Open Thread 7

quokka, without having ever decommissioned a fast reactor, I can’t see that it would present any special problems.

The main reason is, you wouldn’t dispose of it. There are plenty of commercial applications of metallic sodium. If you had to decommission a reactor, you’d sell the material.

Likely it would wind up in another fast reactor. On the assumption that we have an energy future in fast reactors, the fleet will be expanding for perhaps hundreds of years. Maybe at some point we reach stasis. There would be no net sodium disposal unless the fleet started to contract – maybe LFTRs displacing sodium pool fast reactors?

If there weren’t a market for the sodium, there is a market for lye – just add water, and sell the sodium hydroxide. But I think the sodium metal would be more valuable.

I assume the reactor vessel would be designed with ports for filling and draining the sodium, so the handling aspects should be covered at the design phase.

I don’t think there’s a radiological problem. The sodium isotope formed by neutron capture (Na-24) has a half life of 15 hours. I haven’t checked the decay pathway but I expect any decay products are short lived, and probably insoluble in liquid sodium so readily isolated.

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Gregory Meyerson, on 15 December 2010 at 7:59 AM — DV8 went on about “funding sources” and similar matters. I concluded he was less than fully rational regarding the more dubious claims for radiation hormesis. It looked to me to be the style of argumentation (unreferenced) which many who have jumped to a conclusion use; most recently I’ve seen this repeatedly from climate denialists.

In every matter of science the jury is always, to some extent, still out (although not much for the laws of thermodynaics and a few other settled matters). Regarding AGW the risks are potentially so high that one ought to simply accept it, holding whatever remaining doubts one has at bay for the interim (which might be a long time).
Merely pointing out a correlation (without giving references) and without a causal hypothesis (even if wrong) isn’t advancing science.

I am open to cogent argument which offer an explanation of radiation hormesis which also accounts for why, in some circumstances, only very low dosage LNT appears to explain the evidence; read the Wikipedia article.

However, rgarding the usual range of topics here, radiation hormesis is rathr off-beat (since as I understand the matter, regulatory agencis all consevatively use LNT).

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Kaj Luukko – Unfortunately the contaminated building in Taiwan is a poor experimental location to ether support or reject radiation hormesis as some of the exposures were almost 3 Sv, at the beginning of the building’s occupancy . This is well above the level of radiation for which radiation hormesis has been observed.

Thus there is nothing conclusive that can be drawn from this event in support of radiation hormesis.

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Joffan – That’s what I meant up thread when I wrote: “If a particular study failed to find evidence of radiation’s ill effects, the data was simply forced into the LNT model. “ The other favorite technique is to define ‘low-dose’ as starting at exposures well above those at which radiation hormesis effects have been observed.

Unfortunately though, it must be admitted that there is a lot of poor work done on the side of supporting radiation hormesis as well, the worst with authors offering ludicrous conclusions that the population is suffering from a lack of exposure to ionizing radiation. Others, like the Co-60 in the apartment blocks in Taiwan, poorly controlled. This sort of nonsense, and sloppy work has not helped, and one must take care and examine each study carefully on its own merits.

The fact is that regulators of several stripes, are scared spitless of backing down from LNT because of the political implications, and the fall-out that they would have to endure. Keep in mind that there is an active segment of the population in many countries, that is convinced that there is a real and present danger from cell-phone towers, and there is now a huge body of poorly done studies that purport to show that these are linked to health issues in an exposed population. Against this backdrop, and with many careers in radiation protection at stake, one can understand their reticence.

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Joffan – The Achilles heel in most of these studies, pro and con, is poor dosimetery. With the exception of rad worker, the general population doesn’t file wear a badge an have it checked every month, so it’s almost all estimates.

This is why I personally think that the studies done on large populations in high background areas is most valuable, even though there are other confounding factors with these as well, that make it difficult to use them to validate radiation hormesis. Nevertheless, one would expect to see an overall clear indication of a LNT effect with these groups, if the hypothesis had any value, and yet this is not the case.

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spangled drongo – radiation hormesis is not considered that type of adaptive response, where a breeding population of organisms are under selective pressure. Hormesis is defined as a dose response phenomenon characterized by a low dose stimulation that results in a positive inhibition of disruption in homeostasis.

It’s expected by the hypothesis that in any randomly selected population, most individuals would manifest a positive effect to low dose exposure to the insult in question.

