Toyota and Lexus Still Hating on Plug-Ins and EVs

you're probably right, but what were we talking about?

 

Should we stop using fires because of accidents that involve fire?
Why in the world do we allow cars, since so many people die in accidents every day?

im not saying nuclear power is 100% safe.
What I am saying is that any form of power has its risks, and nuclear has fewer than most IF proper precautions are taken.

 

In my country it is possible to clean up a fire car accident mess. I am not sure if your country authorities are able to do that. But a nuclear accident like fukushima NOT. Maybe in your country it is different. That's why I asked you and all who claim I am a meltdown to take the bath at a damaged core reactor pool and then .

 

"Using historical electricity production data and mortality and emission factors from the peer-reviewed scientific literature, we found that despite the three major nuclear accidents the world has experienced, nuclear power prevented an average of over 1.8 million net deaths worldwide between 1971-2009" - Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet: Coal and gas are far more harmful than nuclear power

More data on that here: http://www.oecd-nea.org/ndd/reports/2010/nea6862-comparing-risks.pdf

Natural gas is cleaner, but like coal, it needs more fuel, which means more risk of accidents and deaths from acquiring and transporting that fuel.

I already mentioned how a coal plant emits more radiation than a nuclear one during operation. That is more radiactively harmful material being pumped into the neighboring environment. Coal ash and sludge are also quite toxic.
"A typical coal-burning power plant creates over 300,000 tons of waste ash and sludge each year. That residue forms a toxic mess with pollutants such as arsenic, cadmium, chromium and mercury (See Reference 5). A typical nuclear power plant generates 20 metric tons of radioactive waste annually. This material must be isolated, transported and stored in remote locations for hundreds of years." - Which One Is Better for the Environment: Coal or Nuclear? | Home Guides | SF Gate

The time scale for storing nuclear waste is an issue. Though we could reduce the amount some if we were politically willing to recycle some of the spent fuel rods. Being sealed away, it's threat to the environment is small. Getting to the lethal dosage spots generally involves getting past armed guards.

The many magnitudes more coal ash produced by a coal plant is basically just piled up outside the plant, where the heavy metals and isotopes can leach into the environment. Though some of it is disposed of by being improperly contained for a golf coarse construction, or as filler in the synthetic fibers of carpeting used in schools.

But nuclear radiation is scary. So we should just turn a blind eye to the hundreds of thousands of tons of coal ash and sludge lying around, and the occasional failure of the dams containing. Even when those failures result in environmental damage worse that petroleum spills. Ans not worry about mountain top removal to get the coal, with the resulting dust, that was recently classified as cancerous, spreading through out the mining region.

 

but a slow lingering death from an unknown source is so much more appetizing.

 

That could describe the cancer cause by the mountaintop removal dust spreading across those regions.

 

These claims are for the shortsighted. Half of US nuclear stations are over 30 years old. Each one will need huge time and resources to get decommissioned. Nuclear activity is highly corrosive. It damages both nuclear plants and storing equipment. In the future, unless the costs and energy to prevent nuclear accidents skyrocket, accidents will happen more frequently. When this happen you will not be able to clean up the disaster mess. "Problem" below has been happening for some time, but thanks to you agents, people don't notice.

OLD NEWS.
Hanford nuclear waste tank will leak for at least another year — RT USA

<< The deal agreed by the Dept of Energy and Washington’s Department of Ecology will put off pumping nuclear waste from the AY-102 double-walled tank until March 2016. Once the removal begins, the process will not be completed for another year, AP reported.

Hanford, located along the Columbia River in south-central Washington, is the site of 177 massive underground nuclear waste storage tanks, making it the largest collection of nuclear waste in the US. For four decades, the site was home to plutonium development for use in the production of nuclear weapons.

While many of Hanford’s single-walled storage tanks have leaked, AY-102 is the only one of the more recently-installed double-walled tanks that have shown signs of leaking. The Energy Dept has said about 30 ounces of nuclear waste per week leaks from the million-gallon tank’s inner wall. The waste has not breached the outer wall, the department has claimed.

The deal marked yet another point of outrage for local residents who have for decades tried to clean up the toxic site.

>>

Some very good bets

A. Energy dept usually try to hide the truth about such accidents fearing extensive public outrage.

B. Nuclear waste needs huge military and high tech resources in order to be as protected and "safe" as our imperfect thought suggests it can be, against unprecedented challenges. BUT it is not only that. You have to follow the same protocol for 2) nuclear tailings at uranium mines, 3) uranium fuel reserves.
C. These storage tanks cannot hold the nuclear corrosiveness for a long time. You have to keep personnel to check each of those storage tanks for leakages, every day.

