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Former Anti-Nuclear Activist Does A 180
palegray.net writes "Wired is running a story on how Gwyneth Cravens, a former nuclear power protester has changed her views on nuclear power as a viable solution to the world's energy needs. Said Cravens: 'I used to think we surely could do better. We could have more wind farms and solar. But I then learned about base-load energy, and that there are three forms of it: fossil fuels, hydro and nuclear. In the United States, we're maxed out on hydro. That leaves fossil fuels and nuclear power, and most of the fossil fuel burned is coal.'"
1. World production at current prices has peaked I'm assuming you meant to say, there is plenty of it around but just not at current costs of extraction. The cost of the uranium is a small part of the total cost of nuclear power plants so even a substantial raise in the costs of extraction can be dealt with.
2. Uranium 235 is not the only fuel that can be used in nuclear power plants.
Try looking up the Olympic Dam mine in Australia owned by BHP Billiton. Every few years they send the geologists out a few more hundred meters and add another 50 years to the life of the mine when they need to boost reserve numbers for financial reasons. No one knowns how big the deposit is but it is HUGE - I've heard figures sugesting it might supply 30% of world uranium demand for the next century or more.
It's not nearly as dire as that, unless we keep using light-water reactors... take a look at a brief summary of the situation that jibes with what I've heard from various sources. Can't seem to find anything peer-reviewed at the moment, but I'm sure it's out there.
Cyg
2: No, it hasn't.
3: Doesn't matter. There are other radioactive materials that can be used for fission.
The stuff is safe, as long as its contained there's no reason why anybody needs to gain access to it. There's only one reason to guard the waste, and that's to ensure that it doesn't end up in the hands of terrorists.
From the point of view of disposal, the main thing is keeping it out of the water supply and away from people. Not really that hard, until you start getting alarmists crying about the problems. The reality is that the harm done by fossil fuels on a daily basis to people and wildlife is far greater than what nuclear is going to do.
Even in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, probably the worst esposures ever to radioactive waste, the number of radiation related deaths was only a small fraction of the number that were killed as a direct result of the blasts.
The main issue I have with the way its handled here, is that we in WA get all of the waste from, I think, 11 states, and we have the feds refusing to give us any assistance to clean up the mess we have. That being said the treat is more of a long term thyroid cancer risk than anything else, and potassium iodide does a pretty good job of keeping that at manageable levels.
In the US, any reactor that loses power to the control rods will also cut power to the fuel rods, resulting in the control rods falling into the core, and the fuel rods falling out of the core into a huge slab, stopping the reaction. I wish TFA had properly indicated that as the reason why we won't ever have a chernobyl, along with our compliance with basic safety regulations.
Noticed the question in the tagging section... apparently, "prote" is short for "protester"... news to me :).
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
The CSIRO (google them) will be able to tell you that Australia has the bulk of the worlds known Uranium deposits, however Canada is the worlds largest producer.
This is because the vast majority of Australia's Uranium is, as yet, untapped. This limit is not due to technology or environmental concerns preventing the rights holders from extracting the material from the ground. It's because they are waiting on the market prices to rise.
There is no shortage of Uranium, it's just that the raw materials are, mostly, in the hands of a very small number of companies who are colluding to exploit high demand while controlling supply.
You know, just like the Oil companies have done for decades, with great success.
At this point in time, Uranium demand hasn't even BEGUN to peak. Once everyone starts rushing towards nuclear power and away from fossil fuels, expect to see production ramp up.
The moon has nothing to do with hydroelectric, maybe you meant tidal energy?
Sorry, didn't have much luck with non-IEEE sources, but I'm sure you can find something if you look.
Power demand in a given day follows a sort of double-peaked curve. It peaks during daytime hours when businesses are running, and then again in the evening when people turn on their lights, tv's, etc. (and tapers off as people go to bed). If you draw a line underneath the minimums of the curves, however, you'll notice that demand never drops BELOW a certain point. This is the amount of "base load" power that must be constantly generated, 24/7. Think of it as "inflexible demand."
Now, as I've mentioned elsewhere in this thread, wind power is intermittent. Wind can and does just *stop* blowing. Obviously you choose sights where the average wind is highest (which are somewhat limited). If your generating source stops, you need a replacement that can kick on extremely quickly (I believe natural gas-fired generators are typically used for this, as I think they have start-up times of somewhere ~ 10 minutes) so that you're not providing less than current demand (and stressing out other generators).
Solar power actually provides the most power when demand is highest, but it can only work during daytime hours (hence, it can't cover the minimum load at night), and is still susceptible to clouds and things.
I'm perfect in every way, except for my humility.
It's a case of someone using bad Latin to sound smart, and failing. Prote is the middle Latin conjugation of Proteo, meaning "first among". They're trying to say she was one of the earliest of the decriers. Unfortunately, given the woman's demonstrated propensity to speak about things she does not understand, they're also probably correct.
StoneCypher is Full of BS
As several posts (including one of mine) have pointed out, fission can be used for quite a while (even if you don't take breeder reactors into account). Converting a fission plant to a fusion plant would be interesting. Basically, the reactor itself would almost certainly be scrapped entirely. The turbines and generators, OTOH, wouldn't generally care whether the steam was produced by fusion or fission, so they could probably remain more or less intact.
Interestingly, when/if you actually look carefully at the history of accidents (and near-accidents) in nuclear power plants, most of the problems are surprisingly mundane. In fact, it looks like a lot of the problems are basically mechanical -- things like building a steam valve that simply opens and closes dependably for years at a time, even though the steam involved is at high pressure and temperature (e.g. ~300 degrees C and 2000+ PSI). Quite a bit of research has been done into temperatures and pressures of primary coolants (near the bottom of the page).
