# Nuclear Power **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 29, 2008, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-power/470035 "2008-10-29T02:56:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 15
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2009, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-power/470035/281 "2009-02-27T14:04:26Z")
> [@billfish678](#): > > Somebody need to do this back of the envelope calc. > > How much would it cost in high pressue tankage to store all the CO2 produced per person per year? How much space would that take up? How many thousands of years would that tank last or not last? > > Assume a typical scuba tank holds roughly 10 pounds of CO2 and cost 10 dollars wholesale. Go/scale from there. I am sure the numbers will be ungodly. Oops, the CO2 is going to be liquid under pressure, so figure more like 40 to 100 pounds per tank. Still gonna be ugly though. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2009, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-power/470035/282 "2009-02-27T15:42:19Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Don’t worry - among his many other recent spectacularly bad decisions, Obama has announced that he’ll try to shut down Yucca mountain and is dramatically cutting funding for it. I guess nuclear is off the table again. > > [Cite.](http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=a9V3MZRVLn5Y&refer=us) What. A. Fucking. Moron, Obama. Is. The only pork he doesn’t like, the only infrastructure spending that wouldn’t be wasted, is what he opposes. All that stuff about 45 new nuclear reactors, all that shit about AGW, all that drivel about energy independence - all a lie. As if it wasn’t enough that he is trying to bankrupt the country for twenty years with his waste and stupidity. Now he is trying to fuck up our energy future as well. _This_ kind of thing is why nuclear power costs so much. Nothing particularly inherent to the system - just short-sighted, weak, stupid, cowardly politicians making sure we got close to a serious solution, and then making sure all of the money and effort has been wasted. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2009, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-power/470035/283 "2009-02-27T15:50:10Z")
[QUOTE=Snowboarder Bo] You lose. I don’t even need to see the link you didn’t provide. [/QUOTE] You are right and I’m wrong (blind squirrels and hand grenades and all that). I thought Chronos had said ‘government official’ not ‘Senator’. I’m actually unsure how Federal lands are put into the Federal BLM chest, so it’s actually possible that you are correct in a nitpicky sort of way about what Chrono’s said…i.e. “And I’ll bet that if you look into the history of how that land came under federal government control, you’ll find a duly-elected Nevada senator who wanted it to be put to federal use, to bring money into the state.” Do Senators have any say in what lands go into government coffers? No idea. Don’t really care either and don’t really see how it has much to do with the discussion in this debate. However, when I’m wrong I generally try and fess up…and I was wrong (and lazy for not going back to actually read the details on the ‘bet’). Hell Bo, you have to have ONE victory in this thread…so there you go. My present to you. -XT ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2009, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-power/470035/284 "2009-02-27T16:12:04Z")
I wouldn’t be so fast to conclude that the death of Yucca Mountain as a waste storage facility means the end of nuclear as part of the future mix. First remember that nuclear can’t be the backbone for many years in any case. (See past cites showing the lack of extant infrastructure to build the parts and the shortage of adequately trained people to build and staff them.) In reality only a modest number can be built in any reasonable timeframe in any case. And those modest numbers should be built. Second, realize [that](http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2009/02/26/nuclear-waste-yucca-mountains-scrapped-so-what-now/) “if it did open, there’s already a big enough backlog to fill it, so the administration was going to have to find a bigger solution to the waste-storage issue anyway.” Third, recognize that the Secretary of Energy is Steven Chu. What’s his on-the-record [position](http://neinuclearnotes.blogspot.com/2008/12/legends-and-facts-steven-chu-on-nuclear.html) regarding how to handle nuclear waste? > [@](#): > > … there’s the waste problem: with future nuclear power plants, we’ve got to recycle the waste. Why? Because if you take all the waste we have now from our civilian and military nuclear operations, we’d fill up Yucca Mountain. … So we need three or four Yucca Mountains. Well, we don’t have three or four Yucca Mountains. The other thing is that storing the fuel at Yucca Mountain is supposed to be safe for 10,000 years. But the current best estimates - and these are really estimates, the Lab’s in fact - is that the metal casings [containing the waste] will probably fail on a scale of 5,000 years, plus or minus 2. That’s still a long time, and then after that the idea was that the very dense rock, very far away from the water table will contain it, so that by the time it finally leaks down to the water table and gets out the radioactivity will have mostly decayed. > > Suppose instead that we can