re: Argh. Argh.
You said:
Your major problem is treating every natural system as though it were a closed unit that neither accepts energy from the environment or releases it. Once you realize it's all about flow, and not about filling or emptying a bucket, your calculations fall apart.
I do not understand how you could misunderstand the concept that I was eluding to.
I said:
“If more energy is inserted into a system than comes out of the said system, then that system will warm up.
If you insert more energy or energetic fluid into a system and take the less energetic fluid out of the system, then the system will become warmer.
Try it, just let hot water run into a pail of cold water, and even though the in flow and the out flow is the same, the water that remains in the pail (system) will become warmer.
You said:
So what if a cooling tower evaporates 13 billion gallons per year into the atmosphere? Where do you think that vapor goes, never mind the heat?
It depends on how hot that water vapour is, I suspect that the hotter it is the higher it rises before cooling down enough to make rain or snow.
Super heated water behaves differently than normal water vapour.
Do you know that the NATURAL evaporation loss from Lake Ontario would amount to almost three feet of depth a year if the water wasn't being replenished?
Where did you get that information?
From:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium-235
The fission of one atom of U-235 generates 200 MeV = 3.2 × 10-11 J, i.e. 18 TJ/mol = 77 TJ/kg. However, approximately 5% of this energy is carried away by virtually undetectable neutrinos.
Uranium-235 has a half-life of 700 million years.
From:
http://www.nucleartourist.com/world/wwide1.htm
Argonne National Laboratory International Nuclear Safety Center's (INSC) Database. There are currently about 440 operating reactors in the world.
One reactor alone has 2.8 tons of U-235 in it.
Not all reactor are made the same way but if they were then 2.8 * 440 = 1232 tons of U235 is disintegrating right now and each atom generates 200 MeV = 3.2 × 10-11 J of energy.
Now you tell me how many atoms there are in 1,232 tons of U235 then that will give us some idea of what thispiss can do.
We can also look at some other estimates, such as:
The power plant into Diablo Cove pumps 2.5 billion gallons of water for cooling each day.
Suppose that all 440 units do the same, then today 2.5 * 440 = 1,100 billion gallons of water has been heated by 36F.
The question is: how did this heat disappear from the system today. And how will the same amount of energy disappear tomorrow.
Another thing to think about is the fact that the irradiated fuel in the waste pools is up to a million times more radioactive than when initially placed into the reactor.
This energy does not disappear without giving off heat.
All I’m saying is that; look deeply into ALL the effects from nuclear power before touting it as a panacea.