Nuclear Energy

I am curious to know people's views on nuclear energy.
How do people feel about worldwide efforts to achieve nuclear fusion? How do people feel about our current state of fission? Do you believe that nuclear has no place in certain areas? ( I.E. naval vessels/aircrafts/ trains/ shuttles and space stations/ etc.) Are there any reactors or materials you take issue with? What causes any reservations if you have any? How do people feel about waste disposal?
I will be doing another one of these posts on other forms of energy.
I am curious to see what people think. This is specifically on nuclear energies and is not limited to problems but extends to any offered solutions, theories, or inquiries.
I think nukes are the future and fusion is the goal. New designs for fission will take us there in the meantime. The waste issue is a NIMBY thing, there are plenty of safe economical options.
What options do you believe are the best in nuclear waste disposal? I also Completely agree with the future of energy sitting in nuclear fusion.

"What options do you believe are the best in nuclear waste disposal?"

send it out to the sun for recycling as solar power... :)

but that would be economically too expensive...
much cheaper to dig a hole in a 3rd world country and just forget bout it...

So something that was kind of a mind blowing moment for me, was someone who explained how nuclear waste... if it is dangerous.... by definition that means it has usable fuel in it.

It's like this. If you have fire pit, and you pick up a log, and it's still red and hot under it.... by definition it has fuel that can still be burning. That's why it is red and hot.

Ash doesn't burn. And Ash is not hot.

If nuclear waste is emitting enough radiation to harm you, it by definition, has enough radio active material to be used in a reactor.

You follow?

The reason that fuel rods are removed from the reactor, is because the ratio of fuel material to non-fissile material is too low. It's so low, that it can't produce enough reaction to continue producing power.

This is like the fire pit example I mentioned above, where the ash build up around the wood, has prevented enough oxygen to maintain a flame.

This is why you move the logs around, shake off the ash, and then it starts burning again.

Same thing with nuclear fuel rods. The amount of non-burnable material (so to speak) is too high, preventing the burnable nuclear material from burning.

Now some might point out, well that's the whole problem, thus it is waste.

But wait..... Uranium itself is that way when you dig it out of the ground. This is why you have 'enrich' the Uranium.

People think that "enriching" Uranium means we are doing something to the Uranium to make it radioactive, but in reality, all we are doing is filtering out the non-burnable material from the burnable material. This is actually all 'enrichment' is.

You take some Uranium that contains mostly inactive material, and some reactive material. You remove a bunch of inactive material, resulting in a higher concentration of reactive material.

In short, they remove the ash from the burnable wood.

Well the same can be true of nuclear waste. All you have to do, is remove the inactive material from the nuclear waste... and.... you have a usable fuel rod again, and some waste that is non-active. That non-active waste, is largely safe.

Again, if you actually used up all of the burnable nuclear fuel in a nuclear reactor... then by definition, it wouldn't be radioactive, and a hazard for humans or anything else, when it was removed.

We need to start mass reprocessing of nuclear fuel. Most of the nuclear waste that exists, can all be reprocessed into usable nuclear fuel.

" You follow? "

yes i do andy...
i really do...

i follow your enthusiasms and excitement...
i once was sharing every bit of it...
that was when i was as young...

then the reality did set in...

i was hoping to see humans achieve things beyond my imagination...
dont get me wrong, they have and i still find them remarkable...
but they also failed... miserably at times...
and this particular subject, so far, has been one of those...

nuclear energy was such a prominent achievement for humans that could have changed the whole planet...
yet it has been such a disappointment ended up rather changing more of us deep inside...

when you start your paragraph with "All you have to do", i also share the assumption of the simplicity of the task at hand, which is reusing spent fuel...
because first of all we have the technology to be ale to do that..
so it really is as simple as "All you have to do"...

but at the same time, it is not...

hence you dont see it being scaled...
hence why you still see the gigantic market for fresh uranium when world has plenty amount of waste to reprocess...
because of the economics of it all...
because the fantasies some people (like your signature suggests) still believe in where ceos (for some reason) prioritize interest of the people rather than their profit margins, is simply not true...
and there have been plenty of attempts to make use of spent fuel economical, which is all what matters to make it feasible...

i dont know any success stories as of yet but plenty failures...
and maybe you know some that already succeeded that i am not aware...
i think at some point it will be possible...

but appears to me we will need to dig a lot of holes in 3rd world countries before that happens...


So here's the problem.... reactors that run on MOX fuel, already exist. They have existed for decades on end. The UK has one, France has one, pretty sure India has one, and so does Russia.

We're not talking about some mythical future tech, risky venture.... we're talking about things that already exist in the world today, and have been operating safely for 50 years plus.

So why don't we have one in the US? Again, just covered all that. Regulations and government restrictions have made starting up a reprocessing and MOX power plant, horribly expensive with their burdensome controls and hindrances.

This is what drives me crazy talking with some people......

I say "Government is the reason technology has not advanced, and we can't do cool things"

Someone says "Like what things?"

I say "(insert something cool here like reprocessing nuclear waste into usable fuel)"

Someone says "That will never work, because look no one has been able to do it"

I say ".......... did I not just say the reason we can't do cool things, is because of government?"

Yeah, I said that.

By the way, I'm not sure what you mean by digging a hole in a 3rd world country. That would be the absolute worst possible idea. You want to dig a hole, in unstable 3rd world countries, where known terrorist organizations could get hold of radioactive waste and make a dirty bomb out of it?

We should leave it in the Yucca mountains as planned. There is zero reason not to, until such a time as we stop being stupid about nuclear power, and reprocess the spent fuel into usable fuel, and start making power with it.

the only reason some countries are running plants on re-processed fuel is because they are "socialist" and they like to bend the market backwards against its will with tons of regulations and mandates, arguing the environmental gains outweigh the extra operational costs...

if running these plants were any profitable, they would already be operating in the US.,..

Debatable. We actually had plans to build a power plants based on reprocessing spent fuel. They were canceled in the 1970s, when Carter banned reprocessing.

In the 1990s, they attempted to restart the project, but due to the cost of regulations, were unable to do it.

So my question to you is... what changed between the late 60s early 70s, that private companies were going to make a reprocessing facility and reactor to use that fuel... that in the 1990s, no one is willing to build it?

Is it possible.... I'm just asking... Is it possible that regulations passed from Carter to Bill Clinton's time in office, have made it impossible to reprocess fuel profitably?

I think that is a real possibility.

No I'm not opposed to what you are saying. Could be true. I don't know.

But quite often you levy hard regulations on companies, and then say "see? It's not profitable!".

Well yeah... if you pass a regulation that makes it unprofitable to do something, no one will do it.

Maybe part of the problem was that the government decided to listen to Adm Rickover (who ran the Navy nuclear program), and he showed them where there were possible pitfalls. By the way, the U.S. Navy has the safest nuclear program ever developed.

Well yes and no. There is an automatic assumption by left-wing people, that all people in business are automatically evil, and actually think they want people to die. At the same time, they automatically assume people in government are divine and looking out for the best interest of the public.

Which is ironic since we have about 4,000 years of history showing the reverse of that. For every one bad person business, there are millions who are doing the best for themselves and everyone around them.

And for every one good politician, there are tens of thousands that could not possibly careless about the public, actually belittle and denigrate the public, but fake enough to convince idiots they really care.... just as long as you vote for them.

View attachment 437468

Pretty accurate picture if you ask me.

So yes, the politicians trusted Hyman G. Rickover. And possibly that was the right move at that time.

But now life has moved forward, technology is vastly different, and we need to allow nuclear technology to move forward too.

Yes, Rickover did in fact run the safest nuclear program in the world has ever seen. Part of that is because he had dictator powers over the program. Now that isn't a negative. That is not an insult. I'm saying he could do literally anything he wanted, and have nearly unlimited resources to do it.

Power companies do not have that ability. They have a half dozens different regulatory agencies making demands on them, and of course limited by what funds they have, and how much they can sell the power for.

Little different when you can just go to Congress, and say "we need more", than a business that naturally has to make ends meet. Companies (contrary to left-wing claims), can't just come and demand more money from you the consumer, unlike government which has police and the IRS, and the ability to just confiscate your property if you don't pay up.

That isn't to minimize what Hyman G. Rickover did, but I remember in the 1990s, we had people standing around saying "We can send a spaceship to the moon, but we can't make a car that gets 100 miles on a gallon of gas".... as if companies have billions of dollars from the tax payers through government, to make 100 mpg cars.

So I'm not entirely sure how comparable the two are.


all people in business are automatically evil, and actually think they want people to die

not evil and want people to die, but i think we are safe to assume they are in for profits alone...

because otherwise they would not be called a "business"...

they would be called a "charity"...

and i think thats where people on the right are confused...
they think "businesses" are just some "charities" that are obligated to watch out for them and hand out those wages so they can keep up with their comfortable living standards...

But everyone is in it for profit. I would not go to work, if I didn't profit from doing so.
I sure would not spend my money to start a business, spending a million dollars to open a single McDonald's franchise for example, if I didn't make a profit.

