A Reasonable Role for Nuclear

Hi...I had forgotton to sign-off.

Moreover, one big hazard of Nuclear is that no Nuclear Power Station has been shut down till date. They are trying in Germany. This technolonolgy is yet to be demonstrated.

Goodluck!

Anil Tiwari / Delhi

I've worked both nuclear and coal plants. Give me a nice clean, safe nuclear plant any day.

Spent fuel can be re-refined, but it is expensive to do so. Storage above ground, spent fuel pools, and old salt mines WILL leak eventually.

My bright idea (and so far no-one has told me why not) is to drill into the subduction plate near a fault line, inject the encapsulated radwaste into that, and monitor its dissapearance at about 2 inches a year. Drilling and underwater habitat technowledgy can't be so far away from making this a serious possibility. A combination of geophisists, drilling engineneers, and NUMA (for you Clive Cussler fans) ought to have that puppy whiped in no time.

Hi...

Nuclear waste is generated in solid, liquid or gas form. The last is not easy to dispose and i am not aware. In the US & USSR there have been cases of accidental leakages to the atmosphere.

In a U235 processing plant at south India the waste generated is in liquid form. It used to be pumped 1.5 kilometers below the ground. But, the Indian plate (landmass) is in constant movement northwards at a speed of about 50mm per year. It was found in 1980 that some of the radiation had leaked upward and contaminated the ground water. Hence, I feel drilling into fault lines is not recommended and can only be done at our risk & peril.

Most nations became a signatory to the Geneva protocol. They are duty bound to dispose their own wastes within their own boundaries. Otherwise, this worlds oceans would have become a dumping ground within no time. Ofcouse, today there is a strong vigil whereby no rogue country is allowed to dump their waste in the oceans etc. Solid wastes are sealed in thick walled stainless steel capsules which are then buried deep underground and covered with a layer of about 30meters of concrete.

Nuclear waste disposal is a complex issue. The best solution to is to refrain from further use of Nuclear technology till the time an answer to such disposal issues to tackle wastes is found. However, all our governments continue to harp on their own safety factors.

Anil Tiwari / Delhi

Another Thorium discussion:

http://cr4.globalspec.com/thread/34182#newcomments

There are some very informative links included farther down...

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Can-Thorium-Generate-Safer-Nuclear-Power/ At least India is working on it.

Yer just not listening, or I'm not explaining it right. NO WAY should we drill into the fault itself. And only drilling 1.5 Km is just plain STUPID! The 'engineer' who designed that project should have been stuffed down the same hole.

What I proposed was to drill INTO, like as in well into, the subduction layer. Past the slippage interface, where the only way is down, far past ground water supplies. So if 10 klicks down is not enough, go further. Turning the waste into glass and encapsulating it in stainless steel is a good idea. BUT, glass disssolves in water over time, and stainless steel corrodes without fresh air or water flowing over it. But both will last long enought to be well on its' way to Hell before that happens. THEN, being heaver than magma, it should melt and rejoin the heart of the planet. And if you think 30 meters of concrete is good enough, go take a look at where stratification has just about flipped over or formed a Mobeious ribbon. Brewster, NY, USA, along I84 between Carmel and Brewster, is a geologists wonderland. Nearby Tilly Foster has just about any type of geological formation you can think of, most of it at wierd angles to the norm.

I don't have the answers. The present equipment may not be able to do it YET. But that is not enough to deter us from putting our heads together, finding a spot on the continent, yours, mine, or some other, where it would work. Maybe a good hobby for me, or someone with a little more smarts, to find a good place to try it.

Or how about a mile long cannon to launch the waste sunwise, or the space ladder! C'mon, I'm just trying to think outside the box here.

I don't think refraining from Nuclear technology is the way to tackle the problem. It just might have the answer. We Will Prevail!

I like what you have to say, and I'm giving you a GA.. but..

How do we know that most of the core of the planet isn't nuclear powered, but having a much smaller reaction than a solar situation? That would make just the skin of the this planet non-radioactive, as it spent its energy millions of years ago. Maybe all we need to do is drill deeper?

or find another process to convert it. I don't think we are done exploring every possibility.

