The Earth is on Life Support

I’m afraid I have to agree with kro32, turning of nuclear power plants is not the logical solution!
How will I heat my daughter’s bath water?
How will we post on ATS?
How will I microwave last night’s Chinese!
No thanks keep nuclear power just improves safety and shutdown procedures.

Originally posted by ototheb85
I’m afraid I have to agree with kro32, turning of nuclear power plants is not the logical solution!
How will I heat my daughter’s bath water?
How will we post on ATS?
How will I microwave last night’s Chinese!
No thanks keep nuclear power just improves safety and shutdown procedures.

These are questions you should be asking yourself...how WILL you do these things in case of an emergency?

How did your Grandparents heat THEIR daughters bathwater?
Post on ATS for what?
Plant a garden....A Chinese one if you want....

if there is a will, there is a way.....

Okay look...George carlin said it best ( I am paraphrasing)

The earth is just fine....It is the human race we should be worried about.... We are really concieted to think we are able to do any real damage to this planet.... This planet that has survived, meteors, volcanos,earth quakes, tsunamis. hurricans, mass extinctions, ice ages etc....

Humans are just a failed experiment of mother nature and I assure you.... It is US that are circing the proverbial toilet bowl...

Earth will be here long after we die off....and maybe it will one day see an actual intelligent species....

who knows.

reply to post by Unity_99

.
Not to butt in here, bt you name quite a few sources. If they are so easy to convert over, why havent we done it? Here comes the "its like this to enslave, or monopolise" yeah ok.

Nuclear power is safe. If electricity fails, omg nuclear power makes electricity.

You cannot compare a tsunami destroying the containment chamber and leaking coolant with the rest of the worlds nuclear plants.

Another rn away thread with comparisons that are too broad. The japan plant would have never went that direction if the containment chamber was never breached by a TSUNAMI. interesting.


We better start tsunami preparing plants in colorado now for the inevitable nuclear holocaust

wowzers

Originally posted by stereologist
reply to post by InnerPeace2012

 

So you accept all of the assumptions made by other posters? You think that it is sharp and clear to make assumptions that could possibly be false? That would be a good idea if you wanted to push a false agenda such as those that people often claim that TPTB do.

What assumptions? Assumptions because I didn't put a picture of a powerplant overheating or a link to cite my sources like, oh I don't know, wikipedia. Too paranoid to even leave the hometurf ATS just to make a simple google search?

Not my fault you project your own perceived shortcomings onto others, if you don't understand something look it up buddy.

Originally posted by Eavel
reply to post by Unity_99

 

Nuclear power is safe. If electricity fails, omg nuclear power makes electricity.

Nuclear power is safe? Do you know how many people have died as a result of nuclear power in a timespan of only 50 years? This technology has been around for less than a century and killed how many people? Caused how many defections and mutations in newborns, contaminated how much of our Earth's ocean?

And your happy with relying on Nuclear Power, still?

And uh, think you missed the point about the EMP scenario. The electricity generated would be negligible when the cooling system doesn't work.

The purpose of this thread was not 'fearmongering' for kicks, but rather to direct attention to the grave nature of this technology.

Did everyone just forget how we used to generate good old fashioned cooling steam and electricity for fairgrounds all of a sudden?
In the short term if things got bad, whilst relying on back up generators we'd just re open all the closed mines, tag our old ingenuity to it....Of course the rape of the planet would go up even more. But it would have to be just a fail safe until we pulled our fingers out for real this time using cleaner means.

reply to post by RenegadeScholar

What assumptions?

Your argument is based on your ignorance of the issues. For example you claim that electricity is required to do a shutdown. That is an assumption that may not be correct.

Not my fault you project your own perceived shortcomings onto others, if you don't understand something look it up buddy.

Exactly. You need to look up your claims and learn that many of the things you stated as fact are in fact bad assumptions.

reply to post by RenegadeScholar

Nuclear power is safe? Do you know how many people have died as a result of nuclear power in a timespan of only 50 years? This technology has been around for less than a century and killed how many people? Caused how many defections and mutations in newborns, contaminated how much of our Earth's ocean?

So why don't you tell us.

While your at it why don't you tell us how many people have been killed and maimed by solar projects. How many have been poisoned by the deadly materials used in solar panels?

