nuclear power

[werepossum]

I'm for it. Australia has a lot of space that no one lives in (we have quite a lot of deserts), so we have the room to build a (relatively) safe plant. Of course, I reckon that something like geothermal would be nice, but that requires more efficiency to transport the energy.

Only problem is Australia is the driest continental landmass on Terra (even though as I type this its pissing down with rain.) Nuclear fission requires a lot of water, as previous posters have mentioned.

Australia is a perfect place for vapor cycle solar steam generation. Intense sunlight well focused can easily boil water, which can power conventional steam generators. It's extremely clean, too - no daytime emissions, and even if the plant blows up, it just spreads water. (Well, water and big chunks of concrete and steel.) You do still need natural gas, hydrogen, methane, or some other fuel for night time generation though, since there isn't enough water to pump up and generate night time electricity via hydro, and flywheel generation would drive your costs above feasibility. But since electrical use peaks during daytime, you could use nuclear generation for your base demand and vapor cycle solar steam generation for the increased daytime demand. You'll need a lot of energy for desalinization, though - I don't think you can easily use salt water for cooling. Still, cooling towers should be fairly efficient if properly sized, minimizing water loss.

 

[werepossum]

Despite my reservations, I would support a modern nuclear power plant over a coal-fired plant. One description of a nuclear plant caught my eye - apparently it doubled as a desalination plant? Using the reactor heat to distill the water or some such? In which case something on either coast, but particularly in the southwestern US, would make sense. Every major city in the US has some degree of problem maintaining it's potable water supply. If California wants to pipe water from as far away as the Columbia River or the Great Lakes, I say go with the possibility of a nuclear ecological disaster over the certainty of a water-based ecological disaster.

I've thought that's a brilliant idea for Georgia, who is currently trying to re-map our (Tennessee's) common border to seize access to the Tennessee River to serve Atlanta. One of the best ways to capture waste heat is to use vacuum pumps to lower the boiling temperature of water, allowing you to distill water economically with heat levels that are otherwise too low. You can also divert the cooling water and add heat to boil water conventionally, which is simpler but less efficient. That would be a great idea for Australia as well. But does California have any suitable areas which are seismologically stable enough?

EDIT: SilentHunter, my company has used ground source heat pumps on several projects now. Efficiencies are very good compared to conventional air-source heat pumps, and operating costs are lower than even boiler-chiller systems (although first cost and maintenance costs are higher.)

 

[Sayvara]

Regarding solar, an average 30' by 40', 1,200 square foot house probably has a 200A panel at 120/240V, probably with a peak draw of maybe 150 amps or 36KW demand. If the panels are 33% efficient, that means at 1 watt/square meter you need 108 square meters or 1,162.5 square feet. So if that 1,200 square foot house has a shed roof oriented toward the south, it's physically feasible at 33% efficiency. But that overstates the difficulties in solar.

Uhm... 1kW per square meter is what you get at the equator, at noon, when the solar panel is pointed right at the sun. What you seem to be forgetting here is that as soon as you angle the panel, you get a smaller area that is pointed at the sun. Turn the panel 90 degress and you got 0 square meters pointed at the sun and you get 0kW, no matter how big it is.

Also the further from eth equator you are, the longer the rays of the sun has to travel through the atmosphere, bleeding off energy there. And further more, the places on earth that need the most energy (because it gets cold in the winter) are those that get less sun, because of the Earth's axial tilt.

/S

 

[meece]

Actually fusion power right now can generate about a 1:1 power ratio i.e. what power you put in to run it you can in fact get back.... point being it needs a 3:1 ratio to be a viable source of energy... and it can't be sustained like that very long, the other methods (which are more sustainable) are even more inefficient.

Nuclear power staions these days don't necesarily need water, moltern salt cooled reactors are also being considerd and prototypes have been built and you know whats special about them? - their even safer and significantly cheaper than current water cooled ones. Well actually they DO need water but at least it isn't contaminated water and it can (and is) reused.... again.... and again.... and again.... aren't condenser lovely?

