Nuclear power

Great Debates
1

Some of us were hanging out a while ago chatting about alternative energy. (Actually, it the conversation was about what little we know about quantum mechanics, entropy, science in general… and we were all dead tired.)

I mentioned that I think we should build more nuclear power plants. While from what I’ve read there are some problems with the Yucca Mountain facility that might make it unsafe to store waste there, my gut feeling is that the storage of nuclear waste is not as large a problem as it’s made out to be. I agree that it is a problem – aquifers can be contaminated, trains and trucks crash, etc. – but I think it’s a manageable problem. One friend pointed to Three Mile Island and Chernobyl as perfect examples of why we should not build nuclear power generators. I mentioned that Chernobyl’s design is not as safe as the reactors we build here. I didn’t mention that the Navy has been using nuclear powerplants for decades, and through training and discipline seem to have not had any accidents that were newsworthy.

Maybe this is more a debate than an opionion thread, since I’d like to hear arguments for and against nuclear power; but I don’t have the data for an actual debate. I know that (some?) plants in the U.S. store their waste in ‘swimming pools’. How is waste handled in other countries?

So: Are you pro-nuke, or anti-nuke? Why? How would you counter the arguments of the other side? If you’re pro-nuke, do you think that we should use it instead of solar or wind power? If you’re anti-nuke, how do you make up the shortfall without nuclear power?

Being pro-nuclear myself, I see it as part of an integrated set of technologies that include solar, wind, and geothermal – plus fossil fuels. National Geographic has an article which I haven’t yet read that talks about alternative energy sources. The image I saw when I thumbed through the issue shows the ‘footprints’ of solar, wind, and nuclear facilities. Nuclear plants take up much less space.

2

Very pro-nuke. I think a lot of the opposition to nuclear power is just baseless hysteria caused by a fear of “radiation,” and I think nuclear waste can be safely stored in Yucca mountain or a Yucca mountain like facility (IF it turns out that Yucca mountain isn’t safe, which I kinda doubt).

3

Another fan of nuclear power generation. Much of public fear is based on 3 mile island and Chernobyl accidents. Chernobyl being the most recent and worst. But I believe that with proper measures in place (measures which were circumvented in Russia), nuclear power is safe and highly effective.

4

I’m pro-nuke. I worked as a engineering contractor at nuclear plants for 7 years. I’ve worked at 9 different plants, including a DOE site. I think it’s something we need, and that we need to devote some serious resources to solving the waste problem.

5

I would like to see more hydro power dams built, myself.

6

Very anti-nuke. I don’t take the word of engineers who say it’s safe. It’s their job to come up with solutions to problems, and an engineer who doesn’t believe in his/her ability to do that isn’t much of an engineer. But just because they believe in what they’re doing doesn’t make them right. But I ramble.

I think that nuclear power is dangerous, and potentially catastrophic on a number of fronts, all of which have been well covered in other places.

But I also think it’s coming back. The arithmetic of trying to meet the world’s future energy demands doesn’t make it without nukes. So I’m resigned.

7

Pro-nuke. And if we build soem breeder reactors, we can just use the nuclear waste as new fuel, yes?

Re: Yucca moutain: why is this even an issue? Even if it is unsafe, are there no other large moutains made of mostly rock that are far away from all aspects of civilization? Yeesh, doesn’t that describe half the moutains in the Rockies? And what about putting it in a large desert of some kind. Death valley? Not much there, right? Or is the name misleading?

8

[QUOTE=bouv]
And what about putting it in a large desert of some kind.
Iraq? :stuck_out_tongue:

Death Valley has a thriving – and fragile – ecosystem.

9

I used to be very pro. On the grounds that most people’s fears were irrational, thinking that a boo boo at a nuclear plant would cause it to go up like a bomb. I knew enough about the engineering to know that is hardly possible let alone likely. Also I was thinking in purely engineering terms about the associated problems. Just store the waste away from populated places and use breeder reactors to get more fuel - Whoo Hoo!

These days I’m on the fence. My negative issues with nuclear power are all to do with people: Dealing with waste. And if you’re breeding fuel, dealing with a lot of nasty***** material.

How near to getting fusion to work do they say we are now?
*****I use nasty here (and in a recent thread) becase it’s hard to state how frickin’ dangerous Plutonium is. Once upon a time they may have put Uranium in toothpaste, no one could ever make that mistake with Plutonium.

10

I’m certainly concerned with waste; I think we should figure out a way to a.) neutralize or greatly reduce the radioactive properties of the waste or b.) have the waste be nonradioactive in the first place. or c.) totally recycle any waste so it’s basically a “closed system”. I think we’ll succeed eventually.

I don’t consider having a big mountain to put waste in all that great of a plan. How do you put up warning signs that you are certain to be seen or understood tens of thousands of years from now?

11

I am anti-nuke, mostly because of the waste issue. I held this position even before I moved to my current home of Las Vegas. I jus think it’s wrong to produce waste that is that deadly and which cannot be utilized or stored safely.

Re: Yucca Mountain. I live just over 100 miles away from Yucca Mountain. It isn’t that far away from civilization. It is susceptible to movement from earthquakes and other tectonic shifts. It does not meet the criteria which Congress handed down for it to be considered safe. Changing the requirements to fit the circumstances is not sound science. As the urban sprawl of Las Vegas over the past 10 years has accelerated, there are now a sizable number of homes (thousands, if not tens of thousands) less than 60 miles from Yucca Mountain. And, as we are now finding out from recently discovered internal emails, much of the data presented in the study of Yucca may have been fabricated and falsified. cite

Yucca is also the only site that has ever been considered for the dump. The “screw Nevada” bill was passed in 1987, and included provisions which cut funding for any other site study, in large part because Nevada had (and still has) a much lower population and much more open land than any other state. Less people means less of a fight against it, they thought. (I won’t even talk about how the federal government still claims to own most of the land in Nevada.)

