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Twenty years--lets look at that the number carefully. The current mineral inventory of uranium, coupled with current enrichment technology and usage gives you about 70 years. If one projects that number of reactors triples, then we can get the twenty years that you quote.

Let me present the following, albeit rough, argument. The historical trading range for U3O8 has been about $10 in "current year" dollars--in 2006 dollars, the prices has traded in the $10 - $80 range. The two excursions has been in the 70's and 2004+. From 1980 until 2004, the global demand has been low and the HEU blend down program with Russia introduced a cheap source of U3O8 into the market. Thus, investment in uranium mining, conversion, and enrichment has been low. When one factors in loan financing and depreciation, there is little incentive to invest when there is over 30+ years of inventory available.

Lets adopt the 20 year inventory as factual. The assay of U235 in the tailings from enrichment is typically around 0.3% (vice 0.711% in natural uranium)--the amount varies due to the price of uranium feed versus the cost in enrichment. Depending on how many SWU's one uses, current enrichment technology can produce natural uranium feed equal to about 10% - 25% of the mass of the DU feed. If one uses a more efficient enrichment technology, for example atomic vapor laser isotope seperation (AVLIS), even more natural uranium could be produced. Another option is to recover uranium from the oceans.

So depending on what the projected trend is on the price of uranium and the rate of new uranium ore discovery, the economics of tailings enrichment or new enrichment techologies may become viable. If one then factors in reprocessing of spent fuel, the viability of the uranium fuel cycle goes far beyond twenty years.

The biggest problem with solar power is that only 1366 W/m^2 reaches the upper atomosphere of the Earth. Thus to generate 1GW, you would need a 700000 m^2 (0.73 km^2) at 100% effiiciency. If you didn't want to build an orbiting power station, then the solar fluence becomes much less. Lets say half makes it to the surface in the mid latitudes (in North America the range is 125 - 375 W/m^2) and you can make solar cells that are 50% efficient (current cells are 15%) you will need 2.9 km^2 to generate 1 GW. The net generating capacity of the United States is 978 GW, thus one would need 2900 km^2. Of course, one needs sunshine for solar collectors to work, so lets assume in the summer you have a 50% split between day and night and that you get full power for the 12 hours of sunlight. Lets further assume that the night time power consumption in the summer is 20% of the daytime power consumption. Lets further assume that there is some magical energy storage system that is 100% efficient, you would then need 3500 km^2, which is 10 times the size of New York city. If one assumes you can site the collectors with a 50% density (e.g. 1 m^2 collector requires 2 m^2 of real estate), then you need 7000 km^2 (20 times the size of NYC or twice the size of Rhode Island).

For a point of comparison, the Palo Verde nuclear power plant generates 3800 MW and the plant is sited on 16 km^2, thus it generates 0.24 GW/km^2. My widely optimistic solar power plant generates 978 GW in 7000 km^2, which is 0.14 GW/km^2. This does not factor in the "off site" requirements (uranium mines, enrichment, solar panel manufacturing, etc.) but does provide a rough comparison of the two technologies. The Palo Verde generates electricity at 1.33 cents/KWH. A

I keep seeing this point labored again and again, yet it's simply not true. The assumption of having only 80 years of uranium only applies if 1) you consider only the reserves available at current market prices, a minuscule fraction of the world's total known reserves, and 2) don't consider the use of breeder reactors, which process fuel ~100 times more efficiently than conventional light water reactors do.

Plus, there's thorium, which is three times as common as uranium and also fissile.

Sources:
http://www.nuclearfaq.ca/cnf_sectionG.htm#uranium_ supply
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/cohen. html
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf75.html

Result: Clean, safe, plentiful electricity, reduced emissions, etc...

Uranium fission is neither clean (even with reprocessing, there's still large amounts of waste that we don't know how to safely store long term, as well as the damage done in uranium mining), safe (not only are the security and profileration issues are huge, but the widely touted "pebble bed" reactor design hass proven much less safe than its proponents claim), nor plentiful (with heavy use, there's only a century or two's worth) Rather than wasting time on building uranium fission plants as a stopgap, we should do the job right and be investigating fusion (including using that big fusion reactor in the sky) and thorium spallation.

