Seriously, where the * is Nuclear?

[Plimogz]

1-there's the waste, right?
2-I understand not wanting a "potential" Chernobyl in my backyard.
3-Oh, but what about the potential for proliferation (of something not at all weapons grade, as I understand it) ?

I mean to have a discussion beyond those three points. Which while I do think are completely valid in their way, and are totally welcome -- whatever -- are beyond my question:

Which is: Why do I never hear nuclear energy mentioned? It clearly seems to be the next logical step in Sim City terms of energy generation progression terms; I do seem to remember reading that it was vastly more cost efficient than the so-called green energies; it appears to largely resolve the whole carbon emissions debate (though obviously not the nuclear waste disposal debate, but still; clearly no excessive greenhouse gas emissions around our potential radioactive wasteland!), it's quite whether/climate independent, the required fuel seems to be quite abundant. etc!

I'm not saying that there's no wrong way to do nuclear; my impression is quite the opposite, in fact. But, done right, why isn't this next logical Asimovian step being more readily championed by somebody I might hear from -- second hand or in an irate tirade opposing it, I don't care! Am I just disconnected? It seems like the words nuclear power should appear at least once for every ten random mentions of solar/wind/tidal/whatever and perhaps at something like once every hundred vs oil. But I'm just not seeing it wherever I look.

Not that I've gone looking, mind you.

 

[preslove]

Nuclear is extremely expensive because of safety requirements and insurance on the waste. Morrons blame environmentalists for stopping American nuclear power, but it was really Reagan's deregulation of the energy industry that killed us nuclear

 

[Crono]

I thought this would be about Ned...

 

[ForumMaster]

Back in the sixties, two fuels were originally considered for nuclear reactors:

• Uranium - An element rarer then gold
• Thorium - An element that is at least 3-4 times as abundant. There are already supply problems with uranium.

Uranium - Makes nuclear waste that is very radioactive with a half life of several billion years, but also produces plutonium-238.

Thorium - Thorium fuel cycle can recycle old uranium waste, and thorium waste is less radioactive then uranium waste after several billion years... btw, due to the nature, a nuclear meltdown is impossible with thorium.
Not unlikely, impossible. Physically. You have to keep adding neutrons to keep the reaction going.


So which fuel did the industry choose? Uranium of course! The us government wanted weapons. Unfortunately, thorium doesn't produce any.

Uranium... does.

Today, the industry is taking a second look at thorium. termed gen iv reactors, china and India area building many.
safe an efficient, these reactors are also termed "breeder" reactors. They can recycle old waste, and only leave %1 of the old waste.


This doesn't change the fact that nuclear power is expensive...

 

[rockyct]

I think all the construction contracts are held up until Yucca Mountain finishes construction 😉

 

[AmdEmAll]

Back in the sixties, two fuels were originally considered for nuclear reactors:

• Uranium - An element rarer then gold
• Thorium - An element that is at least 3-4 times as abundant. There are already supply problems with uranium.

Uranium - Makes nuclear waste that is very radioactive with a half life of several billion years, but also produces plutonium-238.

Thorium - Thorium fuel cycle can recycle old uranium waste, and thorium waste is less radioactive then uranium waste after several billion years... btw, due to the nature, a nuclear meltdown is impossible with thorium.
Not unlikely, impossible. Physically. You have to keep adding neutrons to keep the reaction going.


So which fuel did the industry choose? Uranium of course! The us government wanted weapons. Unfortunately, thorium doesn't produce any.

Uranium... does.

Today, the industry is taking a second look at thorium. termed gen iv reactors, china and India area building many.
safe an efficient, these reactors are also termed "breeder" reactors. They can recycle old waste, and only leave %1 of the old waste.


This doesn't change the fact that nuclear power is expensive...

And there we have the best answer.

Article explains it some

http://www.forbes.com/sites/william...gest-energy-breakthrough-since-fire-possibly/

 

[adlep]

There is an additional alternative, but I won't mention it in here. I am getting flamed as hell for bringing it up, but I believe it will be a breakthrough soon.

Search for my username + "science".

 

[AmdEmAll]

There is an additional alternative, but I won't mention it in here. I am getting flamed as hell for bringing it up, but I believe it will be a breakthrough soon.

Search for my username + "science".

Ammonia?

