Why is the Left so afraid of nuclear power?

Great Debates
201

The lesson learned regarding nukes, I think, is that because we listened to the so-called environmentalists 40 years ago, that we’re stuck with dirty power that they’re complaining about today. Were we able to lead the world market instead of severely lag it as we’ve done, we would be powered by mostly nuke today and very little coal and the state of reactors worldwide would likely be even more efficient and safer than they already are. We’re now backed into a corner and are faced with a true do or die moment.

As XT says, we could be ready to go right now and in 10 years be far further along than solar/wind/geothermal combined could possibly be for producing actual power in the amounts required by our civilization.

We need to nut up or shut up. Now.

202

Raising what would be essentially a sail into strong winds is not a good idea. Blizzards would be a problem, as would hurricanes and hurricane remnants in the summer and fall.

Blizzards and hurricanes are conditions when it’s safest for everybody to stay inside. If they get their power exclusively from solar panels, that’s going to encourage them to go outside in the blizzard or hurricane to fix the solar panels. There will probably be some injuries or deaths from that, in addition to people falling off roofs.

If you have electric heating, as many houses do, it’s not a good thing if your power goes out during a blizzard. Especially if your house is not particularly well insulated, as many older houses are not. You might face the choice of risking your life on the roof or hoping it doesn’t get cold enough inside to be dangerous. Some people are going to use heaters that are unsafe for indoor use in that situation, which is going to kill people from carbon monoxide.

Not to mention that some of us live in places that are sub-optimal for solar panels. Places like Pittsburgh and Seattle are cloudy. Solar panels wouldn’t work very well in a place like Alaska, where there are only a few hours of daylight every day in the winter.

Not that solar panels on houses aren’t a good idea. But not as the only source of household power. They’re not going to replace centralized power plants entirely.

203

With a general lack of light, solar panels don’t work too well in blizzards and hurricanes anyway, so there’s not much point going out to fix them until the adverse weather has passed.

And with regard to conditions after blizzards, doesn’t sunlight penetrate snow modestly well?

204

At best the panels would be degraded and lose efficiency. They would have to be cleaned and repaired in any case which is going to necessitate SOMEONE going up there to work on the things. That is going to cause a non-zero number of deaths right there. I guess a good ball park estimate would be to look at the number of deaths and injuries per year due to falling from ladders and such while doing repairs on the roof and multiply that by some factor taking into account the proposed new roof top panels.

I actually have a solar system on my own roof, since it makes sense given where I live (it’s sunny fairly often here). Also, the coolness factor was there and I wanted to play with it (I also built a shed with lead acid batteries to store extra energy and power some of my electric devices like my lawn mower and weed whacker).

My system is an older one, but I can tell you a couple of things that may impact on the decision to widely deploy such a system. First off, it takes more maintenance than I think most people realize. I have to clean the things a couple times a month, minimum (and that is if there are no storms…I have to clean them after EVERY storm). The panels get dirty and coated with dust, which degrades their efficiency quite a bit (I have a laptop program that monitors panel efficiency). And they are a pain in the ass to clean and it’s relatively risky to do so, unless you have some kind of high pressure washing system you can use from the ground. I don’t know if the newer systems are the same, but my system can take a 50% degradation after one rain storm or a windy day. Also, over time, the panels lose efficiency regardless of how clean you keep them…they get scratched up or something, I’m not sure. Again, newer systems might be different, but mine has lost something like 20% of it’s efficiency even when it’s squeaky clean these days. Also, it cost a LOT…I still haven’t paid off my loan (let alone repaid the investment in savings vs the initial costs), and considering that I might need to start changing panels I might not EVER break even (I have gotten a number of offsetting tax breaks though, admittedly, which certainly have helped).

None of these things are show stoppers, but I can’t see how it would be economical to even attempt to put solar panels on private homes as a wide spread solution. And, having used the system, I can see some fairly hefty engineering challenges to building a centralized solar power plant out here in the desert as well. I have the impression that people regard solar as a one shot expense…you put it in and then kick back and rake in the savings and energy. Perhaps if they ever manage to put the things in space that might be true (though probably not, since I can think of a half dozen factors that would entail maintenance regardless), but the reality here on earth is that this technology is fairly maintenance intensive. And this doesn’t even count the capital costs, or the manufacturing strain if we attempt to build on the scales we are talking about to take a significant bite out of coal.

-XT

205

Human nature being what it is, though, that isn’t going to stop everybody from doing it.

206

And if you think solar is expensive in terms of just using it when the sun shines, try figuring out what it cost to store excess energy to use later.

207

In support of your point I’ll pedantically add that most gas homes in the US need an electric fan to blow the air, power the thermostat, etc.

208

When I took Environmental Health, we were taught present law on the allowed life of a nuclear power plant & onsite storage of nuclear waste thereafter. What’s unattractive is the idea of getting 25 years of use out of something & then leaving the site inactive & under guard for 300 years.

