Why is nuclear power such an emotive issue?

[ProfJohn]

More people die per year in coal mining accidents than have died in the entire history of nuclear power plants.

 

[crystal]

what the crap, why bring in 9/11 into the discussion when the guy brought up the possibility a major natural disaster will cause a meltdown on one of this plant? Are you saying that is not possible because such an event is know in advance so the plants are build to withstand it? Or are you imply if a natural disaster able to cause a meltdown to a plant, then we have more things to worry about than a little meltdown.

 

[Xavier434]

I can understand debating over the emissions and the possibilities of the stuff falling into the wrong hands, but debating over the plants blowing up seems a bit silly at this point.

 

[ProfJohn]

Originally posted by: SlickSnake
No, I prefer my 911 shrouded in lies and deceit, like you do.

So I guess the Air Force was just struck dumb by all those commercial flights flying unscheduled zigzag courses all over the US even after one hit the WTC, huh? If they had bothered to scramble fighters after the first plane hit, chances are at least one WTC tower would still be standing.

Or here's a real stretch. Why not scramble fighters after they realize commercial planes are flying zigzags off course BEFORE they hit a building? Those fighters could have shot those planes down before they hit those buildings, if they scrambled them into the air after they realized 4 were off course.

And how about building 7 that just mysteriously collapsed after minimum fire damage? I guess they just don't build them like they used to. All that cheap illegal labor for construction has a higher price after all, huh?

Truth or not? Make up all the stupid excuses for it you want to, they are still whitewash stupid excuses.

Perhaps you should go read the 9-11 report.

It does a great job of explain why the AF did such a lousy job with the planes.

The short version: No one told the AF that there were missing planes. By time the military started doing stuff it was too late.

Furthermore, there was ONLY 15 minutes from when the first tower was hit till the second tower was hit.

 

[T9D]

Interesting read on nuclear accidents (scroll down a little bit)

http://www.lutins.org/nukes.html

 

[potato28]

Originally posted by: crystal
what the crap, why bring in 9/11 into the discussion when the guy brought up the possibility a major natural disaster will cause a meltdown on one of this plant? Are you saying that is not possible because such an event is know in advance so the plants are build to withstand it? Or are you imply if a natural disaster able to cause a meltdown to a plant, then we have more things to worry about than a little meltdown.

If you get a modern reactor design, it'll be designed not to meltdown. It will have different systems to reduce that chance to maybe, if a nuke went off inside the reactor building.

 

[Eeezee]

Originally posted by: Anubis

Originally posted by: Queasy

Originally posted by: techs
Simply put the potential for a cataclysmic disaster from a nuclear plant is so high and the failure of American business to adequately run nuke plants terrifies the hell out of me.
After all, we almost lost Detroit to a nuclear accident.

No. No we didn't. That accident happened in 1966 with an experimental reactor whose cooling system failed. Two fuel assemblies melted but there was no contamination.

American business has been running Nuclear Plants for 5 decades without a major incident. Three Mile Island is the closest but even that was a mild event with no contamination and no fatalities.

Today's technology is more than adequate to keep Nuclear Power safe. France provides 80% of their energy through nuclear. Other nations are building more plants now to meet their future energy needs.

yea france kicks ass on the Nuclear Power front, ive always woundered what do they do with the waste?


big issue in the country is the fucking tree humpers and their issues with waste disposial

Nuclear power generates almost no waste. It's the creation of nuclear weapons that has generated most of America's nuclear waste.

 

[SlickSnake]

Originally posted by: TheVrolok

Originally posted by: SlickSnake

Originally posted by: TheVrolok

Originally posted by: SlickSnake

Originally posted by: TheVrolok

Originally posted by: SlickSnake

The size of the tornado would be the key there. A tornado of a small F1 scale might do little damage. But wait until an F2 or greater hits it.

It was an F2

F2 is 113-157 mph and says "Considerable damage. Roofs torn off frame houses; mobile homes demolished; boxcars pushed over; large trees snapped or uprooted; light object missiles generated."

