When will we go back to nuclear power for clean energy?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OK, I'll give a 100% pass on all safety and disposal problems for nuclear. Done.

New nuclear is not happening because of a little thing called economics. It simply is not cost completive with other zero carbon alternatives.

Nuclear engineer again. Didn't realize this post had kept going.

Nuclear is, by far, the cheapest of all the zero-carbon options, and especially so when considering that it operates at night and on non-windy days.

Not went you have an accident and there is always an accident. It’s not if but when it happens.

Better safety record than all other forms of generation over the past 60 years, even solar and wind, accounting for Chernobyl and Fukushima.

The risk from a nuclear plant never really goes away. When you shut down a natural gas plant, the risk is gone. When you dismantle wind turbines, the risk is gone. When you’ve shut down the coal plant and dealt with the byproducts, the risk goes down as the environment heals itself. Spent fuel rods are a risk that never goes away. As long as they exist, the danger is there. And if something were to ever happen to a plant or a fuel rod storage facility, the land is done forever and itself remains a risk. Look what Russia is doing to Chernobyl. 30+ years on and the risk is still there.

Risk of what?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OK, I'll give a 100% pass on all safety and disposal problems for nuclear. Done.

New nuclear is not happening because of a little thing called economics. It simply is not cost completive with other zero carbon alternatives.

Nuclear engineer again. Didn't realize this post had kept going.

Nuclear is, by far, the cheapest of all the zero-carbon options, and especially so when considering that it operates at night and on non-windy days.

Not went you have an accident and there is always an accident. It’s not if but when it happens.

Better safety record than all other forms of generation over the past 60 years, even solar and wind, accounting for Chernobyl and Fukushima.

The risk from a nuclear plant never really goes away. When you shut down a natural gas plant, the risk is gone. When you dismantle wind turbines, the risk is gone. When you’ve shut down the coal plant and dealt with the byproducts, the risk goes down as the environment heals itself. Spent fuel rods are a risk that never goes away. As long as they exist, the danger is there. And if something were to ever happen to a plant or a fuel rod storage facility, the land is done forever and itself remains a risk. Look what Russia is doing to Chernobyl. 30+ years on and the risk is still there.

Well, I think we are seeing that even mother nature can handle only so much to heal itself.

[Anonymous]

Spent rods are not technically considered "waste" just sayin'

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OK, I'll give a 100% pass on all safety and disposal problems for nuclear. Done.

New nuclear is not happening because of a little thing called economics. It simply is not cost completive with other zero carbon alternatives.

Nuclear engineer again. Didn't realize this post had kept going.

Nuclear is, by far, the cheapest of all the zero-carbon options, and especially so when considering that it operates at night and on non-windy days.

Not went you have an accident and there is always an accident. It’s not if but when it happens.

Better safety record than all other forms of generation over the past 60 years, even solar and wind, accounting for Chernobyl and Fukushima.

The risk from a nuclear plant never really goes away. When you shut down a natural gas plant, the risk is gone. When you dismantle wind turbines, the risk is gone. When you’ve shut down the coal plant and dealt with the byproducts, the risk goes down as the environment heals itself. Spent fuel rods are a risk that never goes away. As long as they exist, the danger is there. And if something were to ever happen to a plant or a fuel rod storage facility, the land is done forever and itself remains a risk. Look what Russia is doing to Chernobyl. 30+ years on and the risk is still there.

Well, I think we are seeing that even mother nature can handle only so much to heal itself.

That seems like a well considered opinion. Too bad it's wrong.

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/572589/chernobyl-nuclear-disaster-site-thriving-wildlife

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OK, I'll give a 100% pass on all safety and disposal problems for nuclear. Done.

New nuclear is not happening because of a little thing called economics. It simply is not cost completive with other zero carbon alternatives.

Nuclear engineer again. Didn't realize this post had kept going.

Nuclear is, by far, the cheapest of all the zero-carbon options, and especially so when considering that it operates at night and on non-windy days.

Not went you have an accident and there is always an accident. It’s not if but when it happens.

Better safety record than all other forms of generation over the past 60 years, even solar and wind, accounting for Chernobyl and Fukushima.

The risk from a nuclear plant never really goes away. When you shut down a natural gas plant, the risk is gone. When you dismantle wind turbines, the risk is gone. When you’ve shut down the coal plant and dealt with the byproducts, the risk goes down as the environment heals itself. Spent fuel rods are a risk that never goes away. As long as they exist, the danger is there. And if something were to ever happen to a plant or a fuel rod storage facility, the land is done forever and itself remains a risk. Look what Russia is doing to Chernobyl. 30+ years on and the risk is still there.

Well, I think we are seeing that even mother nature can handle only so much to heal itself.

That seems like a well considered opinion. Too bad it's wrong.

