A “Lib Dem” minister just told Sky News he was approving new nuclear power stations to promote green jobs. If anybody ever votes for these lying bastards again I shall be disconsolate.
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Mary, the timing of this ‘Windscale’ closure is incredibly coincidental, when private enterprise is proposing a new threat to society. Wonderful!
What does a “controlled, safe, shut-down state” mean. I thought it took a long time to close down a nuclear plant. Perhaps not. Where are you Clark? Throw some light on this please.
Glad the site’s back up.
Mary,
Seems they are busy today juggling potential disasters. First the lights nearly go out, then an emergency at Sellafield. I’m not buying they’ve gone into emergency shutdown because of snow on the roads.
Oh well at least all the press have got the gas crisis in their news today. They are probably still in the dark about Sellafield – as are we all.
Dave; Are you familiar with some of Tim Leary’s early notions about the merging of nervous systems between two persons deeply in love? Any lions of your science who touch that subject?
More of the American and Israeli gross hypocrisy.
Israel PM apologies for Gaza flotilla deaths
The Turkish ship, Mavi Marmara, leaves Istanbul on 22 May 2010
The Turkish ship Mavi Marmara led a six-vessel aid convoy which tried to breach the Gaza blockade
Continue reading the main story
Gaza Flotilla Clash
Flotilla fallout
Press review: Turkey-Israel spat
Turkey to take Israel to UN court
Israel’s prime minister has apologised to Turkey for “any errors that could have led to loss of life” during the 2010 commando raid on an aid flotilla that tried to breach the Gaza blockade.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-21902273
The Mavi Mamara killings took place in 2010. Now when Turkey is required to be fully onside for the evil plans for Syria, an apology pops out of the mouth of Netanyahu, backed up by Obomber. What about the young American citizen who was also killed Mr Obomber? Does he not merit some justice?
The apology is mealy mouthed. There were no ‘errors’. It was slaughter. Some were shot in the back of their heads.
@Ben
I have no faith in the Hot fusion project,it was promises,promises.
I remember reading about the answer to the worlds energy problems
in the 1950`s.Its a big game .I use to know and drink with the Hot fusion
guys in the local pub when I use to work at the Rutherford lab so I do have a bit of insider info.You have to keep the funding coming.That is why the funders are cautious.This is why the Hot fusion brigade are against LENR or cold fusion their game
would come to an end.Anyway I`m going with LENR and that is what I`m
working on.
So Mary you think that the Russia Cyprus tax treaty which allows most of the Russian mafia to divert the profits they earn on their businesses in Russia into Cypriot enterprises where it is hardly taxed at all is a good thing – particularly if it deprives the Russian Government of the revenues to properly fund pensions
http://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/andrei-zaostrovtsev/russia%E2%80%99s-pension-impasse-%E2%80%93-is-there-way-out
I don’t think you or Professor Kern realise how prevalent so called Cypriot companies are within Russia as a tax avoidance mechanism. Yes the British banks may take larger deposits, especially after they have been laundered through Cyprus, and they should ask a lot harder questions about the source of those funds, but believe me . I agree that we shouldn’t demonise ordinary Russians – but as for those who deprive those ordinary Russians of the benefits to which they are entitled from tax revenues and the resources of that country by using the Russian Cyprus tax treaty I’m afraid they should be held in utter contempt, and I have no problem if they eventually have to pay some taxes on their ill gotten gains. No wonder the Godfather of the Russian mafia is a little concerned.
Let us at least be universal in our condemnation of tax dodgers – or are we so blinded that we believe that only the evil West is capable of such behaviour and excuse even that vice providing the perpetrators are anti US.
I’m afraid that poor Cyprus is going to suffer just as most of the public sector has in southern Italy and Sicily for getting rather too close to another branch of the Mafia.
PS I would be at all surprised if the Karimovas and their close associates are not above making use of Cyprus because I thin kthey may have inherited the same dounble tax treaty from the USSR.
@Ben Dave; Are you familiar with some of Tim Leary’s early notions about the merging of nervous systems between two persons deeply in love? Any lions of your science who touch that subject?
Yes I remember Tim Leary`s notions
I would have to think about the science one .Did you ever look at John Lilly`s work?
