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Member (Idle past 4175 days) Posts: 990 From: Burlington, NC, USA Joined: |
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Author | Topic: Is nuclear power safe?? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
fearandloathing Member (Idle past 4175 days) Posts: 990 From: Burlington, NC, USA Joined: |
dronester writes: I proffered the excellent idea of mini nuclear power plants (and micro hydro-power plants) in the Japan thread. Sadly, no one remarked about that particular post: Small Town Nukes
National Geographic Magazine
Small reactors can't address all the problems standing in the way of more nuclear investment, but they can address the biggest barriersthe economic ones, Besides costing less to build, some small reactors could be inherently SAFER, . . . No I checked it out, good info, there are many small plant designs..see my link in msg 15. also in 1st post. Although I feel way you do, lots of people don't take time or if it goes against their argument then they will ignore it. I guess one of the real questions should be...Do we trust the NRC? What could be done to make it better? Edited by fearandloathing, : No reason given.
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jar Member (Idle past 424 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
fearandloathing writes: I guess one of the real questions should be...Do we trust the NRC? What could be done to make it better? Right now, I would say that the answer is a resounding "NO!" In the US we have been trying valiantly to make reasonable regulation impossible. We have split control among multiple organizations, under funded and under staffed all of them, limited their authority. We decided that we did not want government overseeing and interfering with making a profit. Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!
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fearandloathing Member (Idle past 4175 days) Posts: 990 From: Burlington, NC, USA Joined: |
jar writes: fearandloathing writes: I guess one of the real questions should be...Do we trust the NRC? What could be done to make it better? Right now, I would say that the answer is a resounding "NO!" In the US we have been trying valiantly to make reasonable regulation impossible. We have split control among multiple organizations, under funded and under staffed all of them, limited their authority. We decided that we did not want government overseeing and interfering with making a profit. What do you suggest we do as far as regulation? My knowledge in area of regulation is sadly lacking.
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jar Member (Idle past 424 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined:
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We have a very long and tough job in the US to return to what I would consider reasonable regulation.
I think an almost essential first step would be to ban all corporate political contributions and severely limit corporate lobbying. But in the case of the Energy Sector, I favor returning to regulated limited utility monopolies where a single entity is granted exclusive access to a given geographic area. Consumer rates would be set by the regulating entity and there would be requirements for minimal level of service to EVERY home and business in the area. Discounts based on increased usage would be eliminated. The profit for the Utility would also be regulated as a percentage of return on investment. At the Federal Level, for example the NRC, we need to fully fund a large enough staff that is well paid and with staffing levels so that every site gets at least a thorough semi-annual inspection. The NRC also needs sufficient authority to actually enforce the regulations with the threat of jail, asset confiscation and termination and reassignment of the monopoly hanging over corporate officers. Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!
