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Forget Nuclear power. It's not going to happen because when you break ground for a new plant thousands of crazy people

Some nuclear-friendly federal regulation and funding could fix that. Research funding into next-gen safer designs? Streamlined permit approvals toward pilot programs? Tax incentives, perhaps to convert aging coal plants? A little DARPA action, enough to encourage universities to offer nuclear engineering degrees again?

When the Soviets were around, propagandizing a nuclear world with nuclear plants that fit on trucks to show off how nuclear they were, the U.S. was red hot to show how nuclear it could be. Now with the Soviets and their propaganda gone, U.S. politicians have no balls for moon-shot beat-the-russians tech stuff.

Or maybe it's not completely gone. The Russians and the Chinese are getting back into nuclear, even in spite of the Russians sitting on shit-tons of fossil fuels. The Chinese want to quickly power up these little islands they're building in the China Sea to claim as their new territory. The Russians want to fill the melting Arctic with flag-flying nuclear ice-breakers to get at all the stuff up there (the U.S. hasn't built an ice-breaker since the late 1970s). Gosh, if we would only elect Congress-people who gave a fuck, we might be able to get in on this while there's something still to get got.

I do raise fish, and you're an idiot: http://bellona.org/news/uncate... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A... Next time use Google before spouting your mouth off.

If only this was because Tepco was wilfully concealing the radiation level in order to save money, but this is likely to be caused by symptomatic incompetence on so many levels in Tepco. One wonders what stupendous errors and failures Tepco will provide in the future.

Instead of progressing, the situation at the Fukushima plant seems get worse day for day; the water tanks are corroding and leaking, the local radiation levels seems to break new records every month, the ground beneath reactor 4 is apparently unstable, no one have a clear picture of what exactly is going on inside the reactor buildings because of the massive radiation, and up until now, only "band aid" work and cleaning have been done; the most difficult and dangerous job of removing the spent fuel rods have barely begun, and is likely to take many years.

And every day is a disaster potentially waiting to happen; if the cooling is lost for whatever reason, the fuel rods may start a spontaneous radiological fire, releasing 3-10 times the radiation as the original 2011 disaster:
http://www.bellona.org/filearchive/fil_Holophi-Special-Report-on-Fukushima-SFP-4-r.pdf

Oh, and the same report cites a scientific paper on how new magnitude 7 earthquakes are expected in the area (Tong et al, 2012).

One hopes that Japan are lucky with the wind direction again if the worst should happen, the human and economic consequences of massive radiation cloud spreading over the Japanese inland instead of the sea, are barely comprehensible.

43% of Fukushima children examined in 9/2012, have thyroid abnormalities. (stat for a "normal" population is .5%).

Really? That's funny, I just tried a web search on this to see if I could find where you're getting this stuff from (since you don't like to provide sources...), and I turned up this: Thyroid tests for Fukushima children find no effects from accident

Oh wait, but there's also stuff like this: Japan hiding results of Fukushima children's thyroid cancer screenings in new information blackout Those bastards aren't releasing medical records for thousands of kids! (And yet, you have access to precise percentages quoted from somewhere or other...)

Spare me your assurances.

Spare us your fear-mongering.

A nuclear icebreaker, travelling through rough seas with several tonnes of radioactive waste on-board, opperated by a country with possibly the worst environmental record in the world. What could possibly go wrong?
http://bellona.org/articles/articles_2011/vaygach_norway
http://www.bellona.org/filearchive/fil_The_Arctic_Nuclear_Challenge.pdf

A nuclear icebreaker, travelling through rough seas with several tonnes of radioactive waste on-board, opperated by a country with possibly the worst environmental record in the world. What could possibly go wrong?
http://bellona.org/articles/articles_2011/vaygach_norway
http://www.bellona.org/filearchive/fil_The_Arctic_Nuclear_Challenge.pdf

Your post is a collection of lies.

Fukushima Dai-ichi unit 1 was granted a 10 year license extension just prior to the incident
http://www.bellona.org/articles/articles_2011/fukushima_reactorext
The earthquake did not damage the plant
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-02/tepco-says-earthquake-didn-t-damage-critical-units-at-fukushima-reactor.html
Fuel rods were not removed, they could not have been. They are still in there, molten down.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-24/tepco-confirms-meltdown-of-no-2-3-reactors-at-fukushima-1-.html
The tsunami was not unprecedented, bigger tsunami wave run-ups have occurred on Japan's eastern seaboard in the past 100 years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1933_Sanriku_earthquake
During the incident, the people at the plant did not work selflessly and continually to help prevent the incident from escalating further, but rather evacuated on multiple occasions.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/latest-nuclear-plant-explosion-in-japan-raises-radiation-fears/2011/03/15/ABwTmha_story.html?wpisrc=nl_natlalert

He is in VIRGINIA! Fukushima is not in VIRGINIA! Ergo, he is a fucking retard for wanting a geiger counter, right! RIGHT!?

