Modern nuke plants

[Pray To Jesus]

Why not start building safe new modern nuke plants?

And decommissioning the unsafe old ones that are way beyond their expected life cycle?

HMMM?

 

[herm0016]

that's way to logical.

we need more "oh my god, nukuler!!!! its gonnna blow up the earth!!!!

 

[mmntech]

Nuclear is the safest, cheapest, cleanest, and most reliable form of electrical generation with only hydroelectric rivaling it. But no, it makes sense to invest that money into solar and wind which cost ten times as much and are unreliable, or keep dirty coal and oil going.

 

[nehalem256]

Because liberals are opposed to all forms of energy production whether it be solar, hydro, wind, carbon, or nuclear.

 

[MovingTarget]

Because liberals are opposed to all forms of energy production whether it be solar, hydro, wind, carbon, or nuclear.

No. Just, no.

Nobody wants a huge powerplant in their backyard else it ruin the view, kill birds, store radioactive waste, lower property values, etc. etc. The problem is NIMBY. It isn't any more common to liberals as it is conservatives.

 

[waggy]

i agree. we should build more and safer plants. Also tear down the old ones. I have no issue with them at all.

 

[Rainsford]

i agree. we should build more and safer plants. Also tear down the old ones. I have no issue with them at all.

I agree, too. Logically I can't see many good arguments against nuclear power. It's efficient, realistic, long lasting and produces less negative impact than pretty much any other form of energy generation we currently have. And all those things are even more true if you build NEW nuke plants based on safer, more efficient designs.

The problem is that too many people look at the question emotionally rather than logically. Big disasters like Three Mile Island and Fukushima scare people. It doesn't matter if the actual impact of the disasters is far lower than coverage would imply, or that traditional forms of power cause far more issues over a long period of time, or that newer plants would make such disasters much less likely. People either just aren't smart enough to really think that hard about it or let their emotional reaction down out anything else.

 

[leper84]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHs2Ugxo7-8

/thread

 

[Howard]

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

About 15 miles southeast from where I live. I couldn't give a rat's ass.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

No problem with modern nukes but where possible we should be moving away from the grid concept. It's expensive, increasingly complex and it's currently. We could use a better topology.

 

[Steeplerot]

There is still to this day no safe nuke plant that is of a consequential size. THorium sounds nice, but the devil is in the details: You need regular reactors to even keep thorium running.
Thorium is a scam to build even bigger nuke plants. Big surprise! The nuke industry are liars from day 1 about nuke powers safety/economics.

Who will pay to build/clean up the sites when things go wrong? Who will be liable for damages? YOU.

This is why the Nuke Industry has so much invested in lying to the public.

Its cancerous socialism for the rich -at it's worst.

A interesting aspect of Nuke power in the USA:
Nuke Plants parent companies in the USA have divested themselves of liability after a accident (they are LLC now) beyond the capital of the site itself, if the one nearby is a smoldering wreck there is no money. You and your family are SOL, you cant go home forever and you are abandoned. Nuke power is awesome!!

 

[Rezag3000]

There is still to this day no safe nuke plant that is of a consequential size. THorium sounds nice, but the devil is in the details: You need regular reactors to even keep thorium running.
Thorium is a scam to build even bigger nuke plants. Big surprise! The nuke industry are liars from day 1 about nuke powers safety/economics.

Who will pay to build/clean up the sites when things go wrong? Who will be liable for damages? YOU.

This is why the Nuke Industry has so much invested in lying to the public.

Its cancerous socialism for the rich -at it's worst.

A interesting aspect of Nuke power in the USA:
Nuke Plants parent companies in the USA have divested themselves of liability after a accident (they are LLC now) beyond the capital of the site itself, if the one nearby is a smoldering wreck there is no money. You and your family are SOL, you cant go home forever and you are abandoned. Nuke power is awesome!!

...and when there is a catastrophe that involves fossil fuels, guess who gets the bill? US.

Nuclear energy has many problems, but many of the problems that nuclear energy has - traditional sources of energy ALSO have.

BUT, the benefits of Nuclear energy are not shared by traditional sources of energy.

Nuclear energy is safer, cleaner, and more sustainable.

 

[the DRIZZLE]

This would have been a great use of that $700bn of stimulus money. Instead we spent it on Chinese solar panels with a 15% capacity factor and propping up state civil servant jobs.

 

[chris9641]

What is the exact cost to construct and maintain a nuclear plant? I've seen figures at around ~4 billion to construct, but that doesn't include waste costs, enrichment costs, mining costs, etc.

I found this:

Prohibitive Cost: Each nuclear power plant costs between $3 to $5 billion just to construct! The U.S. would need over 400 additional nuclear reactors to replace its coal plants. This construction alone would cost roughly $1.2 to $2.0 trillion dollars! Worldwide, 8,000 nuclear plants would be needed to replace coal plants to meet energy needs for the next 30 years (there are only 430+ plants in operation worldwide now). These plants would cost the world approximately $24 trillion just to construct! However, one would have to add the following costs to these calculations to get a truer picture of the situation: increased costs for nuclear waste disposal and plant decommissioning; increased costs for scarcer nuclear fuels; increased costs to safeguard nuclear facilities and materials from sabotage, terrorism, and diversion; increased likelihood of major, multi-billion dollar accidents and their disrupting economic effects.

But it doesn't give accurate estimates on the additional costs.

 

[Rezag3000]

Nuclear energy is slightly more expensive than traditional coal according to the EPA

http://www.eia.gov/oiaf/aeo/electricity_generation.html

 

[Steeplerot]

Nuclear energy has many problems, but many of the problems that nuclear energy has - traditional sources of energy ALSO have.