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fearandloathing Member (Idle past 4175 days) Posts: 990 From: Burlington, NC, USA Joined: |
jar writes: We have a very long and tough job in the US to return to what I would consider reasonable regulation. I think an almost essential first step would be to ban all corporate political contributions and severely limit corporate lobbying. But in the case of the Energy Sector, I favor returning to regulated limited utility monopolies where a single entity is granted exclusive access to a given geographic area. Consumer rates would be set by the regulating entity and there would be requirements for minimal level of service to EVERY home and business in the area. Discounts based on increased usage would be eliminated. The profit for the Utility would also be regulated as a percentage of return on investment. At the Federal Level, for example the NRC, we need to fully fund a large enough staff that is well paid and with staffing levels so that every site gets at least a thorough semi-annual inspection. The NRC also needs sufficient authority to actually enforce the regulations with the threat of jail, asset confiscation and termination and reassignment of the monopoly hanging over corporate officers. I agree, thanks for your view. Here is a little problem I have been having for past 4 months.I have 2 telephone poles on my property, both were rotting at ground, one was so bad it was leaning 20 deg or so from vertical, the only thing keeping it from falling was it had lines on it from 3 directions keeping it up like guy wires. I called Duke power and they came out and tied a rope to a tree in my back yard and used it to hold the pole more or less vertical, I was told they would be back in a week or so and replace it. This was around thanksgiving or so, Christmas got here and nothing had been done. I called Duke back and was told the pole was AT&T's and they had been informed. I called AT&T and was told it was news to them and they would come out and see. Lady for AT&T came out and inspected both poles and told me she would have both replaced in next week or so,as soon as work order was approved and their sub-contractor was scheduled.. 3 more weeks and nothing, so I called friend at fire dpt,being a public danger, city inspections came out and said he make few calls. I called NC utilities commission myself and 4 days later 2 new poles....took Duke 2 more weeks to move wires, Cable and AT&T were out in a day or so of them. Now I got 4 poles, old ones are tied with rope to new ones to keep them from falling, I guess it is time to call utilities commission again!! Somebody needs to be able to make them spend money on maintaining their infrastructure, proactive instead of reactive, I was told them poles were same ones from when this neighborhood was built in early 50's Edited by fearandloathing, : No reason given.
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Rahvin Member Posts: 4046 Joined: Member Rating: 8.3
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Hi fearandloathing,
"Safety" is a loaded term with degrees of meaning. "Safe" to some people means "nothing will ever go wrong; harmless." But in the real world, very few things are truly safe in that sense. Like so many other things, safety and risk are relative. The best comparison for safety would be deaths per terawatt-hour of power generated. The world needs that power to keep our hospitals and economy and infrastructure and everything else running - the question is, if we need X TW of power globally, which power generation method would cause the least amount of deaths.
And we have an answer: quote: quote: I like this source better than the one i used in the other thread - the numbers are more clearly explained, including noting the difference in US-regulated coal power, for instance, vs Chinese coal power, along with the global average. These numbers speak for themselves. They include Chernobyl. No method of power generation is completely safe. Workers fall from windmills and rooftops. Disasters strike hydroelectric dams during construction and operation (note that this source even separates out the deaths from the Bangiao dam, even though that disaster works as a perfect analogue to Chernobyl for nuclear power). Fossil fuel plants experience fires and explosions, and cause amazing damage to the environment in the form of air pollution, acid rain, and the release of radioactive waste ash directly into the atmosphere. And yes, nuclear reactors are not perfectly harmless either - workers have been exposed to dangerous levels of radiation, have been killed by steam leaks, and of course Chernobyl. But when you correct for deaths per unit of power generated, nothing else is even in the same order of magnitude as nuclear power. These numbers are drawn from world governments and the International Atomic Energy Agency. Nuclear power is not completely harmless, obviously. But it is safer, in an objective, measured way, than every other major form of power generation, including solar, hydro, and wind power. But what about Chernobyl? Others have argued that, when a coal plant burns to the ground, it doesn't permanently contaminate the area, right? Wrong. The types of disasters from coal and other forms of power generation (how many people even knew about the Banqiao before I mentioned it here? From Wiki: quote: Granted, Banqiao did not irradiate the land - but it cause multiple orders of magnitude more death than even Chernobyl, the worst nuclear disaster in history. But what of Centralia, Pennsylvania? A coal seam fire that started in 1962 still burns today beneath what used to be a busy mining town. The entire area is irrevocably contaminated now, as the products of the coal fire release carbon monoxide and other deadly chemicals into the surrounding air. It's as deadly today as it was in the 60s, showing no signs of burning out soon - and Centralia is one of hundreds of coal seam fires in the US alone, with thousands worldwide. The parallel to Chernobyl is obvious...but what about Chernobyl today? The extremely radioactive particulate matter ejected in the Chernobyl disaster has have almost three decades to decay and to naturally disperse into the environment...and now you can visit the exclusion zone (if not the actual ruins of the reactor) without fear of radiation poisoning. You'd be more likely to get cancer from a day in the sun without sunscreen. I'll make no argument about the relative scariness of a nuclear disaster vs other disasters. But emotions have nothing to do with actual risk and safety. And the facts clearly and obviously demonstrate that, per TWh of power generated, nuclear power causes the fewest casualties by far, in most cases by multiple orders of magnitude. It even beats out solar and wind power. How can anyone look at those numbers and then say that nuclear power is unsafe? Accidents and disasters, earthquakes and tsunamis, and yes, even mismanagement and greed will always happen for any method of power generation we decide to use. But even with those dangers, nuclear power still manages to kill fewer people per TWh than any other option. Those are facts. They don't lie.
