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UK's Chief Scientist Backs Nuclear Power Revival
Timbotronic writes "The UK government's chief scientific adviser has sent his clearest signal that Britain will need to revive its nuclear power industry in the face of a looming energy crisis and the threat of global warming. In an interview with the Guardian, Sir David King said there were economic as well as environmental reasons for a new generation of reactors." From the article: "His remarks come in the build-up to international talks in Montreal on how to address the threat of climate change when the Kyoto protocol expires in 2012. He denied suggestions - sparked by comments from Mr Blair that he was changing his mind on whether international treaties were the best way to tackle global warming - that Britain was moving closer to the stance of the US, which has refused to back Kyoto-style emission reductions."
I personally don't see a problem with this. What with modern technology, it seems like we should be able to build nuclear power plants much safer and more efficient than anything in the past. The threat of the radioactive biproducts is an issue, but it is a much less immediate (and, in the long term anyway, less of an actual threat) than dumping tons of smog in the air until we're out of coal and oil.
in the face of a looming energy crisis and the threat of global warming
If the world is facing "Peak Oil", then the "global warming crisis" will subside once production is on the decline curve.
Radioactive waste can be contained. A trick we haven't figured out with air pollution yet.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Better to tackle the "looming energy crisis" head on and use human ingenuity to come up with a better, more environmentally friendly, solution. Simply settling for something that works but has problems is the same attitude that has gotten the world into this rediculous oil mess, all the while destroying the very planet we live on.
I'm not saying Nuclear power might not be the best answer for a short term emergency, but short term solutions tend to become long term ones when government is concerned.
You are who you are, let no one tell you different. But, never close your mind to a new point of view.
Nuclear power generation is safer and less polluting than burning fossil fuels to generate power. The new pebble bed reactors offer a significant safety improvement over the old fuel rod design that is in older plants lile Three Mile Island. It's time to use the brains we have and provide the safe and cheap power that nuclear fission can offer.
Have you ever been to Nevada? I'm pretty sure that's why God made it.
As nice as wind turbines are, you're never gonna get enough to gnerate enough power, nor are you getting enough people agreeing to have them built. Nuclear's our only option. At least, if you're that worried, build them to go on until we have enough other means of power generation. Unless, of course, Fusion becomes viable, which (I hope, at least) will probably happen in the next 25 years. Ah well. C'est la vie.
Any grammatical or spelling errors above are for comic effect, and do not signify imperfection in the writer.
is a nation wide awarness campaign on how nuclear power works, why it is BETTER for the enviroment, and how it will help allow
Talk about the new technologies.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Reactor designs have progressed a long way from the 50's. Pebble bed reactors are an inherently safe (being relative) design... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble-bed_reactor Couldn't we just make these into sealed units and run them until they stop being radioactive?
Is that a ding I hear? GET BACK IN THE MAGIC HOUSE!!!
Air scrubbers are good, but they don't take nearly 100% out of the air. And burning coal also releases radioactive waste- you do realise that most coal ores have some uranium in them, right?
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
And?
Nobody wants a coal plant in there back yard.
Nobody wants train tracks in there back yard.
Nobody wants a stadium in there back yard.
The only difference is that people tend to understand and trust the three things listed above. People protest them for very real and daily reasons.
People protest nuclear because NuclearIsBad(tm). Education is the only way to combat this.
Yeah, that's such a bullshit statement. We generate orders of magnitude more radioactive waste with coal than we do with nuclear. And that radioactive coal waste is put out into the air.
BTW, if you have air scrubbers, where do you think the harmful removed by-products go? Do you think they're annihilated or something? You still have toxic waste to dispose of after you pull the pollutants out of the air from a hydrocarbon burning plant.
People around here always seem to fall into one of two groups on this issue: those that dance around talking about how clean nuclear power is, and those that shout "what about the fuckin' waste?"
What about the enrichment though? What about all the noxious chemicals involved in separating the fissile isotopes from the 99+% useless U-238? What about the huge piles of toxic and somewhat radioactive U-238 that you get at the end? Nobody ever seems to bring that up.
I'd like to see what the pro-nuke side has to say about dealing with the environmental effects of this part of the system.
I've been thinking about this for a long while. I wonder what would happen if the US (like some commentators have suggested) embark on a "Manhattan Project" for energy. If the US highly encouraged oil exploration, solar, wind, nuclear, hybrid (like the plug into your wall to charge the batteries), Sterling engine, biodiesel, thermal depolermersation (you know, turkey offal and sewage into oil), microwaves and mining the moon and Jupiter for fusion fuel. What would happen if through alternative energy initiatives we could drive the price of oil down to $10 a barrel. I'm not saying it will happen, or even if it could happen, but what would happen to the Saudis, Iran, Venezuela and all the other dictatorships that run on oil? What would happen if America could export its energy technology instead of importing oil?
Another interesting point made was that the alternatives proposed by the anti-nuclear position have no chance of being developed and deployed on a sufficient scale and in time to meet the Kyoto targets. The greens countered that they were also trying to address the demand side of the energy problem, unlike the nuclear lobby who seek only to replace existing supply.
A bad reputation is very difficult to eliminate. Whereas a good reputation is ruined by one bad action, the same cannot be said for the converse. Nuclear power has clear advantages as well as disadvantages; technology has improved. But if we can't deal with mercury, toxic chemicals, and other pollutants, what are we going to do with nuclear waste? If we have a plan and are ready, then go ahead, but we should still look for alternatives and improvements.
Fun Zoid RPG
If we've got the likes of (Massachusetts Senator) Ted Kennedy opposing something as benign as offshore wind farms with obvious NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) arguments, how can we expect people to agree to deal with transportation and storage of spent fuel rods which have a half-life in the tens-of-thousands of years?
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
The problem with nuclear power is that the nuclear industry is so enmeshed with top secret military programs that no one knows what its costs really are. They say it's cheap, but to what degree is it being subsidized? We'll never know. Also, nuclear power further encourages an overly centralized power grid, with too few, too-large power plants. For both national security and efficency, we should be moving toward a more distributed model. Smaller plants require less investment too, so they can be added/upgraded more easily as technology improves. I'm for millions of solar roofs; microturbines and fuel cells with co-generation; and everyone's meter able to run backwards.
The more education you have regarding nuclear fission power, the more you protest.
There are tombs that haven't been opened in 10 000 years, surely storing a few thousand m^3 of waist can be no technological problem. It's not like it is going to cover the earth...
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
But there are plenty of 10,000 year old tombs that *have* been opened. So you're right, technology isn't the problem -- human nature is.
the world stops it's need for oil? We are starting to see many alternatives, natural gas, nuclear, current solar tech, new solar (e.g. nano-solar), fuel-cell, etc. Even harnessing the oceans waves are becoming practical. France already gets about 80% of its energy from Nuke power.
. php, 270 international patents in 20 years). There are approx. 270 million Arabs in the middle east and the majority living off of oil profit. If things like Britain's initiative spill over into all the world's nations, the Middle East could very quickly loose its primary source of income within the next 20 years. Cars are quickly moving to electric engines wich will feed fuel-cell, and I can't imagine new jet tech is far off. The new scientist has pieces on projects to conserve up to 80% fuel costs.
At present the Middle East doesn't do anything but sell oil (http://www.tompeters.com/entries.php?note=006683
Since the middle east (for the most part) doesn't make anything, do you think they will turn into a society similar to the warring African nations or step up to the plate and joining the world in creating/innovating?
I agree. I wish this kind of attitude were more common here in the States.
Modern reactors are far safer than their more temperamental counterparts of the 70s and 80s (Chernobyl? Three Mile Island?). Unfortunately, this fear of reactors-past generates the not-in-my-backyard mentality among U.S. citizens when it comes to nuclear power. Not only has reactor technology gotten better, but the techniques for dealing with nuclear waste have advanced quite a bit as well.
I, for one, would welcome a nuclear cooling tower on my horizon. Bah, it's a damn shame.
This sig rocks the casbah.
"Lovelock was among the first researchers to sound the alarm about the threat of global warming from the greenhouse effect. In 2004 he caused a media sensation when he broke with many fellow environmentalists by pronouncing that "Only nuclear power can now halt global warming". In his view, nuclear energy is the only realistic alternative to fossil fuels that has the capacity to both fulfill the large scale energy needs of mankind while also reducing greenhouse emissions."
As an environmentalist, though not a proponent of Dr. Lovelock's Gaia theory, I endorse the development of nuclear power. Further, I think, environmenatlist should step up, admit their error in attacking nuclear power, and, actively push a nuclear power agenda.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
There: a place, not here
Their: belonging to them
They're: a contraction, meaning "they are"
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
I'd put a nuclear power plant in my backyard if 1) I got the profits for the electricity and 2) I was the regulator (or the NRC...they know a thing or two).
