Discussion: Nuclear Power

[a completely inoffensive name]

Choices are never between good and bad. They are always between two wrongs, or two rights. If not, they wouldn't be choices.

Solar, wind, tidal energy have some environmental problems of their own. And as of yet, they have not come to their full fruition.

As an intermediate solution, I think nuclear power is the best option. You can leave your children some cemented waste in a mountain; or a polluted world, a crippling national debt, and Saudi princes in Rolls-Royces protected by young American troops.

That seems like a no-win situation, as captain Kirk said: I don't believe in the no-win scenario. There has to be a way to solve the energy crisis and become independent of tyrannical oil exporting countries without leaving another dangerous crisis for our descendent's to deal with. It might not be present right now but I imagine that there will be a way soon.

[Xiahou]

That is what I was wondering about. And that is the problem, because if don't have a permanent solution to the waste issue then if we go ahead of nuclear power then we are simply dumping this problem onto our children and grand children's generations. The reason we are in a crisis is because previous generations did nothing in the 70's and 80's to create lasting renewable fuels even after seeing the worst case scenario of an oil embargo and progress toward fuel efficency which instead was quickly forgotten for SUV's and Hummer's instead. I really don't want to do that to my children's generation as other generations did with us.

Then support nuclear. Solar and wind are well and fine, but they're more akin to putting a band-aid on a severed limb when it comes to controlling our dependence on fossil fuels.

Between 1950 and 2000 there have been 21 serious incidents or accidents involving some off-site radiological releases that merited a rating on the International Nuclear Event Scale, one at level 5, five at level 4 and fifteen at level 3. Additionally during the 1950s and 1960s there were protracted periods of known, deliberate, discharges to the atmosphere of plutonium and irradiated uranium oxide particulates.[31] These frequent incidents, together with the large 2005 Thorp plant leak which was not detected for nine months, have led some to doubt the effectiveness of the managerial processes and safety culture on the site over the years.

Not bad for 50yrs. And how many were when the technology was still in its infancy? According to the Nuclear Event Scale only the level 5 incident would have released enough radiation to go beyond prescribed limits. The only "Level 7" event in history was Chernobyl, in which case the reactor was of a defective design.

Nuclear isn't perfectly clean, but coal power plants aren't clean or safe either. People automatically get frightened when someone mentions a release at a nuclear power plant, but put in perspective most are insignificant. Anyone want to look into how much radioactive material is given off by burning coal for power?

[a completely inoffensive name]

Then support nuclear. Solar and wind are well and fine, but they're more akin to putting a band-aid on a severed limb when it comes to controlling our dependence on fossil fuels.

But we can't just be fixing problems when it's do or die time and leave anything that's not immediately going to cause danger to whoever is alive 50-100 years down the road. If we support nuclear I understand it would go a long way towards securing energy independence right now but that doesn't mean the ends justify the means if there is major environmental problems occurring decades or centuries from now due to storing massive amounts of nuclear waste which could leak depending on how well anything we build today could last after centuries of possibly being left alone.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Here's a piece for you.

I agree, with some small modifications, with Don C.

1. Short term nuclear fission as a primary power source, using reprocessing to minimize the total volume of waste with which we must deal.

a) Uranium is about as common as tin and known reserves have increased substantially during the last 5 years. None of the fossil fuels can make such a claim.

b) Current re-processing facilities and final waste storage technologies ARE sufficient to the task at hand, but SCRUPULOUS attention must be paid to safety protocols and quality assurance. Skimping on the contracting specifics to enhance profits could spell the deaths of many.

2. "Alternative" technologies should be utilized wherever they are practicable. If you live on a houseboat and don't have a small windmill to provide part of your power, you're wasting money. If you have a reliable geothermal formation in the vicinity, exploit it. If you live in the vicinity of Bir Hachiem, then solar panels covering your existing roof might not be a bad idea, etc.

3. Long-term, fusion power will be the most practical of all, but there are boatloads of tech hurdles to overcome to get there. Current efforts along fusion lines are either uncontrolled (boom!) or net power consumers.

