Slashdot Mirror
First New Nuclear Reactor In a Decade On Track
dusty writes "Plans to bring online the first new US nuclear plant since 1995 are on track, on time, and on budget
according to the Tennessee Valley Authority. TVA had one major accident with a coal ash spill of late, and one minor one. The agency has plans and workers in place to have Unit 2 at Watts Bar, near Knoxville, online by 2012. Currently over 1,800 workers are doing construction at the plant. Watts Bar #1 is the only new nuclear reactor added to the grid in the last 25 years. From the article: 'TVA estimates the Watts Bar Unit 2 reactor every year will avoid the emission of about 60 million metric tons of greenhouse emissions linked with global warming. ... TVA began construction of Watts Bar in 1973, but work was suspended in 1988 when TVA's growth in power sales declined. After mothballing the unit for 19 years, TVA's board decided in 2007 to finish the reactor because it is projected to provide cheaper, no carbon-emitting power compared with the existing coal plants or purchased power it may help replace.'"
Common sense prevails. Nuclear is the best option we have right now for clean, cheap, reliable energy.
Inconceivable!
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Nuclear power is the only true green power. Environmentalist wackos want us to turn off electricity and live in paper hats, but you just can't turn off civilization, it's too late. We're addicted to electricity and all the joys it brings-refrigeration being tops on the list, of course! So we're going to have to do something else to fight global warming. Nuclear power is that "something else." It's the only practical solution. There ain't no such thing as clean coal, and Americans will not stop their "unsustainable" lifestyle...and why should they, when they can just nuke it up and enjoy as much refrigerated food as before. The refrigerator is the true ambassador of civilization.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
A nuclear plant also produces less radioactive waste than does a corresponding coal plant. Of course since the latter doesn't fall under the authority of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the radioactive substances in coal ash (like thorium) just get dispersed into the environment along with the stuff that stays toxic forever like arsenic and mercury.
-- Alastair
I think you meant to say:
"... nobody in power to stop these things *ever* takes into account... render a majority of the US *un*inhabitable."
"could of" should be "could have"
"Imagine a winter storm hitting California and a plant *exploding*, picking up the material, traversing south and then moving up the eastern seaboard."
1). Inhabitable? Don't you mean uninhabitable?
2). It doesn't "just take one". We've suffered more than one nuclear reactor failure in this country without experiencing mass-contamination events along the lines of Chernobyl. Three Mile Island wasn't the only one.
with global warming spawned fires and floods and tropical diseases, I will sleep peacefully at night with the knowledge that hillbillies have electricity.
Nuclear reactors are reaching critical mass everyday, they need to reach critical mass in order to function... critical mass - the smallest amount of fissile material needed for a sustained nuclear chain reaction.
I hate to feed the troll, but:
one nuclear accident could render a majority of the US inhabitable. Presumably you meant "uninhabitable", but you'd still be wrong.
In the 1940s-1950s, the US detonated numerous nuclear weapons above ground in Nevada and New Mexico, releasing a hell of a lot more radioactive material than Chernobyl -- and Chernobyl-type disasters cannot happen with US power reactors (totally different reactor design). This hardly rendered even a significant fraction, let alone "a majority" of the US uninhabitable.
-- Alastair
A stranger was seated next to a little girl on the airplane when the
stranger turned to her and said, 'Let's talk. I've heard that flights go
quicker if you strike up a conversation with your fellow passenger.'
The little girl, who had just opened her book, closed it slowly and said
to the stranger, 'What would you like to talk about?'
'Oh, I don't know,' said the stranger. 'How about nuclear power?' and he
smiles.
'OK, ' she said. 'That could be an interesting topic.
But let me ask you a question first. A horse, a cow, and a deer all eat
the same stuff - grass. Yet a deer excretes little pellets, while a cow turns out a flat patty,
and a horse produces clumps of dried grass. Why do you suppose that is?'
The stranger, visibly surprised by the little girl's intelligence, thinks
about it and says, 'Hmmm, I have no idea.'
To which the little girl replies, 'Do you really feel qualified to
discuss nuclear power when you don't know shit?
Nuclear might actually be the future if promises of this new type of reactor turn to be true. As it is explained this very informative video, enjoy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHs2Ugxo7-8
1. Reactors don't explode.
2. A Chernobyl style accident is impossible with a light water reactor.
3. Even with a Chernobyl style reactor and even if they had the exact same accident the problem would have been manageable if they had a freaking containment building.
4. Reactors all go critical. What you don't want is for them to go super critical.
5. No modern reactor can go super critical the fuel they use isn't enriched enough to go super critical and they all need a moderator like water to work.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Will it have a Sector 7G?
I guess nobody in power to stop these things never takes into account that one nuclear accident could render a majority of the US inhabitable.
I think the keyword here is could. I can imagine many disasters that could cause enormous damage too, but the question is how likely they are to happen. What is more likely, a meteor strike, or an accident in a nuclear power station of such a magnitude as to render US uninhabitable? I don't know, but lets say they are comparable. If so, we should be willing to spend as much money on protection against meteors as we are on not using nuclear power, including, arguably, the cost of our military operations in the middle east, the increased danger of terrorism (potentially nuclear too) etc. Either way it's a cost/benefit analysis and you have to look at both sides of the equation.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
LOL. I'd mod that up if I hadn't already commented in this topic.
-- Alastair
Your car has four wheels and an internal combustion engine, traits shared by the 1907 Holsman Model 3. Have you stopped to consider the intense danger this poses to you?
But wait: The Holsman was built in a time before ABS, crumple zones, air bags, or even seatbelts. One might presume your 2003 Nissan Altima to be a little safer.
Chernobyl was a nuclear plant built with all the safety precautions of early automobiles. Comparing it with modern TVA-built plants is just as valid as the above Slashdot Car Analogy.
Your mind is clear / The things that you fear / Will fade with how much you / Believe what you hear
Plus, since the feds own the vast majority of Nevada (>85%), it was already illegal to inhabit those areas, anyways. I'm not bitter; I'm just Nevadan.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the US have naval submarines that are powered by nuclear reactors. And aren't those subs often docked near populated ports, San Diego for example. Thus, we have already accepted the risk of having nuclear power in populated areas, so it seems odd to be afraid of adding a few civilian nuclear reactors that are not in highly populated areas.
I respect Fox news as little as the next (sane) guy, but I really don't have that much of an issue with that clip. It's still pretty obviously a joke; they left it more-or-less in context, with Stephen Colbert telling him to say it.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the US have naval submarines that are powered by nuclear reactors. And aren't those subs often docked near populated ports, San Diego for example. Thus, we have already accepted the risk of having nuclear power in populated areas, so it seems odd to be afraid of adding a few civilian nuclear reactors that are not in highly populated areas.
Agreed. It's mostly irrational fear.
I could see where one would trust a reactor that was built FOR the military and operated BY highly trained military personnel. Too many civilian projects and products get hit by lowest-bidder disasters.
how dare you have a different opinion? look, I totally agree we need to be careful. I totally disagree about the level of danger involved in a properly designed and maintained nuke plant. Even though I disagree, I fail to see what makes this flamebait. fucking /.ers once again afraid of a different opinion.
I will save you all the trouble of replying to this, and do it myself.
Obama is a twitter sock puppet
You must be new here!
Obama is a twitter sock puppet
The keyword is "could", and even that is false. How exactly is an accident at a light water reactor going to render most of the US uninhabitable? Short of divine intervention by a malicious god, I mean?
nuh UHH! Check my UID loser... I am in the sixdigit club!
Obama is a twitter sock puppet
I recently read about Chernobyl on wikipedia. That entire episode was apparently ... well, incredibly stupid and mismanaged. It was more of a "Titanic" incident than anything else I can think of in history. (The "nothing will go wrong" mentality that leads to some really, really stupid actions)
1) Mostly true. They can have a steam explosion, which is basically the first thing that happened at Chernobyl. That said, they can't result in a nuclear explosion.
