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Americans Favor Moratorium On New Nuclear Reactors
An anonymous reader writes "While a drop in public support for nuclear power would be expected after an incident like the Fukushima reactor crisis, the nuclear disaster in Japan has triggered a much stronger response among Americans. When Japan — the nation that President Obama held up as an example of safe nuclear power being used on a large-scale basis — is unable to effectively control its considerable downside, Americans are understandably leery about the same technology being used even more extensively in this nation. And safety concerns about the existing nuclear plants also deserve serious attention."
moratorium, until we have at least a 20% wind power and 10% solar power in the energy mix.
Yes, lets stick with the ancient reactors we have now instead of upgrading to safer modern designs.
Seeing a large nuclear disaster has made people wary of nuclear power.. now that's just shocking!
All seriousness though, between the American media fear mongering and the fact that there is actually something to be afraid of, this isn't too surprising.
I still personally think that nuclear power is the best bet. I imagine (and this is an uneducated opinion) all the junk coal and oil plants pump out under regular circumstances is probably going to kill more people than the japan nuclear crisis over the long run, and alternative energy just isn't close enough for people to wait.
I am beginning to think that my fellow Americans are afraid of success. We claim we want energy independence, but do very little to achieve it, despite valid and workable options staring us in the face. New reactors are precisely what we need in this situation (with more modern safety features compared to the reactors in Japan as well as decreasing our reliance on foreign energy).
With something like 20% of the US's electricity presently coming from nuclear power and *all* of those reactors approaching or already past their lifespan, all those Americans need to decide what exactly they want to replace them with.
While certainly worrisome, please keep in mind:
* Nobody has actually died from this incident yet. (Versus regular deaths in coal mines, etc.)
* The incident can be learned from and other reactors can be improved accordingly. (Again versus the situation in many coal mines, etc. which are unlikely to see any further improvement.) In fact, many claim the risks of these particular reactors were known but not acted upon, something which can be handled with stricter rules.
Poorly informed people, lead by sensationalist news stories, when asked leading questions, will give obvious answers.
As long as we make sure our nuclear power plants in New Jersey can survive a 9.0 magnitude megathrust earthquake and accompanying 20 meter tsunami I don't have any problems with keeping our nuclear power plants operational.
What a terrible article, there is no way solar and wind energy will replace nuclear power, not even in the next 50 years with the improvements that can be made. Where are these American statistics gathered anyway? I guess international spoof.
Wind / Solar along with NAS batteries -> http://www.ngk.co.jp/english/products/power/nas/index.html - really could handle our base load. Certainly the percentage that we in the US use nuclear for.
Not only that, we should be looking at new computerized internet electric meters, and laws that would require utilities to pay fair market value for electricity produced by small private generators. Little 5KW vertical turbines everywhere. Then, just put huge battery installations where the old coal plants are, and we are on the road to green energy.
Not today obviously, but it would grow. And new nuke plants would just not be needed. At least Uranium water/water plants. Thorium / Pebble Bed Reactors might be an option for the future.
* Carthago Delenda Est *
Not all americans
Like anyone can even know that
If one were especially worried about certain classes of mishap, it would make far more sense to favour replacing existing reactors as soon as possible. For example, modern convectively-cooled PWR designs are not subject to the kind of cooling failure that occurred in Japan when external power was lost. Not allowing the construction of new plants is the worst of both worlds; the older designs continue to operate at a lower level of safety than new ones would, yet we're still forced to look to coal and gas as our energy needs grow. And not building new plants does nothing to address the problems associated with storage of spent fuel and other waste, which as seen in Japan and fought over for years in the US and elsewhere is a far greater problem than the operational safety of even the oldest BWRs. Fish or cut bait.
Nothing can be made safe to a 9.0 magnitude earthquake. Nothing. You can't build or plan for it.
The fact of the matter is, given the nature of the earthquake, the situation in the Dai-Ichi plant has been extraordinarily well contained. There have been only a very few casualties (due to hydrogen explosions), and the radiation leakage has been so low-level that it's unlikely to cause any measurable harm.
What's more, current designs are even safer than the Dai-Ichi plant (which is over forty years old), and don't require external power or working generators to safely shut down (convection of coolant will do it).
Many people die from complications of coal mining, etc. No form of power generation is completely safe, and if you look at the statistics, even now nuclear is by far the safest.
We have the technology for much safer and nearly unlimited nuclear power. Only hurdle is how to deploy. What I am talking about is TWR (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveling_wave_reactor) and LFTR (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor). They "burn" waste from current reactors, can be shut-of nearly instantly, no water cooling, and a smaller footprint and cost. Now we have to overcome this bad publicity provided by the old technology.
Journal
OP's commentary is outright dumb. Unable to effectively control its downside? Tell me, where is the meltdown? The huge clouds of radiation? People dying from radiation burns? Entire regions made uninhabitable by fallout? Oh right, NONE of that has happened, and the situation is under control. Seriously, folks, it's time to stop being ridiculous. Or maybe I should move to China, where whatever the government's failings, the polity still has its head located well outside its intestinal tract.
I find it amusing how US media is worried about Fukushima nuclear contamination of Japan and surrounding arrea, including US territories or... Europe. They seem to forgot hundreds of nuclear tests made by the US both in Pacific and continental US. I wonder which event released more radioactive material in the atmosphere, a few hundreds nuclear test or the damaged reactors from Fukushima? (and I'm not even considering detonations over Hiroshima and Nagasaki).
More Britons support the building of new nuclear power stations than oppose it, despite the crisis at Japan's Fukushima plant, an opinion poll says.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
A lot of the rest of the world has had appalling pres fear mongering about this. It has varied from clueless editorials to selective reporting to straight inaccuracies.
In the UK, a lot of our press is controlled by the same person as yours - Rupert Murdoch. They seem to be the big FUD generator in this. Whether they have done this because it sells or because they have an agenda, I can't say. (I suspect the latter.)
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
I certainly don't mind nuclear power any more than I did before the accident. I've lived near a nuclear plant since I was a child and obviously toyed with the notion that it might blow up. I learned to live with it and rather enjoy the idea that there's a powerful, clean energy source so near to where I reside! "Does this surprise anybody?" is a rhetorical question; America's "reaction" to crises like these is uniformly pious.
Just the ones who are easily influenced by questions that are designed to produce the answers desired to support whatever political agenda the media is trying to push.
This is the same kind of senseless knee-jerk reaction that happened after the oil spill... it is like issuing a moratorium on building new cars because someone crashed a 1974 Pinto and it spilled some coolant on the ground.
The media has two positions: everybody panic and nothing to worry about. Nothing in between.
Yup. Due to the news media's disgusting exaggeration of the event, , and the 60+ years of "all radiation = bad = kill you dead", a bunch of people who don't understand a thing about nuclear power generation from the 60's, let alone modern reactor technologies are going to browbeat the power industry into the least effectual, most expensive forms of power generation. And it'll be the power industry's fault when power prices skyrocket. It'll also be the power industry's fault when these sources of power fail at maintaining baseline power levels.
Way to fucking go. Decision by committee of imbeciles.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
They seem pretty safe, as long as there's no once-in-a-millennium earthquakes followed by huge tsunami hitting a 40 year old reactor. And, even then, the situation's not percisely the disaster that the media is protraying it as (because drama sells?) I guess this is a good argument for not buildng reactors near the coast if one can help it, but I've not lost faith in the safety of the tech as a whole.
Yes, lets stick with the ancient reactors we have now instead of upgrading to safer modern designs.
Politically not a bad move. If anything goes wrong they can point to the succession of previous governments who continued the use and the politicians who gave the go-ahead in the old people's home.
If they permit a new reactor and something goes wrong it would be their fault.
.
...Over half (53 percent) of Americans would now support "a moratorium on new nuclear reactor construction in the United States," if "increased energy efficiency and off the shelf renewable technologies such as wind and solar could meet our energy demands for the near term."
Emphasis mine.
Breaking News. American Taxpayers demand Buddy Holly Bobble Heads!
Our carefully constructed survey has found that over 80% of Americans want the government to give them a 10 foot tall Buddy Holly bobble head doll at the end of the April tax deadline... but only if the doll in question was filled with millions of dollars and constructed of solid gold.
The two most damaging hurricanes in the history of the US had very little effect on the nuclear plants directly in their path. Not every place in the US can experience a 9.0 quake and then a tsunami right after that.
How many of you work with complex systems on a daily basis that FAIL? My guess is just about every IT professional on here. Yet you think the nuclear sector is safe? I guess the grass is always greener. Complex systems ALWAYS fail, you can't beat entropy just like you can't beat the house at Vegas.
Good feelings and hopes for tomorrow!
Hey, Americans refuse to face the economic facts that threaten to bring down the United States, and earnestly believe that money (value) grows on trees, so why should they concern themselves with silly things like the practical side of supplying energy? Just write a law mandating that all power come from safe, cheap, and renewable sources and call it a day.
That should do it!
http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2011/03/what-is-the-worst-kind-of-power-plant-disaster/
I know it's gizmodo but it really is worth reading. It has lots of numbers.
I just got a postcard from 2211, They said to go with solar when we can... all the wind farms permanently damaged the jetstream and now the equator is 180 farenheit and the poles are -200.
Until we get the solar thing figured out, they recommend nuclear power; just try not to use 40-year-old reactors that are built on the ocean and within 150 miles of a major faultline.
Nuclear power is simply not worth the risk on any large scale. All it takes is one accident, either human error (Chernobyl) or natural disaster (Fukushima), and you end up with a disaster that affects the entire world, and has local effects that will last for billions of years.
As opposed to, say, coal, where the day to day operations affect the entire world?
Nuclear power is safe, but you have to consider where any plants would be built. You build a reactor on the coast, and you run the risk of a big coastal storm causing problems. If you build it in an area that can get earthquakes, you run THAT risk, so, the solution is you build the plants mostly underground in the midwest, away from any large population centers. No earthquakes to speak of, and underground would make storms a non-issue as well. You put in redundant supplies of water from different sources in different directions so there are fewer chances that THAT might be a problem.
What has happened in Japan is due to Japan being prone to earthquakes in the first place, even if the 9.0 was extreme, earthquakes are not uncommon. Old designs are also not going to be as good as newer designs. In short, you don't build nuclear power plants in California or Alaska, because those are the states that get the most earthquakes.
