Anything we can learn from the French about nuclear power?

Great Debates
21

[QUOTE=xtisme]
Well…there are various estimates, to be sure. I’ve seen figures ranging from 5-10k deaths world wide (3k in China annually alone) just for the mining of coal…which is only one small aspect of power production using coal. Then there are the deaths through various other nasty means, including air pollution and respiratory ailments.

Not to mention that coal plants have accidents to of course…

Quite true…the impact being nearly nothing. Good point gonzo!

Interesting…looks to me, in the US at least, that it’s the eco-nut cases and anti-nuke whack jobs who are blocking every move to try and clean things up and safely (or at least centrally) store the waste.

Heh…hehehhehehehheeh! BWAHAHAHHAHA! Too funny. The irony…it burns! I suppose you are right. I mean, the eco-fascists and anti-nuke crowd puts up ever barrier they can, files lawsuit after lawsuit and makes it impossible (not nearly impossible, not sort of impossible, but impossible) to even BUILD a nuclear power plant in the US due to all the additional cost and time it would take…and then comes back and goes ‘Well, you see! Nuclear power costs to much! Told ya, told yah, nanny nanny boo boo!’

What planet do you live on? Or, at least, what country do you live in? If you are in the US, what the hell are you talking about?? Do you know how many new nuclear plants have been built in the US in the last decade (that these evil corporations have supposedly built by getting around all this lack of regulation stuff)??

Answer: Zero.

-XT
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. No there are no new plants. The last one estimated at 2 bill cost 7. No that plant was not competitive.
I understand you are a complete and total believer. Not just about nukes but everything you buy. No amount of evidence sways you. But ,I am a skeptic. There are no absolutes. The truth is in the middle between your supersafe never a problem nuke plants and reality. This is not a new discussion. You never change or learn a thing.
We can not afford to build those things. They take years to get onl ine and we are broke. Our money is in Iraq.

22

[QUOTE=gonzomax]
No there are no new plants. The last one estimated at 2 bill cost 7. No that plant was not competitive.
[/QUOTE]

And, assuming your figures are correct (I’ll accept them this time, just for the sake of argument), I ask you…WHY were the cost over runs so much? Was it because of greedy executives? Underestimation of the actual cost? Or perhaps incessant lawsuits, foot dragging, protests and other forms of blockage?

You tell me gonzo.

And yet you’ve presented no evidence to support your case. Convince me gonzo. Show me that nuclear power is inherently more dangerous than coal. Show me the money.

No, you aren’t. I’ve never seen you question one of your assumptions or assertions. Never seen you weigh the evidence in any meaningful way. Hell, I’ve never seen you actually attempt to debate. Not just on this subject but on ANY subject. You aren’t a skeptic except in the sense that you disbelieve what you disbelieve…regardless of the evidence.

On nuclear power I actually have done an about face. When I was younger I bought into the whole anti-nuclear propaganda thingy. I was convinced that it was dangerous and to expensive and I actually (to my shame) participated in several protests of nuclear power at Calvert Cliffs and a few other places. I was one of the mob after the 3 Mile Island fiasco. But then I actually started looking at the real facts, at the real risks, and comparing them in a real apples to apples way with other power generation methods on the same scale.

You however will never be convinced because you don’t have anything like an open mind about anything. C’est la vie.

If you and the other anti-nukes and eco-fascists would get out of the fucking way we COULD build them for less money and in less time! OTHER countries don’t seem to have the problem building the things on target for time and money after all…curiously it’s the US that seems to have the major problem in this respect. I wonder why?

It’s simply really…either we build nuclear plants or we keep on keeping on with fossil fuels. Even T. Boon Pickens is only claiming we could get 20% out of wind (IIRC from his commercials)…and that with a pretty massive effort. Solar may snag us another 20% someday (maybe)…that still leaves a pretty big chunk of energy we are going to need to come up with somehow (and it grows all the time). Where is that energy going to come from gonzo? Magical unicorns? If not nuclear then what?

-XT

23

The fact is, we can build much better and safer nuclear power plants today. Most of the operating plants (French and American) are based upon 1950’s designs. The new designs are self-regulating-they will shut down automatically in a emergency situation. The problem is, the anti-nuclear crazies have sraed everybody-the fact is, coal-fired plants put more radioactivity into the ecosystem than nuclear plants.
The Ted Kennedies and the Ralph Naders have screwed up the nuclear industry, and made building nuclear power plants next to impossible.