Oh, wait.

Or maybe you are lacking the mental comprehension to understand my argument? Fukushima should be a changing point for how we treat nuclear technology. Buying a geiger counter is now a good idea, because the disaster in Fukushima taught us we can never be too careful. Making fun of such an act is a dipshit thing to do and disrespect to the victims of Fukushima.

Here is an example. Let us say 6 months after 9/11 your friend said he was scared of tall buildings and was thinking of buying a parachute. Making fun of him would be a dipshit thing to do and would be a form of disrespect to the victims of 9/11 and the horrific end they met. So yes, fuck you.

maybe in some parallel universe those items still radioactive are indeed stored, but not in this reality.

To be fair, technetium emissions from Sellafield have recently been greatly reduced. Apparently Sellafield launched a new trial treatment in 2003, in which technetium is removed from the liquid waste and, wait for it, stored as medium-level solid radioactive waste. Apparently this led to a 95% reduction in Tc-99 during trials. As a result of this, this cleaning technology was adopted on a permanent basis.

I agree that the Wikipedia article does not contain this factoid. Wikipedia is not the only source of information on the Web.

maybe in some parallel universe those items still radioactive are indeed stored, but not in this reality.

To be fair, technetium emissions from Sellafield have recently been greatly reduced. Apparently Sellafield launched a new trial treatment in 2003, in which technetium is removed from the liquid waste and, wait for it, stored as medium-level solid radioactive waste. Apparently this led to a 95% reduction in Tc-99 during trials. As a result of this, this cleaning technology was adopted on a permanent basis.

I agree that the Wikipedia article does not contain this factoid. Wikipedia is not the only source of information on the Web.

At least 15 people have been admitted to hospital with symptoms of radiation poisoning after a devastating earthquake damaged Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant, Kyodo news agency said on Sunday.

http://www.bellona.org/articles/articles_2011/mox_reactor_coolant_loss

One hundred and ninty people have been reported as being in hospital with radiation poisoning, Slivyak said.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/asia-pacific/japan/110313/japan-tsunami-earthquake

At least 22 people are known to have been exposed to radiation and were being treated in hospital; Japanâ(TM)s nuclear and industrial safety agency said that as many as 160 people may have been exposed.

Normally I would agree with you, but the MOX issue is still up in the air, so to speak. Take a look at these, just text search down to "MOX". In fact, they are the first two Google News results on "MOX" at the moment.
http://www.bellona.org/articles/articles_2011/mox_reactor_coolant_loss
http://www.economist.com/blogs/asiaview/2011/03/after_earthquake

One more point about the press. It is using Chernobyl and Three Mile Island as comparisons, but have forgotten Windscale (1957). That disaster was widely reported at the time. The graphite reactor was more experimental than the operators realized. The geometry of these things is tricky.

Windscale was between Chern. and TMI in severity, so would be an instructive scenario of the after effects of a radiation leak.

Siiiigghhh.. fish farming.. you know, as opposed to getting in your boat and going out to fish in the ocean then being surprised when one day there's no fish?

Oh that's what you mean? Like farmed fish don't need to be fed and don't know massive amounts of antibiotics. Except they do. Farmed fish requires vast amounts of wild caught fish to feed. Daniel Pauly "a professor of fisheries science at the University of British Columbia, has calculated that it takes 2 to 5 lbs. of anchovies, sardines, menhaden and the other oily fish that comprise fish meal to produce 1 lb. of farmed salmon". Because they are packed into small areas they also need those antibiotics, which end up in the ocean leading to antibiotic resistance. Fish farms also create dead zones.

1. Seven Reasons to Avoid Farm Raised Salmon.
2. Fish Farms: Underwater Factories
3. Farmed or wild fish: Which is healthier?

Still think fish farming is the answer?

