91–100 of 190 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're right. For them it was an absolute tragedy. I wasn't implying otherwise. But the premise of the OP was some Australians that were freaking out because of the events in Japan. It's a similar situation.
From the comments looks like the OP lives in Japan, hence his family's concern.
The light from the Sun that strikes this planet, (the largest fusion based nuclear reactor in the Solar System) produces more energy in one day than all the nuclear, oil, or coal based power plants on the planet. One has to wonder why governments insist on building poisonous, fragile, radioactive generators on earth, when we can safely harness solar, wind, and wave energies without such horrifying risk. Will it be th…
Sure, we can replace our current energy sources with solar + wind + wave.
What fraction of coastline needs to be covered with wave-driven generators, and what fraction of Earth's land area needs to be covered with solar or wind farms to get to our current energy generation levels? Last I saw the numbers for the US they weren't pretty.
Just to run the numbers for the US, average insolation for the Earth is 250W/m^2 according to " rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insolation>. That's for the whole spectrum, not just whatever solar cells can actually use.
The land area of the US according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States> is a shade under 1e13m^2. That gives us a total of about 2.5e15W for solar power for the continental US, assuming your solar cells are amazing and have 100% efficiency across the full electromagnetic spectrum (as in, you've done an "Apollo Program" for solar cells and had amazing results).
Energy consumption in the US 5 years ago was about 29e15PWh/year, so about 3.3e12W.
So we'd need to entirely cover about .13% of the land area of the US in solar cells to get the amount of power we were using 5 years ago. We're using more now, of course.
That's about the area of Connecticut.
Now what's the useful life of solar cells? How high can we sensible expect to get it? How do we plan to handle the fact that the generation is ... very variable? How close to 100% efficiency do we think we can actually get solar cells? How noxious is the production process for these solar cells you'll have to be cranking out continuously to replace the failing ones, and where do you plan to locate it?
> Does anyone seriously believe that a "shoot for the moon" > style campaign like the one we held to create nuclear > power plants, would not result in workable alternative > energy programs?
Yes. I don't think such a campaign would get us to the point where we could use any combination of wind, solar, wave for baseline power.
> Nuclear energy is inherently dangerous.
So are solar cell production facilities. So is swimming, for that matter; the question is one of probabilities.
> the penalty last 25,000+ years.
How long does the "penalty" for a serious chemical spill last?
> No amount of carefully considered analysis changes the > science of this issue.
This much we agree on. ;)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can tidal power equipment survive a tsunami, though? Japan needs a stable energy supply – if only because they can’t just import power from one of their neighbors in a pinch (like, for example, most European countries can). I heard today that even wind turbines are not ideal for Japan because typhoons are common. Japan is in a pretty unique position – it’s certainly understandable why nuclear power is very popular th…
I hope it remains popular. I know, this is a disaster, but the reactors at risk are old steam-engine types. Comparing this to modern reactors is similar to comparing an old steam-locomotive boiler explosion to a modern formula racecar. e.g. http://www.nuscalepower.com
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Honestly, whether the fuel is UOX or MOX is not particularly relevant at this point, since the primary differences between those fuels are neutronic, not thermal, and even there they are qualitatively very similar. I'm pretty sure the author is not an 'expert', exactly, because he seems unfamiliar with some of the nuances of BWR operation, but his summary is generally correct.
Sure it is relevant. It means that the level of Plutonium could be higher in reactor 3 of plant Fukushima 1. This could have relevance in case of a full meltdown. It is said that then there is a possibility that there is a different reaction.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure it is relevant. It means that the level of Plutonium could be higher in reactor 3 of plant Fukushima 1. This could have relevance in case of a full meltdown. It is said that then there is a possibility that there is a different reaction.
You're rattling around various fora, throwing out really bad red herrings (e.g., on reddit you tried to link Niger's average life expectancy to uranium mining when that likely isn't even a blip on the radar compared to poverty, malnutrition and lack of health infrastructure). So the onus is on you to provide strong citations for the claims you're making, rather than just tossing out BIG SCARY CAPS in a comment and th…
The article is mostly correct, but a few corrections from a nuclear engineer: 1. What he refers to as "moderator rods" are actually control rods. The term "moderator" refers to a material that is unlikely to absorb neutrons, but likely to scatter them. This helps lower the average neutron speed inside the reactor, which actually increases the fission rate. Since water serves this purpose just fine, most reactors do n…
for 4. Tritium is a beta emitter. Wherever it ends up when it decays, the radiation won't get very far.
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for 4. Tritium is a beta emitter. Wherever it ends up when it decays, the radiation won't get very far.
Still not good when it ends up in your body.
Probably better to not get exposed to tritium all other things being equal but you would receive more damage from radioactivity IMO inhaling someone's cigarette smoke. I suppose this depends on exactly how much tritium is present in the steam that was vented.
The original engineer also left out the many other radionuclides that are created that don't break down instantly, but his points about filtering most contaminants out before they are vented, and their destination of the vast Pacific Ocean is right on target.
People talked about how strong this earthquake was, and it was strong, but the epicenter missed the power plants by quite a distance. Then we will get a surprise when a much smaller quake his one much worse.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
for 4. Tritium is a beta emitter. Wherever it ends up when it decays, the radiation won't get very far.
Range of Betas in air (I believe at 1 MeV) is 12 feet. These aren't alphas here, they'll make it into living tissue.