It works just fine in Europe. Now, wide-scale deforestation without proper management is another matter.
QUESTION: If we go ‘serious nuke’, say 50% of our energy needs from nukes-
How much radioactive waste will we be generating?
(Bonus Question:) Are you ready to bury that in your backyard?
IIRC a couple of cubic yards per plant per year. A coal plant probably generates that volume every few minutes. Not to mention the tons of CO2 into the air every few minutes too.
Nuke generates about 20 percent of our electricity now with 100 plants. And I’d WAG 5 to 10 percent of total energy. So, we would need 300 to 500 plants.
And yes I would be if my back yard wasnt under water. Its not that I dont want it nearby, it that you shouldnt put any waste where there is lots of water. If I actually lived in a dry desert I wouldnt give a rats ass if was litterally in my back yard buried.
If by ‘backyard’, you mean ‘deep in a vault in a nearby mountain, further sealed inside nigh-impenetrable steel crates’, then yes! Absolutely.
Seriously, though, I can’t help but wonder how much modern anti-nuke sentiment can be traced back to The Simpsons. The omnipresent vats of green goo are a completely inaccurate portrayal of nuclear waste…and yet that’s the first thing most people think of when they hear ‘nuclear waste’. Not to mention Homer himself as the safety inspector, Mr. Burns (a caricature’s caricature of cost-cutting skinflints) as the owner, and so on.
The no nukes movement predates the Simpsons. But they don’t help.
A coal plant will generate a couple of cubic yards of radioactive waste every few minutes? I’m going to need a whooooooole heap o’ citations before I buy that one.
People thought the same thing about the movies The China Syndrome and Silkwood; that they hurt the nuclear cause.
Depends on one’s definition of what a ‘backyard’ entails. No, I wouldn’t want the stuff literally buried in my backyard, since my backyard is completely unsuited to housing the stuff. However, what we are in fact talking about is burying it in a mountain miles from where anyone actually lives and in a region where we used to do nuclear testing, including exploding several nuclear weapons.
-XT
It does mirror the Silkwood story though. The company was covering up bad welds and preventing people from airing it. They did expose their employees a few times. It is not all fantasy.
Karen Silkwood - Wikipedia In case you did not know about her.
It’s not all fantasy, gonzo. There have been and probably will continue to be problems. But that’s the same in every industry and endeavor that humans participate in. It’s the reason we have regulations, after all. Sure, some companies and individuals will always try to get around them, to circumvent them for various reasons, most of which are distinctly shady, but you have to be able to look at the big picture and do a rational assessment of the real pros and cons. I think any rational assessment with a minimum bias is going to find that, despite all the problems, nuclear is the only reasonable alternative to coal that exists today, or will exist for some time to come. Maybe 20 or 30 or 50 years from now there will be viable alternatives to supplant coal that won’t involve nuclear fission reactors, but today the ONLY alternative that scales up to meet our needs is nuclear. So, you have to ask…is it better to use nuclear, despite the engineering problems and challenges, in an attempt to seriously take a bite out of our CO2 foot print, or is it better to stay with the status quo and try and build up other alternatives as they exist today, knowing that none of them will be able to scale to take a serious bite out of coal any time in the foreseeable future?
To me, that’s what the debate boils down too. Status quo while building non-nuclear alternatives that may, in a few decades, provide 10 or 20 percent of our over all needs, but which may scale up in the long run to provide a larger percentage, or go nuclear, which in a decade or so could potentially cut a significant amount of CO2 from our overall foot print and can continue to scale after that.
-XT
I was talking ASH. Its enough of a waste you can’t eat it. You should know better, and you should know thats what I meant.
Now that’s a bit impolite, isn’t it?
You directly quoted a person who was asking about RADIOACTIVE WASTE, and referred directly to coal plants. Coal ash is not radioactive waste, and given all the references people have made in threads on this board AND off about “coal plants emit more radioactive elements than nuclear plants” I think it’s important that we get the facts straight not confuse the two issues, because coal plants DO emit radioactive elements and some casual debaters feel that it’s a much larger amount than it really is.
Coal ash is radioactive waste.
Its also impolite to assume somebody is a complete dumbass too. Which is what you did to me.
Huh? From your link:
…and it goes on from there.
I don’t know what that random site is saying, but it’s not saying that coal ash is radioactive waste. It’s not even classified as hazardous waste by the EPA (yet). It’s used freely in concrete, soil stabilization, and other industrial uses without needing radioactive testing, monitoring, or protective procedures. I work with fly ash almost every single day of my professional career, and in the US fly ash is not considered or classified as “radioactive waste” by anyone except an oppositional-defiant environmental absolutist.
No I bloody well did not.
If I see a post in my specific field of expertise which is not factual then I’m going to comment on it. It’s unfortunate that you didn’t make a post that was factually correct and it’s unfortunate that you couldn’t just be forthright and say “sorry, I meant to say this”, but that’s not my fault. My problem is you taking a hostile attitude and talking down to me with that deliberately taunting “You should know better.”
bolding mine
How long will people continue to perpetuate this lie? I suppose technically it’s true since there is more than 1 mile between Yucca and the nearest towns, but to continue to try and portray this area as a desolate stretch of uninhabited land is ridiculous. Look at a map. There are towns within 20 miles of Yucca Mountain: Beatty & Amargosa Valley.
Nevada is not a wasteland.
Before calling me a liar you should perhaps go there and look for yourself. I should point out that I lived for 8 years in Nevada, and my father worked at the NTS btw. I’m unsure what you THINK your wiki map cite proves, but did you happen to look at the population figures for the two ‘towns’? The entire population of Nye County is only 30-40k for the gods sake! :rolleyes:
Been to Las Vegas or Tahoe, ehe? 
-XT
I think this speaks for itself.