How many superfund sites in the US are due to power generation from non-nuclear sources?

This thread is not related to 2012 and is based on fearmongering.

Okay your either very narrow minded or a troll lol.

It wouldn't happen........although I'm not too familiar with the inner workings, I'm fairly sure there is a manual method of getting the water in to cool the system, i know newer plants have a passive method which would not fail in the event of a power outage. Also, a solar flare wouldn't knock out the diesel backup generators, and then there is battery backups which I believe can last for up to 8 hours......giving time to sort somthing else out.

reply to post by kro32

If the OP wanted to properly state the seriousness of this he would have researched and presented the possible scenarios in which every single nuclear plant could face a loss of power that would cause a meltdown. He briefly mentions some solar activity that could knock everything out but doesn't state how that's possible.

He doesn't mention if a nuclear reactor immediately goes into meltdown after a loss of power or whether or not there are safety measures in place for that....

He also does not mentioning that safety design of Nuclear reactors has been done to the point they are the SAFTEST method of producing energy. Nor has he even bothered to LOOK at what has been done in terms of safety.

The really interesting point is you can trace a lot of the nuclear hysteria right straight back to our old friends the Rockefellers of Standard Oil.....

Can't make lots of money on "Peak Oil" if you have CHEAP Thorium power competing.
From CHANGE.org

Thorium: Nuclear Energy's Clean Little Secret | Change.org News
Get Nuclear's 'Clean' Little Secret Off the Backburner | Change.org News

Safety of Nuclear Power Reactors

(updated 26 July 2011)

* From the outset, there has been a strong awareness of the potential hazard of both nuclear criticality and release of radioactive materials.

* There have been three major reactor accidents in the history of civil nuclear power - Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima. One was contained without harm to anyone, the next involved an intense fire without provision for containment, and the third severely tested the containment, allowing significant release of radioactivity.

* These are the only major accidents to have occurred in over 14,500 cumulative reactor-years of commercial operation in 32 countries.

* The risks from western nuclear power plants, in terms of the consequences of an accident or terrorist attack, are minimal compared with other commonly accepted risks. Nuclear power plants are very robust.

* Safety is achieved through "defence in depth".


One mandated safety indicator is the calculated probable frequency of degraded core or core melt accidents. The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) specifies that reactor designs must meet a 1 in 10,000 year core damage frequency, but modern designs exceed this. US utility requirements are 1 in 100,000 years, the best currently operating plants are about 1 in 1 million and those likely to be built in the next decade are almost 1 in 10 million. While this calculated core damage frequency has been one of the main metrics to assess reactor safety, European safety authorities prefer a deterministic approach, focusing on actual provision of back-up hardware, though they also undertake probabilistic safety analysis for core damage frequency.

Even months after the Three Mile Island (TMI) accident in 1979 it was assumed that there had been no core melt because there were no indications of severe radioactive release even inside the containment. It turned out that in fact about half the core had melted.....

Regulatory requirements today for new plants are that the effects of any core-melt accident must be confined to the plant itself, without the need to evacuate nearby residents.

The main safety concern has always been the possibility of an uncontrolled release of radioactive material, leading to contamination and consequent radiation exposure off-site. . Earlier assumptions were that this would be likely in the event of a major loss of cooling accident (LOCA) which resulted in a core melt. The TMI experience suggested otherwise, but at Fukushima this is exactly what happened. In the light of better understanding of the physics and chemistry of material in a reactor core under extreme conditions it became evident that even a severe core melt coupled with breach of containment would be unlikely to create a major radiological disaster from many Western reactor designs.....

An OECD/NEA report in 2010 pointed out that the theoretically-calculated frequency for a large release of radioactivity from a severe nuclear power plant accident has reduced by a factor of 1600 between the early Generation I reactors as originally built and the Generation III/III+ plants being built today. Earlier designs however have been progressively upgraded through their operating lives.

It has long been asserted that nuclear reactor accidents are the epitome of low-probability but high-consequence risks.

Understandably, with this in mind, some people were disinclined to accept the risk, however low the probability. However, the physics and chemistry of a reactor core, coupled with but not wholly depending on the engineering, mean that the consequences of an accident are likely in fact be much less severe than those from other industrial and energy sources.