However, the possibility that a population that has been under evolutionary pressure, may have adapted through natural selection to have a high tolerance to a given toxin, is a confounding variable that must be controlled for in any epidemiological study of the hormesis phenomenon.

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Greens could be onto something about fossil fuel subsidies.
http://www.greenlivingpedia.org/Government_subsidies_for_fossil_fuel_use_in_Australia
It turns out Bell Bay aluminium smelter in Tasmania has been paying 2.2 c per kwh while households pay more like 20c. The new price is a secret but a couple of years ago it was said to be worth $133k per employee. 550 workers X $133k = $73m p.a. approx. Link.

Some more factoids. The aluminium smelter is close to two gas fired power stations supplied from gas platforms in Bass Strait. It is also close to the HVDC converter station for the underwater cable. That cable sells peaking hydro high and imports un-carbon-taxed brown coal power low. According to the Peak Energy website the Hydro’s wind farm at Woolnorth in NE Tas lost money because wind speeds were 14% lower than expected. Sounds strange.

I was just talking to a Hobart foundryman who said his business is too small to extort cheap power prices. However there is talk of a silicon smelter to add to the State’s aluminium, zinc and specialty steel electrorefiners. It seems pensioners will have to foot the higher power bills to pay for it.

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DV82XL:

Thank you for the reply.

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John Newlands – Ultimately with primary industries added costs are always passed down to the final consumer anyway, and shows up as a higher price for finished goods. Thus it’s hard to see how those on fixed incomes would benefit.

As for smelters being compensated under a penalty clause, this is normal too, because the consequences of an unscheduled loss of power to an operation like that can be severe, and expensive.

The two types of customers for electric energy cannot be compared, and it is unfair to do so, the facts on the ground are often much more complex than can be described by superficial analysis.

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Thanks for the link MD. The key difference between BNC and sites like the Tasmanian Times is that emotive arguments get short shrift here.

There is a widespread perception that aluminium smelters should pay a lot more than 10-15% of what households pay. For example some suggest the workers clock in for 5 minutes a day, don’t bother making aluminium but the subsidy gets paid and spent regardless. An inquiry needs to propose multiple criteria by which to assess this state of affairs.

The terms of reference could be wide ranging
-10c deposits on sticky soft drink cans
– tariffs on imported aluminium
– giant battery banks to take wind power
– effect of carbon tax
– alternative employment
– price effect on households.
As household energy bills skyrocket and nukular is a non-option Big Biz will have to take some of the pain.

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Just thought I’d mention that I had a brief exchange with Dan Cass over at his blog.

All very polite, as it should be, but for those interested, here is the link:

http://dancass.com/blog/post/my-critique-of-the-cancun-unfccc-climate-negotiations/

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Fran, just read your excellent comments on Dan Cass’ blog, and that was indeed a very polite, terse, GTFO response.

As an aside, the commentary I see you provide in various fora I occasionally visit is first class. The tenacity and intelligence of your comments is surely cutting through. You’re doing great work.

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Thanks John Morgan. I value your feedback.

I found it telling that Dan was unable/unwilling to directly accept or reject my proposal still less refute even one the counterclaims I made to his nuclear power acceptance benchmarks.

PS: GTFO?

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OIC!

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To be fair to Cass, I made the same (incorrect) claim about Pakistan not having any civilian plants, in good faith.

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Benson, you will have to be specific rather than patronizing to undertake a discussion on why you feel it is valid to discard the best data source. “Read more carefully” is a cop-out.

Nobody is saying these studies are easy. But without convincing evidence of harm, there is no reason to spend effort and resources on preventing that speculative harm.

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Just read an interesting article in The Economist on vertical farming. The bottom line (in the authors’ view); It’s all great, except it requires too much energy which also means more greenhouse gases, and therefore it won’t work. I mentioned in my article comment that nuclear can fix the plentiful clean energy requirement.

http://www.economist.com/node/17647627/

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Joffan, on 19 December 2010 at 3:43 AM — No intent to be patronizing, merely brief. (1) LNT is conservative and the BEIR VII explain that the available evidence doesn’t (statistically) support a more complex relationship. (2) BEIR VII states that the so-called linear-quadratic relationship gives a better fit to the available evidence. [I understand the presumed biologicial response for the low dose, quadratic portion; it is sensible, but that doesn’t mean it is correct.] (3) I’m not going to read more of BEIR VII. The quotation I gave suffices for me to conclude that at the time BEIR VII was written the (knowledgable and expert) authors wrote ‘purported hormesis’; clearly they have yet to see any unbiased, statistically significant evidence nor any plausible biological hypothesis advanced.

