Nuclear Waste Doesn’t Exist

 great post Ray.

I guess we can’t follow the French example as they are cheese eating surrender monkeys.
Freedom fries and all that.
Yet the French example points to the larger hypocrisy of Europe when it comes to environmental policy and particularly their attitude towards the third world and develoment. They don’t want the third world to have what we do – for their own good. Look at how wretched our lives are!
I can’t say it enough times – we will drive in electric Porsches while the third world starves.(will expand in future)
It also ties in to the kyoto accord, and the fact that it was written in such a way that the European nations could easily meets their “targets” with very little effort.
Of course the Americans were smart enough not to even bother signing it. I believe it was unanimously voted down.
We in Canada signed it, but didn’t even try to implement it – I think we were just trying to rub the Americans noses in our superiority, and show how enlightened we were.
At least Harper has enough sense to state that there is no reason to sign Copenhagen when it is completely unreaslistic, and no one will even bother trying to meet it.
Of course here in Ontario, instead of building nuclear, we spend 5 000 000 on windmills that won’t produce energy when the wind doesn’t blow. So I guess we’ll have to build some gas fired power plants to back them up. “Green” boondoggle.
Keep up the good work.  

There’s a 800 pound gorilla in the wind- and sun-energy sources. As Redmond points out, windmills “won’t produce energy when the wind doesn’t blow.” And solar panels fail at night.

So where’s the gorilla? The power grid has no storage! Were does the power come from when the wind stops? Answer: coal and (we wish) nuclear. The gorilla is the fact that you can’t turn these on and off – you have to keep them “spun up” to compensate for the inconsistent wind or sun sources.

In other words, wind and solar, besides being unsightly and grossly inefficient, does nothing to reduce pollution because we still need to burn coal to maintain the power grid.

We should embrace windmills when they place them on the coastal ridges where rich liberals live. You’ll find they are just as NIMBY about windmills as they are about nuclear power plants (as Kennedy already proved).

p.s. you should check out my article “Is Wind Power Base Loading?” – you don’t need storage! Unlike “zero percent solar.”

Pierre Guelfe: “We use everything. We don’t leave any waste.”

Everything? Don’t leave any waste? Not one iota of waste? Seems hard to believe. Now I don’t know how credible the following information is, but I wish I could hear what Guelfe has to say about it.

“reprocessing does not reduce the need for storage and disposal of radioactive waste, and a geologic repository would still be required. Plutonium constitutes only about one percent of the spent fuel from U.S. reactors. After reprocessing, the remaining material will be in several different waste forms, and the total volume of nuclear waste will have been increased by a factor of twenty or more, including low-level waste and plutonium-contaminated waste. The largest component of the remaining material is uranium, which is also a waste product because it is contaminated and undesirable for reuse in reactors. Even if the uranium is classified as low-level waste, new low-level nuclear waste facilities would have to be built to dispose of it.”

http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_power/nuclear_power_risk/nuclear_proliferation_and_terrorism/nuclear-reprocessing.html

Or:

“France sends thousands of tonnes of nuclear waste to Russia each year, . . .”

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=31466

Again, I don’t how credible these sources are, and seeing the name Greenpeace in the second source triggers instant skepticism, but are they really just making this stuff up? There are many more stories about nuclear waste in France. If in fact France does use “everything” and they “don’t leave any waste,” then why all these stories, why the contrary claims? Just curious.

I found you on Mises.org with an article discussing Nuclear vs. Wind. I have been a huge proponent of nuclear power and the use of radioactive isotopes for medical and industrial purposes, and am often frustrated by the sheer absurdity of people’s perceptions of radioactive materials.
Nuclear ‘waste’ is one of the biggest myths relating to nuclear power, and I’m glad someone finally has the nerve to point it out.
To spite all those radiophobes, I keep Uranium-238 and high-grade Uranium ore on my nightstand. Soon I’m going to buy some Strontium-90 and Cobalt-60 sealed pellets to add to my collection.

hai

It floors me how ignorant people are and how said ignorant people will not use logic in their thinking or reasoning. A lot of these people make hasty decisions and let emotions cloud judgement and understanding. I am all about making the earth cleaner BUT to ignore the facts is completely ludicrous. The energy necessary to produce the alternative energies is not sustainable using alternative energies. Meaning, other energies such as coal, oil, and nuclear are needed. There aren’t enough batteries to run a town and the storage and cleanup for them is just as toxic as nuclear. Even the batteries used in the so-called “Smart Cars” are polluting because once used they have to be stored as “Toxic Wastes”. The solar panels are so inefficient and expensive it’s not even worth discussing. Wind mills are a better alternative than solar but not as the sole means of energy. There isn’t enough land to hold the amount of wind mills necessary to sustain the amount of energy needed to keep a city the size of Houston running. So what’s the most efficient means of energy? Regardless of who you are or what you think, nuclear energy is the most efficient. Is it the most dangerous? Maybe, maybe not. The nuclear industry has a pretty good safety record. There have only been three emergencies where major concern have arisen, that I know of, and I have been in the industry for 15 years. One of these is happening right now in Japan and this was caused by an earthquake of 9.0. Where in the United States is there a fear of an earthquake of that magnitude, other than California? The other two meltdowns were caused by operator error.

So in short, there are many concerns with nuclear energy as there are with any other energy. What we have to ask is what is the most inexpensive, efficient, and safe means of energy? If you do the math, it’s a simple answer, Nuclear. The problem is the government, as mentioned above. Get the government out of the money making business because they aren’t good at it. Talk about inefficiency! But, not to rule out other alternatives by any means. A combination of all would be preferrable. Nuclear as the main source and wind as a back up. Leave the batteries in the flashlights and ipods. I guess solar would be a nice energy saver for the individual homes, if you can afford it, but you still need a battery back up system with it.

Those who have been there understand the unique culture and value of the Japanese.
It pains me to observe the enormous and yet uncounted loss of life due to the historic earthquake and ensuing tsunami.
In contrast, to my knowledge, no one is dead from the [media fantasized] nuclear holocaust.