Why is nuclear power such an emotive issue?

[Queasy]

Originally posted by: Elstupido
I am a huge fan of nuke plants, the only real downfall is what to do with the waste, as has been said before. Solve that problem and we are golden.

Hydro is really something that we should use more of. Nothing at all wrong with dams, mankind has been building dams from the very beginning, and the earth hasn't destroyed itself from it.

We've dammed just about all the rivers in the USA that are worth being dammable from my understanding. Dammit.

 

[BrownTown]

I think one important thing to point out is that a "meltdown" isn't necessarily a total catastrophe, the whole point of the containment building is to CONTAIN any radiation that might by a catastrophic failure. The newer plants are even better, if the plant is melting down you can literally just walk away and it will keep itself safe for 3 days without having to do a damn thing.

 

[Mark R]

Originally posted by: SlickSnake

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.

That's why plants have specific design parameters - specific levels of natural disaster that they can withstand. Wind, flooding, earthquake, etc. Critical components are protected from natural phenomena with estimated '1000 year' severity - or more depending on the specific project.

E.g. plants may be built at elevations above the surrounding land - to protect from maximum plausible flood. Safety critical areas are built from extremely heavy, seismic rated concrete, designed to protect from natural and artifical damage (including explosives and projectile attack).

Failure is protected against by redundancy in both number and type. E.g. A typical plant may have 4 diesel generators - and it's normal practice to source the generators from at least 2 different manufacturers (or at least use 2 different models, with substantially different designs), with redundant fuel bunkers, supplied by different suppliers (to protect against incorrect fuel being delivered - unlikely, but it has happened and caused generator failure).

It's unlikely that the primary shutdown system would fail completely - in PWR or BWR the primary mechanism is control rods, each has its own drive - so in the event of an electrical or mechanical failure, it's unikely that anything more than a handful of rods would be compromised. Don't forget the secondary shutdown systems either - usually, pressure injectors that flood the reactor with boron or gadolinium solutions (which are liquid control agents). Unlike control rods, these systems don't need AC power. (Pressurize the solution tank with compressed air. All that needs to happen is to open the valve - they even make 'electro-explosive' valves which can be detonated by battery power. No need for complex UPSs, generators, etc. Press the switch, value is instantly opened by the force of the explosive charge).

Granted, some reactor designs are dependent on pumped coolant circulation after shutdown. However, several more recent designs can be gravity cooled - whereby the natural tendency of hot water to rise and cool to sink is sufficient to remove decay heat from the reactor core (designs vary, but a typical feature is 72 hours of passive cooling before water tanks need to be topped up - hopefully, that should be enough time to arrange portable generators, if something knocked out the existing quadruple redundant systems).

Even in the worst case where the reactor melts down, there is a containment building - which worked quite well in the case of TMI. Newer designs have improved on the containment structure, and have also added meltdown mitigation systems to the building. E.g. At Chornobyl, the molten core actually melted through the bottom of the reactor vessel, and then through the floor of the reactor building and into the tanks and structures below. The more modern designs include mitigation for this, with 'core catchers' that are designed to catch molten core, spread it out so any reaction is halted, and chill it to solidify it and prevent any further progress.

 

[BoomerD]

Originally posted by: Jeff7

Originally posted by: BoomerD
Godzirra? GODZIRRA!!

IIRC, that's what the nuke plant at San Onofre and Diablo Canyon do. At San Onofre, local surfers say the water is a few degrees warmer than the surrounding water, and is blamed for a host of marine environmental problems, including the near total wipeout of the local kelp forest. SoCalEdison is building an artificial reef off San Clemente, designed to help offset the environmental damage done by the hot water discharged by their San Onofre plant.

"The San Onofre nuclear plant is "the most destructive marine industrial facility ever built," said Mark Massara, statewide director of the Sierra Club's coastal programs. The 2,200-megawatt plant is the region's largest power source, serving as many as 1.5 million households at any time.

"This reef is really just the tip of the iceberg in terms of trying to restore the marine resources that this plant had destroyed," Massara said. "My only regret is that they're not doing a lot more."

....

That sounds like poor thermal engineering. They should have been able to calculate the increases in temperature, based on the outgoing temperature of the coolant, vs water flow in the area.

The two power plants at San Onofre draw about about 1.6 million gallon per minute from the ocean...that's tough to engineer so there's no impact.

