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Ok, this one's for you Chimensch.
The whole Nuclear thing has it's pros and cons... we.. big pros and big cons. Which side do you feel the scale weighs towards?
Personally with the disarmament of many countries and the non -proliferation agreement I think the technology has been a benefit to us all as a whole, and hopefully will become moreso.
nuclear power is an idea that i actually like and if the idea would just stay at power it would be fine, but whe you start speaking nuclear another type of "power" comes into play... and weapons are born and my view on that is well.... to use a saying I have heard many times ww1 and ww2 were fought with guns and knives, I dont kow how ww3 is gunna go but i promise ww4 we will be fighting with sticks and stones
Nuclear isn't just one thing, where you can turn fuel processes into weapons processes by flipping a switch.
Fuel breeder reactors are different from weapons material breeders.
Nuclear fuel is the best option that we have right now. Wind, solar, wave, ... energy is something we should investigate. And if solar ever becomes efficient enough, it will be great. But until that time, nuclear is better than anything we have.
Coal plants emit more nuclear waste than nuclear reactors, but noone seems to mind because it doesn't have 'nuclear' in its name.
And with reprocessing of nuclear fuel, combined with modern reactor design, there is only ver little actual waste. But it won't matter because the greenpeace zealots fight against anything that uses nuclear fuel, regardless of facts. It's no different from any other fundamentalist mindset, except they don't blow up stuff.
Well said metalhead!
I may be a tad naieve, but I don't think nuclear weapons will be used again. It's now generally assumed that to do wo would be mutual destruction of the countries involved at the very least. I (once again in my naivete) think we're past the age of world wars for that very reason.
Please explain in more detail.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bruno
Yes please, I haven't heard about this either.Quote:
Originally Posted by Chimensch
You think that Israel wouldn't like to drop some tiny, little, harmless tactical nukes on Iran?Quote:
Originally Posted by Nickelking
The thing about coal powered plants is that they burn massive amounts of coal, and coal dust gets emited into the atmosphere. A fraction of all carbon is radioactive (which is the basis of carbon dating).Quote:
Originally Posted by Nickelking
from
Nuclear power - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
It's just a wiki article, but if you google around, you'll find lots more.Quote:
. Coal-burning plants are particularly noted for producing large amounts of toxic and mildly radioactive ash due to concentrating naturally occurring metals and radioactive material from the coal. Contrary to popular belief, coal power actually results in more radioactive waste being released into the environment than nuclear power. The population effective dose equivalent from radiation from coal plants is 100 times as much as nuclear plants.[58]
Thanks bruno!
Chimensch: according to some declassified documents from the US government Israel has had nukes since 1975, so I don't think they're anxious to drop the bomb on iran or anyone else.
I couldn't have said it better. The best option in the future is obviously harnessing nature, but right now the best harness we have is nuclear energy. All the Nimitz carriers use it, so why not cities?Quote:
Originally Posted by Bruno
I support the use of nuclear power fully, and think we could take a page from the methods the French are using (e.g. recycling fuel through the reactors, etc until by the time it is waste, it is MUCH safer than the one-time-use method which causes so much concern)
With less demand for fuel, I feel prices would go down, also, as well as the need for international squabbling over it. At the moment, if Russia or OPEC shut off the fuel, people would freeze in their homes during the winter, all sorts of bad things could happen; if electricity was being produced primarily by nuclear power nationwide/worldwide, this would be less of an issue, and, hopefully, once one nation is not able to hold this vital resource against another (much like the sugarcane or spice trade of years past) there will cease to be fighting over it.
I'm rambling, I guess I could have simply said
"I agree".
John P.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bruno
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bruno
Except that the nuclear waste lasts for thousands of years and can not be transported safely.
yeah for the lasts thousands of years, but I won't buy can't be transported safely without more details.
Just think, given a chance, we could all be driving vehicles without burning petroleum or what used to be our food(biofuels).