Our biggest problem is that the politicians are too stupid to understand WHY there are problems with Japan, so can't properly calm fears by the clueless masses.
So obviously we should have the people demanding a moratorium on oil drilling and a massive transition to alternative energy sources after the Deepwater Horizon disaster... Oh, that didn't happen? Well, I see people are as irrational as ever...
Leading questions? You bet!
How about something besides reactors containing a super-critical mass designed to produce raw materials for nuclear weapons? Oh wait, no one can build any reactor without Leviathan's permission, and Leviathan wants bombs, not safe power.
The minute gasoline hits $10/gallon. Crude is still on an up trend and the scary thing is this time it's not a bubble, it's a clear trend.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
So, Deepwater Horizon (and hundreds of other smaller disasters, still with larger environmental impact than the Fukushima incident) never happened?
The reality is that nuclear is safer than oil, and yet there is so much fear, It's like airplanes, occasionaly one falls down and people are afraid of flying even though it is 100x safer than driving a car which people do every day without fear.
The interactive way to Go -- http://www.playgo.to/iwtg/en/
There haven't been any accidents in the USA that resulted in leaked radiation. 60 years of experience suggest that your assertion, "no amount of mitigation makes it a rational chance to take", is incorrect. Experience suggests that in fact risk can be managed. "billions of years" is also incorrect: http://news.softpedia.com/news/Chernobyl-Still-Radioactive-After-23-Years-129912.shtml
Making the Internet a better place for everyone...Delineal
So we should block out the sun over large cities? The sun gives off more radiation than a nuclear reactor.
Common sense would suggest a moratorium on the old nuclear reactors of the type used in Fukushima and rapid construction of new safer alternatives which exist. But again, asking for common sense is demanding too much:-)
It's so hard, understandably, to argue for nuclear energy after something like this. No matter what any scientists say the general public will never be able to grasp how relatively safe nuclear power is. So long as we don't construct every single one of them in a region which has it's own damn nickname for how many earthquakes it gets people shouldn't be concerned about it being destroyed by a natural disaster. There are plenty of nuclear power plants in places like the Gulf Coast which are hit, hard, by hurricanes every year. In the end we have no other way of generating power as refined (no pun intended) and readily available as nuclear power.
...you end up with a disaster that affects the entire world, and has local effects that will last for billions of years.
Sorry, but that is completely wrong. The danger of a radioactive substance can be effectively measured by its "half-life". Isotopes with a very short half-life emit radiation very quickly (forgetting for this quick post whether we are talking about alpha particles, beta particles, neutron radiation, or gamma rays). Isotopes like U-238 / U-235 with a long half-life (700 million years for U-235 and 4.4 billion years for U-238) don't pose a danger unless they are in just titanic quantities. However something like the particular isotopes of Iodine and Cesium that have been seen at Fukishima have half-lives on the order of days. They are very dangerous, but that danger is short lived. A small quantity of them can definitely kill, but they don't typically last long enough to travel far from the region where they were produced. None of this adds up to "effects that will last for billions of years".
Of course people are going to show less support for nuclear power after the fossil fuel subsidized press gets done with all the fear mongering. You get what you deserve for putting up with that crap.
The Public doesn't understand the difference between base-load power generation (coal, oil, nuclear) and electrical generation used to supplement peak demand hours (solar, wind). Base load power generation is what will be demanded in the future with increased in average electricity demand.
What most don't know either is that coal plants throw up more radioactive material than a nuclear plant does. nuclear plants emit steam... yes... steam. Coal plants emit a plethera of materials, which contains radon (yep, that naturally radioactive substance found in... coal.)
I encourage everyone to take a look on the nuclear websites that know their facts from fiction (nei.org, nrc.gov, and ansnuclearcafe.org). The NRC site is probably the best tool US citizens can use since they are COMPLETELY DISJOINT from the commercial side. Their number one concern is public safety, and I won't be the first to say that they are fantastic at .
americans will find themselves enthusiastic about nuclear power
oh right, sorry, i forgot, for all of those in denial: cheap easy petroleum will last forever! there is no increasing worldwide demand! supply is not harder to dig up and process! yeah!
pfffffft
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I read contradictory statements regarding this topic.
If the stuff is going to become scarce in 150-200 years or so (these estimates are at current consumption levels but do they really know for sure I doubt it) then I really don't see the point in developing another dead end infrastructure. Esp one that while can be very safe, rarely is in practice (for the usual nontechnical reasons - save money, cut corners, unwisely build in an earthquake zone, ad nauseum).
I mean sure - that's great for us as individuals (until an earthquake strikes that is), but for once let's not foist a new set of problems on our grandchildren.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
This is nothing compared to how much Germans currently "favor" shutting down any nuclear reactors in reach....
Already been stated a few times, but I'd say that this has probable been driven by very poor media coverage. It is so poor that, as someone who has had several years "exposure" (hah) and training to nuclear reactors, I physically cringe and usually change the channel (or skip the post) when the topic comes up. The "experts" they brought on early on (and continue to do so, I assume) were laughable. I specifically remember one being a journalist who had covered the industry for a couple of years. She had absolutely no idea what was going on, but tossed out the same trash that was being said elsewhere (people exposed to radiation, extremely dangerous and life threatening...CHERNOBYL! THREE MILE ISLAND! 2012!!!~!~!@~!$#@!!!). Most of the others, I vaguely remember being mostly made up of theoretical nuclear physicists, lobbyists of one persuasion or another, and people who dealt in the field of nuclear weapons. Jokes, all of them. How hard would it have been to find an SRO at a running plant to ask questions of? You know, someone how actually has a clue?
I just wish that they would at least get the verbage right so they wouldn't sound like a retard on a bad day. It's like they've never heard of the term contamination before and just use the term 'radiation' for everything.
Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis hebes
You're an idiot. Chernobyl, the worst nuclear accident man has known, had immediate, serious issues but nothing to the extent portrayed in the media and the results certainly won't last "billions of years". Background radiation is only above safe levels in the immediate vicinity, and bearing in mind this was an ancient (by nuclear standards) reactor with none of the safety mechanisms in place on modern reactors. In fact, had the Chernobyl reactor been based on modern designs, it never would have happened, and reactors are getting safer and safer. Even Fukushima was an old reactor, things would have been much better if it had been a modern reactor, but even there the problems are nowhere near so serious as media is claiming. We've damaged the earth far more in the last thirty years by pumping the smoke from burning coal, gas and oil into the air than the damage caused by every nuclear "disaster" in that period. How is the risk "high" when there have been a handful of notable accidents in the entire lifetime of the nuclear industry? I'd say on those numbers it's incredibly low risk.
Seriously? I mean we have people like Homer Simpson working to keep OUR nuclear panner plants safe, how could anything go wrong?
Monstar L
It's about time you welcomed them. They've been here for a while.
Dude, neither is petroleum
Deepwater Horizon oil spill (https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill)
nor coal
Kingston Fossil Plant coal fly ash slurry spill (https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Kingston_Fossil_Plant_coal_fly_ash_slurry_spill).
Seriously, we use electricity at an industrial scale, so we generate it at an industrial scale. When things go wrong, they do so at an industrial scale.
"Non-thinking, ill informed Americans", want a moratorium on nuclear plants. These are basically creationists/anti-vaccine/anti-science people.
YES, nuclear has problems, BUT we know where the waste is and how to avoid it. It is contained, more or less. Coal gasses go everywhere.
Tree hugging is nice, when it is well thought out, but most of the responses are knee-jerk anti-something thinking.
who said there was hard times to come. hired goons are getting 100k+. math molesters are in the billionerror range, as are the reviled talknicians. as for the royals, they don't need money, so long as they have ours?
rated R viewer resolve required; http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=lSp-oIOhq00#at=55
deleted from usmessageboard.com?
We might want to look towards what Hyman Rickover, the architect of America's Nuclear Navy, did.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyman_G._Rickover
Clean up (actually: close down and let the radioactivity decay for 50 years) an active reactor is very expensive. This will not get much followers. And i did no see much major proposals to increase safety on current installations (I am not a expert...)
Prepare for the people that say that closing down reactors is a choice for coal.
Anyways: (radical) new designs will take years and years. In those same years you can build a lot of water/wind/wave power that is understood.
Beside that, new reactor types have nothing directly to do with the (un)safety of older reactors. Allowing new (type) reactors will not make old reactors safe or unsafer. Replacing them might, but that would require someone with a lot of knowledge to declare an old reactor as unsafe. If an old reactor is unsafe (against what standard?) it should be closed down anyway, independent of the replacement. I do not see good reasoning skills in your one liner.... ;)
Dunt duh Duuuuuuuuuh!
Eight more people died when the Fujinuma dam failed in the earthquake than were killed in the nuclear power plant "catastrophe". When is Germany going to start dismantling all dams?
Not to mention the urgency of laws banning anyone from living withing 10km of the Pacific ocean...
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
and you end up with a disaster that affects the entire world
I don't think you can defend this statement, unless you are talking about induced fear and panic. The people who do follow-up studies on Chernobyl and Hiroshima find no increased cancer-related deaths. Depending upon the disaster type, you may or may not have long-term localized effects on the environment, but non-local effects do not seem to exist.
I'm not sure I'd want even relatively low-level radioactive materials being spread about a city in such vast numbers and being accessible to so many people.
Then close up the coal plants because they put out a lot more radiation than anything else.
It's happening here in Germany too. The CDU just lost a state in the west (Baden-Württemberg) for the first time in 58 years, and they lost it basically to the Green Party which managed to triple their support because of what happened in Japan. Not to mention the anti-nuclear protests going on in cities across the country.
Speaking to people around me it's clear very few people actually know anything about nuclear power, outside of what they pick up in the 6 o'clock news. Most have no idea that there's even more than one type of reactor, much less that there's some pretty significant safety differences between them. It just amazes me that in an age where nicely summarized information on any topic is just a few clicks away people don't at least invest one or two hours of their lives to educate themselves before they form an opinion on something. If someone knows even just a little about pebble bed reactors, nuclear reprocessing, molten salt reactors, safety deficiencies in the old Mark I light water reactors at Fukushima etc, and they're still against nuclear power then I can respect that. Just make an effort, that's not too much to ask is it?
