Nuclear Propulsion - The best way for space travel

soph · 2003-01-07 17:03:59

I'm entering a dupont essay challenge. if i place in the top 50 (national contest for science sponsored by dupont), im going to send a modified copy to all my local and state politicians, along with bill o'reilly.

oh, about the orion. i have mentioned before that the space elevator could bring it up piecemeal, orbital assembly, and send off. no earth launch is needed for the orion to provide us the benefits of quick travel and huge payload.

Bill White · 2003-01-08 10:32:45

Maybe "overwhelm" was the wrong word to use. But, I still feel that we should continue to write to our politicians and express our ideas to them. (Whether they actually listen is another story! I understand that we should not say that it must be a nuclear propelled spacecraft to get us to Mars but it will greatly help any mission that may occur.

Heh! Sorry for bashing you. Writing our leaders is a good idea.

All I am saying is that we need to remember there is NOT a giant wellspring of support just waiting to explode if only a charismatic space advocate would get some air time on "Larry King Live" or "the Factor" - we need to revise our message to explain why and how the man and woman on the street - John and Jan Q Public - benefit from space.

I strongly believe "doing Mars" is in humanity's best interests - its just that most people don't see it. Heck, the 359 folks here at NewMars cannot readily agree on "why" going to Mars is a good idea though we all pretty much agree it is a good idea.

Also the "doing science" angle ain't going to work, IMHO - otherwise Zubrin's Mars Society would have a million members already.

Auqakah · 2003-01-12 12:11:32

Also, Auqakah, how many cancer deaths can be PROVEN to be caused by nuclear powerplants? Not inferred. PROVEN.

Sure, that's an unreasonable request. But I can go find data on Black Lung deaths and every one of those can be PROVEN to be caused by coal.
Why do we just shrug and accept the bloody toll caused by coal, while idiot greenies like YOU spend untold efforts to infer possible casualties that might be caused by a cleaner alternative. If this statement bothers you, go look up Black Lung. I have had family members die of Black Lung, and it is not pleasant.
Here's a little taste:
Coal workers' pneumoconiosis, also known as black lung disease, is caused by the inhalation of coal dust. An estimated 4.5 percent of coal miners are affected; about 0.2 percent have scarring on the lungs, the most severe form of the disease. Between 1979 and 1996, 14,156 deaths were attributed to black lung disease.
From here.
If nuclear power had killed a thousand people a year for 15 years in a totally uncontrovertible manner, it'd be on the news every night. Why isn't coal treated that way?
Please note, this does not even begin to address the crap that coal spews into the air you're breathing right now.

Cancer deaths cannot be proven to be caused by anything, my insulting friend. Probability dictates who will and won't get cancer (excepting those types of cancer caused by viral activity - but even then, its probability that decides who gets what and when). And its a fact that living near a nuclear power plant increases your probability of having cancer in your lifetime. If you work in one, the probability increases further.

I defy you to PROVE anything about a subject we do not understand to a decent degree. And if you say we understand nuclear physics well, I will laugh at you. Loudly. For a very long time indeed.

All things are inferred, because all of reality - from our point of view - is an illusion. This basic disparity with our environment prevents us from ever truly quite having anything other that OPINIONS on many subjects that our inventions have yet to allow us to fully understand.

Again, if you think nuclear physics.... do I have to say it again? I hope not.

Having lived near an erimulsion power plant for most of my life (and I can assure you that the emissions from one of those is FAR more dangerous than any coal power plant, considering the high asthma, bronchitis, and emphasemia rates in the area I live in) I well understand the dangers of fossil fueled power plants.

I do not claim - like some people - that nuclear fission is more dangerous than fossil fueled power plants. I do not say that nuclear power is too dangerous to use. I say that there are other, better alternatives that require a) less manpower to run and b) less infrastructure.

Also, they MIGHT be safer, because of those INFERRED dangers that nuclear fission MAY have.

Satisfied?

One other thing: black-lung has killed members of my family also. I fail to see how saying that one method of power generation is bad proves that nuclear power is inherantly good, however. Sorry.

