Japanese Company Admits To Nuclear Cover Up

a-charles writes "Just as power companies are considering the first expansion of nuclear power usage in the US since the 70s, Reuters reports on a disturbing anouncement from the nation of Japan. On Thursday the Japanese power company Hokuriku Electric Power admitted it had covered up a 1999 incident in which mishandling of nuclear fuel rods led to an unintended self-sustaining nuclear fission chain reaction. The mishap caused the plant, located in central Japan, to enter a 'critical state' for much of those 15 minutes. Apparently, this was in the same year that two workers were killed in a separate incident in Tokaimura, northeast of Tokyo. A pair of workers were killed after using buckets to mix nuclear fuel in a lab, a test that also created an uncontrolled chain reaction for a short time. The nuclear power industry already has a bad name for safety violations in Japan, and these revelations are unlikely to help with that public image."

Comments

New race of mutants

[Anonymous Coward]

The real reason they covered it up was that some of the employees mutated into evil transcendental beings of superior intelligence who afterwards went to hibernate in a secret facility reportedly located in the 23rd underground level of Satori III naval cybernetics base.

Re:New race of mutants

[AmberBlackCat]

And a few of them turned into Ninja Turtles.

Just like every other country

[dotancohen]

Now Japan is like every other country: Israel, Germany, and even the US. Welcome to the G8!

This is a well known nuclear power plant

[vivaoporto]

A pair of workers were killed after using buckets to mix nuclear fuel in a lab

We all know what power plant is that. The Sector 7-G Safety Inspector Homer J. Simpson refused to make any statement, but was heard shouting "D'oh!" right after the incident.

Re:This is a well known nuclear power plant

[thhamm]

to mix nuclear fuel in a lab

Homer: "Nucular. It's pronounced "Nucular".

Re:This is a well known nuclear power plant

[Pyrowolf]

Let me get this straight. They were mixing nuclear... ahem... NUCLEAR fuel in --- BUCKETS ---! Tell me how any part of that whole idea sound any bit logical?!?

Re:This is a well known nuclear power plant

[mattkime]

>>Tell me how any part of that whole idea sound any bit logical?!?

Buckets work waaaaay better than bowls.

(Unless its the bowl for a KitchenAid mixer.)

Re:This is a well known nuclear power plant

[Original Replica]

Something about this says "poor management choices" to me. The workers were preparing fuel for an experimental reactor, with buckets. It's not hard to imagine that the proper equipment would have put the project over budget, so they were told to make due. I know that every business cuts corners somewhere, but maybe nuclear facilities should be an exception to this.

Re:This is a well known nuclear power plant

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, proper procedures and equipment that didn't involve buckets existed and were documented. The workers cut corners because using buckets were more convenient.

This kind of makes sense. The kind of people smart enough to know the dangers of working with radioactive material and take the necessary precautions wouldn't work at a power plant.

Re:This is a well known nuclear power plant

[StikyPad]

Well, to be fair, they were very sturdy-looking buckets which, aside from the large one on top, were completely hole-free. Also the workers were seven.

so many...

[Psychotria]

uncontrolled reactions. Kind of like my reactions after meeting with my managers.

Let the flamewares begin!

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

The real problem with nuclear energy is not the reactors (the middle bit)), but the mining (the first bit) of the uranium and the disposal (the end bit) of the waste.

I can imagine a solution to clean up the former (although this would make nuclear fuel even more expensive), but I haven't yet seen a (proven) solution for the latter*

Until we're there, nuclear just doesn't seem as viable as coal (sad tho' that may be).

The search for a better solution to our energy need continues. (be it sequestration for coal, waste disposal for nuke, higher efficiency for wind, cleaner materials & higher efficiency for solar, better storage techniques for all the above). There is no silver bullet.

* Not to mention the fact that we won't allow some countries to develop nuclear energy, so its an energy solution that's not even on the table for many parts of the world.

Re:Let the flamewares begin!

[apathy maybe]

IF we have to have nuclear power (and I fail to see any good arguments for it, and I'm not going to argue this point so don't even bother), I would not be adverse to simply putting it in rockets and shooting towards the nearest star.

We could build them cheaply (they don't have to re-enter the atmosphere) and I think safely enough (lots of experience building rockets that don't fall apart when *leaving* Earth) not to have to worry.

But, I'm an intelligent environmentalist, there are lots of crazies out there who wouldn't support such a solution, and they tend to be louder then me. Shit happens.

Re:Let the flamewares begin!

[KDR_11k]

We can build pretty safe rockets but not perfectly safe ones, there's always the risk of an accident causing an explosion in the atmosphere. Also expect the number of rocket explosions to increase as commercial interest in cheaper launches increases.

Re:Let the flamewares begin!

[soccerisgod]

Here's a crazy novel idea for you: Why just not stop wasting so much energy in the first place? If you need less energy, you need not worry as much about where you will get it from. Let's be honest, a lot of the energy used today is senselessly wasted on matters of pure convenience. We have standby circuits in many electronics products that needlessly waste energy, we leave our computers running all the time even if we're not around, same for light; we waste gigantic amounts of energy to produce things like tin foil, and the list goes on and on. Surely, at least in a few of those areas, we could do with less wasting?

Coming back to the topic, this incident just proves again that no matter how glorious and good your technology is, there's always a (big) risk as long as humans are involved. I'm not sure if you've heard of it, but there was a long string of accidents and problems in Sweden's NPPs too, one as critical as the one that was covered up in Japan: they got within 15 minutes of meltdown, and it was only by pure luck they managed to stop it. In the long run, the only alternative is to use 'alternative' energy sources that don't destroy the planet, and at the same time stop to waste so much energy.

Re:Let the flamewares begin!

[sphealey]

> ut I haven't yet seen a (proven) solution for
> the latter*[nuclear waste]
> Until we're there, nuclear just doesn't seem
> as viable as coal (sad tho' that may be)

Of course, coal burning generates radioactive waste as well. The concentration is small but the volumes are very large.

sPh

Re:Let the flamewares begin!

[ShakaUVM]

It's a myth that we waste energy.

Besides incredibly trivial things like replacing our light bulbs with CFDs and turning off our power when we go outside, which is a *trivial* amount of savings, there's not much humans can do to save power.

No alternative energy source is capable of cheaply producing mass amount of energy, and even most of these run into problems with environmentalists as well (damns stop fish from migrating, windmills chop up endangered birds, etc.)

In all honestly, nuclear power is the correct solution to our energy needs.

Re:Let the flamewares begin!

[Anonymous Coward]

The best part being that it goes up in to the air and you're breathing it.
At least the waste from a nuclear power facility is perfectly contained and stored.

Re:Let the flamewares begin!

[JackMeyhoff]

actually there is a silver bullet.. Read up on Tesla's inventions. Not only do you have green energy from the environment around you you also have the high energy from the environemt around you. Our problem is we turn our back to nature and the environment around us, yet it is brimming with energy, you have solar, wind, wave, you have THE MAGNETSOSPHERE and more. Work with nature and it works with you.

Re:Let the flamewares begin!

[apathy maybe]

Sure, but what do I care?

Actually, more to the point, the government exists make it implement safety standards, it does it for other industries.

Re:Let the flamewares begin!

[mblase]

It's a myth that we waste energy.

Actually, it's a law.

Re:Let the flamewares begin!

[DaleGlass]

Besides incredibly trivial things like replacing our light bulbs with CFDs and turning off our power when we go outside, which is a *trivial* amount of savings, there's not much humans can do to save power.

You're kidding, right? There are many places where power can be saved. Example:

• My laptop uses about 25W, while my desktop uses probably more than 200. Benchmarks say that the Pentium M 1600 was roughtly equivalent to one CPU in my dual Athlon MP 2000+, while the whole laptop uses less power than one CPU in the desktop.
• CFD bulbs use less than half the power of incandescents
• LCD monitors use much less power than CRTs. OLEDs seem to be an even further improvement
• Improving insulation in the home can easily cut the heating bill in half

No alternative energy source is capable of cheaply producing mass amount of energy, and even most of these run into problems with environmentalists as well (damns stop fish from migrating, windmills chop up endangered birds, etc.)

Sure it is, after all the whole planet is solar powered.

Also, I don't get what's the deal with "windmills chop birds". Yes, they do sometimes. But birds fly into skyscrapers quite often too, and for some reason that doesn't seem to stop anybody from building them. There are also types of windmills that rotate slower, and are less dangerous to birds.

Now, I have absolutely nothing against nuclear power, if well done, but what you say simply isn't true. Other viable alternatives exist as well, and nuclear isn't the only option.

Re:Let the flamewares begin!

[dbIII]

No alternative energy source is capable of cheaply producing mass amount of energy

There are many things you can do in the right location and improved distribution makes a lot of things viable. There's even a very large tidal power station in France that is around fifty years old - it's a far more mature technology than nuclear power.

In all honestly, nuclear power is the correct solution to our energy needs.

Firstly I'll provide my opinion that anyone that pushes a single energy source no matter what it is for all purposes either has spent no more than a couple of minute considering the issue or is selling something.

Second, economic grounds still rule out nuclear power for civilian purposes due to a lot of factors - such as the expense of safety systems and the use of exotic materials to withstand high levels of radiation and factors such as each new plant built at this point would be a prototype in an attempt to get something a bit more viable.

Third, the limited availability of high grade fuel to make processing as cheap as possible means new designs are necessary with alternative fuels - and this is occuring but it will take time and actual research money instead of just lobbying and advertising. Fast breeders such as Superphoenix are not the answer until we can work out how to easily handle the fuel produced - as it was it had the dubious honor of falling behind even the purely small scale solution of low grade 1980s photovotaics in terms of dollars per kilowatt at the full scale with no clear way to cut costs.

Fourth, nuclear power generation in nearly every case is a dual use system so new plants will only be seen as acceptable in countries where nuclear weapons proliferation is acceptable - hence the fuss about Iran, Nth Korea, and the large amount of fear about Iraq in years past even after it had been bombed back into the third world. In the USA it is not such an issue becuase new nuclear weapons are being developed now anyway - but no-one wants to see Myanmar with the bomb.

I haven't even got onto safety and waste disposal due to the many stupid claims of perfection and silly comparisons to cleanliness for a mining and minerals processing operation. I'm no luddite, I've carted radioactive materials around for industrial radiography, worked with people from nuclear installations in three countries and listened to people who have come close to minimising the waste problem after thirty years of poorly funded work.

We don't have our flying cars and we don't have our 1950's atomic dream. Nuclear materials have a lot of uses but it is a horribly complex and expensive way to boil water.

Re:Let the flamewares begin!

[cryfreedomlove]

Coal fired plants release a lot of radio activity that is already present in coal. see: http://www.kgoam810.com/viewentry.asp?ID=346099&PT =PERSONALITIES

Re:Let the flamewares begin!

[jotok]

Really? There's nothing then that the average person can do to conserve power?
My electric bill says otherwise--after taking steps to reduce my usage and to be more efficient, I noticed a distinct savings (bill was reduced by about 1/3).

Is that trivial?

Or were you referring to power applications besides the home?

Re:Let the flamewares begin!

[evilviper]

We have standby circuits in many electronics products that needlessly waste energy, we leave our computers running all the time even if we're not around, same for light; we waste gigantic amounts of energy to produce things like tin foil, and the list goes on and on. Surely, at least in a few of those areas, we could do with less wasting?

No, I don't think we could.

To reduce the no-load power requirements of transformers, you're going to have to drastically increase the price of each unit.

I certainly don't leave my computers running all the time unless necessary, and for those that do, CPU power-saving features have trickled down to desktops now, so computers are more efficient when idle than ever before.

Tin foil takes energy to manufacture, but cleaning and reusing takes time, money, and energy too.

And if you don't think the above points are important, I suggest you consider that people working to pay for their vastly more expensive gadgets will waste lots more energy than any of those could possibly save in return. Remember, only about 1/4th of the electricity in the US is used for residential purposes. The other 3/4ths is used by companies... The company where you work to get the money to buy things. The factory that assembles the brand-new (energy efficient) products you buy. etc.

There's little sadder than watching a rabid environmentalist throw away perfectly good, working equipment. Often, spending lots of money to buy a new "green" item gets you a product that is only marginally more efficient than the old one.

If you want to actually save a non-trivial amount of energy, the solutions aren't easy or glamorous. Better home insulation will make a huge difference. Turn down your heater, so your refrigerator doesn't have to work as hard. Dry your clothes on a line. Compost all your own garbage. Get the entire world to drive mopeds to work (hopefully with 4-stroke engines). etc. Hell, in warmer climates, you'll probably save hundreds of dollars each years on air conditioning if you spend a few minutes, and $20 to duct the hot exhaust from your refrigerator, directly outdoors.

If you consider things like indoor plumbing a convenience, then yes, lots of energy is wasted on modern conveniences. If you instead consider that a necessity, then no, relatively very little energy is wasted on conveniences.

And even if you cut out all completely non-essential human activity, we'll have the same issues with power that we have now. Even when you're burning less of it, coal is still toxic, oil is still expensive, etc.

Re:Let the flamewares begin!

[shmlco]

An "intelligent environmentalist" eh? What's so intelligent about not reprocessing spent fuel? Even "waste" contains energy that could eventually be reused by more advanced processes, and you just want to throw it away? Ever heard of recycling?

Re:Let the flamewares begin!

[jahudabudy]

Here's a crazy novel idea for you: Why just not stop wasting so much energy in the first place?

B/c it won't happen. Not a novel idea, but crazy if you think it would work. Its called Tragedy of the Commons. Obviously, you can't require people to use less energy than it requires for them to live. Once basic subsistence is met, extra energy == luxury. People LIKE luxury. So, if everyone else is living at subsistence level, there is enough energy for ME to run the heat 1 degree higher, drive my car a little bit farther, etc. And you KNOW there will be people that will do just that. So, eventually, you get right back to where you started. The only way rationing would really work on a global scale is with a global authority enforcing it; I doubt anyone here really wants an Energy Consumption Control Organization monitoring and enforcing energy rationing.

Re:Let the flamewares begin!

[cliffski]

are you serious?
is this why most UK high street stores heat the store during the winter but jam the doors open to 'entice' people in?
You don't consider that wasteful?
Why are the street lights in the middle of nowheresville still on at 3AM when the only eyes looking at them are foxes?
Why are street lights not fitted with motion sensors for that stuff anyway?
Why are businesses leaving their billboard lighting on from 1am-5am every night?

We waste an incredible amount of energy all the time. The PC I'm typing this on is wasting god knows much power, even between each keystroke.

And I personally do not know a single environmentalist who opposes widespread use of wind power. Yes, it means we kill more birds, but on a cost-benefit scale, I'm fine with that.

Re:Let the flamewares begin!

[cliffski]

we already have this. Almost every country has government set minimum energy efficiency levels for cars. In Europe, the regulations are way tighter than the US, and *tada*! we have more energy efficient cars.
Year after year, people try to get the US efficiency standards raised, and year after year, the car lobby forces such measures to be abandoned. But the fact that such standards exist at all (weak though they are) shows that the system works fine, we are just arguing over the extent to which such standards should be enforced.

I like luxury too, but luxury doesn't have to equate to waste. A luxurious car is defined in many ways, and none of them (in my mind) equate with lower fuel efficiency.

Re:Let the flamewares begin!

[KonoWatakushi]

The real problem with nuclear energy is not the reactors (the middle bit)), but the mining (the first bit) of the uranium and the disposal (the end bit) of the waste.

Actually, it is not a problem in the slightest, if we use modern designs like the Integral Fast Reactor. Current reactors only extract a few percent of the energy from the Uranium, and throw out the rest. Merely by recycling this "waste", any new Uranium mining can be delayed for certuries.

I can imagine a solution to clean up the former (although this would make nuclear fuel even more expensive), but I haven't yet seen a (proven) solution for the latter*

Using the aforementioned technology renders the waste problem inconsequential. More than that, it is likely to actually improve the waste situation; these reactors burn away all of the really nasty elements, and the little remaining waste is much safer and (relatively) very short lived.

Furthermore, the design is passively safe, and meltdowns are impossible.

The search for a better solution to our energy need continues. (be it sequestration for coal, waste disposal for nuke, higher efficiency for wind, cleaner materials & higher efficiency for solar, better storage techniques for all the above). There is no silver bullet.

The search is over. Of course we should continue to investigate other technologies, but we have a perfectly workable and very nearly ideal one staring us in the face. For the foreseeable future, this is the silver bullet.

In any case, holding out for something like the Tokamak is a waste of time. While a Fusion machine, in the end, it is hardly radiation free; the neutronic fusion reactions will slowly irradiate the hundreds of tons of reactor, which will eventually need to be disposed of and replaced.

Much more interesting and promising in my opinion is the Polywell, conceived of by Dr. Robert Bussard. The device seems like it may be perfectly feasible in the short term, and would have so many advantages, that it is madness not to make the minimal investment. I'm not going to discount Tokamak research, but we should really be investigating the alternatives as well. Anyway, here is Dr. Bussard's Google talk as well, for those who missed it: Should Google Go Nuclear?

Re:Let the flamewares begin!

[xSauronx]

everyone here saw the Bullshit! episode on recycling, this is just silly talk ;)

Re:Let the flamewares begin!

[Courageous]

[i]Here's a crazy novel idea for you: Why just not stop wasting so much energy in the first place?[/i]

A coworker of mine was going on and on about some new electric car that is coming out in a lotus like body. He was fawning over the lightweight composites and other clever weight reductions, like engines in the wheels so that there doesn't have to be the whole cam-shafty thingy.

What occurred to me here was that one of the best features of this vehicle is that it is lighter. That's definitionally energy-conservative. Neat stuff.

C//

Re:Let the flamewares begin!

[ShakaUVM]

Actually, environmental groups are suing wind generator operators.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-01-04-win dmills-usat_x.htm

There's a similar story down in Arkansas.

Re:Let the flamewares begin!

[kad77]

Your waste is another mans progress. Feel free to live in a tent anytime, and unplug your computer. Seems to be a waste of energy, no? Try running it with pedal power- you will soon agree!

Re:Let the flamewares begin!

[trimbo]

but I haven't yet seen a (proven) solution for the latter*

Just because you haven't seen it doesn't mean it's not there. Integral Fast Reactors. There are other reprocessing techniques out there. These are proven solutions.

The Clinton administration pulled the plug on the IFR project. Furthermore, the Carter adminstration outlawed nuclear reprossessing altogether. These policies need to be reversed to get rid of the current situation, wherein we plan to bury waste in Yucca Mountain that's still 98% viable for producing more energy, were it reprocessed.

Re:Let the flamewares begin!

[Anonymous Coward]

The main problem is not that windmills chop birds, it is that the windmills chop the power grid stability. Once you have 10% of energy generated in mills, you need to start adding new coal/nuclear plants just to anchor it. For example German power system would get unstable and collapse if it was not anchored againts its neighbours.

Re:Let the flamewares begin!

[ShakaUVM]

Incorrect. Nuclear power is actually quite cheap, and produces no CO2.

http://images.pennnet.com/articles/pe/cap/cap_0702 pe_technology01.gif

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_controv ersy#Economics

The technology is a solved problem, and building safe reactors is no longer a technological challenge.

Re:Let the flamewares begin!

[ShakaUVM]

Look up the cost per kilowatt of your alternatives. Wind and wave are around 70 per kilowatt hour, Nuclear is at around 20-something. I don't consider paying over triple the cost for power a "viable alternative".

Yes, they do sometimes. But birds fly into skyscrapers quite often too, and for some reason that doesn't seem to stop anybody from building them.

The windmills here in San Francisco kill something like 4,000 birds a year. I doubt that many run into skyscrapers.

Re:Let the flamewares begin!

[mikelieman]

Three simple words: Solar Beamed Microwave.

Re:Let the flamewares begin!

[poopdeville]

I can imagine a solution to clean up the former (although this would make nuclear fuel even more expensive), but I haven't yet seen a (proven) solution for the latter*

Solution for the latter: materials recycling using pebble bed and newer reactors. Followed by disposing unrecyclable materials in the largest reactor in the solar system, Super Man style.

Re:Let the flamewares begin!

[Abcd1234]

I doubt that many run into skyscrapers.

You might wanna do a little research before making claims like this. For example, ignoring the clear sensationalism (it's MSNBC, after all), I have here an article where a researcher claims to have studied skyscrapes which kill 200 birds per day .

Re:Let the flamewares begin!

[stormy_petral]

Also, I don't get what's the deal with "windmills chop birds". Yes, they do sometimes. But birds fly into skyscrapers quite often too, and for some reason that doesn't seem to stop anybody from building them. There are also types of windmills that rotate slower, and are less dangerous to birds.

Well, for one thing, we don't build skyscrapers in continuous lines along the mountain ridges which huge numbers of birds follow as they migrate.

Re:Let the flamewares begin!

[KDR_11k]

Well, if it explodes (and that WILL happen, it happens to everyone because launching rockets is always a risky operation) the radioactive crap gets blown all over the area, even without the radiation most of that is highly toxic. The result would be kinda like the Chernobyl desaster with radioactive crap raining down everywhere and all living things soaking it up.

Re:Let the flamewares begin!

[blank axolotl]

Actually it is not much at all (from here):

These studies concluded that the maximum radiation dose to an individual living within 1 km of a modern [coal] power plant is equivalent to a minor, perhaps 1 to 5 percent, increase above the radiation from the natural environment.

I think I got that link from a slashdot comment a while ago.

Re:Let the flamewares begin!

[jahudabudy]

You're right, there are some ways in which we can and do reduce energy consumption. I think cars are a point for my argument, however. Not everyone can have a car. There simply aren't enough oil resources to support 6.5 billion people having a car and a road to drive it on. And you will never convince the "have" societies to give up the advantages and luxuries their greater resources afford them (such as cars); at least, not to enough of an extent that it will allow the "have nots" an even playing field.

ut the fact that such standards exist at all (weak though they are) shows that the system works fine, we are just arguing over the extent to which such standards should be enforced.

I think most people agree that current levels of industrialized nations energy consumption are unsustainable without some technological breakthru (or possibly political one, depending on your stance on nuclear) in energy production. Barring a breakthru, we are guaranteed to run out of the energy necessary to support the industrialized world's lifestyle. The current system of reduction controls can extend the inevitable for a while, but doesn't offer any real solutions. I would therefore argue that it does not work fine.

I'm not saying reduction is not a worthwhile goal. I'm just saying that it is not feasible to expect people to reduce their energy consumption to the levels necessary for reduction alone to solve the coming energy shortage.

Re:Let the flamewares begin!

[LionKimbro]

Unfortunately, your situation in San Fransisco wasa very special case. With emphasis mine,...

"Since the mid-1980's, a number of research organizations, universities, and consultants have conducted studies on avian mortality due to wind turbines. In the U.S., these studies were prompted because of the relatively high number of raptors that were found dead at the Altamont Pass Wind Farms near San Francisco."

"After dozens of studies spanning nearly two decades, we now know that the Altamont Pass situation is unusual in the U.S. The high raptor mortality there was the result of a convergence of factors, some of which were due to the bad siting in the local ecosystem while others were due to the wind turbine and tower technology used at the time. In fact, a very different situation exists not far away at the San Gorgonio Pass Wind Farms near Palm Springs. A 1986 study found that 69 million birds flew though the San Gorgonio Pass during the Spring and Fall migrations. During both migrating seasons, only 38 dead birds were found during that typical year, representing only 0.00006% of the migrating population."

That's from an article on Windmills and bird deaths, that includes full references.

If we're going to cite special cases:

"One television transmitter tower in Eau Claire, WI, was responsible for the deaths of over 1,000 birds on each of 24 consecutive nights. A "record 30,000 birds were estimated killed on one night" at this same tower."

Wow!

To put these in context:

• "Collisions with automobiles and trucks result in the deaths of between 60 and 80 million birds annually in the U.S."
• "Together, human infrastructure and industrial activities are responsible for one to four million bird deaths per day!"

I won't argue for complacency, if we can spend a few cents more, and save the lives of birds, I'm all for it.