209

I don’t hate the concept of nuclear energy. I just don’t think it is very good. The plants cost billions and don’t have a long shelf life. They have huge cost over runs .
They have lots and lots of incidents and problems, due to construction problems or poorly trained workers. The lowest bidder does all the work and has incentive to cut corners to increase profits.
The waste problem is unsolvable. We have had a long time at it and radioactive waste still sits in water tanks all over the country. Yucca will not solve it . It would be immediately filled. Then we have to start all over. If we have a lot more plants, the problem will just get worse.

210

Good thing that’s not what’s happening, then. As I already mentioned, the new CANDU is initially certified for 60 years. A whole lot of nuclear plants have already had their lifespans extended to 40-60 years.

But that’s just initial certification, and it was originally over-cautious because people weren’t sure how long-term exposure to radiation would affect the materials. As we’ve collected data, we’ve extended the lifespan of the reactors. Some experts think that the newer plants will reach 100 years or more of operation lifespan.

How Long can Nuclear Reactors Last?

As for ‘guarding it for 300 years’ - have you got a cite for that? Because from what I know, a fully decommissioned and dismantled nuclear plant site can be completely reused. Some options include ‘entombment’, which leaves part of the plant in place in a small area, but that’s not the most common way to handle an old plant. Basically, you remove the fissile material, dismantle the plant, cart it off the site, and release the site back for whatever use you want. There’s no ‘300 year guarding’ phase involved.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission describes three different ways of decommissioning a nuclear plant:

[ul]
[li]Immediate Dismantling (or Early Site Release/Decon in the US): This option allows for the facility to be removed from regulatory control relatively soon after shutdown or termination of regulated activities. Usually, the final dismantling or decontamination activities begin within a few months or years, depending on the facility. Following removal from regulatory control, the site is then available for re-use.[/li][li] Safe Enclosure (or Safestor(e)): This option postpones the final removal of controls for a longer period, usually in the order of 40 to 60 years. The facility is placed into a safe storage configuration until the eventual dismantling and decontamination activities occur.[/li][li] Entombment: This option entails placing the facility into a condition that will allow the remaining on-site radioactive material to remain on-site without the requirement of ever removing it totally. This option usually involves reducing the size of the area where the radioactive material is located and then encasing the facility in a long-lived structure such as concrete, that will last for a period of time to ensure the remaining radioactivity is no longer of concern.[/li][/ul]

Only entombment might qualify for your description, but looking at the list of plants being decommissioned, I only see one listed as being entombed, and a bunch that are going into 25-40 year ‘safestore’, after which they will be dismantled. But there’s also a lot that were simply decommissioned, dismantled, and the site reclaimed, so I don’t see a technical reason why they couldn’t all be treated that way.

I don’t see any where the plan is to abandon them and guard them for 300 years. So where does that come from?

211

And what makes you think that it would be any different for any alternatives? That’s not a problem that has anything in particular to do with nuclear energy; you could say the same about shoe manufacturing.

No. AGAIN, the problem is already solved, and was solved a long time ago - several ways, in fact. It’s just a matter of politics preventing the solutions from being applied.

212

Again, that is true of every single power source.

Cite?

213

No…you fear it. That’s the problem.

And yet you give no solid alternatives, just pie in the sky magic pony tech that MIGHT be developed in a decade or so. Maybe. Perhaps. In theory.

Not a long shelf life? What do you base that on? As for costing billions, that’s true enough…but then, part of the reason they are so expensive is because of all the safety measure that are put in the designs, the double and triple redundancy, the cut offs and fault tolerance measures. And, of course, the fact that people like you drive up the cost by your actions and then, ironically, point at the cost as if circular thinking were just business as usual.

BTW, modern high capacity coal plants cost a lot of money too…and so do cutting edge solar plants like the one recently put into production in Spain. IIRC it was like $400 million Euros (and produces something like 50 or 60 MW…that’s a LOT less than a nuclear or coal fired plant). Granted, it was a pilot, and costs will probably come down for future plants…but then again, there probably won’t be a lot of protesters getting in the way, filing lawsuits and getting the regulations constantly changed, so that will certainly help, ehe?

They have huge cost over runs mainly because of…well, you aren’t listening anyway, so what’s the point in telling you again? You will continue to repeat stuff like above regardless.

Again, you have your fingers in your ears and are just going ‘nanananana! I can’t HEAR you! nananaananana!’ You’ve been told repeatedly in this thread and others solutions to this supposedly ‘unsolvable’ problem, but you don’t want to hear them. You don’t want to hear that OTHER countries don’t seem to have this problem, yet it’s ‘unsolvable’ in the US. Nor do you want to think about why that may be, or engage in a rational discussion about it. You just want to put your fingers in your ears and repeat the ‘wast problem is unsolvable’ meme over and over and over again.