Dumping stuff into the sun isn't really very hard, all you need to do is get it to reach escape velocity from earth but not fast enough enough escape velocity from the sun... and since those speeds are RATHER different thats easily doable - and unless it somehow is knocked into a stable orbit around something (unlikely)or hits something (rather more likely but unlikely to be large enough to stop it) it will eventually hit the sun... or a planet but since it won't be ours whats the issue?.... course its *kinda* expensive to get stuff away from earth.... ask NASA what it spends its tiny pathetic budget on

Famous quote about anti-matter "If we could assemble all of the antimatter we've ever made at CERN and annihilate it with matter, we would have enough energy to light a single electric light bulb for a few minutes." Now sure thats only 1 research place but it gives you the scale of current anti-matter production AND there's the fact that an estimate for antimatter's cost is $300 BILLION per milligram..... not efficient (most of this paragraph was nicked from wikipedia... however I know from other sources that this is at least generally right if not specifically)

Also its called "depleted uranium" for a reason....

Anyway nuclear will do till something better comes along.... or at least take up enough of the slack that we'll last till something better comes along....

hopefully

 

[gim73]

Good stuff. Alot of you are putting more effort than I did at 1 am last night. As for the guy who said that it's okay to get 450,000 mRem exposure... This much exposure would at least lead to multiple organ failure, blindness and most likely death. Low levels each day for years IS the way to go. The body repairs itself as you go and you don't get the whole organ failure thing. Yes, there is a risk for cancer. People risk cancer every day they venture out under the sun. They smoke 3 packs a day. Of course, this risk applies only to the people who WORK at the plants. The public at large recieves no extra dose by having a nuclear reactor in their community. There are no mutated critters created by 'green nuclear ooze'. The water source nearby may experience a small increase in temperature, but that's just a side effect of the laws of thermodynamics.

Another plan is to use russian nuclear bombs to fuel american nuclear reactors. Haven't heard anybody talk about this yet on the forum.

 

[meece]

Another plan is to use russian nuclear bombs to fuel american nuclear reactors. Haven't heard anybody talk about this yet on the forum.

Actually something like that has already been done with when America decommissioned a large chunk of its nuclear arsenal after the cold war and cutting (diluting) the weapons grade uranium/plutonium with ordinary U238 to use it in reactors. It resulted in the the uranium mining and purifying industtry almost shutting down for a while since the cost of uranium droppped so much.

Seems reasonable that Russia could do the same at a later date

 

[John Galt]

Personally I don't really care about *your* country being run mostly by nuclear power. But I think nuclear power is a bad idea. Chernobyl, anyone? Ejecting waste into space sounds all well and good, but littering our universe doesn't sound such a good idea either.

You do realize that the Chernobyl reactor was built using the plans designed shortly after WW2(inferior moderation materials), and didn't even have a concrete casing around the building. Essentially, they had the reactor just kinda sitting there, with traditional Soviet attention to safety. If you take the time to do research into nuclear power, you'll reconsider this opinion. Current reactors are safer than ever, and even the most recent disaster in the US at Three Mile Island was far from what it was made out to be. The radiation released in that accident could only cause perhaps a few cancers(in addition to the 20% of developing cancer that we have regardless of radiation dosage).

Since we are faced with horrific fuel shortages in the future, I feel that nuclear power is the most viable option. It's cheaper than solar, cleaner than fossil fuels, and with current safety procedures, we have nothing to fear from a reactor(unless that is, the operator is trying to fuck things up, even then there's some bit of a challenge).

On the issue of waste, simply re-tooling some of our reactors to run on the waste will virtually eliminate the environmental impact, and even then, there is plenty of land to safely store waste (Yucca Mountain, anyone?).

Also, there is a reactor type called a pebble bed reactor [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor] that is infinitely safer than what was operating in Chernobyl. It's incredibly efficient, and can be built in a modular fashion. The only problem it faces is the misinformation of the public and the bureaucratic mess(it doesn't have any need for some of the safety features required by law).

