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Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

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Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

#191

Post by asharp »

Tichy wrote: post #138
asharp wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

And yet nature all around us seems to thrive on solar power alone, with zero toxic waste byproduct. I don't think pollution in production is a must, either. You don't have to dump your garbage in the river.

First off no, nature doesn't thrive off solar power alone. At the very least hydrothermal vents provide energy to most aquatic life past the thermocline.

I'd also like to point out that the sun produces more radioactivity then anything likely to be found on earth, and fusion as a whole accounts for all the heavy metals ever created in the universe. (just some food for thought).

Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

#192

Post by VladRussian »

Natsu wrote: post #163
VladRussian wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ]

> develop nuclear fusion [ as its development has been practically stopped for the fear of proliferation ] Wait ... what? Are you saying that nuclear fusion (and not fission ) poses some kind of proliferation risk? Proliferation of what, exactly? Advanced lasers? Powerful magnets? Hydrogen? Deuterium?? Tritium??? Helium???? Or are there some reasons to worry that the neutron flux from the reaction would be used to ac…

>Advanced lasers? Powerful magnets?

this 2, laser driven inertial confinement and tokamak, don't pose a significant proliferation risk even/when they are successful. Unfortunately this 2 is also least promising as the decades of experiments have clearly shown. As a result, there is no rush of investments into them.

The proliferation risk is creation of relatively compact, say, in the first generation, up to transport container size fusion device. Creation and maintenance of such a weapon wouldn't be possible to control as there is no radiation, no uranium mining/buying, no massive enrichment facilities, no breeder reactors,... nothing to control. Basically a nightmare for modern international politics.

At the end of 199x the government analysis shown that the fusion wouldn't be cheaper than 4c/kwt of coal power and it would pose the significant proliferation risks if developed and miniaturized into the deliverable device. Thus we have such a dismal investment and progress. Do you pay attention to Sandia?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2266841

Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

#193

Post by asharp »

_urga wrote: post #190
michaelchisari wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The title of this article is that nuclear power is the safest , relative to other sources of power currently capable of scaling to needs. That's a very important distinction, so I would ask you to please consider that.

Your definition of "safest" is not entirely true. They are "safe" in the sense that the probability of a catastrophe is 1 in 10,000 years (that is the statistic). But they are exponential orders of magnitude more deadly, with the consequences thereof lasting for tens of thousands of years, when that 1/10,000th year comes around. With 500 nuclear power plants operating, we can expect a serious nuclear catastrophe ever…

I do not believe that is his definition of safe.

I believe he is using the standard definition of safe, for a power source, which is expected deaths/Twh.

Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

#194

Post by asharp »

kgarten wrote: post #168

Downvote me if you want, yet I'm really sad about Hacker News. This is the 4th or 5th pro-nuclear propaganda article up-voted in a couple of weeks. Personally, I'm always sceptical about superlatives. Yes right ... the safest. Especially, for our children and their children. For everybody who's a proponent of nuclear: If it is so save, why can't you get one insurance company to insure a plant against accidents? And w…

Sure. Global warming can kill people for tens of thousands of years to come.

Newer processes produce no fission products with a half life > 100y. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Thorium_fuel_... Proper reprocessing can dramatically reduce the amount of waste produced, and the toxicity therein.

Just generally, but why would you expect insuring a nuclear plant to be any more painful then insuring a pesticide plant/etc? A leaky pesticide plant can easily wipe a town off the map. A leaky dam can wash away a city with ease.

I mean if you screw up your shale oil extraction you can end up with oil/natural gas leaking in to groundwater for hundreds of k's. Similarly with a burst dam at a gold mine, or....

There are large numbers of things that can cause massive ecological damage. A good number of them are that bad that they arn't ever really reported: http://newsdesk.org/2010/06/niger-delta-oil-spills-dwarf-bp-... as they continue on for years. It's just that some of them are easier to use to sell papers then others.

Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

#195

Post by asharp »

lukeqsee wrote: post #4
TGJ wrote: post #2

While the safest, the waste will be with the Earth for a long time to come. Longer than any corporation will be around, or government agency. There has to be a clear cut plan to deal with the waste of nuclear power that accounts for it's life span, and possible natural disasters. Currently all waste is stored at the power plants and the only current plan is to encase the waste in concrete. But where to go with that c…

That consideration is the biggest. Nuclear power is safe, intrinsically. Nuclear waste is devastation waiting to happen (if not now, in the future).

Not really.

If you take the waste out of a thorium cycle reactor (ie. no fission products with half lifes > 100 hears), burn it down until there is basically nothing left then turn it into glass and stick it underneath solid granite in the middle of the worlds most geologically stable tectonic plate then no. It's not exactly devistation.

Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

#196

Post by Turing_Machine »

jbm wrote: post #15
owls wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

I live in the state (Illinois) with the most nuclear power plants. By far. It suits me just fine.

By your reasoning, you should be raising your kids on a coal ash dump. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/us/07sludge.html

Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

#197

Post by justatdotin »

asharp wrote: post #152
justatdotin wrote: post #89

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,…

Nuclear power reactors can be produced without any real proliferation risk, see for example thorium reactors. Similarly the thorium fuel cycle is a lot clearer, ie. assuming that you can recycle actinide wastes, there is very little radioactivity after the first few hundred years: http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/04/14/97/PDF/documen... Finally, if you have waste of any sort that you want to keep away from hum…

thanks A#:

thorium? maybe. but all of the reactors currently dotting the globe, and any of those which may be built in the near future, all use uranium. I'd hate for us to make the mistake of basing decisions about whether or not to retire existing aging uranium reactors on the promises of theoretical thorium models. We certainly shouldn't keep building dangerous uranium reactors simply because, one day, hopefully, there might be thorium models that might be safer. Like I said : this industry's been promising more than they can deliver since Go.

waste: out of sight / out of mind? not good enough: this material should remain prominent in the eyes and minds of the technological wizards who created it.

Solar: these sound like valid concerns, and I don't know enough to answer them, but I'm pretty sure that there's a lot more to build before we hit those constraints.

Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

#198

Post by CountHackulus »

veidr wrote: post #90
jerf wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

He said 'is probably going to be' not 'has already been'. There is plenty of suggestive evidence, like the nytimes article EScott11 referenced, showing cesium 137 contamination 200% of Chernobyl levels 25 miles from the plant, or the recent Greenpeace video where they max out their Geiger handhelds 35km from the plant, that there are going to be some fairly widespread consequences to the contamination of soil by radi…

Maxing out a handheld geiger counter is misleading because they've got a sesitivity knob. A friend brought one to a party recently and showed everyone that their soda cans would max out the counter (at full sensitivity). Believe it or not, some people then refused to drink more soda because they thought it was contaminated. Better not bring them into a brick building!

Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

#199

Post by VladRussian »

asharp wrote: post #107
VladRussian wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

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

do you have any information about fusion development being really seriously continued? It isn't proliferation risk alone that affects the development. It is also about projected cost of the produced energy. Any such facilities would be extremely expensive, typical nuclear plant expensive, and it doesn't look like it will have energy density higher than current nuclear plants as both are limited by the same factors, like cooling system engineering that transfers the energy from core to turbines. Thus the price of fusion energy may theoretically be cheaper than the price of fission energy only by the cost of uranium itself. Permits, regulatory approval process, etc... will not be cheaper. Such cost projections, together with the proliferation risk are the reasons that there is no meaningful development of fusion today.

Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

#200

Post by billybob »

billmcneale wrote: post #80
marze wrote: post #33

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…

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…

Doesn't uranium get mined? How safe is that?
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