2) Exactly. To be specific, the Chernobyl (RBMK-1000) reactor design used a graphite moderator in order to make it more suitable for production of weapons materials. Graphite moderators are bad for a variety of reasons, both in regards to reactor stability, and the fact that it's extremely flammable (which is where most of the atmospheric contamination from Chernobyl came from - burning graphite.) No US civilian power reactor serves such a dual purpose.
3-5) Don't really need to say more
Additonally:
A typical coal plant releases more radioactive material into the air in a day due to traces of uranium in the coal than TMI released in its lifetime
Also, in addition to the fundamental deficiencies of the the RBMK-1000 design, they were running an experiment with the reactor that could only be described as "fucking dangerous". Well not only, "fucking stupid" works too. By the time the incident occurred, the reactor operators had overridden most of the reactor's safety features - the reactor SHOULD have SCRAMed long before the incident occurred but the operators kept it going to run an experiment because they feared retribution from their superiors. (The experiment failed the first time, and rather than continue shutdown they tried to restart the reactor to try again.)
The biggest problem currently is waste. Sadly, there are reactor designs that are both far more efficient in fuel use (hence produce far less waste per kWh) AND also produce far shorter-lived waste (plus can use traditional LWR waste as fuel), but were killed because politicians translated "breeder" into "proliferation risk" even though traditional LWRs were more of a proliferation risk than the IFR was. Also, a past president (Carter?) banned all nuclear fuels reprocessing in the U.S. with an executive order. Back then, reprocessing = PUREX and banning PUREX was understandable (it WAS a major proliferation risk), but now there are many other reprocessing technologies that are not proliferation risks but are still banned under the wording of the executive order.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
In the 1940s-1950s, the US detonated numerous nuclear weapons above ground in Nevada and New Mexico, releasing a hell of a lot more radioactive material than Chernobyl
Nope. The 100 or so bombs detonated above ground on the US mainland were relatively small, releasing a few kg of material each. Chernobyl released tons of material. To match that, you'd have to go to the US thermonuclear tests in the Pacific ocean, some of which released about of ton of fission products each. (Some of those test site islands are actually still uninhabitable.)
Science-to-car analogy translation:
All car engines use small explosions to provide power. What you don't want to happen is a really big explosion.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Here is a map of sites for which applications have been submitted to the NRC and are currently undergoing review. None of these will happen until the political will emerges to move the bureaucracy.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
All wrong:
1. Reactors don't explode. :
See SL-1, Chernobyl, and the one the AEC blew in Idaho just for fun.
2. A Chernobyl style accident is impossible with a light water reactor.
True, but there are still about 843 other failure modes that don't involve the many bad
design features of RBMK-style reactors.
3. Even with a Chernobyl style reactor and even if they had the exact same accident the problem would have been manageable if they had a freaking containment building.
Not feasible if you're a poor country that needs a RBMK style reactor that can be refueled while running.
4. Reactors all go critical. What you don't want is for them to go super critical.
Duh. And I think you're confusing super-critical to with prompt-critical. Very different beasts.
5. No modern reactor can go super critical the fuel they use isn't enriched enough to go super critical and they all need a moderator like water to work.
Nope. Enrichment has nothing to do with it. AT least three reactors have gone boom with low enrichment uranium.
I'm kind of neutral about the whole subject. Neat tech, but trusting corporations is not in my nature.
Also, when compared to wind and solar, Nuclear is the one power source that allow corporations to retain control of power generation.
But balancing that is the fact that it's a pretty continuous source of energy...
What I'd really like to understand (I always ask this and I've never gotten an answer) is why some people are so for it. They aren't going to make money off it, overall it will not save them money (Even those of us who live exclusively off dams don't have THAT much of a money savings)...
I can understand people being really against it. Fear of the unknown, lack of understanding, history (quite a few people have died in the past)
I can also understanding someone being somewhat for it (I'd be tempted to vote for one in my city, although the last one here was a complete cluster-fsck) but where does one get the motivation for the positive passion that this topic so often seems to create?
Don't forget:
6. Coal power stations, worldwide, release approximately the same amount of radioactive material into the atmosphere every year than Chernobyl did, ever.
Which means we that if we could replace those coal power stations with nuclear ones then we could have a Chernobyl-style event every couple of years and still come out ahead.
I think it's great to see new nuclear power coming online, but it's too bad this is simply the completion of a project begun in the 1970's. There hasn't been enough work done in the US to advance the design of nuclear power stations in the last few decades. I wonder how much more efficiently these stations could be built and run today if we had been focused on the problem all this time.
that they were just waiting on Windows 7.
I expect it was modded troll/flamebait because it was the equivalent of raving that one sneeze could wipe out an entire state with swine flu. Saying reactors can be dangerous isn't flamebait; grossly exaggerating the dangers of them is.
When someone says, "Any fool can see
Will they hire people who show up on day 1 even if they only have a high school diploma?
And the military isn't?
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
"A typical coal plant releases more radioactive material into the air in a day due to traces of uranium in the coal than TMI released in its lifetime"
Not to be an ass, but citation needed and very much desired.
RES PUBLICA NON DOMINETUR
RMBK had no containment building and was like that because it was based on the designs for the military nuclear reactors where you wanted easy access to fuel for reprocessing into plutonium. But yeah the design is shit for civilian power usage.
Quibble. President Reagan lifted the ban in 1981.
For the 17 of you commenting about his misuse of the word supercritical: I believe he meant supercritical mass. Which is to say, pebble bed reactors cannot form the geometry necessary for sustained uncontrollable supercriticality. I could be entirely wrong of course, but I'm certain the GP was referring to core geometry not neutron cycle.
re #2: Doesn't the "Whoops Two" reactor use graphite moderators? Unlike the RBMK-1000 they don't push them up but rather let them fall into the pile. I also remember something about a heat fuse link (like of fire systems) that will drop the rods into the pile in case of meltdown conditions.
Of course, it was 32 years ago that I got a tour of WNP-2.
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
There's a difference between having an educated opinion, and having an opinion that's egregious filled with misinformation based on events that will never happen. And event's that can never happen based on the way reactors are designed.
That's called being ignorant.
Om, nomnomnom...
"TVA's board decided in 2007 to finish the reactor because it is projected to provide cheaper, no carbon-emitting power..."
Where does the waste go? (TBD) What is the cost of waste disposal? (TBD) Have they factored that cost into their calculations? (No)
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
look, a lot of things in the post were not true, but its not because he made it up. this is really the stuff that people think. There are many people out there that haven't done as much research on nuke tech as I have... that doesn't make them flamebait.
Obama is a twitter sock puppet
I am not sure that it was an intentional exaggeration, somewhat misinformed, but being wrong doesn't make you flamebait does it?
Obama is a twitter sock puppet
What's with the reference to the coal fly-ash spill in the middle of the summary about TVA building nuclear power plants?
1. Not really an explosion. It was more of steam rupture. No combustion or nuclear explosion was responsible. Just think of it as venting in a hurry. But that can happen with your home hot water heater.
2. But none of those will cause a Chernobyl style disaster.
3. The US isn't a poor country that needs to refuel the reactor while it is running.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
The hills of Dixie Valley in this case. Fallon, NV was witness to an above-ground nuke in the 1960's at some point. The whole town came out to watch the big boom (more than 25 miles away). Apparently you can still go out there to Dixie Valley and see the blast crater. And yes, I'm a Nevadan. I glow in the dark and sport an absurd immunity to arsenic. When the apocalypse does come around, I and my fellow Nevadans will be duking it out with the giant mutant cockroaches and their cthonic overloads atop the mounds of your corpses. (Texans ain't got shit when it comes to heat, environment, guns per capita, or any claim to be tough in general - we laugh in their general direction)
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
The summary is all over in terms of calling it new plant, when it is really a new reactor. But that is a good start. It would be nice if the pubs would push the concept of even 1 new nuclear plant / every 4 states. Heck, the stimulus money could have done a nice job of funding this and allowing us to move nicely to electric cars.
