I am sorry but I will just have to agree to disagree.

You have hit all the proper talking points for the anti-nuke crowd. You are well informed. But I can flood the board with just as much information from sources that refute what you say. The problem is that these sources come from pro-nuke organizations.

We have two viewpoints that have two different sources of data for proving exactly what we want to prove.

Time will tell who is right.

Sithdarth -- you make some good points around nuclear proliferation, but I think your fear of radiation is a bit unfounded.

I'm sure my words will do nothing to convince you, so I will default to UC Berkley physics professor Richard Muller who wrote the book "Physics for Future Presidents".

I suggest you read two sections....the effect of radiation and nuclear storage. Here's a link to the later:

http://muller.lbl.gov/TRessays...f-Yucca-Mountain.htm

I am not scared of Nuclear Radiation. I have more than once handled radioactive Isotopes. I have used an X-ray diffraction machine in the course of a lab. Simply put no matter what you do radiation is potentially lethal. It is irresponsible to play with that kind of fire if there are any other options. However, like I said before just about any one of the reasons I gave is enough reason to hold off on Nuclear power until we've explored every other option thoroughly.

quote:

I suggest you read two sections....the effect of radiation and nuclear storage. Here's a link to the later:

http://muller.lbl.gov/TRessays...f-Yucca-Mountain.htm

1) What makes you think I've become this well informed and somehow totally missed this.

2) Yucca-Mountain is no longer being considered for storage. Which means we have no plan on where to store any waste at this point. Given the amount of time it takes to find a site let alone make it ready we wont have a place to put it for at least a decade probably 2 and then it probably won't even be big enough to contain the waste we have now.

I suggest you look into finding Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free by Arjun Makhijani, Ph.D. In fact you can download the PDF at the link I provided. Its fairly unbiased and if I remember correctly relies almost exclusively on government produced facts and figures.

quote:

Originally posted by sithdarth:
I am not scared of Nuclear Radiation. I have more than once handled radioactive Isotopes. I have used an X-ray diffraction machine in the course of a lab. Simply put no matter what you do radiation is potentially lethal. It is irresponsible to play with that kind of fire if there are any other options. However, like I said before just about any one of the reasons I gave is enough reason to hold off on Nuclear power until we've explored every other option thoroughly.

quote:

I suggest you read two sections....the effect of radiation and nuclear storage. Here's a link to the later:

http://muller.lbl.gov/TRessays...f-Yucca-Mountain.htm

1) What makes you think I've become this well informed and somehow totally missed this.

2) Yucca-Mountain is no longer being considered for storage. Which means we have no plan on where to store any waste at this point. Given the amount of time it takes to find a site let alone make it ready we wont have a place to put it for at least a decade probably 2 and then it probably won't even be big enough to contain the waste we have now.

I suggest you look into finding Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free by Arjun Makhijani, Ph.D. In fact you can download the PDF at the link I provided. Its fairly unbiased and if I remember correctly relies almost exclusively on government produced facts and figures.

The fundamental problem with your rosy scenario is that nuclear power already exists. Giving up on it simply makes the situation worse. We're now using b0mb grade material that has been demilitarized in reactors to produce power; something I much prefer to it's original use. Nuclear power can be controlled and used for clean energy if treated professionally, whether you like it or not. Fuel rods can and should be reprocessed until all the fissionables are gone and we are left with daughter products and more highly radioactive elements with short half lives that don't require multi-millenias of storage. So far , no one has died from a US commercial or military reactor plant and about 750 people a year die from coal generation. Wind is perfectly fine, but it will take decades before it even makes a dent in the base load. Solar is still far too expensive and requires very toxic materials in the manufacturing process. So who gets to decide who freezes in the dark-you?

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The fundamental problem with your rosy scenario is that nuclear power already exists. Giving up on it simply makes the situation worse. We're now using b0mb grade material that has been demilitarized in reactors to produce power; something I much prefer to it's original use. Nuclear power can be controlled and used for clean energy if treated professionally, whether you like it or not. Fuel rods can and should be reprocessed until all the fissionables are gone and we are left with daughter products and more highly radioactive elements with short half lives that don't require multi-millenias of storage.

