NP RE: Pynchon wrote in his defense...we think they are some kind of friends

[Michael Bailey]

Joseph Tracy wrote:
>
> I don't think this holds up. At Vermont Yankee and many other places a lot
> of the problems are just a function of age. Age and pressure can cause
> serious problems. Also people who call attention to problems and
> malfunctions have often been fired and even sued. When profit is on the
> line, people cheat. Also if they are so safe , why are so many leaking?
>
> Chernobyl is also too easily discounted as a product of the corrupt Soviet
> system . In my estimate corruption can happen anywhere and certainly
> happened in Vermont.
>
> This is from wikipedia;  it asks important questions:  "Relating
> specifically to atomic energy, Brand argued for a centralized global
> distributor of nuclear fuel without demonstrating any concern for the
> possibility such an arrangement might become totalitarian. As nuclear power
> is unavailable as a tool to ordinary people but, rather, is wielded by a
> military, corporate, and academic techno-elite, some see Brand's recent
> statements as philosophically incompatible with his earlier work."
>


I'm sure you're right.  I'm in a very flippant frame of mind lately
and need to renew my 2009 resolution about making my p-list
posts a little more thoughtful.

There was something I read once about risk, where even when the risk
is very small, if the potential catastrophe is very large it changes
the equation.  I think that applies to nuclear fission power.
But not to fusion power:

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

....The likelihood of small industrial accidents including the local
release of radioactivity and injury to staff cannot be estimated yet.
Nevertheless there is no possibility of a catastrophic accident in a
fusion reactor resulting in major release of radioactivity to the
environment or injury to non-staff, unlike modern fission reactors....

....There is also no risk of a runaway reaction in a fusion reactor....

....Although failure of the reaction chamber is possible, simply
stopping fuel delivery would prevent any sort of catastrophic
failure....

....in the case of a fire it is possible that the lithium stored
on-site could be burned up and escape. In this case the tritium
contents of the lithium would be released into the atmosphere, posing
a radiation risk. However, calculations suggest that the total amount
of tritium and other radioactive gases in a typical power plant would
be so small, about 1 kg, that they would have diluted to legally
acceptable limits by the time they blew as far as the plant's
perimeter fence.[8]....

....In general terms, fusion reactors would create far less
radioactive material than a fission reactor, the material it would
create is less damaging biologically, and the radioactivity "burns
off" within a time period that is well within existing engineering
capabilities....

....Although fusion power uses nuclear technology, the overlap with
nuclear weapons technology is small....

....Assuming a fusion energy output equal to the 1995 global power
output of about 100 EJ/yr (= 1 x 1020 J/yr) and that this does not
increase in the future, then the known current lithium reserves would
last 3000 years, lithium from sea water would last 60 million years,
and a more complicated fusion process using only deuterium from sea
water would have fuel for 150 billion years....

....While fusion power is still in early stages of development,
substantial sums have been and continue to be invested in research. In
the EU almost € 10 billion was spent on fusion research up to the end
of the 1990s, and the new ITER reactor alone is budgeted at € 10
billion. It is estimated that up to the point of possible
implementation of electricity generation by nuclear fusion, R&D will
need further promotion totalling around € 60-80 billion over a period
of 50 years or so (of which € 20-30 billion within the EU).[12]
Nuclear fusion research receives € 750 million (excluding ITER
funding), compared with € 810 million for all non-nuclear energy
research combined,[13] putting research into fusion power well ahead
of that of any single rivaling technology....

**** but still a relative trickle.  Just cancel a discretionary war or a couple
of bailouts and spend the trillion bucks on fusion,
and I bet we could have it in five years! ****



-- 
-- "the problem with the deployment of frictionless surfaces is
that they're not getting traction."