nuclear energy (1 Viewer)

[Todd Hochard]

The waste containers currently are designed to store for 10,000 years. What kind of maintenance burden are we heaping on future generations?

I think the issue of high level waste is overrated, to be honest. Yucca Mountain has the capacity to store basically everything that has been generated, and will be generated, until 2016. When it's full, I say turn the whole giant hole into a concrete sarcophagus, and then dig another one. So far as I know, our rate of waste generation has slowed considerably, mainly due to the reduction in weapons efforts. Perhaps I'm mistaken about that.

What of the waste generation from current power generation efforts? I'd certainly consider solar/wind/hydro better alternatives. However, there are places the sun doesn't shine much, where the wind doesn't blow much, and where rivers don't rage. I'd consider nuclear MUCH better than coal (or natural gas turbines, for that matter). Look at the marks that fossil fuel burning has left on our environment. Why has acid rain throughout the Northeast, and high NOx/smog throughout the Southwest, and the waste trail from oil refineries become so acceptable, and yet comparitively small amounts of radioactive material are considered obscene?

FUD, for sure.

Todd

 

[Chris PC]

My current alternatives are NOT to continue to invest in Nuclear energy. The current alternatives are Energy Efficiency and renewables. Solar Thermal, as in Solar water heating and air heating, Ground Source Heat Pumps, Wind and Solar PV and also Biomass and Small Hydro. I know what you're going to say, nothing can replace Nuclear right now because of the amount of power it can produce. All the more reason to invest in energy efficiency and renewable energy. I just think I'd rather do as much as possible to work with more renewable and non-polluting energy sources than with complicated, costly, high risk and polluting energy sources.

 

[KyleS]

Yucca Mountain has the capacity to store basically everything that has been generated, and will be generated, until 2016. When it's full, I say turn the whole giant hole into a concrete sarcophagus, and then dig another one. So far as I know, our rate of waste generation has slowed considerably, mainly due to the reduction in weapons efforts. Perhaps I'm mistaken about that.

Problem is what if you live near Yucca Mountain like the 2-3 million people in Henderson, Las Vegas, & the surrounding areas? What if you had leaks in the storage and it gets into the surrounding water table? Point is No-One wants to live near Nuclear Waste Storage or any other Toxic storage for that matter. What happens if earthquakes hit at or near Yucca mountain? Sure they have not happened lately but what can happen over the course of 10,000 years? For now Yucca might be the best place to store this material but we need to find other sources of power or a way to send this waste to the Sun safely.

KyleS

 

[Max Leung]

Chris, as has been pointed out earlier in the thread, all the current alternatives have their downfalls too. As mentioned a few posts back, manufacturing solar cells requires the use of very toxic and hazardous chemicals (or creates them as a byproduct of the process). Wind generators are very expensive to maintain, and could cause micro-environmental problems. Geothermal or air-thermal power sources are promising though...the new air-thermal power generator proposed for Australia sounds promising (it looks like a massive vase poking up and out from the desert).

Biomass power generation...you mean as depicted in The Matrix? Sure why not...hook everyone up in front of the TV and they can generate energy with their body heat. Uh, probably not enough to keep the TV going though.

A human slave system would work as an alternative and renewable source of energy. Hey, it worked back in the industrial age!

Key benefits of human slave labour for power generation:

1) Renewable (get their kids!)
2) Good for the environment (bodies decompose and return the nutrients to the soil, no toxic runoff, no messy smog).
3) No radioactive waste or material left over (they don't glow in the dark).
4) You can't get cancer living next to the slave plant.
5) Much easier to control the energy generation process (guns are cheap and effective as an energy catalyst!)
6) Unemployment will be nonexistent....great for the economy!
7) Crime will be greatly reduced (too tired after all that labor to land a starring role in COPS).

I'm sure this proposal is perfectly acceptable to all the environmental groups, who don't need to master statistics to see all the awesome incredible benefits that my new energy program will bring.

Everybody wins!

Although I still think nuclear power is much safer.

