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Could the US Phase Out Nuclear Power?
mdsolar writes "In the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, [German Chancellor] Merkel announced that her country would close all of its 17 existing reactors by 2022. Other nations, including Japan, Italy, and Switzerland, have announced plans to pare back nuclear power, but none have gone as far as Germany, the world's fourth-largest economy. Merkel vows to replace nuclear power with alternatives that do not increase greenhouse gases or shackle the economic growth. Could the US do the same? An increasing number of reports suggest it is not beyond the realm of possibility, and Germany could provide a road map."
No.
And neither can Germany.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
No. This is just another anti-nuclear FUD article from mdsolar. Secondly, if the US did phase it out what exactly is going to replace it? More coal plants? Yeah, that sounds like a brilliant plan but would be an extremely amusing backfire from the anti-nuke nuts campaign.
What the hell are they going to replace it with? More fossil fuels?
Sunshine and wind aren't going to meet any nation's energy demands with current technology.
Can we stop being scared of fission please. Yes it will kill people so will coal solar wind hydro etc. Please can we live in the real world where people die. Once we do that we can figure out that fission is the next to least bad option next to hydro. Since nearly all the potential hydro is tapped out already it's the only currently viable option.
No sir I dont like it.
Why would they want to?
It's easy to panic about whatever the latest disaster was rather than actually rationally evaluate the trade-offs of various options.
Of course we could. It might be painful and messy, but we could. The more relevant question: *should* the US phase out nuclear power?
Nuclear power (as distinct from weaponry) is safe.
Nuclear power (including the mining of uranium and all associated accidents) has killed far, far fewer people than related coal activities.
In the same vein as airline accidents produce headlines where car accidents generally do not, nuclear accidents suffer the same fate compared to coal.
I hate all this overreaction. We were just about to get to a point where we could seriously make a dent in air emissions with electric cars and reduced reliance on coal, and now we're whipsawing back. Makes you wonder who is controlling the message, doesn't it?
...and the coal industry would be thrilled.
See: http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html
Of course it can, and it cqn even produce qll electricity it needs with renewables, thanks to smart power grid that allows to transport efficiently the electrity from the best production locations to the consumption location.
Political will is all that is needed.
Oh, I forgot - it can be achieved at 0 net cost.
When do we start ?
If the irrational over-reaction to nuclear power based on the Fukushima disaster were mirrored in other industries, then the Titanic would have ended the ship industry, and Ford's exploding Pinto would have ended the auto industry.
And just because water-cooled nuclear reactors were and always will be a stupid idea, doesn't mean that all types of nuclear reactors are stupid ideas.
There was an editorial at DailyTech about this recently: DailyTech nuclear power editorial
The hard leftist core of the so-called environmentalists (really they are anti-human and anti-civilization) will be the ruin of us all yet. I am for more electrical generation - not less - for everyone. I say refrigeration and air conditioning and 24hour reading lights for all! Bring on next generation nuke power! Speed up Orbital Solar Power! Drill for natural gas and oil! Upgrade the networks of Power Grids so in the marginal sources of electrical power can be utilized where they make economic sense.
And you men and half of the Internet as well are just as bad. We sit here, considering Wikipedia the all-in-all. We consider the greatest end of science is the classification of past data. It is important, but is there no further work to be done? We're receding and forgetting, don't you see? Here in the America they've lost nuclear power. In Japan, a power plant has undergone meltdown because of poor repairs, and the Chancellor of the Empire complains that nuclear technicians are scarce. And the solution? To train new ones? Never! Instead they're to restrict nuclear power.
--Salvor Hardin, paraphrased
Some new advances in LENR Cold Fusion are showing signs of commercial viability. The Rossi E-Cat inventor has a 1MW reactor due to open in late October 2011. If it works as advertised, (fusing Nickel to Copper), with no nuclear waste at low cost, retrofitting existing fission plants to fusion will happen very quickly.
Here are some links:
http://blog.newenergytimes.com/2011/06/01/nasas-bushnell-lenr-most-promising-energy-alternative-and-its-not-fusion/
http://rossicoldfusion.com/
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/blog/post/2011/05/swedish-skeptics-confirm-nuclear-process-in-tiny-4-7-kw-reactor
http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/BarnhartBtechnology.pdf
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzL3RIlcwbY
So, we are in the shitstorm of nuclear blowback. But what is the reality for the future? Well, let's see,
China is trying to cap coal and become largest user of renewable energy. They are also building or planning more nuclear reactors by 2030 than any nation currently operates. China's largest worry is that current supply of Uranium is not sufficient. They are planning 80% of all new reactors by 2050 (they expect 400+ by then) to be fast neutron reactors.
India is expected to 12-fold number of its nuclear plants, as energy needs skyrocket by 2030. They are also planning on installing 60+GW of solar.
Meanwhile, in Germany there are protests now about the evil power lines to move power from north to south while at the same time investment leaders are warning that Germany may become a higher risk place to invest in manufacturing due to uncertainty in future energy prices.
Frankly, seeing how Germany is dealing with the E. Coli outbreak by what seems to be random accusations (Spanish cucumbers, no it is tomatoes, no spouts, ok that is wrong too), their reaction to Fukushima is as expected.
So what is the future? The future is renewables and nuclear, just like it was 5 years ago. Any nation that curtains nuclear, like Germany, will become very dependent on nations that do not. Simple as that.
What if we didn't have nuclear power? We would be just fine.
Claims that we have to use it because other forms of renewable energy are not ready, are mistaken.
As Churchill said, 'Americans can be counted on to do the right thing only after all other options have been exhausted.'
And indeed, the US will not develop alternatives to oil and nuclear unless we have no choice about it. But if those options were removed, we would find alternatives. It would be costly for awhile, but eventually costs would go down and new industries will have been born.
The fact is, as a former nuclear engineer, I can say with some intimate knowledge that nuclear energy is extremely dangerous from a proliferation point of view, with respect to the risk of nuclear terrorism. Nuclear reactors produce plutonium in their fuel rods, and plutonium is one of the most hazardous materials on Earth; and it is possible to purify plutonium sufficiently to make a dirty bomb powerful enough to take out a city, using table-top chemical processes. One does not need enrichment centrifuges the way that one does for uranium.
If we want to be sure that we don't want one of our major cities to be blown up one day, we should shut down nuclear power.
The most rational, prudent, safe, and progressive thing to do would be to phase out the current, 1st generation plants, but simultaneously remove, insofar as possible, obstacles to safer 2nd / 3rd generation designs such as CANDU.
Nonaggression works!
I think you'll find the answers to those are radically different. Could we? Sure, with enough expense ( time, effort and currency ), we absolutely could.
Should we? Absolutely not. Japan showed us what could go wrong with old designs and bad policies. We paid for those lessons, it'd be irresponsible to throw them away.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Look at deaths/megawatt hour. Nuclear is much lower than coal, gas/oil, hydro, and wind. (Forget about solar). Sure nuclear makes the news more often, but it's because it's scarier. Just as the e. coli outbreak is terrifying people but less than 20 have died from it.
Forget the source on the deaths/megawatt, will look for it now.
Germany will fill the gap using dung fired power plants using all the horse crap from the state mandated horse based transportation system. Though of course, fossil fuel based transportation will remain available to citizens making above a certain amount of Deutschmarks and the political class since they have important business to conduct. All nice and tidy, and somewhere in all that crap, there's a pony!
What would Richard Feynman do, if he were here right now? He'd do some math and he'd follow through!
Geez, this site is getting old. Feel the optimism. The all American 'yes we can' spirit.
And now get off my lawn, punk!
With newer reactor designs, it could be even better. We still need to come up with a good solution for the waste, though. Nobody has any idea how much it will cost to deal with as we're currently just putting it aside.
Note to zee Germans: Jews are not carbon-neutral, even if they are a renewable resource...
Germans are usually smart but not this time. By closing their nuclear power plants they will encourage building of more nuclear power plants in France, Poland and Russia (there is a piece of Russia pretty close to Germany).
Now if you have nuclear power plant do you prefer it to be run by russians, polish, french or germans?
Other forms of power kill more people than nuclear, nuclear just does so in a flashy form and in obvious clusters around the release. Coal, on the other hand, kills a lot more people, but does so over a longer period of time and over the entire area the particulate emissions spread...in other words, everywhere.
But hey, don't let that stop you policy makers. Do the thing that makes it look like you're taking action rather than taking the RIGHT action.
At the time, Italy is definitely discussing the nuclear issue.
The Berlusconi government wants to open new nuclear power plants, threatening the country with higher energy bills.
His government says that nuclear is the way to go, indeed.
The answer from the people was outstanding.. kind of.
Next week there is a referendum planned, in which Italians are asked to answer to 4 questions and one of these questions is about bringing back nuclear power to the country.
Berlusconi tried to block the referendum in almost every way, even asking to the highest courts (well, he didn't call them "commies" in this case..) without success. He made a new law in order to make the referendum useless by saying that the decision about nuclear power is postponed (until he makes the country forget about Fukushima). He also says that "going to vote for this referendum is useless".
No matter how many countries say that will abandon nuclear power soon, Berlusconi still says it is the future.
In order to decrease the chances of a new political drawback, the questions in the referendums are inverted (basically, if you want to say that you DON'T want nuclear power, you have to say YES).
I just pray for the quorum to be reached...
Not if Fred Upton remains in power.
It comes down to footprint and lifestyle choice,
We have no way to store wind or solar power other then pumping it into the grid for immediate use, both are not consistent in delivery, cloudy or no wind days.
Coal is a major generator of mercury and arsenic and acid rain in the atmosphere as well as CO2, as well as coals radioactive trailing's, and ash see and open pit hazardous waste sites. Scrubbers do not take care of the issue if the power plants do not have them installed. This includes almost every country that is not first world. Also the sludge dams....
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Martin_County_Sludge_Spill
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_Creek_Flood
Nuclear's benefit the waste can be 98% reused. The minuses most plants are old designs, the US does not recycle fuel, we do not have a good storage solution even if we start recycling waste.
For a former nuclear engineer, you seem pretty damn retarded. Please explain how the USA shutting down it's nuclear power stations removes the risk of a city being blown up by a foreign produced bomb (dirty or full-nuclear).
If you're planning to come back with some nonsense about merely reducing the risk by removing the domestically produced materials, don't bother.
Sure we can do that... but you first Germany. Lets see how that works out. Or we could use Dogbert Power
Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats. -HLM
But if we use breeder reactors that burn the plutonium then the only place at risk is the plant itself.. It's our backasswards old plants that are the problem, not modern nuclear plants.