I read that with the latest designs (using breeder reactors for fuel mix) there are only 2 kinds of waste: with a very long half life (10s of 1000s yrs) and very short half life (20 years).Quote:
Originally Posted by DSailing
In the case of the long life: what people fail to understand is that if the half life is extremely long, it is also very low radioactive so while it is chemically toxic, the radioactivity is not that dangerous and it can be contained and reprocessed.
In case of the short half life, it is very radioactive, but it decays so fast that it has gone all but inert after 100 years. So this is controlable as well.
Now, the halflife of carbon 14 is 5730 years. And as I indicated previously, this gets actively dumped in the atmosphere by the coal plants, and into our food and air. Add on top of that the heavy metals that get expelled with it, and you have to admit that while nuclear has the potential for pollution, coal power actively pollutes right now, 100 times worse than nuclear.
Yet noone seems to mind, and people still consider nuclear to be the worst choice, despite the fact that it is safest and less polluting. :shrug:
Just wondering what the risk of a Chernobyl style 'accident' is with the latest reactors ?
More than 0% is unacceptable to me.
If the correct procedures are in place, it will be 0 for all intents and purposes.Quote:
Originally Posted by onimaru55
A theoretical 0 is not possible, and it shouldn't be a reason not to choose nuclear.
The risk of US nuclear weapons falling in wrong hands is not 0. they plain lost half a dozen already.
The risk of a civilian aircraft crashing is not 0 either, yet still people fly.
The risk of bioweapons escaping from weapons labs is not 0 either. Yet those labs still exist.
Where you like to admit it or not, risk cannot be expunged from your life.
The only way to prevent people from dying in traffic would be to set the max speed to 0 mph.
Yet we cannot do that, so while any death is one too much, we have to accept that it can and will happen with the current speed limits.
So if proper procedures with fail safe and triple redundancy are in place, chernobyl won't happen again.
In fact, chernobyl wouldn't have happened at all with that reactor design, if people would have followed procedures instead of doing their ****ing best to blow up that reactor.
The reactor was safe enough. The people weren't. Same as the people handling nuclear weapons and bio weapons. Yet we trust them all the same.
1. haven't had coffee yet, sorry if this isn't coherent
2. right now the US can't fully benefit from nuclear technology that WE invented because of the idiotic Carter-era ban on breeder reactors. this needs to be fixed
3. about 10% of the inherent risk of an "incident" is in the physical design of the reactor vessel + control rod system, and the other 90% is in the people that run it. people are ALWAYS the weakest link in any security system, ask Kevin Mitnik. proper protocols are vital for safety. it's like the four rules of safe gunhandling... if you follow all four, accidents can't happen, it's only when you start relying on one or two to keep you safe instead of four overlapping that you have problems.
4. about 40% of the French grid is filled by nuke plants (and breeder reactors fuel them)... if those guys can get it right, it stands to reason that most other people should as well.
I hope he doesn't enjoy hot dogs... the choking risk on those isn't 0 either.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bruno
But in all seriousness nuclear is one of the cleanest scalable forms of energy we have to date. This whole mess is a case of what I call "not in my backyard". We all want the benefits of things like close airports, mass transit, cheap energy but don't want the airport, the train tracks, or cooling ponds in our backyards.
Nuclear: Small footprint for large output and economically viable
Wind: Large footprint for large output and not economically viable yet.
Photovoltaic: Large footprint for large output and not economically viable yet.
Hydroelectric and wave generators: Getting there slowly.
Frankly a coal burning power plant creates more waste than a nuclear power plant ever would.
I've done a couple of projects in a plant where the fuel was made.Quote:
Originally Posted by jockeys
Basically, French and most european reactors run a mix of reprocessed nuclear fuel, plutonium and uranium.
The really cool part is that most spent fuel can be reprocessed into new fuel, adding only a little plutonium and uranium each time.
This is both really efficient and results in little real waste.