I kinda doubt it was an F2 and the reactor and out buildings supporting it like the control room was untouched. Sounds more like an F1 hit it, if it was REALLY a direct hit as claimed. Remember these ratings are only speculative and made after the tornado has struck. It might have been an F2 prior to hitting the reactor, but had diminished in strength before it actually hit it. Or it could have increased in strength after it hit. Either way they would still call it an F2.

Well, I guess since you doubt it, it mustn't be true. I suppose we could also just ignore the US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works Hearing on 11/2/05 when the NRC Chairman spoke. I'll quote some for you so you needn't visit the link:

Over the years, U.S. nuclear power plants have experienced direct impacts of severe natural phenomena, and their robust design and construction have enabled them to successfully withstand such events. Some of the events experienced within the past 15 years include: Hurricane Andrew, a Category 4 hurricane, which passed directly over the Turkey Point nuclear power plant with sustained wind speeds of 145 miles per hour and gusts up to 175 miles per hour (August 1992); the Cooper Nuclear Station, which experienced flooding onsite from the Missouri River (July 1993); a Fujita Tornado Damage Scale F2 tornado, which directly hit the Davis Besse Nuclear Power Station, with winds of 113 to 157 miles per hour (June 1998); and, the Diablo Canyon Power Plant, which felt the shock from a Magnitude 6.5 San Simeon earthquake in Paso Robles, California (December 2003). In all these cases, the nuclear power plant functioned as they were designed, and adequate protection was maintained during and after the event.

Oh, I left some extra information in there about other issues at other plants. I guess though, since it was discussed in front of a US Senate committee and spoken by the NRC chairman, it's all bullshit and lies?

Text

I didn't say it was all bullshit and lies, now did I? And I'm somehow the troll for defending an opinion?

Thanks for playing forum nanny, though.

Every single nuclear plant is designed differently. Those designs take into account geographic situations, which is part of the reason for this modified design. Therefore, what might fail in one plant due to external forces, may not fail in another plant due to wind, storm or seismic damage.

That is not to say that those designs are completely foolproof, and obviously in TMI they were not. But there in lies the fact of the matter. All you need to do is add in a few fools who fail to maintain a system, or manually override it, and you don't even need a natural disaster to occur.

So far the USA has been extremely lucky as far as nuclear power goes. And your quote only emphasizes that fact, not diminishes it. And that is pretty much all there is to say about it, until a disaster happens.

Defending an opinion with unbased facts/conjuncture does can indeed make you a troll. TMI is PROOF that the unexpected gets accounted for in safety precautions/procedures. TMI suffered a partial meltdown and all necessary safety precautions shut the plant down and prevented anything remotely serious. The leak was contained, and there were no people killed. It's interesting that you attribute the safety of the NPPs in this country to LUCK, instead of proper procedure. Arguing that NPPs are unsafe if you have "fools" working who fail to do their jobs is a fallacy. That's like arguing that cars might as well be outlawed because there are terrible drivers.

Yes, nanny dear, whatever you say.

Some people just enjoy rubbing others noses in their self righteous opinions all while ignoring the obvious fact they are also acting like a whiny little spoiled brat about it in the process.

Originally posted by: TheVrolok

You guys need to stop feeding the troll; he's obviously too busy reading The National Inquirer to take off his tin foil hat.

My opinion is no more invalid after your initial thread crap towards me than it was before hand. And on top of that, I don't give a crap what you or any other pro nuclear power thread troll here thinks about my opinion about nuclear power.

Obviously people feel strongly about it, which explains why the thread topic is titled like it is. And the facts about nuclear power safety are about as factual as the people who try to sell you on nuclear power want them to be, like it or not. Just like the drug companies will claim a drug is safe and it won't kill you, that is until enough people die from it that they have to pull it from the market.

 

[Eeezee]

Originally posted by: Modelworks
I live near a reactor. It has been there for the last 20 years. The issue I have with reactors is waste and transporting that waste. Even if you recycle it, 200 years is a very long time to have to store something. I do not think nuclear fission is the solution, fusion maybe. I think that geothermal would be a much better option overall.

