Nuclear Power, What say you?

[Bennyboy]

I am against it for a cost, subsidy basis, never mind the waste, the other things, I think they are too expensive to build, to run and are targets for terrorism by the air.

Obama gives 8 billion and that won't even cover the cost of one plant...

[timeforpeace]

1. This is great leadership by President Obama. It's inevitable so let's get started, 30 years late.

[ddeclue]

16. First meaningful thing he's done in months..

[packerbacker53]

214. What about the waste

Until we figure out what to do with the old" glow in the dark" proceed with caution.

[ddeclue]

227. Beats the hell out of the waste that we generate every day from coal fired power plants.

Not afraid of nuclear waste - I'm afraid of coal power and natural gas power.

[MadHound]

19. No, actually it isn't inevitable.

If it wasn't for the government providing huge subsidies for the nuclear industry there simply wouldn't be one. The cost factor is too large for nuclear to make it in the free market on its own, thus we the people pay for it with our tax dollars.

Meanwhile things like wind and solar, with very, very little government assistance, have now developed to the point where they are cheaper than nuclear. Since that is the case, why should we be forced to adapt the more expensive method of generating electricity?

The fact of the matter is that in this new age, where we need to get off of solar and fossil fuels, we should adapt a completely new energy generation paradigm. Instead of having centralized power generation, which is costly and generates lots of pollution, we need to go decentralized power generation, where each house becomes a power plant. Of course this would put those invested in centralized power generation out of business, so they are using their billions to buy Congress and the WH in order to keep this country on the path to energy and environmental self destruction.

This isn't inevitable, not if we the people take charge. Nor is this great leadership by Obama, rather it is simply another example of this administration being just like all the others, nothing but a corporate whore.

[timeforpeace]

79. Those terrible snowstorms which had little wind but days of cold and overcast didn't make a little

light go on in your head about the inevitable failings of wind and solar?

[MadHound]

118. And if we were operating on a decentralized power generation system combined with a smart grid

We could still power this country, in spite of snow and overcast Cold really, really doesn't matter that much, and bonus, winter winds to generate more energy:think:

The wind is always blowing, the sun is always shining somewhere in this country. With decentralized power generation and a smart grid, we can transfer power from the place that is producing the excess to where it is needed. Not to mention that you can throw a twenty four hour battery bank into most buildings.

To give you an example, I live in the Midwest, let's say you live on the East coast. When those big snowstorms came rolling from west to east across this country while I'm getting hammered with snow and socked in overcast, you're still sunny and nice. Your part of the grid is generating more power than you need locally so you ship it off to the Midwest. The front moves on, things are clear and sunny here while you're getting clobbered. So I'm generating excess energy and shipping it back east. Whoa, and if we get places like the desert southwest involved, and the west coast, yeah, I think we can deal with winter, or any other season.

If you want, I go into a little more detail in my post 115 below, actual numbers and stuff.

[JDPriestly]

241. Sunny and 80 degrees Fahrenheit here in Southern Ca today and yesterday.

We will have a few days of rain and some cold, but there is plenty of sun to provide energy for many, many homes, businesses and cars -- if we just had solar materials on the roofs of our homes and maybe some plants in the deserts around here. Then there is lots of sun in Arizona, New Mexico, even in Texas, Nevada. We have huge expanses of very sunny areas, and the solar energy technology will improve as we use it more. Let's go solar. They were fueling a house around MIT in Massachusetts way back in 1974 -- most days. The technology is much better now. Solar is popular in Germany -- and that is a cold rainy even snowy climate. So, solar is not a problem just because of an occasional snowstorm. Some natural gas can be used in conjunction with it -- in small quantities and on occasion if needed.

Average number of days of sunshine in a few American cities:

New York, NY ... 234
Los Angeles, CA ... 263
Chicago, IL ... 189
Phoenix, AZ ... 296
Yuma, AZ ... 313 - (Sunniest place on Earth)
Las Vegas, NV ... 293
Miami, FL ... 250
Seattle, WA ... 164
Honolulu, HI ... 270
Minneapolis, MN ... 197
Anchorage, AK ... 125

Read more: http://www.city-data.com/forum/general-u-s/634940-days-sunshine-year-do-you-prefer.html#ixzz0fsimaII1

Seattle and Anchorage see the least sun, but even there you have close to sun one half or more than one half of the days of the year.

Places like Yuma, AZ (larger area of the Sonora and adjacent deserts than you would believe) and L.A. and Las Vegas really don't need nuclear energy. We need investment in solar energy. It is very feasible here.

[JDPriestly]

238. I'm with you, Madhound.

[KittyWampus]

2. not a fan. Choosing between the two "evils" of coal and nuclear, I opt for coal.

[TheWraith]

20. Are you serious?

Coal kills 70,000 people a year in the United States. Civilian nuclear power has never killed a single one. Not to mention coal is killing our planet.

[KittyWampus]

29. I disagree with your assertion that nuclear power plants haven't killed a single person.

[TheWraith]

32. Disagree if you like, but the facts are on my side.

Civilian nuclear power has never killed anyone in the US. Even military nuclear facilities and reactors haven't killed one one hundredth as many people as die every year from coal in this country.

[Donnachaidh]

78. and how many people in the Chernobyl area are STILL suffering?

I'd advise you to find a copy of the documentary Chernobyl Heart before you start cheerleading about how SAFE nuclear power is.

How many died from radiation problems after Chernobyl? How much radiation STILL pollutes the area around the reactor?

[verges]

85. Chernobyl is not in the US.

The USSR's safety standards were incredibly low.

[Donnachaidh]

86. and you really think there is NO possibility of that happening here?

If so, I have a bridge I know you'll love... :eyes:

[verges]

89. American standars are much higher.

An accident is remotely possible, but highly unlikely. The track record of both civilian and military reactors to date in incredibly good.

[Donnachaidh]

91. THREE MILE ISLAND.

standards? yeah, right.

[Confusious]

110. Actually, very little radiation was released

an average was 30mrems or less while your regular dosage from the earth trying to kill you is 300mrems.

Safety systems worked, everyone OK.

[struggle4progress]

121. mrem is not a measurement of radioactivity release. in fact, it's not a measured unit of any sort

[Confusious]

134. Really?

All the science classes I took says it exists.

this page says the millirem exists.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%B6ntgen_equivalent_man

As far as AMOUNT of release, I wasn't talking about that. I was talking about the dose people got.

[struggle4progress]

141. I do not wish to argue whether mrem "exists" - I merely want to point out it is never measured and

that by definition it cannot be measured: it is calculated and inferred

It is intended as a crude surrogate for a unitary scale of biological dose, incorporating various different radiation types -- and so it is not really a direct physical quantity. It may have its uses, if not taken too seriously

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

144. Well now that's a specious argument.

Ridiculous even.

[struggle4progress]

151. The question was whether "much" radiation was released at TMI. Respondent provided mrem figures.

I pointed out radiation releases are not quantified by mrems. Respondent attempted to turn discussion into whether mrems "existed." I demurred.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

152. The unit's fine, and you pretended otherwise.

You're trying to walk it back, but we all know how silly you're being.

[struggle4progress]

160. Whether the unit is "fine" or not depends upon its use. In a laboratory accident, where

one has a good grasp of the geometry and duration of exposure, it may be a crude but useful indicator of risk

When material is released in a city environment, and one wants to estimate exposures with a large number of simplifying assumptions about unmeasured features, including plume dispersion rates and how diluted the plumes were when inhaled, the usefulness of the notion depends more on exactly how it is used: the typical PR use is to produce very crude average exposure estimates to argue no one could possibly have been injured -- which rather resembles arguing that no one can possibly be injured when a gun is fired into a crowd, since the average lead concentration in the air remains below regulatory limits

[Name removed]

240. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Confusious]

159. There was no question

There was a statement of fact that people within 30 miles of the plant got an average 30mrem of radiation, the regular dosage from the earth is 300mrem.

[Confusious]

149. Alot of things in science are

Never measured and are calculated and inferred. Does that mean all of them should be ignored and dismissed?

try again.

[Pavulon]

113. Not a single dead body from that incident. Nor any civilian reactor in the US

studies back that. Studies conducted by universities, not agenda groups.

[Donnachaidh]

184. so as long as there are no visible bodies, it's okay?

And university studies after the fact does not trump technicians who were THERE and saw how very VERY close they came to a massive fuck up. Revisionist history can and does get used in those studies you speak of.

You folks are so willing to put not only your own lives but the lives of your children and grandchildren in the hands of for-profit corporations? Unbelievably stupid.

[Merchant Marine]

145. Chernobyl was a graphite-moderated reactor with no containment vessel

No western reactor has ever used a graphite moderator or been built without a containment vessel. Do some research on the design flaws of the Chernobyl plant. If they had shelled out for a containment vessel there would have been no spread of radioactive materials beyond the plant.

3 Mile Island was caused by maintenance mistakenly leaving the secondary cooling valves closed when they shut down the primaries for maintenance- this caused a partial meltdown and steam buildup that was released through a faulty blowoff valve. Today computer valve monitoring and remote actuation makes this scenario impossible.

[Merchant Marine]

146. You probably think Chernobyl was a nuclear explosion...

n/t

[immoderate]

154. If you do a search, you'll find deaths from Three Mile Island

IIRC, there are quite a number of deaths, not to mention the usual birth defects, miscarriages, etc., downwind of TMI. The studies I saw were convincing.

--imm

[JDPriestly]

242. Have you heard of Santa Susannah in the SImi Hills here in California?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Susana_Field_Laboratory

Throughout the years, approximately ten low-power nuclear reactors operated at SSFL, in addition to several "critical facilities": a sodium burn pit in which sodium-coated objects were burned in an open pit; a plutonium fuel fabrication facility; a uranium carbide fuel fabrication facility; and purportedly the largest "Hot Lab" facility in the United States at the time. (A Hot Lab is a facility used for remotely cutting up irradiated nuclear fuel.) Irradiated nuclear fuel from other Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and Department of Energy (DOE) facilities from around the country were shipped to SSFL to be decladded and examined.
. . . .

At least four of the ten nuclear reactors suffered accidents. The AE6 reactor experienced a release of fission gases in March 1959, the SRE experienced a power excursion and partial meltdown in July 1959; the SNAP8ER in 1964 experienced damage to 80% of its fuel; and the SNAP8DR in 1969 experienced similar damage to one-third of its fuel. (see "Reactor accident sources" below).

. . . .

In October 2006, the Santa Susana Field Laboratory Advisory Panel, made up of independent scientists and researchers from around the United States, concluded that contamination at the facility resulted in between 0 and 1,800 cancer deaths (the average estimate was 300 deaths). The report also concluded that the SRE meltdown caused the release of more than 458 times the amount of radiation released at Three Mile Island.<1>
. . . . More at link above

[Statistical]

31. You are misinformed. Coal plants emit more radiation than nuclear plants.

They also disperse it all over the atmosphere. That doesn't even get into the mercury, arsenic, and heavy metals spewed into air, earth, and water.

Coal is literally pure death. It has killed more people than every other form of power combined.

[TheWraith]

33. "Coal is literally pure death. It has killed more people than every other form of power combined."

Well put.

[KittyWampus]

43. I most certainly am not "misinformed". I prefer Renewables & investing in technological innovations.

When it comes to bridging the gap to a Green Economy, I prefer the evils of Coal to those of Nuclear.

That doesn't mean I am not aware of the problems.

[Statistical]

49. Then you are intentionally choosing the far more lethal form of power.

[KittyWampus]

68. No, I'd choose not to invest massive amounts of money in another addiction.

[Jax]

239. cryingshame usually does.

nailed Statistical.

Alyce

[struggle4progress]

123. coal plants do not "emit more radiation than nuclear plants." there are many serious problems with

the worldwide use of coal, but radioactivity release is not among them

[Statistical]

125. You sure about that?

Radioactive isotopes including uranium, thorium, potassium-40, Rubidium-87 are found in coal ore.

Coal plants don't burn 100% pure coal they should be called "mostly core plants" and the mixture they burn while mostly coal also contains radioactive isotopes, heavy metals, mercury, and other horrible stuff. In order for coal to be economical entire veins of coal are extracted and burned whole. There is no work done to remove "non coal parts". It would be far too costly and make coal uneconomical.

Now most of those radioactive isotopes and toxic heavy metals ends up in the ultra lethal fly ash (of which millions of tons are produced each year) however a substantial portion of that gets atomized in the furnace and ejected into the atmosphere where it joins air currents and gets spread over thousands of miles.

Coal plants release radiation. I know it is shocking but true.

