On Jan 2, 7:45 am, Brad Guth <
bradg...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Is Venus as truly insurmountable as we’ve been taught to believe?
>
> It’s not exactly a Goldilocks kind of place, because it’s certainly
> hot and seriously pressurized.
>
> Those perfectly natural looking mountains, canyons and the associated
> rock seem about right.
>
> The atmosphere is mostly toxic to us, but well above them thick acidic
> clouds it gets way colder than anywhere here or above Earth, and so
> what gives with that?
>
> As to its surface, is there anything that’s otherwise out of place or
> irregular upon its hot crust and of the mountainous geology of its
> roasted to death terrain and subsequent erosion that’s perhaps even a
> wee bit unnatural or unexpected?
> “GuthVenus” at 1:1, plus 10x resample/enlargement of the area in
> question:
https://picasaweb.google.com/102736204560337818634/BradGuth#slideshow...http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/imgcat/hires/mgn_c115s095_1.gifhttps://picasaweb.google.com/102736204560337818634/BradGuth#
We already have plutonium 238 and 239 coming out of our ears, and
there’s lots more of it on the way that’s also 100% public/consumer
funded as is. In other words, all nuclear fuel and any secondary
products such as its plutonium is 100% public owned, as in bought and
paid for several times over.
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-12-797
2000~2400 tonnes/year of spent reactor fuel that’s hosting 1.25%~2%
plutonium (Pu238) is becoming quite an issue because of its residual
heat and spendy complications of extracting it from our spent reactor
cores.
http://www.usnuclearenergy.org/PDF_Library/_GE_Hitachi%20_advanced_Recycling_Center_GNEP.pdf
“Today, in the US there are approximately 100 nuclear power reactors
in operation. Assuming that they each produce 20 tons of SNF a year
for 60 years of operation, then the current fleet will produce 120,000
tons of SNF.”
Conventional reactors consume roughly 210 tonnes of uranium fuel per
GW/year, so there’s obviously a need of recycling that fuel. Actually
the uranium fuel is still worthy of usable fission if it wasn’t for
the buildup of undesirable elements and the fatigue to the containment
fuel rods or tubes. Of course the thorium alternative is not only
failsafe, but it’s also extremely compact and it’s not going to be 1%
the all-inclusive reactor source-energy cost and even along with hefty
DOE fees or an energy tax, it’s not going to exceed 10% the end-use
cost of what conventional reactor produced energy represents.
At .5 watts/gram or 500 kw/tonne of Pu238 represents a lot of wasted
energy within spent reactor fuel that’s already at considerable volume
and accumulating tonnage within just our country, plus we’re busy
creating 2000+ tonnes/year (that’s not even including issues of DoD
spent nuclear fuel from numerous research and secret reactors that
remain as nondisclosure and thus unaccounted for), of which we’re
adding this 30~35 tonnes/yr of Pu238 derived from just our commercial
reactors isn’t exactly helping, because it’s a dirty form of Pu238
that’s not easily extracted.
I would suspect that our all-inclusive SNF and breeder reactor derived
Pu238 (including DoD reactors might give us 2400 tonnes/year to
extract those elements of plutonium 238 and 239 as well as a few other
nasty but useful elements) is perhaps closer to or perhaps exceeding
36 tonnes/year of Pu238 in addition to creating the weapons grade
Pu239 element (roughly .8% of SNF, or roughly half as much as Pu238).
This heavy Pu239 element is quite nifty in many ways other than its
use in nuclear weapons, though mostly left to rot within SNF, its
hoarding by our military industrial complex that’s run extensively by
oligarchs (some of which being ZNRs as having a free “paperclip”
ticket to ride) and its always secretive closed-door nature that has
most Americans and others around the world scared to death of such
nuclear elements, has been intent upon keeping those need-to-know lids
on tight, and otherwise making us pay dearly for its storage and
security that’s simply way overkill and spendy as hell.
