Poll: Nuclear power and You

[Lord Of Cyberia]

Nothing I can say hasn't already been said. Nuclear Power = Good. Media = Stupid Jerks. Almost all other power sources = dangerous/too little energy.

I'm hoping for more Nuclear Power Plants very soon in the U.S. And Australia, as the bandwagon government is being a bunch of wusses and banned all nuclear energy in Oz, as has Canada. Bloody Canada. Always helping the U.S. to its' DOOOOOM!


But seriously, I meant the first bit, and for more N. Power plants.

 

[TobiObi]

i think we should use hydrogen fuel cells
it's prefectly safe
the only waste is pure water
and there are no moving parts so they need almost no maintenance
plus u can turn the water back into hydrogen and oxygen with just pond scum and sunlight
and of course still use solar and wind energy

yea, get 1/1000'th the power at 165 times the cost

hydrogen is not that expensive or inefficient, and with solar all you pay for is the solar panel and it's setup, after that one time cost it's FREE! and besides that neither of them are a giant bomb waiting to happen

and besides, with fuel sources as abundant as hydrogen, wind, and THE SUN you dont need very high efficiency

 

[Lord Of Cyberia]

Look, the sun might be infinite, but we don't have the cash or Photo Voltaic Cell Production we need to make it totally reliable. And also, HYDROGEN CREATES CO2 WHEN BURNED.And producing Fuel Cells is very expensive.

 

[axia777]

hydrogen is not that expensive or inefficient, and with solar all you pay for is the solar panel and it's setup, after that one time cost it's FREE! and besides that neither of them are a giant bomb waiting to happen

and besides, with fuel sources as abundant as hydrogen, wind, and THE SUN you don't need very high efficiency

Hydrogen as a power source is very far away as a technology so don't bet on it any time soon.

Solar is good but cannot support the growing demand that the world is experiencing. The best bet for solar power are the planned orbital solar power stations that will beam the energy back to earth as microwaves to be collected. But again, this is not very close in it's time line of development. To read about it go here.

Space-based solar power - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-based_solar_power

Wind is good but again it is not as reliable in it's ability to consistently create power. Some are trying to devise planes to have either a giant battery system or capacitors to store the power for times when the wind is not producing as much as is needed.

For the time being nuclear power is the best way to take care of the current energy needs to our planet. And as I all ready pointed out France has been using nuclear power for over 40 years with no accidents. Modern nuclear power plants are much safer and reliable.

 

[TobiObi]

Look, the sun might be infinite, but we don't have the cash or Photo Voltaic Cell Production we need to make it totally reliable.

solar panels aren't that expensive, plus if you buy some for your house or something the government will help you pay for them

HYDROGEN CREATES CO2 WHEN BURNED

1) no they dont, they ONLY create PURE WATER and enegry which the fuel cell captures
2) the hydrogen isnt burned
3) hydrogen CAN'T create Carbon Dioxide, THERE'S NO 'H' IN CO2
4) most your info so inaccurate i hafta ask where u get it from

And producing Fuel Cells is very expensive.

for now, Engineers are working on making them cost as much or less than gas engines

 

[Necrofudge]

Well I just feel that until we design a disposal system that isn't just digging a really big hole and dumping the nuclear waste. But overall if the workers are competent enough, its pretty safe.

We have. It is called the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_repository]. It would already be complete but misinformed people keep throwing wrenches at it.

Also the modern navies of the world are nuclear powered. How many times do you hear of shipboard reactors blowing up and killing all hands? I think we pretty much have this building reactors safely bit down. As far as transporting. Well there are a set of rails not to far from where I live. They lead out from the the Shipyard. Occasionally, but rarely as most of this work is done on the other coast, this train does transport nuclear waste. I have seen the containers they transport them in. They can handle being dropped out of a plane, they can handle burning, explosions, anything you name.

OK, now how expensive might this be?

 

[aussiesniper]

But then what is depleted uranium? The stuff they use in tank shells? I know, I could google this, but discussion is much more fun.

