quote:

Originally posted by adambigge:

I opted out of the discussion earlier because I think Sithdarth brings a great deal to the conversation and didn't see any reason to risk hard feelings over something that will be decided independently of what we all think.

Be civil folks. Please?

The problem is that he refuses to even look at anyone else's view. He just wants to ram his view down everyone else's throats. The problem is that they are his opinions and opinions of others and not facts. Yes there are facts in there but they are very very bias.

It has been shown that nuclear energy can be safe and can be cost effective in the current market, with the high cost of fossil fuels. The problem is that he will completely ignore anything that doesn't show that he is correct.

So discussing energy policy with a wall is more productive.

theTroll

theTroll

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The problem is that he refuses to even look at anyone else's view. He just wants to ram his view down everyone else's throats. The problem is that they are his opinions and opinions of others and not facts. Yes there are facts in there but they are very very bias.

The very same things could be said about you with the exception that you've done very little in the way of presenting referenced facts. Besides facts can't be biased and that bias you see isn't nearly as bad as you make it out to be. Also, I think I have fairly sufficiently demonstrated my open mindedness by remaining calm and civil; as well as the degree to which I have researched this issue in terms of real data.

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It has been shown that nuclear energy can be safe and can be cost effective in the current market, with the high cost of fossil fuels. The problem is that he will completely ignore anything that doesn't show that he is correct.

The safety of Nuclear energy was only about a fifth of the case I made about it. The cost effectiveness of Nuclear energy was no part of the case I made about it. However, the only times I've been made aware of Nuclear energy being cost competitive is with substantial government subsidized mostly taking the form of paying for the very costly geological storage and/or reprocessing of waste.

Again I say its pretty clear at this point we are just two walls each trying to break the other and it isn't going to work. I further once again wonder why people feel so emotionally invested in Nuclear energy that they must lash out at anyone that doesn't immediately agree with them.

The fundamental problem is that nuclear power exists and you don't want it to because you think you know better. I have lived within an hour's drive of 3 nuclear reactors for the better part of my life and none of them has so much as burped while providing over 90% on line function. You seem to have no grasp of what the consequences of your fantasy would mean. I suggest that you go out along the Union Pacific main line somewhere in Nebraska or Iowa and spend a couple days watching the 10,000 ton coal trains going by like cabs in downtown NYC and consider that that coal and many times more is going into the air everyday as combustion products which you are going to breathe. That's what the real alternative is to nuclear power. I'd prefer not sending a large part of Wyoming into the atmosphere and using modern, expertly designed and professionally operated nuclear reactors to provide power. The dreaded "Waste" you cavil so much about is simply fuel that needs to be re-refined and put back into the fuel cycle. We should reprocess, breed, and reprocess all the nuclear materials we can find until there is an irreducible minimum of material left. That provides power, doesn't pollute the atmosphere, and greatly lessens the long term storage problem you worry so much about. It can power cars and trains instead of fossil fuels which windmills can't. It isn't an emotional investment that you try to insult us with; it's a firm grasp of reality.

As for your unsubstantiated claim that we will be using less and less natural gas for heating; That must be the reason that a local utility is bringing in train cars loaded with 24" pipe by the mile to build a new, high pressure, high volume gas line to greatly increase their ability to provide heating for our area even though there is a vast effort underway to install wind farms which has already made us #2 in the Nation after Texas in wind generation.

The wall you complain about is Reality and you are just outside throwing spitballs at it.

Sith, you need a dose of Penn & Teller's BS.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...ext_from=PL&index=22

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The fundamental problem is that nuclear power exists and you don't want it to because you think you know better. I have lived within an hour's drive of 3 nuclear reactors for the better part of my life and none of them has so much as burped while providing over 90% on line function. You seem to have no grasp of what the consequences of your fantasy would mean. I suggest that you go out along the Union Pacific main line somewhere in Nebraska or Iowa and spend a couple days watching the 10,000 ton coal trains going by like cabs in downtown NYC and consider that that coal and many times more is going into the air everyday as combustion products which you are going to breathe. That's what the real alternative is to nuclear power. I'd prefer not sending a large part of Wyoming into the atmosphere and using modern, expertly designed and professionally operated nuclear reactors to provide power.

Would you please for the love of all that is holy and just stop saying this. I've said on at least five separate occasions in this very thread that I do not want Nuclear plants that are in operation now shut down and replaced. That is a ridiculous strawman argument that has been used in this thread several times. It is clearly false. Please restrict your arguments to the facts at hand.

