Singapore's Population to Plunge by 90 Percent?

[goldismoney]

Maybe for the chief of bank, but bank failures ( liquidity crisis and bank run) were very severe in the great depression.

[goldismoney]

water powered car? I will take it with pinch of salt.
Although it is technically possible, it is not economical. Basically, you use more energy to create hydrogen from "free" water, than from burning the hydrogen generated.

I agree, It appears that they use a kind of metal hydride ( a high energy chemical ) to generate a chemical reaction to split the water into H2 and O2. The law of thermodynamics guarantee that the synthesis of metal hydride ( eg :CAH2) will surely require more electrical energy than the final output of fuel cell car, and the unfortunate part is the energy source can be originated from the dirty sources such as the polluting coal/oil fired plants.

This is why nuclear energy makes so much sense for us as the energy can be used to split the h20 in the cleanest possible way to power our future green fuel cell/electric car or even the air compressed car.

Uranium substitute : THORIUM !!!
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf62.html

* Thorium is much more abundant in nature than uranium.
* Thorium can also be used as a nuclear fuel through breeding to uranium-233 (U-233).
* When this thorium fuel cycle is used, much less plutonium and other transuranic elements are produced, compared with uranium fuel cycles.
* Several reactor concepts based on thorium fuel cycles are under consideration.

[Pishon]

Originally Posted by goldismoney

I agree, It appears that they use a kind of metal hydride ( a high energy chemical ) to generate a chemical reaction to split the water into H2 and O2. The law of thermodynamics guarantee that the synthesis of metal hydride ( eg :CAH2) will surely require more electrical energy than the final output of fuel cell car, and the unfortunate part is the energy source can be originated from the dirty sources such as the polluting coal/oil fired plants.

This is why nuclear energy makes so much sense for us as the energy can be used to split the h20 in the cleanest possible way to power our future green fuel cell/electric car or even the air compressed car.

Uranium substitute : THORIUM !!!
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf62.html

Actually im not in support of sg going nuclear, where can we store the nuclear waste??!!

[goldismoney]

I shake my head in anger whenever government plans to build another coal fired plant for energy generation. I mean if you really compare the level of hazard in between nuclear vs coal. You would be shocked to realize that the danger of nuclear has been over dramatized and over exaggerated by the media and anti nuclear activists. If the world does not go nuclear quick enough to reduce greenhouse emission, the "wet dream" experienced by AUAG would become a reality in another few decades. There would be no Singapore as the entire island would be flooded with seawater. Ignorance on nuclear will kill many of us.

Coal, meanwhile, is believed responsible for a host of more quotidian problems, such as mining accidents, acid rain and greenhouse gas emissions. But it isn't supposed to spawn three-eyed fish like Blinky.

Over the past few decades, however, a series of studies has called these stereotypes into question. Among the surprising conclusions: the waste produced by coal plants is actually more radioactive than that generated by their nuclear counterparts. In fact, fly ash—a by-product from burning coal for power—contains up to 100 times more radiation than nuclear waste.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=...-nuclear-waste

http://russp.org/nucfacts.html

Anti-nuclear activists like to scare us with horror stories about the "thousands of tons of nuclear waste" that have been produced since nuclear power began some four decades ago. That sounds like a lot -- until you put it into perspective, which anti-nuclear activists and the mass media never do. Consider that one pound of plutonium can produce as much energy as the Yankee Stadium full of coal. And coal-fired power generates something like 100 million tons of waste annually in the United States, or about three tons of ash per second. Every few hours, more coal ash is generated than high-level nuclear waste has been generated in four decades!

Oh, but nuclear waste is far more dangerous than coal waste, isn't it? Actually, it isn't. For a given amount of energy produced, coal ash is actually more radioactive than nuclear waste. How can that be? Simple. The quantity of coal ash is literally millions of times greater than the corresponding quantity of nuclear waste, so even though the radioactive intensity of the coal ash is much less, the overall amount of radiation and radioactive matter is greater.