It's like arguing against modern hybrid or electric cars because ones built in the 70's were gas hogs.
I only ask that if they get rid of nuclear, they also say no more new coal plants. Tit for tat and all that.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
The federal government still has to let them tap that natural gas at volumes that could replace those nuclear power plants we have. Replacing 20% of our capacity is going to create a huge boom in natural gas production and the federal government has been playing games with drilling permits for over 10 years. If they don't get things moving now, the cost of natural gas will skyrocket which means that both electricity and home heating costs (in quite a few areas) will go up simultaneously.
Sure, they can pass a law that says to replace all nuclear power plants with power plants that do not generate greenhouse gasses. While they are at it, they should also pass a law to make influenza illegal. I mean, that is really bad too! When the rolling blackouts come, maybe we will elect some sensible leaders.
Sure, we could, but why would we be stupid enough to want to?
What's always disappointing is that even on /. people don't seem to understand the real nature of radiation: It's a poison.
No less, but also _no more_. And many choose to focus on the latter to the point of hysteria.
It's always seen as some magical, invisible, and very scary entity that shouldn't exist anywhere near humanity, but consider that (m)any of the conventional (I willingly acknowledge the benefits of green energy, but also realistically acknowledge their shortcomings) sources of power we use today also create poisonous byproducts.
And sure radiation is not only poisonous, it's also a carcinogen! But yet again so are many of the (poisonous) by products of coal and oil burning plants. Heck, just read the back label of a quart of motor oil.
In addition, the recent Fukushima incident has sadly been compared to Chernobyl (1986), and TMI (1979), taking away attention from the real tragedy that caused the meltdown. But just sift through your own memory of how many recent coal mine collapses in that time (countless, so I'll just link it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mining_accident) or global environmental damage from tanker and oil rig accidents have occurred in those two decades, and you'll see that you'd actually be in favor of Nuclear Power if you cared about lives lost, or global environmental impact.
And how many poisonous chemical spills do you remember reading about in the news? It happens every year, has the same diffusion characteristics as poisonous radioactive particles, but gets absolutely squat media attention (aside from maybe the local news).
There are also reports of how Fukushima might have released double the amount of radiation than previously reported. Boy, this sounds scary. How does it compare to the fracking (not a curse word euphemism) that's managed to methanate drinking water in towns across America to the point of tap water being combustible?
I will admit: there is a huge gaping problem with Nuclear Waste. There's lost of it, it lasts forever (as far as we're concerned), it's sitting in temporary storage at the facilities that generated it, and nobody wants to be the final resting place of it (Yucca mountain fiasco).
Yet it's manageable, and there are well proven reactions that can basically process/burn them down into much less dangerous/reactive compounds. But these techniques to reduce the waste, next generation plants that produce less waste, all of it never gets developed because of the public's immediate and irrational fear of the word "Nuclear".
I'm not saying people should be proponents of Nuclear just from reading this post, and if we could make hyper-efficient solar cells without generating the high-tech waste associated with processing so much silicon, I'd want to plaster the world in solar panels. But until that day comes, I'd prefer we judge nuclear power on its real scientific merits and demerits, and not on some "gut feeling" of how scary it is.
How the hell does anyone get killed by wind, unless they fall off a tower? And deaths/megawatt hour for nuclear are hard to figure, as it may take years to die from radiation exposure, and it can manifest itself in a number of ways. Plus there's the whole issue of rendering a large area uninhabitable for generations.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Even with ten more Chernobyls and twenty more Fukushimas, per watt, Nuclear is both the safest and lowest environmental damage power system out there.
Centralia PA. We still use coal.
Why would we want to give up on nuclear? It's our only chance without involving future tech. None of the other non-carbon-cycle renewables have consistent power, are available wherever they're needed, aren't dependant on ridiculous rare earths, can be deployed at scale without enormous land usage, or have any hope of providing even today's power usage, let alone tomorrow's.
There is no meaningful taking nuclear off of the table until there's something better to replace it, and that something better just hasn't come along yet.
StoneCypher is Full of BS
The US hasn't built a new plant since TMI. As plants are decommissioned they're being replaced with coal and Natural gas plants.
What really needs to happen is a complete phase out of the older generation nuclear power plants and a phase in of the next generation of nuclear power. From there, we use the knowledge gained from the reactor replacements to build the future generation plants.
Sitting back and letting our plants get older and older instead of replacing them on schedule is like sitting on a time bomb.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
The US will get rid of its nuclear reactors only after nuclear weapons become obsolete. Remember, it's not about cost or the environment; it's about plutonium production.
And that's precisely why the cleaner, cheaper, and safer alternative of thorium-based nuclear energy has received so little attention in the US -- thorium fission doesn't produce anything that's easily weaponizable, making it largely irrelevant to US policymakers. Energy has been little more than a useful byproduct of US nuclear policy.
Cynically,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
In 2010, Germany had 21000 wind mills that produced 6.2% of Germany consumption. To replace nuclear 22%, they'll need 63000 more wind mills. The intermittency problem hasn't been factored in the computation so they'd need even more.
Standard wind mills generate 2MW under optimal wind conditions.
German wind mills produced 35,500 GWh in 2011. This mean, in average each wind mill generated 35000*1000/21000/365/24=0.2MW. Compare to the nominal power of 2MW of most standard wind mill: wind mills are very rarely operating under optimal conditions.
There are plenty of reactor designs that do not need Pu in the fuel. Thorium reactors come to mind. To boot, thorium is relatively cheap, and the biggest deposits are in countries that have decent infrastructure.
There are other designs that do not use plutonium in any, shape, or form. TWR designs come to mind. In fact, most Gen IV designs are similar. No way these designs are going to be spitting any Pu amounts, much less enough to make it useful for terrorists.
I'm sure you know this, as a nuclear engineer.
You mean, like Spain does? Oh, wait, Spain exports energy to France, and last year over half of its energy production was from renewable resources.
Actually, Spain imported 2% of its energy from France, and gets 20% of its domestic power from nuclear plants:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Spain.
-- Terry
A friend who is originally from Germany said it was things like that announcement that made her glad to be in the U.S.
Keep in mind that Fukushima was an older version of a long-obsolete design. Keep in mind further that it was the improper local storage of spent fuel rods, not the reactor itself, that caused by far the majority of the problem.
There is no need to get rid of nuclear, and there should be no desire, either. Gen. IV designs (not to mention breeder and Thorium reactors) are far less dangerous than Fukushima even without its extraneous fuel rods, and far more efficient as well.
I don't know if OP was trying to spread FUD, but if so, it was pretty weak.
The energy has to come from somewhere, unless we cut down the demand, we can't reduce production.
So we could easily phase out nuclear power plants if we also phase out air conditioning.. we would just sweat a lot more.
We could also, if we wished, eradicate widespread vaccination and the refrigeration of food.
THAT sounds pretty impartial to me.
Not.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
As a member of the weapon's effect test group in Eniwetok my buddy and I put on coveralls and walked a few hundred years to ground zero to kick around the glass slag. We weren't supposed to but that's been years ago. I'm now 84. Have COPD related to partly to smoking but aside from that I'm healthy as a horse. The dangers of radiation are overblown in the extreme in my view. Smoking is FAR more dangerous!
The question is not could, but should. Clearly we could.
In some ways, I am not sure it matters much, as it will take so long that several different government will have to approve it, and minds can change.
The Fukushima disaster should not have happened, period. The reactors themselves survived the earthquake and tsunami just fine; the disaster was caused by a cascade of secondary failures. It's as if your house burned down because of a power failure. The operators and regulators knew that this was a possibility in these old designs, but it was "too expensive" to rebuild or replace 50 year old gear. That thinking will have to change. Clearly a lot of money will have to be spent on existing nuclear plants, regardless of whether they are wound down or kept going. The "stress tests" ordered by the EU are just the beginning.
When we were kids, we learned the safe handling of knives and forks. Sure they can cause injury and even be deadly, but when handled properly, they are useful too. We didn't do away with knives and forks did we?
We use deadly chemicals on a regular basis. Fertilizers, fluids in our cars, insecticides, rat poisons and lots, lots more. We have learned the safe handling and usage of these chemicals and once in a while, we have accidents with them -- oil spills, fires, poisonings and so on. We haven't simply "done away" with those things either.
We mine for coal, drill for oil and more. We know what happened with BP and why. We have seen news stories where dozens of miners are trapped and killed because their work is dangerous and frequently, safety needs are not observed and met. The results are all too predictable. We still burn oil, coal and gas regardless of the crap that is spreads all over the planet even when it is used "properly."
And here we have nuclear power -- awesome power. We have seen a few incidents that demonstrate what it can do. Has the damage of any other industrial energy production caused as much environmental damage, injury or loss of life as the nuclear incidents we have seen so far? Yeah... I would be willing to bet oil, natural gas and coal certainly have and that would be with and without "accidents."
All this fear-driven activity is really kind of disgusting to me. Let knowledge be the cure for fear and let it be made accessible to all out there who are afflicted.
...and it is possible to purify plutonium sufficiently to make a dirty bomb powerful enough to take out a city...
You've shown us right there that either a) you have no idea what a dirty bomb actually is, or b) you are purposefully conflating it with one which has a nuclear yield, which is even worse. Whether you are ignorant or dishonest really doesn't matter, though. Either way you're wrong.
Legislating physics doesn't work. California was supposed to have a 100% emissions free new vehicle fleet eleven years ago. Maybe obviating ~20% of all US base load power generation is possible without getting voted out of office for a generation. Good luck with that.
Nuclear power isn't dead. It isn't even dying. China made obligatory noises about 'reviewing' nuclear projects after Fukushima Construction has not actually halted and nothing has been canceled. Ultimately it will amount to a couple siting changes and little else. Sweden is pushing back at German nuclear energy policy changes and has no intention of abandoning its own nuclear energy. Neither will France.
Germany is the victim of a large amount Chernobyl fallout, so nuclear is a bad word in German politics. Germany's neighbors, on the other hand, are not uniformly following Germany's lead. It is rather likely that Germany will find itself replacing some of its lost generation capacity with foreign nuclear power.
As for the US? Investors are not going to put up billions of dollars for pressure groups to play with in court for twenty years; that money is going to China. Nothing is going to happen one why or the other until after the currency collapse and breakup. We're a debtor nation balkanized around our welfare state, so we don't get to build, replace or otherwise change much of anything until long after the public debt bubble pops.