Maybe you didn't see what I posted on the other page so I'll say it again:

Anyone of the reasons above is more than enough reason to avoid nuclear energy. The combination of them makes a very strong case against expansion of nuclear energy use. Now that is not to say we should just shut down our currently operating plants. However, we should not be building more plants and we should be looking at replacing the ones at the end of their intended lifespan instead of fixing them up so they can keep running. Nuclear energy is not an answer its a problem that has the potential to be much worse than pollution from oil if we depend on it to much.

Simply turning of the plants would be completely idiotic and potentially disastrous. At the very least we need them as a transition. We shouldn't be building more.

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Wind is perfectly fine, but it will take decades before it even makes a dent in the base load.

Maybe not as long as you think. All you have to do is look at Texas. Of course building any new Nuclear plant is going to take at least two decades, probably more, from design and approval to construction and inspection. But like I said I'm not saying shut down the plants. I'm saying don't build new ones and replace the ones that have reached the end of the usable lifespan.

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Solar is still far too expensive and requires very toxic materials in the manufacturing process.

1) If we didn't heavily subsidize Nuclear power and made people pay for the cost of building the disposal sites as part of the cost of generation then Nuclear power wouldn't be all that cheap. Besides like I said the cost of solar is in the inverters not the panels and large to medium installations are becoming competitive and are forecasted to become even more competitive in the next decade.

2) There has been much work done in removing the toxic waste produced by making Solar panels. There is absolutely no reason to expect that it can't be completely eliminated and relatively soon. Nuclear power is always going to produce waste at least is toxic at basically every step. Mining the fuel produces radioactive mining waste, refining the fuel produces radioactive waste in the form of depleted Uranium, using the fuel as fuel produces radioactive waste. None of these can be eliminated.

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So who gets to decide who freezes in the dark-you?

No one has to freeze if we do this right. Seriously take a look at Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free it address all the pros and cons of all the options and lays out a pretty detailed path towards were we need to be. One of the biggest and most important sources of energy will be higher efficiency. It just seems really stupid to keep digging our energy out of the ground when that hasn't really worked out so well for us up to this point.

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2) Yucca-Mountain is no longer being considered for storage. Which means we have no plan on where to store any waste at this point. Given the amount of time it takes to find a site let alone make it ready we wont have a place to put it for at least a decade probably 2 and then it probably won't even be big enough to contain the waste we have now.

Yucca mountain is not being used because they legalized re-processor reactors in the US.

Re-processor reactors is a type of reactor where the fuel is reused and reused until almost all of ti's fissionable properties are exhausted. The resulting waste is less radioactive than Depleted Uranium.

Re-processing is used through out the world to maximize the life of nuclear fuel and to remove the problems of waste. The reason the US hasn't used it is because President Carter banned their use since part of the process is plutonium.

With that ban in place, there was no way to use the nuclear waste and so they had to build Yucca Mountain. Now that we can build re-processors, there is no need to build Yucca mountain to store perfectly good fuel. The waste we have collected will simply be used to fuel the new re-processor reactors when they come online.

Amount the problems with wind and solar is they are not reliable sources of power all day and night, everyday. On their own they will not be able to supply the power you need for a full day of use. There are systems available to make them practical, but those systems are still under development and their cost is not figured in when people push for those sources of power.

quote:

Yucca mountain is not being used because they legalized re-processor reactors in the US.

Re-processor reactors is a type of reactor where the fuel is reused and reused until almost all of ti's fissionable properties are exhausted. The resulting waste is less radioactive than Depleted Uranium.

Re-processing is used through out the world to maximize the life of nuclear fuel and to remove the problems of waste. The reason the US hasn't used it is because President Carter banned their use since part of the process is plutonium.

