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Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

#101

Post by burgerbrain »

danenania wrote: post #76
burgerbrain wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NOBODY is saying that we shouldn't learn from the past when it comes to nuclear power. However, sensationalists such as yourself, claiming shit like "Nuclear power is inherently UNSAFE. It takes a lot of hubris to claim otherwise." are not adding to rational discussion, but rather detracting from it. The only thing people like you accomplish is preventing modern reactor designs from being implemented, therefore effec…

Every design was once a modern design. Nuclear power is inherently unsafe. That's why we're having this discussion.

And bloodletting was once modern medicine. You're so full of shit, it's unbelievable.

Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

#102

Post by KirinDave »

jbm wrote: post #73
KirinDave wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't you give the same challenge to the area near a coal powerplant? And oh, our entire climate has been significantly soured by that . Every power generation method we have significantly impacts the local environment, even geothermal and hydroelectric. There are a lot of accidents and environmental corruption stories every year, but one accident in a worst case scenario impacts you personally, and suddenly you'r…

I have gone on record and said that I support Nuclear power. I think it is necessary. However, to simplify further, I think that Nuclear power supports hand wave deep issues of trust that develop because of the way these issues are treated. I don't imply that there are any easy answers to power. Solar, wind, etc.. are not mature enough (to the best of my understanding). Coal releases more radiation (but not in catast…

I think detractors "handwave" the importance of building new reactors. By refusing to allow existing reactors to be obsoleted, they force existing power stations to stay in operation without interruption, keeping outdated and inferior equipment online long past its prime.

Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

#103

Post by afterburner »

veidr wrote: post #77

I looooves me some electricity. So, even though I'm presently suffering some annoyances in my daily life here in Tokyo (sporadically contaminated drinking water, suspect milk and other foodstuffs, not enough electricity to maintain our previous standard of living, Internet outages forfuckssake), and even though I bristle any time anybody (this article's author included) ignorantly implies that we know all the bad thi…

"I don't see why we should build even one more plant without the safety planning and preventive measures being an order of magnitude better than they have been so far."

Because then the bids might be too high and they would never get built in the first place? This is probably what happened in Ontario: the requirements for the bids were strict, and the cost of the only one that met it was three times expected. The runner up, from France, was only 10% lower.

Good balanced comment though, thanks.

Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

#104

Post by lispm »

michaelchisari wrote: post #28
jbm wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buy Fukushiman land. Raise your kids there. Feed them local produce. To thy own self be true. I am not defending coal or solar or whatever. I am referring to the closed attitude of the nuclear industry. There is a huge problem with nuclear defenders in Japan who don't eat their own dogfood. You'd think they would be happy to do so since the reward is huge (improved confidence) and the risk is only 20 or more years do…

The problem with Fukushima was that it was an outdated design that should have been decommissioned. Nobody who points out the relative safety of nuclear power wants us to build more Mark I BWR's. My interest is in Travelling Wave Reactors and Thorium Molten Salt Reactors. But the problem is, when people freak out about Fukushima, they don't say "Hey! Mark I BWR's aren't safe! We should shut down those designs!" They…

The problem is that people also compare this with outdated designs for coal plants.

There are much cleaner modern coal plants with filters. Still coal is dirty and dangerous.

In the nuclear industry you have new designs. But this does not solve the basic problems:

* mining of Uranium is dirty

* you need to transport dangerous material

* nuclear weapons can be produced

* reprocessing is extremely dirty

* storage is unsolved

* it promotes large corporations with all problems (corruption, ...)

* a society needs to be sufficiently advanced to handle the risk (i.e. better than Japan, the Soviet Union, or the US)

* the capital costs are large, needs to financed by the government

Plus with the new reactors you get interesting new dangers. Ever heard of 'stuxnet'? There are now viruses and attacks against nuclear facilities based on computer viruses.

Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

#105

Post by lispm »

jbri wrote: post #93
nextparadigms wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Safer than wind and solar? I don't think so. Those stats that we saw a while ago that people die from solar too because they fall off the roof are pretty ridiculous. 10 years from now all new homes will come with solar panels pre-installed, so people won't have to set them up themselves. Plus, you could always hire someone else to do it for you. In my country we're building giant wind turbines that will generate twic…

Clean energy alternatives are not viable. And they won't be for a long time. Wind and solar power are inherently unsuitable for providing base-load coverage - you need to have sufficient generating capacity spooled-up and available to cover any lulls in output. They can reduce the environmental impact of conventional generation, but they're useless on their own. Nuclear power already produces 100x more than even the…

Renewable already generate similar amounts compared to nuclear.

