why do people suddenly fear nuclear power plants?

[rockyoumonkeys]

Because they aren't safe. Just because they aren't exploding left and right doesn't mean they're safe. And as is proven in the rare cases when they do explode, the consequences are catastrophic. Same thing with stuff like oil drilling: accidents might be rare, but when they happen, the damage they do is nearly impossible to recover from
.

 

[DaMullet]

Um.... seriously, there's actually debate about this?

The problem with Nuclear power would be nuclear waste that takes like 300,000 years to ware out to the point where it doesn't give you cancer by standing next to it.

Even if there is no problem now and we keep using Nuclear Power, future generations are going to be fucking pissed with us. No one knows what the world will look like 200, 500, or 1,000 years from now when nuclear waste has bearly gone through one half life. There's no way to make sure it can be safe for that long. There's no way for us to stop potential terrorists 1,000 years from now from using it as a weapon!

 

[Max_imus]

Um.... seriously, there's actually debate about this?

The problem with Nuclear power would be nuclear waste that takes like 300,000 years to ware out to the point where it doesn't give you cancer by standing next to it.

Even if there is no problem now and we keep using Nuclear Power, future generations are going to be fucking pissed with us. No one knows what the world will look like 200, 500, or 1,000 years from now when nuclear waste has bearly gone through one half life. There's no way to make sure it can be safe for that long. There's no way for us to stop potential terrorists 1,000 years from now from using it as a weapon!

This man speaks the truth, listen to him.

Another great problem of nuclear power is the mindset it puts the energy providing companies into: "Research into safer and more effective alernative energies? Nahhh, we got our money machines (aka the nuclear plants) set up nice and comfy, thanks."
That is basically what happens in Germany right now, these companies, who pretty much hold monopolies in their regions, hamper the implementation of renewable energy and downplay the risks of nuclear power, just to be able to keep printing money with those reactors.

 

[Anton P. Nym]

So what brand of magic concrete is guaranteed to last for 100,000 years?

The Roman Collesium and the Pantheon were made from concrete, hand mixed by slave labour from pumice and ash and other stuff, and with even that low level of technology it's lasted 2000 years. See also some Roman underwater works still present.

I think you'll also find that most of the long-term storage solutions don't rely on just concrete, but also high-strength glass (engineered to behave like naturally occuring volcanic glasses such as obsidian) containers enclosed within stainless steel and then placed deep underground in seismically-stable (and remote) bedrock. Yucca Flats in the US, for example, or here in Canada locations in the North on the billion-year-old bedrock under the Canadian Shield.

1) What we take out is uranium ore. That is far less dangerous than the enriched uranium and fission byproducts that we would be putting back.

Only if we're being foolish. Spent fuel rods still containing enriched uranium can be used to fuel other reactors. CANDU, for instance, can burn that fuel with very little reprocessing. Burying that stuff is wasteful.

I'll also point out that the volume of radioactive material is vastly smaller than the volume of ore extracted. It may be "hotter", but there's much less of it to bury and therefor much more room to accomodate sealant and other safety precautions.

2) Assuming that we don't find the recipe for magic 100,000 year concrete, we can assume that at some point it will weather. Water will collect, there will be chemical weathering, ALL areas have some sort of geological activity, etc. A few cracks and this stuff works its way into the water table.

You're also assuming that degradation will be rapid enough to pose a risk. I wouldn't; in many places of the world you can find "fossil" water trapped millions of years ago that hasn't migrated to the surface. It's a matter of picking the right location and choosing the right design and materials.

-- Steve

edited to add:

Anyway, nuclear power plants = very very good in terms of power and pollution but if one goes tits-up, you're screwed completely. I was wondering, why not build an enormous blast shield over nuclear power plants? in case of imminent explosion, just close it up, pump in emergency coolant and if it all goes badly, then at least it's all contained.

Actually modern plants are designed with that form of containment. Even the Japanese plants we're talking about have much of what you're talking about, and they're over forty years old; the explosions happened outside the reactor vessels themselves, and the part of the buildings damaged was just the weather-proofing shell around the reactors.

