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First New Nuclear Plant in US in 30 years
Hugh Pickens writes "With backing from the White House and congressional leaders, and subsidies like the $500 million in risk insurance from the Department of Energy, the nuclear industry is experiencing a revival in the US. Scientific American reports that this week NRG Energy filed an application for the first new nuclear power plant in the US in thirty years to build two advanced boiling water reactors (ABWR) at its South Texas nuclear power plant site doubling the 2700 megawatts presently generated at the facility. The ABWR, based on technology already operating in Japan, works by using the heat generated by the controlled splitting of uranium atoms in fuel rods to directly boil water into steam to drive turbines producing electricity. Improvements over previous designs include removing water circulation pipes that could rupture and accidentally drain water from the reactor, exposing the fuel rods to a potential meltdown, and fewer pumps to move the water through the system. NRG projects it will spend $6 billion constructing the two new reactors and hopes to have the first unit online by 2014."
Everybody busy reading TFA?
A monkey is doing the real work for me.
So this is what Ahmadinejad was called there to inaugurate! Cool.
In other news: Martin Weisz just announced the scheduled 2015 release of a reality tv version of The Hills Have Eyes, broadcasting live from South Texas.
Given the vast alternative resources available to the US, why do this before building large scale solar and wind plants? Is it really going to be cheaper than (say) paving large areas of desert with ever-cheaper solar cells? Or building the really large wind-farm projects in the many available on/off shore locations? As technology advances, these alternatives have got cheaper and cheaper..
And the full cost of Nuclear Waste disposal is still not known, nor is it included in the quoted "price" of the electricity..
"A nation that forgets its past is doomed to repeat it." - Churchill
There are many reactors which have problems operating right now because of local/regional water supply issues. Either water levels are too low or temperatures are too high... And it will only get worse in many states.
Worse as in 'even if the climate stops screwing around, most states have done a shitty job managing growth in relation to their water resources'.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
The goggles....they do NOTHING!
The ABWR seems like a fairly standard design. Nothing too exciting, although the submitter might want to note that no reactor drives the turbines "directly": there is always a heat-exchanger between the primary & secondary coolant stages, otherwise you're circulating highly radioactive water through a complex series of pipes and turbines under very high pressure.
[Taps fingertips together.]
Excellent!
And don't forget the chemical weapons used at the start of the 2nd Iraq war. (W/P and Napalm)
We used them TWICE over a half century ago in a war against another nation state, and only when we were in the most dire of need to find a solution that wouldn't have slaughtered countless millions of not just our own soldiers, but Japanese as well. I guess what the rest of the world hates is that we're able to do the math. 100,000 or 10 million? And we're not afraid to make those kinds of decisions when we have to. Frankly, I don't trust Iran not to develop and then export either the components themselves, or the scientists and materials needed to make them to other states or groups that could strike the United States or our interests overseas. The restraints we have in place (it begins with secular Democracy) don't exist in Iran. Excuse me for not trusting a mad religious crack-pot dictator with an apocalyptic world view not to use a nuclear program to leverage his position in the world, and intimidate or harm "the great Satan".
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
On the one hand, no matter how much time and effort is put into building a nuclear reactor, there's always a small chance that human error will cause a catastrophic meltdown leading to an almost incalculable loss of human life.
But, on the other hand, they're going to build it in Texas.
-- Trinity in high heels carrying a whip: The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism
Maybe one day we will have thermonuclear power plants, the nuclear reactors will be obsolete, and we will have abundant energy. I dunno. Right now, however, there is a shortage of energy. We rely too much on natural gas and petroleum. The exporters of those feel their power and twist the arms of the importers. The money made from gas and oil are insane and they are the foundation of too many of the world's tyrants and lunatics-in-power. Cut their revenue streams and they will suffocate.
It seems that making abundant electricity can alleviate that problem at least as far as natural gas is concerned, so we can get rid of the natural gas racketeers (mainly Russia). If we go to hydrogen economy we can liberate ourselves from the petroleum racketeers as well. To have hydrogen-based economy we need a lot of energy. People get excited by the progress in fuel cell technology but rarely ask themselves how hydrogen is to be produced in gigantic quantities.
True, there are risks in nuclear energy production that can't just vanish. But, dammit, nuclear energy has no alternative for the moment.
How are we going to store the nuclear waste in such a way that no one is hurt by it? Who will guard this facility for a million years? How much will that cost?
I think that before any new nuclear facility is licensed, its operators should be required to pay in advance for the disposal of its spent fuel. I don't think it's right that the cost should be borne by the taxpayer.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
It's about time we started building new nuclear reactors. Anyone who wants to seriously reduce our oil addiction must look at nuclear -- it's really the only cost effective alternative, and it's safe, all the FUD aside.
/shrug.
Ironically, the FUD comes from greens, that should be supporting the things. But then again they've protested hydroelectric (kills fish), wind (kills birds), geothermal (OMG, it is cooling our crusts), so
Request your free CD of my piano music.
If you throw white phosphorous and napalm under the chemical weapon boogie-man umbrella then you have to include every weapon that explodes. Trinitrotoluene (TNT) and cyclonite (C-4) are as much chemicals as WP and Napalm. Sorry to rain on your US-bashing parade.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
One reason against nuclear power is that it is centralized. That is, it is farily easy to bomb a nuclear plant to take out electricity for a lot of people. Wind or solar power which is much more decentralized doesn't have the same problem because you have to strike hundreds of targets for the electricity to go down.
And what about the terrorists? How hard is it to imagine a few devoted terrorists infiltrating a plant to deliberately cause a melt-down?
Football Odds
I could have gotten this advice from you over on the old K5...
And your advice is appreciated, but joining the armed forces is not an option.
US Army. Since you have a college degree you can go to OCS right after basic training (be sure that the recruiter has that part written into your contract, they will try to scam you into something else). From there, you should try to go into Chemical Corps or Medical corps given your long term goals, which shouldn't be that hard since it is not very glorious and everybody wants to do Military Intelligence. After your five year commitment is up you will leave the Army as a captain, unless you really fuck up and don't get promoted with your year group. That will open all kinds of doors for you in the civilian world, but to be quite honest the life of a soldier can be pretty fun and it is damn well paid for the officers.
Of course, this route probably also involves a couple tours in $ARMPIT_OF_THE_UNIVERSE.
Excuse me for not trusting a mad religious crack-pot dictator with an apocalyptic world view not to use a nuclear program to leverage his position in the world, and intimidate or harm "the great Satan".
--
5 billion less people on Earth would solve nearly every socio-economic and environmental problem we currently face.
Where to begin...
So and because of that, you want to forbid Iran to have a nuclear programme?
If I went by the same reasoning we'd have to forbid the US from having one, too. The hard truth is that a sizeable part of the world's population doesn't trust you as far as they can throw you. A sizeable part of the world's population also is unsure of which leader of the two countries in question is the more evil dictator.
There's alsways a lot of emotion in such arguments. The real problem about it is the feeling that you have the RIGHT to forbid another country from having a nuclear programme.
Basically, if we hadn't fucked with them arabs for years I'd bet we wouldn't have to be scared of them now. It's like the school bully who torments those weaker than him for two years and hiding the third when the others are fed up with him and start working together to pay him back.
Unfortunately, my general health is not suited to be sent to tours in $ARMPIT_OF_THE_UNIVERSE, and my general disposition is not suited to military discipline. The only upside I can see is that my little brother, a PFC in the Army, would have to salute me.
USA coming out with an announcement they threaten to attack themselves if they don't stop their own nuclear plans.
I mean, USA of all knows best, that building nuclear power plants is just a facade. They plan to nuke themselves!
The part where I'm an atheist advocating a slow, peaceful, and voluntary stabilization and eventual reduction of the birthrate to bring population levels back under control. That's where I'd begin.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
Is that you Karl Rove?
1. The possibility that the documentation and design of this plant will be written in Imperial system units (Toshiba has won the contract, btw; last time I checked Japan is very much ISO).
2. That some overweight Texan family is going to drive over to their local city hall in an SUV the size of Rhode Island that gets 2.5kpl (about 6mpg numb-nuts) with their "not in my backyard" signs.
I just call... vaporware!
R Tape loading error, 0:1
So it's only fitting that STP 3 and 4 are the next ones started.
What's funny is the cost overruns that plaqued the first two aren't mentioned. It was absurd how wrong THEY got it. It also had operational problems that kept one reactor down for a decade. Why not ask Mexico to site these things? As far south as is practical.
FYI, Japan had offered to surrender before we dropped the FIRST bomb. We had already defeated them. How do you know it would have been 10 million casualties? Can you magically predict the past's future?
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If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
I had hoped that when new nuclear reactors showed up in the U.S., they would be of more sensible designs, like pebble-bed or thorium. *sigh*
> Excuse me for not trusting a mad religious crack-pot dictator with an apocalyptic world view not to use a nuclear program to leverage his position in the world, and intimidate or harm
You just made me spit coffee everywhere
Before blasting nuclear energy as *potential* radioactive hazard READ THIS FIRST: coal-fired power plants dump tons of mercury polluting water and fish and turning good source of omega3 into a poison:
http://www.epa.gov/waterscience/fishadvice/advice.html
http://www.environmentaldefense.org/documents/3370_MercuryPowerPlants.pdf
thank you for your time
Wouldn't the future of the past be our present?
