Wow.

I wonder how that much hemp would be processed and the energy distributed?  But, that's not why I'm posting into this thread.

1) Nuclear waste.  Except for the used fuel, nearly all the radioactive stuff decays in a few to a few dozen years.  Any rad stuff that decays to normal background (and remember natural uranium and thorium start radioactive) is just a simple matter of containment storage, nothing else.  As for the longer-lived stuff in fuel, let me offer a few numbers.  A 1000 MW coal plant consumes a 100-car coal train, 100 tons per car (total 10,000 tons) EVERY DAY.  That same plant produces about 10 - 30% of that mass in solid waste, which typically contains cadmium, lead, radium, and other stuff that (except for the radium) will never decay.  A nuke of the same size produces about a dumpster-worth of spent fuel EVERY YEAR.  That's tiny in a country like the US with over 3 million square miles in just the lower 48 states.  Find an empty desert and bury it in a hole a few thousand feet, or just pave a parking lot a square mile or ten big in the middle of nowhere and put it all in concrete bunkers there.  That's a lot simpler than trying to farm over 180,000 square miles of anything. (6% of 3+ million square miles)

2) No one died at TMI, and Hiroshima and Nagasaki doubtless saved hundreds of thousands of lives, and probably millions.  The death toll at those two cities has been estimated at about 200,000 - google is your friend, just enter the city names and "death toll".  The Japanese had already provided compelling evidence that there would be no surrender unless they were conquered by invasion, absent something remarkable that allowed the Emperor to seize the government and over-rule the military (which the A-bombs did).  The US deaths alone for Operation Olympic and Operation Coronet were estimated to be well over 200,000 (ranged from 267,000 to 800,000).  The Japanese deaths were estimated at 5 to 10 million.  The US Army manufactured 500,000 Purple Heart medals in preparation.  As of a few years ago, they still were still drawing from that stockpile of medals.  (Again google: operation olympic coronet)

3) Could the US have simply blockaded Japan?  Sure, except that kamikazes and subs were still killing US sailors, and the Allies would have had to keep vast forces deployed ... somewhere ... and sustain them.  Meanwhile, Japan was far from self-sufficient food-wise, and what food was being grown could never get into the cities - the roads were inadequate (no gas anyway), the RR system was dead, and coastal shipping was essentially extinct.  In short, 1945 Japan cannot feed itself and would never surrender.  No medical imports, little food, impure water, and winter is coming in August, September, October 1945.  Translation - cholera and famine kill multiple millions before Spring 1946.  Even if Japan surrendered in December 1945, there would have been no way to feed them then -- there were over 71 million in Japan at the start of WWII.

The solution was to find a way to convince Japan to surrender BEFORE winter and before the rest of the infrastructure was destroyed by bombing, invasion, or simply time.  Thank the Almighty there were nuclear weapons available to give the Emperor the chance, even though it took a second bomb to convince them that the one was not a unique event.

(And no hypothetical demonstration off-shore would ever have convinced them, as it took nation-wide shocks through all levels of the population to make it possible.  Historically, Hirohito almost did not manage it as it was August 9 - 15, 1945.)

You sir, deserve a cookie.

Because I've yet to encounter *anyone* who was in favor of cultivating hemp and in favor of criminalization. Show me its so-called advantages are independant of your own little addiction and I may take you seriously, but not before.

Try living on a diet of *anything* alone.

Thnx for being a voice of reason LTjim.

Grtz,
Flipkik 

ya that's weird.. I've yet to encounter *anyone* who was in favor of continuing the criminalization of marijuana who had any decent reasoning behind it.  "Cuz the government says it's illegal" isn't a good answer :/

As for the technology not being implemented immediately.. you do realize that it takes time correct?  The current facilities are already in place, and the plans for what you're talking about are in the gaming equivalent of alpha stage.  Hell.. not even.. it's still idea generation.

Your facts are all skewed to point in your favor btw anteachtaire.  You realize you're not even including all the information? 

that's great and all.. and makes hemp look like it's a minimum of 2x better than anything else.. up to 133 times better than some even.  Until you include the other items found on the same list:

damn now it's not looking as good amirite? 