I definitely don't think we should discount windmill power as an alternative energy source, on the account of birds, especially given the drawbacks of alternative power sources such as coal & oil..! We're talking about exhaustion of supplies, which would (I strongly believe) lead to global war. The environmental consequences of World War III would have a far greater impact on birds than windmills.

Re:Let the flamewares begin!

[JohnFluxx]

The shops that have open doors usually have a heat curtain thing.

Re:Let the flamewares begin!

[drsquare]

Why are the street lights in the middle of nowheresville still on at 3AM when the only eyes looking at them are foxes?

So people can drive there safely. Streetlighting also reduces crime. I drive to work on a road that's unlit at night and there are accidents there all the time, usually in the morning when it's dark.

Re:Let the flamewares begin!

[soccerisgod]

To reduce the no-load power requirements of transformers, you're going to have to drastically increase the price of each unit.

If there's no load, it shouldn't be connected to the mains at all. That's what the right kind of power switch will do, cut it off from the mains altogether.

If you want to actually save a non-trivial amount of energy, the solutions aren't easy or glamorous. Better home insulation will make a huge difference. Turn down your heater, so your refrigerator doesn't have to work as hard. Dry your clothes on a line. Compost all your own garbage. Get the entire world to drive mopeds to work (hopefully with 4-stroke engines). etc. Hell, in warmer climates, you'll probably save hundreds of dollars each years on air conditioning if you spend a few minutes, and $20 to duct the hot exhaust from your refrigerator, directly outdoors.

Those are actually very good points. Pitty I didn't think of them at the time; my only excuse is a) that I was a little pressed for time and b) I neither drive a car nor a moped nor even a bike, I usually walk to places, and despite an exceedingly hot and very humid summer the last few years, I'm not even contemplating getting an air condition. But that aside, very good points indeed, especially about the house insulation.

If you consider things like indoor plumbing a convenience, then yes, lots of energy is wasted on modern conveniences. If you instead consider that a necessity, then no, relatively very little energy is wasted on conveniences.

I think you will agree that example was a bit over the top. Obviously anyone will agree that indoor plumbing is a necessity in this day and age :) But there are still many ways in which energy is wasted, as you yourself have just explained rather well. And yes, I don't think everyone will drop all of their energy wasting habbits - or even know and understand all of them - but I'm seeing at least some light on the horizon. Everyone right now is talking about it, about global warming and what it means for humanity and what can be done to stop it, and a lot of people are thinking of how they can help to stop it or at least slow it down, so there's definitely more awareness of the problem then say five years ago. This also means -hopefully- that people will be wanting more energy efficient electronics as well. Thinks like video cards for instance waste an incredible amount of energy, and most desktop CPUs do, too. Hell, just the other day I heard of a computer that can work on four watts. While I agree that that's probably a rather extreme example and that that computer will probably be far from full-featured, I have to wonder if it's really necessary to waste 400 watts just for writing a letter?

I also agree that consumer awareness and behaviour is only part of the solution. Stronger regulations on an international level are required as well to cut back on energy wasting in the industry. Of course if that is to happen, it will only happen against extreme resistance.

And even if you cut out all completely non-essential human activity, we'll have the same issues with power that we have now. Even when you're burning less of it, coal is still toxic, oil is still expensive, etc.

Sure, and rat poison is rat poison. Still, the amounts can make a huge difference. And yes, obviously we have to get away from these forms of energy, but it can't be the only measure. The solution to this problem will not be that painless. Sacrifices will have to be made if all are to be safed </drama>

Re:Let the flamewares begin!

[dbIII]

Three simple words: Solar Beamed Microwave.

Just the thing to use to flame people - otherwise broadcast power is still a bit impractical even with good columnation.

Re:Let the flamewares begin!

[wiredlogic]

There have been a number of accidents in which RTGs have been lost in the atmosphere. While some earlier designs have released their contents, many of them, most notably one from the Apollo 13 LEM, have survived reentry without failure of their container. That being said ther is no practical way to safely and economically launch nuclear material in bulk quantities. There are better disposal options for spent fuel anyway.

Re:Let the flamewares begin!

[Anonymous Coward]

Although it doesn't compare to a skyscraper, our last house had a lot of glass - big windows and doors, a conservatory and most particularly a sort of verandah area which has big glass windows on two sides. We would have had about 5 or 6 birds a year kill themselves flying into the windows, about 4 of them on the verandah windows. I suppose that's because the birds could see the garden on the other side, thought they could get through and flew into the glass at speed. We had many more birds knock themselves out and recover, or bounce off and carry on going. I don't know how many of them would have died later. During the summer there would often be at least one a day, you wouldn't always see them but you'd hear them, sounded like someone throwing a tennis ball against the house somewhere. There were a lot of birds around our house, we had a very large garden with lots of trees and shrubbery, and a lot of the surrounding land is farmland/pasture so where we were living was the only decent bit of habitat (apart from windbreaks) for quite some distance. Where I'm living now, despite having quite a lot of trees about, is up in the mountains and we just don't get the same numbers of birds here. We've only had a few birds fly into the house in the couple of months we've been here.

Regards,

Jo Meder

Re:Let the flamewares begin!

[Fission86]

Actually if I'm not mistaken it's not the mining of uranium that's the problem as uranium in its natural state isn't that radioactive, all the problems arise when it's refining to reactor grade. And a couple breeder facilities would eliminate the need to mine any more uranium for a good 30-40 years. The reason these things aren't built has ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with technology, it has to do with politics and economics (which are unfortunately VERY intertwined). Note: IANANP (nuclear physicist), but I hope to be one some day

Re:Let the flamewares begin!

[ShakaUVM]

In San Francisco? Doubtful. It's 4000 birds a year just in the Bay Area, killed by the wind farms here.

Re:Let the flamewares begin!

[evilviper]

If there's no load, it shouldn't be connected to the mains at all.

Obviously, there are problems with that. Most devices use a wall-wart, where there is no way for the device to shut-off/disconnect the transformer. Integrating that transformer into the device instead, would make it more expensive, and both less flexible, and less reliable. I've got many devices that I kept using after the original wall-wart burnt-up. My computer speakers, with their built-in transformer, however, had to be trashed. The small energy savings probably doesn't put you out ahead...

The same has to be said of the mechanical switches needed to shut-off the transformer. They corrode, oxidize, deform, arc, etc. On anything large (like a CRT), I think the higher chances of failure will offset any energy savings.

For many other devices like VCRs, Computers, etc., you need a trivially small amount of current when "off" to keep the clock running, save settings, and being ready to power itself on. If you shut-off the transformer, you're going to have to add a battery and additional circuitry, which will probably waste more energy and money, as well as making the device less reliable.

But there are still many ways in which energy is wasted, as you yourself have just explained rather well.

Home insulation and ducting refrigerators are the only examples I believe are really practical. Even then, it can be very expensive to rip a house apart to improve the insulation, for somewhat small gains.

The rest are either time consuming, don't do the job as well, or otherwise less than ideal.

I believe clothes driers, dish washers, etc. could be made more energy efficient, but not overwhelmingly so. There becomes a point of diminishing returns, where any more energy efficiency becomes very expensive, and possibly energy intensive to produce.

Thinks like video cards for instance waste an incredible amount of energy, and most desktop CPUs do, too. [...] I have to wonder if it's really necessary to waste 400 watts just for writing a letter?

I have to agree about high-end video cards. I'm sure they too will come around, when cooling them becomes just too challenging.

CPUs, however, are in pretty good shape now. SpeedStep/PowerNow/CoolnQuiet/etc have become standard on PCs now, thanks to AMD, so an idle CPU is using less power than ever, despite being able to go up to 2GHz when performance is needed.

Intel, IMHO, is somewhat sabotaging this, though. When they rebrand their Core chips as "Celerons" one of the things they disable is SpeedStep. Add to that the needlessly hot northbridges on all their boards.
Buy a new computer today, with an AMD CPU and a Seasonic PSU, and it will probably use half as much power as your old one.

My point is... No doubt there is waste. However, it's not a substantial portion of the overall power use, and it would be either vastly inconvenient (driving a moped in winter) or expensive/unreliable enough that it might eliminate any real benefit to that savings.

Re:Let the flamewares begin!

[Abcd1234]

In San Francisco? Doubtful.

Oh, well, if you say so, it must be true.

Re:Let the flamewares begin!

[ShakaUVM]

Instead of being petty, come up with stats. I gave you an article showing 4000 birds a year chopped up in the Bay Area. Surely you could do the same for skyscrapers.

Re:Let the flamewares begin!

[SupremoMan]

I always thought some sort of a giant rail gun can launch nuclear waste somewhere where it won't bother us for a while. But it seems a bit sci-fi for now.

Re:Let the flamewares begin!

[shoemilk]

The Challenger, it held t o gether really well. (damn those o's)

Re:Let the flamewares begin!

[Abcd1234]

Instead of being petty, come up with stats.

Says the guy who responded to that MSNBC article with "doubtful", despite providing no evidence.

So, let me ask you, what makes you believe that the Bay Area is any different than the rest of the United States, where plate glass accounts for approximately 33% of the 290 million avian deaths per year?

Re:Let the flamewares begin!

[ShakaUVM]

So you don't have the numbers. It's okay.

The point is, windmill farms go up in wilderness areas, and kill tons of birds, many of which are endangered species. Thus, it actually becomes illegal to build them.

I'm not saying wind power is bad, for this reason, but that it is a dirty secret of the wind power industry that a lot of environmental groups are opposed to them, for this reason. I dislike wind power because it is not cost-efficient. They are expensive to build and maintain, you have to run long power lines to them in inaccessible regions, which result in transmission losses and high maintenance costs, with the net result that power from wind costs triple what oil or nuclear costs.

Re:Let the flamewares begin!

[hr raattgift]

There is little that can be done about old RTGs already deployed in orbits that run the risk of unplanned reentry, and there are lots of ugly RTGs on earth-orbiting spacecraft.

Newer RTGs are pretty safe and are designed with high-profile/low-probability accidents in mind.

The 238Pu used in RTG applications is a strong alpha emitter, and the radiation risk to humans is small particulate entry into the digestive tract, lungs, or open wounds. There is a serious food-chain risk involving calcium intake (especially bone meal) or animal liver tissues where 238Pu is introduced into an environment. Consequently a great deal of the safety engineering done on RTGs involves avoiding the release of small particles of plutonium.

The first step is to use a ceramic rather than metallic form of plutonium. Ceramicized 238Pu has very low chemical reactivity and is less (biochemically) toxic than lead; it's also resilient against shock fragmentation, vaporization, and aerosol formation. Next, the ceramic 238Pu is encased in iridium cladding as a highly heat resistant physical barrier. This in turn is encased in a graphite/activated charcoal/carbon fibre/pyrolitic carbon sandwich or casing for structural strength against a variety of explosions and chemical exposures. Finally everything is embedded in aerogel. The whole assembly is then likely put into a separate aeroshell as a further protection against stresses from a full reentry.

Consequently, the major risk of new RTGs deorbiting is that it might land on something valuable, like a meteor, causing impact damage. The packages are designed to be very hard to open with ordinary tools so as to avoid accidental contamination should someone curious (or interested in scavenging the specific parts) happen to discover one on the ground.

Fallen/stolen RTGs are also of very low proliferation risk, as 238Pu is a poor input into nuclear weapons processes (it can't be used directly in a nuclear weapon, it breeds weaponizable fissiles poorly even in carefully constructed reactor piles, and it acts as an alpha poisoner upon other more economical weapons isotopes interrupting their chain reactions).

That being said ther is no practical way to safely and economically launch nuclear material in bulk quantities

Modern RTGs are very safe to launch.

Discounting the cost of the 238Pu itself, they are also fairly economical -- certainly cheaper than other long-duration power systems, because they don't need especially gentle handling, or an involved post-launch deployment process. They have no moving parts, and are essentially immune to particulate contamination from space debris. The half-life of ~87 years is reasonable for most missions, and far exceeds that of any comparable power system. (A modern RTG also almost always degrades gracefully rather than simply failing in service).

The layered casing is fairly inexpensive in terms of manufacture and component costs, and a modular approach scales well to sizes well beyond launch capability, in terms of total mass and in terms of thermal energy in a modular assembly. (The modular approach also allows for a distribution of mass into multiple small aeroshells that are likely to spread apart on unplanned reentry so as to avoid dropping a large and heavy chunk of material on one spot).

In terms of useful power, the main engineering challenge is with respect to converting heat to power (especially electrical power), since thermocouples are not very efficient. (There are prototype Stirling engine generators, and there are other plausible heat->electrical power systems that could be used instead of thermocouples in some applications).

Unfortunately the 238Pu itself, however, is insanely expensive, and is the principal limit on RTG use.

The entire global stockpile of 238Pu is on the order of low tens of kilograms (perhaps 30 kg).

There is almost no production of 238Pu outside of the Russian Federation, which produces it as a p

Ugh, too bad

[BrainInAJar]

It's terribly unfortunate to hear stories of mismanagement of nuclear materials...

I'm very much of the opinion that more nuclear power is a good thing, It's clean, generally safe, & could serve as a solution to the global warming problem, but the public'll never agree with it if monkeys like this keep screwing it up.

Re:Ugh, too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

the problem is, as often, the corporations that own the nuclear plants. they want to make money, and often times this menas cutting corners. that's when it starts becoming dangerous for all of us. there should be a global agency, managed like the better NASA projects (JPL or so), that is in controll of ALL the plants in the world. this solves a lot o problems: they don't want to make money, so it's cheaper electricity. there is no single nation in control of the plants, so ne proliferation. there is no need to cut corners, so less danger of accidents. less danger of accidents means that the people regain some trust in nuclear energy, which means we can build more plants and fight global warming.

unfortunately this ignores a) the countries currently possessing nuclear abilities - they won't give up this power; b) the corporations - they won't give up this profitable enterprise; c) the hazards associated with mining and depositing of the nuclear materials. so, what will be the solution? fission?

Re:Ugh, too bad

[dbIII]

Under the tightest of civilian controls you can still have guys like those that ran Enron giving orders. They are of course more of a potential danger than the people running power stations in the Ukrane in 1986 so you really do have to regulate everything tightly, enforce the rules and punish keeping incidents secret from the regulators without mercy.

People are not safe

[bl8n8r]

They find the quickest way to make money for the least amount of work. Whether it's building a reactor, managing it, or turning the little knobs, people eventually go for the Easy Button. That kind of mentality does not historically* mix well with nuclear power. Another problem is accountability. Nobody (sans the religeous nutjobs) wants to get blamed for contaminating the globe so problems like these will always be minimzed and covered up; if even made public at all.

[*]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_mile_island
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_Nuclear_Pow er_Plant#Accidents

Re:People are not safe

[evilviper]

That kind of mentality does not historically* mix well with nuclear power.

But it somehow mixes well with huge hydro-electric dams, and coal/oil/natural-gas fired power plants?

I'd be far more worried about a dam in my backyard than I would about a nuclear power plant. Just ask China...

Re:People are not safe

[Anonymous Coward]

This would have been a better example if the building of Chernobyl happened within a money-maximising system and the direct trigger of the explosion was also motivated by saving money.

Re:People are not safe

[ShakaUVM]

You should probably also realize that modern nuclear reactor designs do not have the risk for meltdown that Chernobyl and 3 Mile Island had.

Statements like this are pure FUD.

Re:People are not safe

[hcmtnbiker]

people eventually go for the Easy Button. That kind of mentality does not historically* mix well with nuclear power.

That is not exactly true, both of those accidents where caused by human error, Chernobyl mostly because the plant was terribly managed. Three mile is an interesting thing to bring up because it was started by a crew using candles to test for air leaks, which i hope most people would think is not the way you want to test for them inside such a facility. Anyways, it eventually caught an electrical fire which locked the core open. The plant crews held off firefighters for hours while the core continued to heat until they finally let the fire crews handle it and got the fire controlled in under an hour. The major disaster of Three Mile was the level of incompatance of the workers who worked there, and the lack of regulations of what to do once an emergency happened.
Both of those are much better now, 9-mile nuclear facility in Oswego NY was commissioned for ~3 million under the old 3-mile island regulations, after the incident and before the plant was finished(they had to incoorperate the new regulations into 9-mile, roughly a 10^3 multiplier in safety regulations), 9-mile held a ~3-billion dollar price tag, and was still profitable. People equate nuclear power to nuclear bombs too much, you can have a controlled nuclear reaction, just as your car relies on a controlled conventional explosive. If maintaned correctly nuclear both is very safe and very efficient, although plant building costs have drove it to a very long term investment. NY has still benefited from the 9-mile plant despite its building costs.

Something to keep in mind is Humans + Anything will lead to disaster at some point. Coal plants have problems all the time, partly because of the very large amount of them, partly because they arnt really any safer. The fact still lies that US Coal Plants each year kill more people then projected deaths off ALL nuclear plant disasters.

The way to virtually eliminate the disposal and much of the transportation problem of the waste is to build breeder reactors with on-site storage and refinement, but international treaties and pressure has made this nearly impossible.

Re:People are not safe

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not so much that people are not safe as in careless on US Nukes, mostly they got into something outside their training.

The dumb stunt with testing for airtight with candles, subsequent fire and a true chinese fire drill was TVA's Browns Ferry, not Three Mile Island. The reason the plant held the firefighters out was they were afraid that fire hoses were not a good idea in a electrical switch gear room powering all the safety pumps. A wrong call, but not off the wall.

Chernobyl management wasn't bad, they just didn't know that at around twentyfive percent power, the reactor wasn't stable (a big no-no for US designs). Normally not a problem bucause you don't operate there, but still. Not realizing thre could be problem, they, for good reasons, as an experiment, tried runnning there. (I take everything back if they did know about their positive power coefficent at low power. If so, they were lunatics.)

Anyhow, it went prompt critical, blew, the graphite pile caught fire and burned for days.

At TMI, a safety valve hung open, losing coolant, the control board showed it as shut (It showed that the valve should have been shut, not it's actual position as determined by a limit switch - poor design, classic mistake). The automatic safety systems started to do their thing, pump in replacement coolant water. The operators, not realizing what was going on, turned the pumps off. Wrong!

It wasn't that the operators were dumb or not trained, they did what they were trained to do. They thought that they were "losing the bubble" therefore too much water. Actually due to not enough water, the bubble had shifted. They ran into something their training did not cover. A few hours later when the top dogs got into it, the pumps were turned back on and things settled down

There were a lot of hardware fixes from TMI, the basic fix was adding a shiftie with Masters in Nuke Engineering.

I spent thirty years in Nuke design and construction. They are pretty safe, back ups for backups, but it really does help to know what you are doing. Thankfully, the NRC will shut you down if you don't. And you stay down maybe for a year or two until the problem is fixed.

SELL it to them, for oil!

[Anonymous Coward]

"* Not to mention the fact that we won't allow some countries to develop nuclear energy, so its an energy solution that's not even on the table for many parts of the world."

You so casually forget that we're perfectly willing to SELL them the power output of nuclear power so that we can use their oil for a few more years.

Re:SELL it to them, for oil!

[soccerisgod]

Oh, and how is that going to work? Unlike oil pipelines, you can't just have a power cable running around the earth for 1000s of miles. If it was that easy, we could just plaster all the deserts with solar power cells and never think about charcoal or uranium ever again.

Re:SELL it to them, for oil!

[Ja'Achan]

Hydrogen?

Re:SELL it to them, for oil!

[Raenex]

Unlike oil pipelines, you can't just have a power cable running around the earth for 1000s of miles. <insert Tesla-conspiracy-rant here>

Re:SELL it to them, for oil!

[BiggerIsBetter]

<insert Tesla-conspiracy-rant here>

IIRC, Tesla was talking about doing it without wires.

Re:SELL it to them, for oil!

[Raenex]

IIRC, Tesla was talking about doing it without wires. Yup, sorry for not making that clear for those unfamiliar with Tesla. Fun video here, for anybody reading this far: Tesla - the missing secrets of Nikola Tesla.

So that's why!

[Anonymous Coward]

So that's why there was that Godzilla Attack on Tokyo in 1999! That explains everything!

Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

Japan has rednecks, and they've got access to reactor fuel.

I'd bet you a nickel somebody said "Hey, hold my beer" just before that bucket incident.

Hell yeah...

[Anonymous Coward]

the nuclear power industry already has a bad name for safety violations in Japan

Tell it to us, Zonk.

At least they didn't drop a whole bomb on themselves, huh?

Re:Hell yeah...

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, I don't recall the American nuclear industry committing atrocities in Canada and Mexico, though...

I guess we're ahead of schedule

[edwardpickman]

I remember a quote about there would only be on average a significant nuclear accident every thousand years. The first accident occured before the first commercial plant was built, a small test reactor blew. Since then the safety record has been pretty miserable. The obvious ones have been Three Mile Island and Chernovyl but there have been lots of other nuclear accidents with one of the worst in this country the leaking waste water at the Hanford site which threatens a major river. In an ideal world it might be considered safe but humans aren't great at safety. In end the end companies cut corners and accidents happen. Often it's just outright human error. Coal can be burned cleanly but it's expensive so the companies don't do it. If you filter smoke and trap CO2 cheap coal power gets more expensive. Ultimately the issues are greed and human error and we aren't getting rid of either of those anytime soon.

Re:I guess we're ahead of schedule

[maxume]

Three Mile Island was a severe incident, but it demonstrated safety procedures actually working.

Re:I guess we're ahead of schedule

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, nobody died and there was no appreciable release of radioactive material. Chernobyl was the only truly significant nuclear accident, and they were deliberately operating the reactor in an unsafe manner to run a test.

List of Nuclear Accidents

[PhotoGuy]

Good reference for the history of nuclear accidents.

Sigh

[pionzypher]

I'm a big proponent for nuclear power.... but stories like this make me wonder if we humans are intrinsically incapable of dealing with nuclear power on a day to day basis.

daily routines become more of a habit, and soon we're taking things for granted.... Definitely dangerous in a situation like that, and whether or not the procedures are well written and generally followed, it only takes one person.

Then again, I am drunk. I think I'll go mishandle my rod for a bit, and leave philosophizationing (nice huh?) to everyone else.

Statute of limitations

[tokyopimpdaddy]

Sadly, the only reason we're even getting this news is because they're safely outside the three year statute of limitations (or local equivalent) so these morons can't be sent to court and buried with some control rods in a pit somewhere.

I admit I take things like this kind of personally because my family and I live within striking distance of these incidents.

This is the sad side of a culture which doesn't question or criticize. If people want to hide their dirty laundry in an accounting or business situation, fine, but let's not hide whether or not Suzuki-san was watching the dial...

I hope they go over these folks as rabidly as they went after Horie...

Bollocks

[BJH]

This came to light when one employee, in response to an internal survey, mentioned that there appeared to have been a coverup of an accident at the plant.

I never thought I'd say this...

[WgT2]

I never thought I'd refer to France as exemplary... So, here it goes:

Has France ever had this problem?

Doh! old news "Dogs & Demons" Alex Kerr 2001

[ponyslaystation]

And i thought /. kept up! *yawn* old, old news. http://www.amazon.com/Dogs-Demons-Tales-Modern-Jap an/dp/0809039435/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-9093765-89904 56?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1174134871&sr=8-1

I just love it when people hate nuclear power

[watomb]

First the accident was contained the system worked! The only problem was the cover up.

Personally I think everyone that hates nuclear energy should go jump of a bridge. What's next wind power fears, I mean we don't want to kill the birds or slow the earths rotation, and destroy the view. Oh wait do you mean my solar power panels have to be replaced every 10-15 years and produce huge amounts of localized heat. Oh then we have clean coal that produces more radioactive waste then any other form energy. Ok so its just radon and its half life is ~4 days.

So if we can't have Coal or nuclear power plants and well we don't want to slow the earths rotation down because it could cause the moon to crash in the earth. An well we have to free Niagara Falls so that its all natural again. Then we have to ban the sun and eliminated all animals because they produce more carbon than all the cars&factories on the plant. We also can't have Hydrogen cars because currently all industrial Hydrogen comes from oil. An because you hate nuclear power you can't have the high temp generation of nuclear power plants that are designed to produce hydrogen.

