Media has a first look at Fukushima

[MillCreek]

http://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/1st-look-at-Japan-nuke-plant-rubble-amid-progress-2265490.php#page-1

Some comments near the end of the article drew my interest: Japan relies on nuclear for one-third of its electricity, and due to political consideration, every remaining reactor could be offline by May 2012.  Which means that either Japan will be in the dark, or will be transferring additional billions of dollars per year to oil producers.  I wonder about the global macroeconomic effects of that.

[P5 Guy]

http://blog.seattlepi.com/seattlepolitics/2011/11/09/bellingham-mayors-race-tight-as-a-tick/

Sell them coal and ship it from this port. Lots of jobs for the USA!
Help them build clean coal fired generators. ChiComs want in too.

[French G.]

Any country that does not pursue an agenda of building nuclear power plants is run by idiots. There, I think that covers all of us.

So, on the face of it I should support Iran wanting nuclear power. In a perfectly naive world that'd be cool. I think the reality is more like Lee Harvey Oswald asking for a gun so he can go duck hunting.

[Tallpine]

I think maybe our local coal is some of that which will be shipped to Jay-pann... 

They had been shipping (training!  ) it back to Ohio or someplace for power generation, but I read an article a while back about training it to the west coast instead.  Don't remember the details.

[stevelyn]

I think Alaska has just found a new market for North Slope LNG.   

[makattak]

Any country that does not pursue an agenda of building nuclear power plants is run by idiots. There, I think that covers all of us.

Although I am not the least bit opposed to nuclear, it is not necessarily the case that we have to seriously invest in nuclear power. Coal is very cheap and you can't turn over a rock in this country without finding some (yes, that's hyperbole).

Now if we choose to buy into the "GLOBAL WARMING IS GOING TO DESTROY THE WORLD!!111!" tripe, then we should reject coal for nuclear. But nuclear is not the cheapest solution to our energy needs.

[French G.]

Clean coal is possible and we should use it but we have to acknowledge that coal as used has altered the environment. No alarmism there. I do not ever see coal being politically acceptable enough for companies to make large new investments in. Interestingly enough many of the anti-coal people around here are also virulently anti-nuke, so I guess they are holding out for either the dark ages or unicorn fart fusion.

[birdman]

Clean coal is possible and we should use it but we have to acknowledge that coal as used has altered the environment. No alarmism there. I do not ever see coal being politically acceptable enough for companies to make large new investments in. Interestingly enough many of the anti-coal people around here are also virulently anti-nuke, so I guess they are holding out for either the dark ages or unicorn fart fusion.

Yup.  Though clean coal (integrated gasification and carbon sequestration) is more expensive than nuclear

[French G.]

Hasn't there been some studies done as to using nuke heat to gasify coal and obtain feedstock for synthetic liquid hydrocarbons? That would piss every greenie off in unison.

[Tallpine]

Hasn't there been some studies done as to using nuke heat to gasify coal and obtain feedstock for synthetic liquid hydrocarbons?

Can we get bacon as a by-product?   

[birdman]

Hasn't there been some studies done as to using nuke heat to gasify coal and obtain feedstock for synthetic liquid hydrocarbons? That would piss every greenie off in unison.

Yup.  And studies done using nuke heat to mine oil sands :)

[kgbsquirrel]

How efficient is that though? Is the energy acquired from heating the oil sands with nuke power greater than the energy being expended by the nuke power?

[Tallpine]

How efficient is that though? Is the energy acquired from heating the oil sands with nuke power greater than the energy being expended by the nuke power?

No, but the fuel produced is quite handy until they invent a portable nuke reactor to run your car, truck, tractor, etc. 

[kgbsquirrel]

No, but the fuel produced is quite handy until they invent a portable nuke reactor to run your car, truck, tractor, etc. 

  For some reason the reference to coal made my brain drop into "power plant fuel sources" mode instead of "general purpose portable liquid fuels". Depending the energy input/output it strikes me that it might be better to locate those nuke plants near a stable stretch of coast line (PNW?) and hook them up to a bunch of huge Fischer-Tropsch synthetic fuel plants (pulling water and CO2 from the oceans), and save the coal for use in electrical power plants instead of converting it to liquid fuels.

[birdman]

For some reason the reference to coal made my brain drop into "power plant fuel sources" mode instead of "general purpose portable liquid fuels". Depending the energy input/output it strikes me that it might be better to locate those nuke plants near a stable stretch of coast line (PNW?) and hook them up to a bunch of huge Fischer-Tropsch synthetic fuel plants (pulling water and CO2 from the oceans), and save the coal for use in electrical power plants instead of converting it to liquid fuels.

Well, yeah.  Except in the purely synthetic fuel fuel version the energy ofthe fuel is less than the nuclear heat used, while in the oil sand mining, the energy of the oil obtained is 3-5x the energy put in to heat it and getitnout of the ground.  And the best description of the logic, (when asked the same question as to why I want to use nuclear to get oil) is "do you know how much people will pay for oil?!?!". :)

[Ron]

For some reason the reference to coal made my brain drop into "power plant fuel sources" mode instead of "general purpose portable liquid fuels". Depending the energy input/output it strikes me that it might be better to locate those nuke plants near a stable stretch of coast line (PNW?) and hook them up to a bunch of huge Fischer-Tropsch synthetic fuel plants (pulling water and CO2 from the oceans), and save the coal for use in electrical power plants instead of converting it to liquid fuels.

Big earthquakes are possible as well as tsunamis along the PNW coast.

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