Put it deep under a mountain in a desert that already has almost no living life. Oh wait, we're trying to do that, but for some reason environmentalists hate that idea... wtf? Where else are we going to put the waste?

 

[ElFenix]

Control your nested quotes.


ATOT Moderator ElFenix

 

[Zenmervolt]

Originally posted by: SlickSnake

Originally posted by: TheVrolok

Originally posted by: SlickSnake

The size of the tornado would be the key there. A tornado of a small F1 scale might do little damage. But wait until an F2 or greater hits it.

It was an F2

F2 is 113-157 mph and says "Considerable damage. Roofs torn off frame houses; mobile homes demolished; boxcars pushed over; large trees snapped or uprooted; light object missiles generated."

I kinda doubt it was an F2 and the reactor and out buildings supporting it like the control room was untouched. Sounds more like an F1 hit it, if it was REALLY a direct hit as claimed. Remember these ratings are only speculative and made after the tornado has struck. It might have been an F2 prior to hitting the reactor, but had diminished in strength before it actually hit it. Or it could have increased in strength after it hit. Either way they would still call it an F2.

Senate report states F2 tornado and that it was a direct hit on Davis-Besse.

Link.

a Fujita Tornado Damage Scale F2 tornado, which directly hit the Davis Besse Nuclear Power Station, with winds of 113 to 157 miles per hour (June 1998)

The switchyard was damaged and all external power was severed. Both the turbine building and the administrative building had their roofs torn off, with extensive flood damage to the second floor of the administrative building. The reactor shut down automatically and diesel backup generators maintained power to safety systems as designed.

You're out of straws to grasp at.

ZV

 

[alkemyst]

besides the point that WHAT IF the F2 just went through a freaking neighborhood. Not much difference in the end results.

 

[frostedflakes]

Originally posted by: SlickSnake

Originally posted by: TheVrolok

Originally posted by: SlickSnake

The size of the tornado would be the key there. A tornado of a small F1 scale might do little damage. But wait until an F2 or greater hits it.

It was an F2

F2 is 113-157 mph and says "Considerable damage. Roofs torn off frame houses; mobile homes demolished; boxcars pushed over; large trees snapped or uprooted; light object missiles generated."

I kinda doubt it was an F2 and the reactor and out buildings supporting it like the control room was untouched. Sounds more like an F1 hit it, if it was REALLY a direct hit as claimed. Remember these ratings are only speculative and made after the tornado has struck. It might have been an F2 prior to hitting the reactor, but had diminished in strength before it actually hit it. Or it could have increased in strength after it hit. Either way they would still call it an F2.

What kind of force is nature would it take to destroy a reactor's containment structure? Those things are tough as hell, IIRC it's 10 ft thick steel-reinforced concrete.

Also, the risk of meltdown in a modern design is extremely small due to passive safety systems, which don't rely on humans or electronic circuits to slow down the reaction. And in the unlikely event that meltdown does occur, the containment structure would prevent fallout, as was the case with TMI.

 

[BudAshes]

You guys are missing another big deal with nuclear power plants. They produce an incredible amount of heat waste that requires huge amounts of water to cool down.

 

[Eeezee]

SlickSnake, how can you even compare drug companies to nuclear power?

Let's examine why that comparison is stupid.

1) Drug Companies often conduct very limited human trials, and in most cases they have no idea what the drug could do. Frankly, the human body is very poorly understood. If we could design drugs to do exactly what we want without side effects, we would. Unfortunately, we just don't have that capability yet.

2) Nuclear energy is based on nuclear physics. Nuclear physics, as far as fission power is concerned, is COMPLETE. We know exactly what is going on, exactly how to prevent meltdowns under any circumstance, and exactly how to design an efficient nuclear power station that can withstand not only internal malfunctions, but external disasters as well (natural or otherwise). We know how to effectively remove and store waste so that it will be harmless within a few hundred years, and significant scientific research is being conducted to reduce this number even further.