Spallation ("accelerator-driven nuclear energy") using thorium is especially interesting, because it really is safe (no chain reaction - if things start to go wrong, just turn off the particle beam), clean (indeed, you can use it to "burn off" some nuclear waste), and thorium is much more plentiful than uranium.

spent waste is about 25-30 tonnes per reactor per year... There are 104 licensed reactors in the US alone...

so, minimum of 2500 tonnes per year. and a maximum of 3120 tonnes per year. And that's /just/ the US.

Assuming recovery of useful material mentiond in a another post, that's still 500 to 624 tonnes of nuclear garbage per year.

Any one have stats on
(A) Cost per weight of lift (some sites said 10k/lb is a myth, and another mentioned a reuseable boost that could to 1.4k/lb, I'd like a decent verifiable source.
(B) Does anyone know how much cargo we have lifted into space at this point total (mass), or how much we can lift per year?

Thanks.

Regardless, the numbers *don't* look feasable for this kind of operation.

        Current usage is about 68,000 tU/yr. Thus the world's present measured resources of uranium in the cost category slightly above present spot prices (4.7 Mt) and used only in conventional reactors, are enough to last for some 70 years. This represents a higher level of assured resources than is normal for most minerals. Further exploration and higher prices will certainly, on the basis of present geological knowledge, yield further resources as present ones are used up. There was very little uranium exploration between 1985 and 2005, so a significant increase in exploration effort could readily double the known economic resources, and a doubling of price from present levels could be expected to create about a tenfold increase in measured resources, over time.

        This is in fact suggested in the IAEA-NEA figures if those covering estimates of all conventional resources are considered - 10 million tonnes (beyond the 4.7 Mt known economic resources), which takes us to over 200 years' supply at today's rate of consumption. This still ignores the technological factor mentioned below. It also omits unconventional resources such as phosphate deposits (22 Mt U recoverable as by-product) and seawater (up to 4000 Mt), which would be uneconomic to extract in the foreseeable future.

        Widespread use of the fast breeder reactor could increase the utilisation of uranium sixty-fold or more. This type of reactor can be started up on plutonium derived from conventional reactors and operated in closed circuit with its reprocessing plant. Such a reactor, supplied with natural uranium for its "fertile blanket", can be operated so that each tonne of ore yields 60 times more energy than in a conventional reactor.

Do you think if we rapidly built 1,360 (or 650 or 390) new nuclear reactors and bring them online in 10 years - that this would have an effect on the price of uranium ore (and the related assumptions about how much electricity $9 would buy)? Would China also do the same?

Who would be the OPEC of uranium? Where are the easiest to mine and process proven reserves? Are those countries politically stable?
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/printable_inform ation_papers/inf75print.htm

Welcome to your new Australian overlords

Should we look again at breeder reactors?

Will environmentalists get on board to permit nuclear power plant construction to resume?

Not really making a point here with the questions - just encouraging rational discussion before we commit to a government mandated "5 year" program.

what the hell is up with the ore grade?

"unusually high" alright, i expected 2 or 3 times higher. but 20? this is just creepy

If this is really so novel and useful, surely an analysis of it exists that is not written by the guy trying to sell it!

The article goes on to explain that six other countries have tried laser-enrichment schemes and failed, but this effort has succeeded, and the only possible hint at why is that this new approach is that it is more "elegant and sophisticated".

Even a link to the press release would have provided a bit more information (though more legalistic than technical).

I'm not familiar with the Fast Reactor, but another point to consider is that we can also recycle used fuel, as was mentioned in the article. Also, the World Nuclear Association has pretty much everything you ever wanted to know about nuclear waste, and more. (Page may appear blank -- scroll down).

First, I was talking about Britain's electricity supply, but I'll bite and use the USA.

Wiki States that 2004 US wind capacity was 9,149 MW.
Nuclear Power's been stable for a while.
Nuclear power capacity is 99,210 MW

However, this doesn't show the whole figure. In the case of the wind turbines, this is the amount of power produced under ideal conditions. For nuclear power, this is it's maximum safe/standard power generation.