I was trying to get this on Last night, what happened to the site?
But OMG…Check out some of Data from Fukushima at this time.
I have been unable to find a transcript, so I took some notes by hand. Jeeeezo its shocking stuff.
By Hiroaki Hoide
Master of Science in nuclear Engineering
Assistant Professor at the Kyoto University research institute
Nuclear waste management & Safety Expert
From About 8 mins in – Till around 12 mins
” However, because it is a wind, somtetimes it Flows to the East, and there are times when it is a South wind, or a North wind. Because of this, the Tohku and Kanto regions of Japan were extremely contaminated.
People who used to live in an aproximately 1,000 SQ kilometers ( 390 SQ miles ) area around Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, have been forced to evacuate by the Japanese Government. More than 100,000 people have lost their Home towns, their houses, their neighbours, and live in exile.
And if the laws of Japan were strictly obseverved, Areas with Soil contamination over 40,000 Bq per Sq meter would be designated as radiation controlled areas.
However, the contaminated areas was as large as 20,000 Sq kilometers ( 7,000 Sq miles ) which ment a vast zone in the Tohoku and Kanto regions would have to be evacuated.
The Japanese government decided that it would never be able to help the people in these contaminated areas, and the people would be abandoned, and left there.
As of today, about 10 million people have been left in areas that should have been designated radiation controlled areas, and are exposed to continual radiation every day.
Then you might ask if the Fukushima disaster has come to an end, but that is not the case.
On march 15th 2013 there was an explosion at the reactor No 4 building, which was located right next to reactors 1, 2, 3, and was off line at the time of the march 11th disaster.
All the fuel rods that had been in the reactor core had been transferred to the spent fuel pool,in the reactor building.
There were 548 fuel assemblies in the core – that is 2.5 times the number of fuel assemblies that should have been in the reactor core.
At the moment, they are at the bottom of the spent fuel pool,which is full of fission products.
I believe that this fuel that sunk to the bottom of the spent fuel pool contains cesium-137 equivalent to more than 10,000 Hiroshima atom bombs.
The nuclear reactor building that was destroyed by the explosion is still exposed to the environment even today.
if another large aftershock occurs, the reactor building will undergo further damage, it will become impossible to cool the spent fuel at the bottom. I am apprehensive that much more radioactive material than has been released up till now will be blown into the environment ”
Hiroaki Hoide
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=clmHptj2RVo
“.Did you ever look at John Lilly`s work?” You’re referring to ‘Programming and Meta-programming the human bio-computer”, Dave?
It’s been a long time. I don’t specifically remember that issue.
Dave @ LENR;
It seems to me the lack of funding is the strict need for scientific evidence of what you have with cold fusion. It seems a mysterious process even for the best informed. Am I correct on this (just a casual acquaintance with the subject)
Why is hot fusion a dead end? Is your opposition based on it bleeding away funding for LENR? It would seem like a stepping stone, FMP.
The Japanese have very little options but to go with Nuclear with their power demand being very high and their natural resources being very low, what strikes me is that with Japan getting 1000’s of earthquakes each year how the risk evaluation on the fuel supply to the back up generators was missed. it does highlight (to me) that Nuclear could be safe and reliable but because of human failings in not planning or maintaining them properly another disaster will happen. If the Japanese could harness the potential energy built up in the earthquakes then they would be home free.
Hi Mark,
Electric cars can be more energy efficient than combustion, because you can recapture breaking energy with the same hardware that releases it.
Combustion engine cars just have a range/performance edge on electric ones with legacy technology.
Most hybrid and plug in hybrid cars currently combine under rated electrics with over rated combustion systems, for humdrum commercial strategy. A lot of room for generational improvements has been allocated. The combustion system should really be an optional removable generator for long range journeys.
It is long past time the glamourised pleasure and enthusiasm of car use has been a traffic jammed sham anyway. Traffic has made public space and transport so noisy and dangerous, everyone wants a nice seatbelted car to get through it in relative comfort, distracted by the inherent perilous demands of driving and satisfaction of playing out the advertised role, as the captain of a shiny street ship.