Chris

I see it differently. First off we have only used about 1/2 of what hydro power is available. See or look up INLL or INNL in Idaho and do a search and you will find out. Several idiots in the year 2000 tried to take the dams out of the Snake and Columbia River. They wanted to use the fact that it kills the fish and that it causes more methane gas due to rotting plant matter. I am sure that it does. But not anywhere near the damaging levels the CO2 and other gases we get from burning ANYTHING, Coal , Natural Gas etc..There are small dams being torn down all over the USA and it is a shame. IT is an outrage from these environmental groups that clearly do not know a proton or neutron from a salad Crouton.

Look at Grand Cooley Dam in WA State. When they added the 4th or 3rd power plant it made that dam the largest producer of power in the world. Shortly after that the French and now the Chinese with the 3 Gorges DAM have the largest. But here is the Sad part. After the last power plant on Grand Coule was built it was stopped from adding the full amount of generators as it can hold. These are a potential there to almost double what the dam now puts out. And without that DAM we would never have won WWII. OR at least not without a lot more of the Japs and Americans killed and frankly I do not want anyone killed.

Now Back to the dams on the columbia. Most of the ones between the Grand Couly and the ocian have fish laders and it has been proven over and over that there are now more fish because of the dams than before. But the Radicals that are against anything and everything started killing with clubs many many thousands of Salmon.

Why? Well it was illegal for them to do this but they wanted the fish count to go down so they could blame the dams and hoped that would help get the dams removed. I want those dams and am DAM glad they are there. They help control flooding and help grow food. I assume more of you like to eat. And the more food grown the less CO2 and the more O2 as plants have a way of doing that as we all know. The Grand Coulee dam made the Columbia Bason (A pretty large desert in Washington) (Yes Washington State has a desert with Tumble weeds and all) Just not any catus. Anyway now that is some of the best farm land in the world thanks to the puping station at Grand Coulee dam.

Now

Who are these Radicals that would not let the last power plant be finished on the Grand Coulee dam? Who are they and why are they protesting?

To be honest I do not know. But I can only figure that they work for indirectly the coal and oil companies. Some of them may not be aware of this and just do it. We know this happens with the extreme left and extreme right. They will just ask what are we protesting and join up regardless. I say put the rest of the Generators on the Grand Coulee and also lets start building more dams. There is a new way to build them that has litle impack on anyting. No Fish get killed and the flow of the river stays the same for the most part and we have as stated earlier already identified enough to double the hydro power that is generated in the USA alone. Believe it or not and the calculations are not that hard but there is enough power in the Amazon River to power all of north and south america. All electrical needs could be met with just that river alone and if done with the newer technology it would have little impact on the invironment in a negative way and have a great impact in a positive way.

As for nucular. We have the technology to safely store the waste for far far longer than we is needed to make it non radioactive or at least lowered to a level that is nothing to worry about. The gable mountain is a good one and folks do not realize that we have had a glassification process developed and tested by Betel NW Labs over 30 years ago. So we take the waste. Turn it into Glass and put it in a stainless steel case and then a hardend cement case and burry it about 5k feet (1 Mile below the surface) and forget about it. IT will not contaminate any water as it is god dam glass. Besides there is little water in the area anyway. But even if there were it would not be a big deal. And some folks say "What if we have an eathquake. Well We will have them and there is not a dam thing we can do about it. But if we get an earthquake or anything happens that can turn the 1 mile of the earth's crust

Upside down then we are not going to be alive to worry about the glassified and safe

Nuclear waste that is or was stored there. That is like worrying what if the earth runs into the sun and the nucular waste comes to the surface. Good god folks. Use you heads. Nuclear power is clean and we have not had any deaths that I am aware of in the USA from Nuclear power. But we have them every day from pollution.

Also another thing we can do is put insulation in the homes and apartments in the state of CA. My heating bill and the cubic feet of Natural gas used to heat in the winter since I moved the CA is more than it was in eastern Washington were it is not at all unusual to get below 0 degrees F for many days of the year and below 32 for many weeks of the year. Yet in CA it is as if someone thinks we do not need insulation. The apartment I lived in had NO insualtion. Not a small amount. It had none. And insulation cost next to nothing. And it saves on Heating and cooling.

I could go on and on about many different ways we could tell the Muslims and the butt heads in Venzewayla (Soory not sure how to spell it or a lot of other words). to go to hell. But it will not happen as long as you vote party lines rather than vote to get rid of career politicians.