With that said, I do think that we need to continue with AE esp Geo-thermal and Solar Thermal. Both are capable of base load power, which is really what is needed.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
No kidding. I mean, we already have constant hydrogen fusion in the sun, making large swaths of the earth inhabitable. And we all know how THAT turned out.
THL phish sticks
Using these data, the releases of radioactive materials per typical plant can be calculated for any year. For the year 1982, assuming coal contains uranium and thorium concentrations of 1.3 ppm and 3.2 ppm, respectively, each typical plant released 5.2 tons of uranium (containing 74 pounds of uranium-235) and 12.8 tons of thorium that year. Total U.S. releases in 1982 (from 154 typical plants) amounted to 801 tons of uranium (containing 11,371 pounds of uranium-235) and 1971 tons of thorium. These figures account for only 74% of releases from combustion of coal from all sources. Releases in 1982 from worldwide combustion of 2800 million tons of coal totaled 3640 tons of uranium (containing 51,700 pounds of uranium-235) and 8960 tons of thorium.
Please spew on the following: 1 - the likelihood of a comet bearing alien spores crashing into the Earth and infecting everyone with Athlete's Face. 2 - the coming Zombie armageddon and how long it'll take all the bodies to rot away in the weather so we survivors can keep on living 3 - Megan Fox... oh wait, women in general! 4 - String Theory 5 - Spam - the actual meat 6 - Cowboy Neal's Brain 7 - carbuncles 8 - How is it that Greg Gumbel STILL has a job?
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
I believe you mean "super critical" [/pedant]
Could be worse. I'd hate to be around when a reactor went hypercritical. :-)
My other car is a 1984 Nark Avenger.
I just finished reading a book (Prisoner's Dilemma) discussing the development of the Nuclear Bomb, and among other things, the period of time between the US development of the bomb, and Russia's development of the bomb.
One of the more interesting factoids I took from the book was a comment about the power of a single traditional fusion weapon: although incredibly powerful, a nuke is not powerful enough to level a major city -- a hydrogen bomb would be needed for that level of destruction.
In fact, I doubt that the worst case scenario for a nuclear reactor would cause a level of devastation and loss of life comparable to what we've already experienced in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste
attack of the "Anonymous Cowardon"
Ummm .... just how many deaths and how much radioactivity was released by 3MI? Approx: None.
The ONLY lesson to be learned from Chernobyl is that a tin roof over a bad rector design isn't a good combination. Modern reactors have both failsafe designs AND better containment, so no, it can't happen here. Reactors like (eg.) the Pebble Bed reactor have no unstable state. Even if some lunatic director goes berserk in the reactor control room he can't cause a meltdown.
No sig today...
No one answers the question: Where are you going to put the waste? You can't recycle or reprocess everything and whats left is mind bogglingly bad.
The reason is, there is no answer for a 250,000 year problem like that. Even if you find a 'solution' to keep it out of the easy to parts of the world we use you still have left future generations a crap load of trouble in addition to what every they will have to deal with.
Thanks mom.
Yes, let's not forget that a major design goal of the 1950's reactors was bomb production, ie.. they wanted filthy byproducts from the reactions, and lots of them. It was an arms race and the product of that race was reactors like Chernobyl.
No sig today...
Let's not forget that the USA used to treat atomic bombs like firework shows. People would go down to Vegas for the weekend and drive out to watch the mushroom clouds rising.
Where's the comic-book-like nuclear wasteland in the USA? Surely there must be one...
No sig today...
Though I don't really trust the safety record of the TVA, it's about time we get some more nuclear reactors online. All the global warming guys should love them because they produce NO GREENHOUSE GASES.
That answer isn't insightful, its a blind shot in the dark cop-out for a real answer.
mark it troll if you like, but I'm probably right (pending an onslaught of evidence that FROM the author that is actually spot on and not googled after I post, lol)
Why not let the free market sort out the risk factor? Require each reactor to be insured in case of a catastrophic failure or a major accident. It wouldn't be to hard for an insurance company to quantify the risk. Let's say the worst that can happen is fallout that makes a whole city of 100,000 uninhabitable. What is the cost of rebuilding the city and providing shelter for the refugees? What is the geopolitical cost of al-qaeida getting hold of some nuclear waste which enables them to build a dirty bomb?
While the above scenarios are extremely unlikely to happen, the payout to the insurance taker would be enormous so the insurance premiums has to be huge too. I believe that is the reason why almost no nuclear power plants are being built. When factoring in the insurance costs it just is not profitable anymore.
Football Odds
Quite a few did.
Red to red, black to black. Switch it on, but stand well back.
It was sufficiently wrong and hyperbolic that many reasonable people were convinced that it was flamebait.
At any rate, I agree with you that differences of opinion should not cause one to be modded down.
You've got to be kidding. How do you quantify costs for lost lives as immediate consequence of a meltdown?
Criticality is a function of free neutrons: if there's not enough to sustain a reaction, it's subcritical; if it's break-even, it's critical, and if there are enough to grow the reaction it's supercritical. Contrary to the movies, a reactor that's critical is not a failure state (it's normal operation). Even "supercritical" isn't necessarily trouble (though if you stay supercritical for too long it will eventually be).
The real problems happens when you're "prompt critical". There are two kinds of neutrons that are interesting in a reaction: the ones that immediately cause new fission (prompt neutrons), and the ones that need to wait around a while (because of $PHYSICS, they're too energetic, and actually need to slow down) before they can start a reaction ("delayed neutrons" or such IIRC). "Prompt critical" means that there are enough prompt neutrons to cause the reaction to speed up. That's generally serious trouble, and is liable to melt your equipment before too long.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
a) Insurance companies do life insurance every single day, b) There is no "meltdown" with modern reactors.
No sig today...
ABOUT FUCKING TIME!!!!!
It's great to hear about someone finally building another nuclear plant in stead of another coal- or gas-fired plant. Here in the People's Republik of Kalifornia, nuclear power is verboten, and mentioning it will get your ass drummed out of town by "newspaper scientists" and politicians who allow themselves to be led around by the nose by environmentalists who wouldn't know a rational thought if it bit them on the nose.
However, unless this is a PBMR, the problem is only half-finished. Nuclear wast cannot be stored for the thousands or millions of years that it would need to decay to a safe level. The solution would be to use a breeder reactor to efficiently reprocess the waste fuel, instead of simply storing it underground. This would reduce the amount of raw fuel production that would be needed, and would greatly reduce the quantity of radioactive waste, which could be separated into usable isotopes. Apparently, Jimmy Carted, despite his nuclear degrees, thought that it would be better just to let waste accumulate in huge quantities underground, instead of *RECYCLING* it back into usable nuclear fuel, and caved into the demands of the Greens and banned breeder reactor construction.
Here in the People's Republik of Kalifornia, Greens attack every form of power generation, except, for some reason, gas turbines.
1. Solar - Uses up too much valuable land, not efficient enough for the energy demands of the state. Extremely expensive and not useful on cloudy days. Technology not advanced enough.
2. Wind - Indefinite moratorium in CA, because the places windy enough to make them efficient are in the flight paths of birds. Banned in Altamont, CA, the windiest place on the planet.
3. Nuclear - "Sen." Feinstein has vowed to oppose any form of nuclear power. Not going to happen in CA. Feinstein refuses to educate herself on PBMRs, and instead listens to lobbyists.
4. Geothermal - Not efficient enough due to too few suitable locations (Many in open spaces and parks).
Rep. Ellen Tauscher, a Democrat from Kalifornia, is one of the few Democrats to actually see the advantages of nuclear power generation over those who remain blinded by politics. Although a democrat, I still have to give her serious props in her position on nuclear power.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
Well, technically... Easily. You can claim the lives themselves are invaluable, but the judgement against the offending company would most definitely have a very specific dollar figure.
The insurance is for that. Not to replace the people themselves.
If you have so little faith in the future of technology, and the improvements it brings daily, then I have little faith about your future on slashdot.
Insurance companies do life insurance every single day
You're comparing apples and oranges. Insuring one's own life isn't a problem. But GP's proposal was effectively sticking a price tag on the lives of other people, without their consent. He's effectively saying, "I'm going to do something risky that's going to get you killed, but don't worry: if that happens, I'll pay a lot of money to your relatives!".