The power generation system you have now will be what you have in 2026. If you're lucky.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
If anything, we should pursue more nuclear power. Want to be safe about it? Start by redesigning, replacing or refurbishing the older US plants that have a remote chance to fail in the (overly dramatized) way the Fukushima plant did. From there, build more plants - especially in places that depend on oil or old coal plants to keep the lights on. It's an opportunity to make more jobs on all levels and regions, and will actually provide a return on the investment via lower power costs.
Right now fuel costs for a nuclear plant are less than half that of its closest competitor (coal) and that gap continues to widen. Throwing that away is totally unreasonable given the current state of the western economy. Even better would be to start using thorium 232 - there's three times as much of that in the Earth's crust as there is uranium 238 and many modern plants can switch over to that with relatively little modification.
That is how they die for the most part. Same for roof mounted solar.
Hydro power makes large areas uninhabitable for as long as you want power. Ask the folks that live in the area flooded for the three gorges damn all about that.
> Merkel vows to replace nuclear power with alternatives that do not increase greenhouse gases
Really? Did she say that? Sounds like a contraddiction
Merkel: new gas and coal plants to replace nuclear (Reuters Fri Apr 15, 2011)
Hack your mind out of its sandbox.
People are good at overreacting. The zeppelin industry didn't last much after May 6, 1937 except as novelties, despite nearly two thirds of the people surviving the accident. Most airlines would love those kinds of numbers in a crash. On average in 2010, more people died every seven hours from car accidents in the US.
Pointing out that there are Gen IV reactor plans incapable of having accidents like this is impossible when people are in full panic mode.
On one of the World's worst fault lines? In a Tsunami zone?
Yeah, lets not do that.
The worst of the worst happened, and.. Thousands and thousands died from the Tsunami - but not from the nuclear plant.
Speaking of thousands dying... Every year around the glove in coal mines.
All emotion and no deduction.
Wind and solar are a joke when it comes to addressing world energy demand.
If we want to be sure that we don't want one of our major cities to be blown up one day, we should shut down nuclear power
Of course! It is not like there are THOUSANDS of NUCLEAR WEAPONS ready to do actual damage at moments notice. No sir!! After all, nuclear power produces plutonium so efficiently that the highly inefficient US military decided to make their own plutonium pits instead for these weapons..
And of course plutonium cannot be used as a fuel because using that instead of virgin uranium makes bunnies cry.
proliferation point of view, with respect to the risk of nuclear terrorism
I say we go further. burn all physics books!, especially those ones that deal with particle and nuclear physics. No one needs to know about cross sections. It is the devils knowledge!!
On a more serious note, anyone that brings up proliferation as a significant problem is a little crazy. You know, there are these things like radiation detectors that can detect a few atoms of contamination. I think they would detect a nuclear reactor worth of fuel going missing... It is not easy to build a nuclear weapon even though conceptually it seems so. An effective plutonium device is very difficult to produce and a "dirty bomb" is the most useless type of a bomb and it is easy to clean up.
If you want to worry about proliferation, worry about chemical and biological agents because these happened and are likely to happen again.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarin_gas_attack_on_the_Tokyo_subway
Here's a nice list of attempting smuggling of nuclear stuff. Basically all after USSR fell apart. None of these were sourced from nuclear energy. They call came from nuclear weapons programs.
http://articles.latimes.com/keyword/smuggling-russia
PS. This was mostly sarcasm, but since mdsolar is probably modding with 10 accounts, this will get -1 anyway ;)
And finally, nuclear energy from Uranium will not become exhausted for at least 1000 years. With fusion, nuclear will be permanent base load, unless we nuke ourselves over coal/oil/gas/food/water (take your pick) to kingdom come..
Yes because shutting down nuclear power in the country is going to prevent a terrorist organization from getting what they need from another country and smuggling it in here and still exploding a dirty bomb.
We are "The Saudi Arabia" of natural gas. We can use that. We can use that pretty much exclusively if we want to, but we have vast reservse of coal and oil, too.
As for "the environment", nothing we can do will please the environmentalists, they'll whine about keeping nuclear, they'll whine about building more gas or coal or oil fired electrical generating plants to replace the nukes. So, we have nothing to lose by just doing what is best for our pocketbooks, and buy earplugs for the whining.
But even if you do pull it off, and really can build all that renewable energy capacity that fast. It's still totally irresponsible to shut down nuclear power plants and keep their coal plants running. Those actually kill people... like, many, every year!
Wind power has come a long way [...] This video isn't the best, but..."
...because it's a Ren & Stimpy cartoon of a project that hasn't actually been built.
You can call us back when they build the real thing; until then, it's about as real as the Tooth Nerve Fairy.
-- Terry
A clever thought, but it would not solve the problem. In fact, it would make it worse. A breeder reactor fuel cycle would require used fuel rods to be transported to reprocessing plants. That means: lots of trucks on the road carrying the most dangerous substance known to man....
It is a matter of opportunity. It takes resources to steal and utilize nuclear material. If it is all over the place, it is easier. We should be removing it from the economic system, not proliferating it.
I see Merkel got some of our Hope and Change. Although if it works in Germany as well as it has here, they'll still have a problem keeping their lights on.
... 8 of those 17 reactors have been shutdown right after the Fukushima desaster, partially taking advantage of scheduled maintenance downtime. While the industry has been holding up the thread of a brown out before, obviously nothing bad has happend since. Germany just isn't exporting electrical power anymore. Wind energy and photovoltaic power has been subsidised for year and is thus going strong.
By the way, the previous government had an even more ambitious plan to get rid of fission power, years before Fukushima. So effectively, the current agenda is a slowdown of the previous exit plan.
"If we want to be sure that we don't want one of our major cities to be blown up one day, we should shut down nuclear power."
And that my friend is why we have "security forces". You know, the guys with guns we pay to stop the other guys with guns from getting their hands on anything potentially harmful to our guys with guns.
And the peons. Can't build anything without peons.
Power reactors do not produce plutonium for bombs. A power reactor fuel cycle produces plutonium that contains a substantial percentage of the isotopes Pu240 and Pu242. These are fine for reactor fuel, but they have a high spontaneous fission rate, which makes them very bad for bombs. (Hint: Neither India nor Pakistan used plutonium from their power reactors to make their bombs -- they both went to the great trouble and expense of building special-purpose breeder reactors. Ask yourself why.)
This is yet another FUD article on nuclear power submitted by mdsolar. I personally have nothing against publicizing the dangers of nuclear power, but this should be done in a fair way. User mdsolar has repeatedly posted FUD articles on nuclear power and frequently gets them through because of the mass volume of his submissions and the lack of attention paid by the moderators to specific users' agendas.
mdsolar, reveal yourself. What is your viable plan for generating electricity once you have wiped all the reactors off the map? How do you plan on dealing with the decommissioning and waste? Could you try easing up and submitting articles not chock-full of such alarmist banter? Are you a BP employee?
Yes, good point.
But there are mitigating facts. (1) The complexity of the thorium cycle and lack of established reprocessing systems make it somewhat as unproven as other forms of energy production, such as solar energy cells; (2) it is not clear to me that thorium is immune to use for nuclear terrorism; (3) thorium is still a limited resource, so it must be mined, and there is not enough of it to consider it to be a permanent source of fuel: it will eventually run out. It is not "renewable".
Thorium might be viable, as you say. But it is not a clear-cut case, in my opinion.
I personally prefer renewable forms of energy. I liken burning anything that we dig up to "burning the house to heat it". The plant life of the entire world use the energy from the sun: why can't we? Why must we dig things up - sometimes hazardous things - and burn them? As a species we can do better.
Seriously check out this guys submissions. Mdsolar is 100% TROLL.
This isn't a knee jerk reaction at all.
Where does the signature go?
No.
Nuclear is the present and future for our energy needs.
Perhaps if we built plants that weren't complete junk this wouldn't happen.
Instead of phasing out nuclear power plants, why not just phase out incompetent managers.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Of course the US could make such vows. However, neither the US nor Germany can actually make good on such promises. And if they could, they should instead retire the equivalent amount of coal fired power.
...unicorn farts then?
In a debate on TED talks, taking the pro-nuclear side, Stuart Brand said something that sums up the whole thing: "I am not so much pro-nuclear as I am pro-arithmetic."
The anti-nukes keep making assertions about how we "don't need nuclear or fossil fuels" that are violations of basic arithmetic.
Assuming we're to be permitted to continue having a technological civilization, of course, which is not, perhaps, a given.
As Churchill said, 'Americans can be counted on to do the right thing only after all other options have been exhausted.'
So, what you're saying is, the right thing is one of the following:
Since this is Slashdot, I'm sure you're rooting for the second option, so let me say: You first. Our economy is fucked, and you want to throw more on the common man? You first, my friend. You start paying the price premium that new, inefficient technology and infrastructure will require. And the rest of us will think about it.
(By think about it, I mean we'll likely opt for highly efficient, highly safe, highly cheap nuclear power.)
Title says it all. Promising you'll get something done well after you'll be out of office? Puleese - I know the Germans can't be stupid enough to buy into that! Oh, it's the self-defeating greens, maybe they are that stupid.
Name one case in all history where such a projection came true. In this case, the rising costs of power will turn the popular view around, I suspect, and the next politician will be singing a different tune. Or the one after.
As a poster above said -- Japan paid a price to teach us how not to do it. It'd be ignorant to throw that lesson away.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
I would bet a very large amount of money that Germany has not shut down their nuclear power by 2022.
These plants are already built and relatively cheap to maintain versus the cost of building all new alternative energy plants.
Just my $.02
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
The problem is nobody wants a new nuclear facility in their "backyard". I think the trick is to just build a few out in the mountains or deserts where old military based used to be, close enough to supply major cities but not obviously there. Make them all state of the art, don't talk about it, don't ask about it. Then when the energy crunch comes and everyone is stuck with rolling brownouts... "We have a solution!"
Tada!
After all the govt is allowed to keep matters of national security private, it's less of a stretch than feeling people up at the airport.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
sorry guys, i stopped at "mdsolar writes"
I believe you've all been trolled.
Uh huh.. And of course, NOBODY would respond to power generation being costly by making power consumption costly. Which means it would never make people in cold winters freeze to death or people in hot summers go into heat stroke.
Nor will the diversion of resources into building all these alternative, expensive power generation facilities impact any other activity which uses those resources or .. money. Because money and resources are unlimited, and if we're using them to get away from nuclear power nothing bad can possibly happen.