I guess that if you think we can control the thermal properties of the earth by using carbon emissions. We should build more nuclear power plants/dams/windmills no one solution meets are current and future power requirements. Ps if you would like to stop global warming ban all living animals! Go hunting and kill every creature you see. You will help prevent global warming. Ha if you kill more than 6 large animals you can drive hummer and still have a net carbon savings at the end of the year!

Cheers,
Bill T

Re:I just love it when people hate nuclear power

[aero6dof]

What I hate about nuclear power lobbying is the dishonesty about who pays for security and disposal in calculations about the economic efficiency of the power source.

Solar PV pays back its energy cost in 1.5-3 years according to this: http://www1.eere.energy.gov/solar/pv_basics.html. Solar Cell manufacturers warrant their systems to last 20-25 years with many older systems going 30+ years (as is the expectation for current systems being installed).

In the long run, if we build a electric power infrastructure that encourages decentralization, we encourage a free market for energy production. A market with barriers that individual citizens can enter ultimately gives us all more freedom and makes our society more resilient to disasters - man-made and natural.

Re:I just love it when people hate nuclear power

[bill_mcgonigle]

There's a great reason to be against any of the practical solutions you mentioned - if you make the Global Warming people go away all those people currently and speculating on getting power via the Global Warming Crisis won't have that position.

It's in many people's great interest to see that the populous is scared and believes themselves helpless.

Re:I just love it when people hate nuclear power

[bill_mcgonigle]

Solar energy is great but I want a carbon-free energy source to keep my refrigerator running on cloudy still winter days. That's either hydro, fission, or massive potential storage. Hydro and water potential storage kill wildlife, and fission doesn't.

Besides, I can't afford PV - as much as I'd like to, the economics aren't there, yet. PV loses money every time for large-scale use.

Re:I just love it when people hate nuclear power

[aero6dof]

Just get a grid-tied PV system. Make more power in the summer to offset pulling power in during the winter. I understand about the economics of PV though, it's a big investment.

Re:I just love it when people hate nuclear power

[bill_mcgonigle]

Just get a grid-tied PV system. Make more power in the summer to offset pulling power in during the winter.

My point is where is that winter energy coming from? It's not being stored up in the summer time.

I understand about the economics of PV though, it's a big investment.

Yeah, PV performs worse economically than electric bills and the same investment in safe financial instruments. This may be in part due to paying costs which are not actual costs.

That makes two accidents in 1999

[mdsolar]

The one with fatalities is listed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_civilian_nucl ear_accidents here. This raises a very serious issue. How complete is the list of accidents? The one in 2006 in Sweden suggests that modern plants can't be operated safely but that the risk of a very large accident is one in forty years at the present level of reliance on nuclear power. If the list is very incomplete, as this cover up might urge us to consider, then the risk of large accidents could be much higher than one in forty years at the present level of reliance on nuclear power. In that case, increasing our reliance on nuclear power seems foolhardy and decommisioning existing plants on an accelerated schedule would be a good policy to adopt.
--
Fusion power today: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

Re:That makes two accidents in 1999

[kad77]

In your mind, an ever running public wiki of the names, date of birth and location of every human ever involved in a nuclear accident may sound important. It is not. Organizations that matter are aware of the risks, benefits.

Unfortunately, too many 'flat earth' types are hindering scientific and technological progress with their foolish FUD campaigns and political action committees-- hindering third world countries efforts to build fossil fuel burning stations to provide basic services to their impoverished citizens. The same over-reactionary fear mongers (Rory Kennedy comes to mind) are hampering the US from even catching up with China in developing nuclear power stations.

These anti-thought efforts keeps the country stuck burning fossil fuel. The 'alternatives' are highly impractical on a mass scale. We can't produce nearly enough biofuel to run 50% of our energy use, especially without driving food prices high worldwide. Who does that effect? THE POOR. Yeah, less manufacture a million+ tons of chemical batteries to run our cars on. THATS A GOOD IDEA.

Fine, build a windmill in your backyard. But stop telling me that we can't develop pebble bed reactors because you are running scared of nuclear fission technology. Your feel good politics are bringing down the worlds quality of life. Please, think critically.

Re:That makes two accidents in 1999

[mdsolar]

You seem not to understand that the safety record of the nuclear power industry is very poor. As it turns out, contrary to what we have been led to beleive, there is no full opportunity for the industry to learn from its mistakes because accidents are covered up. This particular accident has no record or analysis so it may well be repeated with worse consequences.

As you point out, different technology is called for. However, it is not at all clear that pebble bed reactors can be run safely on a commercial scale. Further, it is no longer clear that problems with such new technology will be reported or addressed.

I agree with you that biofuels based on rooted plants have limited capacity as you will see here: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/02/photosynthesis .html. But, wind and solar are not limited in this way so you seem to be selecting you example rather poorly.

Re:That makes two accidents in 1999

[operagost]

With all the accidents in coal mines, not to mention their addition of huge quantities of CO2 to the atmosphere, I think we should accelerate the decommissioning of these plants.

Re:That makes two accidents in 1999

[operagost]

How many people have died in nuclear power accidents? Stop trolling. You're wrong.

Re:That makes two accidents in 1999

[mdsolar]

Conservatively 4000 to 9000 deaths. Most likely the 5000 deaths of newborns is a solid number and you may scale this report as you like http://www.ippnw-students.org/chernobyl/research.h tml but clearly the large number of birth defects is not and illusion. The UN figures are given here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_accident#Th e_Chernobyl_Forum_report.

Re:That makes two accidents in 1999

[mdsolar]

This is a very good idea. Coal plants do provide a large portion of our electric power so replacing them should probably be done using something that scales up quickly. Solar and wind seem to have this property.

Re:That makes two accidents in 1999

[Aglassis]

The one in 2006 in Sweden suggests that modern plants can't be operated safely but that the risk of a very large accident is one in forty years at the present level of reliance on nuclear power. If the list is very incomplete, as this cover up might urge us to consider, then the risk of large accidents could be much higher than one in forty years at the present level of reliance on nuclear power. In that case, increasing our reliance on nuclear power seems foolhardy and decommisioning existing plants on an accelerated schedule would be a good policy to adopt. You do not have a clue about nuclear safety. As someone who was personally responsible for the safety of a nuclear reactor I can tell you are just fear-mongering. You have cited some abstract fear (that accidents aren't reported) that you somehow use to rubberstamp fear about every design of nuclear reactor, including in a latter post the pebble bed reactor. Do you have justification that the US industry is not safe and not reporting its issues? You damn well better because you are claiming that the US nuclear industry, along with that of France, Canada, the UK, etc., are operating unsafely because of failures in Japan and Sweden. Oh and before you decide to cite your little list, you had better be damn sure that your 'accidents' affect reactor safety, not just vent a little radioactive gas into the atmosphere or spill a little radioactive water (which compromises >90%) of your list.

But before we continue, the only question that I really need you to answer is what is your history of analyzing the safety of *any* industrial system? Or do you assume that any Joe off the street can analyze industrial systems (and in particular, nuclear systems) without detailed knowledge of their theory of operation, design requirements, QA system, formal procedures, operator training, monitoring systems (what you might call a meta-operator system), or regulatory requirements? Have you performed any operational risk analysis studies? Reactor protection analysis studies? Do you even know what 'QA' stands for? Can you tell me why switching off the cooling pumps during the TMI accident increased the severity of the casualty? Or what type of experiment were the operators at Chernobyl performing? What I'm asking is for a little credibility before you damn the entire world nuclear industry. You are asking the nuclear industry to prove a negative result so I am curious to how you have analyzed the problem that will affect things from jobs to global warming to the number of people who die due to pollution from coal plants.

Re:That makes two accidents in 1999

[mdsolar]

Humm... It is a little discouraging that someone with responsibility for nuclear safety considers venting or spills unimportant.

I would say that your list of studies does not really pass the smell test for a system that has any chance of ever being considered reliable on the safety front. Sounds like system complexity is a bit too high.

I have not seen companies that own reactors shutting down the coal plants that they also own so are you not being a bit optimistic on the idea that nuclear power can replace coal?

What we learned today is that the list of nuclear accidents is incomplete owing to a cover up of a nuclear accident. We do not know how incomplete it is. Perhaps you can help out here. Have you personally covered up any of those little spills that you feel are so unimportant?

Re:That makes two accidents in 1999

[Maserati]

On this one I'm gonna listen to the low 5-digit ID with the Admiral Rickover quote in his .sig. Just sayin'.

Re:That makes two accidents in 1999

[Aglassis]

Humm... It is a little discouraging that someone with responsibility for nuclear safety considers venting or spills unimportant. You would. People who haven't worked in nuclear power plants or studied nuclear power in detail don't understand the difference in the orders of magnitudes of problems. You can say you have had a radioactive spill if you release 10^-6 curies just as easily as you could for 10 curies. Spilling 500 gallons of radioactive water sounds bad until you learn that it had trivial activity. People who don't understand these issues think that the 500 gallon spill is somewhat comparable to melting a fuel assembly. It is not, and it does not even come close. Including trivial items like spills and gas discharges as major nuclear accidents is misleading to say the least.

I would say that your list of studies does not really pass the smell test for a system that has any chance of ever being considered reliable on the safety front. Sounds like system complexity is a bit too high. ....

What we learned today is that the list of nuclear accidents is incomplete owing to a cover up of a nuclear accident. We do not know how incomplete it is. Perhaps you can help out here. And yet again you try to prove a negative. US plants are unsafe because we don't know! We haven't had the accidents, but we don't know if someone is covering up an accident. Or if someone is covering up for someone covering up an accident. Will someone please think of the children!

Have you personally covered up any of those little spills that you feel are so unimportant? And this statement shows that you are an asshole. My answer is no, I have never covered up anything. But I would like to know who you are that allows you to sit on such a high horse. It is interesting that your response failed to answer any of the significant questions I asked, but I still responded to yours. Why don't you answer a couple of those questions now.

Re:That makes two accidents in 1999

[Raenex]

A Slashdot nerd that is pro-nuclear. Absolute faith in technology. Just sayin'.

Re:That makes two accidents in 1999

[Andy Dodd]

Also, I recall (but cannot confirm) hearing that there is a coal plant in Utah that releases more radioactive material into the air EACH DAY due to traces of uranium in the coal they burn than TMI has released in its entire lifetime.

Whether or not this is true, I'd rather live 5 miles from a nuclear plant than a coal plant. With a nuclear plant, there is a tiny probability that something might be released into the air that will affect my health. With a coal plant, you KNOW it's happening daily.

Anyone who has read a detailed description of the Chernobyl incident and the events leading up to it would know that it is simply not possible for such an accident to occur in a civilian reactor in the U.S. (For one thing, U.S. civilian reactors don't use a highly flammable substance as their moderator...)

Re:That makes two accidents in 1999

[mdsolar]

Sorry if you felt offended. Con Ed, for example, has been censured for failing to report an incident in a timely way so I was curious if you had been a part of this or some other cover up that up to now has been more successful.

Now, to details: You say 90% of the list represents minor spills. I count two minor spills. Which are the others?

Re:That makes two accidents in 1999

[ncc74656]

You seem not to understand that the safety record of the nuclear power industry is very poor

Let's see...one incident nearly 30 years ago that didn't kill anybody and didn't release any radiation into the surrounding environment constitutes a "very poor" safety record? Pipe down, Chicken Little...there are plenty of worse offenders out there.

Re:That makes two accidents in 1999

[mdsolar]

Humm.... You might want to read the news a bit more often than once every thirty years. The other accident in 1999 killed two people. There have been others. You might want to check up on that.

Re:That makes two accidents in 1999

[Stanistani]

mdsolar is an astonomer, not an engineer. He is a member of the Green Party.

*sound of axe grinding*

He apparently has no intention of responding to questions about his qualifications. Judging by his use of personal attacks, he's an asshat.

I wouldn't have him consult on designing a whirligig, much less any sort of power solution.

Look at his attack on a nuclear engineer in this thread.

Pah.

For the record, I'm not an engineer, either. I'm not pro-nuclear, either. I did a six-month analysis of Three Mile Island, to write code for a computer game. Interesting, but not germane for forecasting the reliability of totally different designs. Just my uninformed opinion.

Re:That makes two accidents in 1999

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry if you felt offended

No, I don't believe you are sorry at all. Your comment would have offended any human being, especially honest ones trying to do a good and safe job. GP is right, you are an asshole, and not worth dealing with.

When people leave you out of things in future, it's because of your present tone. HAND.

Sorry if you feel offended. Really.

Re:That makes two accidents in 1999

[mdsolar]

I thought it strange that I was asked if I was a nuclear engineer. It seemed a strange question given that my profile is available. As to qualifications to comment, nuclear safety is really everyone's business because it poses a threat to all of us. I can express concern whether I know how he abbreviates quality assurance or not. I asked Aglassis a question which was relevant to the discussion despite his rather rude opening. This was not a personal attack but rather a request for information. I would like to know how much the nuclear industry is covering up accidents that it is obligated to report. I take him at his word that he has not been involved in such activity. I apologized when he took offence at my question which was phrased provocatively in response to his apparant attitude that the reported accidents were of no significance.

He clearly mischaracterized the existing list of nuclear accidents and has not responded to me on this issue, so basically I figure he's all hat.

I'm not too surprised people in the nuclear industry would react defensively to this news. So, his rude tone does not bother me much.

Your tone, on the other hand, does not appear to have much to excuse it.

Nuclear cycle

[iwein]

This is always bugging me a bit. But I'll give it a shot again:

1. Mining.
This is the same as any other kind of mining, just that what you dig up is a bit more dangerous, so you'll have to be carefull. No fundamental problems here.

2. Reaction
No fundamental problems here, just handling dangerous materials, have to be careful. The good thing is that you'll actually reduce the amount of radioactive material in the reactor.

3. Waste
Well now you just put the material that remains back were it came from. End result: less radioactive stuff in the globe. No fundamental problem here. You could even put it in one of those trenches on the bottom of the ocean. Then it would naturally transported to the earts core, mixed through the magma and only resurface in a few milion years or so...

The story is a little bit more complicated and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spent_nuclear_fuel/ is of course nasty, but in the end there is less plutonium and less uranium 238 and those are by far the most dangerous, right?

Re:Nuclear cycle

[LordVader717]

2. Reaction
No fundamental problems here, just handling dangerous materials, have to be careful. The good thing is that you'll actually reduce the amount of radioactive material in the reactor.

Handling volatile radioactive fuel? Potential outbrake of uncontrolled chain reaction? Numerous points of failure? Some people with an almost complete lack of respect for regulations and instructions?
The reaction process is dangerous, just look at Chernobyl.
Although nuclear power has been relatively safe, but no one can deny that it is potentially highly dangerous, and risks can never completely be eliminated.
The biggest problem has been human carelessness, and that is something you're never going to be able to prevent unless you insist on tighter regulations.

As far as reducing radioactivity: You know it doesn't work like that. Heck, Plutonium doesn't even occur naturally. Only an extremely small fraction of the fuel is converted anyway, which you first had to concentrate to use at all. You also have a cocktail of other materials, in some ways even nastier than your Uranium.

You could even put it in one of those trenches on the bottom of the ocean. Then it would naturally transported to the earts core, mixed through the magma and only resurface in a few milion years or so...

Before which the container would break, spilling a cloud of radioactive material in one of the planets most sensitive ecosystems.

Re:Nuclear cycle

[GooberToo]

Rule #1 when discussing anything nuclear. The first person to mention Chernobyl as an example as to how dangerous nuclear power can be is the loser. The reason? That person just admitted that they have absolutely no clue what they are talking about and are unfit to contribute anything to a nuclear debate. The second rule of debating nuclear power, never mention Chernobyl.

Here are the Chernobyl facts:
o Chernobyl only has a single containment shell which is thinner what anyone considers safe for a single layer of a double layer containment design. In other words, any non-Russia design has two containment shells, both single layers are thicker than what Chernobly provided with its single shell. Why? Because its dangerously stupid to do it that way.

o Chernobyl has fewer safety mechanisms that is considered safe by the world, even as far back at the 1950s. Basically, all non-Russia designers have deemed Chernobyl a worst case accident waiting to happen and unfit to be built. Only in technologically inferior Russia could such a design be approved. Even by Three Mile Island standards, where some monitoring equipment was not installed, Chernobol is third world sub standard. This is important because by the time Three Mile island went online, even its monitoring equipment was considered sub standard by its opponents.

o What little was installed for Chernobyl's auxilary cooling systems were non-functional and in need of repair. They were offline. Ignoring all non-Russian operated reactors, the reactor would have been taken offline as a matter of safety protocol.

o But small penis Russia had something to prove, so they DISABLED their remaining safeties! Followed by a mandate from the Russian government that they begin a series of very dangerous tests. These tests would be considered dangerous for any fully operational, non-Russian reactor. In otherwords, basic protocols say you NEVER do these types of tests on a full scale reactor unless the reactor is specifically designed for these types of tests.

o And oh, let's make sure they do these tests while the reactor has a skeleton crew. Basically, they had so few people, they could never hope to react to any real emergency.

So in a nut shell, we have a design that is so flawed, it could NEVER contain any type of serious accident and by worldly comparison, is considered ufit and should never have been built. Most of its backup systems were never installed and what few were installed, were not operative and in need of repair. Both common sense and basic safety protocols were already violated yet they contained to run. What few safetys remain were purposely disabled by the skeleton crew to allow for a series of very dangerous tests. The tests caused a run away which any other non-Russian design would have safely handled. But, for the sake of argument, let's assume a non-Russian reactor would of failed...but all non-Russian containment shells would have properly contained the situation causing only a minimum of radioactive venting. And that's still assuming a 1960 - 1970s reactor design. Modern designs would simply melt into a slag, shutting down the runaway, preventing any and all containment loss.

Long story short, anyone that thinks Chernobyl is in any way, shape, or form an example of how dangerous nuclear power is is ignorant of the subject, and unworthy to debate it. Pointing to Chernobyl as a posterboy makes as much sense as pointing at a standard bomb and declaring nuclear is dangerous. Chernobly is a posterboy of how small Russia's penis is and nothing more. In otherwords, if one wanted to spread radioactive contamination over a huge area, you do it, by design, EXACTLY how Russia did it. Chernobyl is a posterboy of how to build a bomb while calling it a power plant.

If anything, it proves that we don't want Russia building nuclear power plants. If anything, it proves that Russia is technologically incompetent. If anything, it proves that the Russian government is unethical and immorale. If

Re:Nuclear cycle

[gfxguy]

Which is why I have to wonder why they mention the U.S. is expanding in a posting about Japanese problems. Just more fear-mongering.

Re:Nuclear cycle

[LordVader717]

I do not oppose to nuclear energy per se, but pointing at the Russians and smugly believing that it proves nothing bad could ever happen at a western plant is what disqualifies people from discussing nuclear power.
Admittedly, there were a number of issues with the RBMK reactor, and it probably wouldn't have been able to happen to common western designs, but then again it did have safety mechanisms which could have prevented what happened.

There weren't any "series of very dangerous tests", but a simple test to check whether the turbine would provide power long enough for the backup generators to start up, if the reactor was shut down. To do this somebody decided that they could spare a few of the channels normally used to monitor the reactor, so they could observe the test.

They then powered down the reactor to a very low level of power, but had trouble keeping the output constant. When they got it to the desired performance, a number of control rods were completely removed. That was a dangerous state to be in, and it could have been known, but somebody had not read the fucking manual.

Then, when they were about to conduct the tests, the reactor went crazy, and the operator decided to do an emergency shutdown of the reactor, but it was precisely this what caused the accident, as the rods, which were supposed to shut down the reactor, initially caused the water to boil, which lead to a fast boost in reactor power, and thereby caused the explosion.

There were a number of reasons why it was able to come to what it did, including the design and the lack of the kind of "safety culture" that many western plants have (although there are a number of western examples with bad records which haven't been shut down because of it)
But Chernobyl is a classic example of human error and the consequences it can have.
Mixing nuclear fuel in a bucket? Leading to chain reaction? That's a crazy thing to do, yet it happened in a "safe" Japanese plant!
Pretending that everything is absolutely safe and that there's nothing to worry about because no "penis Russians" are involved is ignoring the numerous stupidities and accidents that have happened in the past, which is a truly ignorant thing to do.
The biggest threat to safety comes from workers doing thing's they shouldn't, which is why reactor safety is sometimes synonymous with "fool-proof".

Re:Nuclear cycle

[GooberToo]

I do not oppose to nuclear energy per se, but pointing at the Russians and smugly believing that it proves nothing bad could ever happen at a western plant is what disqualifies people from discussing nuclear power.

That was not my point. My point was, citing Chernobyl in any context as it relates to western nuclear safety (or general nuclear safety) is completely off topic. Chernobyl is what happens when people purposely go out of their way to create a nuclear cloud. Period. Citing nuclear weapons tests and thinking it has some connection to nuclear power plant safety makes as much sense.

Admittedly, there were a number of issues with the RBMK reactor, and it probably wouldn't have been able to happen to common western designs, but then again it did have safety mechanisms which could have prevented what happened.

Which were disabled or never installed.

That was a dangerous state to be in, and it could have been known, but somebody had not read the fucking manual.

They did read the manual. They were ORDERED to operate as such despite informing the governing body that bad things would happen. Despite the fact that the governing body knew they had a skeleton crew. Despite the fact that the governing body knew basic safety equipment had never been installed and no backups were available. Despite the fact that the governing body knew what safetys were left would have to be disabled to operate in the mode required to conduct the tests. This was NOT human error as a result of someone not reading the manual or failing to follow procedure!

But Chernobyl is a classic example of human error and the consequences it can have.

LOL!!!! If you say so. Chernobyl has nothing to do with human error. It has everything to do with purposely trying to blow up a reactor. Did they set out to blow up a reactor that day...I have no idea...was it simple human error that caused the melt down...absoluetely not! It was 100% willful act on a reactor which should not have been running in the first place, which was knowingly ignored. Stating this is human error is like me loading a gun, pointing it to my head, and pulling the trigger. Then someone comes behind me and says, "well, that's human error. If only he had caught just one of his mistakes. Had he not loaded it...had he not pointed it...had he not pulled the trigger, he would still be alive. Had he just read the owner's manual." If you want to see the world like that, fine, but it doesn't make it any less of a willful act knowing full well that they were pulling the trigger, after they had loaded it and pointed it.

Re:Nuclear cycle

[GooberToo]

Just more fear mongering is correct. There is a long list of nuclear related issues which are ripe for debate but Chernobyl has no place in such debates unless ignornace and fear mongering is the objective or the topic is how to create a WMD.

Re:Nuclear cycle

[seer]

Your comment is great, but you miss the point. Chernobyl did exist. It was built. It was used. It had a poor design, yes, but that didn't stop them from using it. The people that ran those tests must have known what would happen, and they didn't stop.

That fact alone makes me wonder what other design shortcuts were used all around the world?

Re:Nuclear cycle

[TuballoyThunder]

The key point about Cheynobyl is that the RBMK reactor uses graphite as a moderator, which has a positive temperature coefficient in reactivity. A water moderated reactor (the type used by almost all other reactors) has a negative temperature coefficient. As temperature increases, a graphite moderated reactor will have an increase in reactivity. Thus, the safety issues with graphite-moderated reactors goes beyond a design shortcut and straight to the underlying physics.

The turbine spin-down test that the Soviets were attempting to do was not particularly dangerous and was a reasonable test. The Soviets wanted to determine how long the generators would be turned by the turbines if the site lost power from the electrical grid and steam production was lost (low reactor power, ruptured steam line, etc). The turbine spin-down time would provide information on how long they had to bring the diesel-powered generators online.

The problem was in the design of the test protocol and the lack of oversight by nuclear engineers. The test required that the power levels of the reactor be decreased. About 13 hours after the reactor was brought down to 50% power (1600 MWt), the reactor was ordered by the electric-grid dispatcher to resume full power in order to meet demand. At that point, if a nuclear engineer was in charge, would have postponed the test for several days because of Xe-135 production, which has a huge neutron absorption cross-section (it eats neutrons).