BTW, for youse in SoCal...

http://articles.latimes.com/20...local/me-radioactive18

"Radioactive, cancer-causing tritium has leaked into the groundwater beneath the San Onofre nuclear power plant, prompting the closure of one drinking-water well in southern Orange County, authorities said."

"San Onofre has extracted more than 10,000 gallons of the contaminated groundwater and piped it into the Pacific about 8,600 feet offshore, where it is instantly diluted in seawater, Golden said.

Since groundwater will continue to seep into the contaminated area, plant officials will continue removing contaminated water and discharging it into the ocean until they can remove all traces of the contamination."

 

[GooeyGUI]

Nobody is even going to see this so it will remain in obscurity,

Windscale reactor accident. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windscale_fire

Combined with TMI and Chernobyl the real dangers seem to be from airborne contamination.

TMI emitted large clouds of Iodine 131 which has a half-life of 8 days. Pregnant women were asked to stay indoors for several days. The fires at Chernobyl raged for days.

The Windscale accident

Ignition

On October 7, 1957, operators began an annealing cycle for Windscale Pile no. 1 by switching the cooling fans to low power and stabilizing the reactor at low power. The next day, to carry out the annealing, the operators increased the power to the reactor. When it appeared that the annealing process was taking place, control rods were lowered back into the core to shut down the reactor, but it soon became apparent that the Wigner energy release was not spreading through the core, but dwindling prematurely. The operators withdrew the control rods again to apply a second nuclear heating and complete the annealing process. Because some thermocouples were not in the hottest parts of the core, the operators were not aware that some areas were considerably hotter than others. This, and the second heating are suspected to be the deciding factors behind the fire, although the precise cause remains unknown. The official report suggests that a can of uranium ruptured and oxidised causing further overheating and the fire, but a more recent report suggests that it may actually have been a magnesium/lithium isotope cartridge. All that was visible on the instruments was a gentle increase in temperature, which was to be expected during the Wigner release.

Early in the morning on October 10, it was suspected that something unusual was going on. The temperature in the core was supposed to gradually fall as Wigner release ended, but the monitoring equipment showed something more ambiguous was going on and one thermocouple indicated that core temperature was instead rising. In an effort to help cool the pile, more air was pumped through the core. This lifted radioactive materials up the chimney and into the filter galleries. It was then that workers in the control room realised that the radiation monitoring devices which measured activity at the top of the discharge stack were at full scale reading. In accordance with written guidlines, the foreman declared a site emergency. No one at Windscale was now in any doubt that Pile Number 1 was in serious trouble.

The fire

Operators tried to examine the pile with a remote scanner but it had jammed. Tom Hughes, second in command to the Reactor Manager, suggested examining the reactor personally and so he and another operator went to the charge face of the reactor, clad in protective gear. A fuel channel inspection plug was taken out close to a thermocouple registering high temperatures and it was then that the operators saw that the fuel was red hot.

"An inspection plug was taken out," said Tom Hughes in a later interview, "and we saw, to our complete horror, four channels of fuel glowing bright cherry red."

There was no doubt that the reactor was now on fire, and had been for almost 48 hours. Reactor Manager Tom Tuohy [3] donned full protective equipment and breathing apparatus and scaled the 80 feet to the top of the reactor building, where he stood atop the reactor lid to examine the rear of the reactor, the discharge face. Here he reported a dull red luminescence visible, lighting up the void between the back of the reactor and the rear containment. Red hot fuel cartridges were glowing in the fuel channels on the discharge face. He returned to the reactor upper containment several times throughout the incident, at the height of which a fierce conflagration was raging from the discharge face and playing on the back of the reinforced concrete containment?concrete whose specifications insisted that it must be kept below a certain temperature to prevent its disintegration and collapse.[4]

Initial fire fighting attempts

Operators were unsure what to do about the fire. First, they tried to blow the flames out by putting the blowers onto full power and increasing the cooling, but predictably this simply fanned the flames. Tom Hughes and his colleague had already created a fire break by ejecting some undamaged fuel cartridges from around the blaze and Tom Tuohy suggested trying to eject some from the heart of the fire, by bludgeoning them through the reactor and into the cooling pond behind it with scaffolding poles. This proved impossible and the fuel rods refused to budge, no matter how much force was applied. The poles were withdrawn with their ends red hot and, once, a pole was returned red hot and dripping with molten metal. Hughes knew this had to be molten irradiated uranium and this caused serious radiation problems on the charge hoist itself.