As for expensive, well, not really. The prices are largely comparable to other energy sources and could be cheaper if the regulatory environment were relaxed comparable to the advances in technology.
In the U.S., the industry is heavily subsidized. It is a credit to wind and solar that it has achieved as much as they have, with the negligible subsidies. I've noticed that the portable construction highway signs are now powered by solar. Very cool. Maybe if just a tad bit more of that money went to other, renewable energy sources...
I wonder if he's being forced to say that by one of these guys who is secretly building a giant bomb on top of a time-fissure in Cardiff!
Nah, that couldn't happen. It's about as likely as hmm, a Doctor Who spinoff series starring a bisexual army captain. Oh wait, nevermind.
std::disclaimer<std::legalese> sig=new std::disclaimer; sig->dump(); delete sig;
The point is that you end up with a *LOT* more radioactive waste from burning coal than you do with fission.
Coal produces large amounts of greenhouse gasses, sulfur- and nitrogen-oxides, uranium, and thorium. The last two are radioactive, the middle two are the largest contributors to acid rain. The amount of uranium and thorium actually adds more radiation than storing the spent fissionable fuels. Add to that the issue of 100s:1 for coal to nuclear for fuel amounts.
In the US, for example, more radioactive material is released into the air by burning coal *than used in nuclear reactors*!
I never said that nuclear didn't have waste, hence the term "nuclear waste". However, "clean" coal is not very clean, either, and coal waste really should be treated the same as nuclear waste. It contains the same materials, and in higher quantities. Also, for the amount of produced power, you have *less* waste from fission than you do from coal... and that includes "clean" coal.
My primary sources were DOE, ORNL, which is part of the DOE, and PG&E.
I have no problem with nuclear power, modern plants are safe and quite useful.
However, I do not exactly trust the upper management of such facilities to always do the right thing, after years of shoddy practices by some owner/operators. In the past, I've encountered many stories of rather remarkable safety oversights and downright irresponsible decisions that have made certain reactors unnecessarily dangerous. Sure we have the NRC, but history has shown that they are not always on the ball...or quite far from it.
As with virtually every major reactor incident that has ever occurred, the human element is the potential problem, not the technology.
So fellow nuclear power supporters, please understand when some of us have genuine concerns about construction of new plants, and please do not lump us all in the "OMG ATOMS!!!!" category. In fact, fellow environmentalists here in Florida are only asking for a large exclusion zone around a new plant that is being considered. Obviously, they are going to get the zone for a variety of reasons, theirs being that it makes a fantastic nature preserve.
Even worse than a nuclear reactor is a uranium mine. It producues much more waste, which is generally just as toxic, if not worse.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Almost all of France's power comes from Nuclear, and it's the one thing they seem to be better than us in ;)
I would probably replace the word 'better' with 'more reckless', given the population density of the nation... there really aren't safe (ie uninhabited) places to put reactors in Europe. Nuclear seems to make more sense for the US/Canada/Russia/etc.
If you want a model energy grid, look at Iceland's geothermal plants or Denmark's wind generators... not France's half-assed solution.
Besides, in terms of pollution & fuel supply, the gasoline infrastructure is a much bigger problem.
i would love to have a nuke plant in my backyard - but alas, the environmentalists prevent any form of nuclear power in the US from growing.
i would love to get hydrogen from that plant - but alas, the envrionmentalists refuse to take SUV's out of the equation - SUV's powered by hydrogen piss them off too.
please - put a nuclear power plant in my back yard - i'm in Southern California.
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
- first there is the large "blanket" of green house gasses that is prety tranparent and keeps heat low to the earths surface ( global warming -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming ) - second is the blanket of particle polution that is not so transparent and is blocking the sun's energy from getting down to the earth. ( global dimming - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_dimming ) The particle polllution is decreasing rapidly because of cleaner burning technology but the greenhouse gases are not decreasing at the same rate. So the earth will get warmer sooner and because of the increasing global warming the release of more greenhouse gases may continue from natural sources. So we should decide upon a way to rapidly decrease the amount of greenhouse gases in the next 10-20 years - after that we start to hit a rapidly increasing chance of large scale temporary and permanent flooding. Wind, hydro, solar, and nuclear power plants are options that many contries will have to invistigate. As well hybrid and alternate fuel and propulsion vehicles ( not just cars but large trucks, buses, trains, boats, and ships ) will need to be produced on a masssive scale. There is a massive "ship-kite" already under development - the company beleives that the kite can cut a ship's oceanic fuel costs by up to 50% - this is not an alternate fuel - it is alternate propulsion. Honda's hydrogen car ( with its home refueling station) is an alternate fuel vehicle. In case you are wondering - I am not anti-oil, nor anti-coal. Both of these fuels have a place in this equation -it just happens that the worlds dependence on them should decrease sooner than these industries wish. British Petroleum( though they have changed their name and I can't remember what the new one is ) was very smart and a number of years started a large scale solar division.
Pfft, what's the problem? Uranium's half life is only ~760 million years. It'll be gone before you know it.
It's already been proven that nuclear is the safest form of power time and time again, even without all these new cool designs.
It's already been proven that nuclear is the most environmentally safe power time and time again.
It's already been proven that nuclear is the cheapest if irrational regulations are left off.
It's already been proven that nuclear releases LESS radioactivity into the environment than other forms of major energy production like residue isotopes in coal.
If these haven't convinced people to embrace nuclear power, than nothing will. In my opinion, the best solution is to generate nuclear power in international waters at sea free from bureauocracy, taxes, and regulation - and sell hydrogen generated thru electrolosys back to the mainland. After all, the enxt generation of freedom is going to be at sea anyhow - so minus well make that the next frontier and make energy profites while at it too.
So we must encourage Iran, North Korea and so on to build as many nuclear power stations as they like.
Nuclear is safe. Modern nuclear is cheap and safe. Public opinion is a travesty. Fission processes will outlast coal if reprocessing is allowed (hundreds of years). IGCC (gasification -> gas turbines -> Rankine cycle -> carbon sequestration) or similar technology will help get us there. The technical challenges of more sustainable energy futures pale in comparison with the political, economic, and societal obstacles.
Get a clue dude and at least Google a little bit before you post. Chernobyl happened because of a shit design that was made *just after* the second world war. The RMBK-1000 design is a close cousin to Enrico Femi's original reactor and was inherently flawed. Yes, I choose to say technology will advance and solve these kinds of problems. You think engineers have been sitting around with their thumbs up their ass for the past 50 years? By your logic, you shouldn't drive around in an M-class 'cause your grandpappy got waxed in his Rambler in 1964.
As to the waste, Google for "pebble bed reactor waste" and you will find it won't be an issue, if we can just convine people like you to look at the evidence rationally instead of dismissing it with a "ooooh I've heard THAT before" type of flippant comment.
Honestly, if it wasn't for proliferation issues I would be all over this technology like a dog ready to hump. By why not nuclear FUSION? I've seen or heard little progress in its research. Sure, we've read about some technologies that can aid in the process but I have yet to read about them being applied right now. Why is it we don't have "Manhattan project" on a global scale using the worlds best scientists and engineers available to boot-strap with yet?
I admit I am naive and ignorant when it comes to fusion research. But I like many slashdotters would love to have these questions answered! Is there anything we can do in the public sector to help out? If computer modeled tests are needed and lack resources, why not someone like SETI design a distributed processing system?
Life is not for the lazy.
The site you link to - Nuclear Tourist, sheesh the name alone should have given away their bias - quotes the subsidized costs. If you care about the free market then you wouldn't promote a 60 year old fuel source that still can't turn a profit without subsidies.
As for "relaxing" the regulations, this is entirely the problem with nuclear power. It requires strict reglations because there are high risks associated with careless management. Trusting capitalists to run a safe nuclear plant is at best naive.
A nuclear plants worst case scenario...
It's physically impossible for a pebble-bed reactor to meltdown. It does not have cooling rods. It does not have heavy water.
Cleaner? Coal and gas give off Carbon oxides and other nasties. Yes this is a problem.
Coal also gives off quite a lot of radioactivity, and it's going straight into the atmosphere. In 1982, US coal power plants released 800 tons of radioactive uranium and 2000 tons of radioactive thorium burnt straight out of coal directly into the atmosphere. Nuclear power plants, as a rule, don't do that. We need to shut down every damn coal plant as soon as humanly possible.
Other coal nasties include sulphur dioxide, the thingie that reacts with water in clouds to drop a lovely rain of sulphuric acid on our heads. Yay!
Oil and coal are obviously bad. Natural gas releases a fair bit of carbon dioxide, and it will run out sooner rather than later if we keep building more plants. Hydroelectric power drowns whole ecosystems. A pretty giant lake where there was no pretty giant lake before is very environmentally unfriendly.