Jim Davison

an excellent rant! don't hold back, because there is much more that needs to said

You hit it right on. I want to rant and rant and will do some more ranting.

I have to wait a few weeks as I am trying to save one of my homes.

I was lied to and cheated and then told what a looser I was for signing the contract

and not sticking to the contract. But I see it as nothing less than Froud. (Spelling again). Anyway as soon as I get done with that I will be ranting about Dioxon , insulation, OIL, Mostly how bad and or good they are as compairded to Nuclear.

I am Pro Nuck

Brussles uses a lot of nuclear and they light the highways. Not just the city streets

but the highways as well. In case someones car breaks down they want to be able to see it and the car owner to see in case he/she/they do not have a light that last long enough etc.. But to have so much power that they can do that is realy cool.

The russions have a nuclear ICE breaker. Now that is realy cool. They have so much power in that ice breaker that they can if they ever get stuck and it does happen on ocasion they heat the walls of the ship and they also send out massive amounts of steam to melt the ice that has them trapped. They can also instuck other ships that would otherwise be crushed by the ice by sending out a hose on a robot contorled

Caterpilar loooking like device that is draging a high temp hose. Then they blast it with heat around the stuck ship and they also melt a hole into the ice down to the water and inject steam. These bubbles that are left lift and break the ice around the stuck ship so it can be on its way. We do not have this although Admiral Rickover who desighned the reactors that where first used on Military ships did such a good job that not one person in the US or on US made ships has be harmed by the reactors on the ship. Most ships that have reactors have at least two.

One for backup in case one needs some maintainance.

also we have had a new type of reator that is called passive. Why that term I do not know. But what I do know is that it takes work to start it and it takes work to keep it running. If it is left unatended or part of it is broken it will stip working. IT has not choice but to stop. IT is a law of physics. These reactors can be smaller so they can be located closer to the population and that also makes it less expensive. Plus there is less loose due to resitance in the wires. With the exception of the DC line that runs from the Dalls OR to LA CA most power lines loose about 3% for every 150 Miles.

these are the big main cables not the small ones. They are usualy about 200 to 400K volts. But the DC Line is running at 750,000 Volts and looses less than 4% on a 920 mile trip. No bad. And since it is DC it does not cause the health efects of AC.

Jimmy joe jetter.

How could the public ever be expected to accept nuclear as a safe power source. It's too safe and the safety systems have backup safety controls and the backups have backups. It's a thoroughly controlled sequence of events and so it just couldn't be possible that such a cheap and efficient power source could ever be manifested ya think

Really what bunk!!!!!! Is this the type of hype we let our leadership attend too!!!!! Then then we deserve what we get.......

Yes this needs aired......

I am a solar contractor and have been for over 30 years. The person from India is right. Why risk such damage? Efficiency and renewables will provide all we need and keep the power sources de-centralized. Solutions that involve paying a central utility for energy that is available all around us will make less sense over time. When costs (like health care and energy) rise faster than economic growth they inevitably take a bite out of our standard of living. Renewable energy sources come with a fixed cost that, even if it is higher, allows economic growth to improve our standard of living.

Thorium power is really the way to go. A fraction of the cost, you can't make bombs, far less radioactive waste, and it has a shorter half life. Take a note from the French on breeder reactors. Check out Hyperion Energy if you want to see the future of nuclear. I think if they can incorporate Thorium into their design, there will be an enormous revival in nuclear. The old designs of dinosuars and they will become extint, but at what cost.

Who cares we give billions away without any accountability AtLeast we'd have a clear conscious

Nuclear waste can be stored in glass. There is also the synrock process.

Both of these store the waste in a form where leaching is less than occurs from the original ores from which the uranium was mined.

High level waste generally has a short half life. It can be stored until it drops to a reasonable level of radioactivity. At this point end products (non radioactive materials which are the final product of the radioactive decomposition) can be extracted and sold if the expense of extraction is worth it. the remaining material can be "synrocked" or "glassified", and buried.

Another possibility with high level and some medium level wastes is to place them in an insulated container and use the heat of decomposition to generate power. Obviously it is not quite that simple, but it could be turned into an asset instead of a liability.