Not only due coal plants release radiation they release 100x as much as nuclear power plants do.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste

[struggle4progress]

137. I've done the calculations and posted results here repeatedly. Coal contains traces

of U and Th, most of which is trapped in flyash

Integrated worldwide, of course, the tonnage totals from coal sound impressive -- until you realize that natural U is not terribly radioactive, and so the atmospheric releases are only of the order of 2600 Ci in natural U and Th and daughter products. There may, of course, be 65 times that much in retained flyash, but the flyash (according to USGS measurements) is typically only as radioactive as common shales. If you examine worldwide releases, and learn anything about the spiky irregular radiation releases from nuclear plants, you will find that every year there are a number of individual nuclear plants with radioactive releases approximately of the order of the atmospheric radiation releases from all world coal combustion combined. Then, of course, are the historical releases associated with mining U, fuel fabrication, reprocessing, and the occasional catastrophic accident: Chernobyl released enormous amounts of radioactivity, in comparison to historical global coal consumption

Mara Hvistendahl is a journalist, whose competence to discuss these issues carefully may be gauged by the editors' note to her article: she originally wrote, for example, "In fact, fly ash -- a by-product from burning coal for power -- and other coal waste contains up to 100 times more radiation than nuclear waste" which is pure horseshit. The editor's correction, unfortunately, isn't much better

[Confusious]

139. I think I prefer the word of the editor of Scientific American

Then a nameless person on the internet, with no links and no data.

You're a Nigerian prince? sure I'll send you 10 thousand dollars! pulease.

[struggle4progress]

142. Vide infra #140

[Confusious]

135. What do you do, that you don't know this stuff?

Google "radioactive release coal" and it's the first page that comes up.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste

[struggle4progress]

140. Can you do arithmetic?

Lets go through the math
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=229124&mesg_id=229294

After you check those numbers, go look at a number of years worth of tritium release data for US power plants. The data are spiky: you will, however, find that a release by a single facility of order 2500 Ci is not at all uncommon

Then you might look at the history of CANDU reactor releases

Finally, you might want top compare the results to (say) Chernobyl releases

Coal has, of course, done enormous damage to the environment. But historical radiological releases from coal are dwarfed by the historical radiological releases associated with nuclear power

[Confusious]

158. The only problem with your calculations

Which I perused, was that it did not include Radon

Table 9-3. Average Annual Radionuclide Emissions per Operating
Boiler Unit and per Billion Kilowatt-Hour Electricity Generated


Radionuclide............................mCi/billion KWh

Rn-220......................................1.1 x 10^2 = 110

Rn-222......................................2.0 x 10^2 = 220

U-238........................................1.5 x 10^0 = 1.5

U-234........................................1.5 x 10^0 = 1.5


The radiation release from Radon 220 and Radon 222 is 110 times that of the uranium isotopes.

There are others which are worse then just uranium:

Ra-226......................................1.2 x 10^0 = 1.2

Po-218......................................3.8 x 10^0 = 3.8

Pb-214......................................3.8 x 10^0 = 3.8

Po-214.....................................3.8 x 10^0 = 3.8

Pb-210.....................................3.8 x 10^0 = 3.8

Po-210.....................................3.8 x 10^0 = 3.8

Po-216.....................................2.4 x 10^0 = 2.4

Pb-212.....................................2.4 x 10^0 = 2.4

K-40........................................5.3 x 10^0 = 5.3



Data from this report:

http://www.epa.gov/ttn/caaa/t3/reports/eurtc1.pdf

[struggle4progress]

170. You didn't understand the secular equilibrium argument: given a natural mixture of radioisotopes

of an element and its decay daughters in secular equilibrium, the total radioactivity of the top isotopic mixture of an element together with its daughter compounds can't exceed the activity of the top isotopic mixture times the length of the longest decay chain. This is because the daughters at each stage, if they all decay, must decay in combination at the rate of the immediate parent or (in the case of partially re-entrant chains) at the combined rates of the various parents, whereas if some are stable the total decay rate for the daughters will be less than the rate of the parent or combined rates of the parents. The path from U to Pb can't involve more than 7 or 8 alpha emissions, so I took the activity of natural U and multiplied by 10

<on edit: perhaps I should have used a factor of 14 or 15>
<on edit: practically, however, the factor of ten may be reasonably realistic for exposure purposes, since given the low concentrations, the beta emittors are likely to be trapped in a solid matrix and may not contribute much to surface radioactivity measurements>

[Confusious]

177. Perhaps you're thinking of another argument

Secular equilibrium:

In nuclear physics, secular equilibrium is a situation in which the quantity of a radioactive isotope remains constant because its production rate (due, e.g., to decay of a parent isotope) is equal to its decay rate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secular_equilibrium

easy enough, don't see how it applies though. We're not talking about the laboratory, or a pure element.

"the total radioactivity of the top isotopic mixture of an element together with its daughter compounds can't exceed the activity of the top isotopic mixture times the length of the longest decay chain."

I would have to point out this and that, I don't even want to bother. exceed the activity?

"The path from U to Pb can't involve more than 7 or 8 alpha emissions, so I took the activity of natural U and multiplied by 10"

Try 11 alpha, 9 beta minus for U238, which is "natural U."


All together, your post made no sense.

[struggle4progress]

179. Hmm. Suppose we start with one isotope. It decays at a certain rate.

After a sufficiently long time, secular equilibrium holds. At that point, as I pointed out, the total radioactivity of the parent and its daughters is bounded above by the length of the longest decay chain. Before secular equilibrium is reached, relative proportions are still changing along the chain, but the overall upper bound must still be good

The most important decay chain from U238 ends at Pb206: there's no way to insert 11 alpha decays between these, since the nucleon difference is 238 - 206 = 32 < 4*11 = 44

Nor is U238 natural U: natural U is a mixture of mostly 234, 235, and 238. But the same argument will work: if one has activities a234, a235, a238 for the isotopes in the natural mixture, after sufficiently long time, each isotope is in secular equilibrium with its daughters, so the prior inequality and elementary addition of inequalities shows the total radioactivity of the sample is bounded above by the activity of the natural uranium times the length of the longest decay chain for each isotope

Nothing more than high school arithmetic is required to understand this argument

[Confusious]

211. I still don't see the point of talking about secular EQ

You have no idea where all the isotopes came from, or when they were created.

"The most important decay chain from U238 ends at Pb206: there's no way to insert 11 alpha decays between these, since the nucleon difference is 238 - 206 = 32 < 4*11 = 44"

There is is a table at the page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium-238

Decay doesn't happen in a straight line. Beta minus emission causes neutrons to be converted to protons.

"Nor is U238 natural U: natural U is a mixture of mostly 234, 235, and 238. But the same argument will work: if one has activities a234, a235, a238 for the isotopes in the natural mixture, after sufficiently long time, each isotope is in secular equilibrium with its daughters, so the prior inequality and elementary addition of inequalities shows the total radioactivity of the sample is bounded above by the activity of the natural uranium times the length of the longest decay chain for each isotope"

That only applies to a closed system over the decay life of U238 which is 99.25% of uranium.

[struggle4progress]

228. Same argument works for branched chains: again, just high school manipulation of inequalities;

argument similarly works whether you start with U238 or a mixture of U234, U235, and U238, again, just high school manipulation of inequalities; and it gives an upper bound. As beta decay doesn't change the number of nucleons, there's still no possible chain from U238 to Pb206 with 11 alpha decays, regardless of the number of beta decays

If you're discussing trace minerals in bulk native coal, which is rather solid and inert, stuff will mainly remain in situ; this comment applies also to radon, in both coal and fly ash:

Radon Emissions From a High Volume Coal Fly Ash Structural Fill Site
Michael E. Sutton, Thomas Schmaltz, E. Cheri Miller, Kathy J. Harper
2001 International Ash Utilization Symposium, Center for Applied Energy Research, University of Kentucky, Paper #91. Copyright is held by the Authors.
http://www.flyash.info
... Based on a 1991 study of fly ash at TVA’s Shawnee, Bull Run, and John Sevier Fossil Plants , average Radon flux (a measure of the rate of flow of Radon gas across a surface) for in situ Bull Run fly ash was 0.098 pCi/m2s while average environmental Radon flux was 0.207 pCi/ m2s. Combining data from all three plants yielded an average Radon flux of 0.13 pCi/ m2s from fly ash and an average flux of 0.33 pCi/ m2s from environmental soil. The average radium concentration was 2.35 pCi/g for fly ash but only 0.66 pCi/g for soil, indicating that, although fly ash contains more radium than environmental soil, it emits much less Radon. Thus based on this study, a fly ash fill may have over 3.5 times as much radium as soil, but fly ash has a Radon flux of less than 40 percent that of the soil in adjacent areas ... www.flyash.info/2001/envben2/91sutton.pdf

There might be multiple physical and chemical reasons for this relatively reduced radon emission from fly ash: the fly ash particles themselves resemble sintered ceramic material, and trace amounts of parent isotopes are likely to be held in matrix from which a heavy gas with short lifetime is unlikely to diffuse; moreover, Rn (despite its "nobility") can form compounds, including oxides, so perhaps transmutation converts some stable oxides of the parents into relatively stable oxides of the short-lived daughters

[Umbral]

173. I seem to recall a chemistry prof. saying that the radioactive elements in coal are retained...

in the ash and not dispersed into the atmosphere. He also mentioned that there was enough of it present to power a nuclear generator capable of powering the coal fired facility with plenty leftover to put on the grid. Not that they do that, they prefer to turn the ash into cinder blocks - you know, the stuff used to build houses and what not.

[Confusious]

178. The EPA says different.

http://www.epa.gov/ttn/caaa/t3/reports/eurtc1.pdf

[Statistical]

202. MEH. What does the EPA know anyways? I trust peoplez on the intertubes over the EPA.

Just in case /sarcasm

[gratuitous]

3. Nope

And for all the reasons you stated. Just sitting here downriver from Hanford, waiting for the inevitable day when the Columbia River no longer supports life due to radiation leaching into the river from the waste buried there.

[gateley]

14. I can't tell you how many people I know from the Hanford area who developed

cancer -- and almost epidemic thyroid problems.

[bbinacan]

4. I like it. n/t

[invictus]

5. No. We need to develop renewable energy (wind, solar, geothermal, etc.).

[DevinKline]

169. +1, and I'll add

that we need to stop using so damn much power! Green roofs, LED lighting (which is admittedly not there yet, but it is close), halting population growth, and less dependence on our TVs, computers, etc. for entertainment are all off-the-top-of-my-head ways to get there.

[Vincardog]

I say there is nothing clean about nuclear. Given a choice between Nuke and coal I choose Solar Wind...

Geo thermal and tidal.

[gateley]

10. Agree -- and even though I've heard some negative things about those

approaches (seems like everything has a potential negative), they're much more gentle and natural, at least from my uneducated standpoint.

Let's work WITH the planet, not try to conquer and 'tame' it.

[Statistical]

39. Nuclear is natural.

The substantial amount of fissionable material in the earths core (slowly turning inert) is what hes kept our core Molten despite other planets like Mars going cold thousands of years ago.

It is that geothermal reactor which produces the earths magnetic fields and ironically keeps us from being bombarded by lethal amounts of solar radiation.

[KittyWampus]

48. thunderous applause! The money wasted on Nuclear could go into Green Technology

and retrofitting.

[Confusious]

109. One of which no one is using at all right now

for commercial power, geothermal costs more to start up, solar takes a lot of ground space and only has a base load of 20% and the wind doesn't blow all the time.

Hmmm, grubs, cave. Me like.

[quinnox]

6. Lets just irradiate everything

No, nuclear power is not the answer. And when the next nuclear meltdown happens (and it will) then all the happy talk about nuclear power being the solution for the future will die down lighting fast.

[Blue_In_AK]

7. I'm really not thrilled about it,

but my opinion doesn't seem to carry much weight. They're going to do what they're going to do. I'm really about ready to give up and just enjoy what's left of my life sans politics.

[gateley]

8. Against it regardless of the cost -- the waste scares the hell out of me.

We should know by now that our planet is an intertwined ecosystem. We can't stash something so lethal and expect it to 'behave' and not migrate.

[Donnachaidh]

15. the potential for f*ckups both accidental and on purpose scare the crap out of me

Jesus -- one of the buildings put up in Atlanta for the Olympics SANK 6 inches or more, because of stupidity. And he thinks a nuclear power plant in Georgia is going to be safe?????

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[gateley]

61. Yes -- the potential for disaster is there, regardless of how we try to

make sure it's as safe as can be.

Someone presented the argument that we don't have time to do the wind/solar route -- but why not? It's not as though it doesn't take time to pursue nuclear or coal energy. And what's with the US, anyway? I think it was Rachel who showed that China is going to have high speed trains zipping all over the country in 4 years, we will have one route completed.

Can't we just go hell bent for leather on this? What is our fucking problem? Jeez!

[GoCubsGo]

198. What is our problem?

Try the republican-controlled media, that has whipped the country into a frenzy over the deficit. People are afraid of spending any money, because they have been told that all of a sudden, it's really, really bad to have deficits. Think of the grandchildren!!! OMG!! Don't you know it's more important that the precious grandchildren not be left with a deficit, than it is that they not be left with a safe, clean and efficient source of energy? Can't have no socialist high-speed rail or green energy, because it costs too much.

[gateley]

222. Yeah, the question was pretty much rhetorical, but you're right, of course. nt

[Rebubula]

192. Actually

Georgia already has 2 that have been online and safe for more than 2 decades.


Thanks for playing....