The term for what percentage of maximum the plant actually produces is called "Capacity Factor". For nuclear plants, this is 91%
Wind seems to be around 30%-35%
(Note: One of the sites quotes nuclear at 71%, that's for the UK, not USA)

This means that Nuclear power has an effective capacity of 90,281 MW, while Wind only has 2,745-3,202MW. That means that Nuclear is producing 28 times as much power as wind. That means that it'd take wind a decade of doubling every 2.3 years to even catch up with nuclear. It also assumes that construction ramps up evenly for the next decade. It also means, that at least for 2004, a mere 4% increase in nuclear capacity would equal the increase in wind.

A nuclear power plant, from time of groundbreaking, only takes 5-7 years to build. There's actually a few new generators, built on existing sites, as well as refurbished plants that had either been shut down or had construction stopped before they came online that should come up by 2010.

If we use our heads, there is much better than a 50 year supply.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/sym/1999/adamov.htm
http://canteach.candu.org/library/20054702.pdf - PDF Warning!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle#Th e_Thorium_fuel_cycle

And those rational arguments still apply, because all nuclear reactors are poorly designed soviet reactors.

At the current rate of consumption, there is only enough Uranium on the planet for the next 50 years

Fortunately abundant Thorium can be bred into fissionable U-233, so there is no inherent problem with long-term fission power.

At the current rate of consumption, there is only enough Uranium on the planet for the next 50 years
Hence the need for breeder reactors so we can use all that U238.

At the same time, we have an energy source right in our vicinity which is, for all practical purposes, non-depletable and delivers several thousand times more energy to our planet in every second than we are currently using but you'll have to guess what it is as I'm not going to say.

I think a price rise in Uranium will lead to discovery of additional sources, but you are generally correct that Uranium is fairly scarce.

On the other hand, Thorium is very abundant, and there are ways of breeding Thorium into fissionable U-233.

That is the dumbest thing I've heard so far in this age of "war on terror." The governments of the world do some dumb things to be "safe" or "secure," but this is just inane. I thought the block over the White House and Dept. of Treasury were stupid, as the pixelation of the US Capitol. But a nuclear plant? Hell, I did a search and found a frigging AIR TRAFFIC map that focused attention on a local nuclear plant in my area. At some point (a point that we've crossed, IMHO), we need to get over the possibility of terrorism and come up with real strategies that will combat them. We have to go through all sorts of ordeals in the airports and there is the God-forsaken "Patriot Act". I think this falls into "your rights online" and "your rights (period)". How about we come up with a new strategy. We (the US) provides significant trade and other economic incentives to governments who publicly condemn terrorist acts or radical ideologies. Maybe the countries who hate us would change their minds a little. Call it the Marhall Plan 2.0.1. Australia, however, has some of the harshest censoring in the world. I always find that a little weird, anyway. If it is too dangerous for us mere citizens to view, why can the government view it and say it's too dangerous? I did a little experiment: searched google for information about this power plant before looking at the original article. I found information about the plant in Australia (which is not a power plant, just a research facility), at the World Nuclear Association's website, http://world-nuclear.org/info/printable_infomation _papers/inf64print.htm. Terrorists could come by information with any means. The tactic must be stopped, not the ability to practice the tactic. If we're so scared about terrorism that we block images from being viewed on websites, doesn't that mean that we have succumbed to their scare tactics? --Drew

Alternative fuels ... Ethanols and the like.

Ethanol production is a net energy consumer. Nope, you better start looking at nuclear and hydrogen.

Did I say nuclear? Yep. Even poor old Japan is knee deep in reactors.

Nuclear power provides about one-third of Japan's electricity, and with the enhanced efficiency brought about by reprocessing spent fuel to recycle the uranium and plutonium, it represents a major part of Japan's endeavours to achieve maximum self sufficiency in energy. Certainly plutonium is seen as a valuable energy resource, not to be spurned as a source of electricity. Japan plans to have one third of its 53 reactors using some MOX by 2010.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf39.htm

Hooray, for Godzilla (if ever there was an anti-nuke mascot).

