The Scientific Nuclear Power Debate.

[brennan]

We're not? It's not really hard to sling some stuff at the Sun, methinks.

At the moment that'd be a little expensive. Wait till it's more affordable.

 

[Falcon02]

At the moment that'd be a little expensive. Wait till it's more affordable.

~$10,000 per kilogram multiplied by the number of kilograms of nuclear waste....

and that's just to LEO throwing it into a Heliocentric orbit (at minimum) adds additional cost.

 

[Masquerouge]

At the moment that'd be a little expensive. Wait till it's more affordable.

Gotcha. I thought you were talking about the technical details, not the financial ones

 

[Abaddon]

Really, what is the harm in burying the stuff?

 

[brennan]

It can contaminate groundwater. It may also become a problem at a future date when we aren't around to do something about it. Huge piles of radioactive waste are a bit of a crappy thing to leave lying around for the next Civilisation on Earth. Most responsible thing is to keep it around till we can dispose of it permanently, not bury it and pretend we've done the job properly.

 

[AL_DA_GREAT]

I find the risk of a meltdown laughable. Seriously it isn't going to happen. Storage I don't find that bad. Sure we might contaminate a bit of waste land but it is so much less than contaminating the entire atmosphere.

 

[peter grimes]

What do the French do with their spent rods? From what I understand, they produce more megaWatts from nuclear sources than any other nation.

 

[AL_DA_GREAT]

A few months ago a Swedish family was killed during a storm by a wind turbine. The article was on page 15 in the newspaper and the accident was described in 10 sentences. On the evening news they talked about storm related deaths without mentioning the windpower. Imagine what would have happend if a family had died from a nuclear power plant. It would be on every headline for a month. Even CNN would have had it as important news. There would be large campaigns against nuclear power.

 

[Abaddon]

But the Wind Turbine didn't directly cause the death, you have just as much chance from a tree.

Nuclea power however unlikely can have a much more dangerous outcome

 

[Agent Cooper]

I don't mind nuclear power, but to design and operate nuclear power plants commands the highest level of integrity and skill - no shortcuts.

I was a teenager when the Chernobyl reactor blew up, so I remember that incident quite well. I would like to note though, that the Chernobyl disaster was directly caused by human errors and the lack of back-up systems to prevent those human errors from turning into a full scale catastrophe.

You can't really blame nuclear power as a whole for what happened at Chernobyl.

I believe I read an article in a science magazine a couple of years ago, that mentioned how they were constructing a huge and very safe nulcear power plant in Finland - a meltdown was not possible with this construction or something like that - I don't remember the details. Anyone know anything about this?

 

[Abaddon]

I still don't even understand what a meltdown is

 

[Cutlass]

A meltdown of a nuclear reactor is when the cooling system fails and the fuel overheats. When uranium overheats, it can become hot enough to melt concrete. So what happens is that the fuel rods melt into a puddle of liquid uranium and iron on the bottom of the containment vessel, and then melt their way through the bottom. The classic worst case scenario of a "China syndrome" is that the uranium stays liquid until it has gone below the whole building and reached ground water and the whole region is poisoned by radioactive steam.

That hasn't happened (that we know of, the Soviets didn't admit to things) but is the real reason that nuclear power is so frightening to so many people.

 

[peter grimes]

...[A meltdown] is the real reason that nuclear power is so frightening to so many people.

Though I agree that most people seem to fear a meltdown or some other sort of unintentional release of radiation, I'd say the fundamental reason so many people fear nuclear power is Ignorance. Ignorance of the chain of events necessary for a meltdown, ignorance of the safety systems, ignorance of the risk factors.

If nuclear power really were as dangerous as many people imagine it to be, why on earth would the navy rely so heavily on it?

It all comes down to the design. Reactors that melt down are, de facto, poorly designed.

 

[Cutlass]

It's not even so much ignorance as human nature. We all "know" that we are more likely to break our necks falling down a staircase than we are to die in a plane crash, but the spectacular nature of the plane crash elicits more fear than the prosaic concern of a common accident. The more dramatic and large the consequences, the more the fear.

But I'm just trying to describe where the fear comes from, not say that it's legitimate to base policy on it.

As I have said in other venues many times, when French bureaucrats can do something more efficiently that American capitalists, something is very wrong with this picture. Yet the French nuclear power industry is much better than the US one.

So:

1 We know that it's reasonably safe, but we also know that fears of safety will cause heavy opposition.

2 We know that it's possible to permanently store the waste products, but for a variety of reasons we have absolutely failed to implement a plan. And that raises the risk and costs that nuclear waste represents.

3 We know that nuclear power is not as environmentally benign as some would claim, because processing the fuel is messy as hell.

4 We know that nuclear power is somewhat cost effective, but we do not know how cost effective because there are so many government subsidies and secrets involved that a full accounting is impossible.

5 We know that well designed nuclear plants are safe, but we don't know what happens when terrorists put a real effort into blowing one up.

6 We know that there is a lot of uranium in the ground now, but we also know that nuclear power based on uranium is not a permanent power source because the uranium will become scarcer and more expensive over time.

7 We know that as more nations seek to use nuclear power, the costs will go up he time when nuke plants must be replaced with something else draws nearer.

Therefor, why not bypass nukes and go to renewables now?

 

[Slobadog]

I wonder if the civ franchise is contributing to the publics fear.

 

[Ur_Vile_Wedge]

I also think that ignorance as to what a meltdown *is* contributes. Some of the people I've spoken to (and sadly, some that I'm related to) can't tell the difference between a meltdown of a Nuclear plant or that of a nuclear weapon going off. (and I don't mean a radiological bomb) I know quite a few people who are absolutely convinced that the Chernobyl Meltdown caused a massive fireball that obliterated a small city off the map. Granted, a meltdown would be catastrophic, but it's not a fission bomb.

 

[Chandrasekhar]

~$10,000 per kilogram multiplied by the number of kilograms of nuclear waste....

and that's just to LEO throwing it into a Heliocentric orbit (at minimum) adds additional cost.

We'd need a space elevator to make it remotely efficient, I think. From there, it shouldn't be too tough to launch it on an eventual crash course with the sun.

 

[AL_DA_GREAT]

A meltdown of a nuclear reactor is when the cooling system fails and the fuel overheats. When uranium overheats, it can become hot enough to melt concrete. So what happens is that the fuel rods melt into a puddle of liquid uranium and iron on the bottom of the containment vessel, and then melt their way through the bottom. The classic worst case scenario of a "China syndrome" is that the uranium stays liquid until it has gone below the whole building and reached ground water and the whole region is poisoned by radioactive steam.

That hasn't happened (that we know of, the Soviets didn't admit to things) but is the real reason that nuclear power is so frightening to so many people.

The China syndrom can be stopped. Anyone who constructs a nuclear power plant surounds the reactor with many meters of concrete which would be to thick to melt through. The tjernobyl peoplöe had a thin layer of concrete around it. If the same thing had happend in a modern reactor nothing would have leaked.

 

[brennan]

The Chernobyl reactor was an obsolete and fundamentally dangerous design. It is entirely possible to built reactors in which the increased temperature of a run-away reaction leads to the reaction short circuiting itself (the increase in temperature inhibits the actual fission process). This is how all UK nuclear plants are designed, and presumably pretty much everyone else's as well. Meltdowns should not be a worry.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Unfortunately, politicians will not see it that way. "Think of the children" and nuclear power makes people lose all common sense.