[GoCubsGo]

196. Yes.

They are in the same damn spot where the new one is to be built.

[GoCubsGo]

195. There is already a nuclear plant where the new one is to be built.

Look up "Plant Vogtle." It's right across the border from the Savannah River Site, which has five nuclear production reactors, which have been in place for sixty years. None of these sank into the ground.

BTW, Atlanta is over a hundred miles away from where this new plant is going to be built. The underlying geology is completely different.

[TheWraith]

27. The waste shouldn't scare you.

For starters, nature has been storing nuclear waste for thousands of years without our help. Look up the Oklo natural reactors. Second, the coal plants that we need to replace are currently dumping 18 tons per year of uranium and thorium straight into the environment--and that's PER PLANT. Now compare that to 30 tons of spent fuel rods out of a nuclear plant, 97% of which can be recycled back into usable fuel, and all of which is safely sequestered away from the environment.

We need to replace coal, and we need to do it now. We can't afford to wait another 30 years, like we did after the first time the fossil fuel industry lead a crusade against nuclear.

[gateley]

58. I'm still scared -- we're "messing with Mother Nature" by doing whatever we

do to get it up and running, and producing the waste which we DO know is harmful. It's the "safely sequestered away from the environment" that gives me the most concern. There's only so much planet, and we've fouled so much of it already.

The "clean coal" (I know) advocates present a similar argument for their opinions.

This all looks good on paper, but speak to the people who have been affected by our manipulation of both of these elements (if elements is the correct word).

I'll look up Oklo natural reactors because I may have responded differently had I actually checked it out :7.

[Statistical]

75. Well bad news is the geothermal reactor will eventually run out of fuel in ....

and then the core will go cold and earth will lose its magnetic field
When it does the earth will no longer protected by lethal solar radiation.

Good news is we got about 100 million years (maybe a billion scientists aren't exactly sure).

[immoderate]

175. Help me out here.

You can take 30 tons of spent fuel rods, and turn them into 29 tons of fuel? How? And what do you do with that waste when they're spent? What's "sequestered?"

--imm

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

9. Actually, it's 18.5 billion.

Actually, it's a loan guarantee.

Actually, it'll cover two plants.

Actually, I'm not really expecting you to pay attention anyway.

[LisaM]

I'm against it. But I'm also against outsourcing jobs,

war, privatizing schools, faith-based intitiatives, regressive taxes, and for-profit health care. So I don't expect much at this point.

[amborin]

11. not a fan

[Donnachaidh]

12. having had family members who worked in the nuclear biz during 3 mile island

I can only cringe and hope they don't put the POS anywhere near where I live right now. Karen Silkwood is literally SPINNING in her grave.

[Rebubula]

193. You...

...of course know that was over 30 years ago.

Technology and safety standards have improved significantly.

Several people were killed at a WHO concert many years back....does that mean it is still not safe to see the WHO? (other than the fact that they started sucking years ago...)

[JDPriestly]

243. Are you familiar with the Santa Susannah disaster in Simi Valley in S. California?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Susana_Field_Laboratory

In October 2006, the Santa Susana Field Laboratory Advisory Panel, made up of independent scientists and researchers from around the United States, concluded that contamination at the facility resulted in between 0 and 1,800 cancer deaths (the average estimate was 300 deaths). The report also concluded that the SRE meltdown caused the release of more than 458 times the amount of radiation released at Three Mile Island.<1>

We are more sophisticated today. And today we have the money and political organization to insure the safety of these facilities. But will our grandchildren have the money and political organization to spend on safeguarding nuclear sites and waste 100 years from now? That's the question. We take a very high standard of living for granted. Should we lose the ability to maintain that standard of living, we would lose the ability to safely maintain the nuclear sites and the nuclear waste. That is the problem. We are gambling with the futures of our grandchildren and their grandchildren when we go nuclear. We cannot do that.

People talk about the problems of leaving our national debt to our grandchildren. Leaving a national safety hazard to our grandchildren, leaving nuclear sites and materials for them to clean up, would be much, much worse. We cannot go nuclear. We just cannot afford it. Our grandchildren cannot afford it.

[Mumblefratz]

13. Nuclear energy in conjunction with a decent electric car ...

Is the only realistic solution to the upcoming peak oil problem. Of course there are safety and disposal issues but they are technically solvable.

Wouldn't you like to get the $1 billion dollar a day oil monkey off our back?

[jpak]

21. US reactors consume 62 million lbs of yellowcake each year - the US produces only 2 million lbs/yr

That's a bigger monkey

try again

[TheWraith]

23. No, it's not. There's an ample supply of uranium if we want it.

And regardless I'd rather be buying from Canada than Saudi Arabia.

[jpak]

25. If we want to buy it from someone else - & oh yeah, the US was NEVER uranium self-sufficient

but we are wind and solar and hydro and and biomass and geothermal self-sufficient.

yup

[TheWraith]

30. Actually we can produce more than enough uranium by seawater leaching.

Literally filtering uranium and other heavy metals out of the ocean using nanomaterials. The Japanese have already been doing it for a few years.

[jpak]

37. LOL! the concentration of uranium in seawater is 3.3 micrograms per liter

The US alone would have to process >7000 cubic kilometers of seawater per year to satisfy its current uranium requirements - that's more than 10 times the annual discharge of the Mississippi River or ~100 times the volume of Chesapeake Bay.

And nobody has ever extracted more than a few grams of uranium from seawater - let alone the ~25,000 metric tons of uranium oxide consumed by US reactors each year.

And nobody has verified the claims of those Japanese researchers.

If people wish to delude themselves - that's perfectly OK - it's a free country....

on edit

:rofl:

:evilgrin:

[struggle4progress]

128. not quite. there have been limited feasibility studies, suggesting that under optimal

conditions one might hope for 1.5 g U per kg of polymeric adsorbent fiber, allowing 30 days for absorption

This is natural U, not enriched. A GW of electricity for a year requires something like 200000 kg natural U before enrichment. Thus, crudely, we're talking about 13000 metric tonnes of fiber that must be manufactured, carried to sea and placed, left a month, recovered and drained, carried back to land, and processed to recover the U. The U must then be converted to UF6 and enriched, then processed into fuel, used, and the waste must be disposed

Tiny multiyear projects, recovering perhaps a total of 1 kg U from seawater over a decade, have been performed, but nobody has shown that the process can be economically self-sustaining

[KittyWampus]

50. all of which must be mined. Processed. Disposed of.

[Statistical]

34. The US only produces 2 million lb BECAUSE WE DON'T NEED MORE.

Why would you produce Uranium that nobody needs or wants?

Why don't we need uranium? Why I am glad you asked because for last decade we have been fueling nuclear reactors with cold war era bomb material.

So which makes more sense.

Running a reactor on recycled bombs

OR

digging up more fresh raw uranium while leaving all the bombs (we don't need) lying around.

It's called MOX
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOX_fuel

[jpak]

42. Ummm...we NEED 62 million lbs per year to run our reactors, we PRODUCE only 2 million lbs/yr

math literacy

[Statistical]

47. We only need 2 M RAW URANIUM becuase MOX from nuclear stockpile makes up the difference.

[jpak]

52. That's just plain wrong - MOX is Mixed OXide fuel (U and Pu) and there are NO US MOX reactors

nope

statistical reality

[Statistical]

57. Stand corrected I mixed up MOX with weapons grade program...

however weapons grade material is being reprocessed into fuel and burned in US reactors. It makes up the majority of civilian nuclear fuel supply for last decade.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf13.html

* Weapons-grade uranium and plutonium surplus to military requirements in the USA and Russia is being made available for use as civil fuel.
* Weapons-grade uranium is highly enriched, to over 90% U-235 (the fissile isotope). Weapons-grade plutonium has over 93% Pu-239 and can be used, like reactor-grade plutonium, in fuel for electricity production.
* Highly-enriched uranium from weapons stockpiles is displacing some 10,600 tonnes of U3O8 production from mines each year, and meets about 13% of world reactor requirements.

The conversion of surplus warheads is displacing 10,600 tons of U3O8.

Given both the US and Russia want to reduce the arsenal it simply makes more sense to burnup weapons grade material than mine virgin uranium.

[jpak]

65. 13% of world reactor requirements is not a "majority"

again, math literacy

[Statistical]

67. I don't think your original post was about the world it was about THE UNITED STATES.

Weapons Grade Conversion program makes up the MAJORITY of civilian fuel supply in THE UNITED STATES.
That is why (try to follow along) URANIUM MINING is substantially reduced IN THE UNITED STATES.

With govt programs converting weapons into reactor fuel there simply is very little demand for raw uranium. Weapons grade uranium is very concentrated 90%+ compared to about 3% in reactor fuel so when HEU is cut down to LEU it increases supply by about 30x fold. 1 ton of HEU = 30 tons of reactor fuel.

We have tens of thousands of tons of bomb material to dispose of from Cold War stockpiles which converts to hundreds of thousands of tons of reactor fuel when diluted back down to 3% enrichment.

Once bomb material runs out the US has nearly half a million tons of uranium supply
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf75.html

That is just economic supply at $130 per ton. Doubling price of Uranium would increase economic supplies substantially while only increasing electricity costs by couple percent.

[jpak]

180. ummm....the US uses 25,000 metric tonnes U/yr, global blend-down U production is 10,000 tonnes/yr

still no majority

again, math literacy

[Statistical]

188. Apples and oranges. You are confusing uranium (yellowcake) with LEU

20,000 tons is amount of UNENRICHED uranium required (U6) however that is at natural 1% concentration. For use in western reactors that needs to be enriched (concentrated) to about 4%. 20,000 tons of U6 is enriched to about 5,000 tons of LEU.

So US nuclear fuel demand is:
20,000 tons of U6
5,000 tons of LEU (4% enrichment)

Weapons down conversion produces 10,246 tons of LEU not natural U6. That is the equivalent of about 40,000 tons of U6 (more than about US nuclear fuel demand). Of course weapon down conversion isn't only used in the US it is also used to supply reactors in Russia.

However the point remains weapons down conversion supplies the majority of nuclear fuel in the United States

According to the DOE (first number is actual tons and second number natural U equivalent.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf41_US_nuclear_fuel_cycle.html

US high-enriched U from unwanted weapons 67.6 HEU 12,485
US natural U 5,156 Natural U as UF6 5,156
Russian natural U* 12,440 Natural U as UF6 12,440
Off-spec non UF6 4,459 DU / Natural U / LEU 2,900
Depleted U > 0.35% U from historic DOE enrichment 73,500 DU 29,950
Total 58,931

Just the HEU in US bombs supplies 12,485 tons of U6 equivalent. Russian weapons supplied another 12,400 tons. We signed a 20 year deal to allow Russian to dismantle the nukes, down convert them and sell us the U6 equivalent.

With that much supply coming from weapons dismantling there simply is NO REASON to mine anything more. In last 20 years all but 2 uranium mines closed due to lack of demand.

At $130 per ton there are 430,000 tons of uranium desposits in the US.

Weapons down-conversion will last until about 2012-2015. At current reactor and burnup levels existing uranium deposits are good for another 25 years. After that we have enough Thorium for another 200 years. Lastly we have many allies with substantial amounts of Uranium (Australia for example).

The idea we are running out of uranium anytime soon is utterly foolish. Nuclear energy doesn't need to last "forever" just like fossil fuels didn't need to last forever.

Fossil Fuels -> Nuclear Energy -> Future Energy (fusion + renewables)

Fossil Fuels supplied majority of power for last 100 years.
Nuclear energy can supply majority of power for the next 100 years.

Before reactors being built today reach end of life we likely will have perfected fusion, orbital solar arrays and other mass energy production mechanism.

Nuclear energy only needs to be a build between fossil fuels and future energy. We have MORE than enough supply to do that.

[Confusious]

94. You can turn yellowcake into useable uranium

But I prefer thorium.

[Mumblefratz]

112. I'm not sure how much and of what type ...

of nuclear fuel the US currently produces but the following source seems to suggest that there is no real shortage of total supply.

www.nea.fr/html/pub/newsletter/2002/20-2-Nuclear_fuel_resources.pdf

[gateley]

28. I'm not sure the disposal and safety issues are technically solvable. Well,

maybe TECHNICALLY solvable, looks good on paper, but I think the risk is too great.

Why do you think nuclear energy is the only realistic solution? I'm of the mind that we could go balls-to-the-wall and develop more passive alternatives -- working WITH the earth.

I'm 100% with you on the electric car. All the time they were touting hybrids and hybrid research, I couldn't understand why they just didn't jump to the next step.

Edit to add I was thinking the other day how cool it would be if we could develop a Segway type vehicle

[Mumblefratz]

35. Because wind, solar and whatever have zero possibility ...

of ever coming close to satisfying our energy consumption needs. We essentially have the technology to go nuclear today if we only would have the intestinal fortitude.

Perhaps when we have the technology to build a dyson sphere then solar would become practical but everything else is pie in the sky.

[MadHound]

38. Have you got anything other than hot air to back that assertion up with?

Because frankly you don't know what you're talking about. We have enough wind power in three states to furnish all of the electricity this country needs.

