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A problem with peppering the country with tons of these nuclear batteries is that at the end of their 30 year lifespan, the nuclear materials have to be deposited somewhere, and this country has yet to deal with existing nuclear waste storage. Yucca Mt. was supposed to deal with the problem, but Harry Reid is trying to gum up the works. Existing nuclear plants have to store their high level waste on site, and many facilities are already at capacity. Others are getting close to capacity.

No blood for Uranium!!!

Nuclear Cheese!

yeah those damn ecoweenies. the world would be so much nicer with black skies, toxic rivers on fire, and wildlife consisting mostly of mosquitos, deer, and pigeons.

Hey asswipe, these nuclear batteries are to replace polluting diesel generators. Any scientist worth his/her salt will tell you that nuclear is the best, cleanest option we have, yet you eco-weenies object? That's why no one takes you seriously. Go suck up to Martin Sheen, he shares your pain.

These people lived for 10000 years without power... why is it so necessary now? They need to watch Opra? That aside... But yeah, it would be better than diesel if it works 1/2 as well as predicted. Any scientiest will actually tell you conservation is the best, most reliable, most terrorist proof option we have... but I suspect the folks in Galena are pretty good at conserving already, unlike the rest of the lower 48 (although we would be too if we were paying 35cents/kwh).

Toshiba is saying this first plant will cost over $600 million to build (mostly R&D) but they think they could get it down to $25 million when they get volumes in the 200s. $25 million still sounds like an awful for for power for 700 people, doesn't it?

And then we have the waste whose half-life is much longer than the existence of all written languages. What language are we going to label the stuff in so that when they dig it up in 10,000 years, they'll know that it's not a fun time-capsule we left them?

After the Atomic Energy Commission [AEC] was dissuaded from exploding their thermonuclear bombs at Ogotoruk Valley in 1962, AEC scientists decided to bring fresh radioactive fallout to Alaska drawn from an earlier thermonuclear explosion at the large Nev ada test site. In August of 1962 approximately 26 milliCuries (mCi) of isotopes and mixed fission products were transported to the Chariot location and buried. As later reported by Douglas Vandegraft (1993) of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Srvice, this included a maximum of: 10 mCi of mixed fission products, 6 mCi of Cesium 137, 5 mCi of Iodine 131, and 5 mCi of Strontium 185. All together, this represented 17.5 pounds of sediment, sand, and dust along with small "segregated quan tities" of Iodine 131, Strontium 85, and Cesium 137, mixed with sand.

The experiment was basically designed to determine "the dispersal, in an hydrologic environment, of radioactive products from a buried nuclear explosive." In so doing, it would answer a question the AEC had earlier posed to the United States Geological S urvey (USGS): Would the bombs contaminate local drinking water? The response of the USGS was that "under some situations, effects...could be substantial and a serious handicap to Man's activities." After these amounts of radioactive fallout were placed in measured plots of ground at Ogotoruk Valley, the ground was watered to simulate rainfall.

In his report on the Project Chariot, Douglas Vandegraft (1993) stated that "The scientists had used Iodine 131, Strontium 85, and Cesium 137 which were not permitted according to the USGS license, and the quantities of radioactive isotopes buried in the mound were larger than permitted - perhaps as much as 1,000 times more strontium and cesium as allowed by federal regulations. Also, the BLM permit to the AEC did not allow the use of radioactive materials."

When questioned about this, Arthur Baker, acting Director of the USGS in Washington, D.C., responded that the radioactive material had been dispersed to harmless background levels, and "the extreme cold coupled with the permafrost in the area causes distu rbed ground to freeze solid early in the winter and to remain frozen...It is our opinion that...this material does not constitute a hazard."

In 1992, Dan O'Neill, a researcher at the University of Alaska, learned about this burial from recently declassified Department of Energy documents. Shortly thereafter, the burial mound was excavated. At the two foot level, radiation counters detected low levels of radiation. At this point, Inupiat leaders from Point Hope and the North Slope Borough demanded immediate action to remove radioactive materials from the site. Native residents of Point Hope were particularly angry - in part because that village had experienced a high rate of cancer related deaths in the past 30 years. Further studies undertaken by the federal and state governments concluded that no hazard existed. However, if the Natives of Arctic Alaska insisted, all radioactive material would be removed.

Jessie Kaleak, mayor of the North Slope Borough, responded: "We Alaskans believe this action is the very least the government can do. [However] The plan doesn't address health issues and the monitoring of our oceans and land and marine animals. That is s omething we pushed for and we are not going to give up on it."

