South Bruce Peninsular - SeismicTesting at Sauble - Comments

See now, it goes like this:

garym — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 11:28:00 -0400

See now, it goes like this: here we are with 20 years of accummulated nuclear wastes swept under our carpets and the rest of the world? Well, it has predictably gone 100% solar ...

futurist and inventor Ray Kurzweil is part of distinguished panel of engineers that says solar power will scale up to produce all the energy needs of Earth's people in 20 years.

There is 10,000 times more sunlight than we need to meet 100 percent of our energy needs, he says, and the technology needed for collecting and storing it is about to emerge as the field of solar energy is going to advance exponentially in accordance with Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns. That law yields a doubling of price performance in information technologies every year.
[ Solar Power to Rule in 20 Years, Futurists Say ]

Oh, and just by-the-way, I'm curious, has anyone yet mentioned that mankind has yet to actually construct any sort of Deep Geologic Repository? Apparently it's true, we haven't even constructed a test version, we have precisely zero direct experience in building and administrating anything even remotely like a secure forever-storage system, ever. 100% completely only a theoretical possibility without a single working shred of empirical assurance. I just wondered if that maybe that little detail somehow burbled up during the many thorough and honest OPG Open House meetings.

garym: ict evangelist - musician - whatever

Seismic Shock Syndrome

garym — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 10:18:07 -0400

You see, it's like this: it is one thing to say a nuclear dumpsite is geologically safe to the best of our current scientific knowledge, but it is quite another to say that our current scientific knowledge is complete and correct. Evidence of absense is not the same as absense of evidence ...

The most expensive public works project in the US was today in disarray after it emerged that a planned giant nuclear dump would be located on a faultline.

Rock samples from deep within Yucca Mountain, in Nevada, showed that the fault runs directly beneath the site where the US federal government planned to store 70,000 tonnes of highly radioactive waste.
[ US nuclear dump plan in danger after seismic shock | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited ]

Of course we all just know our own OPG-sponsored geological survey would be impeccably correct and unquestionably complete, so I don't even know why I bother to mention it.

In other news, and its maybe odd you'd hear it here instead of from your local campaigning Greenie, but Scientific American reports on how new breakthroughs in solar technology can already rival coal-fueled plants, should it matter, if we need it, like, y'know, if the whole toxic-sourced/toxic-waste green clean nuclear thing doesn't pan out.

garym: ict evangelist - musician - whatever

Powered by Brampton

garym — Mon, 14 May 2007 23:21:33 -0400

Now for something completely different, and absolutely one item I felt I had to post but though it seems here like flogging a dead thread, really it was the only place I could think to put it.

Before I get to the new one, I did want to relate a thought I had while down in Toronto recently, standing at the edge of one of those massive Markham mall parking lots, thinking of Dan's Acres and pondering a what-if that says you can have free parking here if you put one of these-here advertiser-branded solar screens in your windshield and wire your solar exposure into our mall's grid ...

Or your employer's grid. And then there's all those Dodge Vans lined up awaiting sale in Burlington, and all their like all across the province, sitting there, soaking up annoying excess heat energy. What is the total acreage of in-use parking space in Industrial Ontario? If there's to be a spot to get a spot of shade and shelter, I can think of no better.

However -- even more outside than that, here's a sobering thought on a new approach being pondered for the Mars mission: using existing technical means, the combined harvested daily output of just 240,000 well-fed urbanite subscribers could actually exceed the total output of Bruce Nuclear, giving a whole new meaning to the term "energy worker"

"NASA's Waste Processing and Resource Recovery Workshop estimated that a crew of six would, on a low-carb diet, produce 10.55 kilograms of organic waste per day en route to Mars. That quantity of waste, Silver calculates, could produce up to about 1 kilowatt of constant power in a microbial fuel cell."
[ Power in Space: Time for a Biological Solution? ]

NASA is said to be eying the bio-generators because you scale your solution by feeding it more, the gear is inherently messy so there's no need for intense clenliness, and if it spills out on your crew, well, it's gross, but so what? Anal retentives, needless to say, need not apply.