I got news for you. Life is dangerous. You can appreciate the dangers of nuclear power because you worked with it. Apparently you don't appreciate the dangers of things like wasteful spending. Oh sure, its not a good thing but it can't be lethal. Its just money! Yeah.. you think stuff like that because there aren't burned out buildings and dead bodies or there isn't an acute chain of events like earthquake>tsunami>meltdown. Waste just costs us ability to alleviate problems because we're doing what we can to maintain what we've got. No terrorism needed.
This terrorism shit pisses me off. Most years, swimming pools are more dangerous than terrorism. Every year, automobiles, fatty foods, and plain old rage/greed/jealousy are more dangerous than terrorism. I promise, the solution is not to make everything a bit worse now in order to to fend off a terrible thing that may or may not actually happen.
Not to mention, oh wait no I totally am going to mention, even if we did away with nuclear power, it doesn't even eliminate the possibility of a dirty bomb.
They are simply going to buy the difference from other countries (like Nuke-heavy France)... and declare victory, like all politicians do.
Germans can't be stupid enough
Germany basically lost the 20th century due to their own stupidity. Now they're trying to prop up Europe's deadbeat nations by leveraging their own banks and public finances. What basis do you have for dismissing yet more bone head maneuvers?
makes increasing our use of nukes more attractive. Fuel is going to be cheaper. When other nations start getting back into nuclear power to help cope with rising petroleum costs, our nuclear engineering industry will have a leg up with a new generation of safer designs.
We are assuming better designs, aren't we? Or are we entertaining the possibility of a crash construction program with old designs from the 1970s? If that's the case we'd be better off taking a pass along with everyone else.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Merkel vows to replace nuclear power with alternatives that do not increase greenhouse gases or shackle the economic growth
Pixie dust and unicorn piss?
I was watching a Nova documentary on the weekend about the issue of power in the US. it came out after Fukushima and there was this one guy who used to be an activist against nuclear power in the 70's talking about it. He said something along the line of even after the Fukushima disaster it's still a viable solution.
The documentary went on to show how newer models were being built to be safer. They were starting to standardize and simplify their models of plants to make them more safe. One thing for instance was the water tanks were above the reactors so if there was a complete loss of power and diesel generators failed gravity would still be able to pump cooling water into the reactor for a period of time(until the tank runs out something like 1-3 days).
The reactors that are a problem are the ones built in the 70's these need to be phased out, the U.S. hasn't built a new reactor since it was banned in the 70's. This scares the hell out of me. Proper construction and disposal of waste could be a lot cleaner than coal.
Well if EGS/HDR Geothermal pans out, then absolutely.
It'd be available nearly everywhere on earth, have an uptime capacity factor similar to nuclear reactors, and it's looking like they wouldn't even require much water, since it seems like liquefied CO2 is a better working fluid.
That said, it'd be interesting if Geothermal got anywhere near as much federal funding and financing as nuclear does.
___
But the better question I guess isn't so much should we get rid of old nuclear plants.
It's if it makes financial and geopolitical sense not to make new ones.
Which is actually a much easier question to answer.
I am certain that the ultimate decisions for dealing with our current nuke waste stockpile will be to build IFRs or some way to burn it up. It is just plain cheaper than to come up with burial for 20 to 200K years.
Likewise, we will certainly re-start the thorium work that the USA did in the 60s. In particular, I suspect that General Atomic is hard at work on re-starting this program.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Name one case in all history where such a projection came true. In this case, the rising costs of power will turn the popular view around, I suspect, and the next politician will be singing a different tune. Or the one after.
You are completely missing that this is already the government after - a government composed of the two parties that are most nuclear-friendly and that had already committed to extend the planned phase-out of nuclear power (product of a social democrat/greens government in 2000) when Fukushima happened.
I'd like to see a nuclear pilot plant project, where small (<200MW) next-gen reactors are deployed so that we can get some operational hands-on time with these designs before we start phasing out the big BWRs and PWRs, and before we just commit our resources to big multiple GW reactor complex. I find it difficult to believe that nuclear power won't eventually become the major part of our accepted energy inventory, even if in the short term, there's a retrenchment.
Has anyone of you been in Germany lately...? It is incredible if you drive through the country in most southern parts. Full of photo-voltaic roofs on buildings and everywhere.. You can see the power generated by all photo voltaic in Germany here.. http://www.sma.de/en/news-information/pv-electricity-produced-in-germany.html
Of course still it might be tough for them to generate 100% of power needed using alternate energies.. But they are on the right way.
Of course the media in North America and other parts of the world influences you in a way which makes you believe it is impossible to replace Nuclear power.
In any case i believe it is the only way forward. And of course a switch away from Nuclear power - is super easy for countries like the U.S. (You have more then enough space to generate all the power required.)
I have myself installed software in a plant where the produce today 20000 panels for 1.7 x 1 meter large solar panels... (only the very special glass sheets) (and that is of course only a part of what is being produced right now.)
So yes they will make a switch away from Nuclear power and they will make it in a good way.
5% of the area of Germany are required to generate 65% of the energy needed today used by wind energy.
Of course the wind is not always blowing and the sun is not always shining - but we will soon be able to generate gas from wind energy .. and we are already since a long time able to store electrical energy using Pumped-storage hydroelectricity. (see for instance this concept http://www.ringwallspeicher.de/images/Ringwallspeicher-Hybridkrafwerk-m.jpg)
Yes this means we have to change our landscape in some areas -- but this is a real low price compared to be unable to be on our earth anymore.
If you cannot believe what's happening i suggest you come to Germany and take a look there. (also Virtually :))
By the way in Austria we never started to use Nuclear power .. this is what happened to our only nuclear power plant: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zwentendorf_Nuclear_Power_Plant (or here .. http://www.nuclear-power-plant.net/index.php?lang=en&item=Home)
Dietmar
Ah everyone does realize we survived over 50 years of using electricity without a single nuclear power plant? By the 70s they were a major source of electricity but they have never been the primary source and it's unlikely they'd ever become the main source which makes it an unlikely source to replace coal. Do the math. If we started in earnest today with a massive program of building nuclear power plants it would take decades, easily 30 to 50 years to replace coal. It'd never actually stop because before you replaced coal half the plants would need replacing. In the Slashdot Universe Solar is a poor option but if you put solar cell on all the houses where it's practical the problem would largely go away especially if you did the same with businesses. If they had ten years ago required all new house over 250K in value to have 50% solar and all over 500K to have a 100% solar we'd be on our way to fixing the mess. Sure it'd add 10% to the cost but they pay for themselves. All houses below the Mason Dixon line should have solar hot water. It's cheap to install and would save a huge amount of energy. Once we switch over to all high efficiency blubs there'll be a huge reduction in demand especially if they can get LED blubs affordable. Add more insulation and more thermopane windows. Saving energy is the fastest way to close the gap. Obama got laughed at for pointing out the fact that if people would keep their tires inflated properly we'd save more oil than is in the arctic reserve. No one claimed he was wrong they simply thought the comparison was silly because we don't believe in conserving to fix a problem we're into consuming not conserving. Everyone wants a solution that allows us to go on wasting. Sorry unless you want to build a Dyson sphere we will run out of sources eventually and even a Dyson sphere is based on the idea of using all available energy. I guess a Dyson Sphere is the ultimate example of peak energy.
Or, you do the smart thing and build the breeder reactors right next door to the 'normal' reactors. Then you just have a few trucks moving the rods from one building to another a few hundred yards away.
Lucky for everyone involved, this is just political grandstanding. Nothing's actually going to get done about it.
And butterflies and unicorns.... Look, you want electricity? Then nuclear in some form is in our future for a long time. Admittedly, older reactors are poorly designed behemoths should be phased out in favor of passive designs and thorium fuel, but this is going to take time. Meanwhile the 160 exajoules of energy that oil provides to civilization each year is starting to decline due to plain old depletion of positive EROEI liquid hydrocarbons (Crap, we've got lots of). This is *not* the time to be thinking of taking out nuclear too. Radiation is dangerous. Starvation is more so.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
There are only three positions here:
You believe in global warming and therefore support nuclear power.
You don't believe in global warming and don't believe in nuclear power.
You do believe in global warming, and don't believe in nuclear power - thereby qualifying you as a brainless, back-to-the-mud-hut Luddite nitwit whose views no reasonable human being should listen to.
Of course, there is a tiny minority of a fourth position - those who don't believe in global warming and do believe in nuclear power - but no one ever listens to them. Economic growth, improved medicine, better life for all of Earth's billions, all the good things we know are tied to increased energy production...who wants that kind of crap?
I'm sure some will disagree with me but I think the best response to the disaster in Japan is not to try to move away from nuclear power but to push for quicker modernization of our nuclear power. Fukushima, like almost all nuclear reactors currently in use, was a old outdated design built 30+ years ago and designed 40+ years ago. Virtually all modern nuclear reactors designs, and there are several different types, have moved away from the active safety mechanisms that are used in these old designs to passive safety mechanism that require no intervention or power to occur. It's like the difference between your typical car breaks and air breaks. If you're car's breaks fail you've got no breaks and you can't stop. If air breaks fail, they are engaged and you automatically stop. More modern designs also have the advantage of greatly improving the nuclear waste situations through reprocessing and ability to use different fuels.
The sad reality is that trying to "Phase out" Nuclear power will most likely just result in extending these outdated designs even further past their original design life expectancy and further delay modern nuclear power. This will just make these types of disasters even more likely rather than protecting us from them.
I'm all for using more renewable power but it has to be done in a sensible, well planned way and not as a knee-jerk reaction to a disaster.
So Merkel is saying: Let's be more "green" by wasting a vast amount of money to replace nuclear energy with a large increase in open-cast strip mining for coal and/or extra drilling for oil and gas mostly in natural wildernesses, which we can then burn and make many tons more CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions every year.
My only question is how is it even possible that she or at least most other Germans have not had the blindingly obvious "Oh Wait..." moment yet?
There was a piece on NPR about this about a week ago: http://bit.ly/mnZf5r Quite interesting to listen to this in its entirety (about 46 min). The reactions from listeners to that program were markedly different from what the slashdot crowd generally seems to think.
We have been lead to believe that there aren't any safer nuclear power generation technologies. That's simply not true!
See: Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors for a perfect example. An amazing story.