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Son Member (Idle past 3860 days) Posts: 346 From: France,Paris Joined:
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The problem is that competition is not working for every business. In a case like electricity distribution that necessitates large investissements, no matter what (you can't really have "small" businesses here) you will end up with quasi monopolies and no meaningful competition. That's why it makes sense here to use a public ownership or something near that (for security purpose and control).
Privatizing everything is not the miracle pill you seem to think, some domains just don't work with it even though in a number cases, private ownership is more efficient (since usually, competition works like a "natural" regulator where efficiency is concerned). Privatizing everything can lead to out of control corporations whereas state ownership for everything would increase bureaucracy too much. You really need to think about which system works better for each sector and not dogmatically use one or the other.It was a bit off topic but I thought it needed to be said.
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jar Member (Idle past 424 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
That is actually a great example.
In the past, back when the Bell System was the sole supplier of telephone service and one of the limited regulated utility monopolies, and the same was true for Duke Power, their profits were directly tied to their investment in infrastructure. If they came out and changed out those poles it simply would have increased their profitability. Today, maintenance and infrastructure have been moved to the other side of the ledger, and replacing those poles is a direct cost and a decrease in profitability. Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!
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Rahvin Member Posts: 4046 Joined: Member Rating: 8.3 |
I proffered the excellent idea of mini nuclear power plants (and micro hydro-power plants) in the Japan thread. Sadly, no one remarked about that particular post: Hi dronester. I didn't comment on this in the other thread because I was too busy attacking the parts of your posts that were wrong. However, mini-nuclear generators are a great idea that I've heard praise of before. One of the major economic hurdles of a nuke plant is the certification of the design - and a standardized, mass-produced small reactor would would allow local utilities to scale generation capacity very easily to the needs of the community. Imagine a small nuclear generator capable of generating a few megawatts or so for a good ten years. You could power a large residential community with one unit for a decade...but you could also easily deploy them to disaster areas where we typically take diesel generators, which have far lower generating capacity, burn massive amounts of fuel, and cause dangerous pollution. How much would a few small nuclear reactors have helped in Haiti? How long did New Orleans go without power after Katrina? How much would they help Japan right now with most of their infrastructure decimated? They'd also allow a decentralization of the power grid, making us less susceptible to solar weather and other grid problems (remember the East Coast blackout a few years back?). Large "traditional" generators with modern designs, I think, can still occupy a large role in national power generation, but I think small-scale mini-nukes would be a great supplement and provide some much-needed local redundancy as well as quick set-up for emergency response.
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dronestar Member Posts: 1417 From: usa Joined: Member Rating: 7.0 |
"Dam" interesting about Banqiao. Nope, I never heard about it even though I researched visiting Henan Province the previous year (visited Guizhou Province instead). Will google about, wiki doesn't seem to have any photos linked.
thanks
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Rahvin Member Posts: 4046 Joined: Member Rating: 8.3 |
"Dam" interesting about Banqiao. Nope, I never heard about it even though I researched visiting Henan Province the previous year (visited Guizhou Province instead). Will google about, wiki doesn't seem to have any photos linked. Might be hard to find - the Chinese gov't covered it up, only declassified the incident in the 90s.
