Nuclear Photo Gallery

One of the captions mentions that after the spent fuel rods are submerged in water for a period of time they are transfered to dry storage tanks that are built to last fifty years... Talk about handing down our problems to our children, hell the half-life of some the crap they are putting in those containers is in the hundreds of thousands of years. Reminds me of an obscure Rod McKuen poem called 'Before the Monkeys Came" for some reason. But hey, there's a buck to be made.

Originally posted by twitchy
One of the captions mentions that after the spent fuel rods are submerged in water for a period of time they are transfered to dry storage tanks that are built to last fifty years... Talk about handing down our problems to our children, hell the half-life of some the crap they are putting in those containers is in the hundreds of thousands of years. Reminds me of an obscure Rod McKuen poem called 'Before the Monkeys Came" for some reason. But hey, there's a buck to be made.

Well, it seems to me it's better in a cask somewhere than spread across countryside. Just because the radioactive elements in coal are "natural" doesn't mean that aren't going to harm your lungs; as a matter of fact they are in the prime condition to do that.

By way of explanation: coal fired plants emit amounts of radioactive materials which would put a nuclear power plant in permanent closure, except that the emissions are allowed because they are "natural", the natural byproduct of burning the coal that contains them. Of course, the nuclides in the coal don't know that.

But you're talking about waste. What is it? Well, they make fuel pellets out of a combination of uraniums (and sometimes part plutonium) called low-level enriched. These pellets are 100% fuel, perfectly fissionable all the way to the end. However, when they are burned in a power plant, the breakdown products of their use build up in the pellets, and when only 1% of the fuel is burned, the pellets are retired because their own waste products poison the reaction. They could be recycled to remove the fission products, and allow the next 1% to be used, but it has proven up to this time to be cheaper to dump the old and manufacture completely new fuel. Doesn't sound too efficient, does it?

Eventually that remaining fuel is going to be valuable. There are new reactor technologies which will allow the wastes to be removed continuously, allowing the fuel to be burned completely, including all that which is sitting in those casks. Your children will bless you, I think.

I've got three books of McKuen's poetry on the wall. I especially like Stanyan Street and Other Sorrows.

Originally posted by puncheex
Well, it seems to me it's better in a cask somewhere than spread across countryside....
I've got three books of McKuen's poetry on the wall. I especially like Stanyan Street and Other Sorrows.

Amen to that! Giving it away to arms manufacturers was just about the worst case scenario and I'm hopeful that eventually international pressure will at least limit our use of it in munitions abroad.
McKuen was one of the greats!

Originally posted by intrptr
reply to post by where2oceansmeet

 

There is a generation now that has no idea about the real danger and the threat of these weapons.

When I was young we learned about the bomb from class room drills and siren tests, what not. That is what stoked my curiosity about them. They have since discontinued any kind of Civil Defense in schools these days. As stupid as "duck and cover" and Tommy Turtle were, it was better than a complete information vacuum.

Thank God for the internet...

And thanks for your reply.

Any ideas about why such training and preparedness faded away?

Having just finished WWII, everyone was familiarized with the British interpretation of a bomb drill: run to the nearest deep shelter and hole-up until the all-clear. Atomic bombs as seen in Japan were huge, but survivable, if you weren't right underneath one. Most of the dead in Japan died because of falling buildings, so duck and cover was sensible, but it had to be done quickly. Unlike the blitz, you didn't get bombs exploding in the distance to warn you. The drills and the fuss were imminently good advice, for school and factory, and home.

Then came the H-weapons. It became pretty obvious right away that use of these weapons is not survivable, if one came and visited your city. (Well, LA might have need a few). Duck and cover won't buy the vast majority of the inhabitants anything. Incidentally, the same was true for the battlefield; tactics were being worked out for armor and infantry to operate in an atomic battlefield, but the H-weapons brought that to a quick halt.

In fact, using H-bombs tactically was just plain silly; the only real use is as strategic weapons, taking whole cities as hostages against the threat. And since use of a-bombs would likely escalate to H-bombs, they were ruled out as well except in the most extreme cases. That is where MAD came in; it is the only justification for atomic weapons.

Today we don't bother to prepare the populace; if it comes to that then the nation and its weapons have failed. On the battlefield, it is mainly the same WWII training tactics, updated for newer hand weapons and with guerrilla tactics thrown in.

reply to post by puncheex

Any ideas about why such training and preparedness faded away?

I'll just address this part of your reply.

Warning drills were a fear generator in my opinion. School aged kids had no comprehension of what a nuclear weapon was or what it could do. But they would come from school and tell their parents about the drills... imagine how they must have felt? I don't know, I was just a kid.

The sirens were near schools on big towers that looked like "funny" street lights. In the SF Bay Area there were no tornado or earthquake drills back then. The sirens had only one purpose. We didn't really know either what we were supposed to do if in fact a war ever came. There were no shelters in our area (or even basements). Emergency Broadcasts on Television didn't exist yet. You were supposed to tune to a radio station if you ever heard the sirens. And they were freaky to. They would blow for 3 minutes and then a single blast for a minute to sound all clear. I used to listen for the "all clear" real hard. We were told if you didn't hear that all clear that was the real thing. On a Friday. We were freaked out until we heard the all clear.

Sounded something like this:


You must understand that I heard these sirens until I was in High School. They tested them all my growing up years. Eventually they announced the last test one day and after that they discontinued those "tests". The fear had gone out of it by then, most people didn't bother with them the last couple years. They had to develop new fear tactics after the end of the Vietnam war and the cold war.

Just my opinion. Hey, if you haven't already and you want a kick, check out a film called "The Atomic Cafe". Its about my era... parts of it are ROFL.

Here's part 1:

a reply to: intrptr

Wow!!! Awesome post and great photos!

Edit: changed link to Atomic Cafe…

Atomic Cafe on Vimeo