"It [the exposed fuel channel] was white hot," said Hughes' colleague on the charge hoist with him, "it was just white hot. Nobody, I mean, nobody, can believe how hot it could possibly be."

Carbon dioxide

Next, the operators tried to extinguish the fire using carbon dioxide. The new gas-cooled Calder Hall reactors next door had just received a delivery of 25 tonnes of liquid carbon dioxide and this was rigged up to the charge face of Windscale Pile 1, but there were problems getting it to the fire in useful quantities. The fire was so hot that it stripped the oxygen from what carbon dioxide could be applied. The additional oxygen just supported the fire.

"So we got this rigged up," Hughes recounted mockingly in interview, "and we had this poor little tube of carbon dioxide and I had absolutely no hope it was going to work."

The use of water

On the morning of Friday October 11 and at its peak, 11 tonnes of uranium were ablaze. Temperatures were becoming extreme (one thermocouple registered 1,300 degrees Celsius) and the biological containment around the stricken reactor was now in severe danger of collapse. Faced with this crisis, the operators decided to use water. This was incredibly risky: molten metal oxidises in contact with water, stripping oxygen from the water molecules and leaving free hydrogen, which could mix with incoming air and explode, tearing open the weakened containment. But there was no other choice. About a dozen hoses were hauled to the charge face of the reactor; their nozzles were cut off and the lines themselves connected to scaffolding poles and fed into fuel channels about a meter above the heart of the fire.

Tom Tuohy then ordered everyone out of the reactor building except himself and the Fire Chief. All cooling and ventilating air entering the reactor was shut off. Tuohy once again hauled himself atop the reactor shielding and ordered the water to be turned on, listening carefully at the inspection holes for any sign of a hydrogen reaction as the pressure was increased. Tuohy climbed up several times and reported watching the flames leaping from the discharge face slowly dying away. During one of the inspections, Tuohy found that the inspection plates?which are removed with a metal hook to facilitate viewing of the discharge face of the core?were stuck fast. This, Tuohy reported, was the fire trying to suck air in from wherever it could.

"I have no doubt it was even sucking air in through the chimney at this point to try and maintain itself," he remarked in interview.

Finally he managed to pull the inspection plate away and was greeted with the unfathomable sight of the fire dying away.

"First the flames went, then the flames reduced and the glow began to die down," he described, "I went up to check several times until I was satisfied that the fire was out. I did stand to one side, sort of hopefully," he went on to say, "but if you're staring straight at the core of a shut down reactor you're going to get quite a bit of radiation."

Water was kept flowing through the pile for a further 24 hours until it was completely cold.

The aftermath

Damage caused

The fire itself released an estimated 700 terabecquerels (20,000 curies) of radioactive material into the nearby countryside, although recent reworking of contamination data has shown national and international contamination to have been much higher than previously estimated.[5] Of particular concern at the time was the radioactive isotope iodine-131, which has a half-life of only 8 days but is taken up by the human body and stored in the thyroid. As a result, consumption of iodine-131 often leads to cancer of the thyroid. It had previously been estimated that the incident caused 200 additional cancer cases, although this figure has recently been revised upwards to 240.[5]

No one was evacuated from the surrounding area, but there was concern that milk might be dangerously contaminated. Milk from about 500km² of nearby countryside was destroyed (diluted a thousandfold and dumped in the Irish Sea) for about a month.

There is evidence to suggest, however, that the official Meteorological records may have been altered in an attempt to cover up the fact that, throughout the radiation leak, the wind was blowing out to sea, significantly increasing the contamination dose to Ireland and the Isle of Man. [6]

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: BoomerD
The two power plants at San Onofre draw about about 1.6 million gallon per minute from the ocean...that's tough to engineer so there's no impact.

BTW, for youse in SoCal...

http://articles.latimes.com/20...local/me-radioactive18

"Radioactive, cancer-causing tritium has leaked into the groundwater beneath the San Onofre nuclear power plant, prompting the closure of one drinking-water well in southern Orange County, authorities said."

"San Onofre has extracted more than 10,000 gallons of the contaminated groundwater and piped it into the Pacific about 8,600 feet offshore, where it is instantly diluted in seawater, Golden said.

Since groundwater will continue to seep into the contaminated area, plant officials will continue removing contaminated water and discharging it into the ocean until they can remove all traces of the contamination."