If you make biofuels the "traditional" way, you use microorganisms to break down molecules. These organisms use part of the energy stored in the fuel, and on top of that they are usually quite specific. What would be better would be to build a big nuclear reactor, and use its energy to heat up your (agricultural) waste to plasma temperatures. Inject coal, water or air to control your final product, and allow the plasma to condense, possibly in contact with the right catalysers. Voila: biofuel. And instead of having removed lots of joules from it, you will have injected some. At the same time, you got yourself an eco-friendly way to get rid of organic pollutants like insecticides. (You will have to find another way to treat heavy metals.)
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
Well, everyone knows that, actually anyone with an inkling of sense knows that Nuclear Power will play an important role in satisfying the energy demands of the future. Now, my question is this:
Why a country which has oil as the biggest(only?) source of income trying to develop alternative energy sources is evil only because it can be used by the radical elements to create a nuclear weapon somehow? Yeah I understand the situation with all the flashy rheoterics flying about but, from their point of view, they are taking a step in the right direction to safeguard the future when the oil runs out. Moreover, even all the oil in their land will not be able to do certain tasks (say power a space mission in some distant future) unless they have a better energy source. We like to point out their seemingly backwards looking policies and rules but when they do something like working on a nuclear reactor, its suddenly dangerous, too dangerous to let them handle it.
I am not trying to troll but can someone please point out the justification for it without getting into any religious tirade. (We can leave the whole issue of whether getting nukes does or does not give any country a sort of bargaining power or not, if that troubles anyone)
Disclaimer: No, I am not from Iran. (I am not even a muslim, not that it matters or should matter)
Politicians and Pedophiles: Two groups of exploitive bastards who are most dangerous when they're thinking of children.
Go ahead and spend your billions where you like. This is private enterprise electing to spend it here.
BTW, if you search through my postings, you will find that I am a fan of alternatives. But the simple fact is, that altnertives are NOT going to be provide Gwatts of power 24x7. So, you are left with Coal, Natural Gas, or Nukes. Oh, and prior to this company being bought (it WAS run by texans; now it is run by NYers), they were counting on opening 100's of new coal plants. So, of the 3 listed, which do you want? Me? I will take nukes combined with Alternatives (which is exactly their long term plans).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
Because most of the UN is made up, not of noble scholars and thoughtful people...they're the kind of people who took control of a small nation in the middle of the night from their cousins, kill their own civilians for fun and bully the nation next door to get more resources, once they realize they've squandered their own. See also Chavez; taking the farms from the white owners left a lot of land to work, and at gunpoint it gets worked quite poorly, lowering the amount of food for the populace.
America after World War Two was magnanimous; we had freed a billion people, almost completely for free (the Brits had a lend-lease thing going on) then we started pumping in millions for all the cities we'd just blown up: we realize, at the state level, that we need the other nations...but we don't need to conquer the other nations.
America has never said it wants to attack, change the government and own another nation; we don't want more territory- we just want wars there to stop. It's maddening when we take part in a distant war (think Bosnia) where we bombed the Christians and worked for the Muslims, and then come home. But we're not about expansion-for-expansion's sake, many/most of the UN members cannot make such a claim.
The president of Iran for example has spoken many times of using a nuke to wipe Israel off the planet (in direct violation of UN law) so many times, we're pretty sure he means it. So...what do you think he'd do if he had one? And after that job was done, he'd bully the neighbors.
We used the atomics at a very, very early stage; we were in the largest war, ever, working against time with the Germans who were close to getting it first. But notice: in 60 years or so, we've never used it in anger. As a nation whose leaders are accountable to the people, it makes it very hard for a madman to rise to the ranks and do the deed. (And notice Regan didn't; he was trying to scare the Russians, and the best way to do that is to tell the Liberals something scary, since the friend-of-my-enemy is a Liberal. The Kremlin was behind the No Nukes Movement...I know what I'm talking about, here.)
It's just so surreal, though; knowing the good we've done, the 40,000 men who died to clear France for example, the play-by-the-rules military that we have, and there's a world of bloggers trying to convince us *WE* are the enemy. George Soros is definately getting his money's worth. I just hope there are History books that can be written, to store the history of the greatest propoganda posed by man.
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
"the PBMR is an unproven design"
All reactors were once "unproven designs", but they got built. We know an awful lot more theory today than we did back in the 1950s.
Pebble Bed reactors are a lot simpler than other types of reactor. There's far less to go wrong than the type of reactor in the article.
No sig today...
You ask questions, but seek no real answers. Remember, Google is your friend. Oh, short answer, is yes, it does make sense. We are simply doing nukes wrong. Read the first couple of articles. BTW, cool, that you do not want this bourne by the taxpayers. So, does that mean that we taxpayers stop funding of all alternatives? Keep in mind, that without it, we would be a 100% coal country, with results that would make us look like china.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I'd be happier if the USA began doing nuclear fuel reprocessing, which I believe is currently banned. Uranium fuel production will peak in the next few decades, much like oil and gas, so reprocessing is a good way to guarantee a supply of fuel and allow the reuse of existing spent fuel.
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
Exactly! I don't know why this comment is marked as flamebait, because it's a fair question (although it could probably be stated better). I can't help but wonder if this isn't a reaction to the ongoing anti-Iran campaign (specifically their nuclear plans). And indeed, why would we (the people) trust the ones who started the most wars based on bogus reasons?
:P
Okay, i guess *this* post could qualify as flamebait
For reference. I found these here.
Coal-fired plants - 49.0 percent
Nuclear plants - 19.8 percent
Natural gas-fired plants - 19.2 percent
Petroleum-fired plants - 1.8 percent
Conventional hydroelectric power - 7.1 percent
Solar, wind, etc - 3.1 percent
"Well..here I am..." - Jubal Early
We dropped 1 bomb, and warned the Japaneses gov. The emperor chose to try and continue this. Basically, he told us to drop another. We had no real desire to do so. We can be "blamed" for the first one, but the Japaneses gov of the time deserves the blame for the second.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
This suggests a solution to two problems. Build the wall along the border out of spent fuel cores. It'll provide a place for the waste and it'll make it easy to find illegal aliens, just use a Gieger Counter. Given the half life our border will be secure for thousands of years to come.
This is good news. Thirty years of inaction thanks to a hysterical reaction to a bad Jane Fonda movie was more than enough.
The obvious alternative is advanced deep geothermal. If we spent a fraction of the amount spent on the development of fission and fusion power on developing deep geothermal we would be largely energy self sufficient by now. Geothermal is available 24/7 right now! Geothermal offers a place to sequester CO2 while using it as a super-critical heat exchange medium. Geothermal is a huge untapped resource readily available in the western US. It is also better to invest in deep Geothermal technology. The long term payoff is huge. Go to www.mit.edu and search geothermal. The second search result is a 300 plus page study that shows a less than $1BN investment over 15 years would yield enough Geothermal power to replace 10% of US electricity requirements. This is a trivial investment. Private industry will invest over $1BN in the next 5 years using current technology to develop shallow resources. Going deep (6-10km) will make geothermal available anywhere in the world. The current administration has cut all funding for geothermal research (a paltry $27M) from the current budget.
Iran? I thought you were referring to GWB there for a moment.
The Republic of Iran is a democratically elected theocratic republic.
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however a local lib trash rag that is freely distributed set out to trash that idea saying that the power that the plant generates should not be created and that conservation should be enforced instead.
:)
While conservation is indeed a nice idea the fact remains that with an ever increasing population our energy needs will go up. Combine expanded nuclear power plants, new energy sources; wind & solar; and conservation, and we should be much better off.
The long term keys also involve have governments pass laws, perhaps on the Federal level, that prevent localities and HOAs from blocking installation of solar panels. Right now I cannot do so because its not permitted - I am not in any mcmansion or such, just a standard subdivision. None of the neighboring ones I know of permit and the one city area clamped down on someone in town from doing so by beating them over the head with zoning and then historical protection crap when the zoning got whacked. This would need to be something similar for what was done for Satellite and also short wave.
We can still do a lot in our own homes to reduce our usage and encourage friends to do the same. From CFLs to better insulation and door and window seals. Plugging external wall sockets with child protection caps also conserves energy from wind leakage. Running your AC no lower tha 78 when home and keeping at 80+ when not. Loads of ways to reduce your needs, while your friends may laugh I figure they will change once you start telling them how little you spend on electricity
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I wasn't talking about Japan.
Can this type of powerplant actually blow up and cause a nuclear explosion? I'm not sure if it's possible. I think the real dangers of modern powerplants is the pollution although I'm also certain that they can deal with that now.
I agree that it makes more sense to have decentralised power sources in case of war/attacks. Personally I'm a fan of solar panels although they are extremely expensive.
Property Duquesa
Oh, and Soviet army also defeated the largest continental part of Japanese army and was preparing for the invasion (actually, Russia DID invaded several Japanese islands).
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
All reactors were once "unproven designs", but they got built.
Yes? I never said otherwise. Do you know how you go about building a nuclear reactor? You have to have a license to build and operate it. Quite rightly, your reactor design has to be licensed for use: an RBMK may be cheap, but it isn't safe (& yes, they really are still building RBMK reactors in Russia and other ex-Soviet countries). Getting a license for your spiffy new design requires a lot of time, and a lot of money. So as I said: building an "old fashioned" reactor that has already been licensed is a lot cheaper and easier than getting a license to build a new reactor design.