 

[Kiesel]

its worth noting that a large percentage of the people here keep mentioning chernobyl or the risk of nuclear power...

here is your answer... READ MY POST

not all nuclear reactors are created equal.

the ONLY western nuclear reactor to harm members of the public was an experimental british military design in 1957 where the FLAMMABLE graphite core was cooled by blowing AIR through it and then straight into the country side with only a filter keeping the toxic chemicals in. Not suprisingly it lit on fire and then burned down.

the ONLY soviet reactor to harm members of the public was of a horrificaly dangerous design, that has NEVER been produced outside of the soviet union. It was SO badly designed that the disaster occured when they TESTED THE EMERGENCY COOLING SYSTEM. what happened at Chernobyl literally CAN'T happen in other types of designs, such as EVERY WESTERN reactor ever made for power generation.

for comparison... the WORST reactor malfunction was ACTUALLY at Three mile island. The operators accidentally did just about everything wrong that they could have. The whole reactor melted into a radioactive boiling puddle. HOWEVER because of the sound reactor containment design NOTHING BAD HAPPENED. In FACT the only thing that could have been a problem was that a release valve in the coolant piping had gotten stuck open (operator error in fact) and was threatening to pop the overflow tank. which would have released mildly radioactive water into the river, forcing the population avoid drinking the water for ~2weeks untill the most dangerous bits had decayed.

The fact of the matter is that YES as strange as it might sound... MORE PEOPLE are KILLED EVERY YEAR in COAL related industries, than have been killed in the ENTIRE HISTORY OF NUCLEAR POWER.
And YES, MORE PEOPLE get chronic illnesses including cancer FROM COAL related industry, THAN HAVE BEEN GIVEN CANCER DURING THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF NUCLEAR POWER

just think of airliners... when one crashes hundreds of people die and its in the news. but THOUSANDS of people die in cars every day.

THE NUMBERS DON'T LIE NUCLEAR IS THE SAFEST SOURCE OF ENERGY ON THE PLANET... and if you cant understand that then you are just dumb


Just imagine that there was a car available that got 10,000mpg , produced no pollution, and was so safe that the passengers could not be harmed in any way in an accident. the only drawback? On the off chance that you get hit by a passenger airliner while driving down the road, the resulting explosion will kill you and destroy the plane killing the innocent passengers.
Don't you think people would rush out in droves to buy such a vehicle?
(an airliner has in fact hit a car during a single incident in which the plane ran off the end of the runway and onto the street. the only fatalities were the occupants of the ill fated automobile that was crushed by the airliner landing on top of it after its nose wheel buckled)

 

[Kiesel]

also someone mentioned earlier that I was neglecting the deaths caused by the mining of uranium in comparison with mining for coal... the reason I did so is because it isn't worth mentioning. the scales are just so vastly different.

a nuclear powerplant only requires a few pounds of nuclear material every couple of years...
a coal burning power plant requires a few THOUSANDS of TONS of coal PER DAY... even with several tons of ore required to produce each pound of the uranium dioxide fuel its still ratio of several hundred thousand to 1.

in addition to the scale issue... mining uranium ore is much safer than mining coal. Uranium ore doesnt contain explosive or toxic gas. uranium ore does not produce explosive dust when mined. uranium ore occurs in very hard stable rock that does not risk tunnel collapses. and most uranium ore is mined in strip mines which are much safer in general. and the uranium strip mines are in the middle of a desert so their environmental impact is limited.

coal contains deadly gas pockets, produces explosive dust, constantly risks collapse and the only way to deal these hazards is to strip mine forested mountains down to stumps.

 

[joswie]

Like anything, if nuclear power is out of proportion, you create a whole host of problems. Nuclear power is the safest and most effective when done well, but when you have a sudden demand for a power plant everywhere, quality declines and danger emerges. Moderation and quality control are paramount.

 

[werepossum]

Regarding solar, an average 30' by 40', 1,200 square foot house probably has a 200A panel at 120/240V, probably with a peak draw of maybe 150 amps or 36KW demand. If the panels are 33% efficient, that means at 1 watt/square meter you need 108 square meters or 1,162.5 square feet. So if that 1,200 square foot house has a shed roof oriented toward the south, it's physically feasible at 33% efficiency. But that overstates the difficulties in solar.

Uhm... 1kW per square meter is what you get at the equator, at noon, when the solar panel is pointed right at the sun. What you seem to be forgetting here is that as soon as you angle the panel, you get a smaller area that is pointed at the sun. Turn the panel 90 degress and you got 0 square meters pointed at the sun and you get 0kW, no matter how big it is.

Also the further from eth equator you are, the longer the rays of the sun has to travel through the atmosphere, bleeding off energy there. And further more, the places on earth that need the most energy (because it gets cold in the winter) are those that get less sun, because of the Earth's axial tilt.