In bombs,they use enriched (high-concentration) uranium (in a mix with plutonium,i guess - i don't really know). Depleted uranium is leftovers,IIRC. It's toxic,and is ignited by air exposure,but it's not radioactive. And with current cannons,it pierces armour just fine. When better cannons or railguns roll around,wolfrahm will be used instead - it's better in armour piercing at very high speeds.

Fission weapons can use either enriched U-235 (i.e. the hard-to-find, explosive kind of uranium that takes several months to refine from regular uranium, which is 99% U-238) or Plutonium (man-made element, made from uranium in certain reactor types).

Depleted uranium is pure U-238 (the semi-useless kind of uranium) and is still quite radioactive (although only 60% as radioactive as normal uranium according to wikipedia). APFSDS shells use uranium because it is extremely dense and thus carries more momentum when it hits something (the fact that uranium burns when exposed to air and crushed is just a bonus).

 

[1rednose]

Ahhhh, Nuclear Power, a topic near and dear to my heart.
First off, hate hearing the term "Nuclear Waste". Think of it more like "Nuclear Leftovers". We can reprocess the stuff for more fuel, and reduce the radioactive element that lasts for thousands of years.
Secondly, all the hoopla over radioactivity stems from the fact that the Nuclear Regulatory Committee (NRC) declared for its guidelines that "no amount of ionizing radiation is safe." Studies have shown that small to moderate exposure actually has health benefiets. Kid you not, look it up.
Another note, they can be huge job pools. Comnsidering every plant refuels every 18-24 months, hundreds of extra people are hired for supporrt. Cleaners, decon people, pipefitters...plenty of jobs to be had.
If anyone really wants to worry about nuclear power, how about the fact that there are 20+ weapons grade reactors floating off of Norfolk, Va., maintained by a crew with no real prior experience, ready to be sent off into combat?

 

[Cryo84R]

The US Navy has been operating a great many reactors since the 50's without so much as a hiccup.

 

[Ph33nix]

what happened at Chernobyl could never happen in a western reactor because of 2 major design flaws. 1 radioactive material was not removed from the bombardment chamber just more lead was added and 2 its casing was graphite which is flammable at meltdown temperatures and caused the meltdown to accelerate.

neither of these two problems are prevalent in American and western reactors

 

[LooK iTz Jinjo]

Fusion power is called the sun. Actually using it to generate power on earth is called Sci-Fi and will continue to be called that for at least a few more decades. As for Nuclear fission, as long as you don't dump the waste in my backyard go for it. What do you think endless African deserts are for? Hell eject it into space, not like it's any different to the shit already floating out there.

 

[RanD00M]

I really don´t care as long as i get my electricity.

 

[Booze Zombie]

Really, give me a real reason though. You must have some reason.

I don't think humanity is smart enough to properly use it, is my plain reason.

Something will go wrong with it, in the end.

 

[Akai Shizuku]

I prefer water-and-wind power over anything else...so the risks strongly outweigh the benefits for me.

 

[gim73]

Hurray for nuclear power!

Seriously though, figured I'd pop in and give you some facts and numbers. You pull uranium out of the ground, and it is mainly U-238. A small fraction (.7%) is U-235. 235 will fission when hit by a neutron and produce more energy and neutrons. Generally nuclear reactors will run on low enriched uranium, only about 5% U-235. You cannot chemically seperate the two isotopes because they are the same element, so you have to enrich it by one of the few methods, most commonly gaseous diffusion and centrifuge (which Iran is currently trying to do). When you enrich the output uranium, you deplete the leftovers, which gives us depleted uranium. Plutonium is a transformation from U-238 with neutron interaction. The chemical seperation gives us pure plutonium which can be used in bombs, or can be used in special reactors. Current plans take old soviet plutonium bombs and use them as fuel for reactors. I also saw people mentioning thorium power. While we need thorium for it to work, it's not actually thorium that is giving us power, it's the transformation of thorium into U-233. An issue with this is that we also get U-232 from these, and that will put off very high energy gammas. We can't make bombs from U-233 because of it's very radioactive, and thus a hazard during production and storage to personnel.
Waste disposal is an issue, but one that people don't really understand. Right now, all the nuclear reactors in the US have their spent fuel stored on sight, either in spent fuel pools or dry storage. This fuel is becoming less radioactive every year that goes by, but there are 104 sites that it is being stored at. The navy has been burying their fuel out in the desert for 60 years, and have never had a problem transporting it across the country to their single disposal site. Other radioactive waste has designated spots for disposal as well. Only high level waste and spent nuclear fuel lacks a disposal sight currently. The US actually made a law back in the 80's that required the federal government to provide a central waste disposal site for high level and spent fuel, and required all nuclear utilities to pay into a fund for it's creation and operation. Nuke plants have lived up to their end for the last 30 years, but the federal government is failing to do what it agreed to do. From what I've seen of Yucca mountain, it looks like it will be pretty impressive once it's finished. The waste transport containers have really impressive testing specs.

