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A CANDU reactor still has a large steel Calandria surrounding the pressure tubes....the reason why the CANDU was designed was because it runs on natural, unenriched uranium. It had nothing to do with the design of the pressure vessel.

At the time of its design, Canada lacked the heavy industry to cast and machine the large, heavy steel pressure vessel used in most light water reactors. Instead, the pressure is contained in much smaller tubes, 10 cm diameter, that contain the fuel bundles. These smaller tubes are easier to fabricate than a large pressure vessel. In order to allow the neutrons to flow freely between the bundles, the tubes are made of zircaloy, which is highly transparent to neutrons. The zircaloy tubes are surrounded by a much larger low-pressure tank known as a "calandria", which contains the majority of the moderator.

When the first CANDU's were being built, the US was still manufacturing PWR pressure vessels and there was no problem in that area.

Sorry to rub salt in

I was under the impression that this was a civil discussion.

Anyway, senseless foaming-from-the-mouth opposition by people like you has raised the price of constructing new nuclear facilities, granted. But the ongoing costs are still in the 2.0-2.5 cent-per-kilowatt-hour range.

Sure, I'll concede that it's cheaper to get wind online right now. But there are only so many spots with strong, consistent wind -- none at all in some regions. When we're talking about satisfying NEW demand, all the good wind sites will get taken up, and then the setup cost for wind will rise, and its cost-per-kwh will as well (since any new wind turbines will have to be set up in subpar areas). This is how it ought to work, but once that's happened, we're back at the old nuclear-or-coal choice, and I'd rather us go nuclear than coal.

Subsidizing nuclear power now is debatable, but that subsidy doesn't change the long-term benefit of the technology. You're setting up a strawman, and missing the point with your silly renewables-will-always-be-enough-how-dare-you-ques tion-us blathering. No "proof" will ever be good enough for the likes of you.

Yes, consoles draw power. In fact, the XBox 360 uses a whopping 130 kWh yearly according to their estimates! However, let's look at facts:

- ~6 million XBox 360s are expected to be sold by June 2006 [Sales Estimate]
- Total power consumption yearly according to their estimates is 780 million kWh [6 million * 130 kWh]
- Modern nuclear reactors produce 600-1200 MWe [Nuclear Power]
- A 1,000 MWe reactor at 80% capacity generates roughly 7 billion kWh yearly [Nuclear Power Facts]

All the XBox 360s in the world can be powered for a year from just over 11% of the power generated in a year from one nuclear reactor.

High energy means a small volume of used fuel Every 12-24 months, U.S. plants are shut down and the oldest fuel assemblies are removed and replaced. All of the country's nuclear power plants together produce about 2,000 metric tons of used fuel annually. To put this in perspective, all the used fuel produced to date by the U.S. nuclear energy industry in more than 40 years of operation--some 40,000 metric tons--would cover an area the size of a football field to a depth of about five yards, if the fuel assemblies were stacked side by side and laid end to end.

If we'd just get them going, Department of Energy laboratories could pretty much eliminate the problem, but anytime someone proposes doing that, who do you think blocks it? But then, if you let them create a way to eliminate the waste, you couldn't block nuclear plants by complaining there's nothing to do with the waste.

uhhh, no?

While over-consumption of most natural resources will likely lead to the eventual death of all species who depend on those resources, running out of oil and uranium will not. Further, while it is also true that the waste produced by over-consumation is often toxic, the amount of waste produced by uranium and oil used in electricity production is not a significant danger.

Ironically, it is the so-called environmentalists who are forcing electric power companies to use more wasteful technologies to meet a rapidly increasing demand for electric power. The use of nuclear power produces zero emissions, and recycleable waste.

Equally ironic is that it was Jimmy Carter, with the aid of Gerald Ford, who prevented US companies from recycling their nuclear waste by executive order in 1979, but while Ronald Reagan lifted the ban in 1981, there is still grassroots opposition to both new reactors and spent fuel recycling. This opposition makes little logical sense given the fact that nuclear reactors are a zero-emmisions technology (I don't think they had ionizing radition in mind when they coined that term.) and even without recycling, a relatively small amount of spent fuel has been created in the first place. In the last 40 years the total amount of commercial spent fuel would fill an American football field to a dept of 5 yards.

The sad fact is, that we should be building nukes all over the US, and enjoying cheap plentiful electricity throughout the country. While doing this we should be closing down coal and oil fired power plants. This would, of course, cut green house emissions, which I don't much care about, but more importantly, it would cut pollutants in the atmosphere which I, and most other people, care about very much. A by product may also be the closure of natural gas fired electric power plants which, hopefully, would decrease industrial demand, and cause prices to fall for consumers.

http://www.ncpa.org/iss/bud/pd112801b.html
http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/jun99/9288629 30.Ph.r.html
http://www.atomicinsights.com/apr95/waste_myth.htm l
http://www.nmcco.com/education/facts/waste/waste_h ome.htm
how's that?

Okay, I've read a couple of your responses, and you really need to check your facts before posting.

Other Sandia tests evaluated a terrorist attack, subjecting a container to a device 30 times more powerful than a typical anti-tank weapon. The test resulted in a quarter-inch-diameter hole through the primary containment wall. The NRC estimates that the hole produced by the test would have resulted in the release of less than 10 grams--one-third of an ounce-- of used fuel. The container's protective shielding would prevent a large release of radiation.