Nothing in this entire world, that exists, exists without profit.

No charity would exist without profits either.

Further, no one anywhere on the right is confused about business and charity. No one anywhere on the right thinks that businesses are obligated to watch out for them, nor hand out those wages so we can keep our comfortable living standards.

Nothing you said is even remotely true, nor supportable. If you want to debate, that's fine. But if your idea of debating is to just making up random crap that no one anywhere believes, and claim they do.... makes for a boring conversation of you saying unicorns and rainbows, while I point out they don't exist over and over.

Try making a real argument.
 
This company's reactors have been US certified and they are on track to have small scale nuclear reactors online within a few years. IMO California had better stop their green dreaming and be all-in for these new generation nuclear plants.

I was looking at that. Seems very do-able. There have been numerous historical examples of small scale profitable power generation facilities. It's interesting to see the idea coming back. I'll be curious to see what the numbers end up.
 
Nukes equal dependency on a 'priesthood' of specialists who can run them safely. If they fail to show up (or make some kinds of demands), there is no alternative to capitulation or disaster. That alone makes them unacceptable. There are numerous other totally overwhelming reasons to reject them and go for safe renewables.
 
Nukes equal dependency on a 'priesthood' of specialists who can run them safely. If they fail to show up (or make some kinds of demands), there is no alternative to capitulation or disaster. That alone makes them unacceptable. There are numerous other totally overwhelming reasons to reject them and go for safe renewables.
Maybe that's true of the old obsolete light water reactors but there are other reactors that are not as hands on and will run with minimal supervision
 
Nukes equal dependency on a 'priesthood' of specialists who can run them safely. If they fail to show up (or make some kinds of demands), there is no alternative to capitulation or disaster. That alone makes them unacceptable. There are numerous other totally overwhelming reasons to reject them and go for safe renewables.
Yep, safety is no accident as they say. If it can't potentially kill people massively for the next million years or so? That's a huge plus.
 
I am curious to know people's views on nuclear energy.
How do people feel about worldwide efforts to achieve nuclear fusion? How do people feel about our current state of fission? Do you believe that nuclear has no place in certain areas? ( I.E. naval vessels/aircrafts/ trains/ shuttles and space stations/ etc.) Are there any reactors or materials you take issue with? What causes any reservations if you have any? How do people feel about waste disposal?
I will be doing another one of these posts on other forms of energy.
I am curious to see what people think. This is specifically on nuclear energies and is not limited to problems but extends to any offered solutions, theories, or inquiries.
I think nukes are the future and fusion is the goal. New designs for fission will take us there in the meantime. The waste issue is a NIMBY thing, there are plenty of safe economical options.
What options do you believe are the best in nuclear waste disposal? I also Completely agree with the future of energy sitting in nuclear fusion.

"What options do you believe are the best in nuclear waste disposal?"

send it out to the sun for recycling as solar power... :)

but that would be economically too expensive...
much cheaper to dig a hole in a 3rd world country and just forget bout it...

So something that was kind of a mind blowing moment for me, was someone who explained how nuclear waste... if it is dangerous.... by definition that means it has usable fuel in it.

It's like this. If you have fire pit, and you pick up a log, and it's still red and hot under it.... by definition it has fuel that can still be burning. That's why it is red and hot.

Ash doesn't burn. And Ash is not hot.

If nuclear waste is emitting enough radiation to harm you, it by definition, has enough radio active material to be used in a reactor.

You follow?

The reason that fuel rods are removed from the reactor, is because the ratio of fuel material to non-fissile material is too low. It's so low, that it can't produce enough reaction to continue producing power.

This is like the fire pit example I mentioned above, where the ash build up around the wood, has prevented enough oxygen to maintain a flame.

This is why you move the logs around, shake off the ash, and then it starts burning again.

Same thing with nuclear fuel rods. The amount of non-burnable material (so to speak) is too high, preventing the burnable nuclear material from burning.

Now some might point out, well that's the whole problem, thus it is waste.

But wait..... Uranium itself is that way when you dig it out of the ground. This is why you have 'enrich' the Uranium.

People think that "enriching" Uranium means we are doing something to the Uranium to make it radioactive, but in reality, all we are doing is filtering out the non-burnable material from the burnable material. This is actually all 'enrichment' is.

You take some Uranium that contains mostly inactive material, and some reactive material. You remove a bunch of inactive material, resulting in a higher concentration of reactive material.

In short, they remove the ash from the burnable wood.

Well the same can be true of nuclear waste. All you have to do, is remove the inactive material from the nuclear waste... and.... you have a usable fuel rod again, and some waste that is non-active. That non-active waste, is largely safe.

Again, if you actually used up all of the burnable nuclear fuel in a nuclear reactor... then by definition, it wouldn't be radioactive, and a hazard for humans or anything else, when it was removed.

We need to start mass reprocessing of nuclear fuel. Most of the nuclear waste that exists, can all be reprocessed into usable nuclear fuel.

" You follow? "

yes i do andy...
i really do...

i follow your enthusiasms and excitement...
i once was sharing every bit of it...
that was when i was as young...

then the reality did set in...

i was hoping to see humans achieve things beyond my imagination...
dont get me wrong, they have and i still find them remarkable...
but they also failed... miserably at times...
and this particular subject, so far, has been one of those...

nuclear energy was such a prominent achievement for humans that could have changed the whole planet...
yet it has been such a disappointment ended up rather changing more of us deep inside...

when you start your paragraph with "All you have to do", i also share the assumption of the simplicity of the task at hand, which is reusing spent fuel...
because first of all we have the technology to be ale to do that..
so it really is as simple as "All you have to do"...

but at the same time, it is not...

hence you dont see it being scaled...
hence why you still see the gigantic market for fresh uranium when world has plenty amount of waste to reprocess...
because of the economics of it all...
because the fantasies some people (like your signature suggests) still believe in where ceos (for some reason) prioritize interest of the people rather than their profit margins, is simply not true...
and there have been plenty of attempts to make use of spent fuel economical, which is all what matters to make it feasible...

i dont know any success stories as of yet but plenty failures...
and maybe you know some that already succeeded that i am not aware...
i think at some point it will be possible...

but appears to me we will need to dig a lot of holes in 3rd world countries before that happens...


So here's the problem.... reactors that run on MOX fuel, already exist. They have existed for decades on end. The UK has one, France has one, pretty sure India has one, and so does Russia.

We're not talking about some mythical future tech, risky venture.... we're talking about things that already exist in the world today, and have been operating safely for 50 years plus.

So why don't we have one in the US? Again, just covered all that. Regulations and government restrictions have made starting up a reprocessing and MOX power plant, horribly expensive with their burdensome controls and hindrances.

This is what drives me crazy talking with some people......

I say "Government is the reason technology has not advanced, and we can't do cool things"

Someone says "Like what things?"

I say "(insert something cool here like reprocessing nuclear waste into usable fuel)"

Someone says "That will never work, because look no one has been able to do it"

I say ".......... did I not just say the reason we can't do cool things, is because of government?"

Yeah, I said that.

By the way, I'm not sure what you mean by digging a hole in a 3rd world country. That would be the absolute worst possible idea. You want to dig a hole, in unstable 3rd world countries, where known terrorist organizations could get hold of radioactive waste and make a dirty bomb out of it?

We should leave it in the Yucca mountains as planned. There is zero reason not to, until such a time as we stop being stupid about nuclear power, and reprocess the spent fuel into usable fuel, and start making power with it.

the only reason some countries are running plants on re-processed fuel is because they are "socialist" and they like to bend the market backwards against its will with tons of regulations and mandates, arguing the environmental gains outweigh the extra operational costs...

if running these plants were any profitable, they would already be operating in the US.,..

Debatable. We actually had plans to build a power plants based on reprocessing spent fuel. They were canceled in the 1970s, when Carter banned reprocessing.

In the 1990s, they attempted to restart the project, but due to the cost of regulations, were unable to do it.

So my question to you is... what changed between the late 60s early 70s, that private companies were going to make a reprocessing facility and reactor to use that fuel... that in the 1990s, no one is willing to build it?

Is it possible.... I'm just asking... Is it possible that regulations passed from Carter to Bill Clinton's time in office, have made it impossible to reprocess fuel profitably?

I think that is a real possibility.

No I'm not opposed to what you are saying. Could be true. I don't know.

But quite often you levy hard regulations on companies, and then say "see? It's not profitable!".

Well yeah... if you pass a regulation that makes it unprofitable to do something, no one will do it.

Maybe part of the problem was that the government decided to listen to Adm Rickover (who ran the Navy nuclear program), and he showed them where there were possible pitfalls. By the way, the U.S. Navy has the safest nuclear program ever developed.

Well yes and no. There is an automatic assumption by left-wing people, that all people in business are automatically evil, and actually think they want people to die. At the same time, they automatically assume people in government are divine and looking out for the best interest of the public.

Which is ironic since we have about 4,000 years of history showing the reverse of that. For every one bad person business, there are millions who are doing the best for themselves and everyone around them.