UK onshore and offshore windpower has been independantly estimated conservatively to have the potential of supplying 68 killowatt hours of energy per day per person in the uk. Each UKers current daily energy consumption is about 125 kWh per day (including electric, fuels and manufacture)
Wind energy with some storage has the potential
to provide more than all current electric demand. It is currently targeted to provide 30% by 2020.
Ideally we would saturate offshore space with wind capture to 75%, and 50% saturate land with many large turbines covering half the national parks and farmland and smaller turbines located – providing altogether a really big chunk of total energy supply.
Turbines should be celebrated, painted, sculpted, all shapes and sizes. They are not a danger to birds – birds are agile and alert in the air to avoid competitors and predators -other raptors. Invisible windows and illusionary reflections are much more dangerous to birds than the large columns and smooth sweeping limbs of windmills.
Once a turbine is built and erected it can provide great levels and peaks of energy of many years with very little maintenance and zero pollution and resource consuption. They do not need to be made from especially exotic or expensive materials either, and all resources employed are contained and recyclable.
Storage is not very problematic until a large fraction the of electricity supply is coming from this completely renewable and fueless gift of nature. Wind power is benignly collectable above farms, forests and mountains, in the Sea their columns enhance the fertility of surrounding waters (Something which should be done anyway regardless of what goes on top).
Opposition to wind turbines is truely a combination of technical ignorance and misplaced aesthetics, any true nature lover should be happy to see wind turbines everywhere. Its only nature fuckers who protest against them while having no concerns for real damage to the planet and environments.
Nuke power processing is extremely resource expensive (many dangerous and exotic mined materials involved), extremely high security and extremely damaging when faults inevitably escaped the grave and expensive precautions proscribed. Monbiot is deluded, it is another fantasy scheme, glamourised and harmful to environment people and culture, and one of the worst.
Sellafield Update
http://www.sellafieldsites.com/employee-area/
So if we are lucky that’s the gas pipeline fixed and Sellafield emergency coincidentally over. So looks like the lights will be on this weekend. On the plus side if a major disaster does develop at Sellafield we could look forward to glowing in the dark – a big plus when the power is off.
I wonder if the pipeline problems have been properly fixed or just restarted with some poor guy holding down the fault condition over-ride switch.
Scourge thunders as follows :
“Overall, nuclear is the safest form of energy generation the world has ever seen (and the statistics since 1950 bear this out). “
Richard why do you not supply the readers with those statistics and provide a link?
“Just to take one counter example, more deaths have occured in the UK due to Wind turbines than nuclear.”
Again you fail to provide any evidence for your assertion. Why not?”
****
May I suggest that your questions would stand a better chance of getting an answer if you yourself were to answers questions other commenters put to you?
Just a thought!
Omni interviews Lilly; OMG ! I was living about three miles from him in 1983.
http://www.erowid.org/culture/characters/lilly_john/lilly_john_interview1.shtml
Clark,
thanks for pointing out the perils of mining for rare earths and mining in general. Most people fail to realize or just ignore the perils of mining that leads to enormous release of radioactive material into the atmosphere. As natural radionuclides are everywhere notably in coal (the trash burned in power plants may contain up to 20% ash) the amount released from burning coal is staggering considering the hundreds of millions of tons burned each year. China (currently burning about 300 million tons per annum) is a pretty good polluter as most of their power plants have no effective filters. Given the average radioactivity of about 6pCi/g, we get a devilish dose of 6 Ci from one million tons of airborn ash. Not even natural gas is clean as it contains 222Radon.
Dave Lawton
cold fusion is the new cargo cult of the semi-educated classes inhabiting the “civilized” world. Let us make the fusion hot, dave.
The Scourge comes out with the following bit of amateur psychology :
“Habbabkuk, you are a despicable creature as I am sure you know yourself. Why you are like this I don’t know but in my broad experience I have found that people like you get satisfaction from upsetting others or causing emotional or physical pain on your chosen victims.”
So we must note from your post that emotional or physical (?) pain is caused to people like Mary. What pains her so much – her inability (or unwillingness) to respond to legitimate questions?
Get this into your thick head once and for all : if Mary, or you, or indeed anyone else, comes out with nasty, snide tripe, they can expect to be pulled up and questioned by people like me. And if being pulled up or being faced with legitimate questions causes them pain – then just too bad.
