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Coal + sequestration is still *significantly* cheaper than solar and will be for the next 20 years at least.

That's because coal is subsidized and external costs are passed on the everyone, whether they use coal or not. If coal plants had to make it on their own and pay for their Externalities electricity costs would be a lot higher. Heck, even the Nuclear Power Industry uses coal's external costs as a selling point.

And dont mention Hydro.
The greenies hate that because it destroys habitats. :)

Some don't like hydro because frequently dams do not live up to their promise or the costs out weight the benefits [pdf]. "World Commission on Dams Report vindicates unjustifiability of large dams".

So, we've got 1 person dead in both cases.

Are we sure though? I mean, we don't do things like study excess cancer cases for most chemical accidents - and yet chemicals can cause cancer. What about premature death due to a weakened respitory system from the accident combined with a case of flu, later on?

On the wiki article it mentions that the average dose was 8 millirem(chest x-ray) and the highest 100 millirem(1/3rd average annual background dosage). So the estimated 1 fatal cancer caused by the release is likely based on the linear harm model - which is in dispute.

Heck, the article mentions that the higher cancer rate for the region could be due to it having more radon on average than surrounding counties.

Basically, I'm just trying to say that an immediate death counts higher than a 'statistical' death an unknown time in the future.

This all ends up getting rolled into my view - that nuclear power might not be perfectly safe, but it is far safer than coal power, which kills thousands from their pollution each year.

We got lucky with 3 mile island

Did we really get lucky there, or was it because we were already more paranoid about nuclear power than the USSR, causing us to build containment structures around all reactors? Structures that, in case of a Chernobyl style event, would be far more secure than the sarcophagus? That we build reactors, to use a clich, that's safe(r) by design?

nuclear plants will always present targets for bombing.

This made me think of another case: California banning .50BMG rifles(classifying them as 'assault rifles') partially because of their 'possible usage by terrorists'.

Terrorists have overwhelmingly shown that they like going after crowded, vulnerable targets like planes, malls, and schools. Not hard targets like a nuclear plant that has it's reactor shielded by a thick concrete dome. Car bomb, even a truck bomb would have to deal with the fact that that's where the containment dome is the thickest - multiple meters.

and wish we had moved to it in a big way the way France has, but this Moore fellow is an easily discredited shill for industry. He's not the representative we want to advance our cause. Richard Rhodes, James Lovelock, and Bernard Cohen have a hell of a lot better credibility.

radioactive waste you're getting right now, from COAL PLANTS, which release far more radioactive material into the air, totally unregulated, than any nuclear power plant. Because there's uranium IN THE FUCKING COAL. Moron.

Those factors make it so difficult to make bombs out of recovered PWR plutonium that not one proliferator, not India or Pakistan or Iraq or Iran or North Korea, has even tried to make a bomb that way.

This is grossly unsupported by proper engineering analysis and history. India's first bomb used reactor material, which had even been used as plutonium in a fast fission plutonium fueled research reactor. Many other nations have fired test bombs using RGPU.

There is no dispute that it's harder to use RGPU than Weapons Grade, or U-233. But the arguments that RGPU weapons are impractical have been thoroughly discredited. Harder is not impractical. More dangerous to handle is not impractical.

See:

Reactor Grade Plutonium's Explosive Properties by J Carson Mark.
India's Nuclear Weapons Program - Smiling Buddha: 1974 from the Nuclear Weapons Archive (Carey Sublette)
Nuclear Weapons FAQ Section 6.2: Fissionable Materials, 6.2.2.10 Reactor-Grade Plutonium from the Nuclear Weapons FAQ (Carey Sublette)
Nuclear Weapons FAQ Section 4.2: Fission Weapon Designs, 4.2.6.1 Clandestine Weapons, 4.2.6.1 Terrorist Bombs from the Nuclear Weapons FAQ (Carey Sublette)

Assuming the plant detonates. This kind of reactor doesn't. Although a water cooled one of this type would be better (shutting off the cooling shuts off the reactor in this type).

"Just like I can tolerate only a certain amount of stupidity."

I wouldn't make comments like that if I were you.

"Plutonium, did you know that Marie Curie died in agony of multiple debilitating cancers"

Try reading sometime.

"How are you even able to post on Slashdot?"

Sure, he was wrong, but that question applies even more to you. You accused him of inaccuracy and didn't even fact-check... Are you implying that Nagasaki wasn't bombed by plutonium or that the thousands of deaths from a power plant melting downis more than the amount of deaths caused by a nuke?

"You can't "shut down" the process of radioactive decay"

No, but you can shut down what powers a nuclear plant, the chain reaction.

"It's all the peacenik's fault that we have nuclear waste"

Your reading comprehension sucks. Try reading what he says. Let me rephrase to make it easier on you. "If we recycle the waste, less of it will be in dumps, and the anti-nuke people make this impossible, even though it can be safe." And before you get stupid on me again, note that not all of it would be safe, etc. But some, if not most, of that can be recycled, but that option is blocked by paranoia.

"What does this have to do with a lot of outrageous misinformation regarding radioactivity and nuclear waste?"

He was explaining and giving examples of why he would be considered 'green'. This is called an informal version of 'establishing credentials". He has. You haven't. I have... at the least, I've shown I know how to use google, which you have failed to do.

"You've got a long way to go yourself, pal"

Pot, stop talking to the kettle, you're giving me a headache.

"What the hell does this have to do with nuclear waste?"

I don't know, sewage vs. nuke waste, seems a fairly decent analogy to me. Maybe I'm just smarter than you.

Fuck that, The Nuclear Control Institute and The Mayak gave me nervous breakdowns that no game can match. Though actually, Realms of the Haunting, had strange squeaking knife throwing things that drove me NUTS...