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[QUOTE=ralph124c]
The Ted Kennedies and the Ralph Naders have screwed up the nuclear industry, and made building nuclear power plants next to impossible.
[/QUOTE]

I doesn’t help that so many people think like gonzo. It’s just like the phenomenon Barry Glassner describes in The Culture of Fear–people latch on to small but flashy risks (e.g., the relative handful of people who die due to nuclear power) and ignore the more mundane but vastly more pervasive and dangerous risks (e.g., the hundreds of thousands (or millions, according to the WHO) of people who die *each and every year * due to air pollution, whose main source is the burning of fossil fuels). This fuels the second objection to nuclear power–it’s too expensive. It wouldn’t be so expensive if people thought rationally about nuclear power; it’s the fear and obstructionism that create the delay and expense.

Final score for humanity: Ignorance, eleventy-billion; knowledge, zero.

25

[QUOTE=Sophistry and Illusion]
The issue about France being more densely-populated seems to me to be a red herring. The US distributes its power somehow; the question is how is it generated at the source? Does it make a difference to distributing power over large areas if the power source is a nuclear reactor or a coal-fired plant?
[/QUOTE]

Your probably right. Dang it.

I was thinking that there might be a loss of power due to inherent inefficiencies when transmitting that electrical power over long distances.

I was also figuring that it might force a country with a more spread out population to have to build more (but smaller) powerplants to make up for these inneficiencies, as well as providing redundancy in the case of some failure in one specific segment of the power net.

But every type of power generating system will have that issue to deal with, true.

However, my (new) bigger point is that a straight up comparison between France and the US isgoing to have to consider the slightly different needs of the systems, and the political climate within them.

26

[QUOTE=xtisme]
Good luck with that. After literally decades of anti-nuke propaganda the public is pretty much immune from the facts…
-XT
[/QUOTE]

and
[qoute]Convince the public nuclear power is safer. Otherwise it doesn’t matter if it is.
[/quote]

I guess we agree?

[QUOTE=xtisme]
Why? Again.
[/QUOTe]

I am in danger of stating the obvious but-accidents such as those in France are useful for anti-nuclear groups.

27

[QUOTE=NurseCarmen]
Doesn’t France go even a step further in cost because they recycle a large amount of their fuel?
[/QUOTE]
I was wondering what France does do with their old fuel. Kick it into a deep hole in the Loire Valley somewhere? Slip it over the Monaco border late at night?

28

They have several repositories IIRC, and are looking into centralized underground storage last I checked (they may have done this already…I’m a bit out of date looking at Frances program).

ETA: They also reprocess their spent fuel rods, something we don’t do here in the US. So it means less final waste.

-XT

29

[QUOTE=xtisme]

ETA: They also reprocess their spent fuel rods, something we don’t do here in the US. So it means less final waste.
-XT
[/QUOTE]

Was golfing with a guy in the business. He observed that reprocessing ought to be a no-brainer, but that the only way it makes economic sense is to have a limited number of reprocessing centers taking advantage of economies of scale. Which would require regular shipping of material. Which is presently a PR nightmare.

30

The main issue with reprocessing is that it produces weapons grade material. Unless I’m mistaken that’s why the US doesn’t do fuel rod recycling/reprocessing, even though it means A) we get less use out of the nuclear material and B) it produces more ultimate waste.

-XT

31

Just out of curiosity, just what is the deal with the supply or uranium? If the US were to go 100 percent nuclear, for example, what is the order of magnitude of years we could go with current known supplies of uranium in this country? Are we talking hundreds of years, or thousands? It’d obviously have to be more than 10’s of years, right?

32

[QUOTE=xtisme]
How many deaths gonzo? Care to hazard a guess? How about we compare it to other power generation technologies?

-XT
[/QUOTE]

http://www.truthout.org/article/jane-dale-owen-communities-near-coal-plants-need-know-health-threat Coal plants cause huge health risks. They could be made much safer. The owners go to court and fight any and all efforts to clean them up. Public safety is apparently not a factor they care about.
The nuke owners will do the same unless the government builds them. The nuke plants have a history of lying and covering up. There has to be a way to regulate .

33

Regarding the costs and losses of distributing electrical power:

[QUOTE=mlees]

But every type of power generating system will have that issue to deal with, true.

[/QUOTE]

Distributed generation techniques get around much of this. Losses scale as the square of the amount of power carried by a given transmission line, so if you can halve the current in a given line, you reduce the losses by 75%.

