why do people suddenly fear nuclear power plants?

[wulfy42]

I recently saw in the news that people in Russia demonstrated against nuclear power plants after they heard that three Japanese power plants where going critical. I personally think its stupid to protest against them because stuff like this only happens in extreme situations (a earthquake like this doesn't happen often and buildings are designed to resist quakes)

Strictly speaking, reactors go critical all the time. They don't work unless they are critical. Someone should have found a less scary sounding phrase for something that is part of their usual functioning.

Secondly, Russia possesses the most nuclear weapons in the world. Those are designed to actually kill people...they utitlise alot of scary sounding words just like power plants do, but they actually are fairly frightening.

Come back with solar power and wind farms and then we can start talking (In Australia's case the amount of sun and wind we get would power our nation easily on them, just imagine the Simpson desert full of solar power panels)

Wind and solar power simply isn't practical, and won't be for ages. Collecting and transporting power is difficult enough (covering the Simpson desert in anything is no small feat, let alone complicated machinery), but there's no feasible method (yet) of storing solar power during the night. Maybe in 50 years, but not now.

Have you heard of Solar City?

Here is a link http://www.hoax-slayer.com/solar-city-tower-2016-olympics.shtml

 

[wulfy42]

So are the power plants in Japan that are currently leaking radiation. We don't know how bad that situation is going to be yet....hopefully it will remain mostly contained. It's obvious from the news reports though that the potential was at least there for a massive disaster. We might not have one, but we could have.

 

[Steven True]

but there are a ton of nuclear plants in japan (around 60 right now I think)

There are around 60 nuclear reactors. There are 18 nuclear plants.

it just takes one plant melting down to put all the others in danger through a chain reaction that could not only leave all of japan uninhabitable

That is BS. Meltdowns do not spread from plant to plant.

 

[Vampire cat]

The whole Powerplant situation is over-blown, the media focuses on it because it gets the views and the debate...

However, I know something else I'm downright scared to death of... Yes, it's our friend ignorance.
http://i.imgur.com/eFYYe.jpg

 

[Jezzascmezza]

Because the things that nuclear power can do if misused is scary.

 

[wulfy42]

but there are a ton of nuclear plants in japan (around 60 right now I think)

There are around 60 nuclear reactors. There are 18 nuclear plants.

it just takes one plant melting down to put all the others in danger through a chain reaction that could not only leave all of japan uninhabitable

That is BS. Meltdowns do not spread from plant to plant.

Um...yes they do?

If you have 3 plants within a 5 mile radius and one melts down (while all three are damaged in some way and need human interaction to prevent a meltdown) it is quite likely that all three will melt down. It of course depends on the level of damage, size of the hydrogen explosions when the plant melts down, the level of radiation being leaked etc, but I would say it is indeed quite likely that multiple plants would melt down within a certain radius.

Has it happened? Nope, but it certainly could.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Have you heard of Solar City?

Here is a link http://www.hoax-slayer.com/solar-city-tower-2016-olympics.shtml

I hadn't, but after looking at that, it's obvious not going to work as advertised. As mentioned in the comments, you can't pump water up to the top of the tower using power derived from water falling down the tower over turbines (that being a perpetual energy machine, which doesn't work due to the laws od thermodynamics), which is apparently how it is going to be powered at night.

Secondly, the cost of that structure would be immense.

Thirdly, you'd need an enormous amount of solo (sic) panels for something that size, and they don't appear to be mobile (attempts at deriving solar people generally use panels or reflecting mirrors with move to catch the sun).

 

[Wintermoot]

I recently saw in the news that people in Russia demonstrated against nuclear power plants after they heard that three Japanese power plants where going critical. I personally think its stupid to protest against them because stuff like this only happens in extreme situations (a earthquake like this doesn't happen often and buildings are designed to resist quakes)

Strictly speaking, reactors go critical all the time. They don't work unless they are critical. Someone should have found a less scary sounding phrase for something that is part of their usual functioning.

Secondly, Russia possesses the most nuclear weapons in the world. Those are designed to actually kill people...they utitlise alot of scary sounding words just like power plants do, but they actually are fairly frightening.

Come back with solar power and wind farms and then we can start talking (In Australia's case the amount of sun and wind we get would power our nation easily on them, just imagine the Simpson desert full of solar power panels)

Wind and solar power simply isn't practical, and won't be for ages. Collecting and transporting power is difficult enough (covering the Simpson desert in anything is no small feat, let alone complicated machinery), but there's no feasible method (yet) of storing solar power during the night. Maybe in 50 years, but not now.

Have you heard of Solar City?

Here is a link http://www.hoax-slayer.com/solar-city-tower-2016-olympics.shtml

that,s not enough to replace Nuclear power plants besides how do you power the city at night?

 

[Pontus Hashis]

Well during the fires this summer in russia, there were a risk of a powerplant being set ablaze and that shit would have been a disaster. So it's not risk free with nuclear power.

 

[Wintermoot]

but there are a ton of nuclear plants in japan (around 60 right now I think)

There are around 60 nuclear reactors. There are 18 nuclear plants.

it just takes one plant melting down to put all the others in danger through a chain reaction that could not only leave all of japan uninhabitable

That is BS. Meltdowns do not spread from plant to plant.

Um...yes they do?

If you have 3 plants within a 5 mile radius and one melts down (while all three are damaged in some way and need human interaction to prevent a meltdown) it is quite likely that all three will melt down. It of course depends on the level of damage, size of the hydrogen explosions when the plant melts down, the level of radiation being leaked etc, but I would say it is indeed quite likely that multiple plants would melt down within a certain radius.

