well, everybody does. even germany, and all we have to dump the shit are salt mines in geologically questionable areas. one of them is used for poisonous waste, and one cave has already collapsed sealing the drums off forever. and nobody knows where ground water will run...

aside that, salt isn't dry at all. and being bombarded with radioactivity it will thus change the crystalline structures and lose the stability after a few years, with obvious results.

Ditto building nuclear plants in geologically unstable areas like California and Japan.

Come to think of it, my brother has been quieter than usual on the subject since Japan's tsuname...

geee, I wonder why... XD

though japan doesn't have many alternatives. but they are there.

I the Japan case they don't have much choice. Imagine you want to give your country an atomic plant, but every square inch of your country is "unstable" by everyone opinion. The best one can do is to take dangers into the project. Btw: Fukushima WAS protected against dangers, earthquakes and tsunami too, they just didn't predict such that it will be strike by a really big one. Besides the plant wasn't new (just like the other well know case...)

That's kinda why the U.S. government built an immense "dump" site deep in the Rocky Mountains. Low chance of any earthquakes and no ground water should any of the unused nuclear materials ever be compromised.

at least you have a spot where you can say the stuff is safe for the next 1000 years... germany, doesn't. but still they tried to press more new nuclear power plants through.
best thing is, the energy companies pay for the building, and handling of the new stuff, and the tax payer pays for handling the waste and the remainders of old power plants... after they were in used for 3 to 4 decades at least. which means they have been paid off two to four times already.

The real problem is how to ensure the ability communicate that the site IS a toxic dump for the next 10,000 years. That signs will still be able to be read, that signs will last, that DOORS will last. They already have problems with salt crystal intrusions against barrels from humidity and heat produced by the waste.

When it comes to Nuclear matters, the US is like a little kid. . .always showing they are cool but in the end when they make a mess, they just go home and hope someone else cleans up their crap.

radiation is everywhere. you are absorbing it right now. i admit, nuclear waste is a problem. but its not really waste. it's just not hot enough to use to generate electricity. they should take the rods and reuse them for water heating for use in homes. unfortunatly, people are too scared of radiation to even allow a used rod near there homes.
nuclear should only be used in places where natural disasters are almost non exsistant too, so the risk of meltdown is low.

At least once a year, someone manages to blow up their house improperly installing a gas-fueled water-heater.

But at least they don't poison the neighborhood for a thousand years doing it.

Webb has much the same idea you do, only for him it was heating houses. My problem is I do not trust mankind to invent a fool-proof technology for handling the stuff, delivery-system, etc.

gas fueled heaters are in every home, so that is going to up the risk enitirely.

i don't think water companies would ever allow dricking water to be irradiated, or directly heated from the rod.

there is no such thing as 100% safe technology. but spent rods are not chucked around willy nilly. unfortunately, bad practices of other companies become a bad apple that ruin the bunch. but what other method of energy gathering would you suggest. renewables are very weak and expansive. we should at least put in some energy production methods whilst we improve remewable energy tech

"But at least they don't poison the neighborhood for a thousand years doing it."

Well...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn

I work in pollution control, and from here it looks like we have two choices. We can use nuclear power, which will kill us if it breaks down big time, or we can use coal, which will kill us if something DOESN'T break down big time.

Geothermal

Too expensive to maintain.

Technology will eventually address that; the real issue is there not nearly enough potential geothermal power to meet our energy needs.

Horse shit. My entire home country runs on geothermal. Maintainance of a pipe stuck into the ground is easy and cheap.

Speaking of, I've heard geothermal causes an increase in seismic activity in regions where it's utilized. Any truth to that?

No. When you pump water out and lower pressure, you get less eruptions. Not that you could really tell, in Iceland. The country is still in the process of welling up from the midAtlantic ridge, so there's seismic activity out the ass.

It was tried in Commiefornia, trust me. It was deemed too expensive

Works beautifully where you have the heat gradient to drive it. It is really difficult to find any place where you have boiling-water temperatures at a depth you can drill to. Yellowstone would work, I think there's a place called The Geysers (go figure) in California where they have a big geothermal plant. In almost all the world you don't have that, and where you do it is usually not close enough to major population centers to transmit the energy there- as I recall we use something like 40% of all our power just getting juice through the lines to where we need it. Until we get superconducting transmission lines, if we ever do, that's going to be a tough one.

I had thought they might use a closed cycle ammonia or freon turbine system, the advantage being these boil at a much lower temperature. You can find warm but not boiling temperatures at depth over a much larger area. Of course freon and ammonia are dangerous/deadly each in its own special way, maybe that's why nobody's gone that route. Ocean thermal energy exchange uses that idea too but apparently storms tear it up too much and/or it's not where we need it. For whatever reason that hasn't gone too far.

