And they want to build 3000-10000 more nuclear plants...

[kristopher]

Scrap Metal Radiation Raises Concerns in India

By JIM YARDLEY
Published: April 23, 2010


NEW DELHI — To walk through the squalor of Mayapuri, a grimy industrial area of hundreds of tiny scrap-metal shops, is to bear witness to the industrial detritus of the world: tons of rusted iron pipes, twisted steel poles, copper and other discarded metals from Europe, Russia, Japan and the United States, as well as from India.

...And then there is what came into the small shop owned by Deepak Jain: a piece, or pieces, of metal blamed for an alarming radiation scare this month that hospitalized seven people and caused the police to temporarily cordon off an area barely 10 miles from India’s Parliament. Some experts declared it one of the most troubling cases of radiation exposure in recent years.

“We’ve never seen a problem like this,” said Krishna Kumar Jain, another scrap dealer and brother-in-law of Deepak Jain. “Now people are scared, so nobody is coming here.”

For years, India and other developing countries, particularly China, have imported different categories of waste from developed countries as a lucrative, if controversial, business. Critics have blamed the importing of discarded computer equipment, known as toxic e-waste, for long-term chronic health problems among workers in scrapyards, as well as environmental damage....

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/24/world/asia/24india.html

This isn't the first instance of this happening, either; nor could we expect it to be anything but common if the nuclear power lobby gets its way. To meet our needs with nuclear power will require producing so much high level wastes (including old reactors) that it is expected we would need the equivalent of a complete Yucca mountain complex every two years to hold it all.

[Statistical]

1. No more hospitals.

Front the article ...

Last year, several containers of Indian steel were stopped at European ports after monitors detected high radiation levels; Indian foundries had fabricated the steel, partly, by melting scrap metal that turned out to be contaminated with Cobalt-60, the same radioactive isotope detected in the Mayapuri episode. It is commonly used in food irradiation machinery as well as for radiotherapy, as in cancer therapy machines.

Of course most (although not all) people on DU realize nuclear is only part of the solution. There is no need to build 10,000 reactors. Building 600 reactors would result in 30% of global electrical power by 2050.

WIND - HYDRO - NUCLEAR - SOLAR EFFICIENCY

[kristopher]

2. nuclear only accounts for 2.4% of global energy consumption.

A small buildout of nuclear isn't going to do squat about AGW except to remove the growth potential of renewables. If we build lots of renewables, nuclear power is not economically viable. If we build lots of nuclear, the gaps in the current generating structure that invite investment in renewables close, and renewables are are not economically viable.

It is an either or proposition for investors.

[Statistical]

3. Only if your brain.

You just love to use total energy instead of electrical percentage.

Except when talking about wind or solar then you use the higher electrical %.

WIND - HYDRO - NUCLEAR - SOLAR - EFFICIENCY - CCS
It is the solution preferred by majority of Americans and our President. It is the only solution that makes sense.

[kristopher]

4. It is the solution preferred by the nuclear energy industries, you mean.

[Statistical]

5. and Obama and the American people. Your just upset because nobody buys into your fantasies n/t

[kristopher]

6. Well that shows you know about fantasies anyway...

You don't get much right, but you have your fantasies down pat.

[NNadir]

7. No. It is the solution objected to by the dangerous fossil fuel industry that funds your pals

Amory Lovins, Gerhard Schroeder and Joshka Fischer, all of whom are openly funded by the dangerous fossil fuel industry.

Any literate person knows that.

Illiterate people by contrast, make blanket accusations that, for instance, the President of the United States and his Nobel Prize winning Secretary of Energy are working for the nuclear industry.

If you're illiterate, you might, for instance, say, in a manner of speaking cut and paste over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over the writings of GOD!!!!! MARK!!!!! Z.!!!!!!!! JACOBSON!!!!!!!.

[jpak]

8. Literate to us about the made-up NJ molten salt breeder reactor that was made-up

by a made-up internets "scientist"!!111

:rofl:

[joshcryer]

10. As of no there exist no solution to AGW.

[Statistical]

13. There is a solution. AGW isn't a technical problem but rather a willpower/social/political problem.

The world has capacity to build about 24 reactors per year. With a global push that number could be tripled. The capacity limits comes from the lack of massive forges necessary to make reactor pressure vessels (sadly not a single one exists in US anymore). 60-70 reactors a year would be 100GW of new capacity a year.
We could build out 10,000 to 20,000 turbines a year. Massive solar parks don't really make sense but the same money could be spent to put solar power on the roofs of millions of buildings each year. Hydro is about tapped out but modify suitable dams to acts as pumped hydro would add millions of kwh of energy storage to the gird.

However all that requires a "Manhattan project" type commitment and not from a single nation but the entire world.

The issue of AGW is purely societal and political.

[joshcryer]

15. Don't forget economic, which everything boils down to in our globalized capitalist world.

As such there exist no solution that is economically, politically, and socially viable. Yes, I think it's technically possible, but in the reality we live in, it ain't happening.