Never-mind I see your talking about the E-Cat. A lot of people talking crap about that but usually when something that big comes along there are always nay sayers. I'm hoping something amazing can come from that.

 

[Jeff7]

It's a shame that thorium tech received such little attention, it certainly sounds like a much safer option than uranium.

Uranium waste: The good news is that the more energetic a radioactive material is, the quicker it will decay to lower-energy material. It's effectively "hotter," and so it will try to decay more quickly.
If we hadn't banned reprocessing in the US, the amount of waste generated by uranium reactors could be dramatically reduced. Even so, the total volume of radioactive waste we've produced since we started using it for power is really not a whole heck of a lot.

Ammonia?

Magic, essentially.

 

[ForumMaster]

TED as usual, has it all.

 

[marvdmartian]

It's a combination of NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard), environmentalists who believe that nuclear is evil, and protest it any chance they can (but who also don't want coal, natural gas, or anything else that isn't powered by love and rainbows), and, sometimes, just location. You have to have a fairly steady flow of cooling water, for your coolers & condensers, to keep the steam cycle going. Many places that would be perfect for that, unfortunately, already have something else located there (pesky cities, and such).

Back during the Enron days, I said that someone should have built a half dozen nuke plants, just across the state line from California. Say, up in the Sierra Nevada mountains, in Nevada. They could have sold all their electricity to the power hungry Cali's, and made a nice profit off of it, without having to put up with all the CalEPA and CalOSHA rules & regulations. Win!

 

[NuclearNed]

I've been on vacation for a week. I'm back, all is well.

 

[mmntech]

Nuclear is extremely expensive because of safety requirements and insurance on the waste. Morrons blame environmentalists for stopping American nuclear power, but it was really Reagan's deregulation of the energy industry that killed us nuclear

If that were the case, why isn't nuclear being built in places with highly regulated energy industries. Since the cold war ended, there's been an unwillingness to invest in big infrastructure projects in the West. Governments are afraid to spend on things people actually need, instead preferring to spend it on sexy pork projects.

Wind and solar are such projects. They appeal to the environmental crowd because they're 100% clean. Which is to say they don't generate waste. It doesn't mean they're the most ecological option, since they require huge tracts of land to generate usable energy. They're also inefficient since they're completely at the whim of nature. They can't vary output by demand, and it's impractical to store energy on that scale to make it possible. So they should be viewed as supplemental rather than an alternative source.

This is the mistake Ontario made after closing the coal plants. After building hundreds of windmills and small scale solar farms, and paying huge subsidies to landowners and manufacturers, it wasn't enough. So to offset the gap in demand, they had to build natural gas plants. Which sort of defeats the purpose of having renewable energy to begin with. Many of which were located too close to residential areas. By close, I mean less than 1km. The so called NIMBY's were 100% justified in their outrage. The FOMBY (force on MBY) crowed only backed down when they saw they were going to loose seats in the legislature, and thus their majority control. They spent $1 billion cancelling the half completed projects right before the election. Will be more once all the breach of contract lawsuits go through.

The point being that had the money wasted on renewable energy and the power plant scandal been put to building more reactors, far from the city, we wouldn't be in such a bind.

As for the environmentalists, statistics show that nuclear power is safer per unit of energy than all other conventional sources. Only wind and solar are safer because they require little maintenance. Environmentalists like to city Fukoshima and Chernobyl. What they like to leave out was Fukoshima was involved in an unprecedented earthquake, as well as disregard for safety. Which only snows the need for more stringent requirements. You don't ban cars because people are dying in crashes, you legislate and enforce mandatory seat belts. Since Japan shut down their reactors, there have been persistent energy shortages. As for Chernobyl, it was a perfect storm of Soviet disregard for safety. The plant lacked even the most basic reactor containment systems, and it was a disaster waiting to happen. Nuclear plants don't just blow up.

In the case waste, systems have been developed to bury it deep in old mine shafts far below the water table, or where radiation could leak out. Transport vessels are designed to withstand punishment far greater than what they'd ever encounter without leaking their contents. It's not like on the Simpsons with green ooze giving fish three eyes.

The only thing that's really holding nuclear back is baseless fear and junk science. With proper regulation and proper funding, it's the best energy source we have right now. Not to completely discount renewables. Though I think governments are better off retrofitting buildings than wasting it on massive green farms. It's practical to store collected energy on a small scale so it can be used on demand, to supplement mains electricity.

