In all the talk about energy independence there is a lot of talk about soy fuels, clean coal, etc., but I haven’t heard much talk about new nuclear power.
Is it even possible for America to achieve energy independence? Wouldn’t nuclear power get us much closer than any other energy source?
It also seems a lot the debate is realted to cars. Are cars we that big a part of our energy needs to make a difference? And even if we go to fuel cell cars the hydrogen still has to be produced by some source. (Won’t nuclear power be clearer than coal or oil?)
So is new nuclear power necessary for energy independence? Is it necessary to just meet growing energy needs?
There’s an immense amount of dialog about nuclear power, if you look around for it. War and oil is sexier, though.
I’m personally looking forward to the results of the ITER fusion project and I’d like to see one or more reactors built in northern Alberta to aid in the refinement of the tar sands which promises to turn Canada into an oil-producing nation rivalling or exceeding Saudi Arabia.
I think the main problem is that nuclear power is scary to a lot of people. This is the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster. People also remember Three Mile Island. What people don’t remember is that the U.S. Navy has been using nuclear power for – what? Fifty years? – and they have a very good safety record. But many Americans have a poor opinion of them. I think a lot of people believe that a meltdown is just a matter of time.
Nuclear waste is perceived as a problem. The fact is, it has to go somewhere. From what I’ve heard about Yucca Mountain, I’m dubious as to whether it should be stored there. But not being a geologist or hydraulogist, I’m prepared to concede that my impressions are mistaken. In any case, it needs to be stored. But I think that the problem of storage has been overblown.
Transportation is more of a concern to me than storage. I remember what seemed to be a rash of train wrecks in the '80s and '90s. And of course, highway travel is much more dangerous. I would hope that the engineers designed ‘bombproof’ transport containers, but even if they did there are people who don’t want it to traverse their state.
There’s the possibility of nuclear materials being stolen and used for terrorism. Security should never be taken lightly – especially nowadays. Many people are not convinced that nuclear materials can be 100% protected.
Nuclear powerplants are very, very expensive. I read recently (maybe here on the boards) that there is an issue about financing them. And the financing may be harder to come by if the local population is vocal.
So nuclear power is politically problematic at the moment. Nevertheless, I think that we need it. Our reactors are better than the ones at Chernobyl. Safer. Although nuclear power generates lethal waste, the waste is contained. So it’s basically non-polluting. We have plenty of fissionable material to last us a while, so we don’t need to import it.
We have an abundance of coal. Unfortunately burning coal adds to greenhouse gasses. Still, we already have coal-fired powerplants in place. Hydro is good, since it’s non-polluting. Only it does have an impact on wildlife. And you have to have rivers. I think we’ve already got about as many dams as we can have. I’m not sure about our reserves of natural gas. It’s fairly clean and the power plants already exist. Solar and wind power are limited to certain locations where they can be used efficiently. We have a lot of sunny, windy space that can be used for that – and they do take a lot of space.
I think that we should use whatever fuel – coal, gas, hydro, solar, wind – wherever it makes the most sense. And I think that nuclear power should be a part of our energy solution. But nuclear needs a better PR agent.
There are a lot of people here on the board, and IRL, whom are talking about nuclear power.
I’d like to offer some links here - but the Hampsters aren’t letting me either search or look at my subscribed threads. If someone wants to be kind I’d like to have the recent thread about reprocessing spent fuel linked here. Thanks.
Certainly the 2005 global conference on global warming made a point to emphasize that compared to other currently available technologies for power generation nuclear power should be given more emphasis.
In the US part of the problem is that there is a phenomenal amount of stubborn, willful ignorance.
For example, when the Johns Hopkins study released in the early 90s of persons exposed to low level ionizing radiation from the Navy’s nuclear power program showed that there was no detectable increase in cancers in those persons monitored CSPI and all the other usual suspects in the anti-Nuke power crowd had conniption fits trying to claim it was a cover-up or conspiracy. I won’t get into the various reasons they used, but the arguments were more than a bit surreal.
This is not to say that there aren’t real concerns with nuclear power plants. Just there’s a large amount of public inertia to overcome in the US before people will be willing to let anyone build more reactors.
