Nuclear Power

So, why is the left, the party of global warming, still so anti-nuke?
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The antinuclear movement in America is an eclectic one. The leftists as well as a significant number of centrists and rightists realize that nuclear power produces huge amounts of concentrated edited to add the word waste, is a dangerous terrorist target and has a huge startup cost.

France has no fossil fuel reserve to speak of but the US has huge underutilized coal beds. Coal does produce low level nuclear waste, as does the burning of wood, tobacco and other plant products but many US citizens recall the fact that burning what you have is cheaper than burning what you don't have. ;)
 
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They are already doing some small scale tidal in N.Y. city,as for putting metal in salt water I thought we had that pretty well figured out , better check with the navy maybe I missed something but I thought most of their canoes were metal,as far as cost like anything the more you produce the cheaper it gets.
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Unfortunately it doesn't always work this way. The Navy's solution is (where appropriate) to use Nickel based alloys instead of steel. These are extremely expensive, and increasing production likely would not bring the cost down... I believe the cost is driven by energy requirements.

Contained fusion reactions are possible, and the break-even point (producing more energy than is consumed) has been reached in experiments; however it's a very long way from production. Yes, hydrogen is used as a fuel, but it's the more rare isotopes, deuterium and tritium, which are useful. Deuterium is plentiful enough, but tritium is another story...

44 AMP, the waste problem won't go away so easily. BTW, the required velocity to drop something into the sun is insanely high (approximately equal to the orbital velocity of the earth, 29.8 km/s, plus the escape velocity, 11.2 km/s). Mass drivers simply can't do the job, especially from within the atmosphere.
 
The leftists as well as a significant number of centrists and rightists realize that nuclear power produces huge amounts of concentrated, is a dangerous terrorist target
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F-4 Phantom at 500 mph vs Wall. Wall wins.

The only thing on a plane dense enough to damage the wall of a nuke containment building are the engines. Even then, a jet engine won't penetrate 9 feet of concrete. It would damage the outside, yes, but not get anywhere near penetrating. Aircraft just aren't designed to go through concrete walls.
 
Hydrogen (in terms of electrolyzing water then burning it again in, say, a cars engine) is a waste of time. It takes more energy to split the water molecule than you get by putting it back together. Another way to get is is by cracking fossil fuels.. but then we're back to square one again. Storing hydrogen is notoriously hard, as it has to be at very high pressure, and it will leak through any container, at a rate of about 7% a day IIRC. I certainly wouldn't want to be driving a car with a big ole tank of the stuff pressurized under my butt! It has a much wider range of flammability compared to gasoline or ethanol.

No, i'm placing my bets on an eventuality of a purely electrical society somewhere in the future. Once scientists and materials engineers reach and perfect room temperature superconductors, society as a whole will take a big step forward. This coupled with the advent of nuclear fusion power (which will probably be facilitated BY the RTS) will pretty much solve all energy problems. Aside from a few things that I'm too tired to think of a way of being purely electrically powered (jet engines and rockets).
 
The leftists as well as a significant number of centrists and rightists realize that nuclear power produces huge amounts of concentrated, is a dangerous terrorist target
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Please don't take this the wrong way, but whenever that particular quote is bandied about it makes me want to shriek. The containment vessel of a nuclear reactor can be breached, yes. By bunker-busting munitions. On the second or maybe third direct hit on the same spot.

A Boeing 777 would effectively bounce. It'd wreck generators and such, but in terms of causing a radiation leak, you're shooting spitballs at an Abrams. It's such an uninformed, uneducated statement to claim that nuke plants are dangerous terrorist targets that you might as well flat-out state that you've got no interest in educating yourself about the issues.

Here's a horrible, horrible case in point.

Greenpeace on Nuclear Power - Science Doesn't Matter.

When one of the main eco types is saying that he doesn't care about the science, that's all credibility gone, right there, forever. Because it is all about science. If you're not willing to do the science, you're not able to talk effectively about any issue surrounding nuclear, er, science. Sorry, but you're not. Which means you've gotta be able to do the numbers, and look at the experiments (that one with the Phanton is always a favourite), and be able to make an evaluation based on the facts.

Not opinion, not gut-feeling, not belief, not boogiemen, tooth fairies, invisible friends or What The Bloke Down The Pub Said - facts.