How we got from mapping tremours in the bedrock to rockin' the crapper is a bit of a leap, and there's still more great leaps in that article which even includes powering your iPod from the movement of your clothes, but even for the outsideness of it all, it is a case in point on how things change, and often so quickly. And to think we came so close to actually paying someone to flush away all that raw power ...

garym: ict evangelist - musician - whatever

Other approach

Dan O. — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 21:31:20 -0400

Gary; I guess that this solar option is much like the sauble sewage problem. Each set of units takes the equivalent of 870 football fields (about an acre) to produce the 40 mega watts (during sunny periods). This powers a large town during the day, if it's sunny. I'd rather see the homes that are going to use the energy put up their own collectors/turbines and take responsibility for their own usage. This would be at a much lower rate than Ontario is going to pay for the solar power.

This installation is only being built because the provincial government is going to pay $.42 per kilowatt hr. for it's production. The general population would be up in arms if they had to pay that rate. With distribution, debt paydown, taxes and other charges we pay around $.14 kw/hr. Wind turbines could have done it much cheaper than the solar but the government only buys their power at $.11 kw/hr.

If the governemnt were really serious about displacing current power plants they would follow the lead of california and start giving large grants to fund private installations. Otherwise raise the price that they will pay from all renewable sources to $.20. We have lots of wind during the winter in the Bruce but not much sun. How many rural residents would go off the grid if the government made it worth while? It would save on the one big stumbling block that prevents wind turbine development at the present. The distribution lines that are in place aren't designed to carry power from new turbines in the other direction. On site/local production and consumption eliminates this problem.

I'm all with you about going to renewable sources, I just think there are better ways to do it. I see the policies of our provincial and federal governments as nothing more than spin. They over spend to get these headline plants built and in the end they'll end up building more nuclear plants because renewable installations fall far short of demand.

Dan O.

Here Comes The Sun

garym — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 17:27:18 -0400

News in the Toronto Star today of a new passive Solar Energy Farm to be built outside of Sarnia, and while large, keep in mind that the panels themselves are a meter or two above the ground opening up over-exposed areas to shade-crops, and note also that with just a hundred of these things and not counting the recent 7% improvement in non-silicon solar-panel energy transfer efficiency and nanoscale coax, just a hundred of these things would replace the entire output of all of our precious Bruce Nuclear's. This ain't hippy science fiction, folks, this is not a drill, this is the real thing, happening now:

Once complete in 2010, the 40-megawatt project, near Sarnia in southwestern Ontario, will be able to supply enough emission-free electricity to power between 10,000 and 15,000 homes on sunny days
[ North America's biggest solar farm set for Ontario - Yahoo! News ]

Consider the vast stretches of too-much-space Canada, mega-hectares of too-much-sun, too-much-sky southern Manitoba and most of Saskatchewan, consider the Aussie project to build a reactor-rivalling solar chimney, and even if you don't count on the inevitable Moore's Laws applicable to technology cost/performance improvements (think 'room temperature superconductor plastics') and even recent breakthroughs in Sandia Z fusion, I'd say the days of needing to permanently poison your planet just to drive a new car every 3 years are rapidly on the wane.

I said 'wane', wayne. Not 'wayne' wane. Just wanted to make that clear.

And as for the obvious next comment, yes, I am aware that this planet is round and that half of it is in darkness for half the day. But donning my Green Eggs hat, I'm also ultra aware that the planet is also spinning, and that optimizing our use of this diurnal motion is 100% blocked by political lack of will and not by any technical means to do so.

But even all that is a pittance of power if you want to wax only just a teeny bit sci-fi for a moment, because there is a secret about space that your teachers didn't tell you, a secret that will cause tomorrow's children to look back on our atomic age the way we regard the quaint age before steam, a secret was dead obvious from the beginning and only just now beginning to dawn on the new generation of astrophysicists: our whole galaxy is fundamentally infused with an unimaginatvely massive electrical current ... and all we need do is reach out and tap into zettawatts of it, for free.

