You’ve ignored my cites. Particularly the one that showed the millions of lives that nuclear power has saved by avoiding more dangerous forms of energy. Kind of makes me uninterested in doing more. But I will, below.
Not sure how I can cite my own training. You can feel free to not believe me. You’re child-like conflation of the phenomena (and continual misunderstanding of my arguments, as the above statement shows) tells me that you’re not really interested in learning anything here.
All of those accidents were the results of improper training and/or engineering practices.
This makes no sense and has nothing to do with anything I’ve said. I have no idea where you get this stuff from. The Russians were much worse at nuclear engineering than we were, and had many more and much worse accidents.
I’m not an expert on Russian nuclear engineering. I’m knowledgeable about US Navy nuclear engineering.
Not sure how I can cite my own training without revealing private information.
And that’s a massive difference. Huge, huge difference in how it physically works and how it physically affects people and stuff around it.
I’m against using nuclear weapons for generating electricity. I’m glad we stand together on this. Bombs are not a good way to make power.
There. Now there’s no need to ever discuss nuclear weapons again in a thread on nuclear power.
[quote[They are different ways of controlling nuclear fission for different purposes. Where did you get the idea that they are “quite different physical phenomena?” Provide cites.[/quote]
Some very basiccites on the difference between nuclear bombs and reactors.
I compared it earlier – living in a place under a nuclear bomb that’s falling from the sky and about to explode is worse. I would rather live next to a power plant than under a falling bomb about to ignite.
This is totally irrelevant anyway, of course.
Most power plant “aftermaths” are far safer, because most power plants don’t melt down.
It’s way, way better than coal. You continue to ignore the fact that nuclear power is much, much safer to life and environment than the most major power source of the world.
If you’re not for coal, and not for nuclear, than you’re not for electricity right now. Wind and solar can’t power more than a tiny portion of the world right now. Coal and nuclear can.
We should try to do better. But in the mean time, that rate is still much, much better than the only real world alternatives.
I quantified the lives saved from using nuclear rather than the only possible alternative, coal, in the present real world. In some fantasy world, wind and solar can play a significant role sooner than the next 50-60 years. In the real world, they won’t.
If there’s no nuclear plants, you will be paying much higher taxes to pay for the much more significant cleanup and many more lives destroyed by coal, or for subsidies to technologies that aren’t capable of competing at a large scale on their own right now like wind and solar.
Cite?
If you don’t like nuclear, you like coal. Or you don’t like electricity.
Factual information – sure, I’ll keep spreading factual information. You haven’t exactly refuted any of my cites, or even any of my claims. You’ve failed at everything here.
Great! I love wind power. I love solar too. I hope they get subsidies and take off as a major contributor to world electricity in my lifetime. Until they do, I still want my home and city to be powered, and nuclear is much, much better and safer than coal.
No. Not true. They must have fission in them to make them an “atomic” bomb, and the only way to trigger “runaway” fusion in a bomb is to use a fission bomb as a trigger. “Hydrogen” bombs are fusion bombs that have fission bomb as part of the mechanism.
That was an article about how coal causes more environmental damage and health problems then nuclear. I read it. I’m not defending coal here, I am against wasting resources on coal plants too. And I’ve said that before. Nuclear is not a rational choice for the future when there are wind and solar available.
You can’t cite your own training and say “it’s secret” in a public debate. And it is pretty clear that you had no idea that they were the identical reaction at different speeds until I explained that to you, and I’m pretty sure you still don’t understand that. The reaction is nuclear fission of uranium. When the reaction goes wrong, you get a meltdown in both instances. The meltdown for a “fizziled” bomb is nasty, but won’t clear out a 60 kilometer radius for a hundred or more years. A nuke plant meltdown will clear out a 60 kilometer radius for a hundred or more years. If you can’t talk about it, you can’t claim super secret double probation status. You can either tell us, or not. Your nuclear training that you can’t discuss is something you can’t discuss. It is not at all persuasive to me. Thank you for serving your country.