 

[Ryan Wright]

I believe it has been proven that cancer rates steadily increase the closer you live to a nuclear power plant.

Please don't spread this sort of hysterical misinformation without backing it up. I'd like to see this supposed study your textbook refers to. I am sure it is 100% FUD.

 

[Todd Hochard]

Chris,

I won't argue with you on the efficiency aspect. There's no question that the entire concept of efficiency (particularly in the US, but less so in Canada) has been merely played lip service to for too many years.
But, the harsh reality is, that in spite of most (decidedly lame) efforts, consumption is higher than ever. Increases in efficiency in the home (in water heating, heating and cooling) have been offset with additional loads in electronics. A typical PC will consume nearly 200 watts with monitor (about 100 without- I've measured), and there are many now running personal servers, etc., that run 24/7, never going into any power-saving mode. Compound this with the continuing trend of wanting to be more comfortable, not less, in our homes- meaning more gadgetry, higher temps in the winter, lower temps in the summer. More power used, any way you look at it.

I know what you're going to say, nothing can replace Nuclear right now because of the amount of power it can produce.

Sure, there are two alternatives that I can think of- equally large coal fired plants, or equally large Hydro plants. How many rivers are there, that can be dammed enough to generate 2000+ MW continuous?

And regarding wind- I'd take its micro-environmental problems, over the macro problems associated with fossil fuels, any day of the week.

Todd

 

[Seth_S]

http://www.llrc.org/health/subtopic/oldbrept294.doc

 

[SteveA]

That study involved one nuclear power plant, which is outside the U.S. That proves nothing about the safety of nuclear facilities in general.

 

[Todd Hochard]

I don't know, and can't find much on, the specifics of the Oldbury station used in that study, but I have a few issues with it-

1. They talk about the dispersement of Pu-239, Sr-90, and Cs-137 throughout the environment. The vast majority of this came from atmospheric testing of weapons 40-50 years ago. It would take an accident-level event, involving rupture of fuel rods, to release any of this to the environment from a normal commercial reactor site. These aren't things that are normal release by-products of operational facilities. I can't find any info on that type of event for Oldbury.
2. The background levels of radiation that they speak of are lower than other areas of the world. The real danger is in ingesting even small amounts of radionuclides, as breathing them in often makes them a lifetime continuous source, as they become trapped in the lungs.

From the study, it's simply not clear to me that the plant caused any of the environmental issues noted, particularly without evidence of a fission-product release accident. Interesting read, though. I haven't digested it all, yet.

Info on radiation doses and effects- http://www.uic.com.au/nip17.htm

Info that says Calvert Cliffs in MD is killing people- http://www.radiation.org/calvert.html
http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/n...cfm?pageID=201
Info that says it isn't- http://cis.nci.nih.gov/fact/3_11.htm

Who to believe?

 

[Philip Hamm]

Here is a very interesting link regarding nuclear accidents.

 

[Ryan Wright]

I don't know, and can't find much on, the specifics of the Oldbury station used in that study, but I have a few issues with it-

I agree. I can't imagine anyone has hard data on this matter. If it were really a problem, there would be data to prove it.

 

[Todd Hochard]

From Phil's link-

The substandard quality of these submarines is borne out by the high number of accidents and incidents related to nuclear submarines.

That is so LOL funny, I can't even begin to describe.

Substandard...aye carumba. There has NEVER been a release of fission products (or significant release of radioactivity, for that matter) accident in the entire history of the Nuclear Navy (from the mid-50s), not even on the two subs that have sunk (Thresher in '63 and Scorpion in '68).

Todd

 

[Philip Hamm]

There has NEVER been a release of fission products (or significant release of radioactivity, for that matter) accident in the entire history of the Nuclear Navy (from the mid-50s), not even on the two subs that have sunk (Thresher in '63 and Scorpion in '68).

How would we know?

