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US Nuclear Power Industry Poised For a Comeback
ThousandStars sends us to The Wall Street Journal for a report that momentum for nuclear energy is waxing in the US. "For the first time in decades, popular opinion is on the industry's side. A majority of Americans thinks nuclear power, which emits virtually no carbon dioxide, is a safe and effective way to battle climate change, according to recent polls. At the same time, legislators are showing renewed interest in nuclear as they hunt for ways to slash greenhouse-gas emissions. The industry is seizing this chance to move out of the shadow of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl and show that it has solved the three big problems that have long dogged it: cost, safety and waste."
"...The industry is seizing this chance to...show that it has solved the three big problems that have long dogged it: cost, safety and waste."
Yeah, I never liked petroleum either. Paying 6 bucks a gallon to a multinational cartel, causing two fruitless wars in the Middle East, and then my kids' college funds and my 401K being given to the CIA and State Department's $300,000/person/yr Blackwater mercenaries while we eat Ramen for dinner.
Huh, what? Oh. Nevermind.
Ethanol-fueled
I really hate the comparisons of Three Mile Island to Chernobyl. Three Mile Island was an example of a failure at a nuclear facility that was solved correctly. Chernobyl was an example of a failure that was caused by extraordinary stupidity and handled as badly as you could handle such an incident.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Time to order a couple thousand 1970s era alarm clocks (With the glowing dials) and start up a nuclear pile in my garage!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
This needs all the political momentum it can get. Nuclear power is one of the areas I have strong disagreements with the current administration. Considering how much Uranium (and thorium, but lets not get into that) we have available domestically, this is such a fundamental and simple (albeit expensive) steps we can take to reduce emissions (I'm looking at you, coal) while decreasing our energy dependency. It has been so long since we have built a new reactor in this country that the safety of the newest designs, particularly the pebble bed reactor makes the still operating relics of the 60s and 70's look like potential Chernobyls (Of course, they're not, but I'm speaking relatively and the safety aspects have come quite a ways since then)
Nukes are awesome. Let's put bunch of them OVER THERE. No, no, no, not over here, OVER THERE.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
See this on a ./er's sig so I can't take credit for it, but it sums up the situation nicely:
Nuclear power. Global warming. Agrarian society. Pick one.
Want to improve your life? This guy will show you how!
One must take into account the amount of CO2 emitted during nuclear fuel production. Has anybody done the math?
It's about time they get the, money grabbing, global warming train. This is much better plan than hybrids, wind mills and CFLs.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Until renewable energy sources mature and gain public acceptence (solar is relativly inefficient and expensive, and Americans seem fond of complaining about "ugly" windmills), nuclear power is the best option we have.
Go ahead. Build it. I'll give you a good deal on the property.
I think it's tragic that a plant from that era has come to symbolize nuclear power for the entire nation when the technology has advanced so considerably. If we applied that line of reasoning to automobiles, we'd close all the freeways because the Corvair was unsafe.
woowoo homer is going to love this!!! and mr burns will be making bank with a few more subsidaries...
How will the closing of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository affect the development of more power plants? I would think a lack of waste storage could slow down the construction of new plants.
"Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning." Bill Gates Yeah Right!
A majority of Americans thinks nuclear power, which emits virtually no carbon dioxide . . .
Nuclear plants require a large containment building, which takes a lot of concrete. Lots. That concrete puts out gigantic amounts of CO2 when it's initially made.
However, it does reabsorb CO2 as it cures over the building's lifetime. It takes decades, but it's eventually carbon neutral. It also doesn't come with all the other junk being dumped into the atmosphere that comes from coal like heavy metals, sulfur, NOx, and radioactive isotopes (yes, quite a bit more than the dirtiest nuclear plant would).
You shouldn't have to distort things to promote Nuclear.
Not a typewriter
I am an enthusiastic supporter of nuclear power for many reasons (the least of which is not its potential capability to move mankind into the space). However, no matter how excited and supportive the government or the populace become of nuclear energy there is one huge barrier that it faces. Due to the terror of nuclear energy generated in past decades, there are miles of legal hurdles, red tape, and bureaucratic BS festivals to go through before anything nuclear can be approved and implemented. Unless both federal and state litigators are willing to ease up some of the legal garbage surrounding nuclear facilities, it will remain an incredibly expensive (and unnecessarily so) solution to energy problems.
I hope the folks planning to establish new nuclear facilities hire a damn good group of lawyers. They are probably going to need it.
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
But your great, great, great, great, great grandchildren will be employed monitoring the "by-products".
They haven't solved the environmental issues. They might have better safety, but what about the fact that they use massive amounts of water, and heat it up about a degree before returning it to the river that the plant is inevitably next to? How about the waste? They still haven't solved that one; all our old waste is still sitting on site at current plants.
The simple truth is that nuclear power is good technology that solves a variety of sticky problems. Anti-nuclear propaganda films irrationally scared the public in to rejecting a highly beneficial and useful method of power generation. With the passage of years, the public has come to the realization that the sky isn't falling and that a modern, safe nuclear power system is good economics and good social policy. We should celebrate this return to sanity: it's reason triumphing over irrational fear.
"Man is nothing without the works of man" -- Helvetius
That Americans are suddenly interested in nuclear power is not due to a sudden awareness of the science behind it. Rather, economics has changed the equation. The rise of China and India has dramatically increased demand for fossil fuels and has driven their prices through the roof. This phenomenon directly hits the checkbooks of Americans.
Economics, not intellect, has now convinced Americans to join the nuclear-power club. Unfortunately, for the Americans, since they deserted nuclear power for 30+ years, the most advanced nuclear-power plants are designed by French and Japanese engineers. France and Japan will profit immensely when their companies build plants in the USA for the science-challenged Americans.
If we say that we need nuclear power plants, aren't we just reinforcing the idea that Iran needs nuclear power plants too?
I've heard from a physicist, that we have only so much easily refinable uranium/plutonium to last until 2050 or so. Wikipedia says 100 years which, while not a reason to stop doing it, seems pretty low to me. After that we'd have to go to lower-yield thorium fuel cycle (breeder) reactors which would last a while.
Of course he's not a nuclear physicist/engineer. Anyone have the scoop? Would these current power plant designs be adaptable?
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
There's a reason nobody is investing in this great deal.
The interest on a $8B loan at 8% is about 1.8M per day.
The amount of power made is about that much, at the wholesale rate of .10/KWH
And that's not counting the cost of uranium, labor, maintenance, decomissioning, or insurance .....
Not to mention that it takes many years to build one, with the 1.8M accruing each day.
This is good news. I'm glad to hear that the American public has been doing their research about modern nuclear technology. Ha! Actually, I'm frightened that nuclear policy could be decided by public opinion. Or is the public opinion of a group who mostly don't know what they're talking about at least better than simply letting oil companies decide what we should do?
I suppose I can be glad that public opinion, in this case, seems to be trending toward a rational direction, even if it took 30 years too long to get there. (Not that I'm a nuclear engineer myself, but I've at least done some reading on the subject and made an attempt to be as objective as possible.)
I'm a supporter of widespread nuclear power. However, the industry hasn't solved two major issues:
-Hazards of mining the fuel
-Political viability of fast breeder reactors
If we could get robots to mine the fuel, great. Right now, mining heavy, radioactive material is a hazardous occupation with long-term health effects.
Fast breeder reactors are the way to minimize nuclear waste to easily manageable levels. It is also an efficient generator of weapons-grade fissile material. The international community has proliferation concerns associated with this.
I hope to see these issues addressed in the future for ushering in widespread nuclear power along with solar, wind, and geothermal energy.
We have to reduce C02 emissions. We have to reduce them right fucking now. Solar panels, windmills, or unicorn farts may one day be viable energy sources, but nuclear power is ready now.
...show that it has solved the three big problems that have long dogged it: cost, safety and waste.
The summary is technically right: Thanks to reprocessing fuel, the waste problem has been solved. But since the US doesn't reprocess spent fuel, we don't yet have a solution for that. This won't change until we stop calling it "waste" and start calling it "spent fuel" - the term "waste" is inaccurate.
From the article:
The big problem with controlling waste: Today's reactors capture only about 5% of the useful energy contained in uranium
"Today's reactors" -- meaning, "reactors based on modern technology" do not capture only 5% of the energy. But "Today's reactors" as in "the ones we are building in the US today" do only capture 5% of the energy. It is the most absurd aspect of US nuclear power. Until this is addressed, nuclear isn't going very far.
Nagging question, I know, but we need to have a place to put the spent fuel, or we need to invest heavily on the kind of reprocessing "breeder" reactors that can squeeze every bit of energy out of the fuel. I know there's Yucca mountain, but that seems pretty much DOA, and each reactor has containment and storage facilities built-in. Yet, I can't imagine that there's that much room available in existing storage, or that there will be enough willingness to pay the costs for bigger-scale on-site storage options. As much as people purport to love nuke energy, there's still a bunch of "NIMBYs" around. If you ask a geographically-distributed sample of people if they want nuclear energy, I'm sure there's a majority that do, but I imagine that none of them want nuclear material trucked through their towns, or to have big nuclear storage facilities around.