reduce the lifetime of the radioactive waste by a factor of 1,000. So it goes from a couple-hundred-thousand-year problem to a thousand-year problem. At a thousand years, even though that’s still a long time, it’s in the realm that we can monitor - we don’t need Yucca Mountain. So back to my first link, the WSJ article - > [@](#): > > Does this mean that the administration will embrace one of President Bush’s pet projects, reprocessing spent fuel? That’s what France and Japan do, both to recover useable fuel and to cut down on the volume of the waste. The downsides to reprocessing include loads of additional, if lower-level, radioactive waste and potentially a greater risk for weapons proliferation. > > Secretary Chu acknowledged in his confirmation hearing that the bulk of his energy would be spent tackling the nuclear-waste issue. And I’d say, yes, it does mean that reprocessing is in the future for American nuclear energy. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2009, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-power/470035/285 "2009-02-27T17:11:16Z")
In case you think that Chu’s 2005 statements are too old to be of value, he [again](http://pubs.acs.org/cen/news/87/i03/8703notw1.html) committed to reprocessing (first putting some R&D in) during his confirmation hearing. For anyone interested [here](http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_power/nuclear_power_risk/nuclear_proliferation_and_terrorism/nuclear-reprocessing.html) are some of the standard arguments _against_ the reprocessing option that is clearly in our future. I would be interested in hearing them debunked as I really do know very little about this. > [@](#): > > Reprocessing would increase the risk of nuclear terrorism. > > Less than 20 pounds of plutonium is needed to make a nuclear weapon. If the plutonium remains bound in large, heavy, and highly radioactive spent fuel assemblies (the current U.S. practice), it is nearly impossible to steal. In contrast, separated plutonium is not highly radioactive and is stored in a concentrated powder form… > > Reprocessing would increase the ease of nuclear proliferation. > > U.S. reprocessing would undermine the U.S. goal of halting the spread of fuel cycle technologies that are permitted under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty but can be used to make nuclear weapons materials. The United States cannot credibly persuade other countries to forgo a technology it has newly embraced for its own use … > > Reprocessing would hurt U.S. nuclear waste management efforts. > > First, there is no spent fuel storage crisis that warrants such a drastic change in course. Hardened interim storage of spent fuel in dry casks is an economically viable and secure option for at least fifty years. > > Second, reprocessing does not reduce the need for storage and disposal of radioactive waste, and a geologic repository would still be required … > > Reprocessing would be very expensive. > > Reprocessing and the use of plutonium as reactor fuel are also far more expensive than using uranium fuel and disposing of the spent fuel directly. Thank you in advance. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2009, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-power/470035/286 "2009-02-27T17:20:17Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > I wouldn’t be so fast to conclude that the death of Yucca Mountain as a waste storage facility means the end of nuclear as part of the future mix. > > First remember that nuclear can’t be the backbone for many years in any case. Especially not if we keep stalling and stalling and starting over, again and again. Also remember that solar or wind or coal or oil can’t be the backbone either. > [@Steven Chu](#): > > Suppose instead that we can reduce the lifetime of the radioactive waste by a factor of 1,000. So it goes from a couple-hundred-thousand-year problem to a thousand-year problem. At a thousand years, even though that’s still a long time, it’s in the realm that we can monitor - we don’t need Yucca Mountain. What a stupid thing to say. All we need is magic - then we don’t need Yucca Mountain for more than a thousand years. Suppose we can run the world economy on pixie dust and good feelings. Then we don’t need it at all. Chu’s idea seems to be that it is safer to monitor it on-site for a thousand years. As opposed to monitoring it in a highly secure site, out in the middle of nowhere, for a thousand years. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2009, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-power/470035/287 "2009-02-27T17:32:26Z")
Not an expert. Just my opinion/wag. But IF you immediately mix your recovered plutonium with nuclear fuel, it still makes it hard as hell to steal any useful amount, just from the shear weight/size of it. And if you want, you could also mix it with some short term (like a few years) highly radioactive material that isnt detrimental to the reactor fuel cycle (beside handling). And given that they have to deal with handling issues at the end of a fuel cycle, I dont see how having to deal with it at the begining is a huge additional burden. I think this plutonium and terrorism thing is mostly bogus. Its not like until you have plutonium floating around you dont need any security measures. You need them anyway for the value of the fuel, the technology, the guarding of waste from theft, the worry of sabotage of a high value nuclear site itself… Its like saying a bank doesnt need any security until a valuable painting gets stored in the vault . And terrorist building a sucessful plutonium bomb? That ain’t easy. A nation state maybe. A bunch of guys in a basement? Please. If you are worried about terrorist building a succesful plutonium bomb, you should be scared shitless about them stealing already constructed nuclear weapons, high level nuclear waste, highly enriched uranium, anthrax, nerve gas, the plaque o the day, or a cargo ship full of fertilizer, chorine, or a host of other nasty chemicals. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2009, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-power/470035/288 "2009-02-27T18:06:08Z")