The french run almost 50% of their grid on nuclear. Sadly, in Belgium the greenpeace idiots won their battle and Belgium has stopped buildnig new ones. of course, the greens were not able to come up with an alternativee, but why let reality spoil a daydream. :rant:
Anyway, Carter put a ban on breeders to appease the anti-nuke lobby, regardless of the fact that not all breeder types can be used to produce weapons grade plutonium.
Sounds like asbestos. There's a really amazing form of it that is entirely useful and non-toxic, but all the fear mongers wanted all asbestos banned. Good job idiots...:cen
Can someone please remind me what political party President Carter was affiliated with? My old memory is failing me!
If memory serves, he wasn't a Republican or a Libertarian...hmmm...what was that party?
Damn this poor memory of mine!
Very interesting thread to me. I have been working in Commerical Nuclear Power as a Senior Reactor Operator and Operations instructor since 1977. Prior to that I was in the US Navy Nuclear program for 6 years. It is the cheapest (by far), Cleanest (by far) and most regualted business in the world. It has the best safety record of any industry. The chances of you dying from a nuclear accident at a commerical nuclear plant is about 1 in a trillion. Hehe, you are many times more likely to die in your car, a plane, eaten by a shark, etc ect. As a matter of fact more people have died in Ted Kennedy's car than have died in commercial nuclear accidents in this country.
The training given and the design of US plants sets the standard for the world. Good thing too as the nation gets ready to undergo a massive nuclear plant building program. There are dangers associated with ANY technology. Nuclear always has been and always will be the most environmentally friendly enery source that we can rely on. If you are a tree h:tuugger you should really embrace nuclear power.
[QUOTE=AaronX;251776]I hope he doesn't enjoy hot dogs... the choking risk on those isn't 0 either.
There's at least 3 studies on hot dogs related to childhood leukaemia. But let's not hijack the thread :roflmao
I know there were only about 50 deaths directly related to Chernobyl but thousands were & are affected by subsequent ill health, birth defects, etc. Just a bit hard to come to terms with that...
However, I appreciate the experienced and researched info here. Seems the risk is low indeed. Thanx guys :tu
There have been significant improvements in nuclear power since the Chernobyl accident. We learned a lot from Chernobyl and many precautions have been put in place to reduce the possibility of another nuclear mishap.
In addition, since 9/11 security improvements have been put in place in order to better secure our nation's infrastructure, including nuclear power. These improvements include but are not limited to: Better trained security personnel; more strict site access; more vehicle checks; mock-terrorist attacks and planning; better communication among the various levels of government. They have also conducted several studies to determine the consequences of an airborne attack, in which they concluded that if such an attack would occur, the possibility of damaging the reactor core and/or the release of radioactive material is very low. Lastly, since 9/11 security has significantly improved in the transporting and storing of nuclear waste.
In all, I strongly believe in nuclear power. Not only is it a sustainable energy source that will reduce carbon emissions, but it also has benefits on our national security because it's one small step to decrease our dependency on foreign oil. I understand that it is potentially dangerous, but on a lesser scale so is coal. Living in the appalachia and being apart of a coal-mining community, we lose several men every year from coal-mining accidents. As stated previously, the problem is that no one wants a nuclear power plant "in their back yard". However, I believe that we must act now and begin building immediately. The demands for energy will only increase and the tensions in the Middle-East will likely increase as well, so nuclear energy may be the best solution that we currently have (and I think it is).
I once did a couple of software projects for a plant where they made MOX fuel, and the security measures were draconian.
Bags etc were Xray'ed going in and out, radiation monitors, double access portals where you had to be cleared by security before you could pass.
And you only got on site after a background check by state security, no matter how urgent it was.
My first project meeting was on the parking lot, because my clearance hadn't been processed, and security didn't allow us to enter the inside meeting rooms :)
EDIT: also, I know that our reactors can withstand a boeing 747 crashing directly onto the reactor core. Of course the facility will be destroyed, but the reactor core itself shouldn't rupture.