Bah, it's all just numbers.
1.6 gallons or 1.6 million, big numbers fit into calculators as easily as small ones.
I'd expect even better results with the immense computing power we now have available.

 

[Turin39789]

Originally posted by: 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

how much does it cost to bury it under a mountain and monitor it for 500,000 years?

 

[BrownTown]

Another thing people need to realize is that tritium isn't exactly some horrible poison, they use it in things like gun sights and fire exit signs etc. For example my brother has a chemistry degree and they use tritium in chemistry experiments because its easy to follow (do to the energy betas that cant even penetrate your skin). The leaks being mentioned release amounts of tritium that have the same cancer causing ability as the second hand smoke from a few cigarettes. IF you are so scared of cancer then we would have to outlaw half the chemicals we use in our everyday lives.

EDIT: as for tornadoes and other accidents, nuclear plants are evaluated against design basis accidents one of which is tornadoes. And it really isn't credible that a tornado would destroy the diesel generator buildigns which are made of concrete more than a foot thick, or the reactor building which is more like 3 feet thick concrete + 8 inches of steel. I mean you would wreck the shit out of the switch yard, and maybe even mess up the roof of the turbine building, but its not gonna get to the reactor.

 

[GooeyGUI]

Originally posted by: BrownTown
Another thing people need to realize is that tritium isn't exactly some horrible poison, they use it in things like gun sights and fire exit signs etc. For example my brother has a chemistry degree and they use tritium in chemistry experiments because its easy to follow (do to the energy betas that cant even penetrate your skin). The leaks being mentioned release amounts of tritium that have the same cancer causing ability as the second hand smoke from a few cigarettes. IF you are so scared of cancer then we would have to outlaw half the chemicals we use in our everyday lives.

Tritium is a beta minus emitter. The ability of it to go deeper than a few layers of skin skin is very limited. However, internal exposure is a very different matter. They can kill tens of thousands of cells. What's worse is that they damage many cells that can mutate into cancer.

A small dose (one time) is not very harmful, but continued consumption would be far more cancer causing than smoking. Admiral Rickover, who is the father of the US nuclear navy, once drank a small amount in front of a safety board to prove that a small amount is possible.

Limits that are measured by dosimeters may not tell the whole story. To really know how much you have been exposed to it would be necessary to submit urine samples within a few hours of exposure. Tritium half-life is 12.3 years.

 

[Xavier434]

Originally posted by: IGBT

Originally posted by: elmer92413
Because people are ignorant, not stupid, but ignorant.
And until we take the time to properly educate people we will always have this problem not just with this but in many things in life.

..beyond that, eco-theists are against anything that expands human development. they also loath hydro-electric for the same reason..save the fish excuses. eco-theists will use alarmist seculation supported by willing accomplices in the media to forward their KOOK ideology and dictate lifestyle.

Just remember that for every Yin there is a Yang. Those who almost completely ignore the environment when making these kinds of decisions are just as bad as the radical eco-theists...just in their own way. I'm not saying this to promote some kind of anti-nuclear cause. It's just something to consider. In general, I believe humanity will set it's course in the right direction if all careless extremists are simply ignored regardless of which side of the spectrum happens to be more popular this year.

 

[manowar821]

I know, right? Especially how people can't seem to understand that we're going to run out of the material pretty quick.

 

[K1052]

Originally posted by: manowar821
I know, right? Especially how people can't seem to understand that we're going to run out of the material pretty quick.

If by "pretty quick" you mean a few hundred years...

 

[SlickSnake]

Originally posted by: Xavier434

Originally posted by: LtPage1
Reactors are very safe, they make zero economic sense, and there is no solution (nor is there an idea for a solution) to deal with the waste that's remotely workable.

/thread. Do a little research before shouting down anyone who understands nuclear power as a crazy NIMBY-nik.

You actually brought up something which I am not familiar with. That is, how much does it cost to maintain these plants as opposed to what we are spending on our other plants such as coal? Are we going to see any big increases in expense that we will each need to pay our part for? I realize it will cost a lot of money to build them, but that is not what I am referring to. Does anyone know and have sources to site with reliable info?

How about this rising expense from my link above

For example, only a few years ago uranium inventories were being sold at $10 per pound; the current price is $85 per pound.