Which was the issue that was being solved by the INTEGRATED fast reactor.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Given the info at this page and the seeming MLM-scheme detailed on this page I'm rather inclined to believe the less altruistic motivation, but I could be mistaken. Ah, well. At least his commentary is generally well-written.
Funnily enough Germany is actually exporting solar power to France, because nuclear power can't provide power during peak hours and solar does. Germany is one of the biggest solar producers, with a capacity of almost 17GW.
http://www.energydelta.org/en/mainmenu/edi-intelligence/latest-energy-news/special-report-solar-power-aids-german-nuclear-shutdown
1) Thorium was used in Ft. St. Vrain, and did great (though the backside of the plant was a disaster, the frontside was fine). And reprocessing can come later once the program is RESTARTED.
2) You are kidding, right? Thorium is not fertile. At best, a dirty bomb is all that they could get. And it is easy enough to get thorium and process it NOW.
3) At Mountain Pass, CA, rare earth minerals were mined for 30 + years. During that time, they amassed a large quantities of other elements that were considered pollution. In fact, it was part of what shut down the mine. What element? Thorium. We have LARGE quantities of it being seen as waste. In addition, Only India is known to posses more Thorium than America
Now, I agree that AE is useful. I think that we MUST continue forward with it. But it is insane to say that we must move to just one form of power. Instead, we should have a mixed input of energy in which no one single item is more than 1/3 (if not 1/4) of our input stream
Just guessing, but it has been some time since you were an nuke engineer.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Of course the US can do the same. We too can vow to phase out nuclear power. Now, whether we can replace it with renewable energy is a different matter. I don't like nuclear power, but those that vow to pare back their energy use by a large margin, or won't complain if electric rates were substantially higher, can form a line on the left. Or the right, I don't care which side. I, for one, will try to chose the middle.
Good. More fuel for us then.
No problem. Can it keep its aluminum smelters running without it is another issue....
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
A couple comments on this.
87% of all statistics are made up on the spot. Twenty bucks says that GPs assertion that nuclear is a tenth the cost of solar is one of them.
You may know more about this than I do. I have been out of the nuclear field since 1981. I used to do reactor physics simulations at American Electric Power. But my recollection of alternative fuel cycles is a little dated.
But even if the cycle that you refer to is feasible, is it worth it? It is undoubtedly complex, and as you know, the cost of safety compliance is extremely large. What about the alternatives? Solar technologies, along with high voltage transmission and also energy storage technologies, are not so complex. The technology is not cost-competitive with oil or coal, but it has other benefits (it is renewable and it would free us from dependence on OPEC), and the technology is certainly there. And it is completely safe, and solar energy collection can also be deployed locally (even in the home), to give us a distributed energy production system that is resilient to centralized failure.
Perhaps the best thing to do is not have government decide on the best solution, but to let the market decide. But in that case, each source of energy should bear its full costs. These should include the intangible cost of removing a limited resource from the ground, the costs of R&D and refinement of each technology, the costs of defending the associated infrastructure (the way that we use the Fifth Fleet to defend our access to oil), and the geo-political costs (e.g., the huge political costs of maintaining relations with a part of the world that is suspicious of us).
Countries don't decide anything. A society has no mind of its own; it is merely a collection of unique, thinking individuals.
It is the individuals at the top of the power pyramid -- the individuals who run the business of government -- that make the decisions.
Yes, your guess is right. I was a nuclear engineer until 1981. I did reactor physics simulations at American Electric Power.
But isn't it the case the a thorium cycle produces plutonium? I can't recall, but I thought that it did.
In light of recent developments ( http://money.cnn.com/2011/06/08/news/companies/oil_exxon/?hpt=hp_t2 ), this is obviously the perfect time for such a move!
</sarcasm--irony--28 days is considered significant? it's not like we're talking about a zombie outbreak here>
This stuff is so skitso, does anyone want to live in the dark with a shit mobile phone for computing?
Before the tsunami, the CEO of Exelon ( a leading nuclear power plant operator in the United States)
stated that nuclear power was not competitive with natural gas, let alone coal.
Investors are reluctant to finance nuclear power, it is not only only-competitive but one accident can totally destroy the value of the generating plant.
Yeah, that is the theory. However that Merkel government has had huge problems getting new coal plants approved. Most of the authorisation for that kind of thing is the provence of the LÃnder (sort of the German equivalent of US states) where there is a lot of resistance both from the populace and from the local and LÃnder governments. Due to this pressure the federal government has had to keep the incentives for building solar and wind (especially offshore) much better than they wanted. I expect that the nuclear powerplans will mostly be replaced by a combination of renewables and gas plants.
My vote is for more decentralized power generation using nuclear batteries.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2050039,00.html
They are small. They don't rely on full blown nuclear fission to create power. They are maintenance free. Pretty much every failure mode is that they shut down - no secondary equipment required, the shutdown is built-in to the nature of the reaction.
Bury one in a concrete vault in every neighborhood. If some idiot manages to open it up he'd be on fire by the time he gets close enough to mess with one - they run pretty hot.
They'll run for a dozen years or so, then you swap them out with a new one. You recycle the old one, the amount of unusable nuclear waste is about the size of a baseball.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Amazing.... ... talking heads say "We need oil! There's no other viable alternative"
When BP spills some oil in the Gulf of Mexico (which shuts down tourism and fishing businesses along the Gulf Coast, and has a real potential to affect the eco system for 30 years in a 5,000 sq mile area)
When Fukushima spills some nuclear material (also hurting fisheries, tourism, and displacing families in a 400 sq mile area for a few years)... talking heads say "Nuclear reactors are unsafe!!! There are alternatives!!!"
AM I ON CRAZY PILLS OR IS THERE AN AGENDA HERE?!?!
Mod me down, I shall become more off-topic than you could possibly imagine.
Ain't gonna happen. Unless we no longer give a dadgum about global warning, or wish to sit around our fires spinning yarns about the good old days when you could plug a metal wire into the wall and light would miraculously appear, and how you could cook your gruel without a fire.
It shouldn't be a problem to do away with nukes (or coal, natural gas, oil, hydro). Once the grid is updated, you can check off your favorite sources of power and designate the ones you don't want. Then, when your preferred sources are down (when the wind isn't blowing), your utility will shed load by switching you off.
That's the market solution to getting rid of nukes (or any other power source). Any volunteers?
[Sound of crickets]
Have gnu, will travel.
Sometimes I am so happy that the nerds on slashdot don't rule the world. Most of us, with our simplistic and linear, self-righteous opinions which have no basis in the real world. I mean, whoever says nuclear power is unsafe as it is. It is NOT. It is unsafe in the hands of greedy corporations (general rule), ignorant/incompetent governments (dime a dozen), and yes, terrorists (in countries like Pak). And environmental nuclear damage *cannot* be cleaned/remediated, which makes it different from other forms of energy production.
I mean, only on slashdot can an out of context quotation from a science *fiction* be modded as insightful in this context. I mean, seriously people, get out of your basements, and understand our as yet infantile human race.
PS:- As a PhD in hard sciences and an frequent enough slashdot reader, I do qualify as a geek. Posting as AC because I just realized I didn't login.
This is a journalism 101 template isn't it?
China has started an LFTR program and has a very active breeder program, as well as an aggressive program to clear IP rights of western LWR designs in their own varieties. If you hear a giant sucking sound somewhere around 2020, it might be the entire multi-trillion dollar energy market moving east.
Good grief, the reactors melted down, and nobody was killed or injured, AFAIK. The tsunamis rolled in and whole towns disappeared. Shouldn't we, perhaps, try to mitigate the effects of tsunamis before worrying about reactors?
How many people have been killed by tsunamis since Chernobyl? .... gee, I don't know, 400,000? .... vs ... Chernobyl ... "A UNSCEAR report places the total confirmed deaths from radiation at 64 as of 2008. The World Health Organization (WHO) suggests it could reach 4,000.[10]" ( quoted from wikipedia ). Yes, some people died immediately from the explosion, I think a few tens of people.
We are letting anti-nuclear politics rather than facts decide our critical priorities.
BTW, the Fukushima deaths were directly attributable to the tsunami, NOT the explosions and radiation after impact.
Second, Coal use is a FAR worse danger. Coal mining and burning releases far more radioactive dust (Thorium and Uranium) than Nuclear power does. It kills more people every year than the entire history of nuclear power. In the US alone, there are no confirmed deaths, ever from Nuclear Power Plants (though doctors do estimate that Three Mile Island may have killed one to three people from cancer). In the past 100 years, over 100,000 people have died in coal mining alone.
Safety is relative. Relative to Coal, Nuclear Power is safe. Same for Deep Sea Oil Drilling, and even Natural Gas. But the main difference is that the theoretical worst case scenario for Nuclear Power endangers civilians, while Coal kills employees.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
The decision to phase out nuclear power is essentially a decision to burn coal. Wind is not a realistic alternative, solar will never be viable. Both of these "green" technologies have crept into the territory of public-policy fraud. Natural gas is plentiful at the moment but is a short-term solution. Nuclear is the only environmentally-sound solution.
The problem is that the U.S. nuclear industry is largely based on simplistic reactor designs originating from military research. While the industry has done a great job at improving operational safety, the design basis of the plants has advanced very little because of lack of research. Fukushima clearly indicates that the design basis for BWRs was inadequate despite improvements. If this were an airplane, all airplanes of that model would be grounded. It is somewhat reasonable to demand that plants like Browns Ferry and Vermont Yankee should be "grounded" until their defense in depth is dramatically improved. It should be emphasized that electrical production, especially nuclear, is immensely profitable. Few investments are guaranteed to show return over 50 or 60 years. It is fair to demand that the design basis be top-notch. While the industry looks at things like SOERs (significant industry operating events) they don't do much to challenge the original design basis. The culture of "conservative decision making" discourages improvements thus hurting safety in the long run.
Some of these upgrades are obvious:
Other than shuffling your core, storing spent fuel beside your reactor is stupid.
Backup power is cheap so install extra. In some configurations you can also use it for peaking sales.
Water tanks are cheap so have lots of extra water for the unit. This buys you emergency response time.
However, nuclear power is the only solution. There are types of reactors such as the thorium cycle and the CANDU design that are dramatically safer than all current U.S. plants. It is only the vested interest of big companies that is keeping us from moving forward.
As a german, i am really astonished, how the nuclear engergy industry has turned most posters into "nuclear lemmings". Where is the "yes we can" nation ? Where is the nation with the engineers that can do the job ?