Of course PBMRs will be licensed at some point, and then (once the fuel supply is available) building a PBMR will probably be easier than an ABWR or other current design.
Too bad we don't recycle nuclear waste like France does. Some sorta leftover policy from the Carter or Ford days is what I heard.
France has a facility that can recycle (aka reprocess) something like 95% of nuclear waste products. Sure, the leftover still has to be buried, but isn't it better to bury 5% of something than 100% of something (Regardless of if the USA ever makes any more nuclear plants).
Now I'm not normally a person who says we should emulate France in anything, but they have something like 70% of power produced by nuclear power plants, and we need to do something like that here in USA.
About the only educated people they want connected with nuclear energy these days are the advertising agencies that tell us how they don't need anybody that knows about Radiation becuase the reactors are clean green new and improved protected by American knowhow instead of that nasty Russian stuff. You are better off heading overseas where they take radiation risks seriously.
Are you implying there weren't any lawyers involved?
Note who is supporting this contract and what state it goes to.
It's a scam, as much as the geek at slashdot might light the idea. Had we invested in nuclear power 30 years ago, we could have made a reasonable return by now, however it's unlikely an inestment in nuclear now will wind up being cost effective as compard to just waiting for solar to improve.
It makes WAY more sense to crack down on coal plants, which already exist and are contributing more CO2 than this one nuclear plant will offset. Coal is cheaper to run, cheaper to maintain, safer, more publically accepted and it doesn't take a decade to get one and running.
If the US was going to make the smart move to nuclear, we would HAVE to do so after the model of France who generates 90% of their power domestically. However, what you should note, is that their cost of electricity is not cheaper than surrounding countries. Meaning the main advantage is not cost, nor is it likely envrionment, but rather simply being independant of fossile fuel price instabilities, which of course will only get worse as reserves drop off and environmental concerns increase prices.
Carbon storing is simply not being used effectively on most coal plants and that's really all we need for now.
We are poised to start replaced coal plants with solar plants in 20 years, so how could this nuclear plant be a good investment. We'll get maybe 10 years of operation before solar power would have been a better, cleaner, more publically friendly alernative.
I'm not against nuclear, it's just there is now serious competition from truly gree and renewable sources and it doesn't make sense to jump on the nuclear bandwagon again while everyone else is investing in solar.
I bet the long term storage costs of the spent fuel rods alone destroys any bit of savings we could hope to achieve from nuclear. The US needs a waste recycling program like France has. Our reactors generate many times more waste than Frances resulting in much more difficult storage.
Our storage facility is already leaking radidation as the scientists contracting the building of the place communited fraud to speed things up. That sure is the American mindset. Always doing things the easy way not matter how much harder or more expensive they may be.
If we were in a position where nuclear was really the only option, I'd say go for it, but I can't see how the investment makes sense at a time when we a projecting a major move to solar.
We've already past the point of smart investment. Anyone can save money by installing solar heat or electricity in their homes. That means solar plants must already be perfectly feasible if you can manage a savings at home.
Just like America, spending money first, planning their invvestments second.
Texas !! of all places to not invest in solar over nuclear. Well I hope the state has to pay it's own nuclear storage costs, but I bet it will become some federal duty. I guess in that sense it's a smart investment for Texas but I think their choices in reactors are a bit lame.
I like pebble bed reactors or reactors that recycle waste such as France's system. France has, by far, the most experience running nuclear power so... why reinvent the wheel.
Wait, you're using something that happened in Russia 23 years ago as a reason why the US is not ready to have nuclear power today? Or maybe you mean Three Mile Island, which was 28 years ago in Pennsylvania, but caused no deaths or injuries? How many people died this year in coal mining incidents?
And then you cite hackable control systems for oil power plants are a reason to avoid nuclear power plants (which are generally far more security-conscious)?
There are issues with nuclear power plants, specifically what to do with the waste long-term.* However, nuclear power plants themselves are actually quite safe, in large part because everyone involved respects the harm that can come if something does go wrong.
[*] - France has largely solved that problem by recycling, something the US refuses to do because it creates weapons-grade plutonium.
"Madness takes its toll." - is this random? It's appropriate though :)
> The restraints we have in place (it begins with secular Democracy)
I don't think that means what you think it means.
I honestly don't want to flame or troll here, but as far as I can tell, the US is not a secular democracy.
Let's be honest here, it has nothing to do with being a democracy or one of the 'good guys'.
The US gets away with this sort of hypocrisy *because it can*.
Other countries that have nukes or nuclear facilities have them because the US/Soviets/China did not have enough leverage to strong-arm them out of their nuclear ambitions.
(Battening the hatches for incoming -1 troll)
US military causalities are by no stretch of the imagination considered to be murders. I oppose the war completely, but you're really being ridiculous and needlessly confusing the debate with hyperbole when you talk like this.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
No. Chernobyl is a terrible example, and only brought up by those who don't have the slightest bit of knowledge of nuclear power.
Chernobyl was an insanely dangerous reactor design. Only the Soviets ever designed reactors like this - every other country in the world uses reactor designs several orders of magnitude safer than Chernobyl. Even military ship reactors are orders of magnitude safer. The RBMK design was made with one reason only: to quickly get a reactor going, regardless of safety, to be ahead of the West during the cold war and to be able to crow about technical prowess. The Soviets habitually designed machinery like this. Take a look at the old Soviet era airliners - no thought put into the 'user interface' leading to nasty traps for the pilot to fall into. Things like having to retard the throttles on landing, and then flick a switch and push them FORWARD again for reverse thrust: counter intuitive, but fast and easy to design.
The RBMK reactor as used in Chernobyl and other places had several serious safety flaws - not least, they were a "fail dangerous" design if mistakes were made (which made an accident like Chernobyl inevitable). The design of the control rods coupled with the high positive void coefficiency of the reactor meant that when the operators went to shut the reactor down, it had the opposite effect, causing the reaction to run away. The lack of a cointainment building - another breathtakingly awful Soviet "innovation", meant that when the runaway reactor blew its lid off, it spewed all that radioactivity into the atmosphere.
No one else, absolutely no one else, ever built civil reactors with such a dreadful "fail dangerous" design.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Simply allow the power generators to choose their preferred technologies. The most economically viable solutions will be popular, the unviable ones will fade away. If nuclear is viable it'll get rolled out. if not, it won't.
Deleted
I don't know, maybe I'm biased since I live in Europe, but calling whole of Europe a fringe movement doesn't sound fair to me.
Check out this recent survey from the Financial Times
c++;
You seem to have a very unrealistic view of nuclear energy. It can be done right. Modern civilizations, even including Chernobyl and TMI, have a very good track record with regards to nuclear energy. More people die mining coal per annum than the number of people, in all of human history that have died due to nuclear energy.
And I would go overseas if I thought I could pull it off before accumulating experience in my home country. I'd go to France in a heartbeat, et je parle français, if any French recruiters see this.
Uh ... Then who is responsible for these deaths ?????
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
...A certain world leader who has been called "Messianic" and has declared that he has to invade [another country] because nobody else will have the guts to do it, is in fact in charge of a rather large stockpile of nukes. That least is GW Bush, and the country he's said he has to invade is Iran. (New Yorker article, about a year ago).
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
Depending on where they put them in South Texas the increased cancer rates surrounding the plants should be insignificant in the noise of other pollution-caused illness.
Now if it melts down with a good gust of wind from the northeast, instant and semipermanent border control.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Ultimately the commander-in-chief assumes the responsibilities as the highest military leader of our armed forces. I'm merely saying the deaths are not considered murders. Call them what they are, casualties of an all volunteer military at the command of a Democratic government that answers to the people.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
But isn't a better solution just to be much more efficient with the energy you already produce?
2/ both parties are under control of the corporations, due to the funding of those parties.
3/ lies lies lies lies.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
There are many alternatives - don't fall for hysterical idiots telling you we have to sign off on building some Westinghouse dinosaur that will still take a decade to build because they say "there isn't much time". It takes longer to build a nuclear plant of a decent size than even a major hydroelectric project where it takes many years for the dam to fill - it's the slowest thing to put together even with the tested designs of which none are worth building. It's time for prototypes of promising stuff - not reviving a 1960s white elephant painted green which is what they state of the art currently is.
It's already being done for NOX, SO2, CO2 and other pollutants rather successfully. All the politicians have to to is sample the environment regularly and set maximum acceptable limits.
Deleted
One of the most notable individuals with this opinion was then-General Dwight D. Eisenhower. He wrote in his memoir The White House Years:
"In 1945 Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives."
and "The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace. The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military point of view, in the defeat of Japan." Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet.[35]"The use of [the atomic bombs] at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender." Admiral William D. Leahy, Chief of Staff to President Truman.
The pebbles crack open. (weight, they clunk together)
That's really bad.
(Well, a pebble got stuck, then broken trying to unstick it).
And those idiot Germans shut the plant down. Wimps.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
I heartily agree. There are certainly issues with mishandling nuclear material, but it's the only viable, scalable option for the nearterm to address the combined hurdles facing us in energy and environment. It won't do us any good to worry about nuclear waste disposal if we're all dead due to climate change long before. As a general theory, I would like to see more nuclear reactors, not fewer.