"Congratulations Homer! You've turned a potential Chernobyl into a mere Three Mile Island!
Want to improve your life? This guy will show you how!
Wow, industry boosterism from the wall st journal, what a shocker.
</sarcasm>
My father retired from the NRC 2 years ago.
He has more contracting work at plants all around the country than you could shake a fuel rod at.
By "waste" I assume they mean nuclear waste. What about waste heat problems, that had several power plants running at considerably reduced levels because of drought conditions in the south east?
A problem with nuclear power is that we'll be at the mercy of corporations to set the price and availability just like they do for oil.
I can accept their stance that safety and costs issues has been solved. But waste? Which law of physics have they found a loophole?
My karma is not a Chameleon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_japan
For decades, the typical American has exhibited an abysmal understanding of basic physics.
France and Japan will profit immensely when their companies build plants in the USA for the science-challenged Americans.
Stereotype much?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I'll get behind nuclear power when any state that produces stores it in their state. Putting it in a mountain across the country is not a solution.
Otherwise it's just a bunch of hot air. If you think it is safe and the waste is safe then you can store the waste and have nuclear plants next to schools. If you don't then it really isn't all that safe.
The other big issue is that a disaster...even if inprobable...is decades long. If a coal plant blows up the results can last for some time...but nuclear disasters can be multi generational. Is the plant safe from itself, hurricanes(acts of god), and acts of terrorism\human made events?
Is it manageable? If we scale to lots of more plants...can we actually manage the waste and control of them all. Having 10 plants might be safe, but increase it to 50 and it might become dangerous.
So trade CO2 for nuclear waste? Are we not going backwards here just to solve the problem more quickly?
"You can't recycle the fuel indefinitely, eventually you will have waste. And eventually it needs to be dealt with."
But that waste you eventually have to deal with is almost completely different stuff. Instead of being a highly radioactive mess for a hundred thousand years, it's a much less radioactive mess for a thousand years (and during that last 500 years, it's pretty 'cool' anyhow). I don't know about you, but I suspect we *probably* have the engineering know how and materials science to contain stuff safely for 500-1000 years. I don't think anyone really thinks we currently have the knowledge to solve the problem of containing waste safely for 100,000 years.
I'd much rather try to solve the problem of containing waste safely for 1000 years than 100 times that.
Even without further technological advance, nuclear power will suffice for several millennia. It produces zero emissions (except a little hot water) and produces a tiny volume of solid waste that doesn't escape into the environment. It runs silently all day and all night. If you were handed a datasheet for a nuclear power plant with the source of power blacked out, you'd jump at the chance to build the thing.
Nuclear power produces long-lived, dangerous waste, doesn't it? Dangerous and long-lived are mutually exclusive when it comes to nuclear materials. That's just the way the science of radioactive decay works. After being taken out of the reactor, the waste that remains can be reprocessed into more fuel. But if it isn't, then you can leave it in a cooling pond for a few years, and after that point, it's safe enough to handle, store, and bury. There are far worse industrial outputs than cooled-down nuclear waste.
But it's still dangerous and we have no place to store the waste! What's wrong with a cave in the middle of the desert? There's no water table. The area is seismically stable, and there's no life where we want to store the waste. And by itself, nuclear waste will do nothing. It won't make your children glow in the middle of the night. It won't contaminate your crops. It won't do anything because it's inert.
What about the risk of nuclear meltdown? Won't that destroy cities? Well, what about steam boiler explosions? What about refinery disasters? What about train disasters? Do those keep your up at night? They all killed people regularly back in their early days. But we don't worry about them now because improved safety technology has reduced the risk to an acceptable level. The same principle applies to nuclear power: another disaster like Chernobyl could never happen to even a 1970s-era American reactor, much less the far-improved versions we have today. The risk of being injured by a nuclear meltdown today is on par with being injured by lightning.
Wait -- won't we run out of fuel? Don't we only have reserves for a hundred years? You don't understand how much energy is contained in nuclear fuel. You need so little of it that the fuel is dirt cheap. The price of uranium could increase a thousandfold without affecting a nuclear plant's bottom line. And because uranium is so cheap, there's been very little prospecting. The reason our proven reserves are relatively small is that nobody has been looking very hard, because uranium is dirt cheap. In fact, for the past few decades, the nuclear power industry has been running on decommissioned nuclear warheads. That's how little fuel you really need for nuclear power.
Sure, nuclear might be okay, but wind power! It's decentralized, and therefore better! And it appeals to my philosophical sensibilities because it's not a big evil industry!Wind power can't provide baseload power. Plus, it's limited by the number of sites with good winds. You can, on the other hand, build as many nuclear plants as necessary without severe geographic constraints. As for nuclear being centralized, big, and therefore evil: big isn't necessarily bad. Properly regulated, a huge nuclear plant can provide inexpensive power to millions far more efficiently than many small ones, or thousands of turbines, coal-fired power stations, and natural gas generators. Furthermore, there's no particular reason nuclear stations need to be private per se: consider the Tennessee Valley Authority model.
If nuclear power is so great, why does it take two decades to build one, and why does the government have to subsidize the insurance?In terms of physical build time, it only takes a few years to erect a power plant. The delays come from hysterical opponents using every possible legal avenue to block new nuclear plants. The complaints have no basis in fact, but the courts have to hear them just the same. Often, legal delays are so severe that projects are abandoned altogether (which is, of course, what op
I'll expand your idea to my local utility, Progress Energy in Florida. Progress Energy estimates that a two reactor plant is going to cost $17 billion (http://www.newsobserver.com/business/story/993686.html)
At an 8% cost of capital, that is 1.36 billion a year. With a 35 useful lifetime of the plant, there is an additional .5 billion a year to repay the capital. Throw in some of the other costs you mention (fuel, labor, property taxes, etc) and let's say the plant needs to earn 2 billion a year with no profit for the owners.
The reactors are two Westinghouse AP1000 which produce 1154Megawatts each (http://www.ap1000.westinghousenuclear.com/). If I recall correctly, nuclear plants are running about 90% of the time these days. That means the plants will produce in the ballpark of 2 reactors * 1154 MW * 1000Kw/Mw * 365 Days / Year * 24 hours /Day * .90 (availability derating) or 18.1 billion kilowatt hours per year. Given our cost estimate of $2 billion dollars per year, that works out to 11.04 cents per kilowatt hour.
Your 10 cent per kilowatt cost estimate is very close!
The scary thing is that I'm old enough to have lived through the last wave of nuclear plants being built. They almost all came in at two to four times the original cost estimates. If that happened again, we are talking wholesale electric rates of 22 to 44 cents per kilowatt. Solar PV (being stored in banks of lead acid batteries for night use) is already cheaper than 44 cents per kilowatt.
The reason France gets so much of its power from nuclear has nothing to do with the science education of its citizenry. It is because France has no other choice economically. Next to no fossil fuels, and solar has been more expensive than nuclear so far.
There was a decent article in Nat Geo sometime in the past year or two that went into some detail about this.
France has less resistance among the general population not due to science education, but because the French people don't want to pay high prices for imported fuels and/or energy. Plus the French government mounted a massive PR campaign to increase acceptance, because of the national security issues involved in energy independence, especially during the cold war.
Japan's reasons for nuclear are along the same lines. You can't point to the Japanese as accepting nuclear power because of science education -- they have an entire genre of movies based on the unforeseen consequences of nuclear power (Godzilla, etc).
Japan has adopted nuclear power for the same reason France has -- economics and national security.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Economics, not intellect, has now convinced Americans to join the nuclear-power club. Unfortunately, for the Americans, since they deserted nuclear power for 30+ years, the most advanced nuclear-power plants are designed by French and Japanese engineers.
Are you joking? Taking for argument's sake that the technology on advanced nuclear-power plants is somehow kept hidden by the French and Japanese (which is patently false), there are several US companies, such as GE, who are working on the next generation of nuclear power plants.
France and Japan will profit immensely when their companies build plants in the USA for the science-challenged Americans.
Riiiiiiight. You think someone with a PhD in nuclear engineering from MIT is going to be somehow less qualified than someone with one from the Sorbonne or Tokyo University? First of all, the comparative "science" scores of high school students is worthless. When you correct for the fact that the US does not generally shuttle lower-performing students into vocational schools (and the fact that Japan has been known to provide incorrect data in order to bolster their country's reputation), you'll find the US really doesn't do too badly. Even without correcting, you'll find that the US tends to fall squarely within the range of first world countries (and higher than several European ones) on the more reputable of these tests.
should go into building plants.
if it's not good enough an option to attract private financing then it isn't a good enough option.