Look, I support solar and wind power. I would support a proposal to make rooftop solar power panels mandated by law for all buildings. Windfarms are a good idea, even if they seem to be evoking silly NIMBYism out of some people. But we need nuclear power in the triptych, at least until we get fusion figured out.
You can't produce a lot of megawatts with solar and wind in a single location without using up a ginormous amount of space. That space isn't magically appearing out of nowhere. Something is being displaced, be it a forest, a field, or some sort of human usage. Nuclear power is relatively compact by comparison. In many cases, the choice is between either compact or nothing.
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
The *planet* is doing just *fine*. The planet's survival is not at issue.
Absolutely correct. The planet will be fine.
Human beings, however, may not fare quite so well.
While I'm fully aware that a nuclear reactor is technically a piece of "hardware", in the context of SlashDot, doesn't "hardware" usually imply "something that geeks buy to put on their desks, in their pockets, or in their cars"? ;)
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
Burning coal to produce electricity has enough problems without making stuff up so some adverising agency idiot can say - "look, coal makes nuclear waste too, so nuclear is OK."
The whole coal is radioactive waste thing really is a scam that can be discounted by anyone the thinks about it enough with the aid of highschool chemistry and physics book. No wonder we're plagued by naturopaths and creationists with junk science pretending to be real out there.
Just a few problems with your argument.
Coal is 3-9ppm uranium. Burning coal has pumped more radioactive waste into our environment than all nuclear testing and accidents combined. Burning coal has also been the cause of millions of deaths from differing lung diseases. Coal is by far the least safe alternative.
Whats wrong with something sitting in a hole for 40,000 years? Do you honestly believe that, in as little as 200 years, we wont be able to move a few million tons of material out into space and, say, toss it into a large thermonuclear furnace (the sun perhaps?).
Sure, you can build huge windfarms, you can build huge solar arrays. The issue of cost is not one of greed. When you suggest the nation dedicate so many resources to a certain goal, that takes away from other goals. It's a question of relative worth - when the comparative benefits are.. well.. slim at best to non-existant at realistic, why waste twice as many resources?
We're locked in a life and death battle between nuclear and petro fuel warriors. Both of whom will pump poison into the environment on which we depend. We're screwed, unless an Internet-style surprise deployment in alternative energy upsets the entrenched chiefs and their industrial bribers^Wcontributors who keep us all in the dumps with their tired old approaches.
--
make install -not war
... that everyone go check out a copy of Julian Simon's "The Ultimate Resource." He raises a lot of interesting points about the resource supply and debunks a good many popular myths.
There's been an "imminent" energy crisis for the last few decades, which still hasn't arrived. After reading The Ultimate Resource, my money's on things continuing to get better in the long run.
a few thousand m^3 of waist
I know obesity is a problem in the US, but that's just extreme!
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Bub, if you want to counterpoint then please post references to primary sources, or at least quote them, instead of insulting intelligence. I haven't read anything that refutes the ORNL study, but I do take it with a grain of salt for many of the reasons you mention.
:)
If you look at the numbers for how much nuclear material is required to generate the same amount of energy as coal, you see that you need two orders of magnitude more coal. Common sense and basic science would tell you that the coal is the worse choice of the two. Even if I just ignore the radioactive material part of the argument, the amount of harmful by-product for coal is many times the amount that fission produces.
So really, throw some links in or name a few reliable studies to refute ORNL! I don't mind being *proven* wrong, and it's a lot better than "you're wrong", "no, you're wrong".
A coal plant's worst case scenario is a giant smog cloud.
Not to mention tons of radioactive waste. For a given amount of energy out, there is more waste uranium in coal than nuclear power.
A nuclear plants worst case scenario is the permanent evacuation of the highly populated region surrounding Chernobyl, and a significant rise in lukemia rates, etc, etc.
If you use stupid designs like Chernobyl the above is true. If you use intelligent designs that cannot happen. Nuclear power plants are governed by the laws of physics, not your imagination.
But nuclear power gives us all that lovely radioactive waste which quite simply has to be thrown in big holes and the lid sealed up for over 40,000 years!
Only if you are stupid and throw it into a big hole. France doesn't throw their waste into a big hole, they recycle it.
Oh, but oil and gas are contributing to the greenhouse effect! Well yes they are, but does that justify building more reactors,
Well you can go back to a hunter gather lifestyle if you want. I've considered it, and I don't want to. Nuclear power is the only long term solution so long as we remain on earth.
generating more nuclear waste,
Not a problem, see above.
AND more nuclear warheads?
Where did that come from? Nuclear warheads are a very different subjects. Governments that want one will get them, with or withour nuclear power plants.
There' this thing called the sun. Provides loads of energy. The Wind! Water? Is nothing else viable?
Well yes, the sun does provide loads of energy. Most of it is not directed at the earth though. Even then it is hard to deal with. Many question if enough strikes the earth for our use, even at 100% conversion efficiency. 40% efficiency is the max we have got from a solar cell, and to get that much required a lot of special effort which does not scale to large scale production. Everything else is much worse than that.
People protest nuclear because NuclearIsBad(tm). Education is the only way to combat this.
The more education you have regarding nuclear fission power, the more you protest.
No offense, but this is total and utter BS. Here are just a few very well reasoned out proposals/cases for nuclear power:
here
here
here
In short, the amount of C02 that even circa 1950s nuclear power plants emit is 5 times *less* than wind, 50 times *less* than solar (where do you think all that material to make solar cells comes from anyways?). As for cost, new nuclear power plants are about the same as natural gas turbines (which are as cheap as it gets) and have orders of magnitude left for improvement with new materials. As for safety, coal with its byproducts kill about 50,000 people yearly. Since its the extraction of materials blamed for premature deaths, if solar was scaled up to the same level as coal was, it would kill about 1000-2000/yr.
Face it; every source of energy has its risks. With nuclear, most of those risks can be mitigated because you get so much bang for your buck with the fuel that you can watch the risks carefully. Passively safe systems make things even more secure. Its one of the biggest irony in history that the Greens are fighting tooth-and-nail probably the most environmentally conscious enery source of all. (outside of conservation)
horos
We might as well go ahead and build the nuclear plants - we're all bathed in radiation for several hours a day. No not the sun - spark plugs. The voltage that jumps across the gap in spark plugs is nearly identical to that used to generate medical X-rays, 35-40 KV. OK, so the wattage is low and the Xray dose from each spark is probably in the nano-rads. But your plugs fire thousands of times a minute, and in a few days of driving you probably get a cummulative dose of a milli-rad or so. Or about the same as a diagnostic X-ray. I bet that it is causing a lot of cancers that we are blaming on second-hand smoke and radon exposure.
"Sic Semper Path of Least Resistance"
Greenhouse gases are a big problem and getting bigger.
A ton of uranium yields as much energy as 16000 tons of coal. We bury the nuclear wastes in a small hole. (Work out the size of a ton of metal.) We bury the much larger coal wastes in the atmosphere, where they change the radiative properties of the planet, not to mention various other toxic side effects, including radiation emissions.
It's really a no-brainer. Of course, sometimes it seems that society has no brain.
The right doesn't want to admit it was wrong about global warming and the left doesn't want to admit it was wrong about nukes. So we go on merrily pursuing a thoroughly avoidable catastrophe.
mt
"It's simple. Once the Planet is hurt, it gathers Spirit Energy from the Lifestrea, to heal the injury. " --Sephiroth
If you think commercial solar power has anything to do with photovoltaic cells then you really aren't educated about this topic.
The whole thing was just a stupid tactic in the USA of saying "coal is bad too - why can't we be bad and get away with it?" which has has had zero success if you count the number of plants built in the USA since Carter. Coal has it's own problems - if the nuclear industry spent some of that lobby and adverising money on real research they may have solved the waste and fuel processing problems and be able to stand on their own merits instead of expensive whining and irrelevant moaning about hippies stopping them making money (Carter was no hippy (he was a nuclear engineer) and Reagan or the sensible Bush wouldn't listen to one).
http://permanent.access.gpo.gov/websites/www.nrc.g ov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/next-gen -reactors.html
Process Inherent Ultimate Safety
IUS: The Process Inherent Ultimate Safe reactor is a 640 MWe advanced pressurized water reactor designed by ABB-Atom of Sweden that utilizes natural physical phenomena to accomplish control and safety functions. The PIUS design consists of a vertical pipe, called a reactor module, which contains the reactor core and is submerged in a large pool of highly borated water. The reactor core is comprised of fuel elements that are similar to current PWR fuel elements. The borated pool water is provided to shut down the reactor and to cool the core by natural circulation. Unlike most reactors, PIUS does not use control rods for controlling the nuclear chain reaction. The reaction is controlled by the boron concentration and temperature of the primary loop reactor water. The steam generating equipment of the PIUS design is similar to that of a typical pressurized light water reactor plant. One important difference in plant design is the very large, by current standards, prestressed concrete reactor vessel. This vessel holds both the reactor module and the borated pool.