 

[Chris PC]

Go find out how much money it costs to generate electricity from nuclear power. You'll be surprised. Its a rip off. Again, you have to take care of the waste AND the entombed de-commisioned reactors FOREVER. Infinity x $100,000,000 = Infinity. You'll never stop paying for radioactive waste.

 

[Max Leung]

Just to followup on a previous post of mine:

http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/iraq/facility/osiraq.htm

The Israeli's bombed the Iraqi reactor built by the French.

Hmmm, this is interesting. Supposedly during Desert Storm, the damaged reactor (which was under repair from assistance from the French and other parties) was bombed again:

On the third day of the Desert Storm air campaign, a large conventional daylight strike by 56 F-16s with unguided bombs attacked the nuclear complex, which was one of the three most heavily defended areas in Iraq. The results were assessed as very poor. According to DIA, the nuclear research facility was not fully destroyed following the F-117 strikes on day 6 of the campaign. An additional 48 F-117s were tasked seven more times against the target over the next 32 days, dropping 66 more bombs. Moreover, on day 19 of the campaign, 17 F-111Fs were tasked to strike the site. On 26 February 1991, day 42 of the campaign, DIA concluded that the ability to conduct nuclear research or processing at the site was severely degraded.

That is a hell of a lot of firepower. The assessment of the 1st wave had poor results (they probably used a lot of dumb bombs, likely 80% or more missed), so they had to do it again!

Nuclear reactors are tough SOBs.

 

[Grant B]

I was under the impression that japan recycled its spent fuel rods? no?

When I lived in Cumbria (Northern England) Japanese spent rods showed up every now then.
They sent them up to Selafield for proccessing or dumping.
They were digging a big hole to dump the Polaris Sub that was a little 'hot'....bad welds on the reactor...they probable just stuck them in the big hole with the Sub.
The waste is a real problem, nobody wants the hot potato and sending it into the Sun pisses people off if there is an accident. It's hard to transport and we dont have any 3rd world countries nearby to send it to for $$$$. So basically we run out of power because A holes learned how to manipulate the power gird.
When we were having the energy crisis a few proposals for new plants sprang up...off course they were all killed off cause nobody wants to live next to them.
We are #$%^&ed

 

[Philip Hamm]

There's really great information about the Iraqi nuclear program here. That site also very nicely details the USA atmospheric nuclear testing campaign.

 

[Todd Hochard]

How would we know?

Pretty much everything that anyone, on any ship/sub, has ever done wrong is fully documented, and required reading for everyone who works in the engineering department (every incident of any significance). Given the relatively large number of people in engineering departments, and the fact that they transfer to different ships every few years, it would be virtually impossible for a cover-up to be effective. If a sailor loves anything, it's a good sea story. And, no one that I ever came into contact with had one of these stories about something happening "that you won't read about- wink, wink, nudge, nudge."
That, and Admiral Rickover, the "father of Navy Nuclear Power," boasted, quite proudly, (he was an arrogant, cantankerous old man, so I'm told) repeatedly to Congress this very fact- no accidents.
You can dig up all sorts of dirt on many things, but you'll not find any on the Navy Nuclear Power program.
http://www.naval.ca/article/young/nu...haelyoung.html
As you'll see from that, the Soviet Navy always had "issues."

 

[Max Leung]

That's a very interesting article on that Iraqi nuke'em thing.

The Soviets did a very bad job dealing with spent nuclear fuels, especially from their subs. Wasn't it the Black Sea that was messed up from the radioactive and toxic waste that they dumped into it? I still remember pictures of all the dead sea-life that washed up on the shores there.

I haven't heard any incidents from American "nucular wessels", as Chekov used to say.

 

[Max Leung]

I didn't even know there are out of control coal fires across the globe:

Coal fires are 'global catastrophe'

In Indonesia, the forest fires that began during drought conditions in 1982 started fires in surface outcrops of coal that still burn today, said Alfred Whitehouse, of the US Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources Coal Fire Project.

Nuclear energy is sounding better all the time. On the other hand, I can't imagine I'd feel much better if the countries mentioned in the article ran nuclear reactors instead of burning coal...