I'd say Nuclear fission is a pretty good one. As has been pointed out above, there are a number of reasons the dwindling supply of natural U235 is not much of a concern with proper management. While it is true that only a few years worth of readibly fissile material that can be naturally mined are left in the earth, breeder reactors give us an extremely expanded time frame. Especially when alternative reactors, such as Pebble Bed reactors, which can use Thorium as a fuel instead of Uranium or plutonium come into play.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf62.htm

So my concern with this is, do we stop all of our nuclear activity now and lock (or at least greatly increase the difficulty) ourselves out of fission derived power when the natural supplies decay away?

SYNROC was developed at the ANU in Canberra. I work there at the moment and have heard various tales about it's acceptance (or lack of) by the American government/economy. The story goes both ways, either the American's are stupid or the Aussies attempted to charge too much for the technology.

Anyone wanting to participate in reasonable discussions with anyone about the safety of nuclear energy *must* read about SYNROC and understand how it works. It would effectively _solve_ the nuclear waste "problem" for good. Exciting stuff!

http://www.uic.com.au/nip21.htm

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf58.htm

http://www.ansto.gov.au/info/press/pr9.html

The total cancer deaths added to the world over time with the Chernobyl disaster is estimated at 1.5 milion. After some googling it appears Caesium and Plutonium have similar effects:

Reference for the 1.5 megedeath estimate?

Wikipedia tells me the following:

The IAEA notes that, while the Chernobyl accident released as much as 400 times the radioactive contamination of the Hiroshima bomb, it was 100 to 1000 times less than the contamination caused by atmospheric nuclear weapons testing in the mid-20th century. One can conclude that while the Chernobyl accident was a local disaster, it was not a global one.

IAEA tells me:

No studies have been able to point to a direct link between Chernobyl and increased cancer risks or other health problems outside the immediately affected republics of Ukraine, Belarus and the Russian Federation.

Quite frankly, I can't find anything to support a 1.5 million death figure. I can't find anything to support a .15 million death figure or even a .015 million death figure. Quite honestly, from what little research I fan find, it seems that there has been a documented case of 1,800 people with thyroid cancer in the area and 10 deaths due to that, in addition to those killed during/immediately after the reactor went (about 31).

I also found this (biased?) report which states:

The most recent and authoritative UN report has confirmed that there is no scientific evidence of any significant radiation-related health effects to most people exposed to the Chernobyl disaster. The UNSCEAR* 2000 Report is consistent with earlier WHO findings. The report points to some 1,800 cases of thyroid cancer, but "apart from this increase, there is no evidence of a major public health impact attributable to radiation exposure 14 years after the accident. There is no scientific evidence of increases in overall cancer incidence or mortality or in non-malignant disorders that could be related to radiation exposure." As yet there is little evidence of any increase in leukaemia, even among clean-up workers where it might be most expected. However, these workers remain at increased risk of cancer in the long term.

The figures I'm finding are supporting 4000 - 10000 additional deaths due to Chernobyl, out of millions affected, although those _are_ predictions (unlike your prediction of 1.5 million deaths, I _can_ show the reasoning behind this figure). If the 4000 - 10000 deaths prediction is right, it will be hard to verify: the natural cancer rate will be about 800,000 cases in the affected group.

In short, Chernobyl raised the cancer rate by about 1% throughout parts of Russia and the Ukraine. Its amazing : an obsolete, unsafe design with unsafe practices leading to what is probably one of the worst nuclear accidents possible only killed 4 - 10k people.

I don't mean to trivialize the deaths of cancer victims, but in the whole scheme of things, that's nothing. 10k total predicted deaths is less than half the deaths in one year attributed to "safe" coal power generation in the US. Yes: The worst nuclear power accident will have killed less people than a year's worth of expected deaths due to normally operating coal power plants.

I call bullshit on this - otherwise you would never have been clueless enough to made the concrete and steel comment. Exotic, expensive, and very interesting materials are used in areas exposed to radiation. Please ask your science teacher to post here, they may say something useful.