No other form of power lays waste to vast tracts of the planet for upwards of thousands of years when it loses water cooling for a few hours.

Nuke power is not cheap, decommissioned sites are still hazardous for ages and leaves the communities with billions in cleanup.


THAT is the reality of the modern nuclear industry.

 

[Jaskalas]

...
Big disasters like Three Mile Island and Fukushima scare people.
...

Fukushima is a second Chernobyl, exclusion zone and all. Doesn't belong in the same category as Three Mile Island.

Disasters rightfully scare people when they contaminate square miles of habitable land.

 

[cybrsage]

Fukushima is what happens when you run a reactor well past its expected lifetime and do not update it to the lastest standards of care. I got to study the TMI accident in detail - including the classified information. No one was ever in any real danger, even if the hydrogen bubble would have blown.

 

[chris9641]

Fukushima is a second Chernobyl, exclusion zone and all. Doesn't belong in the same category as Three Mile Island.

Disasters rightfully scare people when they contaminate square miles of habitable land.

Some say Fukushima is in a category of its own, and that the effects will be much worse then Chernobyl.

Nuclear Expert: Fukushima 10 Times Worse Than Chernobyl — 1 Million Cancers

Why the Fukushima disaster is worse than Chernobyl

 

[frostedflakes]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHs2Ugxo7-8

/thread

Been a lot of interest in this lately and seems really promising. Unfortunately sounds like it would probably be at least another decade or two before large-scale plants could be commercialized.

Kind of an interesting what-if to stop and consider how different things might be today if we had pursued thorium back in the 50s and 60s when it was first being researched instead of uranium. Thorium wasn't nearly as attractive back then because the goal of nuclear research wasn't to develop safe, cheap, and clean energy, it was to breed plutonium for nuclear weapons. The ironic thing is that one of thorium's greatest advantages today (resistance to proliferation) was its greatest weakness back then.

 

[Moonbeam]

Nuclear poser contains one big lie, that human beings are responsible and will do what they say when money is involved. We live in a world where money equals personal self worth, the more money you have the better person you are and every dollar you spend makes you more worthless as a person.

The result is that people without internal values are basically pigs. They shit wherever they are and leave it. The waste from nuclear pigs will never be cleaned up. It will pile up in the environment, contaminate it, forever, because no long term storage will ever happen. It costs money. Folk who feel worthless and thus act as if they are worthless, will poison the world rather than spend a nickle to clean it up.

I am fine with nuclear energy just as soon as all the radioactive material on the planet created by people has been safely cleaned up. Chernobyl and Fukushima are no problem if we bury the top two feet of earth over hundreds of square miles a few miles down in the earth. Let's begin today. The nuclear industry can pay. It shouldn't cost much more than a few million dollars a watt.

 

[Argo]

Nuclear energy is slightly more expensive than traditional coal according to the EPA

http://www.eia.gov/oiaf/aeo/electricity_generation.html

According to that article gas is cheaper than hydro.... Am I reading that right?

 

[DCal430]

Plants today are much more advance and safer than Fukushima. Fukushima was a early Gen 2 plan, and the new Gen 3+ plants have put into place numerous safety features that makes things like Fukushima virtually impossible. It would be wise to replace these older Gen 2 and Gen 1 plants with new Gen 3+ plants.

 

[Steeplerot]

Fukushima is what happens when you run a reactor well past its expected lifetime and do not update it to the lastest standards of care. I got to study the TMI accident in detail - including the classified information. No one was ever in any real danger, even if the hydrogen bubble would have blown.

The nuke industry knew the GE Mark 1 reactors would not survive a breach.

They even upgraded the sides with extra pressure release areas by cutting big holes in the sides of the vessels in the 80s, thing is they didn't even bother to give good schematics to TEPCO employees as to HOW to open the valves in such a hydrogen buildup event. Lo and behold even THAT did nothing to stop the inevitable irradiation of northern Japan that happened in 2011 and still.

When Fuku's 1 2 3 pressure vessels blew the engineers were spot on, and the nuke industry had NO PLAN.

Since of course the official line of Nuke industry PR spindoctors is that "A breach could never happen anyhow" (and still is in the USA today!)..why bother planning for these things?

GE Engineers resigned because of the flawed Mark I design, of course profits are #1 so now the human race is stuck with a problem like Fuku...and the nuke industries PR response?

"We need to invent technology now to clean up when a plant goes bad"

Mark I reactors are IDIOTIC, they put holes in the bottom of the pressure vessels, when fuel melts it runs right out the bottom of the environmental containment.

These flawed reactors are all over the USA, jammed full of spent fuel also in the roofs and pools, just like Fuku reactor #4 which is literally the end of humanity if its tips over in a 7+ earthquake.

I was on the fence about Nuke power before Fuku, lot of others are realizing how insane it is now, doubly so with how "fend for yourself" or "your kid having a swelled thyroid is all in your head..so SMILE!" line the industry and govt of Japan are feeding refugees of the affected prefectures.

But hey, nuke power is safe. So they tell you. Unless your family is like...in a plume.

Fukushima amounts to four Chernobyls of cesium-137 contamination
http://www.rt.com/news/fukushima-chernobyl-cesium-137-contamination-145

With no end of releases in sight still, since no one in the industry wants to take responsibility and has buried those leaking burned out husks of meltdown.

 

[Newbian]

What about the skill of the employees to build / maintain said plants?

I would assume coal plants are a lot easier to learn to build and keep running compared to a nuclear plant.