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Author Topic:   Is nuclear power safe??
Rahvin
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Posts: 4032
Joined: 07-01-2005
Member Rating: 9.2


(2)
Message 21 of 57 (609331)
03-18-2011 12:08 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by fearandloathing
03-17-2011 6:30 PM


Risk management
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:
Coal — world average 161 (26% of world energy, 50% of electricity)
Coal — China 278
Coal — USA 15
Oil 36 (36% of world energy)
Natural Gas 4 (21% of world energy)
Biofuel/Biomass 12
Peat 12
Solar (rooftop) 0.44 (less than 0.1% of world energy)
Wind 0.15 (less than 1% of world energy)
Hydro 0.10 (europe death rate, 2.2% of world energy)
Hydro - world including Banqiao) 1.4 (about 2500 TWh/yr and 171,000 Banqiao dead)
Nuclear 0.04 (5.9% of world energy)
quote:
Wind power proponent and author Paul Gipe estimated in Wind Energy Comes of Age that the mortality rate for wind power from 1980—1994 was 0.4 deaths per terawatt-hour. Paul Gipe's estimate as of end 2000 was 0.15 deaths per TWh, a decline attributed to greater total cumulative generation.
Hydroelectric power was found to to have a fatality rate of 0.10 per TWh (883 fatalities for every TWyr) in the period 1969—1996
Nuclear power is about 0.04 deaths/TWh.
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:
According to the Hydrology Department of Henan Province, in the province, approximately 26,000 people died from flooding and another 145,000 died during subsequent epidemics and famine. In addition, about 5,960,000 buildings collapsed, and 11 million residents were affected.
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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 Message 1 by fearandloathing, posted 03-17-2011 6:30 PM fearandloathing has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 27 by 1.61803, posted 03-18-2011 1:52 PM Rahvin has replied

  
Rahvin
Member
Posts: 4032
Joined: 07-01-2005
Member Rating: 9.2


Message 24 of 57 (609335)
03-18-2011 12:21 PM
Reply to: Message 14 by dronestar
03-18-2011 10:36 AM


Re: mini nuclear power plants
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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 Message 14 by dronestar, posted 03-18-2011 10:36 AM dronestar has replied

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Rahvin
Member
Posts: 4032
Joined: 07-01-2005
Member Rating: 9.2


Message 26 of 57 (609342)
03-18-2011 1:03 PM
Reply to: Message 25 by dronestar
03-18-2011 12:51 PM


Re: mini nuclear power plants
"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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Rahvin
Member
Posts: 4032
Joined: 07-01-2005
Member Rating: 9.2


Message 29 of 57 (609357)
03-18-2011 2:54 PM
Reply to: Message 27 by 1.61803
03-18-2011 1:52 PM


Re: Risk management
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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 Message 27 by 1.61803, posted 03-18-2011 1:52 PM 1.61803 has seen this message but not replied

  
Rahvin
Member
Posts: 4032
Joined: 07-01-2005
Member Rating: 9.2


Message 31 of 57 (614619)
05-05-2011 1:06 PM
Reply to: Message 30 by dronestar
05-05-2011 12:46 PM


Re: The Grand Canyon Uranium Rush
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.
Why? Do you suppose that supporters of nuclear power because it is the safest method of power generation are somehow so stupid as to support Uranium mining anywhere and everywhere we can get the stuff, just because it's there?
The relative deaths per TWh mean that nuclear is the best option. The deaths per TWh from mining and using Uranium in the Grand Canyon would be lower than a coal mine in the same place, or solar panels, or wind turbines, or a hydroelectric plant, or a frakking operation...but who the hell thinks that the Grand Canyon is a good place for any of that?! Hell, I wouldn't even want solar or wind power there - the Canyon is a natural national treasure! It should be left alone and preserved, like Yellowstone and Yosemite.
"Safest method" in no way translates to "always appropriate everywhere." We just aren't hard up for Uranium enough to justify that.