However, given that I am quite concerned about the possibility of climate issues, I do wish they would not build these things in places that are vulnerable to sea level rise and flooding. Houston is pretty close to sea level. Do we know for sure that the targeted places are not vulnerable in that regard? Or at least that they have planned for this as an eventuality?
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
I agree. Chemical weapons are weapons that deploy substances used for their poisonous effects, such as Zyklon B, Sarin, Mustard gas and VX. TNT is pretty toxic, but it is used for its explosiveness, not its toxicity.
> We have a right to protect our people from harm. I draw a direct line from Iran developing
> a nuclear program and US citizens being put in danger. Therefore, yes we in fact do have a
> right to stop them.
That was pretty much the line used to justify the Iraq invasion. The danger is when one party acts as judge, jury, and executioner.
When it comes to justice between nations, there is currently no world government with the authority that national governments have to maintain justice within nations. The UN is a step in that direction. It is in part, a forum in which nations can attempt to resolve their differences without violence.
When the UN is brought up on Slashdot, it generates a lot of accusations of corruption, and many people seem to pass off the UN as barely relevant. These comments seem to mostly come from the US. I'd like to respectfully ask US readers to stop and think for a moment, and consider that this might be a reflection of how the UN is portrayed in the US - not how it actually is. In the countries I have lived, the UN is not portrayed in this way. It has a more noble image. Consider also that the US administration around the time of the build up to the Iraq invasion had some reason to discredit the UN.
They US is not interested in a peaceful, civilian nuclear program, they're just interested in making more bombs.
If you are serious about working in the industry, try one of the plant vendors - GE (the one in the article), AREVA, or Westinghouse. Last I heard, they are all hiring to support the new plant construction. Alternatively, nukeworker.com is full of temp jobs in the industry to support maintenance outages.
What about everyone who died because of skin cancer?
I am defenseless. Use your button. Mod me down with all of your hatred.
As far as radiation risks not being taken seriously, feel free to back up your claim. I think you are full of shit.
The name chemical weapons is a bit misleading, it reffers to weapons where the intent is to kill by poisoning with deadly chemicals.
IIRC white phosphorus and napalm are incendery weapons. (that is the intent is to burn stuff)
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Your "lesser of evils" excuse for dropping the bomb is based on false premises. Both the argument that Japan would not have surrendered if not the bomb, and the argument that more would be killed in conventional war is heavily disputed. Still, try it the other way around: Let's say Iraq had nukes, and decided to deploy them on Washington DC as a response to the US invasion. Let's say 200.000 dead. Looks better than the 500.000-1M dead Iraqis estimates. Sounds good to you? Iran acts as rationally as any other country (and certainly USA does not excel in this regard) in terms of defending her national interests in the power struggle world of international relations. No crack pot, no apocalypse is required to explain her behavior. The USA has demonstrated in Iraq that she is willing to dominate with force non-nuclear enemies. The lesson everyone has learned is that if they are to go against the will of the US, they need to get nukes ASAP. It is the only deterrent.
https://dalgamotor.wordpress.com/ - Elektronik beyinlere ozgurluk asisi (Turkish)
Plans for nuclear power in the UK seem to be taking an interesting turn. Greenpeace UK recently looked at proposed sites for new reactors in the UK and found that four proposed site may be unsuitable owing to the risk of sea level rise: http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/media/reports/the-impacts-of-climate-change-on-nuclear-power-station-sites. The South Texas reactor site is one of 14 currrent or decommisioned civilian power reactor site in the US that are located in tidal regions. With a 2014 start date, a 40 year reactor life and a 20 year decommisioning phase, the South Texas reactor site could be subject to 5 meters of sea level rise: http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/1748-9326/2/2/024002/erl7_2_024002.html. That raises serious questions about the wisdom of siting the new reactors close to the present reactors and it might make more sense to seek an inland source of cooling water.
Another location issue pertains specifically to Texas. Texas wind power has been growing very rapidly and may easily meet anticipated demand. Wind costs about $1.30/Watt to build while the nuclear plant, at this early phase, is anticipated to cost $2.20/Watt without modifications that come up in the licensing process or construction delays that genrally plague large projects.
South Texas may not be the best place to test the waters on new nuclear generation.
> I guess what the rest of the world hates is that we're able to do the math. 100,000 or 10 million?
Quote from Leo Szilard (Wikipedia) who played a major role in the Manhattan Project:
"Let me say only this much to the moral issue involved: Suppose Germany had developed two bombs before we had any bombs. And suppose Germany had dropped one bomb, say, on Rochester and the other on Buffalo, and then having run out of bombs she would have lost the war. Can anyone doubt that we would then have defined the dropping of atomic bombs on cities as a war crime, and that we would have sentenced the Germans who were guilty of this crime to death at Nuremberg and hanged them?"
Because it can easily produce weapons-grade material. This, after all, was the reason why Iran was told under threat of threat to stop their nuclear power program: it *could* be used to create weapons grade material.
Now, if the other countries start using fast breeders, what problem is there for Iran?
To neocons, everyone who isn't a neocon is part of the fringe. :)
Not really. Explosives explode, napalm and white phosphorous burn.
If it's not a fast breeder reactor, it's not a solution to the energy problem.
U235 would run out within the next 60 years, IIRC, if we got all of our power from traditional nuclear powerplants like this one!
However, the world has tons of U238, so breeders could provide power for a long time. And if you made the changes necessary to run the breeders on Thorium instead of U238 (Thorium is even more abundant), then you coul provide power nearly indefinitely.
Breeders also solve the waste problem: The reason radioactive waste is so dangerous is that it still has tons of energy in it; the decay is the slow release of that energy. Since breeders extract so much more energy from fuel, their wastes have much shorter half-lives, and decay to the levels of naturally-occurring ores within a few hundred years -- which isn't great, but (1) sure beats the millennia we're talking about with our current wastes, and (2) seems to be a timescale society can handle.
We need breeders. Pebble-beds are wasteful; they (1) don't breed, and (2) generate a lot of pebble-coating waste. Anything but breeder reactors, and solar/wind/geothermal/hydro, is a waste of time. Breeder reactors are the only technology we currently have that can solve the energy problem. We should be building breeders.
To the liberal left, everyone who is not a liberal is part of the fringe.
Nope - chemical weapons are weapons which act through a direct chemical reaction with the target. That can be either being toxic, or, say, WP which burns on contact with skin. Explosives don't count, as it's not the chemical reaction that kills/injures, but the result of that (pressure shockwave, fire, shrapnel, etc.)
-metric
...in Sweden. All three plants have enormous funds put aside for the construction and operation of long-term storage facilities. I've been down in the one they use for medium-level waste, and it's pretty impressive. Think underground Bond villian lair.
No one likes your math, U.S. embargoes and wars will kill more this year than the population of new york, surely we should Nuke the world trade centre. Oh wait...
2.7 gigawatts? 2.7 gigawatts? Great Scott!
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Given this story http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/23/1639205 that was posted on Slashdot only a few days ago regarding the commercially ready form of Solar Power at around $1 per watt there are many alternatives to the arguably clean nuclear power. If you took just a small chunk of the money ($6 Billion?) proposed, let's say about $1 Billion..... put that into further research by the Uni team who originally developed the solar panels technology to for the future, then take another $1B and create some Solar Farms at $1/watt, that 1 Gigawatt available much more cleanly, and far more quickly that the 7 year timespan quoted in the article (I'm willing to bet that within 7 years that $1B research investment in solar research would pay huge dividends). Then take the other $4B and use it for the upgrading of whatever other unclean power options are available to develop and improve (whilst the sun isn't up). Given the speed that renewable energy development is progressing it seems almost dumb to make a plan for a nuclear plant for 7 years time!
I'm no expert, but it seems to make a bunch of sense to me, to encourage and nurture cleaner/safer power technologies that are mature and market ready.
Just my 2 cents.
Some casualty figures. I've never heard the ten million figure before, but overblown estimates have been used to justify the use of atomic weapons for the past sixty years. Although the estimates vary a lot, most are around 1-200k, with a fifth of those actual deaths.
I guess what the rest of the world hates is that we're able to do the math. 100,000 or 10 million? And we're not afraid to make those kinds of decisions when we have to.
It seems more likely to me that the decision was between 100k japanese civilians and 100k US soldiers. "We" are not afraid to make such choices and lie about them afterwards...
Err... I'm not quite clear on your message. Should we be building breeder reactors?
The south Texas plant has been there for close to 30 years. There is already a facility there. Adding another one to that location isn't going to piss anyone off, or infringe on some one's rights. You conspiracy theorists may want to consider that when you start trying to blame bush and his 'connections' for putting this in Texas.
For those of you who don't bother to look at maps, Texas is BIG. REALLY big. Whole other country BIG. When you drive into the east side of the state from LA, there is a sign that says 'El Paso 827 Miles'. Did it never occur to you folks that Texas is a great place to put something like this? There is PLENTY of room. And despite the romantic views to the contrary, there aren't a whole lot of places that are as sunny as I would think you would want for a solar power array. Most of East Texas is sub-tropical, which means a lot of rain, and the occasional hurricane and all the tornadoes that they spawn. This is the last place you would want a lot of flat pieces of anything perched up on turnstiles to follow the sun. West Texas would be better for that, but then you run into transmission issues to get to the more populated places that actually need the energy.