Oh, and you might want to go check out the advances in thin film photovoltaics. Much more efficient at a lower price.

Or you could simply talk to the the thousands of houses that are completely off the grid.

[Mumblefratz]

46. Umm ...

"We have enough wind power in three states to furnish all of the electricity this country needs".

Do you have anything to back up *your* assertion, because your air isn't even warm.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_resources_and_consumption

Total world energy consumption = 15.8 TW

Total world energy from Geothermal, Wind, Solar and wood combined = 0.158 or about 1%.

[jpak]

54. Ummm...wind, biomass and hydro produce ALL the electricity used in my county in Maine

nuclear?

not so much

[MadHound]

55. Let me restate my assertion, since you may have misunderstood

There is enough potential wind power in three states, Texas, North Dakota and Kansas, that if harnessed would power our entire country, including factoring in growth, through the year 2030. This was from a DOE study done in the early nineties, based on nineties tech. Wind and solar tech has grown immensely since then. You put up the wind turbines and wind belts, the solar farms and solar shingles, and yes, we can power a nation.

Now then, what evidence do you have to back up your assertion? And please, please don't use Wiki. It is notoriously unreliable, especially when it comes to controversial and technical matters.

[Mumblefratz]

95. Wiki may be unreliable but you cite nothing ...

provide a link to back up your claims. A vaguely remembered and unnamed study over a decade old hardly counts as an authority.

The Wiki is good enough for order of magnitude and the fact that wind, solar, geothermal plus biomass currently provide 1% of the worlds total energy is a reasonable order of magnitude. I can even be generous and grant that it may be as much as 2%, big deal. To say that we can suddenly supply all the country's power from the source of 1% (or even 2%) of our current consumption is simply silly.

[MadHound]

116. Ah yes, that old lame canard

Provide the link. Dude, the report was put out in the early ninties, you know, before the internet was a big thing and everything was still printed on paper.

Tell you what, go down to your local academic library and go through their archival database and you can find it.

But since otherwise you'll just think I'm making shit up, this is an article from 2006 citing a more recent DOE report on wind potential. Look, the tech has advanced so much in the intervening year that we don't have to pave over Texas with wind farms.:bounce:

<http://www.alaskareport.com/science10049.htm>

You are using Wiki(again, the lazy researcher's crutch) to state how much power via wind and solar is being produced now. Well d'uh, no shit it's only one percent. What I am talking about is potential. And we have vast potential for wind and solar in this country. Go check out my post 115 below for a more complete picture of what can be accomplished via decentralized power generation.

[Mumblefratz]

119. Am I missing something, I see no link in your reply #116?

Also I did read your reply 115 and am starting to see a common theme in your replies.

Silly me, I assumed that a site that only allowed liberals would be a bit more civil than the wild and wooly internet. I don't recall insulting you but I guess I must have to generate the animosity. Cest la vie.

Potential is all fine and good but what does it take to achieve that potential. France and Japan have already demonstrated that decent sized countries can generate large portions of their electric demand via nuclear *today*. That's not some pie in the sky potential of converting every rooftop in the country to a solar farm.

1% is what we're starting with and like the industry blurb I quoted in reply #117 *perhaps* if things work out right we could achieve 20% electric generation from wind by 2030. Potential yes. Reality no.

[MadHound]

124. Forgot to include the link, it is now up for you

And what theme is that which you see? That they're correct. I provided you with numbers, and like I said before I'll provide a post a bibliography if you really want it.

As far as my tone goes, well, as you say, it is the wild and wooly internet, and I'm not one of those meek and mild type of liberals. In fact I'm a rather blue collar type of liberal, a blue collar type of academic and intellectual. You didn't insult me directly, but your tone of complete and utter dismissal, especially with only Wiki backing your ass up in your OP was indeed a bit grating, especially to one who has worked in a nuclear plant for a number of years and done academic presentations on alternative energy. You can't deal with that, fine, that's your problem. If you want to continue to discuss/debate this, fine. Either way, I don't care except for the fact that I'm going to bed here shortly.

Anyway, as far as France and Japan goes, let me let you on to a few things. Yes, they are generating a large portion of their energy today from nuclear power. What are they, or any other nuclear country for that matter, doing with their waste. Well, France is notorious for dumping it into the ocean, and Japan has done the same. Meanwhile, the past couple of years in France they've had a bit of an energy crisis as the summers are hot and dry. The rivers drop below the level needed for safe nuke operation and voila! For weeks they have to import power at a large expense.

So, even assuming our rivers never run dry(wait, they have been) what are you going to do with the waste? There is no safe disposal of it, so what are you going to do with it? Yeah, that old brick wall.

And again, why are we pursuing an energy course that takes taxpayer subsidies and still costs more than wind or solar. That's just stupid economically.

Oh, and as far as pie in the sky solar goes, tell that to the local builders in my area, who've already built 500 homes that generate their own power via thin film photovoltaics in the past two years. That's reality friend, as are every single other technology I mentioned. You can buy them right off the shelf so to speak. Yes, what this means is that you're front loading the energy bill on your house, but over the course of 17 years (again, average house, your mileage may vary), you can pay that front load off and be getting pure profit and free energy for the next thirteen years(thirty years is the average lifespan for the thin film solar and windbelts, much of the other stuff lasts the life of the house).

But hey, if you don't want that, if you don't like that, fine. While you've got your head stuck in the sand, I'll be raking in the big bucks and free energy. Enjoy!

[Mumblefratz]

127. The theme is to be insulting when no insult was given.

But your friendliness and patience have inspired me to take my time to chase down the link that you forgot to provide. Hardly.

Do me a favor, you can save your links and your bibliographies because I have no interest in any of them. Luckily the site has an ignore feature. I didn't expect to have to use it but cest la vie.

At this point I couldn't care less if you are right or not. Obviously it's possible to both be right and an asshole.

[MadHound]

130. Ah yes, the last refuge

When you can't provide facts, come back with faux outrage, claim insult and then flounce off in a huff. Like you putting me on ignore is really going to bother me:rofl: You're just using these "insults" to both cover up your own ignorance and to prevent something like reality to sully your beautiful little mind.

Sorry if the facts don't match your preconceived notions. Sorry that the facts upset your apple cart. But you need to learn to deal in facts, otherwise no matter how huffy you get, the facts will come back to bite you in the ass.

[Mumblefratz]

117. For all I know you could possibly be right ...

however I've yet to see anything in print that indicates that you're correct.

I even went looking for a source for you and the best I could find was the following.

http://www.awea.org/pubs/factsheets/20percent_Wind_factsheet.pdf

This suggests that by 2030 the US could supply 20% of it's electricity demand from wind power. However I doubt this includes the increase needed to power all our electric cars. Still this isn't anything like 100% in the relatively near term.

[MadHound]

120. As your little blurb states right up front, that is just one scenario

It is one scenario based on 3,000 wind turbines put up a year. It is one that is based solely on the turbine model of wind generation. While that is good for more concentrated energy production, home wind generation doesn't necessarily have to be turbine. Check out this <http://www.humdingerwind.com/>

What I'm trying to show is that your original assertion, that "wind, solar and whatever have zero possibility of ever coming close to satisfying our energy consumption needs" is bullshit. What I have shown you is the sheer potential for wind alone.

Go down to post 115 below and find out just what can be done in the here and now, today, with a decentralized generation system that uses both wind and solar as its backbone. I really don't feel like writing it all out again. Then get back to me and prove that your original assertion is correct.

Somehow I doubt that you can do that.

[Confusious]

136. Really?

A study by nature said Wikipedia was at least as reliable as encyclopedia Britannica.

http://news.cnet.com/2100-1038_3-5997332.html

[MadHound]

183. Sorry, I deal with the world of academics

Wiki is considered to be a joke since anybody can provide input into it. Furthermore most schools that I know don't allow their students, of any age, to use Wiki as a source for the same reason.

If all you can find to back up an assertion is Wiki, then your assertion is on shaky ground.

[Confusious]

215. A lot of people felt the same way about Linux.

Anyone could provide code for it. Look at where that's at now.

Oh, and as far as "academia" not liking Wikipedia, here's a little opinion that adds in Google digitizing books:

"This analysis seems to be correct on the surface, and at the same time deeply deeply wrong. Of course librarians, teachers, and academics don’t like the Wikipedia. It works without privilege, which is inimical to the way those professions operate.

This is not some easily fixed cosmetic flaw, it is the Wikipedia’s driving force. You can see the reactionary core of the academy playing out in the horror around Google digitizing books held at Harvard and the Library of Congress — the NY Times published a number of letters by people insisting that real scholarship would still only be possible when done in real libraries. The physical book, the hushed tones, the monastic dedication, and (unspoken) the barriers to use, these are all essential characteristics of the academy today.

It’s not that it doesn’t matter what academics think of the Wikipedia — it would obviously be better to have as many smart people using it as possible. The problem is that the only thing that would make the academics happy would be to shoehorn it into the kind of filter, then publish model that is broken, and would make the Wikipedia broken as well. "

and another:

"Ultimately, the academy has to stop fighting Wikipedia and work to make it better. Academic administrators need to find ways to recognize Wikipedia writing as part of legitimate scholarship for tenure, promotion, and research points. When professors are writing the articles or guiding their students in article production and revision, we may become much less paranoid about this wildly popular resource. Rather than castigating it, we can use it as a tool to improve information literacy."

It may has it flaws, I would never take it as gospel, but for a quick jump-on point to find the general idea it's fine, and just for you, I'll link citations and not the wiki article itself.

[MadHound]

218. Well, since you didn't add links, I really can't properly judge your piece now can I

But the fact of the matter is that in any serious academic research, Wiki is simply not accepted. This is not due to wanting to keep the "monastic dedication, and (unspoken) the barriers to use" but rather from the simple fact that Wiki is open source and all articles on Wiki can be written or altered by anybody with little regard to proper sourcing or referencing. Your quote states that libraries and academics are adverse to digitized media, however simply look at any academic library online database and you will find a wealth of digitized books and articles. Nor are libraries, even academic ones, interested in keeping some sort of air of privelege or class surrounding them. Anybody at all can walk in and do research at virtually any college or academic library in this country. After all, that is what libraries are for, research.

I would be interested in seeing who actually wrote your piece in order to judge what their bias is, what their agenda is. Perhaps you can link up to it so we all can see and judge for ourselves.

[Confusious]

220. So we are doing serious academic research here?

I had no idea. I'm so proud! So, what exactly are we researching?

Day to day, most of us don't live in a world of scholarly research, or 100% certainty. .

"Don't put a knife in that wall socket or you'll electrocute yourself" - It's mostly true, but not 100% true, because I've done it. more then once.

"change then oil in your car every 3 months, or 3000 miles" - I've gone 3 months driving my car only 200 miles or so. Changing the oil would be a waste. Talking to mechanics ( Who were also mechanical engineers ) they said the only thing that mattered was 3,000 miles ( If you got a year out without much driving you should change the oil )

"I would be interested in seeing who actually wrote your piece in order to judge what their bias is, what their agenda is."

They both happen to be professors who like Wikipedia, think it's good enough for day to day, but would never cite it in a scholarly work.

http://many.corante.com/archives/2005/01/03/k5_article_on_wikipedia_antielitism.php

http://many.corante.com/archives/2005/01/04/academia_and_wikipedia.php

http://www.infotoday.com/online/mar08/Badke.shtml

Sorry, a librarian and a professor.

[TheMadMonk]

155. Wind, solar and to a lesser extent wave are all intermittent sources.

This means some form of storage, or a base load generation capacity is necessary.

The simplest and most robust form of tidal power requires the sacrificing of large chunks of coastline.

Anything to do with the sea has to be overengineered to glory to survive the worst nature has to throw at it. So far nature is well ahead on points.

Geothermal that doesn't take advantage of the Earth's natural hot spots (of which there are damned few, and even fewer in useful locations) leeches heat from the the rocks faster than the Earth can replace it, which requires constand drilling of new wells along with relocating or rebuilding surface infrastructure.

There's only so many places Hydro power can be installed, and as was discovered 10 or so years ago, a good many installations actually produce more greenhouse gas over their lifetime than an equivalent capacity in coal, as a result of anerobic decay of bottom vegetation.

Coal spits out tons of uranium and thorium per plant per year.

Existing unranium reactors are indeed far less than perfect. But what can you expect from technology that is decades out of date. However, virtually all thinking on the subject of waste handling first presupposes absolutely no future improvemnent in nuclear technology, or in fact the practical application of what is already demonstrable fact. Any radio active atom can be made into a non-radioactive atom by throwing enough neutrons at it (and of course vice versa). Small scale experiments demonstrate that waste neutron flux can be used to treat waste or bomb grade material, making the latter unfit for bomb making while still leaving it usable as reactor fuel.

New designs exist that make any form of uncontrolled meltdown absolutely impossible. The simplest use deliberately built in weak points that are designed to fail if a reactor core overheats and can not be brought under control. A solid fuel reactor would cause an overhead plug to melt and dump damping material into and around the core. Liquid fuel reactors are easier/better still. Inherent in the physical construction are features that cause to reaction to slow down without any form of intervention if the fuel becomes excessively hot, and in the event that that somehow fails the arse melts out and dumps the fuel into numerous separate containers so there is insufficient nuclear material in any one place to sustain an ongoing reaction.