Even if a repair is strictly in the steam part of the plant (where nuclear radiation isn't a problem) it can take months to cool hundreds of tons of steel, concrete, etc., down from its normal operating temperature to the point that a person can enter and work on something. This makes the cost of repairs so high that the system must be engineered to run for years (preferably decades) at a time without them.
The universe is a figment of its own imagination.
Wind power is the least environmentally damaging of all and takes up the least amount of space, but depending on your idea of beauty they could fuck up your view somewhat.
I'm not so sure about least environmentally damaging, but let's address the space issue: Gigawatt reactors are fairly typical and take up about 100 acres. You would need 17,000 acres of windfarm to match that, and it would only match it when the wind is blowing. So if we assume we need 3 locations to get 1GW of base load, suddenly we need 51,000 acres of wind farm to produce the base load of a 100 acre reactor.
Again I say WTF.
IIRC about 10% more than what is used to generate the required amount of power, since the complete absence of wind across even half a continent is an extremely rare occurance (ie: has never been recorded) there is no need to transport it that far.
"complete absence" is a red herring. Just because there is wind blowing doesn't mean its enough to make use of it.
Here's a wind atlas of the US: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:US_wind_power_map.png
The white and light cyan areas do not have enough wind for economical wind generation. The next bluer area is unlikely to have enough wind. Certainly not enough for companies to risk investment.
Going to the 3rd blue area, can you see any areas of more than half the continent where wind energy would have to be transported? I know I do.
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
Building them everywhere is a incredibly expensive and stupid idea.
In most places the wind doesnt blow nearly enough to justify them.
You'll only find wind farms in consistently windy places which is sensible.
There are a number of places where it rarely stops.
Even if a repair is strictly in the steam part of the plant (where nuclear radiation isn't a problem) it can take months to cool hundreds of tons of steel, concrete, etc., down from its normal operating temperature to the point that a person can enter and work on something. This makes the cost of repairs so high that the system must be engineered to run for years (preferably decades) at a time without them.
It takes Days- as in two or three- to cool down a steam plant, even one attached to a nuclear power plant.
We do mine every 18 months, and in the 30 or so day's it's offline, we can take apart EVERYTHING, work it, and put it back together again. Our minimum refueling outage time is perhaps a couple weeks.
Most nuke plans run on an 18-24 month fuel cycle- 18 months is fairly typical and balances out the required maintanence vs cost of being offline. We do buy and use things meant to run for years at a time, because we want to cut costs.
It costs us well over a million dollars a day (maybe two) in lost revenue and additional staffing costs during a planned refueling outage.
Aside from that timeline problem your post is pretty accurate.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
That still have people living around it.
Yes, but it's still a dead city. 2,800 Sq Km that is too dangerous to live in for any length of time. Why do you insist on minimizing this?
That would have happened even without the accident. Cancer is one of the leading causes of death today, Chernobyl or no Chernobyl. Cancer rates have been worse for several neighboring areas with not particularly clean chemical production facilities.
Forgive me, I assumed that you would understand that I meant "cancers that otherwise would not have happened." Obviously you can't tell the exact cause for most cancers, but, depending on which study you look at, a whole lot more than 60 people have died from that accident. (That study, from the WHO, has a lot more credibility for me than a study that comes from what is in effect a nuclear power lobby group)
She lacks credibility because she ignores, as you also choose to ignore, evidence (and, in the case of the dead zone, blindingly obvious facts) that contradict the point she tries to make.
To answer your question about green baseload replacements, try googling "pumped storage." Proven, simple and efficient. After that, think about (and google) tidal power and hydrogen generation/burning. There are others as well. The world is not as hopeless as the nuclear power industry wants you to believe.
And the cost of nuclear power is FAR more than what you claim. First, did you notice that your link points to a paper from an Australian uranium mining lobby group? Second, that study vastly underestimated the cost of commissioning new plants, which the study pegs at close to $1000/KW, is in reality always at least double that. A decent wikipedia discussion of this exists. See also the MIT study. (which, by the ways, puts the current lifecycle cost of nuke at 6.7 cents/KWh, which is far more then any mainstream power source)
I used to be very much for nuclear power, until I did research with an open mind. The truth is that it's very expensive, has a poor safety track record (and, in case you need something to keep you up at night, think about the dangers and potential for sabotage when we move all this radioactive material around), and is unnecessary. You can talk as much as you want about safeguards to the nuke process, but in the end either government (corrupt) or private industry (more corrupt) has to build and run these things. If we spent the money and energy that is currently going to nuke on developing and building truly green power, we'd all be much better off.
-Daniel
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Stuart Brand and Dr. Patrick Moore, both long-time anti-nuclear environmental activists, have, in recent years, declared for nuclear power:
Stuart Brand:
"There were legitimate reasons to worry about nuclear power, but now that we know about the threat of climate change, we have to put the risks in perspective. Sure, nuclear waste is a problem, but the great thing about it is you know where it is and you can guard it. The bad thing about coal waste is that you don't know where it is and you don't know what it's doing. The carbon dioxide is in everybody's atmosphere."
Link
Dr. Patrick Moore, co-founder of GreenPeace:
"We'd like to see 50 percent by the end of the century, maybe even more. But for now, the objective should be doubling the number of nuclear plants in operation."
Link
-kgj
-kgj