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do you support nuclear power

absolutely 0 waste if the U.S. government allows the recycling of waste.

uranium is the only fuel that when used makes more fuel.

it has the lowest carbon emissions then any other source.

there is know terrorist threat its more likely for fort Knox to be robbed the a nuclear power plant.

It isn't anywhere near that simple. Uranium is a commodity. Like any other commodity if it is at a premium its price will rise substantially. If you restrict your nuclear development to conventional reactors, then only about .72% of the world's uranium is usable. Alternative reactor types, such as fast breeders, are considerably more expensive than nominal technology. Due primarily to the fact that they employ more toxic fuel.

A fact that anyone who thinks nuclear power is THE answer should consider: at current consumption rates the available supply of U-235 will last for roughly 85 years. Considering that nuclear energy supplies, at most , 10% of the world's energy that should be a sobering statistic.

Edit: punctuation.

Reactors also have massive build and decommissioning costs and use a huge amount of carbon in their construction, which offsets the nearly zero carbon emission while operating.

Similar amounts of expense in siting and construction could be better used to build geothermal and tidal power stations.

I hope for commercially feasible fusion power. It looks like we are 25-50 years away from that, though.

Dude, its nu-cu-lar, not nuclear. Say it right...

1 kilo of uranimuim produces more energy than 1 ton of coal, and produces no carbon emission during production, yes it will go up in price and we will slowly run out of it but hell it's better than what we are using now and should spend more money on plasma and other power sources with the money from nuclear energy.

Yes im a big supporter of it

I don't think I really need to express an opinion here... (read my profile if you want to know more)

Love nuclear power...but I am the biast. I've got a decent background in it, and time operating with it.

You have to get your **** straight to utilize it properly. The US is currently 30 years behind the technology curve because of PC alarmist nonsense. But it is finite, and can only be a stop gap for a century or so, as pointed out above.

Still, it's a heck of a lot better than the cuttent options.

I actually wrote a report on nuclear power for my grade 12 writer's craft class. I found something very interesting in my research; more radioactive thorium is produced from coal plants, yearly, than from any current nuclear powerplant. The united states needs to shift from the older designs, however, because these ones are becoming A: unstable, and B: extremely inefficient. And on the threat of terrorist attacks: it would be far easier, and far more damaging if terrorists, say, blew out a hydro electric dam. maybe not in the long run, chernobyl is still highly radioactive, but still, just a look at the bianqiao dam (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam) disaster, which took the lives of well over 150 000 people. Overall, the carbon emissions from all plants is negligible, and in most plants, at most, 3 cubic meters of waste are produced per year. Unfortunately, thanks to hippies (not using that derogatorively, just using it as an umbrella term for avid environmentalists/enviroterrorists) places such as Yucca Mountain, a place which would serve as a long term nuclear storage facility (rather than the temporary storage facilities which are currently in use) will not open for a long time yet. Lastly, on the economics of the issue, Nuclear Power is by far the cheapest out of all available power sources in the long term, except for maybe solar and wind, but those do not produce enough energy to compare right now. (i'm not anti-solar etc, i'm just saying that it's currently not enough to satiate the demand for power). And no, it currently is not an infinite resource, BUT, when newer, better plants are created, especially those that can use the far more abundant neptunium, or thorium (which, actually, can be used by newer CANDU reactors) the longevity of nuclear power is indesputable. If we do run out of it, chances are we will have moved on to fusion power plants by that point, which will available in the relatively near future (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER), which will, thanks to its reliance on helium and tritium, which are very abundant or creatable, pretty much solve a lot of energy problems. anyway, wall of text over.

really just do some research and you will see that nuclear power is the cleanest energy source there is, and why does no country recycle nuclear waste. we don't have a shortage of uranium ether, thorium can also be refined to be used in reactors and there's enough to last for 500-600 years.

just Google nuclear power facts
this ones mt favorite argument against the dangers of nuclear power http://russp.org/nucfacts.html

I know this is really a wrong view to have of nuclear power, but I'm always reminded of The Day After when I think about nuclear power.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_After
Edit: Link to what I'm talking about.

I've wondered sometime if that view hasn't held the US back more from advancement and acceptance in the field. I think it ties to the Cold War and MAD. Living in paranoia for that long (and in some cases still) I think, as a collective, when we here Nuclear Power our mind automatically jumps to Nuclear Bomb. Our gut reaction goes to weapon, not resource.

It's also our long, somewhat-enforced love affair with fossil fuels. Those behind the lobbies for oil and coal are not positioned to exploit and benefit from subsidies and tax breaks pertaining to nuclear power... and so they try their darnedest to make sure that nuclear remains demonized and the near-monoply stays in their domain. Given the research power of the US overall, I'm sure that a clean, safe, efficient nuclear plant could be developed, given time, money, and education of the public as to the pros of it, as well as the well-trodden cons. As the technology stands, it's not a good bet, politically, financially, or (to a lesser degree than most believe but still very real) dangerwise.

I thought it was nuk-a-le-ur? At least that's how it's said in San Antonio. I'm all for anything that can give me the chance to glow in the dark and possibly help some of my kids develop mutant like abilities (hahaha).

