't care for math is that those who do almost never go into education anymore, so that the first encounter people have nowadays with someone who loves math is in college when it might be too late. I happened to have 2 excellent math teachers (women leftover from an era when women couldn't be engineers or scientists but they could be teachers) in elementary school, and then my dad went back to school and got his math degree when I was about 10, so I would help him study (memorizing the things he needed to memorize) and then I would ask him what the heck it was all about when we were done, and we'd talk about it. That and I read Martin Gardner's Mathematical Games column in Scientific American for years. Math is extremely beautiful and cool. Like God's paint set, or something.
Anyway, to make an A in any math course 1) go to every class, 2) do all the homework, and 3) don't be afraid to stop the teacher during lectures and ask for more explanation of anything you don't understand. Doing 1) and 2) above gives you the authority to do that. Most of the time, the whole class will be grateful to you because they were confused too. The atmosphere of the class will change, too, if you will do this, to one in which the students participate, and it will become a much more fruitful and interesting class for everyone, including the teacher. Oh and there's also a 4). 4) The night before the test, work a few problems of each type, (particularly problems off old tests by that same teacher, if you can get them) and make a single sheet with the relevant formulas and things you need to memorize for the test. Read over this sheet several times before the test, and be sure you have it memorized. Save these sheets from each test for help studying for the midterm and/or final. Again before the final, work two or three problems of each type and make yourself a single master sheet, if you like, combining the information from all the previous sheets.
Keep that sheet with your textbook forever. (Never ever sell your books. They are worth much more to you than you could get for them. Make notes in them and put tabs on important pages, write crucial equations on the flyleaves, and so on. They will be a very valuable resource if you do that.)
There you go. ak's four simple rules for making As in Engineering. This also works for physics, chemistry, circuits, thermo, and all those problem solving type classes.
[ May 15, 2004, 01:11 PM: Message edited by: ak ]
Posted by Stan the man (Member # 6249) on :
Nice site, informative. Your human-ness may continue now. I didn't mean anything bad, I was just tryin to inform ya that the one at least didn't work. The rest it says are PWR (Pressurized Water Reactors). In my opinion these are safer, more so than a sodium rx. Of course it all depends on the operators, maintenance, QA, and durability of parts.
Hi ak. thanx. I have bought a few books to help me out until I go for the school. I wasn't tooooo bad at physics when I was in the training pipeline (as long as it dealt with splitting atoms I was fine). If they have me memorizing drawings/schematics/whatever I should have no problem. I have to do that now on a lot of different stuff in the plant.
[ May 15, 2004, 01:24 PM: Message edited by: Stan the man ]
Posted by Alucard... (Member # 4924) on :
Stan,
I actually laughed like a blooming idiot on your account of the bad pump and the supervisor going wonky. Thank you!
I remember as a child asking my mommy if she would buy me a "I survived 3 Mile Island" T-shirt and she said, "No.".
Otherwise, I think nuclear power is a viable option. The US Navy has the most successful nuclear reactor program in the world, mainly because of the purposely-cautious, redundant safety checks that prevent disaster. Their protocols are the benchmark of the field, IMO.
I also had this wrinkled, old Chemistry Professor in college who preferred nuclear power as a means of energy, and he was polite enough to not mention how politics and rival energy sources (oil) have intentionally given nuclear power a bad name.
Posted by Stan the man (Member # 6249) on :
Yeah, it wasn't funny at the time (I thought it was the gears on my engine). However, it wasn't longer than ten minutes afterwords and we were getting a few smiles and laughs about the whole thing. It was just a fire pump. I got plenty more.
Posted by AvidReader (Member # 6007) on :
lma, I was unaware that any reactors had ever released into the environment. Frankly, a news story about a lawyer suing Boeing on behalf of the families is a bit suspect to me. It could be true, but it could just be good press for his case, too.
quote: Barry Capello, Attorney: "The whole story to the public was you have nothing to worry about, nothing got off site. And that was complete bunk. Our experts have shown the accident in 1959 released more radiation, 15 to 200 times more to the environment, than three miles island. Yet our government covered it up."
Unfortunetly, that means none got out. No radiation escaped at TMI. Zero times anything is still zero.