Instead of terminating the test, the test director resumes the test and orders the reactor power to be decreased. The operators fail to program the computer to maintain power at the 700 MWt to 1000 MWt. The excess of Xe-135 causes the power to fall to 30 MWt, so the operators withdrew the majority of the control rods in order to maintain power. Soon after, all eight coolant pumps were activated in order to keep the reactor cool after the test. The fact that the high-flow rate was part of the test protocol is unusual because it violated the operating rules, however, the automatic-scram was bypassed for the test. If a nuclear engineer was in charge, the test should have been terminated before this step (not because of the high-flow rate, though). The increased flow rate decreased the reactivity (remember graphite has a positive temperature coefficient), which require additional control rod withdrawl to maintain reactor power level. These control rod withdrawls was in violation of the operating procedures for the reactor. The fact that the operators were having difficulty in maintaining power was a big warning that there was a lot factors contributing negative reactivity to the system (Xe-135 poisoning, excessive heat removal).

At this point, the reactor is too difficult to control automatically, so the operators assumed manual control and turned off more of the emergency shutdown signals. One minute before the accident, the computer indicated excess reactivity was present and the operators blocked the emergency shutdown. Power started to increase rapidly (through the magic of a positive temperature coefficient) and the reactor operators began insertion of the control rods. This step had the opposite effect because the control rods had graphite leaders on them (in order to maintain symmetry when fully inserted). The graphite leaders introduced additional positive reactivity and displaced water (thus removing a source of negative reactivity). The power increased further because of this step. The reactor had several pules in power in the 100 - 500 time normal power range for about 4 seconds.

The operators at Chernobyl were some of the best in the Soviet Union, but were not adequately trained. The test director did not fully understand the safety requirements and was under pressure to complete the test before the May Day holiday. In addition, the next scheduled down time for the reactor would the next year. There was also a poor chain-of-command (too many "bosses") and the test planning process did not involve the desig

Re:Nuclear cycle

[Anonymous Coward]

Easy to dismiss Chernobyl when you are not in the way of prevailing winds from the region.. I imagine that if you lived in South-Eastern Belarus your feelings might be different.

Indeed, Chernobyl is not a proof that nuclear power cannot be safe, it is simply another item of evidence in the argument that nuclear power cannot be safe unless safety is the primary priority.
If political posturing is more important than proper reactor protocols, then disasters will result.
Similarly, if profit is more important, you will have problems. After all, can anyone argue that the US energy sector has been an exemplar of good practice over the last decade?

Re:Nuclear cycle

[GooberToo]

We'll have to agree to disagree. I'm not pretending Chernobyl does not exist. Just as I'm not trying to pretend nukes don't exist. Having said that, willful destruction of a nuke does not translate into nuclear powerplant safety in the least. Willful destruction of Chernobyl (which is what it was) does not translate into nuclear powerplant safety. Chernobyl was not an accident caused by a string of human errors. Chernobyl is a disaster of human intent and denial, compounded by neglect, third world technology, and penis envy.

A crazy driver behind the wheel of a car, who injures/kills dozens, does not mean that specific car or cars in general are too dangerous for mankind. Only a fool would attempt to argue that point. That is what is commonly called fear mongering. Yet *exactly* that point that is argued everytime Chernobyl is mentioned. Having said that, refusing to accept a crazy driver that willfully injured dozens as a general point against cars, or a specific model of car, does not mean I imagine a world without cars. Likewise, I understand Chernobyl was built. But mentioning it only serves to fearmonger. Invocation of Chernobyl is not a legetimate point/counter-point unless the intent is to fearmonger.

Most of the world use a common and proven set of designs with each adding their own set of improvements and safetys. AFAIK, excluding the designs by the likes of Russia, they are generally considered safe designs.

The long of the short, there exists plenty to debate on nuclear power plants without resorting to fearmongering. Which is exactly why, the first one to mention Chernobyl is resorting to fear and ignorance rather than facts and knowledge.

Re:Nuclear cycle

[GooberToo]

First, let me say what a great post...especially for /. It's rare these days!

The turbine spin-down test that the Soviets were attempting to do was not particularly dangerous and was a reasonable test. The Soviets wanted to determine how long the generators would be turned by the turbines if the site lost power from the electrical grid and steam production was lost (low reactor power, ruptured steam line, etc). The turbine spin-down time would provide information on how long they had to bring the diesel-powered generators online.

I've seen several interviews and articles over the years which all seemed to indicate that those tests, at that given time, would never be allowed because the exact results were unknown as they were operating well outside of their published safety protocols. Which is to say, with nuclear, unknown = dangerous and not that conducting the test means the end of the world. In other words, it is very dangerous to operate a nuclear plant outside its safety protocols.

This is the first I've ever heard so much of a hint that the tests performed at Chernobyl were safe anywhere other than a research reactor so the protocols could be proved and written first.

The test director did not fully understand the safety requirements and was under pressure to complete the test before the May Day holiday.

I've seen an interview where these guys said they could say it was a bad idea but saying, "no", was not an option. Saying, "no", meant terrible things for both themselves and their families. Likewise, it was made clear the mandate or successful completion of these tests by a specific date were purely politically driven. I'm told that's why some of these sames guys later went back into Chernobyl and died in the name of "research."

Good post. Good stuff! Thanks!

Re:Nuclear cycle

[clambake]

The first person to mention Chernobyl as an example as to how dangerous nuclear power can be is the loser. The reason? That person just admitted that they have absolutely no clue what they are talking about and are unfit to contribute anything to a nuclear debate.

No, they have NOTHING to contribute... The Reason? Because incompetence, shoddy, inadequate equipment and good old fashioned dumb-ass bravado are things of the past. Such things can never again happen in the future. Never.

Re:Nuclear cycle

[TuballoyThunder]

Thanks for the feedback. I don't want to give the impression that the test was entirely routine and safe--with proper oversight and planning it could have been done safely. In order to conduct the test, there were some emergency shutdown signals that had to be overridden--that right there should have been a warning that the designers must be directly involved. The critical error was the first interruption in the test. That allowed the build-up of Xe-135 in the reactor and the loss of reactivity. If someone had intervened at that point, the whole accident would have been avoided.

I don't think a research-type reactor would have provided the same data, unless the research reactor was a duplicate of a power producing RBMK. A simulation would also have been difficult--this was back in 1986 and the ability to model a system as complex as a RBMK reactor with computers of that era probably was not feasible, particularly in the Soviet Union.

Re:Nuclear cycle

[LordVader717]

There's no real point in continuing the conversation here, since it's obvious that you have absolutely no clue whatsoever what happened back then.

The problem with the control rods is where they should have read the manual, because it was documented, and we know now that it was a mistake to have the reactor operating with control rods pulled out.
It was neither a highly dangerous experiment or an order to wilfully disable safety mechanisms, but a combination of mistake from many people. Somebody decided it would be easier to use up a few monitoring channels, another somebody decided that it would be easier to disable a safety mechanism than to reconfigure it, somebody else decided to pull control rods, some other guys hadn't read the manual which would have told them that that isn't safe, and when the reactor got to a worrying power level, somebody decided to do an instant shutdown.

Blame the poor safety regulations if you want, but don't try to paint a picture of the evil commie empire trying to blow up the world because it makes you feel better. Otherwise, go back to drinking rain, for fear of fluoridated water, and give us all a laugh.

Re:Nuclear cycle

[GooberToo]

It was neither a highly dangerous experiment or an order to wilfully disable safety mechanisms, but a combination of mistake from many people.

I think it is wonderful that you state I have no idea what I'm talking about while restating what I stated all the while, ignoring many important facts. You just make this stuff up as you type? Notice how my FACTS line up exactly with the wonderful post provided by TuballoyThunder's detailed post and your "facts" are well...blissfully ignorant. Let us know how your rain water tastes.

It's obvious you're happier in your blissful ignorance...please remain where you are.

Re:Nuclear cycle

[Bryan K. Feir]

but somebody had not read the fucking manual.

We are talking about post-Stalin Soviet Russia here, the paranoid state incarnate.

What makes you think the 'grunt' operators even knew where the manual was? The basic operators had been told what to do under certain circumstances, none of them really knew what the circumstances meant.

Re:Nuclear cycle

[LordVader717]

TuballoyThunder's post is a more detailed description of what I have said. (I was mistaken about the reason the control rods caused the power to spike though, mind. It was because they had graphite leaders)

Compare it to the typical electric-company drivel you're pushing, and you get the idea. Chernobyl relates to penis sizes more than to reactor safety? Surely, even you can do better than that. (Another tell tale sign is how you love to push brain-dead comparisons like "Three Mile Island standards" or decades, instead of explaining yourself.)

And since you seem to believe TuballoyThunder's post, it might interest you that it does contradict you and your "FACTS" (don't we all know that if you spell your own FACTS in capital letters, and the other guy's facts with lower case letters, you get super-convincing)

Re:Nuclear cycle

[GooberToo]

The fact that you are lost and confused by my post only underlines that you should not be commenting. Obviously you have no clue as to the political and/or economic climate of the time, otherwise, the expression and meaning would be crystal clear. Nor do you seem to understand that this is one of a long string of nuclear disasters at the hands of the Russians under the same political/economic pressures. If I talked down it is because this is slashdot and I have no idea who you are. You need to learn facts about the topic before you post. Most importantly, you need to understand where you are posting. This is not a respected journal. Obviously you don't understand the difference. Which is yet another clue you shouldn't be posting.

At this point, I think we understand each other. My dumb-down post went over your head and confused you. I think that says plenty. If you want to fire one back my way...fine; but I'm done.

Re:Nuclear cycle

[Sem_D_D]

"Vot Eto Da!"
It is indeed rare to see some of the brothers from the Former Soyuz here discussing in great details those dark minutes...
As for the protocol, in the military academy we were told under the counter that the military were involved in the running of the test, and that itself is a clear flag for the lack of real plant operators present and the pushing of the safety boundaries.

Re:Nuclear cycle

[LordVader717]

Didn't confuse me, but the point is you claimed Chernobyl could not be mentioned under any circumstances ever when talking about nuclear power. In fact, it can.

Re:Nuclear cycle

[hr raattgift]

which has a positive temperature coefficient in reactivity. A water moderated reactor (the type used by almost all other reactors) has a negative temperature coefficient

You don't really mean temperature coefficient of reactivity. In almost all possible reactor designs, that is strongly negative beyond a few hundred kelvins due to doppler broadening. A great deal of work has gone into designs which increase the falloff temperature by a few hundred more kelvins so as to gain greater power production from the plant as a whole, but on top of doppler broadening of the neutron emission and capture spectra, there is a physical maximum related to the binding energy of the fuel components (components expand or deform, metals melt, ceramics crack apart) beyond which there is a steep falloff in temperature to reactivity. (With current materials science knowledge, beyond about 1250 K the fissiles must be fully dispersed/dissolved in a slurry/suspension/solution involving molten salts or liquid metals in order to remain reactive).

This is why there are substantial cooling systems associated with nuclear power plants -- reactor piles are much more efficient when kept considerably cooler than the reactivity falloff temperature.

The Chernobyl accident is usually discussed in relation to another factor: the positive void coefficient of reactivity.

Technically, voids are areas where there is an absence of normal moderator or coolant.

Voids in themselves can be dangerous in some systems, since they may cause explosions or fires because of chemical (rather than nuclear) reactivity, and there may be safety problems with cavitation and blockage.

Voids are often bubbles of superexpanded coolant or moderator. In water systems (coolant or moderator) that means steam. In other systems that means pockets with a different phase than the coolant or moderator.

In normal operation, some systems cannot form voids at all (some carbon moderated, gas cooled systems, for example) while others have a coefficient exactly equal to zero (voids may form, but do not affect reactivity).

The coefficients are of reactivity however, and one can construct a reactor with a positive void coefficient that does not contribute to a positive feedback loop (or a negative one that does). The reciprocating term is the reactivity coefficient of void formation, which in most reactors is positive (or zero).

Positive coefficients mean that the presence of voids increases the reactivity of the reactor pile, which can lead to more voids forming, which forms a dangerous positive feedback loop.

Negative void coefficients mean that the presence of voids decreases the reactivity of the reactor pile, which usually means fewer voids forming (becasue of a positive reactivity coefficient of void formation), and thus a passively safe negative feedback loop.

Voids may also form in the event of loss of coolant or moderator or pressurization, contamination, or misconfiguration. These are all considered "leaks" of different types. LOCA (loss of coolant accidents) usually form and sustain voids.

A positive void coefficient of reactivity usually combines unsafely with void formation in LOCAs. By comparison, a negative void coefficient of reactivity is usually considered passively safe in the face of LOCAs.

It is entirely possible to build a light water reactor with a positive void coefficient, and CANDU and PHWR derivitives in Asia which are operating have a small positive void coefficient. They are moderated by heavy water.

There are gas-cooled MOX reactors moderated by graphite, which have a negative void coefficient. Several of these are in operation in the UK.

Pebble bed reactors of all types generally have a negative void coefficient and are moderated by pyrolytic carbon and/or graphite, and gas-cooled.

The RBMK design is a gas-cooled MOX reactor moderated by graphite, and has a positive void coefficient

Critical State?

[markass530]

It's been a few years (and a lot of beer) since I went through the navy's nuclear power program, so I can no long speak about it like an expert, but this i know a "Critical State" is just what happens when a nuclear reactor is producing power. It's fucking annoying to hear it announced like it's a bad thing. If it inadvertently entered this state, it could be bad a suppose, but as long as the hafnium rods where avaialable to be shoved back down in there to stem the reaction this wouldn't be a problem?

Re:Critical State?

[NewbieProgrammerMan]

It's fucking annoying to hear it announced like it's a bad thing. If it inadvertently entered this state, it could be bad a suppose, but as long as the hafnium rods where avaialable to be shoved back down in there to stem the reaction this wouldn't be a problem?

I know what you mean about the misuse of the term "critical," but I think in this case it is the proper term to describe a bad thing. In the first situation a reactor (presumably shut down for maintenance, probably with no systems to come to the rescue with lots of negative reactivity) becomes critical without anybody knowing about it for 15 minutes. Remember that there's not a lot of margin between critical and prompt critical (which I'm sure you probably remember as very bad), and sometimes it might not be hard to go from one to the other. Ask the guy that got pinned to the ceiling at SL-1 if having a reactor enter a critical state while you're not looking can be bad.

In the second situation some poor schlub is pouring a solution containing some fissile material into a bucket and it goes critical on him. Personally, I'd find an up-close-and-personal dose of neutrons from a bucket at arm's length to be a bad start to the day.

IMHO a critical assembly is nothing to worry about as long as (1) it's got instruments (and alert people) watching it that can trigger some rapid negative reactivity and (2) there's lots of shielding between me and and the assembly.

Re:Critical State?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would usually be the first to agree with you, but this incident does seem pretty serious. Going on memory here... they were shutdown for maintenance/refueling, the vessel head was off, and they had three control rods withdraw from the core. (I say "withdraw" because I don't know if they were pulled out at normal speed, if they dropped, or something in between.) They couldn't scram the rods back in because the accumulators weren't functioning for some reason.

Keep in mind that this is a boiling water reactor. There are probably somewhere between 120 to 180 control rods in total. Control rods enter from the bottom of core. Shutdown margin requirements probably meant they had to verify subcriticality with the single strongest rod withdrawn. At the BWR I worked at previously, that would have meant SDM of 0.38% dk/k if the strongest rod is determined by experiment or 1% if determined analytically.

Nevertheless, BWR cores are fairly loosely coupled. It is entirely possible that IF those three control rods were adjacent, they could have had a small region of the core go critical. Three rods withdrawn would usually mean 12 fuel bundles uncontrolled. That's more than enough.

This is pretty bad. I would need more data to know how bad, but it's bad enough even with the barest details -- unintended critical, vessel head off, unable to scram, and even after 15 minutes they didn't inject SLC (standby liquid control, sodium pentaborate most probably)... yikes.

Don't let the sin...

[Ngarrang]

...of one company muddy the waters for the rest of the power companies with nuclear plants. There are far more plants that do follow safe procedures and have no accidents.

Now, to my energy rant.

Nuclear power plants provide the most efficient production of electricity. It far outstrips the ability of coal, oil, solar, wind, whatever. And, it would be foolish to think that we are going to REDUCE the amount of electricity we need. So, please, all you tree-huggers, just go home. Society is dependent on an ever-increasing amount of the stuff, so just accept it. Thus, we need a power source that gives up the most bang for the buck.

This incident, as with others, provides invaluable data that we learn from, improving the process everywhere else.

All of the electric-car fantatics should be cheering for more nuclear power plants.

Re:Don't let the sin...

[dbIII]

Nuclear power plants provide the most efficient production of electricity.

Only if you cook the books - if you want numbers closer to reality consider British Nuclear Fuels and the subsidy that every UK electricity user pays to keep them going. If you cook the books and not consider mining, producing the fuel or building the installations you get close to zero CO2 emissions too - I dodn't know why the books are being cooked there becuase people should be happy enough with it being around half what you would get with natural gas turbines (as in burning propane etc out of the ground), for as long as you can get the really high grade fuel.

If you want a mature nuclear power industry it needs effort put into making viable designs instead of lobbyists pushing some 1960s Westinghouse dinosaur with superficial changes that may as well be green paint. As for the contemptous tree hugger comment - time to pay attention and notice that it was a former nuclear engineer that cut the nuclear power program for a variety of good reasons that had nothing to do with "tree hugging".

Re:Don't let the sin...

[Anonymous Coward]

Thus, we need a power source that gives up the most bang for the buck.

Somehow, your advocacy seems less compelling than it could...

Re:Don't let the sin...

[earthbound kid]

Don't let the sin of one company muddy the waters for the rest of the power companies with nuclear plants.

The problem is that nuclear plants have to be run by human beings. It's the same problem we have with government: we can design systems that work great in theory, like communism, if we ignore the fact that humans make mistakes all the time, but to make a system that really works, we need to count on people screwing some things up but have a system in place where those screw ups won't kill us all.

I'm not against nuclear power per se. I think it is our cleanest power source. But I think that a lot of time defenders of nuclear power will say, "Chernobyl and 3 Mile Island were massive screw ups by the people in the plant," as a defense, but presuming future plants are also run by people, the problem won't go away.

(Incidentally, that's what's so promising about the pebble bed reactors: they allow fewer chances for people to do stuff wrong.)

Re:Don't let the sin...

[Ngarrang]

First off, my apologies to the tree-huggers. For all know, they may love nuclear power since means not burning trees or strip mining for coal.

Second, yes, as long as humans are part of the safety formula, we are going to have issues. I took most issue with the request that we reduce our power needs to obviate the need for nuclear power.

I forget the count at the moment, but I think the American Navy is operating over 100 nuclear-powered vessels. Their safety record is impeccable. Not perfect, but impeccable. It has been a while since the last accident. It is this very situation that I point to as proof that nuclear fission can be used safely and effectively, and should be on a wider scale. Maybe all nuclear power plants should be run by the Navy?

Re:Don't let the sin...

[Bo'Bob'O]

Actually, if I were a "tree hugger" ... someone who only cares about wildlife then humans, I would love nuclear power. A major accident in a large populated place would likely cause an evacuation, the trees and fauna wouldn't give a shit, and would quickly take back the area. It's the quality of life of the people in that city and the surrounding areas after such an accident that concerns me.

Nuclear Plants a danger?

[Herkum01]

Ah yes, people died so Nuclear energy is dangerous! Talk about FUD, Lets see how safe how great COAL mining is!

Stats are here for coal mining in the US alone. You get around 30 people dying AND 2000+ injuries (or 5% of the work force) is involved in something harmful to their health EVERY YEAR.

So WTF is dangerous about Nuclear power plants now?

Re:Nuclear Plants a danger?

[dbIII]

Look! Other kids are being bad! Can I be bad too Miss Jane?

If you can write you should have outgrown such arguments. Nuclear power has to stand on it's own merits.

Re:Nuclear Plants a danger?

[nomadic]

So...using coal is unsafe. Therefore, using nuclear power can't be unsafe. Which dimension do you come from where that makes any sort of sense whatsoever?

Re:Nuclear Plants a danger?

[Bryan Ischo]

Coal is unsafe. And yet it has been considered safe enough for practical use for hundreds of years. Nuclear power is safer than coal. Therefore it should be considered safe enough for practical use.

I think his point was pretty clear. Are you intentionally disregarding it due to an inherent bias against nuclear energy?

Re:Nuclear Plants a danger?

[nomadic]

Coal is unsafe. And yet it has been considered safe enough for practical use for hundreds of years.

Yes, it has.

Nuclear power is safer than coal.

Arguable, but for the sake of this argument, let's assume that's true, too.

Therefore it should be considered safe enough for practical use.

...And there's where you make a huge non sequitur.
Your first statement isn't that coal is safe, but rather coal HAS BEEN CONSIDERED safe enough. Logically this is not equivalent to the statement coal is safe. Therefore your last statement does not follow. Get it?

Re:Nuclear Plants a danger?

[Bryan Ischo]

Nope, I don't get it. If coal has been considered safe enough, and nuclear power is safer (once again let's assume this is true for the sake of this pretty useless argument), then nuclear power should also be considered safe enough. Seems pretty clear to me.

I think the GP's point was the nuclear power is safe enough for use, not that it's completely safe.

Re:Nuclear Plants a danger?

[nomadic]

Nope, I don't get it. If coal has been considered safe enough, and nuclear power is safer (once again let's assume this is true for the sake of this pretty useless argument), then nuclear power should also be considered safe enough. Seems pretty clear to me.

You'll agree that there is a difference between "should", and "is", right? Coal has been considered safe enough. The fact that people in general have had this opinion over the past few hundred years is a fact.

But people "should" consider things safe enough only if they are actually safe, right?

If people were making a mistake thinking that coal was safe, then just because coal is safer than nuclear energy, doesn't mean it's in fact safe.

Let's say we have a safety scale of 1 to 10, with 5 being "too dangerous for use". Let's say people used to generally considered coal at 0. Let's say it's actually at 8.

Let's say nuclear power is at 7.

So the statement "coal is safer that nuclear power" is true. The statement that "people used to consider coal safe" is true. But nuclear power, at 7, isn't safe. People shouldn't consider it safe, just because it's safer than coal. The fact that people used to consider coal safe does not mean it's actually safe, or that something safer than coal is in fact safe for human use.

I mean, it's safer to drink bleach than cyanide. Bleach could easily kill you, cyanide almost certainly would. That doesn't mean drinking bleach is safe.

I think the GP's point was the nuclear power is safe enough for use, not that it's completely safe.

If the GP wants to argue or even just assert that, that's fine, but using a fundamentally illogical argument isn't the way to do that.

Re:Nuclear Plants a danger?

[Bryan Ischo]

Let me use a better analogy than your flawed one about bleach and cyanide (neither of which people think is safe to drink so this doesn't even satisfy the most obvious prerequisites for an anology here).

Let's say:

a) Ben Affleck is hunky enough to be a leading man.
b) Tom Cruise is hunkier thank Ben Affleck.

Therefore,

c) Tom Cruise is hunky enough to be a leading man.

Now if (a) and (b) are true, then how can people NOT consider Tom Cruise to be hunky enough to be a leading man? The answer is that people are being illogical if they don't. Either they don't believe that Ben Afflect is hunky enough to be a leading man, or they don't believe that Tom Cruise is hunkier than Ben Affleck. Both are valid ways to not conclude (c). But there is no way to believe both (a) and (b) and yet not also believe (c).

So if we can accept that:

a) Coal to be safe enough for widespread use
b) Nuclear is safer than coal

then we MUST accept that

c) Nuclear is safe enough for widespread use

This whole thing where you are introducing "is" vs "should" is irrelevent. We weren't talking about what is true versus what was true. People STILL DO consider coal to be safe enough for widespread use. Dirty maybe, but worth-the-risk safe enough. We *know* from evidence that nuclear is safer than coal (someone pointed out in another post that something like 30 people have died from exposure to radioactivity from nuclear power plants, whereas 30 people *each year* die in coal related accidents). Therefore it makes NO SENSE that some people say that nuclear is not safe. They either have to accept that coal is not safe, or that nuclear is not safer than coal, before they can say that nuclear is not safe. Now, there very well may be people who don't think that coal is safe enough. But we're not talking about those relatively few people. We're talking about the masses who have no problem with a coal fired plant next door but who would protest vigorously against a nuclear plant next door.