... you're dumb.  Leaps in science will never rid mankind of the will to cause ill to others... and that's totally unrelated.  Mankind has had this will to harm since the very beginning.  As for planes hitting a nuclear reactor with waste on site..... you don't think they put any protection up?  They just sit the nuclear waste out on the street just like you put your trash out every Wednesday or somethin?  lol.

Here's a brief demonstration of what occurs when a plane hits a nuclear reactor wall..http://www.webridestv.com/videos/plane-vs-nuclear-power-plant---crash-test-43581 

Sadly, nuclear lost another chance to save lives on 9/11 as it had at Hiroshima and Nagasaki when the planes hit the Twin Towers instead of nuclear plants.  Instead of dead hijackers + dead passengers + 1000s dead in and around the Towers, it would have been dead hijackers + dead passengers + a few dozen plant workers.  The analogy of the few dozen plant workers perishing instead of thousands in NYC, like those 200K died at H + N instead of perhaps 10 million is sound, and I am embarrassed not to have thought ot that previously!

Also, it's tough hitting a little target in an airliner.  It was no coincidence that the amateur-half-trained pilot hijackers chose the tallest or widest buildings available.  Compared to the Pentagon and the Towers, nuke plants are tiny, and storage casks are miniscule.  You should see the videos of simulated plane hits on the armored casks - the planes dissolve and may not even cause leaks.

If they had managed to hit a nuke, by far the most likely outcome was a lot of money to clean up and replace buildings and hardware lost in the fires.  Nonetheless, it would have been a LOT cheaper than the historical damage in downtown NYC.  I'd guess something like $200 M versus the actual $22 B (estimate by NYC Comptroller Thompson in September 2002).  Counting other costs, one estimate was that 9/11 cost NY as much as $95 B.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2002/sep/05/september112001.usnews

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Well, you kind of ignored the fact that the Japanese were already about to surrender. I'm sorry, but thats the truth of the matter. Regardless of that fact, it was a necessity that the bombs be used to show the rest of the world our military willingness and power. I used to be on the side of nuclear energy until I made a couple of friends (a programmer at NASA and a nuclear physicist,) that pointed out the fact that you know, burying nuclear waste and/or sinking it in a deep pit in the ocean still has an environmental impact; especially if the problem of disposal is compounded over the next 200 years. The physicist I mentioned is now working for a company doing research into fuel from algae, but the team would rather do biomass fuel research with hemp. In fact, I live in a place that has had state funded research into hemp; the results were more than promising. But the DEA wouldn't allow continued cultivation (once the results came out,) and when the governor of the state sent a personal letter to the president begging for the use of hemp, it was ignored. This was during the Bush era mind you.

Well, no. Its looking just as good. Those crops are in the same range as hemp and are only good for fiber. Moreover, we have tried the use of most of these other crops in my state; what we have found (the hard way,) is that the density of the cellulose can't compete with hemp, and the quality of the fiber isn't as good. But more so than that, water consumption, soil impact, and the the ability to contain the crops is also an issue (what an understatement). I'm not saying these crops aren't viable; its just a matter of the surrounding area. Hemp provides many benefits to the land itself, such as acting as a natural repellent and clearing growth of weeds for the next crop planting (which doesn't have to be hemp.) It also doesn't damage the soil, allowing for a greater degree of flexibility during crop rotation. But what it really breaks down to is this, most areas would count those plants as undesirable invasive species. Thank you for bringing this up though; you bring up a valid point, there are other crops which I didn't go into. This was only because of the negative environmental impact that has occurred in my state due to the use of such invasive species for industrial purposes.

Oh, I forgot to mention, the technology for Algae fuel may still be in development, but the tech. for hemp has exsisted since the late 1800's. The efficiency of such tech. has only grown over time, it is quite far from being in "pre-alpha" stages. I mean, Ford himself had acres upon acres of hemp to make fuel as well as plastics. The only reason people now think that the technology is undeveloped... is because it isn't used (primarily due to the fact that hemp production is practically nil. in america.) But just because it isn't used doesn't mean it doesn't exsist.

anteachtaire:

++++++++++++

Well, you kind of ignored the fact that the Japanese were already about to surrender. I'm sorry, but thats the truth of the matter. Regardless of that fact, it was a necessity that the bombs be used to show the rest of the world our military willingness and power. I used to be on the side of nuclear energy until I made a couple of friends (a programmer at NASA and a nuclear physicist,) that pointed out the fact that you know, burying nuclear waste and/or sinking it in a deep pit in the ocean still has an environmental impact; especially if the problem of disposal is compounded over the next 200 years.

