How I went from hating to loving nuclear power.

[eclipsenow]

I don't think people realize that they're getting a "dose" of radiation ever single day of their lives, triple the dose if they happen to live in Denver, and many times that dose if they take a flight across the country. They simply hear the term "radiation" and they assume that any amount of it is harmful and going to kill them.

Everyone — what he said!

 

[sdowney717]

i have always favored developing nuclear power. New designs exist that can not melt down if cooling water fails.
Those who dont want it have been obstructionists, and they have laid down in rules and regulations extremely expensive methods, which makes them sort of not economical to operate or build anymore.
Unless you get rid of this regulatory overburden and get new designs approved and change the laws and people's mindsets, nuclear goes nowhere but down the drain.

 

[Erik Nelson]

if scientists can build and safely operate CERN, the most expensive and complex science facility ever in human history...

then can't they build and safely operate comparably simpler nuclear reactors?

 

[Erik Nelson]

given how much is shipped around the world each year, nuclear powered cargo ships would save huge amounts of greenhouse gases

 

[eclipsenow]

given how much is shipped around the world each year, nuclear powered cargo ships would save huge amounts of greenhouse gases

YES! Once we move to nuclear power many nations will be able to easily trade for uranium and thorium, and many will be able to fish it from the seas economically soon. About HALF the world's largest tankers ship fossil fuels around, where it only takes a milk crate of uranium to run a large city-level nuclear reactor for 3 months. Now, if we did finally move off fossil fuels into the atomic era, there goes half the world's shipping fleet and jobs! But many of those shipyards can be put to good use in converting the world to nuclear, because ThorCon build small modular assembly line super-cheap molten salt reactor in shipyards. Float em in to a bay in Indonesia, plug em in, and 10 years later they're removed for recycling. I DO NOT GET how this is economical, but they have a business plan where they build for a short lifecycle rather than (what I'm used to) a longer business cycle, and say they can get it down to 7c kwh. That's some cheap clean safe electricity! ThorCon nukes CANNOT 'melt down' as they are already a liquid, so there's that as well. It would be interesting to see really small scale molten salt reactors to drive shipping but that's different to these ThorCon boats because I understand they are normal boats with nukes in the middle, like cargo rather than their engines. They ship them with the salt frozen in crystal form, so if there's an accident and the boat sinks, it can't spread everywhere and will be safely locked into place with the water halving the radiation dose given off every 12 cm. The bottom of the ocean is one of the safest places for VITRIFIED BLOCK FORM nuclear waste. (Not dust!)

 

[Erik Nelson]

YES! Once we move to nuclear power many nations will be able to easily trade for uranium and thorium, and many will be able to fish it from the seas economically soon. About HALF the world's largest tankers ship fossil fuels around, where it only takes a milk crate of uranium to run a large city-level nuclear reactor for 3 months. Now, if we did finally move off fossil fuels into the atomic era, there goes half the world's shipping fleet and jobs! But many of those shipyards can be put to good use in converting the world to nuclear, because ThorCon build small modular assembly line super-cheap molten salt reactor in shipyards. Float em in to a bay in Indonesia, plug em in, and 10 years later they're removed for recycling. I DO NOT GET how this is economical, but they have a business plan where they build for a short lifecycle rather than (what I'm used to) a longer business cycle, and say they can get it down to 7c kwh. That's some cheap clean safe electricity! ThorCon nukes CANNOT 'melt down' as they are already a liquid, so there's that as well. It would be interesting to see really small scale molten salt reactors to drive shipping but that's different to these ThorCon boats because I understand they are normal boats with nukes in the middle, like cargo rather than their engines. They ship them with the salt frozen in crystal form, so if there's an accident and the boat sinks, it can't spread everywhere and will be safely locked into place with the water halving the radiation dose given off every 12 cm. The bottom of the ocean is one of the safest places for VITRIFIED BLOCK FORM nuclear waste. (Not dust!)

surely we will need the petroleum for plastics and, eventually, carbon nanotubes, also

we need to remember all the other valuable uses of petroleum we'll require for the future

 

[Ophiolite]

surely we will need the petroleum for plastics and, eventually, carbon nanotubes, also

Burning the most valuable chemical resource on the planet has always struck me as strong evidence against the existence of human intelligence.

