Nuclear Power: Safe Or Pure Profit?, Poll

[fred n yourface]

hi.
recent news here in the U.S. says the prez wants to support new nuclear power plants with public funds, even though these plants are purely private enterprises which only produce profit for their stockholders, not the public.
Any comments, or poll responses?

[Fguy]

It's a tough question. I put down safe. Even though some of the possibiities are pretty scary, a properly functioning nuclear plant is a lot better for the environment, and your health, than a coal fired generating station. And hydroelectricty also has some big negative impacts on the environment also. Not to say that nuclear power is all wonderful, but I don't think it's worse than the alternatives. If global warming and acid rain is a concern to you, then nuclear power should be considered.

Also, nuclear plants generate electricity more cheaply than other forms, which is a good thing. Sure, it's profitable, if it wan't, the plants wouldn't be there, but you can say that about a lot of things.

[lizon]

The technology has been safe for decades. The plants being constructed today have little to 0 waste product at all.

[fred n yourface]

{<fguy>It's a tough question. I put down safe. Even though some of the possibiities are pretty scary, a properly functioning nuclear plant is a lot better for the environment, and your health, than a coal fired generating station. And hydroelectricty also has some big negative impacts on the environment also. Not to say that nuclear power is all wonderful, but I don't think it's worse than the alternatives. If global warming and acid rain is a concern to you, then nuclear power should be considered.}

yes, "properly functioning." I'm worried about both: leakage of radioactive coolant water mixing with evaporative cooling water (it's happened before, and was not reported until someone blew the whistle) and disposal of the half-used uranium... currently the only way to actually dispose of it is to use it as fuel in a breeder type reactor to make bomb materials. Otherwise they encase it in glass marbles and bury it. Glass flows, it's a slow liquid. Limited time for safe encasement because of the properties of glass.

{<fguy>Also, nuclear plants generate electricity more cheaply than other forms, which is a good thing. Sure, it's profitable, if it wan't, the plants wouldn't be there, but you can say that about a lot of things.}

The problem that I have with the profitability is that the plants are to be funded with public money, but the profits go purely to private individuals. And the cheapness of the power production doesn't account for the expense of getting rid of the leftovers, simply because right now it all just goes into storage.

{<lizon> The technology has been safe for decades. The plants being constructed today have little to 0 waste product at all.}

Sorry, but without pure fuel there will always be waste product. A gram of plutonium spread across square miles can cause cancers in anything which ingests it. Uranium has a little weaker effect as a particulate, but if the cooling water leaks and gets into the groundwater supply (or vaporizes into the cloud layer,) everyone near the plant (or much further away in case of a vapor leak) can be affected by the radiation.

Now, I'm not arguing to be rude or put down anyone else's opinions. I'd be happy to trade statistics (even though 60% of all statistics are fabricated to make a point) or news articles to support my opinion... or win me over to yours, who knows.

[lizon]

Next generation Nuclear reactors, 4th Gen as their commonly called, are slated to be gas-cooled fast reactors. These reactors are closed system reactors that make use of helium as a coolant at high temperatures. The Objective is to essentially burn up Uranium and heavier isotopes so that only nuclear fission products remain. These designs could also make use of the waste products in Light Water reactors allowing them to generate power from older reactors while at the same time burning up the waste products.

At last I heard Japan, China, and France are leading the way in both the development and construction of these types of reactors.

The CESAR Project by the university of Maryland is an example of the research behind 4th gen reactors.
http://www.caesar.umd.edu/

A LOT has changed in nuclear reactor technology over the past several decades. The technology is viable, and safe, waste products can be reduced and/or eliminated. From what I remember the newer reactors while they do reduce the amount of waste, the waste that remains is highly radioactive. But I'm sure something can be done about that down the line.

[Fguy]

frednurface, I'm not saying there are no risks, but lots of things come with risk. And you have said nothing to convince me that overall risks to health and environment are lower with other forms of energy produiction.

As for your funding/profitability argument, well I don't know the details, but it doesn't sound like an Obama philosophy, does it? If Obama is putting public money into these projects ( are these grants or loans?) he must think there is some kind of a payback to the public good. I would hope so anyway. And who are these private individuals but shareholders? Consider buying some shares in one of these companies and cashing in.

[aussiemcgr]

Personally, I like the idea of the compressed air piston engine for a method of power. So far it has only been tested on cars, but if scaled up it could be the real deal.