There is no "meltdown" with modern reactors.
I know. The context of the thread was more general than that: what if "something happens".
(In truth, this really isn't a big deal with nuclear reactors, compared to other viable options, so this discussion is mostly theoretical anyway).
Snytax and tpyos aside, the parent remains correct: most car accidents are not fatal, but it remains true that it only takes one bad car accident to kill you.
A legitimate *ecological* argument can be made in favor of nuclear power.
Waste disposal and even disasters are really safety/medical concerns and not ecological concerns. The ecosphere tolerates Trenobyl-style disasters much better than it can tolerate changes in climate, although of course neither is actually much of a risk to life on earth as a whole. *People*, on the other hand, individually die from cancer, but can accomodiate to climatic shifts, especially gradual ones, far better than can frogs.
For myself, there are two ways you could balance these concerns, one of them is moral and the other is economic.
Economic: for the forseeable future, I think it is clear that the cost to securely dispose of nuclear waste is going to exceed the cost to burn (burn and remediate? Not sure) an equivalent amount of carbon. The only reason that this plant is a good deal for the TVA is because the feds intervene to externalize a lot of the real costs, while the purchased electricity that is being replaced is being purchased from some non-market enron-esque scam. I don't think nuclear power makes sense economically.
Moral: The moral course of action is to scale back our consumption and economic output as needed to avoid the negative consequences of either fossil fuels *or* nuclear power. Let's put that aside for the moment.
If the real moral course of action is not achievable, the question becomes - is it more moral to accomodate to circumstances by burning fossil fuel (which almost certainly has negative ecoligical impacts, which causes diffuse harm,) or to use nuclear power (which, in the real world, has a high probability of a waste disposal accident of some kind, and raises our vulnerability to terrorism/violence?)
Nuclear power does have a certain moral advantage here - because we in the US will ourselves suffer whatever consequences may arise, rather than foisting most of the consequences off on Bangladesh.
So, we have to evaluate:
(the marginal risk of disaster * loss of life in a disaster) / nuclear kWhr
vs.
(marginal increase in environmental damage * loss of life to environmental damage) / fossil fuel kWhr
This is the sort of thing that *ought* to be carefully studied by environmental scientists, public health and security experts, free from conflicts of interest. I would guess that the marginal damage of burning more fossil fuel is small concerning how much we now burn, and that the marginal risk of a disaster is relatively high given the current status of our nuclear waste disposal network, so fossil fuel is the better choice.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
Almost. The delayed neutrons are actually the ones emitted by the fission products as they decay to more stable isotopes (by neutron emission, obviously). What you are thinking of is fast neutrons. Most neutrons emitted by fission reactions (whether prompt or delayed) are fast. Depending on your fuel and reactor design, you may be able to use fast neutrons to cause fission (hence fast breeder reactor), or you may need to slow them down (turn them into thermal neutrons) using a moderator first. Other than that nitpick, you're spot on.
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
Multiple personalities, both of them newbies.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
It has been said by others in this thread, but my oldest brother (of 8 siblings I have), is a nuclear technician, served on the Enterprise. Nuclear reactors are ALWAYS in critical condition. Without criticality, you have no reactor. "Going critical" is a Hollywood term, and smacks of ignorance that LWATCDR highlights. Critical is normal operation, super critical is a bad thing, ranging from meltdown to a mushroom cloud from an atomic bomb.
Wikipedia also says: "A 1,000 MW coal-burning power plant could release as much as 5.2 tons/year of uranium (containing 74 pounds (34 kg) of uranium-235) and 12.8 tons/year of thorium." One big difference here is that an event like the Three Mile Island accident is usually a one-time event, while the coal-burning plant goes on releasing its radioactive material year after year after year....
I'm not going to take sides because I don't know how many curies you get from the release of 5.2 tons of uranium and 12.8 tons of thorium, or what the typical lifespan of a coal plant is (the multiplication factor here), but I definitely don't think it's quite as simple a matter as your brief post suggested. Can you show your work in a little more detail?
The title is pretty misleading, as it omits "US." One might also look outside of the US borders for some examples of how new nuclear power plants are coming along -- or aren't.
3 Mile Island went as wrong as an American nuclear reactor can possibly go wrong. They basically took the wrong action in response to every choice. And still, no one died. It's just good engineering practice to allow for worst-case humans.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Uranium is basically harmless, radiation-wise (any radioactive material that has been around since the Earth formed is not meaningfully radioactive). It's a nasty industrial waste product the same way lead is.
Reactor fuel is dangerous because once fission is initiated, you get decay product that are nasty, for a short time. This is not a concern for coal plant waste, nor is it a concern for a steam explosion from a nuclear reactor. The only sort of reactor explosion worth worrying about is an explosion that makes airborn the materials the reactor is build from. A containment dome solves this problem - it's just the height of bad engineering not to protect against this, and reactors are only built with this risk in totalitarian states with reckless disregard for life.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
... instead of *RECYCLING* it back into usable nuclear fuel, and [Carter] caved into the demands of the Greens ...
Thanks for spreading falsehoods!
I agree with your argument 100%, except this point. The reason Carter did that is to limit reprocessing in _other_ countries. If the Western countries can, then how do you prevent others from doing it (Do as I say, not as I do).
You do know why you NEED to stop "unstable" (let's say) states from reprocessing don't you? Because it easy (in relative terms) to extract weapons grade Pu? Right?
Let's get back to reprocessing like Europe and Japan do, yes. You'll have to deal with the "unstable" states anyway.
You're being unfair to the Titanic. In order for it to be a fair comparison, you'd have to have the crew of the Titanic cut hols in all of the interior bulkheads, cut apart all the lifeboats and life-preservers, and then steer the ship at full speed directly into the biggest iceberg they could find. Only then would the Titanic incident be somewhat comparable to the sheer negligence of the Chernobyl technicians.
Insuring one's own life isn't a problem. But GP's proposal was effectively sticking a price tag on the lives of other people, without their consent. He's effectively saying, "I'm going to do something risky that's going to get you killed, but don't worry: if that happens, I'll pay a lot of money to your relatives!".
Thousands of companies work this way every day. You're constantly surrounded by industries that could kill many people if things went enough wrong. Some are highly regulated by law, some aren't (though they're regulated internally) except in the general way that it's illegal to recklessly endanger people. (I don't think the free market in isolation works well for these cases, but mostly because insurance companies do a mediocre job of proper risk analysis of rare events. Incentive to do the research just translates into "better that the competition", not "well".) But sticking a price tag on human life is an everyday necessity for all safety system design, and insurance companies are often a good mediator there, especially with well-understood risks.
You know what's really dangerous? Driving. People worry about all sorts of highly unlikely disasters that would make for exciting movies, but simply aren't real risks. There's little that's less credible than someone who protests "dangerous industry" but doesn't wear his seatbelt (I know someone like that).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
If Chernobyl was a car, the brakes wouldn't work unless the accelerator was pressed to the floor and the on-board fire extinguisher would use propane as the propellant.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Well he didn't mention light water reactors. He just said "one nuclear accident". So, you know, if the Sun goes Nova, that would be a nuclear accident that would make the US uninhabitable ...
What do you think car insurance is for?
That's why my insurance company forces me to pay higher premiums if I plan to do much driving in the US - because your courts tend to award more compensation to the relatives of the deceased, so the company is taking a higher risk by ensuring me. If you think they couldn't work out a formula to assess the risk associated with nuke plants, you're just being naive.
I just think that we should build nuke plants because they are safe; not because they're unsafe, but we can cover that up by throwing money at it. If it's really unsafe (so far I don't see how it would be, but let's just assume), then we just shouldn't do it. Of course, "safety" is not a yes/no parameter, so there's some acceptable level of safety. I just don't see it as reasonable to have free market determine that acceptable safety risk level purely from insurance cost (which, if you read to the beginning of the thread, is effectively what was proposed).