And for every one good politician, there are tens of thousands that could not possibly careless about the public, actually belittle and denigrate the public, but fake enough to convince idiots they really care.... just as long as you vote for them.

View attachment 437468

Pretty accurate picture if you ask me.

So yes, the politicians trusted Hyman G. Rickover. And possibly that was the right move at that time.

But now life has moved forward, technology is vastly different, and we need to allow nuclear technology to move forward too.

Yes, Rickover did in fact run the safest nuclear program in the world has ever seen. Part of that is because he had dictator powers over the program. Now that isn't a negative. That is not an insult. I'm saying he could do literally anything he wanted, and have nearly unlimited resources to do it.

Power companies do not have that ability. They have a half dozens different regulatory agencies making demands on them, and of course limited by what funds they have, and how much they can sell the power for.

Little different when you can just go to Congress, and say "we need more", than a business that naturally has to make ends meet. Companies (contrary to left-wing claims), can't just come and demand more money from you the consumer, unlike government which has police and the IRS, and the ability to just confiscate your property if you don't pay up.

That isn't to minimize what Hyman G. Rickover did, but I remember in the 1990s, we had people standing around saying "We can send a spaceship to the moon, but we can't make a car that gets 100 miles on a gallon of gas".... as if companies have billions of dollars from the tax payers through government, to make 100 mpg cars.

So I'm not entirely sure how comparable the two are.


all people in business are automatically evil, and actually think they want people to die

not evil and want people to die, but i think we are safe to assume they are in for profits alone...

because otherwise they would not be called a "business"...

they would be called a "charity"...

and i think thats where people on the right are confused...
they think "businesses" are just some "charities" that are obligated to watch out for them and hand out those wages so they can keep up with their comfortable living standards...

But everyone is in it for profit. I would not go to work, if I didn't profit from doing so.
I sure would not spend my money to start a business, spending a million dollars to open a single McDonald's franchise for example, if I didn't make a profit.

Nothing in this entire world, that exists, exists without profit.

No charity would exist without profits either.

Further, no one anywhere on the right is confused about business and charity. No one anywhere on the right thinks that businesses are obligated to watch out for them, nor hand out those wages so we can keep our comfortable living standards.

Nothing you said is even remotely true, nor supportable. If you want to debate, that's fine. But if your idea of debating is to just making up random crap that no one anywhere believes, and claim they do.... makes for a boring conversation of you saying unicorns and rainbows, while I point out they don't exist over and over.

Try making a real argument.

Further, no one anywhere on the right is confused about business and charity. No one anywhere on the right thinks that businesses are obligated to watch out for them, nor hand out those wages so we can keep our comfortable living standards.

i think they do...
hence why they want the businesses to bring back the manufacturing jobs and pay extra costs to keep their living standards, rather than paying the fraction of the cost over in china for the same work to get done...
so they think profits are important but obviously also think there are other things that are important as well...

so not everything in the world is for profit...
especially the "charity"...
i think you are confused there as well...
 
I am curious to know people's views on nuclear energy.
How do people feel about worldwide efforts to achieve nuclear fusion? How do people feel about our current state of fission? Do you believe that nuclear has no place in certain areas? ( I.E. naval vessels/aircrafts/ trains/ shuttles and space stations/ etc.) Are there any reactors or materials you take issue with? What causes any reservations if you have any? How do people feel about waste disposal?
I will be doing another one of these posts on other forms of energy.
I am curious to see what people think. This is specifically on nuclear energies and is not limited to problems but extends to any offered solutions, theories, or inquiries.
I think nukes are the future and fusion is the goal. New designs for fission will take us there in the meantime. The waste issue is a NIMBY thing, there are plenty of safe economical options.
What options do you believe are the best in nuclear waste disposal? I also Completely agree with the future of energy sitting in nuclear fusion.

"What options do you believe are the best in nuclear waste disposal?"

send it out to the sun for recycling as solar power... :)

but that would be economically too expensive...
much cheaper to dig a hole in a 3rd world country and just forget bout it...

So something that was kind of a mind blowing moment for me, was someone who explained how nuclear waste... if it is dangerous.... by definition that means it has usable fuel in it.

It's like this. If you have fire pit, and you pick up a log, and it's still red and hot under it.... by definition it has fuel that can still be burning. That's why it is red and hot.

Ash doesn't burn. And Ash is not hot.

If nuclear waste is emitting enough radiation to harm you, it by definition, has enough radio active material to be used in a reactor.

You follow?

The reason that fuel rods are removed from the reactor, is because the ratio of fuel material to non-fissile material is too low. It's so low, that it can't produce enough reaction to continue producing power.

This is like the fire pit example I mentioned above, where the ash build up around the wood, has prevented enough oxygen to maintain a flame.

This is why you move the logs around, shake off the ash, and then it starts burning again.

Same thing with nuclear fuel rods. The amount of non-burnable material (so to speak) is too high, preventing the burnable nuclear material from burning.

Now some might point out, well that's the whole problem, thus it is waste.

But wait..... Uranium itself is that way when you dig it out of the ground. This is why you have 'enrich' the Uranium.

People think that "enriching" Uranium means we are doing something to the Uranium to make it radioactive, but in reality, all we are doing is filtering out the non-burnable material from the burnable material. This is actually all 'enrichment' is.

You take some Uranium that contains mostly inactive material, and some reactive material. You remove a bunch of inactive material, resulting in a higher concentration of reactive material.

In short, they remove the ash from the burnable wood.

Well the same can be true of nuclear waste. All you have to do, is remove the inactive material from the nuclear waste... and.... you have a usable fuel rod again, and some waste that is non-active. That non-active waste, is largely safe.

Again, if you actually used up all of the burnable nuclear fuel in a nuclear reactor... then by definition, it wouldn't be radioactive, and a hazard for humans or anything else, when it was removed.

We need to start mass reprocessing of nuclear fuel. Most of the nuclear waste that exists, can all be reprocessed into usable nuclear fuel.

" You follow? "

yes i do andy...
i really do...

i follow your enthusiasms and excitement...
i once was sharing every bit of it...
that was when i was as young...

then the reality did set in...

i was hoping to see humans achieve things beyond my imagination...
dont get me wrong, they have and i still find them remarkable...
but they also failed... miserably at times...
and this particular subject, so far, has been one of those...

nuclear energy was such a prominent achievement for humans that could have changed the whole planet...
yet it has been such a disappointment ended up rather changing more of us deep inside...

when you start your paragraph with "All you have to do", i also share the assumption of the simplicity of the task at hand, which is reusing spent fuel...
because first of all we have the technology to be ale to do that..
so it really is as simple as "All you have to do"...

but at the same time, it is not...

hence you dont see it being scaled...
hence why you still see the gigantic market for fresh uranium when world has plenty amount of waste to reprocess...
because of the economics of it all...
because the fantasies some people (like your signature suggests) still believe in where ceos (for some reason) prioritize interest of the people rather than their profit margins, is simply not true...
and there have been plenty of attempts to make use of spent fuel economical, which is all what matters to make it feasible...

i dont know any success stories as of yet but plenty failures...
and maybe you know some that already succeeded that i am not aware...
i think at some point it will be possible...

but appears to me we will need to dig a lot of holes in 3rd world countries before that happens...


So here's the problem.... reactors that run on MOX fuel, already exist. They have existed for decades on end. The UK has one, France has one, pretty sure India has one, and so does Russia.

We're not talking about some mythical future tech, risky venture.... we're talking about things that already exist in the world today, and have been operating safely for 50 years plus.

So why don't we have one in the US? Again, just covered all that. Regulations and government restrictions have made starting up a reprocessing and MOX power plant, horribly expensive with their burdensome controls and hindrances.

This is what drives me crazy talking with some people......

I say "Government is the reason technology has not advanced, and we can't do cool things"

Someone says "Like what things?"

I say "(insert something cool here like reprocessing nuclear waste into usable fuel)"

Someone says "That will never work, because look no one has been able to do it"

I say ".......... did I not just say the reason we can't do cool things, is because of government?"

Yeah, I said that.

By the way, I'm not sure what you mean by digging a hole in a 3rd world country. That would be the absolute worst possible idea. You want to dig a hole, in unstable 3rd world countries, where known terrorist organizations could get hold of radioactive waste and make a dirty bomb out of it?

We should leave it in the Yucca mountains as planned. There is zero reason not to, until such a time as we stop being stupid about nuclear power, and reprocess the spent fuel into usable fuel, and start making power with it.

the only reason some countries are running plants on re-processed fuel is because they are "socialist" and they like to bend the market backwards against its will with tons of regulations and mandates, arguing the environmental gains outweigh the extra operational costs...

if running these plants were any profitable, they would already be operating in the US.,..

Debatable. We actually had plans to build a power plants based on reprocessing spent fuel. They were canceled in the 1970s, when Carter banned reprocessing.

In the 1990s, they attempted to restart the project, but due to the cost of regulations, were unable to do it.

So my question to you is... what changed between the late 60s early 70s, that private companies were going to make a reprocessing facility and reactor to use that fuel... that in the 1990s, no one is willing to build it?