It goes something like this:
In reality, X produces far less overall pollution than Y.
I've seen this argument used to oppose:
All of these are great technologies. If we're ever to make any progress, we have to learn to think past the environmentalist's fallacy.
Seven-in-ten scientists favor building more nuclear power plants to generate electricity, while 27% are opposed.
That's the thing though. From your data over a quarter of the people who are supposedly the best informed on the subject think it is a bad idea. That is NOWHERE near a scientific consensus. Scientists, as a general rule, are not dogmatic about policy and will change their mind if the evidence supports an opposing viewpoint. The fact that 1 out of 4 educated and ostensibly well informed people who are willing to change their mind when the facts dictate doing so means that the "facts" are not clear and there is no scientific consensus.
Of course just saying "scientists" is actually kind of meaningless because my wife is a scientist of a sort (medical) but knows little to nothing about nuclear power. WHICH alleged scientists were polled in this survey? Maybe they polled a bunch of computer scientists instead of nuclear engineers.
Look it up.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Anybody going to mention fusion?
Why isn't this getting more attention? I believe it solves most of the problems notes, and if it had as much money behind it as the Iraq War did it would be solved by now.
Maybe we should ban other substances that we can use to poison the earth too, then.
Get real.
(Or, if your post is satire, then good job!)
This is the real issue. Citizens, power companies, rational environmentalists and all the rest can get just as enthusiastic as they wish but if every new plant comes with 20 years of built-in legal delays and costs the investors will not show up. Some percentage of our contemporary pool of judges will not hesitate to leverage or invent whatever justifications are necessary to hinder zoning, construction or whatever.
This is what is required. Congress must make law that trumps the enviros, NIMBYers, the Sierra Club judges and the rest. It will literally require an Act Of Congress, probably one for each plant, before anything can happen.
Don't hold your breath.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
You were questioning the 8% cost of capital, here is a recent example of a utility paying 6.7% for 30 year bonds.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601203&sid=a8gdNh70aH5k
Since my example had no profit for the utility, we can assume the 1.3% between the 6.7% and the 8% used in the example is the profit for the utility.
8% seems spot on to me. Am I missing something here?
Some studies suggest Federal dams are mostly resonsible for drop from 16 million to 300,000 wild fish per year
Everything has problems: there is no perfect solution to energy. Considering the horrible state of the World's fisheries and wild Salmon (farmed Salmon has its own issues), I say dams are not an option where the Salmon are migrating unless a way ( fish ladders don't work well at all) is developed.
I can't comment on other fish.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
Who cares about polls? The laws of physics don't care about public opinion. Neither do the laws of economics.
And the later is clearly a problem. We just went through this here in Ontario, with a new set of reactors planned to go in about 50 k east of Toronto at Darlington. Darlington A, the original set, was enormously over-budget, and if I'm doing the math right, will never pay itself back in inflation-adjusted dollars. All of us Ontarians have a little line item on our bills called the "debt retirement charge" as a result. In order to prevent this occuring again, Ontario Power Generation (via Infrastructure Ontario) demanded that the quotes include overrun insurance. That drove the price up over $26 billion.
I'm a failed physicist and I'm very much aware of the realities of nuclear power. It IS safe, and the waste is NOT that big a problem. But $26 billion is a REALLY BIG PROBLEM. I'm not the only one believing that; after the bill was presented, they cancelled the project.
Here's something to think about. Darlington A and B together would have produced about 7 GW peak. The site occupies 1200 acres, or just under 5 million square meters. 5 million square meters of 8% average solar panel will produce about 3.8 GW peak. Yeah, it's not baseload. Yeah, it's only during the day. Now here's the kicker... ready? Solar costs a dollar a watt wholesale, so the price of that plant is about, oh lets round up some, $10 billion.
It gets worse. We already get about 60% of our power from hydro. In fact, there's more _spare_capacity_ in the generator plants in northern Quebec than there would have been in Darlington. All we'd need is a cable to get it. How much? Mmmm, 500 million, tops. Newfoundland and Manitoba also have oodles of spare capacity that they would love to sell us. Arco say's there's another, ready for it? 25 GW continuous in northern Canada lying undeveloped. That's more than all the power the province uses. But they can't get a red cent to develop it, because OPG want's it all in house.
*sigh*
The industry is seizing this chance to move out of the shadow of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl and show that it has solved the three big problems that have long dogged it: cost, safety and waste.
.. and into the shadow of an entirely new disaster.
Regardless of whether they've solved those problems, they're not likely get around the unlimited liability of potential accidents. And even if they do, we have plants operating way beyond their projected lifespans. So the chickens haven't yet come home to roost on all the earlier plants that were in the shadow of TMI and Chernobyl.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
If nukes are not economically feasible, why does France get ~80% of their power from them?
Because they made a policy decision to do so based on their particular economic situation and resources. I give them kudos for doing it but like any policy decision it has it's upside and downside. France has been trying to privatize their energy sector recently but the primary energy company EDF is still 70% owned by the French government. Were it private to the degree the US energy sector is, the liability costs would be more difficult to justify.
Countries have to use what they have. The US, Russia and China are INCREDIBLY rich in coal deposits. The US is to coal what Saudi Arabia is to oil. The US has about 27% of the known deposits. This makes energy derived from coal cheap in the US compared to France which has virtually no coal of its own. Hence US policy is going to favor coal more than French policy and nuclear in the US becomes less attractive thanks to the economies of scale coal has achieved in the US.
This is a terrorist action, our government is being subverted by evil voices to create more high-grade plutonium! Flee! Flee!
Yes after each 'recycling' they become more effect bomb materials if some steals them. I think you do not need to worry so much about domestic theft as international theft.
If you continue to recycle the rods correct the fuel can be consumed, leaving only lighter elements with short half-lives each time. OK a lot more radiation and far deadly but do it enough and you only have to deal with something that will kill you in seconds rather than something that will kill you in minutes. I think it would be easier to protect the extremely highly radioactive material for a very short period of time compared to watching the stuff we have now for thousands of years.
A proposed type of nuclear reactor called a traveling wave reactor is claimed, if it were to be built, to be able to be fueled by nuclear waste, and to be able to operate for 200 years without needing any refueling!
Recycle, Reprocessing and Rejoice!
I'm still not a fan of Nuclear power, however, I do understand it's current appeal. Yes, at the site of the plant, virtually no carbon is emitted. But this doesn't take into account mining and processing activities.
/. is populated by lots of engineers who love nothing better than to undertake new technological challenges, however, a million years is too long of a timescale. This puts you in the realm of unforeseen earthquakes and meteor strikes and a host of 1 in 1 000 000 year events. Frankly, I find it unconscionable that we are willing dump such a tremendous problem in the laps of our children, especially when there is no guarantee that they will be in any position to actually fix any problems that might occur. Then there is that whole can of worms known as reprocessing, with the associated geopolitical implications.
Safety
I fully understand that, like most accidents in the world, the majority of nuclear accidents were caused by human error. Unfortunately, humans aren't going to be cut out of the picture anytime soon. While extremely unlikely, the cost of failure at a nuclear facility is simply too high, and with every new reactor that is in operation the risk, however small, grows.
Waste
As much as government and industry wish to whitewash this issue, it remains unresolved. The fact remains that the world has a growing stockpile of material which requires careful storage and monitoring for hundreds of thousands of years. Most of the material is currently at temporary facilities and will have to be handled and moved at minimum to a permanent facility. I find that in most discussions of Nuclear power, almost nobody wants to talk about the ongoing cost of maintaining and storing the byproducts and anybody who expects industry to pick up that tab indefinitely is out of their mind. None of this cost is calculated into the cost of price of electricity generated. No, it will be dumped on government in the form of cleanups and public debt. Anyone who doubts this simply has to look at amount of cleanup the government is currently responsible for from industry long since moved on. Who's paying to build the current long term site? Which brings us to the concept of a permanent facility. I know
unanswered questions
Finally, there remains one great unanswered question: Why do we need more nuclear power? I know why industry wants it. I know why government wants it. But why do we need it? I can see some limited small scale usage for medicine and perhaps deep space probes, but for our everyday needs Solar and wind ARE sufficient to take care of our energy needs, and when you consider that they are just at the beginning stages of their development they will only get better. Imagine how much better they would be if renewables actually had the same level of investment that the nuclear industry has been (and still is gifted with)? When you throw in geothermal, hydro, biomass, and some limited conventional generation it becomes very difficult to justify the risks and burdens of large scale nuclear deployment.
I think the real problem in the post above isn't the stereotyping. The point is that France and Japan will not be saved from global warming even if they produce their own energy responsibly. So long as the barbarian nations keep burning coal to make most of their electricity, England and not France will be the place where the wine grows.
