FWIW there are many nuclear reactors with positive void coefficients still operating, and many of the gen 4 designs have positive void coefficients. Having a positive void coefficient is in itself not the end of the world, so long as you have another passive system providing an even more powerful negative feedback loop you are fine. A water moderated design is the EASIEST way to make a nuclear reactor work, however it is far from the best in many categories.
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Why we should NOT build more nuclear power plants now.
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FWIW there are many nuclear reactors with positive void coefficients still operating, and many of the gen 4 designs have positive void coefficients. Having a positive void coefficient is in itself not the end of the world, so long as you have another passive system providing an even more powerful negative feedback loop you are fine. A water moderated design is the EASIEST way to make a nuclear reactor work, however it is far from the best in many categories.
QuantumPion
Diamond Member
Actually many parts of the country have insufficient power during the summer months, e.g. California. That is why they have rolling black-outs. Elsewhere in the country, demand can be right at 100% of capacity during the hottest summer days. Within 10 years we will need a significantly more amount of generating capacity that cannot be sustained with just more turnkey gas turbines.
QuantumPion
Diamond Member
This is not correct either. Using already proven breeder-reactor plants, using a thorium fuel cycle, we could supply the worlds energy needs with 100% nuclear for tens of thousands of years, assuming exponential energy demand.
1) We don't need them. America is the Saudi Arabia of coal. At current consumption we have over 300 years of easily recoverable coal.
The actual amount of recoverable coal is debatable look up peak coal
2)Pollution. American air has gotten much cleaner over the last 30 years with only limited efforts to clean coal emissions. With only moderately more effort we can increase electricity production while still producing less emissions than we do now.
Clean coal has yet to be proven, no clean coal plants exist
3)Nuclear power costs more. The government subsidizes nuclear power by doing everything from refining urananium and selling it at a loss to the nuclear industry to providing security for nuclear fuel shipments. Plus the government covers the insurance liablity for nuclear power plants by basically saying if there is an accident Americans can't sue the nucler power plant company.
The whole energy industry is subsidized, including oil
4)Nuclear power has a big back end cost. Decommissiong nuclear plants built now will happen in 50 years, just when our country will be in midst of the SS difficulties.
SS issues may or may not happen, some say its an exageration, but in 50 yrs who knows what the world will look like.
5)Nuclear power will not reduce the price of oil, nor Americas oil consumption of oil. Almost no oil is used for electricity generation. Therefore nuclear power plants won't help the current high oil prices.
It will make the US closer to energy independant, especially if people switch to electric vehicles, more likely all the time
6)No one knows how dangerous nuclear power plants really are. The only studies of the possiblility of nuclear accidents were done over 30 years ago. And they were basically a phony. For example the studies assumed that in any accident the operators would correctly interpret the problem and take the proper action. That this isn't the case was proved at Three Mile Island.
Those were the last accidents to happen on old technology, there have been dozens of plants in the US quietly humming away. More people die in coal mining accidents every year compared to the total accidents related to nuclear, including Chernobyl
7)Nuclear power plants need to be near large population centers. One major accident, say near New York City could so damage American financially that we might never recover.
Fear Fear Fear, France gets 80% of its power from nuclear and have for a while
8)Nuclear fuel is in limited supply. The only way to overcome the shortage of uranium is to build breeder reactors. Like the one that almost destroyed Detroit. Breeder reactors don't melt down, they blow up, in a full scale nuclear explosion.
There are other nuclear fuels than Uranium, again casting aspersions on a pretty safe industry
9)Fifty years ago was about te time the first nuclear electricity creating reactor was built. Consider the advances in those 50 years. In another 50 years we may have materials like carbon nanotube containment domes and vessel containment shells so resistent that even a full scale meltdown would be contained.
Won't help us out today, so you were at one point complaining aobut old tehcnology where the technology is so much better today, but are future pinning hopes on advanced technology?
10)We may find another source of power in the next fifity years. Perhaps fusion. Perhaps something else. But once we build, fuel and run new reactors we will be stuck with the nuclear waste for thousands of years.
Nuclear waste is one of the biggest red herrings going. They recycle so much better today and after about 100 yrs in the cooling ponds under the reactor site you can be in the same room with an exposed core even touch it and you won't be exposed to radiation.