On Preview:
Johnny L.A., I’ve seen some of the tests on those shipping containers. Those things are so over-engineered it’s ridiculous. I seem to recall one test where they dropped a container from about 100 feet onto a Jersey barrier. No loss of containment. This is in addition to the train collision tests, and other things.
That sort of thing is part of what we’ve both been talking about.
The CSPI people, and others (cough Union of Concerned Scientists cough), will point to the one scenario where the container didn’t maintain perfect seal and then claim that the fuel can’t be shipped in a safe manner. The problem I have with this is that usually these sorts scenarios involve “corner cases” that have less chance of occurring in the real world than a re-enactment of the SS Mont Blanc/Halifax disaster.
And then the people who honestly have no education on such matters take the words of the CSPI people as gospel - in part because it ties in so well with the fear-mongering the CSPI people have done for years - and protest based on that.
*The reason I no longer view the Union of Concerned Scientists as anything other than a group of special interest scare mongers has to do with their reaction after a piece of spent fuel from a shut down California nuclear plant had been found to have administratively disappeared. That means that the plant could no longer state exactly where the segment of spent fuel was. This was in 2002 or 2003, so there were immediate concerns about having the missing piece used for a dirty bomb. Everyone and their uncle was sure the silly thing was in the storage pool, just not sure where. So this shill from the UCS makes a press statement about how since the plant had been shut down for a few years (I think on the order of ten years.) the radioactivity in the piece of fuel would have decayed considerably. So there was no reason to worry. :eek: :mad: (I’d had the story linked on my LJ - but the link expired and I’ve never been able to remember enough about the story to find another link to the UCS spokesman’s idiocy. Sorry.)
Yeah, the stupid thing probably dropped from 3000 Curies of activity to 2000 Curies of activity. Big effing whoop-te-do.
A more reasonable explaination would have involved being honest - and pointing out that the likelihood of anyone being able to steal such a highly active piece of material is effectively nil. The LD 50 dose for radiation is 400-500 REM. Using the rule of thumb that one Curie of activity will expose you to one REM of dose at one meter, and noting that this varies with the inverse of the square of the distance from the source, one can see that anyone trying to carry this thing anywhere would be taking a near lethal dose just picking it up. Carrying it for fifteen minutes would likely leave one passed out, and leaking blood out of every pore in the skin.
But as striking as that image might have been - the other side of that explaination is that the radiation hazard from such a source drops off considerably as one gets away from it - leaving the mathmatically literate person to realize just how little effect having this pass through one’s backyard will have. A beautiful opportunity for the UCS, and others, to actually try to do some education about the real hazards with spent fuel. But real education isn’t what they’re about.
Public opinion is one thing, though I think that’s going to change soon.
Another thing (alluded to by Johnny L.A.) is cost. We have previously had a shitty way of doing things. In some European countries, they have a bunch of reactors that have essentially the same design (facilitating economies of scale and maintenance/safety knowledge - if a particular part goes bad in one plant, you know to fix the others), whereas in the US, we have big plants with several different designs, and no new designs or strategies being implemented due to low public opinion, etc. If we want to do nuclear, we need to think about these sorts of things and have an integrated strategy to roll these things out quickly, cheaply and safely - I’m not holding my breath.
Waste is a big concern. I think that while we have to consider storage and transportation issues for the present, we really have to come up with a way to neutralize or greatly reduce high-level waste. Going with fusion or some other type of reactor will probably be the future, but I’m not sure when we’ll be able to do that.
I recently had a discussion with a friend who is a geologist for the EPA. HAs been to Yucca Mountain many times, and has nothing good to say about it (other than that a lot of pretty impressive engineering and a ton of $ has already gone into it!) I believe his criticisms were related to the rock structure and water flow - associated with the vast time periods involved, but whenever folks talk about scientific matters my primative little lawyer-brain tends to seize up.
The “vast time periods” aren’t really an issue. There are radioisotopes that last for long time periods. There are radioisotopes that generate intense radiation. There is no isotope that does both of the above, for the obvious reason that making the nuclear energy supply last for a long time and throwing out lots of energy in a short time are mutually exclusive.