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
Any chance safe nuclear power has is set back when governments lie about risks or the extent of any accidents. The USSR government lied about the safety of nuclear plants and then lied to cover up the extent of Chernobyl. Residents of the Ukraine heard about the disaster from the BBC days before their own government. I heard this first hand from friends of mine who lived in Kiev at the time. The government and power company in Japan is lying through omission about the extent of the ongoing danger in Japan. They have only been forthcoming when outed by foreign media.
I like nuclear power. I think it is safer than belching radioactivity into the air from burning coal. However, nuclear power has a long track record of official deception and lies that will make it harder to have a reasonable discussion about moving ahead with safe and zero carbon nuclear options in the future.
mostly survives a disaster it wasn't designed to cope with coupled with inept management and regulation?
If anything it seems like nuclear power is the way to go.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Chernobyl was not human error, it was deliberate sabotage in the most Soviet way imaginable in a reactor that was inherently unsafe. As for Fukushima, the only global effect it has had is political, and even though the local effects within around 20km or so can be considered hazardous, it's a far cry from a serious disaster like the earthquake that caused the problems. It's only a serious disaster from the standpoint of nuclear reactor safety, not from the standpoint of environment (except perhaps for the very short term, like weeks) or human health. Most of the radioactive particles released have a short half-life (Mainly Iodine-131 at 8 days) which means that the radioactivity will go down relatively quickly.
In the long run deaths from Fukushima will likely number in the single digits, if not at exactly 0, and considering that the nuclear plant itself was obsolete and not designed to withstand the kind of disaster it faced, I consider that a testament to the safety of nuclear power.
"Local effects that will last for billions of years" is trollish bs, and now that I'm writing this I have the feeling that I have been feeding one.
Fusion is a great long term proposition, even if we never learn how to make a reactor other than the one we are orbiting, but I think we will. The thorium won't run out before we figure out fusion. But right now we need to be worried about if fossil fuels will run out before we get the thorium reactors built, not whether they will be prone to the same incidents seen in 30yr old reactors essentially designed as nuclear weapons refineries.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
Here in the UK we have a joint assessment of the risks of new nuclear plant, with public involvement. People don't participate, even "environmental activists". But, at the end , they will announce their own opinions in a fact-free way. Stupidity - the inability to see the connections or lack thereof between the real world and your opinion - truly is a social engineering problem of vast proportions that will probably be the thing that wipes us out as a species.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Fukushima is a light water reactor
If it was a heavy water reactor such as the ones used in Ontario Canada eg. Bruce, Darlington and Pickering (Darlington and Pickering are right on lake Ontario BTW) the events at Fukushima would not of happened.
difference is a LWR requires mechanics to control the reaction, HWR requires mechanics to keep the reaction going. To shutdown a HWR just drain the modulator out of the core and no explosion is possible
(sorry just woke up and 1/2 alseep as I type this)
I decided to try to start learning about nuclear power a little over a year ago, driven mostly by concerns about waste disposal, and safety.
One of the things I've learned is that current reactor designs only use a tiny, tiny percent of fuel potential of the Uranium - basically, about 1 percent.
So, one option is that we keep using the current fuel cycle for another 150-200 years, then when Uranium gets scarce, we start using breeder reactors, which 'unlock' the fuel potential of the remaining 99% of the Uranium which remains in our 'spent fuel' and 'depleted uranium' tailings.
With breeder reactor technology, after extracting 1% of the energy for about 250 years (we've already been using reactors for over 50 years, so the clock has already started), we should be able to get something like 99 * 250 years times more energy (assuming energy consumption levels remain about the same; that's a dubious assumption, but provides at least a good starting point; it also assumes the breeders can consume the full 99% of remaining U-238, which might not, in practice, actually be true - there might be some 'losses' in the process, but we should at least be able to extract a large percentage of what remains).
So, that might be something like 20,000 more years worth of power from that Uranium.
Then there's Thorium. Thorium is a metal which is 4 or 5 times more abundant in the earth's crust than Uranium is. Right now, Thorium is a mostly useless 'waste' product from mining operations extracting other rare-earth elements (like Neodymium which is used for very strong permanent magnets in high-tech equipment, including those little earbud speakers for your phone/mp3 player, some designs of electric wind turbines, hard drives [I think], or anything which needs very strong magnets).
Thorium would most likely be used in a type of reactor called a LFTR (most folks pronounce that as "lifter"), which is the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor. A LFTR very efficiently burns the Thorium, extracting virtually 100% of the available energy, so we should have something on the order of 100,000's of years of energy supply using Thorium.
In the end though, we'll probably be using fusion power long before those eventualities. It's hard to say for sure, but I would think that at most, we'll only be using fission reactors for another 100-200 years anyhow.
I forgot to include a link I was intending to, in my previous post.
If you would like more information about Thorium reactors, check out:
http://www.energyfromthorium.com.
really funny. ...) to take energy out of the wind, windspeed would be MUCH greater.
1/without friction on the surface of the earth (think trees, mountains, plants,
2/180 at the equator and -200 at the poles would produce large pressure differences. = wind.
Current levels of radiation outside the plant can only be said to increase cancer risks if you use the Linear no Threshold (LNT) theory of radiation exposure, one that has no real basis in science. Our bodies are pretty good at fixing low-level cellular damage as long as the repair mechanisms aren't overwhelmed.
Solar, wind, and hydrothermal are not completely safe. There are deaths attributed to wind power generation, for example. Nothing is completely safe. Total safety is an utter myth.
Fission power can be made a lot safer than coal, oil, natural gas, or any other baseline power source we currently use. It will likely be many decades, if ever, when we can figure out how to use wind, solar, or geothermal as baseline power, so you can't really use that as an argument.
The alternative is to switch them off, and go back to using oil and gas from foreign sources and coal fired stations. While people *think* nuclear is unsafe, coal mining is *proven* to be unsafe. Just consider the number of miners killed every year.
Somehow, public opinion has managed to come up with the worst possible solution, by not thinking through the consequences of the soundbite press and media and knee-jerk decisions it promotes.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
You know you just lost all credibility when you posted that?
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Don't worry americans... according to 30% of you this was Gods retribution. So you got nothing to worry about. Do you?
into lake ontario, like we read last weak? so the stuff is drinkable? that's great, with the light potable water disappearing so fast, & all the death, debt & destruction the unclear water prevents?
Americans are fat, dumb and lazy. I'm sure these are the same Americans polled in the survey by ORC. Not all Americans ARE fat dumb and lazy. It is our job to inform the majority that with the proper precautions, nuclear energy a viable and safe energy source.
I am in favor of making the people that run them directly responsible for the consequences. They can't be allowed to profit and then go "aw gee what happened?".
Rick B.
Whenever nuclear comes up, there's an amazingly energetic crowd around here, throwing around the new cool designs "TWR", "Pebble", "Thorium", whatever -- which are supposed to solve all of our problems, somehow.
I'll tell you something: the engineering might even be feasible, but in the end, the older (and less maintained) such a behemoth is, the higher the margins. So those things tend to be shoved into ecoonomic constructs which are forced to cut corner by corner.
Regulations? If there's enough money at stake, it just pays off to buy them.
Where does this crowd come from?
Nuclear power is simply not worth the risk on any large scale. All it takes is one accident, either human error (Chernobyl) or natural disaster (Fukushima), and you end up with a disaster that affects the entire world, and has local effects that will last for billions of years.
As opposed to, say, coal, where the day to day operations affect the entire world?
I'm not sure how the fact that coal causes pollution somehow makes nuclear not dangerous.
Instead of increasing the danger (i.e., building more nuclear plants, which is what so many predictable Slashdotters will favor), why not work on moving off of coal (and existing nuclear plants) to cleaner sources of power?
unfortunately, most Americans are clueless when it comes to reactor technology. There are inherently safe designs which cannot have the type of accident presently in the news. They cannot because of the laws of physics - it is that simple. Unfortunately, light-water nuclear reactors are a nightmare, and what is occurring in Japan is due to the fact that people haven't embraced the new technologies - and the old ones built years ago are still in service when they should have been retired long ago, because there is no replacement option.
Personally, I think they should take them off line - when people start freezing to death and there are rotating brown-outs and black-outs, people will start screaming for something reliable, which is nuclear. All of the so called green technologies are a fantasy... You never get something for nothing, although breeder reactors come as close as you can possibly get.
Thing is, with nuclear, you don't want a bet, you need a sure thing, at least in safety. GE has lately been pointing out about the Mark I reactor design, that they've run for 40 years without a major mishap. That's with 23 in the US, and how many others abroad? Let's pretend in total there are 40 of them. Then of 40 Mark I reactors over 40 years only 6 have partially melted down! If we project that out to a century, there will only be a 37.5% failure rate for this design. What, you say they won't run for a century? But the NRC has recertified the plant of this design in Vermont for another 20 years, and issued that after the Japan meltdowns. Surely if they can recertify it now, they can do it twice more.
This is a design over which 3 top GE engineers resigned in the 70s, saying it was unsafe. The AEC at the same time considered ordering all Mark I plants shut down, but declined to because of the political implications for atomic power. And that containment vessel that's been leaking in the Japanese Mark 1s? In the US they're routinely packed with 5 times the spent fuel they were engineered to hold safely, while in Japan they are only at 2-3 times engineered capacity.
Nothing to see here, folks. Move along.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Every 10 years or so, something happens, and the stupid public sees the movie "China syndrome" in their minds. Even though there is a possibility of something happening, 99% of the time, nothing ever does. The plants in the USA are so overbuilt, and are not placed in an area where a 30 foot wave of water could swamp them, the stupid public gets its panties in a wad every time something happens overseas to a nuke plant. If the USA wants reliable energy, then they are going to have to get it from oil...oh wait...the idiots won't let us drill for oil. Ok, let's try coal...oh wait...the idiots won't lets us mine all of the coal we have. Ok...then there is wind & solar.... oh wait....the wind doesn't always blow & the sun doesn't always shine. Well, then there is hydro power....oh wait, I forgot, they won't let us build dams either. Get the picture? This country has its hands tied due to the PETA/Enviro nut jobs to the point that we can't do anything! Well, if you won't let us build nuke plants, then freeze to death in the dark, and get over it!
I think that opponents of nuclear power create a bit of a paradox by opposing *new* nuclear power plants:
By opposing the construction of new nuclear power plants, whose designs benefit from decades of experience gained with older designs, knowledge about their failure modes, ways to improve cooling with passive cooling systems, etc, you effectively act to keep older, less safe nuclear power plants in operation longer.