The liability issue is not discussed in the WSJ article.
If the new reactors are truly 'safe,' then the industry should have zero problem obtaining insurance without making use of the Price-Anderson Act, which caps liability.
The safety of on-site waste storage issue is still one problem I'm waiting to hear constructive solutions for.
I doubt the current on-site storage strategies being used today are immune to, say, a hijacked jet-liner being used as missile.
IMHO, the French aren't a great example of how to handle the waste, as they have been shipping it to Germany for re-processing. Who's signing up to take ours?
Why don't we just use the tremendous amount of heat energy provided from the earth. This power doesn't have any negative points. No waste, no river polluting, no Radioactive cooling water dumpage. Nuclear is nice, but it requires a lot of safety precautions. GEO-THERMAL all the way baby!
In Soviet Russia, road forks you!
Coal releases every year more radiation into the atmosphere than all the nuke power accidents combined. Lots of greenhouse gases too -and so it will not be a long term feasible solution if we are to solve the global warming problem.
Nuke and solar power will be long term solutions, and probably solar will be the best.
..........FULL STOP.
Shiver in your cave!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Why stop-gap? When using breeder reactors, the uranium in seawater will last for about as long as the Sun will shine.
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/cohen.html
Those who would give up liberty to obtain working drivers, deserve neither liberty nor working drivers.
How are they planning to get rid of nuclear waste ? It is not easy to get rid of the nuclear fissile material. They need to come up with a good way to get rid of it. Maybe start polluting outer space ....heheheheheh ;)
There are two reactor failures in the public mind: Chernobyl and TMI. Therefore they get compared. If you don't like this, then make a third power reactor fail in a way that gets on the news. Until then, you're just being a grumpypants for no reason. There were other reactor failures, but I dare you to find any Random Guy on the Street who can name them without hitting Google.
Beyond that, the article fails to tackle the problem that no one really wants a nuclear reactor in their county. Or their state. Or upwind. Or near their aquifer. NIMBY is strong, and even lots of money can't fight it and win every time.
Coal releases every year more radiation into the atmosphere than all the nuke power accidents combined.
True but when you have a quarter of the worlds supply of coal, it's going to be an economic factor whether it hurts the climate or not. Global warming is a huge issue but there is NO economically feasible scenario whereby coal will not be a major part of the US energy supply for the next 30+ years. I don't like it, and I suspect you don't either but coal is here and we'll have to deal with it. There simply is nothing available, not even nuclear, that can scale large enough to take coal's place in the US economy in the next few decades.
Lots of greenhouse gases too -and so it will not be a long term feasible solution if we are to solve the global warming problem.
Not with present or near-term technology, I agree. Good area for research.
Nuke and solar power will be long term solutions, and probably solar will be the best.
The answer is a diversified energy supply (nuclear, solar, wind, hydro, and yes even fossil-fuels) with careful emissions controls on the dirtier technologies. Nuclear and solar are not magic cure-alls but they should have an important part to play in the mix and definitely should be a bigger part of our energy policy. I absolutely agree with you on that.
'nuff said.
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
You realize, of course, that CA and AK production would produce at best 5% of the oil we consume on an annual basis?
And even if we drill here and now, MULTINATIONAL oil companies could just as easily ship the oil drilled here and now off to Japan and China, who are more than willing to pay for oil.
Worse, drilling more oil means burning more oil, which spews even more CO2 and pollutants into the atmosphere. Sorry, but doing more of the same simply isn't an option.
Here's a better idea. Research and build alternative energy sources, and do it here. We cut down on pollution, contribute less to global CO2 emissions, reduce our dependence on foreign oil, reduce our need to constantly intervene in the Middle East, dramatically slash our import trade deficit, and, oh yeah, create tens of thousands of new jobs here in the US. And probably create a major new export industry to boot.
Now, those are tech jobs that you may not be qualified for, but if we keep the US economy afloat Walmart will always need greeters and stockboys. :)
BTW. If I'd been president a few years ago, I would have hit the automakers with MUCH higher MPG standards, and mandated a significant excise tax on oversized trucks and SUVs. We can easily cut foreign oil consumption by at least a third just by being smarter about what we drive, and by not playing He-Man with our off-road SUVS that never go off-road.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
So I don't need to make ascetic sacrifices.
Regardless, it will take years to get any sort of power plant operational. People in coal country should be taxed to force them to make such sacrifices, until an alternate is brought online. Asking nicely won't get you anywhere.
See "Heat death of the universe".
The report indicated that support is growing, not waxing.
My friend, radioactive waste will always be dangerous.
Solar and wind are still underexploited resources in this country. Combine them with better use of the energy we currently make and we will be energy independent and cleaner.
Installation of residential solar generation is ideal. It places the generation at the place of its consumption. And the use of geothermal heat-exchange heating and cooling should be mandatory.
Best regards.
Parent puts in a link about a wind turbine that failed due to operator error and cites it as an example of unreliability. When a wind turbine fails, a small amount of generation is lost and few people are endangered. When a nuke plant goes down, all hell breaks loose.
Best regards.
there is FAR more CO2 emitted by nuclear than ANY OTHER form of energy on the planet!
You are a Greenpeace shill or supporter. This is their trademark bullshit. I don't even want to comment on this.
If we REALLY cared about the planet and future generations we would not leave behind such a toxic legacy.
Again, typical Greenpeace rhetoric. The future generations are more likely not to have such irrational fears, and actively mine for the waste from non-breeder reactors as a source of power.
The truly advanced know that to seek a nuclear nirvana is both a wasted effort that has moral implications that future generations will gravely judge us by.
Apparently you are also a 100% pure refined idiot that assigns moral value to means of energy generation based on gut feeling and miraculous knowledge of what the future generations will think.
Those who would give up liberty to obtain working drivers, deserve neither liberty nor working drivers.
Having a simple, gravity feed emergency cooling water supply is great.
Having a double, containment building to deter stray airplines is also great.
Just make sure you put the first inside the second.
Nuclear power is inefficient. The plants cost hundreds of millions. The variable costs may be low once they are set up, but the initial fixed costs are high, and there is still no good solution for what to do with the toxic waste they produce. How many of you pro-nuke posters would be willing to have a nuclear plant within 20 miles of were you live? How many would be willing to have the toxic waste stored on-site of the plant? I thought so.
After a 20-year struggle to shut down the Trojan nuclear power plant here in the Northwest, which never produced electricity and yet we are still paying for, it will be a cold day on the Sun before people allow a nuclear plant in Oregon or Washington.
Why do we periodically hear about appeals for more nuclear power? Couldn't be because General Electric and other large multinationals sell the technology.
Why don't we hear more about small-scale solar power? Could it be because you sell the consumer a solar panel once and then you get no more money out of him until he replaces it in 20 or 30 years? No monthly check to the utility. The utility doesn't buy hydrocarbons from the oil and gas companies. We all know how much companies love the subscription model.
If corporations could find a way to put a meter between the Sun and the consumer and charge us per-lumen then you'd see massive investment in solar power research in this country. Until then, they'll continue to push nuclear.
Okay now hands up, how many of you pro-nuke posters are Astro-turfers being paid to post in favor of it? I thought so.
It is nice that the industry wants to build more plants. However, where are they going to get there steel containment vessels from? The last I heard only Japan Steel could manufacture them, and they already had a decade long backlog.
Engineers are always hemming and hawing about how great nuclear is, but the facts are that they are very dangerous, even the most modern plants have horrible consequences in the event of a failure. Fact is that there should be laser power plants -- another power source that uses a subatomic chain reaction, but truly safely - producing only light as a waste product, not deadly poisons.
>"if the third world can do it, I don't see why we can't."
Simple: A lot of politicians will lose a lot money if America starts building cheap, long-lasting pebble bed reactors.
No sig today...
Look to the party in power, they control both sides of the aisle and the White House. They are not nuclear friendly.
Sure they may have one or two but as a party they are co-opted by their fringe side. Nuclear does not stand a chance unless Obama pushes for it and I don't see his current select group of fringe members doing so. Sorry, but he has too many border line people as it is, and I am quite more nuts abound than the recently punted "Green Czar" - which in itself implies no nukes.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
So the only post to put forth a realistic view is a troll. The zealotry of the technology fans here is appaling.
Let me say it loud and clear I don't trust private companies with Nuclear power, and so am not in favour of any increase in its use. Why do people here who normally have a healthy suspicion of corporations fall all over themselves to believe
their propaganda when Nuclear power is mentioned.
I dont believe the claims of the safety of modern reators either.
Fucking moron mods.
