nuclear energy

[piasabird]

If you want to trust nuclear power be my guest. Just dont ask the federal government to bail you out. The problem is if something goes horribly wrong no government intervention can fix the problem once a large area is contaminated.

In Chernobyl part of the reactor literall blew through the roof and landed out in the forest.

I dont really trust reactors. There are other ways to make power.

 

[Mark R]

Originally posted by: piasabird
If you want to trust nuclear power be my guest. Just dont ask the federal government to bail you out. The problem is if something goes horribly wrong no government intervention can fix the problem once a large area is contaminated.

In Chernobyl part of the reactor literall blew through the roof and landed out in the forest.

I dont really trust reactors. There are other ways to make power.

It is true that nuclear power has the potential to cause catastrophic damage. However, this has to be contrasted by the constant drip-drip environmental and social damage, as well as economic impact, of other forms of power generation.

Coal is a very popular source of power - but mining is environmentally destructive, it causes severe health problems for miners, it releases toxins into the atmosphere and landfill, and the atomspheric pollution has been linked to respiratory illness.

Exploration for oil and gas (especially now land based fields are declining) is dangerous. Environmental costs of oil spills are large, and natural gas is a global warming disaster (unburned gas that leaks from pipes/rigs/wells is hundreds of times more potent than CO2).

Hydropower produces large quantities of greenhouse gases (mainly methane) due to decomposition of organic matter in the lakes, destroys potentially valuable land, displaces populations, and can drastically reduce the supply of fresh water (e.g. in Egypt - evaporation from the lake behind the Aswan dam is so huge, that there is less freshwater available now, than before it was built) as well as disturbing traditional agricultural practice.

By contrast, the volume of uranium ore that requires mining is tiny compared to coal - and modern 'leeching' methods can reduce workers' exposure to toxic dusts to negligable levels. Even, if we take the worst case figures that the Chornobyl accident will kill approx 4000 people in due course. That's essentially the whole death toll of the nuclear power industry. By comparison, in 2005, approximately 12,000 miners were killed in industrial accidents (mainly in China), and approx 10,000-15,000 die each year due to industrial lung disease (millions are crippled due to lung disease).

In terms of societal monetary cost, studies in Europe have suggested that coal power has a 'hidden' cost of about ?0.10 per kWh - in other words, the 'hidden' costs of coal are about 2x the actual cost (and that doesn't include global warming potential, because the costs of that are not predictable with any degree of certainty).

For nat gas, the hidden cost is about ?0.05 per kWh.

For nuclear, it's estimated at about ?0.002 per kWh. (That's 2% of the hidden cost of coal).

 

[BrownTown]

Originally posted by: piasabird
If you want to trust nuclear power be my guest. Just dont ask the federal government to bail you out. The problem is if something goes horribly wrong no government intervention can fix the problem once a large area is contaminated.

In Chernobyl part of the reactor literall blew through the roof and landed out in the forest.

I dont really trust reactors. There are other ways to make power.

But don't you understand that at Chernobyl the roof was simply a normal roof like in a warehouse, but in every reactor currnetly operating its several inches of steel covered in several feet of special extra-dense reinforced concrete. The explosion at Chernobyl would never have left the containment building if one had been installed. And like someone said earlier, there WAS a meltdown at a US expirimental reactor and nobody ever hears about it because all the molten material stayed completely contianed.

Irrational fears are NOT what should be determining our energy policy. This is far to important to simply write something off just becasue you find it scarry, the fact is that it is the only way of producing power that can compete with fossil fuels, and not only is it good economically, but it produces no CO2, no particulates, no NOx and SOx, no giant ash ponds full of toxic chemicals. And on top of that it puts out no more radiation that a coal plant. A nuclear reactor disaster can certainlly happen and is a bad thing, but using coal is like a constant disaster going on 24/7 releasing harmfull products into our enviroment.

 

[Paratus]

People have a hard time understanding the difference between thousands of tons of radioactive waste & billions of tons of fossill fuel wastes.

Besides nuclear waste is only dangerous for 10000 years. Petro-chem waste is dangerous forever........

posted via Palm Life Drive

 

[fire400]

research is extremely advanced.

something like used uranium to be recycled into ammunition 'n stuff like that, armor, etc. there would be stuff like that

but then you're looking at factory stuff that gets dumped illegally... then we got a problem. still being done to this day. it's not cheap, but it has to be done. companies need to find ways to make life safer, not worse so that they can gain what they think will make life better for the country (or just themselves).

