[ RadSafe ] Rational Thought

Tue Oct 4 13:35:05 CDT 2011

The disposal of the waste and the cost of this must surely be part of any efficiency of the process to generate electricity. The efficiency of a electricity generation process must be of the form: 

(Price of Energy generated over the lifespan of plant)/ (real costs including health effects for all time of waste and uranium tailings, mining and refining uranium fuel, isotope separation, building, operating, fueling, and disposal of waste and decommissioning)

It is not a political matter. It is straight economics or if you like physics, work put in / work taken out. 

You could do the same for coal. I dont know where you got your figures for cancers near a coal fired plant, but I have examined the cancer deaths near one coal fired plant and they are no different from expected. Do you have a referenced study?  There are no child cancers near coal fired plants but there certainly are near nuclear plants (e.g. Sellafield, KiKK Germany). The US put  the opportunity cost of a child cancer at 1 million dollars. I have shown statistically significant increases in cancers, particularly breast cancer downwind of two nuclear plants in the UK and Sternglass and Gould and Joe Mangano have published results showing the same in the USA downwind of all nuclear plants in the USA using County data.  These results are in the peer review literature. I have also found increases in infant mortality downwind of one nuclear plant in the UK. 
Im not saying that coal plants are great. We need to have less electricity generation generally, it is very wasteful. And I agree that coal mining is a nasty business which kills the miners in many ways. But wind power is great. Something for nothing. And solar power also. The storage problem is easily soluble. Another way is compressed air and turbines. Very efficient. You compress air into cylinders and recover it by turbine generation. There is no dQ/T loss. 

Sincerely
Chris   

-----Original Message-----
From: radsafe-bounces at agni.phys.iit.edu on behalf of Rouse, Raymond Lawrence
Sent: Tue 04/10/2011 18:38
To: The International Radiation Protection (Health Physics) MailingList
Subject: Re: [ RadSafe ] Rational Thought

"...the disposal of the waste etc" This is a political issue and not a
scientific issue. The USA NPP sites store radwaste on-site since
government politicos can't get their act together. However, this has no
effect on efficiency

Great point!

Raymond

-----Original Message-----
From: radsafe-bounces at agni.phys.iit.edu
[mailto:radsafe-bounces at agni.phys.iit.edu] On Behalf Of Perle, Sandy
Sent: Tuesday, October 04, 2011 1:36 PM
To: The International Radiation Protection (Health Physics) Mailing List
Subject: Re: [ RadSafe ] Rational Thought

With respect to Chris's statement:

And if you bring in all the cancer children near the nuclear sites, the
disposal of the waste etc., its efficiency is probably negative

1.      "..all the cancer children near the nuclear sites..."
insignificant evidence that there is this result, therefore, efficiency
is positive

2.      "...the disposal of the waste etc" This is a political issue and
not a scientific issue. The USA NPP sites store radwaste on-site since
government politicos can't get their act together. However, this has no
effect on efficiency

Regards,

Sandy

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-----Original Message-----
From: radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu
[mailto:radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu] On Behalf Of Busby, Chris
Sent: Tuesday, October 04, 2011 8:39 AM
To: The International Radiation Protection (Health Physics) Mailing List
Subject: Re: [ RadSafe ] Rational Thought

Franz,

It is not obvious to me from any of your emails that you know anything
much at all.

Since the wind energy is free any loss of efficiency has to be
considered in that context. What is the efficiency of a sailing yacht?
It gets you from A to B without any outlay on fuel. What, for example is
the efficiency of nuclear power? A meaningless question. And if you
bring in all the cancer children near the nuclear sites, the disposal of
the waste etc., its efficiency is probably negative.  The efficiency of
hydrogen production from electrolysis is very high. The efficiency of
burning hydrogen in a heat engine is Carnot-based dQ/T.  What you may
like to know is that I am a Physical Chemist and Chemical Physicist, was
responsible at Wellcome for and was the expert on Thermodynamics, I also
ran the electrochemical laboratory and my 2nd PhD was in Raman
Spectroelectrochemistry. I am sorry that I know so much, but that's not
my problem, its just a consequence of much study and hard work in many
areas.

I do enjoy our little exchanges. Keep up the insults. Most entertaining.

Best regards

Chris

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