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Brrr is Nasty

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Don Beckett
Don Beckett
Thursday, January 31, AD 2019 1:11am

The joys of a continental climate in winter 😉
Meantime, here, down-under on the fringes of civilsation on a group of islands in the deep south Pacific, we’re just loving 26 – 32 deg.C (78 – 90 F) in our sweet maritime climate – some places in the South Isalnd even up to 38C – the old 100 F. But I’m praying for you all to stay warm and out of the nasty weather. (Come visit us sometime 😆 )

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Thursday, January 31, AD 2019 6:49am

It’s three-degrees above in NYC area, but wind lower to about 13 mph. Last night it almost knocked me down. Thank God, we are coping.

Can anyone help? Apparently, the youths and libs love that “Hamilton” play. If so, can anyone tell me “why?” I mean, if they showed him for the Founding Father he was, I think they’d go bazookas as they do with everything right. Likely, I will not see the play, or any for that matter.

Nate Winchester
Nate Winchester
Thursday, January 31, AD 2019 8:23am

For those curious, that Got Milk commercial was one of Michael Bay’s first efforts.

I have moments, like now, when I think I am crazy to put up with the winters we can have!

The weather is one thing. I can’t believe you put up with the government that you do.

Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus
Thursday, January 31, AD 2019 11:57am

On a serious note, I will remind everyone that the nuke plants in Illinois are generating pollution free electricity to keep you warm (even when you use methane for home heating, you have to have electricity for the furnace controls).

https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/event-status/reactor-status/ps.html#r3

Braidwood 1 and 2 at 100% power

Byron 1 and 2 at 100% power

Clinton at 98% power

Dresden 2 and 3 at 100% power

LaSalle 1 at 100% power and LaSalle 2 at 88% power

Quad Cities 1 and 2 at 100% power

Thank God for uranium and plutonium! Unlike coal piles and gas lines and solar cells and wind turbines, nukes don’t ice up or otherwise freeze up. Ain’t heavy metal fission a blessing from God? Neutrons ‘R Us!

Foxfier
Admin
Thursday, January 31, AD 2019 12:33pm

LQC-
if you’v mentioned it, I haven’t seen it, but I heard that Trump signed a bill to make it so we can recycle some of our nuclear waste. Yes, no, “not exactly” or “so far off it’s not even wrong”?

Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus
Thursday, January 31, AD 2019 2:32pm

Foxfier,

You asked a question. You’ll get the answer: truth.

President Ronald Reagan lifted the ban of reprocessing used nuclear fuel. It is a misnomer to call it “spent” or “waste.” Nuclear fuel discharged from a commercial light water nuclear reactor still has 95% of its energy content remaining. Why? Because the 95% U-238 remaining in the fuel can be converted into Pu-239 and consumed in fast neutron burner reactors. Light water reactors that operate on a thermal neutron spectrum cannot do that – they consume only U-235.

In 1976 President Gerald Ford issued a policy statement, steering the nuclear energy industry away from reprocessing because of unfounded worries that plutonium would be misused for proliferation. This was pure bullshit. In a light water reactor enriched to less than 5% U-235, any Pu-239 generated from U-238 is mixed in with too much non-fissile Pu-240 to make it useful in any bomb. You can’t use light water reactors to make greater than 90% pure Pu-239 required for a bomb, and you can’t enrich it because it’s too radioactively hot.

In 1977 President Jimmy the freaking idiot Carter echoed Ford’s scare warning and indefinitely deferred commercial recycling of plutonium, which is part of the spent nuclear fuel. He should have known better because he was a Navy submarine nuke back in the late 50s. Admiral Hyman G. Rickover once called him one of his worst selection failures for the nuclear submarine officer corps. He remains a failure to this day, but he’s got his own NIV Study Bible in his name published by Zondervan.