Reprocessing spent fuel is really smart, and the french are really pushing that. Right now our known uranium deposits are holding up pretty well. China is really pushing into nuclear power as well, and it's said that they will build 100 new reactors by 2020 (all new gen 3 reactor types too!). Their developing nation is having serious issues with meeting power requirements and is hitting a roadblock on the carbon emissions side of coal. Producing so much coal power is making living in their country untolerable. There are so many people and cars that powering things with coal is no longer a viable choice.

Okay, now that we have covered that, I'll just go onto the track record. US nuclear power plants operate at full power for something like 95 % of the year. No other source of power can boast such a thing. People threw out some numbers about the cost of the power per KW that showed that it was comparable to coal, but that assumes a single plant lifetime of 40 years. Once you increase past 40 years, the cost goes down even further.

Some reactors also have double purpose. Yes, they provide direct electricity to the grid, but they also produce more. Technicium 99m is a special isotope that is used in medical applications. Somebody else was ranting on how hydrogen is the power of the future. High temperature reactors can be used for hydrogen production.

One thing that 9/11 did do for the country was increase the awareness that nuclear terrorism may cause nuclear material to be smuggled across borders. Getting your hands on nuclear material is NOT as easy as just ordering it over the phone. Radiation monitors at borders and ports ensure that radioactive material is not smuggled into the country.

Fusion research has indeed been telling us that fusion power is gonna be viable 10 - 15 years down the road, but that has always been suspect information. Fission research tells us that we will have safer and more efficient reactors 10 - 15 years down the road, and that is pretty much true. This technology is gonna take us places in the next couple of years. Maybe we'll actually be able to live up to CO2 emission standards.

 

[Anton P. Nym]

i think we should use hydrogen fuel cells
it's prefectly safe
the only waste is pure water
and there are no moving parts so they need almost no maintenance
plus u can turn the water back into hydrogen and oxygen with just pond scum and sunlight
and of course still use solar and wind energy

yea, get 1/1000'th the power at 165 times the cost

hydrogen is not that expensive or inefficient, and with solar all you pay for is the solar panel and it's setup, after that one time cost it's FREE! and besides that neither of them are a giant bomb waiting to happen

and besides, with fuel sources as abundant as hydrogen, wind, and THE SUN you dont need very high efficiency

Sorry, I did a project on hydrogen fuel back in my high school days... and the numbers don't add up that way.

You're limited by all the problems of solar power* and wind** when cracking the hydrogen out of water that way, and the process is quite inefficient. Hydrogen's also tough to store and transport, as it leaks through just about everything and metals become brittle after long exposure to hydrogen. It also just doesn't have the energy density of even gasoline (let alone nuclear fuel) unless you chill it down into a liquid, and NASA has found that cryogenic fuels have their own issues. Mainly safety and cost related.

The fuel cells themselves are really efficient, though; they're sweet equipment. It's hydrogen that's the sticky part, especially in such large volumes.

* variable availability (clouds, rain, etc), low intensity even on a clear day, high capital cost to set up (even higher than nuclear right now, watt for watt, but that could improve in the not terribly-distant future), ties up a large land surface compared to the power generated, requires a lot of maintenance to keep the collectors clear of dirt and snow and the like, not suitable for high latitudes or low-lying areas with long periods of shade

** variable availability (calms, storms), low intensity save on extremes, ties up a large area compared to the power generated, possible hazard to wildlife, noise issues

Last time I checked, ITER still didn't exist... and it still doesn't. Site prep is done, construction of the research buildings has started, and it's promising as a research program, but it's not a practical power plant and it will never be one itself because it's not intended to be one.

