Nuclear energy

Are you for nuclear energy production?

  • Yes

    Votes: 69 86.3%
  • Undecided

    Votes: 6 7.5%
  • No

    Votes: 5 6.3%

  • Total voters
    80
I'm for it i don't see that there will be another Chenobil (USSRs nuclear power station
 
Dang, I had a nice post written out, and it got eaten.

I am under the impression that the amortised capital costs of nuclear are too expensive compared to renewables (windfarms and solar, for example) and thus isn't really financially viable.

Nuclear capital costs are definitely expensive, although I think they're less uncertain now that reactor manufacturers and utilities are going towards modular design of plants. It used to be that utilities could build a reactor with cost over-runs in the billions and never even get to open the thing up due to public pressure over the licensing process; that's been greatly simplified now. Pretty much every American plant was different in design; look for new ones to be a lot more similar.

Sure, solar and wind are nice, and I'm all for them, but a single reactor can put over a GW of base power on the line. They run all the time at a much cheaper operating cost than anything else that's currently an option in the fossil side, and with worldwide demand skyrocketing, they're still an attractive option, even if the big bad governments have to throw some tax credits to the utilities to get them to want to build new ones.

I wish I had more knowledge on the economics side of things so I could really back up what I'm saying...

Also, getting rid of the waste poses are serious long term problem.

Not really; only 3% of the crap that comes out of a reactor is fission products that pose a long term problem; the rest is re-usable uranium and plutonium. France reprocesses its fuel, and although there are still some creative chemical engineering problems to solve for more attractive solutions, it's really American policy that makes nuclear waste such a bleak picture. We don't have to throw used fuel into a tank of water, but that's what our omniscient government wants us to do.

JC said:
Uranium and plutonium are in limited supply. What happens when they run out?

By then, the current generation of nuclear reactors and probably the next aren't likely to be online anymore. We've got tons of U-238 to breed if we choose to go that route, too; it creates more fissile material than it destroys while still generating power. Fairly nice little units if we could get a bunch of those on the grid.

JC said:
Wind and solar are definite long term solutions. Nuclear isn't a long term solution.

Depends on your definition of long-term; nuclear is a solution during my lifetime, and probably that of my grand-kids as well, but solar is really the only way to go if we're thinking centuries aand millennia in the future.

JC said:
Nobody has mentioned hydrogen as a fuel...thank god, because it will never be a viable fuel.

Because that argument would be equivalent to suggesting using boxes of Duracells in our power plants.

Wind and solar are smaller scale though - I don't think wind produces much energy, and solar probably doesn't either, and it's small scale: People have them on their roof, you don't see power plants.

I posted something here last year about concentrating solar power, a project that Sandia National Labs is working on; basically it uses a bunch of mirrors to focus sunlight to get more power generated from it. It looks a lot better than any solar panels I've seen. If I find that link again, I'll post it...

I'm all for it! Just as long as they build it safely and make sure that none of the radioactive water leaches into my shower water.

Wait until he finds out there's already radioactive tritium in his shower water and it has nothing to do with nuke plants!
 
Wait until he finds out there's already radioactive tritium in his shower water and it has nothing to do with nuke plants!

True enough. The most radioactive part of France is Britanny, mostly because the soil there is granite, and granite is naturally radioactive...

Granite is a normal, geological, source of radiation in the natural environment. Granite has around 10 to 20 parts per million of uranium. By contrast, more mafic rocks such as tonalite, gabbro or diorite have 1 to 5ppm uranium, and limestones and sedimentary rocks usually equally low.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granite#Natural_Radiation
 
I work for a firm that is funding a windfarm, so I gathered alot of these figures from various models.

But try this wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power

Some of the figures I mentioned can be rationalised here.

What I said about the 1 acre per turbine, thats on a sloped surface. You wouldn't normally have 20 turbines in a flat 20 acre field. If it was on the side of a valley or mountain you could.