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 Message 30 by dronestar, posted 05-05-2011 12:46 PM dronestar has replied

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 Message 32 by dronestar, posted 05-05-2011 1:15 PM Rahvin has replied

  
Rahvin
Member
Posts: 4032
Joined: 07-01-2005
Member Rating: 9.2


Message 33 of 57 (614624)
05-05-2011 1:34 PM
Reply to: Message 32 by dronestar
05-05-2011 1:15 PM


Re: The Grand Canyon Uranium Rush
Still waiting for SOLID numbers that include cancer illnessES.
I can only give the numbers I can find. I backed up my claims with evidence. If you take issue with my claims, if you think I'm mistaken, the onus is on you to provide new numbers that prove my position wrong.
If you think cancer deaths due to nuclear power are sufficient to change the relative risk assessment compared to other methods of power generation, it's your responsibility to back up that assertion with evidence, not mine.
Incidentally, if all you have is a "general sense" that nuclear power generation causes significant cancer deaths, and not any real numbers, that's rather strong evidence that you are currently holding a belief that is not based on any real-world evidence.

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 Message 32 by dronestar, posted 05-05-2011 1:15 PM dronestar has replied

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 Message 34 by dronestar, posted 05-05-2011 3:14 PM Rahvin has replied

  
Rahvin
Member
Posts: 4032
Joined: 07-01-2005
Member Rating: 9.2


Message 35 of 57 (614660)
05-05-2011 5:06 PM
Reply to: Message 34 by dronestar
05-05-2011 3:14 PM


Re: The Grand Canyon Uranium Rush
Your own source agrees with me. From your link:
quote:
Also attending the conference were 280 journalists but the media are still talking of thousands already dead from Chernobyl. In some instances the source of the myth can be identified. For instance, the figure of 125,000 said to be those already dead from Chernobyl was in fact the number of deaths during the period 1988-94 from all causes in the area affected by the accident. A figure of 10,000 deaths in the 600,000 people who helped in the clean-up represents the normal death rate over five years in any comparable population. The most likely explanation of the media's irresponsible propagation of mythology is laziness, simple repetition from other media, combined with a relish for disasters and conspiracy theories that sell "news". Thanks to the media, and according to Mark Twain:
* "It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so."
A more recent, 2000, report, "Sources and Effects of Ionizing Radiation", by the United Nations' Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation increased to 1,800 the number of thyroid cancers in individuals exposed in childhood to releases from the Chernobyl accident. It noted that the high incidence and relatively short induction period are unusual and suggested that other factors may be influencing the incidence. The report confirmed that, except for the thyroid cancers, no increases in overall cancer incidence or mortality that could be attributed to ionizing radiation have been observed.
The report also provided average doses during the first decade after the accident:
* 100 mSv for the 240,000 recovery operation workers
* 30 mSv for the 116,000 evacuated persons
* 10 mSv for those who continued to live in contaminated areas
and an estimated 20 - 50 mSv lifetime dose for Europeans outside the former U.S.S.R.. It noted that these doses, even for the first group, are comparable to an annual dose from natural, ambient radiation and are, therefore, of little radiological significance. Yet another U.N. report, in 2007, put the total deaths attributable to the accident at only 50.
Your words were also misleading - the Greenpeace link was not part of any UN report, but was their own investigation, whose results are rather oddly similar to the very myths discounted in your first link.
So what you've provided real evidence of is 1) a bunch of nucleophobic idiots who actually used the total mortality rate over all causes of death in the region for an entire year as the death toll for the Chernobyl incident (which would be like using the total mortality rate from 2010-2011 in Tokyo and saying Fukushima caused it all) and 2) an estimated 1800 thyroid cancers, not all of which were lethal (I rather think it's only fair that we restrict the numbers to actual deaths, since we aren't including in the argument any nonlethal injuries from the other methods of power generation).
Of course, since nuclear power causes orders of magnitude fewer deaths according to the numbers I provided, even if we add all 1800 thyroid cancer cases to the death toll, the math still favors nuclear power.