Spent nuclear fuel is not actually a very good or much less offering a
clean method of obtaining Pu238 and Pu239, because processing it out
of conventional SNF is simply considered as a risky and spendy process
plus logistics and those way overkill security issues, although a MOX
kind of recycled fuel reuse is still worth doing because of our
extravagant inflated consumer cost of energy is what always gets to
pay dearly for it, as well as responsible for having artificially kept
the value of coal and other hydrocarbon fuels at the highest market
price. In other words, a remix of conventional old uranium fuel along
with a uniform 5~9% mix of plutonium blended with SNF is simply
another way of keeping the ever increasing inventory of SNF and the
ever increasing stockpiles of its plutonium elements safely stored
within operational reactors, thereby reactors using MOX should
continue to benefit by safely extracting thermal energy from the mix,
instead of their having to entirely replace a given load of SNF with
new load uranium oxide, and thereby somewhat reducing their holding-
pond inventory, or at least putting off the inevitable issue of what
future generations are going to be stuck with an even worse situation
once most all of our cooling ponds are chock full of SNF that’s
saturated with nearly 10% Pu238 and possibly 5% Pu239 along with a
little active kicker of Pu240 and 241 just to keep this extra hot MOX-
SNF unstable and the next hundred generations of snookered Americans
on their toes. Either way it’s spendy, although for the moment of our
reutilizing SNF as repacked with an extra dose of Pu238 is a bit more
desirable than having to keep storing it elsewhere and hoping for the
best.
Too bad that thorium(Th232) fuel was not utilized instead of uranium
from the very get-go, although unfortunately them reusable secondary
elements and especially those of any weapons grade could not be
created (at least not to accomplish any viable WMD or much less
suitable or capable of any significant toxic accident or possible
terrorist act contaminating our environment) unlike what spent uranium
fuel has to offer itself as a nearly ideal weapons grade inventory of
Pu239. Actually the used uranium fuel isn’t so much spent as
contaminated with plutonium that creates those uneven and thus
undesirable hot spots that damage the rods, and otherwise these metal
rods containing mostly uranium as having deteriorated from their usage
of generating superheated steam is what reduces their usable failsafe
life as power reactor fuel rods that have to safely contain and
sustain a centerline core temperature as great as 4000 F. Smarter
nations have put together low temperature reactors for their
industrial and domestic community hot water supply, thus creating
truly clean energy that’s incapable of wasting hardly any of that
extremely long-term nuclear heat, and thereby also creating not 10% as
much SNF.
Of course any conventional power reactor regardless of its fuel can
still have a horrific steam explosion and thereby cause all sorts of
nasty collateral damage issues, including irreversible damage to its
nuclear fuel rods. The absolute stupidity of reactor hydrogen and
helium gas containment simply adds further insult to injury. However,
if those fuel rods for its steam generator were loaded only with
thorium and salt, the failsafe shutdown or even worse case of
uncontrolled meltdown becomes practically a non issue.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor
1 GW breeder reactor can also be specifically configured to produce 15
kg/year of clean Pu238 in addition to its annual SNF production of
roughly providing 300~500 kg/year of unavoidably dirty plutonium
that’s a bit tricky and thus spendy to extract. So, for the most part
there’s no apparent shortage of Pu238, and these mostly cooling-pool
stored fuel rods containing their SNF with their relatively small
percentage of Pu238 are not nearly as often messed with because it’s
simply too much bother that only our future generations will get to
deal with and pay dearly for, perhaps because they’ll be too stupid
and otherwise dumbfounded past the point of no return.
Of course the consumer end-use cost of such artificially spendy
electrical energy is already what pays for all of this clean and dirty
plutonium. If all goes according to the oligarch plan, future
generations will eventually get to pay an artificially inflated cost
of $1/kwhr, but since they can’t even accomplish basic math is why
they will not realize how totally screwed they are.
A little more good news bad news (aka education):
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/765620752/Utah-nuclear-power-risks-no-big-deal.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejCQrOTE-XA&feature=youtu.be
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj2qrl6Q2rk
Keeping us and every K-12 generation to come as least informed and
thus easily snookered or simply as dumbfounded and scared to death of
this nuclear stuff is what creates and sustains a energy mafia like
cabal of highly paid oligarchs kept in authority over us, that get to
be always in charge regardless of whomever we elect or appoint,
telling us exactly what we can or cannot do with their nuclear stuff
(including relentless mainstream indoctrinated as to why we need to be
so deathly afraid of it) and otherwise paying whatever price only they
get to decide as for the energy derived from it. In other words, it a
very good win-win for the energy oligarchs that get the last word on
each and every aspect, as well as getting to disregard whatever
consequences of their actions.