Edit: This is a link showing some highlights of generating electricity by wind in Ireland. As you can see, they quoted €5.5m for a 5MW turbine. This is €1.1m per MW, slightly higher than my €1m figure above.

http://www.sei.ie/uploadedfiles/RenewableEnergy/Economics.pdf

That's great. Thank you. Seems you've found a misconception I have about wind power. :)
 
How big is the risk of one of these nuclear plants melting down? Is it like in Civ4 where they melt down quite often??
 
Are you in favour of nuclear power plants or not?

You might also add any comments you may have.

If anyone has any juicy numbers, please throw them in (i.e. cost per Mega Watt etc etc)!
Very much in favor of it.

I really don't understand why the people who are most opposed to the widespread use of fossil fuels, enviromentalists, are in general so opposed to nuclear power - nuclear power is the only realistic long term, large scale alternative to burning fossil fuels for electricity.
 
I said I'd attach a link to the concentrating solar power project that the USDoE and SNL are working on; here it is, in case anyone is interested in some reading material.

http://www1.eere.energy.gov/solar/csp.html

:)

The fact that you talk about Plutonium as a fuel source indicates to me that you need to do more reading (hint, its not used for commerical energy production).

The fact that you talk about it as if it isn't indicates to me that you need to check things before taking the mickey out of someone (hint, look under "MOX").
 
I am for building Nuclear Power Plants to replace the aging Coal and Oil fired power plants.
 
How big is the risk of one of these nuclear plants melting down? Is it like in Civ4 where they melt down quite often??

usually people sneer and become sarcastic when this is pointed out, but nuclear power is historically the safest source of energy there is.

People get completely irrational about nuclear energy and forget how deadly coal is.

Not only because of the fumes:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5174391/

But mainly because of how dangerous mining is.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_disasters#Mining_disasters

Yet why isn't everybody outraged by the thousands of deaths caused by the exploitation of coal?

I'm really curious.
 
Yet why isn't everybody outraged by the thousands of deaths caused by the exploitation of coal?

I'm really curious.

In fairness to coal, uranium mining isn't really a healthful activity.

Other than that, though, I completely agree; I would also add that not mentioned in that article is the fact that a coal plant emits more radioactive material into the environment than a nuclear plant.
 
The fact that you talk about it as if it isn't indicates to me that you need to check things before taking the mickey out of someone (hint, look under "MOX").

I stand corrected on the use of Plutonium in commercial energy production :blush: and I apologise to JC on that note, however the plutonium used there is produced from uranium in reactors and so can be treated as a part of uranium stockpiles as far as predicting how long energy supplies will last.
 
Except you need a heckuva lot less uranium than coal to run a modern nation. ;) Even unrefined uranium.

Well, yes, according to wiki (not my favorite source, I know, but I think these rough numbers are good enough...):

77,000,000 MJ/kg by fission of U-235
32.5 MJ/kg by burning anthracite

Granted, not all of the fission energy is recoverable, but neither is all the coal energy, so they kinda balance. So you'd still need over 2M times as much coal for the same energy of one unit of U-235.
 
Actually the sad thing with nuclear energy is that the energy is used in exactly the same way as it is in a coal plant, mainly to heat water.

A nuclear plant sounds cool and high-tech, but it's simply a very efficient water heater.
 
A lot of nuclear energy startup costs come from the lengthy safety/regulatory process. I wonder if its possible to streamline it without compromising on safety?
 
Nuclear Power is the Power of future. Why waste time with those RIDICULOUS things like "Solar Energy", "Windmills" when we can do it with Nuclear Plants? They don't polute that much, they are very efficient and they are secure. To say that they are dangerous is foolishness.
 
Nuclear Power is the Power of future. Why waste time with those RIDICULOUS things like "Solar Energy", "Windmills" when we can do it with Nuclear Plants? They don't polute that much, they are very efficient and they are secure. To say that they are dangerous is foolishness.

Solar power, with the investment of further research, could become very useful and efficient. Currently you're right, nuclear power is the better option.
 
The danger worries and concerns about excessive waste are unjustly continued based on past, older generations of nuclear plants. Modern designs are completely different - practically 'meltdownproof' and with minimal waste output. In fact the waste can be a renewable energy (for batteries, etc). I say we NUKE UP, BROTHER! [/H. Hogan]
 
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