 

[AmdEmAll]

Water cooled nuclear power is not the best energy source we have right now.. proven by the posts above. I don't think people realize how bad Fukoshima was and still IS. Its leaking highly radioactive particles still into the atmosphere. It just isnt a risk that we should take anymore when there are other options, IE thorium.

http://energyfromthorium.com/thorium/

 

[rudeguy]

Water cooled nuclear power is not the best energy source we have right now.. proven by the posts above. I don't think people realize how bad Fukoshima was and still IS. Its leaking highly radioactive particles still into the atmosphere. It just isnt a risk that we should take anymore when there are other options, IE thorium.

http://energyfromthorium.com/thorium/

because it got hit by a fucking tsunami.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Nuclear definitely should replace all fossil fuel based generation. The risks associated (and even the potential disasters) are much much smaller than the damage fossiel fuel is constantly doing to the planet. Even if a Chernobyl happens every 50 years, it's less damage on the planet than all the CO/CO2 and other pollutants we keep pumping out. CO2 alone is not bad, as long as we conserve forests, but it's the fact that we are making so much of it, and NOT conserving the forests.

I see nuclear as a logical stepping stone towards fully renewable sources. Perhaps there needs to be tons more research put into wind, solar and perhaps other ways to make energy. But in the meantime, at least replace everything with nuclear, except for the existing renewable plants. Like up here it's all hydro electric so it's fully renewable and would not really need to be touched.

Come to think of it, just go straight to building more hydro plants. There are water streams pretty much everywhere. They do have a certain impact on nature, but not to the extent of all the greenhouse gases we create, and there are ways to mitigate those impacts such as having grates/screens on the intakes and having a small bypass stream for fish such as salmon to cross over.

 

[Red Squirrel]

because it got hit by a fucking tsunami.

Yeah people seem to forget that. That plant actually did fairly well to consider it's age, and what was thrown at it. Let's not forget the gulf oil spill and other much bigger disasters that are caused by the oil industry. People are so quick to say nuclear is bad for the environment, and oil isin't? There have been much more oil related disasters and even deaths, than nuclear.

 

[AmdEmAll]

Yeah people seem to forget that. That plant actually did fairly well to consider it's age, and what was thrown at it. Let's not forget the gulf oil spill and other much bigger disasters that are caused by the oil industry. People are so quick to say nuclear is bad for the environment, and oil isin't? There have been much more oil related disasters and even deaths, than nuclear.

I never said oil wasnt bad. Oil and coal are terrible. In fact I was all pro nuclear power before the Japan disaster and before I read about the alternatives. If you actually read the links I posted you would see that I am for nuclear power just a different source of nuclear fuel. Thorium Molten Salt Reactors are the future.

These type of reactors are not water cooled and therefore don't require being by a water source.. usually a river or ocean where there is a huge chance of flooding.

 

[Jeff7]

I never said oil wasnt bad. Oil and coal are terrible. In fact I was all pro nuclear power before the Japan disaster and before I read about the alternatives. If you actually read the links I posted you would see that I am for nuclear power just a different source of nuclear fuel. Thorium Molten Salt Reactors are the future.

These type of reactors are not water cooled and therefore don't require being by a water source.. usually a river or ocean where there is a huge chance of flooding.

The other end of that: When the engineers who designed this stuff say "Follow these procedures, don't do this and this, and retire the thing from service after X years," follow the damn instructions.
From the designer/specifier side, I hate that kind of thing.

- The designer states that Device will fail if Bad Activity is done.
- Bad Activity was done deliberately to save a few dollars. Device fails, and things happen.
- The designer still gets the blame.

Now, if Bad Activity can be easily prevented, then it's good to put in something to prevent it, particularly if it's potentially damaging to people or property.
A big paper slicer: "This will cut off your fingers if you put them here. So don't put your fingers here."

But you can't catch every possible stupid thing that people might do, partly because people are quite innovative when it comes to being stupid, and also because you don't want something like a pair of scissors to cost $375 because of all the safety features it needs to ensure that it will only cut the correct materials under any set of circumstances.


Some of the GenIV reactor ideas sound awesome, too: Impressively efficient, capable of refining and using existing waste (which still contains a lot of usable energy) for fuel, and passively safe. But they're quite a ways off.
Maybe by then, commercially viable nuclear fusion will....still be 50 years out. :\

 

[BladeVenom]

1. Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, but it was shut down by Obama.
2. Nuclear is safer than petroleum or coal.

