Due to historic activities typically related to radium industry, uranium mining, and military programs, there are numerous sites that contain or are contaminated with radioactivity. In the United States alone, the Department of Energy states there are "millions of gallons of radioactive waste" as well as "thousands of tons of spent nuclear fuel and material" and also "huge quantities of contaminated soil and water." Despite copious quantities of waste, the DOE has stated a goal of cleaning all presently contaminated sites successfully by 2025. The Fernald, Ohio site for example had "31 million pounds of uranium product", "2.5 billion pounds of waste", "2.75 million cubic yards of contaminated soil and debris", and a "223 acre portion of the underlying Great Miami Aquifer had uranium levels above drinking standards." The United States has at least 108 sites designated as areas that are contaminated and unusable, sometimes many thousands of acres. DOE wishes to clean or mitigate many or all by 2025, however the task can be difficult and it acknowledges that some may never be completely remediated. In just one of these 108 larger designations, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, there were for example at least "167 known contaminant release sites" in one of the three subdivisions of the 37,000-acre (150 km2) site. Some of the U.S. sites were smaller in nature, however, cleanup issues were simpler to address, and DOE has successfully completed cleanup, or at least closure, of several sites." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_pollution
Chernobyl was a military grade reactor with few of the safeguards we build into the reactors here in the USA. We have regulations against reprocessing nuclear waste that need to be repealed. France is the model to follow when it comes to nuclear power. The people there are not afraid of it or of having a reactor in their back yard. They've had no accidents. They reprocess their fuel and encase the final waste products in a kind of glass that can survive train collisions and being dropped from airplanes.
Not likely. Other than Paris - I found the people there to be as rude as those in beautiful central Oregon... J/K - but really, it makes no sense not to pay attention what is happening in the world and see where there are ideas that work and where there are ideas that do not. I am not an isolationist , you know BTW - direct nuclear power-plant related deaths in the USA since the first plant was opened stands at 7 (over more than 50 years) + additional 430 infants death for the Three Mile Island incident of 1979. In comparison, the American lung association puts the tally of pollution related death in the us at 70,000 annually (thats as much as breast cancer and prostate cancer combined each year). Fear of nuclear reactors is the same as fear of commercial flying - un-logical, but understandable.
You understand that the Volt has a gasoline engine that recharges the batteries when you go out of range, making your entire argument invalid? There is no range issue compared to a normal IC powered car - you are just going to operate the car at a much cheaper rate on average. When the Volt runs on gasoline to recharge it's batteries, it gets 37 MPG (excellent for a big car, thanks to the fact that the IC engine does not run the drivetrain - so it can be optimized for efficiency without dealing with starting and stopping) - but when you put the normal use - it's MPG-e (equivalent) comes to 99MPG which is fantastic... A Sergio in every car would be fantastic, I agree.
Let us know when you buy a Volt. As long as you drive a regular gas engine, I'll take my advice from someone else.
I do not drive much at all as I mostly work from home, but I would certainly be interested in an electric vehicle for commuting if my situation changes. I will keep you updated, per your request, however. You do understand that there is a difference between my immediate situation or recommendation for anyone specific and understanding the long-term situation and it's ramifications and hoping the country does not just puts it's head in the sand and hope that the energy issues will auto-magically resolve themselves, I hope...
Because I find modern cars to be mostly boring and appliance like as is. Can't think of a single new car I want to own. If I need to commute for real (ugh) I might as well get a real appliance with as little as possible to take care of and cheap operating costs instead of putting miles on my classic cars and have them deal with traffic, heating and the like. I probably would not get a Volt as it is too big for my needs and wants - but the Leaf is interesting for short-range commute (wish it was smaller), an electric motorcycle for commuting could be interesting as well. I suspect we will see some of the better super-minis from Europe as EV cars sooner or later - and this is what would probably make it interesting to me as a commuter. Small, easy to park, cheap to buy and operate. A Tata Indica is probably the first mainstream application of that - that we will see, doubt we will see it in the US anytime soon - but would not be surprised to see it in Europe in a year or two. If GM decides to put the Volt drive-train (which is brilliant, technically) into a smaller car like the Cruse or the upcoming Sonic - that would be what I would look at. Of course, if I am lucky, I will not have to commute at all. I do not like it the 2 - 3 weeks a year I need to do that...
Bald-faced lies. There have been 99 major nuclear accidents reported since 1952. 56 of these have been in the US. France has reported 10. Common sense says that any accident not witnessed by the public would probably be hushed up and not reported, so we have no clue as to how many smaller ones happen or how frequently. France is one of the most dangerousely radioactive areas in the world because they HAVE had numerous accidents and spills and leaks. Their water table is so polluted from it that we'll be seeing their entire populace developing mutations and dying off from radiaation sickness in the coming decades. Eventually, every country's nuke waste ends up in the oceans where it will systematically destroy the food chain. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_accidents_by_country#France http://naturalscience.com/ns/news/ns_news3.html http://unjobs.org/tags/radioactive-pollution http://archive.greenpeace.org/majordomo/index-press-releases/1998/msg00190.html http://antinuclear.net/2010/03/17/frances-nuclear-industry-not-safe-not-clean/ http://www.studentsguide.in/biology...ctive-measures-for-radioactive-pollution.html http://toxicswatch.blogspot.com/2009/02/germany-discovers-indias-radioactive.html http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-128589895.html
Good luck with that. And harm the most expensive hole in the world? Environmentalists are often their own worst enemies...
