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

I have to agree with you Sham, I (our railroad anyway & me regularly) haul three trains full of coal per week to the local coal plant. That's 57,000 TONS of coal or 405 cars heaping full of it...per week, whichever is easier to grasp in the minds eye.

114,000,000 pounds of coal per week...poof, into the air for one weeks worth of energy. I think most of that energy goes to the east coast...

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 have had a feeling for awhile that nuke is the way to go, over the years there have been some major stuff ups but that is generally how we learn and I would bet that the latest crop of nuke power stations would be very safe and what is more design engineers would be much better now at anticipating potential problems. My generation here in Australia has been brought up anti nuke since the 1960's and it is only now I have been reevaluating my position. When oil is now longer affordable we will finish up with a diverse range of power sources .

cheers

Heelerau

I would be in favour of nuclear power if someone could answer the question of what to do with the nuclear waste. Also, my understanding of half life is that when nuclear waste reaches its half life in 300,000 years it is only half as deadly as it was 300,000 years ago.

Originally Posted by ndw76

I would be in favour of nuclear power if someone could answer the question of what to do with the nuclear waste. Also, my understanding of half life is that when nuclear waste reaches its half life in 300,000 years it is only half as deadly as it was 300,000 years ago.

Thats an easy one to answer you spread it over a very very very wide area so that its at a level of normal back ground radiation.
Just 1 catch though the cost!!!

The Bottom line is Nuclear is our only option today it is the most concentrated energy source we have and we will be using it more and more as the price of oil goes up Green energy is the future but until oil goes way over the top its still not looking cheap enough yet. Countries like Japan and France went down the Nuclear route to be less dependant on imported energy.

The Economies of the west are in a depressed state but there is money to be made and green energy is the key to getting things moving again. with China and India becoming more wealthy and buying cars hence pushing up the oil price. The oil will become too expensive and or run out that's when green energy will pay off.

Read thats potentially 2 Billion new customers with money to spend on green energy.

Originally Posted by ndw76

I would be in favour of nuclear power if someone could answer the question of what to do with the nuclear waste.

There are many things you can do with it, but they are pretty much the same things you do with any other waste. E.g. process it a little bit and then dump it somewhere, or dilute it until it's more palatable and live with it... May be some day it'll be cheap enough to shove it in space? Of course, nobody wants to pay for that part, the same way they don't want to pay for dealing with any other waste.

Originally Posted by ndw76

Also, my understanding of half life is that when nuclear waste reaches its half life in 300,000 years it is only half as deadly as it was 300,000 years ago.

Not quite. It can be just as deadly or completely undeadly depending on the specifics. Everything has a decay rate (even iron which has the lowest energy i.e. making anything else out of it costs energy, but that's what quantum mechanics would do to you) and the decay rate of most things that are not considered radioactive is just much smaller than the decay rate of say plutonium.
I've carried slow neutrons in a coffee cup across the room to run an experiment and most people would argue I'm still alive
Basically radiation is like most other things - it's not automatically bad for you and as long as you use it properly the benefits can outweigh the damage. Certainly most scientists who discovered how it works died prematurely of cancer.

I can't read the title of this thread without hearing it like this in my head.

Well, now you've got me hearing it like that! "When Putin rears his head..."

Originally Posted by gugi

May be some day it'll be cheap enough to shove it in space? Of course, nobody wants to pay for that part, the same way they don't want to pay for dealing with any other waste.

I could be mistaken, but my understanding of why we don't launch nuclear waste into space is a safety issue, not one of cost. While sending things into space is much safer today than it has been in the past, there is still a % chance of failure. If that was to happen in our atmosphere and if the craft was carrying nuclear waste, the results would be quite bad.

I'm really saying this next bit out of speculation, but I think it would be cheaper to send nuclear waste into space than it is to create longterm storage solutions (which can't even hold the waste securely until it's at a safe level of radioactivity, though the holding period is probably much longer than the human race will survive).

well, here are some numbers:
yucca mountain is supposed to hold 70 000 tons of radioactive waste at the cost estimate of just under 100 billion USD. Which means about 1500USD/kg. Currently the cost to send payload into space depends on how far but it starts at around 15000USD and can go 3x-5x as much if it's to go to say Mars. So that's at present 10x-50x more expensive.
You figure out the overhead for safety.

Originally Posted by Bruno

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.

Essentially, make an off-site backup of the human species. Sadly, no form of backup technology is without potential failure. What if the sun goes supernova? Then our solar system gets a whole lot less comfortable. But I digress, that's a topic for an entirely other thread.

In the case of nuclear power...what would you propose as an alternative? Coal? Wind? Solar? Natural Gas? Geothermal? Hydro-electric? Aquatic thermocline (forget the actual name)? I'm all about "going green" and minimizing our environmental impact, but with our current electricity demands as a SOCIETY, there really isn't a feasible alternative. There are MASSIVE environmental implications to each and every one of those technologies, and you can spend days arguing for or against each and every one, and be right the entire time.

The solution? Turn off your lights when you leave a room. Only charge your devices when you need to. Turn off your computer / tv / cable box when not in use. Level your fridge. In short, use less power. Even that's only a partial solution.

I'm reminded of something I read in Freakonomics (I think) about what happened to the world when the internal combustion engine finally caught on. New York City had lots, blocks, piled many stories high with horse manure left from the thousands of horses used for transportation throughout the city. There was so much, they literally couldn't get rid of it. They couldn't give it away fast enough. What happened? Did they come up with some incredible manure-disappearing solution? Nope. Someone developed the internal combustion engine, and the need for horses as a mode of transportation disappeared overnight. With no horses, there was no waste. Essentially, at this point in time, we need our version of the internal combustion engine. Something more efficient than what we have now, that uses a widely available fuel source.

...until someone perfects cold fusion, that is. Then we're set.