As we speak the reactors have been flooded with sea water as an emergency cooling solution. If necessary, each reactor vessel can be sealed right now and carried off for safe disposal. (Hopefully they're not that badly damaged, and can be refurbished in a couple of years... though the detection of radioactive caesium in the steam release does make me worry that the fuel rods themselves may be damaged. This isn't all rainbows and fluffy bunnies, alas.)

 

[willsham45]

Nuclear power is good, but when things go wrong they can go wrong, the easiest solution is to not build them or possibly only build then in safer more stable areas, the thought that something preserved as pretty safe going up like that so fast is scary thought something that could potentially happen anywhere.

 

[Evil Tim]

Because they aren't safe. Just because they aren't exploding left and right doesn't mean they're safe. And as is proven in the rare cases when they do explode, the consequences are catastrophic. Same thing with stuff like oil drilling: accidents might be rare, but when they happen, the damage they do is nearly impossible to recover from
.

Um, Chernobyl was so badly designed and run that it couldn't have been worse if they were trying to melt it down. The second worst radiation release in history, Three Mile Island, had less tangiable effect on humans than the radiation coming from your computer monitor.

Oooohhhh doooom etc.

 

[DTWolfwood]

wtf do you mean "suddenly?" People have always feared them, why do you think the USA haven't built a new one in DECADES?

They are proven technology that provides near limitless clean (at least in terms of the atmosphere) energy and we have all been too scared to allow for new nuke plants to be built! I think its BS.

 

[Zoe Castillo]

---

 

[bluepilot]

Well, for one thing, I do not particularly want to get irradiated.

Especially by a nuclear plant built next to the pacific ring of fire. Thank you very much Japanese government.

Nuclear power is all fine and happy, until it isn't and then all you can do is watch the news in your makeshift fallout centre.

 

[Evil Tim]

Especially by a nuclear plant built next to the pacific ring of fire. Thank you very much Japanese government.

It ran for 40 years without incident, it's not like they knocked it up there yesterday. It took an incident which is likely to have a final death toll in the tens of thousands to make it stop running totally normally.

This is hardly what you would call unsafe; it's like saying 9/11 was proof skyscrapers are unsafe because we should just assume planes will fly into them on purpose all the time.

 

[Schmittler]

Obviously because Bill Nye the Science Guy just recently talked of the dangers of making more Nuclear Reactors, and he rocks a bow tie like a pro. Essentially what he said, and why people should be concerned, is that the more Nuclear Reactors we build the more chances there are for something to go wrong. The Japanese one in question supposedly "had everything figured out" but of course couldn't compensate for a disaster like this.

I wouldn't say I would be for shutting down ones that are in operation now, but I would be more hesitant to say "Let's go build 10,000 Nuclear Reactors!" because stuff happens, regardless of how prepared we think we are.

 

[rednose1]

Just a few quick questions for peeps.
Do you know exactly how much radiation is harmful, or do you just hear "elevated" and think its time to run for the hills? You get into an "elevated" radiation field everytime you fly in a plane due to closer contact with cosmic sources.

As for Chernobyl, the gist of what we learned from it:
-Operators need to have final say in operations. (What started it all was an enigneer pushing for an unsafe test. What safety features they had back then had to be disabled to allow it to the test to work.
-ALWAYS have a containment building. (ANO has one that is 3'6'' thock of concrete with reinforced steel. The fact that thest buildings were about to withstand such a huge quake then tsunami and come out like they are now is pretty impressive to me.)
-positive temperature reactivity plants are bad. (basically, as the water temperature in these plants goes up, the plant power will want to rise. Negative reactivity plants will decrease in power with a rise in temperature.)

Now of course everything is generalized here. Negative reactivity plants will still produce decay heat (reactors are never really "off". SOME fission is always happening.) and need to be cooled. Also, the reason so many plants are situated close together, if you have an accident on one (which they do), you want everyone knowledgeable there to aid in recovery. Would you feel safer if the closest help was miles away?

Also, reactors go critical all the time, Critical is just when neutrons generated from one generation is equal to the next (plant power stable.) Subcritical = plant power dropping, suppercritical = plant power increasing. What to watch out for it PROMPT critical, when power changes too fast to react to.