Just what we need, more nuke plants and an even more unpredictable priced fuel source that will skyrocket in price like petroleum. And this rising fuel expense on top of very high construction and maintenance fees, then disposal fees? Burning coal and properly scrubbing the smoke for pollutants is FAR more cost effective. By a factor of 10 or more. Plus, it's a lot more stable price wise. I hate to break this news to the tree huggers who want nuclear, but there it is. You want power you can afford to use, otherwise, what's the point of it?

 

[potato28]

Here's Canada's nuclear power history. Anything major? Hmm.... nooo...

 

[ElFenix]

Originally posted by: SlickSnake
Just what we need, more nuke plants and an even more unpredictable priced fuel source that will skyrocket in price like petroleum. And this rising fuel expense on top of very high construction and maintenance fees, then disposal fees? Burning coal and properly scrubbing the smoke for pollutants is FAR more cost effective. By a factor of 10 or more. Plus, it's a lot more stable price wise. I hate to break this news to the tree huggers who want nuclear, but there it is. You want power you can afford to use, otherwise, what's the point of it?

the price of nuclear fuel is nothing in comparison to the rest of the cost.

 

[So]

Originally posted by: SlickSnake

Originally posted by: 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?

I am comparing how they juggle the facts to support what they are selling, not comparing the 2 LITERALLY. I thought that was obvious.

And there is a finite amount of both coal and uranium. In fact there is a lot more coal than uranium to be had for power uses. We have hundreds of years of coal we can use. Uranium, not so much. And not only that, there is currently a supply shortage, to boot.

Lack of fuel may limit U.S. nuclear power expansion

And this tidbit stating we will be out of uranium by 2016 with the current rate of consumption.

No leading-role for nuclear power in preventing the greenhouse effect

"According to the April 1992 report "Perspektiven der Brüter-technik" ("Perspectives of the Breeder Technology") from the Nuclear research center at Karlsruhe (Germany), the uranium resources world-wide were estimated to be 6.4 million tonnes. This is about 2,880 EJ energy. To compare: the estimate for resources of fossil fuels is at 35,700 EJ (4,800 EJ natural gas, 5,700 EJ oil and 25,200 EJ coal). A 1,000 Megawatt light water reactor annual needs 180 tonnes uranium: with a 70% scenario, there is a need for 4.4 million tonnes of uranium until the year 2010. From 2010 on there is the need -- when the nuclear capacity is stabilized at 70% -- for an annual 0.43 million tonnes. The now known resources will be exhausted in the year 2016. In that year the contribution of nuclear power in slowing down the CO2 emissions will have risen up to 35%, in comparison with the 4% in the IAEA assumed scenario. The contribution will go down to zero, unless new uranium resources are found and exploited, or a large system with breeder reactors and a fitting infrastructure of reprocessing factories and so on is established within 20 years."

So this pretty much puts this nuclear power debate to bed, don't you think? Why build new reactors, if the fuels running out?

Your claim is patently false. http://neinuclearnotes.blogspo...at-uranium-supply.html

the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) estimated world uranium resources in 2003 to be 3,537,000 metric tons, an amount adequate to fuel conventional reactors for approximately 50 years. The IAEA further estimated all conventional uranium resources to be 14.4 million metric tons, an amount which would cover over 200 years'? supply at current rates of consumption.

Importantly, these forecasts do not include non-conventional sources of uranium, such as those contained in phosphates or in seawater, which are currently not economic to extract but represent a near limitless supply of uranium to meet increased demand. Clearly, there are very adequate uranium (and thorium) resources to fuel the world's expanding nuclear fleet.

Of greater concern, however, is a general failure to recognize how applications of human ingenuity and technology have enhanced the world'?s supply of uranium. Higher capacity factors and reactor power levels, higher operating efficiencies, reprocessing of used nuclear fuel and development of new reactor designs are just a few examples of technological and operating improvements.