Low level waste needs to have the volume reduced as much as possible. If this raises radioactivity to a high enough level it can generate power, otherwise it can be buried deeply.

I agree that the problems of nuclear power are political, not technical. The activists present the problems as though they are technical to strengthen their case that "nuclear is too dangerous to use". If they admitted that the only difficult problems involved were political and obtaining social acceptance, their fight against it would be lost.

yes but environmental nuts block it. They site technical difficulties but refuse to talk to engineers. They site fear. It will pollute worse then coal if the umpteen safety systems fail. and no one knows how much it will cost, because no one knows what the government will do retroactively. No one trusts the government precisely because the environmental lobby is so powerful. Why are they powerful. Because they sue to block anything they don't like and they win tons of money also they have powerfull amounts of money through donations because people trust them to protect the environment. Without a rewriting of envirormental laws or a liability limiting law nuclear power is not an option. I am not against the environmental laws or protecting the environment but I am against this power grab of this lobby. They spend far to much money advertising and far to little actually buying the lands they want to protect. Want proof. Look at the environmental opposition to every energy option out there. Wind kill birds and is load. Natural Gas gasp CO2, Coal CO2 gasp but no mention of the Urainium, mercury and other metals burned. Coal Gassification, one plant in the south was just sued for unrevealed CO2 emissions of a "coal " plant no mater that they would be burning natural gas. Dams ,hahahaha, bad because yada yada yada. and now the grand daddy of them all, against solar in the mojave dessert in the California. Destroy the "aesthetics" if you haven't figured it out, i am now so cynical that i reject any argument about the environment until they prove it to me. Otherwise it is just a power grab. You should live like this. if you want a discussion of better and worse (including cost of power) that will get you a conversation with me with out cynicism. If you ban anything because its bad for the environment I stop listening.

I agree with your comment, but I add one additional comment. The motivation today has changed to "PAY ME". That has been the long range goal for Mr. Gore and his followers and that is where Mr. Obama is heading with the taxes he is talking about.Control energy and you can wipe out all industry.

The true cost of nuclear power must factor in: 1. Safe disposal of all radioactive materials, and guarding the sites for thousands of years. Of course no society has lasted that long. Also nobody wants it in their backyard. Especially Senate leader Harry Reid. We have NO viable nuclear storage. We have nuclear waste on site all around the world. 2. Security costs to guard nuclear plants and to strengthen them against attacks. Nuclear plant guards have been found asleep, and generally lose battles with mock attackers. Huge blackouts have taken place due to negligence of operators also. 3. Liability insurance that will meet potential damages to the surrounding area, including downwind for several hundred miles. Maybe AIG could sell such a policy. Of course the taxpayer would have to bail it out if something happened. 4. Decommissioning costs when the plant is retired. 5. Reclaiming the uranium mine sites. Proponents of nuclear energy have no real answers for any of this. Some talk of thorium. If thorium is the answer, why isn't the industry proposing a thorium reactor?

Perhaps this is reasonable, although I question some of the assumptions and statements. It is only reasonable if the *same* depth of analysis and restrictions are applied to all viable alternatives over their same life cycles. For we must have electrical power to maintain our civilization at its current level, let alone future growth.

I do not think that coal, the major source (>50%) of electrical power, will turn out well. I suspect that the amount of radioactive material put into the air by a coal plant over its lifetime is comparable to (perhaps greater than) the amount of radioactive waste generated by an equivalent sized nuclear plant, for example. However, I have not done the math on it yet.

Coal scars the land and kills people in its mining. It also causes known, long-term health problems both to the miners and to the population that lives near the coal fired electrical plants.

Oil and natural gas produce carbon dioxide, a concern relative to global warming. we also have to buy a lot of it from our potential enemies.

Solar, wind, and other sources - although good in concept - cannot be reasonably scaled-up to gigawatt levels quickly and are intermittent. Also, the same long term analysis needs to be done to each of them, including initial capital costs, energy yield and decommissioning.

Bio fuels have the additional problem that they compete directly (corn) or indirectly (bio waste) with primary agricultural food sources. They also have potential problems of their own in terms of waste products of the conversion to alcohol or bio-diesel.

I agree with your basic premise, however the basic problem still exists. The radical environmental movement is against all of the technologies you discuss and the general public is completely uneducated about the alternatives. All fossil fuel is finite. We must move ahead or we will fall back. That is inevitable. We have not really moved since the sixties.