+++++++++++

I have studied WWII on and off for nearly 50 years, and I am unaware of any credible historians who believed or documented evidence that showed that the Japanese were about to surrender before the nukes.  Can you provide any?  And I'm not talking about revisionist diaphanous hand-waving or sketchy conspiracy ravings.  You used the words "fact" and "truth", so you should be prepared to provide solid evidence or sound references to support your assertion.  Can you?

Quite honestly, your statement that Truman nuke-murdered 200K humans for the reason you provided is horrible calumny.  Do you honestly feel that President Truman was such a horrible and evil human being?  He could easily have proved the a-bomb power by publicly blowing up islands post-war - - oh, he did that, didn't he?  Have you ever heard of Occam's razor?

On nuke waste disposal, I did not suggest ocean disposal, you did.  And those words, "has an environmental impact" are without any meaning, as opening a refrigerator door to get a cold soda "has an environmental impact".

The truth is that nuke waste disposal is not even an engineering problem; it's purely a political one.  For example, one can vitrify the stuff into a glass matrix, wrap a metal conatainer around it, and bury it deep in a salt formation, a granite matrix, or a desert, and dozens of thousands of years will pass before anything can possibly come out of the container, and it could be a million. 

Call that interval just 25,000 years.  Either man will have tech to deal with it or, more likely, use it as a precious resource in its own right, or man will have regressed to flint after some cataclysm that will make deeply buried stuff trivial compared with the problems our species will be facing.  Good grief, man!  We went from flint to fission in less time!  Personally, I think that if Yucca Mt were opened 10 years from now and filled over the expected period of 50 years, as planned, that we would be going back in and getting that richly-varied heavy metal stuff back out and using it for some future-tech application even before the designed 100 years of monitored retrievable storage ended.

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http://www.footnote.com/viewer.php?image=4346690

Well, its unsurprising you've never heard of any "credible historians" who've said otherwise. This is because the victor writes history; and I seriously doubt you're Japanese, so why would you not believe all the history books? Churchill once said something like “history will be kind to me, because I intend to write it.” Occam's razor, though quite brilliant a way of thinking, doesn't really apply to politics. But that is besides the point; why do you call what he did murder? Is it the reason for which the deed is done? Or the results of the deed itself? Either way, the reasons for bombing innocent civilians (from either viewpoint,) was to keep more people from dying in the future. But this is a matter of philosophy, best spoken and not typed; my god, we could go on until the fingers bleed.

In reading this document, you'll notice that this is a very one-sided agreement. Previous to this being accepted, prior to the bombings, representatives (I believe 5-6 cabinet members*,) from Japan had been trying to negotiate more favorable terms for peace; terms that would not have been so constricting to their empire. These peace-talks, needless to say, didn't pan out. To think of it in a better way, regard the differences in the willingness for Peace vs. the willingness to Surrender. So technically, no. They didn't want to surrender, but the government was trying to sue for peace on favorable terms, terms which the American and Russian powers did not want to accept.

*3 were set on war, and the remainder were neutral.

I don't mean to be crude, but if you've been studying history for 50 years, you're pretty old. This means you have a wealth of experience as well as set views that might be hard to overcome. But all in all, you must admit that you have had more of a past than you will of a future; please think of the future of your progeny. Buried dead bodies might not smell as much, but they still get unearthed. And an optimistic 25,000yrs is a long while.

I think I should be clear, converting all of our energy production (at this juncture in history,) over to one source is unrealistic; I don't think that humans should STOP using nuclear energy or coal or thermal or whatever. My view is that it'd help to have another source for “clean” (or nearly so,) energy, one that can also be used for food, biodegradable plastic, textiles, and more. So what reason do we have to not do this? As things are, the logical leaps some of you are making are unfathomable to me. Wouldn't the end of reliance on oil and its synthetic products be a good thing?

yes I have been looking for that video everywhere

especially with that 9/11 comment

It would severely damage the oil industry (Obviously ^_^) and thus I'd assume that a few thousand people would lose their jobs at the least... But reducing the amount of oil imports while concentrating on nuclear, coal, and solar power would likely offset this if oil imports and alternate energy sources decreased/increased at roughly the same rate.