Believe me, or don't... it doesn't matter. However, you may be interested in the following web pages, which will tell you a little bit more about the materials used in nuclear reactors. By and large, fairly common steels and concretes are used. The "exotic" materials are generally found in fuel (uranium, gadolinium, erbium), control rods (boron carbide, silver, indium, cadmium, hafnium), and detectors (too many to list here).

• http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf32.htm
• http://www.nucleartourist.com/areas/cntm-ovu.htm
• http://www.azom.com/details.asp?ArticleID=2139#_Ma terials_For_Light

Anything else?

here is some general info

"... They don't even split into other elements." Uhhh, wrong. My physics was a bit rusty, so I did a google on the fission process and found this on world-nuclear.org: "The number of neutrons and the specific fission products from any fission event are governed by statistical probability, in that the precise break up of a single nucleus cannot be predicted. However, conservation laws require the total number of nucleons and the total energy to be conserved. The fission reaction in U-235 produces fission products such as Ba, Kr, Sr, Cs, I and Xe with atomic masses distributed around 95 and 135. Examples may be given of typical reaction products, such as: U-235 + n ===> Ba-144 + Kr-90 + 2n + energy U-235 + n ===> Ba-141 + Kr-92 + 3n + 170 MeV U-235 + n ===> Zr-94 + La-139 + 3n + 197 MeV " So you can see that U-235 is indeed split into other elements. The full articles can be found at: http://www.world-nuclear.org/education/phys.htm

Get real. Look at the number of Reactors commisioned in the past 20 years.

The number is in the single digits and several of them are RBMKs (the same type of reactor used at Chernobyl -- yep, they're still making them). This page shows russia having 15 still in service, one yet to be opened (can anyone confirm??), and the last of the others being shut down by 2023.

Things don't look good for nuclear power in the future no matter how safe it may be...

If people could take a step back and apply some common sense to the problem we would see two glaring things staring us in the face. One is, do we really think that storing this stuff above ground is safer than below ground? I, for one, would prefer to have this stuff below ground where some danged fool can't fly their airplane into it, or better yet easily steal it to make a 'dirty' bomb. At least underground access to it is minimized. So we have to watch the stuff for a long time. That fact doesn't change whether it's above or below ground, so throw that arguement out the window. The second thing is, just as the article states, let's reuse as much of this stuff as we can. We are the only country in the world that has nuclear power plants and doesn't recycle the waste. It's called a breeder reactor and it's as safe as a nuclear reactor is. The problem is that nobody wants to build one because they are afraid of what we did to the people who built the nuclear reactors in the first place. We bankrupted most of them by constantly changing the rules in the middle of the game. Each reactor built in this country faced exploding costs as the government made new laws and regulations and changed existing ones as they were being built and forced the owners to change their plans after the projects were already started. Costs skyrocketed by ten to one hundred times the original estimates. Nobody is going to go down that road again anytime soon unless some promises are made, and kept, by our own government. I can't see any politician winning an election on a platform of freezing nuclear safety laws anytime soon, so throw that one out the window.

Common sense says get the stuff underground and watch it the same as we do above ground. Simple 'patch' to a major problem we have, that continually gets worse over time. The recycling issue has too many politic hurdles to overcome to provide a timely answer. We all now how fast things get done in our government.

France also has a great reprocessing system, which would be a great idea for this nuclear waste problem.

can't we just turn it into depleted uranium/platonium shells for raging the next US war?

Why yes, yes we can -- the process exists. See http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf69.htm. But no, no we can't. See that same link for information on why the U.S. does not perform reprocessing -- non-proliferation treaties.

I will also point out that reprocessing allows us to recover unspent fuel from the used fuel rods, which reduces the volume of nuclear waste, but does not eliminate the waste. In a nuclear reactor for energy production, the fuel rods become less efficient as the byproducts of fission "clog up" the works. Reprocessing recovers the 90-something percent of un-used source product that still exists in the fuel rods that we call "waste".

