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Out of all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest

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Re: Out of all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest

#101

Post by jesus92gz-spain »

tboughen wrote: post #76
jesus92gz-spain wrote: post #63

How can nuclear (fision) energy be safer than wind/solar/hydro? New efficient solar cells should be enough, environment friendly, and safer than other alternatives as long as the manufacturing of these are environment friendly as well. Also, everyone can setup their own solar plant at home, I almost did so, but the price of the materials and the setup are too high for me. I'd like you to consider if nuclear material…

I believe it us due to the installation deaths. Typically solar cells are installed on rooftops, which are non-trivially dangerous places to work. Multiply the risk by tens of thousands of installations and we get fatalities due to solar power.

You serious? And building an hydroelectric/atomic/coal plant is not dangerous?

It's not a too dangerous place, when the people who set these up are professionals who are following a security guideline. I see lots of people working on their roof, so, at least for me, this is a nonsense argument to discredit solar energy.

Re: Out of all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest

#102

Post by y4mi »

lmm wrote: post #51
kaikai wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear waste leaking into an aquifer or the ocean will not be a local problem.

Either it will be local, or it will be dilute enough not to matter.

until it doesn't and it does.

i'm sure that its safe to dump small amounts of radioactive material into the oceans, but if you start to build more reactors and dispose of all the waste into the ocean, the dilution will soon cease to be enough to offset a global ... disaster.

Re: Out of all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest

#104

Post by jesus92gz-spain »

GeneralMayhem wrote: post #99
jesus92gz-spain wrote: post #63

How can nuclear (fision) energy be safer than wind/solar/hydro? New efficient solar cells should be enough, environment friendly, and safer than other alternatives as long as the manufacturing of these are environment friendly as well. Also, everyone can setup their own solar plant at home, I almost did so, but the price of the materials and the setup are too high for me. I'd like you to consider if nuclear material…

The manufacture of solar panels is not as safe or as environmentally friendly as you might hope, just like how buying a new Prius to replace your car is probably a net loss for the environment unless your existing one is already near the end of its useful life.

Yes, that's what I'm afraid of. Building solar cells might not be as environment friendly as I'd like, but hey, we can optimize these processes later on. Building a nuclear plant would also be very unfriendly when it comes to ecology.

Re: Out of all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest

#106

Post by ZeroGravitas »

GeneralMayhem wrote: post #99
jesus92gz-spain wrote: post #63

How can nuclear (fision) energy be safer than wind/solar/hydro? New efficient solar cells should be enough, environment friendly, and safer than other alternatives as long as the manufacturing of these are environment friendly as well. Also, everyone can setup their own solar plant at home, I almost did so, but the price of the materials and the setup are too high for me. I'd like you to consider if nuclear material…

The manufacture of solar panels is not as safe or as environmentally friendly as you might hope, just like how buying a new Prius to replace your car is probably a net loss for the environment unless your existing one is already near the end of its useful life.

You have to look at the whole market. When you buy a new car the old one gets resold to someone else, which causes yet another even older car to be resold and so on through the market until the oldest, broken-est car actually exits the market (assuming the total market size is static, if it's growing then you need to compare the Prius against the other new cars that would enter the market) so as long as you're replacing existing usage then you're probably doing good.

Re: Out of all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest

#107

Post by yellowapple »

EADGBE wrote: post #53
FussyZeus wrote: post #2

The brain is not designed to understand statistics. Nuclear accidents are theatrical and fun, and therefore get a lot of play on the media when they happen. Look no further than the media circus surrounding Fukushima to confirm. Everybody is scared to death of Sharks, yet sharks killed only 1 person in the US last year. Cows killed 20, 75% of which were deliberate attacks, but almost no one is afraid of a Cow. Meanwh…

I really think you're just spitting out numbers. Where are you getting these numbers? Particularly the cow one (deliberate killings only). Generally intrigued. > yet people jump in cars like it's routine. It is routine. Time spent driving is much, much, much higher than time spent swimming near sharks. So... My brain understands that if I refused to go skydiving, then I can not die from a skydiving accident. Which is…

ABC has an article about the killer cows (which cites data from the CDC, though I've yet to find the data): http://abcnews.go.com/Health/shark-versus-cow-deadlier/story...

British cows are apparently similarly deadly: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/cows-official...

Re: Out of all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest

#108

Post by novalis78 »

scottLobster wrote: post #83
cjsuk wrote: post #14

Apart from the waste. We really don't know what to do about it other than bury it and leave it for a few tens to hundreds of generations in the future to deal with with the hope that they will know what to do. So it's the safest option. But only for now. We might just be dooming our descendants to deal with the mess and they might be in a worse state than we are now.

Breeder reactors have been around since the dawn of nuclear energy and are extremely efficient, re-using the bulk of harmful waste material as fuel. If we built more of those waste would be far less of a problem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor Hell Thorium-based reactors could theoretically generate the same energy while being much safer and producing orders of magnitude less waste. But as of yet suppo…

Exactly - at which point I love to mention Thorcon Power and the amount of obstacles that they faced in the US only to have to go abroad and start building their absolutely incredible design and test reactor in Indonesia. Sad.

Re: Out of all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest

#109

Post by KGIII »

nothrabannosir wrote: post #60
gaius wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We really don't know what to do about it Another myth. Of course we do: breeder reactors. Hint: why is nuclear waste dangerous? because there is still loads of energy in it .

> why is nuclear waste dangerous? because there is still loads of energy in it. I though it was because of γ-radiation and long half lives? Are those properties unique to matter with high energy potential?

I will try to explain it as best as I can.

Radioactive material decays as particles are emitted. If it has a long half-life, that pretty much means that the energy is being released rather slowly. In other words, just don't go poking at it and you'll be fine.

On the othe hand, stuff with a short half-life means that atoms are decaying rapidly. Particles are being knocked off with great rapidity. That stuff is much more dangerous, in the now. It is transferring energy, in a harmful form, quickly.

A long half-life means don't go poking at it for a while. A short half-life means you probably should consider containing it really well. We store both safely because we know people like to poke stuff, and it is harmful. It's just that the scary long half-lives only tell part of the story and many people seem to think those are the more problematic.

Disclaimer, I'm a mathematician, not a physicist. However, I've taken a whole lot of physics courses. Someone can probably explain this better than I.

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