X-Message-Number: 20666
From: 
Date: Fri, 20 Dec 2002 18:13:15 EST
Subject: Re: CryoNet #20653 Nuclear

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> 
> From: 
> 
> >>- Too costly (30 years to amortize)
> 
> >Artificial costs from regulatory delays and lack of mass production.

Yes, but dismanlting then at the end of their useful life and storring the 
radioactive steel and concrete for centuries has a cost too.

> 
> >>- Too long to build (more than 10 years)
> 
> >Where? Not Japan, it's closer to three years.

Things are simpler in the outlaw world and with a strong political harm (ie 
dictatorship). Japan has undergone some nuclear problems and the law of the 
wild my see its end here.

> 
> >- They are too good targets for megaterrorism.
> 
> It would be easy to kill people by blowing up a hydropower dam or even oil 
> storage tanks (during a temperature inversion). How would a terrorist kill 
> anyone by attacking the meter-think containment shell of a nuclear plant 
> (other than by using a nuclear weapon)? As you'll recall, someone did fire 
> antitank rockets into a French reactor shell a few years ago... with no 
> effect.
> 

Use a B747 with full fuel load.
The true problem is not the reactor, it is the nearby pool where hot spent 
fuel rods are storred until short term radio activity is reduced so that 
transportation becomes workable. A small van with two tons of high explosive 
would suffice to blow up that material. There is always the possibility of an 
accidental chain reaction in the pool. In a matter of second; most of the 
water would boil. A concrete building would explode under the pressure, so 
these pools are protected by light structures readily blown out in such a 
case. The construction material must break down so that there must be minimum 
injuries by falling back objects. 

This is good security mesures, at least until you take into account  
terrorism.


> >- Protection against terrorism, real or assumed, turns the society into a 
> dictatorship system
> 
> Absolutely true... but that's happening anyway.
> 

Yes, you have noted it too. No need to give our rullers more reasons (real or 
assumed) to amplify that.

> 
> >- If spent fuels are reprocessed, a small part, may be .01 percent is 
> released in the environment. This is sufficient to form a major hazard, 
> taking into account the biological selective concentration in the food 
> chain 
> (the problem is not iradiation, it is contamination).
> 
> I think assuming that .01 percent of the fuel rods leaves the reprocessing 
> center is a bizarre assumption... but it may well be true at the Russian 
> centers.


It is true in France at the COGEMA reprocessing plant, the biggest in the 
world.

At start, it was said that radio activity would be too dillute to be a 
problem. Then, after many year of cover up,  a problem surfaced: the 
concentration of radio active elements in the food chain. We had not 
iradiation from the outside but contamination inside.

> 
> >- They are energy inefficient and need to be built and operated nearly as 
> much oil energy as they produce from fission.
> 
> Not even close... you must be using Manhattan Project efficiency figures. 
> The 
> only problem with laser isotope separation nowadays is that it's too easy 
> and 
> energy-efficient.

In France, fuel is enriched at the Tricastin plant using the diffusion 
process. It is powered by two 1000Mwe reactors. You can get a good look at 
them from the nearby highway.

Fuel is only a part of the energy cost, concrete making is energy intensive 
as is the production of iconel steel. Not to speak about dismantling work at 
the life end.


> 
> >- This is a 19th century technology: A water boiller fitted with an 
> exothic 
> thermal source.
> 
> Well, MHD would be nice... while we're at it, why don't we wish for Moon 
> rockets?
> 
I do. :-)

Yvan Bozzonetti.

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