Yeah, jobs would be lost, but more would be made.

(I'm pretty sure I shouldn't get warm fuzzies over the thought of some rich fat-cat oil CEO losing his job... but the fact that he'd still be a millionaire afterwards kinda evens things out, right?)

You have provided no evidence of anything.  I certainly do not regard that document as anything but what it is, the actual surrender document dated September 2, 1945.

As for age and that other stuff you said, I've many times embraced the revision of history when new facts and evidence have been presented.  The code stuff (such as ULTRA) only became declassified many decades after the war ended.  The knowledge from those documents led to considerable revisions to previously-accepted history.  The entrance into record of post-war Soviet records after the fall of the Berlin Wall led to many other new revisions.  I have many times revised what I considered "history" - you simply have offered nothing but an allusion to a not provided document, with no support, no context, and no evidence at all.

Contrast that to the mountain of evidence widely available post-war from many sources and many nationalities - including Japanese - of what happened as the end of WWII approached.  Goof grief! Hirohito himself did not die until 1989!

I'm truly sorry, but you appear to be handwaving or repeating someone else's conspiracy theory hatching.  IN doing so, you terribly insult many honorable folk, not the least of whom was President Truman.  Quite honestly, unless you have real evidence, you should be ashamed of yourself for such remarks as you made earlier about dropping the atom bombs.

As for energy production, I join you in wishing there was a better way than coal.  If growing something like hemp wold do it, that would be fine by me.  You have not convinced me on numbers and feasibility, but that's not an issue for me.  It may be worth considering, and I'm happy for others to do that.  OTOH, your nuclear comments are unfounded or flat out mistaken, and 25,000 thousand years IS a long time, and that was my point. 

As for those who think we should dig up, and burn megatons of coal, spew it all into our atmospere, and deal with megatons of its other pollutants for fear that some savage in a post-Apocalyptic world 25,000 years from now might dig up some spent nuclear fuel, well, I think they're crazy.

... I guess my problem is that I assume people can inferr the (correct,) information... OK, so lets stop going back and forth about the politics and get down to some numbers! Here are some numbers in regards to cali, for anyone from that state on the forums.

This site has some political connotations, but the information is sound.

http://cannabistv.wordpress.com/2008/04/24/ethanol-from-corn-disaster-cellulosic-ethanol-from-hemp-stability/

Just as long as it doesn't have political denotations.

My point about deaths caused by nukes/fallout is how harmful it is. I'm certainly not one to debate how many lives can be saved by a war or a bomb of any kind; Let's say there's another world war, do you think this time a surrender would come from a nuke drop? Of course not. Retaliation bombing would be the result.

And as for man's will to cause harm to one another, it IS related. Why? Because when man choses to do harm to another it results (wars, terrrorism) in the fighting parrties hitting the enemy with something devastating. The more nuclear is available around the world, the more likely it will be used as a weapon. And nuclear waste could be as good a weapon as a nuclear bomb.

TLjim, you think nuclear waste will just decay in a few years to a few decades? How about in 30 years we pop open a drum of today's waste and you can stick your head in there.

A dumpster worth of spent nuclear fuel is bad enough. Burry it in the desert you say? Then every year we put thousands of dumpsters (for thousands of nuclear plants) of nuclear waste in there, year after year, and for how long? Forever? If it takes only a few decades to decay as you claim, then the amount of nuclear waste produced each 30 year period would have to be equal to or less than the amount stored over the previous 30 years, otherwise the amount of waste present would increase over time, not decrease. And as we know, the demands on energy do nothing but increase.

As for the comparison to sept11, Terrorists don't only use planes to destroy things. Where there's a will there's a way, as soon as any terror organisation can produce nukes OR nuclear waste(power plant)... think of the implications.

And a "simulation" of an aeroplane hitting a nuclear plant... bet they wouldn't dare do it in reality.