As I said in my first comment, use breeder technology to reuse and reduce the amount of waste. We could be leaps ahead if Pres. Carter had not "helped" the environmentalist by blocking use of this technology. We could be leaps ahead if we would stop letting the radical environmental movement dictate energy policy in the country.

You are right about the radical environmentalists. I just read that they want to ban black cars in California because they think they add to global warming. They actually have the support of one of their Senators in keeping solar plants out of the Mojave Desert. They are against ethanol, because they think they can tell farmers what to do with their corn. ( I am not advocating the subsidies). They have not built any windmills in the San Bernardino Pass. etc. In some areas they have burned down Hummer dealerships, and housing placed where they didn't want it. I spent most of my life in California, but moved to the Midwest for a calmer lifestyle. I would love to see safe nuclear power that consumes all of its own fuel. I wish the industry would focus on thorium or whatever is safest.

You are correct about the cost.

But the costs are only because of the Radicals. As mentioned by several folks.

Nuclear power can be a safe and cheap power source. The only reason we have the problems you mention are because of idiots that will not look at the technology. Are you one of the idiots?

You say there are no solutions to these problems. That is BS. Personaly I do not care if we use thorioum or uranium or bread uranium 238 into plutonium 239 that can run a reactor quite well and has done so in WA State at the fast flux test facility (The only brader reactor ever in the USA and it was not allowed to be connected to the Grid.

It just pumped out a lot of heat.

You make the statment that there is no safe way to store the waste.

IT has been explaned several times on this page and these statments are not from someone that just wants nuclear power for fun. I assume you work for or are paid by the oil or coal industry or you are one of those that reads and beleaves the Siera Club and other such BS. If you want and I am sure you do not I can list again what has already been stated on this page about how to safely store the waste and get it out of on site storage.

The nuclear plants do not want to store the stuff on site. But because of folks that want to stop any kind of advancement in any kind of power these is still no place to put it. Nevada is a good place. Once the waste is Glassified and I am not saying it is stored in glass it is turned into glass. When did you last see a glass in your dishwasher disolve? IT does not. Glass does disolve in Water but at a rate that is as mentioned slower than the natural ore that is all around us and part of the environment already. I supppose you want to get ride of all naturaly ocuring

Ore that is and has been in the ground we walk on since mans existance on this planet. And as for gurading it after the waste is in proper storate. No need.

Please give me an example where someone decided to dig up something from a mile below the groud that has no value and that is the case with the spot that has been tested in nevada. And an eathquake will not hurt it. We could go on and answer the rest of your supposed concerns but I have a very strong feeling you are not intersted in FACTs. You sound like a swamied burocratic microbe.

Al Gore who is supposedly for Conservation and envronmental issues. Did you know and I assume you do that he gets most of his $ from Occadental petrolium. How do you think Gor gets a living? His family ownes a lot of Stock in Occadental and they make more $ from that than any other source.

When Gore and Clinton got into office they allowed Ocadental to purchase the Navy's

Oil reserve Wells and Pipelines and refineries that were in good workin gorder and maintained but not used. IT was to be saved for a war. We would need it at that point to power the aircraft that take off and land on Carriers. Most o the Carriers are Nuclear Fision powered. And guess what. We have not had an Acceddent that cost the life of anyone in the navy due to all of the reacters the Navy has in Subs and Ships.

Gore took OUR (Yours and Mine) and sold the oil wells that had been drilled and tested and and then turned off for safe keeping in case we needed it. Occadental got it for less than 2 cents on the Dollar and it was ready to start pumping out CO2 and O1 and the worst O3. Then to make things worce even though it had been proven by several studies at the University of CA Berkely that MTBE will not change the amount of polution from a cars exhaused but will in fact contaminate most of the state of CA with a substance that is toxic as hell. The state was forced to put this crap into the fule. And we are not talking a few drops per gallon. We are talking MTBE makes up about 10 to 11% of a gallon of gas. Or in easyer terms for you folks that do not like facts one gallon + for each 10 galons. Or in the case of the average care that holds