Gee…wonder why that may be? It’s a mystery, ehe? Who knows why this situation has persisted? Must have something to do with the evil big energy companies in cohoots with big business and the rich conspiring to make huge profits on nuclear energy by some kind of evil magic which precludes building new reactors or doing anything with the waste. Yeah…that’s it. Couldn’t have anything to do with anti-nukes blocking every attempt to actually do something about the problem…naw, that would be too Occam-like…

:stuck_out_tongue: ‘Gee, if we drag our feet long enough then the solution won’t work anymore and they will have to give it up! That will show them. What? Don’t bother me with details about how the waste is just piling up in pools scattered around the country! We have a PLAN, by the gods! Huh? I don’t give a shit that it’s cost the country billions! We are on a freaking MISSION and you are talking about crass MONEY? Burn the witch…and get me an iced green tea latte with organic milk…’

Fine. What’s the solution then? You’ve basically just gone around and around on this saying how bad nuclear is, how it doesn’t help, that the situation will just get worse (let’s forget about the fact that it will get worse because of folks like you who are MAKING it just go around in circles). Ok…so, what is your solution? Just bury our heads in the ground and wait for the magic pony tech to come along? Don’t worry about global warming? Status quo? Pony up gonzo and actually engage in the discussion with something other than ‘nuclear is bad’. What is your alternative?

-XT

214

Because I figure anti-nuclear posters will bring this up sooner or later: the parent company behind the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant has admitted to a tritium leak that it previously denied under oath ever existed.

Interesting point made in the comments: the leak itself may not have been that harmful, yet the company felt compelled to lie about it. Is this due to fear of public anti-nuclear feeling, or just plain greed?

215

Or corporate reflex. Deny, deny unless you have no choice. Regardless of whether on not the allegation is even true, much less harmful; I expect that their reaction would be to deny it, then check to see if it was true - in that order.

Which is amusing, since the few times a corporation admits something bad happened and makes a public point of fixing it are the ones that tend to blow over. When some lunatic poisoned some Tylenol, they recalled it from the shelves and came out with tamper resistant packaging; how many people even think about that these days, much less blame them? If they’d stalled and denied there was a problem while people kept dying, you can bet people would remember and blame them for it.

216

Either way, this certainly doesn’t do much to inspire any confidence in nuclear power in the hands of private corporations. Or maybe I’m using too broad a brush. We should trust them until we find out they’re lying, right? Doesn’t the NRC send out inspectors?

217

No, of course they don’t. They just let the nuclear power companies run wild and free, doing whatever they want, which is why there are so many deaths in the US each year due to nuclear accidents…

Oh, wait…there aren’t that many deaths and the NRC does send out inspectors. There are also a boat load of regulations. But, you know, only the nuclear power industry attempts to circumvent regulations or lies…all other industries, including coal just meekly go along, never setting a toe out of line, never fucking up either intentionally or with malice aforethought, and never endangering the public as the nuclear power industry has with it’s massive annual death toll and the hospitals overflowing with the sick and dying from radiation poisoning…

So…were you seriously asking if the NRC sends out inspectors?

No, we should build men (and arguments) of straw until we have enough to fuel our power plants! You have solved the energy crisis single-handedly!! I smell a Nobel prize in your future…
To put it a different way, we don’t ‘trust’ anyone…which is why we have all those regulations. ‘Trust’ isn’t really in it…from either side. But then you knew that when you created this strawman argument, right? You knew that no one was ACTUALLY advocating that we trust anyone, and that this is why we have all those regulation things…right? And that, afaik, no one is advocating that we remove all those regulations and trust anyone…right?

-XT

218

They didn’t deny that the leak never existed. They didn’t think there were any pipes underground that could leak tritium. It was a mistake not a lie.

219

Actually, “telescopic extenders” sound like something that may be used anyway, if not on rooftops - turning solar panels to follow the sun allows them to pick up more energy per panel per day. It would still be a really bad idea to catch the wind with them during a storm, though.

The better question is why you’re putting up solar panels if you live somewhere that gets snow. The best payoff is in areas with less cloud cover at lower latitudes.

220

Here’s one of the many things that get me.

Scientists tell someone “inject this crap into you, it might kill you but it will make you immune to XYZ” No problem.

Scientists tell someone “here is this crazy assed medical procedure, good chance it will kill you, but it also might save you” No problem.

Scientists tell someone “Get in this metal tube that will go 700 miles an hour 5 miles up, its safe” No problem.

Scientists tell someone “Our computer models tell us global warming is big nasty shit coming our way, we gotta do something about it” No problem, lets get busy fixing it now!

Nuclear scientists come along and tell someone “Nuclear reactors are safe and waste is a solvable problem”

WE DONT BELIEVE YOUR LIES AND YOUR VODOO “SCIENCE”!

Goof grief.