1) Reprocessing does not solve the waste problem. It lessons the waste problems.

2) For starters Depleted Uranium is itself relatively dangerous. Also, who ever told you reprocessed waste was less dangerous than Depleted Uranium lied through their teeth.

For example from the book I've linked twice:

quote:

The fission product stream, which has most of the radioactivity, would still need
to be disposed of in a deep geologic repository. Most of the long-lived radioactivity
in this stream consists of cesium-137 and strontium-90, with half-lives of
about 30 and 29 years respectively. But there are also significant amounts of iodine-
129 and cesium-135, which have half-lives in the millions of years.

The fission product stream being all that which is not fissionable. The funny thing is that reprocessing of spent fuel will not reduce the volume of waste and increase the overall amount of highly radioactive waste. Not to mention requiring some pretty harsh chemicals and such that once used become mildly radioactive themselves. Further information:

quote:

The uranium stream that results from reprocessing consists of 95 percent of the
nuclear material weight of spent fuel (U-238 plus U-235). It becomes contaminated
with traces of fission products, notably technetium-99, as well as plutonium
and neptunium-237. The contamination with these materials, which are
much more radioactive than the uranium itself, creates considerable problems
for the re-use of the uranium. Before it can be used again, it must be chemically
processed and re-enriched to 3 to 5 percent U-235 content. The trace contamination
results in contamination of the enrichment plant and creates additional
radioactive exposure hazards for workers.

Seriously take a look through the book.

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With that ban in place, there was no way to use the nuclear waste and so they had to build Yucca Mountain. Now that we can build re-processors, there is no need to build Yucca mountain to store perfectly good fuel. The waste we have collected will simply be used to fuel the new re-processor reactors when they come online.

Yucca Mountain died because it was a regulatory mess from the start. It was never a really good place to put Nuclear waste anyway. Inactive or not its a Volcano and suffers from more than a few geological instabilities. It was a bad idea but it was the only place the government had were no one that mattered to them cared about.

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Amount the problems with wind and solar is they are not reliable sources of power all day and night, everyday. On their own they will not be able to supply the power you need for a full day of use. There are systems available to make them practical, but those systems are still under development and their cost is not figured in when people push for those sources of power.

Wind and Solar are only 2 of the sources of power. There are more. It is all in the book I linked. The book clearly lays out the pros and cons of everything and details a plan for a transition into a more stable power future without the need for more Nuclear energy.

Sithdarth there is a little problem with your whole bias against nuclear power. It is called France. They get 75% of their power from nuclear power and at rates cheaper then most of the world.

They have also shown that fuel can be reprocessed safely and it does significantly reduce the volume of waste and also reduced much of the high level waste.

There have been a few issues with some spills at the French sites but there hasn't been a major accident at a French reactor in 40 years.

theTroll

Kudos Troll, you found the one way in which France can be honorably mentioned in the "Military/Weapons" forum.

quote:

Sithdarth there is a little problem with your whole bias against nuclear power. It is called France. They get 75% of their power from nuclear power and at rates cheaper then most of the world.

They have also shown that fuel can be reprocessed safely and it does significantly reduce the volume of waste and also reduced much of the high level waste.

There have been a few issues with some spills at the French sites but there hasn't been a major accident at a French reactor in 40 years.

Well solar and wind would be just as cheap if the government decided to subsidize them to the extent that France subsidizes its Nuclear power plants. Instead of making the power companies, and therefore the people getting the power, pay for the disposal of the waste the French government is using taxpayer money to do it. So the true cost of having Nuclear energy is superficially hidden by spreading the cost of getting rid of the waste to everyone in the form of taxes.

Further, reprocessing does not reduce the overall volume of waste produced. It does reduce the rate at which a given volume of waste is generated but the overall volume increases. Think about it you're starting with one atom of Uranium or Plutonium and ending up with several other atoms. What is worse is those atoms bond into solids that are much less dense then the fuel. It looks like your getting less waste but your actually getting more just at a slower rate. There is also the equipment that you reprocess the waste on and the chemicals you use to reprocess the waste. Once you are done with them they also become radioactive waste and must be dealt with further increasing your overall volume of waste.