Lastly, if one resorts to insulting - "while idiot greenies like YOU" - it surely proves they are far more intelligent than the person advocating the other point of view.

Yes. That was sarcasm.

Moving on...

Someone mentioned the dangers of high-voltage cables near power plants as regards to the high cancer rates?

I'm very interested in that subject, myself, actually. Thanks for the link! And... I have to concede, you may be right.

mauk2 · 2003-01-14 23:13:57

Auqakah: Ah good, now we're talkin'.

And its a fact that living near a nuclear power plant increases your probability of having cancer in your lifetime. If you work in one, the probability increases further.

Show me the link. I showed you one for my contention.

Once you have that link up (And yes, I know there are hundreds of them you can find in a moment), show me there is no similar correlation for hydro plants. Or coal plants. Or granite outcroppings (Darn radon).

Frankly, it's FAR from a fact. You've been reading too many greenie weenie websites without the proper scepticism.

Why am I being so insulting? Because I'm right, and something needs to be done to wake people up so that we STOP killing people with coal and oil. We can do better now, to be blunt.

Now, in the interests of fairness, here's a link that shows WHY I don't believe you:

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992997

This is as solid a study as has ever been done on the topic, and it shows nada. If nuclear was as great a risk as the green propagandists would have us believe, there should have been an easily detectable spike, especially considering that this was the site of the "worst nuclear accident in US history."

Yes, I am also aware of the furor being bandied about over "cancer clusters" close to nuclear power plants. What the people who produce those reports fail to say is that there are ALSO "cancer clusters" that are nowhere near nuclear power plants. Maybe they are caused by high-power lines, instead? To paraphrase the inimitable Mr Twain: "There's lies, #### lies, and statistics." The greenies are past masters of the third.

Here is a link or two to support this view:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2128158.stm

http://www.bristolfoe.org.uk/infoes/inf … 1/hcsu.htm

I find that last link particularly interesting myself.

Basically, most of the FUD out there on "increased risk of cancer from nuclear power" is propaganda.

Now that said, is current nuclear power safe? Absolutely. Is it as safe as it COULD be? No way. New PWR designs can increase safety levels one hundred times, and even more advanced nuclear technologies are on the horizon.

I defy you to PROVE anything about a subject we do not understand to a decent degree.

<sigh> Radiation isn't magic. It isn't evil. It is part of nature. And no, we don't understand nature well yet. But that extends to much more than just nuclear physics, doesn't it.

I have read reports that most if not all of the alleged rise in cancer deaths in the last century can be laid at the feet of hydrocarbon emissions of oxides. We don't understand that topic, either. Heck, I have also seen papers that attribute increased cancer mortalities to coal emissions of uranium! Coal emits TONS of uranium powder into the air every day.

Laying this sort of thing at the feet of nuclear is idiocy. That idiocy is promulgated by ecowackies gone wrong. Either that or they're all Luddites who want us to live in log shacks and wear hemp and burn dung tablets for light. I personally don't wanna do that.

I say that there are other, better alternatives that require a) less manpower to run and b) less infrastructure.
Also, they MIGHT be safer, because of those INFERRED dangers that nuclear fission MAY have.
Satisfied?

Ah, much better.

Now, please detail these alternatives. Wind? Solar? Hydro? Biomass? Geothermal? Tidal? OTES? Something Else?

I am curious as to what your particular favorite is. The less infrastructure remark makes be think you lean toward distributed solar/wind systems, but I could be wrong.

Lastly, if one resorts to insulting - "while idiot greenies like YOU" - it surely proves they are far more intelligent than the person advocating the other point of view.

Ahhh, good! We'll have you pro-nuclear in no time. It's always nice to discover a brain.

josh Cryer:

Of currently used topsoil? At least in the US, it would be zero. The US has a land bank, which has some 100 million acres of land that is going unusued.

So, you want to plow up HOW many acres of fallow land? I can hear the Sierra Club screaming already. Also, how are we going to get water for all these millions of acres of biomass? Much of the land that is banked away isn't exactly the prime bits.