***********
La vita è bella, life is good! (heat – kitchen – get out of)
Habakuk, just out for an evening (s)troll are you ?
Mary thunders, à propos of Prof. Kern Alexander on Cyprus :
“His truthfulness was a breath of fresh air. He spoke of the Russians being demonised and said the amount of Russian money that has come into the UK dwarfs the offshore banking ‘haven’ that is Cyprus. Furthermore, it was accepted into the Euro bloc when its offshore function was well known ie it suited the bloc then.”
A lovely quote. But not so convincing when you consider the following :
1/. There may well be much larger deposits of Russian money in London…..but the UK economy is much larger than that of Cyprus. Many, many, many times larger.
2/. Cyprus’s off-shore function has increased x-fold since the accession negotiations (pre-2004) and Cypriot accession (2004).
3/. EU legislation on prudential oversight of the financial sector pre-2004 was but a shadow of what it is now (and what it will be).
I don’t expect, of course, that I will get a reasoned response from you. At best there will be an ad hominem attack – or a whine – from The Scourge or one of your other useful idiots.
Last point : if I were you, I’d probably have written “Prof. Kern Alexander – who he?”. But I’m, thank God, and so I won’t.
**********
La vita è bella, life is good!
@Windy Miller, much as we appreciate the Pollyana, irrepressible optimism, you display, for some lashings of light relief and a snigger, much as with ‘Barbara’ who pops up at any mention of the Olympics, to tell us how simply marvellous the whole charade was, such little rays of sunshine, or blinding flashes of light do tend to obscure the seriousness of the matter. It is not and was not simply a matter of the fuel supply to generators, that is such an over-simplification as beggars belief. Even sticking with your absurd contention that fuel supplies for generators was indeed overlooked (how preposterous a contention) and the sole issue and not just one of infinite others – as well as fuel, such engines intake (oxygen containing air) and exhaust waste gases, in far greater proportion to fuel, which they can hardly do when under water (or for long in hermetically sealed and dry conditions) – while it highlights for you in your myopic and blinkered vision that nuclear power, there or anywhere else could ever be safe or reliable (or ever economically viable) it more than highlights, it underlines, in blinking bold twenty-foot letters that it has not, will not and cannot ever be any of these things to everyone else.
If your post was intended as humour, as a burlesque of the nuclear evangelists, who enthuse, cult-like of all things nuclear and worship its destructive power to kill us all, then good show, well done, if you were being serious then I really do despair.
@ Villager :
Thank you for that insightful comment.
I look forward to the day when you – or indeed any of the other Eminences – actually best me on a point of fact or on the logic of an argument.
Never happened yet!
**********
La vita è bella, life is good! (never use a fact when an ad hominem will do)
The problem with nuclear is not its potential for planet wide contamination(that can be averaged away choosing a vaste frame of reference, 2/3rds of it being ocean), it is the expensive measures required to optimistically avoid terrible local and regional accidents and potential attacks. Overt local contaminations and arguable regional contamination cause definite but extremely difficult to quantify (or limit) increases in adult and child Cancer.
Im reading people going down this flight of fancy that radioactive power processing is not really all that dangerous, it depends on the kind of selective concern and reference which rife for terrible failure and mistake for an unnecessary and unreal idea of super sophisticated contained dangers, providing cheap energy.
Also Nuclear plants require at least as much mineral mining as wind turbines do (even without uranium mining) – because all nuke plants depend on huge rotating electrical generators to create electricity. Watt for watt you need just as much magnetic and conductive material to generate electricity spun by wind or water, than you do spun by the heat of intense radiation.
Its just a star trek dream that nuke power is so advanced its only problem is being cleverly careful with its radioactive fuel. The grave issues of the radioactive fueling go alongside the standard difficulties of generating and distributing electricity.
You’re all being scammed by danger monger securocrats!
@Ben Why is hot fusion a dead end? Is your opposition based on it bleeding away funding for LENR? It would seem like a stepping stone, FMP.
No I do`nt need funding, I find companies that have the raw materias I need are very generous they will supply me what I need for free.They have spent to much money on hot fusion to .Its politics .When Regan and Thatcher came to power it was all about starwars .Plenty of research money for that.