But still, those sites made me fail my exams >:(

This rather misses the point (in addition to being a bit optimistic). A brief glance at Greenpeace highlights the dangers in long-distance radioactive fuel transport. Trafficking and sabotage of nuclear fuel shipments are the potential source of major disasters, alongside abysmal safety records for fuel storage and reprocessing.

Nuclear power has too many 'collateral' problems, not least in the way it helps the proliferation of nuclear weapons. It's time to ditch it.

wronkiew wrote:
As nuclear and fossil fuels become harder to find...
You might be waiting along time for this to happen. The oceans contain 4 billion tons of dissolved uranium, most of which is extractable with today's seawater extraction technology at easily affordable prices for today's reactors.

Comments from:

Richard L. Garwin

Philip D. Reed Senior Fellow for Science and Technology
Council on Foreign Relations, New York

and

IBM Fellow Emeritus
IBM Research Division
P.O. Box 218
Yorktown Heights, NY 10598
http://www.nci.org/conf/garwin/index.htm

..snip..
In fact, the cost of expanding and continuing nuclear power may be far less than has been supposed by nuclear power technology enthusiasts. They have usually jumped to the consideration of breeder reactors because of the "shortage" of uranium fuel. With proven reserves of some three million tons of natural uranium, and a consumption of some 200 tons per year per 1-GWe reactor, this resource would last for only about 15,000 reactor years-- 50 years at a consumption of 300 reactors equivalent, and a mere two years if reactors are to supply half of the world's future total energy needs.

Of great interest are the terrestrial "reasonably assured resources" of uranium, which are likely to amount to 100 to 300 million tons of uranium at a price of $350 per kg (in comparison with the current spot market price of $20-30 per kg)(21).

Of course, nobody of right mind would buy uranium at $350/kg when the same material is available at $30/kg, but it is of primary importance to note that at $350/kg these high-cost terrestrial resources would still be cheaper than the cost of recycling fuel in an LWR (perhaps $700/kg of natural uranium avoided) or of building a breeder reactor with a capital cost that might be double that of an LWR.

Ultimately, we may have safe, economical breeder reactors, but we can take centuries to perfect them. Because in addition to the 200 million tons of terrestrial high-cost uranium, there are four billion tons of uranium in the oceans-2000 years of operation of a population of 10,000 LWRs. Half of this seawater uranium could be harvested without substantial increase in cost above that of harvesting the first seawater uranium in bulk. And that might cost from $100-$1000/kg-- probably still cheaper than recycle and breeders, but even at the higher figure the cost of fuel is still affordable.

If all enrichment costs and tails fraction remain the same, to buy 200 tons of uranium at $1000/kg to fuel a typical LWR for a year would involve costs of $200 million. This would approximately double the cost of power from an LWR, but the additional cost per kWh would be some 2 cents per kWh-- easily affordable in comparison with the 10 cents or 20 cents per kWh charged to the consumer and the 40 cents or 70 cents per kWh recently experienced in California.

Seawater uranium is available in principle to any producer and would be an article of commerce. The estimates of $100 to $300/kg come from French and Japanese groups,(10) but a recent paper provides an estimate of $1000/kg.(11) More such analyses are needed, and I comment on this paper by Kato, et al, not to attack it but to motivate additional work. A sounder estimate, whether it supports a high cost or a low cost for seawater uranium, is important to the evolution of nuclear power in the next half century. Kato, et al, consider as a unit a plant capable of extracting 200 tons of uranium per year from seawater-enough to supply fuel continuously for a single 1 GWe power reactor (at current tails fraction). At 100 yen per dollar, the investment cost for an Ashore Facility is $269 M, of which $16 M is for chelating resin to retain uranium, and $253 M for equipment; Transport Ships amount to $66 M; and Ocean Facilities to $1,721 M (of which $1045 is for an Ocean Floating Facility). The primary absorbent in the ocean facility total amounts to only $82 M.

Although the Kato study is more detailed and perhaps more realistic in its costing than previous estimates, in my judgment it has analyzed the wrong system. It has an ashore facility because the authors reject the environmental hazard of a 2000-ton ship with a load consisting largely of 15% hydrochloric acid. Yet far more dangerous loads are carried every day over the seas. So we clearly need a cost and absolute risk analysis of what would be a much cheaper system such as that sketched by Foos, et al, with the processing aboard ship. This would enable uranium farming in vast ocean areas far from shore.

In his book, "The Mythical Man-month," Fred Brooks-the architect of the IBM-360 computer line of the 1960s-wisely counsels that one should "plan to discard the first one." That is, the first large project (computer operating system, for instance) should not be put into production, but should be a training exercise. The design should by analyzed, criticized, and used as a stepping stone to a second version, which might be brought to market. And that is exactly what is needed in the design of seawater uranium farms. In particular, even if one were to depend on Ashore Facilities, it seems unnecessary and costly to have Ocean Floating Facilities on the surface of the sea. Instead, the buoyed adsorbent structures should approach no more closely than 30 m to the surface, and the vertical strings of adsorbent beds could be loaded vertically into the ship either for processing aboard or for transport to a structure in the neighborhood. Since even at a cost of $300/kg-U, the investment per reactor in uranium farm will amount to about $700 M, it is worth planning substantial R&D and design refinement to arrive at minimum cost. Of course, specialized design of the lift system to bring aboard the adsorbent bed strings is one candidate a prospect in the longer run is to use a non-standard small-waterline-area ship that would be largely immune to heavy seas and would improve the fraction of the time the ship can operate. And it must be recognized that an annual compensation rate of 10 million yen per person-year for Japanese workers will make uranium farming attractive for organizations with much lower labor costs. Japan buys its uranium now of terrestrial origin; it is likely that Japan will buy its seawater uranium as well, and be richer for doing so.
..snip..

-nukebuddy