Governments all around the world will try to tell us how nuclear is safe. They also said that about smoking....

I doubt this has anything to do with addiction to hemp. After all, you can buy poppy seeds from any supermarket, and WOW we don't have people running around saying oh, no, we can't grow poppies, the world will become addicted to opium!

yes I know the poppy seeds available are sterilised, but poppies are grown around the world and can be obtained.

Indeed, hemp seeds contain no THC; and moreover, from the genetic viewpoint, Hemp doesn't have the breeding to provide high THC content. What I'm trying to say Draek, is that HEMP ISN'T A DRUG! Besides, do you drink Beer? Beer uses Hops, do you know what that means? Jesus, people need to stop sleeping through chemistry and botany, lolz.

The_Butcher -

Let me separate your remarks into two categories: opinions and assertions of fact.

You have ever right to your opinion on what might happen in the future, and everyone has opinions, sobeit.

Your assertions of fact, though, contained flaws and mistakes, and it was to those that i directed my remarks.

First, no one died from the TMI accident.  There was no rad release to the environment of any significance whatsoever.  So, your initial allegation was wrong.  Repeat, you made an erroneous statement.  There is copious evidence, mountains of studies, and Congressional and Presidential commissions, all of whom agreed with that finding.  You might find some anti-nuke who will shake his or her head and say it's all a conspiracy, but that's about it.

Second, the loss of life at H + N was a human tragedy, but a small one when one compares it to the loss of life overpoweringly likely in plausible alternative scenarios.  This was a war that the Japanese started by a Sunday morning attack while at peace.  Many thousands of lives had already been lost, including many, many Americans.  Every day the war was prolonged, innocents would die in China, Korea, and everywhere else the war touched.  Sitting in an easy chair, cool drink in hand, snacks within reach, armchair Wednesday morning (not Monday morning, it's too far removed from that) military and political quarterbacks love to say how things just might have been done better.  If you're of that ilk, fine, but you might do better framing your remarks as opinions.  The nuke bomb deaths at H + N should never be considered as proof of the evil of nuke bombs, but credited instead with providing an unprecedented and unexpected opportunity to Emperor Hirohito to end the war millions of deaths earlier than it would have otherwise.  So, I repeat, H + N were not evil deeds, they provided by far the best and least costly way in human lives for Japan to manage with their own society to end the war that they themselves had started.  To wail at the evils of H + N is to try to wrongly re-write history and slander the honorable men who made the decisions.

Third, I would gladly stick my head in any rad container of low level waste thirty years after it was filled.  Even cobalt-60 with its 5-and-a-fraction year half-life would have had about 5 half-lives to decay.

Fourth, as I said originally, the dumpster count of high level waste, also called spent fuel, would be one per year per reactor.  That was high, as it is more like one per every two years, but let's stay with one per year.  There are 104 operating commercial power reactors in the US, but let's say there are 1000, instead.  I expect fusion or some other tech to come along in the next century, maybe even PV solar, but let's say that doesn't happen until 300 years from now.  Each dumpster, including separation space in its own little scooped out revetment out in some desert might use a few dozen square yards, let's call it 100 square yards per dumpster.  There are 3,097,600 square yards in a square mile, but let's call it an even 3 million.

Now, let's do a little math:

- (1000 reactors) x (1 dumpster/year) x (100 square yards per dumpster) x (300 years)  / (3M sq yds per sq mile) 

- the answer? 10 square miles, or a desert parking lot of just over 3 miles on a side

(Use more realistic assumptions, and you could get it down to maybe just ONE square mile, this in a nation with thousands and thousands of square miles of desert and wasteland - Great Salt lake Desert alone is over 4,000 square miles, the Mojave is 22,000 square miles, and the Great Basin Desert is about 190,000.)

You could put that in the middle of some fed reservation and no one could probably even find it.  The bunker-boxes-dumpsters would laugh off crashing airplanes, fires would hardly scorch them, and it would be simple to guard.

The whole anti-nuke gesticulating and posturing and wailing mess over where could we POSSIBLY put all that waste has always been a laughable farce to engineers with a calculator, or even a pad and pencil.

What i dont understand is this...