The US have better preconditions than germany in using sun und wind energy (see e.g. http://www.clca.columbia.edu/papers/sun&wind-1.pdf). You just have to move your butt and do something instead of just sitting dumb parroting "nuclear engery is fine". Build solar power, build windparks, build DC transmission lines, build power storages (e.g. compressing air, ...). The fuel for renewable engeries is there for free and unlimited ...
There are many reasons to abandon nuclear energy, the most important for me:
1) The waste: Hopefully, thousands of generations will follow us. Every single generation will have to deal (e.g. evade polluting ground water,move it from one hole to another, etc) with the waste we produced in just 3-6 generations ... . That's selfish and unethical.
2) The need for "heros": In case the of the "maximum credible accident" as in Fukushima, you have to send in real people to work in 4Sievert/h environments. In the soviet union, they just ordered them to do so, in Fukushima the typical japanese"mindsetting" ensures enough people are there to handle the job. But what do you do in a democracy in this case ? Call for "heros" ? It's unethical to rely on a technology that can enforce a situation where you have to accept to badly damage the worker's health.
3) The limited resources: The nuclear resources are very limited. They will be gone in 2-3 generations at its best. The wars for the last resources will start ealier, I think no one can tell exactly, when. Again hopefullye thousands of generations will follow us. It's unethical to use up the resources in just a few generations when there is no need to do it.
For germany, it is fine that we are the first. We move our butt. We can continue to grow in these markets and technology. All other nations must follow (it's just when, not if).
Small amounts that can be burned up. Generally, the amount of waste from Thorium is a fraction of the uranium cycle.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
the most dangerous substance known to man....
You should perhaps re-examine the data.
Botulinum Toxin
Could the US Phase Out samzenpus?
No brain, no pain.
I just love it, love it love it.
You are thinking in the wrong way. We already HAVE THIS FUEL, only we call it waste. By burying it NOW, it will be 200K years worth of poison. Longer than man has been on this planet. IFR was meant to take this waste, add a LITTLE bit of fresh fuel to start the process and then BURN IT UP. In fact, if we had a number of IFRs, the waste that we have would last over a 100 year WITHOUT mining a thing from anywhere. The idea was to burn the current waste and then bury the real waste in the reactors, on-site, and it would be less than 200 years. The IFR will cost about double (or was it 3x) what a regular reactor will costs. The reason is the integrated portion. However, we can burn up our fuel, get energy, and solve the waste issue.
As to letting the market place decide WRT to our waste, well, we already took this issue on back in the 60s when we started atomics for power program. We have this waste. It has to be solved. We can either make loads of fuel with it, and make it safe, or bury what we have, at I believe, a much higher costs (you have to include whatever replaces this).
As to the real market place, we currently subsidize our oil, our coal, our natural gas, our nukes, and all of our AE programs. We need to roll these back, except perhaps for AE (to help it get off the ground) as well as R&D for all the fields. While I do not want to continue the operating subsidies that we have for fossil fuels and nukes, we should continue doing R&D such as helping companies convert Coal to Natural gas
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Yes, you are right. I was not trying to be exact.
Although western Europe is hardly earthquake-free, once you look away from collision zones of the Urals (eastern Europe, I know), Alps, and a large chunk of Scandinavia, there are large swaths of land free of earthquakes in a couple thousand years of historic record. There are also plenty of rivers to provide cooling water.
There is evidence of tsunamis, perhaps from the Canary Islands, but further south; avoiding the lower Atlantic shores would be more paranoia than prudence, but it sea water is not the only available cooling water, unlike Southern California.
Germany still has coal deposits, but it makes no sense for Germany to do without nuclear power.
Yes they are. Where, pray tell, does the carbon in the Jews come from?
Oh, fine. So we pretend that we can walk away from the nuclear daemon that we need but fear -- and keep burning stuff to operate our energy-intensive civilization. And as we get accustomed to periodic power outages like much of the third world --- our TVs and internet connections going down regularly, to say nothing of the lights... Sorry, if we can't embrace the nuclear daemon then we need to get really serious about fusion. This burning stuff and running the elevators on the wind and tides is really just so much wishful thinking. Dispatchable power needs to be reliable -- and none of this alternate energy stuff is. Get a grip... if I am on a heart-lung machine and talking to my specialist across an internet connection don;t tell me I am going to die because the sky clouded over.
Only if we want to stick our head in the sand and ignore our best safe, low-impact energy source.
Sure - shut them down and burn more coal, brilliant.
Technically, its possible.
Practically, its impossible at the current time, for too many reasons to go into, but the biggest obvious wall in the way is the economic one, which of course also has about a billion side effects. We're not going to destroy our economy, that'd be stupid. Let Germany do it, let them make the mistakes, and we can do it right the first try by learning from them. Of course, the reality of it is, Germany can't actually do it either and this is all just political posturing.
Long Term Practicality, the planet is likely to see its first man made fusion reactor that is self sustaining once started and actually produces additional power for output THIS YEAR (fingers crossed here), in which case we should just pretty much sit on our nuclear plants just like they are until we can take it to the next level of practical production of power with fusion reactors.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
You make a good point, that by operating this type of reactor, we might actually decrease the hazard that currently exists, while also producing power.
What would be the proliferation (terrorism) risks?
First: it's possible to phase out nuclear power in Germany faster than proposed by the chancellor. There are some issues, but none is a major issue nor a blocker.
Second: it would be even easier for the US to phase out nuclear power. 229 vs. 32 people per sqare kilometer.
cb
china is winning the energy race, it builds a new nuke power plant every 6 months. more energy means more production which means more control over the world.
If TWR works as advertised all existing nuclear, coal and natural gas reactors in the US should be phased out.
Personally the "junk shot" approach to energy policy is unwise if there is a single technology that addresses all issues. Pick a fricking technology that works and go big.
I don't understand why a nuclear accident is enough to make us seriously consider phasing out nuclear power on such large scales, but other unsafe things humanity does don't have the same effect. Alright, Fukushima was a disaster. Obviously the long-term benefits of nuclear power, the decades of power generation without incident, are not worth the risk that this could happen again. (My opinion is that this is not true, but never mind...) But rebuilding New Orleans again is OK? Katrina killed a lot more people than the Fukushima plant; why are we perfectly OK with going back in there and, to paraphrase Monty Python, building another castle on top of the swamp until it stays up?
overreact much?
Germany are going super green by like building coal to replace the nuclear power plants http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/mar2007/gb20070321_923592_page_2.htm l... (apparently coals green now XD) Two thumbs up greens :)! And now some are advocating to follow the Germans footsteps in America. I swear anon are running the greens campaign for the lulz.
Last time I looked there was only one France and they haven't done any reprocessing for a couple of years anyway.
Reprocessing is very very difficult, expensive and is really only done for research, proof of concept and political reasons. Spend ten seconds thinking about the materials involved, their high melting points, high strength, the amount of radiation that means all work has to be done remotely and the problem that you are working with neutron sources so any gear used in reprocessing is also going to become radioactive over time making maintainance etc difficult.
Next time learn about your subject matter before pretending to spread such absolutes around as "one of the few countries that does NOT reprocess their spent nuclear fuels". I'll assume you are simply embarrassingly ignorant instead of the other alternative of being a lying, manupulative weasel of a ignorant fanboy of 1970s nuclear that thinks any transparent lie is worth it if it can fool a few people that do not know better. The nuclear world has moved on to other things and left the reprocessing debate to those that know nothing about the subject other than what was in the 1970s PR.
Instead of knee-jerk reactions to "the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl" - I laughed when a reported said that. You mean the only accident since Chernobyl?
How about just using a little common sense:
- Don't build nuclear reactors on fault lines where you expect an earthquake of magnitude 7.0 or more, move them and use utility lines to bring in the power.
- Don't continue to use reactors past their "expiry" date - shut them down and re-build.
- Use a newer generation CANDU design.
- If someone brings up the fact that the containment unit isn't built thick enough, or there are problems with the cement, look into it before there is a problem.
- Realize that coal and oil burning don't have zero health impacts.
...and that all it will be. An announcement. Just like Germany is doing now.
Does anybody really think that anything announced by politicians "to be done 10 years from now" really means that it will get done?
Really?
Neither the US nor any other country should phase out nuclear power until there is a firm policy on how to deal with the nuclear waist.
When the US started the first large scale use of nuclear fission, it created an obligation to either store or otherwise render safe the resulting spent fuel. At the time it was believed that technological advances would eventually render the fuel safe. In the ensuing 50 years this has been shown not to be the case. One then might ask why we should continue to produce this spent fuel given that we have no way to deal with it.
The reason is that the spent fuel problem does not scale with the amount. The danger of storing 25 dry casks and 500 is approximately the same. For example it is not more difficult to keep a potential terrorist away form a sight with 500 dry casks then it is for a single cask. The issue then becomes keeping constant watch over this spent fuel. So long as a plant continues to operate, its operators will have financial incentive to maintain its spent fuel storage facilities. Once a plant is shut down it reverts to the public or becomes a mandate to a company who no longer has any interest in doing more then appeasing a regulatory body.
In addition, an operating plant has use and value, but once it is closed, a large portion reverts to nuclear waist. It is in everyones best interest to operate plants as long as can be done safely so as to maximize the value of to society of the waist they will inevitably produce. Closing a plant with 20 years of life does not reduce the amount of clean-up required to close the site.
The reality of the situation is that for the foreseeable future the only two options for current nuclear sites is to continue to operate a nuclear facility in the safest manner possible or turn the site into heavily secured nuclear dump.
Some final perspective, if Romulus and Remus had build a nuclear plant at the founding of Rome in 753 BC and somehow kept managed to keep the waist safe from war, natural disaster, and neglect to the present day, we would still be less then half way to "safe levels" of decay.
Strive to make your client happy, not necessarly give them what they ask for
You know, like you: An insignificant done nothing loser and troll, like yourself? Inquiring minds want to know.
This summary implies that cutting back on nuclear power is a good thing...which it most definitely is not.
As long as the companies building them don't build them near potential disaster areas and don't cut corners on safety measures the benefits outweigh the costs.
Check out Portugal's recent attempt to go green: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_Portugal
In 2001 they began a 10 year attempt to achieve 30% renewable (from 17%). They worked hard at it and achieved 45% renewable in 5 years.
We're not even trying.
Can't do attitude. Love it.
