Biofuel from algae?

[WhiteBlue]

As far as sustainability

Breeding

Main article: Breeder reactor

As opposed to current light water reactors which use uranium-235 (0.7% of all natural uranium), fast breeder reactors use uranium-238 (99.3% of all natural uranium). It has been estimated that there is up to five billion years’ worth of uranium-238 for use in these power plants.[33

Id say that will last longer than any bio resources since as our population grows there is going to be less and less land and the sun just doesn't have that much power on a sq ft basses


Bio fuels are neat and all but its not a perment solution plants are just not that effective. Not to mention the water use

dude, you have no ideas!

breeder technogy always involves plutonium-239. thats considered the most dangerous material on earth with a half life time of more than 25,000 years. we never had the --- in our world but we all got contaminated by the weapon tests of the cold war the risk is inhaling dust that contains plutonium oxide which is deadly by micrograms in a very short time period. there is a reason why they stopped this madness very quickly. the sane conclusion is that this material must never be released to the atmoshere in quantities if the species want to inhibit this planet for some more time. as Murphy goes stuff will always be released if you handle it. read about Sellafield and La Hague if you are familiar with contamination sources in Europe.

the other issue is of course proliferation. with plutonium you can build dirty bombs that do not have high tech or high destruction. but you can make big parts of the planet ininhabitable if you blow up a cheap device in the air or in a major water supply system like the north American lakes.

but is enables relatively simple nuclear bombs as well. today terrorists with a scientific education, a pound of plutonium and half a million $ of cash can probably make a device that blows up NYC or LA.

Plutonium may be extremely dangerous when handled incorrectly. The alpha radiation it emits does not penetrate the skin, but can irradiate internal organs when plutonium is inhaled or ingested. Particularly at risk are the skeleton, where it is likely to be absorbed by the bone surface, and the liver, where it will likely collect and become concentrated. Approximately 0.008 microcuries absorbed in bone marrow is the maximum withstandable dose. Anything more is considered toxic. Extremely fine particles of plutonium (on the order of micrograms) can cause lung cancer if inhaled

do I need to translate microgramms as a lethal dose? don't dick around with plutonium!!!!!!

[flynfrog]

As far as sustainability

Breeding

Main article: Breeder reactor

As opposed to current light water reactors which use uranium-235 (0.7% of all natural uranium), fast breeder reactors use uranium-238 (99.3% of all natural uranium). It has been estimated that there is up to five billion years’ worth of uranium-238 for use in these power plants.[33

Id say that will last longer than any bio resources since as our population grows there is going to be less and less land and the sun just doesn't have that much power on a sq ft basses


Bio fuels are neat and all but its not a perment solution plants are just not that effective. Not to mention the water use

dude, you have no ideas!

breeder technogy always involves plutonium-239. thats considered the most dangerous material on earth with a half life time of more than 25,000 years. we never had the --- in our world but we all got contaminated by the weapon tests of the cold war the risk is inhaling dust that contains plutonium oxide which is deadly by micrograms in a very short time period. there is a reason why they stopped this madness very quickly. the sane conclusion is that this material must never be released to the atmoshere in quantities if the species want to inhibit this planet for some more time. as Murphy goes stuff will always be released if you handle it. read about Sellafield and La Hague if you are familiar with contamination sources in Europe.

the other issue is of course proliferation. with plutonium you can build dirty bombs that do not have high tech or high destruction. but you can make big parts of the planet ininhabitable if you blow up a cheap device in the air or in a major water supply system like the north American lakes.

but is enables relatively simple nuclear bombs as well. today terrorists with a scientific education, a pound of plutonium and half a million $ of cash can probably make a device that blows up NYC or LA.