D. Nobody counts resources for storing/re-warehousing and checking for very very very very very very loooooong time all this nuclear fuel/waste/tailings on uranium mines and decommissioning plants to their GRID energy footprint and environmental statistics.

E. What about the people living in this area? Who gives you the authority to call nuclear a clean energy and call these people who fight for a better future for theirs and children, a non existent-number in your agenda?


some reference for the mining process effects of nuclear fuel and the need to store nuclear tailings too.
Experts debate the controversy over uranium mining in Virginia | Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, U.Va.
<<
Jaffe said the controversy over uranium is about waste management. In addition to the actual mining, he said, the process would also require milling, with the disposal of 58 billion pounds of toxic, radioactive tailings each year.

According to Jaffe, these tailings retain 85 percent of their radioactive activity, and global studies have shown that those living and working near uranium mines are at risk for cancer, birth defects, weakened immune systems, and kidney and liver damage.
.......

Wales argued that not utilizing the uranium deposits in the U.S. puts the nation at a greater risk: the risk of being too dependent on foreign countries for natural energy resources.

>>

58 000 000 000 pounds of radioactive tailings per year was the estimation for ONLY the Virginia uranium mine.

F. US imports over 80 % of uranium needed to produce electricity.
Uranium Marketing Annual Report - Energy Information Administration
That guy called Wales claims US desperately needs national uranium mines in order to avoid foreign dependance.
Besides that when you calculate energy and damage footprint you have to take in mind the radioactive tailings damage in the exporter countries too.

Those who claim nuclear is clean energy are brainwashing public perception. But that does not mean coal is clean. Both are not even sustainable. GRID needs to become cleaner. New renewable energy must replace dirty nuclear and coal. The fastest way is to reduce dependance on GRID. I put all my money on Toyota's stance to avoid plug-ins. Instead of overloading the GRID, they are going to build plug-out cars.

 

In my county, Duke Energy has just decided to create huge pits for the storage of millions of tons of coal ash, the byproduct of coal being used to make electricity over decades. This in the only county in the state that seems to also have a viable geography for fracking also just approved. Can you foresee ground water contamination as the result of doing both in the same place?

So tell me a method of generating electricity (or just power for that matter) that doesn't have significant environmental impact.

 

it's our economic lifestyle that's the problem. and not just here, just about everywhere in the world.

 

Fuel Cell cars ARE HYBRIDS. They have a fuel-burning engine and an electric engine. The fuel-burning engine is used like the engine of the Chevrolet Volt - to generate electricity to run the electric engine.

Fuel Cell cars simply use a cleaner fuel - hydrogen - instead of petroleum-made gas. Thus, they have true ZERO pollutants from their exhaust. And Hydrogen is a renewable fuel to boot.

Unlike electric cars, IN THE FUTURE, Fuel Cell car owners can fuel up in minutes at gas stations which carry hydrogen. So range worry won't be there.

So in an ideal world, Fuel Cells are are the best balance of performance, economy, and zero polution/green good for the environment.

 

if you're talking about the future, how can you say, 'unlike electric cars'? how do you know the future?

 

As stated many many times, hydrogen is not a fuel, it is an energy storage medium.
Yes, you can store renewable energy as hydrogen and then run cars with it. However, you can also take renewable energy and store it in batteries and drive a car much further than a hydrogen powered car.

And, I would have to take a step backwards in terms of convenience, cargo space, performance and safety by switching away from my EV. No thank you.

 

How does one make renewable Hydrogen?

 

Hanford is a military/government installation for making weapon grade plutonium. It wasn't a power station, and is likely exempt from the safety regulations to govern commercial power plants. As such it is a poor example on the dangers of nuclear power.

How long does mercury remain in the biosphere after being emitted from a coal plant. No one is just shrugging off the issues of dealing with nuclear waste. It is just that coal ash and offer waste isn't some inert substance that you could use in the kids' sand box. Since there is many magnitudes more of it, and the general lack of concern for it, it is probably a bigger threat to the environment and public health. Living next to a nuclear plant means less radiation exposure than living next to the coal one. Plus, no mercury, soot, NOx, or sulfur emissions.

The amount of nuclear waste from the plants and mines can be reduced. A test run is under way for a new fuel rod. It is 90% unenriched thorium. Thorium is an abundant, less active mineral, and since it doesn't need to be enriched like uranium, using it won't have the associated waste and pollution from processing uranium. The other 10% is plutonium, which we have plenty off sitting in waste facillities. We won't be using it in the US because fear prevents the recycling of nuclear waste. So instead of using it, we store it in leaky containers.