Is it possible.... I'm just asking... Is it possible that regulations passed from Carter to Bill Clinton's time in office, have made it impossible to reprocess fuel profitably?

I think that is a real possibility.

No I'm not opposed to what you are saying. Could be true. I don't know.

But quite often you levy hard regulations on companies, and then say "see? It's not profitable!".

Well yeah... if you pass a regulation that makes it unprofitable to do something, no one will do it.

Maybe part of the problem was that the government decided to listen to Adm Rickover (who ran the Navy nuclear program), and he showed them where there were possible pitfalls. By the way, the U.S. Navy has the safest nuclear program ever developed.

Well yes and no. There is an automatic assumption by left-wing people, that all people in business are automatically evil, and actually think they want people to die. At the same time, they automatically assume people in government are divine and looking out for the best interest of the public.

Which is ironic since we have about 4,000 years of history showing the reverse of that. For every one bad person business, there are millions who are doing the best for themselves and everyone around them.

And for every one good politician, there are tens of thousands that could not possibly careless about the public, actually belittle and denigrate the public, but fake enough to convince idiots they really care.... just as long as you vote for them.

View attachment 437468

Pretty accurate picture if you ask me.

So yes, the politicians trusted Hyman G. Rickover. And possibly that was the right move at that time.

But now life has moved forward, technology is vastly different, and we need to allow nuclear technology to move forward too.

Yes, Rickover did in fact run the safest nuclear program in the world has ever seen. Part of that is because he had dictator powers over the program. Now that isn't a negative. That is not an insult. I'm saying he could do literally anything he wanted, and have nearly unlimited resources to do it.

Power companies do not have that ability. They have a half dozens different regulatory agencies making demands on them, and of course limited by what funds they have, and how much they can sell the power for.

Little different when you can just go to Congress, and say "we need more", than a business that naturally has to make ends meet. Companies (contrary to left-wing claims), can't just come and demand more money from you the consumer, unlike government which has police and the IRS, and the ability to just confiscate your property if you don't pay up.

That isn't to minimize what Hyman G. Rickover did, but I remember in the 1990s, we had people standing around saying "We can send a spaceship to the moon, but we can't make a car that gets 100 miles on a gallon of gas".... as if companies have billions of dollars from the tax payers through government, to make 100 mpg cars.

So I'm not entirely sure how comparable the two are.


all people in business are automatically evil, and actually think they want people to die

not evil and want people to die, but i think we are safe to assume they are in for profits alone...

because otherwise they would not be called a "business"...

they would be called a "charity"...

and i think thats where people on the right are confused...
they think "businesses" are just some "charities" that are obligated to watch out for them and hand out those wages so they can keep up with their comfortable living standards...

But everyone is in it for profit. I would not go to work, if I didn't profit from doing so.
I sure would not spend my money to start a business, spending a million dollars to open a single McDonald's franchise for example, if I didn't make a profit.

Nothing in this entire world, that exists, exists without profit.

No charity would exist without profits either.

Further, no one anywhere on the right is confused about business and charity. No one anywhere on the right thinks that businesses are obligated to watch out for them, nor hand out those wages so we can keep our comfortable living standards.

Nothing you said is even remotely true, nor supportable. If you want to debate, that's fine. But if your idea of debating is to just making up random crap that no one anywhere believes, and claim they do.... makes for a boring conversation of you saying unicorns and rainbows, while I point out they don't exist over and over.

Try making a real argument.

Further, no one anywhere on the right is confused about business and charity. No one anywhere on the right thinks that businesses are obligated to watch out for them, nor hand out those wages so we can keep our comfortable living standards.

i think they do...
hence why they want the businesses to bring back the manufacturing jobs and pay extra costs to keep their living standards, rather than paying the fraction of the cost over in china for the same work to get done...
so they think profits are important but obviously also think there are other things that are important as well...

so not everything in the world is for profit...
especially the "charity"...
i think you are confused there as well...

Name one right-wing pundit anywhere who has said businesses are charities. Post the video or audio clip of them saying that.

I think they do? Yeah, I think left-wingers live in a failed utopian vision where they can get almost everything they want, on from rich people, which has never worked in all human history.

You know what the difference is between what you think and what I think?

I can post actual quotes from people like AOC and Rachel Maddow and the like, saying exactly that, and places like Venezuela which tried it, and ended up in ruins, as all nations that ever have, have ended up in ruins.

Have facts that support my claim.

Show me evidence where right-wingers in government, or the media, or elsewhere, have said that companies are charities, which are obligated to pay wages for everything they want.

Or... are you just full of crap?
 
Yes, "the right" got together one day, created a soap box for Andy, and said it was good. They then told Andy, from that day forward he would ascend that soapbox verily and proudly proclaim any and every goddamned thing popping into his head that he thought might make them sound good compared to dem thar smelly libruls an sheeit.
 
I am curious to know people's views on nuclear energy.
How do people feel about worldwide efforts to achieve nuclear fusion? How do people feel about our current state of fission? Do you believe that nuclear has no place in certain areas? ( I.E. naval vessels/aircrafts/ trains/ shuttles and space stations/ etc.) Are there any reactors or materials you take issue with? What causes any reservations if you have any? How do people feel about waste disposal?
I will be doing another one of these posts on other forms of energy.
I am curious to see what people think. This is specifically on nuclear energies and is not limited to problems but extends to any offered solutions, theories, or inquiries.
I think nukes are the future and fusion is the goal. New designs for fission will take us there in the meantime. The waste issue is a NIMBY thing, there are plenty of safe economical options.
What options do you believe are the best in nuclear waste disposal? I also Completely agree with the future of energy sitting in nuclear fusion.

"What options do you believe are the best in nuclear waste disposal?"

send it out to the sun for recycling as solar power... :)

but that would be economically too expensive...
much cheaper to dig a hole in a 3rd world country and just forget bout it...

So something that was kind of a mind blowing moment for me, was someone who explained how nuclear waste... if it is dangerous.... by definition that means it has usable fuel in it.

It's like this. If you have fire pit, and you pick up a log, and it's still red and hot under it.... by definition it has fuel that can still be burning. That's why it is red and hot.

Ash doesn't burn. And Ash is not hot.

If nuclear waste is emitting enough radiation to harm you, it by definition, has enough radio active material to be used in a reactor.

You follow?

The reason that fuel rods are removed from the reactor, is because the ratio of fuel material to non-fissile material is too low. It's so low, that it can't produce enough reaction to continue producing power.

This is like the fire pit example I mentioned above, where the ash build up around the wood, has prevented enough oxygen to maintain a flame.

This is why you move the logs around, shake off the ash, and then it starts burning again.

Same thing with nuclear fuel rods. The amount of non-burnable material (so to speak) is too high, preventing the burnable nuclear material from burning.

Now some might point out, well that's the whole problem, thus it is waste.

But wait..... Uranium itself is that way when you dig it out of the ground. This is why you have 'enrich' the Uranium.

People think that "enriching" Uranium means we are doing something to the Uranium to make it radioactive, but in reality, all we are doing is filtering out the non-burnable material from the burnable material. This is actually all 'enrichment' is.

You take some Uranium that contains mostly inactive material, and some reactive material. You remove a bunch of inactive material, resulting in a higher concentration of reactive material.

In short, they remove the ash from the burnable wood.

Well the same can be true of nuclear waste. All you have to do, is remove the inactive material from the nuclear waste... and.... you have a usable fuel rod again, and some waste that is non-active. That non-active waste, is largely safe.

Again, if you actually used up all of the burnable nuclear fuel in a nuclear reactor... then by definition, it wouldn't be radioactive, and a hazard for humans or anything else, when it was removed.

We need to start mass reprocessing of nuclear fuel. Most of the nuclear waste that exists, can all be reprocessed into usable nuclear fuel.

" You follow? "

yes i do andy...
i really do...

i follow your enthusiasms and excitement...
i once was sharing every bit of it...
that was when i was as young...

then the reality did set in...

i was hoping to see humans achieve things beyond my imagination...
dont get me wrong, they have and i still find them remarkable...
but they also failed... miserably at times...
and this particular subject, so far, has been one of those...

nuclear energy was such a prominent achievement for humans that could have changed the whole planet...
yet it has been such a disappointment ended up rather changing more of us deep inside...

when you start your paragraph with "All you have to do", i also share the assumption of the simplicity of the task at hand, which is reusing spent fuel...
because first of all we have the technology to be ale to do that..
so it really is as simple as "All you have to do"...

but at the same time, it is not...

hence you dont see it being scaled...
hence why you still see the gigantic market for fresh uranium when world has plenty amount of waste to reprocess...
because of the economics of it all...
because the fantasies some people (like your signature suggests) still believe in where ceos (for some reason) prioritize interest of the people rather than their profit margins, is simply not true...
and there have been plenty of attempts to make use of spent fuel economical, which is all what matters to make it feasible...

i dont know any success stories as of yet but plenty failures...
and maybe you know some that already succeeded that i am not aware...
i think at some point it will be possible...

but appears to me we will need to dig a lot of holes in 3rd world countries before that happens...