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1.61803 Member (Idle past 1534 days) Posts: 2928 From: Lone Star State USA Joined: |
Hi Rahvin, I want to say I am indeed learning a great deal from your post. But I did have a few questions.
1.Is it possible the reason for the lesser deaths/TWh of power from nuclear plants is because when compared to other forms of power generation there are less nuclear plants? If some day nuclear plants equal or exceed coal /water and oil then is it safe to assume, we will see a increase in nuclear power production deaths to equal or exceed other forms of power production? Your mention of the Hydroelectric dam in China was the grandslam though. Simply looking at that one example shows how tame in comparison nuclear power is. 2. Your mention of coal seam fires: It seems to me this is caused by both man made and by natural means of ignition. So to say it is man made is not completely accurate is it? A forrest fire can ignite a coal seam. 3. Death pre TWh of power is one way to assess safety, but what about long term effects on the environment. We all know the ravages of coal mining and the destruction of natural forest. But we still do not know the future implications of storing radioactive waste in the Earth indefinitley. Is the possiblility of radiation poison not something that should also be evaluated in terms of safety? Is the fact that radioactive material has the potential to cause the ground water and food chain contamination not another safety concern? I understand about your example of acid rain, however if those means of power production are reduced or halted wont acid rain be a thing of the past. But yet a massive release of radioactive material would potentially last for decades if not longer?
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fearandloathing Member (Idle past 4175 days) Posts: 990 From: Burlington, NC, USA Joined: |
Rahvin writes: "Dam" interesting about Banqiao. Nope, I never heard about it even though I researched visiting Henan Province the previous year (visited Guizhou Province instead). Will google about, wiki doesn't seem to have any photos linked. Might be hard to find - the Chinese gov't covered it up, only declassified the incident in the 90s. I found buch on it from wiki and few other places...amazing
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Rahvin Member Posts: 4046 Joined: Member Rating: 8.3 |
Hi Rahvin, I want to say I am indeed learning a great deal from your post. But I did have a few questions. 1.Is it possible the reason for the lesser deaths/TWh of power from nuclear plants is because when compared to other forms of power generation there are less nuclear plants? If some day nuclear plants equal or exceed coal /water and oil then is it safe to assume, we will see a increase in nuclear power production deaths to equal or exceed other forms of power production? That's why the units are deaths per TWh of generation, not deaths per power plant. If plant A kills 100 people but generates 10 TWh of power (absurd numbers, jsut demonstration), and plant B kills 10 people but only generates 1 TWh, we'd need 10 of plant B to generate the same power as plant A, and so we'd wind up with 100 deaths. Both would have the same average deaths/TWh. This means that these numbers scale regardless of the number of plants of whatever type. They'll stay the same whether you have a thousand coal plants or twenty, a hundred nuclear plants or five. Does your gas mileage depend on the total distance you drive? No - just whether you're on the freeway or in the city, and what type of car you drive. The same is true of the numbers I presented - the total amount of generating capacity and the number of plants is irrelevant. For each given unit of electrical power generated, we can see the relative risk of fatalities from each type, and the clear winner is nuclear.
Your mention of the Hydroelectric dam in China was the grandslam though. Simply looking at that one example shows how tame in comparison nuclear power is. It's a great example that just because we're used to something, just because we don't often hear about disasters, just because we aren't as frightened of a thing, doesn't mean its really less dangerous. Honestly, I thought hydro was safer than that as well. This is why we need to look at the numbers instead of trusting our initial reactions - we don't have enough information as individuals in teh lay public to make anything resembling an accurate estimate on our own.
