Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
Sure they could. Never underestimate the power of fear and ignorance, my friend.
...and the coal industry would be thrilled.
See: http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html
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
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!
Don't forget Big Oil and Big Coal. They would love the US to be nuclear free. There are plenty of lignite coal deposits and plenty of small towns just itching for toxic mine tailings to wind up in the ground water.
Realistically, lets close nuclear plants... the first gen ones. Replace those with passively safe breeding designs like TWR that can happily chug on fuel until it is plain old lead suitable for adding to paint chips. Done right, we can take the high level nuclear products from older reactors and use it for more than triggering NIMBY knee jerk politics near Yucca Mountain.
There is nothing wrong with nuclear power. We just need to move to designs of plants made after the conflict in Viet Nam, or ideally, designs made this millennium.
Are you referring to the fear and ignorance of saying a phase out of nuclear power is irresponsible? Or the fear and ignorance of saying nuclear power can never be safe?
I forgot which one we're supposed to side with.
Never underestimate the power of fear and ignorance
Fear, maybe, but ignorance? I'd say it's more an issue of trust. Not everyone can be a nuclear engineer, but most can smell the stink when the assurances they are given by them are contradicted repeatedly by empirical reality. When people who purport to know what they're talking about ridicule popular concerns about safety and accidents, they allow themselves to appear cavalier about those matters, which erodes public confidence even further.
Personally, I believe that nuclear energy should be part of the mix in the future. But the next time the impossible happens and a reactor melts down, don't try to convince me that it's no worse than standing next to a bunch of bananas.
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..
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?
Anything which deals in absolutes is probably fear and/or ignorance based. The truth usually lies somewhere in the middle.
Phasing out nuclear power in some geographical areas might not be the stupidest thing in the world. Banning it from a whole continent surely is.
Reading through the first and second pages comes up with such treats as "Fukushima meltdown could be template for terror", "sustainability experts: nuclear energy not essential", "radiation understated after quake" and "nuclear in 2018 more expensive than solar PV today". Definitely an agenda there, especially with the abuse of the word 'terror', regardless of whether or not the stories are credible.