16.7 Galons of fule it would be 1.6 to 1.8 Gallon of pur poisonus MTBE.

Now. Guess who makes the MTBE that goes into the CA and a few other states Gasoline? Subidaries of Occadental. No one at the Siera Club as said a dam thing about it. Yet Holister CAs ground water is hevaly contaminated with MTBE and there are a high rate of Birth Defects and cancer. So litle kids are doomed from the begining so Gore can have a nice suit a nice car and a nice a jet. And he uses them. Tipper was caught with her driver leaving the SUV Running and the air conditioner on so she would not be too hot like the rest of us and when confronted about it she did not have a thing to say. She tells you and I what we can do and what we cannot do. But she exempts herself. Bush is not much better but at least he stopped the idiots that wanted to take the NON poluting fish helping dams off of the columbia and snake river in 2000 and 2001.

the answers to your concernes are in these postings but you and many others like you are not intersted. Why?? Give us all a reason why? A techical one. Not a BS one that has no basis in fact. And do not use Chernoble as an example. We have never built reactors in that manor. We do have some grahite pile reactors in WA and in Sough Caralina but that was to make plutnium for the War to stop the japanse who themselves have admited that if we had not droped those bombs on them. One was Plutonium Based and the other was Uranium Based. The Japanise stated that they would have continued to fight untill there we no more japan. And durring that time we would have lost even more forlks on both sides of the war that were killed by the two bombs. This is not from me. This is what the japaniese have themselves stated.

War is a terible thing. But unfortunatly as long as you have peaple you will have war.

It is a dam shame.

So what oil company do you work for or what is your IQ or what is it that you want?

What is it that you THINK I want and the others that have and are trying to help find a way to have the power we all need and want. Yes I need it. I want to have power to grow anough food that I can afford to have it. Not because food is a luxury.

I also want to be able to drive my car and fly in an airplane and use my computer that runs on electrcity and uses the internet that also runs on elctrcity.

Jim Davison.

When all of the costs of nuclear are figured in, it is the most expensive form of power available. I have been watching the industry for decades. Atoms for peace etc. It has never given the customer low priced energy as promised. It locks consumers in to the cost of the plants and all the expenses that follow for decades. There is no place to store existing nuclear waste. This is a political problem. Until it is worked out no more nuclear plants should be built. Yucca Flat is about as good as it can possibly get, but Nevadans will not allow it to go ahead. I live in Illinois, and we have more nuclear plants than any state. I am not downwind of any of them, but have to worry about those in other states. Mentally minimizing the dangers of nuclear plants doesn't make the real problems go away. That is called denial. I would like to see Yucca Flat used. I don't think it will happen in my lifetime. I understand it is now too small for even the existing nuclear waste though. We need distributed energy sources that are not sure monopolies. Nuclear is the most likely to create monopolies that harm the consumer. I would love to see a safe nuclear solution, but I just keep seeing obfuscation and denial of the problems. The breeder reactor is promising, as is the thorium, but neither are ready, or promoted by the industry. There is no energy shortage, but there is an ongoing struggle determining which technologies will be the most viable and competitive. In democratic nations the people will have a say in these decisions. A slight majority of Americans are open to nuclear power, but many are opposed. Other free nations are having the same debate. Great Britain is facing the prospect of spending approximately 100 billion dollars to clean up nuclear waste. We are probably talking over a trillion dollars world wide. Do some searches on the cost of nuclear cleanup, if you don't believe me.

The only reason that nuclear power is so expensive is having to fight the idot leftist and the greenies neither of which have a clue or an answer. Nuclear power is safe, dependable, cost effective, and is the only real next step we have at the moment. We need to use this technology as a stepping stone to a better answer down the road. As I have said before, fosile fuels are a finite resource that will eventually run out.

I think nuclear, particularly thorium, is a clean, cheap, low polluting power source, based on un-hyped engineering knowledge and experience available. As a non-polluting source, it is clearly better than coal. As a local source, it would help reduce having to import oil.

That said, fossil fuels are not that finite a resource. In the US, we have centuries of known coal reserves in the ground. In Wyoming, there is more shale oil in the ground than in all of the middle east. In Canada, there is 8 times as much. And we know how to get it out cheaply and with low pollution footprint.