So here's the problem.... reactors that run on MOX fuel, already exist. They have existed for decades on end. The UK has one, France has one, pretty sure India has one, and so does Russia.

We're not talking about some mythical future tech, risky venture.... we're talking about things that already exist in the world today, and have been operating safely for 50 years plus.

So why don't we have one in the US? Again, just covered all that. Regulations and government restrictions have made starting up a reprocessing and MOX power plant, horribly expensive with their burdensome controls and hindrances.

This is what drives me crazy talking with some people......

I say "Government is the reason technology has not advanced, and we can't do cool things"

Someone says "Like what things?"

I say "(insert something cool here like reprocessing nuclear waste into usable fuel)"

Someone says "That will never work, because look no one has been able to do it"

I say ".......... did I not just say the reason we can't do cool things, is because of government?"

Yeah, I said that.

By the way, I'm not sure what you mean by digging a hole in a 3rd world country. That would be the absolute worst possible idea. You want to dig a hole, in unstable 3rd world countries, where known terrorist organizations could get hold of radioactive waste and make a dirty bomb out of it?

We should leave it in the Yucca mountains as planned. There is zero reason not to, until such a time as we stop being stupid about nuclear power, and reprocess the spent fuel into usable fuel, and start making power with it.

the only reason some countries are running plants on re-processed fuel is because they are "socialist" and they like to bend the market backwards against its will with tons of regulations and mandates, arguing the environmental gains outweigh the extra operational costs...

if running these plants were any profitable, they would already be operating in the US.,..

Debatable. We actually had plans to build a power plants based on reprocessing spent fuel. They were canceled in the 1970s, when Carter banned reprocessing.

In the 1990s, they attempted to restart the project, but due to the cost of regulations, were unable to do it.

So my question to you is... what changed between the late 60s early 70s, that private companies were going to make a reprocessing facility and reactor to use that fuel... that in the 1990s, no one is willing to build it?

Is it possible.... I'm just asking... Is it possible that regulations passed from Carter to Bill Clinton's time in office, have made it impossible to reprocess fuel profitably?

I think that is a real possibility.

No I'm not opposed to what you are saying. Could be true. I don't know.

But quite often you levy hard regulations on companies, and then say "see? It's not profitable!".

Well yeah... if you pass a regulation that makes it unprofitable to do something, no one will do it.

Maybe part of the problem was that the government decided to listen to Adm Rickover (who ran the Navy nuclear program), and he showed them where there were possible pitfalls. By the way, the U.S. Navy has the safest nuclear program ever developed.

Well yes and no. There is an automatic assumption by left-wing people, that all people in business are automatically evil, and actually think they want people to die. At the same time, they automatically assume people in government are divine and looking out for the best interest of the public.

Which is ironic since we have about 4,000 years of history showing the reverse of that. For every one bad person business, there are millions who are doing the best for themselves and everyone around them.

And for every one good politician, there are tens of thousands that could not possibly careless about the public, actually belittle and denigrate the public, but fake enough to convince idiots they really care.... just as long as you vote for them.

View attachment 437468

Pretty accurate picture if you ask me.

So yes, the politicians trusted Hyman G. Rickover. And possibly that was the right move at that time.

But now life has moved forward, technology is vastly different, and we need to allow nuclear technology to move forward too.

Yes, Rickover did in fact run the safest nuclear program in the world has ever seen. Part of that is because he had dictator powers over the program. Now that isn't a negative. That is not an insult. I'm saying he could do literally anything he wanted, and have nearly unlimited resources to do it.

Power companies do not have that ability. They have a half dozens different regulatory agencies making demands on them, and of course limited by what funds they have, and how much they can sell the power for.

Little different when you can just go to Congress, and say "we need more", than a business that naturally has to make ends meet. Companies (contrary to left-wing claims), can't just come and demand more money from you the consumer, unlike government which has police and the IRS, and the ability to just confiscate your property if you don't pay up.

That isn't to minimize what Hyman G. Rickover did, but I remember in the 1990s, we had people standing around saying "We can send a spaceship to the moon, but we can't make a car that gets 100 miles on a gallon of gas".... as if companies have billions of dollars from the tax payers through government, to make 100 mpg cars.

So I'm not entirely sure how comparable the two are.


all people in business are automatically evil, and actually think they want people to die

not evil and want people to die, but i think we are safe to assume they are in for profits alone...

because otherwise they would not be called a "business"...

they would be called a "charity"...

and i think thats where people on the right are confused...
they think "businesses" are just some "charities" that are obligated to watch out for them and hand out those wages so they can keep up with their comfortable living standards...

But everyone is in it for profit. I would not go to work, if I didn't profit from doing so.
I sure would not spend my money to start a business, spending a million dollars to open a single McDonald's franchise for example, if I didn't make a profit.

Nothing in this entire world, that exists, exists without profit.

No charity would exist without profits either.

Further, no one anywhere on the right is confused about business and charity. No one anywhere on the right thinks that businesses are obligated to watch out for them, nor hand out those wages so we can keep our comfortable living standards.

Nothing you said is even remotely true, nor supportable. If you want to debate, that's fine. But if your idea of debating is to just making up random crap that no one anywhere believes, and claim they do.... makes for a boring conversation of you saying unicorns and rainbows, while I point out they don't exist over and over.

Try making a real argument.

Further, no one anywhere on the right is confused about business and charity. No one anywhere on the right thinks that businesses are obligated to watch out for them, nor hand out those wages so we can keep our comfortable living standards.

i think they do...
hence why they want the businesses to bring back the manufacturing jobs and pay extra costs to keep their living standards, rather than paying the fraction of the cost over in china for the same work to get done...
so they think profits are important but obviously also think there are other things that are important as well...

so not everything in the world is for profit...
especially the "charity"...
i think you are confused there as well...

Name one right-wing pundit anywhere who has said businesses are charities. Post the video or audio clip of them saying that.

I think they do? Yeah, I think left-wingers live in a failed utopian vision where they can get almost everything they want, on from rich people, which has never worked in all human history.

You know what the difference is between what you think and what I think?

I can post actual quotes from people like AOC and Rachel Maddow and the like, saying exactly that, and places like Venezuela which tried it, and ended up in ruins, as all nations that ever have, have ended up in ruins.

Have facts that support my claim.

Show me evidence where right-wingers in government, or the media, or elsewhere, have said that companies are charities, which are obligated to pay wages for everything they want.

Or... are you just full of crap?

Trump: “we’re going to get those jobs coming back.”

people who voted for him obviously must be thinking businesses are charities designed to hand over a wage to guarantee a good living standard for them and should be forced to do so against their will, rather than allowing them to move over to china for profits...
 
I am curious to know people's views on nuclear energy.
How do people feel about worldwide efforts to achieve nuclear fusion? How do people feel about our current state of fission? Do you believe that nuclear has no place in certain areas? ( I.E. naval vessels/aircrafts/ trains/ shuttles and space stations/ etc.) Are there any reactors or materials you take issue with? What causes any reservations if you have any? How do people feel about waste disposal?
I will be doing another one of these posts on other forms of energy.
I am curious to see what people think. This is specifically on nuclear energies and is not limited to problems but extends to any offered solutions, theories, or inquiries.
I think nukes are the future and fusion is the goal. New designs for fission will take us there in the meantime. The waste issue is a NIMBY thing, there are plenty of safe economical options.
What options do you believe are the best in nuclear waste disposal? I also Completely agree with the future of energy sitting in nuclear fusion.

"What options do you believe are the best in nuclear waste disposal?"

send it out to the sun for recycling as solar power... :)

but that would be economically too expensive...
much cheaper to dig a hole in a 3rd world country and just forget bout it...

So something that was kind of a mind blowing moment for me, was someone who explained how nuclear waste... if it is dangerous.... by definition that means it has usable fuel in it.

It's like this. If you have fire pit, and you pick up a log, and it's still red and hot under it.... by definition it has fuel that can still be burning. That's why it is red and hot.

Ash doesn't burn. And Ash is not hot.

If nuclear waste is emitting enough radiation to harm you, it by definition, has enough radio active material to be used in a reactor.

You follow?

The reason that fuel rods are removed from the reactor, is because the ratio of fuel material to non-fissile material is too low. It's so low, that it can't produce enough reaction to continue producing power.

This is like the fire pit example I mentioned above, where the ash build up around the wood, has prevented enough oxygen to maintain a flame.

This is why you move the logs around, shake off the ash, and then it starts burning again.

Same thing with nuclear fuel rods. The amount of non-burnable material (so to speak) is too high, preventing the burnable nuclear material from burning.

Now some might point out, well that's the whole problem, thus it is waste.

But wait..... Uranium itself is that way when you dig it out of the ground. This is why you have 'enrich' the Uranium.

People think that "enriching" Uranium means we are doing something to the Uranium to make it radioactive, but in reality, all we are doing is filtering out the non-burnable material from the burnable material. This is actually all 'enrichment' is.