So I don't disagree with you, I just don't see us doing anything about the problem. 3.0C my friend.

[joshcryer]

9. Note, also, that if you use Jacobson's efficiency numbers (1TW less than now by 2030)...

...they can apply to nuclear as well, but no one likes to do that. Nuclear just isn't compatible with renweables.

[bananas]

11. Medical isotopes are generally made at special reactors, not power reactors

http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/science-updates/hope-creek-nuclear-power-plants-cobalt-stew-double-bubble-toil-and-trouble

Hope Creek nuclear power plant’s cobalt stew: Double, bubble, toil and trouble
Tuesday, 06 April 2010 13:23

Nuclear safety experts warn that a proposal to increase profits at the Hope Creek nuclear power plant by adding cobalt fuel rods to its 100-ton uranium fuel mix could jeopardize the structural integrity of its entire spent fuel pool and should be changed or scrapped.

In addition, the presence of cobalt could complicate the delicate balancing of heat within the reactor core which is essential to ensuring the even burning of the nuclear fuel.

<snip>

Cobalt-60 had been produced primarily at the Chalk River reactor in Canada. "It was an old reactor," said Lochbaum, "and they were building another to replace it. But the new reactor has never been able to operate it because it has design flaws. They spent a lot of money on the new reactor, but were never able to get it past its qualifying tests.

"So eventually they shut Chalk River and stopped on the replacement.

<snip>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_medicine#Source_of_radioisotopes

Nuclear medicine is a branch or specialty of medicine and medical imaging that uses radioactive isotopes (radionuclides) and relies on the process of radioactive decay in the diagnosis and treatment of disease.

<snip>

Source of radioisotopes

About two thirds of the world's supply of medical isotopes are produced at the Chalk River Laboratories in Chalk River, Ontario, Canada. The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission ordered the NRU reactor to be shut down on November 18, 2007 for regularly scheduled maintenance and an upgrade of the safety systems to modern standards. The upgrade took longer than expected and in December 2007 a critical shortage of medical isotopes occurred. The Canadian government unanimously passed emergency legislation, allowing the reactor to re-start on 16 December 2007, and production of medical isotopes to continue.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chalk_River_Laboratories

The Chalk River Laboratories (also known as CRL, Chalk River Labs and formerly the Chalk River Nuclear Laboratories, CRNL) is a Canadian nuclear research facility located near Chalk River, Ontario, about 180 km north-west of Ottawa.

<snip>

In 1952, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL), was created by the government to promote peaceful use of nuclear energy. AECL also took over operation of Chalk River from the NRC. Throughout the 1950s-2000s various nuclear research reactors have been operated by AECL for production of nuclear material for medical and scientific applications. The Labs produce about half of the world's medical isotopes. Despite the declaration of peaceful use, from 1955 to 1976, Chalk River facilities supplied about 250kg of plutonium, in the form of spent reactor fuel, to the US Dept. of Energy to be used in the production of nuclear weapons.<1> (The bomb dropped on Nagasaki used about 6.4kg of plutonium.)

<snip>

[Statistical]

12. The cobalt-60 in the piece came from a hospital and thus a medical isotope reactor.

So why aren't you rallying to let cancer patients die and just end "EBIL" nuclear medicine?

Is "no more hospitals" part of your "no more nukes" campaign?

[joshcryer]

14. Integrity doesn't matter to some folks

[kristopher]

16. What is relevant is that radioactive metal is already showing up as scrap

and if we expand nuclear power that can only get worse.

[joshcryer]

17. Waste from medical industry will lead to waste from nuclear power industry?

Two fields that have dramatically different standards for disposal? Spent nuclear fuel doesn't leave the confines of the reactor space (in most cases), with high levels of security and big signs that say "trespassers will be shot."

Medical isotopes are in hospitals where hundreds of people are allowed to come and go as they please, without any significant security in place until after dark. Those isotopes can be handled by anyone within the credentials to access those areas, in my case at the VA hospital, the whole place is completely open and even the machines are open access with unlocked doors. (There *are* cameras everywhere, though, so you'd probably get caught if you attempted anything.)

[bananas]

19. You don't understand the difference between medicine and electricity?

When the doctor gives you a pill, do you throw the pill away and stick your finger in a socket?
Medical isotopes are made in a handful of specialized nuclear reactors and has nothing to do with producing electricity.
Your post is too bizarre and irrational to even attempt to answer.
Whenever I post about the proliferation problems with nuclear energy,
pro-nukes go ballistic because they have the delusion that nuclear proliferation has nothing to do with nuclear energy,
they whine and scream and hit the alert button and try to get my posts moved out of this forum.
But somehow they also have the delusion that nuclear medicine requires nuclear power plants.
It's impossible to have a rational discussion with delusional people.

[kristopher]

18. Kick