Your opinion on electric vehicles

[GeoffC]

trailer battery is a neat idea - mileage may suffer a little from towing - but the possibilities increase if extra luggage space is also included ...

[wodin]

Originally Posted by Xenophon

As cast, they're minimally radioactive, and stable over quite long time-scales.

Don't you mean they emit a minimum amount of radiation relative to the SAME AMOUNT of radioactivity? A curie of cobalt 60 or strontium 90 will emit the same number of gamma rays whether it's diluted in fifty liters of lead glass or not. The difference is the flux density at the surface. And stability is only in terms of chemical stability. Radioactive material is by definition unstable and all the dilution in the world will not make it less so.

Originally Posted by Xenophon

The resulting billets are stable for 20,000+ years. (Really! The French nuclear agency did some super-careful research on ancient Egyptian glass that's over 5K years old in order to learn about the long-term stability of glass. From there, it's cube-square-law on the dimensions with leaching rates and such as measured. Very solid data!)

Originally Posted by Xenophon

The secure dry storage is overkill even for the small billets, but it makes the public feel safer, so that's what they do. Note that maintaining that dry storage, and providing security for it(!) is a major fraction of their reprocessing cost -- the original big-billet plan would be much cheaper.

In terms of life spans of civilizations, 20K years is a long time! Long enough to see several civilizations come and go. Would you have us believe that, say, middle age Europe would expend the resources to maintain dry storage and provide security for Egyptian glass?

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by yvanleterrible

The trailer battery is the perfect thing. It could be picked up at a gas station anywhere and supplement the owmer's revenue loss by the lowering oil sales.

Originally Posted by GeoffC

trailer battery is a neat idea - mileage may suffer a little from towing - but the possibilities increase if extra luggage space is also included ...

I love it when a consensus comes together! (Now get busy on that trailer, B.A., while Face and I scare up some electric motors!)

[Xenophon]

Originally Posted by wodin

Don't you mean they emit a minimum amount of radiation relative to the SAME AMOUNT of radioactivity? A curie of cobalt 60 or strontium 90 will emit the same number of gamma rays whether it's diluted in fifty liters of lead glass or not. The difference is the flux density at the surface. And stability is only in terms of chemical stability. Radioactive material is by definition unstable and all the dilution in the world will not make it less so.

The issue here is that the lead makes a fine "shield". (Attempting to retrieve my college physics classes... That probably really means that the lead absorbs the gamma rays. It's been a long time since my undergrad years, though, so YMMV. I'd be happy to have a real expert correct me.)

As for chemical vs. radioactive stability: Of course the radioactive material will emit gamma rays over time. What we're concerned with here is keeping the material locked up inside the glass, where the lead shielding keeps it and it's radiation away from the public. And, of course, with keeping nasty radioactive stuff out of the hands of those who might wish to misuse it. The big-billet leaded glass appears to do that quite well. The small billets the French use now are sufficient to meet these goals as long as the dry storage is maintained; they would not suffice for 20K-years out in the weather.

Originally Posted by wodin

In terms of life spans of civilizations, 20K years is a long time! Long enough to see several civilizations come and go. Would you have us believe that, say, middle age Europe would expend the resources to maintain dry storage and provide security for Egyptian glass?

That's one of the big attractions of the "big billet" approach -- no dry storage needed. The big billets are really, really stable things. Big enough that even freeze-thaw cycles and spalling shouldn't be an issue over that time frame. Same for leaching via water and water-based erosion, etc. The idea is to bury them somewhere decently stable (to get as much head-start against erosion, etc. as possible). But they're stable enough to just be left out in the weather if need be.

So, to answer the question you actually asked: No, I don't believe that middle age Europe would expend the resources for that dry storage and associated security. The current approach in use in France is a case of allowing politics to get in the way of a better solution.

Xenophon

[Greg Anos]

Take the small billets, lower them down into a dry salt mine 10,000 feet down, and recast them into a bigger billet. (That was going to be done in Nevada USA, but the anti nukes had a hissy fit.) Any civilization able to dig down to 10,000 feet to get at them will have the brains to know what to do with them.