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/572589/chernobyl-nuclear-disaster-site-thriving-wildlife

LOL. Apples and oranges.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It seems power is getting more expensive. Wind farms do so much damage to the bird populations, solar does to plus it takes up so much land. The waste from solar is going to be a huge problem when the panels reach their end of life.

I hope we will get out of collective heads about how clean nuclear truly is.

This Ted talk really addresses the topic and I agree whole heartedly.

Here is a free e-book written by David MacKay, a British physicist (recently deceased), who assesses whether solar, wind and tidal energy can supply the UK's and Europe's energy needs:

https://www.withouthotair.com/ " target="_new" rel="nofollow"> https://www.withouthotair.com/

One of his key conclusions is as follows:

Let’s be realistic. Just like Britain, Europe can’t live on its own renewables. So if the aim is to get off fossil fuels, Europe needs nuclear power, or solar power in other people’s deserts (as discussed on p179), or both.

Solar and wind are unlikely to be sufficient because massive areas of land would be required to generate our high per capita energy needs -- so much land is needed, in fact, that it would compete with the areas we need for farming and for our homes. This leads him to nuclear power which, while not a renewable resource, has the potential to last for a much longer period than fossil fuels.

With respect to the safety of nuclear power, he presents convincing evidence that nuclear power had led to far fewer deaths per kilowatt hour of energy produced than have fossil fuels. He also deals with the issue of nuclear waste, and points out that if we were to satisfy all of our energy needs using nuclear power, the amount of waste generated, per capita, across the lifetime of a human, could fit inside of a milk bottle, and that the aggregate annual amount of waste for an entire country could fit into a relatively small area. Lastly, he points out that while we need to store this waste for a long time, the radioactivity associated with the waste rapidly declines during its first few decades of storage.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It seems power is getting more expensive. Wind farms do so much damage to the bird populations, solar does to plus it takes up so much land. The waste from solar is going to be a huge problem when the panels reach their end of life.

I hope we will get out of collective heads about how clean nuclear truly is.

This Ted talk really addresses the topic and I agree whole heartedly.

Here is a free e-book written by David MacKay, a British physicist (recently deceased), who assesses whether solar, wind and tidal energy can supply the UK's and Europe's energy needs:

https://www.withouthotair.com/ " target="_new" rel="nofollow"> https://www.withouthotair.com/

One of his key conclusions is as follows:

Let’s be realistic. Just like Britain, Europe can’t live on its own renewables. So if the aim is to get off fossil fuels, Europe needs nuclear power, or solar power in other people’s deserts (as discussed on p179), or both.

Solar and wind are unlikely to be sufficient because massive areas of land would be required to generate our high per capita energy needs -- so much land is needed, in fact, that it would compete with the areas we need for farming and for our homes. This leads him to nuclear power which, while not a renewable resource, has the potential to last for a much longer period than fossil fuels.

With respect to the safety of nuclear power, he presents convincing evidence that nuclear power had led to far fewer deaths per kilowatt hour of energy produced than have fossil fuels. He also deals with the issue of nuclear waste, and points out that if we were to satisfy all of our energy needs using nuclear power, the amount of waste generated, per capita, across the lifetime of a human, could fit inside of a milk bottle, and that the aggregate annual amount of waste for an entire country could fit into a relatively small area. Lastly, he points out that while we need to store this waste for a long time, the radioactivity associated with the waste rapidly declines during its first few decades of storage.

I'm the PP who posted the URL for the ebook by David MacKay entitled "Sustainable Energy -- Without the Hot Air".

In my previous post, I summarized some of MacKay's conclusions for the UK and Europe. Last night, I read the appendix of his book which has a section which deals specifically with the USA. MacKay's energy renewables assessment for the USA is somewhat more optimistic than this assessment of the UK's. For the USA, MacKay concludes that large, sparsely-populated areas in New Mexico and Texas -- each of which have a high average number of sunny days per year -- offer the potential to produce 250 KWH/D (kilowatt hours per day, per capita) of solar-farm-generated energy for a population of 500 million people. 250KWH per day per capita is roughly equal to our present total per capital energy consumption from all fuel sources. So this is a bit of good news, but a huge land area would be required to do the job -- about 160,000 square miles, which is roughly the size of California.

The central challenge with wind and solar is that vast land areas are required to produce enough energy to match our current levels of energy consumption via fossil fuels.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What does France or other nuclear heavy countries do with their nuclear waste?

France's reactor design, Areva, reuses the waste so that it has less radiation when they store the spent fuel.

It's not clear to me why we cant use dry casks to store spent fuel until it has decayed enough to move. We have trash pits, etc so the idea of storing waste isnt new. We have never, ever, in the history of the world, had any deaths related to nuclear waste. Yet here we are, planning more coal and oil consumption out of "safety" concerns.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What does France or other nuclear heavy countries do with their nuclear waste?