I susspect that one of the main objections to prototyping a good many of these designs is that they admit that absolute control is impossible, that catastrophic structural failure of a reactor in normal operation is not 100% preventable. Both the industry and the politians who have to approve construction DO NOT want to ever utter the words "If a reactor melts down" because they are afraid that the public won't listen long enough to be told that the worst possible final outcome is a nasty but fully contained mess. Then of course there is the slight problem of proving the designs, which might involve deliberately crashing a reactor and initiating a meltdown as a final test.

The quite legitmate objections to nuclear power as it exists todate are not insurmountable barriers. The Laws of Nuclear Physics and empyrical testing allow a technological solution to all of those objections.

And we do need something to generate the base load capacity that no renewable source can provide in the quantities we need for existing demand, let alone a future that includes at least another 2 billion people with an appetite for 21st Century living.

The odds are excellent that some some designs will prove unworkable, and that others will reveal flaws when scaled up to commercial sizes. But that is what prototyping is all about, plugging the holes that theory alone can not fill. If the pro argument is we get a solution to our existing nuclear problems and massive reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Not to mention all the things that can be done when you have enough energy available that the only practical limit is the uses to which it can be put. Worst case we're very little worse off than we are right now.

Demands for zero impact before moving forward are just as disingenous and harmful whether they come from the corporates which refuses to abandon the status quo without an aboslute guarantee of profit from day one, or the greens who refuse to move forward with anything less than a 100% "natural" solution utilising only "natural" energy sources.

[MadHound]

185. Yes, they're all intermittant sources, that's why you have a smart grid

So that you can move electricity around from the points where it is being produced to where it is needed.

As far as nuclear goes, there is no way that you can fully guarantee that there won't be a catastrophic failure. You can cut that probability down dramatically, but you can never make it 100 percent. Now a catastrophic failure in gas or coal winds up with a few dozen dead at most. A catastrophic failure with nukes means thousands dead and a stretch of land that is barren and uninhabitable. Even at odds of 1000:1, we should not be making those kind of wagers. The more reactors we build, the longer we run them, well then the law of large numbers starts coming into play and we wind up screwed at some point. Do you really want that to happen?

The issue of waste is, right now and for the foreseeable future, an insurmountable one. We have no place to store it safely, we can't simply dump it somewhere, we can't shoot it into space (remember Challenger and Columbia? an atmospheric burst would be a huge disaster). So until we figure out some way of dealing with it, we shouldn't be making it, much less increasing the rate that we're making it.

Then it comes down to simple economics. Solar and wind are cheaper now than nuclear, and they'll soon be cheaper than coal and gas. Why should we continue laying out billions of taxpayer dollar for the most expensive electricity going?

[TheMadMonk]

203. The sun don't shine at night.

Load ballancing can only do so much and we have no practical way to store excess for later use. No matter what a base load generation capacity is essential.

You are correct there is no way to absolutely prevent catastrophic failure in a self sustaining nuclear reaction. And if you'd read all the way through my post you might have noticed that I addressed this situation. Since failure is not preventable, the trick is to make/force the failure happen the way we want, in a way that causes the out of control reaction to collapse safely before it can result in an uncontrolled release of radiation.

And as a matter of fact there is a way to create a nuclear reactor that is triggered by an external neutron source. Catastrophic failure is physically impossible as there is never enough material in the reaction chamber to sustain an ongoing reaction. Cut off the external source of neutrons and the reaction stops cold instantaneously.

The issue of waste too is not as insurmountable as you might think. Laboratory experimentation has demonstrated that it is possible to irradiate waste in such a way as to render it harmless, and there are no obvious hurdles to scaling it up to industrial levels and do it economically.

Many renewables are about to slam up against a resource barrier. Considerable quantities of some very rare minerals are needed and China controls most of the world's supply. The price of a reactor is four times higher in the US than it is elsewhere for exactly the same reactor. One has to wonder: Who has their hand in the till?

Strange isn't it how in comparisons between renewables and nuclear, the presumption is that the renewables will continue to fall in price, whilst for the cost of nuclear the price is based on continuing with decades out of date designs coccooned in as many layers of safety systems as can be thought up, rather than anything remotely new?

[MadHound]

205. No, but the wind does blow at night

And our base load demand goes way down at night as well.

As far as storage goes, well, in a decentralized system each house would simply have a twenty four hour battery pack. And batteries, while lagging behind other technology, is starting to make great strides forward. Withing a decade we can have battery packs that currently store a days worth of power instead be storing a week's worth of power or more.

As far as a materials shortage goes, well things like thin film photovoltaics are now using a tenth of the material that the last generation of solar arrays used. Not to mention that as these older arrays go down we can recycle their materials into new solar arrays.

Let's not forget the shortage of uranium. We cannot supply our current uranium needs with domestic uranium production, and that problem will only rise if we continue to build more and more reactors. So instead of being beholden to the Middle East for oil we'll be beholden to Africa for our uranium. Not a very good trade off.

As far as safety goes, I'm glad that you agree with me. No matter how you design a reactor, you cannot fully guarantee that if there is a catastrophic failure that there won't be a release of material. You simply can't. There are too many complexities to make that guarantee.

I've read about the research on waste irradiation and I'm sorry, but you're wrong. There are simply to many barriers to scalability at this point. They have been irradiating small amounts of fuel waste, yes, but going up to larger amounts of material is simply too cost prohibitive, among other things. Not to mention that this technique only works on fuel rod material. Nuclear waste is not simply spent fuel rods. It ranges from paper swipes used by HP's all the way up to decommissioned reactor vessels. A variety of base materials, a variety of isotopes. It is something that is simply not possible for the foreseeable future.

As far as costs go, frankly I welcome that those cocooned layers of safety. Given that all reactors are, as anything else in a capitalist society, are built at the cheapest rate possible, we need many levels of safety checks throughout the process. And sometimes even that doesn't work.

Economically, wind and solar have beaten out nuclear without government support, and their costs are going down. Your mention of a "resource barrier" is simply a red herring thrown out there by those with a vested interest in keeping the current energy generation models going. If you have objective evidence out there saying otherwise, I'll be happy to see it.

Sorry, but nuclear is a dinosaur of a technology. We need to move beyond it, we need to move to a decentralized energy generation grid that is safer, cleaner and more economical. Anything else is simply foolish.

[TheMadMonk]

230. Wind tends to drop at night too. And widespread calms are not unheard of.

Wind also makes a poor neighbour. It is not quiet. Aircraft warning strobes are intrusive. It also generates subsonics and pressure waves that can cause effects varying from disturbing to causing physical illness. They also carve up the landscape with service roads.

Offshore installation has its own problems. But these are surmountable.

Systems that harness energy from the sea's movement actually hold the most promise of renewables, if we can only manage to build something Gaia can't break when the whim takes her. The one we can build right now with any reasonable expectation of it surviving long enough to pay for itself, tidal barages, is limited by geography and much further limited by ecological considerations.

Storage: Right now the most economical form of domestic power storage is a ton or more of lead for each house. Or possibly, if space permits, NiFe cells. These can be refurbished on site with a simple change of electrolyte. Lead acid, NiCd and other forms of Ni-Metal hydride, as well as lithium, all require replacement after about five years of use and of course safe disposal or recycling of the old. Yes there are promising experimental results that might give us a true ten hour laptop battery in five or ten years, but I very much doubt it for true bulk storage.

Materials shortage in some cases is an absolute thing. Such as there are litterally not enough platinum group metals on the planet to make enough fuel cells to replace every infernal combustion engine on the planet. The same goes for the materials needed to make the highest efficiency solar cells. These will be forever limited to niche applications.

Uranium shortage is a complete furphy. Yes the supply is limited, but so is the need if the old style reactors could be replaced with a liquid salt fueled thorium burner. The potential thorium supply is good for about ten thousand years. One beauty of this style of reactor is that it is self regulating, thermal expansion moves part of the fuel suply out of the core and the reaction automatically slows down without any outside intervention. The second and probably most desireable feature is that if you build the reactor vessel to rupture at it's lowest point, the whole fuel supply immediately falls out into an array of holes that separate the fuel into small portions that canot react with each other to sustain the reaction. Just those two features make all the secondary, tertiary and so forth layers of safety and control pretty much unnecessary from a human safety (and error) point of view. Worst case scenario is a loss of revenue and a big cleanup bill for the operators.

[MadHound]

245. Again, you're locked in the past

Check out windbelts <http://www.humdingerwind.com> Non turbine wind, perfect for the home, needs very low windspeed, 4mph or more.

Actually a ton isn't what is needed, about a quarter of that, eight deep cycle batteries. Stop trying to exaggerate for effect. Oh, and an eight battery pack is roughly two by two by two feet. Not a big footprint.

Nice touch there, that Aussie slang. But cute slang aside, the fact is we're running short on uranium. However what is disturbing is that you're seemingly willing to do away with safety protocols because of your faith in the thorium pile dropping just right. You know, it was that sort of thinking, that sort of faith that led to Chernobyl. No thanks

[TheMadMonk]

251. Humdingers are no comfort for the farmers who have turbines for neighbours.

As for battery needs, I've actually lived with a solar power setup. A set of forklift batteries at around 300kg will just barely serve two people if managed frugally. Anything that is going to be a significant part of a load ballancing system will not be much less than that per household and anything that is going to provide actual storage for later use would have to be considerably more.

Regardless of actual per house needs, the final tally is millions of tons of lead (or other toxic metals) if price is the main criterion and you can pretty much guarantee that it would be. That's more mines, more smelters and more pollution.

The advanced lithium with massively increased storage capacity you wrote of earlier, are you aware that they will require significant quantities of carbon nanotubes?

So we stop using Uranium as has been said on several occasions. That you keep harping back to it, when you know full well that there are much more abundant alternatives, sugests that you know this is a weak argument on your part and you hope to strengthen it with repetion.

Nowhere did I say that we should do away with all safety protocols in a liquid salt reactor. What I said was that multiple layers of protocols (most of which are designed to catch extremely rare failure modes specific to solid fuel reactors) are not necessary. Primary and secondary containment would certainly remain. As would some others built around the control system. But a good many could be eliminated without compromising safety in any way.

Good try playing the Chernobyl card. However, what happened there was inevitable given the design, the lack of containment and the deliberate acts which compromised the safety systems there. What happened there is not remotely applicable to a radically different reactor design.

Yes I am confident that a liquid salt reactor core will dump just right. Liquids flow downhill. Only gross and impossible to hide sabotage done while the reactor was cold and in pieces might have a chance of preventing a safe dump.

[fascisthunter]

209. I Believe this is the way Europe is going

all renewable energy will come from various sources, however, all will be plugged into a grid system so that when one source of power dwinles on any given day, another source(s) will be collected for use.

[gateley]

40. Or re-discover Tesla's approach to pull energy out of the air. :-)

[jpak]

44. what a stupid post

:rofl:

[gateley]

63. I've heard Brian Schweitzer (Gov of MT) say they have enough wind potential

to provide energy to the entire country. Are you saying it's because of the technology we don't have in place for wind and solar?

If so, I gotta say why the hell can't we come up with it? I just posted that Rachel showed how China is going to have high speed trains cris-crossing their country in 4 years, we'll have completed one short route. Why are we so slow?

I understand that for years it's been because of Big Oil controlling everything, but even they must see the end is near, so why not sink their billions of profits into developing wind/solar options and make a killing off of those?

I get so frustrated with this country at times. It's always about the money. :grr:

[Mumblefratz]

102. As I said above ...

You can't take what currently sources probably less than 1% of our energy needs and realistically suggest that the entire country could be supplied with that source.

I've yet to hear of any actual source with any scientific basis suggest otherwise.

With all due respect to the governor of Montana, he is a politician and in all likelihood is lobbying for GE to setup turbine development in MT. You got anything in writing? I'll even accept Wiki.

Here's another wiki article that suggests that the max worldwide wind capacity is about 1.5% of worldwide electricity usage. Again order of magnitude that's in the same ballpark as I used above.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power

Don't forget that is *current* electricity usage. If we were to suddenly replace the gas powered car with an electric car then we now need to supply that power from this new source of electricity as well. Does that double or triple our current usage? I don't know but it most definitely would be an increase.

[gateley]

223. Actually the governor of Montana is lobbying for clean coal, but threw in

solar, wind, etc., to soften the blow and not appear biased. :7 In all fairness, I believe he truly is convinced clean coal is safe and plentiful.

In addition to my :scared: opinion of nuclear, I'm not sure we do actually have the system almost ready to go, that we'd be able to accomplish this approach the most quickly.

And then there's the $$$. Nobody will loan nuclear companies the funds to build/expand because historically there have been overruns and the lenders lose money, so putting the tab on our bill, along with everything else we're expected to pay for, is another reason why I'm against it.

