J. Clarke wrote:

Han wrote:
"J. Clarke" wrote in news:g0na0502lr3
@news2.newsguy.com:

Han wrote:
"J. Clarke" wrote in news:g0mksh11jc5
@news3.newsguy.com:

Han wrote:
Mark & Juanita wrote in
m:

How about maybe developing our own oil fields and reserves?
A
few nuclear reactors might be helpful as well. Had Bubba
Clinton
not prohibited drilling in ANWR in 1994, saying that it would
take 10 years before anything resulted anyway, we would now be
getting 1 million barrels a day from that field.

.... snip


I'm not a nuclear engineer, so I can't quote you numbers, but I do
believe that the heat generated by nuclear waste can be
considerable.
Obviously it depends on the energy of the decay step(s) and their
respective energies expressed per unit mass or volume (ducking).

Short term it's "considerable" which is why high-level waste stays at
the power plant until it's decayed enough for shipment. By the time
it gets to a long-term storage facility the heat generated is
negligible.


It's been a bunch of years since my Modern Physics course, but I recall
the fact that the highest-level wastes that generate such heat also have
the shortest half-lives.


and
the need to contain it for a very, very long time.

Whereas the CO2 has to be kept warehoused _forever_ or else there's
no point in warehousing it.

Warehousing would suggest you're going to use it again, which does
not
seem logical if you couldn't possible get energy or other use out of
it. I think it has to be put away permanently, really.

Whatever word you use, it still has to be kept forever.


Back before Hanoi Jane and others got the the nuclear industry effectively
shut down, there was significant research on means to deal with nuclear
waste. One of the means involved vitrification (basically encapsulating
in, or turning to, glass) and then launching the waste into space
(destinations varied, from solar incineration to out of the solar system).
The vitrified product would be recoverable and not pose significant danger
in the event of a launch malfunction. There were other approaches under
consideration as well.

Definitely
problems that can be conquered, but there is a lot of NIMBY to
contend with.

And you think there won't be a lot of NIMBY once people figure out
that warehousing CO2 is going to take a huge amount of storage
volume?

Of course there will always be NIMBY, but I think that filling
underground voids generated by mining would be a good place.

Will those voids be sufficient, considering that what you're putting
in them has had two atoms of oxygen added to each atom of carbon that
was taken out? And will those voids be sufficiently secure to keep it
segregated _forever_? If so then why not put nuclear waste there?


--
If you're going to be dumb, you better be tough