Experience, including Fukushima, bears this out. [commissioned in 1971]

The article is very LONG and full of information. It goes on to say

...The use of nuclear energy for electricity generation can be considered extremely safe. Every year several thousand people die in coal mines to provide this widely used fuel for electricity. There are also significant health and environmental effects arising from fossil fuel use. To date, even the Fukushima accident has caused no deaths, and the IAEA reported on 1 June 2011: "to date, no health effects have been reported in any person as a result of radiation exposure."

At Chernobyl the kind of reactor and its burning contents which dispersed radionuclides far and wide tragically meant that the results were severe. This once and for all vindicated the desirability of designing with inherent safety supplemented by robust secondary safety provisions and avoiding that kind of reactor design. [Chernobyl was a completely different beast]

The main safety features of most reactors are inherent - negative temperature coefficient and negative void coefficient. The first means that beyond an optimal level, as the temperature increases the efficiency of the reaction decreases (this in fact is used to control power levels in some new designs). The second means that if any steam has formed in the cooling water there is a decrease in moderating effect so that fewer neutrons are able to cause fission and the reaction slows down automatically.

In the 1950s and '60s some experimental reactors in the Idaho desert were deliberately tested to destruction to verify that large reactivity excursions were self-limiting and would automatically shut down the fission reaction. These tests verified that this was the case.

Beyond the control rods which are inserted to absorb neutrons and regulate the fission process, the main engineered safety provisions are the back-up emergency core cooling system (ECCS) to remove excess heat (though it is more to prevent damage to the plant than for public safety) and the containment.

Traditional reactor safety systems are 'active' in the sense that they involve electrical or mechanical operation on command. Some engineered systems operate passively, eg pressure relief valves. Both require parallel redundant systems. Inherent or full passive safety design depends only on physical phenomena such as convection, gravity or resistance to high temperatures, not on functioning of engineered components. All reactors have some elements of inherent safety as mentioned above, but in some recent designs the passive or inherent features substitute for active systems in cooling etc. Such a design would have averted the Fukushima accident, where loss of electrical power resulted is loss of cooling function.

The basis of design assumes a threat where due to accident or malign intent (eg terrorism) there is core melting and a breach of containment. This double possibility has been well studied and provides the basis of exclusion zones and contingency plans. Apparently during the Cold War neither Russia nor the USA targeted the other's nuclear power plants because the likely damage would be modest.

Nuclear power plants are designed with sensors to shut them down automatically in an earthquake, and this is a vital consideration in many parts of the world..... www.world-nuclear.org...

Anyone worried about Nuclear power should read the entire article not just the snippets I posted

edit on 23-8-2011 by crimvelvet because: added sentence & broke up it up a bit

Originally posted by woogleuk
It wouldn't happen........although I'm not too familiar with the inner workings, I'm fairly sure there is a manual method of getting the water in to cool the system, i know newer plants have a passive method which would not fail in the event of a power outage. Also, a solar flare wouldn't knock out the diesel backup generators, and then there is battery backups which I believe can last for up to 8 hours......giving time to sort somthing else out.

That's great and all but something WILL eventually happen.

The issue with nuclear power is that even very rare problems are very serious problems.

No amount of insurance or money can undo the tremendous amount of damage done to humans and the planet as a whole.

reply to post by RenegadeScholar


It was fairly obvious that you did not understand what you were talking about and that is evident in the valueless post you made. You might want to learn even a smidgen about the variety of nuclear power plants that exist before continuing to spout your disinformation.

Originally posted by Unity_99

Originally posted by kro32
If humans lived by being afraid of "what if's" we would never have left the cave.

I notice you offer no solutions so what do you suggest to replace them?

GEOTHERMAL! WIND/WAVE/TIDE/SOLAR.

Salt Water makes fuel and lots of electtricity.

Just about everything does!

Overunity!

Water/HHO!

You name it!

Like Lauren Moret said.

No species kills its children for energy!

edit on 21-8-2011 by Unity_99 because: (no reason given)

Have you ever bothered to look into the engineering and physics of "Alternate" fuels?

I become very very suspicious when the big Corporations jump on the bandwagon ESPECIALLY with Tax payer dollars doing the funding. The Maurice Strong/Al Gore Molten Metal Technology Inc Scam that bilked tax payers and investors out of millions jumped immediately to mind.