Look up background radiation - that should explain a few things, like why the sand at a nearby beach is more radioactive than your backyard or vice versa.
Unfortunately it isn't as simple as that - ore comes in a variety of concentrations and needs to be processed. Currently we can use nothing but the best stuff we can find anywhere, but that will change if nuclear power is used on a wide scale - which will push the costs up even higher. A better processing technology may fix that in a short term, but no-one is even bothering to try - so on a large scale it's currently fast breeders or nothing.They can run on thorium, prototypes have run for years, they use 1/100th the fuel, and they produce 1/100th the waste. Economic studies show them to be cheaper than light water reactors and even coal, they dont require fuel fabrication, and they're safer than any other breeder reactor design and all light water reactor designs. But no one seems to know about them. They keep repeating pop-sci stuff that they read about, like pebble bed reactors or the integral fast reactor.
We don't need this multi-billion dollar Yucca Mountain crap.
I think this calls for mixing Matt Groening references:
I for one welcome our new British mutant atomic supermen!
Yeah, but we're talking about the UK; the best they can do is Wales.
Actually, while there aren't many oil-powered power plants in the US, some do exist, mainly in the East. See articles for details:
Oil spill at Maine power plantWikipedia article about various types of power plants
I'll grant that a lot of power, particularly in the Western US, is generated by natural gas.
One of the main reasons that oil-fired plants aren't popular is that they have a lot of pollutants, such as mercury. Many oil producing countries find it cheaper to use oil for their power plants.
There have been some developments that may allow the use of lower quality fuels, but I agree, right now it's all using high purity material, and a few reactors that can use weapons grade material. (Not that it isn't high purity, just not generally useful for energy production.)
It doesn't help our production methods that we so rarely are building new reactors. There also isn't a much industry push for fusion research, which would certainly speed things for superior types of energy production.
I read the ORNL study a few times and then knocked a lot of what it said down just becuase it's nearly 25 years old. I still figured that it wasn't so far off as to be useless. I didn't have any other studies that gave me any idea of the waste breakdown from a coal plant either, unfortunately.
I also admit that I wasn't using raw tonnage for mined uranium ore, but was talking about the refined fuel that goes into the reactor. I imagine that there is a similar case for the reduced pollution coal forms.
And nobody wants a nuclear reactor in their backyard. End of discussion.
I do. You call'n me a nobody? eh... You might be right.
To say that no one wants a nuclear reactor in their backyard is to say that you'd never find anyone to work at one either. If you work for one chances are you are going to be living close to one.
Have there been plants shut down because no one wanted to work there by virtue of it being a nuclear reactor? Do they really build them in the middle of cities or do the cities build around them?
I want this account deleted.
As a college student majoring in Nuclear Engineering, the possibilities in the near future for innovation in the nuclear field are astounding. The joint effort between Japan, France, the USA, and a few others I believe, to design the first working fusion reactor, could be our first major step into higher level energy generation. It's quite amazing to learn about these new types of reactors, stuff that I could be designing or operating within a few short years. Anyone who is still so fearful of a nuclear reactor in their backyard is not aware of the innnovations in the nuclear field, and how much safer they are as opposed to previous years.
Actually, I didn't know that Carter was a nuclear engineer. A little research shows he was prepping for doing training on the Seawolf. He was also the engineering officer for the nuclear plant on the Seawolf. He resigned the Navy before it was put into service, though. Certainly qualifies him to know more than most about the things. Carter was a fool about a lot of things, but yeah, he wasn't stupid nor was he a hippy.
I always have held that advertising was the biggest money sink out there, followed by big government. I don't see much nuclear advertising, but I do know there is a lot spent on lobbying.
Nuclear still does suffer heavily from the same issue as solar and wind. Many people don't want it anywhere near them.
There is a reactor designed called an advanced breeder reactor. It's as close to an energy machine as I've ever seen... This type of reactor uses U238, which we (the US) are currently storing as waste (at huge expense). As a by-product of the consumption of this fuel it creates plutonium (the downside), as well as enough fuel to 'seed' another reactor (breeding, in a sense). This reactor was slated to be built, but due to the weapons-grade plutonium by-product, it was deemed unsafe and discontinued. According to people that I know (I used to work at the Idaho National Lab-- a cornerstone of US nuclear reactor design and development) there is enough U238 in storage-- as waste-- that we would could provide the energy needs for the US for several hundred years.
So, to answer one question, there's plenty of fuel. This is just the tip of the iceberg, as far as I'm concerned. This technology has been known for 30 years. There are bound to be technological leaps and bounds in the science of nuclear energy, but collectively we're afraid to try. As evidence of our collective fear, I point to the, IMO, over-zealous regulation/legislation, which makes it impossibly expensive to investigate making nuclear power *more* safe (I believe that it's safer/healthier than coal now).
Okay, having said that... there is a problem with our ability to improve our nuclear technology. That problem is the last 30 years-- where nothing was done in the field (due to FUD). In those 30 years the leading minds have forgottem and gotten old and sometimes have left the US in favor of work in more reasonable countries. In essence, I'm not sure that we have the expertise any longer. It will be expensive and difficult to get the US nuclear programs working again. I only guess that the UK is the same.
Is it worth it for the US, or any country? Yes. I think so. However, you've got an oil industry crony in the W.H. and trillions of lobby dollars spent by US energy corps and, according to many, the old KGB and other foreign govs, which have instilled a real fear about nuclear energy (according to the stories the old USSR didn't want us to develop *infinite* energy to feed our economy).
There is currently an initiative to build what they call the Gen 4 reactor. There has been some discussion as to which design to try. 'Pebble Bed' was discussed, but there are cooling issues to overcome (I can't speak intelligently on that... I wrote the software which tracked the nuclear waste-- IANANE). El Presidente seems enamored with hydrogen reactors, last I heard. My bets on whether we actually do it are placed on 'no.' The current project is woefully under-funded and crazily mis-managed.
Regarding waste... I know a bit about what is stored as waste... Mainly, it's PPE (personal protective equipment-- rubber gloves and the like) and junk. Anytime something even remotely (and I mean REMOTELY) connected with nuclear fuel, or waste, or contamination is discarded it becomes waste. The VAST majority (99%) of waste isn't nasty. Quite a lot can be permanently disposed of in a safe manner, but people start to freak out (FUD again). The other 1% can be stored until we figure out a cost-effective manner to send it to the sun. Right now, we store it all, and that contributes to more FUD.
I probably sound a bit like a fanboy... maybe I am. There IS an energy crisis. Renewables are nowhere near (at least as far as I know) ready to produce the amount of energy that nuclear does/can; it has been operationally tested worldwide.
Solving the political problems... That's another matter.
TAANSTAFL.
Yes, I'm sure those tailings weren't pretty. But check out a coal mining town. Some towns are surrounded by tailings from years of mining.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
I used photovoltaic cells because that is the most commonly known technology. Thin-film PV cells (eg - copper indium diselenide and cadmium telluride) use less materials/square meter, but their conversion efficiencies are less and the infrastructure needed to support them is more; the amount of CO2 emissions per watt-hour (200 g/Wh) is pretty much a constant amongst the different technologies.
source: here
Now, I would suggest stopping the mouthing of empty platitudes and do some research of your own.
and i had to move from southern california to south florida and now im right down the street from turkey point nuclear power plant, one of the safest plants in the united states. people need to realize nuclear is the new 'fire', sure we burned ourselves a few times in the beginning but its the next step and we have to learn to handle it with maturity.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/cixel
Approximatly 36 people have died in nuclear power related accidents. In the year 2004 *alone* 8000 people lost their lives in coal mines. (this figure is sketchy however, due to chernobyl, which was not a safely built station and due to the fact that the USSR did not initally disclose the details of what had happened. In fact, technicians working at a nuclear station in sweeder were the first to notice something went wrong when their radiation badges indicated high does of radiation).
Idle hands are the devil's workshop, but idle minds are much worse
No, but plants have been shut down on account of environmentalist pressures. They do not build them in the middle of cities; they build them on a cooling water source (river / lake / etc) about 20 miles from a major city and run transmission lines nearby.
In southeastern pennsylvania, there's an odd dynamic going on... for the 20 years that my family lived near Limerick nuclear station, noone wanted to build near the plant, on account of all the (unfounded) environmentalist panic. Then the area went through a housing boom in the early '00s, and suddenly all this land became very desireable, since its all 5 minutes from the major highway in the area (route 422) which makes it the perfect commuting spot. Next thing you know, $350k houses are popping up left and right, right in the valley of the shadow of de.. I mean, the cooling towers.
Here's a map of every utility owned nuclear plant that has been built in the united states & canada, including the decomissioned ones.