I lived less than 100 miles from Yucca Mountain, and I was totally in favor of using it to store waste. There's near 0" of rain a year, and a constant temperature (underground). Ideal conditions.
Be as it may be - I am pretty sure that the Obama administration pulled the plug on the facility last year (while expressing his support for new nuclear power-plants - brilliant). Seems like big-government really did well on that great hole in the ground. A true waste and a real problem with this country is that some of the interest groups just are not willing to compromise. It's the same with the right and the left, but in this case the environmentalists really shot themselves in the foot here - where they block a good solution to pollution issues for the Yucca Mountain environmental concerns. You always need to pay for your lunch, but it seems that no-one is willing to do that and sooner or later it will come to bite them in the rear...
100 miles from Yucca Mountain is, IMO, beautiful desert landscape and wildlife and plants like you don't see anywhere else. Sure, there's lots of it, but Alaska is a really big place, too. So the environmentalists want to cover the desert (where nobody goes, but the wildlife!) with mirrors and solar panels, but won't let a teeny bit of Alaska be explored for oil that might tide us over until the reactors can be built and something practical comes along to take advantage. Or the old Ted Kennedy thing - lobbied the local government to prevent windmill farm from being put in near his mansion because it would affect his view. Or they take the land that is doing fine growing food for people and the animals we eat to grow stuff to turn into ethanol, which can't be easily transported, and the result of all that was to jack up food prices and cause worldwide shortages.
don't forget these... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_civilian_nuclear_accidents http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_civilian_radiation_accidents http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_nuclear_accidents Illegal dumpingMain article: Radioactive waste dumping by the 'Ndrangheta Authorities in Italy are investigating a 'Ndrangheta mafia clan accused of trafficking and illegally dumping nuclear waste. According to a turncoat, a manager of the Italy’s state energy research agency Enea paid the clan to get rid of 600 drums of toxic and radioactive waste from Italy, Switzerland, France, Germany, and the US, with Somalia as the destination, where the waste was buried after buying off local politicians. Former employees of Enea are suspected of paying the criminals to take waste off their hands in the 1980s and 1990s. Shipments to Somalia continued into the 1990s, while the 'Ndrangheta clan also blew up shiploads of waste, including radioactive hospital waste, and sending them to the sea bed off the Calabrian coast.[58] According to the environmental group Legambiente, former members of the 'Ndrangheta have said that they were paid to sink ships with radioactive material for the last 20 years.[59] [edit] Accidents involving radioactive wasteMain article: Nuclear and radiation accidents A number of incidents have occurred when radioactive material was disposed of improperly, shielding during transport was defective, or when it was simply abandoned or even stolen from a waste store.[60] In the Soviet Union, waste stored in Lake Karachay was blown over the area during a dust storm after the lake had partly dried out.[61] At Maxey Flat, a low-level radioactive waste facility located in Kentucky, containment trenches covered with dirt, instead of steel or cement, collapsed under heavy rainfall into the trenches and filled with water. The water that invaded the trenches became radioactive and had to be disposed of at the Maxey Flat facility itself. In other cases of radioactive waste accidents, lakes or ponds with radioactive waste accidentally overflowed into the rivers during exceptional storms.[citation needed] In Italy, several radioactive waste deposits let material flow into river water, thus contaminating water for domestic use.[62] In France, in the summer of 2008 numerous incidents happened;[63] in one, at the Areva plant in Tricastin, it was reported that during a draining operation, liquid containing untreated uranium overflowed out of a faulty tank and about 75 kg of the radioactive material seeped into the ground and, from there, into two rivers nearby;[64] in another case, over 100 staff were contaminated with low doses of radiation.[65] Scavenging of abandoned radioactive material has been the cause of several other cases of radiation exposure, mostly in developing nations, which may have less regulation of dangerous substances (and sometimes less general education about radioactivity and its hazards) and a market for scavenged goods and scrap metal. The scavengers and those who buy the material are almost always unaware that the material is radioactive and it is selected for its aesthetics or scrap value.[66] Irresponsibility on the part of the radioactive material's owners, usually a hospital, university or military, and the absence of regulation concerning radioactive waste, or a lack of enforcement of such regulations, have been significant factors in radiation exposures. For an example of an accident involving radioactive scrap originating from a hospital see the Goiânia accident. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_waste_disposal#Accidents_involving_radioactive_waste