Anyway I think your whole posting could be refuted by this simple statement:

* When I said that people have thought that coal was safe enough for hundreds of years, I meant for hundreds of years in the past up to AND INCLUDING *now*. The statements aren't "people used to think that coal was safe" and "nuclear is safer than coal". They are "people DO think that coal IS safe" and "nuclear is safer than coal".

Re:Nuclear Plants a danger?

[Bryan Ischo]

I just re-read the GP. I agree that he didn't make any sense. I tried to extrapolate what kind of meaningful statements he must have been implying.

Feasible transmission distances

[mdsolar]

This study http://www.geni.org/globalenergy/library/technical -articles/transmission/cigre/present-limits-of-ver y-long-distance-transmission-systems/index.shtml suggests that 7000 km transmission legs might be economically feasible. On the other hand, keeping Bagdad supplied with electricity is proving more difficult than keeping it supplied with generator fuel since trucks provide a work around for attacks against oil pipelines. It seems to me that what is really going on is that the sunk costs for current power generation provide inertia against which your plan has to push. What is needed is to make renewables cheaper than fossil fuel costs so that fossil fuel (and nuclear) plants have to operate at a loss to compete. This may mean placing renewable power generation closer to where it is consumed for the present.
--
Generate clean power at home: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

Re:Oh really?!

[apathy maybe]

They weren't accidents. You don't "accidentally" drop a couple of nuclear bombs on a country.

They were dropped quite deliberately for a couple of (main) reasons, one was that certain individuals in the chain of command wanted to see what happened, the second was to prevent the USSR from occupying Japan (or even part of it) as happened in Europe.

Ion Propulsion

[brunes69]

If more investment was made into Ion Propulsion then the nuclear waste issue would be a non-starter.

Once you have orbital launch vehicles that can be powered themselves on nuclear power then all you have to do is store your global radioactive waste up and every six months or so use your nuclear launch vehicle to propel the waste into orbit and then jettison te waste capsule with a small booster propelling it into the sun.

Problem solved forever.

I really have yet to see why more research is not being one into this area... in theory once a working engine powered by nuclear energy is developed fission would be "totally green" energy.

Re:Ion Propulsion

[Anonymous Coward]

"in theory once a working engine powered by nuclear energy is developed fission would be "totally green" energy."

fission?

Re:Ion Propulsion

[StarfishOne]

Nice idea, but some thoughts from me, based on my limited knowledge (IINARS - I Am Not A Rocket Scientist)

a) Launching radioactive material is a risk. What if the thing comes down during launch?
I believe this has been a huge issue before (hmm.. wasn't that with the launch of the Cassini space probe?!?)

b) Ion propulsion is useless for launching vehicles into orbit from Earth. IIRC the amount of thrust of the ion engine onboard the Deep Space I mission was something like the force of a A4-sized paper resting on your palm..

c) Launching things into the Sun costs far more energy than most people assume. It requires quite a booster rocket to decelerate the payload from the orbital speed of the Earth around the Sun to such an extend that the thing will start 'falling towards the Sun'.

Somewhat far-fetched perhaps but:

d) Even though a payload would be extremely small compared to the mass of the Sun, would we want to take the risk to dump things into the one thing that gives us warmth, light and thus ultimately life?!? Do we know enough that we can safely start dumping radioactive material into the one central fission reaction that keeps us alive?

Re:Ion Propulsion

[AdmiralLawman]

You could always use on of these puppies. http://www.nuclearspace.com/a_liberty_ship10.htm Sure they would be an environmentalists nightmare, but hey 1000tons to Leo is too good of a deal to pass up.

Reference?

[an.echte.trilingue]

Besides incredibly trivial things like replacing our light bulbs with CFDs and turning off our power when we go outside, which is a *trivial* amount of savings, there's not much humans can do to save power.

Do you have a reference? I do not think that statement is true.

If it were true, then people in the 15th century would have used the same amount of energy as people living today, which is obviously false. Also obvious is the fact that nobody wants to live in a dark, cold world where long-distance transportation is near impossible, as humans in the 15th century did. So, what we need to do is find a way to reap the benefits of modern technology while using a lesser amount of energy. This is not impossible either, and the results are not trivial.

Germany, for example, gets by with a per capita energy consumption of around 40% of that of the United States without a significant loss in standard of living. How is this done? People habitually turn off lights in rooms that they are not in; smaller, more fuel efficient cars are the norm; waste products are heavily mined for reusable resources; every major city has a reliable, efficient, and widely utilized public transportation networks; people tend to choose bicycles or walking to nearby locations rather than driving; individuals reuse packaging (you bring your own bags to the grocery store); products are generally packed in less packaging material. Some of these things are done by individuals, some of them require government or corporate intervention. However, millions of people choosing to do the right thing creates significant, measurable results on that country's energy footprint.

So what can you do? Light bulbs are the single biggest user of energy in most western households. Turning off lights in rooms you are not in makes a small difference. Turning the heat down a couple degrees makes a small difference. Selecting a smaller car makes a small difference. Avoiding using that car when you don't need to makes a small difference. Sorting your waste materials for recycling makes a small difference. Taken together, these measures make a huge difference in the amount of energy you as an individual consume. If most of your fellow citizens do the same thing, together you will have a huge impact on the amount of energy your country consumes.

Re:Reference?

[Dipster]

Light bulbs are the single biggest user of energy in most western households.

I'm sorry, but that simply isn't true. A quick search will produce hundreds of results like this that show that lighting usually lags behind space heating, refrigeration, and water heating. Photons (even with incandescents) are cheap compared to BTUs.

Re:Reference?

[an.echte.trilingue]

Well, this is what I found: http://www.fypower.org/res/energy.html It says that lighting takes 22% of the average energy consumption in a California household, refrigeration takes second at 19%. They counted both interior and exterior lighting together, and the original source for their data is the California Energy Commission. I imagine that this number shifts based on where one is located. Australia, the country from which your statistics came, already has a very aggressive program to save energy wasted on lighting; they recently passed a law that will soon make it illegal entirely to use incandescent light bulbs at all. So, I think that your statistics, if anything, support the idea that trying to save energy on lights works.

Re:Reference?

[ShakaUVM]

Sorry, I should have made myself more clear. It's very difficult to cut power in such a way that doesn't send us back to the stone ages. People in the 1600s didn't have fridges, but they also died of food poisoning a lot more often. We could turn off street lights, but then more people will die in traffic accidents. Anyone who suggests making cuts that would result in the loss of life should themselves be shot, or, more appropriately, forced to live in the wilderness for a couple years without their Gore-Tex (tm) jacket or First Need (tm) water filter.

You can't compare energy expenditure between Germany and the US if you're counting oil costs. Germans live in much denser cities. Americans are more dispersed. The expectation that Americans could go without cars if they had to is laughable. I live in San Francisco, which has one of the largest public transportation systems in the US, and I still don't use it. Not because I have a car fetish, but because it's impractical. Getting to the BART station from my house (and it's about 3 or 4 miles away) takes over an hour, with two bus connections, from where I live. When I lived in the suburbs of San Diego, it was a half hour walk to get to the nearest restaurant or grocery store from where I lived. Impractical without a car.

Light bulbs are not the single biggest user of energy. As the other guy posted, they're a small fraction. That's why I laughed when Al Gore said he'd be upgrading to CFDs -- his house uses in a day what the average household uses in a month. What, the CFDs will cut it down to a 29-day cost?

Nuclear power is cheap and safe. Any environmentalist who is serious about reducing carbon emissions and lowering their country's dependence on oil, but is unwilling to switch to nuclear power, is a hypocrite.

Re:Reference?

[Josef Meixner]

Germany, for example, gets by with a per capita energy consumption of around 40% of that of the United States without a significant loss in standard of living. How is this done? People habitually turn off lights in rooms that they are not in; smaller, more fuel efficient cars are the norm;

The density of SUVs is still lower, yes, but I wouldn't call the cars very fuel efficient either. Additionally the lack of a speed limit means that the average speed is quite a bit higher resulting in higher fuel consumption.

waste products are heavily mined for reusable resources; every major city has a reliable, efficient, and widely utilized public transportation networks;

the "heavily mined for reusable resources" has a downside as well. As most plastic is removed from general waste (as are metals and glass) the rest doesn't burn well. So waste incinerating plants nowadays actually have to add oil to even work, not exactly a sensible development, because the energy needed to rework the recollected plastic isn't low.

The public transportation system is far from perfect. It basically works in most cities, but the railway to connect them isn't good. There are some very fast connections (I live near a new track where 300 km/h in regular traffic is reached), but many are quite desolate and need work. A lot of traffic is still road traffic.

people tend to choose bicycles or walking to nearby locations rather than driving; individuals reuse packaging (you bring your own bags to the grocery store); products are generally packed in less packaging material. Some of these things are done by individuals, some of them require government or corporate intervention. However, millions of people choosing to do the right thing creates significant, measurable results on that country's energy footprint.

At least one big measure is missing, houses are insulated. There are mandatory insulation values a new house has to reach. If it is loosing too much energy you have to improve it. Windows with two glass panes are the norm since the late seventies, many buildings nowadays have three layered glass windows reducing energy loss through the windows. Windows and roofs are the parts where many older building loose most energy.

There are also some buildings needing no heating or cooling at all. The are called Passive-House.

Re:Reference?

[eldaria]

Well I use Energy saving bulbs, and replace old glow bulbs as they die, but as long as the energy saving bulbs don't handle dimmers, certain places I won't install them.

Re:Reference?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Not because I have a car fetish, but because it's impractical. Getting to the BART station from my house (and it's about 3 or 4 miles away) takes over an hour, with two bus connections, from where I live. "

Lol, I can walk three or four miles in an hour.
Ditch the car, it might even be faster to get there on foot.

"When I lived in the suburbs of San Diego, it was a half hour walk to get to the nearest restaurant or grocery store from where I lived. Impractical without a car."

There are no shops *because* everyone uses cars.

Re:Reference?

[an.echte.trilingue]

Sorry, I should have made myself more clear. It's very difficult to cut power in such a way that doesn't send us back to the stone ages. People in the 1600s didn't have fridges, but they also died of food poisoning a lot more often

Which is what I meant when I said that we need to find a way to reap the benefits of modern technology while using less energy. It is quite possible.

We could turn off street lights, but then more people will die in traffic accidents.

The country where I currently live (Belgium) has so many street lights (brought to you by nuclear power) that at night you can see our border from the International Space Station. This has not been demonstrated to have any positive impact on traffic safety. People here agree that it is a waste, but the government is so caught up in bureaucracy and lobbying that getting it to change is slow.

The expectation that Americans could go without cars if they had to is laughable.

I agree, which is why I never said that.

I live in San Francisco, which has one of the largest public transportation systems in the US, and I still don't use it. Not because I have a car fetish, but because it's impractical.

I went to the University of San Francisco. I understand your complaints about Muni. However, Muni is also a perfect example of what is wrong with public transport in the United States. It is poorly funded (or rather, its funding is squandered), poorly organized, inefficient, and as a result has very low uptake in usage and little environmental impact. It may even be detrimental. San Francisco is much denser than where I live right now, Brussels (and indeed most European cities), and yet with the Brussels subway and tram system, I can get anywhere in the city faster than by car. Why? People care here. When the public transport system has a failing, it becomes a major political issue. People in SF, for all their lip service to liberal causes, don't really seem to care. They just see that their transit system is messed up and assume that it can't work.

Light bulbs are not the single biggest user of energy. As the other guy posted, they're a small fraction. That's why I laughed when Al Gore said he'd be upgrading to CFDs -- his house uses in a day what the average household uses in a month. What, the CFDs will cut it down to a 29-day cost?

As I pointed out to the other guy who responded to me, the California Energy Commission says that 22% of a household's energy use goes to lighting. The next closest thing is refrigeration at 19%. Click on the link on my response to that post if you don't want to take my word for it. This applies more to you than to him since you actually live in California. So, cutting down on your lighting energy use makes a huge difference. I really don't care what Al Gore does.

Nuclear power is cheap and safe. Any environmentalist who is serious about reducing carbon emissions and lowering their country's dependence on oil, but is unwilling to switch to nuclear power, is a hypocrite.

I never said anything against nuclear power. However, since you bring it up again, I should point out that if we were to replace oil with nuclear power tomorrow, the worlds uranium reserves would last about 80 years. Switching to nuclear alone is not going to solve anything. The solution in my mind is to take a mixed approach that involves multiple sources of energy, from oil to clean coal technologies to wind and tidal and, yes, even nuclear, and at the same time reducing energy use.

Re:Reference?

[Anonymous Coward]

40% sounds like a lot, but it ain't so easy. Let's say we do all the things you said (though there's no way in hell i'm gonna consider 3 degrees less in my home progress) and we end up with 30% of what we consume now. That's three times less. Now, you have to adjust these figures by:
    - how much "we", the developed world, consume vs the developing world who doesn't afford to make the investments required
    - the percent of energy affected by your suggestions (mostly homes and offices) vs the total consumption including the heavy industry, cargo and mass transport etc.
    - compare then the figure you get with the least reduction of total human consumption necessary to make an observable change in the biosfere - i.e. the percent of human carbon release vs total carbon release: animal and vegetal life, volcanoes etc.

I am against most of what you suggested because I don't think the numbers add up. Maybe with riding a bike and living in cold we can make a 1% dent, but i don't think it's worth it unless somebody does ALL the math and shows me i guess wrong.

I AM however for most of what you said for completely different reasons: money and local pollution. My home has mostly economic lightning even though it was an expensive investition (i went with the most expensive choices) because it makes sense financialy. I drive a clean and economic diesel small car because i care about costs (in terms of both fuel and maintenance costs a small diesel is best) and because i care about the city air I breathe. And so on.

What about the planet you ask? Well the big cuts in pollution won't come from this. They'll come when industries, companies and people who do the math decide it's cheaper to use newer, cleaner technologies, because it makes economic sense. This can be of course helped by taxes and regulations (used veru carefully). But changing a light bulb _won't_ save the planet, even if we all do it.

Re:Reference?

[ppanon]

Nuclear power is cheap and [can be] safe.

There, fixed that for you. For nuclear power plants to be safe in the US, you have to have them built and run by non-profit or governmental organizations and heavily supervised by a third-party. Why? Because profit-oriented companies in the US repeatedly place profit first and safety second unless they are forced to. Since your governmental system is currently far too susceptible to lobbying and a private nuclear industry (building billion dollar plants) has plenty of money to throw around over time to weaken government oversight, the only way to have a safe nuclear program in the US (and probably elsewhere) is to take the profit motive out of the equation. Yes, it will be less "efficiently" run than if private ventures were used, but it will be safer. With nuclear, that's a tradeoff you should be willing to take, otherwise you risk having more accidents and uselessly setting back the industry for another 4 or 5 decades.

Re:Reference?

[Anonymous Coward]

This page has electricity usage summaries for the United States, as well as some of the census regions.

The average over the whole US has 8.8% of electricity used in households for the purpose of lighting. This includes both indoor and outdoor lighting, but not halogen torchiere lamps. Presumably that's a deficiency in the surveys used.

Anyway, this 8.8% used for lighting is smaller than the amount used for refrigerators (13.1%), air conditioning (16.0%), electric space-heating (10.1%), or water heating (9.1%). So lighting is certainly not the principal usage of electricity in the US households. Maybe it's different in Western Europe.

Of course, it is an area where electricity usage can be improved upon. But it can't account for German households using 40% less energy than Americans (assuming that is an accurate figure).

Fraction of household electricity used for lighting, by US census region:

New England: 13.2%
Mid-Atlantic: 12.1%
New York: 15.7%
East North Central: 10.2%
West North Central: 8.6%
South Atlantic: 6.8%

There are dangeres in everything

[WatchTheTramCarPleas]

I don't understand the fear of neuclear power (or anything neuclear, radio active, radiation producing, or some other word). There are simple risks and benefits to such a solution. Most Americans have a volitile explosive pumped into thier home (natural gas) and think nothing of it. Yet, there are certainly risks to having that come into your home, explosion being the one of the least of those compared to carbon monoxide. The same comes with driving a car. I don't understand why neuclear power is so fear inducing, when there are so many other risks that we take, and think completely lightly of them.

Re:There are dangeres in everything

[Anonymous Coward]

It's because radiation cannot be seen nor smelled nor heard. If someone hid something radioactive in your house, you would just get sick and die slowly over time without knowing the cause.

It's quite reasonable to be afraid of something that you can't sense but can kill you.

Re:There are dangeres in everything

[pawstar]

The same can be said for a lot of other things. You can't sense natural gas, it can kill you, so what do we do? We add a rotten smell to it so that we can detect it. The same is true for radiation. We can't detect it by ourselves, but we can *easily* use sensors to detect it!

Re:There are dangeres in everything

[smash]

The thing is though, is that if you screw up with your home gas devices, you're likely to only kill yourself, your family, or at most, your block of flats.

If you screw up in a nuclear reactor, you've got the potential to kill or at least severely screw up hundreds or thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people.

Hence, we're a lot more willing to trust that the people operating gas devices are competent, or wear the risk that they aren't.

Note: i actually support nuclear power... playing devils advocate here..

False choice

[mdsolar]

You seem to be saying that nuclear power is better than coal power, a dubious claim, but also a logical fallacy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma. The real choice is between depletable resources and renewable resources. In terms of safety, reliability, prudence and, now, price the renewable resources win.
--
Save money with solar: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

Re:False choice

[oldwindways]

Nuclear energy is even better than a renewable resource. In the right configuration, nuclear fuel can "breed" more fuel, or if you prefer, you could always design your reactor to provide a rare resource: weapons grade plutonium.

Re:False choice

[ShakaUVM]

In terms of safety, reliability, prudence and, now, price the renewable resources win.

No, Nuclear is much, much cheaper than any "alternative" energy sources.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_controv ersy#Economics

Safety? Reliability?

Compare
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_and_disa sters_by_death_toll#Flood_disasters
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_and_disa sters_by_death_toll#Coal_mine_disasters
with
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_and_disa sters_by_death_toll#Nuclear_accidents

The GP was correct, on a per-site basis, nuclear is much safer than coal, and modern reactor designs don't have the same criticality risks that old reactors had.

Re:False choice

[Anonymous Coward]

The real choice is between depletable resources and renewable resources.

There is no such thing as renewable resources (except maybe inflationary spacetimes).

All "resources" are depletable, just at different rates.

Even the sun will stop.

but also a logical fallacy

So, after you've just invented a bullshit category of magically renewable resources, you're going to lecture about logic?

Humans should be able to kill subhuman trash like you.

Re:False choice

[mdsolar]

Isn't that a bit over the top? The Chernobyl deaths are estimate in the range 4000-9000 conservatively http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_accident#Th e_Chernobyl_Forum_report and now we are uncertain how many accidents have been covered up and what their effect has been. This vastly exceeds deaths from dam collapses. Your economic argument does no account for nuclear waste disposal, nor can it since there is no accepted method to dispose of the waste.

What makes you consider coal to be a renewable resource?

Re:False choice

[Anonymous Coward]

My, who's a cranky pants today?

Re:False choice

[Chandon Seldon]

Nuclear fuel *is* a limited resource. If we aren't totally inept at engineering, the world's nuclear fuel resources will run out in not significantly more than 20,000 years. Wait... that's longer than recorded history - I guess we don't really have a problem there.

Re:False choice

[Chandon Seldon]

Not setting up nuclear reactors for some sort of useful fuel cycle is stupid. The old, crappy reactors in production in the USA today will run us out of easily accessible fissile uranium really quick - something like 50 or 100 years.

On the other hand, even with a proper fuel cycle nuclear fuel isn't an unlimited resource. Our uranium will only last about 7,000 years, and we only have about four times that much Thorium. But, now that I think about it, I'm willing to bet that we can get fusion power working in the next 35,000 years.

Re:False choice

[Chandon Seldon]

Hydroelectric power is a reasonably good deal. The dams screw up river ecosystems, but the couple species of fish we lose is probably a small price to pay for the cheap electricity. The problem is, there are only so many usable rivers. We're using almost every easily dammed river in the USA for hydroelectric power today, and it's only supplying 10% of our power needs. Further, our power needs are going up and our hydropower resources aren't, so that 10% will go down as our energy usage increases.

The question to ask is this: Where is the other 90% of our power coming from? It breaks down like this: 55% Coal, 22% Nuclear, 10% Natural Gas, 3% Other. Note that "Other" isn't windmills and solar power, it's mostly burning Petrol and Old Tires.

In the United States, we're not building any new Nuclear plants because of the environmentalist asshole protesters in the 1970's. They stopped new plants opening, and have killed a ton of valuable nuclear research since. Even not building any new plants for 30 years, we still have about 1/4th of the power in the USA coming from old poorly designed nuclear plants.

The rest of our power basically comes from Coal. We need new capacity, that'll be coal too. It'd be better if it were nice clean modern nuclear plants, but the hippies want their power from windmills and unicorns - those plans turn out to be economically absurd, so we get more coal plants instead.

Here's the long version of my rant, if you're interested http://www.cs.uml.edu/~ntuck/nuclear/index.html

Re:False choice

[mdsolar]

Actually, to even get this kind of stretch you need to rely on methods which are not legal in the US. At the present rate of consumption and price for fuel we've probably got enough for a hundred years, less than what is available for the present rate of consumption of coal. Uranium is a smaller fraction of the cost for power production than coal, so it is OK to boost the cost on mining a bit and get at some less desirable ores. Suppose this gives us 300 years at the present consumption level. Then nuclear energy can replace fossil fuel use for 30 years. So, its not really worth building the reactors I think.
--
Go fusion! http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

Re:False choice

[mdsolar]

You should have another look at the economics of renewables. Wind is already cheaper tha fossil fuels in Texas and, to toot my own horn, you can rent solar power for what you pay now to your utility. I think also that you are mistaken about the contribution of people to stopping nuclear power. I feel they (we) did not go far enough. You can see why here http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/knowing-warmin g.html seventh paragraph.
--
Power your home with solar: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

Re:False choice

[Chandon Seldon]

Actually, to even get this kind of stretch you need to rely on methods which are not legal in the US.

I think I covered that with my "If we aren't totally inept at engineering" qualifier. Yes, the USA currently has some *really stupid* laws on the books that make effective nuclear power illegal. No, I don't support building more crappy meltdown-prone fuel-cycle-less reactors.

Clearly we have to change the law and start using the resources we have available to build clean, safe, and modern nuclear reactors.

Re:False choice

[mdsolar]

My feeling is that that would be a poor choice on how to invest resources. The law seems reasonable to me just based on thinking about proliferation issues.

Re:False choice

[Chandon Seldon]

You should take another look at the actual properties of a modern nuclear plant with a decent fuel cycle. What you call "waste" in your blog post can be more accurately called "stored nuclear fuel" - reprocessing lets you use the fuel a bunch more times and in the end you end up with the real nuclear waste - leave it sit for 50 or 100 years and it's as safe as any other industrial byproduct. Sure, 100 years is a long time - but there's no need for Yucca Mountain foolishness.

For a better understanding of the damage that the anti-Nuke movement has done, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_Fast_Reactor . We had a working modern reactor that did on-site fuel reprocessing. This design fixed every significant issue with fission power reactors. It got quietly decommissioned in 1994 due to "lack of public support for nuclear power".

Today there are known designs that are even better than the IFR, but *we had one built that worked*. If that had gone into commercial production then, we'd have modern nuclear reactors coming online today. Now - it's not that we aren't building new power plants constantly, they just aren't modern nuclear plants. We get dirty coal plants wit h environmental waivers instead. Good job, "environmentalists".

Re:False choice

[Chandon Seldon]

It's reasonable that we know how to generate cheap, clean, safe power for tens of thousands of years, and we have a law against using the technique? Even when we're using power at an accelerating rate and our only other viable power generation technique (coal) will only work for a couple hundred years at the cost of probable environmental devastation?

Proliferation is an interesting question, absolutely worth considering. It turns out that a lot of work has been put in to it, and modern reactor designs with proper fuel cycles are more proliferation resistant than the reactors we have in production today. In the context of implementing modern fission plant designs, proliferation is mostly mentioned as a FUD tactic.