Enjoy.
I would pay someone to put a nuclear reactor in my backyard.
In fact, I hearby offer $100 USD to any group that builds a nuclear power reactor in my backyard. (where 'backyard' is defined to be within 10 miles from my place of residence at the time of construction)
I'm proud to already live ~50 miles from the Palo Verde reactor.
I don't have a problem with this at all. I'm all in favor of every country getting nuclear technology, even if it means they get nuclear weapons as well.
Besides, the sooner everyone has nuclear weapons, the sooner we'll learn how to defend against them and clean up the messes.
they will be joined by those that control the oil, such as Baby Bush. His "energy" bill was anything but. It was a give away to big oil and had nothing to do with setting up long-term energy usage. I am thinking that most of the Europeans (esp. france) have it right; nukes combined with alternative energy.
So yes, there will be some anti-nukes that run around. But do not fear them. Instead fear those that can do long term damage to the direction.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
In the commercial space, superheated water and thermal towers are the most commonly used technology.
I have done far more research on this topic than you could imagine.
Considering the fact that we could (if Jimmy Carter hadn't banned it) recycle most radioactive waste back into fuel, I'd say there's not much downside at all.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
AND more nuclear warheads?
Weapons grade uranium is 90% U-235. Commercial reactor fuel is about 30% U-235.
Commercial reactors do produce small quantities of PU-239, but require extensive refining to be made usable.
Maybe you should try thinking instead of having emotional outbursts.
"Who's going to believe a talking head?" - Herbert West
You have to remember that coal burning plants are not just belching CO2 and sulphuric acid. They are also releasing radioactive dust in the form of thorium and uranium that are present in coal (3.2 ppm thorium and 1.3 ppm uranium). Your typical burner rejects about 20 tons of uranium and thorium a year. Sure, precipitators wash the smoke and decrease the radioactive releases, but then you get to dispose of radioactive sludge. Is that much better than spent nuclear fuel?
Excerpt from the article:
Total U.S. releases in 1982 (from 154 typical plants) amounted to 801 tons of uranium (containing 11,371 pounds of uranium-235) and 1971 tons of thorium.
That's for 1982. Since then, disco died and worlwide coal consumption more than doubled. So for 2000, US coal power plants released about 5000 of thorium, versus zero-zilch-nada for the fearsome, icky nuclear plants.
It's all a matter of managing risks and futures, and frankly, when you take that problem into account on top of CO2 emission, coal plants don't look like a good solution.
Now, I'd gladly blanket the sahara with solar reflectors and generate "clean" power, but 1. The Polisario Front guerilla think they'd ruin the nice desert landscape, and their Kalashnikovs are very convincing, and 2. It cost $5000 to create a kilowatt of solar power capacity when nuclear plants cost $1500/kW including their end-of-life cleanup.
--
Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
First, you assume that oil is the cheapest form of energy out there. It is not. If it were, then America would be based 100% on just oil. Oil really only comes into its own for portable energy (and other side products). That is why little of our electricity comes from oil.
Secondly, you seem to assume that by our moving away from oil, it will actually cost us more money. That is also not known. In fact, quite often, new ideas/inventions tends to lower the price.
For whatever reason, you seem to ignore the future. Much of the research out there is showing that the world has hit the peak of oil production, which means that all future oil will only continue going up (notice what has happened with a president who is oil friendly; double in under 5 years).
Finally, where is the bulk of oil? Russia, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela (ignoring shale oil in America/Canada).
And where are they?Russia is slowly falling back to a USSR. Iraq will almost certainly continue into true civil war (who wins is anybodies guess). The house of Saud will almost certainly fall (guarenteed if Iraq continues into civil war). Venezuela is under control of an democratically voted in idiot (sound familiar).
IOW, America is trusting much of its future to a bunch of countries who are NOT friendly towards America (or western europe). The best thing for our long term interest is to not depend on wackos. Eisenhower and Carter had it right when they tried to move us to more of a nuke economy.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor It promises to be a safer and more efficient method, which has natural self-limitations that reduce the reliance on mechanical failsafes. As for disposal: Anybody who suggests launching it into the sun or burying it underground is a fool; Rockets are expensive, and the last thing we need to do is have a catastrophic rocket failure in the atmosphere. It's dangerous to bury radioactive waste, since it CAN seep out and contaminate areas, and the concentrations involved are absurdly high compared to natural deposits. Grind it up, massively dilute it with sand, and send it trolling on barges out across the deepest parts of the oceans letting it slowly seep out. Water absorbs radiation very well so there would be a negligible increase over background radiation, and with the exception of plutonium all nuclear materials you would find in a reactor are naturally-occuring. Safe, cheap, and ecological.
If such were developed, it would not only be used in the US, but throughout the industrialized (and industrializing) world, and as a result lower the worldwide oil prices to the point where oil is at least as cost-effective as the new technology, which may well be $10/barrel if not less.
Damn straight. That is true evolutionary thinking. Survival of the fittest indeed. Damn it, if you can't learn to evolve with increasing radiation, you don't deserve to live!
I'm not sure if I'm being serious or funny. Please, narl, don't take this as a flame.
About a third of the area of the United States is flat plains with noone around. I wouldn't mind filling it with nuke plants and bison herds.
Granted, they would be three-eyed bison....
All that is necessary for the triumph of good is that evil men do nothing.
Don't forget, the last time these people made any big noise was the 1980s, and the world's moved on a lot since then. In particular, the sort of reactive luddite environmentalism that was popular then has basically overplayed its hand, reached saturation and lost the moral high ground. Sure the nutjobs will sloganize and march in papier-mache-heads as they usually do - but people will recognise it's just the usual rent-a-mob, not any sort of grassroots uprising. They'll mainly get bad press for blocking the roads. Even the BBC might tone down its traditional awed deference. Heh.
One thing about the waste argument. Nuclear powerplant waste will decay down to the level of radioactivity in naturally occuring uranium in around 125 years or so. We can build stuff that lasts that long. Once the waste has cooled off how about using uranium mines to store it? We know those mines are geologicly stable for holding radionuclides over long periods of time. The waste would pose no more hazzard than the orginial uranium did.
Not to mention that fuel reprocessing greatly reduces the volume of waste that must be dealt with. Nuclear fuel is only about 5% used before a reactor is refueled.
Happy Fun Ball is for external use only.
Wind, geothermal etc are insignificant, inefficient, second-hand energy sources only of interest to luddites. They do not, can not, and never will fulfil the energy demands of the modern world. Nor will humanity permanently cap itself at steam-age energy usage to make nice with said luddites. So basically that idea can go in the dustbin, and good riddance.
There is basically only one "renewable" energy source that makes sense, namely sunlight. Not the poor, murky, filtered stuff that squeezes through earth's atmosphere, but the raw real deal, billions of megawatts pouring out uselessly into empty space.
Nuclear waste is a lot better than having another major world war. Energy is fundamental to a modern society, and if we start to run out, or it gets really expensive, its not a Good Thing. Wars can and do happen over this sort of thing.
Energy lies at the heart of the economy of our society. We've automated things such as farming, manufacturing, and so on, so what controls prices is, yes the price of raw materials, but also: energy. Manufacturing aluminium is really expensive for example, simply because of the energy demands of electrolysing the ore. Reducing the price of energy is key to our development and progress.
Using nuclear power is critical to our society, and we should be using it as much as possible. Not to do so is almost criminal.
I'd much rather a little extra radiation each day than a major world war.
Hugh
Yeah, but the reason for the British is that they start doubting whether the Kyoto protocols are a good way to reduce global warming. The reason for the US is that the president and his cronies deny that global warming is taking place. Another hurricane, mr. Bush?
Others have already tackled the vast amount of radioactive crap that coal stations already pump into the air. The UK, and the rest of northern europe are renowned for their lack of sunny weather, so solar's out as a major form of power - if we could find a way to generate power from rain though, we'd be set for life :) Don't forget the environmental production costs for solar cells either, doped silicon produces a lot of nasty toxic waste.
Wind and wave power are being investigated and used, but for anything other than remote areas, they're too big and too inefficient to generate anything other than minor amounts of power at the moment.
Natural gas of course produces CO2, as does coal, but we're running out of natural gas anyway, so need to find an alternative for both reasons.
Nuclear is a far more attractive prospect than coal, our current other big ticket energy method, simply because the amount of waste is much smaller and easier to control. Countries like the UK vitrify (encase in glass) their waste. Methods to dump it into dead deep sea stable zone are one option; dumping it into subduction zones so it gets sucked back down below the mantle are another possibility.
I'm all for truly clean alternative energy sources, but right now, nuclear power looks like the only affordable and least polluting short term solution.
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
Tech Support!