 

[Fenixgoon]

The other end of that: When the engineers who designed this stuff say "Follow these procedures, don't do this and this, and retire the thing from service after X years," follow the damn instructions.
From the designer/specifier side, I hate that kind of thing.

- The designer states that Device will fail if Bad Activity is done.
- Bad Activity was done deliberately to save a few dollars. Device fails, and things happen.
- The designer still gets the blame.

Now, if Bad Activity can be easily prevented, then it's good to put in something to prevent it, particularly if it's potentially damaging to people or property.
A big paper slicer: "This will cut off your fingers if you put them here. So don't put your fingers here."

But you can't catch every possible stupid thing that people might do, partly because people are quite innovative when it comes to being stupid, and also because you don't want something like a pair of scissors to cost $375 because of all the safety features it needs to ensure that it will only cut the correct materials under any set of circumstances.


Some of the GenIV reactor ideas sound awesome, too: Impressively efficient, capable of refining and using existing waste (which still contains a lot of usable energy) for fuel, and passively safe. But they're quite a ways off.
Maybe by then, commercially viable nuclear fusion will....still be 50 years out. :\

the biggest irony is that keeping old plants in operation is more dangerous than decommissioning them and building new plants with improved designs. and yet we decide that we're not going to allow new plants to be built.

 

[preslove]

If that were the case, why isn't nuclear being built in places with highly regulated energy industries *followed by idiotic drivel*

Countries arranged by nuclear as share of electricity production

Country Megawatt capacity Nuclear share of electricity production
France France 63,130 77.1%
Belgium Belgium 5,927 54.0%
Slovakia Slovakia 1,816 54.0%
Ukraine Ukraine 13,107 47.2%
Hungary Hungary 1,889 43.3%
Slovenia Slovenia 688 41.7%
Switzerland 3,263 40.9%
Sweden Sweden 9,326 39.6%
South Korea 20,671 34.6%
Armenia Armenia 375 33.2%
Czech Republic 3,766 33.0%
Bulgaria Bulgaria 1,906 32.6%
Finland Finland 2,736 31.6%
Taiwan Taiwan 4,927 20.7%
Spain Spain 7,567 19.5%
United States 101,409 19.3%

The more socialist countries are at the top. When you actually PRICE THE REAL COST of nuclear power (insurance for waste that lasts for hundreds or thousands of years is fucking huge) is expensive as fuck. Natural gas is much cheaper, by comparison, especially because the USA has a huge amount of indigenous natural gas.


Reagan stopped the USA's nuclear industry, period. Nuclear only makes sense when there is a big central government willing to backstop the cost of the waste. It doesn't make sense in an unregulated, private market. If you're a tea party wingnut who loves nuclear power, you're just a fucking idiot with an incoherent worldview.

 

[unokitty]

When you actually PRICE THE REAL COST of nuclear power (insurance for waste that lasts for hundreds or thousands of years is fucking huge) is expensive as fuck. Natural gas is much cheaper, by comparison, especially because the USA has a huge amount of indigenous natural gas.


Reagan stopped the USA's nuclear industry, period. Nuclear only makes sense when there is a big central government willing to backstop the cost of the waste. It doesn't make sense in an unregulated, private market.....

Agreed. In effect, the nuclear industry couldn't deliver on its promise of cheap energy.

Ask yourself, what is the cost of storing nuclear waste for 50,000 years? Then ask yourself, how would your price the energy that such a plant produces?

Oh, and don't forget that there are no long term nuclear waste storage facilities in the US. Consequently, when your local nuclear plant reaches the ends of its productive life, you will then have an ipso facto local nuclear storage dump because you will never get the permits to move that waste anywhere.

Now, the companies that want to build nuclear plants are making new promises about new technologies. And not to offend them,or their legions of lobbyists, but they fooled us once with their promises already...

Uno

 

[rcpratt]

I think all the construction contracts are held up until Yucca Mountain finishes construction 😉

Construction is underway in South Carolina and Georgia, as well as many other places across the globe.

 

[Mixolydian]

There's 5 nuclear power plants in northern IL (one defunct). AFAIK there's never been any accidents. Seems to work just fine.