Wind power was going to be our savior, but the minute you start putting up a wind turbine the NIMBY Warriors come out of the woodwork and start blathering about ugly gonna kill birds (although I think the birds have the sense to keep out of the way, mostly) gives me migraines and makes my kid's asthma flare up or some damned made up thing or other. Hydro power is another great option but we've had that since Day One, so nobody thinks of it as an alternative. Just propose a hydroelectric dam anywhere and listen to the antis howl.

I have hopes for solar. But the chief advantage of solar may be that we aren't familiar enough with it to know what its problems are. That seems to be the way of it; any new power source we can imagine is going to be sparkly clean and perfect and solve all our problems, until we actually start trying to use it and discover its downside.

I have witnessed the after-effects of a major breach of an ammonia installation like that. Believe me, I'd rather go clean up Chernobyl during the accident than try to deal with tons of hot anhydrous ammonia.

Oh, by the way- I just have to tell you this, it's too funny- geothermal IS nuclear power. It is radioactive decay within the Earth that provides Earth's heat. :D

Yeah, but the earth is better at handling it.

Most of the time.

Evidently geologists have found evidence of spontaneous nuclear blasts that are naturally generated. All it takes is enough fissionable material in one place, a loose electron or two and BOOM!

To quote the Planet of the Apes book,

Ring of bright electrons
Pocket full of positrons
A fission,
A fusion,
We all fall down!

Given that the original Ring Around the Rosy is about the Plague, that nursery rhyme is not so far off.

This Reactor Earth does give me some hope that there are ways to use nuclear power that are safer than our existing power plants. It is useful to remember that our existing plants are an enlarged version of something invented as a submarine power plant. Submarine engines are fine, as submarine engines, but most power plants don't resemble vehicle engines all that much except in basic principle (with the exception of gas turbine electrical peaker plants, which are ground-based jet engines, but those are designed for power NOW regardless of the price, not for efficiency). There are a number of other designs out there that might work better, but as they haven't been put into production, who knows?

Creates earthquakes

Happend in Basel, Switzerland

Very tiny one, but people went apeshit and the responsible folks got jailtime.

Nuts, I know as I am all for Geothermal.

What creates earthquakes? You're so far down in the thread, I can't tell what you are referring to.

Geothermal power plants

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/200.....thquakes-basel

Ah yes. Forced ground water!

They found out that if you force water into fissures, it lubricates the rock. Causing it to slip. The good part is, after most of the tectonic stress is released, the quakes become quite small and more or less constant. This might cause slippage eventually, but it actually lessens the chance of damaging quakes --once the initial tension is relieved.

They were experimenting with this in California for a while

It's a matter of pick your poison. Personally I'd rather live next to a nuclear plant than a coal or gas plant. And yes, I have lived within eyeshot of both a nuclear and a coal fired electrical plant. The nuc was both quieter and cleaner.

Why not take all the government subsidies (without which the nuclear "industry" would not survive) and invest all those billions in developing hydrogen power?

Because the chief way we have to make hydrogen right now is by using electricity to break water into hydrogen and oxygen. Using electricity to make hydrogen to make electricity is a perpetual motion machine. Nobody has ever demonstrated one of those that worked. (Perpetual motion is also a violation of the laws of thermodynamics, but that's no biggie; you want to convince me the laws of thermodynamics don't apply, just demonstrate a machine that violates them. Show me. That's all. Easy.)

Its a matter of using a quantity of electricity to make even more electricity. You're position is the same I've seen used to argue against the development of electric cars, solar panels, and wind farms. No system is perfect, but that is a pathetic excuse to give and wallow in despair. Invest in R&D is what I'm saying, do not underestimate the power of science to solve practical problems if given time and money.

Granted, though, it might still be useful depending on the efficiency. As I said somewhere else, I seem to recall I read we lose 40% of our power pushing electricity down transmission lines against the lines' internal resistance, just getting the power where we need it. Hydrogen through a pipeline would (hopefully) not lose that much. Imagine how many fewer power stations we'd need if one could cut down or eliminate that 40% transmission loss.

The solution there is to emphasize more localized power production so there is less of a need for extensive power lines (which in socal would also reduce the number of brush fires since a windstorm is guaranteed to knock at least one of those towers down into the chaparral). Rooftop solar power would go a considerable length towards that goal, and if we can find ways to make better use of civilizations byproducts http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105.....led-generator/

1. store onsite for 50 years, then recycle.

2. Like France, cool for 5 years then recycle. (We don't reprocess nuclear fuel France's way because President Carter said we couldn't and no one has repealed that executive order. It is also a proliferation risk which is probably why France does it.)

If I may...

