Nuclear Power? Nuclear Waste?

[IcyPeas]

Is nuclear power safer than it "used to be." Isn't there still the problem of waste? What is the latest thinking on this? Obama seems to say it should be considered but McCain is ready to build 45 new reactors...... I'm no nuclear scientist but my gut reaction says No No No. Am I behind the times?

[phantom power]

1. The argument rages on...

I'm on the pro-nuke side these days. Which puts me in the awkward position of agreeing with McCain about something. Oh well.

If you total up the damage done by spent nuclear fuel, and divide it by the amount of energy we've gotten by using it, it's a good deal.

One thing is completely clear: what's actually going to kill 5 billion people over the next 100 years isn't nuclear anything. It's CO2.

[Mz Pip]

2. I don't know if the waste

is any more dangerous than all the petrochemical waste that poisons our atmosphere and oceans. At least we seem to be able to isolate it into small contained areas.

I don't know what the answer is but just saying no to nuclear power as an almost knee jerk response seems counter productive. France uses nuclear power and has for decades. It seems to work well for them.

[NNadir]

3. Yes. You are behind the times and very uninformed.

[jpak]

7. Please tell us about your molten salt breeder reactor

:evilgrin:

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

4. Yes, modern nuclear plants are perfectly safe.

With modern technology, we'll have our boys home by Christmas. I mean nuke plants are perfectly safe.

[bean fidhleir]

5. There are many things that can be done with the waste.

Some are much worse than others: make it into bullets that disintegrate and scatter death around for ages.

Some are innocuous: drop it into the ocean where tectonic activity is vigorous.

[Gabi Hayes]

12. how bout mauna loa

I think we've being doing the bullet thingy in Iraq, and other places for quite awhile

maybe we can mix it with Agent Orange and send some more back to Vietnam

[bean fidhleir]

14. Mauna Loa would certainly be a roulette-wheel "solution" for sure

I think we probably want one that would pull rather than push the rod material, though :)

As to the bullet one, yeah, isn't it funny how everyone gets up in arms about storage of waste but nobody seems to *truly* grasp what's going on with the du bullets.

[IcyPeas]

18. good example of my ignorance....

what the heck is moana loa and du bullets? I will look this up. :shrug:

[bean fidhleir]

20. Nobody can know everything

Mauna Loa is one of the active volcanoes that make up Hawaii

"Du bullets" refer to the bullets made of (semi-)D(epleted) U(ranium) the making or using of which should in law as well as in fact be a crime against humanity but currently, of course, isn't.

[izquierdista]

6. There is no waste problem

IF you design and build the nuke plant where you intend to let the waste burn out its half-lives. Nuke plants should be put at least a half mile underground, in abandoned salt, potash, coal, or hard rock mines in stable geologic formations. Run a long cord to the surface for the power, and if ever there is a problem or it comes time to close the reactor, just cut the cord and backfill the holes.

[MadHound]

26. Nuke waste is much more than just the spent fuel

The most waste, by volume, is generated by non-fuel sources. These are anything from the paper swipes used by the HP's to the hot, activated host cans, to the containment vessel itself when it has to be decommissioned.

As far as your "solution" goes, those mines that you're talking about are nowhere close to a water source that is sufficient for cooling purposes. And will you backfill before or after the people reach the surface(what a fucking stupid idea:eyes:)

[wuushew]

8. Nuclear waste is very insubstantial by volume

I believe the football field analogy is a fairly common illustration.



All the non-military fuel in the entire history of American nuclear power would cover a football field to a depth of 10 feet.

Obviously this does not include shielding and encapsulation but I find that a rather easy solid object to visualize in my minds eye.



We live on a radioactive planet, and it seems idiotic not to harness the free energy that would otherwise simply heat the Earth.

[Gabi Hayes]

13. ''does not include shielding and encapsulation''

is that like when you get shot, if you don't include the bullet, it doesn't hurt so much?

[TahitiNut]

17. You've never been to the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, have you?

:rofl:

[pokerfan]

22. FWIW, I worked there

The waste problem there (and it is huge) is due to the decades of plutonium production, not the energy production plants.

[TahitiNut]

23. There are acres of spent fuel rods ... from plants and subs both.

The waste tanks are a toxic brew of unimaginable crap - literally. The Purex buildings are still off-limits. But every time a nuclear sub's reactor has to be changed over, it's sliced out intact and barged up the Columbia for 'decommissioning.'

(I was at PNNL for 5 years.)