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

The world's present measured resources of uranium, economically recoverable at a price of 130 USD/kg, are enough to last for "at least a century" at current consumption rates.[38][39] This represents a higher level of assured resources than is normal for most minerals. On the basis of analogies with other metallic minerals, a doubling of price from present levels could be expected to create about a tenfold increase in measured resources, over time. The fuel's contribution to the overall cost of the electricity produced is relatively small, so even a large fuel price escalation will have relatively little effect on final price. For instance, typically a doubling of the uranium market price would increase the fuel cost for a light water reactor by 26% and the electricity cost about 7%, whereas doubling the price of natural gas would typically add 70% to the price of electricity from that source. At high enough prices, eventually extraction from sources such as granite and seawater become economically feasible.[40][41]

Current light water reactors make relatively inefficient use of nuclear fuel, fissioning only the very rare uranium-235 isotope. Nuclear reprocessing can make this waste reusable and more efficient reactor designs allow better use of the available resources.[42]

As opposed to current light water reactors which use uranium-235 (0.7% of all natural uranium), fast breeder reactors use uranium-238 (99.3% of all natural uranium). It has been estimated that there is up to five billion years? worth of uranium-238 for use in these power plants.[43]

Reprocessing can potentially recover up to 95% of the remaining uranium and plutonium in spent nuclear fuel, putting it into new mixed oxide fuel. This would produce a reduction in long term radioactivity within the remaining waste, since this is largely short-lived fission products, and reduces its volume by over 90%. Reprocessing of civilian fuel from power reactors is currently done on large scale in Britain, France and (formerly) Russia, will be in China and perhaps India, and is being done on an expanding scale in Japan. The full potential of reprocessing has not been achieved because it requires breeder reactors, which are not yet commercially available. France is generally cited as the most successful reprocessor, but it presently only recycles 28% (by mass) of the yearly fuel use, 7% within France and another 21% in Russia.[59]

http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter13.html There's too much here so I'm not going to quote but the gist of it is that the sun will burn out before we run out of nuclear fuel.

We have enough nuclear energy on earth to keep the lights on until the sun burns out. Saying that we're about to run out of nuclear fuel based on currently extracted economical resources is like saying that we are running out of trees because the nearest nursery to your house closed and turned into a barbershop.

 

[So]

I just read your first link. Anyone who thinks that would energy usage is measured in "EJ = Energy Joule" has NO CLUE what they're talking about. And they're an avowed anti nuke group. Read the entire book in my last link. The professor who wrote it uses both US government numbers, as well as greenpeace's numbers for all his calcs. Even greenpeace's ludicrously anti-nuke numbers still come out heavily in favor of nuclear power when crunched.

 

[SlickSnake]

Originally posted by: 91TTZ

Originally posted by: SlickSnake

Maybe if someone who was properly qualified WAS in control of the A.F. on 911, that wouldn't have happened. How is that hindsight? WTF do you think we spent trillions of dollars on the A.F. for, "tag, your it!" games in the air?

No, they would have said, "tag, you're it!". They can spell.

Your always this anal with a spelling bee up you are ass?

 

[Xavier434]

Meh....I appreciate the info so far in regards to how much moving to Nuclear will cost us, but it is so damn conflicting between several of you that I have no idea how much more or less it is really going to cost us. I certainly hope that whoever is truly in charge of this mess knows more about it than we do. I hope those same people truly understand how it will or will not effect the environment too. It is a major decision no matter how you slice it. It is paramount that those in power know exactly what is going on.

 

[So]

Originally posted by: Xavier434
Meh....I appreciate the info so far in regards to how much moving to Nuclear will cost us, but it is so damn conflicting between several of you that I have no idea how much more or less it is really going to cost us. I certainly hope that whoever is truly in charge of this mess knows more about it than we do. I hope those same people truly understand how it will or will not effect the environment too. It is a major decision no matter how you slice it. It is paramount that those in power know exactly what is going on.

I seriously suggest everyone read the book I linked above: http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/

It's a fairly short, free online book (also published, but I can't find a good source for it as it's out of print). It is from 1990, so the economic data may be out of date (but things have gotten much BETTER for nuclear energy in terms of economics since then), but the safety and environmental data is still 100% valid.

 

[BrownTown]

Originally posted by: GooeyGUI

Originally posted by: BrownTown
Another thing people need to realize is that tritium isn't exactly some horrible poison, they use it in things like gun sights and fire exit signs etc. For example my brother has a chemistry degree and they use tritium in chemistry experiments because its easy to follow (do to the energy betas that cant even penetrate your skin). The leaks being mentioned release amounts of tritium that have the same cancer causing ability as the second hand smoke from a few cigarettes. IF you are so scared of cancer then we would have to outlaw half the chemicals we use in our everyday lives.

Tritium is a beta minus emitter. The ability of it to go deeper than a few layers of skin skin is very limited. However, internal exposure is a very different matter. They can kill tens of thousands of cells. What's worse is that they damage many cells that can mutate into cancer.

