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Konrad Roeder
North Bend, WA
Telecommunications Network Design Engineer, Inventor, Author
Recent Activity
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Konrad commented on the petition |Just the facts, no politics.
Science should be about collecting data and understanding it. Science should not be politicized by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
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Konrad signed the petition |
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Konrad signed the petition | -
Konrad signed the petition | -
Konrad commented on the article |Sandra Wrote: "We absolutely need CLEAN Nuclear power plants, and not fossil fuels, France has had fantastic luck with Our ideas put to work."
1) Nuclear power plants are not clean. Uranium mining is a very dirty process and spreads radon all over the countryside. The tailings from the mine poison the water supply for hundreds of thousands of years. The waste produced is highly radioactive and will remain so for 1/2 million years.
2) France is a "wonderful" model only because the NEI says so. France needed all those nuclear power plants so that they could make all of the needed plutonium for their nuclear weapons. France bet everything on nuclear power. However, France has completely run out of uranium. They have to import all uranium.
Champaigne from France may have radioactive wastes in it:
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/273411/nuclear_waste_sites_may_affect_french.html
France's big nuclear success is a myth:
http://www.commondreams.org/news2008/0227-02.htm -
Konrad commented on the article |
The "How to make nuclear power cleaner problem" has been worked on by entire generations of engineers for the last 55 years. There is no answer currently, nor are there any solutions on the horizon for another 25 years or so.
As an engineer, I will tell you that nothing is 100% reliable. This means that all 103 nuclear power plants are rolling a set of dice, albeit many sided, every day. That one day that the dice land on snake eyes due to wear and tear or human error, there is a probability of a meltdown. Yes TMI has a containment building, but it won't contain an explosion like Chernobyl had. And yes there have not been major accidents in the US. But past performance is never an indication of future results. As nuclear power plants age, the probability of failure increases, not decreases.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathtub_curve
The youngest of our nuclear plants are now 25 years old. The probability of having a major accident in the US is *increasing* with every day that passes. -
Konrad commented on the article |
The Progress Energy AP1000 reactors in Levy county are precisely the ones that are going to cost $17 Billion. The cost overruns have already begun. Initially, they quoted much less if you remember. Now they are billing you for a plant that won't even deliver electricity for another 10 years.
http://www.progress-energy.com/aboutus/news/article.asp?id=18222
About 25 years ago, here in Washington, the Washington Public Power Supply System started building five nuclear power plants. Due to massive cost overruns, they only ended up building one and stuck the rate payers for four nuclear power plants that were never built.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Northwest
The Oregon plant they talk about is Trojan. It only ran for a total of 16 years before they had to close it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_nuclear_plant
We are still paying for that nuclear nightmare. Google this and educate yourself about the risks of getting stuck with the bill.
Another nuclear power plant, Vermont Yankee, had its cooling tower collapse completely on its own even though it had recently been inspected. The operating company now wants to extend its operating life beyond the original design.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermont_Yankee
The hot spent fuel bundles get moved out of the reactor into a spent fuel pool right outside of the reactor building. After the pool is completely filled, the coldest of the fuel bundles are packed into a sheilded container. The sheilded containers just pile up outside of the nuclear reactor. That's it. Take a look using google earth at your choice of any of our 103 nuclear power plants and see the nuclear waste cannisters pile up right out in the open, outside of the plant.
They want to bury the waste that will remain radioactive for at least 1/2 million years in Yucca Mountain, but they can't guarantee it will be safe for only for 10,000 years. It's still in the middle of a legal battle with permits. Nevada does not want to be the nuclear garbage dump.
http://www.wikimapia.org/#lat=36.852514&lon=-116.426604 -
Konrad commented on the article |
Nuclear power plants get their energy from splitting uranium atoms to produce heat to boil water. The steam turns a turbine. However, only about 30% of the energy unleashed produces electricity. The rest is waste heat. When the electricity is used up, the result is more waste heat. All energy from nuclear power heats up our environment. All of it.
