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The World Environment, America and You! |
Current rating: 0 |
by Wayne Pickette
Email: waynedougpick (nospam) yahoo.com (verified)
Phone: 217-359-3619
Address: 302 S. 2nd Street, Champaign Il 61820 |
02 Apr 2005
Modified: 07:03:18 PM |
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What can be done in the short term to wean America from forign oil, improve the environment and slow down global warming. |
Scientific studies point to the following causes for Global Warming
1: Soot
This is a by product of burning Coals, Diesel and Forest Fires or Wood home fires.
2: Carbon & Carbon Dioxide
This is a by product of burning fossil fuels in internal combustion engines.
3: Volcanic Ash & dirt
These contaminate is purely natures input. If it were alone, it would balance
the warming effect with the cooling effects keeping somewhat of a norm.
Nuclear contamination
Atmospheric Nuclear Tests 1948-1966, (1945) Hiroshima & Nagasaki, all blew radioactive fission co-products into the stratosphere. The Trade Winds then served to distribute these effluents all over the World. As a result, no community in the world has escaped nuclear contamination! CS-137, CO-58, P-40, I-131 collected were absorbed by animals, people and the soils & plants.
One by-product, there is a market for pre-1942 Stainless Steel, for the medical industry.
All other steel is too contaminated to be used in sensitive instruments!
Nuclear Generating Stations, commonly have used fuel rods, radioactive sodium, and other contaminated materials that are removed components that transported or held the above materials. All this (waste) must be stored somewhere it cannot leak into the groundwater or atmosphere. The US is currently running out of storage for it's currently operating Nuclear Reactors. A severe earthquake could decimate the current storage, leaving America with an untenable situation. I am sure the Soviet system has similar problems.
How did I get this information:
My training is in the field of nuclear physics. While going to school, I had student employment through Lawrence Labs, with a company called Helgeson Nuclear Services, 872 Abbie Street, Pleasanton, California, fall 1968-1969. HNS was in the business of helping insurance companies keep employees at the various laboratories and nuclear reactors in compliance with Health Physics guidelines. HNS also collected soil samples and water samples for analysis.
My job was to load the scans into a computer as they were delivered on paper tape, by express services. I then used a slope line setup to select the best peaks for integration. The result of the curve fitting, was a % maximum body burden or element burden. This percentage depicts the amount of contamination per element by body weight in humans, and volume of earth or water.
I would then compile & print reports to be sent to the various agencies. I was under a gag order not to disseminate certain test results.
I spoke out about the environment contamination at a UC Berkeley Student rally in 1969, I was rapidly escorted from the school. Some events occurred, later resulting in my complete expulsion. I then faced the Draft Board. They did not like how I answered a couple of questions I got a 4F.
Mr. Helgeson laid me off, I explored employment eventually to join INTEL.
Fuel Cells have their own problems, in vehicles their application would be too expensive.
My development of the heat engine originally was defined by a need to power a wearable oxygen concentrator. A project I began work on in 1990. For economic reasons I mothballed the design until last year. I then updated the design of both to where they exist now. The new heat-engine design utilizes a space-age material, extremely strong and light weight. My figures, indicate the device may produce greater than 5 horsepower per pound of weight. Leave the rest to your imagination. The fuel for this engine is 60% of sunlight from 600 angstroms downward. This solar radiation we don't see, but we feel it as heat! Substitutes for sunlight, are corn alcohol, soy-oil, sorghum alcohol. On the obtuse end a bag of charcoal briquettes could get you 15 miles to work and back home for a week.
The heat engine would not directly replace the combustion engine in current cars. A retrofit system would place electric motors in the wheels. The engine compartment would change completely. I could see the development of a 500,000 mile chassis, shortly.
Wayne D. Pickette
Support the Heat Engine, it may be America's only chance! |
This work is in the public domain |
Comments
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Re: The World Environment, America and You! |
by Wayne Pickette
waynedougpick (nospam) yahoo.com (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
02 Apr 2005
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A while back (1986) I was a partner in the development of Steel Framed homes in the Chicagoland area. I shall take a picture of the oldest steel frame home, located in outside of Lake Zurich, IL. This home featured 6" outer walls for a total R factor of 32. It has a 26" full length bay window, which has not a single stay showing underneath. The home has plenum heating and air conditioning. It is a raised Ranch design about 1600 sq feet. The Lake Zurich bank gave $35,000.00 valuation over the sale price of the home. So far, not a single piece of aluminum siding has moved or been painted in 19 years. All the doors are still plumb. All the windows are still plumb. there is not a single crack in the home. Termites hate the place!
Building with steel shall almost completely eliminate house fires. |
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Re: The World Environment, America and You! |
by Wayne D. Pickette
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
04 Apr 2005
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Explain yourself ML |
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Need I say more about America's burgeoning Nuclear waste problem? |
by Wayne Pickette
waynedougpick (nospam) yahoo.com (verified) |
Current rating: 0
05 Apr 2005
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The workers were studying how water moved through the desert site where the government wants to store 77,000 tons of commercial and defense nuclear waste for at least 10,000 years. The USGS validated Energy Department conclusions that water seepage was relatively slow, so radiation would be less likely to escape.
In written testimony, Garrish downplayed the significance of the e-mails. "This appears to be a lapse in quality assurance protocol and, at this time, we have no evidence that the underlying science was affected," his written testimony said.
He seemed to soften his position when he addressed the subcommittee, suggesting more study was needed.