By the way, for a guy who has "I'm NOT an American" in your sig, you sure do assume too much about other people's nationality. Hint: I'm not an American, either.
4. Reactors all go critical. What you don't want is for them to go super critical.
5. No modern reactor can go super critical the fuel they use isn't enriched enough to go super critical and they all need a moderator like water to work.
We should reclaim the word "supercritical" at the same time we are fighting for "critical". A reactor is supercritical while its power (and its neutron flux) is increasing (as during start up). Prompt criticality is what you want to avoid.
You would do well to remember that this little urban myth is from an Oak Ridge laboratory NEWSLETTER ARTICLE written by a guy that later went on the write two books of "Southern Humour". It doesn't come from anyone with any knowlege of coal whatsoever and was part of the silly "coal is bad why can't we be bad too" stuff of the 1970s. Towards the end of the article it talks about the threat of terrorists getting enough nuclear material from coal ash heaps to build THE BOMB! In other words, alarmist bullshit with no evidence or peer review. If there was really all that stuff somebody using absorbion spectroscopy on flue gasses would have seen it some time after 1920 or so - not exactly a difficult thing to do.
Now there are plenty of good reasons to not use coal (paticularly in the USA where there is a lot of sulphur in it) and people die almost daily mining the stuff let alone the more difficult to identify deaths by silicosis etc, BUT THERE IS NO REASON TO MAKE UP BULLSHIT ABOUT IT JUST TO MAKE NUCLEAR LOOK GOOD. It's bad enough as it is and Nuclear has to stand on it's own merits. Using stupid divide by zero errors is a cool marketing trick but really has no place in a rational discussion - my lunch theoretically has more radioactive material in it that should be released by a well designed and operated plant so long as you never consider the manufacture of the fuel or the removal of the waste.
That's ignorance. Perpetuating ignorance is the problem, if you're unwilling to learn, then you continuing to contribute to the cycle of ignorance. Spreading misinformation as factual, and misinforming others. That in itself on something like this dangerous, but in other cases it can be.
So yes, it is flamebait, and was modded correctly.
Om, nomnomnom...
There were three major differences between TMI and Chernobyl. TMI had what was at the time uniquely thick containment vessels to protect against the threat of being hit by an aircraft from a nearby airport. Second, events played out by incredible luck more than any sort of management (the monitoring systems were utter crap in comparison to industrial plants and it took days to work out what was going on - this led directly to the far more effective monitoring systems in place in nuclear plants today). Third, people were not going out of their way to push the envelope with the system on the day of the failure.
TMI was the sort of nuclear accident you want to have to wake people up without anyone actually dying. Unfortunately few actually woke up and we just get crap like the above poster dismissing it as a non-event. Pebble bed is a reaction by people that actually did wake up and have actually been putting work into civilian nuclear power research since the 1970s - something that Westinghouse et al have not done. They just order a coat of green paint to go onto their Chernobyl era dinosaur designs instead.
Our reactors are NOTHING like Chernobyl and it is that NIMBY crap that keeps us using coal instead of something better for the environment like Nuclear!
With Chernobyl you are talking about an ancient Soviet era nuclear reactor that had been scheduled to be shut down years before it went off, but they were simply too poor to afford to take it off line. IIRC they are actually still running the second reactor at Chernobyl as we speak!
With reactors in the USA, we constantly inspect them, we have full size trainers designed to simulate just about any possible problem that could arise to train the crews that man them (one of the problems with Chernobyl is a poorly trained crew IIRC) and ours are well maintained and serviced. The simple fact is we NEED nuclear power if we are gonna get off coal, which spits poisonous smog and greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. And the technology for powering a country the size of the USA with solar or wind simply isn't there yet.
So I welcome the new reactor in Tenn and welcome the folks of Tenn into the "cheap power" club. As someone who lives in AR and enjoys cheap clean power thanks to Ar 1 & 2 I say welcome to the club and don't let the NIMBYs stop you.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Time to apply critical thought guys. Read the article and those it cites, see how those numbers appeared and then wonder why only the nuclear facility at Oak Ridge and not any place anywhere around the world that actually does work on actual coal noticed this. Then wonder why there have been no papers on this for a long time and why nobody has ever published anything giving actual quantities coming out of the stack anywhere.
You have been suckered by very effective PR pretending to be science.
There are plenty of real reasons to not use coal, but this bullshit wasn't an attempt to make coal look worse it was an attempt to get people to tolerate nuclear waste more. Somewhere they found coal with large amounts of uranium and thorium and try to pretend it's all like that to justify nuclear waste.
No, I don't think that's what he was proposing. After all, we have to have car insurance but that doesn't mean that car safety standards are controlled by insurance companies. I think he was just saying that it would be a good idea to have nuclear plants privately insured, and that one of the advantages would be that it would create an extra level at which risk factors could be evaluated.
But yeah, if I'm wrong about what he was suggesting and you're right, then I agree with you completely - having corporations determine safety standards would be a horrible idea, especially in an industry in which there's really no competition.
Well then you should put it in your sig ;)
Because as a country we don't do what is right and sensible, we do what is necessary to protect the bottom line for the ultra-rich tycoons that own all this shit. They're keeping the american dream warm for us, after all.
No, I don't think that's what he was proposing.
Here's how it went:
I guess nobody in power to stop these things never takes into account that one nuclear accident could render a majority of the US inhabitable
Either way it's a cost/benefit analysis and you have to look at both sides of the equation.
Why not let the free market sort out the risk factor?
I might be misunderstanding the poster, of course, but I don't see any other interpretation to his words.
Well then you should put it in your sig ;)
Well, it's like "GNU/Linux" leading to "GNU/X11/KDE/OpenOffice/Linux", right? If I do that, I'd also have to eventually add that I'm not a Canadian either (even though I live in Canada at present), and so on. So I just raise that point on an as-needed basis :)
Ummm .... just how many deaths and how much radioactivity was released by 3MI? Approx: None.
What's the old addage? More people have died in the back of Ted Kennedey's car than have died in the US from a nuclear accident.
Have you ever considered piracy? You'd make a wonderful Dread Pirate Roberts.
Just keep the military away from it, you do know it was the Russian Military to blame for causing Chernobyl, it didn't just happen on it's own, they were looking for a way to use a conventional reactor as a breeder reactor and BOOM as you say. The amount of history that the ./ crowd doesn't know could fit in several libraries of congress.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
Hahahahahaha. You do realize that all the military nuclear propulsion reactors were built by private company low-contract (or blind contract) developers, right? A good number of them were under my father's control while he was the Branch Manager of the NRF (Naval Reactor Facility) at the INEL (Idaho National Engineering Laboratory, now INL, formerly INEEL). The reactors such as S1W (Submarine 1 Westinghouse), A1W (Aircraft Carrier 1 Westinghouse), S5G (Submarine 5 General Electric), etc. were built by private contractors; the INEL/INEEL/INL has the DoE reactors operated currently by Bechtel, previously by some Lockheed-Martin subsidiary, someone else before that ... it changes every few years. Bechtel also runs Bettis and Knolls Atomic Power Labs.
The military and government reactors are already built and run by low-bidders. And yet, even with that, there has been one (1) fatal nuclear accident in the US. Three military personnel died in a meltdown and explosion in 1961 at SL-1 reactor at the INEL. So, thinking that military reactors are safer... well, in the US they have the same record for the last 48 years - 0 fatal accidents; but military loses before that...
It was more of a "Titanic" incident than anything else I can think of in history.
Do I really need to point out the obvious here?
Property is theft.
Name the others...
"...can you imagine a BEOWULF CLUSTER of these? That'd be some serious power!"
Criticality is a function of free neutrons: if there's not enough to sustain a reaction, it's subcritical; if it's break-even, it's critical, and if there are enough to grow the reaction it's supercritical. Contrary to the movies, a reactor that's critical is not a failure state (it's normal operation). Even "supercritical" isn't necessarily trouble (though if you stay supercritical for too long it will eventually be).
When a reactor finds fault with 'most everything you do or say, it is said to be "hypercritical".