No shit. From perfectly foreseeable natural processes, among which is that human beings a accident prone. Even in the US Navy. There are no end of accidents in the US Navy, some of which they even admit. But the US Navy never officially admits a nuclear reactor related accident, even though they do happen, as I pointed out above with a cite about the coolant system. This accident was handled correctly not leading to a chain of catastrophe. Now we don’t think that the Thresher or Scorpion were nuclear reactor related accidents. But I’m pretty damn sure that if they were, we would be told a lie about them not being an accident.
The Russians went for volume over safety in virtually everything they did. They engineers and physicists were just as smart and dedicated to what they were doing as we were, they just didn’t have the same resources available. Safety was lower on their priority list for them than it is/was for us. And as a result they have had more problems.
I seriously doubt that. You sound like a guy who was an operating engineer, not a designer. Think Homer, Lenny and Carl, not Professor what’s his name. The notion that such systems can always be operated without failure or fault in the design, equipment, construction, operation and maintenance is insane. The operator will at some point fuck up, and if his back ups fuck up too, a meltdown occurs.
Top secret information cannot be revealed.
It is all a matter of amount of dosage of exposure over an amount of time.
And you have consistently refused to address the issue, without stating what the difference is. I’ve explained the difference is the amount of fuel (and refinement) and the time it is designed to react over. You’ve asserted and begged the question that they are not the same. It’s the exact same fission reaction.
A bomb is designed to release all its energy at once, in far less than a second. If it fails to do that, it will leave the leftover fuel in a state of melting down and scattered over the explosion area. A reactor running correctly will release its energy as heat, heating steam, turning a turbine which turns a generator in a magnetic field making electricity if it works as designed. If it melts down it will release that energy over a shorter period irradiating everything the fuck around it so that you can’t go near it for a long, long time. A lot of non-bomb reactors have had accidents. I don’t usually bring Three Mile Island into the mix because the chain of stupidity stopped short of a complete meltdown, but that was fortunate. It was a partial meltdown. To this day the reactor is off-limits. Three Mile Island accident - Wikipedia The idea that American engineers have more marvelous wangs than Russian engineers and a meltdown could never happen in America.
Yes, and not what I compared it to. That is called a “straw man”. I asked you to state whether you would live next to the Chernobyl or Fukushima reactors today, or choose downtown Hiroshima or Nagasaki. It isn’t irrelevant. People can and do live at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They don’t at Chernobyl and Fukushima. And you don’t either. Why aren’t you buying land near either? It’s probably cheap? Those people who lost all their property could sure use a hand of a “nuclear engineer” who knows what is best for all of us.
Many, many do not melt down. But all have to be decommissioned. Most still have their spent fuel in pools at the plant. The public will have to pay for all to be decommissioned.
I’ve never actually addressed the issue because it at all relevant to the thread and I don’t think coal is clean, safe or sustainable. I think that the long term environmental consequences of coal and nuclear are unacceptable. We can project the damage and make estimates for each, but their proponents will say that you can’t link a particular cancer to a particular cause, and if they are generous, they would admit you might be able to make a statistical case. I think the statistical case for both is rather strongly pointing to dangerous to life, health and property.
That is called a fallacy of the false dilemma. There are other forms of power that are now in use. The fact of the matter is that between the fusion power of the sun and the gravity power of the earth, we have thousands of times more potential than is currently used. The sun is a continuous fusion reactor at a more or less safe distance that has another four billion years of fuel in its supply. Mother nature has been harvesting that power for billions of years.
You also seem to imply that I would shut down all coal and nuclear power today. I can’t and wouldn’t. I would invest heavily in renewables on a government basis and then sell the assets off.
Your real world isn’t the same as the one the population of the world lives in. In your real world, American engineers are infallible. In mine they make big mistakes.
And yet the Germans and the Danes are well on their way to proving you wrong in the “real world”.
I disagree. For the reasons stated above.
False dilemna. I like wind and solor. (I see wind as having more potential) And I do loves me some electricity.