So, would you rather be living near a newer, safer plant, or an older, slightly less safe (but still, mostly safe - it took a massive earthquake and tsunami to take out those old Mk 1's in Fukushima) plant?
That said, I certainly think we should (and I'm positive we will) do extensive investigation and analysis of the problems at Fukushima Daiichi, find what lessons can be learned from that, and apply those lessons to both existing, and new reactors.
But it's worth repeating: opposing new nuclear will likely have the effect of keeping older nuclear online longer than it would if there were new nuclear plants built to replace the old ones.
Here's an option for the US. Don't build nuclear reactors on top of fault lines! I'm not sure the Japanese had that option given the geography of their nation but we certainly do. It's great that people want to learn a lesson from what happened in Japan but I don't see why they can't just take the obvious lesson instead of pushing for more coal smog!
I hate to state the bleeding obvious, but it seems that I must.
Why would you want more nuclear power? There is only so much uranium to be mined. It really doesn't matter how long estimates say the uranium reserves will last, there is still only so much to be had, and then what? Eventually, we'll run out of uranium, just as we'll eventually run out of oil and coal. Sure, we'll have more some day, if you care to wait millions or billions of years. Frankly, I don't have the time.
The best source of power beats us on the head every day, the Sun. We should be seriously investing in solar, wind, and tidal for power generation. These sources are not likely to run out for the lifetime of the planet, and that's a damned site better than relying on finite resources that take millions of years to replenish.
NOTE: There are more ways to use solar power than just photovoltaic cells.
Just be sure to wear the gold uniform when you beam down -- you know what happens when you wear the red one.
Seriously, i am in awe of capitalist ideology. It has managed to convince a large number of people around the world, if this thread is any indication, that the profit motive is as natural as the sun in that for some INSANE reason, the question of PROFIT does not come into consideration when expressing an opinion on whether you think nuclear power is safe to use. It really gets me down it does. Although the new Arab revolutionary upheavals are a welcome development to this jaded old lefty :)
Anyone who really does their research will understand that nuclear energy is by far the cleanest and safest.Apparent "clean" energy pundits are constantly on CNN or some news puff show saying "This is why we need to go solar or wind powered, its proven technology" Yes proven. But take for instance, The Roscoe Wind Farm (the newest and largest) which generates about 780MW of power. Compare that to the oldest nuclear reactors in Ontario (Candu series) that generates 3100MW (6 of them at full power before they began to get decommissioned) and you simply have nothing able to provide the power demands that today's society requires. The wind farm cost 1 billion, spans 100,000 acres and produces less than a third of power that 25 year old reactors are producing here in Ontario. Take the newer Bruce Power Plant which generates over 7200MW with 8 Candus online and there really isn't any competition considering that entire installation spans about 2500 acres. Yes accidents happen and nuclear is dangerous but I don't see ANY of the same criticism towards OIL after BP and their US cronies POLLUTED the entire US south-eastern coastline for the next 100 years. Why doesn't anyone scream about that? Why? Because it would require that fat-ass clean air economist to drive her bike to work the whole three miles from her cozy Manhattan flat instead of taking her gas guzzling car. Nothing in life is perfect but if you take the number of nuclear incidents and compare them to oil disasters it pales in comparison.
we don't get to see it often lately. today, there's an est. 20 mile thick fake cloud over the whole shooting match. talk about intense cold? the easter bunny may have to wait until may, when it'll will be over 100 some days. are we going to have to invade canada because mr. harper got caught/out? will the new regime be friendly, or shot?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=lSp-oIOhq00#at=55
No effects will last for "billions of years", anything with a half-life that long is considered a stable isotope! The longer the half life, the less radioactive something is.
Chernobyl is a red herring because it was an inherently unsafe fail-dangerous reactor design which no one anywhere else in the world was insane enough to produce.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
There haven't been any accidents in the USA that resulted in leaked radiation.
That's physically impossible. Also, Three Mile Island.
60 years of experience suggest that your assertion, "no amount of mitigation makes it a rational chance to take", is incorrect. Experience suggests that in fact risk can be managed.
Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Fukushima. It's 100% impossible to engineer away the risk for an incident. You can reduce the risks, but they will always be there, and it only takes the occasional accident to completely negate the safety of the intervening years.
"billions of years" is also incorrect: http://news.softpedia.com/news/Chernobyl-Still-Radioactive-After-23-Years-129912.shtml
Plutonium and Uranium remain radioactive for billions of years.
Hehehe, Billions of year, that's a good one!
So we should block out the sun over large cities? The sun gives off more radiation than a nuclear reactor.
In the form of photons (as reaches the surface of the Earth). Some of which are dangerous, and we do block them.
But this is a red herring. The sun will be there no matter what we do. It's a fact of life. On the other hand, having nuclear power plants is optional. It's impossible to pretend like there isn't an increased risk. Just because there is a baseline risk does not justify voluntarily increasing it.
The media needs to report on how many people have been injured or killed during this accident. They have 2 works that have been missing from the beginning, presumably swept away by the tidal wave or killed in the initial hydrogen explosion. Then they have another <50 that have been exposed to low, but still unacceptable amounts of radiation.
Now lets imagine what would happen if the same disaster had hit a Coal power plant... or Natural Gas... Now the big one, how about the Hoover Damn? The first 2 would lead to hundreds of deaths immediately, and it's even including all the deaths we have every year due to mining. A Major eathquake at a large hydro-electric damn like the Hover? It would likely be the largest disaster in American history. Tens of thousands dead within minutes.
What's great about this is that it's been picked up by hundreds of blogs over the last couple of days - so now it's quoted all over the place as if it actually has some significance beyond being a study funded by an anti-coal, anti-nuke group. Their past "scientific polls" and studies have also been treated similarly.
With all the fuss about nuclear power plant security out there right now, one thing astounds me, especially in the usually informed, well educated technical elite, which is usually quite sceptical about corporations:
Nuclear power plant safety is not only about physical security (including softwar). It is also affected by social and economical effects on decisionmaking. We have seen in Fukushima that known security failures were ignored and safety inspections forged during the past approx. 20 years. So nuclear power plant safety is also influenced by
"Can we trust big entities (corporations/state owned institutions) to run nuclear facilities?"
I am sorry to presume: propably no.
Yours Truly,
anonymous coward
i like this quote from the article...
The April 26, 1986 accident was the largest nuclear accident in the world, and only a level 7 event on the International Nuclear Event Scale.
"only a level 7"? from my searching that is the highest the scale goes to...
...you end up with a disaster that affects the entire world, and has local effects that will last for billions of years.
Sorry, but that is completely wrong.
What is completely wrong? That there are local effects that will last billions of years?
The danger of a radioactive substance can be effectively measured by its "half-life". Isotopes with a very short half-life emit radiation very quickly (forgetting for this quick post whether we are talking about alpha particles, beta particles, neutron radiation, or gamma rays).
Nothing wrong with a little scientific primer. It helps act as a buffer between your initial claim and the statement that will completely contradict that claim. I can see why you did it.
Isotopes like U-238 / U-235 with a long half-life (700 million years for U-235 and 4.4 billion years for U-238) don't pose a danger unless they are in just titanic quantities.
Tada. Both last for billions of years!
In Fukushima, they stored spent fuel rods on site, which were strewn about by the explosion. These rods are radioactive, and won't simply vanish on their own (well, over many billions of years).
It's definitely possible to live in the area without being affected, but the very fact that these elements are introduced into the environment brings with it the risk of inhalation or ingestion, at which point the normally low-risk of simply being near such elements is replaced by the significant risk of having a radioactive time-bomb in your body.
In other words, effects that will last billions of years. Instead of proving me "completely wrong", you proved me completely right. Thanks.
However something like the particular isotopes of Iodine and Cesium that have been seen at Fukishima have half-lives on the order of days. They are very dangerous, but that danger is short lived. A small quantity of them can definitely kill, but they don't typically last long enough to travel far from the region where they were produced. None of this adds up to "effects that will last for billions of years".
This is entirely correct, but has nothing to do with the elements that do remain radioactive for billions of years.
Instead, it's a danger that is in *addition* to the one you were trying to claim didn't exist.
It is very interesting to see that so many people here are in favor of nuclear power. And the best are the arguments why nuclear is not such a big issue as coal or oil. The discussion in Germany is quite different. We are going to end the nuclear age in our country and have increased the output of electricity out of renewable energy up to 17% in the last decade. Based on current development in wind and solar power we believe that we can obsolete nuclear power by 2020 and meet our CO2 reduction goal as well. We think that we will reach that limit even faster with closing nuclear plant earlier.
But looking into the argument of coal kills more people than nuclear plants and their waste. This is definitely not true. It kill thousands after the Chernobyl disaster and something which is not counted in studies is the increase in cancer rates, babies born dead or deformed and the negative effects on the environment. So the argument coal kills more people is faulty.
Either you are extremely risk-averse, or you would have to also say that coal power is simply not worth the risk on any large scale.
Or oil.
Which is the worse disaster? The BP oil spill or the ongoing Fukushima emergency? Remember that the BP oil spill actually killed 11 workers and injured 17. Fukushima is ongoing and so hard to predict, but it sure looks like fewer people will die there. Also, look at the context - Fukushima was the result of a much larger tragedy. Perhaps 10,000 have died in a massive earthquake and tsunami. In contrast, the BP oil spill happened during good weather. No earthquake, no hurricane.
Imagine what could happen if an earthquake hit a region with a bunch of deepwater oil rigs?
Can you imagine what happened to all of the chemical storage tanks sitting around in Japan? Honestly, if I lived near that region, I'd be a lot more worried long-term about the new chemicals floating around seeping into my water supply than about a short-term nuclear accident that will get the governments full attention until it is cleaned up.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Well, I'd guess that's where the "modern safety features" come in. They do exist you know. They're actually pretty damn good. You can make reactors that shut themselves down safely the second power is lost to the cooling system, they've made them in Canada since the 1970s.
I keep hearing this.
But you know, the Japanese plant "shut itself down safely the second power was lost".
Turns out, you need to do far more than "safely shut down" since the fuel stays really fucking hot even after a shutdown. In fact, the fuel stays really fucking hot and keeps generating heat even after it is depleted and removed from the reactor, and has to be stored under water for a long time before anything can be done with it.