Would living on top of a nuclear waste dump bother me? Not even a little. I can sit here with a pencil and work out the attenuation of gamma rays through concrete. Take the pencil away and it'll take me longer but I'll get there. It'd bug me a bit that a huge majority of people who wouldn't do the math even if they had the ability would junk the resale value of my home, but I've long ago realised that you can bring a horse to water, but you can't stop it being silly.
 
The one problem with nuclear power is what to do with the waste material.

Two words: Nikola Tesla

I don't think it's that simple, but it would be well worth the effort.
 
Superconductor? WOW! If you could devise a room temperature superconductor and patent it you would become a very rich person very quickly and reduce world wide power use is a very short period of time.
 
I'm sorry Crosshair and Bog, it might seem demeaning to point out that terrorists seldom fly F-4's and the high level waste is not necessarily stored inside the containment vessel. I'd suspect that they could breech security with nothing but a pair of wire cutters and a couple of carryout pizzas to keep Homer and friends occupied.:rolleyes:

Geothermal power would be just as cheap without any nuclear waste at all. And if Costa Rica can afford it the price savings must be enormous. So why can anyone justify nuclear power with geothermal power being a proven technology for over 100 years?

Clipped from the Geothermal Education Office site is the following quote:

Geothermal Power Production Worldwide

As of 1999 8,217 megawatts of electricity were being produced from some 250 geothermal power plants running day and night in 22 countries around the world. These plants provide reliable base-load power for well over 60 million people, mostly in developing countries.

Producing Country Megawatts in 1999

United States 2,850

Philippines 1,848

Italy 768.5

Mexico 743

Indonesia 589.5

Japan 530

New Zealand 345

Costa Rica 120

Iceland 140

El Salvador 105

Nicaragua 70

Kenya 45

China 32

Turkey 21

Russia 11

Portugal (Azores) 11

Guatemala 5

France (Guadeloupe) 4

Taiwan 3

Thailand 0.3

Zambia 0.2

Total 8,217 MW
 
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Meek And Mild,

I've got absolutely no problem with geothermal power, where one can drill suitable wells. But it isn't enough to bridge the gap. We need to get rid of fossil fuels as soon as possible for too many reasons to enumerate.

Really, though Meek - your suspicion is right up there with the Easter Bunny in my little list of things that you cannot bring to the nuclear power debate and have anyone take you seriously. What, someone's gonna just load a bunch of used fuel rods into a pizza box and walk off with 'em? Er.

What're you basing that on? Fuel rod storage policies or cheap action-thriller novels?
 
Bog, you mistake my sarcasm. My reference to Homer was regarding a popular American fictional nuclear industry worker, Homer Simpson. The US has a long track record of just leaving nuclear waste laying around though they try to cover it up. The three biggest US areas are the Hanford site, the Savannah River site and the Oak Ridge site but every little power plant has its own waste problem.

Some links of interest:
http://www.ocrwm.doe.gov/ym_repository/about_project/waste_explained/storage.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site
http://www.ieer.org/reports/srs/pressrel.html
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/report/enviro/eis-0220/eis0220_a.html
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpa...6A3575BC0A966958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all
 
And if said terrorists get to a pool of hot rods and attempt to even remove them from the pool they are very likely to be dead in a matter of minutes to hours.

If the rods have cooled enough they will not hurt ANYONE.

Even at a breeder reactor you would not process the new material immediately.
By allowing it to cool off the short half life isotopes decay and the rate of exposure, and the hazards of dealing with the material, go done significantly.

Slick Willy was snookered by the North Koreans with the 'waiting period'.
They needed to let the rods cool before processing them anyway.
1-2 years is about right.

The 'dangerous for millions of years' stuff is absolute BS.
Anything with a half life that long is a very LOW exposure hazard.
You can handle the rods going INTO the reactor with a gloved hand.
You want to stay many feet away from the ones coming OUT.

There is a dosimeter on the visitors board at the TAMU Cyclotron Facility with my name on it.
I visit that often.
 
There is high level and then there is HIGH LEVEL...

And outside the industry (and those acedemics who bother) very very few people know or understand the designations, or what they actually mean. Just as people have been "trained" to think of military look alike firearms as "assault weapons", people have been "trained" to think that all high level waste is instantly deadly dangerous, lasts for ever, and there is no way we can do anything about it, except not make it.