You take some Uranium that contains mostly inactive material, and some reactive material. You remove a bunch of inactive material, resulting in a higher concentration of reactive material.

In short, they remove the ash from the burnable wood.

Well the same can be true of nuclear waste. All you have to do, is remove the inactive material from the nuclear waste... and.... you have a usable fuel rod again, and some waste that is non-active. That non-active waste, is largely safe.

Again, if you actually used up all of the burnable nuclear fuel in a nuclear reactor... then by definition, it wouldn't be radioactive, and a hazard for humans or anything else, when it was removed.

We need to start mass reprocessing of nuclear fuel. Most of the nuclear waste that exists, can all be reprocessed into usable nuclear fuel.

" You follow? "

yes i do andy...
i really do...

i follow your enthusiasms and excitement...
i once was sharing every bit of it...
that was when i was as young...

then the reality did set in...

i was hoping to see humans achieve things beyond my imagination...
dont get me wrong, they have and i still find them remarkable...
but they also failed... miserably at times...
and this particular subject, so far, has been one of those...

nuclear energy was such a prominent achievement for humans that could have changed the whole planet...
yet it has been such a disappointment ended up rather changing more of us deep inside...

when you start your paragraph with "All you have to do", i also share the assumption of the simplicity of the task at hand, which is reusing spent fuel...
because first of all we have the technology to be ale to do that..
so it really is as simple as "All you have to do"...

but at the same time, it is not...

hence you dont see it being scaled...
hence why you still see the gigantic market for fresh uranium when world has plenty amount of waste to reprocess...
because of the economics of it all...
because the fantasies some people (like your signature suggests) still believe in where ceos (for some reason) prioritize interest of the people rather than their profit margins, is simply not true...
and there have been plenty of attempts to make use of spent fuel economical, which is all what matters to make it feasible...

i dont know any success stories as of yet but plenty failures...
and maybe you know some that already succeeded that i am not aware...
i think at some point it will be possible...

but appears to me we will need to dig a lot of holes in 3rd world countries before that happens...


So here's the problem.... reactors that run on MOX fuel, already exist. They have existed for decades on end. The UK has one, France has one, pretty sure India has one, and so does Russia.

We're not talking about some mythical future tech, risky venture.... we're talking about things that already exist in the world today, and have been operating safely for 50 years plus.

So why don't we have one in the US? Again, just covered all that. Regulations and government restrictions have made starting up a reprocessing and MOX power plant, horribly expensive with their burdensome controls and hindrances.

This is what drives me crazy talking with some people......

I say "Government is the reason technology has not advanced, and we can't do cool things"

Someone says "Like what things?"

I say "(insert something cool here like reprocessing nuclear waste into usable fuel)"

Someone says "That will never work, because look no one has been able to do it"

I say ".......... did I not just say the reason we can't do cool things, is because of government?"

Yeah, I said that.

By the way, I'm not sure what you mean by digging a hole in a 3rd world country. That would be the absolute worst possible idea. You want to dig a hole, in unstable 3rd world countries, where known terrorist organizations could get hold of radioactive waste and make a dirty bomb out of it?

We should leave it in the Yucca mountains as planned. There is zero reason not to, until such a time as we stop being stupid about nuclear power, and reprocess the spent fuel into usable fuel, and start making power with it.

the only reason some countries are running plants on re-processed fuel is because they are "socialist" and they like to bend the market backwards against its will with tons of regulations and mandates, arguing the environmental gains outweigh the extra operational costs...

if running these plants were any profitable, they would already be operating in the US.,..

Debatable. We actually had plans to build a power plants based on reprocessing spent fuel. They were canceled in the 1970s, when Carter banned reprocessing.

In the 1990s, they attempted to restart the project, but due to the cost of regulations, were unable to do it.

So my question to you is... what changed between the late 60s early 70s, that private companies were going to make a reprocessing facility and reactor to use that fuel... that in the 1990s, no one is willing to build it?

Is it possible.... I'm just asking... Is it possible that regulations passed from Carter to Bill Clinton's time in office, have made it impossible to reprocess fuel profitably?

I think that is a real possibility.

No I'm not opposed to what you are saying. Could be true. I don't know.

But quite often you levy hard regulations on companies, and then say "see? It's not profitable!".

Well yeah... if you pass a regulation that makes it unprofitable to do something, no one will do it.

Maybe part of the problem was that the government decided to listen to Adm Rickover (who ran the Navy nuclear program), and he showed them where there were possible pitfalls. By the way, the U.S. Navy has the safest nuclear program ever developed.

Well yes and no. There is an automatic assumption by left-wing people, that all people in business are automatically evil, and actually think they want people to die. At the same time, they automatically assume people in government are divine and looking out for the best interest of the public.

Which is ironic since we have about 4,000 years of history showing the reverse of that. For every one bad person business, there are millions who are doing the best for themselves and everyone around them.

And for every one good politician, there are tens of thousands that could not possibly careless about the public, actually belittle and denigrate the public, but fake enough to convince idiots they really care.... just as long as you vote for them.

View attachment 437468

Pretty accurate picture if you ask me.

So yes, the politicians trusted Hyman G. Rickover. And possibly that was the right move at that time.

But now life has moved forward, technology is vastly different, and we need to allow nuclear technology to move forward too.

Yes, Rickover did in fact run the safest nuclear program in the world has ever seen. Part of that is because he had dictator powers over the program. Now that isn't a negative. That is not an insult. I'm saying he could do literally anything he wanted, and have nearly unlimited resources to do it.

Power companies do not have that ability. They have a half dozens different regulatory agencies making demands on them, and of course limited by what funds they have, and how much they can sell the power for.

Little different when you can just go to Congress, and say "we need more", than a business that naturally has to make ends meet. Companies (contrary to left-wing claims), can't just come and demand more money from you the consumer, unlike government which has police and the IRS, and the ability to just confiscate your property if you don't pay up.

That isn't to minimize what Hyman G. Rickover did, but I remember in the 1990s, we had people standing around saying "We can send a spaceship to the moon, but we can't make a car that gets 100 miles on a gallon of gas".... as if companies have billions of dollars from the tax payers through government, to make 100 mpg cars.

So I'm not entirely sure how comparable the two are.


all people in business are automatically evil, and actually think they want people to die

not evil and want people to die, but i think we are safe to assume they are in for profits alone...

because otherwise they would not be called a "business"...

they would be called a "charity"...

and i think thats where people on the right are confused...
they think "businesses" are just some "charities" that are obligated to watch out for them and hand out those wages so they can keep up with their comfortable living standards...

But everyone is in it for profit. I would not go to work, if I didn't profit from doing so.
I sure would not spend my money to start a business, spending a million dollars to open a single McDonald's franchise for example, if I didn't make a profit.

Nothing in this entire world, that exists, exists without profit.

No charity would exist without profits either.

Further, no one anywhere on the right is confused about business and charity. No one anywhere on the right thinks that businesses are obligated to watch out for them, nor hand out those wages so we can keep our comfortable living standards.

Nothing you said is even remotely true, nor supportable. If you want to debate, that's fine. But if your idea of debating is to just making up random crap that no one anywhere believes, and claim they do.... makes for a boring conversation of you saying unicorns and rainbows, while I point out they don't exist over and over.

Try making a real argument.

Further, no one anywhere on the right is confused about business and charity. No one anywhere on the right thinks that businesses are obligated to watch out for them, nor hand out those wages so we can keep our comfortable living standards.

i think they do...
hence why they want the businesses to bring back the manufacturing jobs and pay extra costs to keep their living standards, rather than paying the fraction of the cost over in china for the same work to get done...
so they think profits are important but obviously also think there are other things that are important as well...

so not everything in the world is for profit...
especially the "charity"...
i think you are confused there as well...

Name one right-wing pundit anywhere who has said businesses are charities. Post the video or audio clip of them saying that.

I think they do? Yeah, I think left-wingers live in a failed utopian vision where they can get almost everything they want, on from rich people, which has never worked in all human history.

You know what the difference is between what you think and what I think?

I can post actual quotes from people like AOC and Rachel Maddow and the like, saying exactly that, and places like Venezuela which tried it, and ended up in ruins, as all nations that ever have, have ended up in ruins.

Have facts that support my claim.

Show me evidence where right-wingers in government, or the media, or elsewhere, have said that companies are charities, which are obligated to pay wages for everything they want.

Or... are you just full of crap?

Trump: “we’re going to get those jobs coming back.”

people who voted for him obviously must be thinking businesses are charities designed to hand over a wage to guarantee a good living standard for them and should be forced to do so against their will, rather than allowing them to move over to china for profits...
I think they thought Trump could just make that happen by shear force of will. He was paying attention to them so he must actually care and know what he's doing. That kind of thing. Populist poppycock.
 