All the nuclear waste we have on hand... we dug up out of the ground... enriched it so that it was usefull, and then let it go through some atomic decay cycles....

If we had left it in the ground... it woul have stayed diluted... and in time it would have gone through the exact same atomic decay chain.

all we did was hurry the process along a bit in a controled enviroment (e.g. in the reactor)

so... whats wrong with putting it back in the ground? Radioactive decay inside the earth gives off 30 TW of enegry. all we did... is take some of that radioactive decay... removed it from the ground... put it in a reactor where we could better harvest a bit of that 30 TW, and now... what exactly is the problem with putting it back from where it came from?

THe stuff may last a few thousand years? the stuff has been in the earth for... what... a few billion years... decaying... giving off radiation... and now we cant put a pathetic precent of that stuff back in the ground?

what?

Actually, I think putting the stuff back into the ground is a waste... if its still decaying... giving off heat... why not use it as a heat source for a stirling engine or 2...

Similar thing with oil/coal.

At one point in the earths history... A plant absorbed some C02 from the sky... and then it died... got buryed... and turned in to fossil fuels.

when we burn fossil fuels... were just putting that CO2 back where it started... and somehow... at that point... the atmoshere had an acceptable CO2 level (and temperature) to allow that CO2 sucking plant to grow in the first place.

The earth for the most part is a closed system... and for the most part... there is nothing we stupid humans can do to change what was already here. We may change the forms of the stuff we find in the ground... iron into steel, into skyscrapers... oil and other complex hydrocarbons into plastic... but beyond partical accelerators... (and nuclear decay... which would have happend anyway if we werent here) we are not changing one type of atom into another.  The number of carbon atoms ( in our bodys, in fossil fuels, in our creations, and in the air) is not going to change... it may switch from fossil fuels to in the air... but the number of carbon atoms on this planet is not going to change beyond what the solar wind manages to knock out of our atmosphere... or what astroids bring into it...

On the nuclear part, you're mostly correct.  The problem is concentration, of course.  That is, a few molecules at a time over some years of aresenic will not poison you, but a cupful at once is lethal.  The nuclear industry concentrates the stuff a great deal.  IIRC, a mine will process about a ton of ore to get 5 pounds of uranium - that's something like 400 to 1.  So, using gross numbers here, 10,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel was originally distributed in 4,000,000 tons of ore.

The other thing is that the natural decay period was longer than the spent fuel decay period for everything not uranium or plutonium.  Thus, the energy in that decay chain, instead of being released hundreds of millions of years, or even billions, will be released in tens or tens of thousands.  So, the decay energy will be released in a smaller area and more intensely than in nature, until it's gone.  IOW, even if man re-diluted the stuff spatially or volumetrically, re-diluting it temporally remains beyond us!

My one quibble (my "mostly" above) is that many or most or maybe nearly all the fission product isotopes in spent fuel are isotopes not in the original decay chain for uranium-238 or uranium-235.  I apologize for that statement, as it may be as opague as mud to non-scientists.  What it means is that the non-uranium stuff in spent fuel may not decay to the same stable elements that the original uranium atoms were originally going to decay to.  And, if they do reach the same stable element, it may be by a different chain path (joining at a later daughter junction).  Thus, your statement ("exact same atomic decay chain") is not technically correct, but the delta may not be significant in practice.  My quibble is mainly to alert you against that exact phrasing, at least with folk with knowledge of nuclear physics and stuff.

As for the CO2 stuff, I'll leave that for others.

You should google the powdered milk fiasco and how many people it killed. I'm not even sure if half the world's population can actually digest milk.

The majority of mankind don't get classes.

Throwing people in jail for 20 plus years for a victimless crime is impractical and unjust. There doesn't need to be any advantages to smoking marijuana to legalize it... just the tragic loss of life, political and social instability with very little to say for it if we don't should be reason enough. Summary: I don't want to decriminalize marijuana because it's safe, because it's not. I want to decriminalize because criminalizing it is stupid.

There are many human societies that have had little to negligible amounts of violence in their societies... mostly hunter-gatherer types. People make pessimistic assumptions about human nature too easily. We humans are complex animals and can be peaceful and violent.

Animals pretty much have no choice whether they want to be violent or not. Humans do have a choice. Remember that.