Further, it is neither a fantasy nor is it mine. The options are presented in a reasoned manner in the book I have linked several times. All the objections you raise are addressed fairly. Before you blast me for being ignorant and stubborn take the time to examine you own actions.

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The dreaded "Waste" you cavil so much about is simply fuel that needs to be re-refined and put back into the fuel cycle. We should reprocess, breed, and reprocess all the nuclear materials we can find until there is an irreducible minimum of material left. That provides power, doesn't pollute the atmosphere, and greatly lessens the long term storage problem you worry so much about. It can power cars and trains instead of fossil fuels which windmills can't. It isn't an emotional investment that you try to insult us with; it's a firm grasp of reality.

Except this is demonstrably false. You are right that about 97% of the fuel can be reprocessed and reused. The other 3% is completely useless and is actually more radioactive then the reusable portions. Once you send that 97% back into the fuel cycle 3% of that 97% becomes that same kind of unusable more radioactive waste. You can repeat the process over and over until you use up basically all the fissionable material but once that happens you're left with more of the more radioactive waste then you would have had in the first place. Not to mention the tools used in the reprocessing of the spent fuel become dangerously radioactive and must also be properly buried. Breeder reactors have basically the same effect in that some of them can use something normally no fissile and turn it into something fissile. However, once it has been turned into something fissile and fissioned you are left with some portion of fission products that you can't use. At this point you are once again running into the problem that using the fuel efficiently produces more waste products not less. Like a more efficient burn of something combustible results in more CO2 and Water in the exhaust and less partially or fully intact molecules of the thing you are burning.

Breeder reactors and reprocessing slow the accumulation of waste by using the fuel more efficiently at the cost of making more of the waste. There are still long lived dangerous fission products in any waste. You burn a certain percentage of fuel and you get a certain percentage as waste that cannot be changed. The problem isn't solved merely delayed a bit.

Further, the only kind of cars fission will power is those with batteries that plug into the wall. Any electricity source works just as well for that. Your reality seems really strange to me.

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As for your unsubstantiated claim that we will be using less and less natural gas for heating; That must be the reason that a local utility is bringing in train cars loaded with 24" pipe by the mile to build a new, high pressure, high volume gas line to greatly increase their ability to provide heating for our area even though there is a vast effort underway to install wind farms which has already made us #2 in the Nation after Texas in wind generation.

I did not say we will. I was very explicit, or tried to be at least, that the point is to not just change the electricity system. The point is to change every single aspect of our energy system. This includes taking measures to improve the efficiency at every stage of every possible method of producing and using energy. The point is that instead of continue to let the system grow on its own in a chaotic and inefficient way we must take control of it and produce a more efficient stable integrated and intelligently designed system.

I would stop once again here to point of that every individual thinks differently. Different conclusions can be reached given the same set of facts. As long as either side is well informed and demonstrates that then the differences in opinions are differences in opinion and generally cannot be resolved. Further I have graciously offered to call a truce and let this thing die and yet people continue to accuse me of pushing my ideas forcefully onto other people. Defending my statements is not forcing my ideas onto other people. Continually attacking someone's statements when they've offered to simply end the debate unresolved is forcing you ideas onto other people.

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Sith, you need a dose of Penn & Teller's BS.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...ext_from=PL&index=22

1) That doesn't even apply to my argument because for like the seventh time now I don't want an end to Nuclear Energy. What I want is for it to not spread further than it has. It might be that we may need a little bit extra in the 25-30% range of total electricity. We don't need to quadruple the number of plants we have and we certainly can't start building them in third world countries. We are going to need other solutions to help other nations industrialize safely so we might as well see if we can't make it work here first.

2) Talk about biased sources. I mean really that is about the last place you should be going to for policy decisions. Further, I've more than adequately demonstrated a rather far reaching and in depth understanding of the subject matter to the point where it is clear that I am well aware of both sides of the argument.

Okay I finally get where you get the idea that you end up with more waste then you started before reprocessing.

You are sort of correct. Yes, reprocessing does create a little more waste then by not reprocessing it. The part that you are forgetting about and the article you presented neglected to mention is that by reprocessing that fuel you have to introduce significantly less new fuel into the fuel stream. So by reprocessing you get less over all waste then by not reprocessing.

We know how well nuclear would work, and if new plants were used in conjunction with renewable systems coming on line we could significantly cut down smog and other emissions. And as it stands nuclear is cheaper then the renewables you keep talking about, even with the cost of storage.