A 100% Pu238 fueled reactor could actually be 100% failsafe and
extremely compact, though obviously as having to be engineered as for
avoiding those pesky critical density issues of creating too great of
heat that could damage the reactor core that’s used for creating
ordinary superheated steam. Otherwise if reactor facility space or
the volume and cost of conventional nuclear fuel is not an issue (of
which it usually isn’t because even modern solar farms can do equal or
better results within the same all-inclusive acreage), in which case
we’ve always had the truly failsafe thorium(232Th) option that’s even
a whole lot safer for large or small scale energy applications, as
much cleaner and in so many ways cheaper, to the point of cheapness
that it would make coal as a hydrocarbon/fossil fuel nearly worthless
for other than creating high quality liquid synfuels that would also
become relatively cheap and environmentally friendly. There’d also be
a surplus of this relatively clean energy for producing H2 and
otherwise H2O2, and if you still can’t think of any valid use for
either of those, never mind because, snookered and dumbfounded
Americans more than deserve what they’ve been asking for all along.
The ongoing ruse of having to intentionally create a pure form of
Pu238, for those of our NASA and DARPA RTGs, also provides yet another
private unmoderated channel for their creation of Pu239 plus a few
other nasty elements that our DoD and several unsupervised cloak and
dagger agencies will get to play with because, there’s no independent
supervision nor civilian review looking over any of those oligarch
shoulders. Gee whiz, what could possibly go wrong, this time?
With roughly 70,000 tonnes of SNF thus far, and roughly 2400 tonnes
that’s being added per year, it’s kinda hard to imagine that there’s
not a smart enough soul to figure out how to safely and affordably
extract the more than thousand tonnes of Pu238 plus roughly half that
amount of Pu239. I guess we’re just not smart enough to figure this
one out, and this no doubt speaks volumes as to why we had to sneak
those Paperclip SS Nazis into our DARPA and NASA in order to
eventually get us safely to/from our moon before our mutually
perpetrated cold-war partners did. Perhaps it’s a good thing that we
did not try to help Hitler dominate Earth because, he would have only
failed a lot more miserably if we had. Fortunately for everyone, the
Russians that sacrificed the most is what made Hitler a thing of the
past.
Besides continually fretting and fuming over spendy nuclear elements,
we may need to reconsider the finite bounty of rare earths:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_earth_element
Perhaps by putting copper, silver, gold and platinum as reclassified
in with “rare earth” elements will help to make it perfectly clear as
to how spendy those and even the depleted element of helium is going
to get unless something constructive is done before it’s too late. Of
course, running a few monstrous TBMs as digging and excavating through
thousands of miles worth of crust should allow for a very spendy
alternative, so that any thought of conserving other surface and
shallow pit mining resources of rare earths can be ignored regardless
of their environmental and human bloodshed consequences. Even lithium
might have to become a worthy reclassification as a rare earth, in
that its growing demand being much like that of helium can still
manage to survive and sustain us by way of allowing global inflation
and economic disparity to do its thing, that’ll only help justify
future proxy wars that’ll go a long ways towards making darn certain
that our military industrial complex and their Rothschild oligarchs
can continue living large at the ongoing expense and demise of others
that’ll never get out of their debt or out of harms way as long as
natural and contrived shortages persist.
Of course, any grand scale of creating new and clean resources of
essentially cheap and failsafe energy (such as via using solar, wind,
hydroelectric, fuel cells and thorium) would go a very long ways to
greatly help resolve most of these rare earth shortage issues, to the
point of recycled rare earths and most other valuable elements as
becoming quite affordable without their all-inclusive process doing
more harm than good. Then by utilizing surplus clean energy for
creating large inventories of H2 and H2O2 can only be interpreted as
another great improvement over the current situation that can only
boast of deficiencies and their relative costly aspects which makes
those energy related products as commercially unsuitable.
Any notions of our going off-world for the hot or cold prospects of
asteroid mining or otherwise extracting valuable elements from our
physically dark and naked moon, and/or from the extremely nearby
planet Venus, has to be considered on the long haul scale of what our
overpopulated planet is likely going to require generations from now,
not that fresh supplies of almost anything of rare earth value
couldn’t be constructively utilized and thus appreciated as is even if
it wasn’t sufficiently cost effective. Of course without any surplus
of cheap energy, we’re screwed.