Nuclear Energy: Makes Sense!

I mentioned it a while back, and here it is: America is stupid. And I agree wholeheartedly with Barack Hussein Obama*.

That is, American policy is stupid.

On nuclear generation of electricity.

What's especially stupid is that, of all the ways you can make electricity, with the possible exception of hydrodynamic or geothermal (which are hard to get going on the same scale as nuclear), nuclear energy is the MOST natural of all the ways we generate electricity!

Wind power, you say? I'm for it. Try getting a gigawatt in anything like the same footprint as a gigawatt nuclear facility. The wind pushes the blade which turns the mill, which makes power, which is conditioned and put on the grid.

Solar, you say? Leaving aside for the moment the argument that solar panels require more energy to produce than they will put out over the lifetime of the panel; the sun heats the cell, which makes electrons, which must be rectified and conditioned and then put on the grid.

Oil, coal, both filthy. Much better than they used to be, but compared to nuclear, filthy to make and filthy to use. Not to mention that a single truck can deliver the fuel to run a reactor for a few years, compared to trainloads of coal or constant-flowing pipelines of oil that get BURNED every DAY!

Natural gas, slightly less dirty than oil.

Nuclear power: we take a natural product straight out of the earth (some reactors can use raw ore), put it in a controlled environment, and it does the same thing it was doing underground. Yes, that is correct. Nuclear power generation is merely harvesting a NATURAL chemical reaction. The uranium, plutonium, etc., are turning into lead underground. We put them in a reactor and put them past critical mass, and they do it faster, making more heat. We take the heat to make power the same way you do with geothermal and hydrodynamic generation: spinning turbines. What is the waste product of nuclear electricity generation? Steam and heat. In france, there is one room in one city where they store highly radioactive waste. This waste has a half-life shorter than a human's half-life.

Hold on there.

Not tens or hundreds of thousands of years, single digits of decades half-life on the stuff they store until it is no longer dangerous.

That's France. In FRIKKIN FRANCE they are doing something better than we are!

In the US, we have over a hundred pools next to their reactors storing used uranium and a little plutonium, along with the stuff they keep in a single room in LeHavre.

What's the difference?

Jimmy Carter: worst. president. ever.

Some jerk stole some spent nuclear fuel in India and the world had a minor freak-out. Jimmuh had a major freak-out and said NO transporting nuclear fuel after it's used

okay, why can we transport it before it's used?

Because it's so deadly dangerous that workers have to use special protective equipment to handle the fuel rods that go into a reactor: gloves.

That's right, you can handle unused uranium fuel rods with gloves and not get dead, like you would handling spent rods. They get MORE radioactive when we use them. Crazy. You'd think if they got MORE radioactive, you could take them and stick them back in and use them some more! Right? I mean, RIGHT?

Right. In France, where 80+% of their power is nuclear, they recycle their spent fuel. So does UK, and all the other countries that are not stupid about it. 95% of the stuff in a used fuel rod from a nuclear reactor is useable fuel. That 95% is the stuff with half-lives so long we have to worry about people in a gozillion years getting into it and killing themselves. Yeah, when you spin that out, you get 5% of stuff with half-lives shorter than your own, and the rest is useful fuel.

Question: when is the last time CNN told you that half of the nuclear power generated in the USA is coming from old soviet nuclear bomb warheads? Never, you say? oh, really? Well, it is. We can move those puppies around enough to turn into useful fuel, but not the stuff that used to be useful fuel 6 years ago? Hmm. Makes sense to me.

*During the 'debates', (I can't believe he's the) candidate Obama said he's against Yucca Mountain as the place where we should store our nuclear fuel. He's against it because he's a lightweight. I'm against it because the spent fuel and old bombs should be turned into fuel, not long-term radioactive waste.

This is stupid, people. You want to talk about being green?

I thought you people WANTED to be recyclers! Why don't we recycle something we have heaping piles of lying all over the country?

*********

Safety. Nuclear is dangerous. Three Mile Island! Chernobyl!

Not. So. Fast.

Chernobyl was made soviet-style: zero safety precautions, shoddy maintenance, and poor training. It was literally an accident waiting to happen, and there is not a chance that a power plant of that design would be approved for construction in the USA. As far as I'm concerned, that ends the discussion right there. Go to wikipedia and look it up if you don't agree.

TMI was fine. The safety measures took over and guess how many people got so much as a hangnail from the accident. None. Nobody was killed, nobody was hurt. The safety measures designed into the facility worked as designed and prevented any significant radiation being released into the environment. The core that melted down is currently safely contained and is LESS of a hazard than one of those pools of useful fuel rods sitting, rotting, all over the country. There has NEVER been an accident in a modern reactor that killed the NIMBYs that didn't want it to be built.

So, for no good reason, your electric and oil and gas bills are through the roof, because the majority of the politicians YOU voted for (if you even bothered to vote) refuse to allow the recycling of a valuable natural resource. Why? because they are beholden to the environmentalist socialist watermelon groups and think they will lose their jobs. Bold leadership there. Are you motivated to vote yet? Want to call your Elected Heroes yet? Want to get off your butt and run for office yet? No? Oh well, I think American Idol is on tonight anyway.

Jimmy Carter, you suck.