There are not other systems that are even close to being ready to pick up the load if we start cutting back of the fossil fuel based generation of electricity.

theTroll

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At this point you are once again running into the problem that using the fuel efficiently produces more waste products not less. Like a more efficient burn of something combustible results in more CO2 and Water in the exhaust and less partially or fully intact molecules of the thing you are burning.

Uhhh, except that you use less fuel. In the end you may wind up with about the same pollution, but you wind up with more energy for the same ammount of fuel and pollution.

Is this still going on? Wow. You guys have way more stamina in mounting pointless arguments than I do. Sithdarth, I thought you gave up like 2 pages ago?

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Uhhh, except that you use less fuel. In the end you may wind up with about the same pollution, but you wind up with more energy for the same ammount of fuel and pollution.

Exactly you get more utility out of the fuel but in the end the waste problem is still there and just as bad. Which was the point. Reprocessing delays the waste problem it does not eliminate it.

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You are sort of correct. Yes, reprocessing does create a little more waste then by not reprocessing it. The part that you are forgetting about and the article you presented neglected to mention is that by reprocessing that fuel you have to introduce significantly less new fuel into the fuel stream. So by reprocessing you get less over all waste then by not reprocessing.

This only works if there is a clearly defined target date at which the use of Nuclear Fission energy will stop. Its like buying a car that is twice as efficient as the one you currently own. If you drive the same distance you always drive then everything is fine you use less fuel and make less waste. If you decide that its twice as efficient and so you can drive twice as far for the same cost you use the same amount of fuel and produce the same amount of waste. Basically if Nuclear Fission is guaranteed to end before we run out of usable fuel then we will probably have less waste in terms of mass. Although there is still a chance we could end up with a greater volume because of the differences in densities and the fact that you essentially turn 1 mole of fissile material into 2 or more moles of fission products. Not to mention the reprocessing equipment becomes highly radioactive. If we continue until we use all reachable usable fuel then the waste problem actually gets worse in terms of mass and volume.

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We know how well nuclear would work, and if new plants were used in conjunction with renewable systems coming on line we could significantly cut down smog and other emissions.

I guess the only point of contention then is how many new plants. I think quadrupling the number is absurd. Frankly I don't think any energy source should make up more than 30% or so of demand.

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And as it stands nuclear is cheaper then the renewables you keep talking about, even with the cost of storage.

That's kind of hard to tell because no one has actually found and paid for the permanent storage that Nuclear waste needs. We can make guesses and estimates but they tend to be rough at best. Also we must remember the Nuclear Power industry failed in the US because the investors pulled out. The investors pulled out because no one could seem to complete a plant on time and they basically all went over budget. Some went way over budget.

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There are not other systems that are even close to being ready to pick up the load if we start cutting back of the fossil fuel based generation of electricity.

Nuclear isn't ready either basically because the plants aren't built yet and take to long to build. In the time it takes to safely build Nuclear plants we could fully develop and build other renewable plants many times over. Wind especially is basically ready now as its cost is competitive. Spain is doing a pretty good job with it so far. Solar is a little farther off but has been made to work in places like Germany.

I can't believe it but I actually agree with you on something sithdarth. Yes building 4 times the number of plants that we current have is absurd. I do think we should double the plants. Why double? Well that would produce about 40% of the current needed load. It would allow for some of the inconsistency we get with solar and wind. Next it would all in 10 years after the plants go online to start decommissioning the oldest of our current nuclear plants. By then more renewable sources should be on line and picking up the load of the plants we take offline. The quicker renewable comes online the quicker we can decommission the older plants.

Now I would use the decommissioned plants to store high level waste. After all they were designed to have it when they were operating.

theTroll

Nuclear plants take about 5 years to build; are all your magical solutions going to be online by then or anytime this century? Buy a clue.

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Nuclear plants take about 5 years to build; are all your magical solutions going to be online by then or anytime this century? Buy a clue.

Some of them could be up in 5 years. Wind is basically ready now. Solar just has to deal mainly with inverter issues. Further the plants proposed now have been under review for as long as three years. There is no real reason to expect the review period to suddenly drop. Especially if you like safe plants. Additionally I've never actually heard of a plant being finished on time and on budget. This could be because no one reports about that but the problem was bad enough in the 70s and 80s to kill the new construction in the US. I don't see how its changed much recently and I don't see a lot of new plants going up in less than a decade. Especially since there are a lot of new and untested designs being purposed which would need to be tweaked and safety tested. The interesting thing is that you can get a greater increase in the available energy from Nuclear plants that exist today by uprating then you can get from building all the currently proposed plants. Even better you can do it much more quickly and with less money.