If SRE was not a military reactor, then it was overseen by the NRC and all the anti-nuclear watch dog groups. Somehow I doubt a partial meltdown escaped their notice. I'm waiting to see more evidence before I believe this story.
Posted by JonnyNotSoBravo (Member # 5715) on :
Stan the Man-
quote:I operate a nuke plant so it is a small personal thing for me. It is a fun job.
quote:I don't operate the reactor at all.
Just like a mechanic to take credit for operating the whole plant without operating the reactor at all.
quote:ssywak is right about the water. I have talked to a few civilian plants about this (they were trying to hire me).
Yeah. Well, you should have remembered this from Physics and RP while in the training pipeline. It's just physics, not procedure. Silly mechanics.
quote:Ya know ssywak, I just looked up yer profile. ME Huh? I'm shootin fer the same thing as soon as I get the time to start working on it. Oh and tutoring. I need to find a math tutor.
How the hell did you get into the nuke program without good math scores?! I am so gonna have a talk with my local recruiters...
Here are some other comments I had:
quote:AvidReader wrote: Boy was I off! The half life of cobalt is only 5 something years. It must have been 60 to not be dangerous anymore.
I think you were thinking of what the isotope was. Co-60 is radioactive.
quote:ak wrote: Fission, though, is available now. Europe (France in particular) uses a far higher percentage of fission reactors for their electricity generation than do we, and they (with the notable exception of Chernobyl) have done so very safely.
I believe France is about 96% powered by nuclear power. They store the waste in "ponds" (doesn't that sound so nice and natural?). But the public is too scared about nuclear power to allow widespread usage of it here in the US. The "n" word makes people nervous and more likely to file lawsuits.
quote:ak also wrote: All energy sources are ultimately non-renewable.
Thinking of it philosophically, I'm not so sure this is true. Taking our entire universe to be an energy source, we have this law that energy can neither be created nor destroyed only changed in form. Thus, the universe has a constant supply of energy whether it be large (like stars) or small (like that contained in the covalent bonds between atoms).
Posted by Stan the man (Member # 6249) on :
quote:Just like a mechanic to take credit for operating the whole plant without operating the reactor at all.
But I do operate the main engines which are a huge source of power. They're my babies. Really huge babies.
quote: Silly mechanics
Snipe!!!! Damn it! I'm a snipe! Or ya can call me a knuckle dragger, wrench thrower, or grease monkey.
quote: How the hell did you get into the nuke program without good math scores?! I am so gonna have a talk with my local recruiters...
Ya forget what ya don't use. I can operate my side of the plant with no problems (excluding putting officers in their place) at all. The ET's operate the reactor, but they have a hard time understanding how my turbines work. All rates in my field are required to have a basic knowledege of everyone elses job. It is hard being in my division, because when they get training part of that training is in rate for them. For us, we are seperated by a big wall. Very little of the nuke training they give is in rate to us. We don't see, don't use it, and we lose that much.
quote: I think you were thinking of what the isotope was. Co-60 is radioactive
I know what it is. It is a big concern in the navy nuke program. I can't delv any further.
Any further comments? Please I would like to know. However, I go back to sea very soon so I will not be able to reply to you all that soon.
It must be hard to live your life with everyone bowing down to you and treating you as a god. I'm glad I am just a mortal human.
Edited to add: I said nuke plant. That does not specifically mean a Reactor. F-c-i-g moron.
[ May 15, 2004, 06:43 PM: Message edited by: Stan the man ]
Posted by JonnyNotSoBravo (Member # 5715) on :
quote:I know what it is. It is a big concern in the navy nuke program. I can't delv any further.
I know you know what it is. I was in the nuke program a few dozen moons ago. The comment was directed at AvidReader, not you.
quote:The ET's operate the reactor, but they have a hard time understanding how my turbines work. All rates in my field are required to have a basic knowledege of everyone elses job. It is hard being in my division, because when they get training part of that training is in rate for them. For us, we are seperated by a big wall.
Ah, thank gawd for the EMs then who understand how the turbines work (qualified throttleman, SG watch) and operate the reactor(qualified SRO). All that and LD, too. EMs rewl! You couldn't possibly guess what my rate was, could you?
quote:Edited to add: I said nuke plant. That does not specifically mean a Reactor. F-c-i-g moron.
