Poll: Nuclear power and You

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Deathsong17

New member
Feb 4, 2009
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We should use nuclear untill we perfect renewable energy sources. Onece we can get the amount of powwr we need from renewable, nuclear should be phased out.
 

TobiObi

New member
Oct 8, 2009
18
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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
 

Combined

New member
Sep 13, 2008
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Nuclear material makes me think that God may exist.

God put down the nuclear material unto the ground and said "One day this shall be useful for my children". One day, someone dug it up. The God looked down and said "There, Child, I have given thee the power to destroy worlds and the power to create a future." And man took this as a gift and hasn't said thanks so far.

Nuclear power is the way to go in our modern age. With the introduction of miniaturization, we can make smaller and smaller reactors. In addition, we can use breeder reactors. We must combine the two and make small, thorium-based reactors that will not only drastically improve safety and output, but also reduce the output of nuclear waste to near-nil.

But what we need to do in the future is to make compact fusion breeder reactors that will not only exhibit immense amounts of energy, but also create a much safer environment by reducing the half-life of radioactive material to almost the minimum. And possibly create hydrogen energy that will ensure an even safer world.

Truly, Nuclear Power is God's gift to man. Cheap, reliable, safe and environmentally friendly. All praise be to the atoms, for they have shown us the way.
 

dalek sec

Leader of the Cult of Skaro
Jul 20, 2008
10,237
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Combined said:
Truly, Nuclear Power is God's gift to man. Cheap, reliable, safe and environmentally friendly. All praise be to the atoms, for they have shown us the way.
Your not one of those Children of the Atom people from Megaton are you? I heard those guys are kinda strange.

All jokes aside I say keep using it till we find something better, the odds of a meltdown are very rare and we're running out of oil and what not.
 

Anton P. Nym

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Sep 18, 2007
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Captain_Caveman said:
Anton P. Nym said:
Captain_Caveman said:
building Fission plants is a waste of money.

Fusion will be ready in 10 - 15 years.
They said that in 1960. And in 1975. And in 1990. And in 2005... Fusion is always 15 years away, until it's finally here.

Since no fusion reactor has yet been able to sustain "break-even" power for more than an instant, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that we're not going to have fusion power in 2020... so unless we want to start giving up on having industrial economies we're going to have to build something in the next thirty-odd years to replace plants closing from old age. I say that fission's a better bet than the other alternatives so far.

-- Steve
last time i checked the http://www.iter.org didnt exist in the 60s
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.

-- Steve
 

axia777

New member
Oct 10, 2008
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France has been running nuclear power for over 40 years now. Almost all their power in fact comes from nuclear power plants. They have never had an accident nor do they dispose of their nuclear waste in a no-environmentally friendly way. This disproves all the anti-nuclear power bullshit that environmentalist hippes ***** about. Their arguments are all retarded. America should have been perfecting nuclear power for the last 40 years like France has been doing. Maybe they can give us some tips!

Here is a good quote from an article on NPR's website.

On the coast of Normandy overlooking the English Channel, sits the nuclear power plant at Flamanville. Its two reactors generate enough electricity for the entire regions of Normandy and Brittany. France has 58 nuclear plants like this which meet 80 percent of its total electricity needs -- and allow it to export power to Britain, Germany and Italy.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5369610
 

TobiObi

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Oct 8, 2009
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Glefistus said:
It can work in established nuclear powers who are responsible(i.e. not Pakistan or India, arguably not Russia), but everyone else might make a warhead, or lose enriched uranium to terrorists.
the problem with that is the people, 1 worker with lose morals and/or severe money problems, or 1 clever agent from another government and you'll have those problems anyways

no system is perfect, every system has faults that can be exploited
 

toapat

New member
Mar 28, 2009
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yaik7a said:
EchetusXe said:
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

CrysisMcGee said:
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
 

Nickolai77

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Apr 3, 2009
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Glad to see most escapist's here are in favour if nuclear power. I would just add that as time has gone on, nuclear power plants have become increasingly efficient and generated progressively less and less nuclear waste. That, along with tried and tested methods of disposing of nuclear waste means that nuclear waste disposal is not really a major problem with nuclear power plants.
 

JWAN

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Dec 27, 2008
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Booze Zombie said:
JWAN said:
How much waste do you think they give off?
I think any waste being given off is bad, really, so quantifying it is rather meaningless to me.

Besides that, I don't really like nuclear power because... well, watch The Simpsons.
Having some nine to five-guy running nuclear equipment doesn't appeal to my survival instinct.
Really, give me a real reason though. You must have some reason.
 

JWAN

New member
Dec 27, 2008
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TobiObi said:
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
 

JWAN

New member
Dec 27, 2008
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Abedeus said:
Relatively safe.