Please self-righteous people, get over yourselves. I'm so tired of hearing how we COULD solve the problem IF ONLY. I'm even more tired of hearing how 'your doing it wrong'
Screw you guys and the rose coloured glasses you view the world through. The rest of us need something that works TODAY, running LAST WEEK, not a perfect solution that may or may not be available in the next 20 years.
Cool, the global warming propaganda is working. A new nuclear plant can be built and there are no staged demonstrators with silly halloween costumes out in the woods.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
The sun won't last forever either, so should solar, wind, hydro, etc be abandoned as possible energy sources. Yes there are differences in time scales, but several centuries I would think at least qualifies as a long term solution. All future energy problems aren't going to be solved today, but other break throughs will happen in several centuries that will lead to other ways of of converting energy.
In fact, this is not the case. This development has been encouraged by government through loan guarantees that are not available to other power providers. Even with that the cost, likely lowballed at $2.20/Watt is high compared to Texas wind power (about $1.30/Watt). Wind is curently the least expensive source of power in Texas and it is growing very rapidly because of this. There is a definite risk that the new reactors won't be able to sell their power and we will be stuck with the bill when they default on their construction loans. Eliminate the loan guarantees, repeal Price-Anderson and then see if private capital is available to do this kind of thing. From the numbers, it does not look like it makes any kind of economic sense.
--
Rent solar power for your home and save: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users-selling-solar.html
So let's review: in an age where America is rattling sabres with other countries regarding [denying] their ability to build or operate a nuke facility , how are we taking the moral high ground to open new ones of our own? Doesn't this seem a bit hypocritical?
It is the poisoning that makes it very difficult to reprocess uranium. You need to go to unacceptably high levels of enrichment to overcome the poisoning uranium isotope. This is why only the plutonium is used (about 1% of spent fuel) and the uranium put in long term storage in French reprocessing. You don't get a whole lot of energy from reprocessing.
Ok, additional info to my original post..
You would need to build a solar plant of about 100 x 100 Miles in the Nevada desert to generate the USAs electricity. USA had around 743 GigaWatt (0.743 TerraWatt) installed generating capacity in 1998 - I will dig out a newer figure, but lets say about 1 TerraWatt today.. This scheme in Nevada:
http://www.reuk.co.uk/Nevada-Solar-One.htm
Delievers 64 Mw for 350 acres = 45 watts per sqr meter.
100 x100 miles = 26 000 000 000 m2.
* 44 (watts) = 1.17 TerraWatt supply. Is 100x100 miles too much? How does it compare to coal-strip mining?
It is true that the sun doesnt shine at night - so in reality you would have a mix - wind power, tidal, etc - backed up with ready-to-roll capacity, pumped hyroelectric storage, and new tech like very large SuperCapacitors. Technology is moving all the time..
Cost? Figures vary, but Nevada Solar quote about $0.07/Kwh, wind and others maybe a little less. With oil hitting $80 a barrel this looks good, its hard to compare to Nuclear because of the huge hidden subsidies it recieved, both in terms of research and hidden unknown costs like waste disposal and decomissioning..
More links on power schemes..
http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/story?id=46415
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/08/worlds_largest_4.php
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/06/21/BUG9VJHBLB1.DTL
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,1321857,00.html
http://www.pvresources.com/en/top50pv.php
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_west/6031995.stm
As for Three Mile Island, read this link. Years later, when they could actually inspect inside the reactor, they were horrified to see just what a mess it was in - a huge glob of melted reactor fuel nearly breached the containment vessel - it was very very close to a Chernobyl type meltdown..
http://americanhistory.si.edu/tmi/tmi03.htm
"A nation that forgets its past is doomed to repeat it." - Churchill
how so many people think nuclear is not a valid solution to the energy crisis.
See Here France gets somewhere around 70-80 % of their power from nuclear. You never hear of any nuclear accidents in france, be it waste seepage into water, reactor meltdowns, etc because there aren't any. We don't have to be American pioneers and reinvent alternative energy when today the most viable alternative energy source could provide us with a significant portion of our energy within a decade or so (if done right).
Mabye in the future we can further invest in solar and wind and all the rest, but we should be more energy independent than we are now, and nuclear technology is here now, why dont we fix this problem. now-ish?
"(Well, a pebble got stuck, then broken trying to unstick it)."
Some moron went in with a scaffolding pole to try and shift it (or something like that).
"And those idiot Germans shut the plant down. Wimps"
It happened, like, two weeks after Chernobyl - not the best of timing.
No sig today...
I'll bet poor ol' George's head is spinning... "wait, you mean we are building a site that will give us nookular capabilities? So.. so... what yer sayin' is that we have to attack ourselves. We can't stand for this. What? It's in Texas? I'm from Texas. I must be a terrrist. No, that can't be right. .... DICK! Get in here."
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
And a neocon!
Coal is natural, it's cute, you can hold it in your hands. People have been using it for thousands of years.
Nuclear is something done by evil scientists wearing white outfits and radiation-monitor tags. It's obviously not to be trusted.
No sig today...
Church of Euthanasia
I have a feeling I'll be burning some karma once people see the "I Like to Watch" video, but damn, it's worth it (very not safe for work, just as a warning).
Uh ... Then who is responsible for these deaths ?????
The makers and operators of the roadside bombs, which have caused most of the deaths.
EBR2, the IFR test reactor was built and operated. I'm not sure if you meant to imply that it wasn't. Of course, a commercial - scale power generating IFR has not been built, so it's still a highly experimental technology, but the test reactor was built and tested.
so these people started this pointless war ?
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
Pebble bed reactors will self-shutdown, even if someone "pulls the plug", so to speak. No systems to engage to start the shutdown process. Even this safer version of a water-based requres a shutdown procedure, even though it is automated. Automated systems can still fail.
"A pebble-bed reactor thus can have all of its supporting machinery fail, and the reactor will not crack, melt, explode or spew hazardous wastes. It simply goes up to a designed "idle" temperature, and stays there. In that state, the reactor vessel radiates heat, but the vessel and fuel spheres remain intact and undamaged. The machinery can be repaired or the fuel can be removed." - Wikipedia
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
Well, its about time. Now we just need to move from 20% of our power generation being nuke to more like 80%. I heard they can process the waste "into" glass onsite now (probably not at this site since its not new). Anyone know about that?
US-bashing?
I thought the Iraq war was the result of a Coalition of nations. A Coalition of the Willing as it were.
And don't forget Poland!
Are churches and witches chemical weapons too?
This is something I've found extremely ironic. It's old news, but relevant to the article. After years of doing damage to the nation by opposing nuclear power, Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore has officially renounced his anti-nuclear groups, and called on other environmentalists to do the same.http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/14/AR2006041401209.html
What the real pity is, is that these people were the ones who made it so incredibly difficult (litigation and monetarily) to build a new power plant. Back when opposing nuclear power was the cool thing to do, they lobbied and pushed for increasingly ludicrous laws and fees to try to stymy the growth of nuclear power. I'm sure they had good intentions, but this is just a classic example of a bunch of people latching on to a flawed idea, and then doing a ton of harm with it. As a result of it, now that they realize how dumb they were, or maybe just ruled by emotion, and call on people to start building power plants again, it's almost impossible to do it based on the litigation they themselves fought for.
In some way (of course they aren't the sole reason), they helped contribute to our complete dependence on Middle Eastern oil, and if you buy into what they say the war is about, they started it themselves.
To be honest, I really do hope that environmentalists start jumping on board here to try to make up for the damage they did. Make no mistake, I'm totally for not littering, and maybe even not building on the land of endangered species, but man, Greeenpeace has done some dumbass shit. By all means, nuclear power should be regulated, and standards enforced, but it really isn't the anti-christ. Seriously!
Power is the ability to make a change.
How about a deal?
I'll buy ALL the "waste" plutonium your country produces at USD1 per gram. That's a pretty good price for _waste_ right? But you have to send at least 50% of all the plutonium produced.
I'll even throw in shipping and handling for free.
Excuse me for not trusting a mad religious crack-pot dictator with an apocalyptic world view not to use a nuclear program to leverage his position in the world, and intimidate or harm "the great Satan"
It should be possible to design a completely idiot proof reactor that would automatically disable itself in the event of coolant loss.
As I recall, the Canadian CANDU reactors are like this. They use heavy water as a moderator and coolant, and this slows down the neutrons and allows the reaction to proceed. If the heavy water drains away, the reaction stops. Thus, in the event of a major coolant leak, the reactor shuts itself down.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
I had a friend that actually thought she should move east of the Hanford facility, as the thought it could go up in a nuclear explosion and send everything downstream to Portland Oregon.
It took the best minds in the world YEARS to figure our how to make a nuclear explosion, and apparently it is VERY difficult to do it today.
Why would anyone think a power plant could ever have a nuclear explosion occur?
Here in Portland we took care of things, we destroyed the perfectly good cooling tower and the Trojan facility.
We greenies out here know best, much more than all the nuclear countries in the world...
"The Republic of Iran is a democratically elected theocratic republic." I guess this plus the fact that Iran is light years ahead of the US on Womens and gay rights(at the moment they have no gays yet) and the separation of church and state explains the backlog of visa requests from American citizens attempting to immigrate to Iran. I predict a giant sucking sound of all the Iran converts moving there soon.
I agree. Nice thing is we can build breeders right next (on the same grounds) as the older tech. Or we could ship (noting the danger) to a breeder.
I heard the Chinese have developed a tech that gets even more energy out of the material than traditional breeders. I know little about it though.