My other car is a 1984 Nark Avenger.
From our friends at wikipedia....http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_new_nuclear_power_plants#US
Insurance for nuclear or radiological incidents in the U.S. is organized by the Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act. In general, nuclear power plants have private insurance and assessments that are pooled into a fund currently worth about $10 billion. Insurance claims beyond the fund's size would be organized by, and probably paid by, the U.S. government. In July 2005, Congress extended this Act to newer facilities. For full history, details and controversy, see Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act.
Reactors won't explode like a nuclear bomb, but they can in principal explode. The classic view of a nuclear reaction is that a neutron causes a uranium nucleus to fission, releasing more neutrons. Some of those neutrons are absorbed by the control rods, some cause more fissions. If on average the neutrons produce a growing number of fissions, you have a chain reaction. So far so good. In that simple model though the reactor is impossible to control. If the control rods absorb too many neutrons, the reaction dies away. If they absorb too few, it grows exponentially. The time constant (in this simple model) would be VERY FAST - probably microseconds. You couldn't possibly move the control rods fast enough to keep the reactor running at a stable power. A couple of things let you control the reaction: in a conventional power reactor the neutrons are moderated (slowed down) and the uranium has a higher cross section for slower neutrons. If the reaction rate starts to grow, the moderator gets hot, the neutrons get faster and the reaction slows down - a bit of negative feedback. This helps, but isn't enough by itself to make the reactor stable. The other important item is the fuel mix. Not all of the neutrons are produced immediately in the fission reaction, some are produced later (seconds to hours) from radioactive decay. You can run the reactor in a state where it is sub critical for the prompt neutrons, but still above critical for the delayed neutrons. That slows the exponential growth or decay rate to something you can control. Of course as the reactor operates, the fuel mix changes. U235 fissions. U238 breeds plutonium. The ration of prompt to delayed neutrons changes. People who operate reactors calculate the fuel mix as the reactor operates to be sure they have a reasonable stability margin. Having said all that, the safety record for nuclear power (including Chernobyl) is extremely good compared to other energy sources. The safety record for reactors in western countries is spectacularly good. I absolutely support building more nuclear reactors as the most practical solution to energy / environmental problems.
To me this seems a pretty easy answer once you look at the raw numbers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium-235 shows that when one atom of U-235, once fissioned, releases 202.5 MeV of heat. That's 202,500,000 electron volts, a.k.a., one huge amount of energy.
An atom of carbon when burned (C + 2 Ox->COx2) releases a few electron volts of energy and gives us carbon dioxide, which is said to be a "greenhouse gas". (I'm not debating that point).
Let's just do it with money, okay?
Hold an atom of carbon in one hand. Hold an atom of uranium in the other hand. The carbon's worth a few dollars. The uranium's worth Two Hundred Million Dollars. Which one do you pick? If you pick uranium, you just hit the Lotto Jackpot!
Bear in mind that you have to get enough of either to meet the energy needs of the country, and it's very hard to get enough coal, and much easier, by a factor of two hundred million, to get uranium.
Jimmy Carter made the unfortunate decision (funny how those words appear next to his name) not to include used fuel rods in reprocessing. There's a lot of energy there awaiting.
I think what we ought to do as a country is swallow some pride, go to France, which gets about 80% of its energy from nuclear, and say, "Obviously you have a well debugged design. Help! Show us how to do it!" The French do it right. You know how useful debugged code is.
Thanks,
Dave Small
That and the fact that most insurance fields do mediocre jobs of risk mitigation. Easier to just fold all the customers into one big number and divide by N, then add profit on top, than to actually do hard intellectual labor and work to reduce the chance of a payout on any specific individual cases. Of course, part of it is customer pushback against the suggestion that they might (god forbid) be doing something wrong (after all, that's what the insurance is for amirite?).
I think that's far more common in areas where insurance is mandatory and insurance companies can't refuse customers. At that point, why bother with risk mitigation? You can't reject the losers anyhow, so just run cost-plus. But insurance companies can only do risk analysis based on historical data, and so are not a "free market solves everything" answer when it comes to new technologies. They're great in a free market with lots of historical data, however!
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
idiot,
Calling them out on idiocy, of which you opine them...tsk, tsk.
the amount of power that hits the earth per square meter is NOT enough to run our cities.
I'll grant you it's not solely solar, but renewable energy is already contributing over 14 percent to the electricity supply in Germany. GP advocated common sense. It seems to me that common sense would advocate applying solar power in conjunction with every other renewable energy source under the Sun to come up with something that meets or exceeds power generated by non-renewable energy sources.
You seem to forget something important in the design of PBRs. They have no containment, because the stability is achieved by contact between reactor vessel and environment air, which acts as emergency coolant if everything else fails. They may have a "containment building" built around them, but the doors are left open. That's by design and that's exactly how stability is achieved.
Also, PBRs are the first nuclear reactors ever to feature compressors in the primary loop (which uses helium instead of water). Compressors are much more complex than pumps (which work with liquids), and can surge, something pumps cannot. Since compressing gas is an energy-intensive business, producers will choose the most efficient compressors, which are the axial ones, which also happen to be the most sensitive to surges, and for which the highest efficiency is just before the surging line. Surges cause rapidly increasing temperatures, leading to leaks, metal melting and possibly explosions in a matter of seconds. I suppose you can imagine what happens when hot, radioactive helium flies out of an exploding compressor. Remember, no inherent containment is possible unless we sacrifice inherent stability—we have to trust someone to close the doors; however, if the primary circuit is interrupted and the passive cooling deactivated, heat will build up in the reactor.
Also, pebbles do have a tendency to get stuck when being moved around in the reactor, an operation necessary to maintain uniform conditions. That's what happened in Jülich, Germany, to the German PBR, an event that led to Germany shutting down the program as the technicians ended up releasing radioactive helium in the atmosphere while trying to unclog the pipes. Radioactivity levels were significant for the Jülich area, but were blamed on the Ruskies (the Chernobyl accident happened in the same days, IIRC).
I am an opponent of nuclear power, but I have no problem with anyone building power plants, on a simple conditions that Slashdot libertarians should like: no subsidies of any kind, only private capital. The day the subsidies end is the day fission power ends.
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That was pretty funny. If I had the mod points, I'd give em to you, off topic or not.
Usually the anti/pro nuclear power debate centers around the risk of radiation leaks or something going wrong at the power plant, i.e. the danger of catastrophic faults. Besides attempting to refute the emotional fears of the anti-nuclear proponents, the pro-nuclear guys always focus on the cheapness of the power.
Okay, so here's my question: As I understand it, nuclear reactors have a limited lifetime, after which they have to be decommisioned. At this point, can anything be done with the old nuclear site? My probably out-of-date understanding is that there's nothing left to do but fill the plant with concrete, and fence it off for next X thousand years until the radiation decays. Is that still the case?
Also, what's the deal with the waste from the modern plants, and the waste storage? Has anyone done a good analysis of the real costs of nuclear power, in the long term (i.e. total cost of a nuclear plant, including the storage and cleanup from here to human extinction)? I'd love to see that.
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This argument keeps surfacing, but coal plants do not concentrate these radioactive materials to dangerous levels. Remember that radioactivity is one of those problems where, if you spread the problem enough, the problem disappears.
Some numbers from Scientific American: people living around coal plants are exposed to 1.9 millirem of fly-ash radiation yearly, whereas the average person encounters 360 millirem a year. That's an increase of 0.5%, well within the uncertainty in the 360-millirem figure.
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The following links are to a couple of interesting Google Tech Talks on Youtube, covering the subject of Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors. Carlo Rubbia (Nobel-winning physicist) is pushing another class of thorium reactor - the accelerator-driven system.
I hope you find them of interest - they're quite long.
Not exactly libertarian.
So we should just go back to dumping all radioactive waste in the oceans? That's one helluva dilution factor right there.
Western designs are absolutely nothing like the RBMK series reactor that was built at Chernobyl. Reactor design may have stood still in the United States over the past three decades, but other western countries (& a few non-western countries) have been building new reactors and improving reactor design while the US has been sleeping. Modern CANDU designs, the Westinghouse AP1000, ABWR & APWR are not 1950's technology.