/S

I actually used 1 kW/S.M. because someone had posted that number and I was too lazy late at night to look it up, so I'll take a moment to work the problem like I would if I were giving a quick estimate to a client for my own house. In my particular area, Southeastern Tennessee (USA), the average capturable solar irradiation in the visual spectra is 4.5 to 5.0 KWH/S.M. I know from my electric bill that I use approximately 1,100 KWH ($110) per month, so to pay my whole bill I'd need to capture 8.15 KWH/day. Using Sharp's calculator, I'd need a 22.5KW system to cover 100% of my electric bill, or 102 Sharp #ND-220U2 panels at 13.5% efficiency. Each panel is 1.63 square meters, so I'll need 166 square meters for the installation, equal to 1,787 square feet. My house is actually a bit less than 1,700 square feet not counting garage, but it's on two levels, so my actual roof area is about 1,560 square feet. If I covered my entire roof area with solar panels, I'd need panels of 15.5% efficiency. This assumes I'm on the grid and can buy and sell electricity with the utility as needed. If I'm off the grid, I'll need batteries and more conversion equipment to provide power during rainy periods and at night, so I can expect additional losses of approximately 33%. Now I need panels of 23% efficiency, still well within today's technological limits. So technically, I can run my entire house with solar panels either on the grid, or off the grid, without even attempting any additional load shedding or increased efficiency measures on the house and its subsystems, using only readily available technology.

Now the problem comes in - the initial cost. An installed solar energy system at the 13.5% efficiency level runs about $8 per watt. This is the rate used in Sharp's calculations, but also correlates well with the $7 to $9 per watt I found when checking out solar this week. That includes power regulation, conversion to AC line voltage, and metering. Therefore my 22.5KW system will cost me a whopping $180,000 whilst saving me a paltry $1,300 a year. Even ignoring cost of money and the value of my time for maintenance labor, simple pay-back takes one hundred thirty-eight years! Since neither money nor time is ever free, in effect my solar system never pays me back at all. Even worse, my costs increase exponentially with increased panel efficiency.

Thus as I said solar is perfectly feasible today from a technological standpoint - we could even take every house with good sun exposure off the grid with current technology. It would be much cheaper in dryer, more southern states and much more expensive in Minnesota, but there are no purely technological barriers.

What solar is currently not is economically feasible. Assuming an average 25 year life, solar energy must reach an installed price of about $1.44 per watt at our current electricity cost to just break even, ignoring the cost of money. When you consider cost of money and a maximum 10 year payback, now you're looking at perhaps $0.30 per watt, depending on your cost of money. (It's much worse when you consider solar for commercial use, because now your maintenance is a significant cost.) An installed cost of $0.30 per watt means a state of the art 40% efficiency, 1 square meter panel (assuming an average of 0.3 kilowatts/square meter capturable irradiance, not an unreasonable assumption for much of the world) needs to output an average of 120 watts (a 400 watt panel using standard 1.0KW/S.M. rating) and cost no more than $36 to buy and install. Currently that theoretical panel would probably be in the range of $5,500 to buy and install.

Thus solar power is now technologically feasible, but is not currently economically feasible. Nor is it likely to become so any time soon. Solar is useful, but won't become widespread unless and until a paradigm shift occurs in solar panels.

Someone please let me know if I'm missed anything.

EDIT: Kiesel - strip mines make Baby Jesus cry.

 

[Typecast]

The problem in Australia, is even if we converted to nuclear power, which I hope we don't, it would still take 20years to build a plant with all the inclusive infrastructure necessary to run the bloody thing.
However, another political concern is the mining and exporting of ores to other countries that may or may not use them to develope nuclear weapons. I think, though I'm not sure, our government has erred on the side of caution, and decided not to mine and export our nuclear materials.
There is another issue about nuclear power plants, at least in this country, and that's "Not in my back yard." It isn't the real danger that influences these decisions, its the potential for disaster or deleterious effects that are unforseeable. For instance: no one can predict what is going to happen 75,000 years from now. That's how long it takes for some of the nastier radioactive waste to decay. So I'll be damned if I leave my Great x 289 Mutant/robotic grandchildren a nuclear waste surpluss because I wanted to leave the heater on during winter.
By comparison, the 'green' technologies are a little easier to set up, but still probably taking at least 10years or so, still half the time, to properly/significantly contribute to the national power grid.
Luckily Australia is a relatively small country(population wise), rich and with an abundance of empty space so green would be "faster" to set up than nuclear and probably better for us in the loooooooooooooong term.
I think people make the mistake of thinking that nuclear power is some kind of quick cheap fix to the energy problem. It really isn't.
The most important part of this is really the "quick" part as well.