Side notes:

a: We will not, unfortunately, kick the legs out from under dictators who use our need for fossil fuels as a source of power, so much as we will create a new pool of such dictators in different countries.

b: Their are MANY who believe that woring to better our environment is a worthy long-term goal for all of humanity. Unfortunately, the ultra-greens have a right goodly crop of whackoids who either believe that humanity is unnatural* and should be culled OR who are old-style anti-capitalists who view this as the best way to effect a marxist future.



* This has always vexed me a bit. After all, my knowledge of biology suggests that all species are in constant competition and try to alter their environments to suit themselves by whatever means is available to them (e.g., every year the oak trees behind my property drop several hundred pounds of leaves that congregate in my shrubberies in an effort to choke them out of existence and prepare the way for more oak trees). Thus, humanity is functioning according to plan, more or less. To view us as unnatural -- as though we are NOT part of our environments -- is hubris of the most annoying sort.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Here's a piece for you.

I agree, with some small modifications, with Don C.

1. Short term nuclear fission as a primary power source, using reprocessing to minimize the total volume of waste with which we must deal.

a) Uranium is about as common as tin and known reserves have increased substantially during the last 5 years. None of the fossil fuels can make such a claim.

b) Current re-processing facilities and final waste storage technologies ARE sufficient to the task at hand, but SCRUPULOUS attention must be paid to safety protocols and quality assurance. Skimping on the contracting specifics to enhance profits could spell the deaths of many.

2. "Alternative" technologies should be utilized wherever they are practicable. If you live on a houseboat and don't have a small windmill to provide part of your power, you're wasting money. If you have a reliable geothermal formation in the vicinity, exploit it. If you live in the vicinity of Bir Hachiem, then solar panels covering your existing roof might not be a bad idea, etc.

3. Long-term, fusion power will be the most practical of all, but there are boatloads of tech hurdles to overcome to get there. Current efforts along fusion lines are either uncontrolled (boom!) or net power consumers.

Side notes:

a: We will not, unfortunately, kick the legs out from under dictators who use our need for fossil fuels as a source of power, so much as we will create a new pool of such dictators in different countries.

b: Their are MANY who believe that woring to better our environment is a worthy long-term goal for all of humanity. Unfortunately, the ultra-greens have a right goodly crop of whackoids who either believe that humanity is unnatural* and should be culled OR who are old-style anti-capitalists who view this as the best way to effect a marxist future.



* This has always vexed me a bit. After all, my knowledge of biology suggests that all species are in constant competition and try to alter their environments to suit themselves by whatever means is available to them (e.g., every year the oak trees behind my property drop several hundred pounds of leaves that congregate in my shrubberies in an effort to choke them out of existence and prepare the way for more oak trees). Thus, humanity is functioning according to plan, more or less. To view us as unnatural -- as though we are NOT part of our environments -- is hubris of the most annoying sort.

Thank you so much Seamus I looked at your link and found the Challenges of Nuclear Power section and here is what I found that answered my concerns.
Another option for disposal of long-lived (trans-Uranic) waste is to burn it via either Accelerator Driven Systems or within Fourth Generation reactors.
[...]
Finally there are experiments with Deep-Burn where fuels originating from reprocessed nuclear-waste would be used to power Very High Temperature Reactors (VHTR). The result would be that a single fuel loading derived from 4 years of operation of a light-water reactor could be used to deliver all the energy needed over the 60-year life of a VHTR. This technology would not only destroy most of the long-lived waste, it would make the existing stockpiles a very valuable source of energy, since it could be used to deliver ten times the energy of the original fuel.

Right now nuclear power is supporting generation III reactors which are highly efficient and immensely safer which I knew but it looks as if these generation IV reactors are the key to solving the waste problem that has made me hesitant to support nuclear power. Just like I said in an earlier post:
There has to be a way to solve the energy crisis and become independent of tyrannical oil exporting countries without leaving another dangerous crisis for our descendent's to deal with. It might not be present right now but I imagine that there will be a way soon.
The problem is that these generation IV reactors are not going to be coming soon. The earliest is 2021 with most likely to be commercially available around 2030... however from your link again:
Since the waste is stored in large tanks of water for 20-40 years first, it may be that by this time these new technologies will be sufficiently developed so that waste can be destroyed using these new methods.
If we are going to build nuclear power plants I want these generation IV plants as soon as possible, if it is cost issues holding them back, I think we can spare a billion or two from the hundreds of billions of stimulus money we are spending.