So what's your point? One of our soldiers is worth 10,000 of their civilians or 100,000 of their soldiers.
They started it, they got their asses handed to them expeditiously.. end of story. And before you even start, talk to a WWII vet or anybody else from the allies who lived through that era and give them your so-called "informed" opinion. It would be amusing to see a fat white pasty slashdotter get the shit beat out of him by a 90 year old.
Sure, but did you know that Japan had two independent and advanced atomic weapons programs underway? One, in Japan, was destroyed before the U.S arrived, and the other was located in what is now North Korea, and likely gutted by Russia after the war.
An idea floated was to blow a boat/sub in San Fran harbour, but the two bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki beat them to it.
Check out the documentary:
http://tv-links.co.uk/listings/9/7830
This is not the first recent one.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/index.php?feed=Business&article=UPI-1-20070731-13273100-bc-us-nukeplant.xml
That's one example.
I'm pretty sure that's not the first either, even though that article says the same thing: "First application in 30 years."
I attended a lecture (by someone from Westinghouse, I believe) through my school's nuclear engineering department in early 2007. One of the things shown in the presentation was a timetable of quite a few new reactors plans being prepared/applied for. It might well be that the application was the penultimate step (approval is last) on this timetable. Regardless, there is a lot of expansion of nuclear energy in the near future.
The movies.
"I don't think it's selfish, to eat defenseless shellfish." -NOFX
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epat1p1.html
We do not rely "too much" on NG, as we are a close second behind Russia as the world's largest producer of NG.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/neic/infosheets/natgassupply.html
We get almost all of our NG needs from our own domestic production. We import a little from Canada and Mexico and a fraction of that from Trinidad. We get a fraction of a fraction from a handful of other countries, none of which are Russia:
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/ng/ng_move_impc_s1_m.htm
We also EXPORT NG to Canada and Mexico and LNG to Japan:
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/ng/ng_move_expc_s1_m.htm
Please stop going on about petroleum and dependence on Russia for natural gas. Thank you.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epat1p1.html
All of the lower estimates given there are for a short initial time period, and consider American casualties only. They're also estimating casualties occurring at the rate of 1:3 to 1:5 American:Japanese, so multiply any of those numbers by 4-6 for the total from both sides. And take low casualty estimates by Generals with a grain of salt - they were willing to understate for the sake of invasion. Considering that the battle of Iwo Jima (21 km^2) lasted 35 days with a total of 30000 dead and 20000 wounded, it's not hard to imagine that a land invasion of the Japanese home islands would have lasted a long time with total casualties in the millions. I've not seen any numbers as high as 10M, but most things I've read on the subject have put estimates in the 2-4M range.
It's a separate issue, but it seems odd to me that people always come back to the atomic bombs, even though they might not crack the top 10 civilian atrocities perpetrated - by all sides - during WWII. Even if you look at only American actions, the firebombing of Tokyo was at least as bad as either nuclear event.
As a responsible global society, it is pointless to discuss continuing to use, much less build more, nuclear reactors until such time that the problem of nuclear waste is solved. Right this moment, in the US, all storage facilites for waste have 2 things in common: 1) they were conceived to be temporary 2) they are full. Building more reactors and continuing to create more waste is both insane and either really stupid or suicidal.
And France hasn't solved anything! They've merely concentrated the toxic, nuclear waste, and are burying it! I seriously doubt France will be here 5000 years from now baby-sitting their garbage, which is poisonous for 30,000 years!
Nuclear energy is not clean anywhere. And there are clean alternatives, yes, more expensive, but they (solar, wind, geothermal, tidal, and hydro) are really they only rational alternatives to dirty energy like nuclear and fossil fuels.
The Admin and the Engineer
I was never implying that Iran doesn't have a long way to go wrt social issues. The US also had a long ways to go in that regard.
:)
And I know for a fact that there are no gay people in Iran.
-metric
I guess all competent personnel with adequate experience in designing systems for nuclear plants must be retired now .... or are busy with all their extra hands and heads :-)
Wake me when they start giving households the 1.21 gigawatts I've been needing for... stuff...
Sweden's policy of running nuclear power into the ground is still better than our policy of running nuclear waste into a corrugated sheet metal shed on the plant site.
>>5 billion less people on Earth would solve nearly every socio-economic and environmental problem we currently face.
>Where to begin...
--To begin with, it should be "5 billion FEWER people"
Wow. I see "Sellafield" and all I can think of is
... kudos to anyone that gets that.
Cher-bo-byl
Har-ris-berg
Sel-la-field
Hi-ro-shi-ma
Stop! Radioactivity
it's in the air for you and me
End of lesson. You may press the button.
It's very patriotic to acknowledge the good we've done, but it's just as patriotic to identify the bad, and try to make it better. Critics of the U.S. are not antagonists, they are a whetstone for sharpening. From a narrow view the knife and stone are enemies, wearing away at each other. But in the long run the knife is better and more effective with the whetstone than without it.
The genius of our system is the rule by the people and the ensuing debate about everything. Calling half of that debate "propaganda" is not fair. No one's trying to convince us that "we" are the enemy...the question is: are we doing the best good in the best way we can? It's possible to acknowledge the good we're doing while still asking that question. Constant improvement means constant debate and questioning. The alternative is complacency and stagnation.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
...filed an application for the first new nuclear power plant in the US in thirty years to build two advanced boiling water reactors (ABWR) at its South Texas nuclear power plant site doubling the 2700 megawatts presently generated at the facility.
Awesome, that's enough power for _TWO_ time-travelling DeLoreans!
they should just say, all coal power plants must be shut down by 2075 and no new ones can be made. ma'b people will actually start caring about getting more nuclear. coal is horrible.
Would it have been acceptable for Germany to surrender with the compromise that Hitler would remain in power?
I'm sure we could go on and on with this "sure, but did you know" line. I'll still regard the bombings as a war crime and a crime against humanity.
This is the dumbest thing I've heard all day.
The answer? Yes. Sure as heck it would be a war crime, because the bombs by your definition did not bring the war to a close and did not save more lives than they cost.
Now -- if the Germans dropped the bombs and won, that'd be a lot better than a full-scale invasion of America, wouldn't it?
Have people forgotten how to think for themselves? Do they not remember what the war was like? How the Japanese disregarded every convention of warfare, attacked without warning, or planned to fight to every last man, woman, and child? The lame-brain stuff I hear any more is crazy. Given the thoughts you've expressed, it would have been better to invaded the mainland, lost a million soldiers and marines, god knows how many Japanese, and basically destroyed their culture. As it was, they got out of the war with a LOT more than they would have without the A-bomb.
What an idiot.
They want the world to look pretty, and do not care who gets hurt to make it that way.
The very concept of a "gigawatt" scares the hell out of them, no matter how it is generated, no matter how it is used. Human activity is bad.
These self-centered aesthetes do not want to understand modernity. Note how their aintellectuals delight in "post-modern" fantasies. How their only answer to millenia of progress is "deconstruction," a synonym for destruction, a mass of ideas so stupid even Noam Chomsky called bullshit on it.
And they have the gall to call themselves "Progressives."
Greens puff up their pride by speaking for things that cannot speak. They speak for animals they will never see. They speak for land they do not own. They speak for rivers, for mountains, for the very air and sky.
If they do not see themselves as religious fundamentalists, they need mirrors.
It is why they are allied with Islamic fundamentalists: their goal, all of them, is a return to a pre-modern Dark Age. Back when there were far fewer than a billion humans.
The only honest, moral Green is a suicide.
Coal appears to be worse than nuclear
According to http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/colmain.html
"For comparison, according to NCRP Reports No. 92 and No. 95, population exposure from operation of 1000-MWe nuclear and coal-fired power plants amounts to 490 person-rem/year for coal plants and 4.8 person-rem/year for nuclear plants. Thus, the population effective dose equivalent from coal plants is 100 times that from nuclear plants. For the complete nuclear fuel cycle, from mining to reactor operation to waste disposal, the radiation dose is cited as 136 person-rem/year; the equivalent dose for coal use, from mining to power plant operation to waste disposal, is not listed in this report and is probably unknown."
i think we know enough to make safe, reliable nuclear power plants, although i'm concerned about choosing coastal locations that could end up below sea level. my biggest concern with nuclear power is the national security threat it may pose. terrorists would no longer have to obtain nuclear weapons or smuggle radioactive materials into the country. they could just fly an airliner into a nuclear plant. another scenario: an established nation (not terrorists)(say venezuela or cuba) no longer needs nuclear warheads on their missles. just hit a nuclear power plant with a regular missile. yes, i know that probably wouldn't equal the immediate destruction caused by a nuclear warhead, but it would still be very devestating to the economy...and that is where all wars are won or lost.
on the other hand, perhaps more nuke plants would significantly decrease our dependence on foreign oil. enough that we would have no desire to meddle in the affairs of major oil producing countries. perhaps, this would quaff terrorists activities and anti-american sentiments that would lead to such horrific events. however, there will always be crazy people with power in the world that are willing to do just about anything for any reason. solar and hydrogen-from-water are my great hopes for humanity. it will be the most important point in the history of man if both or one of these abundant resources can be tapped for power generation with efficiency. i'm hoping the recent news of the PA researcher who 'burned water' while applying a high-frequency radio wave will come to fruition. solar and hydrogen would put us back into an individual, self-subsistence mode of life with no centralization that is more harmonious with nature.