A single wind farm may have 0 MW output. But for a European grid of wind farms this is highly unlikely. Like 1% of the year. For that 1% we will have other energy sources pick up nicely.

Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

#106

Post by asharp »

lispm wrote: post #95
billmcneale wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Number of casualties from nuclear plant accidents: a few thousands. Number of casualties from coal mining accidents this past century [2]: 100,000. That's accidents in coal mines alone, not even counting lung diseases and similar. The fact that it takes a 9.0 tsunami after forty years of complete absence of nuclear accidents to bring this to the front page should be indication enough that nuclear is not just safer th…

I vote for neither.

What would you suggest? Keeping in mind that basically all renewable sources sans hydroelectric can't be used to provide baseload power and hydroelectric power both has very few potential locations (most of which are in use) and has the nasty failure condition of washing away a good portion of the countryside.

Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

#107

Post by asharp »

VladRussian wrote: post #20
DarkShikari wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've drank milk and eaten meat contaminated by poisonous chemicals from coal power plants for your whole life. Not a single person has died yet from the Fukushima disaster, yet millions of people have died from ailments caused by coal power plants. Why is that kind of contamination just fine? I find it incredibly offensive to see the Americans on this board downplaying the damage from Fukushima. Perhaps we should f…

why to promote that false dichotomy - either nuclear or coal. There are other options, better nuclear designs, natural gas, wind [ which is baseline type of energy if towers are high enough ], solar - we have so much desert on Earth, and start seriously develop nuclear fusion [ as its development has been practically stopped for the fear of proliferation ]

fusion development hasn't been stopped, especially not for fear of proliferation.

Do you have any information about this subject that I do not?

Also, the major problem with putting solar power plants in deserts is that you lose most of your power trying to get it somewhere useful. Expect this to change when we have commercially viable room temperature (ish) superconductors.

Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

#108

Post by Ratfish »

asharp wrote: post #106
lispm wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I vote for neither.

What would you suggest? Keeping in mind that basically all renewable sources sans hydroelectric can't be used to provide baseload power and hydroelectric power both has very few potential locations (most of which are in use) and has the nasty failure condition of washing away a good portion of the countryside.

I know it's easy to suggest as a New Zealander (lots of mountains, lots of rain, and not that many people), but that hydro you mention is ace, wish all our power came from it.

Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

#109

Post by regularfry »

jerf wrote: post #17
jbm wrote: post #3

Great. I can't drink milk, had to avoid water for a day or two, having problem finding relatively uncontaminated meat, 20 km or so of this country is probably going to be left unlivable and so on. I find it incredibly offensive to see the Americans on this board downplaying the damage from Fukushima. Mod me down all you want. I will be happy to pay attention when someone purchases land at a fair price near Fukushima…

"20 km or so of this country is probably going to be left unlivable" [citation requested] I haven't seen any hint of that. Is that from actual scientific reports based on sensible standards of "unlivable" (i.e., based in sensible risk analysis), or is it just based on unscientific worries? And did you have a hard time finding "uncontaminated" meat because there was actually a shortage of meat that was scientifically…

I can believe it becoming impossible to buy or sell land there. That'd go a long way to making it unlivable in any practical sense, no matter what the actual safety of the area is.

Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

#110

Post by asharp »

owls wrote: post #8
jbm wrote: post #3

Great. I can't drink milk, had to avoid water for a day or two, having problem finding relatively uncontaminated meat, 20 km or so of this country is probably going to be left unlivable and so on. I find it incredibly offensive to see the Americans on this board downplaying the damage from Fukushima. Mod me down all you want. I will be happy to pay attention when someone purchases land at a fair price near Fukushima…

Nuclear power is cleaner than coal or oil. We just need to build stronger and safer reactors. Personally I'm glad OP posted this article. Fukushima was tragic, but it didn't give everyone the right to abandon rational thought. I used to work for a state pirg banging on doors to complain about nuclear power. Spreading fear by barking "3 mile island, chernobyl" etc. Then one day I knocked on the door of a nuclear physi…

We just need to build newer reactors.

The problem isn't that we don't have designs that can deal with these sorts of problems. The problem is that we don't have the political strength of will to decommission the older, unsafe plants and replace them with newer, safer plants. Similarly we don't have the political strength of will to do what is required to ensure uncompromised safety, ie. moving spent fuel into secured areas away from power plants, breeding fuel to dramatically reduce the amount of radioactive waste created and burning that waste out to make it less radioactive before it ever needs to be stored, etc.

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