Reprocessing lets us be more efficient in the use of our fuel, but does not completely eliminate the waste. From the article I linked, it looks like the final form of the waste is in a borosilicate glass, which is a solid and will not "leak" out of containers. I think our current un-processed nuclear waste is also in this form. Barrels with green goo coming out of them are not what nuclear waste looks like, even though it may be a common mental image, unfortunately.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf75.htm First line: "Uranium is ubiquitous on the earth. It is a metal approximately as common as tin or zinc, and it is a constituent of most rocks and even of the sea."
FYI- 4 million tons is what's economically to mine at today's uranium prices. If uranium prices double, 15 million tons of uranium become economically feasable to mine.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf23.htm

A third of uranium comes from Canada and Australia. Not sure if you have worry about these countries not being money-grubbing whores. :)

While the "accident" was admittedly caused by incredible stupidity, the Chernobyl reactor was far from being "inherently safe." This URL explains a little about why.

Chill friend. First off I was pointing out the insanity of someone saying we can just bury it, and the insanity that is Yucca Mountain which is basically just burying it.

Reprocessing it is a whole different and more complicated thing. The issue with reprocessing are so complicated and varied you aren't going to do it justice in a Slashdot thread.

Depending on the methods you choose you still get waste of various forms, different waste sure, but there is still a lot of waste from reprocessing. In particular you are going to get plutonium of various grades from weapons grade to plutonium suitable for fast breeder reactors. The only way you get rid of the plutonium waste in the near term is to put in bombs or burn it in reactors designed to burn it.

A key reason reprocessing has such a stigma attached to it is its historically and still is in some places used to harvest weapons grade plutonium. It is a key avenue for nuclear weapons proliferation and weapons grade plutonium is far more dangerous in the wrong hands than the waste so its not like you want every country on the planet doing it.

There is some value in the way reprocessing its being used in France, India and Japan to recycle the fuel and reuse it in fast breeder reactors but there a whole set of issues with that path two.

Pyroprocessing is the new holy grail and it might prove to be a better route than the current PUREX and UREX reprocessing but its not exactly a proven process and it a potential accident waiting to happen too.

Here is a technical brief on the methods though its written by a pro nuke group and needs to be taken with a grain of salt.

You might be able to reduce the dangerous lifespan of a of of waste to 500-1000 years, and burn some of it in reactors but to hold it out as the final solution to nuclear waste is a stretch at this point.

the sad part is, some of them are still running ...

The following is the Paper everyone will link to. And the following provides some nice diagrams to look at

And just for kicks: Some really freaky pictures. (The second one really gets to people, he is working IN the bloody thing!!)

Sunny Dubey

The Chernobyl accident's final precipitator was pulling the control rods *out* too much. The problem is that accumulated xenon (I believe it was xenon, could have been another material) was poisoning the reaction. Then when the xenon finally "burned off", the reactor suddenly had no control rods impeding the reaction. The end result was a steam explosion that blew the lid off the reactor.

Pulling out the control rods allowed the conditions for the accident to occur. However, about nine seconds before the accident the operators tried to put them back in (01:23:40 at The Chernobyl site and accident sequence). I think this event directly caused the explosion in the reactor.

RBMK Reactors

They might have been 'state of the art', but they differ significantly from most other reactor types in that they have a Positive void coefficient. Reactors built in the USA and most other countries have a Negative void coefficient.

What this means is that for the RBMK reactor(water-cooled, graphite moderated), when excessive steam is produced, power production increases, leading to a meltdown. In other reactors with a negative void coefficient, when excessive steam is generated, power production decreases, as the water acts as both coolant and moderator. With no moderator, the reaction ceases, stopping heat production. I'd say that would mean physical forces stop further meltdown. Some safety systems operate like a fuse. When the reaction gets too hot, the parts melt, and cause a response, varying from seperating the core to dropping the control rods. This all will prevent a meltdown from happening.

RBMK implemented the way the Soviet Union did at Chernobyl was a flawed design. It was along the line of Ford's exploding fuel tanks. Why should we be scared of properly designed reactors, based off of an accident that represented criminal negligence?

RBMK Reactors

They might have been 'state of the art', but they differ significantly from most other reactor types in that they have a Positive void coefficient. Reactors built in the USA and most other countries have a Negative void coefficient.