Gamma ray are electromagnetic radiation, just like sunlight. Lead blocks them the same as a rock blocks sunlight....

[Greg Anos]

As for tow-behind battery trailers...

Since 80% of the cost of an electric car is batteries, that tow behind will probably cost 60% of the car itself... (and a prime target for theft.)

[eumesmo]

Beside nuclear, the only thing of real promise I have noticed lately was http://www.coolearthsolar.com/ .

I can't see a way around the building of huge energy storage facilities ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_energy_storage ), which would enable nuclear reactors to constantly run at near maximum capacity at very little extra fuel expenditure, and make the use of the other energy alternatives, solar, tidal, wind, at all viable.

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

No... statistically, most of the most wasteful driving is carried out by 85% of the country's drivers around urban areas, and these are the people those assumptions are targeting. No one ever said every single vehicle in this country needs to be electric.



Exactly. And your comments about renting are spot-on. I do that now, whenever I need a larger vehicle for hauling something. Renting will even allow people in Texas to use more electrics, and rent when they need to. Most Americans could do the same... and the old excuse of "what if it's not available exactly when I need it?" is exactly that... an excuse. Americans are very familiar with altering their schedules to deal with other people's timetables, and they can do it here, too. If I can do it, it won't kill you.

People who haul and handle heavy equipment regularly should obviously be using the appropriate vehicles for that... but using those same vehicles for light-duty transportation is inefficient and, in most cases, unnecessary.

Even in Texas.

(Hey, you guys wanted all that land! If it costs you more to drive around on it, who's fault is that? )

We're not complaining about the cost of driving, but the attitude that we can't have the access to do so to fit somebody else's opinions....

[wodin]

I'm sorry; I couldn't help pointing out your confusion between radioactivity and ionizing radiation. It’s a common misunderstanding among perhaps 99% of the population. The fact is that radioactivity causes radiation, and it is the radiation that is dangerous (discounting the chemical toxicity of some of the products).

The amount of radioactivity, measured in curies, does not change; however the specific activity in curies per volume does. That is accomplished by dilution, in the case of vitrification, dilution in leaded glass.

Radiation is attenuated by two methods, as you pointed out, one is shielding by massive material, in this case the lead in the glass. The other is distance from the source which, in the case of gamma radiation, obeys the inverse square law that most of us learned about in high school physics class. Classic health physics also lists time, which means to limit the amount of time one is exposed. In this case that is moot.

So, vitrification accomplishes two objectives. The first is it attenuates the radiation utilizing shielding and distance. And second is it provides a chemically and mechanically stable environment to store the stuff.

That’s all fine in the short term, but this stuff lasts for geological periods of time. No matter how well it’s packaged, we are creating poisons that will burden our descendants for hundreds of generations.

[carld]

I don't know if this has been mentioned but a new study says that wind energy can supply 40x the world's current energy needs.

Wind Energy

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by wodin

I'm sorry; I couldn't help pointing out your confusion between radioactivity and ionizing radiation. It’s a common misunderstanding among perhaps 99% of the population. The fact is that radioactivity causes radiation, and it is the radiation that is dangerous (discounting the chemical toxicity of some of the products).

The amount of radioactivity, measured in curies, does not change; however the specific activity in curies per volume does. That is accomplished by dilution, in the case of vitrification, dilution in leaded glass.

Radiation is attenuated by two methods, as you pointed out, one is shielding by massive material, in this case the lead in the glass. The other is distance from the source which, in the case of gamma radiation, obeys the inverse square law that most of us learned about in high school physics class. Classic health physics also lists time, which means to limit the amount of time one is exposed. In this case that is moot.

So, vitrification accomplishes two objectives. The first is it attenuates the radiation utilizing shielding and distance. And second is it provides a chemically and mechanically stable environment to store the stuff.

That’s all fine in the short term, but this stuff lasts for geological periods of time. No matter how well it’s packaged, we are creating poisons that will burden our descendants for hundreds of generations.