Well, like I said, at least in the US's case, we have the resources.

Maybe. I personally have doubts, but for argument, lets say the USA can do this.

What do China and India and Indonesia do? All three have HUGE populations that want power, and not exactly a lot of land.

Oh... well, sure, why not?

Because we'd have to cover most of Kansas in greenhouses? That'd be kind of expensive, Kansas isn't small.... And tornados would be a problem.

What I am getting at is that Solar, Wind, and Biomass are all low energy density solutions. We simply don't have the tech to make these work yet, but we need solutions to our power needs NOW. We're about to go kill a LOT of people in the Middle East because of our power needs, we need to get this fixed.

Any estimates on how much useable nuclear fuel the earth has left? (Excluding fission, of course).

Well, if you exclude fission, that means fusion. We haven't gotten fusion to work yet, but once we do, we will have power basically forever. Yes, I am serious. It'll take us a LONG time to fuse the oceans into helium.

Heck, even if we NEVER get fusion working, we have enough fission fuel stock to last us many thousands of years in the form of Uranium and Thorium.

nirgal · 2003-01-17 13:20:27

I already posted this in the human missions forum but anyway:

NASA eyes nuclear-powered rocket

Agency expected to seek funding to develop way to travel 3 times faster

PETER PAE

Los Angeles Times

Hoping to pave the way for the human exploration of Mars within the next decade, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is expected to announce that developing a nuclear-powered rocket is its top research priority.

The space agency is expected to request "significant resources and funding" to design a nuclear-powered propulsion system to triple the speed of current space travel, theoretically making it possible for humans to reach Mars in a two-month voyage.

The Bush administration has signed off on the ambitious nuclear-rocket propulsion project, dubbed Project Prometheus -- though not specifically for the Mars landing -- and the president may officially launch the initiative during his State of the Union address on Jan. 28, NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe said.

The initiative would greatly expand the nuclear propulsion plans that NASA quietly announced last year when the agency said it may spend $1 billion over the next five years to design a nuclear rocket.

NASA and the Bush administration are keeping the lid on the details, including how much more it expects to request from Congress, but O'Keefe said the funding increase will be "very significant."

I think this is great news.

Auqakah · 2003-01-17 13:56:19

Fnerr! Grawr! Rawr!

Yes.

I did type that.

Your eyes are not decieving you.

I'll explain. I heard on the news the other day that a bunch of 'environmentalists' had stormed a nuclear power plant control room. Oh, how responsible, I thought.

And then the idiot comes on the phone (I should probably note that I mean the phone on the news channel ), and says something like, "Oh, all the plants should be scrapped, because terrorists could use them to attack people".

Hence:

Fnerr! Grawr! Rawr!

Idiots.

Moving on.... :;):

Frankly, it's FAR from a fact. You've been reading too many greenie weenie websites without the proper scepticism.

I think I'll concede this point, (ie, that the same is true for almost any power plant).

Basically, IMHO, strategic use of wind/solar power and tidal power (wind power on oil-rig style sea platforms, with tidal power units underneath, and solar power units on the roof comes to mind) with nuclear power as a conveniant back-up seems the best way to go (here on Earth) to me.

But not for space. I think we need something /better/ than fission. But thats just me. And sod the link. I conceded the point. ;P

Ohhhhhhhhh yeah. Before I forget. Quote the whole quote, the entire quote, and nothing but the quote... cheat! (Yeah, you know what I'm talking about. ) :laugh:

TJohn · 2003-01-17 14:28:25

Outstanding!!! Now, everyone needs to keep their fingers crossed! We may have nuclear powered spacecraft within our lifetimes and missions to Mars and the solar system!

soph · 2003-01-17 15:02:36

Basically, IMHO, strategic use of wind/solar power and tidal power (wind power on oil-rig style sea platforms, with tidal power units underneath, and solar power units on the roof comes to mind) with nuclear power as a conveniant back-up seems the best way to go (here on Earth) to me

Heh, I had the opposite view, with primary power as nuclear, with the rest as backups. I have said that I believe everyone should have a solar panel on their roof, but the energy is too unreliable, and not sufficient to power the average american home, or probably the average european home either. Try powering a factory with it. Wind power requires acres and acres to produce a fair amount of power.