*tongue in cheek*
C17H21NO4
does this http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/n ews/2004/09/26/nnuke26.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/09/26 /ixhome.html help with the waste storage problem?
The main issue with conventional nuclear plants is not the initial cost, or even the safty of the plants, but the de-commissioning. This really does push up the cost of providing energy, but maybe we should just accept that energy costs will have to rise unless we all fancy going back to the stoneage and do without it. By thinking carefully about energy conservation (better cars, insulation in buildings, more efficient air-con, different lightbulbs, etc) we could absorb the higher costs of nuclear energy. it seems to me that most people say they care about saving the planet, global warming, etc but if solving these problems means dipping into their pocket then things suddenly look different.
"Freeing ones self from the grid is like a Borg entity trying to be free. "Prepare for assimilation, resistance is futile."
Indeed there are obstacles for many of us wanting to free ourselves from the grid. Local planning policies, building regulation and propery costs certainly don't help. Forcing people to accept the staus quo will only set us back several decades.
From a survival point of view, it only makes sense to have localised alternatives to being at the mercy of a centralised power policy with a unified grid distribution. For many businesses and households, their only energy supply is grid electricity.
Rather than favour one power generation technology over another, a sensible course of action is to figure out how we can use them all to best effect. This includes taking action to reduce energy losses in distribution and use.
A great deal of power is lost in transmission lines.
1. It is radiated as heat. Birds flock to a power line where an insulator has started to fail and presents itself as a resistive path to earth through the support pylon.
2. It is radiated as electromagnetic energy at the production frequency of 50Hz or 60Hz, depending on where you live, and at the harmonic frequencies. People have been prosecuted for stealing energy from overhead power lines using induction circuits. Various demonstrations of iluuminating a fluorescent tube by holding it under a power line have been televised.
Alternating Current was proposed as a solution to power loss over long distances. AC is also convenient for transforming voltages. Direct Current can be more efficient when it is produced where it is required but it needs to be transformed in to AC for grid distribution or used to do work, whether chemical or kinetic, for storage.
Nuclear is essentially an always on technology and large existing hydo schemes are extremely important in some countries, (e.g., Scotland and USA). Nuclear and Hydo generated electricity should be distributed by a grid or used to do work.
Nuclear is used off peak for pumping water back up to the header source in a pumped storage hydo electric sheme.
Localised wind, solar, mini hydro and geothermal energies should be utilised at or very close to their source.
If I had my own property with sufficient space and regulations,local planners and busybodies didn't interfere, I'd like to do what I could to reduce or remove my needs to use the country wide grid. Meanwhile, I'll just keep using energy efficient light bulbs and only use what heat I need in winter.
My hyperlinks aren't worth the paper they're printed on.
Its ok we can put all the nuclear power stations in Wales.
*ducks*
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
What I meant was that we need nuclear as a 'fill-in,' untill we get better forms of power generation.
Any grammatical or spelling errors above are for comic effect, and do not signify imperfection in the writer.
Hydro-electric :
Good - clean (once constructed), naturally renewable, not necessarily land based.
Bad - Land has to be flooded, wildlife moved (or exterminated).
Conclusion - Has to be better than coal, as it uses less toxic resources, it's naturally renewable, and the argument against flooding land is moot when you consider the rising sea levels projected by continual use of fossil fuels and emmissions thereof.
Nuclear :
Good - Clean (once constructed), fairly large fuel reserves, good long term returns for less input.
Bad - Produces toxic waste which has to hidden/protected. Small possibility of accidents causing widespread pollution.
Conclusion - Has to be better than coal, as the toxic byproducts are contained, and can be used again. Also the returns are better for a given amount of fuel.
Wind :
Good - clean (once constucted), naturally renewable, not necessarily land based.
Bad - Noise issues (wtf?), might kill lickle birdies, doesn't look nice, not terribly efficient.
Conclusion - It's still better than coal, even though large areas need to be in operation to generate enough power, and also there are no waste products.
Solar :
Good - Clean (yadda yadda), (practically) unlimited reserves, no waste products, quiet, can be small (think calculator, watch, etc).
Bad - Not very efficient on a large scale and I can't think of anything else.
I think one problem thats troubling any alternative energy resource, is the fact that people dismiss them because each individual resource cannot replace the whole fossil fuel based system. Surely when combined, and used in appropriate situations, the alternatives make more sense. It has to be more productive in the long term, to localise energy prodution to the consumer of that power. Less power has to be generated to be usefully productive. Instead of huge power plants feeding a grid spanning a continent, have tiny power plants located everywhere, serving the local needs. I realise this was the dream for fusion, but it could be achieved now with natural renewables.
On another point, I see various posts describing different forms of nuclear reactor, each using different fuels, thorium, plutonium, uranium. Also it appears that waste from one type can be reprocessed to fuel plants of a different type. Well, duh ! Ok, each individual type is not going to completely replace fossil fuel, but together ....
Even the massive harmful output of coal burning which includes uranium and thorium (duh !) could be useful. If you are going to burn coal anyway, use it as a process to extract these valuable resources.
I guess my final word is this.
We worry about the environmentally _unfriendly_ aspects of contructing environmentally _friendly_ power plants/schemes, but unless we build some now, we will run out of non-renewables before we have a new infrastructure in place that is capable of taking the load. Surely if we are going to pollute, then it is better to pollute now, for the positive gain of no pollution later.
we haven't demonstrated the ability to do that either.
... which don't do jack to remove CO2 from the flue gas. Shame about that.
Nuclear powerplant waste will decay down to the level of radioactivity in naturally occuring uranium in around 125 years or so.
This is wrong. Nuclear waste, if reprocessed and the actinides recycled, will decay down to the biohazard level of the original uranium in 600 to 1000 years. If you don't recycle the actinides, it takes much longer.
But the waste issue is a red herring. Put the spent fuel in armored dry casks after it's cooled a bit and seal them shut. They'll last for many centuries, even left on the surface. In the future the waste will be easy to deal with, probably by sending it into space once the cost of launch declines several orders of magnitude.
Forcing waste to be reprocessed now instead of in the future is, in effect, transfering wealth from us to our descendants. Since our descendants are likely to be far wealthier and more capable than ourselves it's like a very regressive tax.
The spelling checker didn't catch that one 8-).
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
Wouldn't a nuclear reactor that wouldn't 'go nuclear' be rather a waste of money? :)
What you do with a computer does not constitute the whole of computing.
Yup I dared mention the phrase that strikes terror into the Bush administration. It may amaze US motorists to discover that unlike the new Hummer, European cars have actually advanced their MPG since the Ford Model T.
The Hummer actually reflects an unintended side-effect of energy efficiency. Many energy efficiency improvements have been made in vehicles since the Model T (or even since before the 1970s 'energy crisis'). These improvements could be used to make cars of the same size that use less gas, or they could be used to make bigger cars that are still affordable. SUVs may not have become so popular if they got only 5 miles per gallon.
A similar thing happens with air travel. More efficient planes means cheaper fares which means more passenger miles. Or with lightning: if your light bulbs are more efficient and last longer, you tend to leave them on more. It's 'elasticity of demand' -- as the cost of the activity that consumes energy declines, more of that activity will occur.
Not all solar power involves photovoltaics.
For example, mirrors can concentrate sunlight on a large Stirling Engine to produce eletricity.
There are several pilot projects in the works.
Google for more info.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
Ah, but no you see, I'm British ;)
I'ma have to say we win at most of those.. except the sexy gays and lesbians... and the maths thing (I've got no idea what the f*** that is, dropped maths at 16)... and the wine.. and the psychoanalysis,............. and speaking French...
But apart from that, what have the Romans ever done for us!
That is what Clinton did with NK. We were helping them to build a lightwater reactor that could not be used for bomb building.
BR> In addition, America does not object to Iran's use of a reactor. What we object to, is Iran's ability to reprocess the uranium include the spent plutonium that can be used in bombs.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
A great deal of power is lost in transmission lines.
In the US, about 8% of the generated power is lost in the distribution system (lines, transformers, everything). Is that 'a great deal'?
Oh, and since the power in wind goes as the cube of wind speed, it makes sense to put wind turbines where the wind is strong, not where the consumers are. This also helps, to some extent, to smooth supply fluctuations (geographic diversity). So wind power is transmitted long distances just like centralized power.
http://rhlx01.rz.fht-esslingen.de/projects/alt_ene rgy/sol_thermal/powertower.html
Here in the mid-west small communities are drying up and blowing away because of the collapse of the farming economy. All the small farms are being/have been bought up by the huge multi-national conglomerates like Cargil, etc. The ex-farmers are moving to town and applying at Walmart for jobs.
This trend could be reversed by setting up 10-50MW SPTII sites all over the mid-West, or even the entire country, in these small rural communities. The technology is similar to that of farm equipment, and the ex-farmers could begin "farming" electricity and Hydrogen. Even under overcast conditions these power stations develop 1/3rd their max power. Excess power can be stored in several forms.