Do I have to start adding smilies so you know when I'm joking? Gosh, you start being critical and the namecalling just pops right out, doesn't it? Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
quote: quote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ak also wrote: All energy sources are ultimately non-renewable. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thinking of it philosophically, I'm not so sure this is true. Taking our entire universe to be an energy source, we have this law that energy can neither be created nor destroyed only changed in form. Thus, the universe has a constant supply of energy whether it be large (like stars) or small (like that contained in the covalent bonds between atoms). --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
JNSB, I know you've heard of the second law of thermodynamics. All energy sources are indeed non-renewable ultimately. Energy is neither created nor destroyed, but of course it's degraded into a lower form in which it's not available for use.
[ May 15, 2004, 08:02 PM: Message edited by: ak ]
Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
Weird, when I tried to edit that post above, I got something strange.
But anyway, I just wanted to add one more sentence:
Otherwise we'd be using perpetual motion machines for all our energy needs.
Posted by JonnyNotSoBravo (Member # 5715) on :
Yes, I've heard of the second law of thermodynamics. Let's state a couple of versions of it for those who may be following this thread, though.
i)Heat flows naturally from a hot object to a cold object;heat will not spontaneously from a cold object to a hot object. -R.J.E. Clausius (1812-1888) (also stated more formally as "No device is possible whose sole effect is to transfer heat from one system at one temperature into a second system ata a higher temperature")
ii)No device is possible whose sole effect is to transform a given amount of heat completely into work. - Kelvin-Planck statement of the second law of thermodynamics.
iii)The total entropy of any system plus that of its environment increases as a result of any natural process: delta S = delta S(sys) + delta S(env > 0. (S stands for entropy which is a quantitative measure of the disorder of a system)
Okay, now that we have the fundamentals on our plate, we can talk turkey (and further derail the thread on nuclear power).
quote:All energy sources are indeed non-renewable ultimately. Energy is neither created nor destroyed, but of course it's degraded into a lower form in which it's not available for use.
I guess this is saying that Entropy is the form in which it's not available for use? But how do we know we can't use Entropy? How do we know that there aren't unnatural(manmade) processes that can harness it? (I made the "sole" and "natural" parts of the second law bold to point out their limitations)
Maybe this is just my naive way of thinking that if there is energy there, it can be used. Perhaps the only way to use Entropy is to reverse time since entropy is "time's arrow."
Of course I bow to your superior knowledge in the field, and any insight you can give me is gratefully accepted. Perhaps we should move this to the "ask ak" thread...
Also, I realize there is no 100% efficient engine (see ii). And thus, no Juggernaut(perpetual motion machine).
Posted by Stan the man (Member # 6249) on :
JNSB
sorry, just going thru a lot lately. DPERM SUCKS!!!!! Then we get a whole 4 hours after that is over with then we leave again. Then go out to sea after a few days when that's over again. I don't mind going out to sea (in fact I love it. being single and all.), but they could give some of my guys a break to get things settled to go to CA.
Ya was an EM huh? Wire biter. Smooth Crotch.
We don't let y'all stand SG watch anymore. Ya can qualify it, but will never, ever, EVER stand it. We no longer trust smooth crotches to operate valves. Hey, they won't let me operate switches or breakers.
That's not to say any of us hasn't.
I have one thing going for me. I am really good at training up the conventionals and any new people we get in M-Div (The best there is). I can explain things in ways that the conventionals, who never went to an a-school, that makes it so much easier for them to understand. I hate it when I don't have anyone coming up to me for training. I feel useless and I slack off on things I should be doing. That is until my LCPO kindly reminds me of things he wants done. I work so much better under stress. I really ought to get my blood pressure checked sometime. I'm just afraid they'll tell me to relax more. If I were to do that I would get nothing done.
EDIT: They don't make a graemlin that does an innocent whistle. would fit better than rolling eyes.
[ May 15, 2004, 11:36 PM: Message edited by: Stan the man ]
Posted by Mabus (Member # 6320) on :
JNSB, of course it is true that our scientific "laws" are based on what we have observed. It's always theoretically possible that there is some way to get useful energy from heat and we just don't know about it because it's never occurred in our sight--nor has any process clearly related to it or it would turn up in the equations.
It's also possible, though, that some unexpected factor will reverse gravity today and the earth will fly apart. Don't count on it happening.