And I don't have any back-up documentation -- I was just repeating what I heard Schweitzer say. I don't necessarily believe it, but mentioned it to make a bigger point -- why can't we pursue more passive, natural sources?

[Confusious]

103. I've heard all the people in the world can fit into texas

Not taking into account eating, breathing, etc etc.

[timeforpeace]

81. They are. We just have to get after it, like all the other problems we've solved.

[Bennyboy]

83. Why not rooftop solar and an electric vehicle?

Call your solar company and they will show you how to save money Tomorrow by going to rooftop.

[Confusious]

104. Rooftop soalr maybe power a few things in your house

Plus and electric car? not at all.

[jpak]

181. "a few things in your house" - here in Maine there are thousands of solar homes

where PV provides ALL the electricity for EVERYTHING

try again

[Bennyboy]

210. Exactly, we gotta start convincing people that this is now and is CHEAPER....

solar is the way to go. I have so many off the grid friends. they don't miss out on anything and the bill for the solar is fixed. No telling how much the energy Co's are going to raise rates, especially when we have boondoggle of nukes raising the price...

[Confusious]

226. Thousands doesn't equate to millions

Have you thought about how to store the energy? How many batteries would that take? Most use lead acid, which are toxic, and need to be replaced every 5-10 years. With current electric cars, that can mean a bill of five thousand dollars. how much for a house?

Can everyone in the States pay that cost or more, every 5 years? What about disposal?

?

[immoderate]

176. It's not a solution. What means "realistic?"

And what does "technically solvable" mean? Is it the same as solvable? So where's the solution? doesn't it seem a good idea to nail down the solution before you fire up those new plants?

When (not if) the nuclear disaster comes, we will all pay. They are putting reactors near the Great Lakes. Water supply for millions. Familiar with Murphy's Law?

--imm

[TheWraith]

17. Actually they cost a lot less than $8 billion per plant.

And Obama hasn't "given" anything, he's providing loan guarantees, which cost nothing as long as the conditions are met.

The only reason that nuclear power has been so expensive in the US is because of astroturf efforts to terrify people about it, paid for by the oil and coal industry. In China they're building Westinghouse AP-1000 plants, brand new cutting edge designs that are really amazing pieces of engineering, for $2 billion each. The Chinese plan to build about 100 of the things. So far we've also got 14 licenses to build AP-1000s here in the US.

And a nuclear plant will withstand a full-speed impact by a jetliner without cracking open.

[baldguy]

18. Sure - as a small part of a COMPREHENSIVE energy policy.

Develop wind, solar, geothermal & alternate energy sources, along with massive (as in Manhattan-project levels) of funding for mass transit infrastructure with the aim of conserving fossil fuels and ending oil imports completely.

[Schema Thing]

22. About time.

[dysfunctional press]

24. i say that it's about time.

i'm all for it.

[Statistical]

26. Um the $8.5 billion is for TWO plants.

Two plants that combined have output of 2300 MW.

In one year (w/ 0.95 load factor) just those 2 reactors combined will produce 19 billion kwh which is more power than 7x all solar power in the United States combined.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_States#Electricity_Production

Also Obama isn't paying for the plant. It is simply a load guarantee which lets utilities know the govt isn't going to delay construction (since it will cost govt direct money) once license has been issued.

[Tom Rinaldo]

221. "lets utilities know the govt isn't going to delay construction once license has been issued. "

Are you implying that government would otherwise set up meaningless regulatory roadblocks to construction if it had no financial stake in rapid completion? That's virtually a pure right wing talking point about getting government out of the way of industry doing its thing without all that pesky oversight.

Check out the history of the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant some time to see what would have happened had construction not "been delayed".

[Biker13]

36. It's about time.

It's time we made ourselves independant of OPEC.

[amborin]

41. loans at risk of default:

http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2010/02/chu-not-aware-nuclear-default-rates

[TransitJohn]

45. Well, the cynical part of me says good.

It'll be a lot of jobs here in Wyoming for the uranium mining. That, combined with still producing roughly half of the nation's coal will continue to make these the salad days for the State.

[Bennyboy]

51. Water usage?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22804065/ back to the drought in the southeast. They use an immense amount of water to operate.

[Confusious]

97. Pretty much every form of power needs water

The only one that doesn't is wind.

[MadHound]

53. Nuclear power needs to go, along with all other traditional, dinosaur, centralized power generation

Coal, gas, nuclear, we don't need them anymore and they simply don't make economic or environmental sense, especially in the long term.

Coal and gas we all know about their polluting ways, but to say that nuclear is cleaner is simply wrong. Not only is there no good way to deal with the nuclear waste, but due to that shortfall we have radioactive material leaking into our soil and our groundwater as we speak.

Furthermore, we simply cannot eliminate human error. Granted, human error doesn't occur very often, but when it does happen it can have some horribly spectacular results, results that can harm or kill thousands, results that don't necessarily show up except years later.

There is also the environmental degradation caused by getting the uranium out of the ground. It is a horribly polluting business, on par with what a coal operation leaves behind. Entire ecosystems ruined forever.

The costs of nuclear also don't make economic sense. It is a hugely expensive proposition, one that is subsidize by you and me, the taxpayer. Meanwhile, with very little public assistance, both wind and solar have reduced the cost of electricity to the point where they are cheaper than nuclear, and quickly becoming cheaper than coal or gas.

What is needed is a revolution in our energy production paradigm, from centralized power generation to decentralized power production. This would mean turning every building into a small power plant, with larger "plants" for industrial use, such as solar or wind farms, all connected by a smart grid. Of course this sort of change threatens the current energy cartel, and they will use every method at their disposal to fight this change. But we've still got to make that change if we want true energy independence and to clean up our environment.

[farmout rightarm]

59. You want to replace large efficient centralized power generating centers with

millions of little bitty one-house-at-a-time gadgets?

When I see things like that in actual 'print', I pretty much lose any hope of any remaining American intellect.

:eyes:

[MadHound]

115. Gadgets. nice.

Nothing like being a condescending ass while offering absolutely nothing to back up your scorn. Classy:eyes:

Let me throw a few things your way, see how you handle them.

The average house uses 11,231 kWh of electricity a year. Using a combination of a 19 square meter rooftop solar array and an array of windbelts(non-turbine wind generator, generates in winds as low as 4mph) you can generate an average of 12,060 kWh/year (dependent on your local climate, your mileage may vary). Combine this with solar water heating (water heating eats up to 1/5 of a house's energy bill), neighborhood methane generator (look that one up yourself), Earth Air tubes for cooling(AC for the energy price of a fan), Energy star appliances, state of the art insulation and nice touches like a centralized CFL or HEI lighting system, your average home will generate 5,694kWh/year more electricity than is what is needed to run the house. Extra energy! That's a good thing, why?

Because as every naysayer and skeptic has been saying, you're not going to have the sun shining all the time, nor the wind blow. But, the thing is, the sun is always shining, the wind always blowing somewhere in this country every single day of the year, usually within a couple of hundred miles of that day's "dead zone". That's where the smart grid comes in. You shuttle the excess energy from where it is being generated to where it is needed and voila! Everybody has energy, light, heat, their precious, precious TV's. If you're a belt-and-suspenders type of person, you can even throw in one of those battery banks at the house so that you have twenty four hours of back up power before you have to tap into the grid.

That leaves commercial and industrial applications. Well, a large factory roof just begs for solar and such, but you can also tap into things like wind farms, solar arrays, geothermal, biomass, hydro for those more intense and centralized electric generators to power those heavier applications. After all, as I noted up above, according to an early '90's DOE study, there is enough potential wind energy in just three states to power this country, including factoring in for growth, through the year 2030. And that was using early '90's tech. Today's wind generation tech is absolutely stunning (and let me note here, wind and solar are now cheaper than nuclear and quickly approaching coal and oil in cost, not to mention without the sort of taxpayers subsidies that the nuclear, coal and gas energy get).

But hey, if you don't think those "gadgets" can power this country, show me. Back up your assertions with fact. Oh, and if you think that I'm spouting off shit, just let me know, I'll throw up my bibliography and notes for the presentations I made on this subject but I'd really rather not waste the bandwidth.

Don't fuck with somebody who has both worked in the nuclear field and done academic presentations on the topic of alternative energy. I know what I'm talking about, inside and out.

So, you got anything besides hot air and bullshit or are you simply another idle internet chatterer who doesn't know WTF they're talking about?

[Confusious]

138. How long?

How long to equip every house in the United States with all the little gizmos, redo the insulation, build the smart grid?

No "Manhattan project" time tables. Realistic timetables. The "Manhattan Project" was a one-time event that will probably never be repeated.

[MadHound]

182. Depends,

Are you willing to put some serious government money behind it, you know, the kind of money that they like to put into nuclear?

If we put 600 billion into the project, in the form of direct consumer loans, then we can redo every single house in this country, it would be only a matter of time.

At the peak of the boom there were 1.2 million houses being built every year. Since this is a retrofit, it would go faster and we could hire extra workers (ooo, job's program) to help out. We could probably retrofit ten times that number in a year, approximately 12 million houses/year.

There are approximately 140 million houses in this country, you could retrofit each house in this country within twelve years. If you started working on the smart grid at the same time, it would be done within the same amount of time (I'm basing this on how fast this country ran fiber optic lines in both the US and Canada).

A nuclear plant takes approximately eight years to built, so I would say that the time table for such conversion is favorable when comparing it with nuclear.

[Confusious]

213. 600 billion was the budget for the pentagon this year

and asking for that type of money for something not military in this country is ridiculous. Nothing ever gets more then a piss in the bucket compared to the military.

So, if you got $20 billion a year, about the same a the loans for the nukes, it would take 30 times longer?

It's not that I don't like the idea, it's just I like to be realistic about things.

[MadHound]

246. Let's see, TARP and the stimulus both got over 700 billion

You don't think that energy independence should be granted the same priority.

Hell, we can cut the military budget back for a couple of years. Or, novel idea, tax the rich.

Argue you limitations and sure enough, they're yours.

[Jamastiene]

174. I like your idea of a smart grid.

It makes perfect sense to me. I would love to see this idea actually put into use.

[farmout rightarm]

206. Uh, your "bibliography"?? No, thanks but no thanks.

:eyes:

[MadHound]

219. Fine, just offering

After all, unlike yourself, I know my subject and do my research. I was simply offering to share that with you so that you can better educate yourself. Apparently you would rather remain mired in ignorance.

[farmout rightarm]

56. It's a long overdue start. Nuclear plants are the only alternative to fossil fuels

that can even come -close- to providing the energy that people will demand. When you're freezing in the dark you won't give a shit where the electricity comes from if you can get some. Solar and wind are marginally useful in SUPPLEMENTING primary generating facilities but simply do not have the intrinsic energy density to be sole producers.

[name not needed]

60. Well, it's either that, or build more coal plants and talk about how awesome wind farms are.

[Raine]

62. Against it, absolutely positively NO! nt

:thumbsdown:

[Canuckistanian]

64. Is it REALLY more efficient than say, a natural gas plant?

I heard Thom Hartmann say that a nuclear power plant ONLY starts producing a net power surplus only after a decade in service.

Why? When you consider the cost of building the plant, the energy that goes into producing the fuel (mining, refining, transport)
and the initial start-up costs, where is the benefit?

Not to mention the FUTURE costs of DISPOSING of spent fuel rods (which has been indefinitely postponed)

Does ANYONE take all these costs into account?

[Statistical]

70. Sure fossil fuels are cheaper as long as you don't mind puking billions of tons of CO2 into air.

[Canuckistanian]

72. My point being

That nuclear plants must be in continual service for any REAL CO2 savings to be realized. With shutdowns,maintenance reductions and Uranium fuel costs, are there REALLY more advantages to nuclear in terms of CO2 reduction?

I'd like to see the numbers.

[Statistical]

77. Reactors in the United States have uptime of over 95%.

Less than 5% of the time offline due to shutdowns, refueling, maintenance, and inspections.

They really are online in continual service for years at a time.

[Canuckistanian]

80. Well then

If your figures are right, then nuclear would seem to be a net benefit.

As long as the average nuclear plant can maintain such a record for it's life cycle.

[Statistical]

93. Most of reactors in US are now pushing 50 years and uptime has been increasing.

90% of the total lifetime cost of nuclear energy is the construction.

To turn a profit nuclear operators have to run a tight ship. Fuel is a negligible expense so even a single hour of downtime costs millions of dollars in lost energy sales.

Gen III+ reactors like AP1000 as designed for higher burnup (less refueling) so the goal would be to push uptime even higher.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/pdf/pages/sec9.pdf

Correction though. Capacity factor (also called load factor) is 92% not 95%.

Capacity factor also accounts for when reactor is operating at less than full capacity (spin up and shut down).

A theoretical 1000MW perfect powerplant would generate 100MW every hours * 24 hours * 365 days per year and that would be a capacity factor of 100%.

Nuclear energy (in US) is 92% compared to about:

20% PV Solar
40% wind
43% hydro
60% coal
73% thermal solar
80% combined cycle natural gas

Simply put nuclear is economical despite its high costs specifically because of high capacity factor. It generates 92% of theoretical maximum power which is far better than any other form of power. This near continuous output (collecting $ for each kwh) helps pay for the massive upfront cost ($2 billion to $4 billion per reactor).