A small dose (one time) is not very harmful, but continued consumption would be far more cancer causing than smoking. Admiral Rickover, who is the father of the US nuclear navy, once drank a small amount in front of a safety board to prove that a small amount is possible.

Limits that are measured by dosimeters may not tell the whole story. To really know how much you have been exposed to it would be necessary to submit urine samples within a few hours of exposure. Tritium half-life is 12.3 years.

Yeah, but releases on a few parts per billions aren't exactly the end of the world. For example a recent article talked about a nuclear submarine leaking tritium and then pointed out that hte radioactivity was equivalent to that found in a 50lb bag of fertilizer. And FWIW I didn't say smoking a cigarrete, i literally mean if you were to light a few cigarettes on fire and then the toxins floated for miles in the air and were breather id by someone. The amounts released are essentially nothing (for example a nuclear plant in Japan was closed when it leaked tritium at 1 billionth the legal limit, and in its place they are burning coal, so the health effects of shutting down the nuke plant were litteraly billions of times worse then the accident at the plant itself). It is that sort of idiocy I am talking about here. There are a FEW incidents wher nuke plants have released enough radiation to actually be a signifigant health risk, but leaking a few liters of water with tritium at a few parts per billion is not one of them.

 

[BrownTown]

Originally posted by: ElFenix

Originally posted by: SlickSnake
Just what we need, more nuke plants and an even more unpredictable priced fuel source that will skyrocket in price like petroleum. And this rising fuel expense on top of very high construction and maintenance fees, then disposal fees? Burning coal and properly scrubbing the smoke for pollutants is FAR more cost effective. By a factor of 10 or more. Plus, it's a lot more stable price wise. I hate to break this news to the tree huggers who want nuclear, but there it is. You want power you can afford to use, otherwise, what's the point of it?

the price of nuclear fuel is nothing in comparison to the rest of the cost.

For example a 10 fold increase in uranium prices would be equivalent to a 20% increase in natural gas prices (which often happens in the course of a week).

 

[Eeezee]

Originally posted by: GooeyGUI

Originally posted by: BrownTown
Another thing people need to realize is that tritium isn't exactly some horrible poison, they use it in things like gun sights and fire exit signs etc. For example my brother has a chemistry degree and they use tritium in chemistry experiments because its easy to follow (do to the energy betas that cant even penetrate your skin). The leaks being mentioned release amounts of tritium that have the same cancer causing ability as the second hand smoke from a few cigarettes. IF you are so scared of cancer then we would have to outlaw half the chemicals we use in our everyday lives.

Tritium is a beta minus emitter. The ability of it to go deeper than a few layers of skin skin is very limited. However, internal exposure is a very different matter. They can kill tens of thousands of cells. What's worse is that they damage many cells that can mutate into cancer.

A small dose (one time) is not very harmful, but continued consumption would be far more cancer causing than smoking. Admiral Rickover, who is the father of the US nuclear navy, once drank a small amount in front of a safety board to prove that a small amount is possible.

Limits that are measured by dosimeters may not tell the whole story. To really know how much you have been exposed to it would be necessary to submit urine samples within a few hours of exposure. Tritium half-life is 12.3 years.

It's a low-energy beta emitter (you don't need to say beta-minus, when you say beta it's assumed you mean electron, beta-plus ie positron emitters are rarer). You literally can not detect it with a geiger counter.

Furthermore, Tritium is naturally occurring in the atmosphere. You are literally breathing it right now! RUN! GET OUT BEFORE IT GIVES YOU CANCER! Actually, it's only going to be dangerous if you are breathing in large doses.

Even a "strong" beta emitter like Sr-90 is allowed in classrooms of US universities in limited quantities (several grams). I used a sample in an experiment demonstrating quantum entanglement (ie Sr-90 can create positronium, which annihilates itself and creates two entangled photons traveling in opposite directions). It's only dangerous if you ingest it or sit around staring at it for hours on end.

Radiation doesn't have to be a big deal. We have a good understanding of how much is safe in a single dose, or in several doses. I hate how many people spread misinformation regarding nuclear power.

 

[seemingly random]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernald%2C_Ohio

Probably too old to matter but it contains information about nuclear fuel.

 

[Throckmorton]

John McCain wants nuclear waste to be stored at Yucca Mountain but doesn't want it trucked through Arizona.