What this means is that for the RBMK reactor(water-cooled, graphite moderated), when excessive steam is produced, power production increases, leading to a meltdown. In other reactors with a negative void coefficient, when excessive steam is generated, power production decreases, as the water acts as both coolant and moderator. With no moderator, the reaction ceases, stopping heat production. I'd say that would mean physical forces stop further meltdown. Some safety systems operate like a fuse. When the reaction gets too hot, the parts melt, and cause a response, varying from seperating the core to dropping the control rods. This all will prevent a meltdown from happening.

RBMK implemented the way the Soviet Union did at Chernobyl was a flawed design. It was along the line of Ford's exploding fuel tanks. Why should we be scared of properly designed reactors, based off of an accident that represented criminal negligence?

An interesting analysis, and while I agree w/ that nuclear power would be far preferable to coal, (and without discussing further viability issues), I would just like to point out that wind power in the US should not be ruled out offhand. From the abstract of the 1993 Wind Energy Potential in the United States study by D.L. Elliott and M.N. Schwartz (which supercedes the 1991 study cited):

Good wind areas, which cover 6% of the contiguous U.S. land area, have the potential to supply more than one and a half times the current electricity consumption of the United States. Technology under development today will be capable of producing electricity economically from good wind sites in many regions of the country.

So yes, in theory, wind power could meet our power needs (but not w/o being coupled with advanced battery technologies.

Even cost per kWh, Wind does ok. From a March 2004 briefing published by the World Nuclear Association on The Economics of Nuclear Power, shows a present day cost of about 3.7c/kWh. A recent AWEA analysis of the The Economics of Wind Energy [PDF] places the cost/kWh for a 51MW wind farm at between 2.6-4.8c/kWh depending on wind speed. Even if we account for backup power and double the cost, we're not doing too badly either way.

Coal is at about 3.3c/kWh, but when calculating in the external costs "to put plausible financial figures against damage resulting from different forms of electricity production for the entire EU" as done in the decade long EC ExternE studies. Total cost of both nuclear (avg'ing 0.4 euro cents/kWh) and wind (0.1-0.2 ec/kWh) end up beating the snot over coal (4.1-7.3 ec/kWh).

Regardless, I agree with Lovelock. We really need to dump fossil fuels now.

I am somewhat bemused that despite sitting on something like 28% of the world's uranium, us Aussies don't have a reactor of our own (with the exception of the Lucas Heights HIFAR reactor opened in 1958). We even bitch about mining the stuff, the proceeds of which could be used to deal with real threats to the surrounding environment, like cane toads. We make over 10% of the world's supply of computer grade doped silicon, yet we bitch about upgrading the reactor facility too. Hopefully with some debate people will start pulling their heads out of their asses and making it happen before we end up with some serious problems on our hands. Before long chernobyl et al will end up being the most catastrophic events we've ever experienced - not because of the local effects but because of the resulting widespread misconception about nuclear power. Yes, where there are more plants nuclear fuel necessarily is more available so there is a greater need for security. However those linking the increased use of nuclear energy with foolish nuclear enabled governments and terrorists ought to spend more time worrying about who's got the weapons, why, who pays and what they are (or aren't) doing to protect them.

Pretty big

It's a non-event only if you realize how close they were to core meltdown ...

Chernobyl (towards the bottom)

Three Mile Island

Three Mile Island, it took seven and a half hours to apply the correct remidy for the problem (for over five of which the reactor core was exposed). At nine hours there was an explosion in the reactor core. After 15 hours the core was covered in coolent again.

Compare with Chernobyl. After an hour and 23 minutes of getting the reactor in a dangerously unstable state, a minute and a half later into the test the roof of the reactor had blown off, the core was a molten lump and the building was on fire.

There's a lot of information here.

This link may help. The one thing it doesn't explain that most people don't go in already knowing is that neutron capture, and subsequent fission, of uranium is more likely (in nuclear physics terms, the fission cross-section is higher) if the neutrons are slowed down a bit from the energies they had when their parent nucleus fissioned.