And meanwhile there's the Bruce, anachronistically forgotten, left holding the burning bag of yesteryear's effluence.

garym: ict evangelist - musician - whatever

Keep that Refuse a-Comin'!

garym — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 23:11:24 -0400

It must be Dump It In the Bruce Week ... because now we're being told North Bruce Peninsula is clamouring to get its hands on 4,000 yards of contaminated soil trucked up from the site of the new Owen Sound GB-Health Unit (sic), and okay, I'm probably reading this all wrong, but it does scan to me that their reason to choose NBP is because, well, gosh darn it they just have a surplus of pristine natural beauty, and that just ain't rightly natchural:

The Tobermory area is also home to two national parks and is widely celebrated for its natural beauty ... Rydall said the soil would meet the provincial standards for landfill cover material in the landfill site's Certificate of Approval. He said it would be less contaminated than some soil being excavated from the building site. The more dangerous material would be shipped to Sarnia for disposal....
[ Contaminated soil likely to head up peninsula ]

So, now, ok, I'm no high-priced environmental engineering consultantcy so forgive me for asking, and I realize that the cash-strapped NBP landfills could sure use the five-figure sums they'll pocket to take this stuff, but that cash incentive tag really just makes it all the more perplexing because I really can't understand why, if this 'contaminated' soil is so darn safe and profitable too, then why don't the people of Owen Sound just fold it into their gardens and pocket the difference? I mean, it surely is clean enough for topping an admittedly pristine uniquely-natural priceless wilderness preserve, so surely the load is also way above spec for an everyday suburban pesticized fossil-fuel exhaust-fumed petunia bed. Isn't it?

garym: ict evangelist - musician - whatever

nuclear consumers

mxyzptlk — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 16:57:00 -0400

most of us who live here get our power from the bnpd. perhaps everyone who uses power from bnpd should get their own bit of nuclear waste to bury in their back yard. if you consider our community as a collective family, then the proposal to bury waste from the bnpd in our collective back yard may be the 'right' thing to do. however i do not think we should be taking care of garbage from other families; they should take care of their own. if anyone was _really_ serious about opposing nuclear energy, they would 'get off the grid' and not support the activities at bnpd. i do know of one person who has lived 'off the grid' for at least 20 years. he has a small windmill, solar panels, and batteries with a converter that allow him to run his small refrigerator, tv, and computer. he heats and cooks on a wood stove. it is do-able but i am afraid most of us, myself included, are just too lazy to rely on alternative energy sources.
kltpzyxm

AmEx

Dan O. — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 19:36:27 -0400

Man, woman, I enjoy Keemay's comments. At least it appears Gary made one correct decision in his life :)

Gary; maybe someday to buy you a beer. It'll save all the one finger typing.

Dan O.

No AmEx, eh?

garym — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 08:37:56 -0400

I guess that means Dan's not gonna lend me his American Express card, eh? Pity, that.

garym: ict evangelist - musician - whatever

short comment

bub — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 03:40:29 -0400

Its late..I have a long winded reply to everything almost done..bare with me someday Ill post it(probably when this thread is gone) but I must correct you Dan-O
keemay is a she..(and a terrific cook) and the other half of Gary.

*************************************************************************
"How does one "Seem to think". Either you did or you didn't. "
-ZenGary

If everyone did as we do

Dan O. — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 21:22:58 -0400

Gary; I appreciate that you offer this forum for discussion.
It takes your time and resources with little thanks.

Thanks. Honestly.

All I can offer you is my reply to your comment.

Chernobyl wasn't an accident. It was the outcome to an unauthorized "test" by engineers at the plant. Those responsible that didn't die from the radiation were executed.