Re:False choice

[mdsolar]

Sodium cooled reactors, while thought to have some inherent safety advantages, have a poor history of safe operation. One in four has experienced meltdown.

Nuclear waste remains waste if it can't be used safely. Breeder programs inspire little confidence on that front. As we see today, the nuclear industy's credebility is at an even lower ebb as it participates in cover ups at regular reactors which it is at pains to paint as safe to operate. It is hard to see why the industry should be cut any slack at all. Ending the production of nuclear waste should be a priority.

Re:False choice

[mdsolar]

Since renewables can provide all the power we use and more at lower cost than a pie in the sky breeder program, why even consider it? Renewables don't run out. They don't make waste; they're cradle-to-cradle in a very fundemental way. So, why waste the time? Why waste the money? Why endanger people's lives?

Re:False choice

[Chandon Seldon]

Since renewables can provide all the power we use and more at lower cost than a pie in the sky breeder program

Since breeders can provide all the power we use and more at lower cost than a pie in the sky renewables program...

I guess we'd need hard numbers on both sides to figure out who's blowing smoke where, but... the fact of the matter is that junky old nuclear power plants are providing 22% of the electricity used in the United States today and renewables (other than hydropower, which we've maxed out) don't even show up on the chart. If we don't build modern nuclear plants that can use all that "spent" fuel sitting around, what the hell else are we going to do with it? Dump it in a really expensive hole where it will stay dangerously radioactive for a hundred thousand years?

The reactor designs necessary to allow the use of a reasonable nuclear fuel cycle exist. All I want to see is for it to be legally easier to install a new modern nuclear reactor than it is to install yet another coal plant. Because, let's face it, in the time we've spent arguing another coal plant got built.

But... I've already written this rant. Check out http://www.cs.uml.edu/~ntuck/nuclear/

Re:False choice

[Chandon Seldon]

The nuclear power industry in the USA isn't the greatest, sure. But it's actually pretty amazing that outdated junkers they're running haven't had a really major failure yet. Those plants are 40 years old, and they have no innate design protection against meltdown.

The point is, there have been 25 or 30 years worth of design improvements since those plants were built. We'd have gotten the full 40 years worth of development, but some damn protesters got the USA out of the game 15 years ago. Sure, there have been experimental failures getting to where we are today - but now we have reasonably good designs that support a useful fuel cycle and don't melt into a puddle when the control computer breaks.

We can't "end the production of nuclear waste". These old, junky PWRs are providing 22% of the power in the United States. Power consumption is going up, and we're building new coal plants to compensate. The *only* sane course of action (short of spending two years seeing if Robert Bussard is right) is to put some of our existing Fast Reactor designs into production and start burning that waste for power.

Re:False choice

[mdsolar]

Well, if you are curious, here is a link about how renewables fit on the chart in Germany: http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid /40568/story.htm. Yes that is 11.8% of the electric power supply. Renewables are cheaper and better. You just have to do them at scale, and doing them at scale is much easier than for nuclear power.

You may also be interested in this link: http://www.resourceinvestor.com/pebble.asp?relid=2 7013. Again, it is hard to see getting a new nuclear reactor even approved in a decade, but renewables are set to surpase nuclear power in about 18 years.

This is also where the smart money is: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/14/technology/14val ley.html.

So, while there are some who have not thought this through very well, who look to nuclear power as an answer to global warming, there is little likelihood that nuclear power can contribute anything of significance to that effort and would really only waste time and money. Look to France for good math, good wine and good friends, but watch Germany for engineering trends. Wait, germans make good friends too though it is spooky how many hits I get from there on my blog. Hey, good physics, good beer, you know the stuff.... You're just wrong about ULIRGs....

Re:False choice

[mdsolar]

I suppose it depends on what you mean by a major failure. There have been three meltdowns that we know of at civilian reactors in the US.

Re:False choice

[Chandon Seldon]

One of the big problems with your argument is that "renewables" aren't really just one thing. If you look at them that way, you'd see "10% renewables" in the USA, which is strictly misleading. That's all hydropower. Your link about Germany mentions Wind and Hydropower.

There are places that are good for Wind. Great, we should use them. After that, you have "slightly worse" places, but the energy of wind varies the cube of the speed, so slightly slower wind means significantly less power - quickly falling to the point where its uneconomical. As for hydropower, there are only so many dammable rivers; in the USA, we've already dammed them all. And... we're still building more coal plants.

The point is, until I see a technology like photoelectric cells or ethanol-generating bacteria really take off, putting in modern nuclear plants really looks like the only thing that can actually slow down our carbon emissions. And new reactors are the only good answer to the nuclear waste issue.

Re:False choice

[Chandon Seldon]

When I say "major failure", I mean something worthy of media coverage even without the hysteria surrounding "radioactivity". You know, where the result of the accident was somewhat more drastic than "At least one of the engineers on-site at the time, Phil Harrigan, later died in his '50's of leukemia."

Even Three Mile Island, hyped as some sort of horrific disaster, caused so much damage that "statistically, someone will probably die of cancer" from it.

I bet more people die every year because they get hit by windmills than because of the US nuclear power industry.

Re:False choice

[ShakaUVM]

Actually, the cost per megawatt hour for nuclear power INCLUDES the disposal and decomissioning fees, unlike any other source of energy (which get to expense it separately).

Re:False choice

[mdsolar]

Humm... Three Mile Island gave many people a chance to think about the risks and decide they were too great. I suppose that might not count as major, but thankfully so. What some people just don't seem to understand is that near disasters are part of the coin flip. As they start to pile up, it is a reason to actually be alarmed about the level of safety at nuclear plants. Getting that close so often really does mean that you are at the point where it could be much much worse. Though we won't know much about the lessons to be learned from the covered up accident in Japan, we can look at the accident last year in Sweden which was close and the big accident in the Soviet Union and get a pretty good estimate of how often a big accident will happen. About once every forty years. If there have been more close ones, then it could be more like once every 30 years and we've just been lucky. When (not if) it happens in a very populated region, that will be the end of nuclear power. So, it just does not seem like a good long term investment.

Re:False choice

[mdsolar]

Actually the case of hydro is kind of interesting. I can't sell contracts for renting solar power much in the north west. The market is restricted else where because of the lack of net metering laws, but in the north west that is not the problem. There it is that power is too cheap for solar to compete yet. Solar can compete with nuclear power and coal power, but when it comes to hydro, it can't do it. That is because renewable energy is cheaper. You'll see news of at least a GW per year new solar fabrication capacity going in. (That's 10 GW of new solar in a decade). 500 MW will be in Oregon http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/stor y?id=47621 where power is cheap and I can't say yet where the other half will go. But, that's renewable power making renewable power. You only need to do that about 19 more times to cover our electric power use. That is much less investment than new nuclear power requires, and, as you can see, it is politically easy to do.

So, if you really want those new nukes, better hurry.

Re:False choice

[Chandon Seldon]

Chernobyl was an important lesson about fission plant design and safety. Since then, we've designed power plants that simply don't fail like that. Seriously - something like the IFR doesn't even damage itself (much less melt down) when you do ridiculous stuff like physically disconnecting the cooling system with the thing running.

Any industrial process is dangerous. Many of them involve dealing with highly toxic materials. With nuclear power, it's reasonable to accept the fact that if you eat the fuel rods or something you're going to die of radiation poisoning. But, as a power generation technology, modern nuclear fission is damn safe - at this point, far safer than it really needs to be because engineers have worked overtime trying to combat irrational hysteria with safety improvements.

Re:False choice

[mdsolar]

Yes, but are those fees reasonable? With Yucca Mountain on the table, maybe. But it is not on the table. All bets are off.

On the other hand, other power generators carry their own insurance so it is not as though nuclear power is not subsidized quite heavily. You make a good point though. Externalized costs need to be looked at more carefully. A case could be made for making the atmosphere a superfund site. We could include the cost of removing CO2 in the cost of fossil fuel power generation. Similarly, we might cost out nuclear waste in terms of what it would cost to transmute it to stable species. That, together with full liability for accidents, ought to give us a good picture of what the "power" sources cost to use. Might also want to include some of the defense budget in the cost of oil.

Wait, I'm ready to run for office;-) A 30% tax cut for everyone! It's your money! You decide how to spend it!

Re:False choice

[Chandon Seldon]

Hey, if you're right and we can really make and install enough solar panels to put a dent in our coal usage, that'd be really nice. In that case, we'd still want to build some modern nuclear plants so that we can burn the "spent fuel" from all the PWRs, but there's really no hurry - that stuff's not going anywhere.

I'm still not convinced that the solar's coming fast enough though - I'm mostly seeing all the new coal plants that are getting built.

Re:False choice

[Anonymous Coward]

The real choice is between depletable resources and renewable resources. In terms of safety, reliability, prudence and, now, price the renewable resources win.

Weather-dependent energy technologies (e.g. sun and wind) are, by virtue of their weather-dependence, at the very bottom in terms of reliability. You'd be hard put to name one weather-independent renewable energy technology that beats nuclear in either one of safety and price.

Re:False choice

[mdsolar]

One hopes it is not going anywhere. Storage in place is not really any kind of solution for nuclear waste but it is better than moving it around pointlessly here and there. Since I'm not persuaded that the breeder cycle is a good idea at all, I don't see it as a solution to the waste problem. But I think I'm with you that trasmutation is where we have to go. I just hope that it does not cost us too much energy. That would be a huge burden to have imposed as we come to see the issues involved in global warming. For the present, I consider all nuclear power as something that has to be repaid, at least in part, and perhaps with hefty interest because we must unmake the waste.

Some planned coal plants are being taken out of planning. This is probably a smart move. I can see a transitional role for coal where existing plants are fitted to produce biofuels to service out existing transportation fleet, but I think that role will diminish except perhaps for long haul trucking. It is so much cheaper to run your car on electricity from solar that as soon as the plug-in hybrids have even 40 miles of electric only range they'll take off. I'd give maybe 18 years before most personal transportation in based on wind or solar. To me, anyone proposing a new (not a replacement) coal plant is basically just soaking investors.

Re:False choice

[Chandon Seldon]

Since I'm not persuaded that the breeder cycle is a good idea at all, I don't see it as a solution to the waste problem.

I suggest you actually look into nuclear fuel cycles in a bit more detail. When you actually look at the nuclear chemistry of the processes, it's pretty obvious that you put in nuclear fuel (including "spent fuel") and you get out energy and low level waste. The two most mentioned issues, cost and proliferation, are both seriously overhyped - it's not like you can make a nuclear bomb out of Plutonium 240 mixed with random Actinides.

Re:False choice

[mdsolar]

Somehow we ended up in two threads and I didn't reply here.

I guess I would not characterize insisting on better safety as hysterical. As we can see, may people have died owing to nuclear power. I'm not so sure that the specific leasons from Chernobyl have really been learned though. The one I see is that plant operators are going to think what they are doing is safe even when it isn't. This is the nature of operator error. In the present cover up, it sounds like even recognizing operator error after it has happened is not so easy to do.

This is why you find people involved in the nuclear power industry to be so defensive. People, naturally, don't trust their competence all that much and insist on regulation. Operators feel insulted and then push the envelope, further eroding any confidence in their competence.

To me, getting around this problem is very very difficult because it is deeply rooted in human nature. We need calm, competent operators to maintain safety but we need to second guess them as well because no one is perfect and this creates disgruntled operators who are not so calm. With nuclear power, we are in a situation where making it foolproof is not adequate, we have to make it smartproof too since smart people make more complex mistakes that have broader consequences because they've gained greater responsibility.

It seems to me that safe, reliable power generation will benefit greatly from distributed renewable generation. The smartproof requirements are much lower and, because the base systems are much less complex, the foolproof aspects are much easier to handle. There are still problems that need to be addressed such as what sort of emergent behavior might show up in a smart energy grid, but these problems seem much more tractable than, say, nuclear sabotage which arises from the vunerability to single point human failure.

On thing that is helpful here is to seek wisdom. There are two sides to the seventh generation priciple that began to regain currency in the 2000 election. The first side is that we should use foresight to consider the interests of the seventh generation and not do things which harm those interests. The other side is the recognition that foresight is limited. You might be able to guess what the interests of the seventh generation might be, but those of the 70th generation are a little hard to discern. Given that, leaving boobytraps in the form of nuclear waste, for the 70th generations is pretty irresponsible. But, we can look towards to seventh generation and see that creating a realiable, safe and sustainable power generation system now based on renewable energy would serve their interests rather well.

So, the main lesson of Chernobyl may ultimately be to keep it simple and sustainable as a basis for best practices in power generation. In the interim, it highlights the problems with lessons learned systems in the context of highly complex, regulated systems. On the small government conservative side, the basic thing to see is that small goverment requires limiting the amount of activity that needs regulation. Granting licenses to operate very big complex endevors implies a willingness to provide a complex and costly regulatory system. It will be interesting to see how this sinks in among those who look to Jefferson and Madison's opposition to Hamilton's risky schemes for understanding and wisdom.

Re:False choice

[Chandon Seldon]

Hysteria is absolutely the right word to describe at least some of the public demand for more safety in nuclear plants. Activists have been complaining about the dangers of nuclear power for 40+ years, and engineers have been responding by making new designs more foolproof. The thing is - the Activists either don't know about or discount those improvements (possibly because the actual plants in production are old junk and don't have many of the well-known design improvements) and continue to complain about safety issues that largely don't exist in modern designs.

The assumption that anti-nuclear activists seem to make is that nuclear accidents look *worse* than Chernobyl, that *any* nuclear plant is susceptible to drastic meltdown resulting in a containment breach and spreading high level radioactive waste around in a giant area. You seem to assume that all Nuclear Plant designs are the same, as when you dismissed my reference to the IFR (An early 1990's sodium-cooled fast reactor prototype with passive safety properties) with a reference to a 1959 meltdown at a reactor that happened to also be sodium-cooled. Are you really unwilling to consider the possibility that between 1959 and 1990 that nuclear engineers might have come up with better designs that avoid well-known problems?

Re:False choice

[mdsolar]

The distrust that people have for nuclear power is well founded. The early promises from the industry have never materialized. This goes for cost as well as safety. I don't really think we should think of Chernobyl as a large accident because yes, meltdown is a risk for any reactor and the close proximity of many nuclear plants to regions with high population density make a Chernobyl sized event potentially much more deadly. Perhaps you don't understand the energies involved. Containment is for moderate screw ups, it cannot be engineered to handle a full scale meltdown.

In the area of design improvements, it is pretty clear that these are needed and that the relic plants should be shut down. But, sodium has a pretty obvious failure mode that makes it pretty unsuitable as a primary coolant. This is quite different from the idea of using lithium as a coolant for fusion because failure in this case does not lead to meltdown. Fission really does depend on controlling geometry and failure to do so leads to disasterous results. Violently oxidizing coolant (or cladding) is very unlikely to allow for that measure of control.

Re:False choice

[Chandon Seldon]

It looks quite a bit like the entire problem of cost is a side effect of hysteria over safety. If anyone were ever allowed to just take a good reactor design and build it rather than squabbling for years over the politics of nuclear safety, I'm sure the costs would be much more reasonable.

meltdown is a risk for any reactor
Perhaps you don't understand the energies involved.

You apparently don't appreciate the chemistry and engineering involved. How these reactions work is pretty well understood, and this specific problem has been worked on for 40 years now. In most of the modern reactor designs, you couldn't get them to melt down if the engineers on site tried to make it happen. The fuel mixes and/or chamber geometry simply won't sustain a runaway reaction.

As for sodium as a coolant, they were running the IFR for years - including a test where they had the thing running at full bore and just went and disconnected the sodium cooling system. Even if someone dumped a bunch of water in the cooling system, it's not like a sodium fire produces anywhere near enough neutrons to sustain a sub-critical fission reaction.

Re:False choice

[mdsolar]

Sodium fires don't produce any neutrons. Neither is meltdown a runaway reaction the way a bomb is. It is basically normal operation in the absence of coolant. The fuel cannot sustain the heat, melts, flows together and continues to react as is pools generating more heat. The mess stops if the heating produces sufficent kinetic energy to end the reaction. If enough heat has been produced, containment won't hold and things will be very bad. Kinetic energy can be provided by, for example, the vaporization of nearby material.

The issue with sodium as a coolant is that is can oxidize very rapidly if there is an oxygen leak, leaving no coolant while at the same time producing quite a bit of kinetic energy of its own, leaving little confidence that specially arranged reactor geometries could be preserved.

Re:False choice

[Chandon Seldon]

Sodium fires don't produce any neutrons.

That was my point. I'm pretty sure they'd have to to cause a meltdown in an Sodium-cooled fast reactor.

It is basically normal operation in the absence of coolant. The fuel cannot sustain the heat, melts, flows together and continues to react as is pools generating more heat.

If reactors like the IFR couldn't handle operation in the absence of coolant, there would have been a meltdown when they did a test and disconnected the entire cooling system when the reactor was running in the early 90's. What happens with that design is that when the fuel gets hotter than normal operating temperature, it expands. This decreases the number of neutrons emitted by volume below the level required to sustain a reaction, causing the reaction to stop.

The issue with sodium as a coolant is that is can oxidize very rapidly if there is an oxygen leak, leaving no coolant while at the same time producing quite a bit of kinetic energy of its own, leaving little confidence that specially arranged reactor geometries could be preserved.

Given that the reactor design will safely shut down in the absence of coolant, this is a simple question of math: If the sodium explodes as the result of any possible scenario, can it do enough damage to the reactor to interfere with safe shutdown? Sodium isn't C4. The coolant pipes aren't that thick. The claim that the Sodium wouldn't be able to damage the core enough to significantly change the material properties of the fuel mixture seems entirely reasonable.

It would be nice if gas-cooled or helium-cooled fast reactor designs were a bit more advanced. That would significantly reduce the amount of "OMG sodium blows up if it gets wet" clouding the issues related to nuclear power. Heck, it would be nice if we knew the Polywell worked - that would solve our power / nuclear waste problems. None of this wishful thinking changes the fact that we have a fully functional power plant design, Sodium-cooled Fast Reactors, available today that looks to be strictly better than any other large scale centralized power generation technology.

Re:False choice

[mdsolar]

The shut down was for the secondary coolant, not the primary.

Interestingly, folks at SPAWARS have recently developed a method to preload deuterium into pladium which might make the screen in the old style fusor more useful than in the past. They seem to be getting high energy particle tracks without so much effort though. http://newenergytimes.com/news/2007/NET21.htm#apsr eport.

I think we might be able to agree about the desirability of distributed power generation. Substituting such sources into the distribution network that solar power creates should be a fairly straight forward market development.

Re:False choice

[Chandon Seldon]

The shut down was for the secondary coolant, not the primary.

Reference? This PBS interview isn't 100% clear, but it strongly implies that coolant was completely shut off to the plant: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reac tion/interviews/till.html.

I think we might be able to agree about the desirability of distributed power generation.

Distributed power generation is definitely preferable, simply from a political perspective - decentralizing money makes lobbying less annoying. Unfortunately, I'm still not convinced that the technology really exists to compete economically with just letting the electric meter spin forwards.

Here's what you're forgetting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Global_energy_u se_from_1980_to_2004.jpg. Nuclear fission could provide every watt of the power on that graph and more, but instead we're talking about solar and building more coal plants.

Re:False choice

[mdsolar]

Actually, solar is set to take a big bite out of coal because it can compete on price. In the US, oil is used less for power generation but the price competition is even more obvious. Because the cost shifting on the nuclear power front is so entrenched, particularly with inadequate insurance and no costing of waste disposal, nuclear power appears to be competitive with coal and oil as well, but this is not the case. On the other hand, while solar will reduce coal use, in terms of facilities it will likely shut down nuclear plants first. The reason is that in a distributed renewable grid, base loads become ill-defined. The emphasis has to be on flexibility and low cost energy storage while nuclear power is really only good at constant power output. You can read more about this here: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/why-renewables -displace-nukes-first.html.

I take your point on lobbying, but to me the most important aspect is reliability. Had every fourth house been solar powered after Rita and Katina, our response might have been much more effective and less dependent on federal coordination because food and medicine could have been preserved and water pumped. It is that base level reliability that makes decentralized power generation so attractive.

Re:False choice

[Chandon Seldon]

You seem to be assuming some sort of radical new electricity storage technology that takes away the whole issue of "base load". Storing electricity is hard, to the point that some energy companies are resorting to shit like flywheels. Maybe ultracapacitors will come down in price or something, but that's a technology that today is where photovoltaics were in 1975. Until some sort of really cheap and efficient electricity storage technique exists, the "constant power output" property of nuclear power plants will remain an advantageous feature.

It'd be really nice if solar took a bite out of coal, but I think you're overestimating the adoption rate. Currently the entire install base of photovoltaics in the United States produces less power the new Coal plants coming online in 2007. Even if photovoltaics experience exponential growth until Coal is gone, we'll still be putting in new Coal plants for more than a decade. That's the problem I see, and the problem that everyone advocating renewables over nuclear seems to ignore - the growth rate of actual solar/wind/tidal power installations is far, far behind the growth rate of energy usage. The difference is, and will continue to be, new coal and natural gas plants - simply because modern nuclear plants are illegal.

Re:False choice

[mdsolar]

I agree that energy storage is a key issue, though it is not impossible to follow Bucky Fuller's vision and simply extend the grid so that the Sun is always shining on it and the wind is always blowing over it.

You might be interested in some of the slides linked here which show that if we follow California in efficiency there is really no need for more coal plants http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/02/trimming.html. My state is looking at some of those programs now. If this happens, then it is just a matter of making the coal plants produce less and less. Once they are down to nothing from time to time, the nuclear plants will be decommissioned.

Re:False choice

[Chandon Seldon]

First you say that people are going to put in new photoelectric arrays that get them power cheaper than off-grid. Then you say that people are going to use their power more efficiently. People buy SUVs and need to have their arm twisted to use obviously-superior compact fluorescent bulbs - there's no way in hell they're going to use energy more efficiently as it gets cheaper. Cost down, demand up - that's basic economics.

Electricity is naturally something that people will keep wanting to use more of. Currently, that is resulting in 25 gigawatts/year of new generating capacity being installed. That rate of increase is at least holding steady, but demand is probably accelerating.

You seem convinced that photovoltaics are going to overtake all existing centralized power generating technologies, and that we just have to wait for it to happen. How long will that take? Can we afford to dump that much more carbon into the atmosphere?

I can imagine no scenario that would make uptake fast enough to have a significant impact on global warming. Today the entire world only has 4 gigawatts of photovoltaic generation capacity. I'm sure that the industry can't produce that much capacity in a year, but let's say they can. And let's say their production capacity doubles insanely fast - every five years. And let's say all those new panels get sold in the USA. That means that in 2017 photovoltaic installations will be producing more new power than fossil fuels. In 2023 we can stop building new coal plants in the United States and start shutting down coal plants. Almost sounds good... but it's not until 2123 that we can close the last Coal plant... in the USA... while people in China are starting to notice that it really hurts when you go outside in the hard acid rain.

extend the grid so that the Sun is always shining on it

That's... not going to work. Unless you have superconducting long distance transmission lines. Which are free. And you don't. Storage might be a solvable problem - high temperature low price superconductors isn't something we'll see this century, at least not *that* low price.

Re:False choice

[Chandon Seldon]

Apparently I'm bad at math. 2123 is blatantly wrong. I what I meant to say was 2043. That'd be really good, but there's no way photovoltaics would grow that fast.

Re:False choice

[mdsolar]

As you'll see in the link to the meeting, California has already done what you ask.

On a time scale choice, how about the Moore's Law scale since it is silicon after all. Remember also that a fabrication plant produces more capacity every year so this year's built GW of capacity means 25 GW over 25 years after which is has to change over to recyling what it previously produced, though at lower cost.

There is an organization that is working of Fuller's vision called GENI. Here is a quote from this link http://www.geni.org/globalenergy/library/geni/simu lation/the-GENI-model.shtml#6

Current research from CIGRE,(7) (International Conference on Large High Voltage Electric Systems), indicates that long-distance transmission can be made reliable and economically successful up to 7000 kilometers with HVDC, (High-Voltage Direct Current), and 4000 kilometers with HVAC, (High-Voltage Alternating Current). This permits inter-regional and even intercontinental power delivery from remote sites where large renewable energy sources are found.