 

[morse86]

 

[lasthero]

I don't have an hour and thirty minutes - could summarize what this is all about and what point you're trying to make by posting it? Just a sentence or two.

 

[Erik Nelson]

How much waste is produced from a Nuclear Power Plant??????

(in round numbers) per MW:

• nuclear = 400 tons of radioactive wastes (solid)
• coal = 400,000 tons of ash (solid) + 4,000 tons of CO2, SO2, NOX (gas)

please recall, those 404,000 tons of coal waste byproducts include more (total) radioactivity than the 400 tons of (concentrated) radioactive wastes from nuclear

So, nuclear power:

• reduces total toxic wastes by 1000x
• reduces total radioactive wastes (somewhat)
• reduces emissions to the atmosphere to zero (for all practical purposes)

It’s like you could pull all fossil fuel emissions back out of the atmosphere, compress & compactify them into a solid mass…

then reduce that mass by 1000x…

reduce total radioactivity from that mass, to boot….

and only have to worry about disposing of a dense, compact, concentrated solid substance

Q: if there was some sort of “smokestack scrubber” technology which could do that for fossil fuels (extract & compact all wastes into a concentrated solid mass), wouldn’t everyone want that?

Q: if there was some sort of “super smokestack super scrubber” which could not only do that, but reduce the concentrated solid mass 1000x, and reduce total radioactivity to boot, wouldn’t everyone leap for that in a heartbeat??

Q: if nuclear power already does all of the above, why don’t we all jump for it ?​

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

Q: if nuclear power already does all of the above, why don’t we all jump for it ?

I'm not gonna pretend to know all of the socioeconomic answers to this question, but I will say from what I've seen about this subject is that a lot of people just have a very misplaced fear towards nuclear power.
They think every nuclear reactor has the change to go Chernobyl every day at the best or, I kid you not here, they think that nuclear energy will lead to a Fallout-style scenario (Fallout, as in Fallout the video game. The video game which is based in an alternate reality and is highly ridiculous in every sense).

And it also seems that no politician will commit to even saying nuclear energy as an alternative.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

How much waste is produced from a Nuclear Power Plant??????

(in round numbers) per MW:

• nuclear = 400 tons of radioactive wastes (solid)
• coal = 400,000 tons of ash (solid) + 4,000 tons of CO2, SO2, NOX (gas)

please recall, those 404,000 tons of coal waste byproducts include more (total) radioactivity than the 400 tons of (concentrated) radioactive wastes from nuclear

So, nuclear power:

• reduces total toxic wastes by 1000x
• reduces total radioactive wastes (somewhat)
• reduces emissions to the atmosphere to zero (for all practical purposes)

It’s like you could pull all fossil fuel emissions back out of the atmosphere, compress & compactify them into a solid mass…

then reduce that mass by 1000x…

reduce total radioactivity from that mass, to boot….

and only have to worry about disposing of a dense, compact, concentrated solid substance

Q: if there was some sort of “smokestack scrubber” technology which could do that for fossil fuels (extract & compact all wastes into a concentrated solid mass), wouldn’t everyone want that?

Q: if there was some sort of “super smokestack super scrubber” which could not only do that, but reduce the concentrated solid mass 1000x, and reduce total radioactivity to boot, wouldn’t everyone leap for that in a heartbeat??

Q: if nuclear power already does all of the above, why don’t we all jump for it ?​

I suspect it's to do with the exaggerated public perception of the risks of nuclear energy.

However, now that wind energy costs have become competitive, and it's now cost-effective to replace coal power with solar, I can't see even next-generation nuclear getting much of a look-in.