Argh; There are times that I hate this new in-line editing. :)
Ok, ZERO chance of proliferation. The idea is that the 'waste' is brought in, loaded into the reactor, and then is burned. At various times, parts of the fuel is brought out, WHILE RUNNING. IOW, ZERO COOL DOWNS. The fuel is brought into a processing room, and then processed, WHILE HOT. Not just radioactive, but thermally hot. Apparently, robotics has advanced enough that they did not have to cool it. In the processing room, the fuel is re-processed and only the true waste is pulled from it. NONE of it is capable of being used in a bomb (other than a dirty bomb). The active fuel remains in the processing room and is re-mixed and sent back into the reactor. With this approach, anything that is useful to a terrorists, well, I would love to see them head on in.
I would not want to depend on this for 100%, or even 25% of our electricity, let alone energy. HOWEVER, it does make sense to build a few of these and burn up all of our waste fuel.
I will say that I still believe that we should restart thorium. Ft. St. Vrain did just fine in terms of the reactor. It was sensors that had issues, along with a few other items.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Interesting. Of course there is the matter of transporting existing spent fuel, and new spent fuel as it is produced in existing reactors, to this type of facility. But even so, the advantage of being able to dispose of existing waste is compelling.
But what about existing reactors? The question posed was probably intended to ask whether we should shut down existing reactors (over time, of course).
Why should we? It's sustainable power that produces next to no carbon emissions. Better to spend the money which would go to removing it on instead making it safer and more widespread.
You're not kidding. There is only about 80 years of uranium left at the current rate of use. With a nuclear renaissance, most new plants would face a fuel shortage before they are fully paid off. The only low cost path for nuclear power is less and less of it.
It's mdsolar. Oooooh.
Well, setting a date is silly. Because no one knows what will happen two days from now.
New things are improved and invented weekly.
Fact is we (Earth) _is_ going to a world without 'unsafe nuclear power' and any unhealthy power-sources.
Those who work activly gets to this state earlier. And becomes more rewarded with improved life etc, then
those kicking and screaming that they dont want to go.
Stupid? I think not. But last I checked, the US was not a whole continent so maybe you should hold back on the 'stupidest' claims.
Nobody panics when things go "according to plan." Even if the plan is horrifying! If, tomorrow, I tell the press that, like, a gang banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it's all "part of the plan." But when I say that one little old mayor will die, well then everyone loses their minds! Introduce a little anarchy. Upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos.
- Joker, The Dark Knight
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0468569/quotes?qt0499831
The same applies to energy production. People die from oil wars, oil accidents, coal pollution, smog, etc. etc. but that is "normal". Nuclear pollution from Fukushima is not suppose to happen. Even if no one dies. Even if no one is in current significant danger.
How many dead in Iraq oil war? 100,000+? How many dead from the Japanese tsunami? 25,000+? How many dead in because of the tsunami causing flooding and meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi? 0. How many dead because of Chernobyl? Less than 100. Yet, what are people worried about...
PS. Ignore the number strewn around by Greenpeace by Chernobyl. They take entire population of the world, apply a wrong model to it (LNT) and then they calculate that 300,000 people *must have* died. By that model, in the US 95+% of all cancers is caused by the CT scanners. UNSCEAR actually did the real research and found out the reality - small variations in radiation do nothing.
Although those exposed as children and the emergency and recovery workers are at increased risk of radiation-induced effects, the vast majority of the population need not live in fear of serious health consequences due to the radiation from the Chernobyl accident. For the most part, they were exposed to radiation levels comparable to or a few times higher than annual levels of natural background, and future exposures continue to slowly diminish as the radionuclides decay. Lives have been seriously disrupted by the Chernobyl accident, but from the radiological point of view, generally positive prospects for the future health of most individuals should prevail.
http://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/chernobyl.html
The economy of the United States of America exists soley to support the Department of Defence Nuclear Weapons Program and has no other rational, or need for existance.
--
I'm talking about this decade - you know, the one with 2010 and 2011 in it. That's what is meant by "they haven't done any reprocessing for a couple of years anyway". You should pay attention to news instead of stale propaganda that has been through a lot of hands at a PR firm since it left anyone that can even spell Uranium.
Your second point about reprocessing should be amended because it misleads - it's not only "right now" that the process is far more expensive but to this point the entire history of nuclear fuel processing. While that may change some day because a lot of the costs are from capital and research, it has not changed yet so I can either charitably assume you are ignorant of what you are writing about or I could assume that you consider this issue important enough to try to fool the uninformed with deliberate lies.
What is it with this issue where there has to be a pretence of absolute perfection, an assumption that anyone that points out the merest blemish is a deadly enemy and an argument style that relies on the readers being too poorly informed to identify transparent lies? It's depressing to those of us that are interested in the leading edge of nuclear technology and not the propaganda of the 1970s designed to retain a status quo of expensive, dangerous white elephants bleeding the taxpayer dry.
There are options that can use spent fuel without reprocessing. Use google and drag your knowlege of civilian nuclear power kicking and screaming into at least the 1990s.
Although they aren't even up and running yet, Greece has been investing a ton of money into cold fusion as a means of powering their country. Although to some this may seem far-fetched, despite the lack of interest and funding from other governments, there has been a great deal of private venture capital being thrown at commercial cold fusion power solutions for the last decade. Oddly enough, I think the revelation of it's eminence and true potential, are now being realized by the powers that be, hence the recent talks by the likes of Germany about the abandonment of nuclear....
-Oz
That's is main interest. I no doubt that some of his opinions and submissions are done in good faith, but he stands to win in his business if people for fear does the investment in solar equipment.
For the US's south and southeast makes a lot of sense to invest in solar termal power, but is not something that can be used everywhere, and this is not taking into account the fact that most people around the world are still consuming far less energy than western Europe or USA. When that people manages to improve their standard of living they will need far more energy; even with increased efficiency, the huge numbers will make the demand to increase sharply.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
Seriously all these accidents are happening with first generation and prototype plants. The problem is the anti nuclear fanatics. The plants in Japan specifically should have been replaced at least 15 years ago. There is nothing cheap and cleaner for on demand fuel than nuclear. We need to invest in the tech rather than run away from it. Mandate that facilities must be demolished and rebuilt every 20 years. Pairing nuclear with solar, wind and thermal is obvious.
More specifically in the US we need the federal government to finance and push the construction of superconducting power lines of massive proportions with at least two lines supplying each state. The electrical equivalent of building the railroads. It will allow power plants at a distance. It will allow solar and the deserts in the south west to actually supply the bulk of electricity for the country with nuclear handling maybe 25% but being able to ramp to 200% if needed.
Let's take for a start the issue of supply and demand. Currently, the U.S. (and every one elses) power networks are designed to supply enough power to meet the demand no matter how ridiculous the demand happens to be. There is no doubt every house needs several appliances turned on at all times. Refrigerators cost us in power but preserve food and therefore should not be considered optional. Since the invention of air conditioning, people have been moving to warmer climates rapidly. People move to Florida, Southern California, Arizona and Texas all the time to live a "more comfortable life".
:
:
Having lived in Florida for 8 agonizing years, I can say from experience that air conditioning is a mandatory requirement. If we forget the issue that people don't really need it and they can adapt to the heat, we should focus on issues like the mold and rot which can destroy houses in that swamp in very short times without air conditioning. Property owners need to leave the air turned on in unoccupied houses to avoid destroying the property before renting or selling it. This is because we build houses in Florida the same way we do elsewhere in the country instead of adapting our construction techniques to the climate. Let's face it, adobe houses with no window glass worked in those climates for centuries before we chose to build pretty houses out of heat retaining materials on the outside and easily rotting materials on the inside. Because of the lack of a natural foundation (as Florida is a floating land mass), it is impractical to build upwards. Therefore houses are built relatively flat. Therefore, building a taller house which can be cooled from the top down is not possible. Instead, the houses are built longer and wider increasing their surface area that is baked in the sun, therefore requiring a great deal more cooling. And instead of making use of the underground water (which smells quite bad) to assist in the cooling, purely electrical means are used.
Let us for the moment suggest that we can't just go back and easily force everyone to build houses that are more efficient to cool. After all, in Florida, Texas and Southern California, the average household income is very low relative to the cost of living in the areas. This is because so many people choose to live in a location where they "Don't have to shovel rain" and where the heat is so brutal that is is really hard to motivate themselves to work harder than is necessary to simply sustain themselves. There are of course exceptions, but the masses of these states are quite lazy in comparison to people in warmer climates. Hell, in the northern states where it's not economical to have air conditioning, people go to the mall or to the pool to cool down, either way constantly moving. In the south, people simply stay inside their houses in the air conditioning to avoid the heat.
Now, we need to figure out how to balance the supply and demand scenario another way which is
a) non-intrusive to the people. Possibly even provide them enough "value" they'll rush to the store and pay for it themselves.
b) is cost effective enough that it costs the government less to enact it then to build a new series of power plants to compensate for shutting down the nuclear plants
1) Force the cable companies to either
a) eliminate set top boxes in favor of in television tuners
b) make all set top boxes which do no power themselves off when the TV is off (or at least switch them to 0.5w or less standby) illegal
A modern set top box without PVR uses 25 watts of power. With PVR can use 35-80 watts. We'll assume the balance of this is approximately 50 watts per box. When people turn off their TVs, they typically leave the set top box turned on. After all, even when they turn the box off, that little led is still on, so what's the difference. And the PVR doesn't work unless the box is turned on. Siting "http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/med_tel_percap-media-televisions-per-capita" and "http://www.
With regards to the USA, the big problem are the not nuclear power plants, but the many dozens of nuclear powered naval vessels, submarines and supercarriers, with which the USA exports the possibility of a nuclear holocaust to the shores of other nations, ignoring their independence and black-mailing them.
Luckily the russian (and now hindi and chinese) development of large, Mach 3 "shipwreck-class", highly manouverable missiles already made the CVN super-carrier design obsolete. If a country can accept radiation-poisoning her own territorial waters, there is no longer a technical difficulty in destroying the US CVN's, which attack or threaten that country.
Also, the new air independent internal combustion liquid oxygen propulsions and Stirling engines make noisy nuclear submarines obsolete in the face of super-silent conventional submarines, as developed by the germans and the swedes and also in service with south africa, australia, etc.
BTW, the CAPTCHA quiz text for submitting this comment is "Atheism", which I find offensive. I think Slashdot should be more observant about the people's 1st Amendment rights, considering rights enshrined in the 1stA are protected and extended under the umbrella of the 14th Amendment, so its observation is not optional, not even for private parties!