I am curious to know people's views on nuclear energy.
How do people feel about worldwide efforts to achieve nuclear fusion? How do people feel about our current state of fission? Do you believe that nuclear has no place in certain areas? ( I.E. naval vessels/aircrafts/ trains/ shuttles and space stations/ etc.) Are there any reactors or materials you take issue with? What causes any reservations if you have any? How do people feel about waste disposal?
I will be doing another one of these posts on other forms of energy.
I am curious to see what people think. This is specifically on nuclear energies and is not limited to problems but extends to any offered solutions, theories, or inquiries.
I think nukes are the future and fusion is the goal. New designs for fission will take us there in the meantime. The waste issue is a NIMBY thing, there are plenty of safe economical options.
What options do you believe are the best in nuclear waste disposal? I also Completely agree with the future of energy sitting in nuclear fusion.

"What options do you believe are the best in nuclear waste disposal?"

send it out to the sun for recycling as solar power... :)

but that would be economically too expensive...
much cheaper to dig a hole in a 3rd world country and just forget bout it...

So something that was kind of a mind blowing moment for me, was someone who explained how nuclear waste... if it is dangerous.... by definition that means it has usable fuel in it.

It's like this. If you have fire pit, and you pick up a log, and it's still red and hot under it.... by definition it has fuel that can still be burning. That's why it is red and hot.

Ash doesn't burn. And Ash is not hot.

If nuclear waste is emitting enough radiation to harm you, it by definition, has enough radio active material to be used in a reactor.

You follow?

The reason that fuel rods are removed from the reactor, is because the ratio of fuel material to non-fissile material is too low. It's so low, that it can't produce enough reaction to continue producing power.

This is like the fire pit example I mentioned above, where the ash build up around the wood, has prevented enough oxygen to maintain a flame.

This is why you move the logs around, shake off the ash, and then it starts burning again.

Same thing with nuclear fuel rods. The amount of non-burnable material (so to speak) is too high, preventing the burnable nuclear material from burning.

Now some might point out, well that's the whole problem, thus it is waste.

But wait..... Uranium itself is that way when you dig it out of the ground. This is why you have 'enrich' the Uranium.

People think that "enriching" Uranium means we are doing something to the Uranium to make it radioactive, but in reality, all we are doing is filtering out the non-burnable material from the burnable material. This is actually all 'enrichment' is.

You take some Uranium that contains mostly inactive material, and some reactive material. You remove a bunch of inactive material, resulting in a higher concentration of reactive material.

In short, they remove the ash from the burnable wood.

Well the same can be true of nuclear waste. All you have to do, is remove the inactive material from the nuclear waste... and.... you have a usable fuel rod again, and some waste that is non-active. That non-active waste, is largely safe.

Again, if you actually used up all of the burnable nuclear fuel in a nuclear reactor... then by definition, it wouldn't be radioactive, and a hazard for humans or anything else, when it was removed.

We need to start mass reprocessing of nuclear fuel. Most of the nuclear waste that exists, can all be reprocessed into usable nuclear fuel.

" You follow? "

yes i do andy...
i really do...

i follow your enthusiasms and excitement...
i once was sharing every bit of it...
that was when i was as young...

then the reality did set in...

i was hoping to see humans achieve things beyond my imagination...
dont get me wrong, they have and i still find them remarkable...
but they also failed... miserably at times...
and this particular subject, so far, has been one of those...

nuclear energy was such a prominent achievement for humans that could have changed the whole planet...
yet it has been such a disappointment ended up rather changing more of us deep inside...

when you start your paragraph with "All you have to do", i also share the assumption of the simplicity of the task at hand, which is reusing spent fuel...
because first of all we have the technology to be ale to do that..
so it really is as simple as "All you have to do"...

but at the same time, it is not...

hence you dont see it being scaled...
hence why you still see the gigantic market for fresh uranium when world has plenty amount of waste to reprocess...
because of the economics of it all...
because the fantasies some people (like your signature suggests) still believe in where ceos (for some reason) prioritize interest of the people rather than their profit margins, is simply not true...
and there have been plenty of attempts to make use of spent fuel economical, which is all what matters to make it feasible...

i dont know any success stories as of yet but plenty failures...
and maybe you know some that already succeeded that i am not aware...
i think at some point it will be possible...

but appears to me we will need to dig a lot of holes in 3rd world countries before that happens...


So here's the problem.... reactors that run on MOX fuel, already exist. They have existed for decades on end. The UK has one, France has one, pretty sure India has one, and so does Russia.

We're not talking about some mythical future tech, risky venture.... we're talking about things that already exist in the world today, and have been operating safely for 50 years plus.

So why don't we have one in the US? Again, just covered all that. Regulations and government restrictions have made starting up a reprocessing and MOX power plant, horribly expensive with their burdensome controls and hindrances.

This is what drives me crazy talking with some people......

I say "Government is the reason technology has not advanced, and we can't do cool things"

Someone says "Like what things?"

I say "(insert something cool here like reprocessing nuclear waste into usable fuel)"

Someone says "That will never work, because look no one has been able to do it"

I say ".......... did I not just say the reason we can't do cool things, is because of government?"

Yeah, I said that.

By the way, I'm not sure what you mean by digging a hole in a 3rd world country. That would be the absolute worst possible idea. You want to dig a hole, in unstable 3rd world countries, where known terrorist organizations could get hold of radioactive waste and make a dirty bomb out of it?

We should leave it in the Yucca mountains as planned. There is zero reason not to, until such a time as we stop being stupid about nuclear power, and reprocess the spent fuel into usable fuel, and start making power with it.

the only reason some countries are running plants on re-processed fuel is because they are "socialist" and they like to bend the market backwards against its will with tons of regulations and mandates, arguing the environmental gains outweigh the extra operational costs...

if running these plants were any profitable, they would already be operating in the US.,..

Debatable. We actually had plans to build a power plants based on reprocessing spent fuel. They were canceled in the 1970s, when Carter banned reprocessing.

In the 1990s, they attempted to restart the project, but due to the cost of regulations, were unable to do it.

So my question to you is... what changed between the late 60s early 70s, that private companies were going to make a reprocessing facility and reactor to use that fuel... that in the 1990s, no one is willing to build it?

Is it possible.... I'm just asking... Is it possible that regulations passed from Carter to Bill Clinton's time in office, have made it impossible to reprocess fuel profitably?

I think that is a real possibility.

No I'm not opposed to what you are saying. Could be true. I don't know.

But quite often you levy hard regulations on companies, and then say "see? It's not profitable!".

Well yeah... if you pass a regulation that makes it unprofitable to do something, no one will do it.

Maybe part of the problem was that the government decided to listen to Adm Rickover (who ran the Navy nuclear program), and he showed them where there were possible pitfalls. By the way, the U.S. Navy has the safest nuclear program ever developed.

Well yes and no. There is an automatic assumption by left-wing people, that all people in business are automatically evil, and actually think they want people to die. At the same time, they automatically assume people in government are divine and looking out for the best interest of the public.

Which is ironic since we have about 4,000 years of history showing the reverse of that. For every one bad person business, there are millions who are doing the best for themselves and everyone around them.

And for every one good politician, there are tens of thousands that could not possibly careless about the public, actually belittle and denigrate the public, but fake enough to convince idiots they really care.... just as long as you vote for them.

View attachment 437468

Pretty accurate picture if you ask me.

So yes, the politicians trusted Hyman G. Rickover. And possibly that was the right move at that time.

But now life has moved forward, technology is vastly different, and we need to allow nuclear technology to move forward too.

Yes, Rickover did in fact run the safest nuclear program in the world has ever seen. Part of that is because he had dictator powers over the program. Now that isn't a negative. That is not an insult. I'm saying he could do literally anything he wanted, and have nearly unlimited resources to do it.

Power companies do not have that ability. They have a half dozens different regulatory agencies making demands on them, and of course limited by what funds they have, and how much they can sell the power for.

Little different when you can just go to Congress, and say "we need more", than a business that naturally has to make ends meet. Companies (contrary to left-wing claims), can't just come and demand more money from you the consumer, unlike government which has police and the IRS, and the ability to just confiscate your property if you don't pay up.

That isn't to minimize what Hyman G. Rickover did, but I remember in the 1990s, we had people standing around saying "We can send a spaceship to the moon, but we can't make a car that gets 100 miles on a gallon of gas".... as if companies have billions of dollars from the tax payers through government, to make 100 mpg cars.

So I'm not entirely sure how comparable the two are.


all people in business are automatically evil, and actually think they want people to die

not evil and want people to die, but i think we are safe to assume they are in for profits alone...

because otherwise they would not be called a "business"...

they would be called a "charity"...

and i think thats where people on the right are confused...
they think "businesses" are just some "charities" that are obligated to watch out for them and hand out those wages so they can keep up with their comfortable living standards...

But everyone is in it for profit. I would not go to work, if I didn't profit from doing so.
I sure would not spend my money to start a business, spending a million dollars to open a single McDonald's franchise for example, if I didn't make a profit.

Nothing in this entire world, that exists, exists without profit.

No charity would exist without profits either.

Further, no one anywhere on the right is confused about business and charity. No one anywhere on the right thinks that businesses are obligated to watch out for them, nor hand out those wages so we can keep our comfortable living standards.