Problem comes in if you digest it so you don't want it getting into ground water for a few thousand years. So you dump it in the Canadian sheild which has been a stable mass for 2 Billion years with no issues on the horizon.
The actual amount of recoverable coal is debatable look up peak coal
2)Pollution. American air has gotten much cleaner over the last 30 years with only limited efforts to clean coal emissions. With only moderately more effort we can increase electricity production while still producing less emissions than we do now.
Clean coal has yet to be proven, no clean coal plants exist
3)Nuclear power costs more. The government subsidizes nuclear power by doing everything from refining urananium and selling it at a loss to the nuclear industry to providing security for nuclear fuel shipments. Plus the government covers the insurance liablity for nuclear power plants by basically saying if there is an accident Americans can't sue the nucler power plant company.
The whole energy industry is subsidized, including oil
4)Nuclear power has a big back end cost. Decommissiong nuclear plants built now will happen in 50 years, just when our country will be in midst of the SS difficulties.
SS issues may or may not happen, some say its an exageration, but in 50 yrs who knows what the world will look like.
5)Nuclear power will not reduce the price of oil, nor Americas oil consumption of oil. Almost no oil is used for electricity generation. Therefore nuclear power plants won't help the current high oil prices.
It will make the US closer to energy independant, especially if people switch to electric vehicles, more likely all the time
6)No one knows how dangerous nuclear power plants really are. The only studies of the possiblility of nuclear accidents were done over 30 years ago. And they were basically a phony. For example the studies assumed that in any accident the operators would correctly interpret the problem and take the proper action. That this isn't the case was proved at Three Mile Island.
Those were the last accidents to happen on old technology, there have been dozens of plants in the US quietly humming away. More people die in coal mining accidents every year compared to the total accidents related to nuclear, including Chernobyl
7)Nuclear power plants need to be near large population centers. One major accident, say near New York City could so damage American financially that we might never recover.
Fear Fear Fear, France gets 80% of its power from nuclear and have for a while
8)Nuclear fuel is in limited supply. The only way to overcome the shortage of uranium is to build breeder reactors. Like the one that almost destroyed Detroit. Breeder reactors don't melt down, they blow up, in a full scale nuclear explosion.
There are other nuclear fuels than Uranium, again casting aspersions on a pretty safe industry
9)Fifty years ago was about te time the first nuclear electricity creating reactor was built. Consider the advances in those 50 years. In another 50 years we may have materials like carbon nanotube containment domes and vessel containment shells so resistent that even a full scale meltdown would be contained.
Won't help us out today, so you were at one point complaining aobut old tehcnology where the technology is so much better today, but are future pinning hopes on advanced technology?
10)We may find another source of power in the next fifity years. Perhaps fusion. Perhaps something else. But once we build, fuel and run new reactors we will be stuck with the nuclear waste for thousands of years.
Nuclear waste is one of the biggest red herrings going. They recycle so much better today and after about 100 yrs in the cooling ponds under the reactor site you can be in the same room with an exposed core even touch it and you won't be exposed to radiation.
Problem comes in if you digest it so you don't want it getting into ground water for a few thousand years. So you dump it in the Canadian sheild which has been a stable mass for 2 Billion years with no issues on the horizon.
QuantumPion
Diamond Member
3) Uranium is mined, refined, processed, and assembled by private companies. I think the companies that enrich uranium may be quasi-government contractors or part of the DoD itself, I'm not sure. But regardless, the government doesn't enrich the fuel for free, or even subsidize it.
4) ... Which is offset by how ridiculously cheap the fuel is compared to coal. Nuclear works out to be more cost effective in the long run.
6) ...Except for the tens of thousands of engineers, physicists, NRC, INPO, EPRI, etc etc. What you mean is that YOU have no idea because you chose to be fearful and ignorant. Safety calculations and studies are done for pretty much every aspect of plant operations on a daily basis, which is what I do for a living btw.
7) No? I have no idea where you got this from. Plants are usually built in the boonies where land is cheap.
8) Using current LWR with LEU fuel, we have a few hundred years of fuel in the world with today's known reserves, accounting for projected increases in energy demands. If we go to breeder reactors, especially ones using thorium, we have an essentially unlimited supply.
