131–140 of 262 posts
When I see a story like this, it reminds me that the events in Japan represent the biggest PR challenge the nuclear industry has faced in many years. Fifty billion dollars of nuclear reactor US taxpayer-backed loan guarantees hang in the balance. The industry has been working for the past few decades to rehabilitate the image of nuclear power after Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, and now they have to contend with vi…
One thing that blows my mind with the Fukushima plant (and presumably others) is that the spent fuel pond is seemingly built above ground. Wouldn't you want this to be at the very bottom of the reactor building, so that water could collect in it in an emergency situation like in Fukushima where water is pumped in from above? Maybe this is (was) one of the unknowns/unthoughtofs that you mention. As an aside, if no one…
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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.
You are handwaving when it comes to the dangers of coal power, and screaming at the top of your lungs when it comes to nuclear power, despite the fact that coal power kills people every year, despite the fact that coal power plants actually emit radioactive particles in the air, and nuclear plants normally don't.
The point is that most forms of power generation we have, today, is less safe and causes more environmental impact than nuclear power. And yet you are upset about nuclear power? You are not being rational, you are sensationalist.
You guys know about the problem of nuclear waste right? You've read plenty about it right? Because this whole "it hasn't caused an apocalypse yet" argument in favor of nuclear power is just a tiny bit short-sighted. If you make your software like you reason about nuclear power, send me a note naming your products so I know what to stay away from.
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Do you think coal mining is more dangerous than Uranium mining?
As a quick bit of thought. Lets say that you need to mine, say 2,715,384x the amount of coal to produce the same amount of energy as you would uranium. (From https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Energy_densit... ). Now if mining uranium is less then 2,000,000x more dangerous as mining coal, then per unit of energy generated it is actually safer. Hence yes, I do think that coal mining is more dangerous then…
How much percent of Uranium is in ore? How fast is that going down in the next century?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining_debate
Ever wondered why Europe has coal mines but closed all uranium mines? Just for fun?
Uranium mines now happen to be in remote areas or developing countries.
Uranium mines are a cluster fuck of all kinds of environmental problems.
Germany closed one. It cost billions to contain the damage.
France with 50 reactors doesn't have a Uranium mine. They exploit poor countries like Niger and leave an environmental catastrophe there. Uranium mining is the largest business in Niger and the life expectations is not much about 50 years there. If nuclear mining would be so great and people would make a lot of money from mining, this should be much higher.
Obviously it is not the case.
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…
This call for sources, at the same time demanding they be sensible and have to use sensible definitions in this kind of discussions has an unfortunate "get off my lawn" tone to it.
Clearing the area is also already openly discussed by the Japanese governement. By contrasting "overzealous safety organizations" with "sensible risk based analysis" you put excatly no argument forward but already indicate what you would do with any such source.
hmmm, the entire article excludes the words 'weapons' and 'waste'. all nuclear reactors produce long lived radioactive wastes which are left for humanity to manage well beyond the forseeable future. Here in Australia, we've come up with a state-of-the-art answer to our own burden of nuclear waste (arising from 30 years of experimentation and research reactors) - we're building a road out to a remote desert location,…
That's just flat-out wrong. The "waste" from current nuclear reactors is perfectly fine as fuel in newer reactor designs, you can burn the fuel again to get more energy out of it, and reduce the half-life of it significantly. I'm confident that that process can be repeated again, and again, and again, so that at the end we won't have any waste left that needs to be stored.
Yet the public at large is still convinced that what was true in the 70's has to be true today, despite decades of research and technological innovation...
Not even one mention of solar power? Maybe the technology is not at its peak yet, but combines with saving a lot of energy, is it not an option? Let's not forget that a lot of money went into perfecting nuclear power, probably a lot more than into solar power. Comparing with coal deaths seems a bit like a strawman. Also I don't trust the way the victims of Chernobyl are calculated. Adding up victims from survivor sto…
Strangely enough it takes very little money, nor energy to produce nuclear power. It's very simple at its core. Have a look at the first research reactors and you'll find that you need basically no technology to produce reactors that produce useful amounts of energy. On the other hand solar power, especially photovoltaics is stupidly complex. Photovoltaics requires semiconductor processes, arguably one of the most co…
I don't think pollution in production is a must, either. You don't have to dump your garbage in the river.
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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.
"However, in lesser developed countries and some developing countries, many miners continue to die annually, either through direct accidents in coal mines or through adverse health consequences from working under poor conditions. China, in particular, has the highest number of coal mining related deaths in the world, with official statistics claiming that 6,027 deaths occurred in 2004.[19] To compare, 28 deaths were reported in the U.S. in the same year.[20] Coal production in China is twice that in the U.S."
So counting deaths of coal mining from countries were human lives are considered to be expendable resources sounds a bit dishonest. Not that I want to promote coal mining, but I don't trust these PR pieces, sorry.
I think that article also counts accidents from people colliding with coal transporting trains? How is Uranium transported, are there never any collisions?
Also, abandoned mines seem popular for storing nuclear waste. Were the deaths for creating those mines counted towards the nuclear power toll, too?
As for "we don't care about deaths in China", strange enough nuclear power plants tend to be built next to country borders, so that possible pollution has a good chance of blowing into the neighbor's land, not your own. At least that is a story I heard about french nuclear power plants.