1. I'm not printing out those pictures to hang on my walls. Do you have them hanging on your walls? Wear them on a T-shirt? I find the killing in Iraq and Africa just as deplorable. I don't have those pictures up either. The atomic bomb? I can see the pictures from Hiroshima without posting them. We're 60 years from the worst holocaust in human history. Did we learn from it even though the pictures have been shown millions of times? This doesn't mean that it isn't my problem.

Scientists such as James Lovelock "Revenge of Gaia" support nuclear reactors as the only way to save the world. Recent documentaries show the Chernobyl area revegetating and repopulating with wildlife the like has not been seen since humans populated the area. Scientists know that there will be nuclear reactor "accidents". Unfortunately when the three observations are put together those supporting nuclear energy are supporting saving the earth not the population of humans on it. Nuclear energy will allow the status quo to continue until the unthinkable happens. You jumped off the treadmill, I'll get my chance.

2. All resistance doesn't have to be "active". You don't have to have attend protest rallies to be "anti". It can be the way you vote. I agree with you on the "must pay their own way". BUT; how do you guarantee against sabotage or "true" accidents? Correct me if I'm wrong but the nuclear power stations in Ontario are publicly owned. Outside companies may operate them on contract but don't we own them. Aren't we the shareholders?

3. Sorry Gary. Bruce is a fission reactor. The sun is a fusion reactor. Chalk River and McMaster are fission reactors. I'll admit that the earth's core is not a self sustaining fission reactor. But; its main fuel is fissionable isotopes and in that definition it is a fission powered furnace. Natural fission reactors have occurred on earth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor

Gary; I don't believe that you can name an area on earth that hasn't been in the state of war in the past 2 centuries (forget Switzerland they stay neutral and make money). I believe that you will agree that war brings out the worst in human atrocities. With two world wars in the last century and the many recent conflicts humans continue to show that it's in our nature. Maybe not of all humans but just the 10% that are the warriors in our society. Those 10%, combined with an event such as 9/11 remove all rational judgement from the other 90%. We must find storage for the nuclear waste that we have. It may not be perfect. The ability to permanently dispose of the wastes at a future time with fusion furnaces (on earth) or reuse the wastes should be included but we can't keep stock piling used fuel bundles. What do you believe that we should do?

4. I can't comment on all of your statements. These weren't omissions. Of course we could pay more in insurance premiums. The company operating the Bruce would just charge us more anywise. You know that a true nuclear cleanup after a major "accident" would be a fallacy.

"chose a futile path of educating earthmen of their proper place in the cosmos, although I go through long stretches of giving up all hope for their salvation. There are days when I cheer Wormwood."

Gary; this is very fatalistic. As was mentioned in another post, we keep trying to change others. Someone said things would be much easier if "they" thought more like us. In regards to the natives the world might be better if we thought the way that they do on many topics.

I like Keemay's comments, pure and honestly believed. Keemay was right in his comment about the mafia and church. We need to live our convictions every day and every opportunity that we can. I like earth day because people who don't normally think about the earth "learn" to do something for it. Maybe they can carry the habit further. It's the same as holding your Chernobyl picture in front of them only people are more receptive if they want to do something. If they can believe in a common cause. Maybe that answers your neo-nazi question. Supremacy may be a perverted common cause but as a "brown shirt" once told me "it was just like the Boy Scouts". He still believes that.

The problem with the statement about the mafia is that it is black and white. It's portrays the mafia as "bad" and the church as "good". The mafia operates many honest businesses and supports some worthwhile causes, while the Catholic Church is still reeling over the priest sex scandals. How many wars have been fought over religion? Hopefully our beliefs and convictions are correct and hopefully we can all be self reflective enough and flexible enough that others convictions won't lead us into armed conflict.

Back to the title "If everyone did as we do". If this were to happen with the world consuming and expecting the standard of living that we have the world would be in trouble. I don't have the answers. I can see paths that hopefully will lead to my "vision" of a just, sustainable world. I hang pictures that show me the goal that I'm aiming for. I take steps such as planting trees that will help me reach that goal. Steps that I can do. Not "active" resistance. I don't try to change peoples outlook or views. I plant seeds. I hope that they'll admire the trees and plant some too.