Posted by JonnyNotSoBravo (Member # 5715) on :
quote:It's always theoretically possible that there is some way to get useful energy from heat and we just don't know about it because it's never occurred in our sight--nor has any process clearly related to it or it would turn up in the equations.
Uh, yes of course it's possible to get useful energy from heat. Like heating up water to make steam to turn turbines. Also, heat can be transferred in 3 forms: conduction, convection and radiation. Ya know, I'm not sure if solar panels just collect the radiation from the light of the sun or the heat of the sun or both. Is there a difference between light photons and heat photons? Or maybe the light photons or just the photons at the right wavelength to produce the certain color of the light from the sun and are just part of the spectrum of photons produced by the superintense heat of the sun. ak, do you wanna help me out on this? You said we could ask you anything...
I'm thinking you meant a different word than heat, Mabus.
I am not suggesting anything contrary to our current laws, Mabus. I'm not suggesting that gravity will suddenly reverse itself - natural law doesn't work this way (the magnetic field of the Earth may be reversing itself naturally right now, but that's a different question). What I am suggesting is that there is no such thing as energy that is unusable.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:Uh, yes of course it's possible to get useful energy from heat. Like heating up water to make steam to turn turbines.
"Heating up water" only happens if the water's tempature is less than the heat source's.
I think Mabus was referring to extracting energy from heat that is merely present, not heat generated on the spot. In those cases, it is really chemical (or nuclear) energy being used to create energy, with heat as the medium of exchange.
Dagonee
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
"there is no such thing as energy that is unusable"
What you are missing in your reasoning is that energy is a relationship, not a substance.
Posted by skillery (Member # 6209) on :
Gotta have a source and a sink.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
Waste heat is rarely usable, because it tends to heat the local environment, rather than something useful. Steam-powered turbines work because the heat transfer is highly contained and focused.
Only EM radiation comes in photons. While radiant heat (infrared) does fit this bill, most heat energy (on planetary surfaces, at least) is transferred via conduction or convection -- moving molecules, not free radiant energy. Far more difficult to get any useful energy transfer.
Heat does NOT produce EM radiation (with the single exception of infrared). The sun's EM spectrum is produced by the raging magnetic and electrical fields within it (specifically in the corona, I think).
"Loose" or environmental heat is not (generally) usable energy, because it would require more energy to trap/focus it than would be gained.
[edit:typo]
[ May 17, 2004, 06:45 PM: Message edited by: rivka ]
Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
Yes, to answer your question about photons, they are all electromagnetic radiation, including visible light but also infrared (heat radiation, lower energy than visible light), radio waves, (all tv broadcasts, radio broadcasts, radar, microwaves, etc.) as well as ultra-violet, xrays, hard xrays, gamma rays (higher energy). All these are the same, just in different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. The blue direction is higher energy than the red direction.
The confusion you have about heat being used as a useful energy source is indeed to do with entropy. You see, heat will never flow spontaneously "uphill" from a colder thing to a hotter thing. You can pump it uphill at a cost of greater energy usage somewhere else (like in an air conditioner or refrigerator), but it won't just flow on its own. So the ultimate usefulness has been extracted from heat once everything in the environment is the same temperature. You have to have a big enough temperature DIFFERENCE, to be able to get any useful work out of heat.
So if you have a swimming pool full of water that's boiling hot, that may represent the same energy as a lake full of water that's barely warmer than ambient, yet you can't use the energy in the lake, because there's just no decent amount of temperature drop there. The boiling hot swimming pool could be used in a number of different ways, for instance to power an absorption chiller, or turn a turbine. The tepid lake is just not useful. The difference is entropy. The entropy of the universe is always increasing, and eventually the universe would reach heat death (a state of maximum entropy) in which nothing more could happen ever, if it weren't going to fly apart long before then due to dark energy. Posted by JonnyNotSoBravo (Member # 5715) on :
quote:Dagonee wrote: "Heating up water" only happens if the water's tempature is less than the heat source's.
Yes, I know this. See where I posted about the 2nd LoT.
quote:aspectre wrote: What you are missing in your reasoning is that energy is a relationship, not a substance.