A reactor not only needs to "shut itself down safely" in the event of a problem, its associated systems need to be able to continue functioning properly for quite a while afterwards, and IMO that's where the uncertainty and risk are.
The exact thing that makes nuclear power desirable (high energy density) is what makes it dangerous. When you consider the system end-to-end, I seriously doubt there is such a thing as a failsafe nuclear reactor.
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
You're an idiot. Chernobyl, the worst nuclear accident man has known, had immediate, serious issues but nothing to the extent portrayed in the media and the results certainly won't last "billions of years".
Many thousands of people have died, and the nuclear meltdown is still underway. I'm sure this will significantly decrease the duration of the event, but just because Chernobyl's effects won't last billions of years does not mean other incidents will not. Fukushima, for example, may very well last that long, because of the dispersal of plutonium and uranium into the surrounding area.
Background radiation is only above safe levels in the immediate vicinity, and bearing in mind this was an ancient (by nuclear standards) reactor with none of the safety mechanisms in place on modern reactors. In fact, had the Chernobyl reactor been based on modern designs, it never would have happened, and reactors are getting safer and safer.
Just like with "newer, safer, modern designs", Chernobyl should never have happened either. It was entirely due to human error. No nuclear reactor can be made safe from human error.
Even Fukushima was an old reactor, things would have been much better if it had been a modern reactor, but even there the problems are nowhere near so serious as media is claiming. We've damaged the earth far more in the last thirty years by pumping the smoke from burning coal, gas and oil into the air than the damage caused by every nuclear "disaster" in that period. How is the risk "high" when there have been a handful of notable accidents in the entire lifetime of the nuclear industry? I'd say on those numbers it's incredibly low risk.
Nuclear power is less widely used than coal, gas and oil. Also, cancers from nuclear accidents (and even just standard nuclear operations, without the need for an actual accident) are significant.
But this is a red herring. Just because something else is also bad does not make nuclear good. How about we move away from fossil fuels as well, instead of heaping nuclear atop them?
Not the nuclear reactors....
Here in the USA, we've been relatively isolated from most natural disasters, and most man-made disasters.
Think about it: How disrupted would your life be if planes were bombing the crap out of your country, and there was random gunfire in the streets all the time?
On the west coast, there's more of a building code, but let's face it. If New York City were hit by a 9.0 earthquake, nuclear reactors would be the last thing we'd be worried about. Loss of life would be in the millions if the quake hit during the day. There's not a single skyscraper in Manhattan built to withstand that kind of shock. Try an imagine 9/11, but laying waste to the entire island. There's what, 20 million in Manhattan during the day? You're looking at at least 10 million dead. From the quake.
Then if there's a Tsunami to follow, there could be another 10 million (at least) killed from that. Because DC, Baltimore, Phildelphia Newark, and Boston would also be affected. The Northeast has a lot of major cities within a close proximity, and absolutely no building code regarding quake management.
And yet Americans are worried about the reactor? Ignorance truly is bliss. Americans have NO CLUE about what's really going to kill them. We are a fortunate lot to live in a politically and geologically stable environment. But neither of those conditions are going to last forever.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
I favor a moratorium on media and this political regime.
Following the outcome of 9/11, one conclusion is that high rise buildings, when they are compromised can cause many deaths. If people only built single story buildings then that disaster could not have happened.
If people didn't build nuclear power plants then the sort of outcomes than occur when things go wrong can also be avoided.
The point here is that no-one is opposed to high rise buildings, instead people draw on the experience and try to design high rise buildings in a way which don't collapse if damaged the way the world center was, and also try to come up with ways to prevent the buildings from being subjected to the attack they were on 9/11.
I'd love to here a good argument why the general consensus is different when it comes to nuclear power... surely rather than opposing the idea altogether we should work towards mitigating the risk when things go wrong (admitidly here we probably can't prevent earthquakes, instead we need to build more reduncancy into nuclear reactors)
I think this is one of hundreds of analogies which can be applied to many different technologies we use every day which, when something goes wrong is very dangerous, but we usually concentrate effort into making it safer (planes for example were very unsafe in their early days compared to what we have now, and their benifits are rarely called into question)
I think the main issue here is that people don't fully understand how detremental the current alternatvies (coal, gas, etc) are to human health... or how sustainable they are. People don't grasp how important the benifits of nuclear power are.
A lot of technologies have to be refined and improved.. I really think people should lobby for safer nuclear power rather than no nuclear power at all. At least until alternative safer methods are found.
Like there are alternatives to flying which are probably safer (like taking a ship) the cost outweighs the risk for most people.. I personally believe this applies to nuclear power
Dude, neither is petroleum
Did I say it was? Does it somehow make radioactive matter safe?
Seriously, we use electricity at an industrial scale, so we generate it at an industrial scale. When things go wrong, they do so at an industrial scale.
As opposed to a global scale, like with nuclear.
But I do agree with you, we should move away from fossil fuels as well as nuclear.
From TFA, the results give an indication of how leading questions were.
* Over half (53 percent) of Americans would now support "a moratorium on new nuclear reactor construction in the United States," if "increased energy efficiency and off the shelf renewable technologies such as wind and solar could meet our energy demands for the near term."
What a horrible question, and also what a stranger response. First, the question makes a premise that has no substantiation in reality. When will off the shelf renewable energy technology actually meet our energy demands. Hell, I'd support renewables over nuclear if renewables would meet our needs. That doesn't mean I am against nuclear now though.
Second, why isn't the response rate 100%? Who in their right mind would support nuclear over renewables if they both had the same output? The risks may be low for nuclear disasters but there are still risks. Renewables have very few risks that I am aware of, so why on earth would someone not support this?
Stuff like this is virtually meaningless and leads to sensationalistic headlines. Reading articles like this reminds me that "a public-opinion poll is no substitute for thought."
"As long as we are able to continue the energy wars in the middle east, we don't have a need for 'alternative' energy." - The U.S. military industrial complex...
Hardly any mention of the damage which is done to the environment and human beings when mining for uranium and hardly any mention on slashdot (if any) on the problem of "final" disposal of the waste.
Now go and inform yourself. And show up again when you have some new and very good ideas.
Japan built their reactor to withstand 8. earth quake, so they were knowingly taking on risk. In the USA we are much less likely to get hit with an earth quake like this. As soon as you start reducing your acceptable level of risk for anything, costs WILL sky rocket.. How do you plan for the 1000 or 10000 year earthquake or storm or whatever? Answer is you will usually take on the risk of assuming that won't happen. If people weren't able to take on any risk whatsoever you would never leave your underground nuclear/tornado/quake/hurricane-proof bunker.. Come on people....
You mean like in Canada with the Chalk River reactor? Ask Linda Keen how she liked losing her job over shutting down the reactor. There were rules Stephen Harper didn't care. (Look at the US government, what have rules and laws ever stopped them from doing whatever they want?) http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2009/01/27/8159396-sun.html
Disaster usually involved deaths. The earthquake and tsunami involved over 10,000 so far.
Coal mining involves a lot of death around the world. If Americas are so concerned then what should have learned is that we need to outlaw living in all Pacific Coastal Lowlands... And may be digging for coal. Those things could get people killed.
Specifically:
We have 4M square km of arable land in North America (with 2.3M in use). The land requirement for algae:
The United States Department of Energy estimates that if algae fuel replaced all the petroleum fuel in the United States, it would require 15,000 square miles (39,000 km2) which is only 0.42% of the U.S. map.
That would be 0.17% of our in-use crop land. No substantial displacement. And that's beside the fact that algae can make use of marginal land -- dry or salty, for example.
Headline!
"Amazingly Safe Nuke Plant Sustains One Of The Most Powerful Earthquakes On Record AND A Tsunami! No One Dies From Radiation!"
Fantastic safety record from one of the oldest and least safe designs running in the world today. Good thing it wasn't a Coal powered plant, many many more would have been working there, and many many more would have died.
Wake up America. Ignorance is ugly.
People who oppose nuclear power have to come up with an alternative energy source
Not including
Coal (emits CO2 (and other pollutants)
Wind and solar (not available 24 x 7)
Oli (running out fast)
Tidal and Hydro (limited locations mostly exploited already)
Imagine the only cars on the road were 40 years old. There's masses of press about how dangerous cars are - they're a deathtrap! There are three possible solutions:
1) Stop using cars altogether. Back to the dark ages for us!
2) Keep using 40 year old cars and live with the danger.
3) Design modern cars using everything we've learned about safety over the last 40 years.
Which would you choose? It looks like people are being frightened into choice number one.
This is an urban myth and is completely wrong.
There is no existing coal plant in the world that in our days emits any noticeable amount of radioactive material.
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
"Americans are understandably leery..." no they are simply uninformed about how much better thorium reactors compared to what we currently use as well how bamboozled they were when politicians and generals steered us down this path. The Cold War is over, we don't need a huge nuke stockpile, just a little! lol
QUIT WASTING PRECIOUS TAX REVENUE ON BAND-AID SOLUTIONS SUCH AS SOLAR AND WIND, PUT IT WHERE WE NEED TO DO SERIOUS, SUSTAINABLE RESEARCH- THORIUM REACTORS!!!!!!
The problem with nuclear, besides technical safety factors which we can overcome by not being stupid and putting backup generators and pumps in a sub-basement in a tsunami zone, is that its not "sustainable" - we can only scrape enough fissionable material off the Earth and from sea-water to last 5B years. Oh wait, the Sun will red-giant an burn the Earth up in about 5B years... Maybe it is sustainable if we develop some good solar cells by then - and solar shields...
"As for the future, your task is not to foresee it, but to enable it." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Wich part of "don't pose a danger" didn't you understand?
The real headline should read, "Stupid Americans Favor Needlessly Increased Nuclear Risks". By preventing expansion of newer, safer designs, they are mandating certification extension of older, less safe reactors. Which is actually maintaining the status quo. Thusly, any moratorium which prevents the deployment of newer, safer designs is mandating the continued operation of older, less safe designs. In essence, they are mandating a more dangerous world.
In the US alone, we have over sixty reactors which would have likely long been replaced with newer, safer, more efficient designs if it were not for anti-nuke idiots. Sadly, rather than being replaced, these reactors are forced to apply for certification extension. And because of the hostile environment created by anti-nuke idiots, they are almost already granted their extension.