Plutonium may be extremely dangerous when handled incorrectly. The alpha radiation it emits does not penetrate the skin, but can irradiate internal organs when plutonium is inhaled or ingested. Particularly at risk are the skeleton, where it is likely to be absorbed by the bone surface, and the liver, where it will likely collect and become concentrated. Approximately 0.008 microcuries absorbed in bone marrow is the maximum withstandable dose. Anything more is considered toxic. Extremely fine particles of plutonium (on the order of micrograms) can cause lung cancer if inhaled

do I need to translate microgramms as a lethal dose? don't dick around with plutonium!!!!!!

reactors do not equal bombs. Do I need to calculate the lethal dose of water its all around us!!!!!! (yes I know its High) Like I said in a proper reactor there is a greater chance of being hit by lighting than there is being killed by fallout. Scare tactics like yours are why we are stuck with no real solution to our energy needs. The answer has been here all along blame the NIMBY club.

[WhiteBlue]

LOL, thats not supposed to be serious, isn't it?

I will not argue about reactors. you can think what you want about their safety. the problem arises when you transport, handle and distribute the stuff commercially.

you have to transport it from place to place. you have to handle the waste materials from regeneration (one million times the mass of the original fuel). finally you have to dispose of the entire chain of reactor building materials, transport infrastructure and waste material that gets contaminated with plutonium. everything that gets in contact with it will be contaminated for millions of years realistically at that half life time and toxicology.

it isn't manageable economically. and the risk is'n insurable anyway. thats proof enough.

wake up!!!!

COGEMA has recently opened two new plants, UP2-800 in 1994, and UP3 in 1989, increasing La Hague's reprocessing capacity from 400 tonnes per year to a total of 1600. Between 1989 and 1995, radiation in La Hague's discharges increased five-fold-making it the largest single contributor of radiation in the region. La Hague dumps an estimated 230 million litres of radioactive waste into the Atlantic each year.

While tritium, strontium-90 and caesium-137 dominate la Hague's marine discharges, the facility releases many other radioactive isotopes, as well. The 1995 release levels of iodine-129, for example, soared to 10 times higher than those of 1980. In a single year, La Hague discharged five times more iodine-129 than was released by fifty years of global nuclear weapons testing, dumping an estimated 40 to 60% of its iodine-129 into the sea.

if you happen to sit on top of a radiactice loo that takes your --- away and dilutes it into a huge eco system without a chance to monitor it you are quite happy. that doesn't mean its without risk to the environment. the channel between the british iles and france has a huge flow speed that disperses radioactivity into the Atlantic and the North sea quickly. that doesn't mean it is healthy to contaminate the eco system with radionuclids.

[flynfrog]

LOL, thats not supposed to be serious, isn't it?

I will not argue about reactors. you can think what you want about their safety. the problem arises when you transport, handle and distribute the stuff commercially.

you have to transport it from place to place. you have to handle the waste materials from regeneration (one million times the mass of the original fuel). finally you have to dispose of the entire chain of reactor building materials, transport infrastructure and waste material that gets contaminated with plutonium. everything that gets in contact with it will be contaminated for millions of years realistically at that half life time and toxicology.

it isn't manageable economically. and the risk is'n insurable anyway. thats proof enough.

wake up!!!!

COGEMA has recently opened two new plants, UP2-800 in 1994, and UP3 in 1989, increasing La Hague's reprocessing capacity from 400 tonnes per year to a total of 1600. Between 1989 and 1995, radiation in La Hague's discharges increased five-fold-making it the largest single contributor of radiation in the region. La Hague dumps an estimated 230 million litres of radioactive waste into the Atlantic each year.

While tritium, strontium-90 and caesium-137 dominate la Hague's marine discharges, the facility releases many other radioactive isotopes, as well. The 1995 release levels of iodine-129, for example, soared to 10 times higher than those of 1980. In a single year, La Hague discharged five times more iodine-129 than was released by fifty years of global nuclear weapons testing, dumping an estimated 40 to 60% of its iodine-129 into the sea.

if you happen to sit on top of a radiactice loo that takes your --- away and dilutes it into a huge eco system without a chance to monitor it you are quite happy. that doesn't mean its without risk to the environment. the channel between the british iles and france has a huge flow speed that disperses radioactivity into the Atlantic and the North sea quickly. that doesn't mean it is healthy to contaminate the eco system with radionuclids.

