Fukushima: Nuclear power's VHS relic? (BBC)

[hunter]

Fukushima: Nuclear power's VHS relic?
By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News

The most obvious cause of the disaster at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station was the massive wall of tsunami water that swept the site clean of back-up electricity generation on 11 March, removing cooling capacity from reactor cores and resulting in serial meltdown. Would a newer reactor have fared better? Was the relationship between industry and regulators too close? Perhaps.

A question less often discussed, but equally intriguing, is whether decisions made half a century ago for reasons of commercial and geopolitical advantage have left the world with basic designs of nuclear reactor that are inherently less safe than others that have fallen by the wayside.

...

With the US government now actively courting friendly European countries with its nuclear technology including enriched uranium, partly to immunise them against Soviet lures, Westinghouse and General Electric began to market their wares in Europe and the US - and eventually further afield.

"They had a huge vested interest in dominating the nuclear power space - they stood to make many times the amount of money building a nuclear plant as they did a comparable coal or natural gas facility," says technology writer Alexis Madrigal.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14060913

Once again, decisions made by giant corporations in their quest to dominate markets come back to bite us in the ass.

[bananas]

1. All these reactor designs have their own problems. nt

[kristopher]

2. Nuclear fission's 4 problems - Cost, Proliferation, Waste, Safety

The OP is nuclear industry spin attempting to scapegoat the PAST industry so that the present day industry can continue making money placing the public at risk when there are far better alternatives to FISSION.

Yes the nuclear industry 60 years ago followed a path related to nuclear weapons. But the market for nuclear power today is one where nuclear proliferation is a front and center concern for those who want to expand the market into non-nuclear weapons states around the world. There are definite problems with the once through uranium fuel cycle, but that it is a relic of the desire to build weapons doesn't even begin to pass the smell test.

The present approach has been selected as the best technology that is a balance between the Cost, Proliferation, Waste, and Safety issues that define the challenges of nuclear fission. The OP is pure, unadulterated nuclear industry bullshit.


Here is the truth:

We don't need nuclear. Period.

We don't need nuclear reactors using the once through uranium fuel cycle.

We don't need plutonium breeder reactors.

We don't need thorium breeder reactors.

We don't need small modular nuclear reactors.

We don't need to build cities on the oceans.

We don't need to arm every country in the world with nuclear weapons to offset the risk of nuclear proliferation from nuclear power

We don't need nuclear.

Period.

It is not necessary.

It isn't desired.

No one wants it.

People hate it.

People want us to stop using it.

People want us to use renewables.

Renewables are better in every respect.

Renewables are better in every respect.

Renewables are better in every respect.

We don't need nuclear.

Period.

[txlibdem]

3. Very informative -- Take it as a complement that the resident anti-nookz hate it!

It's always important to know how we got to where we are now.

My favorite quote:
*************************************************************
Other reactor concepts that offer major theoretical advantages over light water reactors have fallen by the wayside, or remain stuck in the research stage.

These include designs that use thorium rather than uranium as fuel, resulting in less long-lived waste and a lower weapons proliferation risk, and travelling wave reactors that burn their waste as they operate.

...

Even more provocatively, would any of these lineages have led to reactors that could have survived the Fukushima deluge, averting the need for many thousands of people to leave their homes and for the government to shell out $100bn or so in compensation?

John Idris Jones, a physicist who has worked at the Magnox station at Wylfa in Wales for more than 30 years, believes it would have survived.
*******************************************************************

The thing that frightens *them* most: the Thorium cycle reactor designs that are passively safe even in the event of total power loss, and that the reactors produce almost no long-lived waste and cannot be used to produce weapons. And most new designs of Thorium or Traveling Wave reactor (and several other designs seeking approval) are mass produced in factories and delivered by train to the site. Safety, waste, proliferation, and cost are NOT a problem: there goes "the 4 things wrong with nook-yoo-LUR."

[kristopher]

4. Another "this nuclear technology is the one that will save us" myth.

1. our analysis of thorium versus uranium fuel cycles (appendix a) found advantages and disadvantages for both fuel cycles—but the differences were not sufficient to fundamentally alter conclusions.
The Future of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle — Overview, Conclusions, and Recommendations
Chapter 1 page 17
MIT

[txlibdem]

6. Using that same old MIT paper... written by which momma's boys born with a golden spoon?

MIT is only as good as the people it lets in. They have been lowering their standards for foreign students for decades ('cause they pay cash) and must now be lowering their standards for everyone.

The study is flawed and does not look at fluid based reactors such as the LFTR, it only looked at the very problematic solid fuel Thorium reactors which are plagued with expensive and inefficient work arounds that are immediately solved by using liquid fluoride thorium reactors instead.

Why keep citing this flawed "report?" We both know it's junk science.