9) Containment vessles built 50 years ago are already able to completely contain any credible accident scenario (e.g. excluding an asteroid landing on the plant or something highly unlikely like that). FYI, at TMI, the reactor did not even penetrate the pressure vessel.
10) Possibly, but why ruin our clean air by using only fossil fuels for power in the mean time? Nuclear waste is manageable and who knows, maybe in 50 years we'll have the technology to transmute it into short-half life forms, or shoot it into the sun or something.
Coal is not clean. Not even "clean coal". I've been to a plant near where I live. It is dirty, ashy, the river is all green, and your car will have dust all over it after parking for an hour. By clean, they mean it is not a hell-on-earth type environment like it was 100 years ago.
QuantumPion
Diamond Member
wtf are you talking about?
heyheybooboo
Diamond Member
Planning, construction, operation, maintenance, waste storage & disposal, and decommissioning is paid by ratepayers and taxpayers - in the case of North Carolina operators are guaranteed a 12.5% return.
Why do you ask. You think your self deceiving by choice and can turn it off? wtf is par for denial and because you ask a question does not mean you are prepared to understand the answer. You can go to school and learn information but you can't learn wisdom. For that you have to pay in pain and suffering. You can know everything and understand almost nothing if you do not know yourself. Are you ready to see you are a pig? Pride goeth before a fall but it is always concurrent with foolishness.
man, he lost it looong ago, must been using too much of the drugs back in the day if you ask me, but then again he may never have had it to begin with.
also FWIW, we HAVE safely stored our nuclear waste, there haven't been any incidents of high level waste getting out into the open last i checked.
QuantumPion
Diamond Member
I think someone took the Matrix:Reloaded a bit too seriously.
CycloWizard
Lifer
Like I said - only enough known reserves for ten years. The federal policy of disallowing fuel recycling seems like an immutable object (though I have no idea why, other than the persistence of ignorance). If this policy could be reversed, then my investment decision would change accordingly. However, it doesn't look like it will any time soon, so I'll invest my money on research ventures looking into carbon sequestration. Coal is the foreseeable future whether I like it or not.
CycloWizard
Lifer
Obviously you have no idea about how much a power plant or light rail system would cost, nor do you understand that it could be a very profitable private venture. Equally obvious is your desire to spread your ignorance rather than learn anything, as evidenced by your excessive usage of HA.
You must do a lot of checking:
Background Information on the Proposed Private Fuel Storage Nuclear Waste Dump
Radioactive waste has been called the smallpox blanket of the Nuclear Age, for atomic waste dumps are often targeted at Native American communities. 60 Native American reservations have been targeted for high-level radioactive waste dumps by the federal government and nuclear power industry in the past 20 years. 59 tribes have fended off the dumps. This PFS dump -- targeted at the Skull Valley Goshute community, with only about 125 members (only 25 of whom actually live on the reservation) -- has come the closest ever to actually opening.
NRC's Atomic Safety Licensing Board could rule by mid-February or even earlier on the last two remaining contentions against PFS filed by the State of Utah, which adamantly opposes the proposed dump. Utah's first remaining contention argues that one of the many thousands of military aircraft that would fly over PFS from Hill Air Force Base to the Utah Test and Training Range every year could accidentally crash into the high-level atomic waste facility, causing a catastrophic radiation release (Salt Lake City is just 45 miles downwind). Utah's last remaining contention cites the U.S. Dept. of Energy's recent admission that, by the terms of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, it will only accept irradiated nuclear fuel for permanent disposal at the proposed Yucca Mountain, Nevada dump if it has been freshly packaged by nuclear utilities. PFS would lack any such repackaging capability. Thus, "interim storage" could easily become de facto permanent disposal at Skull Valley, in contradiction to assurances by PFS and NRC staff that storage would last at most 40 years. Whichever side -- PFS or Utah -- loses, the licensing board decision will almost certainly appeal to the NRC Commissioners for this ultimate licensing decision. This is why phone calls and letters to the five NRC Commissioners are so important!