Yes the water comment was a joke. Can you site a major radiation spill during transport. the means they use are extremely safe. Once agin Ill point you back to the fact that coal is worse than a reactor in terms of environmental damage. When you vote down a reactor you are not voting in bio fuel you are voting in coal power. granted coal is becoming more and more clean. I cant speak for france but we dont dump our radio active waste into the ocean we store id down the road from my house. I am not worried one bit.

[WhiteBlue]

https://eed.llnl.gov/ans/2002/vantine/vantine_paper.php

there are numerous cantamination issues related to plutonium technology in the US or caused by US weapon systems. fortunately they never occurred close to populated centers. thank god the US never got involved in commercial power generation based on breeding technology. some people had enough common sense! amen! 1000 hail maries!

[casper]

Mushrooms can be a source of energy also. Heres a link to how the mushrooms form. http://www.waynesthisandthat.com/abombs.html.

[flynfrog]

Wow those pictures are amazing

[Ciro Pabón]

I think Flynfrog is right (as usual) about nuclear energy. Some excerpts from previous posts (in the regenerative systems thread):

The cleanest energy source is nuclear.

A coal plant, even the most advanced ones produces 100 times the amount of radioactive material a nuclear plant produces.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.02/nuclear.html

... people like Gaia theorist James Lovelock, Greenpeace cofounder Patrick Moore, and Britain's Bishop Hugh Montefiore, a longtime board member of Friends of the Earth agree that nuclear power is better.

Hearing those guys, I have to believe nuclear power will become an important part of the energy basket of the future:

Everybody talks about global warming: let's ... talk about global dimming: the Earth is receiving at least 2% less solar radiation because of smog particles:

Cloud of smog over South China sea


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_dimming

Smog is created by NOx (nitric oxides) from your car. Biofuel does diminish CO2 appreciably but increases NOx. So, you can expect less carbon monoxide and more smog on your city. Natural Gas for Vehicles (NGV) does diminish NOx.

This is not going to help fight global warming. We get the worse scenario: a hotter (CO2), darker (NOx) world.

The mushroom pictures are fascinating and revulsive. I hate them. You might read the account of a witness on The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, United States. Army. Corps of Engineers. Manhattan District

[Carlos]

Those pictures remind me of plague virus.

[WhiteBlue]

Its a pitty that this turns into a nuclear discussion than the topic of renewable energy from algae.

The wired article is significantly dishonest in the mantra that pebble reactors are safe and that breeding reactors are no problem at all. both technolgies were essentially developed in Germany and there were accidents regarding the pebble reactor that led to the closure of the experimental device in Jülich. Pebbles are operating at very high temperatures and carry considerable risk of pebble fracture. when pebbles break the turbines and the reactor machinery get contaminated. thy are not shielded by heat exchangers as in water reactors. when the graphite is exposed to oxygene it will burn and distribute the nuclear fuel into the atmosphere. keeping the reactor vessel integrity under inert gas is absolutely essential. to consider such a reactor for vehicle powering where accidents can damage the vessel is ridiculous. pebble reactors produce considerably higher waste material volumes compared to water based reactors. that leads to high cost of waste disposal and alternatively waste reprocessing.

plutonium technology is even more dangerous. fast breeders use liquid metals for cooling that are combustible at oxygene presense. what is even more disturbing is the manufacturing of the fuel which involves the problematic plutonium. read this for a critical report about Japans accident and plutonium problem Siemens who have been a big player in the reactor industry used to run a commercial MOX element (mixed oxides=uranium+plutonium) factory in Hanau. Several workers were contaminated in accidents which were not properly communicated to the authorities. the factory was closed. al significant nuclear fuel factories had accidents including Windscale/Sellafield and La Hague. Those factories are both located at the ocean where contamination can be covered up by use of sea water. In Germany the public has long decided by democratic voting that the risks associated with plutonium technology are unacceptable in a land with such a high density of population. an accident on the scale of Chernobyl in Germany would have made most of the country ininhabitable and probably cost the lives of millions of people.