Yes, Germany seems to be going crazy, but here in Slashdot, there are pro-nuclear forces in number. This makes me happy. If you want to see better nuclear power, read up on LFTR (Liquid Thorium Fluoride Reactors).
As I am from Germany, I am very amused reading through the commentaries here. Most, if not all of the pro-nuclear fraction are simply ignoring the biggest factor against nuclear energy: The waste. What will you be doing today and in the future to avoid radioactive pollution of your, our environment with waste that will be deadly for at least several tenth of thousands of generations of man kind? The area around tschernobyl and around Fukushima will be unusable wasteland for a very long time, a time longer by several orders of magnitude than the written history... and so will be the areas where we will have to put the waste. As long as there is no actual solution for this problem, we should forbid ourselves to leave it deliberately to our children, our grandchildren and their grandchildren and so on.
As far as the german chancelloress ;-) announced their plans, it is of course of political nature. I and many other germans do not trust them. But there are actual plans, that can work, if the politicians find a way to work against the short-sighted financial interests of the energy companies. Greenpeace made a paper, that contained a plan to end up all nuclear power in germany until 2017, without buying any power from France or England, instead building gas plants and enhancing renewable energy sources. Further the paper proofed that it is possible to opt out of the cole plants until 2030something and, after that, to shut down the gas plants until 2050sth in favor of using renewable energy. It is based on a decentralized energy distribution with lots of smaller and more efficient plants than on what is going on now. many single examples have proven, that this is a possible way, but of course it works against the financial interest of the energy companies and its shareholders.
In my opinion we have a political problem here, not a technological. If there were laws to bild more energy efficient technologies, houses and vehicles, and if there were politicians with the guts to stand up against the economical-political-energy-complex we could bundle technological powers and knowledge to use the natural sources of energy like sun, wind and water in such an efficient way that we would never have to think of a technology which poisons our planet for unforseeable long times.
And one for the US-folks: You are about what?... 300 million people? The planet belongs to about... 7 billion people. So stop acting, if it was yours alone. Build insulated houses, stop driving fule-blasting cars and using air conditions wherever you are, if needed or not. If you want to be a super power, show the world, that you are able to take the responsibility that comes with that. Show us "Change we can believe in" ;-)
Cheers,
Digital Hayduke
And the amount of solar panel needed to provide the entire earth energy budget is 240km on a side in the Sahara.
Seems pretty certain that nuclear ISN'T "absolutely needed".
And how do you come to the wiered idea that people in the 70's thought the world might be cooling? ...
The fact that we have a Greenhouse effect was very well known at that time
Thats a lie. Coal plants don't kill anyone in germany.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Sure, Germany will provide a road map - to disaster.
You're not kidding. There is only about 80 years of uranium left at the current rate of use. With a nuclear renaissance, most new plants would face a fuel shortage before they are fully paid off. The only low cost path for nuclear power is less and less of it.
Idiot.
There's only 80 years of uranium from proven reserves in traditional mines with no recycling.
With recycling that goes to 100s of years
with unconventional sources like seawater extraction that goes to thousands of years.
And then there's thorium...
It's so good cause it's safe as houses and twice as good as coal and for times better than solar and eight times better than wind cause it doesn't kill migrate short rubber tailed finches in their migatory travels from the north pole to the south pole. Even if a Nuclear power plant blows up its still perfectly safe because it won't even burn your toast in the morning let alone give you skin cancer from putting banana skins on your face.
We need newer Nuclear Power stations because they are probably 100 times safer than the stupid old crappy reactors we have now. Mining uranium is perfectly safe because it doesn;t happen here and thats great. When we enrich uranium we are all enriched and we shouldn't waste any of the spent fuel because it make great nuclear power dildos to keep grandma happy in the colder months.
It's perfectly safe, I want one NOW in my backyard because its so good, there is no reason why we can't have twice, ten time more reactors, today!.
Even if we shut down production now, the "dangers" from nuclear energy are not going anywhere soon. Spent fuel rods stored on-site at the reactors and piles of nuclear waste that don't have a planned home will not go away by shutting down the existing plants. 20% of US power comes from Nuclear and it won't be easily replaced in the short term by renewables, so that means Coal or Natural gas. Neither are a panacea. I recently wrote an article to try and clarify some of these issues for myself and found the research to do it right really informative. Might help clarify some of the angles for people. http://www.baxleys.org/in-defense-of-nuclear-energy/
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
Actually, recycling gets you very little more, certainly not hundreds of years. The sea water idea is a bad joke and the molten salt reactor never worked right and had a hugely expensive cleanup cost.
Actually Italy has no nuclear power, has they shut down any reactor (the tree of them if I'm not wrong) after Chernobyl. But the government was on its way to reintroduce it, so this week-end they'll have a referendum on the matter. The government is so scared about it (the referendum) that tried two 'tricks' to avoid it, but it seems like Italians are gonna vote and they are all against atom.
Actually, recycling gets you very little more, certainly not hundreds of years.
Got a source for that bizzare claim?
The sea water idea is a bad joke
Sez who?
and the molten salt reactor never worked right and had a hugely expensive cleanup cost.
Who said anything about molten salt? You can burn thorium in conventional PWRs.
You need to read your own link better. Right there in the executive summary there's a table that shows total subsidies for nuclear around $1.3B, gas at around $2.1B, and for all renewables at about $4.8B. So you're talking more like 4 times. Also: this just counts current subsidies. Nuclear has had the benefit of an enormous R&D budget, which was almost exclusively paid for by the federal government. Much of the current subsidy to renewables just provides the same type of assistance to that energy source that the nuclear industry has already received.
Also: this analysis almost certainly doesn't count "off the books" costs of nuclear power to the gov't. Read about the Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act. In a nutshell: when the nuclear power industry was trying to get started in the fifties, they found that they couldn't obtain liability insurance at any price. No private insurer was willing to underwrite them, perceiving that the liabilities involved were potentially so immense that they couldn't effectively be insured against. So the federal government provided them with what amounts to a "pre-bailout" - the government has assumed the liability for any damages above $12 billion. In other words, the US government is providing free insurance to the nuclear industry, and I highly, highly doubt this cost has been incorporated into this cost analysis (certainly, I couldn't find any references to "indemnity" or "insurance" in the document.
So, to sum up: if you're going to compare costs, well, first, accurately represent them. Also, be sure that you count ALL the costs for each item.
Well, the majority of reactors will probably live out their lives and then be shut down.
And just thinking about it, I am wondering if can we build a small IFR reactor that can go on these sites and then finish burning the rest of the fuel. I mean, we were looking at small reactors, so why not an IFR type approach?
If we can get into the manufacturing approach, that would be CHEAP to do. It would already have storage, safety zone, electricity hook-ups, cooling, heck, even generators, security, trained ppl, etc. All that would have to be added was multiple new style reactors, along with a processing plant.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
You might want to read through these articles: http://www.theoildrum.com/tag/michael_dittmar
That is a clever idea. You should propose that idea to the industry. Are you still a practicing nuclear engineer?
I used to be a Geneticists that worked with lots of radiation. As such, I took classes, along with my general interest in science. Now, I am a Compter Scientist that is working on a manufacturing start-up. For the next decade, manufacturing esp. with robotics will be the place to be.
However, B&W HAD been working towards micro reactors (100-300 MWe sizes), which I thought made a lot of sense. Now, with Japan, that will be dead. But I think that by moving towards a IFR that burns up the fuel in-situ, then we could see something interesting.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Avoid topics with a question mark at the end, nothing new here. Germany's new nuclear policy is purely a political vote winning stunt.
And?
"It's enlessly amusing to see such incredible ignorance." - by Falconhell (1289630) on Monday June 13, @06:57PM (#36430124)
Look - we're not here to decipher your "hieroglyphics", and you're correct (especially about yourself, lol!).
"THE CONSOLIDATED ILLITERACY COLLECTION BY PROFESSOR FALCONDUMMY" (world reknowned master of illiteracy, lol!)
However, below?
I managed to do a translation of your "troll speak", and, with CONSIDERABLE effort, for the benefit of others here (and for their amusement at your expense trolling dolt) and, I have consolidated your single day 'fine effort' & attempts at writing properly (lol, not - 4 blunders in writing in a single day? Please... lol!) here:
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FROM -> http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2235170&cid=36430760
Still havent made me angry at all by Falconhell (1289630) on Monday June 13, @08:07PM (#36430760)
Ahem - it's "haven't" (see the apostrophe? Good - we knew you could, lol!) and, we still haven't managed to teach you how to write or spell properly either, lol!
(Wait, wait... read on, it only gets BETTER, lol!)
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FROM http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2235170&cid=36431020
its hillarious - by Professor FalconDUMMY (1289630) on Monday June 13, @08:07PM (#36430760)
LMAO! Hahahahahaha... Now that? That's HILARIOUS!
So you know?
The correct phrase, and spelling, is "it's hilarious" using the contraction for "it is" properly, and spelling hiliarious properly... apostrophes boy, learn about 'em!
(Not what you 'ScRiBBLeD' in your droolings on the printed page fool quoted above!)
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FROM -> http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2235170&cid=36429940
Personal I find the "free market" does a fine job of slandering itself. by Falconhell (1289630) on Monday June 13, @06:37PM (#36429940)
Personally speaking, the correct word & turn of a phrase here is PERSONALLY, not "personal" as you wrote (incorrectly as per your "hieroglyphics usual", lol!).
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FROM -> http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2222626&cid=36381748
Climate deniers have done a lot of damage to the credibilty of all scientists with their vile lies and obsufcation of the issue." by Falconhell (1289630) on Wednesday June 08, @07:27PM (#36381748)
LMAO - You've done CONSIDERABLE DAMAGE to the English lanuage Roman Maroni (see the film Johnny Dangerously, lol) and to your own attempts at "acting intelligent", because your spelling is HORRENDOUS!
(It's credibility and obfuscation, moron!)
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FROM -> http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2222626&cid=36381748
its endless fun hoisting them with their own petard of scein tific corruption. " by Falconhell (1289630) on Wednesday June 08, @07:27PM (#36381748)
Well, what about YOUR CORRUPTION OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE THERE, "Roman Maroni"? LMAO!
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This one take the cake:
FROM -> http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2231292&cid=36430236
Soemthing more complicated for me... Would have liked to arrive earlier but definately left on time! - by Falconhell (1289630) on Monday June 13, @07:13PM (#36430236)
It's "SOMETHING" and "DEFINITELY"