Swiss stand in support of nuclear power

[The PIT]

Originally posted by James_D
http://www.rpii.ie/press/pr200305.htm

This is an article concerning Sellafield, and their dumping of Radioactive material to the Irish Sea. So to all living around the Irish sea. Read this..

James.

Old news they've been doing for years.

[Brian Ellis]

James

Sellafield and Windscale (which is one and the same site) have always had a catastrophic record, including a remarkable history of cover-ups. The UKAEA was not very serious in the early days. Incidentally, I visited the Windscale reactor quite often in the 1950s, when I was a sales engineer for what was then Cumberland and Westmorland. One such visit happened on the day following what later turned out to be the catastrophic leak, so I suppose I got an excessive dose. Yet my interlocutors, senior engineers, were not in the least perturbed at what had happened and the radiation doses beetling around. Incidentally, I have a chemist friend who lost an eye by a splash of a solution when precipitating radioactive uranium trichloride out of a solution in carbon tet, with hydrochloric acid or somesuch. This gives you an idea of the level of safety in those days.

However, bad as the safety record is at this plant or at Tchernobyl, Three Mile Island or elsewhere, one cannot tar the whole nuclear industry with the same brush, today. A modern reactor is very safe, indeed. This is evidenced in France, Belgium and Switzerland which are all producing vast quantities of electricity from the atom (76%, ~50% and 38% of their total requirements, respectively). Finland is also going the nuclear way with new plants projected.

[James_D]

I know its old news, but it still worth a read, esp. when it comes from the RPII, and also it shows the trends of increasing levels.

Brian: Yep You are very right, modern reactors are very reliable, and safe. I am not against Nuclear Power, but are against polluting the ocean with Radioactive material when it could be prevented.


James

[Marshmallowman]

physics honours degree or not.

ehh...I have not studied this stuff formally in 10 years, but I am very interested it with some solid background. But please don't interpret this as meaning I am an expert... I just trying justify my some what fanatic interest.

And peak efficeny of top of the line crystalline solar cells in about 25%, cheap amorphous silicon about 5%, and you your midrange polycrystaline cells about 12%(those figures are at least 8 years old)

Light is waves counting photons was just a huge simplification...I can't even remeber my quantum wave thery lucidly enpough to explain but believe me me you are not simply counting photons.

Think of a photon as a blob of energy. A very energic blob can give you several less energictic blobs.

Obvious photons ARE quantum particles, if you don't have the requiste energy to form a particle it will not form

And do you know what happens if say you only have half the energy required to form a uv photon......you form a "green" photon.

frequency of a given photon by energy.

v=e/h(v=freq,e=enrgy, h=plancks constant)

In normal solid state junction physics you usually only see descrete energy levels for photons, becasue the band gaps are designed that way(limited range of electronic transistions). So you only ever see a narrow range of light produced (eg LED's)

But in a gas phase elecrotonic interactiuons you get energies which vary accoridng to the electon transition in energy levels and the kinetic energy of the gas particles.

Now in a crystalline matrix normally use would get a very discrete range of photons produced(almost monochromatic). BUT, they are using a shock wave to vary the crystaline structure enough to provide a wave for the oscillaitian to ride.

LIGHT IS A WAVE, using photon analogies can be very misleading....Oh and just to provoke a bit, did you know that the group velocity in a coliminated light beam can exceed the velocity of light by a significant margin, if you understnad that you are in are in the ballpark of what *Probably* is going on here.

[Marshmallowman]

I think I have sussed it..

This situation is very similar to waht happens with a laser.

(coliminated, I may have the word and spelling a little wrong)

two types gas and solid state

1, in a solid state laser the photons are (near 100%)monchoromatic and (near 100%)coliminted.
monochromatic =single frequency , colimintaed = in phase

2. Gas laser the photons are near monochomatic and partialy coliminated
near monochromatic because the light output varies slightly in frequency due to the variation of the kinetic energies of the gas molecules in the laser tube.
partial colimintaed becasue there are so many particles with varying postions and energies you only get in phase behaviour for small lengths of time.


But with this situation you have crystal lattice which should give you emisission on monochromatic/colimintaed light,
but the wave traveling through the crystal lattice(phonon) varies the kinetic energy of the lattice point(vibration mode)
so the emitted light will have energies +/-(energy of vibration) of the nromally emitted light,
If you can get this wave to travel along the lattice you get a consistent addition of a specific amount of energy hence a frequency shift.

In a normal lattice this variation is so tiny it is barely perceptable, but with a strong enogh wave you should get a significznt shift.

BUT. the above senario relies on the absorption and reemmission of the photon by the lattice point's. thus you could only get a frequecny shift of +/- the vibrational energy at each lattice point.

I huess that why they want to use a bullet, fecking big shockwave so you get a lot larg frequency shift than id normaly available from phonons.

Now that I think about this is pretty commonaly known stuff, it just no one really bothered to try and find a practical way of using it
(and it still sounds a bit practical)

I guess if they can find very strong crystals that support very large phonon energies without disisntegrating they will be on a winner

I guess adding diamonds to solar cells is not going to make them cheaper

[Marshmallowman]

addendum: the above is can only be part story Its simply not enough for apaer. but if they get an additve change in energy per reflective cycle they will have something, which probably what the talk about wave compression alludes to.

Still very interesting and could/should have some interesting uses