[Donnachaidh]

73. NO -- and think Chernobyl when you factor in TRUE costs

Natural gas explosions, while hazardous, don't turn areas into DEAD ZONES for decades. And it doesn't poison the people who try to live near a meltdown.

[Canuckistanian]

87. Chernobyl was an epic disaster of human AND engineering faults

It was a "worst case scenario" in almost every respect. Training, design, and bad judgment were all suspect in the Chernobyl #4 reactor disaster.

Lessons were learned. It's highly unlikely that anything of the magnitude of Chernobyl will ever happen again.

http://www.stacken.kth.se/~foo/texts/chernobyl.html

[Donnachaidh]

90. you can NEVER be sure of that.

Especially with the sort of companies our Government has a record of using. KBR, anyone?

I *DON'T* trust this corporacratic government we NOW have to protect me and my family from the greed of the power companies.

My stepdad worked in the nuclear field in the era of 3 mile island. I know what sort of fuckups went on then. I fully expect to see more of the same, and possibly worse.

Take that money and put it into solar and wind power.

[Confusious]

114. What if they have designs that can't DO worse

There are designs for reactors that have 0% chance of meltdown, nearly 0% waste and last 100 years.

[Donnachaidh]

186. so on paper they are safe -- ever know of contractors to cost cut?

KBR? for example?

Paper perfection does NOT guarantee safety. It's a comic book solution to cover up potential real life problems caused by greed and stupidity. We have plenty of that in this country already. I'm not willing to subject my descendants to someone's *safe* paper plans.

[Confusious]

212. Well, I can't argue with that level of mistrust.

[GoCubsGo]

199. Chernobyl is not a "dead zone"

Far from it, actually. The Exclusion Zone surrounding the reactor was designated a wildlife refuge in 2007. It's one of the largest in Europe. The wildlife is thriving there.

[Confusious]

98. A nuclear plant will run for 60 years

New designs will last 100 years.

[ConcernedCanuk]

66. NO

.
.
.

The waste

We don't know how to handle it

and neither will our children

(sigh)

[Confusious]

99. I find your lack of faith disturbing

http://www.utexas.edu/news/2009/01/27/nuclear_hybrid/

[Sugarcoated]

69. FAIL

In addition to the many reasons stated above, human error, inevitable accidents, massive expense and still no solution to safely disposing of waste, cancer rates are higher, especially in children, around nuclear power plants.

[spanone]

71. no nukes

[Confusious]

105. No horseless carriages!

[Moochy]

163. Hooray Modernity!

A brave Chernobyl firefighter.

[WeDidIt]

74. I've got no problem with nuclear power. n/t

[mdmc]

76. nay

[damyank913]

82. This a good move and it's badly needed...

We need a way to bridge the gap while we develop these new technologies and nuclear is the way to go. Not saying we should plan on using this indefinitely. But we can do this technology pretty well and it is a good way to go until we have enough hybrids, wind turbines, and solar farms to make a difference. Either that or get used to paying 10 bucks a gallon or more to drive or heat your home. Pay that much and nuclear power will start to look real good. Let's plan ahead for a change.

[philly_bob]

84. I support nuclear -- as long as there's insurance & tough regulation. /nt

[paulk]

88. it's inevitable, I suppose

The powers that be are going to get their way. God forbid we put our money into renewable energies, but if we did, how would these folks stay in charge? They can't stop the sun or the wind, they need a resource that they can control. It's all about making a buck.

Hopefully they won't kill off half the human race when one of these things fucks up.

[NNN0LHI]

92. The nuclear angle was hashed out decades ago

The cost of litigating court challenges against building them brought to an end the building of new reactors.

End of story.

Don

[Confusious]

100. Wow did anyone tell

The french, chinese, indians, or a host of other countries who are racing ahead with nuclear, and even creating new designs that have 0% chance of meltdown, 0% nuclear waste, and will cost a fraction of plants today and last 100 years?

Boy, those jokers. They're going to have to suffer with nuclear energy that is both clean and abundant while we sit back and eat our grubs in our cave and laugh.

Can't wait!

[DeSwiss]

96. I'm against it as well.

It's stupid because it leaves everyone chained to some grid and it leave the nation scrambling around for fuel when we are ignoring two free sources: solar and geothermal.

- But I'm not surprised in the least by this move. Not. One. Bit.

[Confusious]

106. So what about the street lights?

Or government buildings? or hospitals? Building that have a high rise and high density?

Where are they suppose to get power from?

[DeSwiss]

126. Where?, you ask....

http://www.solarlighting.com/">Solar Power ***** http://www.outdoor-solar-lights.com/solar-powered-street-lights.html">Solar Power ***** http://cleantechnica.com/2009/05/13/exploiting-the-downsides-of-wind-and-solar/">Wind & Solar Power ***** http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/02/florida_town_in.php">Solar Power

And beyond solar is geothermal. Read this from an article at the Union of Concerned Scientists:

The areas with the highest underground temperatures are in regions with active or geologically young volcanoes. These "hot spots" occur at plate boundaries or at places where the crust is thin enough to let the heat through. The Pacific Rim, often called the Ring of Fire for its many volcanoes, has many hot spots, including some in Alaska, California, and Oregon. Nevada has hundreds of hot spots, covering much of the northern part of the state.

These regions are also seismically active. Earthquakes and magma movement break up the rock covering, allowing water to circulate. As the water rises to the surface, natural hot springs and geysers occur, such as Old Faithful at Yellowstone National Park. The water in these systems can be more than 200°C (430°F).

Seismically active hotspots are not the only places where geothermal energy can be found. There is a steady supply of milder heat—useful for direct heating purposes—at depths of anywhere from 10 to a few hundred feet below the surface virtually in any location on Earth. Even the ground below your own backyard or local school has enough heat to control the climate in your home or other buildings in the community. In addition, there is a vast amount of heat energy available from dry rock formations very deep below the surface (4–10 km). Using a set of emerging technologies known as Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS), we may be able to capture this heat for electricity production on a much larger scale than conventional technologies allow.

If these resources can be tapped, they offer enormous potential for electricity production capacity. In its first comprehensive assessment in more than 30 years, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) estimated that conventional geothermal sources on private and accessible public lands across 13 western states have the potential capacity to produce 8,000–73,000 MW, with a mean estimate of 33,000 MW.http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/technology_and_impacts/energy_technologies/how-geothermal-energy-works.html#2">2 State and federal policies are likely to spur developers to tap some of this potential in the next few years. The Geothermal Energy Association estimates that 132 projects now under development around the country could provide up to 6,400 megawatts of new capacity.http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/technology_and_impacts/energy_technologies/how-geothermal-energy-works.html#3">3 As EGS technologies improve and become competitive, even more of the largely untapped geothermal resource could be developed. The USGS study found that hot dry rock resources could provide another 345,100–727,900 MW of capacity, with a mean estimate of 517,800 MW. That means that this resource could one day supply nearly all of today’s U.S. electricity needs.http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/technology_and_impacts/energy_technologies/how-geothermal-energy-works.html#4">4.

MORE: http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/technology_and_impacts/energy_technologies/how-geothermal-energy-works.html

So with a renewable and steady resource of energy literally right under our feet, then why do you suppose no one wants to go in that direction? BECAUSE it's right under your feet. So you can access it for yourself. No middleman. Just the right tech and maintenance.


- Our leaders lack the ability and the will to start thinking outside the box.....

[Confusious]

132. First you have to know which box you are in.

And I usually don't get my info from a source that is so obviously biased, just as I don't get my info from the nuclear industry.

Solar would only work in the southwest, wind could be viable, geothermal takes an investment which is even more then nuclear, and tidal, no one has a commercial plant in the world.

But the sun doesn't always shine, the wind doesn't always blow, and the are new ways of doing nuclear that are safe and cheaper.

[DeSwiss]

143. That has got to be.....

....don't tell me, you work in the nuclear field?

Apparently you aren't up on the latest tech in either http://us.sunpowercorp.com/residential/">solar or http://www.waterfurnace.com/heat_pumps.aspx">geothermal, because I know personally that you're wrong. And apparently biased, as well. When you can figure out how to do fusion-based nuclear energy, then give me a call.


- In the mean time, no one wants nuclear waste in their own backyard. And that includes not even traveling through their backyard to get to someone else's....

[Confusious]

148. I was wondering how the geothermal thing works

I also know about solar. Solar only has a 20% base load, and that geoexchange thing will work in some areas, but the cost might be a little prohibitive in certain areas of the country where the ground is frozen or superheated during the summer, or too humid.

I've also used solar water heaters. HATE them with a passion. 5 minutes of luke-warm water in the summer.

As far as nuclear waste,

http://www.utexas.edu/news/2009/01/27/nuclear_hybrid/

Thorium reactors also create no waste. 4x more abundant then natural uranium. No reprocessing needed. India is building these reactors right now.

And no, I don't work in the nuclear field, I'm just a non-traditional student.

[DeSwiss]

161. It uses existing....

...and cheap technology. Where I'm from a unit that will run a HVAC system and provide you with hot water runs in the $16K - $20K range. Your electric bill will translate into about 10% to 15% of what the current bill is now. You're partially off the grid.

With new advances in lighting going on now, the energy consumption is even less. You're further off the grid.

The tech has been out there for some time. That's why I said thinking outside the box is necessary. There's nothing in it for the current powers-that-be if you or I decided to get off the privately owned tit they rent to us. But in remote areas this is the only way to live on a regular basis. And people have been for sometime. The system needs to be modularized for smaller and urban spaces.

If we can modularize a station in the hostile environs of space, we can also do it on earth with cheap and available technologies. The heat source is constant, clean and right down under our feet. And a few feet at that. And there are even better techs coming down the pike them with the explosion in the nano field.

And most of all, its free and can't be embargoed or held subject to OPEC, nor can it be sold to us at a high price because of some speculators fucking with the commodities markets.

Here is an existing http://www.waterfurnace.com/heat_pumps.aspx">water furnace that's built in Indiana. It'll run around $20K (needs a well dropped to around 30' in my area). It can easily handle areas of 10,000 to 15,000 sq.ft.

- If we were to do this, we can start creating jobs right away. That's all I'm sayin'.....

On edit:



And, if we can build systems like the one above, we don't have to be forced into creating more urban sprawl because the housing can be built to fit the topography. Rather than McMansions forced into line order in order to maximize the use of the existing power grid.

- Okay, I'm off the box now.....

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

156. Um, DeSwiss, that's a heat pump.

It requires energy. It doesn't make it.

[DeSwiss]

166. Actually you're right it is....

...but it doesn't require an outside source for power. The system's pumps can run off of a solar panel. Any other electrical requirements are negligible because we're talking 115v (for some electronic controls), not the big boys for systems weighing at at 220v and over as on most electrical HVAC systems.

I've seen these things operating. Personally. I wanted to have them for rehab of the housing coop I manage, but with little to no competition in our area, the costs are too prohibitive ($16K per unit)for our small rehab budget. And remember, these systems provide hot water as well. That's usually around 30% - 40% of most people's electric bills.

- Although maybe I might give the http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/16/bank-of-north-dakotasocia_n_463522.html">Bank of North Dakota a call....

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

167. Right, it's an admittedly efficient way to heat and cool a house.

But you switched the discussion of geothermal energy production to heat pumps.

[DeSwiss]

171. Well actually.....

...I didn't change the discussion. I am relating to someone else about my first hand experience with what it can do, because of the nature of my work. But my first post speaks about the concept of developing geothermal energy's capabilities from sources within our own government -- vis-a-vis the U.S. Geological Survey. And since they mainly study the more "celebrated sources" of geothermal energy -- when a volcano explodes -- then I suppose they know ought to what they're talking about when it comes to knowing where the hot water is.

Th footnotes were included in my initial post. I had been previously admonished for my source (the Union of Concerned Scientists) by someone who thought they are biased. But the claims they make in the article, "that we can provide ALL of our energy needs from geothermal" -- come from the federal government.


I cannot speak to the engineering aspects of this technology as that is not my field. But as the below videos show, the idea isn't new. It's that no one's paying attention. A lot of money will be lost by the existing old companies and systems if and when we change. We will likely only do it from necessity when gas for our cars becomes absolutely prohibitive.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfUQy86ZMpQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15xQ82LwDok

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyD7O_Qe-cw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btJ2suHKfls

[damyank913]

200. No this is wrong.

This system works by capturing or rejecting heat in the ground using water as the transfer medium. It still requires an energy input to operate the machinery to make this possible. This system doesn't just require pumps. It also requires a compressor and with current solar technology you aren't running a compressor off a solar panel unless it's huge. Furthermore, the only way a 110v compressor will operate with any level of comfort to you is that you are cooling (or heating) one room or a small home. What's not really known is whether enough of these machines installed in proximity will affect the ecology of your area (ie: the effect of dropping or raising the temperature of ground water before it enters a lake or stream). And then there's the the addition of chemicals to the water for closed loop systems. Energy is energy-you're not gonna move it or use it without some sort of input.