"NRG projects it will spend $6 billion constructing the two new reactors and hopes to have the first unit online by 2014." Rather than wasting $6 Billion on building new reactors that could cause disasters, not use half of that to buys renewable energy sources such as solar power fields or wind tunnels in areas which are inhibited in Texas.
A: The movies.
Narrator: In this week's episode of Mythbusters Adam and Jamie build their own nuclear reactor in Jamie's workshop in San Francisco to try and debunk the myth that a nuclear power plant can cause a nuclear explosion. But first they need to find someone who will sell them some enriched uranium ...
Becasue though we are to some degree a theocracy what with halfwit envangelicals having so much power in this country, we're nowhere near as crazy as Iran. We don't have established ties with radical Islamic terrorists. We don't advocate genocide of any particular race or country. More importantly, the cat is out of the bag already - we have them. Some people thought your question was legitimate and didn't deserve to be modded down, but you are properly modded - your question is absolutely fucking stupid.
"America has never said it wants to attack, change the government and own another nation; we don't want more territory- we just want wars there to stop. It's maddening when we take part in a distant war (think Bosnia) where we bombed the Christians and worked for the Muslims, and then come home. But we're not about expansion-for-expansion's sake, many/most of the UN members cannot make such a claim."
You must have just woken up from your nap that started around 1965 when the US got heavily involved in Vietnam after faking the Gulf of Tonkin incident (and after all was told the whole fucking mess lead to some 2 million dead civillians and 50'000 dead Americans) right through 2003, when a certain country's politicians lied to everybody about another, smaller country having big bombs, germs and shit, and invaded that smaller country, which has, up until now, and it hasn't stopped yet, resulted in about 70'000 dead civillians and 3500 dead Americans.
Wake up. It's no longer 1945, and the English have finished paying off their war debts to you. (which went up until right until 2006). Perhaps today is a good day to realise that the world has changed, and that your image of the world is seriously out of wack.
Then something needs to be done about illegal immigration, especially along the Texas-Mexico border, because there's basically no monitoring along the majority of the border. There's an estimated 10 million illegals currently in the United States. Then remember that Mexican culture encourages large families, with six to eight children, and that they usually marry young (teens to lower twenties). Use math to figure out how large that pool will grow in twenty years.
(By contrast, I think most Canadians are happy to stay in Canada.)
I want to be a breeder! Where can I sign up?
Online Starcraft RPG? At
Dietary fiber is like asynchronous IO-- Non-blocking!
>Do they not remember what the war was like?
Perhaps it's your age that makes you so disagreeable.
~notthesamecoward
Then why would NASA spend millions of dollars to develop a pen that could write in outer-space, when the Soviet's were smart enough to just use a fucking pencil? Who's got the hard-on for displaying their technical prowess? Who's that, you say??
**ducks**
**ducks again for the backhand**
what you're really asking for is the country to be dotted with great big radioactive targets for people to fly airliners into. fun.
Cut their revenue streams and they will suffocate.
No they won't... altruists will start screaming about their plight and we'll just prop them up with foreign aid, like we do now in Africa.
For starters, Iran is believed to support the Islamic group Hezbollah, which is designated by several countries as a terrorist organization.
The nuclear paranoia stems from the revelation in 2002 of the development of a uranium enrichment facility in the village of Natanz in the province of Ishafan in Iran, and the construction of a heavy water facility in Arak, in the province of Markazi in Iran.
Both had been constructed without the knowledge of the international community, in particular, the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, which is the nuclear watchdog.
After the IAEA started investigating, it found that Iran had been secretly importing uranium and that it had not been forthcoming in reporting where the uranium was being stored within Iran. (Refer to http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Board/2003/gov2003-75.pdf and http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Board/2004/gov2004-83.pdf). For example, from the 2003 report:
Iran's secrecy and self-contradictions have raised suspicions about the true intent of these facilities. When Iran's president stated that "Israel should be wiped off the map", more alarms were raised; was this an idle rhetorical threat or something that could be carried out through Hezbollah?
The Wikipedia article "Nuclear program of Iran" contains more information, but be aware that the article (as are all articles in Wikipedia) is subject to edit wars, revisions at any time by pranksters, etc, and make sure that footnotes point to legitimate sources.
By the way, it is a myth that you do not need backups and secondary sources with coal/nuclear/gas - both power-lines and the generators themselves trip out all the time, so a cetain amount of ready-to-roll-backup is needed for a stable system anyway..
Sure, for critical systems like hospitals, phones, and server farms, but your average grocery store is able to last through the average power outage without having to throw all the food away without any generator backup.
If your power solution is so unreliable as to have most people looking into building level UPS units, there's a problem.
In the long term, the answer is coming in the form of improved energy storage/regulation technology, like Ultracaps, as well as more traditional methods like pumped hydroelectric storage.
Ultracaps don't even come within orders of magnitude of the cost per kWh of storage necessary for the sort of backup that would be necessary if we were 100% wind/solar. Traditional solutions suffer from a rather classic problem - suitable sites where they can be economically built are few and far between. I did see a system where they had the wind turbines turning pneumatic compressers rather than electric generators, moving generation to where the air was released. This allowed you to stabilize power over time because you could simply let pressure build up when power demands were lower than the power the wind was providing, and dropped pressure when the opposite occured.
The problem with this solution is that you lose efficiency and increase cost(the tubing involved increases cost by something like 30% by itself). They also proposed exploiting natural underground caverns to hold pressurized air so the system could ride out calms even lasting multiple days - part of the problem with this is that those caverns are mostly already used for other things and they rarely occur where the climate is suitable for wind turbines(strong steady winds).
I don't read AC A human right
god, i just love this marker system.
http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=160
Of all the dead horses to flog, why build a BWR?
It's a really primitive and unsafe design.
Even supposing it doesn't suffer from a Loss of Coolant Accident (it's "fully automated against [that]" whatever that means) it's not fail-safe, it's horrendously inefficient thermally, but worst of all, it uses reactor coolant to drive the turbines directly.
That means there is radioactive steam in your turbine halls. How dirty and disgusting.
It's 2007 already. Why are they not building a pebble-bed reactor, or at least an SIR or APWR?
Stick Men
Is there reason to believe that uranium mines will be considerably safer than this in the event that all the effort is shifted to nuclear?
.1% of the material.
One word: Volume.
The volume needed to mine enough uranium to produce a kWh of electricity is so much less than coal that you can get rather extreme on safety, not to mention the sheer fact that you need fewer miners.
To get a picture of it - a coal plant can go through two or more 100 car trainloads of coal a day. A single car of uranium can power a similarly sized nuclear plant for a year. Even though coal is pretty much shoveled directly into the burners while uranium has to be refined, even at a 1000 to 1(1000 tons ore to 1 ton reactor-ready material), you're talking about mining something like
I don't read AC A human right
...in which unelected clerics control the media, the military, and have the power to overrule the policy decisions of the democratically elected president.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
Worst. Timing. Ever.
I thought most Breeder reactor designs used liquid sodium as a coolant. As far as corrosive materials go, I imagine superheated liquid sodium falls in the " freakin' insane " category. Perhaps this drives the already high initial investment associated with nuclear reactor construction into the stratosphere.
I think the impediment to this technology is probably a mix of the problems mentioned here: part public/government ignorance, part economics, part proliferation concerns.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The utilities don't control the demand for energy, they control the supply. NRG is a producer here. The best they can do is limit how much electricity they produce and tell people not to use any more than that. If the people want to use more and NRG won't produce it, someone else will.
So while you're absolutely right that reducing usage is typically much more cost effective than increasing production capacity, that is a method that inherently must be exercised by the consumers, not the producers.
This is a common mistake people make in the midst of their enthusiasm to implicate the power companies in cruelly destroying the environment while sucking their pocketbooks dry.
Of course, the other important point to be made is that you can only be so efficient before you either have to make non-trivial cuts in activity or build more capacity.
Primarily this thought experiment speaks against the notion of war crime. The whole point of war is to use violence and deadly force to subject a country to your rule. If you don't like that, don't go to war.
http://erichsieht.wordpress.com/category/english/
It is solved. Dump it in the Yucca Mountain site (and similar geologically stable regions). Burying it is a reasonable solution.
And France hasn't solved anything! They've merely concentrated the toxic, nuclear waste, and are burying it! I seriously doubt France will be here 5000 years from now baby-sitting their garbage, which is poisonous for 30,000 years!
This is unlike France's usual garbage, which due to heavy metals, will be poisonous forever.> The whole point of war is to use violence and deadly force to subject a country to your rule.
Not everyone holds this opinion. Some differentiate between "total war" (where anything goes) and war with rules. The latter is generally viewed as more "civilized" - in as much as war can be civilized. The trials at the end of WWII demonstrate that the victor nations thought that there should be some rules in war.
Having said that, I would accept that what I wrote tends to be more true in public forums and in the history books, and what you wrote probably has more sway in the war planning rooms and on the battle fields.
Monorail!
Yet you're trusting one of them to run NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS?
You know they'll either neglect it as much as they possibly can to save a buck, or else dump all their waste into convenient nearby rivers!
I do not STOP thinking upon reading "Greenpeace" because unlike Big Oil, they don't do PR for the sake of making unfettered profit-- if anything their motives are just short of removing mankind off the planet.