France's reactor design, Areva, reuses the waste so that it has less radiation when they store the spent fuel.

It's not clear to me why we cant use dry casks to store spent fuel until it has decayed enough to move. We have trash pits, etc so the idea of storing waste isnt new. We have never, ever, in the history of the world, had any deaths related to nuclear waste. Yet here we are, planning more coal and oil consumption out of "safety" concerns.

Its ironic that nuclear power releases less radiation into the environment than any other energy source. The worst offender is coal:

Burning coal gasifies its organic materials, concentrating its mineral components into the remaining waste, called fly ash. So much coal is burned in the world and so much fly ash produced that coal is actually the major source of radioactive releases into the environment.

https://e360.yale.edu/features/why-nuclear-power-must-be-part-of-the-energy-solution-environmentalists-climate

[Anonymous]

Clean nuclear doesn’t hurt freedom or capitalism. That’s why it’s shunned. The environmental movement is anti American at its core and nuclear doesn’t advance evil.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Nuclear power has two major problems. First is the waste. There is no easy answer to this. All of the waste is store on site. Reprocessing is very expensive and not as efficient as people say. Burning still leave radio waste. Building a storage facility to hold waste has to have a life of 10,000 years. It is impossible to build a facility that will last that long.

Second there have been major accidents with nuclear power plants. These plants are large and complex facilities. Over time there will always be accidents and natural disasters.

People who say this is clear no problem source of power do not know what they are saying.

More people were hurt mining coal this month than were hurt from Three Mile Island.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Second there have been major accidents with nuclear power plants. These plants are large and complex facilities. Over time there will always be accidents and natural disasters.

There have been three in 50 years.

How many people died from those three?

From peer reviewed studies…65 is estimated.

TMI … 0
Chernobyl … 65
Fukushima … 0

There is more naturally occurring radiation from the earth (radon) and from our own star that is far more dangerous.

Those storage casks are far more safe and haven’t killed anyone.

Yet we have increased our energy costs because of solar and wind without the gains we have been promised.

One can look at Germany for those numbers.

Golly, can you imagine saying this with a straight face?

Unfortunately, it's the truth. The public has a lot of misconceptions about nuclear thanks to movies like The China Syndrome and Chernobyl.

What about TMI - that was not fictional.

What about it?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OK, I'll give a 100% pass on all safety and disposal problems for nuclear. Done.

New nuclear is not happening because of a little thing called economics. It simply is not cost completive with other zero carbon alternatives.

Nuclear engineer again. Didn't realize this post had kept going.

Nuclear is, by far, the cheapest of all the zero-carbon options, and especially so when considering that it operates at night and on non-windy days.

Not went you have an accident and there is always an accident. It’s not if but when it happens.

Fukushima killed exactly one person. Here's a coal power plant accident from last year. Twice the deaths of Fukushima, and yet no wall to wall coverage.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/coal-pile-slide-buries-kills-2-colorado-power-plant-rcna31788

To say nothing of coal mining deaths or deaths from coal pollution.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Second there have been major accidents with nuclear power plants. These plants are large and complex facilities. Over time there will always be accidents and natural disasters.

There have been three in 50 years.

How many people died from those three?

From peer reviewed studies…65 is estimated.

TMI … 0
Chernobyl … 65
Fukushima … 0

There is more naturally occurring radiation from the earth (radon) and from our own star that is far more dangerous.

Those storage casks are far more safe and haven’t killed anyone.

Yet we have increased our energy costs because of solar and wind without the gains we have been promised.

One can look at Germany for those numbers.

Golly, can you imagine saying this with a straight face?

Unfortunately, it's the truth. The public has a lot of misconceptions about nuclear thanks to movies like The China Syndrome and Chernobyl.

What about TMI - that was not fictional.

What about it?

Didn't you know? Harrisburg was leveled. When you visit Harrisburg, it's really a Potemkin village run by Booz Allen Hamilton.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What does France or other nuclear heavy countries do with their nuclear waste?

France's reactor design, Areva, reuses the waste so that it has less radiation when they store the spent fuel.

It's not clear to me why we cant use dry casks to store spent fuel until it has decayed enough to move. We have trash pits, etc so the idea of storing waste isnt new. We have never, ever, in the history of the world, had any deaths related to nuclear waste. Yet here we are, planning more coal and oil consumption out of "safety" concerns.

Hey, go ahead and sign up to have the stuff stored in your backyard. Since you’re all nuclear regulators, you’ll know exactly how big the casks are and how fast they get filled, as well as how much space needs to be around them… then we can just park it all on your lawn and you can enjoy looking at it till it’s ready to store somewhere else.