The icing on the cake is that the fission products that constitute that bit of waste you can't reuse are more radioactive then the fuel itself. Which would be great except you can't induce fission in them. In the end you end up using more of the fissile material and therefor make more of these fission products. Which in the end means you end up with a higher volume, because its less dense, of waste that more radioactive then what you would have had in the first place.

Don't take my word for it I linked a source from the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research titles Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free. It was written by a Ph.D. and is well worth the read. I used to be totally enamored with Nuclear Energy because it is just so neat. Its still neat but now I recognize that it has problems and that we have other better options.

I swim in Lake Ontario in Oswego NY, very near 9 mile point, often and trust me, NOTHING is getting bigger. Yes, it's a pee-pee joke. But seriously, there is no harm done to the surrounding area by nuke plants. You hippie "no nukes" people make me sick. If you actually gave a damn about the environment you would go off the grid and have no computers or electricity so you couldn't post here. You're just a bunch of posers acting like you care about the cause but lacking the fortitude to do anything about it.

quote:

I swim in Lake Ontario in Oswego NY, very near 9 mile point, often and trust me, NOTHING is getting bigger. Yes, it's a pee-pee joke. But seriously, there is no harm done to the surrounding area by nuke plants. You hippie "no nukes" people make me sick. If you actually gave a damn about the environment you would go off the grid and have no computers or electricity so you couldn't post here. You're just a bunch of posers acting like you care about the cause but lacking the fortitude to do anything about it.

Please read the actual arguments being presented and remain civil.

sithdarth I read the article and it is very very biased. Being a PhD does not mean that you are correct about things, trust me I am wrong all the time.

The article is not a research paper but a position paper trying to convince people of some point of view.

The problem is that no other technology is really ready for going into service tomorrow.

Nuclear power plants could provide the 20-30 years of extra power until the other technology is ready.

Your arguments about complex systems doesn't really work either. A nuclear power plant is less complex then a modern airliner and it doesn't have to move. It also has a lot more redundancies and manual backups. If they build one behind my house I wouldn't worry at all.

theTroll

quote:

sithdarth I read the article and it is very very biased. Being a PhD does not mean that you are correct about things, trust me I am wrong all the time.

The article is not a research paper but a position paper trying to convince people of some point of view.

I linked an entire book that was about 200 pages. I don't think you've had time to read it but maybe. Seems a little odd though especially since you are referring to it as an article when it is clearly a book.

From the title page:

quote:

A Joint Project
of the
Nuclear Policy Research Institute
and the
Institute for Energy and Environmental Research

I of course also admitted the bias but it has a lot of good information and if I remember correctly uses only facts and figures produced and approved by the Department of Energy. Any writing on the subject is going to be biased some direction or another but this book avoids it well.

quote:

The problem is that no other technology is really ready for going into service tomorrow.

Nor are any new Nuclear plants going to be ready tomorrow. For the third time I will repeat it and quote it so maybe it will stand out this time:

quote:

Anyone of the reasons above is more than enough reason to avoid nuclear energy. The combination of them makes a very strong case against expansion of nuclear energy use. Now that is not to say we should just shut down our currently operating plants. However, we should not be building more plants and we should be looking at replacing the ones at the end of their intended lifespan instead of fixing them up so they can keep running.

The Nuclear energy we have is needed but we don't really need any more. Maybe on plant to replace one at the end of its life and to produce isotopes for medicine. I am not advocating that we shut down Nuclear plants in operation and deal with the consequences. Now please refrain from making arguments against things I have not said.

quote:

Nuclear power plants could provide the 20-30 years of extra power until the other technology is ready.