Its literally become real world safety versus scare mongering with intent for self fulfilling prophecy and sadly, scare mongering is winning by a wide measure.
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War on drugs, war on crime, war on terrorism. Americans can now have the war on Nuclear power. just can't wait until the troops storm the plants to blow them up.
But yet more people have been killed directly installing / running wind turbines or other renewable energy sources in the last 10 years than they ever have been from nuclear power over the last 50 years. Not to mention the number of people who have also been badly injured. May by its about time to start looking at the real risk here and measuring the number of watt's produced by the number of people killed! If you go further back and look at the accident china had with a broken dam that killed 230k people and caused bad issues for a further 10 million people then you will see what I am on about here :)
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It's STUPID to build a Nuclear power plant in a fault zone. Of course Japan is one HUGE fault zone being on the Pacific 'ring of fire'. Japan has learned how to live with earthquakes and they probably have the toughest building codes (for new construction) in the world as far as earthquakes go. In fact, those nuclear power plants were NOT damaged by the earthquake or the tsunami, but rather by the lack of cooling when convention power backup failed as a result of the tsunami. The irony is that if the plant had NOT been shut down by the computers when the earthquake started it probably would NOT have been damaged as it would have been generating the necessary power to run the cooling systems.
I doubt that Japan will give up on nuclear power, though they will review all the safety systems and backups. They simply DON'T have a choice, they are a nation so dependent on electric power and have NO fossil fuels of their own. They might be able to develop geo-thermal or otec power however.
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Please don't use Chernobyl and accident in the same sentence.
Read up on the timeline - it wasn't an accident, it was a dangerous experiment gone wrong, including acts of criminal negligence by the plant supervisor.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
While Canada may be considering nuclear power itself, please keep American plants away from Canadian borders. Feel free to build them in Texas though, a nuclear disaster should have no noticeable effect on the collective IQ of American citizenry, while being extremely beneficial to the American political, educational and judicial systems. Okay this is going a bit far, but c'mon! Heck, just build it near one of the many prisons that have a "death row", kill two birds with one stone so to speak.
how is babby formed?
Bananas are equally dangerous to U-238/U-235 when present in equal mass. Spent fuel rods? They don't contain the type of Uranium that has long half-lives. They contain a bit of the short half-life Uranium (ie: not fully spent), and a lot of fission products like the Iodine and Cesium isotopes that don't last long enough to travel, and you yourself say aren't important to your point.
Your point was that the Uranium is highly radioactive and stays that way for billions of years. The truth is that it is EITHER highly radioactive (and short lived), OR stays for billions of years (and is barely if at all radioactive, and not particularly dangerous unless it falls on you - it's pretty heavy). Not both.
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I think we Americans should have more trust in our leaders. President Obama in 2009 very wisely said:
"There's no reason why technologically we can't employ nuclear energy in a safe and effective way. Japan does it and France doesn't and it doesn't have greenhouse gas emissions, so it would be stupid for us not to do that in a much more effective way" Source
The FA says Americans support a moratorium *IF* solar/wind can meet their energy needs. That's a long way from being against nuclear power.
How you ask the question is important. You might get different answers if you asked, instead:
Even if America faced a severe energy shortfall that other technologies can't make up, should we impose a moratorium on new nuclear plant construction?
While the survey sponsor may be non-partisan, that doesn't men they don't have an agenda. From their website it appears they are pushing solar/wind/renewable. It's important to have a diverse energy supply, and a reliable and secure one.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Woop, you were doing so well until you slipped in that boner. Erhm, at the moment biofuels are the best bet. It's just math.
Biofuels are less harmful to the environment than anything that has to be mined, full stop. Mining is going to keep happening because we need non-fuel elements that must be mined, so we need to eliminate fuel mining as much as possible.
Biofuel refineries can make plastics and alcohols as well as fuels, but they do it carbon-neutral and without exposing workers to as much carcinogenic material as petroleum refining. Nuclear plants can make electricity just like biofuel burners can, but they can't replace the plastics and other byproducts that come from oil - biological sources can.
Methane, the finest biofuel for fixed installations like homes and factories (biodiesel is better for cars) can be fed through pipe networks with almost no loss - low pressure gasses have the best transfer efficiency of any form of energy distribution, far superior to the line losses suffered by electrical energy grids that distribute solar, wind and nuclear energies.
Although solar panels do gather the sun's energies just like biological organisms, and very cleanly put it into the grid, they will not reproduce themselves cyclically like living organisms. Not only are self-managing living elements an integral part of the biofuel cycle, it's possible for modestly educated people to selectively breed biofuel feedstocks for greater utility, robustness and conversion efficiency. A solar panel remains the same for 50 or more years, and then has to be replaced and disposed of. Advances in solar technology rely on breakthroughs by brilliant, highly educated men who are in demand for other fields of endeavor, not by hard-working but relatively inexpensively educated farmers.
Biofuels allow management of atmospheric carbon (because all bio-carbon comes from the air to begin with, not from geologically sequestered sources like fossil fuels). Burn it or bury it depending on where you want the carbon levels to go.
Methane and biodiesel are also perfectly suited to distributed generation and community co-generation; making nations, peoples and communities stronger by removing single-point vulnerabilities that can be compromised by wars, terrorism or oppressive governments. Distributed generation of energy also combats the massive political distortion and market manipulation effect of monopolistic energy brokers, that are destroying the markets and economies of nations all over the globe.
If we covered Death Valley with algae tanks and switched all the corn subsidies over to favor biofuel feedstocks that do not require petroleum based pesticides, herbicides or fertilizers, we could be energy-independent and carbon neutral in 20 years. We could save the oil for lubricants, where it belongs, and for specialty chemical synthesis.
If we converted all the municipal sewage systems to methane breeders, we'd have a system that grew with the numbers of people served, because everyone shits. Highly efficient methane powered stoves, ovens, water heaters, furnaces, and generators exist right now and are cheaply available nearly everywhere in the world - no fantasy technology or fuel cells required, so no industrial conversion required. You can get a 95+ percent efficient natural gas furnace shipped anywhere today.
We need to keep all our existing nuke plants built after 1991 (since those are relatively safe, unlike the many Bush/Obama grandfathered plants 20 year past their service life) until we get the bio-fuel systems up and running. We need to keep our solar, wind and hydro industries and expand them where it's practical. We just need to get rid of foreign oil sources first, then domestic coal production, then we need to stop burning domestic oil.
It's just math. Geeks can do math, right? This is mathematically the best (and indeed only) path forward.
Goodbye any hopes for energy independence. What? Wind and solar? Sure, kid, sure.
Wouldn't underground nuclear plants be the best way to handle problems like earthquakes, tsunamis and asteroids? in case there is a catastrophic failure that cannot be handled, then shutting down the reactors and filling them with dirt would make it impossible for radioactivity to affect anyone on the ground.
Am I crazy, have I been misinformed, or was the sole reason for the Fukushima disaster that the backup diesel generator didn't work when it needed to? In other words, had the backup generator started when the power went down, the coolant pumps would have continued working and there had been no problem?
In that case, it wasn't "nuclear power = bad" but a friggin' DIESEL generator.
Every few days nuclear industry folks come on slashdot and talk about how Safe, Safe SAFE nuclear power is.
The fact is that nuclear power is probably not gonna kill us all, but it's probably gonna kill a lot of people in the distant future because of the waste problem. If you have a technology that produces deadly waste, I'm sorry I don't care how much CO2 it avoids, it's not green or viable long term. Nuclear power is irresponsible when you look more than a few years down the road, period.
What we really need to be doing is shifting to decentralized power generation from renewables. You get way more mileage from the couple billion dollars you stick into a nuclear plant when you pour that into putting wind turbines on America's criminally underutilized Great Plains fields. You get way more jobs, way cleaner, and no sticky waste problem that we are passing on to our kids.
The consumer part of this is to cut back on energy usage. It's much cheaper to reduce inefficient economic activity than to build new plants. Spend the money building energy saving rather than energy generating devices, and you will be much further ahead over time.
For God's sake cut the subsidies for Oil and Nuclear and ramp them up on renewables and energy efficiency. Anything else is madness.
We need some government leadership here, but citizen's demanding better energy policy focused around balls to the wall buildouts of renewables, and strict efficiency requirements are the only way we are going to get around the energy industry trying to lobby their way into billions of centralized energy generation boondoggles.
If we're going to start making decisions on what kind of energy plant we build based on hos much radiation it throws off, doesn't that mean we'll stop building coal burning plants?
Tada. Both last for billions of years!
Jesus Christ you're stupid. By your standard the Earth is an uninhabitable planet because it's full of radioactive materials that last OMG billions of years. Do you know what a half life is?
Instead of proving me "completely wrong", you proved me completely right. Thanks.
If by "completely right" you mean "a complete idiot", then yeah.
While there will always be dangers in nuclear energy, the Fukushima reactors are not CANDU. This catastrophe would not have happened if they were... or at least the damage would be far less... and would 'likely' not ever got to this point.
That's not to say the CANDU system is not perfect. there are lots of down times and accidents happen.
What is strange though are the places in which these plants are located. Understandably they are often located on the edge of a large body of water. But why did Japan decide that the east coast was better then the west coast?
The west coast has less effects by earthquakes, and hardy would be hit by a tsunami. Also, If there ever were a meltdown and it made its way to the water, it would be better off on the west coast so as to have less of an effect on the rest of the Pacific Ocean.
What are the advantages of the East?
The interesting thing to me is how completely inaccurate all of the media has been in this entire "nuclear crisis". I work for a very large energy company with some of the guys that go visit those nuclear plants every year, most of them with PHDs in Nuclear Physics. Their concerns right now focus mainly on the nuclear fuel rod storage and how they are going to handle the excess amount of heating and unspent fuel rods sitting in empty cooling pools. There are absolutely no major concerns around the radiation levels past the power plants property lines. There has so far been ONE casualty to this accident, and people think that nuclear is unsafe? People in California are taking Potassium Iodide and several of them have gone to the hospital for their stupidity. If you are interested in the information about the nuclear event, and information about the actual power plants and exposure levels? Here's some reading, enjoy :)
Things it would be nice for the news media to have read before they started talking...
