Slashdot Mirror
New Nuclear Power Plants in the next 5 years
Guinnessy writes "As oil, coal, and gas become increasingly expensive, energy utilities take another look at nuclear power. The nuclear reactor builders are jostling for business as more than 26 plants may be ordered or constructed over the next five years in Canada, China, several European Union countries, India, Iran, Pakistan, Russia, and South Africa. Companies in the US and UK may order an additional 15 new reactors. Physics Today magazine has a global roundup of the new plants on construction, and how the builders are getting around some of the potential road blocks in their path. I'm sure many slashdot readers would be surprised to know that some new plants will be coming online so soon."
Also, nuclear plants to not produce pollution comparable to coal power. Nuke plants take in relatively small amounts of fuel and produce a relatively small amount of contained waste. Coal plants take in a huge amount of coal and produce a huge amount of waste, some of which is contained and some of which is vented into the atmosphere.
Nuclear waste is scary, but it is very possible that the CO2 released by burning oil is more dangerous. Global warming is at a minimum decently probable, and at the very least our CO2 production is significantly affecting our atmosphere in ways that will take a long time to understand. The only difference is that unlike the atmosphere, which is inconceivably large and complex, we can wrap our heads around the idea of nuclear waste, so it seems scarier. Chernobyl is much more dramatic than melting Antarctic icecaps, but he latter is probably more serious.
If all of America was powered by breeder reactors, we could fulfill current energy demands for over a hundred years by running them off the nuclear waste we have in storage right now. Isn't nuclear power cool?
I'm really sick and tired of breathing heavy inversion air every winter, hydro-chloric acid in our acid rain. With those and the coal plant shut down, maybe my chronic breathing problems would lessen. It sure would make it easier to breath when I exercise too!
Nah, people will just blame that I'm fat on being lazy, it's not like there could be other contributing factors.
No! It's a *SIG*. Keep the Special Interest Groups away! (Con joke!)
Most coal fields exhibit a substantial degree of natural radioactivity, and when burned in a power plant it goes right up the stack
No it doesn't, 99.5% of the thorium and uranium gets caught by the fly ash precipitators. Radon gas is released, but then wikipedia gets stupid: if it's released, it's not nuclear waste. The proper claim is that, while operating as designed, coal plants will release more radioactivity than nuke plants. "[...] the maximum radiation dose to an individual living within 1 km of a modern [coal-fired] power plant is equivalent to a minor, perhaps 1 to 5 percent, increase above the radiation from the natural environment."
Moreover, as for radioactive material, with the coal plant, that's it. There's no need for the whole decommisioning process with lots of radioactive material, because the plant itself and the fly ash isn't particularly radioactive. Same source: "One extreme calculation that assumed high proportions of fly-ash-rich concrete in a residence suggested a dose enhancement, compared to normal concrete, of 3 percent of the natural environmental radiation."
And before all you pro-solar, pro-wind, pro-tidal, pro-{insert alternative energy system here} get on my case
Ya gotta have a better argument than that.
On-demand plants like coal-fired ones can help smooth out the peaks and valleys. (I'll admit ignorance on whether any current nuke plants can operate in an on-demand mode and would have any benefit -- such as the fuel lasting longer -- in doing so.) And there are plenty of systems for storing and releasing power, batteries are by no means the only ones. Moreover, lots of industries are perfectly capable of adjusting their output as grid power waxes and wanes, and thus the price falls and rises. Large numbers of windmills in the sparsely populated Midwest could produce a good portion of our power needs, and are nearing cost-effectiveness, even without subsidies like Price-Anderson and the money spent on Yucca Mountain.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.