The only group calling FCVs hybrids is Toyota. Everybody else calls them an electric vehicle, because that's what they are.

A fuel cell is not an engine. It is more a battery that has external reactants for electrical production. It produces no motive force on its own. The Volt ICE can produce electricity in conjunction to a motor/generator unit. It can also directly propel the car. Take the electric motor out of a FCV, and you have an immobile art piece.

To make renewable hydrogen, you need biogas off of a landfill, or some other source of renewable methane. It can also be made with renewable electricity. The electricity can drive plug in cars more miles than if used to make hydrogen for fuel cells. It and the other is more expensive than how most hydrogen is made now, from natural gas. So most of the fuel for a FCV will come from fossil fuels.

 

The 2013 Norwegian test?

What bothers me is the thorium cycle has been known for sometime and there have been earlier tests. Yet it is still under test. <hummmm>

Bob Wilson

 

I believe that is the one.
What exactly were the other tests on; enriched or unenriched thorium, with or without an neutron donator, liquid floride or not.
What I understood of this test was that it is of the final fuel rod composition; 10:90 plutonium:thorium. The intention is too convert existing uranium plants to these fuel rods.

 

Known reserves of natural uranium and thorium probably have less energy content than our coal reserves. So, to make energy production from these elements "renewable", breeder reactors of some sort are needed. Uranium-fueled breeders produce more plutonium fuel than they burn ("burn the rocks"), and while plutonium is a great nuclear reactor fuel, it can also be made into big, big bombs (there's more detail to this process, but no room for that here). Thorium-fueled breeders produce more uranium-233 than they burn as fuel; thorium is relatively benign, but U-233 is so wickedly radioactive that weaponization is impracticable and fuel-rod manufacture is vastly complicated. I haven't read about the Norwegian work you're referring to (I would love the reference), but a plutonium-thorium reactor is probably a plutonium burner for getting rid of weapon-grade plutonium, and doesn't breed any fuel significantly. Thus, as a (very) long-term energy producer, it is no better than coal as far as energy reserves are concerned, and we would still have a radioactive waste by-product.

 

Here is the thread on what I'm referring to, Long term test of Thorium-Plutonium fuel started | PriusChat

A liquid fluoride thorium reactor is a better design in terms of safety. I think India is starting one up. The Norway fuel rods should be cheaper to implement by only needing to convert existing plants instead of building whole new reactors. It has a plus of 'burning' up waste plutonium. The plutonium is the neutron donator to get the thorium converting to uranium 233 for heat.

Coal plants have radioactive waste by-product, along with a list of heavy metals and combustion pollutants. They are shorter lifespan than what a nuclear plant puts out, but the coal plant just produces a whole lot more and dumps it right into the environment. Nuclear waste is really bad, but relatively little is produced, and is contained. Coal waste is just bad, but some of it isn't contained. The rest that is contained is no where as contained as nuclear waste.

The shear amount of coal waste and required fuel makes it more damaging than nuclear. A 1 GW plant will need 100 to 120 tonnes of uranium ore to run for a year; with coal, it will need up to 7000 tonnes a day. the coal plant will produce 15 times the amount of nuclear waste from a nuclear plant in coal ash waste, that is in addition to what goes up the smoke stack.

Renewables are the ideal, but until we get cost effective regional scale energy storage to balance their production to demand, they need to be supplemented with traditional power generation. Natural gas would be the best in terms of cost and emissions, and it can be used in peaker plants. I don't think nuclear can work for peak demand, but is a GHG free base lode.

Then there are spots where renewables aren't going to be real effective. Like isolated towns in Alaska. There diesel generators or a micro nuclear turbine might be the only feasible solution.

 

I've seen some attractive, small Russian reactors that look to be a standard sized part. My understanding is the Russians put in as many as needed in their large ice breakers:

KLT-40S reactor

• 300 MWth
• 70 MWe
• 175,000 hours operation, 300 reactor-years

Of course discussing such technology is probably giving some folks a nuclear headache. Still, I've always thought the ideal disposal area would be a plate subduction zone. Even if subsequent volcanic activity compromised the original containers, it would be vastly diluted on the way to the surface.

Bob Wilson

 

Where do I find this ideal world you speak of?

In "this" world:

• a FC + hydrogen costs more per mile than battery+electricity for the fuel.
• fuel cells are very expensive, even compared to big batteries
• there is no place to refuel with hydrogen
• renewable electricity -> hydrogen-> electricity is about 20-30% efficient while renewable electricity -> battery -> electricity is about 70% efficient
• you can buy an EV for $30K to $80K; you can't buy a FCV for any price

Mike