"The impact of this issue is yet to be determined, and yes, we are concerned about the integrity of the data, and what was done was inexcusable," Garrish said.
The inspectors general of the Energy and Interior departments are conducting criminal investigations with help from the FBI, and the Energy Department is studying the impact on the scientific underpinnings of the planned waste dump site.
But Nevada lawmakers called Tuesday for additional reviews. Rep. Jon Porter (news, bio, voting record), R-Nev., who chaired Tuesday's hearing, said he wanted an independent commission similar to the presidential commission that investigated the 1979 accident at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island.
Porter also said he was summoning the two main USGS workers who wrote the e-mails to testify at a hearing next week. Their identities have not been released. Groat said Tuesday they are no longer on the Yucca project but are still employed by USGS.
John Mitchell Jr., president and general manager of Bechtel SAIC, the Energy Department's managing contractor on the Yucca project, also testified Tuesday. He said the e-mails were originally discovered by Bechtel workers in early December and were discussed by high-ranking company officials, but weren't turned over to the Energy Department until March.
Porter was the only member of the House Government Reform federal work force and agency organization subcommittee to attend Tuesday's panel. He invited Nevada's other two House members, Republican Jim Gibbons and Democrat Shelley Berkley, to join him in questioning witnesses. That turned the three-hour hearing into a face-off between Nevadans adamantly opposed to Yucca and government officials committed to it, and there was little budging on either side.
A planned completion date of 2010 for the Yucca project was recently abandoned by Energy Department officials. A new date has not yet been set. |
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And some are idiotic enough to urge us to build more Nuclear Reactor power plants! |
by Wayne Pickette
waynedougpick (nospam) yahoo.com (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
06 Apr 2005
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WASHINGTON - Fuel storage pools at nuclear power plants in 31 states may be vulnerable to terrorist attacks that could unleash raging fires and deadly radiation, scientists advised the government on Wednesday.
AP Photo
The group of nuclear experts said neither the government nor the nuclear industry "adequately understands the vulnerabilities and consequences of such an event." They recommended undertaking a plant-by-plant examination of fuel storage security as soon as possible.
In the meantime, plant operators promptly should reconfigure used fuel rods in the storage pools to lower decay-heat intensity and install spray devices to reduce the risk of a fire should a storage facility be attacked, the scientists said.
Congress sought the study by a National Academy of Science panel because of the heightened concerns that terrorists might seek to target nuclear power plants. The release Wednesday of a declassified version of the report followed months of debate with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission over how much of the findings should remain secret, and therefore, unavailable to potential terrorists.
At 68 plants, including some already shut down, in 31 states, thousands of used reactor fuel rods are in deep water pools. Dry, concrete casks hold a smaller number of these rods.
Much more highly radioactive fuel is stored in pools than is in the more protected reactors β 103 in total β at these sites.
Some scientists and nuclear watchdog groups long have contended that these pools pose a much greater danger to a catastrophic attack than do the reactors themselves.
Some plants where pools are all or partially underground present less of a problem. Others, including a series of boiling-water reactors where pools are more exposed, represent greater concern, said Bob Alvarez, a former Energy Department official who has argued for increased protection of used reactor fuel at nuclear plants.
The experts' report "pretty well legitimizes what we've been saying," Alvarez said in an interview.
The scientific panel said reinforced concrete storage pools β 25 feet to 45 feet deep, with water circulating to keep the fuel assemblies from overheating β could tempt terrorists.
The report said an aircraft or high explosive attack could cause water to drain from the pools and expose the fuel rods, unleashing an uncontrollable fire and large amounts of radiation.
Nuclear regulators said they would give the report's recommendations "serious consideration." But the NRC has disputed many findings and suggestions from the experts.
After the classified document was provided to members of Congress last month, the NRC's chairman told lawmakers in a letter that some of the panel's assessments about plants' vulnerabilities were "unreasonable" and that certain conclusions "lacked sound technical basis."
"Today, spent fuel is better protected than ever," Nils Diaz wrote.
The NRC said it believes the potential for large releases of radiation from such a fire "to be extremely low." Still, the agency has advised reactor operations to consider refiguring the pools' fuel rods β pairing new ones with older ones to reduce the heat.
Kevin Crowley, the scientific panel's staff director, said the classified version of the report includes "some attack scenarios well within the means of terrorists" that could result in a catastrophic fire of spent fuel.
Nuclear safety advocates said the report recognizes, for the first time, the vulnerability of spent fuel.
David Lochbaum, a nuclear industry watchdog for the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the study makes clear that regulators have not acted aggressively enough.
"Three years after 9/11, our hope would have been more of that homework had been done," Lochbaum said.
The industry says its system of storing the fuel is safe and protected. But in response to the report, the industry said it was "assessing the potential to augment" safety systems for spent fuel facilities.
Marvin Fertel, a senior executive at the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's trade group, said a computer analysis the industry commissioned in 2002 showed that fuel pool structures would withstand, without a significant loss of water, the impact of an aircraft crash.
But the study said the pools vary among plants and reactor designs, and that some are more vulnerable than others.
The panel said dry cask storage provides better protection. It also said significant numbers of used fuel rods always will have to be stay in pools for as long as five years before they adequately cool. At least one-quarter of the power plants now have some of their spent fuel in dry casks.
The panel said the government should look into more widespread use of dry cask storage as part of its detailed assessment of risks.
The academy is a private organization chartered by Congress to advise the government of scientific matters. |
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