Message from Mexico: U.S. Is Polluting Water It May Someday Need to Drink

What other terms could there be?

> In general, you made a one-sided statement that also ignored the fact that your assumptions could change. I pointed that out, along with possible alternatives. Then, you reply that I am being one-sided? You're talking in circles.

My point is that we have lots of information on what is valuable out there and what is not, and the people wringing hands over it seem to be trying to put all the burden of proof on everyone else, and speculating vaguely about how one might one day want that deep acquifer (without any consideration of future technological advances and economic and demographic shifts away from the areas, opportunity costs like foregone economic growth) etc. That's very one-sided.

> The Mexicans are now having to dig deeper than they thought would be necessary or viable. At some point, they were saying "what would ever justify...".

Greater Mexico City has been growing for how many centuries now? If they were saying that, they weren't doing a very good job of forecasting. There's a big difference between wondering whether one of the largest urbanizations in the world will one day want to tap in local water, and wondering whether some random plains acquifer located nowhere important will one day be worth the expense of tapping into and whether this can justify expensive restrictions now.

Absolute.

>we have lots of information on what is valuable out there and what is not

Again, that's now. Strange that you agree that we're talking in relative terms, but keep repeating this. Please understand that it's a meaningless statement in the context of this discussion. The very question is whether the water could someday be valuable.

>the people wringing hands...put all the burden of proof on everyone else

Of course, you realize I could say that as well; as in, "you guys are putting the burden of proof on the hand-wringers to show exactly when, where, and why we'll need it, else it's OK to destroy it".

>without any consideration of future technological advances of future technological advances

Why is it reasonable for you to consider future technological advances, but when others suggest the same, they're being "one-sided"?

>economic and demographic shifts away from the areas

Or toward the area, right? Also, who says the aquifer must serve the immediate area? We ship water from France and Fiji now as a "luxury". So, given that many are predicting a more global water-crisis, why is there reason to believe that our sources would be geographically bound when there is actual need?

In short, you're throwing out a bunch of hypotheticals, then declaring that's what the other side is doing. OK, let's call it a draw: no-one knows what will happen. So, what makes the most sense to do in that case? Preserve or destroy?

There is a certain arrogance that mankind has with regard to stewardship of our natural resources. Deciding that it's OK to destroy this thing or that one for some short-term economic benefit is short-sighted hubris at best.

>Greater Mexico City has been growing for how many centuries now? If they were saying that, they weren't doing a very good job of forecasting

I wasn't being literal. Mexico City didn't even know the water existed.

>wondering whether some random plains aquifer located nowhere important will one day be worth the expense of tapping into

According to the article there are 1,500 such "random" aquifers that are permitted for pollution in the U.S. [1]. Many of these are in drought-stricken states.

So, it's not just the one aquifer. It's 1,500. Again, it's the overall attitude around these resources that's short-sighted and troubling.

Are you willing to state that all 1,500 (and possibly growing) will never be needed? If not, which ones will be?

[1] http://www.propublica.org/article/poisoning-the-well-how-the...

AFAIK the pressure vessel was never breached at Fukushima. They had plenty of problems whose primary cause was the absence of cooling water (including a hydrogen gas explosion), but there was never an uncontrolled criticality because of it. (Also see further comments below on criticality.)

I am talking about short-term "everyone evacuate the building" types of disaster scenarios. You can do precisely that with a LFTR because of the passive decay heat cooling combined with the loss of criticality that happens when the freeze plug melts.

Ok, this makes it clearer where you are coming from. I certainly agree that the LFTR is a big improvement over the standard PWR design.

We don't really even know how bad the damage can get.

It's true that Chernobyl could have been worse, so we can't really judge the worst case from what happened there. However, these worst-case scenarios have been simulated in great detail; the physics is actually pretty simple.

With any design that isn't Soviet-built, a loss of coolant will not cause an uncontrolled criticality; losing coolant decreases the reaction rate, causing loss of criticality. The problem with the Chernobyl design was that it had a "positive void coefficient of reactivity", meaning that the reaction rate increased on loss of coolant. That feature, as I said, is not present in any non-Soviet design, which means it's not present in any commercial design currently operating (since all the old Soviet reactors have been shut down).

I just REALLY don't like the idea of the balancing act that has to be performed in 1 and far prefer the kind of intrinsic safety that you get from 2.

So do I. Now that we have such designs, we should certainly be building them, and should not be building the old designs that lack those passive safety features.

Huh? No nuclear plant incident has even come close to this level of impact; this number is at least four orders of magnitude too large, and quite possibly more.

someone who spent 35 years in the nuclear industry

I didn't say all his arguments weren't cogent, just the particular argument he made about "releasing radiation".

there's not enough fissible material to run nukes for more than a few decades

Sure there is, if you reprocess the spent fuel (spent fuel actually still has a fairly large fraction of fissile material in it) and/or run breeders (sure, you have to keep control of the nuclear material, but that's a lot cheaper than the alternative of making us all poor because we don't have enough energy).

I was surprised to see the Chinese that pessimistic about the time scale for thorium reactors; I haven't had time to dig into the details to see what the roadblock is. They're not the only ones working on those, either.

oil provides fuel for transport, while nuclear doesn't.

But oil provides fuel for other things besides transport as well. If it only had to provide fuel for transport, that would change things significantly.

(Also, battery technology is a lot better now than when Rickover made his speech; electric cars can now actually have decent range for things like commuting.)

Rickover actually addressed aspects of this in a 1956 speech

Yes, I've read it. One thing that struck me was that he came right out and said that energy == standard of living, which is true, but it's an inconvenient truth. Of course, he wasn't a politician.