Granted, they are thinking of large remote hydro and pulling together resources from a dispersed grid for long distance transmission might be a problem. I'm not so sure though that if we consider an intercontinental interconnect carrying enough power to cover night time use that we really want to use the same thinking about depreciation as we would for a 200 mile run of transmission. One might want to build it to last a few hundred years, in which case thicker conductors might be justified allowing much lower losses. We seem to be willing to build intercontinental oil and gas pipelines that will only last 30 years before the fields are exhausted. That is quite a bit of material to put out for such a short return. However, energy storage is likely going to be important and I'm not sure what the balance will be. You'd want a large over capacity before you start sending power to your benighted neighbors on the other side of the world.

Some of the biggest solar fabrication plants are going in in China http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/11/chinas_ric hest.php

Re:False choice

[Chandon Seldon]

On a time scale choice, how about the Moore's Law scale since it is silicon after all.

How about... no. Moores law is completely unrelated... it is about cramming more transistors onto the same area of silicon by reducing the size of each transistor. You can't make solar cells smaller without a corresponding efficiency increase, and that's damn hard. We're talking about production capacity here, and even production capacity *for* production capacity. Doubling every five years is about the speed at which the semiconductor industry grew in the 1970s through the 1990s - I seriously doubt that photovoltaics can match that, much less beat it.

As you'll see in the link to the meeting, California has already done what you ask.

http://www.energy.ca.gov/electricity/consumption_b y_sector.html

Through extensive regulation, California has managed to... slow down the increase in power consumption somewhat. If you look at the table, there are a couple years where they mananged a temporary decrease, but the dominant trend continues to be a steady increase in power consumption. Even with ridiculous energy prices and occasional rolling blackouts, they still use more power. California is definitely not evidence that power consumption will decrease in the face of a lowered price.

Re:False choice

[mdsolar]

Sorry that was a joke. 18 months is what it takes to get a plant up to full production so if you are intent on rapid growths you can start you next plant at the time the revenue from the first plant is coming in full. It is a coincidence that this looks like the Moore's Law doubling time (or is it?). If you've demonstrated your market, there is no big problem building two new plants after the first plant, but you want to watch that you're not spreading the expertize too thin.

I don't think that black outs were a reason for reduced consumption in California for the most part. I don't think I've heard of that kind of thing since Enron went down. I looked quickly at this link http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06000.html and confirmed that per capita energy consumption went down between 2000 and 2005 using the last column of your link which matches what I remember from the meeting at the Dirksen Senate office building. So, that's not bad work. They are also increasing milage standards for cars. Guess California's population is going up faster than the rest of the country because they're making it a nicer place to live. When everyone else catches up perhaps there will be some flowback. They are also installing quite a lot of renerwable generation so I doubt we'll see much in the way of new coal there.

Re:False choice

[Chandon Seldon]

It being physically possible to build plants that fast doesn't make it economically likely. In california, per-capita energy consumption does not equate to gross energy consumption.

I don't think it's reasonable to bet the stable climate of the entire planet on an exponential uptake of photovoltaics combined with an unprecedented level of individual power conservation. Consumer adoption simply doesn't scale up that fast for *any* product, and conservation remains the fool's hope it was in the 1970's.

If we want to stop dumping billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year, we need to burn less coal. Actually burn less coal. Not hope that we might burn less coal in the future, not have discussions about the safety of nuclear power while more coal plants get built... actually stop burning so much of it.

Re:False choice

[mdsolar]

Our position is to reduce carbon emissions by 80% by 2016 http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/state-of-earth -report.html which seems to us to be prudent. There is certainly sufficient borrowing capacity to achieve this goal though it would take us up to the level of indeptedness experienced just after the second world war. It is worth noting in this thread that a pay out under the Price-Anderson Act for even a moderate scale disaster similar to Cherobyl at, say, the troubled Indian Point reactor could eat up most of this remaining borrowing capacity and we would have to go with more expensive secured credit. Others look for a similar level of emissions reduction by 2030 or 2050. However, we did not win any congressional seats in the last election, though you might be interested in our spending to votes ratio in my district: http://www.opensecrets.org/races/summary.asp?ID=MD 05&Cycle=2006 and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steny_Hoyer#Election_ history.

The example of California does show that conservations efforts can work but achieving an 80% reduction in emissions will, I think, require converting to renewables. Relying on price competition alone may not be fast enough but it does show that the transition could boost our living standard which is a step that will help to be persuasive towards adopting our position as national policy.

Re:False choice

[Chandon Seldon]

Our position is to reduce carbon emissions by 80% by 2016

That's the sort of reduction that would be necessary to have a significant impact on global warming. I'm pretty sure it's strictly impossible. Not "impossible with photovoltaics" or "impossible with renewables" but "strictly impossible".

To begin with, there are two many carbon sources. There are no good replacements for cars and there are no good replacements for some of the industrial processes that emit carbon. Even for the one area where there are good replacements - electricity generation - you aren't willing to accept the only technology that might be possible to put into production that quickly.

In order to actually accomplish that carbon reduction goal that quickly, you'd have to send in the jackbooted thugs and force people to shut down their industrial operations at gunpoint. That would cause much more damage to the economy than even the most extreme estimates of global warming (i.e. the sea level rises 2 meters in 50 years).

a pay out under the Price-Anderson Act for even a moderate scale disaster similar to Chernobyl at, say, the troubled Indian Point reactor

The nuclear reactors in production in the United States are really crappy, but they're not going to have an accident like Chernobyl. An accident like Chernobyl required an innately dangerous plant design, incompetent operators, and a really stupid experiment.
- Unlike Chernobyl, reactors in the US have containment buildings to keep really bad accidents confined to the plant rather than spreading as radioactive plumes over miles.
- Unlike Chernobyl, reactors in the US don't have positive void coefficients. When they heat up that doesn't cause the reaction to speed up.
- Unlike Chernobyl, reactors in the US have control rods that actually slow the reaction down - the Chernobyl control rods actually *speed up* the reaction momentarily when they are activated. (the operators didn't know this when they caused the disaster)

I'm not going to say we can't possibly have another accident like Three Mile Island. I'm not even going to say we can't have an accident where people actually die. But... worrying about fallout and off-site radiation deaths from nuclear power accidents is a waste of time. A rogue meteor impact is much more likely.

Re:False choice

[mdsolar]

Well, the scaling up for WWII took less than ten years so I'm not sure where the impossible part comes in. Renewables are being put into use now so they seem to have a bit of a head start on even planning for new nuclear plants which have to go through public review and legal challanges.

I've noticed that in all your statements about nuclear safety, you are assuming that the primary coolant is present and working. Especially for Indian Point, it is not at all clear that the coolant would always be present. Containment does not always work for meltdowns, that is not what it is designed for. It is a bit like the New Orleans levy system: built to withstand some but not all problems.

Re:False choice

[Chandon Seldon]

Well, the scaling up for WWII took less than ten years so I'm not sure where the impossible part comes in.

Ramping up production for an obvious war is much easier than, say, making cars or fertilizer illegal would be. Global warming simply isn't as clear and present a danger as "most of Europe has been conquered" was. It's important, but the USA isn't going to give up cars and suburbia over it.

Renewables are being put into use now so they seem to have a bit of a head start on even planning for new nuclear plants which have to go through public review and legal challenges.

Have a sense of scale and be realistic. There is no politically feasible government policy that would allow production of windmills and photocells to ramp up fast enough to supply the majority of the power in the United States by 2016. Further, based on my local politics, it looks like every windmill has to go through years of public review and legal challenges.

Short of a drastic, politically-impossible democracy-straining government intervention it looks to be economically possible to implement policies that will reduce (not eliminate) the damage that will be caused by global warming. Policies like progressively decreasing carbon caps are what is going to work, if we manage to do anything at all. Those policies just need to go into place soon enough that we stop building more coal plants. If such policies do get put into place and stay in place, they will eventually reduce carbon emissions to acceptable levels. If we don't give the big power companies a good alternative to coal plants by legalizing modern nuclear reactors, they'll spend all their money lobbying against the carbon caps and getting exemptions instead. I'd rather have the nukes than the coal plant carbon exemptions.

I've noticed that in all your statements about nuclear safety, you are assuming that the primary coolant is present and working. Especially for Indian Point, it is not at all clear that the coolant would always be present.

For modern designs, all my references indicate that they fail gracefully in the face of complete coolant loss. I gave one reference earlier for the IFR and asked for a contradicting reference.

For obsolete PWRs in production, you're right that they are vulnerable to meltdown in the event of coolant loss. The coolant won't just vanish - in the event of a leak or something there will be time to react. There are multiple redundant monitoring systems, and there are people on site who are tasked with hitting the SCRAM button if there is a coolant alarm and the primary automatic safety systems fail. A severe, containment-breaching meltdown isn't impossible - but it would probably require multiple plant personnel intentionally conspiring to sabotage the plant.

Re:False choice

[mdsolar]

Hmmm.... Have a second look at this link and see if you read it the same way that I do: 1) The design is good even if primary cooling circulation is stopped: loss of flow without SCRAM. The design is good even if the secondary cooling is shut down: loss of heat sink without SCRAM.

All bets are off (literally: Price-Anderson) if the primary coolant oxidizes rapidly imparting large amounts of kinetic energy to to structure of the reactor. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_Fast_Reactor #Safety.

You might be reading it another way.

Some of us feel global warming is a danger to the ecosystems that sustain us. We are trying to persuade more people to this view. Did you like our Earth Day Report? I mean other than what we propose to do about it? I think our program is politically challanging (very) but we'd have it go from the grass roots rather than imposed. Stepitup2007.org now has over 1000 events planned. They are a little less urgent on timing because, I think, they are looking at direct human impacts rather that ecosystem impacts first. We're trying to look at ways that 11 billion people can live in comfort so we're interested in protecting ecosystem diversity to preserve its resilience. The present rapid climate change is going too fast for evolution to provide species-by-species adaptation in a number of cases.

Re:False choice

[Chandon Seldon]

Hmmm.... Have a second look at this link and see if you read it the same way that I do:

I read that as "the nuclear reaction is safe, but the sodium coolant itself could be dangerous" - i.e. that the worry is a big sodium fire rather than some sort of nuclear accident. The idea that the sodium is going to explode and somehow change the material properties of the fuel enough to change its passive safety is something that you seem to have come up with. I can't really visualize how it would explode inside the reactor core internal shielding unless someone went in there with a drill and a bunch of water to rapidly inject into the coolant pipes, and I can't really visualize how a sodium explosion would alter the reactivity of the nuclear fuel even if it was right next to it.

Some of us feel global warming is a danger to the ecosystems that sustain us.

Personally, I think that the ecological systems are much more resilient to the loss of a few specific species than that. I see global warming as more of a "tens of millions of lives lost to famine as traditional farming methods stop working when the climate changes" and "millions of lives lost to flooding as weather patterns get more erratic" sort of problem.

But... if you really believe that I don't see how you can possibly be against putting in modern nuclear power plants to reduce coal demand. Even if you did get a Chernobyl style accident every 20 years or whatever, that's nothing compared to the problems we'd have if we lost a bunch of food sources to ecological damage.

Re:False choice

[mdsolar]

In a reactor, it is all about geometry, and violent explosions tend to rearrange geometry. My thinking is that a crack that allows air into contact with the primary coolant will only get larger because heat and gas pressure from the combustion will erode it. This allows a greater supply of air and more rapid combustion to the point where the coolant is rapidly and violently exhausted. If the result of this is to leave fuel in close proximity to itself, then the nuclear reaction will continue until its own energy separates the fuel.

The argument that nuclear accidents are an acceptable cost because of the limited area which is made uninhabitable has some merit though I doubt that any nuclear power would continue in the US if there were an accident like that here. But, so long as we continue with nuclear power, it is a matter of time before such and an accident happens. As you read the list of accidents you'll see some that were very close calls. This portion of the list will continue to be populated as time goes on and eventually a close call will cross over into disaster. The disaster side of this is not that well populated yet so it is less easy to make projections based on experience but I would suggest that the lack of containment may have limited the altitude to which material was released at Chernolyl since a containment breach it likely to be hotter and at a higher pressure when it happens. So, the scale of disaters may be larger than past experience suggests. But, A US accident a quarter of the size of Chernobyl would rule out nuclear power as an alternative to fossil fuels so to me we are really down the the question do we wait for the accident to shut down nuclear power or use a little foresight to save lives. With the industry covering up accidents, one is urged to increase efforts to shut it down sooner.

The rate of species loss is a concern. It matches that seen in great extinction events after which ecosystem recovery was slow. So, because we see the effects of warming now we are concerned to end it now rather than waiting a bit. The ecosystems need to be strengthened as much as possible to handle the expected demographics so we need to work rather hard on harmonizing human pressures on ecosystems with their productive capacity.

Re:False choice

[Chandon Seldon]

In a reactor, it is all about geometry, and violent explosions tend to rearrange geometry.

It takes a reasonably specific geometry to allow a nuclear reaction to occur. An arbitrary rearrangement in geometry is likely to serve to stop any ongoing reaction. Additionally, in a reactor like the IFR the passive safety property is not dependent solely on geometry - it is caused by the material properties of the fuel mixture. The fuel mixture is explicitly chosen to expand as it heats up beyond standard operating temperature, thus damping the reaction.

So, the scale of disasters may be larger than past experience suggests.

Based on... what? Irrational fear? For the accident at Chernobyl to occur, it took a string of really bad engineering and operation decisions. They turned the safety systems off with no competent engineer who understood the plant design present! Even that wouldn't have caused the accident if the plant had had reasonable safety properties, but the design had a tendency to melt down if you didn't follow proper procedure.

I see no reason to expect a large scale nuclear disaster in the foreseeable future. People are way too twitchy to let that happen, even in the plants that don't have passive safety properties.

With the industry covering up accidents, one is urged to increase efforts to shut it down sooner.

What, like that sodium coolant fire in Japan? The one that took one of the safest and most advanced nuclear plants in the world off line for 10 years over an accident that was expensive to fix but posed no nuclear-related threat? Knowing how anti-nuclear protesters will react to even the slightest sign of weakness, there's a good argument that a cover up attempt was the correct business decision.

Re:False choice

[mdsolar]

I'm not sure one can frame that as a good business decision, especially for investor owned facilities. A habit of hiding failure to comply with regulations is fraudulant. Now might be a good time to divest since it is hard to know how pervasive the cover up mentality is in the industry. Surely for institutional investors, nuclear power seems like it could be bit risky. Enron's skirting the law cost people a lot of money.

Twitchy folks make mistakes even more often than calm folks. Perhaps the twitchyness has something to do with the recent close calls?

As I said, containment structures can lead to greater dispersion when breached, which is why the scale of disaster could be larger.

Again, you are assuming that the primary coolant is present.

Re:False choice

[Chandon Seldon]

Now might be a good time to divest since it is hard to know how pervasive the cover up mentality is in the industry. Surely for institutional investors, nuclear power seems like it could be bit risky. Enron's skirting the law cost people a lot of money.

That's an excellent example of overgeneralizing to create FUD. Especially the big where you compare the entire international nuclear power industry to Enron. I could compare photovoltaics to AI (research in both started around the same time and we haven't seen any advances in either, investing there is a waste of your time), but that would also be stupid.

As I said, containment structures can lead to greater dispersion when breached, which is why the scale of disaster could be larger.

But... this requires an accident more severe than the one at Chernobyl. For reasons I've already stated, that seems unlikely.

Again, you are assuming that the primary coolant is present.

In regard to the the safety of PWR reactors in the US, yes - the safety model does assume that any loss in primary coolant will be noticed and responded to either by automated computer systems or by an operator hitting the SCRAM button. I agree that this isn't an entirely foolproof safety system, but it would take some pretty unlikely coincidences for it to not prevent a major meltdown.

Twitchy folks make mistakes even more often than calm folks. Perhaps the twitchyness has something to do with the recent close calls?

I am unaware of a single incident recently where a major nuclear accident was narrowly avoided, a "close call". If you have any specific references, please post links. For clarity, before 1980 isn't "recent", and "major" implies that someone (other than the plant operators) could have died.

Re:False choice

[mdsolar]

The comparison with Enron was simply that they were also breaking the law. That turns out to not be so good for business. Advancements in both PV and AI are making quite a lot of news, I think I've mentioned some. The risk to investors in current nuclear facilities is that they may be more prone to total loss than has been disclosed.

The amount of energy invloved could be just the same as Chernobyl but the spreading broader owing to the containment structure. You need to build up more pressure to lift the containment structure and this could lead to a higher altitude plume.

Over time, the unlikely coincidences become a certainty. This is what is useful about the list of accidents. We are able to estimate how often we'll see a big melt down by looking at how often we get close. The actual frequency is likely to be low balled if there have been a few unreported close calls as now seems more possible given the present cover up.

The accident in Sweden in 2006, for example, is thought to be a very close call.

Be careful children...

[CBob]

For under the volcano Mount Fuji, sleeps the giant radioactive mosnster we call Homer-san. If he awakes, there will be no donuts left in all of Japan & the Suntory brewery will be empty.

Re:Doh! old news "Dogs & Demons" Alex Kerr 200

[mdsolar]

I did not find any listing for this plant in the index. Was this accident reported there?

Well, no wonder.

[dannycim]

Shinra Electric Power Company hasn't had a very good track record.

Re:Well, no wonder.

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought that said shinny super happy fun power company.. kinda mocking the simpsons homer-fish esp

Oblig. Simpsons:

[lightversusdark]

It's not a meltdown, merely what we call an "unrequested fission surplus".

We can handle nuke power just fine.

[gaijin99]

The problem isn't that people can't handle atomic power, it is that for profit corporations can't handle atomic power. The US navy, to take a good example, has been dealing with atomic power plants for decades without a single failure. Why? Because they are not cutting safety corners to increase their profit margin.

I'm an advocate of atomic power in general, and I'm simultaniously completely opposed to atomic power under the control of a for profit corporation. Corporations aren't evil, but they are singleminded: they are geared to produce the maximum profit for the minimum investment. When it comes to growing and distributing apples, or manufacturing computers, and so forth they do an exellent job. But when it comes to stuff like atomic power they are absolutely the wrong tool to use.

Either put them under the control of the navy, or some other government agency, or if you are the type who gets all bothered by any suggestion of direct government control of that sort of thing, put them under the control of non-profit corporations. Take the profit motive out, and the safety will stop being a problem.

as if...!

[grikdog]

Sounds like Biivis-kun and Battoheddo-san to me. "Hey, we're just all-thumbs technodweebs here, it's not like we can do that nookuler stuff."

Misuse of French - Nitpic

[Anonymous Coward]

Whenever I go to the US/UK, I am amused by the places people stick mistake-laden French to make themselves, their statements, or their products look stylish and/or intellectual. Take this statement for example:

Nobody (sans the religeous nutjobs) wants to get blamed...

While prepositions can be very hard to translate, "sans" very precisely means "without". You wanted to use "sauf", which means "except for". Even if "without" was what you meant, since its meaning correlates so precisely with "sans", there is no reason to use it except to communicate that you are a pseudo-intellectual prig.

Have a nice day.

The Bad Thing Is...

[SixFactor]

...the occurrence of a cover-up. That's inexcusable. The Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO) and the World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO) would be all over Hokuriku's and Shika station's ass for that.

However, it sounds like what really happened was a subcritical multiplication, wherein fission does occur, but does not quite achieve a self-sustaining rate. The event could have been initiated any number of things; for a boiling water reactor, it could have been control rod misposition. Hence, the blurb about only increasing power by less than 1%. There is a standard requirement that when shutdown, a nuclear reactor will have sufficient negative reactivity to ensure that a recriticality does not occur.

Further, because of the self-regulating (self-shutdown) aspects of non-Soviet (i.e., Western, including Japanese) reactor designs, the consequences of this event are minor: no radiation releases, maybe some minor fuel cladding degradation, at worst, elevated isotope levels in the reactor coolant.

On further reflection, my only caveat to the above was that it appears the unit was in a refueling outage - so a manual operator action was required to ensure no further criticality. I think the statement about an automatic shutdown system failure could be misleading; in a refueling condition, such systems may not be in service at all.

I'd be interested in the deeper technical details when they come out. More on the Shika (also Shiga) reactor here.

Re:The Bad Thing Is...

[Anonymous Coward]

The report I saw said the vessel head was off, three control rods withdrew, and they couldn't scram them back in due to accumulator problems. If the three rods were adjacent, a lumped critical is entirely possible.

Let the energy graphs begin!

[Anonymous Coward]

Fully two thirds of the energy produced by electrical generation and distribution goes to waste.

Re:Let the energy graphs begin!

[ShakaUVM]

By your own graph, 9/11ths of power used in the home is NOT wasted.

You're confused, I think, by the power line losses in transmission. Unless you're a physicist working on building superconducting power lines, I highly doubt you will be able to improve the efficiency of our power distribution system.

Re:Let the energy graphs begin!

[mdsolar]

Looking at the comments on the blog I have to agree that most of your big number for waste is just bad wording. Power generation is not all that efficient and that is the big chunk. If you heat with electricity, your taking a huge hit there because you could burn the fuel directly for heat. But, you can't run many electric appliances that way. Transmission losses are on the order of 7% of the actually generated electricity, they'd be a smaller fraction of the grey plus orange blobs in the figure.
--
Generate your power at home: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

Nuclear is more viable

[pavon]

I agree with you that there is no silver bullet, and that includes nuclear, but strongly disagree that nuclear is less viable than coal.

If we allowed breeder reactor and burner reactors then we could cut the amount of nuclear waste in tenth. At least one of these two technologies has been proven through extensive use in france. It is safe and cost effective. Studies have concluded that the resulting waste from burning all the (estimated) uranium in the US could be stored in a single Yucca mountain type project, if we recycle the waste on site first.

The other thing that people need to remember, is that we have no clue how to store the waste (C02) from coal plants safely. Sequestration takes out such a minor amount of CO2, that it is not a viable solution just a nice supplemental tool. In other words sequestration decreases the waste by 10% breader/burner reactors decrease their waste to 10% (or something along those lines - the number are not exact). I don't know about you but I'd much rather have a small permanently contaminated spot in the desert than to make huge areas of the globe uninhabitable by humans due to climate change, not to mention the changes in crop viability.

I also take issue your requirement for a "proven" technology - no technology will every become proven until it is tried, so demanding that a technology be proven before it is tried is tantamount to banning progress.

As for other countries - the two fastest growing economies (and thus the two most in need of large amounts of clean energy) are India and China, and they are allowed to develop nuclear power. And the way they got to be the fastest growing economies is that the first world chose to trade with them. The countries that have the biggest restrictions with regard to nuclear power also have trade sanctions levied on them and thus cannot grow large economies, so it doesn't really matter (environmentally) if they stick with burning coal. As long as the first world continues to trade only with countries we trust, or rather as long as we continue to trust the countries we trade with, then this problem will take care of itself.

Coal plants produce higher radiation levels

[__aaqvdr516]

From here: http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~aubrecht/coalvs nucMarcon.pdf

" The conclusion was that Americans living
near coal-fired power plants are exposed to higher
radiation doses, particularly bone doses, than those
living near nuclear power plants that meet government
regulations."

I actually work in the nuclear industry and understand the ramifications of what is being talked about here. While it is a "big deal" to the nuclear industry the danger we're talking about is minimal.

The problem with nuclear

[DragonWriter]

The real problem with nuclear energy is not the reactors (the middle bit)), but the mining (the first bit) of the uranium and the disposal (the end bit) of the waste.

"The real problem" suggests there is only one "real" probly. While both mining and disposal are certainly real problems, it is also true that a real problem with (commercial viability of) nuclear energy is the reactors themselves, and particularly their safety. The reason no reactors have been built in the US since the 1970s is the potential liability risk in the case of accidents (not because major accidents are extremely likely, but because the potential damages from one are vast), which is why companies that would like to build reactors and reap the enormous profits possible selling the output from them are lobbying for broad shields from liability in order to build new reactors without substantial risk.