While high tension power lines (450KV) could connect regional areas most power would be produced locally.
Our national electrical power would then be terrorist proof.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
Keep the big business and government control *away*, and allow independent, ad-hoc generation of energy through whatever process is feasible. (local) governments like to provide you with "Services", like water even if a well will suffice, which hooks you permanently as their revenue stream. Companies do the same as it determines how much you *must* work for them so you can heat your home or go anywhere, kindof like the healthcare slavery all Americans are exposed to now: get sick, insurance ends at the end of the month, and you are bankrupted. Don't have insurance? Die anyway because the safety nets don't work.
The Emperor has no Clothes.
"In the US, about 8% of the generated power is lost in the distribution system (lines, transformers, everything). Is that 'a great deal'?"
Ok. By a "great deal of" I meant a large proportion of. Given the vast amount of power used in the US, yes that is one hell of a loss.
My hyperlinks aren't worth the paper they're printed on.
This is wrong. Nuclear waste, if reprocessed and the actinides recycled, will decay down to the biohazard level of the original uranium in 600 to 1000 years. If you don't recycle the actinides, it takes much longer.
I admit my numbers might be off. However I was under the impression that the elements that make nuclear waste 'hot' were mostly short half-life products (which is why they are 'hot'). The uranium and transuranics aren't so much of a problem.
In any case you are correct, dry cask storage is probably more than enough for now until the economics of reprocessing are more attractive.
For ultimate disposal, dropping the waste into subduction zones is probably the way to go rather than launching it into space. (besides it helps keep the core nice and toasty warm)
Happy Fun Ball is for external use only.
I was laughing at the inappropriate use of a colloquialism. 'Going nuclear' when the correct phrase was 'criticality accident'. Or you could have used other colloquialisms, like meltdown or explosion. A way to say it with a more 'no problems here, folks' spin would probably be 'yield excursion'.
'Going nuclear' sounds like the commencement of a nuclear reaction. A reactor that couldn't do this wouldn't *be* a reactor. It would be a billion-dollar inert pile. No pun intended.
'Going nuclear', in this context, is just funny. Hence the smiley at the end of my last message.
There's a good discussion of this on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticality_accident
What you do with a computer does not constitute the whole of computing.
I'm not going to fight the Grammar Nazi battle, especially as I'm not really much of one. Sorry you couldn't see the humor I found in nuclear plants not going nuclear.
But this is getting to be a lot of electrons on both parts, and now insult on your part. Let's just drop the whole thing, shall we? Life is too short.
What you do with a computer does not constitute the whole of computing.
But in a democracy I need to convince them first.
I would not have any qualms about plainly explaining that it would become a criminal offense to be an energy dilapidator.
Sooner or later it will not be a matter of choice anyway.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
.... has very few effective tools in order to effectively modify people's behaviour.
Taxes is one of those tools, and yes, it is a punitive method, but if you are an elected representative you have earned the right to apply punitive tactics to orient the behaviour of the populace.
If your tactics are bad or harmful, the plebs can kick you out of office.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
As usual, the big good old slashdotters' ayatollic approach to nuclear energy (yeah it is kewl!) rears it ugly head again.
/.er believes that magically people in the nuclear industry will be better and more moral being. Yeah, sure.
They dismiss reasonably fears about how to dispose safely of waste forgetting how many industries in the past have not cared about poisoning people. Somehow, the good old little
They forget about terrorism, on spite of the worldwide paranoia about the issue. Sooner or later terrorists will use radioactive material in order to inflict fear. THey will not too many people, if any, but as soon as a geiger reader detects a bit of radioactive activity after a bomb blast we will be in for the scaremongering ride of our life.
They, as good gadget lovers, like big phallic infrastrucutre. PLants producing who know how many Mega, not Giga, not Tera Watts of energy. The more in on e single point of failure, the better.
And more unexplainbaly, they dismiss the value of distributed technology. Why new housing does not have roofs and walls fully covered with solar panels? Why new housing does not have small wind turbines? Why new housing does not use all the knowledge we about about heating or colling by mains of natural airflow? Why are things like the immoral SUVs allowed to even exist?
Why, I will tell you why, because the industries behind the energy are too powerful and have the politicians by the proverbial small ones.
And the general public on rich countries are addicted to an apparently unlimited supply of mind numbing energy.
The reckoning time will come, on spite of the skeptics, the planet is clearly not infinite and sooner or later we will finish the oil, the cleann air or both.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I used photovoltaic cells because that is the most commonly known technology.
In the commercial space, superheated water and thermal towers are the most commonly used technology.
In the commercial space, solar provides far far less than one percent of TPES, and when it does it is in niche areas. Why do you think that is?
Now, I would suggest stopping the mouthing of empty platitudes and do some research of your own.
I have done far more research on this topic than you could imagine.
Great.. then spill it. Show me a counter-example study showing g/CO2 figures from cradle to grave for different solar energy technologies, and I might believe you. Otherwise, what good is your 'I have done far more research on this topic than you could imagine' statement?
Its a discussion group, so you know.. discussion might be nice...
Ed
Why would I do that? This is why I am not wasting my time discussing this with you. My primary comment - as demonstrated in the SUBJECT - is that nuclear power is expensive. That is an indisputable fact as even the nuclear power lobby admits that it is only profitable in the US when subsidised, and is best suited for countries that do not already have cheap plentiful supplies of fossil fuels (such as France).
My secondary comment was that the majority of people - foolish ignorant Slashdotters aside - do not want a nuclear power plant in their backyard. That is also an indisputable fact, as you would know if you have ever had the opportunity to read strategy material from the nuclear industry. They cite public opposition as one of the key concerns.
You have chosen to ignore my primary comment and my secondary comment and instead rant about CO2 emissions. You harp on about CO2, as if somehow those figures were being disputed, and then demand that I take the opposing position. Did you expect I would?
Start talking about long-term costs and I might show some interest.
Why would I do that? This is why I am not wasting my time discussing this with you. My primary comment - as demonstrated in the SUBJECT - is that nuclear power is expensive. That is an indisputable fact as even the nuclear power lobby admits that it is only profitable in the US when subsidised, and is best suited for countries that do not already have cheap plentiful supplies of fossil fuels (such as France).
First of all, your "original comment" was 'Nuclear is expensive and nobody wants a nuclear reactor in their backyard. End of discussion', which is just as fatuous (and empty headed) as the comment that I responded to.
Second of all, I could argue with that comment (as devoid of info as it is) in three ways. First, if you look at the countries that have large amounts of nuclear power, their energy cost per-kWh is on par with those who rely on coal, etc. Source here(look at France && Sweden && Germany for examples). And those countries which rely heavily on renewables tend to have *twice* as high an energy cost (look at the table for Denmark for example!)
Second, I could say that we already are heavily subsidizing coal, natural gas and oil in the form of military encounters, damaged productivity in agriculture, damaged health, loss of life, and so on - and that with large-scale solar power that this subsidy would continue - although not as great as it would be with coal. For it takes coal/oil/etc to *build* solar panels and solar towers, for an energy source which is highly disperse and needs a lot of infrastructure to put 'online'. That's where the figure of 200 g/kWh capacity is a killer. Its 25% that of coal - which means if we scaled up solar, and used 4 times as much electricity as we did now - which is not a stretch considering the amount of population in the world and how hungry they are for energy - we'd still be generating the same amount of greenhouse gases and associated emissions we are today. Which is not an acceptable solution.
And third - and finally - I'd say that you have a woeful misunderstanding of the economics of power plants. All the pain that we've caused ourselves on disposal and lots of the overruns on the building costs of current power plants are caused by politics, pure and simple. Its easy to make anything you want as expensive as you want if you throw hurdles, lawsuits and FUD at the problem. Take away the FUD and the things are relatively in-expensive to build - current LWR around $1000/kW to build in comparison with coal being $1100/kW. And when you turn them on, its like printing money - it costs on the order of 1.5 - 2 cents/kW to maintain and run them. The source of fuel - uranium and its preprocessing costs - is close to free because it is so energy dense. And the important thing - especially in comparison with coal/natural gas/solar/wind is that their capacity factor is *great*. Which means they run almost all the time - circa 90% around the year 2000 in the US, as compared to circa 60% for coal and circa 30% for wind. Which means they can be used easily for industrial base load.
And fourth - finally,finally, there are magnitudes of improvement left in new designs. As I said in my previous post, self-contained, automatic, passively safe breeder reactors such as the sstar are designed to slash the amount of source material by 70 times (by using U-238 instead of U-235) and to cut the capital costs in manufacture by about 2 to 3 times due to new materials manufacture.