Syllable : It's an Operating System
Uranium is basically harmless, radiation-wise (any radioactive material that has been around since the Earth formed is not meaningfully radioactive).
Ask the people of Cornwall in the UK (and some parts of the US, I can't remember which) about Radon. Here's a handy map:
http://www.hpa.org.uk/webw/HPAweb&HPAwebStandard/HPAweb_C/1197636998945?p=1158934607683
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radon#Radon_concentration_guidelines
How the danger of Radon building up in houses to the general public was discovered:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_and_radon_in_the_environment#Radon_in_houses
Can't manage a bit of ash but able to put a 20 old reactor online. 20 years... a lots changed in that time.
Many of the commercial reactor operators come from the military. They provide the best training and experience:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Nuclear_Power_School
the president is giving out free money for clean energy, and someone at the TVA with a yacht said, "i gotta get me some of that!"
but really guys, 19 years of rats and rain? just how efficient and on time do you expect this thing to be, let alone safe, once you bring it up? Almost two decades have passed, in which time things like the pebble bed reactor have come about as more efficient and powerful means of generating nuclear energy. its like trying to finish your kids new crib after theyve turned 12.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Actually these numbers have been calculated. There is an entire field in the industry called probabilistic risk assessment, and deals with the probability of accident event chains leading to reactor core damage. There is a number called "core damage frequency" (you can google this) and typically range from 1e-5 to 1e-6 for US reactors (i.e. the odds of the a reactor accident leading to core damage is about 1 in a million per reactor per year. This only means core damage like TMI, not radioactivity release. That is a different number, called the "large early release factor" and is an even smaller number, around 1e-7 or less).
I'd say a young boy over a bad rector are a worse combination.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Nuclear... the OTHER n-word Americans are phobic about.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
As the another commenter said, a coal plant releases a few tons/year of uranium into the air.
Uranium has an incredibly long half-life and tends to remain in the body due to its chemical properties.
Xenon-135 (which is what the majority of TMI's release consisted of) has a half-life of 9.2 hours and is chemically unreactive, so doesn't tend to concentrate itself anywhere.
Given a choice between living 5 miles from a coal plant or 5 miles from a nuclear plant (US-design, NOT an RBMK...), I'll take the nuclear plant any day.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Criticality is not a function of free neutrons. Criticality (or rather, the multiplication factor) is an eigenvalue of a system and is independent of flux. A reactor can be critical with zero neutrons flying around. This is actually a real issue, because when a reactor is being initially loaded while offline, you need a constant, external neutron source to provide some flux- otherwise if the core was misloaded you could be critical and not even know until it was too late.
nuh UHH! Check my UID loser... I am in the sixdigit club!
We have a club? Sweet! Will my Geek Card let me hang out there? /.
Oh wait . . . this is
No good deed goes unpunished. - Avon, Blake's 7
Please get over you mindless fear.
1. When people talk about reactors exploding they are usually thinking big mushroom cloud destroying a city. Not going to happen. Even a massive steam explosion in a western style light water reactor is EXTREMELY unlikely. The reactor in Idaho people like to bring up wasn't a commercial reactor but an experimental military reactor. Even then it killed fewer people than died at my local oil fired power plant putting up Christmas decorations.
2. Since a Chernobyl style accident is IMPOSSIBLE then bringing it up when talking about a western light water water power reactor is tactic to use groundless fear to scare the ignorant. And yes you are correct there is no reason to protect a building more than a mile for the water from being rammed by the Titanic.
3. We can discuss that when they want to build a power reactor in the US that doesn't have a containment building. All planned reactors in the US will have them. Also the Social Science Journal isn't an engineering or even a physics journal. In fact this is on their front page today. "Child maltreatment in Disney animated feature films: 1937â"2006 "
How about a reference from a physics journal or even the IEEE to back it up?
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Or we could just, you know, turn off computers that we're not using.
Which would require 1. significant improvement in boot times, and 2. significant improvement in triggers for booting. For example, if nobody is connected to a given server at this moment, but someone could connect to the server at any given moment and would expect it to respond within two seconds, should it be switched "on" or "off", and why?
Until I found out that this is not a new design, but just a mothballed 1970's plant that was never brought online being finally finished and put to use. When we implement modern designs, let me know.
And, most importantly, that deliberately circumventing safety systems is a bad idea.
Reactors like (eg.) the Pebble Bed reactor have no unstable state. Even if some lunatic director goes berserk in the reactor control room he can't cause a meltdown.
No, but possibly a nice graphite fire.
At a whim, he can write an executive order to not approve any new power plant licenses
What in Article II or elsewhere in the U.S. Constitution gives these executive orders teeth, apart from where Congress expressly gives the President discretionary powers?
As I understand it, nuclear reactors have a limited lifetime, after which they have to be decommisioned. At this point, can anything be done with the old nuclear site?
Yes, open up a FusionBurger franchise.
If you want a car analogy, the public perception of nuclear power plants is similar to the perception of cars in the movies. Everyone known that when a car goes over a cliff, it will explode in midair (without having hit anything first), and one of the tires will roll away burning when it hits the ground. Similar scientific principles are applied to nuclear power.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
The US uses about 1.1 billion tons of coal per year ( http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/coal/page/special/feature.html ), or a minimum of (http://www.reade.com/Particle_Briefings/spec_gra2.html - assuming solid anthracite, the densest form of coal) 35 billion cubic feet of coal per year. Total US spent nuclear fuel by the year 2015 is projected to be about 75,000 metric tons, or 82,500 US tons ( http://www.sdi.gov/lc_nucle.htm )
So getting about 50% of our electrical power from coal per year requires us to burn over a cubic half mile of coal.
I think it's clear that nuclear is the winner here.
1. Reactors don't explode..
They don't explode like a nuclear bomb but they can have steam explosions.
2. A Chernobyl style accident is impossible with a light water reactor..
That is wrong. *Any* water cooled reactor could potentially have a steam explosion and any such reactor, with a sufficiently stupid design, could have a Chernobyl type accident.
4. Reactors all go critical. What you don't want is for them to go super critical.
5. No modern reactor can go super critical the fuel they use isn't enriched enough to go super critical and they all need a moderator like water to work.
That's not necessarily true (I think you're missusing the term "super critical") and it's not really the point. What you really don't want is for them to generate more heat than the coolant system is capable of dispersing. At the time of Chernobyl, the US had (and I was working on) a similar reactor (graphite/water moderated, dual purpose). A great deal of effort was put in to proving that the same thing couldn't happen here. Thermal reactors (what most of them are) have an optimal ratio of water to fuel. Anyone with any sense designs their reactor to have less than optimal amount of water in the coolant. That way, any accident that causes the reactor to lose water also causes it to lose power. Chernobyl had more than the optimum amount. In the course of the accident the water started to boil (reducing the density) and the power increased, which caused more boiling and ultimately a steam explosion. A design like that would never get approved in any country with competant regulation and if one somehow got built it would get caught in the testing phase.
Radioactive waste in contained in casks that MIGHT breakdown someday. Coal ash is contaminating the environment RIGHT NOW.
No. It have a steam explosion, but it won't develop a raging graphite fire, due to the lack of graphite.
Is that 5000x figure really accurate?
:) ).
Because 5000x might not be much when you consider:
1) More people might want to do fancier stuff that require more power e.g. if everyone wanted cars (or their own mecha
Energy consumption per capita in GJ/year:
Canada = 348.63
USA = 327.38
France= 189.77
Japan = 169.70
UK = 164.56
China = 47.81
India = 21.52
Indonesia = 31.81
Brazil = 44.84
So if the poorer but more populous countries tripled their energy consumption (add night lighting, airconditioning/heating, fridges, cars, skyscrapers, factories to supply all those goodies and it starts adding up really quickly), that "5000x the power we need" could become something like "1300x the power we need".
And if the population doubles, that drops to "700x the power we need".