Both of these would be great supplements, but at this point, fission is the most abundant potential energy source. In space, it is our best option, at this point. Until fusion comes out commercially, I believe it will be our best option.

Oh, and about the protestors, its kind of funny how they plan things. If the security guards stopped them, they would have complained about use of force, infringement of rights, etc. Since they were let it in, the security is too lax. Its a lose-lose. I suspect if the guards thought the protestors were a threat, they would have done something.

Josh Cryer · 2003-01-17 15:36:02

You guys should have a slight reality check here, though. Simply because nuclear fission is ?safe? (ie, we can design reactors that have so much redundancy, there is no way they will fail or cause major harm to people), doesn't mean it's ?clean.? Most of the ?dirty? aspects of nuclear technology come from the mining and production processes. For example, nuclear energy ?doesn't? release CO2, but the production of HEU does.

It would be quite trivial to show cases where nuclear energy is just as evil as coal or other forms. The only truely benign energy source is solar. Anyone pretending otherwise is in major denial.

soph · 2003-01-17 15:46:16

3.2 kg of uranium a day causes that much pollution? I seriously doubt that.

Nuclear power is clean, Josh. Would you like steam or CO2. And I really doubt that the CO2 emission from fission fuel mining is nearly that of fossil fuels.

And I believe we are switching to thorium, which is more abundant=less difficult to mine.

Solar power has tremendous limitations. Try running a solar plant in New York. Or Canada. Or much of Northern Europe. It would be just dandy in the summer, but then you have the fall, and the winter.

Auqakah · 2003-01-17 16:45:50

No, solar power isn't unreliable. Hydrogen-cell solar panels are unreliable. And the weather is unreliable.

Which is why I said /strategic/ - ie, solar panels where they are most useful, and wind power everywhere else. Generally, where it isn't sunny, its windy. And tidal power can provide power anywhere with a coast.

Nuclear power is valuable, and no doubt cleaner than most other non-renewable methods of producing electricity, but its not 'clean'. See those cooling towers? Ever hear of thermal pollution of natural habitats for fish by nuclear power plants?

I don't doubt that it's a /better/ method of power production than coal, or erimulsion, or gas, or any other non-renewable fuel source (and nuclear fuel is kinda renewable, I know, but I'm ignoring that for ease of writing) but the fact remains that its not the /only/ better-than-fossil-fuels method of power production available today.

Josh Cryer · 2003-01-17 17:19:16

soph, sure, it's a lot less than fossil fuels, I wasn't suggesting otherwise (about 10x less per kWh a German study shows).

The point isn't that each form of energy is evil. The point is, that from a safety requirements perspective, solar (hydro, direct, biomass, thermal tower, etc) requires the least bit of maintenance. Coal can be clean with enough filters and waste management (resell the CO2 to biomass facilities). Nuclear can be clean for the same reasons (more efficient reactors, stricter cleanup). Solar is clean almost naturally. By virtue of how solar works, it's necessary that it be clean.

All this talk about how one system is more evil than the other is just silly. If nuclear is ?clean,? it's not the nature of nuclear, but rather regulations and enviro-wackos making it that way.

soph · 2003-01-26 17:53:45

well, saying that the weather is unreliable instead of solar power is really nitpicking. the point is you cant always be sure youll get 100% output, which isnt really the case with other forms. biomass seems a waste of space to me, considering that you can do a lot more with less space, and i really think that the safety problems of nuclear are REALLY blown up.

even in nuclear accidents, most radiation was contained. i wonder if we could find buffer materials to absorb more of the neutrons, or to absorb the entire fission fragments to form something else entirely.

Josh Cryer · 2003-01-27 05:00:13

the point is you cant always be sure youll get 100% output, which isnt really the case with other forms.