GE BWR Manual
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/basic-ref/teachers/03.pdf
GE ESBWR - Latest Design: Unbuilt.
http://www.gepower.com/prod_serv/products/nuclear_energy/en/downloads/gea14429g_esbwr.pdf
Wiki Concerning Accident
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_I_nuclear_accidents
Wiki BWR
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BWR
Spent Nuclear Fuel Calculations
http://repository.lib.ncsu.edu/ir/bitstream/1840.16/2309/1/etd.pdf
Graphic: Plant Status
http://news.nationalpost.com/photo_gallery/japan-earthquake-graphic-nuclear-reactor-status/
Earthquake/ Radiation Levels/ No.2 / Status
http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/03/16/graphics-explaining-japans-nuclear-reactor-disaster/
Tsunami
http://news.nationalpost.com/photo_gallery/japan-earthquake-graphic-where-the-wave-hit/#more-52826
Inside Reactor 2
http://news.nationalpost.com/photo_gallery/japan-earthquake-graphic-inside-fukushima-daiichis-most-worrisome-reactor/
Meltdown Dynamics
http://news.nationalpost.com/photo_gallery/graphic-meltdown-fears/
Exposure Levels
http://news.nationalpost.com/photo_gallery/japan-earthquake-graphic-how-fast-will-radation-kill-you/#more-52930
Earthquake Data/ H2 Blast/ Radiation Spread
http://news.nationalpost.com/photo_gallery/japan-earthquake-graphic-nuclear-plant-blasts/
Nuclear Fission product Decay
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fission_product
NRC: Zirconium Cladding Fire
http://www.irss-usa.org/pages/documents/SGS_213-223_response.pdf
Reactor Status: Excel Spreadsheet
http://www.jaif.or.jp/english/news_images/pdf/ENGNEWS01_13002
but just because Chernobyl's effects won't last billions of years does not mean other incidents will not.
It is not physically possible. You know why? None of the radioactive nucleotides have a half life that long.
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!
There are several really top notch designs from mother Russia. Who needs the open market when you can have Chernobyl. Thanks for attempting to put even more BS politics into the debate. Dumbass.
Coal is thanking the paranoid!!
http://www.worldcoal.org/resources/coal-statistics/
Straight from the horse's mouth:
in last 25 years, coal usage has doubled
in the last 3 years, energy usage from coal is up 20x that from ALL renewable sources (solar, wind, geothermal, etc. etc. etc.)
china is now using about 50% of ALL world coal production - not surprising since it's the factory of the world.
So, all the countries talking that "renewable is the future" are all talking utter BULLSHIT just so people can "feel good" about themselves. The reality is countries like Germany are now producing less steel than 25 years ago. Hell, Germany is exporting 3x as much scrap to china as it is producing - lots of energy usage has been outsourced to China. So Germany saying it emits @ 1990 levels is retarded - their effective emissions are much much higher thanks to the emissions they've exported to China. Too bad there is only one atmosphere.
Oh, and Germany is the world leader in brown coal production and usage. Congrats the greens in Germany for shutting down nukular!! Boost the mines! Whatever is left of them (germany is running out of coal too).
The stupid greenpeace and public are hounding nuclear and arguing that hydro is damaging, while at the same time coal is doubled in just over 2 decades. Frankly, organizations like Greenpeace are effectively boosting coal usage worldwide. But don't worry, World Coal Association is expecting that coal usage will increase another 75% by 2050. Hell, with the panic and "scrap nuclear", it will more than double.. So I say, buy coal? That's how we will destroy this planet after all.
Because plenty of other geologists said they should have been looking farther back than 1896 to plan their worst case scenario:
Shorter storyline: Japan's nuclear industry downplayed the risks and ignored outside experts not on their payroll. Funny how often that happens...
Even worse, if the nuclear reactors had NOT been shut down there would have been no accident since it was the lack of power that caused the coolant failure and the reactors were NOT damaged by the earthquake or the tsunami.
The NYT has a nice summary of recent work on renewable energy on the large scale. http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/28/renewing-support-for-renewables/
Basically, nukes are so expensive that they suck up resources for GHG emissions mitigation and slow things down. Renewables cost less even when you work in storage.
Excluding the only disaster to ever occur at a reactor that did not have any kind of containment vessel is the only rational way to discuss the risks of reactors operating today.
It'd be like talking about the dangers of vehicles on the road today, which does include older cars with fewer safety features, but including a freakishly stupid car that was once built that had tanks filled with nitroglycerin attached to its exterior. Literally everyone recognizes that it was ridiculously retarded to ever build one that way, nobody would ever build another one, and there are no such cars remaining on the road. The relevance to real danger is zero.
Note that a Chernobyl-free discussion still includes a whole gamut of human error, flawed reactor designs, and other things we can rationally talk about. But all relevant reactors -- including TMI and Fukushima -- include containment vessels. It's the simplest, most brain-dead, obvious ultimate back-up plan for reactor safety. Even really old, outdated reactors are using them. And the benefits, when comparing Chernobyl to every other disaster, are obvious.
So yes. Excluding that disaster is the only reasonable way to talk about the dangers of nuclear power today.
The enemies of Democracy are
In a real risk analysis, you have to weight the probability of an undesirable outcome using the amount of damage that would occur.
This allows a low risk of a high-damage event to be usefully measured against a high risk (or even a certainty) of very low damage events, and tells you how much money, staff and equipment you will need to have available to deal with emergencies.
This is what insurance companies do; they understand risk analysis. No insurance company will insure a terrestrial nuclear power plant.
The insurance companies didn't get rich by being stupid, or bad at math, or incapable of judging risk. They will insure spaceships, for a very high price of course, or satellites, but they won't insure a nuke plant unless a government forces them to. Because it's a bad risk.
What you are doing is faith-based engineering - pretending that performance figures from the past will necessarily predict the future. That doesn't work in real life, in real life systems and people and objects all wear out. You are also ignoring the fact that a single nuclear accident can devastate whole cities (perhaps even an island nation) such as the city of Prypat, whose 50,000 citizens will never be able to take their cancer-riddled children back to their former homes. That one accident, at Chernobyl, wiped out all profit that could ever be made from nuclear energy in the former soviet union for the next thousand years. Economically, they'd have been better off burning whale oil in solid platinum furnaces for power.
Nuclear power is not cost efficient and mining radioactive fuels is highly polluting. Fantasy future technologies are not built because they are even less economically viable than the Victorian Steam Engine type reactors commonly used. Nuclear power systems do not generate plastics and other useful chemicals as byproducts, they just make waste which must be sequestered for absurd lengths of time or (at best) requires further dangerous processing in additional fission chambers.
Nuclear power is not safe because even a single incompetent operator or a single overly greedy corporate power (why hello Homer and Monty) can do twelve thousand years of damage by circumventing vital safety procedures, as has been proven to have already happened repeatedly in Japan, Russia, and the United States.
We saw it after the false flag attacks on 9/11, and now we see it with the HAARP generated earthquake.
Yes Americans, demand that your "leaders" take charge.. Fucking idiots.
If we're using the same 50/60 year old tech that those Japanese nukes are using, then we've got problems. There are many much safer nuclear designs.
Also, designing your coolant pump back-up to be semi-tsunami resistant is probably a good thing for a coastal plant at the convergence point of several large tectonic plates.
Anyway, we're already having problems because several bi-products from nuclear plants are required for MRI/Chemo/etc. Our lack of nuclear power plants is causing a shortage of materials needed to save people's lives. Well, we're getting there anyway, but not quite.
.....that we're only 4 years away from "Mr. Fusion", if the Back to the Future series is any indication..... THAT would be *great*.....
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
This is one survey. There have already been other surveys that have shown that even though support for nuclear power has slightly eroded recently, more than 50% still support it. You will never have a perfect survey on nuclear power until you can survey each and every American, because any survey will be contaminated by environmentalists, anti-nuke activists, energy company employees, etc. Half of what has been reported by the American media on what is happening in Japan has been spun to seem like it is Chernobyl all over again, which it isn't. What most people do not realize when there are these daily reports of 'radiation' found in soil/water/animals/etc is that the levels reported are not really hazardous at all. But all you will hear from the media is "1000 times worse than normal". When normal is essentially zero, 1000 times that is not much at all. It would be like going from a penny to $10.
After all it was the main catalyst for this disaster.
According to New Scientist, coal kills about 13,000 Americans per annum. In a chart in their most recent edition, coal is by far the most lethal power source per billion GWh generated.
Jek
http://cricdetails.com
But you know, the Japanese plant "shut itself down safely the second power was lost".
No, not the way the Canadian reactors do. If you get a leak in a Canadian reactor, they shut down and stop getting hotter. The heavy water in them? Take it out and the reaction stops cold. When there's a problem, they do two things - they drain the moderator (yes, moderator, not coolant. Heavy water is needed for these reactors to do anything at all.) and then drop the control rods. Both of these actions happen automatically with a power loss - not because of some magical generator allowing them to, but because the generator failed, and it is what is stopping gravity from causing those things to happen on their own.
If the associated systems on a CANDU reactor stop functioning, the reactor stops reacting, and stops producing the insane amounts of heat associated with that reaction, and won't start again until someone fixes it. Yeah, you don't want to crawl into the reactor in your swimsuit, but it's not going to melt down, because it's not radioactive enough.
One important thing to note: None of the safety features on a CANDU reactor will operate properly in a microgravity environment, and they are not suitable for use on space stations or space ships. In the event of a failure of gravity, CANDU reactors are very difficult to shut down. Fortunately, there are no known disasters that can cause a failure of gravity that will not also pretty much destroy the planet that the reactor was on before the reactor would have a chance to meltdown.
The rationale for this "temporary" (ha ha) measure is that nuclear power would not be competitive with alternative forms of power generation if they had to pay for their own insurance. THIS IS COMPLETELY INSANE!
We are intentionally tilting the playing field in favor of the most dangerous form of power production available (when the danger is measured by the marketplace via the cost for insurance). Imagine what the world would be like if for the past 50 years we had instead tilted the playing field in favor of safer, renewable, alternative forms of energy production. Or, perhaps better still, if we had just left the playing field level.
The only reason for this insane public subsidy of nuclear power is the greed of corporations. At the end of World War Two, many corporations had huge investments in nuclear technology. For example, DuPont had more capital investment in nuclear than all their other capital investments combined. In order to "maximize shareholder value" (wealth without work) they bought the Price-Anderson Act (politics without principles) in order to get rights without responsibilities.