Shortly thereafter, at a considerable expense, all the radioactive components were removed from the buried site. The health and monitoring of oceans, land, and marine animals issues raised by Mayor Kaleak have yet to be thoroughly addressed.

It just confounds the senses that the villagers in galena are eager to be used as human guinea pigs again when the record clearly shows that UAF and the AEC/NRC are liars with no consience and guilty of crimes against humanity, willing to sell their souls and their childrens future to line their own pockets. Shame on you and shame on the village of Galena and the miners who eagerly wait to line their pockets as well. Lisa Murkowskie told me to my face that this project faced a poor prospect. I think she lied. Yet she pushed thru legislation to compensate nuclear workers for the atrocities they performed on the unsuspecting native villagers. Lest any of you forget, the environmental movement originally started in alaska when 3 university professors were fired at UAF for having the courage to stand against the lies and bribes of the "Firecracker Boys".
So if you sincerely want to discard some lies, you should discard Toshiba, Lisa and the NRC.

I want one for an SUV!

Don't we all.

Take it from an engineer that tried the green life.
I lived in the Fla heat without electricity growing veggies for two years. True, I wasnt overweight .
My young son, however, developed a pollen allergy and when his temp stayed steady at 104 we took him to a hospital.
He quickly recovered and they did this and that for a week. What they really did was provide him with cooler filtered air.
My wife and I went back to normal work and paid for insulation and power.
Sure we lived without power for thousands of years but we also lived with a huge percentage of child deaths.
Designers are concerned with a green environment too ( some developers will always poisen the majority for a few bucks ) and I suggest blockers should increase their education instead of automatically selecting the popular antiestablishment view and be prepared to offer a better plan instead of simple negativity.

To "prudence", I'd like to know how conservation can actually generate energy. I try to conserve too (I banned incandescent lamps from our house long ago) but perhaps you can tell me how to make our total energy consumption negative with conservation.

Fission wastes consist of a wide range of radioactive isotopes, most with extremely short half lives in the range of seconds. After the spent fuel has "cooled" for a year or so, only a few isotopes remain to make it hazardous, especially strontium-90 (29 year half life) and caesium-137 (30 year half life). The other isotopes, mainly unfissioned uranium and the "transuranics", have half lives so long as to make their radioactivities very small. So far from remaining hazardous "longer than the existence of all written languages", high level nuclear waste will in only about 500 years decay to the activity of the uranium ore from which the fuel was originally made.

I suspect that there will still be people able to read our English 500 years from now, and most of them will curse us for having burned the earth's entire stocks of carbonaceous materials that they could have used to manufacture useful materials like plastics, and drastically changing the earth's climate in the process. And they will shake their heads sadly at our irrational phobia regarding a far more benign and plentiful energy source.

I support the careful use of nuclear power precisely because I'm an environmentalist concerned about air pollution and climate change. I have the credentials to prove it -- a 2kW photovoltaic system on my roof -- but I happen to support all methods of electricity generation that don't burn fossil fuels. That includes solar, wind and nuclear.

I do not support this particular project, primarily because of the location. It would make much more sense for a pilot project to be placed in an urban environment with a nearby university and an enginerring school so the device could be properly evaluated.

True the town council agreed to it but who could honestly say this was informed consent.

Although I believe that nuclear is a possible option for the future, the industry and the gummit are a bunch of damn liars are not to be trusted. The articles analysis of the security costs are just one example where the bureacracy could cut your throat and make this uneconomic at any time.

I do not support this particular project, primarily because of the location. It would make much more sense for a pilot project to be placed in an urban environment with a nearby university and an enginerring school so the device could be properly evaluated.

I disagree. If the thing should have a catastrophic failure during trials, far better for it to be in remote Alaska instead of here! An urban environment means several thousand lives at risk potentially, instead of a couple hundred. Sorry, I know that sounds harsh, but thats the way it is.

Great idea! I also agree with your proposal that "nuclear batteries" be used in the contiguous 48 states where appropriate, and there are plenty of relatively remote areas in the US where they would make economic sense.

I live in Denver - a major traffic problem is waiting at ground level railroad crossing for 50-car coal trains to move through to our city power plant and to other cities' coal-fired power plants. If we used uranium-powered nuclear power or mixed uranium/plutonium oxides in General Atomics' modular prismatic core helium-cooled power plant, which like Toshiba's "nuclear battery" is buried completely in an sunken concrete structure, our per-kilowatt rate would drop below the present level of about 30 kwh - perhaps far below.