Has it happened? Nope, but it certainly could.

you assume the explosion is going to damage the reactor this is wrong, the core itself is EXTREMELY well protected (in theory you could crash a plane into it and it wouldn't even scratch the concrete dome)

 

[MagicMouse]

Number one killer in an earthquake? Buildings.

BAN THEM!

Do you know how many people die in the coal industry? Alot.

BAN THEM!

Nuclear power is extremely safe, extremely powerful, and extremely regulated. The only reason people are against them is from media fear mongering.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Well during the fires this summer in russia, there were a risk of a powerplant being set ablaze and that shit would have been a disaster. So it's not risk free with nuclear power.

Same thing happening in Australia a few years back, when bushfires threatened the Lucas Heights reactor, which apparently threatend the survival of everyone in the area. [small]Which was a bit odd, as big concrete buildings aren't flammable, and it's only a tiny reactor used for research, of no threat to anyone outside the complex (and not much to anyone within).[/small]

On the other hand, the IAEA site has gone down, so we must be doomed.

 

[Voodoomancer]

People are panicking for the wrong reasons, nuclear power plants are amazingly safe. What we should be worried about is the radioactive waste.

And I think that problem can be solved by substituting uranium with thorium.

 

[Snotnarok]

Because people are idiots, they don't want such a dangerous thing thing like nuclear power to spread because they suspect that everything about it is bad, dangerous, dirty, radiation.

Nuclear power is clean, safe and we NEED new reactors. In America we have reactors but they're old, and inefficient, had they made new ones they'd be both safer and more productive. But people use things like Chernobyl as an example of things going bad. News flash: when Russia built that they had no clue what they were doing and they could barely make decent cars never the less a reactor. And just to throw this out there, the actual radiation released was never discovered. It could have been equivalent to a chest xray.

Nuclear power is the way to go, I'm just hoping people wise up so we can stop burning coal and natural gas for power before our planet is worse off for it. And if you think for some reason it's dirty we have this amazing storage system that's been under construction for holding spent rods. Gasp, this has been thought out so we don't pollute more and there is no real risk?!

 

[Steven True]

That is BS. Meltdowns do not spread from plant to plant.

Um...yes they do?

If you have 3 plants within a 5 mile radius and one melts down (while all three are damaged in some way and need human interaction to prevent a meltdown) it is quite likely that all three will melt down.

You talked about a chain reaction spreading over the whole country making it uninhabitable. That is far different than having a meltdown in one reactor hamper efforts to control another nearby reactor at the same plant. There are no plants within 5 miles of each other in Japan. Therefore given your own 5 mile limitation there is no way this could not happen.

 

[wulfy42]

People are panicking for the wrong reasons, nuclear power plants are amazingly safe. What we should be worried about is the radioactive waste.

And I think that problem can be solved by substituting uranium with thorium.

A U.S. Naval ship detected radiation levels 100 times normal over 100 miles away from the power plant in japan that hasn't even melted down (possibly yet). They may be fairly safe but they are not totally safe...and right now there are multiple power plants in danger.

Will power plants melting down end all life on earth or something crazy like that? Probably not unless there is something we don't know about that might be a factor (which is always possible), but they certainly could cause massive damage to a large area. In japan where population density is so extreme it could be really bad.

All the safeguards in the world won't always be enough, if we build enough power plants eventually we will have an incident. We may have one happening right now for that matter.

 

[smudgey]

Come back with solar power and wind farms and then we can start talking (In Australia's case the amount of sun and wind we get would power our nation easily on them, just imagine the Simpson desert full of solar power panels)

Wind and solar power simply isn't practical, and won't be for ages. Collecting and transporting power is difficult enough (covering the Simpson desert in anything is no small feat, let alone complicated machinery), but there's no feasible method (yet) of storing solar power during the night. Maybe in 50 years, but not now.

.... ever heard of a BATTERY? You can buy solar powered phone chargers now. That is solar power going into a battery. Not that complicated.

Can you really blame people for being scared/worried about nuclear power? We've seen what CAN happen, and i'm sure we're all aware of Murphy's Law. After all, who thought that the twin towers would have been brought down by a pair of planes, or that the "unsinkable" Titanic would sink on it's maiden voyage? Or that 96 people would die at a football match (Hillsborough)? We should ALWAYS consider the worst case scenario, because eventually, it will happen.

 

[Beryl77]

People fear what the media tells them to fear. As long as the media talks about a dangerous topic people fear it and as soon as they stop doing that, the people forget it and don't fear it anymore.
At the moment the nuclear power plant in Japan is the biggest topic in the media, so people are afraid of it. As soon as this will calm down and the media stop reporting about it the people will forget it.

 

[Macgyvercas]

But why not use solar and wind power? It will never explode and produces absolutely no yellowcake. Why invest in a type of power which produces waste instead of clean ones which can potentially continue until the sun explodes in 5 million or so years.

Try five billion. The sun is a middle aged star, and scientists estimate that for it's size, it won't burn up all its fuel for another five billion years.

And besides, solar and wind power (while clean and effective), are not perfect. What happens if there's no wind to power the turbines, or if heavy cloud cover is reducing the effectiveness of the solar panels. They are good to have when conditions are right, but you need power sources you can use when conditions for the ecofriendly ones are not favorable.