While I grant this is true when you're talking about KE and PE,rotational KE and translation KE, etc. etc., is it really true when you're talking about photons? Aren't photons pure energy at different wavelengths and exist independent of the objects that create or receive them? So doesn't that mean that energy is more than "just" a relationship? I agree that energy is not a substance - there aren't any particles in it to grab onto.
ak,
On the subject of entropy then, is gravity a force working in opposition to entropy (I'm not saying entropy is a force)? I mean, gravity seems to pull things together, while entropy is a tendency for things to spread out. So if we managed to create a miniature microscopic blackhole and used it to bring a lot of things together, wouldn't it tend to cause the growth of total entropy of the universe to slow from its natural rate?
Side note: I used to have this vision of the universe as a giant rubberband, where the big bang(something caused by/related to entropy?) made everything spread out and then gravity caused everything to "snap" back together as the velocity of the expansion of the universe slowed(decelerated due to the force of gravity) and came back together. And then the process started all over again. Unfortunately, now we know the universe is still accelerating its expansion (due to dark energy, as ak alluded?), scientists think it can't snap together because it passed the critical point where it would have to be at zero acceleration for gravity to be able to pull it back together. Which ruins a really neat rubberband theory. But scientists were really excited about finding out the universe was accelerating its expansion instead of decelerating like they had previously thought.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
I know you know this. Which is why I thought you were taking Mabus's quote out of context, and why I said, "I think Mabus was referring to extracting energy from heat that is merely present, not heat generated on the spot. In those cases, it is really chemical (or nuclear) energy being used to create energy, with heat as the medium of exchange."
Posted by Mabus (Member # 6320) on :
Thanks to everyone who clarified while I wasn't paying attention to this thread (I forgot I posted here). Yes, there are ways to extract energy from heat if you have a source and a sink; no, that is not normally the case with waste heat.
Oh, and sadly black holes do not decrease entropy. In fact, the radius of the event horizon is a measure of the entropy within the black hole (as per Stephen Hawking). The bigger the black hole gets, the more entropy it represents.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
quote: While I grant this is true when you're talking about KE and PE,rotational KE and translation KE, etc. etc., is it really true when you're talking about photons? Aren't photons pure energy at different wavelengths and exist independent of the objects that create or receive them?
Photons cannot be at rest -- they ALWAYS travel at c. So there is still a KE involved.
Posted by JonnyNotSoBravo (Member # 5715) on :
Sorry, rivka. Guess I was being vague. I meant the KE of the objects that created or received the photons, not the photons themselves (although, if the photons have massless particles, is there really KE according to the equation (1/2)mv^2?).
Mabus- Sorry! I guess your first post kinda confused me because I didn't know you were talking about "waste heat." Dag cleared some stuff up, tho.
quote:Mabus wrote: Oh, and sadly black holes do not decrease entropy. In fact, the radius of the event horizon is a measure of the entropy within the black hole (as per Stephen Hawking). The bigger the black hole gets, the more entropy it represents.
I guess the last part makes sense - the bigger the event horizon gets, the more quantum microstates that can exist in the blackhole. But it seems illogical that when a black hole absorbs a lot of "free floating" material, thereby reducing the number of quantum states it can exist in by restricting its movement, that it does not reduce entropy. Maybe you can clear it up for me or point me towards a book or website that explains this. I'm sure I'm just not getting the entire picture.
Dagonee - I don't get why you would repeat something that you know I already know, ya know? But seriously, I didn't understand why you included the first sentence, when your second and third sentences would have stood alone by themselves. The only reason I was talking about heat with regards to water and turbines is because I didn't know Mabus was referring specifically to "waste heat" or just heat at a low enough temperature where it's impractical to find a sink for it.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
No, not vague. You claimed that photons have energy separate from their relationship to anything else. But the fact that they have a specific speed and KE indicates that is false. They clearly have a specific relationship to something.
As far as the kinetic energy of photons, 1/2 mv² is not relevant. I've forgotten the relevant calculus, but they seem to know it here.
Posted by Mabus (Member # 6320) on :
Jonny, I got the stuff about black holes from Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of the Universe. He goes into some depth but doesn't talk about the quantum states you mentioned, so I'm not sure he'll answer all your questions. You might try looking at some of his other books.
Posted by JonnyNotSoBravo (Member # 5715) on :
quote:No, not vague. You claimed that photons have energy separate from their relationship to anything else. But the fact that they have a specific speed and KE indicates that is false. They clearly have a specific relationship to something.
