The solar storm of 2012 that almost sent us back to a post-apocalyptic Stone Age

a reply to: TKDRL

Dude... seriously?

Nuclear energy is da bomb...get it? I was being ... humorous.

a reply to: bbracken677
I guess I misunderstood then lol. Not the first time, won't be the last time I am sure.

a reply to: adnanmuf

The production of energy and the advancement of science via nuclear reactions has nothing to do with Satanism or the devil in general. I should also point out than Christianity has been responsible for the retardation of humanity's technological advancement since the turn of the last millennium, probably even before that if truth be told.

Humanity's ability to produce power via fission reaction is still in its infancy. We need to build these reactors far away form our population center's and in a safe environment, possibly underground. Because lets face its they are the only viable option that's going to meet our growing energy requirements as a species.

Nuclear Fusion via the use of advanced Tokamak reactors is quite possibly right around the corner but until we hit the sweet spot regarding more energy out than we put in us Humans need to utilise the technology at hand. There are also new fission reactors being built and designed that utilise Thorium rather than Uranium or Plutonium as a fuel source and produce far less radioactive waste products and toxic waste than the current reactors we have in service.

a reply to: TKDRL

No problem! I have a .. unique.. sense of humor. My wife often tells me that I need help (while grinning).

I have been known to sing along with the radio using Eeyore's voice, and I also do a passable imitation of Billy Bob's voice from Sling Blade...also hilarious to sing along with.

a reply to: andy06shake

I'm sure if we take a minute and think for ourselves a bit: building anything nuclear underground is not safe.

I mean, it doesn't make it safe(r), if its built underground. Agree?

You seem knowledgeable about nuclear energy. Can you comment on a statement that nuclear power has not been net-positive after 2008, due to total uranium depletion through mining? I mean, WE do need to burn more than 1KW of fossil based fuel to produce 1KW of nuclear energy? PLUS all that waste... +handling...

How about the fact that after Russia stopped supplying the safer nuc. fuel, it got replaced by not so safe, plutonium mixed MOX-fuel, reactors started faulting?

I'm no expert in any circumstance. But where i stand, the state of nuclear energy is nothing more than sick-war-instrument.

As i've heard, theres blood being used in nuclear reactors.. so that comment about nuclear energy being devilish ATM is not so far fetched.

Please comment on the obvious questions if you are in the know.

originally posted by: Cinrad

originally posted by: mwood
We will NEVER get knocked back to the stone age, never.

There has been so much metal won from the ground in the last 100 years that we would never get knocked back to the Stone age too, for that matter. You only have to go to the nearest stop sign to get enough metal to make knives, pots, hooks, traps, combs, etc. to last you for years. They didnt have this only a few hundred years ago. So to be anal about this, it wold be the Iron age. But we also know more about germs than they did then.

Wouldn't we be knocked back to sometime in the 1800's?
Except we would still have all of the knowledge and books that we have now.

I'm thinking more Steampunk Age as opposed to Iron Age.

a reply to: menneni

Regarding whether nuclear energy is net positive or not seems to depend on who is providing the analysis.

We have found the information about the EROI of nuclear power to be mostly as disparate, widespread, idiosyncratic, prejudiced and poorly documented as information about the nuclear power industry itself. Much, perhaps most, of the information that is available seems to have been prepared by someone who has made up his or her mind one-way or another (i.e. a large or trivial supplier of net energy) before the analysis is given. As is usually the case, the largest issue is often what the appropriate boundaries of analysis should be. The following diagram, which should be considered conceptually if not necessarily quantitatively appropriate, illustrates the main issues. The diagram indicates from left to right the timeline of a power plant, with the initial negative values (“phase 1”) indicating the initial energy costs of plant construction, the large positive value generated over the reactor’s lifetime (with a correction for the energy to get/refine the fuel) and phase 3 indicating the energy required for dismantling the plant and sequestering the dangerous by products.

Here is the full report including much in depth analysis that would seem to call into question the remark that nuclear energy is net negative. Indeed there is a case for a better EROI than that of oil, which I know used to be the case. I am somewhat neutral on the subject depending on the location of the plant and other factors. There are positives (not using fossil fuels) and negatives (potential safety issues).

I can say this: If we examined every technology and subjected them to the same scrutiny that nuclear energy gets, we would probably be cooking food with wood fires outside in a stone pit. On the other hand, few energy sources have the capacity to do as much damage as nuclear plants potentially have.

Nuclear EROI

a reply to: FinalCountdown

Correctomundo! I like the steampunk reference lol since that is probably what we would be seeing after the dust settled a bit.