I was looking into wind power for my own power generation until I read this: WIND POWER FRAUD

Then there is bio-fuels. A possibility on a small scale but not on the large scale. (Wood/crop residue burning stove & methane generation from crop waste/manure)

All biofuel legislation did was drive the cost of grain through the roof, cause the 2008 Food Riots, children to starve and record breaking corporate profits.

“...Today three companies, Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill, and Bunge control the world’s grain trade. Chemical giant Monsanto controls three-fifths of seed production. Unsurprisingly, in the last quarter of 2007, even as the world food crisis was breaking, Archer Daniels Midland’s profits jumped 20%, Monsanto 45%, and Cargill 60%. Recent speculation with food commodities has created another dangerous “boom.” After buying up grains and grain futures, traders are hoarding, withholding stocks and further inflating prices....” www.globalissues.org...

...Then, in spring 2008, prices just as mysteriously fell back to their previous level. Jean Ziegler, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, calls it “a silent mass murder”, entirely due to “man-made actions.” Through the 1990s, Goldman Sachs and others lobbied hard and the regulations [controlling agricultural futures contracts] were abolished. Suddenly, these contracts were turned into “derivatives” that could be bought and sold among traders who had nothing to do with agriculture. A market in “food speculation” was born. The speculators drove the price through the roof....” www.independent.co.uk...

What are the benefits for the tax payer??? NONE - just higher food costs and more money in Monsanto's pockets GRRRrrrr

Cornell ecologist's study finds that producing ethanol and biodiesel from corn and other crops is not worth the energy

Turning plants such as corn, soybeans and sunflowers into fuel uses much more energy than the resulting ethanol or biodiesel generates, according to a new Cornell University and University of California-Berkeley study.

"There is just no energy benefit to using plant biomass for liquid fuel," says David Pimentel, professor of ecology and agriculture at Cornell. "These strategies are not sustainable."

Then there is Solar. Useful in specific applications but how about large scale???

....Lang’s ‘Solar Realities’ paper (download the 17 page PDF here) is summarised as follows:

This paper provides a simple analysis of the capital cost of solar power and energy storage sufficient to meet the demand of Australia’s National Electricity Market. It also considers some of the environmental effects. It puts the figures in perspective. By looking at the limit position, the paper highlights the very high costs imposed by mandating and subsidising solar power. The minimum power output, not the peak or average, is the main factor governing solar power’s economic viability. The capital cost would be 25 times more than nuclear power. The least-cost solar option would require 400 times more land area and emit 20 times more CO2 than nuclear power.

Conclusions:

solar power is uneconomic. Government mandates and subsidies hide the true cost of renewable energy but these additional costs must be carried by others.

bravenewclimate.com...

Of the stuff I have looked into, Geothermal (Trench and pipes) for heating and cooling and the mini Thorium Nuclear plants, if I can get the local power coop interested are the only decent options.

reply to post by crimvelvet


I have a thread on making HHO fuel at home. I don't believe in buying something. However, for most people they would need this set up, in small businesses locally, no need for big business pyramid schemes. All businesses run like that should be changed by a firm commitment by the public locally to start local businesses replacing this, ignore and write in they will not comply with any illegal bills government might write and will never re-elect anyone who would act in treason, and put the big corporations out of business. All needed things such as utilities should be run as cooperatives for the people, at cost. For example, here in Canada, when the people's tax money developed our Hydro electricity and even natural gas, that meant it was ours, we paid for it, and should have been run at cost with the lowest utilities going. Along came nazi's elected in thinking they were sales people who sold what we paid for to US corporations, robbing Canadian citizens, and now we're being milked twice as much. Thats an example of conservative policy by the way. Rip off the people and hand it to some rich friend to milk them, though they already paid for a service at low cost.

Now if you understand what I'm talking about, its the opposite. Locally run, small businesses and people doing it themselves as much as possible.


edit to add: And our BC Hydro, was something that we could be very proud of, as it was not in deficit, it was surplus machine, creating tons of extra revenue for our services. Thats why they buried it. They hate anything that shows collectivity works. I wrote quite abit about it on BC forums at the time. So here was a facility that worked, run at low cost to the consumer, paid for by their tax dollar, that generated millions and millions surplus that went back into services for the citizens. Groups of people brought up, and wrote in that under no circumstance do we ever hire sales people as leaders. We're not hiring a real estate agent. We hire EARS!

reply to post by Unity_99

Along came nazi's elected in thinking they were sales people who sold what we paid for to US corporations, robbing Canadian citizens, and now we're being milked twice as much. Thats an example of conservative policy by the way. Rip off the people and hand it to some rich friend to milk them, though they already paid for a service at low cost.