The two are incomparable. Our understanding of one subject (nuclear power) is vastly superior to our understanding of the other.

In the meantime, while we sit on our hands, our old nuclear power plants are still running! They are much less efficient! They use much more fuel and produce much more waste of a far more dangerous quality than modern nuclear power designs would permit!

There is literally NO reason for us to prevent the construction of new nuclear power plants. In the meantime, we're building more coal power plants. WTF? How can so many people in this country be so damn STUPID?

 

[miri]

Nuclear power plants alone produce 2000 tons of spent fuel rods a year. These rods need long term storage. Not only that but moving these rods over any distance is dangerous, especially considering most of the nuclear powerplants are in the eastern part of the country and most of the suitable areas for longer term storage are in the western part of the country.

2000 tons of spent fuel rods a year is a lot of transporting you need to do without a accident.

Most of the spent fuel rods are in their temporary storage facilities in the nuclear power plants. There are like 50 years of spent rods that need to be moved and have not been moved yet because of debate over long term storage. 50 years of spent rods is about 200 million pounds that has not been moved yet from its temporary storage.

 

[Turin39789]

I never understood why we don't just launch our nuclear waste into the sun, along with all of our daytime tv talk show hosts and pork rinds.

 

[Anubis]

Originally posted by: Turin39789
I never understood why we don't just launch our nuclear waste into the sun, along with all of our daytime tv talk show hosts and pork rinds.

well rockets can malfunction and shower us with sweet sweet radioactive waste


also costs way too much

 

[Eeezee]

Originally posted by: BudAshes
You guys are missing another big deal with nuclear power plants. They produce an incredible amount of heat waste that requires huge amounts of water to cool down.

Water is a renewable resource. I'm really not too worried about this; at worst, a few saline plants on the coast can be powered by nuclear power and would provide enough fresh cooling water to keep the plant running indefinitely.

Or you can use synthetic coolant. Whatever

Furthermore, the number of coal power plants required to produce the same amount of electricity are going to produce a lot more heat. I'd be willing to bet that nuclear power produces less heat than coal for the same electrical output (or at least a similar amount).

 

[Anubis]

Originally posted by: Eeezee

Originally posted by: BudAshes
You guys are missing another big deal with nuclear power plants. They produce an incredible amount of heat waste that requires huge amounts of water to cool down.

Water is a renewable resource. I'm really not too worried about this; at worst, a few saline plants on the coast can be powered by nuclear power and would provide enough fresh cooling water to keep the plant running indefinitely.

Or you can use synthetic coolant. Whatever

Furthermore, the number of coal power plants required to produce the same amount of electricity are going to produce a lot more heat. I'd be willing to bet that nuclear power produces less heat than coal for the same electrical output (or at least a similar amount).

theres also some statictic that coal power plants actually give off more radiation then Nucl ones do (not counting spent fuel rods)

 

[SlickSnake]

Originally posted by: Zenmervolt

Originally posted by: SlickSnake

Originally posted by: TheVrolok

Originally posted by: SlickSnake

The size of the tornado would be the key there. A tornado of a small F1 scale might do little damage. But wait until an F2 or greater hits it.

It was an F2

F2 is 113-157 mph and says "Considerable damage. Roofs torn off frame houses; mobile homes demolished; boxcars pushed over; large trees snapped or uprooted; light object missiles generated."

I kinda doubt it was an F2 and the reactor and out buildings supporting it like the control room was untouched. Sounds more like an F1 hit it, if it was REALLY a direct hit as claimed. Remember these ratings are only speculative and made after the tornado has struck. It might have been an F2 prior to hitting the reactor, but had diminished in strength before it actually hit it. Or it could have increased in strength after it hit. Either way they would still call it an F2.

Senate report states F2 tornado and that it was a direct hit on Davis-Besse.

Link.

a Fujita Tornado Damage Scale F2 tornado, which directly hit the Davis Besse Nuclear Power Station, with winds of 113 to 157 miles per hour (June 1998)

The switchyard was damaged and all external power was severed. Both the turbine building and the administrative building had their roofs torn off, with extensive flood damage to the second floor of the administrative building. The reactor shut down automatically and diesel backup generators maintained power to safety systems as designed.

