Thursday, April 28, 2011
Friday, April 22, 2011
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Theater of the Absurd: The Irish Bailout
Link if above video does not play: Ireland Hot Spots 1
Link if above video does not play: Ireland Hot Spots 2
Saturday, April 16, 2011
A few things I appreciate about America ...
Electricity that's always on, A Shower with good water pressure, Instant on hot water, broadband, a car horn I rarely have to use, ...
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
The Uranium Reactor
From Casey's Energy Report:
"The typical nuclear fuel cycle starts with refined uranium ore, which is mostly uranium-238 but contains 3% to 5% uranium-235. U-238 is the most common uranium isotope but does not undergo fission, which is the process by which the nucleus of the atom splits and releases tremendous amounts of energy. By contrast, U-235 is not very prevalent but is fissile. As such, uranium ore must be enriched to boost the proportion of U-235.
Once in the reactor, U-235 starts splitting and releasing high-energy neutrons. The U-238 does not just sit idly by, however; it transmutes into other, fissile elements. For example, if an atom of U-238 absorbs a neutron, it transmutes into short-lived U-239, which rapidly decays into neptunium-239 and then into plutonium-239.
When the U-235 content burns down to 0.3% the fuel is spent, but it contains some very radioactive isotopes of americium, technetium, and iodine, as well as plutonium. This waste fuel is highly radioactive and the culprits, these high-mass isotopes, have half-lives of many thousands of years. As such, the waste has to be housed for up to 10,000 years, cloistered from the environment and from anyone who might want to get at the plutonium for nefarious reasons."
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