[DeSwiss]

231. I have no idea.....

...what you're referring to as being "wrong." I think nuclear waste is wrong. No, I'm sure of it.

However the systems I've seen installed and running aren't wrong. The homeowners think that they're perfect. They work with little to no input of outside energy and that's the direction I think the country needs to go. I know that the system I've seen work as I've described. And I'm quite aware of what a heat pump is and how it functions, since I have owned a air-heat pump on my house at one time. So thank you all the same. The geothermal systems I'm talking about are applications where people have been living with such geothermal systems for years and save anywhere from 40% to 70% in energy costs. That's not a figment.

As for environmental impact, these systems would have the least impact of all when compared to existing conventional systems. They've had no adverse environmental problems reported that I'm aware of. And the chemicals you referred and which are used today, are in the closed-system. thus the impact (if any) is negligible to non-existent. Further, to suggest that the dropping and raising of groundwater temperatures may have an adverse environmental impact in the absence of any data or studies to show this, is speculative at best. At worst, it sounds more like another excuse to continue the abuse of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fVI3BRBC6o&feature=player_embedded">energy-wasting and political energy-dependence that we're now doing and have for some time. Or worse, a proponent of nuclear energy that leaves us with poison no one wants or can get rid of. They've used this geothermal extraction approach for over 100 years in California and no one's ever reported nor claimed that moderating groundwater temperatures in this manner have had any deleterious effect. Since the groundwater is not used directly but only exchanges heat from it, I can see no way this is an issue. So I'd have to say that it sound more to me like you're blowing smoke here. Otherwise, if you have proof, then cite your sources.

I'm not an engineer, so I'm not going to debate outside of my field, of the technical efficacy of geothermal. And unless you are, then I'll take you comments with grain a salt. What I do know is http://www.nextenergynews.com/geothermal/geothermalindex1-20.html">what works and what doesn't. So until you have a clean renewal alternative to suggest and one that won't poison us and our progeny's future any more than we already have -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XlWSurevy4&feature=player_embedded">then you can take it up with others....

[LWolf]

101. NO. nt

[SnoopDog]

107. Nukes is all about pocketing money by a few...

Our planet can only survive by using solar, wind, and geothermal energy.

A very small number of people, who use nuke power as a cash cow, will destroy our planet if they succeed...

[Moochy]

165. Nuclear Industry requires huge subsidies to even exist

It's basically institutionalized corporate welfare for a select few companies for whom the public underwrites the risks.

The US taxpayer picks up the bill for any superfund site and exempts the companies from liability should anything go wrong.

[MicaelS]

108. I want fission, fusion, solar and wind, especially wind and fusion.

What makes me extremely mad are the environmentalists who have been touting wind power for decades, but now that we start to get more and more wind turbines on line, then they start screaming about wind turbines killing birds. Or we have rich folks whining about wind turbines spoiling "their" view of nature. It leads to me to believe that some people just like to complain or they really don't want an efficient energy structure at all.

I have worked in an industry that was involved with coal, and I have seen just how dirty and truly filthy coal truly is. Clean coal is an oxymoron.

Even if all fission power plants were shut down tomorrow, there still would be a need for fission plants for production of scientific and medical isotopes. Fission is not going away.

The ultimate energy source would be controlled thermonuclear fusion. Yes we have been working on it for over 50 years, but so what? Sometimes it takes a long time to produce results.

[lostnfound]

111. More welfare for corporate capitalism. Work on decentralized power sources instead. nt

[jtrockville]

122. There are so many better/cheaper/less dangerous alternatives.

Nukes make no sense. There are better ways:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfzVQwW_8Jk

[Rosa Luxemburg]

129. nasty and evil

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windscale_fire

[bridgit]

131. I appreciate the way you've laid out some of the downsides, Benny...

And Rancho Seco, not that far from where I am, is a park today for many of them http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,957975,00.html But then I turn on the TV, and see so many anticipating electrical-manna to just keep falling out the receptacles on our walls like they've done all along and I wonder - How can it go on without a realignment of thinking with respect to the enhancement of energy and its transmission? Fossil fuels aren't so yesterday although they are so much as they are so this guy,

Figuratively speaking of course


And then I think: wull, I saw that movie and nothing worked out right :( *WE* need to be part of the crew that births the next level into existence - where we live, dad gum it! :thumbsup: But you're right that takes money lots of money everything takes money more so these days, what to do what to do :( :(

In the brochure; nuclear power looks cool and it is kinda cool with smiling families falling snow sipping hot coa-coa in a warm day room with a 62" flat screen watching Nickelodeon, studious children under soft lit laptops off to do better things one day, right? That's the cool stuff: security, permanence, stability, warmth...it's the stuff standing behind the nuclear power brochure people should be rightly concerned about

I like sparkley, glow in the dark stuff found in corn fields just like anybody else. Cept that's when I send in my crow cause he's all about that stuff, and he says: the people that already operate nuclear facilities are pretty smart as it is - they have to be cause they're sitting in a control room eating their lunch from home on top of a process willing, in the absence of stringent protocol & redundancy, to blow the roof off the dump and fuse a hole into the earth

But the next level is coming, and its good to be thinking about it

[lib2DaBone]

133. The last Nuclear Plant in the US was built back in the Jimmy Carter Administration..

Technology has come a long way since then.

High Tech (gravel-base cool-core pressurized nuclear units) could provide a clean non-polluting source until fusion and other green technologies are developed.

If we wait until Peak Oil takes over... we are SOL. By then the lights go off, there is no heat or A/C, people are cooking outdoors with scrap firewood and it is TOO LATE.

[earth mom]

147. I'm disgusted and pissed off. But I saw it coming during the primaries when Obama

talked up "clean coal" which does not exist.

Now he's talking nukes-no surprise.

Obama is just proving himself to be the corporatist that he is.

[GreenTea]

150. It won't ever happen way up here Northern California-3000 miles away in Georgia

Is a long ways from me....but it is still too close for comfort, feel sorry for the aware progressives who live down there deep in Dixie....And how & where are they going to ship & store the waste?

[Statistical]

191. They have been storing waste onsite for 50 years.

The casks in photo contain spent fuel for about 20 years of power generation for a reactor.

Cut away of what you are looking at.


The facilities are "temporary" because govt promised the utilities a final storage location would open in ..... 1998. Oops?

Other countries use dry-casks but place them into more environmentally hardened facilities.


Hate to break it to you but.... you have nuclear reactors a lot closer than 3000 miles away.

[upi402]

153. Paint targets on them and have the "Nuke-Away"handy

stupid that we insist on forgetting the lessons of history

[Merchant Marine]

168. An airliner will bounce off

A 10 foot steel and concrete retaining wall is going to laugh at anything short of military ordnance.

[Statistical]

189. In the 1950s the US Army shot at containment building with heavy artillery.

The airforce crashed fighter jets and passenger planes into the containment building.
They have been tested against high explosives, missiles, and virtually anything else we can think of.

It is 10 feet think solid concrete reinforced with steel in a dome shape to gain geometric strength and fixed to a hardened concrete foundation 25 feet deep.

The control room could be taken over by terrorists however that would just result in a SCRAM and reactor would shutdown automatically.

[upi402]

229. Silly to think terrorists couldn't pack nukes onto a plane IMHO

If you think there will never be nukes in the hands of terrorists that can penetrate that I'd like to know why. There are many access points, utilidoors, people doors, hoistways, conduit ports, duct banks, etc -that are weak points as well.

[spoony]

232. Lol, uhhhhh if they have nuclear weapons

is there anything you'd rather they blow up, that would be more convenient for you? At that point isn't it pretty far beyond manageable no matter what is hit?

[upi402]

234. did you misunderstand maybe?

you accuse me of cheering-on terrorists? idiotic...

" is there anything you'd rather they blow up, that would be more convenient for you?"


idiotic accusation, uhhhh i'm trying NOT to have more NUCLEAR targets. go back to your skull bong son.

[OxQQme]

157. Explanation of different types:

http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/tq/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15048703

[oldlib]

162. How many people died at Three Mile Island?

I'll tell you. Zero.

[cherokeeprogressive]

164. I say that TEN THOUSAND+ miners have died in the last decade from Coal workers' pneumoconiosis

Otherwise known as Black Lung Disease.

I say that your OP is hyperbolic at the very least for saying in its subject line that "Obama gives 8 billion" because he didn't "give" shit. Nada. Zip. Zero. Nil.

I ask "Targets for terrorism by the air"? When? Where? What was the outcome of the terrorist attacks that came "by the air"?

[Onceuponalife]

172. I'm for it

Post #133 is correct. It's the best solution for the time being. I know it's been a big boogeyman for the left for a lot of years, but I think the henny pennys out there need to step back, take a breath and look at this with a critical and more open mind.

[Orsino]

187. A huge fusion generator would meet all our needs.

We could hang it in the sky, say, nearly a hundred million miles away where we are relatively safe from the worst radiation, and power our lives photoelectrically.

[ThomWV]

190. Pro - lets get out there and build them.

[taught_me_patience]

236. Let's build em in W. Virginia

and leave solar and wind to Cali.

[Vinca]

194. The plant 10 miles from my house is leaking radioactive tritium into the ground.

The level increased over the past week, according to samples taken in a well they drilled. It's also leaking into the Connecticut River. A couple of years ago a cooling tower collapsed shortly after an inspection. All the while, the corporation running the place has been lying about the condition of the place. Nuclear power may be safe, generally, but it's expensive. Just like health insurance companies, corners will be cut in the name of profit. Give me solar panels.

[ThomWV]

197. Tritium has a half life of 12 years, ground water moves at an average rate of 1" per year

In 10 half lives an unstable element ceases to exist for all practical purposes. That means that if the source of the tritium is over 120 feet from the fence you'll never be able to detect it, let alone be effected by it.

Do not be fooled by the zealots, they use disingenuous arguments to sway you.

[Common Sense Party]

201. It's long overdue and a serious step to weaning ourself off foreign oil.

President Obama's move is, at best, a token gesture.

[SidDithers]

204. I support generation of electricity from Nuclear Power...nt

Sid

[Hell Hath No Fury]

207. Not interested in Nuclear engery.

For the amount of money and time involved, we could have addressed wind, solar, geothermal, and wave energy for every American home.

[fascisthunter]

208. no need for it... we have technology to move in a safer, greener direction

and with all renewables being harvested, I'm sure we can manage to meet everyone's needs for energy. It will take time, but it is there.

[Javaman]

216. Just the mining and clean up are enough to deter me. nt.

[Tom Rinaldo]

217. It's the number one reason why we don't have widespread affordable solar and wind power today. n/t

[timeforpeace]

225. The lack of nuclear power plants in the US is the cause of that? Explain.

[marlakay]

224. Against for a bunch of reasons

waste, accidents, feel they should use windmills and other green technology first for electricity.

I also think Obama is wrong on coal, there is no clean coal.

[SoCalDem]

233. Until we figure out what to do with the waste, I'm not that keen on it..

I'd rather see solar shingles on every roof and solar powered generators to re-charge electric cars

[taught_me_patience]

Not jazzed about it

But as long as they keep building them in Georgia, I don't really give a shit. You guys build your nuclear power plants over there and we'll stick to wind and sun in Cali.

[taught_me_patience]

235. dupe

[JDPriestly]

237. I oppose opting for nuclear energy. It is much too expensive.

It's not so much the cost of building the things. Those initial outlays are competitive. It's the cost of maintaining the safety of the site and the nuclear materials into the coming centuries. Talk about putting debt on your grandchildren. This is outrageous.

[quaker bill]

244. Don't like it

for the many reasons mentioned and probably a few more, but understand that sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. I have no problems with this decision, as long as it is combined with equal or greater emphasis and assistance on renewables.

Now if I had my preference, a nuke plant to "burn" the stuff already mined and sitting in warheads, as we dismantle them, would work for me.

[AsahinaKimi]

247. If there were a great way to get rid of the waste

without side affects, killing people, or destroying the Ocean, I would say fine, lets use it. I don't know how US Navy Ships that are Nuclear powered deal with the waste, but they seem to be able to use it safely.

Again, deal with the waste, and its viable.

[mmonk]

248. I'm with you. This looks like a Republican energy bill.

[hunter]

249. I hope we continue to build nuclear power plants until every last coal plant is gone.

Then we can keep building them while we tear down dams (good bye Glen Canyon Dam, good bye Hetch Hetchy Dam...) and free the rivers. And continue building them until we stop using any fossil fuels at all.

[saltpoint]

250. Nuclear power -- I don't care for it.

[old mark]

252. I'm not happy with it, but I think it is necessary. We wasted over 30 years

since the last batch of US nuclear plants and did not find any solutions to alternative energy sources. I worked on designs for oil-from-shale plants in the early '80s that went nowhere.There was some interest, nothing was done, government talked about the problems but never addressed them-both parties share the blame on this-congressional happy talk, no action.

We should have had this discussion in 1981 or so.

Build the plants and develop realistic replacements for them starting NOW.


mark