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xcept this is demonstrably false. You are right that about 97% of the fuel can be reprocessed and reused. The other 3% is completely useless and is actually more radioactive then the reusable portions. Once you send that 97% back into the fuel cycle 3% of that 97% becomes that same kind of unusable more radioactive waste. You can repeat the process over and over until you use up basically all the fissionable material but once that happens you're left with more of the more radioactive waste then you would have had in the first place. Not to mention the tools used in the reprocessing of the spent fuel become dangerously radioactive and must also be properly buried. Breeder reactors have basically the same effect in that some of them can use something normally no fissile and turn it into something fissile. However, once it has been turned into something fissile and fissioned you are left with some portion of fission products that you can't use. At this point you are once again running into the problem that using the fuel efficiently produces more waste products not less. Like a more efficient burn of something combustible results in more CO2 and Water in the exhaust and less partially or fully intact molecules of the thing you are burning.

Except you are the one posting outright falsehoods. Either you don't understand what a reprocessing system would do or you don't understand the entire concept of radiation. Radioactivity is the propensity of an element to spontaneously decay into other elements. You don't seem to get this but having your waste product as highly radioactive as possible is very desirable. The horror you anti-nuke people always rail against is the prospect of having to store dangerous nuclear waste for geologic time. Of course you never admit that is because the spent fuel is filled with Uranium and Plutonium. The PUREX process has been available for more than 4 decades to extract the U and PU from the "spent" fuel rods. Spent is really a misnomer; it's more like they are contaminated with daughter products that inhibit neutron flux and slow the reaction to a standstill. There are also smaller amounts of other Transuranic elements. Some of these, like Americium have industrial and commercial applications (Smoke Detectors, etc.)and may have a possible application for a fission source. Most are so rare and radioactive that the yield is very small and extremely short lived. For example, Californium costs about $60 Million/ gram it's so rare. Most of the transuranic isotopes have halflives on the order of a few seconds to 100 years, so long term storage is a very minor problem. You sneer at a volume reduction of 97%, but that is a major thing. You can keep reacting the materials and refining them through PUREX and it's more modern derivatives until almost all of the U and PU is used. You can also add DU and Natural U, as well as Thorium to the fuel cycle and use neutron capture to breed more fuel which can then be used as an energy source. What you advocate is very wasteful of clean, non-polluting energy.

You are also being disingenuous about new designs; most of the new reactors in the pipeline are not really new designs, but will be clones of a proven European design, They will not need long periods of tweaking as you put it, but will be a standardized design-something that should have been done decades ago. There are also designs on the shelf for much safer reactors; essentially Fail-Safe. They are designed with pelletized fuel and low enough power density that you could literally lock the door and walk away leaving them unattended and nothing would happen other that they would gradually cool off.

There is also an even neater concept usually referred to as the Traveling Wave Reactor. This design would start with conventional fuel with DU, Natural Uranium, and Thorium added. It would then be able to run unrefueled for 200 years with little maintainence. The single biggest problem that held back advancement of nuclear energy is the Nervous Nellies who have spent the last 3 decades suing everyone in sight because of their irrational fear of the Nuclear Boogeyman.

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Except you are the one posting outright falsehoods. Either you don't understand what a reprocessing system would do or you don't understand the entire concept of radiation. Radioactivity is the propensity of an element to spontaneously decay into other elements. You don't seem to get this but having your waste product as highly radioactive as possible is very desirable. The horror you anti-nuke people always rail against is the prospect of having to store dangerous nuclear waste for geologic time. Of course you never admit that is because the spent fuel is filled with Uranium and Plutonium. The PUREX process has been available for more than 4 decades to extract the U and PU from the "spent" fuel rods. Spent is really a misnomer; it's more like they are contaminated with daughter products that inhibit neutron flux and slow the reaction to a standstill. There are also smaller amounts of other Transuranic elements. Some of these, like Americium have industrial and commercial applications (Smoke Detectors, etc.)and may have a possible application for a fission source. Most are so rare and radioactive that the yield is very small and extremely short lived. For example, Californium costs about $60 Million/ gram it's so rare. Most of the transuranic isotopes have halflives on the order of a few seconds to 100 years, so long term storage is a very minor problem. You sneer at a volume reduction of 97%, but that is a major thing. You can keep reacting the materials and refining them through PUREX and it's more modern derivatives until almost all of the U and PU is used. You can also add DU and Natural U, as well as Thorium to the fuel cycle and use neutron capture to breed more fuel which can then be used as an energy source. What you advocate is very wasteful of clean, non-polluting energy.

