What is Digg?187 Comments
- inactive, on 12/15/2008, -3/+56You're talking like it was 1950. Nuclear have been cheap and safe for the last 50 years. Of course it costs billions to build a nuclear plant (dooh!). In return you get massive amounts of completely emission free energy for 50-70 years.
Wind turbines/solar is expensive, inefficient and unreliable. In Europe it's only a viable alternative because of government subsidies. - cptshamrock, on 12/16/2008, -0/+38Answer: Yes.
- Markab3, on 12/15/2008, -2/+35I agree. It is important for nuclear power to reach critical mass markets.
- thedrue, on 12/17/2008, -1/+22For some reason nuclear energy has become so politically incorrect, it truly is the future. There are very few downsides if used responsibly and safely and the energy yields are tremendous compared to amount of fuel used.
- hnazareth16, on 12/15/2008, -3/+23The word "nuclear" has such a bad stigma attached to it that it would be difficult for mass markets to accept it.
- Alucard010, on 12/17/2008, -0/+19Contrary to popular belief, coal power actually results in more radioactive waste being released into the environment than nuclear power. The population effective dose equivalent from radiation from coal plants is 100 times as much as nuclear plants.
- TheManikin, on 12/17/2008, -1/+20Yes. France can do it, we can do it. Let's stop being all talk about clean energy and go nuclear.
- tgc1, on 12/17/2008, -0/+15Despite that stigma, Nuclear still better than coal. Coal ash produces a lot of radioactive waste itself, and most people don't even know that.
- loafnut, on 12/17/2008, -0/+15"There is sufficient fuel to power IFR type facilities for well over 100 thousand years. This results because the IFR is a breeder reactor which can utilize uranium 238. Today's reactors only use uranium 235 which is less than 1% of the uranium found in nature. The IFR, with its fuel reprocessing capability, can use all the uranium. There is enough uranium that has been mined and placed in barrels (uranium 238) for IFR-type plants to provide all the electricity for the United States for over 500 years -- without mining. Also, the IFR can likely reprocess the spent fuel from today's reactors, and use the recovered materials for fuel. Uranium is as abundant in the earth as many of the commonly used materials such as bismuth, cadmium, mercury, silver, etc. In fact the uranium in a typical 1 ton block of granite (concentration of about 5 ppm) is the energy equivalent (if used in the IFR) of 10 tons of coal! The abundance of uranium suggests that its price will likely not increase as a fuel material for the foreseeable future. "
Quoted from here:
http://web.archive.org/web/20071009064447/www.nuc. ...
This is by far the cleanest energy we have. NO emissions. NO mining for hundreds of years and 99.5 percent of the uranium is used. In total it decreases the waste on a yearly basis 1000 fold. The technology is here, now politicians need to stop pandering to anti-nuke hippies and coal companies and fund this kind of project. - tehphoberer, on 12/17/2008, -0/+14Coal average negative externalities per KWh: 1c (cent)
Nuclear average negative externalities per KWh: .024c at most, but only .00062c if you take into account new passively safe reactor technology.
Source: Radetzki, Marian. "Coal or Nuclear in Power Stations: The Political Economy of an Undesirable but Necessary Choice." The Energy Journal 21, no. 1 (2000): 135-147. - Stuffburger, on 12/17/2008, -0/+12I'd rather live next to a nuclear plant than a coal one- The nuclear plant has a microscopic chance of blowing up, and the coal one is guaranteed to give me some kind of respiratory issues. Seems pretty clear cut to me.
- Gareth321, on 12/17/2008, -1/+13Oh. My. God! You fused two memes. What have you done =O
- tgc1, on 12/17/2008, -0/+12They are made not to leak or explode these days. This isn't the 1980's. There are so many failsafes it's incredibly hard to make them fail ala chernobyl.