Um, all forms of energy depend on production, delivery and so on. The only truely reliable energy form is solar, since you're going to get it 24 hours a day 7 days a week 365 days a year, and you're going to get it everywhere, without delay. Ever. Nuclear and coal aren't everywhere, nuclear and coal are as reliable as the producers who mine each respective resource. The only advantage nuclear has over coal is that you get more bang for the buck, that is all.

biomass seems a waste of space to me, considering that you can do a lot more with less space, and i really think that the safety problems of nuclear are REALLY blown up.

I totally agree. It would take a lot of normal biomass to get anything done. The point is to show that biomass, in its totally unadulterated form, is already a viable replacement. The proposal, is that biomass can become much more efficient with the proper science.

Let's do a short comparasion between [current] biomass and nuclear (bare in mind, biomass is arbably able to get better). I'm not going to talk about coal, but that doesn't mean I'm defending it or whatever. Like I said before, no forms of energy are evil, it's the respective implementations which are evil.

With biomass, you till, plant, water & grow, harvest, put in a pyrolysis process, burn the derived products as fuel in cars and as charcoal in power plants. You have zero unhealthy by products if you chose the proper plant, one which has no sulpher and so on. And you have very little requirements for containment, the only mild issue you'd have is crop rotation. The whole process could be done with very little, if no regulation, since there is nothing harmful involved. The cleaner a facility is, and the less waste it creates, the more efficient it is (technically, a biomass facility doesn't actually create waste since they would still derive their CO2 from the atmosphere). Facilities that burn biomass and release the CO2 into the atmosphere are going to be less efficient than facilities which contain that CO2. So by virtue of economy, people working these facilities will want to have clean efficient power plants.

With nuclear, you mine in various forms. You make sure you don't mine over subsurface aquifers, because if you do, you risk containiminating the water. Which is a no-no. You must insure that waste by products are all kept contained, because radon from depleting materal is a no-no. After mining you process, another step which must be relatively regulated and contained. You don't want people having easy access to nuclear material, it's nasty, even though we're pretending that it's ?clean.? From then on, the whole process of possessing nuclear material must be quite regulated, even after its been spent and is no longer useable. And that's just a few of the things that go in to keeping nuclear ?safe.? I could go on about the complexity of a nuclear reactor, verses a field of, um, plants, if you wanted.

Now tell me, which is safer? Growing stuff, or mining, containg, and regulating stuff? And then, ask yourself if the nuclear industry really gives a crap about making sure radon levels stay low and about not contaminating water and so on.

An interesting fact is that of all the biomass on the planet, only a tiny tiny fraction makes up the thousands of quadrillions of BTUs that the planet absorbs each year. The key is growing more biomass.

soph · 2003-01-27 07:32:07

Oh jeez, saying solar is reliable 24/7/365 is a joke. In New York, for example, theres bad weather, lets say, once a week. It is very rare to get strong sunlight, or temperatures above 90 degrees. Are you going to tell me that Im going to get 100% efficiency out of my solar plant all the time? No.

It takes 3.2 kg of uranium to generate 1,000 MW. if we use things like breeder reactors and modern designs, there is virtually no waste except for a few fission fragments, which are contained very well. When I say safe, I mean chances of an accident that have a real chance of threatening lives, which hasnt happened yet (Chernobyl was a result of bad safety procedures by the Soviets, not the reactor itself).

I agree, the management of the nuclear industry needs to change. They dont communicate with people, and there is no feeling of good faith. We need nuclear officials who talk to the public and show them that they are working for the people's safety.

Josh Cryer · 2003-01-27 14:07:36

Oh jeez, saying solar is reliable 24/7/365 is a joke.

Um. How's that? Does not the planet get drenched with sunlight 24/7/365? You're not being very open minded here.

Simply because the weather doesn't permit sunlight to reach the ground in optimal quantities reliably doesn't mean it's not collectable from orbital facilities to be transmitted to the surface via microwaves and so on. Biomass is just one of many ways to collect and store sunlight.