2) There will be conversion losses. 50% efficiency = 350x the power we need. 10% efficiency = 70x the power we need.
3) We're not the only species on the planet that needs a share of that solar energy. There are way more than 5000 species on this planet.
So, forgive me if I'm not comforted by "5000x".
Even a worst case accident (a deliberate and well planned failure maximizing release and dispersal) wouldn't render the majority of the U.S. uninhabitable.
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Yes, as I said there are plenty of real reasons to avoid coal. I get a coal mining newsletter emailed to me once a week and nearly every issue has a list of the number of people that died in coal mining accidents over the past week.
I think it's clear that coal is the loser but that doesn't automaticly make nuclear the winner. The real answer (unless you are a salesman) is a mix of energy sources. Civilian nuclear only makes sense at very large scales and while big base load staions are nice you still need something to cover the peaks.
The steam explosion yes but it would take a lot of work. The raging fire that spread most of the fall out no. Also once the water is gone there is no moderation and the reaction slows in a light water reactor. In the graphite reactor that was in Chernobyl once the water was gone the reaction speed up.
And reactors in the US have containment buildings.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
You are actually underestimating how long nuclear waste remains dangerous: The Yucca mountain repository license application requires them to consider the nuclear waste dangerous for a million years.
At this point, all the nukespeak people will jump in with talk of breeder reactors and all kinds of new technology. Unfortunately, nobody is even thinking about deploying new technology.
All the DOE and the nuclear industry want to make are the same old 70s reactors they have been building (or trying to build) for the last 40 years. The industry approach to nuclear waste is still "Bury it and forget about it." It probably won't leak soon enough for them to catch me.
An engineer who ran for Congress. http://herbrobinson.us
Anything that moves us away from non-renewable energy sources and imported resources to domestic energy production is good. But we have to consider costs and space.
For instance, the Nevada Solar One solar thermal power plant cost about $266 million to build, covers 400 acres of land, and generates about 129 GWh per year. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevada_Solar_One
The US used over 22 quadrillion BTU of coal power in 2005 http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/solar.renewables/page/trends/table1.html which converts to about 6450 TWh so if we wanted to replace coal use with Solar Thermal Plants, that's 6450 TWh/129 GWh = 50000 copies of Nevada Solar One at a cost of $13 trillion and covering 30,000 square miles of land. Solar isn't exactly a quick fix either.
1. Any explosion, or even just a deflagration, involving the primary coolant is going to leak radioactivity and will have consequences. Everybody I know knows very well nuclear power plants cannot explode, even my father who's pretty dim about anything related to technology. So stop painting opponents of nukes like luddites.
2. Whooosh. You kind of missed the point that the Titanic sunk and killed over a thousand people. Just because it cannot crash into a building it does not protect it from many other kinds of accidents.
3. Why would an engineering or physics journal be relevant? You did not even read the article, which was about the economics of nuclear power, not the technical implementation. I brought my source, if you have one contradicting it bring it on.
Uh, and besides, why would it be irrelevant to study episodes of child maltreatment in Disney pictures over many decades? It seems to be a good way to gauge public attitude towards children. I have in any case seen much more unlikely titles for scientific articles.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
Not sure about the details, and indeed they chose helium because it does not carry that much radioactivity around. However the Germans in Jülich did break the pipe, leaked helium, and radioactivity was leaked. Not sure whether that was due to impurities in the helium, or air that rushed to take helium's place in the circuit and then leaked out again.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
Here's the deal: your power plant leaked radioactivity. My potato field is glowing. You get it back in the condition it was before, and pay me the damages I suffered since I cannot harvest potatoes this year. Don't care how you fix it, nor how much it costs you. If you cannot deal with it, stay out of nuclear power.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
1. If a Primary coolant pipe leaked it would be contained because it is would be in the containment building that is one of the reasons you have them.
2Whoosh..
Even bringing up the Titanic is yet another simple minded attempt to bring fear into this.
What did it have anything to do with anything. It was silly.
But if you want to work with it I will your bringing up that Chernobyl when talking about a modern western light water reactor is kind of like someone bringing up that Titanic as a reason for not going on a modern cruise ship!
"Lets go on a cruise."
"No it is too dangerous remember that Titanic."
"But this ship will have enough lifeboats unlike the Titanic."
"No remember the Titanic it could still sink too fast to get in the life boats!"
"But it has Radar and GPS and satellite communications so it can avoid storm, reefs, and even icebergs!"
"But it could run into one that is totally under water!"
"But we are going on a Caribbean Cruise! There are no icebergs!"
"Just because nobody has ever seen one doesn't mean that they are not there"!
Bringing up Chernobyl or the Titanic when talking about a modern western reactor is NOTHING BUT A FEAR TACTIC.
The both have the same validity to the subject. Nothing at all.
Okay want some sources that disagree with yours
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf02.html
http://www.nucleartourist.com/basics/costs.htm
http://www.nei.org/keyissues/
Of these are pro nuclear sites but before you dismiss them just realise this. If there where studies of nuclear power that positive results wouldn't pro-nuclear sites post them?
Also wouldn't anti-nuclear sites dismiss them?
Plus you know that France gets the majority of their power from nuclear, Japan gets a lot of from Nuclear, and China is planning on building more reactors "made by GE no less". I find it hard to believe that those nations are being "taken in" and building plants that are no economic to build and run.
And your source isn't a journal of technology, physics, engineering, or economics!
It is a journal of sociology which can include some economics but would probably lack the technical expertise in the subject of Nuclear Engineering or even power generation.
I have seen similar studies. They all use older US plants as the source of their cost data. That is going to give you skewed data because those plants are all over 30 years old in design and each of them was a custom design. The had huge cost over runs because of that. Add in the problems with regulators after TMI and the costs are terrible. If you use modern standardized reactor designs like those used in France and China the costs totally different
Oh and here is one final article but not a study.
It is from one of the founders of Greenpeace about why he was wrong about Nuclear and now supports it along with the reasons.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/131753?GT1=43002
Simple fact seems that you fear nuclear power. No study or history of safe plant operation in the West will convince you because you have made up your mind. Anything that confirms your fear you will embrace and that which contradicts you will reject.
The West had decades of experience running nuclear power plants with France getting something like 80 of it's power from nuclear and Sweden getting around 50% all with reasonable costs and very good safety. The US also has a very good safety record even with TMI.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
And here's another problem: If you tell the judge that the plant leaked radioactivity, you may have a very good point in his eyes, but it's absolute nonsense from a technical point of view (it's radioactive materials that are dangerous when they leak - your potatoes are going to be exposed to a few million times the radiation they're ever going to catch from a nuclear power plant when they go through the food irradiation plant).
On the other hand, if the plant really leaked radioactive materials, have fun proving where they came from (remember: no regulation, that would be unliberatarian). And who's saying that you can't harvest your potatoes (let me guess: an evil unlibertarian government agency).
"built and run by low-bidders."
Sorry for the late post, but thats tatment irks me, since it's wildly inaccurate.
built and run by low-bidders who meet the safety and production requirements.
I ahve been on boards deciding who is going to win a bid, and low cost is only a factor. In fact, I don't think we have every awarded to the lowest bid becasue one of the requirement is a company history.
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".. Can you say molten fuel rods?"
can you say so the fuck what?
Jeez, everything that was supposed to happen under that condition did.
Do you know how many people died from 3 mile island? Zero(0)
Do you know haw many people ahve dies because environmentalist pressured them not to reopen the other tower? over 50 from coal related deaths.
You should take a summer to study Nucleaer reactor design to at least get the understanding of why a Chernobyl incident is impossible in a US designed reactor.
Yes, IMPOSSIBLE.
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If by that, you mean bury in the trench? then yes.
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Industrial SOlar Thermal
Cheap? yes compared to coal or nuclear* . also very cvheap to maintain, and your energy fuels costs never go up from zero.
Clean? yes. Uses the sun, and the liquads used to store the heat are a lot cleaner the coal.
Reliable? yes. 24/7 base load reliable. It stores the heat hor night time generation.
*no, I am not anti nuclear.
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