Gasers,Xray lasers even Black hole bombs you could make up anything it was quite ridiculous.
Also Ben did you know the Grateful Dead ?
Thanks for the Lilly link will take aread later
“Also Nuclear plants require at least as much mineral mining as wind turbines do (even without uranium mining) – because all nuke plants depend on huge rotating electrical generators to create electricity. Watt for watt you need just as much magnetic and conductive material to generate electricity spun by wind or water, than you do spun by the heat of intense radiation.”
They work differently.
The generators in a nuclear plant have field coils fed by a smaller generator. Wind turbines tend to be permanent magnet for various reasons.
Aye Mary, The Mavi Marmara was in international waters when attacked, And crew members murdered in cold Blood, as you point out some of them shot in the BACK of the head, Cowardly Bastards, But why ( even if it is Isreal ) have they not been brought to justice. Screams for dreams with that lot, and the international community ?????????
Anyway Good ol Roger Boy
David Cronin: Do you think the campaign for a cultural boycott of Israel is having an impact?
Roger Waters: I’d like to think that it was.
My experience when I speak to people and say “don’t go” is either they reply “that sounds good” or they say “don’t you think it’s better to go there?”
Well, no, I fucking don’t.
DC: How do you feel about the support for Israel offered by David Cameron’s government in your native Britain?
RW: Cameron has absolutely adopted Tony Blair’s wolf’s clothing that he [Blair] adopted so eagerly and happily when he went to war in Iraq on George Bush’s coat-tails.
Cameron is entirely content for Great Britain to be a satellite nation of the US. None of us can quite understand why
http://electronicintifada.net/content/boycotting-israel-way-go-says-pink-floyd-legend-roger-waters/12287
Ho hum, I hate polarised debates. On the one hand, “nuclear will kill us all”; on the other, it’s the safest form of power generation ever devised. On the one hand, renewables will easily supply all our needs; on the other, it’s just a scam to make money for landowners.
Phlup. 🙁
Crab, Fred is right about generators. I suppose you could supply grid power to wind turbines so that they could use elecromagnets instead of permanent magnets, but that’s not the way it’s being done at present. By-products from making “clean” wind turbines are polluting poorer countries.
“The generators in a nuclear plant have field coils fed by a smaller generator. Wind turbines tend to be permanent magnet for various reasons.”
That is much to vague a refutation of the general principle Fred — that an efficient electrical generator will require similar quantity of expensive materials to others being at a different scale -except for problem and opportunities presenting from extremes of scale.
We might argue some economies of scale between Giga-watt capable wind rated generators and Terra-watt capable nuclear plant generators, but these will always be fractional in over all terms. There are also increased hazards to protect against in constructing and operating a Tera-watt scale devices over many dispursed Giga-watt scale ones.
And the Neodymium magnet or feild coil dichotomy is false, because feild coils also demand exotic magnetic inductors, unless air core is possible? in which case the coil material would have to be hugely increased to compensate.
Its just a baseless rumour that wind generators inherently use more minerals than concentrated power plants, as preposterous as the bird threat idea when you examine it.
Habakuk, any idiot can recite facts in this Information Age.
But, the majority of people who come here are compassionate human beings concerned about the injustices faced by the large majority of mankind, inter-alia through wars perpetrated by our shallow, deceptive politicians in connivance with the military-industrial complex. They offer original opinions and insights that are heartfelt, and often share the wisdom of other men and women who have the courage of their actions to do good.
I have to observe you stand out as rather a “weak (stalking) force” in this regard on this blog. Your bleat of life is good etc is just a superficial banner of your uninspired acceptance of the status quo, like many other parasites.
Its not right Clark, you dont need to use neodymium magnets in a Kilowatt capable generator never mind 10 Megawatt wind turbines or Terawatt power plants.
And if you dont use permanent magnets you specify expensively mined and produced materials with super magnetic characteristics for your inductive cores anyway.
There should be rather few economies of scale and possibly as many problems of scale between Gigawatt and Terawatt capable generating devices.
That there is some considerable inherent difference one way or the other is just a load of shaggy dog tales, its never been properly shown -it couldn’t be, there is no over riding principle separating these two scales of generators. Its just people believing in their favourite technical cheries.