You haven’t actually proven that wind, solar, hydro, tidal or anything else will work. You’ve failed to even prove that you are a real navy nuclear engineer. Shhh, it’s secret! You and I have never designed a power plant in our lives. I’ve held shares in every conceivable kind. You’ve sat at a station on a sub waiting to “slam”. Maybe.
Well, Yucca Mountain is out until the People of the Silver State agree to it. I’m not sure it’s fair to call them morons because they don’t want a big pile of radioactive waste. The question still remains, what do we do with the junk? Seems silly to me to build a bunch of new nukes without answering that question.
They should call this site Shootin’ Dope!
The K-19 was built to catch up with our George Washington class ballistic missile subs. All soviet subs were very dangerous, minimal training, minimal safety. The US Navy has been sending reactors to see since the early 1950’s. Over 60 years, no accidents. Over 500 reactors. WOW! And the tech has gotten to the point that the waste can be refined for other uses. that leaves less than 5% that highly radioactive. Now that the rub. What the hell do we do with it? Launch into the sun? That the best idea, but our rocket tech isn’t exactly foolproof and can u imagine 100 tons of nuke waste falling on western Europe because that the way we would launch it, or eastern Africa. to bury it in old salt mines is a very short term answer. but as far as Power to weight, there is no comparison. Those navy reactors may be small, but each sub could power 200,000-400000 homes. Perhaps the answer is a bunch of little reactors while solar efficiency, cheap hydrogen from ocean water and other sources catch up. even converting most of our cars to Nat gas. I’m an all or above guy. Even weps grade plutonium can be now degraded to the point that it can be used in civilian reactors. Don’t kill Nuke Power yet. The Yuppies remember 3 mile Island. Even the Japanese with their entire vaunted tech had shitty reactor vassals. Those types of reactors are not used in the US. You have your opinion and I have mine. Jimmy C. was brave, to a point. Any danger had long since passed. Building Nuke Plants near civilization is a bad idea. There was no meltdown at 3mile island. The hydrogen problem was a problem but it was dissipated quickly. So turn off your radio and your computer ‘cuz you’re getting more rads from it than I got from 20 years in nuke boats!
Later
RRR -retired TMC (SS/DV) That means submarine service
… which gives 20,000 to 40,000 homes … seems you overestimated by a factor of ten.
Yes indeed, nothing like having your local Neighborhood Watch group gain access to nuclear materials … especially some of that 96% U[sup]235[/sup] stuff they use on subs.
Hold a cup of crude oil in your hands, worst thing that could happen is you spill it and ruin your kilt. Now hold a cup of that 96% U[sup]235[/sup] in your hands and you get severe diarrhea, severe headaches, severe fever and death within a day or so.
Silly humans being silly … something that kills you right away just by being near it is to be feared … whereas having to order new wool from Scotland isn’t as fearful. With brains no further evolved than a Silurian rodent, it’s real easy to rationalize these fears, just look at Donald Trump.
However, it’s about quantities … does anyone know off hand how many tons of fuel rods there are total … and compare that to a major oil spill … or the twenty foot deep pile of bird carcasses under each wind mill?
I pay an extra 2¢ per kW-hr to get electricity exclusively from a wind farm. The owners were getting government subsidies, but they got cut off first of the year. It’s the open market for them now, but we live near California and they’ll pay triple to run their air conditioners and electric cars.
Wind and solar are not viable in the present or the short-term future as large-scale producers of power. Hopefully they will be viable in a few decades.
I’m not citing my own training. I’m offering my opinion based on my knowledge and experience. The “full disclosure” I mentioned was not to prove my expertise, but to let people know that I might be biased due to my training and experience. And I recognize this – I might be biased. I was taught how a US navy nuclear reactor can be operated safely and properly. I also learned about what can go wrong, including in-depth sections on the major nuclear accidents in world history. But I didn’t take any classes that showed, comprehensively, nuclear power in a negative light.