So how can a citizen get involved and get our government/private enterprises to start looking seriously at nuclear power? Write a congressman, state or federal? sign petitions? leave all the lights on in the house all day and night?
lick the cancle button (at least thats what our Chinese QA says)
Carbon Dioxide Emissions were (2007): 2,433 million metric tons emitted to produce gridpower, and 3,557 for other uses, mainly transportation (no car/plane runs on nuclear fuel!). Source: EIA
In other words building 400 new nuclear reactors, a major ordeal, only reduces carbon dioxide emissions by 40% and there is no further potential gain without an even much more major retrofit: only using gridpower-fed transportation means. Is it an "effective" approach?
Nuclear: 8.5 percent of the total primary energy used. Renewable (7.3%) are not ridiculous, especially given their long history of lack of founding.
We have all these cool designs for Nuclear power reactors, yet when it comes down to it, we have a steam powered turbine.
Before we start down this road again, I think we need to work out how to use the energy locked up in the fuel more efficiently. Instead of just dumping water on it to get it hot, there has to be a better way to use the fuel.
Comeback, eh? That will be temporary, at best. Most of the ore which is left is so low-grade that it is hardly worth mining it. The US is way passed peak uranium and relies on imports. Those countries who do export are running out and will soon stop doing so. The Nuclear Power Industry simply has no long-term future.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
I always thought the nuclear industries three biggest problems were time, distance, and shielding. :-)
Not really. The facts are on the side of the pro-nuclear groups. We can SOLVE the nuclear waste issue by building more nuclear plants...
If we build a modern generation of feeder-breeder reactors that are something close the 97-99 times more efficient than the old breed and can consume previously generated nuclear waste as fuel.
no you can't, a breeder will not turn lab gloves into nuclear fuel. Most "Nuclear Waste" is really low level, high bulk materials; fly ash from a coal plant is probably more radioactive than most "Nuclear Waste" coming from a Nuclear facility.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
move out of the shadow of Three Mile Island
There is no such "shadow". Get your facts straight. It didn't blow up. it didn't expose any humans to radioactivity. Anybody on a transcontinental flight this evening will receive a higher dose of ionizing radioactivity than anybody received from Three Mile Island. The design fault that led to its failure has been identified and fixed in all US plants for a very long time. There is NO legitimate comparison between Three Mile Island and Chernobyl; where humans specifically disabled and overroad several safety systems on purpose despite warnings.
Literally, Ted Kennedy is personally responsible for killing more people than the entire history of the United States Nuclear Power program, including Three Mile Island.
I will never live for sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.
For decades, the typical American has exhibited an abysmal understanding of basic physics.
France and Japan will profit immensely when their companies build plants in the USA for the science-challenged Americans.
Stereotype much?
Hello Mr. Hypocrite. You left something a few posts back. Here it is:
Shucks, where will I be if you don't read what I wrote?
It's an accurate term. The lunatic fringe of the environmentalist movement won't be happy until we revert to a stone-age society or cease to exist altogether.
Stereotype much?
" ...is a safe and effective way... "
It's pleasing to see that the ex-Soviets have found a "constructive" market for their bombs. It helps the health of their economy, and the longevity of its Middle Class. This could be a win-win solution if only the Great, Innovative Peoples of the ex-Soviet would also be so generous as to show the world how to filter out Radio-Active materials from Radio-Active Waste. Maybe those who wish Americans to buy Russian Radio Active Materials, should volunteer to live by the piles of Nuclear Waste that will be generated from their ideals. I'm told that 2nd generation animals can, it's the first generation that has to figure out how to live without a Thyroid Gland. I think for once I have thought of an Out-Sourcing project for our BRIC nations. They can use their new found wisdom to create a Radio Active Waste System Handler Intensive Treatment; I for one, would be proud to see them do this great project, in their back yard.
For the first time in decades, popular opinion is on the industry's side.
If this were true, would we need a news article telling us about it? Noo.
-Matt
No, I don't, because my statement is accurate and his is trolling.
Now bugger off and go back to your Mom's basement. I think I heard her yelling that your hot pockets are done.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Grandparent is the fool.
-
In a pressurized light water reactor, the reactor-grade uranium fuel has to be replaced after 3% of the fuel has been burned up, leaving us with 97% useful fuel and some dangerous waste products. Since reprocessing was forbidden in the United States by President Carter, we've been making plans to vitrify and bury all of our leftover fuel in a way that would render it permanently inaccessible. Even if we reversed the ban on reprocessing, we would still be dealing with a lot of dangerous long-lived actinides that are highly radioactive but last longer than the human race has existed.
I recently read a detailed analysis of the thorium fuel cycle. Based on a probabilistic analysis of the decay product chain, it's believed that a practical thorium fuel cycle can be designed that burns up 97% of the fuel, leaving only 3% of the input material behind as nasty stuff. Thorium is also quite plentiful in comparison to uranium, and is isotopically pure unlike uranium.
Here are some interesting facts about the thorium fuel cycle from wikipedia:
Well there is more to this than just the fact that US is re-discovering Nuclear Power. India has thrown open its 150 billion dollar business of setting up power plants. The french/russian/japanese folks already are busy setting up base here. The US India 123 agreement was just a means of securing power contracts to the US nuclear fuel industry. What's not very well known is that India and its indigenous Fast Breeder Program is miles ahead of the US/World. This is primarily the reason why many of Indian nuclear facilities are still not covered under the 123 agreement. The US is itching to get its hands on this. India i guess is the only country actively running a FBR. India with its Thorium reserves is well on its way to gain a massive edge in another 20 years when its comes to Nuclear Power.
http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090702/full/news.2009.619.html Obama stopped nuclear recyling efforts too. So not only is Obama opposed to nuclear storage in one of the best places in the country, he is also going to obstruct recycling efforts which convert 96% of the waste back into fuel while leaving the remaining waste thousands of times less radioactive and less dangerous. Instead, Obama believes in cap and trade which merely shifts the production of carbon while putting a heavy financial burden on the order of thousands of dollars a year to every American citizen. Obama is essentially an anti-human extremist.
Wow, the propaganda machine is on overdrive today. So lets examine your statements;
It produces CFC114 emissions in the enrichment process. CFC114, a greenhouse gas 20,000 times more potent than C02 which leaks from Paducah at 1 million pounds, thats 453,592.27 kilgrams per year since the bans began. That is 8 618 255.03 kilograms *since* CFC114 was banned. That's the equivalent of 172,365,100,000 kilograms of carbon dioxide from the enrichment process alone and does not include the 1 Gigawatt of coal fired power used to run Paducah. One thing that is not immediately obvious is it's eventual effect on Phytoplankton which creates more breathable oxygen than the Amazon.
I suggest you read up on the emissions that the NRC permit from a Nuclear reactor every second day and that Nuclear power plants vent approximately 100 cubic feet of Noble gasses roughly every two weeks, and they decay into deadlier elements. Thats NRC standard operating procedure even *before* we start talking about unintentional or unauthorised radioactive effluent emmissions.
and over the time you live there you would have cumulative exposure to radioactive isotopes that you would never be aware of.
Isn't it the case that the life span of the concrete containment casks have never been tested because it has never been funded? Are you sure your not just 'assuming' that they wont leak? Isn't part of the DOE response to the geology of Yucca Mountain a shift from geological containment to development of a material called 'C-22' to be used as drip shields to prevent water penetration into the 'dry casks' as they are unable to mitigate the egress of water from the casks. Why would the DOE bother funding their creation if they were confident the casks weren't going to leak especially when their original engineering specification of the geology of the site stated a specific geologic chemistry to mitigate an expected egress of water containing radioactive isotopes? Especially if, as you say, it's safe enough to handle, store, and bury.
You mean Yucca? The DOE's own 1982 Nuclear Waste policy Act reported that the Yucca Mountain's geology is "inappropriate to contain nuclear waste". Yucca mountain is not a suitable site because it is made of pumice and actually *is* geologically active evidenced by recent aftershocks of 5.6 within ten miles of a repository that is supposed to be geologically stable for at least 500000 years. Long term corrosion data on C22 (the material to contain the Pu-239 and mitigate the ingress of water - yet another Yucca problem) is just not available.
Studies of the Yucca mountain hydrology revealed that the passage cl-36 from atmospheric nuclear testing took less that 50 years in ground water through Yucca mountain so the reality of Yucca is it is inappropriate to contain *any* kind of radioactive products, especially the ones you are ref
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
"The possible danger of radon exposure in dwellings was discovered in 1984 when Stanley Watras, an employee at the Limerick nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania, set off the radiation alarms on his way to work for two weeks while authorities searched for the source of the contamination. They found that the source was high levels of radonâ"about 100,000 Bq/m3 (2,700 pCi/l)â"in his house's basement, and it was not related to the nuclear plant. The risks associated with living in his house were estimated to be equivalent to smoking 135 packs of cigarettes every day. "
This is very common issue where I am and buildings need to be built properly (air conditioning of the basement should do - im not expert) and water filters work/maintain properly.
Radio Active Waste System Handler Intensive Treatment
R.A.W.S.H.I.T... ROFL...