Basically, its an engine that runs the same way as the petrol powered piston engines, except it uses the pressure from decompressing air instead of the pressure from the explosions of petrol. All it needs is a tank of compressed air. The same people building it are working on finishing an air compression engine (to make the compressed air) which ironically runs on compressed air. Meaning if they can put the two engines together, you have perpetual energy that is 100% free, 100% environmental, and technically much safer than a petrol powered car (although if you crash and the compressed air punctures, it would probably be just as bad as your gas tank exploding).

[lizon]

Everything costs something. There is no such thing as 100% free energy. You have to put energy into the system cause your always going to loose some amount of energy in the compression process. It would be better if the compression was simply hooked up to a wind turbine or some solar panels. Would be easier to develop and be more efficient.

I think we're going the route of fuel cells though. Seems to be the most developed technology ATM and is the technology that's being pushed by the auto industry.

[fred n yourface]

Next generation Nuclear reactors, 4th Gen as their commonly called, are slated to be gas-cooled fast reactors. These reactors are closed system reactors that make use of helium as a coolant at high temperatures. The Objective is to essentially burn up Uranium and heavier isotopes so that only nuclear fission products remain. These designs could also make use of the waste products in Light Water reactors allowing them to generate power from older reactors while at the same time burning up the waste products.

At last I heard Japan, China, and France are leading the way in both the development and construction of these types of reactors.

The CESAR Project by the university of Maryland is an example of the research behind 4th gen reactors.
http://www.caesar.umd.edu/

A LOT has changed in nuclear reactor technology over the past several decades. The technology is viable, and safe, waste products can be reduced and/or eliminated. From what I remember the newer reactors while they do reduce the amount of waste, the waste that remains is highly radioactive. But I'm sure something can be done about that down the line.

ok, interesting data, and they sound great, but are any of these things actually in use currently or still just under development? When the man goes to build more reactors, he's gonna use what's already available, not neccesarily what's best to use, often based on cost. New tech is costly, and may be bypassed in favor of 'cost-effectiveness.' And, anything still experimental will probably be ignored in favor of 'tried-and-true' tech.

frednurface, I'm not saying there are no risks, but lots of things come with risk. And you have said nothing to convince me that overall risks to health and environment are lower with other forms of energy produiction.

As for your funding/profitability argument, well I don't know the details, but it doesn't sound like an Obama philosophy, does it? If Obama is putting public money into these projects ( are these grants or loans?) he must think there is some kind of a payback to the public good. I would hope so anyway. And who are these private individuals but shareholders? Consider buying some shares in one of these companies and cashing in.

I wasn't arguing other methods...although solar heat focussing tech has been around and functional for many years now. < Solar Power Towers... Wikipedia >
As far as Obama philosphy goes, much of his campaign funding supposedly came from the nuclear power lobby, while McCain was backed by coal. I haven't really seen much come out of the Obama administration which has benefitted anyone but the insurance companies, banks, and investment companies, and I personally am not among any of those groups. So, I've been foreclosed on due to job loss, and meanwhile watched bankers, investment managers, and insurance company execs pull down millions of dollars each from 'bailout' funds which were given to their parent companies with almost zero accountability for spending. If that's not bad enough, similar amounts of tax money are still flowing out of the country to fund imperialist foreign wars that the US has no right to wage, considering they are being fought on sovereign foreign soil. Some attacks by the US are even crossing borders into Pakistan and killing yet more civilians, against the stated wishes of the Pakistani government! The military does 'need' more depleted uranium for weapons, the way they've been using it up, so maybe that's an admistrative reason to build more nuke plants?
If that money was flowing into instead of away from the US civilian (not military-industrial) economy, we'd not have a problem paying to develop clean power sources. I've not really got any respect for Obama's actions in office (especially the appointment of multiple lobbyists after going on about not doing so,) and I'm sorry now that I didn't vote for Nader instead of the apparent lesser of two evils (Obama.) The differences between Democrat and Republican in this country have gotten really thin once the politicians achieve election. Maybe if millionaires were blocked from public office? Then we'd have about 237 less congresspeople < 237 millionaires in Congress... CBS > and none of our last several Presidents would have been allowed to run.

I think we're going the route of fuel cells though. Seems to be the most developed technology ATM and is the technology that's being pushed by the auto industry.

I agree about the fuel cells, Canda has been using them successfully for years both in vehicles and for power plants. Nice and clean! The only problems I've seen are how to produce the hydrogen cleanly and how to store it (though I read in a hydrogen power book that the Germans have successfully been using regular natural gas pipelines to transport hydrogen for a while now.)

[Fguy]

...
I wasn't arguing other methods...
...

So what exactly is your point? I thought you were arguing against nuclear power. Fact: clean, safe, affordable power is needed. end of. If you wanna argue against nuclear, you gotta show that the alternatives are better.