Hard to say back to the Stone Age since we would still have all the technologies available that were discovered or developed up to the beginning (at least) of the industrial era. And a few afterwards (like semi and full auto weapons).

a reply to: bbracken677

Thanks for your post, really appreciated.

To be frank, i'm terrified about the potential damage the nuclear disaster could make in worst case scenario, like really powerful CME for example. Power (cooling) fails, plant pops. Thats like major S hitting the turboprop.

I'm also not so sure about nuclear waste management either. Real pain in the arse, as far as i understand.

Really hoping that magically, some new energy technology gets developed and we can collectively put whole nuclear-energy in the past. I understand that there is use for some-things-nuclear, but i just don't think that the best use is making electricity from it, at least not for on-earth.

I wouldn't do it in my backyard. And did, or did not A. Einstein once say that use of nuclear will kill its user, eventually? Not really nice gift for our sons and daughters.

a reply to: menneni

I think the answer should be an all out assault, Manhattan project style, on developing fusion energy. Safe in virtually every way that fission is not. No bad byproducts, no chance of meltdown or radiation clouds, none of that.

You also do not need huge central generators such as the current fission plants.

Regarding fission I would like to expound a bit on my opinions. First I will start off with some pros of sorts.

If we hadn't developed an almost obsessive nature about the beast, we would have continued building better and more technologically sound, safer plants. As it is we have what boils down to a bunch of 30, 40 year old cars around who are not exactly working as efficiently or as safely as they could be. We have not shut any down because we have better versions...we have no versions. Did you know that 65% of electric generation in France is by nuke plants? Using nuke plants would and could eliminate virtually all of the fossil fuel plants... That is a big positive, IMO.

Oh, and I am sure they have ways to deal with the loss of power safely. So just cause a CME cut energy, nuke plants around the world would not be twerking in response. I will post a link later.

We pretty much all know the cons... no need to dwell on the issue of waste disposal, the number of potential casualties should a worst case scenario happen at a nuke plant. I grew up watching China Syndrome and seeing all the buzz from the 3 Mile Island incident, and of course we had the Russian disaster and now Fukushima. Therefore, my position on nuke plants is a big no...specially in areas where seismic activity and such are common. In a perfectly stable area away from the population, perhaps.

In conclusion I feel that on one hand the industry has had to deal with a buttload of bad press and lots of agenda driven propaganda. On the other hand, we have Fukushima which should never have been built in a location such as it was, and we have Chernobyl, which was... shall we say the worst case quality being applied to something as potentially dangerous as a nuke plant. No surprise what the result was. If done properly (which can be a big if) nuke power generation should be safe... should be... It's that 1% of 1% that is the real killer.

the swedes of sweden had been using safe nuclear energy using a mineral that is abundant and very safe and it is been known about for fifty years.
i believe the nuclear energy industry opted for uranium to make use of nuclear uranium war industry biproducts.

we could have solved the problem long time ago.
it always end up are the wrong decisions of industrialists and their bankers.

Well since this thread seems have much more life than mine ever did, I will amgamate my posts from there and add to the discussion here.

What does this get you, two years ago something could have happened but it didn't.. 

May be the next one doesn't miss?

Here's the thing, some of the parts of the grid which would be damaged the most would take as many as 18-36 months to replace as they aren't kept 'on the shelf', assuming there is power in order to be able to manufacture them in the first place.

Telegraph lines caught fire and melted due to the huge amount of current induced in them, what do you think would happen to all those high tension lines that crisscross the country?

Substations and relays would turn into puddles of slag, things would not look good for the methods to transmit power anywhere on the sunward side of the earth that day.

Even more ominous is a natural counterpart — think of it as a solar tsunami — that will come our way at some point in the foreseeable future: an intense geomagnetic disturbance (GMD) caused by one of the sun’s periodic, huge coronal mass ejections (solar flares). Such GMDs are known as Carrington Events, and they occur roughly every 150 years. The last one took place 155 years ago.

The difference is that in 1859, the only thing remotely equivalent to modern electric systems and the things they power were telegraph offices, equipment, and wires. And during the Carrington Event of that year, many of them caught fire.

A solar storm of such magnitude these days would, among other things, seriously damage, if not destroy outright, high-voltage transformers that constitute the backbone of the nation’s grid. It is, as a practical matter, impossible promptly to replace these critical pieces of equipment if large numbers of them are taken down at once — ensuring that the power will be off for many months, and probably years, in the affected areas.