Nuclear power is clean, highly efficient and produces an amazing amount of energy for the amount of fuel expended.

CaptainCommunsism - has a point too. It would be much harder for terrorists to attack and cause a catastrophic failure in a more "modern" nuclear reactor. While the threat of such a thing is very scary. The level of operational planning/expertise to pull of an attack makes it a pretty much non-viable option. It's much easier to look elsewhere.

Unfortunately the status of our (US) older (darn near ancient) reactors leaves alot to be desired. The Europeans and Japanese lead the way when it comes to the field. Or the N. Koreans (as far as willing to spread the "wealth") if you want to look at those willing to build anywhere, anytime.

AoS

Will you use the fission energy to produce hydrogen fuel for mobile applications?

The UK doesn't have a nuclear industry any more. We sold it to the French. The French nuclear industry is in a bad way -- they've had to shut down a reactor because of badly done welding. Safety is a big concern with nuclear power.

The Japanese have had a lot of trouble with their nuclear industry. There was that accident a few years ago when some untrained guys were carrying around dissolved uranium in buckets and managed to build up a near critical mass. The are safety concerns about the construction of some of their reactors.

I don't know if the Germans use nuclear power. They are very good at engineering.

Kilkrazy wrote:The Japanese have had a lot of trouble with their nuclear industry. There was that accident a few years ago when some untrained guys were carrying around dissolved uranium in buckets and managed to build up a near critical mass. The are safety concerns about the construction of some of their reactors.

If it´s the same accident that I know of that´s not true. The scandal was that untrained temporary workers were exposed to radiaction because they were ordered to clean an empty cooling pool and move spent fuel rods without any kind of protection and being temp guys they were not informed about the risks involved, why bother they come cheap somebody must thought.

M.

It was the one up near Mito City in Tohoku.

In the account I read, they were untrained workers and were handling the materials inappropriately by carrying the stuff in buckets. It sounded very funny except it was also very scary and I think at least one guy died.

Anyhow the details are not as important as the fact that the Japanese, who are so keen on rules and procedures managed to have such a bad accident.

My issue with nuclear power is threefold.
1. No nuclear powerplant in the US (I don't know what the case is elsewhere) has ever been constructed either on time or on budget. The massive cost of matinence on nuclear plants as well as the fact that most nuclear reactors can only be operated safely for about 50 years means the industry relies heavily on government subsidies and produces almost no profit. Add to that that many nuclear plants are long past the date at which they were supposed to be shut down and we come to my second point.
2. Waste and saftey. The US still has no plan to dispose of radioactive waste produced by nuclear power plants. Right now that waste is stored on sight. A terrorist attack or accident would not have to cause a meltdown to endanger innocent lives, they would only have to rupture holding tanks full of decades worth of radioactive waste causing the release of radioactive gas as well as releasing the waste into our ground water where it could spread to populated areas.
3. We don't need it. With advanced in energy efficiency, the way forward should not be to massively increase power supplies but to cut power consumption. With new thermal powered batteries (now nearing 60% energy transfer efficiency) we waste less which in turn creates less pollution without the need for new power plants.
And in regards to fusion power: Get ready for a war over mining rights to the moon. No I am not kidding.

BloodofOrks wrote:

2. Waste and saftey. The US still has no plan to dispose of radioactive waste produced by nuclear power plants. Right now that waste is stored on sight. A terrorist attack or accident would not have to cause a meltdown to endanger innocent lives, they would only have to rupture holding tanks full of decades worth of radioactive waste causing the release of radioactive gas as well as releasing the waste into our ground water where it could spread to populated areas.

Actually, they do have a plan to dispose of it. The Yucca Mountain facility is meant to store all of that stuff beneath the earth, where ground water has not been for thousands of years. unfortunately, the Yucca Mountain facility isn't set to be opened until about 2017, thanks to environmental lobbyists, and coal lobbyists as well. As to the problem of holding tanks, you do have a point, but if the plans for Yucca mountain were accelerated, we'd be fine.

BloodofOrks wrote:
1. No nuclear powerplant in the US (I don't know what the case is elsewhere) has ever been constructed either on time or on budget. The massive cost of matinence on nuclear plants as well as the fact that most nuclear reactors can only be operated safely for about 50 years means the industry relies heavily on government subsidies and produces almost no profit. Add to that that many nuclear plants are long past the date at which they were supposed to be shut down and we come to my second point.

The reason they weren't is because they were of older designs, many newer designs have longer lifetimes, and are practically maintenance free, case and point, the CANDU reactors. These reactors are designed such that the only thing that really has to be done is for people to make sure there isn't an unsafe buildup of steam pressure, other than that, not much is required, other than periodical replacement of uranium pellets. As for "almost no profit," that's pretty much untrue. The total fuel costs for nuclear power are at about "one third of a coal power plant" (http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf02.html) so total operational, construction, and eventual decomissioning (if need be, better reactors etc,) costs of a nuclear power plant, even for those 50 scant years, will be less than that of a coal-fired plant of comparable size, and therefore, in the long run, profits will be higher than that of a coal fired plant, or a gas plant, whose costs will be approximately 5 times that of a nuclear power plant.