I feel like we're arguing semantics here. My argument is that photons are not JUST a relationship between objects. Of course they have a relationship to other things - lots of objects that exist independently still have relationships. Independence does not mean you can't interact or can't have velocity relative to something else. Or maybe you're saying something totally different...I dunno.
quote:As far as the kinetic energy of photons, 1/2 mv² is not relevant. I've forgotten the relevant calculus, but they seem to know it here.
Ah, thanks. I knew I wasn't being precise with the equation. Yet the equation that is being linked to KE = m(subscript 0)c^2(gamma-1) still seems to depend on rest mass (m(subscript 0)). Since light has no rest mass can it really be said to have kinetic energy? Or is this leading to a question of what is 0 times infinity?
Thanks Mabus!
Posted by Black Mage (Member # 5800) on :
quote: I like swords.
Welcome to Corneria.
Please tell me some one realized this wasn't just a stupid brain fart on my part.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
I don't think we're arguing semantics. Light/photons has the energy it does because of its motion, just as a moving ball has energy because of its motion. (Yeah, yeah, quantum effects and stuff matter too, but on a basic level, I think my statement is true, neh?)
As far as solving the energy equation, I think it does come down to infinity and zeroes. However, the part of my brain that does calculus is gibbering in a dark corner. Look here, they seem to know what they're talking about. And there's always this theory.
Posted by Glenn Arnold (Member # 3192) on :
quote: Heat does NOT produce EM radiation (with the single exception of infrared). The sun's EM spectrum is produced by the raging magnetic and electrical fields within it (specifically in the corona, I think).
Incandescent lightbulbs disagree with you. Heat up any object and it will emit visible light. Heat it up enough and it will give off UV. The "color temperature" of a light source is a measure of the ratio of specific photons released at a given temperature. Infrared is merely a subset of the possible frequencies. As the object heats, it emits more higher frequency photons, and the light appears whiter.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
It's my understanding that the EM radiation produced by the heat of an object is based solely on its tampature. Is that correct?
I know that the EM emitted due to other reactions in an object will mix with the heat-caused EM, but for just the heat EM, is it based solely on tempature?
Dagonee
Posted by JonnyNotSoBravo (Member # 5715) on :
Well, where do EM waves come from? The acceleration of any charged particle will produce an EM wave. Well, what is temperature? Temperature is the measure of the average molecular KE of an object. Heating up an object changes the temperature, changing the KE, thus accelerating the particles, producing EM waves.
Of course, at a given temperature the particles are still accelerating and decelerating to a certain degree due to their molecules' vibrational, rotational and translation energies, and thus produce EM waves.
From my physics book (Giancoli, 2000):
quote:We saw in Chapter 19 that all objects emit radiation whose total intensity is proportional to the fourth power of the Kelvin temperature (T^4). At normal temperatures, we are not aware of this electromagnetic radiation because of its low intensity. ... As the temperature increases, the electromagnetic radiation emitted by bodies is most intense at higher and higher frequencies.
For those of you who don't remember the EM spectrum, as frequency gets higher the kind of radiation proceeds in this order: radio waves, microwaves, IR, visible light, UV, X-rays, Gamma rays (like the kind David Banner used to turn himself into the Incredible Hulk). So yes, Glenn Arnold is completely correct and somehow I let myself be swayed by someone's argument without asking for sources...who was that? *scrolls* GRRRRR! Rivka! High school science teachers, I tell ya!
[ May 31, 2004, 01:55 PM: Message edited by: JonnyNotSoBravo ]
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
At least it wasn't physics.
Posted by Alucard... (Member # 4924) on :
So does this mean Nuclear Power is good or bad? Economically viable or a waste of funds and what are the environmental concerns? And should we bury our nuclear waste in Canada or Mexico?
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Hi ak. thanx. I have bought a few books to help me out until I go for the school. I wasn't tooooo bad at physics when I was in the training pipeline (as long as it dealt with splitting atoms I was fine). If they have me memorizing drawings/schematics/whatever I should have no problem. I have to do that now on a lot of different stuff in the plant.![[Wink]](wink.gif)
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Oops. ![[Evil Laugh]](graemlins/evillaugh.gif)
J/K