We get our oil from the middle east in part because it is so available there. Saudi Arabia has estimated it costs them $1.25 per barrel to pump their oil out of the ground. The rest is all economics and politics. And as Plato said, all politics is about money. With such economic leverage, it is difficult to break free of cheap oil.

But the media and the chattering classes need something to talk about, particularly the old print and TV media that is going under. In the mean time, ordinary people could use things that help them get on with life.

#25 sceptic says:

Perhaps we are creating a problem with nuclear power by requiring standards of safety etc which are totally unjustified by the risk posed.

Same ole song and dance

Somebody crack the whip and let's move into the brighter tomorrow we were promised before restrictions for the sake of restricting congealed the process.

Could someone knowledgable speak to the safety of the workers?

Along the lines of never ask someone to do something you wouldn't do yourself.

Would you work in the maintainance or sanitation departments?

Yep sooner than in a coal mine

I know you're an advocate,

Could you expand on that a bit?

I personally would not choose either form of lingering death.

But shit happens & someone has to clean it up...

And the honcho's office is closest to the head

My take on it was from the stand point of one in those fields, Then I would choose a nuclear plant over coal, hands down.

There are only three technologies that can support our current, high level electrical energy needs and its future growth. They are coal, oil/natural gas and nuclear.

NG, Nuclear and Hydro are our substantively effective resources.

A nice post, but I would prefer biomass, "clean coal", oil shale, solar, wind, tide, hydro etc. I think a combination of all of these plus conservation of energy measures would easily meet all our needs, and at a lower long range price than nuclear. Especially considering the monopolistic capacities of the nuclear energy industry. Distributed and competing technologies are more likely to give a better price to the end consumer, in my opinion. I personally fear the continuous production of nuclear waste without permanent storage , dirty bombs etc. The recent polonium murder by Russia was very scary also. We shall see what technologies win. Various countries will make it fairly easy to compare early results of differing energy paths.

That's a real nice list, unfortunately each one is opposed by the enviromentalist, will cost more than nuclear to implement, and is not as reliable as nuclear.

Hey ronwagn,

"clean coal"

I put that in the same bag with fat-free cream, I mean what is that stuff? I've handled coal have you ever touch that stuff?

I agree that we could use some of these things without one being counter productive towards the ideal of cleaning up the rock in space we call home. We should use everything in that context.

Have you noticed in history development of life changing products were almost entirely supported with private funds.

Take some time and study some of the other posts in this thread. Then compare to a few of the statements you've made, what used to be ain't no more and most important which is actual fact?

Biggest single problem with wind and solar is that it is intermittent.

Breakthroughs in energy storage are needed to enable a stable grid to incorporate much.

The max percentage for grid stability depends on the assumptions made but seems to lie between 10 and 20%. A good mix of wind and solar may allow that to be pushed a bit higher because wind frequently is strong when solar is virtually non existent.

An interesting proposal I one saw was to mass produce small wind turbines and mount them on EHV power transmission towers where they could feed directly into the grid and basically replace transmission losses. This could well prove useful, but large scale use of these 2 methods is not feasible for grid use, although they are great for private use.

Perhaps when these 2 are much cheaper, it may be a proposition for the majority of houses to be run this way, leaving industry as the user of large scale power.

Biomass as it stands at present is unlikely to provide more than a poofteenth of the liquid fuel needed. In the immediate future this is still going to have to come largely from oil (either petroleum, oil shale, or coal to oil).

Even if electric cars become wide spread, liquid fuel will still be needed in large quantities for transport. Of course oil based plastics and other chemicals are likely to be with us for a long time yet.

I like the idea of improved efficiency of utilization of our resources, but this is unlikely to make a huge difference to our needs.

People will not be prepared to accept a significant drop in their living standards just to satisfy some environmental doctrine.

Nuclear is safe and reasonably priced as a source of base load power. The sustainable power sources are never going to be able to satisfactorily fill that role.

(Those who doubt the cost effectiveness of nuclear, go talk to the French who generate a high percentage of their power this way).

Enough rambling.