 

[John Galt]

The potential for disastrous events is extremely small with modern reactors. Despite what you hear of Chernobyl, roughly 4k cancers will develop. I figure for what the media portrays it as, that's pretty good considering that the thing was nothing more than a rickety shack filled with uranium and graphite. Three Mile Island showcased the wonderful safety measures we have(the only radiation released was through a fail safe to prevent gas buildup and therefore a TNT[not an atomic bomb mind you] style explosion). While an atomic economy will certainly require extensive monitoring for any leaks in the shipping, the construction of an atomic weapon is extremely difficult. Let me just go over the four main types for you.

Uranium bombs rely on a simple gun design. The design, while simple, is not within the reach of even Al-Qaeda. Getting weapons-grade uranium is extremely hard to do not only due to trade regulation, but the fact that only a small fraction of the ore is good enough for a bomb. Purification is a lengthy process and a small terrorist cell has hardly the patience for that when it's much simpler to crash a crop-duster filled with gasoline into a stadium.

TL;DR: Uranium is hard as hell to get to weapons grade and the body count could be easily achieved by other means.

Plutonium while easier, is much harder to make into a successful bomb. It requires a series of extremely precisely timed explosions to trigger the reaction. Not even the North Koreans, who're clearly putting everything they can into the project, have made anything close to something that could threaten anyone more than a fertilizer filled truck.

Hydrogen bombs, while in the multi-megaton range, are essentially a combination of the former two and therefore, out of terrorist reach.

Dirty Bombs pose little threat. The most damage would be caused by a slight increase in cancer rates and doesn't provide the body-count a terrorist organization desires. No one wants to take credit for a .16% spike in cancer rates. That's just asking to get laughed out of Jihadcon '08.

So, the threat doesn't really come from nuclear fuel, but from existing nuclear bombs. The odds that a terrorist could procure a bomb from a disgruntled ex-Soviet warehouse manager are much greater (detonation will still be a ***** though, even the Reds put in tamper-proofs).

Since you're probably questioning how a high-school student knows this, just read Physics For Future Presidents by Richard A. Muller.

 

[Kiesel]

typecast... australia is where most of the uranium mining and production currently takes place. the only other major sources of fuel are from decommisioning of soviet weapons stockpiles. the US only produces about 5% of its own fuel, with the rest coming from australia, the russians, and a little from canada.
Sorry to dissapoint you, but your government is the BIGGEST exporter of nuclear materials in the world.

the fact that you don't even know about it and you live there just goes to show how little effort is actually involved. I doubt it would take 20 years unless you count the time spent trying to get nuclear construction permits through the government. The biggest challenge would be getting it past the anti-nuke lobbyists and after that it would just come down to picking which variety of safe effective powerplant to build. Do you go with the pebble bed reactor which is the ultimate so far in safety (physically impossible for it to meltdown) but with more expensive fuel? or do you go with the more conventional light water reactor which is cheaper but is not completely idiot proof (TMI worst case scenario).

and just so you know, there are hundreds of non power generating nuclear reactors in schools all across the US... Even a Community college I took classe at in Atlanta had a "reactor building" for its physics department, and I hear that there are about 50 around Seattle where I am now. I wouldn't be suprised if australia had similar concentrations of student run reactors...

and jowsie... all but the 5 remaining russian RBMK reactors (6th was chernobyl) require a significant direct operator action to fail (TMI caused primarily by MASSIVE user error). there are hundreds of nuclear reactors worldwide that all use the same system, and only one of them has failed, causing no illness or death to non-operators.
when you look at the numbers, 0/300 reactors over 50+ years times 4 times as many reactors carry the 0 EQUALS SAFE.
And more significantly. Any reator built TODAY will use the more modern reactor designs. which take advantage of the lessons learned in the 50+ years of nuclear power operation.