[fred n yourface]

Point? It's a poll.
My views, or even serious discussion regarding them, weren't really what I was after when I made the poll. I was curious about the rest of your opinions. Also, discussion is the best way I know of to collect data I'm unaware of. Otherwise, I'd have polled something like:
What do you think is the safest option for clean power?
a>solar pv
b>solar heat
c>hydroelectric
d>coal-fired
e>biomass-fired
etc.

I hadn't heard that any 4thgen reactors were actually online anywhere yet. Can you point me to any, Fguy? I'd appreciate the extra info on how they're functioning beyond theory and small-scale artificial tests.

Thanks for contributing, all!
I'm not trying to diss anyone's opinions just 'cause they're different than mine. And, I try to be open minded. So, please, feel free to disagree and express yourself (within forum rules, of course.)

[aussiemcgr]

What do you think is the safest option for clean power?
a>solar pv
b>solar heat
c>hydroelectric
d>coal-fired
e>biomass-fired

Solar Power is what interests me the most. Clear potential and obviously clean. Our current solar technology doesnt absorb anywhere near what the sun is giving off, so you usually need alot more solar panels to get enough electricity. Although if the technology is improved, it can be extremely efficient. It really does depend on where you live though.

I live in Florida and we have solar heating for my pool. It is reliable, durable, and it works. My mum was saying that she wished we turned our home entirely solar when we built the place 7 years ago because under US (or Florida, not sure) Law, the Power Company MUST buy our excess power. However we cant do that now because based on the current technology, it would take about 30 years to pay off the expense of setting up our house that way. At the least, we wish we had set up our water heater (for the house, not the pool) to use Solar, but my dad was skeptical of it at the time.

Also, my mum got the new Prius with the Solar Cooling and that is a godsend. What it does is it uses the solar panel on the roof of the car to run the air conditioner while you are parked for the day. That way when we get into the car, it is always a nice 75 degrees and the battery is charged despite the outside temperature. I wish I could get that on my Volkswagen.

I did watch a show that said if they set up a big enough Solar Garden (or whatever its called) in the desert, they should be able to power the entire West Coast of the US. Once the Solar Panels are in place, it becomes almost free to generate the power. The problem is that with the current technology, it is just too expensive to set that up.

[Haplo]

It's as "safe" as anything else. There are occasional situations, but it's tough to compare nuclear fallout from a plant like Chernobyl or other major meltdowns to the damage done by all the coal plants and mines in the world. I am ready for cold fusion to stop being ignored by the snot-nosed members of the scientific community so that it can get funding to propel it the last few steps toward practicability.

[Anna Martin]

This burden should not be put on public

[munni]

hi.
recent news here in the U.S. says the prez wants to support new nuclear power plants with public funds, even though these plants are purely private enterprises which only produce profit for their stockholders, not the public.
Any comments, or poll responses?

dear friend i cannot get your mean to ask this question .....!!!

[bethmont]

hi.
recent news here in the U.S. says the prez wants to support new nuclear power plants with public funds, even though these plants are purely private enterprises which only produce profit for their stockholders, not the public.
Any comments, or poll responses?

nuclear power plants are dangerous in fact the whole nuclear adventure is crazy, nuclear devices give as a result nuclear waste, toxic, therefore the best thing to do is to find more intelligent and alternative energy. nuclear will not do it as well this atomic researches will go nowhere, better look at the sun, and capture the produce energy as a nuclear plant works as the sun but the aim is the energy not the process. once nuclear is out of the way new forms will appear, the king is dead long live the king!

[Maulkin]

yes, "properly functioning." I'm worried about both: leakage of radioactive coolant water mixing with evaporative cooling water (it's happened before, and was not reported until someone blew the whistle)

Links? Also, just how much was leaked into the water supply? A couple gallons (or even a couple hundred gallons) of 'radioactive coolant' - ie, isotopes of hydrogen and oxygen - aren't gonna be that bad. We drink them all the time, as they are naturally occurring isotopes.

and disposal of the half-used uranium... currently the only way to actually dispose of it is to use it as fuel in a breeder type reactor to make bomb materials. Otherwise they encase it in glass marbles and bury it. Glass flows, it's a slow liquid. Limited time for safe encasement because of the properties of glass.

1. That's exactly what France does, and they seem to be doing pretty well.

2. Glass is NOT a liquid. It DOES NOT FLOW. http://www.glassnotes.com/WindowPanes.html

3. The amount of waste created is tiny compared to other methods of energy production - and the longer-lived waste products could one day become yet another fuel source.