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 Message 34 by dronestar, posted 05-05-2011 3:14 PM dronestar has replied

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 Message 36 by dronestar, posted 05-06-2011 12:38 PM Rahvin has replied

  
Rahvin
Member
Posts: 4032
Joined: 07-01-2005
Member Rating: 9.2


(1)
Message 39 of 57 (614803)
05-06-2011 2:48 PM
Reply to: Message 36 by dronestar
05-06-2011 12:38 PM


Re: The Grand Canyon Uranium Rush
Dronester, you set up so many straw men it's no wonder you only barely responded to my previous post.
It seems you’ve been giving my posts the short thrift. I am often needing to remind you of my previous posts or point out strategic words used. Dronester sad.
In fairness, there was a delay of several days between posts in the thread, and I haven't re-read everything to catch myself back up.
Of course, the other side of that is that I had to remind you what your own link said because it didn't back up your assertions. I at least read my own links.
1. When you gave pro-nuclear stats from a questionable propaganda site, I called you on it. You replied unless I have my own stats, I should stay quiet, Fucking end of story. Ok, precedence was set.
2. So when I gave you SELF-ADMITTED DUBIOUS cancer numbers, instead of replying with your own stats as you have directed me, you dismissed ALL of my stats. Doesn’t seem fair.
I dismissed your statistics based in large part on your own link, which very clearly stated that the absurdly large cancer numbers attributed by some sources to Chernobyl, none of them actual scientific studies, were myths and not facts, including one in which every death in the region over an entire year for all causes was added to the Chernobyl death toll. I didn't cast doubt on your numbers just because I didn't like them, but rather because your own link said they were bullshit, and showed why.
3. You want to restrict the numbers to actual deaths because there can never be SOLID cancer illness numbers. This doesn’t sound like an accurate way to determine the safety of nuclear power.
It's the only fair way to do it, unless you think you can somehow track down the cancer/injury/other hazard numbers for all the other methods of power generation. If we include non-lethal cancers in considering nuclear power, wouldn't we also need to include non-lethal cases of black-lung for coal? Non-lethal groundwater contamination from frakking? The point isn't to unfairly leave out data, it's to establish a uniform base of comparison.
If you don;t like using deaths per TWh, what metric would you use in comparing relative safety?
4. You want to only use the death per TWh as indicative of nuclear power safety. I think this marginalizes too many other current serious problems with nuclear power. As Fukishima showed, nuclear power plants shouldn’t be built near populous zones. They are. Nuclear Powerplants shouldn’t be placed on fault zones. They are. Nuclear Powerplants shouldn’t be placed near tsunami risk-areas. They are. Nuclear Powerplants should be held to high safety regulations and strict monitoring. They aren’t. Nuclear Powerplants should have adequate safety backups. They don’t. Nuclear Powerplants should NOT be operated with known design flaws. They are. Nuclear Powerplants should not store spent fuel rods in non-reinforced, un-secure pools. They are. You may only want to use death tolls, but that wouldn’t accurately show the true on-going risk of nuclear power. Indeed, I am asserting, we’ve been lucky so far. Consider, if a highly technologically advanced nation like Japan could have so many glaring serious problems, what can we expect when a third world nation, banana-republic, wants to build /operate nuclear powerplants? I think future catastrophes are inevitable.
You won;t even find argument from me in quite a bit of that little rant. I agree that the Fukushima plant, as a single example, was an outdated design that should have been closed down and rebuilt years or even decades ago. A major theme of my posts in the Fukushima thread was that the design used in that plant was abandoned for new plant construction in the US in the 70s, which hardly speaks to the relative safety of that particular design. Sticking all of the backup diesel generators for the cooling system in a basement in an area that can be easily flooded by a tsunami was certainly stupid in retrospect.
But all power plants everywhere have flaws, and they're especially obvious in hindsight. I still maintain that the best metric we can use for comparing safety between methods of power generation is the number of deaths caused per TWh generated.
That doesn't at all mean that we should stop looking for ways to improve, looking for plants that need to be retired, refitted, or redesigned. "Safest" in no way translates to "perfect," or even "safest possible."
5. The costs of nuclear power plants is extraordinary. Why not spend the money towards alternate power sources. I mentioned hydro before. I am starting to conclude the real reason hydro power (ocean wave or mini-river) isn’t pushed is because it simply isn’t as profitable as nuclear.
That would be one reason. Another is transmission distance. Power lines aren't superconductors, and you can build a coal or gas or nuclear plant basically anywhere you can get approval. Wave power is only usable on coastlines or at sea and is unreliable; wind power can only be used in fairly windy areas, takes up a lot of physical space per unit of power, and isn't reliable; same for solar. Hydro dams are pretty reliable, but can only be placed in specific locations - not every river can support a dam, and even among the ones that can, certainly not all of them are like Niagara Falls. Only a finite amount of power can ever be generated by hydro dams.
Nuclear, coal, oil, and gas remain extremely scalable, generate a lot more power per square foot, and can be build virtually anywhere to cut down transmission distance. Among those, nuclear is the clear winner on safety, while coal is the clear winner on cost.
Choosing how to generate electricity is not single-issue. It's not only about cost, not only about reliability, etc. But when one method of power generation kills fewer people per unit of power, AND is extremely reliable, AND is extremely scalable, AND can be built in virtually any location, it becomes the clear choice for most situations.