You can find out more about the timeline of US nuclear reprocessing here:

https://www.reuters.com/article/nuclear-waste-history/factbox-timeline-of-u-s-nuclear-reprocessing-idUSN049952820100817

And I prepared a nine-page essay for my priest who is going to give a lecture on environmental stewardship sometime in February. You may read that essay at the web link below. Lots of web link references – truth cannot be distilled into a Facebook meme or a Twitter soundbite, and truth requires you use your brain which I know, Foxfier, you do):

https://prognosticis.blogspot.com/2019/01/oecologia-et-energia-nuclearis.html

Here I talk about the following:

(1) Fuel Comparison – thorium, uranium and plutonium are the densest and leave the least waste
(2) Pollution – none from nuclear
(3) Land Use – lowest for nuclear
(4) Capacity Factor – highest for nuclear
(5) Mortality Rate per Terawatt Hour – lowest for nuclear (even less than solar and wind)
(6) Accidents (TMI, Chernobyl, Fukushima) – don’t flaunt God’s laws of physics
(7) Spent Fuel – all sequestered from the environment and can be re-used in fast neutron burner reactors
(8) Radiation Hormesis – a little nukie is good for you

As for President Trump, he is pro-energy: pro-coal, pro-gas, pro-nuclear, pro-wind, pro-solar, pro-geothermal, pro-hydro, pro-tidal, etc. He believes that the free market should decide what we should use for energy. He is against regulatory strangulation all around. And he disbelieves that (1) CO2 (a natural gas in Earth’s atmosphere) is harmful and (2) we’re all a’gonna die from anthropogenic global warming. Side note: if Democrats are so afraid of CO2, then maybe they should stop exhaling CO2. I would be happy with that!

That all said, we need to level the regulatory playing field. No one gets to dump his refuse into the air we breath and water we drink, whether coal, oil, gas, nuclear, etc. That includes solar where every 5 to 10 years solar cells are replaced and the used ones go to the landfill dump with all their toxic heavy metal poisons. And it includes useless worthless windmills whose oil transmissions routinely catch fire and whose rotating blades routinely fly off. BTW, did you know that fracking for natural gas (methane) and oil releases more radioactivity than any nuke because of the Ar-41 and Rn-222 that occur naturally with the methane gas and oil? And did you know that coal burning releases more radioactivity than any nuke because of the U-238, Th-232 and Ra-226 which occur naturally in coal? If gas, oil and coal industries had to comply with the radiation standards applied to nuclear, then there would be not a single gas, oil or coal plant in operation.

Furthermore, we have multiple reactor designs that can burn up all the long-lived actinides in used nuclear fuel and make the Yucca Mountain geological repository a moot point:

(1) GE-Hitachi PRISM liquid sodium cooled reactor
(2) General Atomics fast neutron modular gas cooled reactor
(3) Transatomic molten salt homogenous reactor
(4) Terra Power travelling wave reactor

And there is a regulatory guide – number 1.232 – on Developing Principal Design Criteria for Non-Light Water Reactors which can do this. You can read that here:

https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1732/ML17325A611.pdf

If it weren’t for Donald Trump that wouldn’t exist, I can assure you.

I am going to stop for now. I could talk about marrying Candu heavy water reactors with US light water reactors to reduce our stockpile of used nuclear fuel and on and on and on. But you get the idea. I have vented my spleen enough. Suffice it to say that we don’t have an energy problem or a spent fuel problem. We got the means to reprocess all this and generate electricity for all mankind without any pollution for millennia to come. Rather, our problem is one of greed for money and power – politicians love carbon taxation because it means more money for govt. We have a sin problem. And a nation that cannot follow moral law to save an innocent baby ion the womb and stop the sanctification of sterile sexual filth is a nation that darn sure cannot follow the regulations needed for the safe use of nuclear energy. Thus, we do what our ancestors of antiquity did before us: burn mineral rock, mineral slime and mineral gas. Fire is all we know, and possibly all that’s available in hell.

Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus
Thursday, January 31, AD 2019 2:33pm

Darn! Donald, my comment back to Foxfier had web links in it so likely it went to moderation. Can you check it? Thanks!

DJH
DJH
Thursday, January 31, AD 2019 4:12pm

LQC: Thank you for your efforts. Here in Michigan, we have wind (no) power. >;(

Foxfier
Admin
Thursday, January 31, AD 2019 4:51pm

*laughs*
LQC, what you provided was what I was HOPING to get you to expand into, but you didn’t say if Trump just recently signed a good nuke bill. ^.^

Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus
Thursday, January 31, AD 2019 5:50pm

To Donald, thank you for approving my post with its web links. Sadly there are more links here.

To Foxfier – sorry. You asked about recycling / reprocessing, not generically about what Trump has recently signed with respect to nuclear. I also want to expand a little on that: we don’t recycle / reprocess right now because (1) mining and enriching uranium is cheaper than recycling / reprocessing and (2) the regulatory structure in 10 CFR 50 is built specifically for light water reactors (BWRs and PWRs), NOT fast neutron burner reactors that can consume all the long lived actinides in used nuclear fuel. Yeah, we got a new Regulatory Guide now (1.231), but that’s it. The US NRC moves at a glacial pace (no pun intended). Now here is what Trump has done:

President Trump Signs Bill to Boost Advanced Nuclear in America – Sept 2, 2018
https://www.energy.gov/articles/president-trump-signs-bill-boost-advanced-nuclear-america

Trump Signs Another Bipartisan Law to Boost Advanced Nuclear – Jan 17, 2019
https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/bipartisan-law-advanced-nuclear#gs.c3pqRd3v

I can get you the actual text signed by Trump, but both bills signed into law are full of nuclear technobabble legalese that interest no one except poor demented souls like me.

The company for which I work is a partial beneficiary of Trump’s pro-nuclear policies. Yet the company strangely remains solidly aligned with the Democrats (global warming and all that crap). And no, I am not going to reveal the name of that company in the public forum. If you are my friend on Facebook, then you may have guessed what it is. But here in the public I am going to give my company plausible deniability.

Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus
Thursday, January 31, AD 2019 6:17pm

PS, this is for anyone living in Illinois’ deep freeze right now:

https://www.nuclearpowersillinois.com/

I don’t particularly like Exelon’s management style. The company is quite ruthless. But it’s a professional nuclear utility with decades of experience. And the other year it took over Entergy’s FitPatrick nuclear power plant in upstate NY where I once worked, saving it from even more cut-throat purveyors of methane.

I will also remind everyone: methane supplies are finite and pipe volumes limited. If you have one deep freeze, then you overstress the system with demand for methane-fired electrical generation and demand methane residential heating. And I hate using the phrase natural gas. It makes everyone thing methane is green. It’s not. It’s explosive. It’s toxic. It’s dangerous. Fracking for it releases more radioactivity in the form of Ar-18 and Rn-222 than any nuke is allowed to release. And its purveyors love solar and wind especially in this deep freeze because those solar cells and wind turbine blades are covered in snow and ice, necessitating spinning fossil fuel reserve. Useless freaking worthless green power, black death – eco-imperialism. But people love to feel environmentally self-righteous. Pharisees!

Foxfier
Admin
Thursday, January 31, AD 2019 6:33pm

I can get you the actual text signed by Trump, but both bills signed into law are full of nuclear technobabble legalese that interest no one except poor demented souls like me.

Yeah, I looked at what the bills said, and got dang near blue-screen.

I take that as a “Yep, is good!”

^.^

Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus
Thursday, January 31, AD 2019 7:22pm

CORRECTION

Change Ar-18 in my dialogue to Ar-41. No such thing as Ar-18. I had a brain fart. Ar-41 is an isotope of argon which has 18 protons. 41 means 18 protons plus 23 neutrons. I got confused.

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