Dan O.

Learning Responsibility

garym — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 16:19:05 -0400

Regarding the passive 'tragic accident' in the Ukraine and other flips of rhetoric and perception ...

The psychology underneath this and other cognitive fallacies is brilliantly illuminated by psychologist Carol Tavris and University of California, Santa Cruz, psychology professor Elliot Aronson in their book Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me) (Harcourt, 2007). Tavris and Aronson focus on so-called self-justification, which "allows people to convince themselves that what they did was the best thing they could have done." The passive voice of the telling phrase "mistakes were made" shows the rationalization process at work. "Mistakes were quite possibly made by the administrations in which I served," confessed Henry Kissinger about Vietnam, Cambodia and South America.
[ Bush's Mistake and Kennedy's Error: Scientific American ]

because you didn't print out that picture and take it to work. you dismiss the accident as someone else's problem.
the two sentences contradict. anti-nuclear means active resistance, not lip service. remember, I never said I was anti-nuclear. Never once. All I said was so long as they pay the full price. Didn't I say that? I meant to. Maybe I dreamed it. Anyway, if plasma will work, then as I said, we store this 'perfectly safe' waste in the basements of the daughters of the respective spent-fuel source reactor shareholders, and we wait for plasma to be more than a sci-fi idea, then yes certainly, if they pay fair price and take responsibility for it, absolutely let's host their plasma machine and cure the planet of all this raw death our industrial barons have produced. No question, that's ok by me. But right now, it's a trip to the heart of the Sun or it stays in their daughter's basement. What's so unreasonable about that?
natural 'fission' is not a chain-reaction from compressing artificially enriched unstable isotope fuel. go read a book on physics: even protons will decay over time (10**41 seconds?) -- that is all at rates and levels to which life on this planet has evolved and existed for a long time. The nearest natural nuclear chain reaction even remotely similar to what happens inside the Bruce is ninety two million miles from the nearest living creature, and besides, fission won't cure the waste problem, it will just make more waste -- the only disposal method known, I repeat, is atomic dissolution through nuclear fusion.
What is being proposed doesn't even attempt to stuff this waste into your hot core, doesn't truck it to the continental rift, it puts it in a shaft next to a lake in an area surrounded by tens of millions of people and vast tonnage of precious flora and fauna, and will leave it there hoping that someone else will know what it is and know how to deal with it. I notice you said nothing at all about the $75 million maximum liability of Bruce Nuclear should they make any mistakes leaving you and I, and not the big-industry corporate consumers to shoulder any costs beyond that; you also omit how they already routinely make mistakes with the contaminated workstuffs. Now, before you jump on that, be aware that I don't fault them, people make mistakes, even I make mistakes, but I take responsibility for my mistakes.

What did I do for Earth Day? In 1977 I literally walked out on a life as a rocket scientist, I found out what they really did and how they really got there and chucked it, I turned my back on my urban birthright and chose a futile path of educating earthmen of their proper place in the cosmos, although I go through long stretches of giving up all hope for their salvation. There are days when I cheer Wormwood.

And sure, I'm no hermit, I still have to use cellphones and computers, I still need to drive on fossil fuel, but I don't excuse that, I don't forgive myself for it, I stay keenly aware of the damage I do through them. I read labels and shop smart. I mourn every grub I must unearth to plant, I thank every animal I must kill to eat. We kill with every step, unavoidably, every time we blink; Japanese call this "living through" and I must acknowledge that I am living through these other creatures even with the electricityt I must use. It is a responsibility that I accept by my complicity and participation. I am fanatic about mindful stewardship in these matters because I must take full responsibility for the global damage I cause simply buying these goods, and I don't feel good about that.