I fully understand this, it’s just not at all relevant to this discussion. Nuclear weapons are not relevant to a discussion of nuclear power. Just like discussing flamethrowers and old-time coal-fired railroad trains are not relevant to discussions of fossil-fuel power.
Nuclear weapons are a sideshow here, and I’m not going to waste my time talking about them. If you can’t criticize nuclear power without talking about nuclear weapons, then your criticism is totally bunk.
A coolant leak is not a nuclear accident. That coolant leak killed no one and did no more than trivial damage to the environment.
If you want to make conspiracy accusations, this probably isn’t the thread to do it.
Of course I was an operator! That’s what I said. I never claimed to be a nuclear reactor designer.
I’ve said the risk can be managed and minimized, not totally eliminated. Considering the real-world alternatives, this risk is the best we can do right now.
Part of the difference, but not close to all of the difference.
It doesn’t matter if it’s the same fission reaction. This is a sideshow. Nuclear weapons are not relevant, and I’m not going to discuss them any more.
Right – the worst US nuclear accident caused no deaths and no significant damage to the environment or human health. That’s a pretty good track record. Way to go USA!
Yes, and this goes into the long-term costs of nuclear power.
I’m all for using these sorts of power. I look forward to a future utilizing them heavily. Until then, I’ll continue to live in the real world.
Then what are we arguing for? I’m not saying “nuclear now, nuclear forever” – I’m just saying “nuclear now”.
No, you’re totally confused (again) about my argument. I haven’t said this.
In the real world, the Germans and Danes have made statements. You’ve utterly failed in demonstrating this is any more than talk right now.
And you’re wrong, for the reasons above.
How would I prove that I’m a real navy nuclear engineer? And are you really interested in my qualifications?
It’s “SCRAM”. I didn’t just wait for it, I did it many times (in drills).
It’s shorthand for “this makes no difference, since truckers transporting nuclear waste must use NRC approved routes which will bypass any restricted roads, as you will notice if you read the cite which is the next line”.
What I don’t see discussed enough, and it may be so obvious that it’s not, is that this shouldn’t be a discussion if nuclear power is good or bad. The question should be is it comparatively good or bad?
Risk is never determined in a vacuum. It’s measure against other options. Should we let little Timmy die in the well isn’t the question. Should we have one fire fighter die to save him is the question. What about 10? A hundred? A thousand?
So the question to me isn’t if nuclear power good or bad, but how is it measured against the alternatives? If the world shuts down every nuclear power plant in the world, what are we going to replace that 17% of the electrical power with? More coal? We don’t like that because of global warming and the fact that it kills more people than nuclear. Solar power? Do you believe in Santa Clause too? Because it sounds great but we just can’t do it now, and with the growth of demand, I don’t see that solar will ever replace nuclear.
What is the alternative, now, today, of not having nuclear? I don’t think most of us are willing to have four hours a day of no electricity.
And the thing that the anti-nuke folks never seem to understand is that, per kilowatt hour, solar kills more people than nuclear. So does wind.
I know a little about nuclear safety. Caught it by osmosis as my father was, before he retired, one of the world’s leading experts on nuclear safety. He ran a nuclear safety research division. He was at Three Mile Island the day after the accident. In fact he was asked to head up the clean up operation but turned it down. He was emailing guys on the ground at Fukishima. If he hadn’t retired he would have been there as he did work for the Japanese, Google ‘F-4 phantom wall’ and you can see videos of one of the tests he ran for them.
The short answer is simple, nuclear is safer per kilowatt than just about anything. And , had not the anti-nuc folks killed nuclear in the U.S., we’d have newer and safer plants. But the anti-nuc crowd made it all but impossible to build new plants. So we are stuck using old nuclear technology and burning shit to produce energy instead of building new, much safer, nuclear plants.
Right now nothing scales to the size we need other than nuclear if the goal is clean energy. But a deep and wide misunderstanding of relative risk makes nuclear politically impossible.