Yep, them spent fuel rods are a real problem, they give off lethal levels of radiation. And they do. But if you don't sit on them it isn't quite the problem the anti-nukers would have us believe. 6 feet of concrete cuts the dose from thousands of REM to barely dectable. The "high level waste" designation starts at material giving off 1/10th (.1) the energy of a regular medical x-ray, and includes everything up through the irradiated fuel itself.

We do not reprocess spent commercial nuclear fuel, thanks to a treaty signed during the Carter administration, and so nothing can be done with the spent fuel except store it. And we do not reprocess spent nuclear fuel from government sources, thanks to political decisions made during the first Bush and then the Clinton administrations. It is a problem, and will continue to be a growning problem until we develope the political will to spend the money to finally do something with it. However, it is not the problem that the press makes out, not the problem that the public generally believes it to be.

Of late one bug-a-boo facing security is the idea that terrorists could get their hands on "high level waste" and wrap it around a bomb to spread it around. This is what is now referred to as a "dirty bomb". It would be nasty, but only somewhat more nasty than a regular bomb convered in toxic chemicals, if as bad. And it can be cleaned up. It is not an unsolvable problem. Just an expensive one.

In industry today we routinely use dozens of chemicals that are instantly fatal if you are exposed, and thousands of chemicals that are harmful or fatal over long term exposure. We deal with them day in and day out. Nuclear waste has hazards, but it is not the most dangerous stuff on the planet, by a long shot. And notice, that the only place anyone has seen Godzilla has been on a movie screen.
 
"Of late one bug-a-boo facing security is the idea that terrorists could get their hands on "high level waste" and wrap it around a bomb to spread it around."

Of course they have to live long enough to assemble, transport, and deliver said bomb.

A radiological bomb (AKA 'dirty bomb') is almost entirely a terror weapon relying on the mass ignorance of radiation exposure and its effects.

Millions of dollars would be spent trying to 'clean up' an area, only to find that the stone work used to make the buildings was radioactive (granite, cinders, etc.).

I remember about 20 years ago when some recommendations became public on handling the aftermath of a nuclear detonation.
One good recommendation was to have those in there 50s and up do as much clean up as possible. Since the cancers produced by radiation typically take about 30 years to show up, the average 50+ year old will be dead from something else before then.

We routinely activate lead, brass, and copper during proton testing of semiconductors for space use.
Even after delivering 300 krads(Si) of protons to a target backed by a 1 inch brass block it cooled off in 3 weeks to be shipped.
For the facility we used that means no radiation above background.
 
Why try to pliticize this? I look at it from a problem and solutions way. Yes, it helps reduce fossil fuel requirements. But, operating safety and waste disposal are serious concerns, at least to me. This stuff is so extremely deadly toxic that it really is an issue. I am not against it or for it. I think we need to be mor ecertain of the issues surrounding it.
 
About geothermal power...

The new "enhanced" hot dry rock geothermal technology has great promise... but even if it were developed, it isn't nearly enough. US energy use averages about 3.3 TW (as of 2005, including transportation). The measly current geothermal production, ~3 GW, is insignificant... less than 0.1%. The 2006 MIT reported an affordable untapped geothermal potential (using "enhanced" deep-drilling) of ~100 GW which could be online by 2050, requiring $1 billion invested. That's still only 3% of current power consumption.
 
I've always been pro-nuke. It's the common sense solution for generating electricity so petroleum fuels can be conserved and used for applications where alternative fuels aren't feasible yet.

Two words: Nikola Tesla

I don't think it's that simple, but it would be well worth the effort.
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You mean chanting the words as a group effort? Or calling up his spirit for guidance?
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Free energy. Although there isn't proof that Tesla actually managed to produce it.
 
We dropped nuclear power thanks to Three Mile Island and Jane Fonda's timely The China Syndrome movie. The cost of building nuke plants at the time was far greater than fossil fuel plants. Thanks to 30 years of new regulations, that is no longer true. The US NEEDS Nuclear Power.
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One of the reasons for the cost was that the industry wasn't given time to evolve and standardize designs. You see utilities operating plants with different charactersitics (pressurized water versus boiling water). So, there was no economy of scale.

This stuff is so extremely deadly toxic that it really is an issue.
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Some of it is, most of it isn't. You'll find equally toxic materials in many other industries.
 
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