**Shodan** I certainly do not know enough about reprocessing to have an opinion yet, including how much is left after the process is complete, what role [transmutation](http://www.nea.fr/html/trw/index.html) may play, or how much of a risk what is left behind is either to the environment or as a target for bad actors. What I can say is that probably no one has ever before called [Steven Chu](http://www.lbl.gov/Publications/Director/index-Chu.html) “stupid” or accused him magical thinking. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2009, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-power/470035/289 "2009-02-27T18:27:21Z")
The terrorism risk of reprocessing nuclear fuel is vastly overrated. If having any plutonium anywhere in a concentrated form is such a huge terrorism risk, why do we tolerate still having nuclear weapons? Yeah, maybe terrorists who got their hands on reprocessed fuel could make a nuclear bomb out of it. But I’m absolutely certain that terrorists who got their hands on a nuclear bomb could make a nuclear bomb out of it. If we’re confident that we can keep our nuclear weapons out of the hands of our enemies, why doesn’t the same confidence extend to fuel used for electrical generation? ---
**Author:** ![Strassia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e8c25b/32.png) [@Strassia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Strassia)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2009, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-power/470035/290 "2009-02-27T18:30:01Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > Especially not if we keep stalling and stalling and starting over, again and again. > > Also remember that solar or wind or coal or oil can’t be the backbone either.What a stupid thing to say. > > All we need is magic - then we don’t need Yucca Mountain for more than a thousand years. > > Suppose we can run the world economy on pixie dust and good feelings. Then we don’t need it at all. > > Chu’s idea seems to be that it is safer to monitor it on-site for a thousand years. As opposed to monitoring it in a highly secure site, out in the middle of nowhere, for a thousand years. > > Regards, > Shodan I think what he is saying is if we recycle the fuel, all that we will have left is the higher decay rate material that is useless as fuel(or fission bombs) andwill be gone in a much shorter time. It would still be a good idea to have disposal facilities, but we won’t need one that lasts for eons. Jonathan ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2009, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-power/470035/291 "2009-02-27T18:31:00Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > Especially not if we keep stalling and stalling and starting over, again and again. > > Also remember that solar or wind or coal or oil can’t be the backbone either.What a stupid thing to say. > > All we need is magic - then we don’t need Yucca Mountain for more than a thousand years. > > Suppose we can run the world economy on pixie dust and good feelings. Then we don’t need it at all. > > Chu’s idea seems to be that it is safer to monitor it on-site for a thousand years. As opposed to monitoring it in a highly secure site, out in the middle of nowhere, for a thousand years. > > Regards, > Shodan Yucca Mountain is not “out in the middle of nowhere”. It is less than 80 miles from downtown Las Vegas, and there are other small communities within 15 miles. ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2009, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-power/470035/292 "2009-02-27T18:35:29Z")
True. If a huge comet hit Yucca mountain, enough to send the contents flying 80 miles in every direction, Las Vegas would be in trouble. ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2009, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-power/470035/293 "2009-02-27T18:38:08Z")
> [@SenorBeef](#): > > True. If a huge comet hit Yucca mountain, enough to send the contents flying 80 miles in every direction, Las Vegas would be in trouble. I think I saw that in a recent episode of “Las Vegas”. Ed Deline was pissed. Fortunately that Magnum PI guy had just left town 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2009, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-power/470035/294 "2009-02-27T19:10:01Z")