Not really. In the USSR, large fiasco's like that weren't unheard of... see Chernobyl, the Nedelin Disaster, etc... None of those were blamed on the US, although hundreds of Soviet citizens died.

can be found here
If the russians have learned from the past at all, they will build it in some remote, dark crater not unlike the Ukraine... Better make that 'biological shield' a few meters thicker.

I had intended to make the coal vs nuclear claim in my original post, but when I was looking for a link to provide, I stumbled upon this.

The fuel elements ruptured and the resultant explosive force of steam lifted off the cover plate of the reactor, releasing fission products to the atmosphere. A second explosion threw out fragments of burning fuel and graphite from the core and allowed air to rush in, causing the graphite moderator to burst into flames."

If I read my sources then the Chernobyl accident was the worst in the history of nuclear power, in fact it KILLED 10 TIMES the previos record holder of 3 deaths. Yes, 30 people died at the site. Another 10 have found to have thyroid cancer and have died. "An authoritative UN report in 2000 confirmed that there is no scientific evidence of any significant radiation-related health effects to most people exposed"
AND - if could of been avoided completely.

Not the biggest deal in the world... but since the conversation was here I thought I'd stick my nose in. Looks like for acciendent related deaths, Nukes are pretty damn safe, thus far anyway.

Tell you what, save a few lives and a ton of cash. Don't bother building your damn on one coast and your nuke plant on the other - next time both of you meet in the middle (Colorado) - I'll buy you both a beer.

The fuel elements ruptured and the resultant explosive force of steam lifted off the cover plate of the reactor, releasing fission products to the atmosphere. A second explosion threw out fragments of burning fuel and graphite from the core and allowed air to rush in, causing the graphite moderator to burst into flames."

If I read my sources then the Chernobyl accident was the worst in the history of nuclear power, in fact it KILLED 10 TIMES the previos record holder of 3 deaths. Yes, 30 people died at the site. Another 10 have found to have thyroid cancer and have died. "An authoritative UN report in 2000 confirmed that there is no scientific evidence of any significant radiation-related health effects to most people exposed"
AND - if could of been avoided completely.

Not the biggest deal in the world... but since the conversation was here I thought I'd stick my nose in. Looks like for acciendent related deaths, Nukes are pretty damn safe, thus far anyway.

Tell you what, save a few lives and a ton of cash. Don't bother building your damn on one coast and your nuke plant on the other - next time both of you meet in the middle (Colorado) - I'll buy you both a beer.

According to this document, nuclear fuels can be extended by about 30% via reprocessing, which is useful but hardly makes nuclear power "renewable". Common sense and the Second Law of Thermodynamics say that you can't get something for nothing -- you have to keep shovelling new energy into the system.

"Appropriate Technology" will ruin us. Listen to the engineers, they still believe in a better tomorrow.

Their "better tomorrow" isn't better enough. I want a tomorrow where our energy sources never run out (at least, not for billions of years) and nuclear materials do not find their way into the environment or into the hands of people who would use them to kill. The best way to accomplish this (at least until fusion reactors are viable) is via non-nuclear renewable technologies.

I think the map is a few years old but a lot of the radioactive material that Chernobyl released has a halflife of a few thousand years. From what the Ukranian Govt. has said(probably isn't true, however) the immediate area around Chernobyl is relatively radioaction free, with the exception of the Reacter 3/4 building.

Check out these site for more info
Chernobyl.com
Chernobyl.co.uk
WNA Chernobyl Info
Chernobyl Disaster Zone Site There's an english link on the bottom.

Those sites are defintely some good places to start. Chernobyl is actually quite an interesting subject.

Some people would disagree with you.

" If the spent fuel is later reprocessed, it is dissolved and separated chemically into uranium, plutonium and high-level waste solutions. About 97% of the spent fuel can be recycled leaving only 3% as high-level waste. The recyclable portion is mostly uranium depleted to less than 1% U-235, with some plutonium, which is most valuable."

Although, I think those ads that have been running the last week are pretty funny. "Casino Barons", yea, they are the ones controlling everything, right.