Only real concern of nuclear power is the environmental hazards of storing waste. However that argument is largely a paper tiger. Uranium is actually one of the more common elements in the earth's crust, about the same as tin. It was even more common millions of years ago due to it's halflife. there are signs in modern uranium deposits that at some time in the past they were even concentrated enough to sustain fission reactions for thousands of years.
Yes the radioactive material in the waste is more concentrated, but you have to remember that it actually contains less total remaining energy that the uranium that produced it. it is estimated that the waste products of fission will last for 10 thousand years, but you have to remember that radioactive uranium in the same concentrations would have lasted millions of years before becoming safe.
If you dont like the idea of storing the waste in a hole in the desert for a few thousand years untill we figure out a better use for it. the safest alternative is paradoxically to just dump it into the oceans over a wide area (not concentrated). it would sink right to the bottom and if diluted enough, a few tons of waste over such a large area would cause no detectable rise in ocean background radiation levels.
The fact is that the earth is just a radioactive planet, the average human gets a substantial dose of background radiation throughout your entire lifetime. which is why doctors feel safe administering x-rays and radiation therapy for cancer. Its such a small dose compared to what you already experience every year, that a little more isn't going to do much.

 

[WolfMage]

I'm sorry, I can't hear "Nuclear Power" without my little cynical voice screaming "Chernobyl!" in my head. I don't care how "safe" it is, I care that it is manned by someone other than Capt. McFuck Up Jr. and the other highschool rejects.

 

[BaronAsh]

I'm sorry, I can't hear "Nuclear Power" without my little cynical voice screaming "Chernobyl!" in my head. I don't care how "safe" it is, I care that it is manned by someone other than Capt. McFuck Up Jr. and the other highschool rejects.

Paranoid Liberal much?

 

[gim73]

Capt. McFuck Up Jr? I take it you are talking smack about Naval reactors? You know, the ones that have never had a major accident. The ones that are manned by well trained officers and enlisted men, pretty much the top five percent of what the military has to offer.

High school rejects don't get to operate reactors. Hell, you gotta be pretty smart just to get into the nuke program, and the school weeds out anybody who is not worthy. Even after you finish the two year pipeline, you are constantly trained and drilled in all aspects of reactor safety. Every reactor is subject to inspections and all personnel are competent enough to do their job properly.

 

[Kiesel]

just so you people know... Chernobyl, the only power generating reactor to ever explode... was brand new, and run by the cream of the russian nuclear engineers and technicians.
They followed all their instructions and guidlines to the letter... and it still blew up.
the reason Chernobyl happened was because all of the 6 RBMK style reactors had a fatal flaw in their backup cooling design. when the operators attempted to test the system, the turbine that powered the cooling pumps was supposed to run on momentum for ~45 seconds untill the diesel engines that would take over powering the pumps could turn on. The problem was that the turbine slowed down faster than the design specified, and the reactor went without proper cooling for about 10secs. During those 10seconds steam bubbles blocked up the pipes. The Operators then got conflicting data from the system because the reactor output suddenly spiked. they took the normal safety measures to turn the reactor back down... but because they didn't know about the coolant problem, these measures caused further heating, which they then tried to fix again, which made it even worse etc... And to add the iceing to the nuclear cake, when they finally realized what was actually happening, a few minutes in, they tried to SCRAM the reactor. But the control rods got stuck due to the overheated core. after that they had just enough time to hit the panic button to warn the outside world before they died. BOOM the completely intact fully functional containment vessel around the reactor BLOWS UP exactly like a steam boiler, spraying radioactivity all over.

Capt. McFuckUp Jr. (who Im going to assume is the superhero with the power of FAIL and not a military captain) would have never thought to test the backup cooling at all, and the situation would never have occured.


AMERICAN and EUROPEAN reactors on the other hand HAVE NEVER EXPLODED, EVER... And even in the WORST CASE when the reactor went into uncontrolled fission, like what happened at Three Mile Island, All the workers had to do was SCRAM the reactor shutting it off instantly. the over the NEXT FEW DAYS a slow leak in the coolant system caused by a stuck open valve leaked radioactive water all over the inside of the containment building. this exposed the the core and risked a hydrogen explosion which would have damaged the containment building (think hindenburg) to prevent the possibility of disaster they vented a bunch of radioactive krypton gas into the atmosphere where it floated up into the jetstream and was blown away by the wind with no ill effects.