If we were to say, do some major constrction on the Straight of Gibraltar, effectively stopping up the Mediterranean, or if we were to do the same to the Red Sea, we would have more hydrological energy than the world would ever need, and it would be solar.

Are you going to tell me that Im going to get 100% efficiency out of my solar plant all the time? No.

Just a nitpick, but the laws of thermodynamics say 100% efficiency is impossible. And even then, if we were 99.99999% efficient, the sun itself varies in intinsity over time, like a beating heart. So even if we had a completely unobstructed view of the sun, it would still fluctuate. But so would practically any form of energy delivery. Just because those fluctuations are non-issues doesn't mean they're not there (ie, you have a slurplus of uranium so that if production is low for some reason... say, a mine closed because of an accident or whatever, that surplus will keep you going until you find another supplier).

When I say safe, I mean chances of an accident that have a real chance of threatening lives, which hasnt happened yet

Right. And when the pro-nuclear people say that say, um, coal is unsafe, they like to cite problems with the mining of coal, and they foolishly think that such things won't occur with miners of uranium or throium. I think this is somewhat hypocritical at the very least.

When I look at safety I look at the whole cycle.

I agree, the management of the nuclear industry needs to change. They dont communicate with people, and there is no feeling of good faith.

Um, communication isn't the problem. Viable profitablity is the problem. As long as they need to curb safety for profit (ie, do inspections half as much... ?avoid? replacing certain things and so on) you will never have true safety. This goes for everyone, but the nuclear industry is especially susceptible.

Of course, newer reactors are really all that's needed to fix such problems... but they still wouldn't approach the mining issues.

Echus_Chasma · 2003-01-27 21:09:34

Hey peoples, just got back, been away for a few days at this awesome music festival. Damn the boards have been busy...

Anyway, back to the point,

What exactly is Biomass?

soph · 2003-01-27 21:18:35

josh, if we used breeder reactors we would have to mine that much less.

also, mining 3.2 kg of uranium for each day is a lot less than mining 10,000 tons of coal.

mining should be regulated...possibly even automated to minimize "contamination." we are fully able to program robots to mine uranium, so this is fully feasible, and would be a good solution.

Josh Cryer · 2003-01-28 07:56:08

soph, no, it doesn't work that way in the business world. Once nuclear material (uranium, thorium) became profitable to mine again (and it would), there would be mines all over the place.

I'm sure that the logic is sound, ?we only have to mine such and such because we only use such and such? but when applied to economy it doesn't work that way. If this were the case, Debeers would mine only a few thousand dimonds a year (they mine many more than that, though).

The key is to mine as much as you can, and own as much as you can, so that you have a monopoly on the resource. Then you can dictate prices and so on.

No, mining nuclear material just opens up a pandoras box, all related to forms of containment; be it through regulation of processed material (can't have terrorists getting it), or the mining process itself.

At least with coal, what is mined is used almost immediately, so such monopolies aren't necessarily possible. With nuclear, though, you could have stockpiles and price fixing and so on.

soph · 2003-01-28 09:05:59

Oh please. Uranium is easily contained in its natural form. Theres no pandoras box.

Your analysis of the capitalist system doesnt hold. That approach would be inefficient and too costly. You dont mine what you dont need, because you incur costs on the stuff you dont use (containment, physical costs, etc.) If your scenario were the case, oil wouldnt exist anymore.

With things like breeder reactors, a small supply would be reusable many times. So a smart businessman would open a few mines and lightly mine them, saving up the resources, but controlling them.

You are too cynical.

Mark S · 2003-01-28 12:22:23

Yay breeders!

I've heard that our proven Uranium resources will only last for fifty to eighty years if we continue to use these thermal reactors. The solution lies in the form of fast reactors and fuel reprocessing.

There is important, ongoing research at the national laboratories regarding fuel reprocessing to extract actinides from the waste. This pyroprocessing system has dstinct advantages over the current reprocessing metods used by countries like France.

