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PetroChina buys entire Alberta oilsands project

If there is any one point I think is important related to energy issues, it is this...

we in the USA already have the knowledge and techology to get off the Arab oil teat.....we don't need to stop importing oil from our friends and neighbors, just our enemies. We can devestate the economies of several middle east countries just by not buying from them.
Effliciencies, aka conserving, not so much by using less but by WASTING less, can cut our energy consumtion drastically.
then there is the cultural shift, as in the Jimmy Carter days....driving slower, driving less, wear a sweater, etc. DO work.
The energy bills in my household are considerably less than many of my neighgors because they won't make the effort. One of my AZ neighbors pays about $700 per month during the summer because his wife wants their house cold, not just cool.
Reporters and politicians are the least reliable source of information on energy topics..
 
my wording was careful, I did not actually call you an idiot, just led you down the path where you decided to infer that you are included in that category...:2razz:

That was very Clintonesqe of you........... but most Dems are good at that game.
 
again, address that to yourself....
what are the topics you know something about? it isn't nuclear, so why are you here? what did I make up?

Well, you either made this up or simply spoke out of ignorance:

UtahBill said:
He has the power by himself to kill it? He can veto, but congress can override...

Yes, he and his State Department have the power to kill the pipeline. Congress CAN NOT override the decision.
 
you have links to spent fuel issues at Fukushima? ever seen a spent fuel pool? they don't have a drain system, as they are not meant to ever be drained....

Thought you claimed to be an expert on nuclear issues.

Spent fuel rods are kept in pools of circulating water to keep them cool. Even though spent, they still radiate considerable heat. If the pumps fail, water no longer circulates, the water heats up and begins to boil off exposing the fuel rods to the atmosphere.

That's what happened at Fukishima.
 
That was very Clintonesqe of you........... but most Dems are good at that game.
I voted only once in my life for a democrat, Jimmy Carter. He is the only president to have an energy plan.
All the other elections, I voted for the republican. so I guess one sin cannot be forgiven by you ubercons?
If that is the case, you won't vote for the morally bankrupt Newt, right?:2razz:
 
We just need to drill our own oil and use our own resources while moving towards renewable energy.
 
We just need to drill our own oil and use our own resources while moving towards renewable energy.
we can do that, it won't be cheap, tho.....nearly all the easy stuff has been taken.
 
Well, you either made this up or simply spoke out of ignorance:



Yes, he and his State Department have the power to kill the pipeline. Congress CAN NOT override the decision.
congress can introduce bills....that overrides state department...
 
Thought you claimed to be an expert on nuclear issues.

Spent fuel rods are kept in pools of circulating water to keep them cool. Even though spent, they still radiate considerable heat. If the pumps fail, water no longer circulates, the water heats up and begins to boil off exposing the fuel rods to the atmosphere.

That's what happened at Fukishima.
never claimed to be an expert.....show me where I did...
I have participated in the refueling of the ATR in Idaho many times.....the volume of water used is sufficient to cool the fuel for long periods of time without external cooling.....it is part of the design....sort of like trying to boil a gallon of water with one very long candle...the losses to ambient surroundings will delay the loss of water for a very long time...
 
We just need to drill our own oil and use our own resources while moving towards renewable energy.


This is so common sense, I am constantly surprised that more people don't just cut the noise and stick that fact.

No one on the conservative side that I am aware of advocates that we just totally scrap any movement at all toward different energy for the future. But, this constant forceable, and false meme that creates a false crisis in order to move us toward technology that are unproven to be able to replace energy of today is IMHO, a recipe for disaster.

In this country we have a real knack for pushing things that are unproven, and full of bugs because they sound shinny and wonderful...Consider in my industry, trucking. Diesel is not only cleaner than gasoline, but runs more efficiently, however only know of diesel as the bus they follow and their car fills with fumes from the exhaust, or see trucks on the road that bellow exhaust that they think that diesel is a dirty fuel, and as such have been ramping up the standards on the transportation industry like mine....Fist they came out with a system that regenerates the exhaust from the engine, back through a particulate filtration system that has cause problems with trucks since '08 when this was mandated, and caused one major supplier of diesel engines CAT to get out of the business of producing engines for the industry. Now the newest thing is for trucks like the one I drive to use a substance called DEF in conjunction with the particulate filtration system to further clean the air, and touts that exhaust now emitted from a truck like mine is cleaner when it exits the truck, than it is when I take it in. Problem is the cost of these systems have severely raised the cost of transportation and WILL be passed along.

My point being is that these ideas are good, no doubt about that. But, we should not be cutting off what we are now operating on for a pipe dream of something better until we are sure it will work.

j-mac
 
never claimed to be an expert.....show me where I did...
I have participated in the refueling of the ATR in Idaho many times.....the volume of water used is sufficient to cool the fuel for long periods of time without external cooling.....it is part of the design....sort of like trying to boil a gallon of water with one very long candle...the losses to ambient surroundings will delay the loss of water for a very long time...

Obviously did not work at Fukishima.
 
Obviously did not work at Fukishima.
links? I have an errand to run, so will search more later, but so far I haven't seen anything that says spent fuel was actually uncovered....
 
links? I have an errand to run, so will search more later, but so far I haven't seen anything that says spent fuel was actually uncovered....

Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) has said there was a hydrogen explosion that damaged the Unit 4 reactor building on Tuesday morning in Japan (Monday afternoon U.S. time), reportedly blowing a 26-foot wide hole in the side of the building. If this explosion was due to hydrogen, that hydrogen very likely came from the spent fuel since there is no other clear source (this reactor was not operating when the earthquake hit). And if the spent fuel produced the hydrogen, that indicates that the water level in the spent fuel pool must have been low enough to have exposed a significant fraction of the fuel rods.

Shortly after that—at 9:38 am Tuesday (8:38 pm EDT Monday)—TEPCO discovered a fire on the fourth floor of the building in the spent fuel pool, which reportedly burned for three hours. That fire may have been the oxidation of the zirconium cladding, as it was continuing to produce hydrogen.

The other effect of heat damage to the fuel rods is that radioactive gases such as iodine-131 and cesium-137, which are produced in the fuel during the operation of the reactor, can be released. The hole in the secondary containment at Unit 4 means that any emissions from the spent fuel will be vented directed to the outside.

If water cannot be added to the pool, or if the pool has been damaged and is leaking, the fuel may remain uncovered. The exposed fuel can get hot enough to melt, depending on how long it has been out of the reactor. If the fuel melts, it would release significant additional radioactivity into the air.

This same scenario could occur at Units 5 and 6 if the water in the spent fuel pools is not replenished, although the fuel there has apparently been in the pools longer and is not as radioactive as at Unit 4. For rods that have been in the pool for long enough, their decay heat will have dropped sufficiently that they will not undergo the same rapid oxidation as newer fuel rods will, and would not produce as much hydrogen.

Thus, depending on the age of the spent fuel in Units 5 and 6, there may be less hydrogen produced if the water level in the spent fuel pool drops. There may still be enough heat to damage the fuel and release radioactive gases, but if the secondary containment is not damaged by a hydrogen explosion, that gas may not be released to the atmosphere.

If mechanisms to fill the pool at Unit 4 are broken, or if there is a need to repair the pool, it will be difficult to get workers close enough to do this. If spent fuel has been in the pool for a relatively short time, even if the water level is at the top of the fuel rods, the radiation dose to someone at the railing of the pool would give them a lethal dose in well under a minute. This would explain why there have been reports of requests to use helicopters to deliver water to the pools. However, it appears that this is not a practical way of delivering water.
All Things Nuclear • Spent Fuel Pools at Fukushima

There are dozens more stories.
 
looks like unit 4 has problems with their spent fuel pool....still, you have to seperate these reports by type of source. TEPCO will be biased in their favor, journalists will just be stupid. I read one by a journalist that said spent fuel rods are "packed closely together", which is not true. There must be space between them for natural and forced cooling, plus the racks that keep them apart are lined with neutron absorbing material, ohterwise there could be fission happening. And fission requires a moderator, so when the water is gone, the moderator is gone, so no fission. The danger is melting, and that appears to be the case in unit 4. How much is still to be determined.

what I find really stupid is that they could have piped in water from reservoirs above the pool, if they had thought to build them. There are mountains and fresh water right behind those reacotrs. One thing that never fails, so far, is gravity. Redundant flexible pipes carrying fresh water would have been a far better choice than powered pumps bringing in sea water...
 
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That's interesting Bill. Years ago when I drove dump trucks for a living, we used to have a contract with BG&E to pick up, and transport to the quarry fly ash from the local electric plant. It was taken to the quarry, and basically buried much like a dump would take care of waste. What are the concerns of that process?

j-mac

That is the ash collected by the bag house and other particulate reduction methods that coal powered plants use. They still emit ash into the atmosphere. Older plants tend to emit a lot more then newer ones (older ones tend to have far fewer and less effective particulant reduction operations then new ones) One plant just recently shut down outside of Edmonton Alberta emitted at least five times the particulate matter that a plant 30 years newer did just a few miles down the road

The particulate matter can contain mercury, lead, other heavy metals and radioactive particles.
 
dumping ash in the ground leads to water table pollution, depending on some variables.....when rain water soaks through the ash, it leaches out pollutants...
It has some uses, but not enough for the amount we generate...
a large coal plant willl have lots of coal being brought in by truck or train, and a lot of ash going out by truck or train....plus the airborne pollution out the stacks.
 
dumping ash in the ground leads to water table pollution, depending on some variables.....when rain water soaks through the ash, it leaches out pollutants...
It has some uses, but not enough for the amount we generate...
a large coal plant willl have lots of coal being brought in by truck or train, and a lot of ash going out by truck or train....plus the airborne pollution out the stacks.

Coal ash must be placed in disposal sites built over impermeable liners that prevent any water leaching.
 
Coal ash must be placed in disposal sites built over impermeable liners that prevent any water leaching.
was it last year? one of those sites embankements collapsed, sending coal ash sludge into a town and river.....quite a mess...
 
was it last year? one of those sites embankements collapsed, sending coal ash sludge into a town and river.....quite a mess...

That was a 50 year old pond that couldn't take an extraordinary rainfall followed by severe cold temperatures.
 
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