The thing that worries me the most about nuclear power isn’t the death rate, but that fact that nuclear disasters are forever. Even when meltdowns are contained, you now have a “never dig here again” spot, which we won’t have the technology to clean up in the foreseeable future. If we on average create one nuclear “tomb” per decade, how many centuries are we going to keep accumulating them?
Sorry, but not even close. It’s just not that radioactive. Eating a chunk would probably do you no good (it’s an alpha emitter), but an 8 oz cup of 100% U235 isn’t going to do you much, if any harm. Lesser enriched grades will be even less reactive.
That’s the problem with nuclear power in the US- most of the anti-nuclear people are staggeringly ignorant of the actual physics involved, and think of nuclear power in the same sort of woo-ish way that they think about “chemicals” and the like.
Yet here I am in Antioch, California posting with electrons generated by a wind farm across the river that is the equivalent of a whole nuclear reactor that is actually working. Wind and solar work now. We do not have enough of them to power the whole country yet, but more windmills go up every week.
And if you fail to operate the reactor safely and properly, like say you, God forbid, pass out. Or forget your training, or are given orders by an idiot to do something unsafe.
So you say. Anything to do with a nuclear pile that might melt down is off limits in your rules of discussion. Anything that leaves unwanted fallout is off limits. Anything that relies on nuclear fission to release energy is off limits and irrelevant. You didn’t even know they were the same reaction at the start of the thread. I’m going to reject this special pleading.
If you can’t accept that it is the exact same reaction, then you don’t know what the hell you are operating.
It is an inccident related to the operation of a nuclear plant that if left unattended or dealt with incorrectly will lead to disaster.
The US Navy has lost two nuclear submarines, the Russian six. The Russians admit that their loses were power plant related. The US refused to list any cause.
You claimed to be a nuclear engineer. You did not claim to be an “operating engineer”. There is a world of difference between a college educated engineer with a degree from a university who is certified to design stuff and the fellow who stands at the controls of a piece of equipment. You didn’t exactly disclose that.
That would be true about the accident at Three Mile Island. Not the finest moment in US nuclear history, but hardly the worst. There have been other reactors accidents in the US, I’ll let you google them yourself.
I already use them.
I’m against building new plants, and stepping up safety and maintenance and training at existing plants. The existing plants should continue to operate, but they need more precautions.
The Germans and Danes have done more than statements, they have successfully taken action. Denmark! Denmark! Go! Go! Go!. (And congrats to the Germans on their renewable success.)
The real world does not require my existence or citations to exist or function or change.
Show me your Bachelor of Science degree from an accredited university in engineering. If you are an operating engineer, fine, you are an operating engineer, but don’t come into a thread on nuclear power and not qualify engineer with operating engineer. There is a big difference. You get as much respect from me as the sonarman and the other guys with the dolphins. Thank you for serving. But you still don’t seem to understand the nature of a fission reaction. (That is what gave you away as an operating engineer.) By all means pick up women saying you are a navy nuclear engineer. But I’m a bit surprised that you are still under the impression that a bomb is different than a reactor in the physical laws and processes it uses. A skilled operating engineer can prevent a reactor from doing more damage than a bomb. An evil terrorist operating engineer could turn a commercial reactor with 150 tons of fuel into a nightmare of unbelievable proportions. No, you can’t turn it into a Hiroshima style bomb. But you can do much, much, much worse with it. Because of the fission process.
Agree with this. I wouldn’t want to handle 96 percent pure U235 in 8 oz chunks, but a few moments would pose only a statistical risk, and not much at that. Blowing a 100 tons of much lesser enriched material in particles over a 25 mile radius is going to give you a huge spike in cancers down the road and make the area unlivable. In much the same way burning millions of tons of coal every year will make the whole planet unlivable.
It is just over double for the fifth tier. I pay it for my AC, as it is a cost of doing business in my home.
The thing with electric cars is to use pay chargers outside your home to charge them up. I’ll have to ask my brother about this as he has an electric car. But it is typical to see a few Leafs or Teslas on the Freeway or at the chargers in Walnut Creek.