Thread: Nuclear energy - Opinions on its use as a power source?

Originally Posted by JimmyHAD

In the early 20th century they figured that they would lose one ironworker per floor on average when building a skyscraper. That was an acceptable level of risk at that time. Safe work practices developed that improved that statistic considerably. The old saying that you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs comes to mind. When they build nukes, chemical plants, cement plants there is certain amount of danger to the surrounding community. That is life in the big city. How many more people get killed driving to and from work every day than have been killed as a result of nuclear power plant accidents ?

I've worked in nuclear power plants on shut downs quite a few times back in my ironworker days. Been in the containment and around the spent fuel pit and seen fuel rods with my own eyes thirty years ago, and lived to tell the tale. I can only say that the cost of maintaining nukes is astronomical compared to conventional units and than you have the problem of dealing with radioactive waste. Affordable energy is already a problem and it won't get easier as the population increases. Tough out there and getting tougher every year that goes by. I think we need to take advantage of the nukes while we work on alternatives. There are risks but that is part of life.

Its interesting how this has changed. I know in the 60s when they were trying to get to the moon people were dying right and left. If they'd been doing that today, one accident and the whole program would have been mothballed for years. We likely would have never gotten to the moon.

I'm ex-Navy and most folks don't realize just how many nuclear power plants there really are. Look at all of the submarines and surface ships in our U.S. Navy fleet. Until we learn to harness "green" energy and the technology to make enough energy to feed the energy monster's/end users (all of us), nuclear energy is a very viable option that is probably more effecient than natural gas and/or coal energy combined.

Originally Posted by shooter74743

I'm ex-Navy and most folks don't realize just how many nuclear power plants there really are. Look at all of the submarines and surface ships in our U.S. Navy fleet. Until we learn to harness "green" energy and the technology to make enough energy to feed the energy monster's/end users (all of us), nuclear energy is a very viable option that is probably more effecient than natural gas and/or coal energy combined.

I am suddenly having visions of submarines equiped with solar panels

Bruno's point about the different designs of nuclear reactors is a good one. There are also different reactions that nuclear powerplants can use, and some create waste that has much shorter halflives. I don't recall what the current biproducts are or if the halflives of the waste are currently minimized. But my point is that there are ways in which nuclear power has become safer, and there are more ways to make it safer too. I think focusing on that, for the time being, is a better idea than trying to scrap nuclear power all together. Because another good point is what other options do we have.

The real problem isn't how we get the energy, though, it's that there are too many people using it, and they are also using too much.

Seriously, how far into the future would you guess the human race, as we know it, will continue to exist?

That will depend entirely on whether we can get off this rock as a species or not. The human species is not that old and yet we've done remarkable things.
If we can get past the point where we all kill each other, then colonization of space is a real option. At present, the solar system is a strong boundary with the technology that we have so far. Otoh, I don't doubt that we can overcome those problems, make technological advances and zoom out of here before we get hit back to the stone age by a supervulcano or killer asteroid.

That is something not all people realize. We depend on todays technology to make tomorrow's technology. If todays technology breaks down in a cataclysm, kick starting the entier industrial process again from scratch is going to take a loooong time. Think of it like this: suppose you get warped back to 1700 with your knowledge of today's math and physics. what could you do? The answer is : precious little. You could have interesting conversations with physicists and mathematicians of those days. Not much more. Because everything you could do with that knowledge requires industrial support for obtaining raw materials, energy, engineering, ....

It is my profound hope that I will live to see the day where we can power up the first craft that can take humans away from the earth to a mars colony or something similar. A community that can live independent from earth support. If we can do that, then the human species will survive in this galaxy for as long as it exists. If we can't, then it is pretty much a given that we will sooner or later become extinct.

Originally Posted by Bruno

I am suddenly having visions of submarines equiped with solar panels

Hey, you laugh...but Captain Nemo could have done it!!

Thing is that there is a LOT of energy in those little reactors on subs...maybe that's the answer itself. Small versus the large ones.

there are disposable reactors available today able to supply mid sized citys for 50 years(500k people IIRC)
and they are also designed to be plased deep underground so storage is a matter of leaving it alone
Windmills still kill birds and solar power is not werry effective, methanol fuel cells are but a life span of one year cant pretend to be economic

Originally Posted by Bruno

There are 2 important issues to keep in mind.

1) modern reactors are built to use a different type fuel and work according to different principles. It is simply impossible to get a melt down if the cooling fails because it's the coolant that makes the reaction possible. Older reactors are still the design which can go critical and which are in effect nothing more than controlled nuclear bombs.

Sort of, but not exactly. Standard fuel for LWRs (light water reactors) is slightly enriched Uranium (~5-7% 235 IIRC), although some like CANDU reactors (they use heavy water or D2O) or RBMKs (Chernobyl's design--they use graphite as a moderator & I forget what else they do) can use natural uranium. Navy reactor fuel is enriched quite a bit more--I forget what it is.

It is very possible to melt down from decay heat well after the control rods are inserted. Eventually it cools off, but not for a while. That's what happened @ Fukushima--the operating reactors SCRAMed immediately upon feeling the tremor & shut down just fine, but the tsunami later wiped out the diesel generators that powered pumps & various other backup/emergency cooling systems. Decay heat built up & we all know the rest.

I think you're talking about water acting as a neutron moderator, where steam bubbles slow the rate of reaction--that's called a negative void coefficient--big safety feature. (Chernobyl had a very high positive void coefficient--the reaction increased in the presence of steam voids.) This only slows the reaction rate, though--it has nothing to do w/ decay heat. Melting down is a function of heat in this case.

Lastly, any fission reaction involves criticality (I think the term is delayed criticality, but I could be wrong--anyone who knows, feel free to correct me if I am)--if it's not critical, there's no chain reaction. Weapons operate under prompt supercriticality. Some newer designs don't require active safety/cooling systems, but every reactor needs to go critical to produce energy. Nuclear explosions are impossible in a power plant--the enrichment is far too low for that to ever happen even w/o any controls.

No offense whatever intended here; just wanted to clear a few things up. This whole thing has gotten me reading a lot more about nukes in general even though my area is chemicals.

Jimmy- There are risks and that is part of life.

And always should and probably always will be.

and I daresay I agree with Dylan. The world IS overpopulated, and it's getting worse. Nothing you can do about it, but the world can only support so much for so long safely and in a way people can enjoy being alive. At this rate, the end is coming and not far off. More, more and more is going to have to become less, less and less regardless of new technology as far as energy is concerned or the world will eventually become to small.

Nothing is green out there.
We should compare our sources?
what we have and what are we getting.
Has any of you seen how coal plants works? how much coal they use ? and how harmful it is? starting Mercury and ending up ash?
i do think safely build Nuclear plant will save a lot more lives then rest of options we have today.
Just my 0.2 cent