PFS would be perhaps the single largest away-from-reactor, dry cask storage facility on Earth. PFS proposes to "park" 44,000 tons of commercial irradiated fuel rods -- nearly 80% of the current U.S. total -- inside 20 foot tall concrete and steel silos, out in the open air, for at least 40 years, and perhaps even permanently.
PFS would launch an unprecedented 4,000 rail shipments of irradiated fuel over the next 20 years -- only 3,000 or less such shipments (by truck and train combined) have been done since the 1940's in the U.S. -- through dozens of states. See how close such routes pass by your home, workplace, school, hospital or place of worship by entering the address at http://www.ewg.org/reports/nuc...waste/find_address.php Although those maps show transport routes to Yucca, given the proximity of Nevada and Utah, and the fact that most waste would come from east of the Mississippi, routes to Yucca (DOE's proposed national burial site) and Skull Valley would often be very similar or even identical.
High-level radioactive waste is very deadly material. A few minutes of exposure, without radiation shielding, is enough to kill a person standing nearby. This waste will remain hazardous for hundreds of thousands of years into the future, requiring continual monitoring to prevent human exposure or leakage into the environment. Each rail container bound for Skull Valley would hold over 200 times the long-lasting radioactivity released by the Hiroshima atomic bomb. These containers are vulnerable to severe transport accidents and terrorist attacks. Release of even a fraction of the cargo could result in a radioactive catastrophe, injuring or killing large numbers, and costing hundreds of millions or even tens of billions to "clean up" (if that would even be possible).
The Skull Valley Goshutes Indian Reservation was first targeted by DOE's Nuclear Waste Negotiator in the early 1990's for a "Monitored Retrievable Storage Site" for high-level radioactive waste. Then, in late 1996, a consortium of 8 nuclear power utilities picked up where the DOE left off. Under the name of PFS, they targeted Skull Valley for "interim storage" of 44,000 tons of irradiated nuclear fuel (nearly 80% of the total amount currently in storage across the U.S., almost entirely at the reactors where they were generated).
Leon Bear, whose chairmanship of the Skull Valley Goshutes had already been challenged as illegitimate for several years previously, signed a lease agreement with PFS in early 1997 without the approval of the adult membership of the tribe (referred to as the "General Council," the sole decision-making body on the reservation). To this day, the full terms of the lease agreement, most importantly the amount of money to be paid by PFS to the tribe, has remained secret -- even from tribal members themselves! Despite the deadliness of high-level radioactive waste, as well as its own duty to ensure the long term well being of the tribe and its individual members, the Utah office of the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs quickly approved the lease agreement after just a few days review.
Even if DOE were willing to take PFS wastes at Yucca, there very likely would not be enough room. Yucca's legal limit is for 63,000 metric tons of commercial waste, an amount that will exist in the U.S. as early as 2011. In fact, DOE projects that U.S. reactors will generate enough irradiated fuel to fill both Yucca and PFS to capacity. Most significantly of all, Yucca may never even open. In July, 2004 the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that Yucca's radiation release regulations were inadequate for public health protection, and ordered the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to strengthen them. Yucca's earthquake-fractured geology almost certainly cannot meet such protective standards, so the project should be terminated. (It's important to also note that the Western Shoshone Indian National Council claims ownership of Yucca Mountain by the Treaty of Ruby Valley of 1863, and opposes radioactive waste disposal there, another possible roadblock to the dump's opening.) Thus, PFS could very well lead to de facto permanent "disposal" of 44,000 tons of high-level radioactive waste on the Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation, out in the open, exposed to the elements, vulnerable to deterioration over time, as well as to accidental crashes of military aircraft from the adjacent bombing range, or even to intentional terrorist attacks.
Native American environmental leader Winona LaDuke has said "The greatest minds in nuclear science have been searching for a solution to the radioactive waste problem for 60 years, and they've finally found it: haul it down a dirt road and dump it on an Indian reservation." Her organization, Honor the Earth, working with Goshute tribal members opposed to PFS, has taken important first steps towards alternative economic development. Skull Valley is blessed with abundant sunshine, creating tremendous potential for solar energy systems, which Honor the Earth hopes to help the Goshutes install. Please see http://www.honorearth.org/init.../energy/renewable.html for related info.