- norman619, on 12/17/2008, -0/+12"Seems to me that a couple wind turbines/solar arrays are more likely to win due to the lower cost of assembly and drastically less long term cost. "
This is pretty naive. Fact is solar and wind can't even begin to provide the power our country needs. They are nice pipe dreams. They are nice green PR tools to guilt the ignorant into action. Also, no one has died from working at a nuclear power plant here in the US, I fail to see why you would think it is anything but safe. Neither has there been a meltdown in the decades they have been in use here in the US and Europe. People love to point to Chernobyl w/o telling the whole story. Fact is that plant was very poorly designed. Even using the standards of the 50's that plant was an accident waiting to happen. It is the exception not the rule. They cut all kinds of corners in its construction and they paid for it. - artwhite, on 12/16/2008, -5/+17It's hard to explain this to the eco-fascists crowd who thinks it's cute to return to the Dark Age.
- EntangledPhysx, on 12/17/2008, -1/+13Especially now. I've read that new nuclear technology can use the spent fuel from the old reactors. Plus they're so safe it's just ridiculous to fear them. What's the freakin' hold up!?
- tehphoberer, on 12/17/2008, -1/+12It wouldn't cost that much money per KWh, and it would be easier to deal with than coal fly ash. Coal gives off more radionuclides per KWh than nuclear does - coal itself has more energy in form of fissionable materials than is stored in the carbon.
source: Gabbard, Alex. "Coal Combustion: Nuclear Resource or Danger." Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Communications and External Relations (DOE), February 2008. http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/ ... - AaronCo, on 12/17/2008, -0/+11In the "clean energy" market? No. In the real energy market, the one we actually use in the real world? Oh yea.
People make the waste an issue, but that assumes we can't find a way to fix the waste problem. A little research... I bet we could find a way to filter out the non-radioactive isotopes and recycle them, maybe even find a way to induce further breakdown of the radioactive isotopes in order to stabilize them. People are so short-sighted on this stuff. - avrygoodfrnd, on 12/17/2008, -1/+12Nuclear power could save our country! Energy, as we learned not too recently, is the key to power.
- tehphoberer, on 12/17/2008, -0/+11@joe8pack. Wind doesn't provide baseline power. Also, it's not "disgustingly inexpensive" per KWh or it would have already dominated the electricity market. As it is, it satisfies about 1% of global energy demand. It will really come into play once a carbon tax or cap-and-trade system is put into place.
- loafnut, on 12/17/2008, -0/+10Reprocessing the fuel and NOT storing it underground is the clear answer. If you are worried about proliferation, there are designs that limit the risk. Check out the Integral Fast Reactor design. The byproducts decay in 200 years. The program was canceled by Clinton in 1994 but it is the best design I've seen.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_Fast_Reactor
More info on fast breeder reactors.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_breeder_reactor
As for the disadvantages of the sodium cooling, MIT, i think, has done some promising studies with lead cooling instead to remove the hazards of sodium. - dedknedy, on 12/17/2008, -0/+10It's going to Yucca mountain.. which is far safer than keeping it on site which is where it is stored today. And if we get on board with spent fuel reprocessing there won't even be that much waste to store.
Solar power and wind power are pipe dreams in their infancy. It would take aprox. 500 square miles of solar power panels to equal the output of a single base load power plant.
More people die every year mining for coal and drilling for oil than than have ever been harmed by a nuclear disaster... which there only been one of. Chernobyl. - CDRaff, on 12/17/2008, -1/+11Actually they no longer dump hot water, they use piping to move the water long distances allowing it to cool, and then return it to the reactor.
- inactive, on 12/17/2008, -1/+10I don't see why it can't. Nuclear isn't as bad as some people think it is. As long as you don't live within a few kilometre's of the reactor, you should be fine in any event of a catastrophic reactor leak or explosion.
- pygmy, on 12/17/2008, -5/+13In Soviet Russia, Nuclear Power accidentally you!
- loafnut, on 12/17/2008, -0/+8Or even if you do live within a few kilometers of a reactor, its still negligible.
- nail3r, on 12/17/2008, -2/+9It's only a matter of time before the world adopts nuclear.
- avrygoodfrnd, on 12/17/2008, -0/+7You've been brainwashed.