2. Your mention of coal seam fires: It seems to me this is caused by both man made and by natural means of ignition. So to say it is man made is not completely accurate is it? A forrest fire can ignite a coal seam. I brought them up to show that nuclear incidents aren't the only power-related disasters that can lead to permanently evacuating an area. Centralia, Pennsylvania was an actual coal mine, and its thought it was ignited due to some trash burning at a landfill near the mine. Yes, natural causes can start coal seam fires (Burning Mountain in Australia has been burning for an estimated 6,000 years), but the mining itself creates conditions that make the ignition more likely, by exposing the coal seam to the air, and by leaving behind highly flammable coal dust. There are other disasters as well. Hydrofraking is a process by which a rather nasty mix of chemicals is pumped into the ground to fracture oil shale and make it available for pumping. Unfortunately, this also gets into the groundwater - there have been recent cases in the US where, literally, tap water was flammable because the groundwater was so contaminated. No, that's really not safe to drink. Yes, Id rather drink water from the Chernobyl exclusion zone.
3. Death pre TWh of power is one way to assess safety, but what about long term effects on the environment. We all know the ravages of coal mining and the destruction of natural forest. But we still do not know the future implications of storing radioactive waste in the Earth indefinitley. Is the possiblility of radiation poison not something that should also be evaluated in terms of safety? Is the fact that radioactive material has the potential to cause the ground water and food chain contamination not another safety concern? I understand about your example of acid rain, however if those means of power production are reduced or halted wont acid rain be a thing of the past. But yet a massive release of radioactive material would potentially last for decades if not longer? The storage of radioactive materials is actually not so difficult as you would imagine. The casks they pack the stuff in are designed (and tested) to withstand, not kidding here, the impact of a freight train while doused in burning jet fuel, without releasing any radiation. Penn and Teller even did an amusing little bit on their show about it, complete with video. But the largest issue with radiological waste is the issue of reprocessing. There are two simplified types of radioactive waste - high-level waste and low-level. High-level is extremely radioactive and dangerous, but has a relatively short half-life and decays rapidly. Low-level waste is comparatively tame in terms of radiation intensity, but lasts for millions of years or more. Reprocessing involves the recovery of still-usable fissile material from "spent" fuel rods. Fukushima provides a great (though unfortunate) example - the disaster right now is largely in the spent fuel containment pools, which are right now generating a few megawatts of waste heat just from the products of decay and some small remaining nuclear reactions (not enough to go critical at this point and start a self-sustaining reaction like would happen in the actual core, but enough to make it really hot). That spent fuel can be reprocessed, reducing waste by up to 95% and recovering an absolute ton of usable fissile fuel that can be reused. The US does not reprocess spent fuel because of multiple concerns, though the most commonly touted is the fear of terrorists gaining enriched reprocessed Uranium and Plutonium (some of the products of reprocessing) for use in a dirty bomb or even a nuclear weapon. Those concerns seem pretty baseless, though, in the face of the fact that other nations, including France and Japan (at least one of the reactors at Fukushima I know was using reprocessed fuel) manage to use reprocessing without any terrorists getting their hands on teh stuff. What's more, the high-level radioisotopes are what we want in a nuclear power plant. What's left after reprocessing is mostly low-level waste - not nearly as much radiation, much easier to store (nuclear decay generates heat, less radiation and slower decay means less heat and so easier storage), and much less quantity. France uses a single reprocessing facility, and since the beginning of its operation it has processed over 23,000 tons of spent fuel, recycling enough to power the entire country for another 14 years. This is what nuclear fearmongering has done - the US wants to bury fuel rods, most of which could be recycled into even more fuel, leaving us with more power and less waste.
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dronestar Member Posts: 1417 From: usa Joined: Member Rating: 7.0 |
For the past two years, the Grand Canyon has been protected from Uranium mining. But now, the temporary mining moratorium is set to expire . . .
quote: http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/grand_canyon_mining/?...
quote: Opinion | The Grand Canyon Uranium Rush - The New York Times
quote: Resources Archive - Earthworks As long as the actual direct deaths per TWh are kept low, I suppose SOME people MIGHT think that uranium mining in the Grand Canyon is a GOOD policy. I'd disagree.
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