[pokerfan]

24. And I have family who were downwinders

and the sheer volume (tens of millions of gallons) of high level waste is staggering. I have a friend who's been working cleanup there for the past fifteen years.

But again this was due to weapons grade production (over decades when the science and technology was in its infancy), not commercial energy production and certainly not what is state of the art today.

As I said in a earlier post, lift the ban on reprocessing or nationalize the industry. Or both. Whatever it takes. I believe that everyone else (France, UK, Japan, India, etc.) is reprocessing to vastly reduce the waste problem. Why aren't we? It makes sense not only because of waste reduction. It's also more efficient use of a finite resource. There's only so much uranium in the world.

I really hate being on McCain's side on anything and I certainly don't trust his motives and I don't want him anywhere close to the white house either way this issue comes down... BUT, we should at least have an honest, sober debate.

Peak crude is here and now they're talking about tar sands and shale oil and "clean" coal. We can't keep dumping Carbon into the atmosphere.

We have some hard choices in front of us.

[keep_it_real]

9. If we have to have them

We should bury the waste in abandoned mines, deep in the earth.

[bananas]

10. Nuclear waste is a serious problem, and Obama is against Yucca Mountain.

We still don't have a solution to the waste problem.

[Gabi Hayes]

11. I HEARD McCain say this:

Nuclear power is CLEAN

Nuclear power is CHEAP

Nuclear power is SAFE

not sure of the order, but he said all three things, right in a row.

Now, I'm not sure about two of those, but I KNOW for CERTAIN that Nuclear power is NOT CHEAP

what an ahole

[iamthebandfanman]

15. dont forget about what happens

if one is left unattended(by another disaster)......

BOOM!

[SergeyDovlatov]

16. Pebble bed reactors look promising.

They are passively safe. Meaning if you stop doing things to it, it will shutdown all by itself. You must pump gas through it for it to work.

Fuel spheres (pebbles) can be used to store nuclear waste.



Each pebble, within the vessel, is a 60 mm (2.6") hollow sphere of pyrolytic graphite. The sphere is one containment layer. The design of the pebbles (called "TRISO" fuel) is crucial to the reactor's simplicity and safety, because they include no less than four of the seven containments. The pebbles are the size of tennis balls. Each has a mass of 210 g, 9 g of which is uranium. It takes 380,000 to fuel a reactor of 120 MWe. The pebbles are constructed of ceramics that are known not to melt at the maximum equilibrium temperature of the reactor. The ceramics also act as a renewable moderator for the reactor, and are strong containment vessels. In fact, most waste disposal plans for pebble-bed reactors plan to store the waste within the spent pebbles.


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

A pebble bed power plant combines a gas-cooled core<6> and a novel packaging of the fuel that dramatically reduces complexity while improving safety.<7>

The uranium, thorium or plutonium nuclear fuels are in the form of a ceramic (usually oxides or carbides) contained within spherical pebbles made of pyrolytic graphite, which acts as the primary neutron moderator. Each sphere is effectively a complete "mini-reactor", containing all of the parts that would normally be separate components of a conventional reactor. Simply piling enough of the fuel spheres together will eventually reach criticality.

[pokerfan]

19. Most countries recycle their nuclear waste

It doesn't eliminate all of it but reduces it about 95%. Our government doesn't allow commercial reprocessing.

Then store (not dump) what's left underground where it can be periodically inspected and moved as needed, even repackaged if required.

[NuttyFluffers]

27. yup, 5% waste is a wonderful option compared to coal/oil power plants

give us a few more decades and we can probably either get fusion to eliminate that last 5% or just jettison it off into the sun. it really is a much better solution than the primary provider of energy currently.

naturally, renewable sources would be best, but they just are not mainstreamed into significant mass production to take up the slack. one day they will be, and many nations are investing so that it will be so. but our problems are rather immediate, so...

[MasonJar]

21. There should be no more plants until the scientists come up with a

legitimate disposal system that is safe.

[Flaxbee]

25. Never safe, never will be.

Nuclear power is an abomination.

My husband did some work at Chernobyl after the reactor blew, and the suffering those who were contaminated endured is horrible. Why anyone would think nuclear power was good is ridiculous.

If the entire country heated its water with solar, there would be no need for nuclear power. There is an enormous amount of energy used in this country simply to heat water and refrigerate food. Solar could handle both of those - just in households, I'm not talking about the power needed in hospitals, etc. - and we could eliminated nuclear power.

But the nuclear industry is very profitable, and powerful. Pretty easy to understand why it's being pushed ...