Visit http://www.nirs.org/ejustice/ejustice.htm for more info. on environmental justice and links to groups such as Indigenous Environmental Network. See http://www.nirs.org/ejustice/n...elands/nativelands.htm for NIRS "No Nukes on Native Lands" info. Check out http://www.nirs.org/factsheets/pfsejfactsheet.htm for NIRS fact sheet "ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM, TRIBAL SOVEREIGNTY and NUCLEAR WASTE: High-Level Atomic Waste Dump Targeted at Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation in Utah."
Link
Moonbeam, remind us again of your extensive background in this area that allows you to talk down to everyone who opposed your argument. Last I checked we have people here opposing you who have engineering degrees and/or work at nuclear power plants or have contacts in the nuclear power industry, whereas last I checked you have no extraordinary knowledge of this subject.
CycloWizard
Lifer
http://www.nuclearfaq.ca/cnf_sectionE.htm
I don't worry about radiation once it starts to move
one year following discharge, would be about 50 - 60 Sv/h (5000 - 6000 rem/h) [5], which is lethal after a few minutes' exposure. The radiation level drops to about 1 Sv/h after 50 years, 0.3 Sv/h after 100 years, and less than 0.001 Sv/h (100 mrem/h) after 500 years. At this time the major hazard from the used fuel is no longer one of external exposure; for example, by these estimates, spending an hour about a foot away from a 500-year-old CANDU fuel bundle would result in radiation dose about 1/4 of the average annual background exposure, and thousands of times less than what is known to lead to physical harm.
I don't worry about long term radiation once in underground caverns
The Canadian technology was designed to address the one credible mechanism by which radionuclides from the used fuel can be transported to the surface: ground-water migration. With the current plan, transport times to the surface are measured in the hundreds of thousands of years, and therefore the effects of the used fuel on the biosphere are maintained at negligible levels. The technology of immobilizing radionuclides in the geosphere is verified by natural "analogues" (see related FAQ) which possess similar characteristics.
I don't worry about how it gets to said caverns
Another important component of the disposal plan is the transportation of nuclear fuel to the disposal site. In Canada this aspect is the responsibility of the Ontario utility, Ontario Power Generation Inc.. Special transport casks have been designed that are able to withstand severe accidents. The battery of tests applied to these casks include being dropped 9 metres onto a hardened surface, exposure to an 800 degrees Celsius fire for 30 minutes, and immersion in water for 8 hours. The development of such specialized containers has proceeded in parallel with efforts in other countries. Sandia Labs in the U.S., in particular, has published some remarkable photographs of severe crash tests performed on one such design.
I don't worry about radiation once it starts to move
one year following discharge, would be about 50 - 60 Sv/h (5000 - 6000 rem/h) [5], which is lethal after a few minutes' exposure. The radiation level drops to about 1 Sv/h after 50 years, 0.3 Sv/h after 100 years, and less than 0.001 Sv/h (100 mrem/h) after 500 years. At this time the major hazard from the used fuel is no longer one of external exposure; for example, by these estimates, spending an hour about a foot away from a 500-year-old CANDU fuel bundle would result in radiation dose about 1/4 of the average annual background exposure, and thousands of times less than what is known to lead to physical harm.
I don't worry about long term radiation once in underground caverns
The Canadian technology was designed to address the one credible mechanism by which radionuclides from the used fuel can be transported to the surface: ground-water migration. With the current plan, transport times to the surface are measured in the hundreds of thousands of years, and therefore the effects of the used fuel on the biosphere are maintained at negligible levels. The technology of immobilizing radionuclides in the geosphere is verified by natural "analogues" (see related FAQ) which possess similar characteristics.
I don't worry about how it gets to said caverns
Another important component of the disposal plan is the transportation of nuclear fuel to the disposal site. In Canada this aspect is the responsibility of the Ontario utility, Ontario Power Generation Inc.. Special transport casks have been designed that are able to withstand severe accidents. The battery of tests applied to these casks include being dropped 9 metres onto a hardened surface, exposure to an 800 degrees Celsius fire for 30 minutes, and immersion in water for 8 hours. The development of such specialized containers has proceeded in parallel with efforts in other countries. Sandia Labs in the U.S., in particular, has published some remarkable photographs of severe crash tests performed on one such design.
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