That's why the plants we have now need to stay. With increased efficiency and subsidized solar, wind, and other alternatives we can more than meet our needs. That and wind is pretty much ready now. Solar with government help, which is currently being given to Nuclear Power anyway, could be ready inside of a decade. Hot Rock geothermal, wave, and tidal could follow pretty soon after that. We just need a concerted effort.

quote:

Your arguments about complex systems doesn't really work either. A nuclear power plant is less complex then a modern airliner and it doesn't have to move. It also has a lot more redundancies and manual backups. If they build one behind my house I wouldn't worry at all.

Maybe not but risk is risk no matter how small and when given an equally capable option without said risk choosing risk is irrational. Not to mention this address one out of like 5 points that each individually make Nuclear energy less appealing than alternatives. The combination of them is just an overwhelming rational argument for at the very least being very very careful before doing any Nuclear power expansion and exploring all other options.

Yeah yeah yeah, we get it, hippie. You are taking the high road (along with the others who read A book) and us morally corrupt lowlifes will be taking the low road. Good thing you're thinking is superior to our's (and society's) or you would be stuck down here with us troglodites.

Sithdarth in my line of work, 200 pages is an article not a book.

theTroll

quote:

Sithdarth in my line of work, 200 pages is an article not a book.

Its 200 pages, published, copyrighted, and sold bound into a neat little book like package. Its a book. That was still on heck of a quick read to have gotten much more the jist of it.

If radiation is such a big problem, why are you not going after the coal plants ?
http://www.scientificamerican....e-than-nuclear-waste
As far as suggesting replacing Nuclear with wind and solar, you cannot replace base load power with interruptible power supplies. Period, end of story.

If you want to discuss power intelligently, you need to learn the differences between types of power.

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If radiation is such a big problem, why are you not going after the coal plants ?
http://www.scientificamerican....e-than-nuclear-waste

The point I am making is that we shouldn't replace Coal with Nuclear we should replace it with other stuff.

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As far as suggesting replacing Nuclear with wind and solar, you cannot replace base load power with interruptible power supplies. Period, end of story.

Seriously I have to say this a 4th time. Are people even reading this. I don't want to shut down and replace currently active Nuclear power plants. The only thing I am advocating is not building any new ones. Is the difference clear because I can't see a way to make it clearer.

Further, please go through the book Carbon-Free Nuclear-Free. It explains everything far better than I could in terms of options. Wind and solar aren't the only options and they aren't as periodic as some people would have you believe. A lot of the periodic nature can be forecasted and planned for well ahead of when it might happen. It is more than possible to plan a stable power grid with wind and solar making up large portions of the energy and other non-coal and non-nuclear sources making up the majority of the base. Though we'd still have that 20% Nuclear base until the end of the lifetime of the plants.

quote:

If you want to discuss power intelligently, you need to learn the differences between types of power.

Please don't make assumptions about what I do and do not know. Its a bit aggravating especially when I link a source that address that very thing you blast me for not considering. Like I said before there are many options for dealing with the intermittent nature of solar and wind. The first are base load type plants like Hot Rock Geothermal. The second are energy storage options. A third is natural gas/bio mass/hydrogen stand by power plants. In the future before you instruct someone to consider the entire issue it might be prudent to double check that you have done so.

Sith, you are living in a fantasy world if you think the base load can be switched to such imaginative energy sources without massive dire consequences. While you read your little book, I have been studying nuclear issues for 40 years and have heard all these tired arguments from the nuclear-phobes for a couple generations now. Nuclear plants can be designed and redesigned to operate safely and efficiently. If reprocessing plants are properly utilized and breeders put on line, the volume of dangerous waste can be sharply reduced by the end of the fuel cycle. What you propose is the dumbest possible solution to the problem; the fuel already exists by the thousands of tons. Not using the energy already available leaves us with vast stockpiles of fissile material that have to be stored , essentially forever. and can be turned back into weapons or contaminate the environment. The Chicken Little approach will leave generations starved for energy and the industrial economy in ruins. of course, the promise of clean , inexhaustible Fusion Power is only 30 years away just as it has been for the last 50 years