Oh, I also started this conversation, and fund and manage this place to have it, rather than just shrug and passively resign to it.

garym: ict evangelist - musician - whatever

Every day is Earth Day

KeeMay — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 22:20:52 -0400

Mafia go to church regularly. Does that make them less sinful human beings?

As far as I am concerned, it is Earth Day every day.

Learning

Dan O. — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 19:40:55 -0400

Gary;

1) How did I refuse to look at all of the evidence?
2) I am anti-nuclear. In saying that, we have nuclear power stations. Not wanting them won't make them or the waste they create go away. Plasma may help.
3) You said that the closest natural nuclear reactor was 92 million miles away. If you read the articles you would see that 90% of the heat produced by the earthâ€™s core is due to fission reactions (i.e. a nuclear reactor).
4) I mentioned going deeper than the storage that is being proposed in relation to #4 not as a viable disposal method.

Gary: did you ever work in heavy industry? From the personal write-ups it sounds like bub did. I've now spent the last 29 years working in the bayfront. With my chemical background I've known very well the genetic and mutational consequences of what I've been exposed to. To live in any unnatural setting (war, crime, industry) people develop self defense mechanisms. Humor is one of those. It may be humor that those outside of that environment don't understand but it allows existence to go on. Rather than work elsewhere I choose to improve my work environment. It was my idea which has recycled hundreds of tons of tar sludge each year rather than landfilling, I was integral in improving our bioplant and helping to remove the effluents from the harbour. Air emissions from our area were reduced to the point that the MOE allows voluntary controls because we acted before being asked. Perfect no, better yes.

Chernobyl is a tragedy. Did it stop people from building more reactors? No. Whether you like it or not we must develop technology to minimize the potential damage from what we have.

Some "Green" scientists are advocating nuclear as the salvation from global warming. Toronto doesn't want the fallout from a Nanticoke coal fired generating station. On the other hand they want the power so the chances are very good that Nanticoke is going nuclear. Relate that to the maps from the Chernobyl presentation when you consider wind direction.

I'm going to plant 500 more trees this weekend (if they come in). What are you doing for earth day?

Dan O.

Learning to Look, Learning to Read

garym — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 20:57:56 -0400

Dan-O, I am not looking in the wrong direction: Both those sources you cite, neither of them says anything about a nuclear furnace from enriched fissionable material. One of them says Iron might leech a particular isotope of potassium and cause it to sink, the other says there is radioactive material in the core, mostly because, being heavy, it sank, and in both cases the materials are many orders of magnitude deeper than the Bruce Nuclear plans, but that doesn't really matter because the natural material is also no where near as deadly.

But I don't care about any of that. I only really care about the place that you refuse to look, and I will not respond further to this thread until you do me the good justice to follow these few simple instructiosn:

Go to this photo essay on the aftermath of the low-level radiation exposure effects in the second generation of Chernobyl victims. Don't just say you did, don't assume you already know what it looks like. Go there. Subject your memory and your soul to having endured the sight of it.
before you dare say anything glib, browse through to the photo of the mother holding her child; it is easy to spot, because the baby's brain is growing outside of his body. The child is alive, the mother cares for that child every day of her life. Focus on the expression on that woman's face as the image rolls out of your printer.
now this is the really important step: take that picture to work and tape it up in your workplace, and tell all your friends there that you can't wait to see this image for real, live, right in front of you, here in Ontario. Tell them cars and money are far more important than this child. Tell them this is the face of progress and industry and just looking at it it makes you so excited about the future you dream of your own kids bearing a tragic twisted freak like that woman did and would be so proud of your self to say that you had even a small part in the situation that caused it.

You do all that ... and then we can talk meaningfully about the real costs of your nuclear waste disposal plans.

garym: ict evangelist - musician - whatever

SeismicTesting at Sauble

ollie — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 09:53:18 -0400

OPG is doing seismic testing at Sauble....does anyone know where the testing is taking place. Apparently Pt. Clark and Walkerton have also been designated for testing as well as Sauble.