Energy Transformation & Nuclear Waste


I am happy to announce that for FreethoughtBlogs upcoming Panel of Inexpert Discussion, I have been able to secure the contribution of notable local luminary Ingibjörg Margarét Guðiradottir, Roy G. Biv Professor of Darwinian-Dysonian Radioecology at Nanaimo Technical University, British Columbia. She will be speaking next weekend, during our fundraiser, on a comprehensive plan to address problems with current nuclear waste disposal, accelerating the transformation of electricity production and energy markets more generally, with knock-on effects for demilitarization and updating older urban infrastructure to more modern building designs.

Before you read her intriguing abstract, please remember to click through to read about my own offer to craft custom short stories for your benefit and titillation.

The Role of Nuclear Waste in Energy Infrastructure Transformation Favoring Biological Energy Production and Demilitarization
The largest problem facing the world’s energy sector today is the production of useful work from energy reserves without byproduction of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide and methane. While recent decades have seen significant progress in several energy subsectors, current projections of climate impact show that energy infrastructure is not being updated rapidly enough to halt the worst climatic and oceanic effects. One much smaller part of this problem is the inability of fission reactors to play a more substantial role in decarbonized electrical production. This subsidiary problem is largely linked to two fears: meltdown and the disposal of heretofore unsafe radioisotopes that are the economically burdensome byproduct of fission reactions in the world’s electrogenerative reactors. We believe we can solve at least one of these problems, disposal of radioactive “waste” while making substantial progress on energy infrastructure transformation with concomitant benefits in global demilitarization.
The authors of the current study propose strategic bentho-littoral and bentho-pelagic placement of economically unproductive radioisotope stockpiles in Pacific waters known for high biodiversity, exploiting well known principles of oceanic radioecology to encourage the natural production of economically valuable novel species capable of generating and emitting energy at extremely high rates. Such species are known to favor energy emissions in coastal urban areas where much of the world’s largest energy needs obtain. While some disruptive effects of this transformation are expected, we believe that such effects will aid the causes of world peace through accelerating demilitarization and of energy efficiency, though opportunities to update outdated, largely timber-frame housing stockpiles to more modern, state-of-the-art structures featuring energy efficient features, long-term stability including seismaticity resistance, and a new emphasis on fire resistance.

Comments

  1. Pierce R. Butler says

    … exploiting well known principles of oceanic radioecology to encourage the natural production of economically valuable novel species capable of generating and emitting energy at extremely high rates.

    Would these innovative organisms function under code-names such as Kitty Pryde, Beast, Storm, Iceman, Jane Grey, Cyclops, Wolverine…?

  2. Pierce R. Butler says

    Crip Dyke … @ # 3: … other novel species, emerging out of the Pacific.

    Gojira, Mothra, & Company? Definitely major energy processors and first-phase urban renewers!

  3. GerrardOfTitanServer says

    The so-called nuclear waste disposal problem is a political fiction, and not a real scientific health concern. Nuclear waste from civilian nuclear power plants has never hurt anyone and likely never will hurt anyone. Disposal is easy, cheap, and safe.

    First link to educate you a little on what we’re actually dealing with. All three links to show cheap, easy, and safe disposal methods. Last link in particular to show that it really is safe.

    http://thorconpower.com/docs/ct_yankee.pdf

    https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1996/10/the-sub-seabed-solution/308434/

    https://jmkorhonen.net/2013/08/15/graph-of-the-week-what-happens-if-nuclear-waste-repository-leaks/

    It is highly instructive to note how anti-nuclear activists seek to discredit the science here. They may well know that even using highly pessimistic assumptions about e.g. the copper canister and the bentonite clay, there is an overwhelming probability that any doses caused to the environment or to the public will be negligible. Perhaps for that reason, or perhaps simply because they themselves honestly believe that any leakage results to immediately horrendous effects, they completely ignore the crucial question: “so what?”

    What would happen if a waste repository springs a leak?

    What would be the effects of the leak to humans or to the environment?

    Even if you search through the voluminous material provided by the anti-nuclear brigade, you most likely will not find a single statement answering these questions. Cleverly, anti-nuclear activists simply state it’s possible that nuclear waste can leak – which is not in doubt, anything is possible – and rely on innuendo and human imagination (fertilized by perceptions of nuclear waste as something unthinkably horrible) to fill in the gaps in the narrative.

    Whether you go along with this manipulation is, of course, up to you.

    PS: See also:

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/apr/05/anti-nuclear-lobby-misled-world

  4. says

    @gerrard

    Did you even read this post before commenting?

    Do you have any clue that you’re rebutting an imaginary scientist of “radioecology” whose plan to save the world’s power problem is to create multiple Godzillas and then harness their fiery nuclear breath to generate electricity?

    The fact that you spend your time rebutting an imaginary lunatic who thinks “demilitarization & urban renewal through attacks by kaiju” is a good and scientifically reasonable idea isn’t winning people to your side. It’s making people – well, me at least – question whether you have the judgement to determine what is and isn’t a good argument in the first place.

  5. GerrardOfTitanServer says

    To Crip Dyke

    Yes, I did read. If you want me to respond to a particular quote, ok.

    This subsidiary problem is largely linked to two fears: meltdown and the disposal of heretofore unsafe radioisotopes that are the economically burdensome byproduct of fission reactions in the world’s electrogenerative reactors.

    Waste disposal is not economically burdensome. It’s only economically burdensome if you believe that Green hysteria and wildly overexaggerated risks and harms. This is not a technical problem in need of a technical solution. To admit that it’s a technical problem in the first place is to effectively surrender. It’s to surrender to the Green framing of the “problem”. It’s to admit that there’s a particular urgent problem in the first place. It gives way too much debate ground to the Greens, and this framing means that I must be on the defensive. Rather, it should be on the Greens in the first place to prove that it is a problem at all, because it’s not.

    At least meltdowns have caused actual harm to actual humans, unlike the entirely mythical harms of disposal of radioactive waste. Still, Greens exaggerate the dangers of meltdowns by factors of at least a thousand, and close to a million. Radiation is not as dangerous as the Greens say it is. Meltdowns are not as bad as the Greens say they are. Crip Dyke – Chernobyl and Fukushima are not as bad as you think they are.

    I really encourage you to read the scientific sources on these matters, and see how the Green movement is entirely full of shit in this matter. They’re no better than flat-Earthers and young Earth creationists in terms of making shit up, lying about what the science says, and selectively denying the science whenever it suits them. I do not use these comparisons lightly, and I am not exaggerating in the level of science denialism, delusional thinking, and often outright lying. The anti-nuclear aspects of the Green movement, and renewable energy aspects of the Green movement, are religious delusions, and the framing that you put in the opening post are implicitly supporting and condoning that pseudoscience framing. Again, start here: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/apr/05/anti-nuclear-lobby-misled-world

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