The biggest reason for the ballooning costs associated with US nuclear plants hasn’t been the competition between designs, but the escalating costs associated with storage and disposal fees. AIUI most states require nuclear plant operators to keep a fund of monies set aside for estimated decomissioning costs: dismantling the plant, storing and transport of spent fuel, and eventual clean up of the plant site. As time goes by not only have the storage costs escalated, but so have labor costs associated with all this. This is one reason why I don’t think that there will be any serious money spent to even consider building any new nuclear plants in the US until a long-term waste storage facility, such as the one proposed for Yucca Mountain, is available.
The second biggest reason is going to be the lessons of the Seabrook II nuclear plant. Seabrook II is a large, second or third generation plant - while it’s only one of several “mature” designs in use in the US, it’s also the “youngest” plant in the US, IIRC. It was originally scheduled to come online approximately around 1980. In the wake of TMI-2, however, the pressure to keep the plant closed, at all costs, kept it from beginning operation until 1992 or 3, IIRC. For the time between the originally planned start-up and when it finally began operating the various power companies that had invested in the plant were stuck paying off a major capital investment, with no offsetting income associated with the plant. For almost 15 years. I know that while my family lived in MA our local power company had heavily invested in Seabrook - and was therefore forced to charge some of the highest per KW rates to keep servicing the debt on that monster.
Hell’s Bells, the 1992 Dukakis campaign made political capitol about blocking Seabrook II going operational!
Unless there’s a public turn around on the perception towards nuclear power I can’t see many investors being willing to consider building more plants in the US. (But if we’re buying nuclear power from Canadian CanDU plants it’s all good. )
I see what you’re saying about the advantages of having several plants of a single design, An Arky, but I think at this point nuclear power is a fairly proven concept - you’ve got moderators, piping and steam. Very little that I’d call cutting edge. (Until, and unless, we start getting PBMRs or other new nuclear power techniques ready for real-world applications.) This isn’t to say that there aren’t economic advantages to standardized plans - the automobile industry should be a good example of that even with proven technologies. Just that even with those savings factored in, there is still room for competition, too. (Again, just look at the automobile industry.)
On preview: Dinsdale, without a more specific list of complaints I can’t address what exactly is bothering your friend. The problem I have with the complaints that I’ve heard and read regarding the Yucca Mountain site is that the complaints are all on the nature of the complaints that I’ve already discussed with the shipping containers. “If the water table rises…” and other rather unlikely scenarios.
First off - I think that most (not all, by any means) of the concerns being raised about the mobility of heavy metal isotopes are exaggerated. For my argument I want to talk about something that most people from the Navy’s nuclear power program hate to think about: USS Thresher. When she sank, she shattered - like an egg. Or a sub exceeding test depth. I’ve seen a piece of her hull that had been recovered and kept as a momument at NNPS Orlando. (Behind lead glass, I have to admit.) It was smaller than the fingernail on my little finger.
This accident site is a worst case scenario for storage of any kind of waste: the pressures and temperature differences involved make it guaranteed that the core of the Thresher is in pieces. Lots and lots of little pieces. With effectively no containment of anything, anymore. On top of which the water that the wreck site is in is salt water: while it’s about 0 C, the salt water is still going to corrode the metals much more quickly than anything that could ever happen at Yucca Mountain.
In spite of all these problems the isotopes from the reactor haven’t spread all over the place. If they were spreading I think that it would be safe to say that there would be a lot of pressure to do what was done to the wreck of the Estonia: build a concrete casement over the wreck to retain as much of the material at the wreck site. Currently there are regular follow-up dives on the wreck, checking for this spreading contamination.
The end result is the one that most any chemist could tell you: heavy metals just don’t go into solution very well. Even less easily when the concern isn’t for ions from dissolved metals, but for metal particulates being entrained in moving fluids: it takes very turbulent and very rapidly moving waters to pick up bits of lead or similar metals.
I can’t guarantee that the site under Yucca Mountain will never, ever, ever, ever experience such rapid flows of water. I can, and will, hazard a guess that if it ever does, there will be so much else going FUBAR with the whole planet that whatever concerns people have about contamination of the waters is small potatos.
Like I said - my little lawyer brain and all. And I recall some confusion before I realized his use of the word “hot” did not mean warm to the touch.
By “vast periods” - I understood him to be discussing the difficulty of predicting geology and engineering within pretty precise standards for even a millenium or 2 - not the much longer half-lives of various materials.