BloodofOrks wrote:
3. We don't need it. With advanced in energy efficiency, the way forward should not be to massively increase power supplies but to cut power consumption. With new thermal powered batteries (now nearing 60% energy transfer efficiency) we waste less which in turn creates less pollution without the need for new power plants.
And in regards to fusion power: Get ready for a war over mining rights to the moon. No I am not kidding.

A bit ignorant; Ontario definately does need it; 51% of all power is produced there via nuclear power (http://www.cna.ca/english/index.asp). And as for Thermal batteries, those are currently only being developed for vehicles, rockets, and other things. No large scale plans are currently in developement (which are REQUIRED at present).
In regard to your statement on fusion power... what? Explain please; the moon has exactly what to offer us in that regard?

really why can't they do research into reusing nuclear waste.

it is entirely possible to use 100% of the uranium in a nuclear reaction.

The Yucca mountain facility is unlikely to ever happen, largely due to efforts of citizens and state governments opposing nuclear waste being trucked through their states (the US senate has already killed several bills which would have overridden state laws.). It doesn't matter if the facility is built, unless it can actually be used. The thermal batteries I refer to were invented by Lonnie Johnson (the guy who brought us the super soaker.) Quoting from wikipedia: "Johnson Thermo-Electrochemical Converter System (JTEC), which was listed by Popular Mechanics as one of the top 10 inventions of 2008, and has potential applications including solar power plants and ocean thermal power generation. It converts thermal energy to electrical energy using a non-steam process which works by pushing hydrogen ions through two membranes, with significant advantages over alternative systems, and is claimed to be highly scalable." These can be used on anything which produces heat, even the human body. This technology coupled with increasing efficiency in electrical appliances and updated electrical grids could significantly lower energy needs world-wide.

As far as profit, are you calculating in the initial cost of constructing a nuclear plant? Are you counting the cost of decommissioning these plants when they go out of operation? Also, I live in the American South east. Right now we are in severe drought and the nuclear plants in Georgia use massive amounts of water. This has caused problems.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_new_nuclear_power_plants
As far as the moon, I was referring to it's deposits of helium three which will likely be the fuel of choice for fusion reactors. As helium three is not found in significant quantities on earth, and is difficult to manufacture we will most likely have to go tho the nearest available source: the moon. The Chinese government has publicly stated that one of it's primary long term goals in regard to it's space program would be mining helium three on the lunar surface.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium_3#Extraterrestrial_supplies

Any way... this is a touchy issue and even the experts (of which we can all agree I am not) disagree on how to best move froward. The way I see it, we have limited resources to invest in new energy solutions. Nuclear power just has too many cons to make sense. I would much rather see investment in solar, wing, geothermal etc. which produce little or no waste and are infinitely renewable. You are welcome to disagree with me but my opinion remains unchanged.

The Chinese government has publicly stated that one of it's primary long term goals in regard to it's space program would be mining helium three on the lunar surface.

That´s a faithful wish as it wouldn´t be economicaly viable unless huge advances in rocket tech allow for cheaper space launches and at that point probably we´ll have cheaper alternatives on Earth.

M.

Kilkrazy wrote:It was the one up near Mito City in Tohoku.

In the account I read, they were untrained workers and were handling the materials inappropriately by carrying the stuff in buckets. It sounded very funny except it was also very scary and I think at least one guy died.

Anyhow the details are not as important as the fact that the Japanese, who are so keen on rules and procedures managed to have such a bad accident.

My bad, I was thinking power plants and you said industry as pointed here.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/19990930/aponline222555_000.htm

The rules and not following them is something common to any human activity all over the world. How many planes had an accident because somebody in charge decided to skip the manual? How many ships sunk? Discos were the exit doors were blockaded. Some people have a very cavalier actitude to procedures especialy if said procedures are expensive to follow.

M.

I'm all for it and wish the idiots here in Australia (the Labor party) would stop rejecting it out of hand.

Sure wind and solar may pick up in the future but if you want to do reliable, always available, and 10 times cheaper than the 2 sources mentioned (but still more expensive than coal) to replace cola and oil fired power stations then nuclear is the only choice into the forseeable future (20-30 years).

Waaagh_Gonads wrote:Sure wind and solar may pick up in the future but if you want to do reliable, always available, and 10 times cheaper than the 2 sources mentioned (but still more expensive than coal) to replace cola and oil fired power stations then nuclear is the only choice into the forseeable future (20-30 years).

My goodness, what are they putting in the Coke and Pepsi down there?

Yucca Mountain ran into the problem that the rock is more permeable than thought due to unknown cracks or channels running though it. This allows water to seep down into and through the proposed burial caves in a matter of decades or years rather than centuries.

The other problem is that no-one has managed to invent a really stable storage method for high level waste. Vitirification was supposed to do this job, and turns out not to be as stable and long-lasting as is really needed.

The problem with high-level waste is that it is highly radioactive, chemically very poisonous and take hundreds or thousands of years to decay into something more benign. It really does need to be stored very safely indeed.