Hopefully, though, ITER's construction will teach us the lessons necessary to build a practical tokamak reactor... but that step is more than that "15 years away" figure, I think.

Of course ITER exists. ITER is the project. The project exists and has since forming in 2006. No project even near it's scale has existed in the past, especially not in the 60s.

also they're on schedule to have a working prototype by 2018. that is 9 years from now. I think 6 years is a sufficient buffer. And once they have the kinks worked out you can bet it will be cloned all over the world.

Everything i said originally still stands true.

ITER the project exists, but ITER is the last project stage of a project that's been cooking since the mid-80s. If they do run to schedule, and don't have any of the problems the Large Hadron Collider ran into, they'll have a prototype to test in 2018. It won't be a full-up commercial reactor, it's not designed to be one, it's an experimental reactor. And that's assuming that they don't run into engineering problems while scaling it up, or unanticipated kinks in the physics. Fusion ain't easy to do; don't take the challenges it poses too lightly.

I'd love to be wrong, but I learned caution when predicting new forms of power generation with the Pons and Flieschman "cold fusion" circus.

-- Steve

 

[yaik7a]

Those waiting for fusion power might want to put the kettle on now because they have will be having a fucking long wait.

Not really , as the expertments at the LHC have shown a possibal way to fusion protons

what experiments? the LHC broke down in 9 days

I am pleased you know what happened at chernobyl. It was entirely human error. Which by itself even woulndn't have caused the explosion if they hadn't turned off the safety features.

In all honesty, it is a safer and less polluting source of energy than Coal.
Geothermal and Solar power are our 2 best options at the moment. But Solar requires too much space, and geothermal is not fully explored yet.

The energy content of a kilogram of uranium or thorium, if spent nuclear fuel is reprocessed and fully utilized, is equivalent to about 3.5 million kilograms of coal. This figure is from Wikipedia.

Anyway, our ultimate energy is whatever generates electricity at the best rate. And Finding a way to safely deposit the waste. Coal deposits it into the air, nuclear is sealed and remains inside its container wherever it is stored.

Solar's problem is its inability to process a large spectrum of light. it only reacts in the infrared spectrum, so it is unable to process the 2 mm of light's total spectrum we can see, loosing a masive amount of power. if we could perfect the other chemicals that cover the spectrum of visible light, solar would be far more effective at powering the world. if we could say, make a chemical that can effectively harness power from gama-rays, the concrete foundation of your house would be able to power your house

There was tests completed .

 

[AvsJoe]

The risks outweigh the benefits in my eyes. I believe that we should put more effort into harnessing renewable resources anyway, considering that our planet is getting its ass kicked by us because of stuff like this.

 

[gim73]

The risks outweigh the benefits in my eyes. I believe that we should put more effort into harnessing renewable resources anyway, considering that our planet is getting its ass kicked by us because of stuff like this.

Do you even know what RISK means? The risk equation is probability times severity. Let's say we apply it to a real life scenerio.

Say we look at a happily married man and his risk of dying from aids. Dying from aids is pretty severe, and a likelyhood if you get it. Now you gotta look at the double probability that you need to have sex and with a person who already has hiv. Now our probability is really low for this (at least it SHOULD be), so our risk for aids is very low as well, despite high severity.

Now you wanna see something that boggles your mind? Look up industrial accidents at chemical plants and what they have done to the surrounding public. The sheer NUMBER of accidents you find on the internet will astonish you. Chemical burns and horrible disfigurements, death and permenant disablility. These are ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE higher risk than a nuclear accident.

You want solar and wind power? Enjoy your windless nights, because you won't be getting power then. You like hydroelectric power? I like eating salmon, but eventually we will have to choose if we want our fish to breed or dams on our rivers. Geothermal power is a cool option, but for places that don't have these options, nuclear is a solid choice for baseline load. Public fear has kept us from fully utilizing it for so long, but eventually public stupidity will have to face the fact that carbon emissions are killing the planet, and nuclear is a good choice to fix that problem.