Smoke belching coal fired generation, supplied by frequent coal trains, needs to be located off in the sticks where the people that can afford to hire lawyers don’t live. Note that the downside of the plants happens during normal operation.
Nuke plants could be located closer to the loads if not for the “what if something goes wrong?” scare factor. A properly operating nuke plant is not nearly the bad neighbor that a properly operating coal plant is. Point being that if you could de-stigmatize nuclear power, you could probably actually reduce transmission cost compared to existing generation sources.
The nation we really should get to tutor the US on nucular power is Canada. Supurb designs, a culture very close to our own, and they are right next door. Also less obnoxious than the French. (When not going on about hockey, Eh?)

34

I am trying to keep an open mind about the possible benefits of nuclear power. Clearly, it is necessary to examine every possible option for energy generation in order to deal with the problems of pollution and climate change while still maintaining a high standard of living. However, the pro-nuke people (both in this particular thread and in general) aren’t helping their credibility by their inability to refrain from spewing hatred and contempt at all those ignorant tree-hugging eco-fascist propagandists who dare to disagree with them, and who even have the nerve to use the rights which the law gives them in order to advance their position. I tend to suspect that if someone can’t say what they have to say nicely, they probably don’t have much to say.

35

Gonzo…the nuclear power industry here in the US is HEAVILY regulated. Hell, between the heavy regulations and the anti-nuke whack jobs it’s impossible to build one anymore. If you think that the industry is not regulated or that companies are somehow getting around those regulations then you seriously need to educate yourself.

As for coal plants, leaving aside your standard anti-industry/business rantage, that’s kind of the point I was trying to make. Using coal as a power source is MUCH more dangerous at all levels than nuclear ever was. Even factoring in large scale disasters like Chernobyl nuclear plants are FAR less dangerous and damaging. Something like, for instance, Chernobyl, while nasty (and also highly unlikely in a Western/US design) is really a LOCAL environmental problem. Coal fired power however has global repercussions.

Nuclear isn’t competitive economically with coal, especially the older coal plant designs. However, part of the reason for that is folks like you who block every effort to build a nuclear power plant. That and the fact that a lot of coal plants are of an older (and dirtier) design. If you factor in a lot of the proposed clean-up technology for coal fired plants AND you get the bloody hippy and eco-nutballs out of the way then suddenly nuclear becomes more viable…especially if we start talking about newer, more modern nuclear plant design.

-XT

36

[QUOTE=Thing Fish]
I am trying to keep an open mind about the possible benefits of nuclear power. Clearly, it is necessary to examine every possible option for energy generation in order to deal with the problems of pollution and climate change while still maintaining a high standard of living. However, the pro-nuke people (both in this particular thread and in general) aren’t helping their credibility by their inability to refrain from spewing hatred and contempt at all those ignorant tree-hugging eco-fascist propagandists who dare to disagree with them, and who even have the nerve to use the rights which the law gives them in order to advance their position. I tend to suspect that if someone can’t say what they have to say nicely, they probably don’t have much to say.
[/QUOTE]

:dubious: Ah…so, for literally decades the anti-nuclear crowd has demonized the nuclear power industry (with some digs at the Evil Big Business Lords and Masters in general) and the pro-nuclear people, but that was cool until the other side started getting nasty back? You see a lack of credibility when it comes from one side but ignore literally decades of the stuff when it comes from the other? And you figure this puts you in the unbiased camp, ehe? Seems like a bit of a double standard to hang your opinion on…

I’m not trying to convince anyone here, or my own part. AFAIAC the anti-nuclear stance is mostly faith based. Those people know what they know, and no amount of facts are going to sway them. There are valid issues and concerns with going nuclear, but you rarely hear them debated by the anti-nuke side who go for more of an emotional based argument.

-XT

37

[QUOTE=xtisme]
Even factoring in large scale disasters like Chernobyl nuclear plants are FAR less dangerous and damaging.
[/QUOTE]

Even in the outrageously exaggerated worst case of a Chernobyl every year, nuclear power would still be far better than the usual projections about global warming produced by fossil fuels. Ergo, it is impossible to oppose the replacement of fossil-fuel plants with nuclear plants ASAP, unless you are a total global-warming skeptic and/or have utterly unrealistic notions as to how much power can be generated by other alternatives.