 

[Ophiolite]

if scientists can build and safely operate CERN, the most expensive and complex science facility ever in human history...

then can't they build and safely operate comparably simpler nuclear reactors?

You are setting aside:
1. The major problems and failures that occurred with the project.
2. There tend to be technicians rather than scientists operating nuclear reactors.
3. There is major commercial pressure on operating nuclear reactors.
4. CERN was very, very expensive.
5. The most massive failure at CERN would have minimal impact*.

Other than that, I tend to agree with you.

*Of course, the most massive success was the discovery of the Higgs-Boson.

 

[Michael]

Fukushima: Japan will have to dump radioactive water into Pacific, minister says

There are some aspects of nuclear power that are quite disconcerting. I can't help but wonder way the water can't be "filtered" before it's dumped. It seems like the nuclear contaminants would be relatively easy to remove with something like carbon filtration before it's simply dumped into the ocean.

 

[Erik Nelson]

You are setting aside:
1. The major problems and failures that occurred with the project.
2. There tend to be technicians rather than scientists operating nuclear reactors.
3. There is major commercial pressure on operating nuclear reactors.
4. CERN was very, very expensive.
5. The most massive failure at CERN would have minimal impact*.

Other than that, I tend to agree with you.

*Of course, the most massive success was the discovery of the Higgs-Boson.

if we can build CERN, then surely we can build safe nuclear power stations, too?

nuclear power stations do not have to be unsafe

 

[Michael]

if we can build CERN, then surely we can build safe nuclear power stations, too?

nuclear power stations do not have to be unsafe

At some point we made a conscious decision to go with uranium power plants rather than thorium based reactors, in order to help build bombs. Had we gone with the "safest" nuclear technology, we wouldn't have the problems that we have today. It's in our best interest to modernize our nuclear power plants to thorium based designs to ensure that a Fukushima scenario doesn't happen ever again.

 

[Ophiolite]

if we can build CERN, then surely we can build safe nuclear power stations, too?

nuclear power stations do not have to be unsafe

Yes, but my point was that CERN was not safe, that a failure at CERN would not endanger a swathe of central Europe, that there were fewer financial or temporal pressures on its construction, and that nit-picking scientists rather than pragmatic, (pressured) engineers may have played (continue to play) a larger role in construction and operation.

I agree that we could build safe nuclear power stations, but I have strong reservations about our current competence to do so. The vulnerability of the back up generators at Fukashima is, in retrospect, an obvious error. It is far removed from the sophistication at the heart of the reactor and yet it was overlooked.

 

[Erik Nelson]

failure at CERN would not endanger a swathe of central Europe, that there were fewer financial or temporal pressures on its construction, and that nit-picking scientists rather than pragmatic, (pressured) engineers may have played (continue to play) a larger role in construction and operation.

Failure at 3 mile island didn't endanger anybody

Chernobyl was a unique design, numerous other safer ones

 

[Ophiolite]

Failure at 3 mile island didn't endanger anybody

Chernobyl was a unique design, numerous other safer ones

I notice you have failed to address the Fukushima Daiichi incident - the only one I specifically mentioned, even if I did misspell it.

Chernobyl failed primarily because if humans can do dumb things then human will, periodically do dumb things. True, the safer designs are meant to reduce the chances of human error causing a problem, but can they eliminate those chances? No. I'm in favour of nuclear energy if and only if a thorough and convincing risk-reward estimate is in place.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Fukushima: Japan will have to dump radioactive water into Pacific, minister says

There are some aspects of nuclear power that are quite disconcerting. I can't help but wonder way the water can't be "filtered" before it's dumped. It seems like the nuclear contaminants would be relatively easy to remove with something like carbon filtration before it's simply dumped into the ocean.

It has been filtered. Did you actually read the article? It explains that very point:

"Tepco has attempted to remove most radionuclides from the excess water, but the technology does not exist to rid the water of tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen."​