[GliderGuider]

8. Every "this technology is the one that will save us" story is a myth

More and different technologies will not "save us" (whatever the heck that means). Technology simply mediates our interaction with the world, it's not some numinous force of salvation.

Every technology is like duct tape or The Force - it has a light side and a dark side. Which one we use is up to us. We are the only agents of our own salvation...

[hunter]

11. That's why the prospect of cheap fusion terrifies me.

I can't help but imagine fusion powered container ships and factories and mining equipment and desalinization plants...

The sort of economy we have now, given such power, would eat the earth. Everything would get turned into crap for the landfills, suburbs, automobiles and freeways.

[GliderGuider]

12. Yeah, me too.

We're doing a good enough job at "eating the earth" with the energy sources we've got.

The more expensive energy becomes, the happier I'll be.

[txlibdem]

14. Alfred Nobel also saw the light and dark side of his invention

That much we agree on but I would rather have more and better technologies than the alternative (mass starvation, plague, resource wars, etc).

Remember that we have only just begun to invent new and advanced technologies:
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
-- Arthur C. Clarke, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws

[GliderGuider]

15. But we already have those alternatives

Just not that close (yet) to where you or I live...

And we have no guarantee whatsoever that more technology will keep them at bay.

"The future is already here - it's just unevenly distributed." -- William Gibson

[txlibdem]

18. It's a question of scale, molehill vs mountain

I mulled over your post for hours, on and off, trying to figure out exactly what point you were trying to make. I think you are saying that there are no guarantees in life ("we have no guarantee whatsoever that more technology will keep them at bay"). No intelligent person could disagree with you on that concept.

But the larger issue of avoiding a worldwide population crash is a moral imperative. We would not be human beings if we didn't use all of our brain power and all technologies available to us to try to avoid that all too possible outcome.

[GliderGuider]

19. You've just hit one of the nubs of our difference.

You say, "But the larger issue of avoiding a worldwide population crash is a moral imperative." I do not agree with that statement at all.

For me, helping individual people who can't help themselves is a moral imperative. Protecting other species who are defenseless against human activity as a moral imperative. But avoiding a decline in the human population is not. In fact, for me the exact opposite is true. I feel it is a moral imperative to foster a decline of the human population.

Of course, a lot depends on how we get there. The word "crash" is imprecise and quite emotional, so I prefer to work with examples. Here's an example scenario. Over the next 25 years we experience a drop in global birth rates from what they are today to the level seen in Japan and Hong Kong, and a rise in death rates from today's level to what they are in Afghanistan and Mozambique. If the rates then stabilized (for some undefined reason) at those levels after 2035, we'd have a world population of 3 billion by the end of the century 90 years from now.

Edited to add: To put this in context, Russia's birth rate dropped to less than half and their death rate doubled over the 50 years from 1950 to 2000, so the changes I'm speculating about are entirely within the realm of recent human experience.

My preference of course is that any increases in the global death rate not be due to direct human action - even I have my moral limits. :evilgrin:

In any event the rates of change I think are necessary to reduce our population as much as I believe is necessary are far too large to be caused by human actions. If they happen they will be driven by underlying circumstances - global economic failure, climate change and oil supply limits being chief among them.

If we do not reduce either our population or our level of activity, but instead tinker around the edges of the problem with band-aid "solutions" we will irreparably damage the planet in terms of its habitability for both humans and other species.

[txlibdem]

20. Why do you call them "band-aid solutions?"

Let me pose a hypothetical. For the sake of argument let's take the following as worldwide facts:
1. Fossil fuel use is ended by 2040.
2. Nuclear fission use is ended by 2050.
3. Solar PV, Concentrating Solar Thermal, Onshore Wind, Offshore Wind, Geothermal power, Wave and Tidal power provides 100% of our energy needs
3.a. These renewable energy sources are able to store their excess energy and adequate overcapacity has been taken into consideration so that there are no other sources of energy needed.
4. Energy conservation technologies and techniques have decreased Americans' energy usage down to 30% of 1999 levels.
4.a. Example: Lighting consumes 12% of the energy in residential and 25% in commercial settings, converting all of our lighting products to LED so they use only 15% of the energy that current lighting products do would cut down dramatically on total energy usage. It's more complex than that but as a general statement.
4.b. Example 2: Electric vehicles use only 20% of the energy of a gasoline or diesel powered vehicle.
4.c. Example 3: Passive solar and other intelligent building techniques (such as PNC SmartHome or geothermal heating and cooling systems) reduce heating and cooling costs by 80% to 90% -- Heating/Cooling in Residential is 32%/11% and in Commercial is 13%/11%.

Reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_States#Current_consumption
http://www.cmnh.org/site/atthemuseum/onexhibit/smarthome.aspx
http://www.cmnh.org/site/AtTheMuseum/OnExhibit/SmartHome/Wall.aspx

There are a thousand other ways we can drastically cut our energy use... by intelligently applying the technology we already have and improving or inventing technologies in the coming decade. By 2020 the cost curve will have shifted away from fossil fuels in every sector in favor of renewable energy and the examples above.

So in this hypothetical, why would mass population decline be necessary or even desired?

[GliderGuider]

21. Because human activity is causing most of the world's problems, and energy is the enabler.

By switching to alternative energy we do exactly nothing to curb human activity. As I said above, "Protecting other species who are defenseless against human activity as a moral imperative." Aside from climate change and ocean acidification (which will keep on rolling for years even if we do go 100% renewable) the other damage - to soil and ground water, to forests, to habitats, to the genomes of all sorts of "useful" species - human activity will continue unabated whether the energy that drives it comes from oil and coal or biodiesel and wind.

I would like humanity to stop growing and start shrinking in both numbers or activity. In my opinion the planet has a sucking chest wound, and human beings are the shrapnel.

[txlibdem]

22. Include advanced farming technology that cuts water use by 95%, uses 1/2000th the land

Explained in my OP on Vertical Farms, http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x304085

Current farming methods use 62% of all fresh water in America. Vertical Farms use only 5% of that amount, have zero agricultural runoff, produce as much on one acre of land as 2400 acres of farm would thus allowing millions of square acres to return to its natural state as forests. The only water that is used is taken up by the plants and a comparatively tiny amount of evaporation (and even the evaporation can be captured and recycled with a properly designed vertical farm). Pesticides and herbicides are almost never used (as in cut by over 99%) in a vertical farm.

Most of the plastics we use come from petroleum. Dozens of companies and hundreds/thousands of scientists are working on using algae and other non-edible plant materials to make plastics. The same goes for a large percentage of chemicals that now come from petroleum or leave as waste products a huge quantity of very toxic waste. The only thing that is slowing down the rapid expansion in biofuels and biochem is "cheap" fossil fuels... and that isn't going to be much of a problem from here on out.

These advances will reduce the burden on the planet from "human activity" and return the majority of farmland back to native forests and their proper ecosystems.

Will that, when added to the energy reductions mentioned in my earlier post, convince you to end the death sentences you have placed on 8 billion human beings?

[GliderGuider]

23. We'll see, won't we?

As I've said before, I think "vertical farming" is pie in the sky. I have not changed my mind.

[txlibdem]

24. We shall see

One person's "pie in the sky" is another person's "it's happening as we speak." As in, per the link in my earlier post, there are 4 nations that have built prototypes of vertical farms already and America has two in the works (seeking financing).

[BeFree]

5. Oh goody

Nuke power that is too cheap to meter!

[txlibdem]

7. Then I invite you to unplug all of your lights and appliances...

because some of the energy that you are using right now comes from nuclear power plants. Uh-oh. Didn't think of that, did ya?

[GliderGuider]

9. There has to be a name for the fallacy you just committed.

A person can legitimately object to something that they are forced to use by circumstances beyond their control.

For instance, for years I used a "green" power provider. I paid my bills to them, and they in turn paid my bill to the PowerCo and invested the premium I paid in wind farms. But most of the the electrons coming out of my wall still came from the Darlington and Bruce nukes, and the Nanticoke coal station. Does the fact that I chose to keep my lights and refrigerator on despite my objections to coal and nuclear power somehow invalidate my objection?

It's like slagging off Al Gore's house or "inviting" population activists to kill themselves, ferchrissake.

[BeFree]

10. Invite?

30 years ago, solar was going great. Then the nukers got all the bennies and solar was written off by the republicants.

If you are proud of that legacy, then say so. Otherwise.....

[txlibdem]

13. Solar, wind and the electric car were going great

Mother Earth News has archived issues online, one of which talked about a passive solar house built with help from President Carter's energy efficiency tax rebates. The repukes killed off all of those. We could be 30 years ahead of the game. Instead we got "morning in America" and about 90 gazillion more tons of CO2 spewed into the atmosphere... and now we have 4 (or is it 5) oil wars instead of being 100% energy independent as President Carter's energy plan would have brought us.

The one person to blame is Ronald Reagan, traitor to America and to the world.

You and I may disagree on the importance of nuclear power plants but unless you can say you voted for a 2nd term for President Carter (against Reagan) I claim the lead in green points.

[BeFree]

16. Lead? This ain't no follower

"...importance of nuclear power plants..."

You got that right. It is very important we shut down the next Fukushima, NOW, and stop making any more nuke waste.

[txlibdem]

17. Pray tell, what should we do with Coal, Oil and Fracking Natural Gas?

It's a very serious question, perhaps life and death. Since you intend to remove 20% of our electric generating capacity NOW, what will replace it... NOW?