You're out of straws to grasp at.

ZV

And if those diesel backup generators failed or were flooded, what then? Unless they restored power to it very quickly. And if power lines are down for miles from a tornado, you have no power. And if the main emergency shutdown safety systems were damaged or failed, the power would not have mattered, would it? I'm hardly grasping at straws here. And if they had to make major repairs to the cooling system or other safety systems controlling the rods, could they have been made in time using only robotics? I pretty much doubt it. And you won't find many volunteers to run through the radioactive areas to make emergency rod mechanism repairs manually and die as a result of extreme radiation exposures, either. All the automated safety stuff is just great, until its no longer working. And even redundancy is no guarantee of no failures in some natural disaster, either. If both redundant safety systems go down, that's it.

 

[crystal]

Originally posted by: potato28

Originally posted by: crystal
what the crap, why bring in 9/11 into the discussion when the guy brought up the possibility a major natural disaster will cause a meltdown on one of this plant? Are you saying that is not possible because such an event is know in advance so the plants are build to withstand it? Or are you imply if a natural disaster able to cause a meltdown to a plant, then we have more things to worry about than a little meltdown.

If you get a modern reactor design, it'll be designed not to meltdown. It will have different systems to reduce that chance to maybe, if a nuke went off inside the reactor building.

Wouldn't he be better to state this than pull the 9/11 crap.

BTW, no design is 100% sure proof.

 

[Sho'Nuff]

Originally posted by: dug777
Which is fine, but if you really cared you'd understand how Chernobyl happened, at least on a basic level, and why it's not hard to prevent that happening again...

A relatively large number of yanks, europeans and japanese co-exist with reactors every day, and haven't blow up recently...

People associate the word "nuclear" with major disasters like chernobyl, hiroshima, and three-mile island. They don't care how the event happened, just that it did, and it had to do with nuclear.

I also agree with another poster who said that people fear nuclear because they are ignorant about it. Much of that ignorance is fueled by inaccurate information supplied by the media. For example, most people think that plutonium is some incredibly dangerous substance that will explode at the drop of a hat. In fact, plutonium is an alpha emitter that you can hold in your hand without issue (I know, I have done so). Now, if you put plutonium next to some form of matter with a lot of C-C bonds, that is another story. In that case the alphas emitted by the plutonium will interact with the C-C bonds, ultimately resulting in the production of a crapload (easily 10e9 or more) neutrons per cm2. Neutrons aren't terrible for you, but even I wouldn't want to be exposed to that many of them, even for a second.

Also, it is a little known fact that the beaches of brazil have a high natural concentration of radioactive thorium (a gamma emitter). As a result, the areas around those beaches have a level of backgroun radiation that is many times higher than the rest of the earth. However, studies have not been able to conclusively show that the cancer rate in those areas is any higher than the rest of the globe.

 

[WolverineGator]

Originally posted by: Capt Caveman
Enjoy that plummeting property value. And being forced to evacuate your home whenever there is an incident or when they perform a drill.

Originally posted by: Queasy
It's honestly more political than monetary. The best solution for the waste would be to reprocess the spent fuel rods.

Originally posted by: BudAshes
You guys are missing another big deal with nuclear power plants. They produce an incredible amount of heat waste that requires huge amounts of water to cool down.

These guys have it right. It is about politics and Not-In-My-Back-Yard. Also, the energy it takes to build a nuclear power plant is equivalent to running that power plant nonstop for 10-15 years (from NPR last month)! Don't discount the water scarcity issue for landlocked Western states.

Also consider the huge subsidies, taxpayer money, and incentives (free land, tax credits) involved. I'd like to see alternatives pursued with as much vigor as nuclear (including inmates on energy-generating stationary bicycles!).

 

[l0cke]

Okay here's my idea, we put all of the reactors in the ghetto so when they blow up nobody cares