So yes, the economics of nuclear power plants is quite cheap once you get the politics out of it. As for costs of decommission and storage, those are greatly reduced if you simply let the radioactive actinides disintegrate and then move the relatively inert radioactive waste - or do what the french do and simply reprocess the fuel, and embed the residue in volcanic glass. We produce about 2300 metric tons of waste a year to deliver about 1/5t
It costs 12c/kWh for nuclear power. I've no idea what hole you pulled your figure from, but I could take a wild guess.
I'm glad you've finally noticed. I've no idea why you've put "First of all" in front of that sentence though, because you're the one who should be apologising for not paying attention to what I said.
And when you turn them on, its like printing money - it costs on the order of 1.5 - 2 cents/kW to maintain and run them.
It costs 12c/kWh for nuclear power. I've no idea what hole you pulled your figure from, but I could take a wild guess.
First of all, your "original comment" was 'Nuclear is expensive and nobody wants a nuclear reactor in their backyard. End of discussion'
I'm glad you've finally noticed. I've no idea why you've put "First of all" in front of that sentence though, because you're the one who should be apologising for not paying attention to what I said.
I'm feeding a troll here, but here goes -
1) I said that the operating costs for nuclear energy are about 1.5-2 cents a kilowatt hour. As for the base cost, like I said its approximately $1000/kWH. And I got that figure from both an operational plant (the Vogel twin plants), and the profit figures from nations who rely on nuclear electricity (france, sweden).
2) the '12 cent/kWH' figure that you get factors in a lot of the original R&D cost which is not necessary to repeat, as well as a lot of the political costs that were associated with that R&D. It also has to do with the assumption that you are only going to be running the plant for 20 or so years, and it looks like most plants will be running for a lot longer than that (about 60 in fact). In practice, the true operating cost is about 1.5 cents/2 cents an hour. And - unlike wind - there is no subsidy for the operation of nuclear plants. Do you really thing the Vogel plants would be selling nuclear power at 5 cents per kwh, at a 7 cents loss? Do you really think that *france* would be selling 1GW-9GW nuclear power for 8 cents/hour to businesses (or to other countries like italy) for a 4 cent loss/kWh?
And that doesn't even count 3rd generation/4th generation nuclear reactors, which have orders of magnitude improvement over current, 1970s technologies.
Why isn't there more nuclear power? Again, its politics. Its ironic, because so much effort has gone into fighting nuclear power buildup that plants that to *real* damage, like coal, are sailing through and the greens are actually *retarding* sustainable development. Its no wonder that true greens (like James Lovelock) are amongst the strongest supporters of nuclear power.
3) what you *say* is worse than useless when you don't back it up with figures, references, reasoned argument and discussion. The fact of the matter is that I didn't see your original comment at first, just your second mouthed platitude (the more you look into it the more.. etc. etc.). So, you tell me to go to the first comment, which I dutifully do so, and see that its another useless mouthed platititude. Doesn't do me - or anyone else - any good.
Read some books. Please. Start with those I mentioned, and then read Vaclav Smil, Amory Lovins (although he's a bit 'pie in the sky', he's got some good ideas on efficiency), and maybe deffeys. I'm not 'nuclear zealot' - I am not in the nuclear industry, and have no vested interest (other than wanting to keep living with the comforts of civilization). And I think that wonders can be done with solar and wind - to shave load off of peak power. But *replacing* peak power is a totally different thing - Denmark is finding real barriers in doing this, even though they are under political mandates to try to totally rely on renewables - and their spot price for electricity is twice as high as the countries with supposedly 'too expensive' nuclear power.
Ed
Right, so the way you prove that nuclear is cheaper than the alternatives is by ignoring all the costs except for the one that makes your argument look good.
No it doesn't. You're making stuff up again.
Hahaha, except for the 1.2c/kWh energy subsidy, the $150billion R&D subsidy, and the government's gift of limited liability without which it would be financially impossible to operate a nuclear plant. Yeah, except for those.
No, it's due to economics. Nuclear power wouldn't exist without politics. It's not a financially sensible choice of power, and it would never have gotten off the ground if governments hadn't subsidised it every step of the way.
I've read the books, that's why I know you're blowing smoke. You say Lovins supports nuclear power? The same Lovins that wrote "Non-Nuclear Futures: The Case for an Ethical Energy Strategy" and once said "phasing out nuclear power should make our electricity cost not more but less." Your arguments are specious. Your "facts" are fabricated. In the face of all this evidence, your condescending attitude is simply amusing. To leave you, here's a quote from Diesendorf. You might have heard of him.
Now back in your hole, you ignorant pissant.
said that the operating costs for nuclear energy are about 1.5-2 cents a kilowatt hour.
.9 * (30 years) * (1 GW)
.9 is the capacity factor and 5 billion dollars is the startup cost, and 1 GW is the amount of energy produced. Calculate this, and it gives approximately 10.25 billion dollars cost for running that power plant. Divide that by the number of kilowatt hours produced:
.9 * 30 years)
.9 * (60 years) * (1 GW)
Right, so the way you prove that nuclear is cheaper than the alternatives is by ignoring all the costs except for the one that makes your argument look good.
the '12 cent/kWH' figure that you get factors in a lot of the original R&D cost
Now you're making stuff up again.
Ok, lets talk some figures here. I'm not 'making stuff up' - my argument is that the statement 'Nuclear is Expensive' is a inherently useless, dumb statement. Its like saying 'cars are expensive' or 'computers are slow'. And that the 12 cents/kwH figure that you cite lumps everything together into one big basket, rather than looking at things critically.
Is nuclear expensive? If you're talking about 1st generation nuclear power I'd agree with you (it being done primarily for military reasons). If you're talking about 2nd generation (ie: 40 year old technology) nuclear power, it really depends on what you include in your scope. And how long the plants last. If you've got a second generation nuclear power plant (like the ones at Vogel) that are producing electricity at a cap of 2 cents/kWH, and that cost about $5000/KW to build, the economics of running the plant become pretty straightforward:
5 billion dollars + (2 cents/(kilowatt hour)) *
where
(10.25 billion dollars) / (1 GW *
and you get about 4.33 cents / kilowatt hour (if you don't believe me, believe frink). If they last 60 years:
(5 billion dollars) + (2 cents/(kilowatt hour)) *
that's approximately 15.5 billion dollars for the running of the plant. And at a total cost of about 3.3 cents/kWH.
So - where does Diesendorf get his 12 cent/kwH number? Well, first of all, there is the insurance 'subsidy' that you talk about (which a large part is the 'Price Anderson act' which protects nuclear producers with a cap on disasters) and the R&D 'subsidy'. If you factor in that research used to develop those plants, plus failed reactors (ones that started and never completed), plus the past R&D going back to 1945, you get (I'm guessing) about 12 cents/(kilowatt hour). And that's the number that you are apparently attracted to.
But that's my point - these costs (failed reactors, botched administration) are unlikely to re-occur. The nuclear plants *themselves* are competitive. And the R&D isn't useless - like say, the cost of supporting a war to keep ourselves hooked on oil, or the cost to cleanup the environment and the damage to agriculture. Its not money wasted, its a one time charge spent for plants to come that are now being built in (ironically) india and china with our R&D. If you take the millions of man-years used in us perfecting nuclear power and put it into engineering practice, you drop the startup cost from $5000/KWH to approx $1000/KWH, and the running of the plant from 2 cents/kwH to about 1 cent, which is cheaper than your average coal station. Which is what is being built in india at this very moment (the advanced westinghouse reactor).
So, in *further* answer to your question, 'is nuclear expensive'? No, not *modern* nuclear power. I'd also argue that most of the 'subsidies' that are mentioned in these calculations aren't really subsidies; that they lead to bigger and better things, and to a point where the 'subsidies' end. Sort of like the subsidies for wind and solar energy, which you seem so fond of.
Ed
(ps - I didn't mention Lovins because he bolstered my argument; I mentioned Lovins to show that I had read more than
1 GW is the amount of energy produced.
oops.. make that the 'amount of power produced'. The calculation is still correct, though.
Ed
(ppps - wow. I just looked at the incentive bill for Comprehensive Energy Legislation. It puts nuclear power under the same umbrella as wind, solar, etc.
It doesn't give the same credit to nuclear as it does to wind - ie: getting a flat-rate 1.2 cent/kwH production credit to wind, plus a 1.8 cent/kwH tax credit, but it *does* extend the 1.8 cent/kwH tax credit to nuclear for the first 6,000 MW.
Not quite the same, but whoever builds the first advanced nuclear plants is going to get a windfall - they truly are going to be able to 'print money'. If the next gen plants generate at 1 cent/kilowatt hour operating cost, then as I see it, at 40% tax rate, they are going to be able to generate electricity for free and sell it for sheer profit...
Now if they can only streamline the hurdles for getting approved.
Ed
so...
;-)
Do you cede defeat?
Ed