If Capt. McFuckUp Jr. had been running the plant. the containment building would likely have popped and dumped radioactive water into the river. forcing the inhabitants of pennsylvania to drink beer for a few weeks untill the water was washed away. and never eating fish from the river for several years.


My point is... that even with the most skilled and experienced operators in the world. The threat from a nuclear reactor is primarily due to its design.
TMI went for DAYS untill the problem was found and corrected, and no-one got hurt. Chernobyl went for a few MINUTES untill the problem was found, and by then it was too late and it caused a disaster. the key portions of both events involved cooling loss, but the chernobyl design was several THOUSAND times more dangerous.

If you make a reactor out of graphite and then run air through it as coolant, expect it to light on fire like the british one did.

if you make hundreds of reactors you make sure that they are as safe as you can make them. thus of the Hundreds of reactors around the world just like the one at TMI, only one has threatened the public. the operators did just about everything wrong that they could have and it still took several days to become a threat, and even when it did, the solution was so simple that it was resolved without any further damage.

IF you are DUMB enough to design a reactor that requires constant pumping of coolant to NOT EXPLODE. You had better not be dumb enough to design a backup cooling system that has a 45 second delay before it turns on. And if you are dumb enough to do both of the above you had REALLY not be dumb enough to believe Comrade McFuckUp Sr., who is obviously the designer, when he tells you that the primary cooling loop will circulate on momentum during the time it takes for the backup to turn on. And if you are that dumb... remember to put someone other than McFuckup Jr. at the controls so that when your reactor does explode in a glorious fasion, he will hit the warning button to alert you to the fact that you need to get the hell out of there.


And the even more modern designs being proposed today, are even safer than the standard variety that have gone 50 years without causing any harm the the public.
designs that are so safe that even if you did everything wrong and you were intentionally trying to make the reactor explode, you couldn't do it without a bomb the size of a bus (and even then it would be the bomb exploding not the reactor).


and as a last note... if an american naval nuke had lost coolant, it wouldn't matter because there is always more seawater to pump in. the only naval nukes to fail were all russian designs that used distilled water or liquid metal.
ITS ALL ABOUT THE DESIGN PEOPLE...

 

[Saskwach]

There is another issue about nuclear power plants, at least in this country, and that's "Not in my back yard."

I prefer the acronym: NIMBYism. It makes the thing so childish and reactionary (which it mostly is).

Since you're probably questioning how a high-school student knows this, just read Physics For Future Presidents by Richard A. Muller.

I actually was wondering how exactly you, a high school student, knew all that. I will be yoinking that book as soon as time and funds allow. Sounds interesting.

This is partly off-topic but, hey, this is the off-topic board isn't it?
A big problem that we in West Oz face but never speak of is salinity; it's made a large patch of what was very fertile farming land useless. What's more, the problem seems nigh unfixable with what I'll call the 'trees' solution; farmers have been told for decades by a governing body, whose name I forget, that to solve salinity they need to cover x% of their land with trees to stop the rising salt water table. The first few estimates, though rising, were always doable for the farmers: 10% and wait 30 years, 20% and wait 50 years - that sort of level. However, the latest estimate is just infeasible: 80% and wait a century. Assuming these numbers are accurate, then, it's clear that the trees wouldn't do it.
I've heard of an engineering solution, though, that seems, from my limited understanding of some highfalutin' calculations, to make sense. Basically, since elevations ever so slightly rise as you go inland, a fairly windy canal could be built over the highest parts of the water table (or rather, the areas of the land where the water table is closest - literally, you'll hit it if you stick a shovel in) that could use the very gradual downward incline of the land to transport the water out to sea where salty water is more tolerable.
There are other parts of the plan, such as planting very salt tolerant bushes and trees along the banks of the canal, but the part where this gets even remotely related to the topic is this: the canal could be used to power a hydroelectric power station that could, according to these numbers I wouldn't know how to check, power a few thousand homes. Whether the plan could work or not, I was impressed at the ingenuity of using one problem to help with another. This kind of ingenuity will be needed to meet future power needs, now that the easy solutions are drying up.
Engineers: they take one problem, solve it, then use that solution to fix another.