I seem to be permanently on the fence on this topic…
I had the fairly unique experience of being in my very first week of Navy Nuclear Power School when Chernobyl happened. So during my own time in the industry, we were not only still in the shadow of Three Mile Island, but we were all stunned at Chernobyl. Hence, these events were never far from my mind during my nuclear career, and I would like to think I can form a reasonable opinion, but it’s still not so clear cut.
I think I am not too concerned about the waste—Yucca Mountain seems like a fine idea to me, though the interstate transport of the waste is a dicey issue (imagine a train derailment or something nasty like that).
The thing that scares me is that the potential for disaster is so great. Sure, we operated our Navy reactors following extremely rigid guidelines with lots of training and drills. We performed our tasks by checklists, just like airline pilots. Backup systems had backup systems.
But… if enough plants are running, then one day those “9 things” will be done incorrectly to form the perfect storm and render a large bit of real estate unusable. That’s why I’m on the fence about this.
(Note that PWR and BWR designs in use in domestic plants differ substantially from the Chernobyl design, but I’m talking generalities).
Do you remember the Kerr McGee plant of Silkwood fame? They were faking critical welds and many other constructions because they were in a hurry to make money. It holds very well indeed.
Sorry I wasn’t clear - I meant that there is no pollution in sunlight.
There’s pollution in building a nuclear power station. But you can’t generate nuclear power without producing nuclear waste that needs storage for thousands of years…
So? Yucca Mountain seems adequate to the task.
As for transportation disasters, those cylindrical casings seem pretty tough, bouncing after getting hit by trains and such.
Absolutely. I don’t wish to give anyone the impression I’m ignoring or downplaying these costs. Similarly, I’d like the relevant costs of continued coal-burning taken into effect.
The strongest criticism of nuclear power that I’ve heard came from an admitted environmentalist, but the guy’s pretty moderate and well-informed on a lot of issues. He told me that we mined the majority of quality uranium decades ago, and that most of the fuel we’re using right now in our nuclear plants comes from decommissioned warheads. If we start building more reactors and require more fuel, the reclamation process is going to start getting really expensive, really fast.
The cost of storing nuclear waste currently is factored in - the companies pay for it. It’s coal that gets the free ride by being able to dump their waste into the air without any cost.
That would be a good point if it were true, but it’s quite false. The uranium mining industry is clipping along quite nicely and available reserves are very extensive.
I’ve read that estimated known Uranium reserves were worth at least “hundreds of years” and furthermore you can build reactors that either (I forget) use spent fuel from another type of reactor as a fuel, or you can reprocess the spent fuel into useful fuel.
checks which forum this is in Don’t waste your time Mr. Moto…it’s like trying to explain astrophysics to pocket lint trying to make gonzo understand even the simplest concept.
I definitely agree with the OP…I think it’s stupid and short sighted of people to be this knee jerk against nuclear. But then the public is A) stupid, and B) so saturated with anti-nuclear propaganda they wouldn’t know reality or be able to assess real risk or understand the levels of risk we current blithely take vs those of nuclear if it reared up and bit them on the collective butt and C) think that magic pony technology is out there and ready to fly and that Big Oil™ (or Big Energy™, or The Man(All Rights Reserved), etc etc) is simply keeping it back.
The public is like a field of mushrooms on this subject…they are kept in the dark and fed a line of bullshit, and have been for decades now. So, in the end, we’ll get 20 or so more years of CO too pumping coal fired plants before the magic ponies are ready to be lead out of the pasture and put into the traces. Hopefully for us this whole GW thingy is just a lot of, um, hot air. I don’t THINK it is, but due to the eco-idiots and knee jerk anti-nukes we best HOPE it is…
I largely agree with the OP. I’m a solid Democrat but I really wish we could jettison some of the anti-nuclear power activists the same way some Republicans wish they could clip the Religious Right wing of the party. I’m hoping Obama might view it a little more pragmatically (hey, he’s from Illinois and we’ve got more nuclear power plants than any other state) but so far it’s a lot of “I’d like to do it… if it’s safe and we have the perfect means of disposing of the waste”. Which sounds a lot like “Ain’t gonna happen” said nicer.
Current economic uranium resources will last for over 100 years at current consumption rates, while it is expected there is twice that amount awaiting discovery. With reprocessing and recycling, the reserves are good for thousands of years… Australia has 23% of the worlds known reserves.
Australia and Canada have large reserves, so there hardly seem a need to be dependent on Russia.
Oh…we are buying from Russia for geo-political reasons basically. A) We wanted to inject capital into Russia’s system (for our own benefit), B) we don’t want the Russian’s selling it to anyone else, and C)…we don’t want the Russian’s selling it to anyone else.
Oh, and did I mention we don’t want the Russian’s selling it to anyone else? Also (D I suppose) we wanted to form more trade ties and other connections between the US and Russia…this is similar to what we did with the International Space Station and some of our other space type projects.
Well, and we didn’t want Russia selling it to anyone else…
Agreed. Plus, if I didn’t mention it, we really don’t want them to sell it on an open market, so to speak. We want to monopolize their entire production aside from whatever they need internally.