So you sell the excess electricity at a profit having roped people into long term contracts and now you are upset that US money flows north into Canadian coffers. If you want to see real nazi's at work go to Montreal and watch the language police at work.

So when Canadians build hydro plants that are well in excess of needs did you ever get the idea that just maybe there was some hint that power was going to be sold? Canadian needs are subsidized by sales to the US.

reply to post by stereologist


No, we, the people, paid for development of Hydro in our province with our tax dollars, and land. 100% Canadian. The Gordon Campbell takes our utilities that was run low cost yet made a surplus and put money back into our Collective Programs, and sold that like a business to some rich US company, though we paid for it, and we didn't agree to sell our utility company, and have some US thief own our tax dollars and development, own a chunk of our real estate dams, and land, and control over it, and charge us more.

That is akin to you buying a car, and then the government sells it to the US and they charge you for use. Or building/buying a house. And the government sells it to the US and they charge you rent and raise it. IT WAS HIGHWAY ROBBERY AND MANY MANY PEOPLE WROTE IN ABOUT IT BECAUSE HERE IN CANADA, WE GET THESE KIND OF THINGS. IN FACT IT WAS HALTED BY THE COURTS INITIALLY AND THEY PULLED SOME ILLEGAL SLIGHT OF HAND BY PASSING SOME PSUEDO CRIMINAL BILL TO ALLOW THEM TO SELL OUR INFASTRUCTURE AS IF THEY WERE LEGALLY REAL ESTATE AGENTS STEALING FROM THE PEOPLE!

A small tiny wealthy group here may support nau and like the US, but the majority of Canadian citizens get things and are horrified by US policies, consider living next to them akin to living next to Nazi Germany and are never ever going to be "one" with the US. Nor are we handing our assets and tax dollar initiatives over to US interests. They can take a rolling leap in a rolling doughnut. Better yet, ask your Entities and Dark Side Puppet Masters to take you off my planet, because you've done enough damage to people and we don't like it.

reply to post by Unity_99

No, we, the people, paid for development of Hydro in our province with our tax dollars, and land. 100% Canadian.

So what. There are lots of ways to raise the cash to build a project.

and sold that like a business to some rich US company, though we paid for it

So what. That's called privatization.

and we didn't agree to sell our utility company, and have some US thief own our tax dollars and development, own a chunk of our real estate dams, and land, and control over it, and charge us more.

So the people that privatized the utility did not seek long term contracts for the generated power. Did they turn a tidy profit in the sale of the utility?

So the cost of operating the plants, the pensions, the payroll, the maintenance are no longer the problem of the government. A for profit enterprise is dealing with that.

That is akin to you buying a car, and then the government sells it to the US and they charge you for use. Or building/buying a house. And the government sells it to the US and they charge you rent and raise it. IT WAS HIGHWAY ROBBERY AND MANY MANY PEOPLE WROTE IN ABOUT IT BECAUSE HERE IN CANADA, WE GET THESE KIND OF THINGS. IN FACT IT WAS HALTED BY THE COURTS INITIALLY AND THEY PULLED SOME ILLEGAL SLIGHT OF HAND BY PASSING SOME PSUEDO CRIMINAL BILL TO ALLOW THEM TO SELL OUR INFASTRUCTURE AS IF THEY WERE LEGALLY REAL ESTATE AGENTS STEALING FROM THE PEOPLE!

EVERY SINGLE EXAMPLE YOU POST IS A FALSEHOOD. EVERY CLAIM OF HIGHWAY ROBBERY IS FROM YOU NOT TELLING THE TRUTH ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED. YOU ARE ANGRY BECAUSE YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT HAPPENED AND CHOOSE TO MISREPRESENT THE ISSUE.

This is akin to the government buying cars (you did not buy the power plant) and then selling them to someone else for a profit. (The buyer, not the user, sold the cars.) Then you lease the cars at a higher rate than the government was charging.