To save money on construction costs the AP-1000 cuts back on significant amounts of concrete and steel. The result is a ratio of containment volume to thermal power below that of today's PWRs, thereby increasing the risk of containment over-pressurization and failure in event of a severe accident. Consider TMI-2, it was designed with thicker containment than most other reactors so it was resistant to an aircraft crash. Even that suffered from voids that collapsed in the containment building. Aircraft attack on a Nuclear facility is a viable threat, and gravity cooling won't mitigate containment volume vs thermal power, containment is the last thing you want to loose in the event of an accident.
A Nuclear industry panel of Westinghouse, General Electric, Bechtel, Sargent & Lundy, Northern States Power and Commonwealth Edison proposed design recommendations specifically targeted at reducing the opportunities to sabotage a nuclear reactor installation. The AP-1000 incorporates none of the design changes the industry *itself* recommends be applied to reactor facility design. AP-1000 is a rehash of the Standard Westinghouse Nuclear Utility Power Plant (SNUPPs) examples of which are installed at Wolf Creek and Callaway, you will note in the picture the uncanny resemblence to the AP-1000 design (and similar capacity).
The design changes have been made for economic reasons, not to engineer the reactor installations so they are hardened, if anything they are more vulnerable to attack. The new design does not take the opportunity to implement design improvements that the industry *itself* recommended on the behest of the NRC.
I will not be linking to the 'watered down' version of the documentation of design enhancements for Nuclear power plants for obvious reasons. Uncle Sam is way ahead of us and has pulled access to the original document from the web, the original is sobering reading.
The nuclear industry used to say that about the chance of a melt-down before the two we've seen so far. The difference is lightning is a natural event, terrestrial nuclear power is not.
Do you mean Mox?, we are not really burning up pu-239 though are we? And heavy reliance on re-processing introduces a weapons proliferation platform - which of course is the other side of the coin. Current reactors have a burn up rate of roughly less than half of one percent of the fuel, not a good starting point fuel wise, with the reactor being around 33% efficient. That might be typical for an industrial power plant but as the industrial energetic inputs weigh heavily off the efficiency of the plant, that is going to be another figure we will never be able to determine simply because the plants will consume energy *after* they are decommissioned.
As I mentioned elsewhere "The breakdown of U.S energy research and development subsidies reported by the US DOE is roughly 60% for nuclear, 25% to fossil fuels and 15% to SUSTAINABLE energy sources, even doubling alternative energy research budgets would take 1/7th of the nuclear research budget, there is plenty of scope for us to produce baseload energy from means other than coal and nuclear."
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Projecting much? Your response is disingenuous scaremongering. You guys are like Intelligent Design advocates, constantly shifting from one justification to another as each is debunked, each one flimsier than the last, with the only constant being the judicious abuse of scientific language to instill fear and doubt in ordinary people. Yes, you are exactly like Intelligent Design advocates.
Enrichment consists of passing vaporized uranium through membranes to separate out the heavier isotopes. It doesn't emit CFFs or anything else as a matter of course. That one older plant does is an artifact of that plant and not the process itself. The USEC plans to replace that plant.
Also, the one primary source I found for the CFC114 information mentions 800,000 pounds per year for two plants, which means that it's around 400,000 pounds now, equivalent (using your numbers) to 1.5e9 kg of CO2. That refined uranium generates 8e8 megawatt-hours. Coal generates 1,970 pounds of CO2 per megawatt-hour. So had the electricity supplied by nuclear been produced by coal, we would instead have emitted 7.1e11kg on CO2. That's approximately five hundred times less CO2, and starting to get into negligible territory. And that's 1) using a relatively inefficient enrichment process, and 2) not recycling the enriched fuel in any way. Do you want to compare that to the CO2 used to manufacture and maintain wind turbines (don't forget transportation), or the quite toxic chemical soup used to manufacture photovoltaic cells?
The rest of your post is similarly misleading, and not worthwhile to debunk in detail. In brief, the noble (I don't know why you capitalized it) gas fission products are managed and harvested (as we've known how to do for 50 years --- read the date on that paper), not simply emitted into the atmosphere. Even if they were emitted, they have very short half-lives, and would contribute insignificantly the background radiation level. Remember, noble gases are insert and don't bioaccumulate. But since they're not simply vented, it's a moot point anyway.
Your phytoplankton reference is the worst kind of scientific pandering. It's not CFCs that are the primary danger, but rather the acidification of the oceans caused by their absorption of CO2. We've already established that coal emits quite a bit more CO2.
As for Yucca mountain: a granite facility with no groundwater permeation probably would be better, sure. Let's use or make one.
Nevertheless, Yucca isn't bad. Even a 5.5 "aftershock" is hardly enough to damage a secure facility. (If these shocks even exist: a source would be nice here.) Long-term corrosion information, because it's a gradual process, can be extrapolated from short-term experiments. Corrosion doesn't suddenly accelerate three hundred years out, as you imply. And remember: by the time nuclear waste even gets to a storage facility, it's already radioactively decayed into longer-lived isotopes that simply aren't that dangerous. As for groundwater permeation: first of all, the waste is put in containers specifically designed to avoid water contact. Second, even if water were to erode these containers, the radioactive waste within is highly insoluble and vitrified, so contamination would be low. And even if contamination were something
Reprocessing is really a huge waste of money while there is plenty of high grade uranium ore. Making fuel is stupidly expensive and uses vast amounts of energy, but reprocessing at the moment is even more so. There is no point just doing it becuase it is possible, there has to be an energy or cost advantage. The newer methods which are almost at the pilot plant stage don't even need reprocessing anyway and can use high grade waste mixed with their fuel.
It's all irrelevent unless taxes go up to pay for it. You'll see a few small token installations applying repurposed military technology but since civilian research has been dead for thirty years it would take complete idiots to build expensive Westinghouse junk which is really TMI painted green and won't start generating power until a decade after construction starts.
It's funny seeing people screaming for the most expensive white elephants in power generation NOW before the local nuke lobby gets overrun by local outsiders like Hyperion or imported methods like pebble bed and accelerated thorium. The nuke lobby is really just a welfare addict that has conned a lot of people - give up on them and instead promote ongoing research to solve the problems the nuke lobby refuse to attempt to solve and to develop nuclear technologies that can stand on their own merits. "It's better covering your kiddies in coal dust" is not good enough, everything is better than that so if nuclear is going to be a viable alternative energy they need to put work in (like Hyperion doing the work, but Westinghouse et al just slap a coat of green paint on TMI and call that good enough).
The nuclear lobby needs to be dragged screaming out of the 1970s or get put down.
I know it's ad hominem, but it's so delicious that I can't resist: the verb you're looking for is "to lose". I somehow doubt that "to loose" is what you intended.
Anyway, back to the substance of your hit piece:
You're bringing out the terrorism card? You're not even trying to fear-monger subtly. Nuclear reactor resistance to terrorism has been analyzed to death. Some particular designs might be vulnerability to some specific attacks, sure. That's a good reason to reinforce those particular designs. It's not an attack on nuclear power in general. Or are we supposed to abstain from any technology that might conceivably be used to hurt someone via terrorism? If so, we're back to the wheel and fire --- actually, scratch fire.
As for your criticism of the Westinghouse reactor: you might have a point about that reactor. Fine. But you're committing an error of faulty generalization here in supposing that your arguments apply to nuclear power in general.
Or are you claiming that because there are issues to resolve with this particular design, it's impossible to to design a safe reactor? That's clearly nonsensical, though since you're not arguing in good faith but rather trying to intimidate lay people, that's precisely the fear you want to create.
Also, your focus on "cutting costs" is also disingenuous. Sometimes additional expenditures aren't justified by the increase in safety. Cutting features that don't improve safety much in order to cut costs isn't evil: it's engineering. Do you propose surrounding all power plants in one mile of concrete and putting them in Antarctica for safety, cost be damned? You have a neat trick there: no matter how safe a design is, the designers can make it safer. Because they obviously stop adding safety features for reasons of fiscal and physical practicality, you can claim they're cutting corners to reduce costs no matter how safe the design.
As for Mox: see terrorism, above.
Lastly, you statement about the risk is entirely fallacious and is designed, again, purely to elicit an emotional response. From the point of view of risk analysis, the distinction between natural and artificial events is irrelevant. Their distribution can be analyzed the same way. And as for the juvenile "well, they said it was safe and LOOK WHAT HAPPENED" argument: you ignore the very real technological progress that's been made in the last 50 years, our much-improved mathematical modeling tools, our computer models, and that we are not an ostensibly-communist authoritarian empire with no regard for safety or human life.
Besides: if you want experience, simply observe that the French do not, in fact, glow in the dark.
The Polywell Inertial Electrostatic Confinement design is showing a lot of promise, and the current estimate is the tech will be ready for commercial use in 12 years or so.