Falcon

I read an interesting article once that the Soviets never considered nuclear weapons to be as big of a deal as the American public did - after all, they are just really big bombs. Supposedly, the KGB did their best to foster that fear, and promoted the false concept of a "nuclear winter".

I'll have to see if I can find that again, it was good reading :)

That falls in line with some other things I've read about, though, like the nuclear-powered electrical generators the Russians used in secluded outposts and such, that are now basically strewn about haphazardly in Siberia.

Here's an article about one of those that is laying at the bottom of the sea, which contains 6 MILLION Ci. For scale, that's 3 million times more radioactivity than the spill in the OP.

http://www.bellona.org/english_import_area/international/russia/navy/pacific/incidents/35864

Sure, you could put it like that. You're pretending like electricity is limitless, though. Which is only one of the flaws of your post.

The efficiency of the electrolysis process is high, but it's not 100%. (This PDF puts efficiency of most economically viable methods around 80%.) Taking into account the efficiency of the electricity production, that number plummets. Also keep in mind: about 50% of the United States' electricity is made in coal-fired plants. This Wikipedia article states:

Average share of electricity generated from coal in the US has dropped slightly, from 52.8% in 1997 to 49.0% in 2006. However, due to growth of the total demand for electricity, the net production of coal-generated electricity increased over the same period from 1.845 to 1.991 trillion kilowatt-hours per year in absolute terms.

The ways we're currently generating electricity are not at all limitless. Fossil fuels are still our primary source of electricity, and producing hydrogen uses a LOT of electricity. From this Wikipedia article:

In current market conditions, the 50 kWh of electricity consumed to manufacture one kilogram of compressed hydrogen is roughly as valuable as the hydrogen produced, assuming 8 cents/kWh.

A more relevant quote, though, also comes from the PDF I linked earlier:

At current market price, the cost of producing hydrogen from natural gas is about a third of the cost of electrolysis.

Which means people probably won't be using electricity, let alone solar/wind/hydro, to produce hydrogen. They'll use natural gas. Which, again, is not limitless.

And I haven't even mentioned CO2.

Sure, you could put it like that. You're pretending like electricity is limitless, though. Which is only one of the flaws of your post.

The efficiency of the electrolysis process is high, but it's not 100%. (This PDF puts efficiency of most economically viable methods around 80%.) Taking into account the efficiency of the electricity production, that number plummets. Also keep in mind: about 50% of the United States' electricity is made in coal-fired plants. This Wikipedia article states:

Average share of electricity generated from coal in the US has dropped slightly, from 52.8% in 1997 to 49.0% in 2006. However, due to growth of the total demand for electricity, the net production of coal-generated electricity increased over the same period from 1.845 to 1.991 trillion kilowatt-hours per year in absolute terms.

The ways we're currently generating electricity are not at all limitless. Fossil fuels are still our primary source of electricity, and producing hydrogen uses a LOT of electricity. From this Wikipedia article:

In current market conditions, the 50 kWh of electricity consumed to manufacture one kilogram of compressed hydrogen is roughly as valuable as the hydrogen produced, assuming 8 cents/kWh.

A more relevant quote, though, also comes from the PDF I linked earlier:

At current market price, the cost of producing hydrogen from natural gas is about a third of the cost of electrolysis.

Which means people probably won't be using electricity, let alone solar/wind/hydro, to produce hydrogen. They'll use natural gas. Which, again, is not limitless.

And I haven't even mentioned CO2.

I did not say there were no middle roads. Merely that greenies will never accept them.

I'm a greenie, and I accept them, so that's clearly untrue. Or perhaps your definition of "greenie" is "anyone who doesn't accept them"? In that case your argument is tautological and pointless.

Nuclear power expansion is the ideal middle road today after all. Barely needs any space. Lots of power. Cheap. Fuel many times recyclable. 1 kg fuel powers new york for a year. Few, tiny mines ... what else could you ask for ?

Well... I could ask for a power source that isn't so easily weaponizable, one that we would be happy to share even with, say, Iran. I could ask for one whose infrastructure doesn't present an opportunity for theft of radioactive materials that could then be made into terrorist devices, held for ransom, etc. I could ask for one that isn't dependent on a finite fuel supply that has to be dug out of the ground in potentially unfriendly areas. I could ask for one that doesn't generate any hazardous waste. I could ask for one whose power plants don't form giant centralized targets for terrorists.

I'm not saying that nuclear isn't an option, just that it isn't the be-all and end-all of power technologies.