 

[marvdmartian]

Concerning using weapons grade uranium for reactor fuel (as I posted above), the problem with downblending is that you then go back to what we have now, which is tons and tons of waste every 5-10 years.

Navy nuclear reactors use fuel that's 97% pure, in other words, weapons grade. This fuel is formed and encased in metal forms which make it impossible for that reactor to blow up like a nuclear weapon (nuke weapons have to have a specific shape and size to blow up, which nuclear reactor cores come nowheres close to being). It's also going to sit in a reactor for 25+ years, after which time it's become so used up that you couldn't get a good bang out of it anymore, so stealing it's out of the question as well. Tight controls by the DOE and NRC on refueling reactors would make certain that the new replacement cores aren't shipping until the old ones are ready to be taken out of the reactor vessels, after which time the new core is installed and the old one is taken away for reprocessing (there's still enough fissionable material that can be mechanically/chemically seperated out, and re-used, to make this economically smart).

Even if the nuclear material were somehow stolen, the thieves would have to have a pretty major ability to machine the pieces, remotely (remember, it is pretty radioactive, so you're not going to be hacking away at this stuff with a hacksaw!! :shocked: ), and reform it into the new shape you'd need for a bomb (which means smelting the material). There's no way you're going to be able to hide an operation like that for a sufficient amount of time to keep it from being found by the authorities. Let's face it, you'd need a buttload of shielding just to make it safe to be around this stuff (navy nuclear reactor vessels have shielding around them, PLUS shielding around the reactor compartment, in order to make them safe to work around), and even then a simple Geiger-Muller radiac instrument is going to pick this stuff up from quite a ways away.

IMHO, using the weapons grade material as-is is the better bet. You're dealing with a different animal than the commercial reactors currently use (and for those, you could blend a lower concentration fuel, until they retire those reactor plants), but you're also generating a LOT less material, and it's taking you longer to generate waste (2-3 times as long, perhaps longer). Again, the navy has been using this stuff for 50+ years, and has had ZERO incidents.......and coincidentally, the majority of guys operating nuclear reactors in the commercial plants right now are likely ex-navy nuke operators, so they're already trained to operate higher grade nuclear plants.

And if you think that the navy doesn't operate large plants, consider that one of our modern carriers has a reactor plant that puts out over 1000MW total output......that's just a few households worth of power, eh?

 

[Horus]

Originally posted by: K1052

Originally posted by: Moonbeam
I want to consider nuclear power just as soon as all the nuclear waste we have produced so far is safely stored. I see the nuclear industry as just another group willing to risk the health of the world for the sake of money with constant lies and promises. We see what will be when we look at what is. The wast that is not cleaned up is just a part of what they will create more of and not clean up. Nuclear energy is a dangerous fraud and any time they want to prove otherwise they will deal with the current mess first before they make more.

The US commercial nuclear industry has far more megawatt hours under its belt than any other nuclear energy progam in the world. We have over 100 operational commercial power reactors in the US. As fossil fuel prices have increased dramatically (most notably NG) nuclear power plants have become very desireable due to consistantly low fuel expenses per kWh, predictable outages, and reliability. There has only ever been one serious incident resulting in the loss of a reactor, which was contained by the plant's engineering safeguards.

The reprocessing ban has finally been lifted and the DOE is currently letting contracts for pilot reprocessing facilities. That will reduce the amount of high level waste requiring long term storage to about 1/8th of its original mass and create more fuel in the bargain.

The long term geologic storage question still needs to be adressed, however the reduced waste quantity buys us more time to select a solution. Yucca Mtn. would be more than sufficent as an interm waste repository if it is indeed found to be unsuitable for long term storage (maybe use the Canadian Shield instead).

And Canada wants radioactive waste why?

 

[marvdmartian]

It's likely they would find this economically fantastic, as they could charge premium prices to store nuclear waste in areas that are devoid of civilization for the most part. That's what made Yucca Mountain so attractive (let's face it, I bet 95% of the population of Nevada lives in 5%, or LESS, of the land area of that state).

 

[TheBDB]

I work on a nuclear submarine, and I feel completely comfortable with nuclear power. Unfortunately we can't have everyone know the things I know, but if they did a lot more people would support nuclear power.