Not Environmentalists - Wall Street

[bitrex]

As Peter Bradford, a former member of the NRC stated to the New York Times: "The abiding lesson that Three Mile Island taught Wall Street was that a group of NRC-licensed reactor operators, as good as any others, could turn a $2 billion dollar asset into a $1 billion dollar cleanup job in about 90 minutes." Even with massive government subsidies to the nuclear industry, no new plants have been ordered since 1978 as virtually every other power generation option is cheaper and has less risk to investors.

Re:Not Environmentalists - Wall Street

[Bryan Ischo]

This is a very interesting piece of information. As pro-nuclear as I am, if the financial risks are too great (a single event being able to wipe out billions of dollars of capital is pretty scary from an economics standpoint), then I can understand it being difficult or impossible to get the capital to make a new nuclear power plant. I can't stand the ill-informed "safety" arguments against nuclear, but this financial argument of yours does sound like a significant strike against nuclear power.

Re:Oh really?!

[sycodon]

Actually, I know for certain that at least one nuclear bomb was accidentally dropped from an USAF plane into the ocean of the eastern U.S. coast.

I think it is still there.

As far as the reasons go, it is pretty cynical to suggest that one of the main reasons for dropping the bombs on Japan was just to see what happened.

There are ways to improve.

[eldaria]

This http://www.greengeek.ca/ blog contains a lot of interesting material. I like the article about Solar concentrators strategically placed.

Gojira?

[Ranger]

At last we know the real reason what awoke Godzilla.

Using buckets to mix nuclear fuel?

[Anonymous Coward]

What kind of 'nuclear fuel' would be mixed in a bucket? Makes on sense at all. Any ideas what was going on there?

The small-uranium-reserves fallacy

[QuoteMstr]

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

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

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

Critical state means okay in Nukespeak

[freetolio]

I learned from my job in the nuclear biz that critical means that a reactor is in an operational state where it is running (aka fission is going down and energy is being produced). Too much Jack Bauer has scared you people. I am a Software Engineer who sits in a cube next to a Criticality Engineer, and his work is plain old reactor engineering. This whole incident is about a plant that accidentally came online. I am laughing my A** off right now.

Wait, what?

[VorpalEdge]

A pair of workers were killed after using buckets to mix nuclear fuel in a lab, a test that also created an uncontrolled chain reaction for a short time.

They... used BUCKETS to mix nuclear fuel? As in, they took a couple buckets of uranium and dumped them together in the sink?

Hopefully they at least got to see light flash before their eyes before their cells were sterilized permanently. And in the meantime, while I'm not glad that they're dead, I am glad that they can't kill anyone else with incompetence of this magnitude.

This really is an unbelievable story. Am I missing something here?

Doh!

[Original Replica]

Actually, proper procedures and equipment that didn't involve buckets existed and were documented. The workers cut corners because using buckets were more convenient. This kind of makes sense. The kind of people smart enough to know the dangers of working with radioactive material and take the necessary precautions wouldn't work at a power plant.

Hmm, real life Homer Simpsons, now that is scary. So I guess it's not just airport security that has under trained people in important jobs.

Nuclear vs. fossil fuel deaths

[David Jao]

Conservatively 4000 to 9000 deaths. [from all nuclear accidents, in all of history]

I hope you're aware that the coal mining industry suffered over 6000 accidental deaths in 2004 alone. Given the relative safety records of coal vs. nuclear energy, it's not even close. Nuclear energy is safer by a long shot.

Re:Nuclear vs. fossil fuel deaths

[mdsolar]

It is so strange that you bring up coal. I did not. Both nuclear power and coal have poor safety records. There have been cover-ups in the coal industry as well. Quite obviously the granularity of fatalities in the two industries differs. Should we wait for nuclear power to kill even more people in its inevitable way, and at a level that dwarfs any single coal related incident before doing what needs to be done?

Re:Nuclear vs. fossil fuel deaths

[David Jao]

It is so strange that you bring up coal. I did not.

Even though you did not bring up coal, the fact of the matter is that for large scale energy production the only options are coal and nuclear. Solar? Don't make me laugh. Even the simplest back of the envelope calculation shows that there does not exist the theoretical production capacity to make enough solar panels for everyone at current rates of consumption.

Should we wait for nuclear power to kill even more people in its inevitable way, and at a level that dwarfs any single coal related incident before doing what needs to be done?

As many others here have already pointed out, you can't use Chernobyl as a representative example of nuclear safety. In the 21 years since Chernobyl, the total number of accidental deaths caused by nuclear energy plants, worldwide, is two.

Read that again. Two deaths worldwide in the last 21 years, for an industry that provides one sixth of the world's electricity. That is an astoundingly good safety record. I wouldn't be surprised if solar panel manufacturers and suppliers were found to be covering up two deaths worldwide in the past 21 years. This is without even considering that solar power provides much less than one sixth of the world's present electricity.

Even if solar eventually proves to be the superior technology, fossil fuels are so mind-bogglingly bad that it's worth it to switch to nuclear power immediately just for the sake of the short term benefit of getting away from fossil fuels. Unlike renewable energy, nuclear power has been proven to work on a large scale. We can switch to it now. We should.

Re:Nuclear vs. fossil fuel deaths

[mdsolar]

Switching to nuclear power quickly is very difficult. Obtaining permits for new plants is pretty time consuming.

I wonder it you could post you envelope. I get about forty 500 MW per year production capacity plants as a ballpark number. To me this does not seem so hard.

Why do you discount existing nuclear accidents? That seems a bit strange to me.

Re:Nuclear vs. fossil fuel deaths

[Anonymous Coward]

Switching to nuclear power quickly is very difficult. Obtaining permits for new plants is pretty time consuming.

Permits are a political obstacle, not a technical or scientific obstacle.

Remember - no means nothing

[dbIII]

Incorrect. Nuclear power is actually quite cheap, and produces no CO2.

No CO2? Nothing? Not a single bit? Consider the mining and the very heat intensive enrichment process - it takes a lot of heating to get Uranium Hexaflouride gas. Even a few thousand tonnes of concrete that make up the building and containment involves a lot of CO2 release - remember you start with calcium carbonate. No CO2 is only a convenient lie to paint the thing green. Less CO2 than most alternatives is what the nuclear lobby should be pushing instead of a silly lie that if very easily pointed out as one.

As for the economic argument - Thatcher used that to stop the constuction of new plants in the UK, plants of the smae type of design we would build today if we wanted a finished plant at the end of ten years.

Links

[dbIII]

A graph of dollars per MW/h with no context and a link about how by cooking the books with a big enough carbon tax some nuclear plants can break even? Please try harder and remember that many of the people here have at least started on high school chemistry and physics so it doesn't have to be dumbed down.

One thing that may not be apparent to most however is the efficiency of thermal plants increases dramaticly with size up to a point while things like photovoltaics only have an additive benefit so the context is very important - comparing a large scale solution to a small scale solution makes no sense. Obviously some nuclear plants are better than others - superpehoenix was a dismal failure for power generation but did have other uses so it the nuclear bit of the graph would have to be the best instead of an average and even then it would be good to see where the numbers come from. I've seen the books cooked enough with a coal thermal plant to make it look a lot cheaper than it is just so the manager of the project could win a bonus so you really have to know where the numbers are coming from.

Re:Links

[ShakaUVM]

Check the second link. Read other sources if you like. The conclusion is nuclear is at least as cheap as coal, and possibly much cheaper.

Re:Links

[dbIII]

The conclusion is nuclear is at least as cheap as coal, and possibly much cheaper.

I read it. Paticularly the bit where by taxing coal and other competitors at a higher level you can make nuclear power look cheaper - personally I don't think this is the correct approach or even an honest way to operate. Actually putting work into something that is not out of the 1960s such as pebble bed, accelerated thorium and many other promising approaches is a better approach than trying to win by crippling the other alternatives and trying to sell the old stuff that is proven to be a waste of effort by extensive lobbying and adverising budgets orders of magnitude above R&D budgets.

I suggest you look at other sources - nuclear power is a subject where both advocates and opponents make emotive arguments and stray far from the facts. Paticularly look at the British and European experiences - energy production in the USA is a swamp of corruption leading to very high levels of government which is what will influence the choice of a new nuclear facility over practicality and it's very hard to trust any figures that come from there (eg. the "too cheap to meter" lie along with the current and silly "clean" lie).

Re:Links

[ShakaUVM]

Nuclear power is cheaper and cleaner than other sources (or at least comparatively clean and cheap), but it removes our reliance on foreign oil, and will make a bigger difference for CO2 emissions than any number of Al Gores replacing their lightbulbs with CFDs (while zipping around the world in their private jets) will do.

Prediction of the future.

[Deliveranc3]

EIAA:
You have been found to be in violation of the EMEA (Electric Millenium Energy Act), sharing energy through p2p.

This violates your contract for 4TW/s of energy, unlimited monthly.

By doing so you threaten our business model and we don't like it.

Since we're too lazy to come up with a new business model pay us $75,000 or we'll see you in court.

Standby power

[Thomas Shaddack]

A solution for standby power consumption is simple. Use a supercapacitor for feeding the standby microcontroller, and when the capacitor voltage drops under a limit, switch on the mains power for few seconds to recharge it. The mains switch can be realized as a solid-state relay with an optically driven SCR. So instead of eating 5-10 watts all the time when off, it will eat 10-15 watts couple times per day for few seconds, cutting down the losses. For "hard" startup with depleted supercapacitor, there may be a manual pushbutton shorting the SCR. For case of power blackouts, there may be an autostart circuit that activates for few seconds after connection to the mains, opening the SCR and recharging the capacitor. Simple as that, and it can be all integrated into one module that becomes very cheap if made in high volumes.

Coal mine vs reactor safety?

[Circlotron]

Has anyone ever done a weighted comparison of how many people have been killed in coal mine accidents over the years in comparison to nuclear industry accidents? While nuclear energy, like large airliners, has great potential to kill, it is not a foregone conclusion that it will. Many people that are afraid to get on a plane drive a car each day without a second thought. If nuclear power killed as many people as cars you could understand it being banned.

Re:Coal mine vs reactor safety?

[SupremoMan]

The psychological motive is different. If you are in a plane crash, most likely you WILL die, unless it's a freakw ater landing or the plane is still 10 feet off the ground. But in a car crash there is a good chance you will walk away. That is why flying is scares people, myself included. If something goes wrong, you are pretty much screwed. And Im not a fan of that feeling.

Clinton killed IFR

[bill_mcgonigle]

Too bad Clinton killed all IFR research his second year in office. It was good politics - you can't have a contributing NO-NUKES crowd with a safe fission reactor. Amazing how the NO-NUKES crowd is now the Global Warming Crisis crowd claiming no good solution to the problem.

In any case, holding out for something like the Tokamak is a waste of time. While a Fusion machine, in the end, it is hardly radiation free; the neutronic fusion reactions will slowly irradiate the hundreds of tons of reactor, which will eventually need to be disposed of and replaced.

This is designed for - their designs shroud the Tokamak with copper, which catches the neutrons. IIRC the half-life of copper is about 37 years. Of course it's not ready for commercial use and probably won't be until mid-century under current funding schemes, so we need IFR or graphite pile reactors until then.

I'm not concerned about very-long-term storage of waste because I believe humans are capable of developing safe lift into space in the next century or two, and we can get rid of the waste off-planet just as soon as we can move it safely.

Re:Clinton killed IFR

[MrKaos]

Which is the real reason he should have been impeached, apart from the fact that he didn't put a comprehensive disarmament treaty in front of the then drunken russian president and say "sign here". However, as enthused as I am about the possibility of using a space elevator to deal with nuclear waste, if our good friends the chinese keep blowing up satelites then our prospects of being able to build a S.E will continue to diminish. Much more prudent for us to use systems like IFR and deal with it in our own gravity well.

Re:Clinton killed IFR

[bill_mcgonigle]

Agreed - those are required presently. I'm optimistic we'll have a few of those other problems solved in 400 years or so.

At last, a more evolved discussion about nuclear

[MrKaos]

Thorium reactors show some promise too, but IFR looks more attractive because it deals with the waste and mining issues. Engineered better because the isotope is in it's metal form and the coolant is metal, converting more of the transuranics to fissile ash in a closed system.

In a cold war reactor the isotope is ceramic, so using it as an insulator with and water as a coolant was never going to be efficient at producing electricity as anything but a by-product, unless you have a large organisation, about the size of a government, prepared to buy all of the plutonium you produce for the life of the reactor.

I would be interested in an economic analysis that factored the long term storage costs of Pu-239 and uranium mining against the investment in perfecting the "pyroprocessing" process of IFR. The reality, as I've said before, is IFR is the only realistic future for nuclear in the 21st century. Let's be realistic about cold war nuclear power plant design, it's ain't that safe because it doesn't factor the cost to future generations. After 50 or 60 years you will still have to shut the power plant down, as it's just a machine with radioactive components. As for the transuranics passing through their halflives, 25000 years for the first, 100000 odd years for the second, we are talking in geological ages of which us mere mortals struggle to even comprehend, let alone know what life will even look like after that much time.

I see IFR as a step forward for these reasons,

It ends the bulk of uranium mining in our lifetime, and for the forseeable future.

It provides a means to consume the stockpile of transuranic waste that exists - mostly plutonium.

However by employing a breakthrough in technology such as IFR we will have to acknowledge one very significant factor, IFR provides a very real argument for eliminating nuclear weapons, and there not a single politician in the world prepared to give up that sort of power.

And that is what IFR is up against.

IFR != Fast Breeder

[MrKaos]

Carter banned Fast Breeders because the elements mixed (paladium and lithium with plutonium - I think) in a fast breeder effectivley tripled the amount of radioactive material that eventually had to be stored. Clinton shut down IFR because he had a political point to make.

Re:IFR != Fast Breeder

[trimbo]

Okay, but that's not what I said.

I said Carter had banned reprocessing. His administration did so out of fear of proliferation. Some have attributed it to the Ford administration, which is fine. However, Carter, being a nuclear engineer himself, should have promoted the technology rather than abolish its future in the face of oil crises.

Re:IFR != Fast Breeder

[Anonymous Coward]

The then Democratic congress planned to effectively defund IFR. This was not at the behest of the Executive, although there were disputes in DOE about the utility of IFR compared to pursuing enhanced burn up in thermal reactors. (Some of that was coloured by commercial concerns).

Carter was well aware of activities in Canada (he personally helped with the cleanup management after two separate nuclear accidents at Chalk River, and had first hand experience with the three-party Quebec Agreement). He was personally aware the precursor to CANDU was used to breed nuclear weapons materials, and how easy in practice it was to produce reasonably close to weapons grade fissiles given natural uranium inputs and a specialized breeder cycle. He also should have understood that a fast spectrum reactor would be a more tolerant and efficient breeder than a PHWR particularly when supplemented with chemical reprocessing.

There were also problems with the LMBFR (at Enrico Fermi) involving the physical and chemical hazards of liquid sodium and its tendency to become a strong gamma emitter.

Finally, Carter was intractably opposed to the Clinch River boondoggle, and exercised his veto power against it once (and threatened to do so again). His objections were in part based on the industry partners, in part based on the LMBFR accidents, and in part on his belief that ongoing civilianization of Navy PWR designs would ultimately be more efficient power generators than FBRs. He also made speeches involving proliferation concerns versus the plutonium economy.

There was no ban with respect to waste reprocessing in general. Carter had problems with the Savannah River site (where the PUREX process was invented) for a variety of reasons, and moved to kill it. He was also concerned that the other nuclear powers would follow any move towards plutonium+uranium extraction with similar processes and dramatically increase their stockpiles.

Carter's nuclear policy in general was reasonably consistent and fairly good. He was keen on minimizing pollution and accidents (having dealt personally with both several times in earlier years) and even more keen on pouring fire on the nuclear arms race with an obviously militarizable civilian power generation program (which the Soviet Union was toying with) instead of developing even more obviously civilianized naval PWR designs with minimal utility in nuclear weapons production.

He was largely opposed by commercial interests outside of GE and Westinghouse (power authorities in general viewed Carter's policies unfavourably as the GE/WE designs were expensive), and strong (!) personalities (!!) like Charles Till.

Finally, Carter was certainly the most pro-nuclear power generation president. What he promoted was an evolutionary approach to making light water reactors safer and more efficient. The marketplace success of PWRs and BWRs today is evidence that this approach was neither stupid nor too cautious. Moreover, the designs seen as radical and cool and so forth by other parties at the time (gas cooled graphite moderated MOX in the UK, liquid metal reactors in Japan and the Russian Federation) have suffered several serious nuclear accidents directly attributable to aspects of their designs shared with projects opposed by Carter. Also, PHWRs amenable to plutonium cycles have been implicated in the development of at least four countries' publically declared first nuclear weapons, and the well-known RBMK disaster is often attributed to military interference in the plant's operation.

AncientCoal plants produce higher radiation levels

[Anonymous Coward]

I suggest you read this before getting too carried away with that line of reasoning.

Re:Oh really?!

[apathy maybe]

Well, I meant dropping the bombs and having them explode, but hey.

And I am a cynic, when it comes to the government and military.

They had only ever exploded one of these new type of super weapons before. They had two different types though. People wanted to see how the two types compared, and what effect they had on an actual city. It also forced the Japanese to surrender earlier and unconditionally (when otherwise the USSR might have been able to get troops to Japan). One other reason was also to show off to the USSR. Don't mess with us, stick to our agreements about dividing Europe, and we won't use these new weapons on you. But that was a minor third compared to the two main reasons, I am sure.

Re:Oh really?!

[sycodon]

Something like 60% of U.S. casualties in the Pacific came in the last 6 months of the war.

The Japanese still had upwards of a million men in arms.

The defense perimeters on the beaches of Japan were 14 miles deep.

They still had thousands and thousands of aircraft for use in Kamikaze attacks.

The military command had shown that it did not know the meaning of surrender and in fact attempted a coup when the decision was finally made after two cites were obliterated in the blink of an eye.

It would take quite a SOB of a cynic to completely discount that the U.S. wanted to bring the war to an end as quickly as possible and avoid the estimated hundred thousand plus U.S casualties it would take to sucessfully invade the Japanese Islands.

"Clean" as in dirt?

[dbIII]

Interesting. Not being in the USA I do not care one way or the other about Al Gore - I suggest argueing about nuclear power on it's own merits instead of branching off into irrelevant personal attacks on people that have little or nothing to do with the issue as far as I know.

Also - repeating something does not make it true and telling someone that knows the bare basics about mining that something like uranium fuel production is "clean" in my opinion reveals either ignorance, being misled, or attempting to sell something. Industrial processes are "dirty", we know it and try to minimised the consequeces - we don't just try to sway arguments by ignoring them completely. To make oil into fuel you use dangerous HF - to make nuclear fuel you have the intermediate step of far more dangerous Uranium Hexaflouride gas. Pretending either of these is "clean" is ignorance or a confidence trick, but so long as we can deal with the consequces it's barely relevant. With nuclear power there are idiots that assert that it is "clean" when we don't have a decent way to deal with waste, which makes it as "dirty" as you can get - unfortuantely these idiots have an advertising budget which they spend more on than actually trying to solve the problems. Don't be taken in - read about the nuclear fuel cycle.

Re:"Clean" as in dirt?

[ShakaUVM]

Al Gore is relevant insofar as he is the perfect example of our dependence on energy. As much as he crusades about CO2 emissions, he takes a private jet instead of flying coach, and spends energy and CO2 in much vaster amounts than the average American that he hates so much.

In other words, though it seems rather obvious, and people don't seem to grasp it: people aren't going to not spend energy. If I am hungry, I will drive to the grocery store or restaurant, and buy food.

The Hexaflouride problem, and other nuclear waste issues have been solved, at the engineering level, as has the problem of designing safe reactors. We simply lack the political will to switch to nuclear power. A third of all our C02 emissions comes from power plants. Switching to nuclear power could save nearly all of that, especially if nuclear power is used to power the building of the new plants. Nuclear power is also one of the most efficient, ratio-wise, in energy output over its lifetime versus energy consumed to build it. During the operating of a nuclear power plant, it produces negligible amounts of atmospheric pollutants.

If countries are actually serious about reducing their CO2 emissions, it is brain dead for them to continue operating coal and oil plants when nuclear is such a better alternative.

Re:"Clean" as in dirt?

[dbIII]

There are complex issues that prevent switching over quickly - availability of fuel, availablity of people with the knowlege to constuct such systems, the lack of a tested design that produces good enough results, the long time it would take to build prototypes of the promising designs and of course the problem of assuring other governments that you are not doing it for a nuclear weapons program. It takes many years to build any large thermal plant.

Please actually read about the thing you are advocating - the comment "The Hexaflouride problem" makes it appear that you don't even know how the fuel is produced.

Re:"Clean" as in dirt?

[ShakaUVM]

The only significant issue is having the political will to switch over to nuclear.

It irks me to no end that people will get up in arms over CO2 emissions and then be opposed to nuclear power.

Re:At last, a more evolved discussion about nuclea

[hr raattgift]

IFR is the only realistic future for nuclear in the 21st century

IFR is part of ancient history from a time when once-through fuel cycles were considered much much less cost effective than operating plutonium fuel cycles. This is not the case now. (In fact, the reverse may be true).

Early commercial PWR designs leveraged HEU production in nuclear weapons programs and did little other than the occasional offline rearrangement of partially depleted fuel rods to gain small burn up gains. HEU production is expensive, and there was a great deal of belief that the plutonium economy would be a substantial advantage in a once-through design. There was a further belief that SEU production would not be much cheaper than higher enrichment, or that natural uranium could produce power with even half of the efficiency of an HEU once-through, much less a breeder using a dramatically reduced amount of HEU plus the same natural Uranium to produce power and transmute fertile wastes (238U mainly) into fissionable fuel (238Pu).

That is, the belief was that only a fast neutron spectrum reactor could efficiently breed inexpensive low-enriched uranium inputs into plutonium (this is called the plutonium economy).

The need for fast breeder reactors to gain from the plutonium economy remains moot. Current commercial thermal neutron spectrum PWR designs (EPR or AP1000 for example) designs gain large enhanced burnup through the transmutation of fertile 238U to 239Pu through downblending (in mixed oxides) or blanketing. Although thermal neutron power generating reactors are not specifically designed for breeding, and are not as efficient as fast reactors for breeding fissiles from impure mixes of fertiles, that is exactly what "enhanced burnup" is. Nobody expected enhanced burnup efficiencies approaching 0.9 in any thermal reactor, let alone one on a mostly once-through fuel cycle (TRISO input). By comparison, IFR's target burnup efficiency was less than 1.25 (these numbers are the ratio of fuel consumed to fuel bred in the reactor) and required nuclear and chemical reprocessing of at least the fuel blanket to maintain the plutonium fuel cycle.

Because of the inefficiencies of once-through cycles well into the 1980s (burnups of 0.1 or less and mainly HEU as input), IFR's on-site electrolytic separation of wastes and reformation of fuel assemblies was considered a large plutonium economy gain.

This has to be understood in the context of thermal reactor designs (PWRs and BWRs) incorporating large pressure vessels enclosing the whole pile. These pressure vessels meant a full shutdown and cooloff was necessary to make any adjustment to the pile in terms of composition or geometry. There was no blanket layer, and little thought for rearranging the pile to improve burnup, although these were later added within the large pressure vessels.

Likewise, IFR began with a single containment vessel housing the core, the blanket layer, cooling systems, and associated equipment.

Let's take a diversion through the evolution of CANDU -- a fundamentally different design developed over the same timeframe as the development of EBR and IFR. (Incidentally, Canadians and Americans were involved on both sides of the border in the development of both designs, and individual personality issues were factors much more than national politics in the engineering and theoretical analyses and comparisons right up to the point where funding was cut for IFR...)

CANDU began with a serious constraint. Canadian heavy industry could not produce the large pressure vessels as used in U.S. light water designs, and focused on making smaller ones from neutron-transparent materials that could be immersed in a low-to-non-pressurized pool of moderator (heavy water for the most part, but various carbons -- hydrocarbons and slurries mainly -- have been used experimentally with some success). These had the advantage of being intrinsically modular -- being small, an entire