6. I am not fully against all nuclear power. I have already stated I think the mini nuclear power plants a good idea. Unfortunately, industry wants massive sized nuclear power plants because of the huge profit margin and because the risk, if something catastrophic happens, is capped.
I'm not so sure it's that simple. Getting a small-scale plant design approved for mass production would make for an excellent opportunity for profit - the cost is in getting a new design approved. For the very reasons we're discussing now, cases like Fukushima, new designs for nuclear plants are very stringently analyzed and can take a lot of time and money to finally get approved...not to mention the permits required, which are likely scaled to large traditional plants rather than small ones. Small-scale plants are so outside-the-box that I would place a fair bet that the regulatory structure will need some modification before we see them.
7. I am not fully against all nuclear power. But I do want the concerns addressed. Perhaps the shrill and hyper-vigilance of the anti-nuclear crowd will somewhat cause advances in safety. But if we simply leave it to industry and government, we are not being very good parents to our children or stewards of the earth
That's just the thing - "shrill hyper-vigilance" really means "insane, inaccurate propagandic lies being spread to kill an industry entirely rather than address any real flaws." And while I have no confidence in the nuclear industry in regulating itself, we are the government, the government is suppsoed to represent and answer to us, and what we actually need is accurate information dispensation and a strong public will to address the issues of nuclear power like storage, reprocessing, and safety in ways other than the standard Greenpeace "no nukes." It's an abstinence-only approach to the nuclear industry, and it's just not going to work.
8. Lastly, just a plea towards a healthy earth. I am trying to contain the epidemic, and others seem to be driving the infected monkey to the airport. I love tuna, but health officials urge women and children to restrict their consumption because of the mercury poisoning we have poisoned our waters with. I love safe drinking water, but industry wants to increase pumping poisonous chemicals into the ground to release gas/oil. The government works against us by implementing standards that allow manufacturers to pollute the earth. Government reduces funding for regulations and monitoring and then the industry is not adequately policed or fined. And America is a first world nation. What about third world nations where industrial toxic sludge is directly pumped into rivers? You can say, currently, that nuclear power is the cleanest or safest, but really, is this the best we can do? Our standards continue to slip, indeed, do we really NEED to fight against mining in the GRAND CANYON? It’s amazing that this is even contemplated in the first place. Can you concede our national, and more pressing, global safety net is swinging haphazardly?
Like I said above, "safest" does not mean "safest possible." In no way would I ever claim that nuclear power is the safest form of generation we will ever develop - I would hope within a few more decades we'll get fusion based plants working, and those generate far more power while being impossible to "melt down" and not using long-decay radioisotopes as fuel or waste.
I favor fission now because now it is the safest and best we have available. I'd like to see all the coal plants in the US replaced by a much smaller number of higher-producing and lower-fuel-consumption nuclear plants, with reprocessing instituted to recycle most of the "waste" just like what France has been doing for years.
But if next year we make a better mousetrap, I'll shift my support in an instant. Hell, I've heard some wonderful things about the Thorium fuel cycle as an alternative to Uranium that allows for more efficient reprocessing, a far more plentiful fuel, and less hazardous end products. I'd LOVE to see some of those benefits.
Rhavin, this is a somewhat rambling post. But in it, can you at least see my aggravation/frustration that the earth will be in a much worse condition than when I inherited it? Often, when an eco-system is once changed, there is never going back to replace it. I am urging everyone to re-think how best to maintain a fragile planet's health.
Of course I can see that - but you should really realize that nuclear power hasn't been responsible for more than a very tiny amount of that. Nuclear power doesn't pollute much at all, either in the mining of Uranium (since not particularly much is needed with the energy density of fissile fuel), or the actual generation of power. Nuclear waste is more visible as a problem because we actually need to either reprocess it or bury it somewhere...as opposed to the waste products of combustion, where we just let fly ash from coal burning out into the air to cause cancer, respiratory ailments, and acid rain to name just a few.
My issue is that people tend to target a specific mode of pollution in a vacuum. They say "look how awful that pollutes, we shouldn't do that" without even looking at the alternatives for a comparison. Perfection is impossible; anything we do is going to have SOME kind of environmental impact. We can't say "this pollutes, let's not do that" without heading back to the stone age. What we need to do is look at how much each option damages the environment and in what way, and make an informed decision to minimize lasting harm to the Earth and to human life.
That's what I'm about, and it's why I support nuclear power - I think it's the smartest choice, given its proven safety record, the low amount of pollution generated, the prevalence of the fuel required, it's easy scalability, and the ability to build plants in locations of our own choosing without needing thousands of kilometers of inefficient power lines wasting the electricity and making us mine a bunch of copper, not to mention being more susceptible to the sort of issues that caused the East Coast blackout a few years back (the longer the lines, for instance, the more vulnerable they are to electromagnetic induction, and so they become more susceptible to solar weather among other things...).