The problem that I have with the profitability is that the plants are to be funded with public money, but the profits go purely to private individuals. And the cheapness of the power production doesn't account for the expense of getting rid of the leftovers, simply because right now it all just goes into storage.

I agree that they should not be publicly funded. But I'd settle for deregulation to make it easier to set up - make the process of opening a nuclear power plant less onerous.

Sorry, but without pure fuel there will always be waste product. A gram of plutonium spread across square miles can cause cancers in anything which ingests it.

...Could you kindly cite a link to this? Because, quite frankly, I don't believe a word of it. Namely, roughly 500 grams of plutonium would constitute a lethal dose, so unless you're willing to EAT roughly half the area...

Plutonium is toxic, yes. So are most heavy metals. The radiation itself, however, isn't really that dangerous. The smoke detector in your house uses a small amount of Americium, for instance, and

Uranium has a little weaker effect as a particulate, but if the cooling water leaks and gets into the groundwater supply (or vaporizes into the cloud layer,) everyone near the plant (or much further away in case of a vapor leak) can be affected by the radiation.

Direct leak (ie, water pouring onto the ground) - easily contained and cleaned up, as it's limited in scope and range.

Vapor leak (ie, most likely, considering that the water is super heated, and the most likely scenario of rupture is when it is at such high pressures) - not very dangerous at all. The uranium - a toxic heavy metal - is found only in trace amounts in the water. That water is further spread out over several miles, and while there is a not insignificant heavy-water concentration, it's still a relatively small concentration when spread out over

Let's assume that 1,000 gallons of water - pure heavy water, even though that's unlikely - is released in the form of a vapor. Let's also assume that 5 pounds of uranium are dissolved into it - roughly 500 grams per pound, so 2,500 grams. Now, 1 cubic meter = 264 gallons, so for the sake of simplicity we'll just assume that we're dealing with 4 cubic meters of fluid-turned-vapor.

Now, let's start with a dispersion of 1 cubic kilometer. 1 cubic kilometer = 1,000,000,000 cubic meters... So that's 4 cubic meters of pure heavy water / 1,000,000,000 cubic meters yields a concentration of .000000004, or .004 ppm.

This isn't dangerous in the least, as far as heavy water is concerned. Indeed, heavy water only has significant dangers in statistically large amounts... And these ain't statistically large amounts, and this is just assuming a dispersion over 1 cubic kilometer.

Now, what about the uranium? 500 grams / 1,000,000,000 = .0000005 grams per cubic meter.

Or, roughly, .5 ppm.


Not. Dangerous. At. All.


Keep in mind, I rounded almost everything in favor of it being dangerous, and I gave absolutely worst case scenarios. But, consider:

1. Leaks likely wouldn't be this big. The water vapor released from such an explosion would be more likely to be measured in gallons rather than hundreds of gallons.
2. The concentration of heavy water released would be much lower than 100%
3. The amount of uranium in 1,000 gallons of water would likely be much lower than 5 pounds, as uranium doesn't like dissolving in water.

Personally, I like the idea of the compressed air piston engine for a method of power. So far it has only been tested on cars, but if scaled up it could be the real deal.

Basically, its an engine that runs the same way as the petrol powered piston engines, except it uses the pressure from decompressing air instead of the pressure from the explosions of petrol. All it needs is a tank of compressed air. The same people building it are working on finishing an air compression engine (to make the compressed air) which ironically runs on compressed air. Meaning if they can put the two engines together, you have perpetual energy that is 100% free, 100% environmental, and technically much safer than a petrol powered car (although if you crash and the compressed air punctures, it would probably be just as bad as your gas tank exploding).

Problem is, even gasoline has a slower release of energy than compressed air, usually. In order for gasoline to be truly explosive, it must be aerosolized - which is rare in most car crashes. Usually the gasoline will just leak out and splatter on the ground.

With compressed gas, however, all it needs is a large enough tear in the hull of the storing cylinder for it to rip itself apart, turning it into, essentially, a fragmentation grenade. All of the energy is released at once, and you had better hope you're out of the way when it does.

(Also, compressed air is only a *medium* for energy, not a *source*. True, power plants are more efficient than cars, but that's a relatively tiny gain...)

[kamlanegi]

yes you are right.

The technology has been safe for decades. The plants being constructed today have little to 0 waste product at all.

[herrysmart]

i think nothing is right or wrong its our usage which makes it good or bad if nuclear power we use for the energy purpose and other good purpose so who will be against it but if we use it to attack some or to defend ourselves so it would so harmful as no one will survive in atomic war neither the attacker nor the defender........... so its all up to you how you make it........


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