The only part that lasts for geological time periods is Plutonium (Half life of 242,000 years) which can be recovered and used for further nuclear fuel. The vast majority range have half-lives from a few seconds to around 5,750 years (Carbon 14) By the time you get 3-4 half-lives out, it's basically harmless.

Shielding and distance. Gamma rays are absorbed by various materials and re-reradiated as heat, just light sunlight heats rocks. Lead has the highest absorption rate of common materials. Takes about a foot of lead. Alpha particles are just Helium without the electrons, and beta are just high speed electrons.

The real jokers are neutrons. But most radioactive materials don't emit neutrons, and 10,000 feet of rock and salt will stop any of them. Cadmium is an absorber of neutrons, but chemically toxic. You used it with care. (and yes, the old Ni-Cad batteries were real toxic....

[wodin]

There are seven long lived fission products:

Technetium-99 halflife 211,000 years
Tin-126 halflife 230,000 years
Selenium-79 halflife 295,000 years.
93zirconium halflife 1,530,000 years,
Caesium-135 halflife 2,300,000 years
Palladium-107 halflife 6,500,000 years)
Iodine-129 halflife 15,700,000 years

There are also a number of radioactive isotopes created by neutron abortion, most notably several isotopes of plutonium including the nuclear weapons fuel PU239.

Neutrons are most readily attenuated by hydrogenous materials (stuff with a lot of hydrogen) like water or plastic. That is because a neutrons atomic mass is nearly the same as the hydrogen nucleus (proton) and hydrogen nuclei have a relatively high cross section for scattering. Once the neutron reaches thermal equilibrium, it can be readily absorbed by something with a high cross section for absorption. Usually boron because it is cheap and plentiful.

[Daithi]

I didn't vote because their wasn't an option for "I don't know."

How toxic and bad for the environment are the batteries? How is the energy for the electricity produced? If it is primarily based on let's say coal plants then is this energy cleaner than petro burned in a modern cars engine? How does finding, recovering, and refining crude oil fit into this equation? I can make guesses, but the truth is that I don't have a clue.

It also occurs to me that the push for electric vehicles really might be about lessening the influence of oil producing regions such as the Middle East, Venezula, and Russia. Once again, I really don't know.

I don't trust what I'm told by the government; I don't trust big business; I don't trust the mainstream media; and I find environmental advocates are willing to turn a blind eye to facts when they don't agree with their preconceived agenda.

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by wodin

There are seven long lived fission products:



Technetium-99 halflife 211,000 years
Tin-126 halflife 230,000 years
Selenium-79 halflife 295,000 years.
93zirconium halflife 1,530,000 years,
Caesium-135 halflife 2,300,000 years
Palladium-107 halflife 6,500,000 years)
Iodine-129 halflife 15,700,000 years

There are also a number of radioactive isotopes created by neutron abortion, most notably several isotopes of plutonium including the nuclear weapons fuel PU239.


Neutrons are most readily attenuated by hydrogenous materials (stuff with a lot of hydrogen) like water or plastic. That is because a neutrons atomic mass is nearly the same as the hydrogen nucleus (proton) and hydrogen nuclei have a relatively cross section for scattering. Once the neutron reaches thermal equilibrium, it can be readily absorbed by something with a high cross section for absorption. Usually boron because it is cheap and plentiful.

All of which are either Beta or Gamma producers, not neutron producers, so no tertiary radiation products. (Due to neutron absorption - i.e. no neutrons)

Excluding TC-99, Most of the rest are low yield products. TC-99 and I-129 can be "cooked" in a reactor to capture further neutrons and convert into less hazardous products.

One aspect of slow decay radioactives is just that - slow. Which means the give off very little radiation over time. For example. I-129, with a halflife of 15,700,000 years. That means that only 1 atom out of 15,700,000 will issue a beta/gamma event in a year. Radioactive - yes, but not very. it is also produced naturally in uranium ores.

Plutonium is both radioactively toxic (a nasty neutron producer that causes secondary radiation products) as well as being extremely chemically toxic. Much, much worse that the other 7 listed...

[wodin]

Originally Posted by Daithi

I find environmental advocates are willing to turn a blind eye to facts when they don't agree with their preconceived agenda.

Bingo!