Very effective and small chance of backfire (Chernobyl was a human's error). But those toxic wastes... Ugh. A half-life of hundreds of years?
yea but after 20 you can literally be right next to them and as long as you don't drink it your fine.
If they would cut the red tape away in the US we could keep them at Yucca Mountain WAY away from anyone that could be hurt by it.
 

JWAN

New member
Dec 27, 2008
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Kilaknux said:
JWAN said:
In the US we have a solid granite mountain in the middle of nowhere we put it under. so storage is really a non issue.
Did you also know that the waste can be recycled to a point where you could use it for 1-2 more years?
New one on me. I often suspected as much, but never really bothered to verify it. Cheers, shall add it to my arguments for the glowy power. Cheers!
Besides it would be an excellent way to cut down on antiquated warheads that tend to disappear at an alarming rate, just disassemble them, take them to a power plant and power a city.
 

Captain_Caveman

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Mar 21, 2009
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Anton P. Nym said:
Captain_Caveman said:
Anton P. Nym said:
Captain_Caveman said:
building Fission plants is a waste of money.

Fusion will be ready in 10 - 15 years.
They said that in 1960. And in 1975. And in 1990. And in 2005... Fusion is always 15 years away, until it's finally here.

Since no fusion reactor has yet been able to sustain "break-even" power for more than an instant, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that we're not going to have fusion power in 2020... so unless we want to start giving up on having industrial economies we're going to have to build something in the next thirty-odd years to replace plants closing from old age. I say that fission's a better bet than the other alternatives so far.

-- Steve
last time i checked the http://www.iter.org didnt exist in the 60s
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.

-- Steve
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.
 

Bob_Bobbington

Senior Member
Oct 27, 2008
645
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21
Why is everyone so scared. I blame the scaremongering media. Reactors are thousands of times safer than earlier ones (as has been stated), the waste isn't that potent (sure it has a long half life but it isn't intense at all and are mainly Alpha and Beta emitters which can be stopped by a thin sheet of lead) and is relatively cheap which is what we need at the moment to put more funding into Fusion.
 

Andalusa

Mad Cat Lady
Feb 25, 2008
2,734
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I'd be just as happy getting my electricity from a nuclear power plant as I would be from solar panels, wind turbines and tide... thingys. It's just another way of getting energy.
 

TobiObi

New member
Oct 8, 2009
18
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Glefistus said:
TobiObi said:
Glefistus said:
It can work in established nuclear powers who are responsible(i.e. not Pakistan or India, arguably not Russia), but everyone else might make a warhead, or lose enriched uranium to terrorists.
the problem with that is the people, 1 worker with lose morals and/or severe money problems, or 1 clever agent from another government and you'll have those problems anyways

no system is perfect, every system has faults that can be exploited
What are you talking about, almost every nuclear power is a capitalist democracy/
what does that have to do with anything?!?
 

Gmano

New member
Apr 3, 2009
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I got another pro for you. Depleted Uranium! That stuff is a very tough material with a low drag coefficient and high density. Great for making vehicles, armo(u)r, radiation shielding (i know, ironic right?), aircraft counterweights etc.

Also, my personal favorite Hot Dry Rock [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_geothermal_systems] is the best (renewable, no base/backup required, scalable, no greenhouse gases etc.)

The viability for space travel and the portability of a nuclear power station makes it useful.

IMO the best system would be: Solar and Wind based by HDR (instead of the current coal with a minor hydro and nuclear). For vehicles that require range: solar based by a nuclear engine.
 

axia777

New member
Oct 10, 2008
2,895
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JWAN said:
TobiObi said:
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
That is complete and utter BS. If it were true then how does France get 80% of it's power from nuclear? Huh? Answer me that. If it were true then France's power department of their government would be well into bankruptcy as they have been using nuclear power for over 40 years now.

You people have all been brain washed against nuclear power by the scare tactics of the environmentalist hippies. The fact of the matter is that nuclear power is the best way to stop using coal and to help the global climate change situation.

I will quote myself to prove a point.

axia777 said:
France has been running nuclear power for over 40 years now. Almost all their power in fact comes from nuclear power plants. They have never had an accident nor do they dispose of their nuclear waste in a no-environmentally friendly way. This disproves all the anti-nuclear power bullshit that environmentalist hippes ***** about. Their arguments are all retarded. America should have been perfecting nuclear power for the last 40 years like France has been doing. Maybe they can give us some tips!

Here is a good quote from an article on NPR's website.

On the coast of Normandy overlooking the English Channel, sits the nuclear power plant at Flamanville. Its two reactors generate enough electricity for the entire regions of Normandy and Brittany. France has 58 nuclear plants like this which meet 80 percent of its total electricity needs -- and allow it to export power to Britain, Germany and Italy.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5369610