Although a nuclear power plant does not emit greenhouse gasses, the whole process does. The nuclear energy industry does generate large quantities of CO2. While that amount is less than coal plants, nevertheless, that amount is increasing.
Uranium is a finite source of energy just like oil, coal, and natural gas. Most of the high and medium grade uranium in the world has already been mined. As lower and lower grades of uranium have to be mined, it takes more and more raw ore to produce the same amount of yellowcake. This means that as uranium gets depleted, greenhouse gas emissions from uranium mining have to be increasing. As the quality of uranium ores decrease, more trucks and other equipment are needed to refine them, which wastes more energy and resources. -
Konrad commented on the article |
Nuclear power depends on a steady flow of imported uranium.
By going to nuclear power, we are becoming increasingly more dependent on a foreign fuel. Uranium is a finite source of energy just like oil, coal, and natural gas.
Although uranium in low concentrations is fairly common, uranium in high concentrations is actually quite rare. The world's top uranium producers are Canada, Australia, Kazakhstan, Russia, Namibia and Niger. Eleven countries, Germany, the Czech Republic, France, DR Congo, Gabon, Bulgaria, Tajikistan, Hungary, Romania, Spain, Portugal and Argentina have exhausted their uranium resource. Many others such as the US have already peaked their production and are declining every year. Many mines are already mining low grade uranium ore because all the high-grade and medium-grade ore is already gone. The lower the grade ore, the more energy (diesel fuel) it takes to mine, mill and refine it. Also, the *rate* at which the uranium can be delivered will slow. Clearly, if one has to mine ten times as much ore to get the same amount of yellow cake, it will take ten times as long. Of the ten largest uranium mines in the world (Mc Arthur River, Ranger, Rossing, Kraznokamensk, Olympic Dam, Rabbit Lake, Akouta, Arlit, Beverly, and McClean Lake), by 2020, six will be depleted, two will be in their final stages.
The US uses close to 30% of the world's resource of uranium. In 2006, owners of U.S. nuclear power reactors bought 67 million pounds of uranium in 2006. Out of that 84%, or 56 million pounds were imported from foreign suppliers, according to the Energy Department. A large portion of the remaining uranium comes from downblending highly enriched uranium from Russian nuclear weapons. In 2013, the megatons to megawatts program is going to be done. The end effect - we are becoming more and more dependent on imported uranium and that uranium is becoming depleted.
If we want to become energy independent, do we really want to hang our hat on nuclear power? If the value of the dollar drops, the price we have to pay for uranium goes up. In the last decade, the price of uranium has already gone up significantly.
There is a lot of uranium in the world. If it could be produced effectively, uranium could be recovered from phosphate mines or from sea water. But those processes do not produce uranium at a significant rate.
The other important question to ask is can the US get uranium at a sufficient *rate* to meet the *rate* at which it is being consumed.
Can we reprocess uranium? The US has no reprocessing facilities. There are only two reprocessing facilities in the world. They are limited to reprocessing at a certain *rate*. Reprocessing plants are prohibitively expensive.
Can we use the depleted uranium to make more fuel with breeder reactors? Yes, but the *rate* at which the breeder reactors make plutonium is limited. Also, breeders are prohibitively expensive.
Peak uranium happens when the rate at which uranium is demanded is not me by the rate at which uranium can be produced. Will we see peak uranium in our life times? It will happen much sooner than you might think. -
Konrad commented on the article |This is a good idea. It assumes that there is cell coverage in the area, or that the samples are sent to the lab later from an area where there is coverage or connectivity. I would imagine that a camera that also has Wi-Fi in it would come in very handy in some places where there is Internet coverage but no GSM coverage.
A small technical detail - when photos are sent using GSM, it's not an SMS, but an MMS message that is being used.
How do you make sure the picture of the sample is matched with a particular patient? Do you rename the picture? What prevents typos? Hopefully you using a naming system that includes a check digit or error detection scheme.
