Re: Dale Question - but others feel free
Posted by Dale on Mar 01, 2002 at 10:27
(204.212.222.9)Re: Dale Question - but others feel free (Mike Kremer)
I take it they would be rented out, remaining the property of the Nuclear Company?Why? More profit for the nuke company but automobiles don’t remain the property of GM.
Couple of points...even paralleled thermocouples would not supply the amperage required to run the average households max use. ie. Winter space and water heating.I think it would be far easier to pack TC junctions into a confined space than to pack hydrogen. In the past nuke devices that have been used to power spacecraft didn’t need large current and needed to extract the maximum power per pound weight. You had to pack the fuel tightly to ensure maximum reaction rate. This put the TC junctions around the outside. Without the weight/efficiency constraint we can layer TC junctions and fuel. Getting the waste heat out reduces efficiency but we have plenty of efficiency to waste and still be economically viable.
Accident or breakdown insurance.Do you have accident or breakdown insurance on your automobile? Same companies could provide this if needed.
Since the US, nuclear companies have to pay the first $9 billion of damages before your Goverment steps in, I'm wondering if the rent and insurance total, might work out somewhat more than todays Hydro prices, since they might attract terrorists?The Price-Anderson Act started at about $560 million and is now up to about $9.5 billion. The reason the private insurance fund has grown so much is because we have never had a serious accident. A TRIGA economy would be even safer. Sure there will be the occasional release when some idiot digging a swimming pool puts a backhoe through the neighbors “geothermal” power converter and releases the “natural” radiation that has accumulated over the years. But the cleanup costs would be minimal. It should cost less than an Interstate traffic accident.
Terrorists shouldn’t be a problem. There are far easier ways to kill people. Cleaning up the WTC is a far bigger task than a few tons of nuke material would be. The anthrax letters cost more to clean up than a truck load of nuke could. Nuke is this evil ogre in the minds of so many people and it scares them witless. Anyone who looks at what it takes to spread a hazardous dose of radiation quickly realizes it is easier to just shoot people. Building a nuclear bomb is impossible without billions of dollars for the factories. Building a “dirty” bomb is not very effective except for the initial scare factor. After the first one or two everyone would figure out they aren’t very dangerous compared to other easier to build devices. As we came to realize in September, there are lots of things that are even more dangerous than a truck full of explosives and easier to build as well. Anyone who seriously tries to build a nuke device will soon discover that they aren’t easy to build, don’t hurt many people, and are far more likely to kill the builder than other more effective tools.
Make them run from the present nuclear waste, and you will become a billionaire.I can do that. Nuclear waste in the US isn’t that much different from what comes out of the enrichment plants. But I will never become a billionaire on this device. The problem is the thousands of laws in most developed countries that regulate everything from the method of nuclear energy release to the people who are allowed to handle nuclear material. This is why I don’t believe nuke has a chance of ever replacing oil. It is technically simple. It is politically poison but knowledge can eventually overcome this stupidity. But it has been so highly regulated that it will never be able to get out from under the legal chains. The US has spent 50 years making sure nuclear is not a viable solution to our energy problems. It would take at least that long if we made a 180 degree turn today. Our only hope is for some other country (France?) which hasn’t been so paranoid, to take over the development and lead us back to sanity. But I don’t think it will happen in the next 100 years.
P.S. For my use of the words September, nuclear, bomb, terrorist, anthrax, WTC, etc., you can be assured that we all now have a nice thick file in Washington. How does it feel to have your words immortalized? ;)