We have a saying here, “Nevada is not a wasteland”. We, like Death Valley, also have a thriving eco-system. It’s different from any other, but it’s still an eco-system. IIRC, Nevada has more different species of plants and animals than any other state in the union, owing to our unique topography. Most of the state is an example of “islands in the desert” with each small set of rugged mountains populated by unique species of plants and animals.

It would be, IMO, a far better idea to work to improve battery technology so we can avail ourselves of the abundant sunshine (we get less than 2.5 inches of rain per year, our record rain/snow fall is just 2.59 inches, set in 1957) and wind of Nevada to generate and store power. The Great Basin covers more than 200,000 square miles of territory, more than a fifth of all the land in the West. That’s a lot of room for solar generators and windmills.

I realize that not all locales are a perfect match for this kind of technology as it exists today, but I would certainly rather see research dollars spent on that than on the boondoggle that is Yucca Mountain.

12

Filling vast tracts of land with solar generators and windmills seems like it would change ecology more then sticking nuclear waste in underground tunnels.

13

How, exactly? By increasing the surface area of the landscape? And why do we have to just fill the entire state of Nevada? Can’t some of the other states in the union build their own facilities?

Stay with me a moment on this…

Why can’t every new building be built with solar panels on it’s roof? Why can’t the technology be improved so that a regular 1500-2000 square foot house is able to provide it’s own power and generate surplus from a rooftop covered in solar panels? Why can’t each building have at least one windmill?

We’re going to build buildings anyway, why not make them all power generators as well?

I’m sorry, but your question seems short-sighted to me.

14

That should read “your statement seems short-sighted to me.”

15

I’m Nuke neutral.
I am very pro Solar roofs and Windmills. I even put my money where my mouth is and installed a 6700 watt Solar System on my roof.
I try to follow advances in Fuel Cell technology, Bio-mass and geo-thermal heating.

Hydro dams cause more damage to environment then nuclear power plants.

I trust the navy to run Nuke plants but even they had 1 major accident at Idaho Falls. http://www.lutins.org/nukes.html

I am neutral as waste management is a real problem, especially transport. I don’t dismiss transport of nuclear waste as simple or safe. An accident would be very hard to clean up.
Around 1990, a train carrying toxic chemicals manage to crash right near Lake Shasta, effectively wiping out a reservoir for a long time.
http://www.sonomacountyfreepress.com/reaction/a_toxic_nightmare.html
I also don’t trust “bottom line” civilian power plant operators to not cut some corners. It’s there business to make money, some risk will be taken.
I also recall in California, a nuclear power plant was actually started on a fault line. Does anyone know if this was fueled? Just seems like a really bad idea. {Possible UL}

If the proposal is to build Navy run Nuclear power plants in safe locations, I would support it. If the proposal is to allow Enron/Haliburton type companies to build and run power plants I am very frightened.

Beside building new power plants, a tremendous amount of electricity can be saved by people buying Energy Star appliances and even better switching to the new Fluorescent replacement bulbs that last an extremely long time and use 1/3 to ¼ the power as the incandescent they are replacing. http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=cfls.pr_cfls

16

The concerns that Snoboarder Bo mentioned are the ones I’ve heard.

About the vast tracts of land that would be necessary for a solar power plant: Compared to the expanse of the desert, a plant would not take up a very significant amount of space; but there are still some ecological concerns. For example, how would covering a vast area with a solar panel ‘roof’ affect wildlife? Since solar collectors are so inefficient, they need to cover a lot of space. Would raptors and other birds be able to hunt? Wind turbines are also said to be dangerous for birds. (Of course, this might result in sparter birds. :wink: ) Still, I think the impact of solar and wind (which is, after all, solar-generated) energy plants would be minimal in the desert. It’s not as if we’re talking about covering the whole state with them. The idea of installing panels on ‘every new building’ also seems to have merit. (I wonder if the Power Lobby would object?) There’s an awful lot of ‘unused acreage’ on rooftops.

So I’m all for fields of photoelectric cells, ‘solar lenses’ to heat liquids for power generation, and wind turbines. But I also think that nuclear power plants are essential for our power needs – at least until we figure out how to make fusion power with less power going in than comes out.

17

I think that everyone who is interested in this topic should read the current issue of National Geographic in detail like I did yesterday on a plane ride.

The gist of the article is that we are going to need to tap every alternate power source available to make a significant dent in replacing fossil fuels in the U.S. and the world: solar, wind, bio-fuels, and nuclear etc. All of the experts in the article agreed that each had its place and that solar energy still has a long way to go to be able to contribute much at all (it currently produces less than 1% of power in the U.S.). All of the alternate energy sources except nuclear require a huge footprint of land. Switching completely to biofuels for example would require over four times the farmland that we currently use. Covering every house with solar panels would still only produce a fraction of that household’s needs while still disregarding the needs of transportation and industry.

I am pro-nuclear energy.

18

Because we don’t live in a dictatorship.

19

And yet we have building codes.

20

Because housing is hard enough to afford as it is. Because the chemistry involved in mass production of solar panels produces more hazardous waste than the equivalent nuclear power plants would. Because the death toll from cleaning leaves and snow off all those rooftop solar panels would be higher than that from the equivalent nuclear power plants even if they were all Soviet-engineered Chernobyl clones.
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