While you are correct that terrorist threats are over stated there are other good reasons for hoping that these batteries are not widely used, looking at past events can show why. The use of radioisotopes to power thermoelectric generators is not a new idea. During the 1960s to the 1980s the former Soviet union used Radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTG) to power lighthouses and other remote equipment along the Russian northern coastline. These worked well for the most part during their service life, however the Soviet union collapsed and most of the RTG's in place were forgotten. Since then these devices have posed a considerable pollution risk to the environment as their casings degrade over time. They have also been associated with several deaths as people unaware of the dangers they contain have come into contact with them in remote areas. Many old RTG's are still in the environment today long past their design life. The Environmental Foundation Bellona has an informative article about old Soviet RTG's.

It will be interesting to see if future American companies and governments are as keen to clean up old RTG's from the environment as the current Russian government are today. I think that apathy is by far the greater danger than the terrorist.

There have been "accidents"

http://www.google.com/search?q=accidents+in+USN+su bs&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

http://www.bellona.org/english_import_area/interna tional/russia/nuke_industry/co-operation/31750

Ever heard of Thresher and Scorpion. Sure, the reactors are either intact or leaking negligible rads, but there have been others. Such as problems with sodium-coolant reactors. Granted, I can't recall any deaths or hair-loss events over these, but... In general I see what you're trying to say...

After doing some more research on the internet, I need to rectify some facts:
Since 1986, no more that two reactors of the Chornobyl plant, have been operative..

In 1991, one of the two reactors caught fire and was taken offline and was taken back online in 1995. Currently there's only one reactor operational, the second one was taken offline in 1997 because it exceeded it's lifespan. The remaining reactor, is in such a bad shape, that it needs a half year of service for every half year of operation. Ukrainia has scheduled the last reactor to shut down before 01-01-2000, but is now probably forced to use it until end Q2 Y2K, because they still haven't received any money to finish building their new power plants and winters are very harsh over there..

Currently, Ukrainia had only power 22/24 hours, before powering up #3 and the Ukrainain public transport is largly electrical powered.


In the first year after the accident, the number of cleanup workers in the zone was estimated to be 211,000, and these workers received an estimated average dose between 165-250 millisievert (16.5 rem). In total, around 600-800,000 workers have been involved since 1986 and around 8000-10000 of them died.

Right after the accident, the main health concern involved radioiodine, with a half-life of eight days. During which those 135.000 people were not evacuated.. Today, there is concern about contamination of the soil with cesium-137, which has a half-life of about 30 years.
It is true that the reactors themself are based on old analogue technologies, but the powergrid, auxialiary control units and power backup units aren't.

The POWERGRID and NOT the reactor itself perse, is THE main Y2K concern, according to the CIA.
If the powergrid fails or miscommunication etc, the 5 powerplants Ukrainia has, have to be taken off-line. The ironony is, that reactors need power from the grid to be able be be shutdown, as the Chernobyl test disaster prooved. It is feared, that the current power backup system takes to long to get online, altough it has been improved (providing it is not hit by a y2k problem).

America has offered to send batteries and power generators and also offered to improve current reactors.. But is hindered by politics.. I'm in general anti-America, but it seems like America is the only one who cares.. The G7 still hasn't payed.

How precare is the situation of #4 at the moment?
* In 1991, the Chornobyl plant suffered from an earthquake.
* There is leaking rain water into the "sarcophagus" of unit 4, causing massive corrosion and major damage of the structural integerity as robot surveying showed. There's imminent need of $700,000 todo some very short term repairs to #4, but money lacks...
* #4 contains still 70% of it's original fuel in dust form.. The roof of the 'sargophagus' is imminent to collapse. Does the term 'fall out' ring a bell to anyone? If it would collapse, the disaster would be much much bigger than in 1986.. Providing it won't ignite the nuclear fuel in #3, causing a real global disaster, which is a real fear.
And don't forget the 1991 fire..

Russia and Lithuania still also are using 14 RBMK light water graphite reactors such as at Chornobyl. The RMBK 1000 model VVER 440-230 in Novovoronezh NPP (Russia), the same as used in Chornobyl, has already failed 17 times, during it's life...
Some article on Sovjet reactors.
Some other articles: Russia today , more info this and this

"The odds of a meltdown are one in 10,000 years. The plants have safe and reliable controls that are protected from any breakdown with three safety systems." Vitaly Sklyarov, Minister of Power for the Ukrainian SSR., February 1986