In Soviet Russia the problem was that the government controlled the corporations. The situation in Capitalist America is exactly the reverse.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
Right now the only viable replacement for nuclear power is coal.
Global Resource Corporation [GRC] has a neat technology that uses specific microwave frequencies to release liquid (diesel) & gaseous (propane/butane) hydrocarbons from solids like used tires, plastics, and coal.
But they haven't managed their company right (or they ran out of money), and haven't gotten past the prototype stage. Perhaps they're going to fold, or maybe Exxon-Mobil will buy up the patents to kill the technology. Or maybe GRC was infiltrated by big oil. Who knows.
There are energy options that are better than nuclear, they're just not profitable for the financiers & utility barons. Raphial Morgado says in one of the YouTube videos (one of these: SJSU demonstration) that his "Mighty Pump" is disruptive technology, because it makes every internal combustion engine everywhere obsolete. Nothing's safe with disruptive technology: every turbine, and every water pump is now obsolete too, and whatever will JP Morgan do when all those utility companies start defaulting on their loans (when their power infrastructure, bought on time, becomes unprofitable because of Mr. Morgado's pump)?
(Plug: I mentioned the Mighty Pump in my recent post that advocates having dedicated disaster response ships)
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
If you're going to use the highest estimates of deaths resulting indirectly from coal, then you have to use the highest estimates of indirect deaths from Chernobyl. They are hundreds of thousands, not 28.
Here:
Two technologies that are real that we never hear about. Solar thermal and fluid fuel reactors. One estimate says that a solar thermal plant of 100 sq mi would be capable of supplying the entire US power need. Yes Virginia, it can produce power at night (see the references below).
Thorium based fluid fuel reactors. Plentiful fuel. Safe reactor design. Little toxic byproduct. Why don't we do it? You don't get weapons grade byproduct of course.
Both make sense so will never happen. Start here:
Solar thermal or "Concentrating Solar Power (CSP)":
http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/200803141
Thorium and the fluid fuel reactor:
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/ff_new_nukes/
Pro-nuke dweebs say if only new plants were built old ones would be retired.
New plants are insanely expensive. Old plants are already built. So power companies will run both old and new plants. The economics dictate it.
The old plants will never be retired. There is no ECONOMIC reason to retire them. Plenty of safety reasons, sure, but they are not in the safety business and have externalized any costs of an accident (Price-Anderson Act). No economic reason to shut down an old plant, just run it until an accident shuts it down. And when the spanking new plants become old and dangerous the same economic reasons will keep them running until they blow up too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gMcZic1d4U
Let me explain again. This is not a fight between safe and unsafe.
if you replace an "old design" reactor with a "newer safer" you might improve. However what I am saying is that there is no replacing. You add new reactors. You do not replace old reactors in a current plant since it economically impossible to do so. There is not a direct connection between shutting down old plants and creating new one.
It's said that William Gibson, the author of Neuromancer, when he finally got a computer, was non-plussed with what he saw as the weird electro-mechanical Victorian contraption (you're reading data by storing it on rotating plates with a magnet hovering over it?).
Similarly, does anyone find it weird that all the cutting-edge technology of the splitting the atom is really doing is just boiling water?
Have we really no other way to boil water?
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
>> Over half (53 percent) of Americans would now support "a moratorium on new nuclear reactor construction in the United States," if "increased energy efficiency and off the shelf renewable technologies such as wind and solar could meet our energy demands for the near term."
You know, if you could show me wind and solar to meet our energy requirements I'd ask for a reactor moratorium.
But it isnt going to happen. Over here in the UK we've just had a wek where the wind farms were running at 1% capacity, because there was no wind. Anywhere in the country. And it'll be no surprise to anyone that it was cloudy a lot of that time too. Given the choice of coal (mining deaths, global warming) oil and gas (running out shortly) wind (keeps stopping) hydro (Banqiao) and Nuclear (4K deaths from Chernobyl, non at all from Fukushima or 3 mile island) I'll go nuclear thanks. It's the least bad option.
I certainly don't want to go back to growing wood or any other fuel crop. Our population is now about 10 times too high for that. And going up...
I am mystified as to why the Japanese nuclear issues of today are being taken as a sign that nuclear is unsafe instead of being taken as the opposite.
Shall we review some facts? Using an old design that is less safe than what would be built today the Japan nuclear plants were built and maintained for decades without adverse effects on the population. It was only in the event of a "perfect storm" of disasters chained together that the plant failed: an earthquake and a tsunami and a failure of the backup generators. While the long term consequences, if any, are still being sorted out the focus should be on the story so far: All of the safety mechanisms worked as designed even in this fairly ridiculous scenario. To the extent that radiation was released it was a relatively minor amount that is not cause for immediate concern.
Why is the headline not "Thousands dead in Japan but not one due to nuclear disaster."? Despite all of the fear mongering going on I have yet to see any credible evidence that the amount of radiation released is capable of causing harm. This is an enormous vindication of nuclear energy!
Furthermore, to the extent that safety systems failed they failed in ways which would not be possible with newer plant designs. At the worst the headline should be "30 year old nuclear plants should have been replaced with modern designs before disaster struck."
I want my Cowboyneal
what keeps the entire Middle East relevant on the world stage or history? What funds the South American dictators and keeps the "former" Soviet Union from failing and provides the impetus to manufacture the hardware for the "cultural rebellions" around the world? It sure isn't an oil-independent Western Society.
An electric car infrastructure needs the universe's most efficient power generation system, or as close as humanity can get to it. The megawattage currently released from fossil fuels *must* be replaced in order for the "green future" to arrive.
But the Royal Saud and their innumerable by-blows, and the Hugo Chavez's of the world would not have their undue influence and personal fortunes if the West went nuclear. Imagine what the consequences would be if there was reduced market for oil. Suddenly the "palestinian" movement wouldn't care about Israeli access to the Red Sea for pipelines. How would Chavez or Mexico's nationalized oil industry subsidize their socialist policies or afford the weapons to oppress their neighbors? Where would Putin find the cash or motivation to stomp neighboring nations like Georgia? How would Saudi and middle eastern "Royalty" fund their fleets of private jets and their attempted kingmaking through funding terrorist actions? By selling sand?
So for decades, a pittance for propaganda, cheaper than even the most basic bombing raid, keeps America and most of Europe backwards. The science of propaganda has only advanced in sophistication since Goebbels proved ideals and the Media could be weaponized. Don't be fooled into thinking the anti-nuclear paranoia is accidental. Remember that the West doesn't have a "free" press-but it's not that expensive to manipulate either. Fortunately for them the amount of "useful idiots" is not in decline.
You're fricking stoned. No, Americans who are dumb enough to get cornered by the marketers / pollsters fear it because big media is telling them to be afraid of it, are saying they are.
Just as much as I could go on the news and tell them that there are zombies out there that will eat their brains.
Nuclear power can be safe, however sometimes the older reactors are not as safe as the newer technologies are.
= Grow a brain...
http://xkcd.com/radiation/
To put that into perspective, in Hockey this year up in Canada, I had a pretty tough year, and managed to crack a rib, and mess up my rotator cuff on my left shoulder. As such I have had 3 xrays of my ribs, and like 6 (I presume because its a joint and harder to see) of my shoulder, so like 9 chest xrays in the last 6 Months.
So that's like 20 SV * 9 = 180 SV. Which is more than double the average exposure from within 10 miles of 3 mile island or more than 50 times the average of the dose that someone got living in one of the nearby towns as of March 17th.
Kind of puts it into perspective.
Wind turbines at their best are uneven suppliers of electricity. They are are also eye sores.
Maybe compared to Glacier National Park they are eyesores, but compared to coal and nuclear power plants, they are scenic beauty!
Also, what you said about wind power being inherently uneven is a lie.
It just requires a modicum of intelligence.
"I can't imagine how things could get any worse!" (some guy) "That could just be failure of imaginatioÂn on your p
But nuclear and petroleum shills like you do, constantly.
"I can't imagine how things could get any worse!" (some guy) "That could just be failure of imaginatioÂn on your p
All that is required for wind to provide baseload power is 10 or more interconnected, geographically separated wind farms.
www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/winds/aj07_jamc.pdf
"I can't imagine how things could get any worse!" (some guy) "That could just be failure of imaginatioÂn on your p
I imagine the real reason is that the theoretically engineering maximums were too optimistic.
Do you have any facts?
"I can't imagine how things could get any worse!" (some guy) "That could just be failure of imaginatioÂn on your p
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2056604&cid=35672794
Now let's see yours.
"I can't imagine how things could get any worse!" (some guy) "That could just be failure of imaginatioÂn on your p
“Firm capacity” is the fraction of installed wind capacity that is online at the same probability as that of a coal-fired power plant. On average, coal plants are free from unscheduled or scheduled maintenance for 79%–92% of the year, averaging 87.5% in the United States from 2000 to 2004 (Giebel 2000; North American Electric Reliability Council 2005).
Not 92%, which was your lie.
Figure 3 shows that, while the guaranteed power generated by a single wind farm for 92% of the hours of the year was 0 kW, the power guaranteed by 7 and 19 interconnected farms was 60 and 171 kW, giving firm capacities of 0.04 and 0.11, respectively.
So that's at least 11% for 19+ wind farms, not 4%-11%. You have both exaggerated coal's firm capacity and understated that of large numbers of interconnected wind farms. Maybe you just enjoy coal pollution, but the more likely motivation of your behavior is that you are a paid coal / petroleum shill.
Furthermore, 19 interconnected wind farms guaranteed 222 kW of power (firm capacity of 0.15) for 87.5% of the year, the same percent of the year that an average coal plant in the United States guarantees power. Last, 19 farms guaranteed 312 kW of power for 79% of the year, 4 times the guaranteed power generated by one farm for 79% of the year.
Finally, nobody believes we will decommission all coal plants any time soon. But wind is capable of adding to baseload instead of adding more coal plants or more nuclear plants. That is the relevant fact for the present situation. All new capacity should be clean, which means only wind and solar, and that is quite feasible using wind and solar thermal for baseload and pv solar for peak.
"I can't imagine how things could get any worse!" (some guy) "That could just be failure of imaginatioÂn on your p