The classical argument of the pro nuclear side is the nuclear contamination of coal by Uranium and Thorium which was released by old style coal fired power stations. this is no problem in modern designs. the technology to filter out the ashes is available and used in modern countries. the radioactivity in the filtered materials is so low that sand, ashes and granules from power stations can be used as building materials. the building materials have no different level of radioactivity compared to materials from other sources. radioactive materials have different half life times and different physiological behavior when incorporated. plutonium which is a man made synthetic element is both extremely long lived and posesses the worst physiological aspects. minute quantities of plutoniumoxide when incorporated causes rapid lunge cancer. plutonium is the only radioactive material that is prohibited from air transport in the united states!! How much plutonium does it take to overdose a person the answer is an accident with a MOX element of 600 grams can overdose six billion civilians.

the EU by the way is running a huge R&D program aimed at improving efficiencies of coal power stations.

this shows the efficiencies of different technologies. sorry for the German. I don't have researched european sources for this. soon IGCC coal power stations will be operating above 50% efficiency.

IGCC technology
zero co2 emission platform

Germany still uses plutonium in MOX elements in some of his reactors and currently employs La Hague for the reprocessing of the plutonium. The process produces considerable amounts of high radioactive waste that is transported by trucks and and railways. when such transports are due we see demonstrations of 10 thausends of people and 30,000 police in action to protect the transports. each transport can cost up to 60 mil € due to the security measures necessary because the public isn't prepared to accept the risks from plutonium technology. as a result MOX elements have not found the use they were expected to find. hence the nuclear industry in Germany has accumulated 40 tons of plutonium which will be returned by France at some time. Nobody has any idea how the material can be protected against terrorist theft forever. It is a published fact that reactor grade plutonium can be used for nuclear weapons. the USA have tested several designs successfully in the seventies. the information is now declassified and can be easily confirmed.

The oldest lie of the nuclear industry is the lie that nuclear energy is cheap. this is only the case when the costs of decomissioning reactors, waste treatment and risk insurance are payed by the public sector. this has happened in the UK and in France where the tax payers have already payed big time and will foot another huge bill eventually. decommissioning a water reactor can cost 10 times what it has cost to build it. we are talking 30 billion $ a pop here!! The other end of the business is also misrepresented. no private equity or venture capital company in their right mind would finance a nuclear power station at rates that you pay for gas powered or wind powered plants. finance immediately considers the risks which state financed reactors in France never had to pay. today you probably look at 20% interest and huge incremental steps in finance volume. eco projects with proven technology can find finance for 6-8%. the difference will have to come out of the tax payers pockets again I predict.

there are many lessons learned about the plutonium industry and it now looks that some people try to forget those. I do not think they will be successfull.

[flynfrog]

I design airplanes for a living. For certain systems you have to have backups and redundancies to the point that complete failure is nearly impossible.

I found simmaler calculations for reactors.

Reactor accidents

The nuclear power plant design strategy for preventing accidents and mitigating their potential effects is "defense in depth"--- if something fails, there is a back-up system to limit the harm done, if that system should also fail there is another back-up system for it, etc., etc. Of course it is possible that each system in this series of back-ups might fail one after the other, but the probability for that is exceedingly small. The Media often publicize a failure of some particular system in some plant, implying that it was a close call" on disaster; they completely miss the point of defense in depth which easily takes care of such failures. Even in the Three Mile Island accident where at least two equipment failures were severely compounded by human errors, two lines of defense were still not breached--- essentially all of the radioactivity remained sealed in the thick steel reactor vessel, and that vessel was sealed inside the heavily reinforced concrete and steel lined "containment" building which was never even challenged. It was clearly not a close call on disaster to the surrounding population. The Soviet Chernobyl reactor, built on a much less safe design concept, did not have such a containment structure; if it did, that disaster would have been averted.

Risks from reactor accidents are estimated by the rapidly developing science of "probabilistic risk analysis" (PRA). A PRA must be done separately for each power plant (at a cost of $5 million) but we give typical results here: A fuel melt-down might be expected once in 20,000 years of reactor operation. In 2 out of 3 melt-downs there would be no deaths, in 1 out of 5 there would be over 1000 deaths, and in 1 out of 100,000 there would be 50,000 deaths. The average for all meltdowns would be 400 deaths. Since air pollution from coal burning is estimated to be causing 10,000 deaths per year, there would have to be 25 melt-downs each year for nuclear power to be as dangerous as coal burning.