What do you think would happen if power were out for years?

Without power for pumped cooling and water replenishment, the spent fuel pools will boil off and the still-hot fuel rods will overheat, catch fire, and disseminate radioactive fallout downwind. The effect would be simply devastating, especially when combined with other, horrific environmental and societal repercussions of blackouts that could last a year or longer.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has acknowledged the implications of the threat posed by intense solar storms, declaring in 2012, “The NRC believes that it is possible that a geomagnetic storm-induced outage could be long-lasting and could last long enough that the onsite supply of fuel for the emergency generators would be exhausted … Accordingly, it is appropriate for the NRC to consider regulatory actions that could be needed to ensure adequate protection of public health and safety during and after a severe geomagnetic storm.”

Put the above together with this map:



Imagine each one of those dots becoming a fukushima reactor 3-type explosion...

But surely this is being taken care of, right?

Right?

The bad news is that — despite the evidence revealed in the Center’s compendium entitled Guilty Knowledge, which presents the executive summaries of 11 different government-sponsored studies of grid vulnerability conducted since 2004 — federal authorities have failed to do anything appreciable to protect us from such disasters.

Lawmakers Neglect Vulnerable Power Grid

all emphases mine

a reply to: menneni

"I mean, it doesn't make it safe(r), if its built underground. Agree?"

As long as the reactor is build well below the water table and within rock of sufficient density I imagine it would indeed offer rather more containment protection should some type of radiological disaster occur than being built on our shores next to our population centres and/or agricultural land. Cooling any underground reactor thought would present a problem short of some type of independent water source.

"As i've heard, theres blood being used in nuclear reactors.. so that comment about nuclear energy being devilish ATM is not so far fetched."

Cant say that i have ever heard of blood being used within any type of reactor, I take it the implication is of some type of ritualistic nature? Love to here more regarding the use of blood in reactors, can you elaborate please?

As to your other queries i really dont have the answers i'm afraid.

I thought another blast from the sun missed us last week, because we had moved along in orbit. A CME Will only effect half the Earth directly. The half facing the sun. The side effected could be the Middle East or China...... or USA?

Our tax dollars in the USA need to go to preparations in case such an event occurs, obviously. My brother is an electrical engineer. I believe the parts for replacement transformers come from Italy. I read it would take five to ten years to receive and install them.

No doubt millions/ billions of people would starve. Many would starve after 21 days. Have you have seen the Naked and Afraid show on cable TV? People would be too weak to hunt or walk around and cause trouble. So stock up for a month and you will miss the first wave of death. Then the people who are left would be dangerous because they are the ones with skills, brains, and luck... Most of the people in the large cities would be in trouble stuck there by grid lock on the roads, unable to fire a riffle, succumbed to the violence of chaos and panic. Disease and Corpses would be every where, sounds like an appacalypse movie plot. I pray we as a planet of people, start to act like responsible adults. Who think wisely and plan ahead for disasters while getting along.

a reply to: andy06shake

There is no blood being used in reactors. That is about as accurate as saying there are tiny little gerbils inside your pc that provide the computing power. The more gerbils the more computing power you have.

a reply to: bbracken677

Its hamsters inside mine, quad core hamsters to be precise.



I don't particularly think blood would be of any use in a reactor myself. That being said i can't wait to hear Menneni's
take on why we would possibly use blood in nuclear reactors?

What can i say, i love a good conspiracy theory! LoL

a reply to: andy06shake

lol Awesome! I love the graphic!

a reply to: andy06shake

Well, just to clear some air:

I don't personally have a belief that blood is being used in reactors. Like i said, i heard that stuff from a guy who has some high safety clearance to have that kind of knowledge. He had personally found barrels of swine blood in one european nuc. facility. IIRC, he told that only blood that can be used is swines/pigs, and human blood. The data i recall is so vague that i just cannot reproduce it right now into coherent story.

But i try to take a recheck on the issue, as i believe i have that story somewhere.

He left some questions on air, said you can fact check it. The leads were somewhere in what happens to people when they die, where does the blood go and what they do with it. Also said that main exported of that blood is USA.

It gets weirder tho; somehow story was linked with the working principles of Mt. Etna -> Pyramids -> Nuclear reactor.

a reply to: menneni

Sounds interesting i recommend starting a thread on the subject should you come across the information again.

a reply to: andy06shake

Except that it is pure hogwash, lol. Blood, no matter what kind, is not used in reactors.

I can only ROFLMAO at the thought that someone actually thinks so.