Jonathan, thank you, I hadn’t realized that **Shodan** had not understood that. **Bo** , don’t you get it? Anywhere not in his backyard is out in the middle of nowhere to him! That said, wouldn’t there still be a need for some long term deep geologic repository even if the stuff stored in it is of smaller volume and degrades a hundred times faster? If so don’t we still need a Yucca? Or where does he propose monitoring it for that long? Is the concept that such end-waste is of low enough risk and low enough value that storing it in distributed monitored above ground sites is adequate? **Shodan.** Your. Calling. Obama. A. Fucking. Moron. Aside. (ahch, too annoying to keep up) the reality is that Yucca is no “serious solution”, not by itself, not given the WSJ and other sources statements that the backlog alone would fill it up. Once again I am not yet either convinced or not convinced about reprocessing (although Chu’s cred does make me want to give it the benefit of the doubt) but some other solution also needs to be had if we are to have any new nuclear at all. As for having an energy backbone - FWIW I do not think that there will be a backbone. I think that there will a varied selection of different sources in various niches taking advantage of abundant solar in some areas, abundent wind in others, some using coal co-fired with biomass and perhaps capturing CO2 using algal bioreactors to produce biodiesel or other biofuel, some geothermal, some natural gas, some nuclear, maybe tidal even in some places, and who knows what other concepts will emerge. The government’s role is to help with the research, make sure things are done safely, and to make sure that carbon is priced right. Okay, and help with the nuclear waste too. After that stay out of the way and don’t try to force one to be _the_ winner in advance. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2009, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-power/470035/295 "2009-02-28T03:18:26Z")
[http://www.deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,700243465,00.html](http://www.deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,700243465,00.html) Yucca is reaching 50 billion. When,(if) it opens there is already enough nuke crap to fill it. We will be starting over again. It is step one in an endless building of super expensive ,dangerous waste areas. ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2009, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-power/470035/296 "2009-02-28T03:26:49Z")
I know, right? When our population increases we build more houses. When the demand for something grows we build more factories for it. When we get more garbage, we build more landfills. This civilization thing is endless building of crap. Let’s burn it all down. ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2009, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-power/470035/297 "2009-02-28T04:22:50Z")
> [@gonzomax](#): > > [http://www.deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,700243465,00.html](http://www.deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,700243465,00.html) Yucca is reaching 50 billion. When,(if) it opens there is already enough nuke crap to fill it. We will be starting over again. It is step one in an endless building of super expensive ,dangerous waste areas. 50 billion for: 100 nuclear power plants 30,40, plus years of operation. How many billions of dollars worth of electricity do you think the reactors produced over all those years? Do the math. It adds a fraction to the overall cost of the electricity. Thats still cheaper than pulling CO2 outa the smokestacks and stuffing it in the ground, which apparently (if we can even do it a practical level), will double or triple the cost of electricity. ---
**Author:** ![Una\_Persson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/una_persson/32/346_2.png) [@Una\_Persson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Una_Persson)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2009, 5:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-power/470035/298 "2009-02-28T05:20:20Z")
> [@billfish678](#): > > How many billions of dollars worth of electricity do you think the reactors produced over all those years? FWIW, from 1994 to 2007 inclusive, nuclear power in the US generated 10,249,845,000,000 kWh of electricity (net). At a sale price of $0.11 per kWh, we get $11,274,829,500.00 I don’t have figures for longer than that period available to me. ---
**Author:** ![Una\_Persson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/una_persson/32/346_2.png) [@Una\_Persson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Una_Persson)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2009, 5:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-power/470035/299 "2009-02-28T05:44:50Z")
> [@Una\_Persson](#): > > FWIW, from 1994 to 2007 inclusive, nuclear power in the US generated 10,249,845,000,000 kWh of electricity (net). At a sale price of $0.11 per kWh, we get $11,274,829,500.00 I don’t have figures for longer than that period available to me. Sorry, I was off by a factor of 100. I blame it one working too much. The math goes: 10,249,845,000,000 kWh \* 0.11 $/kWh= $1,127,482,950,000, or $1.1 trillion, and $50 billion is a small fraction after all. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2009, 6:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-power/470035/300 "2009-02-28T06:01:14Z")
**Una** , any words of wisdom about reprocessing and whether or not its end products need long term deep geologic storage or if Chu’s statement that Yucca is not needed is accurate? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-power/470035.md?page=14) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-power/470035.md?page=16)