Of course deaths from coal burning air pollution are not noticeable, but the same is true for the cancer deaths from reactor accidents. In the worst accident considered, expected once in 100,000 melt-downs (once in 2 billion years of reactor operation), the cancer deaths would be among 10 million people, increasing their cancer risk typically from 20% (the current U.S. average) to 20.5%. This is much less than the geographical variation--- 22% in New England to 17% in the Rocky Mountain states.

Very high radiation doses can destroy body functions and lead to death within 60 days, but such "noticeable" deaths would be expected in only 2% of reactor melt-down accidents; there would be over 100 in 0.2% of meltdowns, and 3500 in 1 out of 100,000 melt-downs. To date, the largest number of noticeable deaths from coal burning was in an air pollution incident (London, 1952) where there were 3500 extra deaths in one week. Of course the nuclear accidents are hypothetical and there are many much worse hypothetical accidents in other electricity generation technologies; e.g., there are hydroelectric dams in California whose sudden failure could cause 200,000 deaths.




Radioactive Waste

The radioactive waste products from the nuclear industry must be isolated from contact with people for very long time periods. The bulk of the radioactivity is contained in the spent fuel, which is quite small in volume and therefore easily handled with great care. This "high level waste" will be converted to a rock-like form and emplaced in the natural habitat of rocks, deep underground. The average lifetime of a rock in that environment is one billion years. If the waste behaves like other rock, it is easily shown that the waste generated by one nuclear power plant will eventually, over millions of years (if there is no cure found for cancer), cause one death from 50 years of operation. By comparison, the wastes from coal burning plants that end up in the ground will eventually cause several thousand deaths from generating the same amount of electricity.

The much larger volume of much less radioactive (low level) waste from nuclear plants will be buried at shallow depths (typically 20 feet) in soil. If we assume that this material immediately becomes dispersed through the soil between the surface and ground water depth (despite elaborate measures to maintain waste package integrity) and behaves like the same materials that are present naturally in soil (there is extensive evidence confirming such behavior), the death toll from this low level waste would be 5% of that from the high level waste discussed in the previous paragraph.


you can read the rest here.
http://physics.isu.edu/radinf/np-risk.htm

I am sorry I drove this thread so off track If you would like we can let the matter be and end the discussion now

[WhiteBlue]

....I am sorry I drove this thread so off track If you would like we can let the matter be and end the discussion now

I will not waste my time to try and convince you about the dangers of an energy system based on widespread use of plutonium.

It is so obviously wrong to say that modern coal plants produce more radioactivity than nuclear plants. Low radiating nuclear materials in coal have always existed and are not produced by the coal burning. their disposal in a safe way is manageble and affordable. High radiating high toxic and synthetic Plutonium is not found in nature and only produced by nuclear plants. it is a non manageable risk if a world wide energy system is based on such materials.

You do not care to adress most of the issues explained in my post about the specific toxicality of plutonium, the handling outside reactors, the transport, fuel processing, the proliferation risks and the cost issues. so I agree with you to end it there. let us go back to the benefits and issues of algae and have a nuclear or plutonium thread if people care to discuss those things.

[Belatti]

It happens that I find useful the discussion between "La rana voladora" (Flynfrog) and "Blanquiazul" (Whiteblue) cause they both have good points, but...

Things in life (and in life I include our problems with energy, global warming, war, economics, religion and whatever you may like) are not like this:



but more like this:


What if we power our cars, trucks and buses with algae (meanwhile we get rid of wastewaters and other sh*t) while we power our TV´s, PS2, Air conditioners and Ilumination with Nukes?

[Carlos]

Gasoline replacement 'made' from CO2:
http://www.physorg.com/news179683624.html

[WhiteBlue]

Gasoline replacement 'made' from CO2:
http://www.physorg.com/news179683624.html

This is very similar to the algae idea and except that genetical engineering always carries a certain risk of side effects that needs to be studied. If you use existing algae nature already has the safeguards build into the genetic structure.