The real pity of it all is that we're almost sitting on top of massive gas and oil-bearing shales here in the Rockies, but since natural gas is in such demand, it costs ten times or so as much per BTU than coal and is mostly shipped out of state.

We have sufficient uranium and plutonium here in the US to take care of our energy needs for the foreseeable future. It's time to tell Sen Harry Reid that it's his constituents' turn in the nuclear waste barrel (so to speak) - here in the metro Denver area we've just shut down the Rocky Flats plutonium processing plant after having it here pretty much for the entire Cold War (with nothing like the security and containment of Yucca Mountain), AND across town we've had the largest nerve gas factory and storage dump on Earth. We didn't whine and we didn't have our senators try to get Congress to move the things or shut them down when the nation needed them to defend our country. We did our patriotic duty. Now it's Nevada's turn.

The fact is that nuclear power is much cleaner, and actually releases LESS radioactivity to the environment in routine generation of electricity than burning fossil fuels. The new General Atomics prismatic reactor has a unique pyrolytic carbon-clad fuel element from which the nuclear fuel and fission products cannot escape - which renders the complaint that transporting spent fuel elements from reactors to reprocessing facilities is unsafe invalid.

If we'd told the anti-nuclear morons to sod off in the late '70s and early '80s and continued building nuclear power plants as we had planned to, we'd be in a good position to declare energy independence, using our domestic fossil fuel deposits as a bridge motor fuel until electrolytically produced hydrogen or some other power source can be developed and deployed for the nation's auto and truck fleet and electrical catenary can be strung nationwide for our trains.

We owe the anti-nuclear protesters of the world so much. My son died in Iraq because the anti-nuclear crowd (some of whom were quietly taking money from Big Oil lobbyists) made us largely dependent on foreign oil. I would give a lot of money to be left alone with an anti-nuclear protester and a Louisville Slugger for about thirty minutes.

First, where is Galena? Galena is a 700-person Athabascan Indian village on the Yukon River, located 275 miles west of Fairbanks and 550 miles northwest of Anchorage. (Credit: Shaw Pittman LLC).

Wish I'd been here when this thread was fresh.

i want to know about nuclear baterry.

I want to be six feet tall and blonde. Life is rough, ali.

Still didn't Toshiba Corp contact NRC for the license in 2006 ? Why don't US ruin Toshiba Corp the thievish terrorist ? Also GE will be theived ABWR patents by the company.

Does Babelfish have a Gibberish to English translator?

I would tell you, but then I'd have to solve the CAPTCHA and I'm too lazy to do that.

Any updates on when or if they finished installing the reactor in Galena?

If you need a new battery, I suggest you could purchase one from [the website I'm spamming] , which would shipping to you fast and the quality is satisfy satisfied.:)

Like I was saying.

Hehe. That was timely.

Why do I need to do that, when I can get 5 4-packs of AA's that last forever, for $10 at the Radio Shack just four blocks away?

BTW, any idea why all of a sudden we're getting a bunch of random people posting on old, old threads?

One of the charms of Bloggie is random people. Perhaps at some point they will have something to say.

Although, not so far.

At least this isn't the abortion thread.

I guess we're just not weird enough for her {sigh}

Your Excellency, the papers are demanding to know what you're going to do about the abortion bill.

Pay it. Pay it already.

Well, zorkie, now that you ask...

The problem in the UK is that customers don't have guns.

I don't think they should do this, the lack of pollution would be nice but i come from an isolated village [I'm alaskan native]
and what happens if they have a minniture chernobyl? i've got koyukuk cousins, and we dont need any more friggin potlatches [native version of a funeral] up here!!

Twytchy, the design of the Toshiba 4S doesn't allow for a Chernobyl-style accident. Consider the waste of resources, and the exorbitant cost to the consumers, of using diesel to generate heat and electricity. Couldn't those resources be better used elsewhere? Don't let your fear or ignorance of nuclear power deter you (and the rest of us) from making better use of all our resources and maintain a cleaner environment in the process.

#7 jomama: 17 millicuries is not enough material to statistically increase cancer rates if the local residents ate it before it was buried. They probably got far more than that from above ground testing by the Chinese in the 80's - which was detectable in much of the US (including the nuclear plant I worked at which hadn't started up yet.) I would analyze dietary changes in the Native American populations as a more likely source - they probably eat far more processed foods and live a bit longer due to vaccines and medical care (so they are less apt to die of disease and more apt to live long enough for cancers to show up.)...