But nobody worries much about the radioactivity of coal ash because the chemicals in it are far more dangerous. They include several thousand tons per year of mercury and other heavy metals, along with huge amounts of lead, arsenic, and asbestos, for example. Yet even the huge quantities of chemical waste in coal ash are of little concern compared to the gaseous emissions from burning coal, which kill an estimated 10,000 to 50,000 Americans every year, depending on which study you believe. As a point of reference, even the lower estimate approaches the rate at which Americans died in the Viet Nam war, and the higher estimate greatly exceeds it, yet the media rarely report on those deaths.

Coal-fired power is many thousands of times more dangerous and harmful to the environment than nuclear power. Does that mean coal-fired power should be stopped? Absolutely not. Even coal-fired power is far better than no power at all. Without economical electric power, we will rapidly degenerate into a third-world nation, and average lifespans will drop precipitously. Even though emissions from coal-fired power costs many lives, the net effect of coal-fired power is to extend average lifespans. The point is not that coal-fired power is bad, but rather that nuclear power is thousands of times cleaner and safer. And the fact that so many so-called "environmentalists" vociferously oppose nuclear power -- even while they agitate for draconian measures to stop "global warming" -- should tell you something about them: they are either ignorant or they have ulterior ideological motives -- or both.

[goldismoney]

Long term management of waste

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

Storage
High-level radioactive waste is stored temporarily in spent fuel pools and in dry cask storage facilities. This allows the shorter-lived isotopes to decay before further handling.

Geological disposal
The process of selecting appropriate deep final repositories for high level waste and spent fuel is now under way in several countries with the first expected to be commissioned some time after 2010. [/b]


Transmutation
There have been proposals for reactors that consume nuclear waste and transmute it to other, less-harmful nuclear waste. In particular, the Integral Fast Reactor was a proposed nuclear reactor with a nuclear fuel cycle that produced no transuranic waste and in fact, could consume transuranic waste.


Reuse of waste
Another option is to find applications of the isotopes in nuclear waste so as to reuse them. [8] . Already, caesium-137, strontium-90 and a few other isotopes are extracted for certain industrial applications such as food irradiation and radioisotope thermoelectric generators. While re-use does not eliminate the need to manage radioisotopes, it may reduce the quantity of waste produced.

Space disposal
Space disposal is an attractive notion because it permanently removes nuclear waste from the environment. However, it has significant disadvantages, not least of which is the potential for catastrophic failure of a launch vehicle. Furthermore, the high number of launches that would be required — due to the fact that no individual rocket would be able to carry very much of the material relative to the material needed to be disposed of—makes the proposal impractical (for both economic and risk-based reasons). To further complicate matters, international agreements on the regulation of such a program would need to be established.[9]

[Gold_newbie]

Originally Posted by goldismoney

I shake my head in anger ..

sounds a bit like an Oasis song..

[Gold Chunkie]

But wouldn't the danger of just one nuclear accident in Singapore to completely wipe us out? It is like comparing numerous mosquito bites to just one big bang. I think we should go for the mosquito bites, even if there is the danger of dengue, to just one big bang.

[aurictaurus]

Originally Posted by goldismoney

Long term management of waste

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

I've long wondered about this issue. Thorium reactors seem to be one (partial) solution as well as CANDU and Pebble Bed reactors, both of which seem to offer advantages in reducing weaponisation and waste production.

As for the residual high level waste - the stuff that's truly toxic and lasts essentially forever, I propose the best place to bury this is in very deep well bores at the edge of a continental subduction zone. Over (geological) time, the waste is simply returned to the magma core where it came from.

Unfortunately,

Subduction zones have also being considered as possible disposal sites for nuclear waste, where the action would carry the material into the planetary mantle, safely away from any possible influence on humanity or the surface environment, but this method of disposal is currently banned by international agreement[2].

Temporary storage of high level radioactive waste is often achieved by holding it in cooling ponds - why not harness some of the 'waste heat' and get a double dip of the cherry?

Here's something I didn't know:

A natural precedent

We have an example in nature to suggest that final disposal of high-level wastes underground is safe. Two billion years ago at Oklo in Gabon, West Africa, chain reactions started spontaneously in concentrated deposits of uranium ore. These natural nuclear reactors continued operating for hundreds of thousands of years forming plutonium and all the highly radioactive waste products created today in a nuclear power reactor. Despite the existence at the time of large quantities of water in the area, these materials stayed where they were formed and eventually decayed into non-radioactive elements. The evidence is there.