- scoottie, on 12/17/2008, -1/+8yes
- icabodane, on 12/17/2008, -0/+7Nuclear power plant -> hot water runoff -> tea bags in said runoff -> bottling company -> Krogers beverages aisle. I'm thinking whole industries could spring up around these things!
- atbnet, on 12/17/2008, -0/+7Don't be ignorant, people like you are the reason why we haven't widely adapted nuclear power. Look up pebble bed reactors. You can cut all cooling and it won't cause a meltdown. "By 2050, China plans to deploy as much as 300 gigawatts of reactors of which PBMRs will be a major component."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor - blinkatron, on 12/17/2008, -1/+8You are correct Norman. Chernobyl was built without a secondary containment system around its reactor, had it had one, the accident would have been nominal at worst. The reason the plant went critical in the first place was that all of the top Russian nuclear physicists got together there one day, and were doing experiments, and they decided that they knew what they were doing and turned off ALL of the safety protocols, and when one of the experiments went wrong... well, there were no safe measures in place to prevent the accident. Gotta love it.
- norman619, on 12/17/2008, -1/+8They have no real choice. Solar, geothermal, and wind can't really compete with the power nuclear can supply. Solar, geothermal, and wind are very dependent on location. They aren't universal options. Each require very special conditions. You can build a nuclear plant just about anywhere.
- PrometheusBorn, on 12/17/2008, -1/+7Not true at all (or anymore anyway). They have to abide by gov't standards w/r/t temperature return. Last I checked it was like 73F. If someone is worried about 73F pure water being discharged, they need to check out what other kinds of industries discharge.
- thallium205, on 12/17/2008, -1/+7Unless its cloudy... or not windy... or both.
- EntangledPhysx, on 12/17/2008, -0/+6Just launch it into the sun =D
I'd much rather have spent fuel that to be buried, then mercury and excessive amounts of pollutants and CO2 into our breathing air (coal). And don't give me crap about all this clean energy. It's not economically viable yet, and we have cheap and effective (and clean enough) sources of energy now to carry us to when green energy is realistic. - Gareth321, on 12/17/2008, -1/+7We have a lot more problems right now with CO2 than I can imagine we would ever have with "hot water". Fair trade-off? I think so.
- jsauter, on 12/17/2008, -1/+7You should read up on 3rd and 4th (theoretical) reactors. They have pretty much gotten past the safety, waste and expense issues.
- bobbknight, on 12/17/2008, -0/+5That's the trouble today, what people know about Nuclear Power they learned from the Simpsons.
It's not NEA approved to teach about Nuclear Power in a good light. - sdwilly, on 12/17/2008, -1/+6You really don't know anything about modern Nuclear Reactors do you? Go ahead you can admit it, oh wait you just did.
- septicmadman, on 12/17/2008, -2/+7I am a proponent of nuclear energy but I find it disingenuous to call wind and solar unreliable.
- pygmy, on 12/17/2008, -2/+7This is so true. Such a divisive word. Some say it 'Nuke-ular' while just as many say it 'New-Clear'. Stigma is a horrible thing. Fight the Stigma people.
- Alucard010, on 12/17/2008, -1/+6Chernobyl was a pretty ***** reactor. It used a Carbon moderator which only speeds up the reaction when as it heats up. Modern reactors use moderators that slow down the reaction when temperatures get high, like water. And then there are pebble bed reactors which are nearly fail proof, even with everything failing at once they do not overheat and meltdown.
- inactive, on 12/17/2008, -1/+6Nuclear can produce or generate electricity cheaper per-kilo-watt hour than anything else on this planet. So what's the hold up?
- pygmy, on 12/17/2008, -0/+4Cause I'm the king of Australia, retard. Watch the PANGEA video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjBSAlu0hjM - Enasni1212, on 12/17/2008, -1/+5You were doing so well until, "or explosion." Nuclear reactors don't explode.
- PrometheusBorn, on 12/17/2008, -0/+4because i'd hate like hell to commute from Antartica.
that and the transmission lines would be incredibly wasteful. - inactive, on 12/17/2008, -1/+5YES and it SHOULD
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