Sorry all for what turned out to be a fairly long ranting, but just get tired of seeing people take what info the press gives and runs with it like they're Charlie with the golden ticket. If something grabs your attention, please, do some research to be better informed of it.

 

[Schmittler]

Especially by a nuclear plant built next to the pacific ring of fire. Thank you very much Japanese government.

It ran for 40 years without incident, it's not like they knocked it up there yesterday. It took an incident which is likely to have a final death toll in the tens of thousands to make it stop running totally normally.

This is hardly what you would call unsafe; it's like saying 9/11 was proof skyscrapers are unsafe because we should just assume planes will fly into them on purpose all the time.

The difference is, however, that those could be rebuilt. What happened after 9/11 or any other similar example can still be inhabited. If we have say, 2 more extreme nuclear meltdowns, those are two more spots that could be forever irradiated.

 

[kuolonen]

Um.... seriously, there's actually debate about this?

The problem with Nuclear power would be nuclear waste that takes like 300,000 years to ware out to the point where it doesn't give you cancer by standing next to it.

Even if there is no problem now and we keep using Nuclear Power, future generations are going to be fucking pissed with us. No one knows what the world will look like 200, 500, or 1,000 years from now when nuclear waste has bearly gone through one half life. There's no way to make sure it can be safe for that long. There's no way for us to stop potential terrorists 1,000 years from now from using it as a weapon!

Yet people need power, and what are alternatives? Wind and solar would work IF greediness suddenly disappears from the face of the earth overnight. We switch to using coal and earth's enviroment just may hang around for a decade or two before burning out. Those future generations you mentioned might be tad more conserned about breathing 100% toxic fumes than about potential threat buried within immovable bedrock.

 

[alienmastermind]

I would like to point out that Japan doesn't have much choice in the matter. Wind and Solar don't generate enough power to service the number of people they have in their country. They do not have access to enough water to have a viable hydroelectric system either. So, it's either coal, natural gas, or oil. All of which have to come from somewhere...bigger...than Japan.

Which means China or the US, or somewhere willing to ship them material. Again, Japan shouldn't have to depend on every other country on the planet when a viable option exists. And that option is Nuclear Energy.

Chernobyl is an example of someone doing things the exact wrong way. But saying we should not have nuclear power because one country did it ass backwards is like saying no one should have cars, because of the accidental death of a drunk driver.

The material waste, that is an issue that can be argued, of course. What to do with it besides weaponize it, where to store it...But, just because there are problems to be solved doesn't make this a losing proposition for energy in our lifetime.

 

[Frostbyte666]

I have no problem with nuclear power plants what gets me is why is everyone trying to encourage wind farms when they are next to useless when compared to other forms of power generation. They produce pitiful amounts of energy and take up vast amounts of land, plus htey are a real eyesore.

 

[Dys]

The Japanese physicists seem more worried about a potential aftershock than a chernobyl like situation. Western power plants are designed in such a way that a chernobyl like fallout simply could not happen, under the sensationalist media stories the power plant failures there's very little drama here. A hugely unlikely chain of failures[footnote]for all intents and purposes you can't design much safer than avoids uncontained meltdown through a magnitude 9 earthquake with all cooling knocked out[/footnote], lead to this situation, and experts don't rate it even nearly as catastrophic as 3 mile island (which was relatively uneventful).

Ultimately, people hate and fear nuclear power because they are misinformed....that same fear that strangles all social evolution.

 

[DaMullet]

Hey, I never said there was an easy solution; The question was what was the problem.

Also, shooting it into space has a serious issue. If it explodes in midair once, the resulting dust would give the entire planet lung cancer.

 

[Evil Tim]

The difference is, however, that those could be rebuilt. What happened after 9/11 or any other similar example can still be inhabited. If we have say, 2 more extreme nuclear meltdowns, those are two more spots that could be forever irradiated.

The minor issue that not every reactor is Chernobyl and such a meltdown would be utterly impossible at this point appears to have escaped your attention. At most there may be two partial meltdowns which ruin the reactors and increase the local radiation levels above background for a while. It'd be far worse for you living in Hiroshima (you know, where people do live) or on top of a granite deposit (ditto).