I’ll bow out of this discussion - which is clearly over my head - until I next see my friend and get a clearer picture of his concerns.
I was a little impressed at the vehemance of his reaction. Seeing as his job for the past 20 years or so involved supervising the clean up of heavily polluted sites, I thought he would likely have a relatively informed opinion. And he has always impressed me as a relatively level-headed, tho cynical, guy.
Perhaps he was criticizing YM as a political choice over other alternatives he thought better. I’ll ask him when I next see him.
Dinsdale, I’m sure he’s got some legitimate concerns. Unfortunately the best place I can think of to place such a facility involves storing our wastes under Uluru. Besides not being our country to use - I think that the Aborigines and others would have massive conniption fits if it were even suggested.
If nuclear power would actually do something to reduce our dependence on oil, I think we’d be hearing a lot more about it. Since the primary use for nuclear power is to generate electricity, and only about 2% of our electrical energy is generated from oil, why bother? We use oil primarily for transportation and in the petro-chemical industry (producing plastics, fertilizer, etc.). As hybrids and electric cars become more viable, then we might need to boost our electrical output with nuclear energy, but if we brought 10 new nuclear plants online next year, it probably wouldn’t appreciably affect our oil imports.
Hydrogen as a fuel source has a lot of problems of its own, and isn’t ready for prime time yet. It might be 10 or even 25 years before that technology is ready to help us kick the oil habit. The funny thing, though, is how everyone on both sides of the political aisle decry the escalating price of oil, and hence the escalating price of gasoline. No government program will spur the development of alternative fules like rising gas prices will. The more expensive gas gets, the easier it will be to kick start an alternative fuels industry. Conversely, if we artificially hold down the price of oil or gas, we’ll delay the introduction of those very alternative fuels. But politicians (as well as the American public) want to have their cake and eat it, too.
That’s true. As I said in another thread, high gas prices will probably spur people to buy alternatively-powered vehicles in spite of the lack of infrastructure. When companies see that people are buying the vehicles, they’ll move more quickly to build the infrastructure.
High gas prices aren’t really an issue for me at the moment; but they’ll become an issue in a couple of weeks. For the time being, I do need my (compact) SUV. It’s going to hurt. And until I no longer need the Cherokee, I can’t buy a fuel-efficient car. And when I do no longer need it, I won’t get anything for it. But anyway, nukes…
Battery technology has improved over the last 20 years. I think that as it continues to improve there will be a point where all-electric cars are viable. When that happens more people will buy them, increasing the demand for electricity. So even though we make very little electricity with nuclear power, it makes sense to me to build more plants so that we can meet the need for more power when it comes.
With so much coal available in the U.S., I understand why nuclear power may seem redundant. But I think the larger issue is not energy independence through nuclear power, but the reduction of greenhouse gasses.
Here’s something I’ve wondered: Currently the easiest way of getting hydrogen is by getting it from fossil fuels. If we had more nuclear power plants, would there be enough power available to economically get hydrogen from water through electrolysis?
Uber-environmentalist and inventor of the “Gaia” theory, James Lovelock, has been banging on about nuclear power for a while. However, in the light of the latest warming data, he’s now concluded that it’s gone too far for restitution.
Well, if we are talking about the short term there isn’t anything that is an alternative to oil, but if we are talking long term we have to look to sources that can provide the amount of energy that are greater than our current oil needs.
If we are going to replace oil based technology with new technology something has to provide the energy (if it was fuel cell the hydrogen has to be produced). 47% of the oil we use is automobile fuel. My question is can this amount of energy be replaced with any other known sources other than nuclear power? And as a side point can it done as cleanly and as cheaply?
If you want more electricity, why not just build more conventional power plants? You can bring them online much faster than a nuclear plant, and we aren’t fuel limited for conventional plants… yet.
The argument for nuclear power is probably more closeely aligned with mitigating climate change. Close to 50% of Carbon Dioxide emissions in the US come from industrial use of coal and natural gas, a good chunk of which we could eliminate by converting to nulcear generated electricity.
We also have access to a huge source of energy -offshore windmill farms. This could produce lots of electricity with very little bad effects. Unfortuneately, a well-known Massachusetts senator doesn’t think that doing this is a good idea-it would spoil his ocean views! :smack:
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