Biomass can easily meet most of the heating needs of the country and can be used for electrical generation as well. Trash to energy solves the trash problem also. Plasma gasification leaves a glass like building material. Windmills can use their electricity to turn water into hydrogen and burn it as needed during low wind periods. Micro hydro can tap many streams, and unused small dams for power. There are more answers than we need. We just have to choose the best. I am researching the dangers of the nuclear industry. It appears that there have been a multitude of cover ups and a lot of secrecy. This has taken place with the cooperation of the federal government and the Defense Dept. Possibly millions of cases of cancer have been caused by increased radiation exposure. It doesn't take an explosion to kill people. Research Rocky Flats, Colorado near Boulder and Hanford, Washington. Apparently there are a lot of maintenance problems at existing nuclear plants. Corrosion was recently found at a Japanese plant that was damaged by an earthquake. Freeenergynews.com has an abundance of information on all sorts of energy technologies.

Hi...

I agree on the dangers of the Nuclear industry. Although Nuclear has many advantages but it's hazards including proliferation pose a greater risk. Nearly all governments have indulged in cover-ups of sorts to avoid international criticism. We must wait till safer solutions are available. Otherwise, contamination could become a big issue. Only today there are reports of disease in some physically & mentally retarded children in the Punjab province being attributed to uranium contamination. This place is about 2000km from the nearest uranium processing centre. As per the news paper report the government has already washed it's hands off this issue.

Anil Tiwari / Delhi

There are always reports of cover ups in the nuclear (oil, big business etc) industry.

Unfortunately, the reports generally lack substance. They also completely ignore the fact that it is extremely difficult to cover anything up unless the entire project is covered by the extreme secrecy of military research projects. Even there leaks occur.

When you have private industry involved, cover ups cannot remain secret for long. Private organizations leak badly.

In actual fact, the nuclear industry has a safety record second to none. You are at greater risk as an ordinary office worker.

If you compare the nuclear record with coal or oil or gas power stations, or even such things as small scale generation from sewage or trash incineration, the nuclear safety record is far better. The uranium mining industry also has a good safety record - better than coal (although the 1950's early mining record is not so good, but then it wasn't too good elsewhere either.)

Technically, the problems of disposal have been solved.

Note that France has a large proportion of their power from nuclear, yet have no problems.

The old one of "increased cancer and other illnesses " is obviously nonsense as the measured radioactivity from nuclear plants is virtually indistinguishable from the normal variations in background radiation. (If you live in an area with lots of granite, you will get a higher exposure, yet such areas have no higher illness than any other).

It used to be claimed that all radiation exposure was harmful, ie there was no lower limit of exposure that was safe, it has been found that there is a lower threshold below which exposure is safe. Nuclear plants are well below this.

(That there is a lower limit is intuitively expected as there must be a level below which the body repairs damage faster than it is occurring. There has even been some evidence that life expectancy is improved by exposure to low levels of radioactivity. I am not sure I believe these results. I suspect they are an simply part of experimental variation and the fact that the people measured probably had a better working/living environment than most. The experiments with rats may well be a function of rat physiology. I can't think of any mechanism that would make low level radiation good for you as distinct from simply being harmless.)

The Government starts to act ""

CHANDIGARH: Prompted by The Times of India report 'Uranium deforms kids in Faridkot' on April 2, Punjab government ordered a probe into the abnormalities among children on Thursday. A five-member committee will now look into the causes of uranium strains in inmates of Faridkot's Baba Farid Centre for Special Children.

Civil surgeon, Faridkot, S S Mahia, who heads the probe team, said, "We've taken five water samples from the town, including the centre where these children with uranium traces have been lodged. We plan to test the water for heavy metals." He said the state's Integrated Disease Surveillance Project, too, has decided to come on board and look at the unusual finding in the town. TOI had highlighted how a clinical toxicologist from Johannesburg, Karin Smit, has been trying to unravel the mystery of uranium in some 150 kids admitted to the centre.

OR maybe the Pakistanis have contanimated the substrata as their Nuclear facililities are 150km from this border town.

I know that a lot of disinformation has been created and posted by the anti-anything environmentalist. They proven the old adage that figures don't lie but liers can figure.

fantastic. I used work with a guy who was safety engineer for Bruce Nuclear.. and by all reports what you are saying is dead on. I've also spent lots of time in MDS Nordion in Kanata (Ottawa) and I think that the people who handle nuclear products are amongst the best trained (and friendliest) people out there... It is interesting to not that such reprocessing facilities are actually nuclear filters, because they put out cleaner air than they take in, respect to local background radiation.

GA

Chris