This increase in fuel efficiency should stretch our uranium reserves to about a thousand years. It is my hope that the waste from Yucca Mountain will be eventually reprocessed, as well as weapons-grade material from decommissioned nuclear weapons. The more effort you put into terrestrial nuclear power, the greater gains you make with space nuclear power.

orionblade · 2003-01-28 16:00:12

what about electric propulsion? I'm not talking Ion thrusters, i'm talking about the JLN labs concepts, and my design which uses the same principle to get a bit more thrust. There's dozens of ways to design a thruster, so I'm sure there's loads of better ways than simply a piece of copper tube and a ring electrode. Anyhow, I think this stuff has some promise, and you wouldn't need a huge nuclear thruster or fusion or anything like that. Just enough solar panel to give you some significant thrust, and you can run a thruster on about 100 watts to give you almost 100% conversion efficiency, minus resistive losses, from electric potential to kinetic energy. I'm working up a design for a cryogenic test series, since a friend of mine works at a welding shop.... free liquid nitrogen! (small rental fee for the dewar, but big deal, it's free LN2!!!) anyhow, check his site out, lemme know what you think, and take a look on www.google.com for Thomas Townsend Brown, and electrokinetic propulsion. Later y'all,
Rion

Josh Cryer · 2003-01-28 19:00:04

Um, soph, oil hardly has the density of uranium or thorium. Stop with the fallicies here, man. It would be too inefficient and costly to mine only a kg a day when you already have machines capable of mining much much more. Granted, they may process only a kg a day, but that ain't happening because they want to undercut competitors. You have no clue about supply and demand, and the basic market. The only way this fabled ?kg a day? figure would ever exist is if the government mandated it. And then, your little reactors would be just as unreliable as coal, since you wouldn't much of a surplus, and the momment a supplier went down, you'd have no fuel.

Oh, and BTW, your ?rebuttal? was wonderful. Completely lacking substance. I love it when people do that.

soph · 2003-01-28 19:12:16

Um, thanks, but ive taken macro and micro. and i have two parents who are doctorates of economics with the full set of economics books. having read the wealth of nations, i think i have a pretty good idea of supply and demand.

however, supply and demand does not apply. when you are dealing with a car, it does, because you cant drive many cars at once. however, if you are given more electricity, you can use more electricity, with no boundaries. if you are given cheaper costs, and more supply, you use more.

supply and demand is mostly for physical products, like cars or computers. however, there are certain goods, like food, oil, or electricity that are called giffen goods, where supply and demand have no real influence.

but you still havent touched that there is no real pandora's box here. what is the difficulty in mining uranium? most of the pollution in power systems is the burning of the fuel, which doesnt apply to uranium. so your point really doesnt hold water.

soph · 2003-01-28 19:14:08

also, yes, you would always want multiple suppliers, but that doesnt mean you would have to mine 20 kg a day to process 3.2 kg a day. and that 3.2 kg a day is unrelated to density-thats the amount of uranium it would take to produce 1,000 MW of power daily, and the 10,000 ton figure is the coal it would take to produce an equivalent amount of power. its physics, man, not fallacies.

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Re: Nuclear Propulsion - The best way for space travel

#91 2003-01-27 14:07:36

Re: Nuclear Propulsion - The best way for space travel

#92 2003-01-27 21:09:34

Re: Nuclear Propulsion - The best way for space travel

#93 2003-01-27 21:18:35

Re: Nuclear Propulsion - The best way for space travel

#94 2003-01-28 07:56:08

Re: Nuclear Propulsion - The best way for space travel

#95 2003-01-28 09:05:59

Re: Nuclear Propulsion - The best way for space travel

#96 2003-01-28 12:22:23

Re: Nuclear Propulsion - The best way for space travel

#97 2003-01-28 16:00:12

Re: Nuclear Propulsion - The best way for space travel

#98 2003-01-28 19:00:04

Re: Nuclear Propulsion - The best way for space travel

#99 2003-01-28 19:12:16

Re: Nuclear Propulsion - The best way for space travel

#100 2003-01-28 19:14:08

Re: Nuclear Propulsion - The best way for space travel

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