38

[QUOTE=xtisme]
:dubious: Ah…so, for literally decades the anti-nuclear crowd has demonized the nuclear power industry (with some digs at the Evil Big Business Lords and Masters in general) and the pro-nuclear people, but that was cool until the other side started getting nasty back? You see a lack of credibility when it comes from one side but ignore literally decades of the stuff when it comes from the other?

And you figure this puts you in the unbiased camp, ehe? Seems like a bit of a double standard to hang your opinion on…
I’m not trying to convince anyone here, or my own part.
AFAIAC the anti-nuclear stance is mostly faith based. Those people know what they know, and no amount of facts are going to sway them. There are valid issues and concerns with going nuclear, but you rarely hear them debated by the anti-nuke side who go for more of an emotional based argument.
-XT
[/QUOTE]

In my experience, it is the pro-nuke people who are quicker to go for the name-calling. That doesn’t mean that I think it’s OK when the other side does it. Nor do I think that any reasonable person would have concluded from what I wrote that I do think that.

This judgment that the pro-nuke side is generally more likely to use poor debating tactics isn’t what makes me unbiased, the fact that I have no strong fixed opinions for or against nuclear power puts me in the unbiased camp.

If you are not trying to convince anyone, why participate in a GD thread?

And as for “emotionally based arguments”, routinely referring to your opponents as “whack jobs” and worse certainly isn’t likely to arouse any emotional reaction in anyone… :rolleyes:

But I don’t want to hijack this interesting thread with an etiquette discussion. Carry on.

39

[QUOTE=Steve MB]
Even in the outrageously exaggerated worst case of a Chernobyl every year, nuclear power would still be far better than the usual projections about global warming produced by fossil fuels. Ergo, it is impossible to oppose the replacement of fossil-fuel plants with nuclear plants ASAP, unless you are a total global-warming skeptic and/or have utterly unrealistic notions as to how much power can be generated by other alternatives.
[/QUOTE]

Agree completely. If you are serious about global warming and CO2 emissions then nuclear power has to factor in heavily in the equation for fixing the problem. If you categorically dismiss nuclear power while also wanting to get rid of coal fired (or other GHG burning) plants, then we are back to magical unicorns. No current technology scales up enough to replace coal fired plants. Not wind, solar, geothermal or hydro-electric. Not all of them combined. Nothing but nuclear could be scaled up quickly enough (assuming we actually allowed ANY plants to be built, and didn’t block them for years while building them). Now, if we have decades and can afford to run our current coal power infrastructure for that time, then sure…we don’t need nukes. Eventually solar and wind (along with other alternatives) will probably scale up to meet our power needs in a cleaner way. Eventually.

-XT

40

[QUOTE=Thing Fish]
In my experience, it is the pro-nuke people who are quicker to go for the name-calling. That doesn’t mean that I think it’s OK when the other side does it. Nor do I think that any reasonable person would have concluded from what I wrote that I do think that.
[/QUOTE]

Well…your experience must be limited then. I don’t say that to bust your chops, but the anti-nuke diatribes have been going on at the screeching level since at least the 70’s…and the rhetoric those folks use can melt the paint off the walls.

As for the rest, I pointed out that you seemed to be (from your post) leaning toward an anti-nuclear stance based solely on name calling (probably mostly by me since I’m the most guilty of that in this thread) by the pro-nuke faction…and that this seems a double standard (to me), since while I admit that in THIS thread there hasn’t been a lot of name calling of the pro-nuke crowd, this isn’t exactly a universal stance by the anti-nuke crowd…by any means.

Now, if I misread what you were saying there I apologize. It just seemed to close to a lot of the anti-nuclear double standards that are used. Nuclear plants are non-fiscally competitive! They take too long to make! The pro-nuclear faction is mean to us and calls us nasty names (the pro-business capitalist pig-dogs! They are only out to screw the people and kill us all…MURDERERS!)…

Etc etc.

Ah…I see. Well, that’s not the impression I got from your post. MMV of course, and after all, you know what you meant.

:stuck_out_tongue: Why participate in the various (and endless) Evolution threads? Or the (thankfully few these days) threads on how the US government was directly responsible for the 9/11 attacks…AND shot Kennedy! Or the threads on supernatural phenomena, ghosts, ESP, bigfoots, or faked moon landings?

I do so because I pay good money to do so…THAT’S why! :wink:

:rolleyes: I’m not appealing to emotion…I’m insulting the anti-nuclear eco folks (not the one’s in this thread…in general). There is a difference, aye?

(by the way, my own rolley eyed thingy was simply for comic effect)

-XT