Well yes, the stupidity or otherwise of TMI operators is irrelevant because they didn't even have control.
TMI was an example of luck and of declining levels of care in the years between initial design and final construction. Without the extra thick containment vessel designed in case of aircraft crashing into it there would have been a similar disaster to Chernobyl, so extra care in the initial design stage worked. If it had happened at a similar plant elsewhere it would have been a disaster. It probably didn't happen at a similar plant because more care was taken at those places than the mess that TMI was by the time it was operating. It took many days to even work out what was happening. The incident resulted in improving the control systems to levels similar to that of an average oil refinery or fertilizer plant, and then beyond to the sort of systems that should have been there to start with. Upgraded to systems as good as or even exceeding those in Chernobyl.
TMI was caused by incredible stupidity and cost cutting and unlike Chernobyl happened during normal operation. It was the best sort of nuclear accident to have, one that doesn't kill anybody but wakes up the complacent. I get the feeling here however that MightyMartian and others here are complacent and are pretending that a "made in the USA" sticker makes things perfect, and thus think the comparison is irrelevant. It isn't and lessons can be learned from both. The big one is smaller reactors that cannot behave in those ways no matter what stupid experiments the operators run or how little control they have.
http://maps.google.fr/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=fr&geocode=&q=saclay&sll=46.75984,1.738281&sspn=9.288255,23.269043&ie=UTF8&ll=48.725227,2.152076&spn=0.017467,0.045447&t=h&z=15
The research and training facillity of the CEA in Saclay. The INSTN ( nuclear engineering school ) is just 400m under. I'm not sure about the number of reactor near the MIT but it's probably less.
P.S. the Sorbonne is a literature university, they don't taught engineering. French university system != US univeristy system
And Chernobyl was even worse than that:
"Hey, Yuri, let's play 'unsupervised experiment tetris deluxe' with the nuclear reactor"
"But all these safety things are in the way, Boris."
"Well turn them off"
"Oh, oops... looks like I turned the whole thing off, and it'll take a while to reset. Well, dinner time, guess I'll go home and drink vodka"
"Hey, I'm the new guy. What's going on?"
"Oh, we were just doing something or another with the reactor. Don't worry, it's simple, just follow the documentation"
"Hey, I have no idea what's going on what are these readouts, and these instructions have things crossed out in them. Teletech, do you have any idea what to do"
"Um, I guess follow the crossed-out instructions? "
"Well, let's begin the 'lets push the reactor as close to meltdown as we can without actually melting down so we know how far the reactor can go without melting down' experiment!"
"Shouldn't we tell somebody that we're going ahead with this? Or at least have a clue what we're doing?"
"Nah, hit the switch, Dmitri. What could possibly go wrong?"
"Um, I already hit the switch"
"What's that blaring warning for? Ah, must be nothing, we get all sorts of random alarms in this plant."
Apart from the building, the mining operations and the refining.
So, apart from all THAT, what CO2 does a nuclear power station produce..?
Well, there's...
Shut up, Stan.
so now you have to build nuclear protection bunkers so that you can keep scaring people into believing the terrist threat is real and dangerous.
The earth is a closed system - the only energy input in the past came from the Sun or Moon. Solar energy obviously comes from the sun. Wind energy is indirectly caused by the sun warming the air. Tidal energy comes from the moon. Hydro dams are fuelled by the water cycle which is controlled by the sun. That only really leaves combustion and fission as less natural sources. Combustion occurs regularly in both Australia and California on a wide scale with bush fires. The only other notable energy sources are: Fossil fuels, coal, wood fires and fission. If you run a boat engine inside a swimming pool for long enough, the water will heat up. Does that mean boats heat up the oceans? Yes, a little, not much as its so big compared to only a few boats relatively speaking. Fission is creating energy from something that didn't occur in nature, that energy eventually turns into heat. There will be a small effect over time of heat. Enough to matter? I doubt it...
The future of mankind really is nuclear, it seems.
So of course let's let every nation be part of it, including of course Iran, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, The United Arab Emirates, Tonga, Venezuela, Libya, Chile, to name a few just in order to give an idea of the breadth of that spectrum.
Then, a serious problem is that you can't really go massively into "burning the waste" - e.g. breeder reactors - without establishing a massive Plutonium economy. So... how do you make sure e.g. no one ever diverts some of that material?
These, then, are the actual pressing problems behind the idea of going massively nuclear.
What more frequently happens is the corporate owners slowly start to cut the maintenence budget (because obviously less money is needed for upkeep as the physical plant ages!). And the regulators (who either were in the industry or will golden parachute into it after early retirement) courteously look the other way.
Plus 99+% of the solar cell is recyclable with a minute fraction of the chemical waste needed.
Now, how much chemical waste do you get from uranium mining (never mind the purification)?
-- Thhhhe Simmmmpsonnnnns
Can't wait to have so many more f these then we do qualified people to run them, and start seeing more people like Homer Simpsons, eating their doughnuts unaware...while the boiler is about to blow.
What do we recover from ancient cultures?
Stone, and pots. Pots can last thousands and thousands of years.
(The prevailing remnant of our society 10,000 years from now will be billions of ceramic toilet bowls.)
How hard is it to take the reactor waste turn it into insoluble salts, sulphides or oxides, and mix it with glass, cast it into bricks, and make pyramids out of it in the desert?
Or put it in a salt mine.
Or drop it in a subduction zone.
Third Career: Tree Farmer Second Career: Computer Geek First Career: Teacher, Outdoor Instructor, Photographer.
Actually I believe MIT has a nuclear reactor on site. And fine, whatever the top French engineering school is. The point still stands, this isn't the 15th century anymore, where scientists and engineers in one country keep developments secret.
EEStor's device reportedly stores 50 kWhr in a 300 lb block. The electrolyte is barium titanate -- neither barium nor titanium are rare or expensive. They currently claim price level around 3K in bulk.
Now whether eestor's stuff is real or vapour ware is admittedly up in the air. If not eestor, then someone else will develop this .
50 kWhr makes it reasonable to put one in every house. That's a couple day's back up power for the house -- more if you are frugal. It makes alternative power feasible.
A trailer with such a unit replaces or augments generators at the lake cottage.
With smart electrical meters it makes it possible to use them as load leveling devices so that power plants can run at more uniform rates.
Third Career: Tree Farmer Second Career: Computer Geek First Career: Teacher, Outdoor Instructor, Photographer.
I work in regulating an industry (aggregate mining) that is pretty hated and ill regarded even though it is one of the most important building blocks (pardon the pun) of civilization.
I have come into contact with many many lobbyists. They are NOT all the same. The "tree hugging Luddites" as you put it, make up a VERY small percentage, and while vocal are not the norm. By far are pretenders that basically pretend to be "tree hugging Luddites" but in reality are only doing so to further their own agendas.
Primary to this is NIMBY. If you actually look at the BIG environmental lobby groups, they are typically coalitions of many many tiny lobby groups. Most of these can fall under the Cottage Association, or Residents Coalition, etc... Basically the big this here is that they are more worried about the location of some undesirable land use type popping up next to where they are located and driving their real estate prices now. Period. All the save the whales and other BS is mostly posturing. SOME actually believe in that, in the actual environmental impact, most however don't give a crap and are only interested in the short term fiscal real estate issues.
I always like to mention that it is short sighted as they don't look at big picture. So sure they will piss and moan and make a big fuss about pretty much ANYTHING coming into their area (queue save the whales and think about the children), however in a decade when Energy doubles in price they certainly won't like that too much or when aggregate goes from 3 bucks to 80 bucks a tonne and makes the house they wish to build cost about double, then they certainly will be unhappy.
One of my favorite examples, and it l made my jaw drop on how stupid it was, was the proposed development of wind turbines off shore of Toronto. This was on "The Nature of Things" which is actually an environmental show (which sort of surprised me that they even looked at this angle, or maybe it was just me that found it stupid). Anyway the current obstruction is a lobby group which for all intents and purposes is a cottager's association comprised of people that own million dollar cottages in and around Toronto waterfront. During the interview they basically admitted when pressed that there was zero environmental impact (however still use that as an official argument) but they were what they called heritage environmentalists or some such nonsense, in which they are concerned about the aesthetic health of the environment, and that the wind turbines were ugly, and not at one with nature and thus a form of pollution and contamination. I am not kidding. So you have an "Environmental" lobby group blocking the development of environmentally friendly energy sources because basically they think they are "ugly" and it will reduce the price of their multimillion dollar cottage (of which in the grade scheme only a few rich people have). It truly boggles the mind. To date, they are still not built, and development is still being blocked by a bunch of environmental posers. I can respect someone's environmental views even if I might not agree, however people just using those ideals for very un-idealistic ends.
As expected ad hominem attack. In the first line of your reply no less, clearly demonstrating the weakness of your argument.