I don't know about Greenpeace other than meeting a few people, and I do not find their fanatic members to be bad or even "crazy" and their motives are entirely honorable; the organization and some of its members is bound to have the same problems any large organization has.
Greenpeace is far from perfect; however, they get a bad rap from the trillion dollar industries they fight with. The most powerful forces on earth today are some of the long time enemies of Greenpeace and don't think they haven't spend time and resources to hurt Greenpeace in every way they can for DECADES now.
You should consider how much actual experience and examination you have done in respect to Greenpeace and the large influential global powers with proven track records WANTING you to judge them based upon popular culture (which they have considerable influence over.)
My objections with nuclear are with stupid politicians regulating the waste and the actual long term cost - because no nuclear plant in the USA has ever been profitable. (hint: include government handouts when you do your math.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
FWIW, I don't personally agree with the premise that the nuclear bombings of Japan were substantively different from the non-nuclear fire-bombings, and trying to reason out the morality of that leads one down a very twisted and confused path.
What the media doesn't tell us is that in 2004, the worldwide death toll among coal miners was a whopping 21,500!! (Most of the accidents happened in China.) That's as many deaths, every single year, as seven World Trade Centers stacked atop each other.
Contrast the coal industry with the nuclear power industry; in its entire history, there's been only one incident with fatalities. (Chernobyl, a reactor that was orders of magnitude less safe than modern designs, killed 31 people. Divide that by the 50-year existence of the nuke power industry, and you get an annual death toll of 0.62 persons.)
If all coal-fired power plants were converted to nuclear, we'd immediately surpass the goals of the Kyoto Protocol. Environmentalists spend a lot more time criticizing nuclear power than coal; the facts show they are barking up the wrong tree. Even when they criticize coal, they do so for the wrong reasons - like acid rain, which pales in comparison to the massive death toll among miners.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Burn it in a reactor. Pu burns very well. The true waste products that don't recycle well in the fuel process have half-lives around 30 years. Strontium and Cesium the biggest ones. After 300 years you have 1000 times less, in the meantime the Strontium can be packaged into RTG's for the ultimate in dependable power backup. Frankly I'm shocked they don't have a couple of these at the South Pole. As for Cesium you'll probably have a surplus even after incorporation into medical therapy devices. But it only is around for a half life of 30 years. I'm sure we can build something that will last at least 300 years.
History has shown that the only war crime can be safely summed up as "losing."
Jesus is coming -- look busy!
War with "rules" is ultimately a slow defeat. Just look at Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and just about anywhere else conflict has broken out since the end of WWII. Either a nation is prepared to defeat its enemies, and willing to do whatever it takes to reach that end, or it is not. You can't make war into something other than war.
Jesus is coming -- look busy!
You don't have to just consider the plant matter that was there when you flooded, but also incoming organic material.
So does that mean we should drain the Great Lakes? But what about the ocean? Oh, no!
It's about time people start getting over the stigma of the word "nuclear" in the US. Nuclear engineers in this country have been finding themselves out of related job work for far too long. This is probably the best and cleanest form of energy we can produce until we can master fusion technologies. Sadly, fusion technology is a good 20+ years away as we can't find enough helium-3 on Earth. There's plenty other places though ... (awaits the space race to go to the moon.. US vs European Alliance vs Russia vs China.. sounds stupid, but in 20 years I'll have said "I told you so").
For nations, there is one thing better than winning a war. That's winning a war and being able to claim the moral upper hand. Nations don't want to be seen as the one who shot the opponent in the back or kicked them when they were down.
Because of this, most nations do claim that they abide by rules of war (such as the Geneva convention). I don't know any nation that openly says "When we wage war, anything goes".
In practice of course, these rules get bent. But the victors inevitably claim that they followed the rules and the losers didn't. My original point was that at the end of WWII the victors had a trial where the losers were accused and punished for breaking rules of war. I quoted Leo Szilard who suggested that the use of atomic weapons would have been considered a war crime had it been carried out by the losers.
And don't forget who these big-oil guys are controlled by! Just investigate any one of these CEOs, and you will find he is a member of the Freemasons, the Illuminati, and the Rosicrucians.
I have heard that some of them also belong to the elders of Zion!
Damn! Will we EVER manage to break their evil hold on our society!
Perhaps Bill Gates might help us. Gosh Darn! HE'S one of them also!
- And come to think of it, so am I! Nyahhh hha ha haa! - Drunk on power (and Pinoqachole too)
Burying nuclear waste is not the solution. It'll just immanently turn into a bigger, more deadly Love Canal situation. No one knows where garbage was buried 50 years ago. Try adding 2 zeros to that figure, and basically its just planting the unsuspecting future death.
The Admin and the Engineer
Burying nuclear waste is not the solution. It'll just immanently turn into a bigger, more deadly Love Canal situation. No one knows where garbage was buried 50 years ago. Try adding 2 zeros to that figure, and basically its just planting the unsuspecting future death.
I don't see that. You ought to look at the design, geology, and location of the Yucca Mountain facility sometime. It was intended to store up to 77,000 tons of highly radioactive waste. Masswise, that's three times the estimately organic chemicals dumped at Love Canal. And I'd say that the Love Canal was far more dangerous than nuclear waste that stays locked up for a few millenia in a isolated location.A PBMR's design failure's only come into thier own when introduced on a commercial scale.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Why can't you see that the sheer amounts of time involved here becomes the unknowable? Nuclear waste has such a long half-life that it really is on the scale of geological time. Saying that Yucca is geologically stable is myopic; its the same thing as claiming that a volcano is extinct: ultimately, looking forward in time for millenia, it is meaningless and just plain wrong. There is no science anywhere that would support a claim that Yucca will be 'geologically stable' in 17,000 years. It is unknowable! I prefer not to gamble with the future, or stake our future on what some NRC hack geologist says.
The Admin and the Engineer
The only thing that will change over that time period is climate and human society. From what I gather the site is far enough south to avoid glaciation during an ice age and above the water table even during such periods. And we have at best little responsibility for the actions of our descendants. To be blunt, one cannot engineer Yucca Mountain to be fool proof. But I see the site as sufficiently safe against natural dangers.
In summary, a lot of work has been done on researching the site. I don't think your ignorance of this work is a good reason to halt what would otherwise be a good solution to the radiative waste disposal problem. Further, I don't like the petty game that some antinuclear activists are playing here. It's pretty obvious that Yucca Mountain or some similar site with similar long term hazards will be used even if global nuclear power were to be discontinued completely today. But by resisting common sense approaches to waste disposal, they have made nuclear power riskier and more costly.
Finally, I find the hysteria surrounding nuclear waste to be extremely biased. Lead, mercury, cadmium, etc are hazardous elements with an infinite halflife. But you don't hear a lot of whining about posterity concerning this danger. Landfills won't remain stable for millions of years. Where's the consistency? What makes radioactive waste more dangerous than heavy metals?
uh... radiation. Heavy metals aren't as hot.
The fact of the matter is the clean and nondeadly, not-so-dangerous alternatives are BETTER than nuclear... the advances in the efficiency and falling costs of solar power alone are compelling enough to give up on fission. Pile on geothermal power, hydrolic power, tidal and wind generators, and it becomes absurd to continue even discussing an energy source that creates a toxin that will effectively be toxic forever! (30,000+ years is forever to me).
And one doesn't take responsibility for future individuals, but responsibility for our actions here and now... and if what we do now makes people sick in 25,000 years, yes, we're still responsible.
Its obvious that you are highly intelligent, but your morality is that of a child (action while denying responsibility for said action).
Screw fission reactors, we got better stuff now!
The Admin and the Engineer
uh... radiation. Heavy metals aren't as hot.
Radiation isn't everything. There's little point to spazzing out about the small amount of nuclear waste while ignoring the substantial quantities of heavy metals that will be around for millions of years.
The fact of the matter is the clean and nondeadly, not-so-dangerous alternatives are BETTER than nuclear... the advances in the efficiency and falling costs of solar power alone are compelling enough to give up on fission. Pile on geothermal power, hydrolic power, tidal and wind generators, and it becomes absurd to continue even discussing an energy source that creates a toxin that will effectively be toxic forever! (30,000+ years is forever to me).
Only one of those power sources you mention, geothermal energy is consistent, around the clock power. That's the role that nuclear power occupies, along with coal and probably fusion. My take is that you can replace nuclear power with renewables, but we need better energy storage and transportation technology. I'd have to say that I wouldn't mind seeing nuclear power obseleted on Earth. While I consider the disposal problem a solved problem (though the solution is rather expensive), most nuclear power is viable only because it is heavily subsidized.
You're right, of course, about freaking out and I must concede to your points about the sometimes inherent disadvantages concerning the cleanest energy sources. But we'll have to agree to disagree about the problem of nuclear waste being solved... you say its solved but I believe your solution is really, at best, an indefinate postponement of a theoretical solution that may never manifest. I'll say that its more likely that no unexpected events would occur with the Yucca option, but in the same breath, that its still irrational to risk it for the main reasons that we don't need to, and the unknown increases steadily if not exponentially as time progresses... and we're talking about a lot of time.
The Admin and the Engineer
Well, all propaganda I have read against fission plants have actually been against nuclear plants, so I naturally assumed that our friendly and ever-benevolent enviromentalist activists will work their darndest to dissuade any attempt to build, research and test fusion plants.
It's the only rational course of action.