My background is as follows: Through my father, a scientist, I have met and talked to quite a few nuclear physicists in Poland, including one of the people responsible for running Polish experimental nuclear reactor back in the time when Berlin Wall was standing tall and Soviet merchant ships carried missiles to faraway places like Vietnam... or Cuba. Coupled with off-again on-again Polish government approach to building a nuclear power plant, Chernobyl disaster and my personal interest in engineering, this was a topic I often discussed.

Most of these people agreed with one conclusion: boiling water nuclear reactors have one GIANT and IMMEDIATELY OBVIOUS catastrophic design flaw. In these reactors (by far the most common design) water is used for two critical functions: cooling and neutron moderation. This means that under certain set of circumstances it is possible that using one function (for example cooling) will directly and immediately impact the other (neutron moderation, i.e. allowing uncontrolled chain reaction).

This critical flaw is allowed for one reason and one reason alone: this type of reactor can produce new fuel from non-reactive elements in fuel pellets.

There are other reactor designs, much safer and resilient than BWR, but they are all kept at "prototype" phase. There are reactor designs that would happily burn the "spent" fuel from BWR reactors and do it completely safely... there's just not enough political will to get a green light to these.

Where have you been?! You know I'm holding three pieces of art for you!

Ooops...

US Navy nuclear propulsion specialist here (well, former at least). The pressurized version of this reactor is actually one of the safest designs from an operability standpoint. If you water flases to steam, you no longer have a moderator... and that's a *good* thing. The moderator slows the neutrons so that a reaction can take place. No moderator, no slow neutrons, no reaction. Now losing your boron enriched control rods... that's a whole different issue entirely! :)

Okay, note to self... double check your spelling when posting via Nook. *flashes* not flases....

Why oh why do I see so many nuclear (industry) furries!?
It's like the new IT stereotype. Fursuit one day, lead suit another! :)

Dunno... maybe we're all hoping for some weird nuclear TF event to turn us into furs? :)

Make a fursuit with a lead suit underlayer!
Also check out my post further down. I went on a diatribe about thorium. You might find it interesting.

I (partially) agree with you - except that it doesn't quite work in practice, as in a "civilian" reactor there's plenty of stuff to catch those fast neutrons anyway. Additionally, beyond certain point, superheated steam becomes surprisingly reactive and even normally corrosion-resistant materials, like zirconium used in fuel rods, starts rapidly deteriorating.

And there's another problem: if the water in the reactor core starts dissociating, you suddenly have tons of very, very explosive gas mix on your hands that you need to get rid of somehow before you can pump fresh coolant in.

To sum it up: yes, BWR reactors are quite stable *until* there's a serious emergency. This doesn't really matter in a military application (especially a *naval* application, where's pretty much infinite amount of coolant available right outside) but it's extremely bad in a civillian application.

Vicky, I love you, but nuclear energy is awesome....

Ok, yes it is environmentally horrific, but the amount of energy it produces is unreal... And it hardly pollutes the atmosphere... It just makes this gunk that will kill anything it touches for 20,000 years... A real shame really....

:D

Uh... That was exactly my point. Don't get too excited until you can figure out some safe way to take out the trash!

The chief problem with nukes in general and this site in particular is that the people making decisions about this are concerned mostly about money and image. Not about solving problems. So they do what is cheap and convenient. And leave the mess for someone else to clean up.

They treat the US budget the same way

A fair point, I guess they think, we can make loads of money, and we will be dead by the time the stuff we have done is a real problem... So lets do it anyway, after all it wont effect us...

Which sucks really, because if they did take the time to find better ways of disposing of nuclear waste, then we would all benefit... Oh well, guess we just have to wait for aliens to show use fusion technology... Then we are sorted!

Can I add , I am a little drunk... Just been for a birthday meal... So ignore me if I am talking rubbish.... :)

Happy birthday!


Anyway, the scientists who developed the atomic bomb were more or less appalled when they saw it in action and there was a fair amount of anti-atomic sentiment post-blast. The quick-end-to-the-war excuse became the don't-let-the-communists-get-it excuse. only the communists got it very shortly after we did, so another justification for the investment had to be found and that was the "atomic energy is good" excuse, which led to nuclear plants being thrown up without a lot of planning or thinking about the consequences.

For a good read on the subject, I suggest We Almost Lost Detroit, published by --of all people-- Readers' Digest

Haha, thanks.

I had never looked at it like that, but it's an interesting idea...

I live in the UK, and I guess it hasn't really taken off here yet, we have a few... But we still rely on coal, and the french.... So yer... :)

Personally, Solar is the way to go, but the panels are so un-efficient it is uneconomical for everyone to get PVC cells... In the future maybe. :)

As an old sage once said" "Nuclear Power: The most dangerous way to boil water!"