Nothing you said is even remotely true, nor supportable. If you want to debate, that's fine. But if your idea of debating is to just making up random crap that no one anywhere believes, and claim they do.... makes for a boring conversation of you saying unicorns and rainbows, while I point out they don't exist over and over.

Try making a real argument.

Further, no one anywhere on the right is confused about business and charity. No one anywhere on the right thinks that businesses are obligated to watch out for them, nor hand out those wages so we can keep our comfortable living standards.

i think they do...
hence why they want the businesses to bring back the manufacturing jobs and pay extra costs to keep their living standards, rather than paying the fraction of the cost over in china for the same work to get done...
so they think profits are important but obviously also think there are other things that are important as well...

so not everything in the world is for profit...
especially the "charity"...
i think you are confused there as well...

Name one right-wing pundit anywhere who has said businesses are charities. Post the video or audio clip of them saying that.

I think they do? Yeah, I think left-wingers live in a failed utopian vision where they can get almost everything they want, on from rich people, which has never worked in all human history.

You know what the difference is between what you think and what I think?

I can post actual quotes from people like AOC and Rachel Maddow and the like, saying exactly that, and places like Venezuela which tried it, and ended up in ruins, as all nations that ever have, have ended up in ruins.

Have facts that support my claim.

Show me evidence where right-wingers in government, or the media, or elsewhere, have said that companies are charities, which are obligated to pay wages for everything they want.

Or... are you just full of crap?

Trump: “we’re going to get those jobs coming back.”

people who voted for him obviously must be thinking businesses are charities designed to hand over a wage to guarantee a good living standard for them and should be forced to do so against their will, rather than allowing them to move over to china for profits...
I think they thought Trump could just make that happen by shear force of will. He was paying attention to them so he must actually care and know what he's doing. That kind of thing. Populist poppycock.

I think they thought ...

i highly doubt they were thinking this through at all... :)
they didnt even realize how socialist they were becoming... :D
 
Nukes equal dependency on a 'priesthood' of specialists who can run them safely. If they fail to show up (or make some kinds of demands), there is no alternative to capitulation or disaster. That alone makes them unacceptable. There are numerous other totally overwhelming reasons to reject them and go for safe renewables.

By 'nukes' I'm assuming you mean nuclear reactors.

That actually isn't entirely true. The newest working reactor designs, using molten salt, are actually self-regulating. You likely know this, but I'll just recap, that nearly all materials expand and contract based on temperature.

So equally I assume you know that nuclear reactions only exist when you can achieve critical mass, which of course is when you have enough fissile material close enough together.

With molten salt reactors, you have a self limiting dynamic, where as the core gets hotter, it expands, thus reducing the mass, thus reducing the nuclear reaction.

It is nearly impossible to have a run away nuclear reaction.

Further, the second problem is decay heat, which is the heat generated after the nuclear reaction has shut down. This is what caused the problem at Three Mile Island. The nuclear reaction was well over and finished, before they had an issue with over heating.

Well, there's a simple way to deal with this. Passive cooling. You just have cold water in tanks, connected to a cooling tower. Hot water rises, flows into the tanks, which flow through the cooling tower. Cold water falls, which goes down into the core again. The cycle flows non-stop without any interaction by anyone.

So might ask, if it is that easy, why didn't all nuclear reactors have passive cooling? Like why didn't Fukushima have that?

Because we didn't have the technology when these plants were built.

Again... why are we using 1950s designs? I'm a bit surprised the Japanese are using such old designs honestly. As high tech as Japan is, I don't really understand it. They can make that money losing bullet train, but are still using a 1955 power plant design? What logic is that?

And that was actually what the Fukushima plant was. A GE BWR-3, which is just the 3rd revision of the 1955 design. The BWR-3 came out 1965. So a very very old design. Like I said before, we should have all those plants replaced with far safer designs.

From what they have shown with self regulating molten salt reactors, and passive cooling, you could in theory switch on such a reactor and go home. The reactor would run itself, and cool itself, for months, until it shut itself off when the fuel became too poisoned to keep the reaction going, and then it would go into a dormant state, and go cold.

And if you really think about it, the only time you really have a disaster is when government causes it. Chernobyl, didn't blow itself up. It was actually government that blew up Chernobyl. Even that reactor was smart enough to shut itself down. It was the government stooges running Chernobyl that blew up that reactor.

Go read about it, if you are interested. Actually HBO's series Chernobyl is pretty good at showing what really happened. The reactor had shut itself off. The system had done exactly what it was supposed to, and gone into a cool down state. It was the idiots who wanted to please their Soviet masters to get promotions, that demanded they over ride all the safety features, and violate every safety protocol, which eventually caused the reactor to explode.

There are numerous other totally overwhelming reasons to reject them and go for safe renewables.

And one huge massive overwhelming reason not to..... because we can't.

At least not with the technology we have today. That's just a fact.

I'm all for it if you can do it. But you have to actually do it. Show me that renewables can even provide the majority of power we need? Because you can't. I know you can't, because I can see the numbers.

Here in Ohio:
The absolute smallest coal power plant : 600 Mega Watts. Largest is 2.6 Gig Watts.
The absolute smallest natural gas plant : 475 Mega Watts. Largest is 1.4 Gig Watts.
The absolute smallest nuclear plant : 900 Mega Watts. Largest 1.2 Gig Watts.

Largest Solar power plant, 20 Mega Watts.
Largest Wind Farm, 300 Mega Watts.

Renewables produce barely 3% of the entire states power. 3%.

The absolute biggest renewable power plant, is smaller than the smallest conventional power plant.

And here's the kicker. That 300 Mega Watt wind farm, cost almost as much as a natural gas, or coal power plant..... that produces nearly double that much power, and it operates 24/7, not just when the wind blows... or the sun shines.

Renewables are simply not a solution. Just flat out... as things stand today, you can talk about renewables for the rest of your life... and still going to use nuclear power. Because renewable are not a replacement for real power generation.

At this point even Japan has figure this out, and has started the process of restarting all of their nuclear reactors, because there simply isn't another option. It doesn't matter how much you want renewables to work, they don't. You either use coal, or natural gas, or nuclear. And of the three, only nuclear doesn't spew into the atmosphere. Natural gas is great, if you have it. Not everyone has it.

So, I'm all for you finding something that works... go for it. But what you have to offer today, isn't even close.
 
Present electric generation is needed for all the energy that is presently desired. Desire means one thing, need means another. Renewables could easily provide enough energy for rational necessity. The gains in health, esthetics and money would make it more than worthwhile. Propaganda is very powerful, however, as modern times have proven over and over. So, sanity is not likely to set in any time soon.
 
Present electric generation is needed for all the energy that is presently desired. Desire means one thing, need means another. Renewables could easily provide enough energy for rational necessity. The gains in health, esthetics and money would make it more than worthwhile. Propaganda is very powerful, however, as modern times have proven over and over. So, sanity is not likely to set in any time soon.

Renewables could easily provide enough energy for rational necessity.....?

Well, looking at facts, rather what you feel is true..... No, they could not. Again, barely 3% of the total electricity used Ohio, is produced by renewables.

Renewables would not even provide enough power to keep the lights on in private homes, even if we cut power usage in private homes by 50%.

How do I know this? Because German homes use on average 3,000 kWh per year, compared to the average US usage of 10,000 kWh per year.

At the same time, Germans are paying 38¢ per kWh, compared to the US 9¢ per kWh.

(which is why they are using 1/3 the power, is because they are paying 4 times the cost. In short, their renewable power has made it too expensive for even the middle class to use electricity).

Despite that, only 16% of their power comes from renewables. They kind of fiddle the numbers, by adding in bio-mass as a renewable source of energy... but that's mostly burning wood. Not exactly the "clean" energy you guys claim to support.

I don't even understand that really, because what is coal? Plants that died a long time ago. What is biomass? Plants that died recently. Yet one is magically "clean renewable power" and the other is evil. Once again, scientifically illiterate fantasy thinking, but whatever.

The point is, even with the German public using a fraction of the power that Americans use, while paying four times the price.... they still can't power everything with renewables.

Again, you can't do it. I don't know how else to present the facts... you can't keep the lights on, and use renewables. It doesn't work. You have to use natural gas, coal, and nuclear power. Even Germany knows this. After shutting down all their nuclear power plants after Fukushima, they are producing 14% of their power from nuclear power again, and they plan to restart their other power plants.

Renewables are not able to replace conventional power. That's just a fact. You can say all your fantasy stuff until the end of time, but the numbers don't support it.
 
Renewables could easily provide enough energy for rational necessity.

If they could, we would only have renewable energy sources now. But the main problem that gets in the way is the inability to supply energy 24 hours a day, we have a day without enough sunlight (or moreover we have night), and also days with calm or hurricanes. The second big problem: we don't have the technology to store energy on a gigawatt scale the best what we have is pumped hydroelectric energy storage (PHES) like Bath County Pumped Storage Station - Wikipedia and therefore you are forced to use "traditional" energy sources, unless you want to be regularly left without electricity.
 

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