Translation; You do not have a reasonable argument to answer these issues. Instead you resort to the same old superiority complex all nuclear fanboi's of your ilk share. When confronted with the evidence and facts your misleading statements fold, evidenced by the condescending remarks your replies are laced with, which are designed to produce an emotional response in an attempt to marginalise the validity of the arguments presented. How predicable you are, don't let the science or facts get in the way of good propaganda. spin spin spin shill shill shill
I was wondering what assumptions you would make. Predictably, you tried to deflect the Nuclear Industries responsibilities. Whilst the externalities of the coal industry are serious issues the point is not equivalence of CO2 but the effect of UV on phytoplankton and zooplankton via depletion of the ozone layer. But you don't have to believe me just read the submissions made to the UN for the Montreal Protocol. Or of course Environmental effects of ozone depletion: 1998 Assessment.
Since the Nuclear industry is the number one industrial emitter of CFC's into the environment these oceanic effects can be directly attributed to the inability of the Nuclear Industry to act as a responsible global citizen. Your point about "plans" for new enrichment methods is irrelavent. CFC114 is used in the process, whether it is used to cool the beers of the technicians or comes in direct contact with the element. The FACT is CFC114 is used.
You said: It produces zero emissions when in reality it produces isotope emissions. In Other Words You Were Lying. It is not lost on me that you had no answer for the question of radioactive isotope effluent, for example Tritium, which is highly mutagenic and does bioaccumulate and often leaks from primary to secondary cooling loops within reactors facilities to be released into whatever water source happens to be the coolant source. I am too lazy to list the plethora of other radioactive isotope emissions the Nuclear industry is responsible for at this stage.
What part of The DOE's own 1982 Nuclear Waste policy Act reported that the Yucca Mountain's geology is "inappropriate to contain nuclear waste" don't you understand? You said: The area is seismically stable when it is clearly not. You said: There's no water table when the science gleaned from the DOE's own assessment clearly indicate an ingress of water in less than 50 years. In Other Words You Were Lying.
Nothing in the rest of you paragraph even indicates an understanding of my original
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Bacteria Used To Make Radioactive Metals Inert, published 9/9/09
We're supposed to take you seriously when you Randomly capitalize words and can't even figure out how to form plurals in the English language?
There is no power generation system that's good. There are only ones that are less bad. Your thinking is mired deep in the environmental's fallacy. You fail to consider relative badness.
Still projecting, huh? My science is perfectly valid. We've already demonstrated that you are willing to lie and exaggerate your unsourced figures. (A "million" pounds --- right.)
In amounts small enough to be negligible, in one obsolete plant that's due for retirement. It's not an intrinsic part of enrichment. You can slathering a wind turbine with turpentine: that doesn't mean wind turbines in general requires dangerous solvents.
As for ozone depletion --- you realize the situation has much improved over the past decade, right? Controls on most uses of CFCs have worked.
That won't satisfy people like you. You'll complain about possible contamination of the water table or somesuch. After all, if storing waste underground isn't good enough for you, a full-fledged reactor certainly won't be. Besides: building underground would make the reactor prohibitively expensive for very little additional safety. It's on par with building concrete walls a mile thing, and you irrational mind won't accept that there's an inherent tradeoff.
At least we were forward-looking in the 1950. You, by contrast, are mired in 1812.
What isotope emissions? We've already established that the noble gas products are retained, and not released into the atmosphere. Of course, there might be minor coolant leaks or somesuch, but the total volume won't make a dent in the background radiation. There's not enough to matter, so for all intents and purposes, a reactor does produce zero emissions.
What you're doing is equivalent to claiming that an electric car produces emissions because some owners might have flatulence while driving. It's ridiculous, and only a hack like you would try to steer the argument in that direction.
Now bugger off and go back to your Mom's basement. I think I heard her yelling that your hot pockets are done.
Good god, it's like arguing with a child. "NYAA NYAA UR MAMMA" Grow up, child.
See, the problem with AC's is I don't know if I'm arguing with the original loser or a new one. I guess I'll have to settle for telling you to kiss my ass and hoping that you are the original one. If so then I guess I'm just so awesome that you had to come back for more abuse :)
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
This is truly petty, any "errors" are intentional. Clearly this is another demonstration of the weakness of your argument.
And your parroting of Nuclear industry propaganda indicates a serious lack of independent thought. Also demonstrates that you are quite happy that the Nuclear industry won't take responsibility for it's externalities. Your ridiculous argument of 'relative badness' doesn't allow the type of thinking required to move the technology forward because it isn't critical of the flaws, it just accepts that nothing can be done to improve it. Your flawed thinking falls into the economist's trap that trades Natural Capital for Manufactured capital and imposes Nuclear Industry externalities as a tax on future generations the same way CO2 externalities have been imposed on our generation. Pathetic.
*sigh*, The data is available to anyone who has the intelligence to look for it. You haven't presented any science, only rhetoric. So what's your scientific method to assess 'Relative Badness'?
Wrong again. The evidence is that 93% of US emissions of CFC-114 is from the enrichment of Uranium. The word for that is significant. That is the official, government recognised, industrially measured FACT of a facility that has been DUE for retirement for at least 10 years. I'll leave it as an excercise for you to establish why Ultracentrifuge is so difficult to establish on a industrial scale. As for your claim that CFC114 is 'not an intrinsic part of enrichment' you are wrong, yet again. The method of enrichment is called 'Gaseous Diffusion', and if CFC114 wasn't an intrinsic part of the process it would not be used. But since it is, clearly *you* do not know what your are talking about.
What part of "Absolutely I think it is possible to design a reactor facility that is a quantum leap ahead in safety." do you not understand.
Now you're just being belligerent. My first post to you displayed the type of waste containment facility that is an acceptable construction. Again you demonstrate your 'fanboi' attitude as opposed to critical thought or the capability to evolve your thought.
Well the NRC industry panel I referred to (Westinghouse, et al) disagree. What you are saying is 'safety and technological advancement costs too much to implement in the Nuclear Industry. *IF* the Nuclear Industry was financially viable these advancements would be affordable and the Nuclear Industry would be able to produce a financial and energetic return without subsidies.
You could have just said 'ner ner'. You are a dogmatic skeptic, no proof is possibl
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
It goes something like this:
In reality toxin X should be dealt with because it's an extremely hazardous externality.
I have seen this argument used to:
So much other technology available, if only the Nuclear Industry didn't consume 60% of the energy research budget we could get past the Nuclearist Justification.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
You seem to get it pretty good - there's more complications of course, but much like me, you're not writing an essay, much less a book. Which is what it WOULD take to do this topic real justice. In the case of my post I dropped the economics completely, and only addressed physical efficiency, and in one spot put 'power' where I probably should have put 'electricity'.
Nuclear economics can get complicated, but if you can avoid screwing up the construction and driving up costs enough it's the cheapest, most reliable, carbon-neutral source of power we have.
I tend to dislike coal due to the non-carbon pollution it still releases, and by the time you fix that the build cost of the plant is as much or more than nuclear plants, especially if you introduce carbon capture - which costs the plant several percentage points of efficiency and increases build costs like another 10%. I'd prefer natural gas be saved for mobile work, home heating(97% efficient), and chemical production rather than producing electricity. Hint: NG->Electricity->high efficiency heat pump is STILL less efficient than NG->high efficiency furnace.
Anyways - I've never really seen breeder reactors making it on their own until we have enough traditional nuclear plants that rising costs of fuel and waste disposal issues makes a breeder make sense more from the 'make more fuel' and 'get rid of waste' perspectives with the power production being a happy(and deal-making) side effect.
Oh, and I've never suggested using nuclear for 100% of our power needs - that doesn't make sense. But I see a future mix of Nuclear 'baseload', Solar 'day use', Wind 'off-peak', hydro 'peak', with miscellaneous 'other sources'. Call it 35%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 5% (Very rough).
Basically - at the bottom nuclear grinds away doing what it does best - providing 100% power better than 90% of the time. During the day, solar panels and solar thermal plants* provide the electricity needed to run offices and air conditioning. Wind provides power to everything people are willing to do without for relatively short periods to a day or two. Charging plug-in hybrid cars, perhaps. Hydro provides peak power, within the environmental limits for flow times and rates to keep the rivers healthy(should also be able to help ride out calm/cloudy days). Others - well, provide niche services that are suited for them, Everything from baseload to peak.
My main concern is that our nuclear plants ARE aging, we're going to need to replace them eventually. Given that I think we need to double our current nuclear capability(20-35% market share plus market growth), we need to be building plants. The first couple will be expensive, then we'll have the infrastructure and experience in place and the cost for future plants will drop substantially.
*Incuding solar hot water in appropriate areas
I don't read AC A human right
I'm basically waiting for your 'last word' comment now. Typically just before the time out for posting a comment.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.