Clearly he was unfamiliar with thermite.

FWIW, Hanford was a breeder reactor, not a primary power reactor. Its whole job was to turn uranium into plutonium for nuclear warheads. Just like Cheyrnobl, the power generation was a neat extra.

Hi, Vicky. I understand your position and inhibitions on nuclear power, but I think you should do a little more digging and research on nuclear waste, nuclear power and safety.
In actuality, the reason we don't have more nuclear plants right now is BECAUSE the US Government actually does have intensely smart people working on this very subject. The reason we aren't building new ones just yet is because right now, we have dozens of engineers fighting like academic cannibals lobbing research and development papers at one another, cutting eachother down on breaches of safety design and making the reactors of the future cheaper, safer and more foolproof. We have so much stuffy inhibition on this stuff (it's a good thing) that just getting designs approved takes at least a decade.

But, please check this out.
http://www.wellhome.com/blog/wp-con.....al-Thorium.png
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoriu....._nuclear_power

Thorium Nuclear Power does it differently. Thorium is abundant, thorium reactors eat their own waste and the waste of less perfect systems, thorium reactors cannot break down to catastrophic effect, thorium reactors wouldn't even become an enormous risk were they bombed by terrorists. Yes, it's a form of nuclear power that would *eat the waste* from previous mishaps and mistakes, converting it to power, and what garbage it does produce will last only 10-300 years instead of upwards of ten thousand years.

One ton of thorium comes to around 1,350,000 tons of coal in terms of power. We quite literally cannot afford not to have this beautiful alternative to traditional nuclear. And not only is it good for our future, it can help erase and mitigate past mistakes. It's being pursued by India, China and the US, and it's one of the things bringing us mutually together to get away from pollutive policies and resource drain.

I can't in good conscience dislike nuclear if this is its future.

One, it can be done safely. But business is in the business of making profit, not being safe. Make it so the board and CEO of any company that violates any safety rule spends two years in prison IN the reactor facility - they will be the first to die if they play games.

Two, we have had a worst case disaster in Fukushima - 4 simultaneous meltdowns in old old designs. Nobody died. Chernobyl was far worse because it was a graphite reactor, that nobody runs anymore. Modern designs like pebble beds are simpler and cheaper to build, though you have to build 3 of them to get the same power of a PWR type reactor today.

Three, we long ago solved the waste problem -- you make ceramic drums of it and drop them into the fault diving under the North American plate. The radioactives return to the mantle where they originally came from ( and exist this very second ) in the first place, where they are harmless and just another part of the inner earth radiologicals

It can be done safely, but only if those responsible know they'll pay a grave penalty if they skimp on safety, as opposed to today's climate where rich fat cats know they can get away with cutting corners to make more profit.

The United States Navy has been operating fission reactors for decades with a spotless safety record.

It can be done; there is existence proof.

There's no problem with nuclear energy; there's a problem with people. Nuclear energy can be (and usually is) very safe, but when some buffoon starts to look for ways to cut costs with "acceptable risk" as a tradeoff, that's trouble in any industry.

The concept of "nuclear waste" is weird. It's like having "waste gasoline" dumps. There are extremely safe ways to extract much more power from nuclear waste, if we can just push for some serious R&D. Fighting nuclear power as a whole just freezes the technology in a state of infancy without changing either the demand or supply for it. We need nuclear power to bridge to a better power source before we melt the entire planet down with greenhouse gasses (if it's not already too late). People are actively fighting wind turbines, and any day now I expect there will be a scaremonger book released about how photovoltaic cells caused half of the author's town to die of hemorrhoids. People fear what they do not understand, they hate what they fear, and we need something to keep civilization running.

Here is another tack to take when arguing with him: Nuclear loses on cost and reliability.

Right now, there are four choices for cheap electricity with one more on the way.

Natural gas, but that is based on near term low fuel prices that aren't going to stay low.[1]
Hydroelectric, but we're already using almost all the cheap hydro.[2]
Wind, which is going to become the cheapest within the next couple of years.[3]
Hot-rock Geothermal, but that's very limited in where you can build it.

The next one is solar-PV, which has an LCOE that is plummeting right now.


All of those also have better uptimes than nuclear, with wind topping them all at ~98%.[4]


[1] Not to mention the little problem of it releasing fossil carbon into the atmosphere.

[2] The only significant expansion of cheap hydro possible right now would involve turning off Niagara and Horseshoe falls. Not going to happen.

[3] Assuming solar doesn't pass it first.

[4] Uptime and capacity factor, while related, are not the same thing. Current wind turbines have a capacity factor of ~50%, which is accounted for when building and siting wind farms.