I suspect they dropped the data you mentioned for lack of an adequate control group, statistical significance or one of the many other reasons such epidemiological studies have to be disregarded.

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John Newlands said:

If this saga gets to the point of laying down in front of bulldozers the Greens risk losing the plot. The public will see they put emotive arguments ahead of impartial analysis.

I doubt it will come to that. FTR, this seems like one of the sillier things Bob Brown has done. He compared it with the Franklin Dam case, which is astonishing.

AIUI, the proposal as it stands would leave the area untouched.

The party’s dominance of the Senate in 2011 will be a one-off and they could go the way of the Australian Democrats.

Doubtful. There is now going to be a pretty solid 11% voting for The Greens and as long as that is true enough preferences will flow for them to stay in the balance.

The Australian Democrats stood for nothing specific and betrayed their own supporters by supporting Howard’s Telstra sell off and GST. Rather than keeping the bastards honest, they became dishonest. Howard could not have won in 98 but for their help.

Moreover, because they were in the centre, they could be pillaged on both sides. There’s nowhere else on the landscape for Greens supporters to go.

Along with them will go much of the opposition to nuclear and support for subsidies like feed-in tariffs

Hardly. The main effectiveopposition to nuclear power is in the ALP left. If The Greens were to decompose politically most would return to strengthen the ALP left.

What is needed is to win over the lefts still in the ALP and the Greens to at worst, an agnostic position on nuclear. Neutralising this issue would mean that the ALP could not be wedged and clear the way for a change in policy.

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Benson – in case you have forgotten, in the previous instance it was you refusing to provide a reference from that paper. An act that I chose to interpret as an attempt to dodge the fact that you had not read it yourself, as you claimed.

In this latest arrogance on your part, at least you are admitting to not reading the source, yet again you expect us to accept it as a reference on the bases of your assertion that it was written by “(knowledgeable and expert) authors”

If you cannot see that in both cases you are clearly in the wrong, you are blind.

You are nothing but a pompous old fraud, that holds everyone in this forum in contempt. Do not be surprised if that feeling is reciprocated.

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Benson – I’m lazy? You won’t find the passages in a paper you say supports you, and “leave it as a homework assignment” for me to find them, and you admit to not finishing to read another paper you assert is authoritative and I’m the lazy one?

Your grip on reality is slipping . Seriously, you have to start looking at what you are writing here, because you are just embarrassing yourself more and more every time you post.

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@John Newlands “…things will start to happen when BAU looks unlikely. My guess is that will be when we get an El Nino and $150 a barrel oil prices in the same year, perhaps between 2012 and 2015.”

You may be interested to know that James Hansen and co-workers concur with your climate forecast (I don’t know what JH thinks about oil prices ;-). From their latest paper in Reviews of Geophysics:

The data in Figures 9 and 10 and knowledge that tropical SSTs are now (July 2010) moving into La Niña conditions permit several conclusions. The 12 month running mean global temperature in 2010 has reached a new record level for the period of instrumental data. It is likely
that the 12 month mean will begin to decline in the second half of 2010. The subsequent minimum in the 12 month running mean is likely to be in 2011–2012 and not as deep as the 2008 minimum. The next maximum, likely to be in 2012–2014, will probably bring a new record global temperature because of the underlying warming trend.

You can add to that the knowledge that we are only just coming out of a deep solar radiance minimum now, which reinforces the notion that we may face a perfect storm of El Niño + solar maximum + continued CO2 increase circa 2013.

The full Hansen et al paper is here, and is well worth a read (it’s not too heavy) as a summary of the current climate situation (and, as an aside, it comprehensively eliminates the possibility of urban heat significantly affecting climate trend measurements).

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For anyone with the desire to read something gobsmackingly inane in the anti-nuclear genre (warning, first put on head gear to avoid injuring head on desk) … read here and here

I did answer the first seriously but the second of my posts descended into sarcasm as by then I just couldn’t believe what I was reading.

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