Apparently you don't know what a fission product is but to quote from my source:

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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.

You will note the the problem is not Transuranic waste but much lighter elements. The majority do have shorter half-lives then the fuel itself but there is still a significant amount of long lived dangerously radioactive isotopes. Spent fuel has to be stored for such a long time not just because of the Uranium and Plutonium. As for the PUREX process to once again quote my source:

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The current commercial reprocessing technology, PUREX (for plutonium-uraniumextraction) is huge and polluting. The largest such installation in the world is located on the Normandy peninsula in France. The radioactive liquid waste discharges from that and the similar facility in northwestern England, have polluted the seas all the way to the Arctic Ocean.

Once again your personal attacks are unwarranted and confusing. I've certainly demonstrated a very high conceptual and factual understanding of the topic at hand and sourced a good deal of information. Further, one should really do some fact checking before calling someone out on being wrong because sometimes you end up learning you are wrong and then that is just embarrassing.

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You are also being disingenuous about new designs; most of the new reactors in the pipeline are not really new designs, but will be clones of a proven European design, They will not need long periods of tweaking as you put it, but will be a standardized design-something that should have been done decades ago. There are also designs on the shelf for much safer reactors; essentially Fail-Safe. They are designed with pelletized fuel and low enough power density that you could literally lock the door and walk away leaving them unattended and nothing would happen other that they would gradually cool off.

I'm pretty sure the regulations in the US are fairly different from the regulations in France. I don't see how a reactor design in the US would get approval without being tested to US standards. I could be wrong but I am fairly certain there are enough differences to make it possible to just transport a design like that.

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There is also an even neater concept usually referred to as the Traveling Wave Reactor. This design would start with conventional fuel with DU, Natural Uranium, and Thorium added. It would then be able to run unrefueled for 200 years with little maintainence. The single biggest problem that held back advancement of nuclear energy is the Nervous Nellies who have spent the last 3 decades suing everyone in sight because of their irrational fear of the Nuclear Boogeyman.

Yeah well source that please. As far as I ever heard the Nuclear Power industry collapsed in on itself because the investors backed out because no one could build a reactor in a timely fashion and they were basically always over budget. Further, I think I've pretty clearly demonstrated I don't particularly have a fear of Nuclear energy I just don't think its the best option. Certainly not in large quantities.

Almost forgot. I am still willing to agree to disagree. There are certainly valid points to your side of the argument even if you haven't really made good use of them. Both sides of this argument share basically the same validity its a bit of a subjective choice that puts you on one side or the other. In short we can agree to disagree and go our separate ways. Although it does seem a lot like you just want to berate me with things I've never said and insult my ability to understand the subject.

I think comparing coal power as equivalent to nuclear energy shows a lack of research and understanding.

1) Coal plants dump more than 600,000 tons of uranium into our environment and 700,000 tons of thorium in particulate form every year without any regulation. The US nuclear industry has produced 70,000 tons of waste in its entire lifetime. Coal plants are the biggest producers and dumpers of nuclear waste.

2) Nuclear fuel can not explode atomically. Fuel uranium is enriched to 4% compared to the 90% enrichment for weapons grade. It is physically impossible for fuel grade uranium to explode unless you re-write the laws of physics. Chernobyl was a steam explosion caused by a reactor breach, not an atomic explosion, this is well documented. Coal plants can and have exploded from ignited coal dust.

3) As for local terrorism the typical fuel rod weighs several tons, is inside a negatively pressurized (vacuum) containment dome underground with one of the strongest reinforced bunkers in the world built on top of it at facilities that score higher on security tests than military installations. F-14's which have a greater energy per are impact than a 747 have been remotely flown into nuclear bunker walls with negligible damage done to the structure.

4) New designs in reactors make the improbable "worst case" meltdowns scenarios history. The rely on fundamental physics properties to operate. In order for fission to occur, the fuel has to be in a certain density and ratio for the free neutrons to impact and carry on the reaction. New designs are temperature sensitive and rely on thermal expansion for alignment. If the rods get to hot they expand, reducing the fuel density ratio and the reaction cannot sustain itself. INL (Idaho National Laboratories) performed a demonstration in 1993 where they shut off all the safety systems, then pulled the control rods and turned off the coolant for a group of senators. The reactor immediately increased in temperature then the temp died off long before critical as the reaction was no longer able to sustain itself.