This message is a reply to:
 Message 36 by dronestar, posted 05-06-2011 12:38 PM dronestar has not replied

  
Rahvin
Member
Posts: 4032
Joined: 07-01-2005
Member Rating: 9.2


(3)
Message 45 of 57 (695076)
04-02-2013 1:07 PM
Reply to: Message 44 by New Cat's Eye
04-02-2013 12:57 PM


Re: Latest News
Given that this is the case with current reactors, most of which are decades out of date and which do not take full advantage of fuel cycles or advanced failsafes, imagine how safe they could be in the near future if the nuclear industry were to be revived.

The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. - Francis Bacon
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." - John Rogers
A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But, on the other hand, in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity. — Albert Camus
"...the pious hope that by combining numerous little turds of variously tainted data, one can obtain a valuable result; but in fact, the outcome is merely a larger than average pile of shit." - Barash, David 1995.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 44 by New Cat's Eye, posted 04-02-2013 12:57 PM New Cat's Eye has seen this message but not replied

  
Rahvin
Member
Posts: 4032
Joined: 07-01-2005
Member Rating: 9.2


(2)
Message 54 of 57 (696049)
04-11-2013 1:54 PM
Reply to: Message 53 by Taq
04-11-2013 1:31 PM


How about a molten salt reactor?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor
Or using Thorium instead of Uranium/Plutnium?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle
quote:
Nuclear fission produces radioactive fission products which can have half-lives from days to greater than 200,000 years. According to some toxicity studies, the thorium cycle can fully recycle actinide wastes and only emit fission product wastes, and after a few hundred years, the waste from a thorium reactor can be less toxic than the uranium ore that would have been used to produce low enriched uranium fuel for a light water reactor of the same power....
...
Thorium is estimated to be about three to four times more abundant than uranium in the Earth's crust,[19] although present knowledge of reserves is limited. Current demand for thorium has been satisfied as a by-product of rare-earth extraction from monazite sands. Also, unlike uranium, mined thorium consists of a single isotope (232Th). Consequently, it is useful in thermal reactors without the need for isotope separation.
The state of nuclear power generation is hobbled not by the laws of physics or the lack of capability, but solely by political nonsense spawning from irrational fear over the objectively safest power generation source currently known to man.

The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. - Francis Bacon
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." - John Rogers
A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But, on the other hand, in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity. — Albert Camus
"...the pious hope that by combining numerous little turds of variously tainted data, one can obtain a valuable result; but in fact, the outcome is merely a larger than average pile of shit." - Barash, David 1995.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 53 by Taq, posted 04-11-2013 1:31 PM Taq has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 55 by Taq, posted 04-11-2013 3:27 PM Rahvin has not replied

  
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