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| Should the world's nuclear power industries face greater prohibitions & legislative penalties? |
| Yes |
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23% |
[ 4 ] |
| No |
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41% |
[ 7 ] |
| Tough call |
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5% |
[ 1 ] |
| Don't care |
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23% |
[ 4 ] |
| Whazah? new-clAy-Hair ... ? yuck yuck yuck |
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5% |
[ 1 ] |
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| Total Votes : 17 |
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| Author |
Message |
keane
Joined: 09 Jul 2007
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 Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 3:14 am Post subject: |
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| Pluto wrote: |
| igotthisguitar wrote: |
| Pluto wrote: |
| I wonder how France has dealt with this problem. |
... etc etc  |
It's a fair question. There is the question of storage and logistics of wasted material. We only need to store it for a period of three hundred years before it can be used again, which means we can keep using the fuel indefinitely. Like I said, the initial investment and planning are the only hurdles. After that, costs and pollutants will be kept to a minimum.
If you are against nuclear energy, have you thought of any other alternatives? |
Do you know what the world will look like in 300 years? Worlds change in such time frames. Can you guarantee these waste sites will still be remembered in 300 years? What if there is massive upheaval or collapse along the lines of a World War or Roman collapse? Who is tracking these things? It is a dangerous assumption that things will roll smoothly on from now till then. That is just one of the dangers.
I was told a long time ago, and I don't know the truth of this, that there are forms of nuclear energy and/or waste that are so toxic that a tiny amount could irradiate the world. Seems a bit of a stretch, to say the least. (Anyone got info on this claim?) Whether true or not, the claim illustrates the fact that we don't really know all there is to know about things. We'r dealing with things that have half-lives of tens of thousands of years or longer, and we've been playing with them for little more than fifty. How well do we really know them? |
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SPINOZA
Joined: 10 Jun 2005
Location: $eoul
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| Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 3:33 am Post subject: |
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| Pak Yu Man wrote: |
| They have the plutonium...but do they have the uranium? |
Plutonium is made from Uranium.
Wiki: "In a nuclear reactor, uranium-238 can be used to breed plutonium-239, which itself can be used in a nuclear weapon or as a reactor fuel source...."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium-238
| Quote: |
| Bad title. Plutonium is used as a detonator...that's it. It's the U that gives the bomb it's bang. |
Sorry mate but that's the most confused understanding of nukes I've ever seen.
The bomb dropped on Nagasaki was a 21 kiloton Plutonium 239 bomb (Hiroshima was Uranium 235).
Plutonium 239 and Uranium 235 are both fisile and used in bombs. P239 is made from U238 (which is abundant but stable).
Your 'trigger' comment I assume is a confusion with thermonuclear weapons (the Hydrogen Bomb), which employ Uranium or Plutonium fission as triggers because that's the only thing known to man hot enough to create thermonuclear fusion and set the H-bomb off (10 million degrees C). Thermonukes therefore use fission and fusion. |
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OneWayTraffic
Joined: 14 Mar 2005
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| Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 5:21 am Post subject: |
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| keane wrote: |
| Pluto wrote: |
| igotthisguitar wrote: |
| Pluto wrote: |
| I wonder how France has dealt with this problem. |
... etc etc |
It's a fair question. There is the question of storage and logistics of wasted material. We only need to store it for a period of three hundred years before it can be used again, which means we can keep using the fuel indefinitely. Like I said, the initial investment and planning are the only hurdles. After that, costs and pollutants will be kept to a minimum.
If you are against nuclear energy, have you thought of any other alternatives? |
Do you know what the world will look like in 300 years? Worlds change in such time frames. Can you guarantee these waste sites will still be remembered in 300 years? What if there is massive upheaval or collapse along the lines of a World War or Roman collapse? Who is tracking these things? It is a dangerous assumption that things will roll smoothly on from now till then. That is just one of the dangers.
I was told a long time ago, and I don't know the truth of this, that there are forms of nuclear energy and/or waste that are so toxic that a tiny amount could irradiate the world. Seems a bit of a stretch, to say the least. (Anyone got info on this claim?) Whether true or not, the claim illustrates the fact that we don't really know all there is to know about things. We'r dealing with things that have half-lives of tens of thousands of years or longer, and we've been playing with them for little more than fifty. How well do we really know them? |
First if your first concern pans out, it's likely that nuclear waste will be the last of the concerns. Being a peak oil man, I'm sure you realise that nuclear is one of the best hopes.
The second one is frankly a mix of ignorance and misinformation. We do know a hell of a lot about radioactivity and radioactive materials. You are taking some untrue (frankly ludicrious) claim and trying to illustrate what exactly? Remember that radioactivity is the transmuting of one element to another by releasing energy. There's a limited amount of energy tied up in mass (E=MC^2) and only a small proportion of this can be released by radioactivity. Also the danger is inversely related to the half life. The really hot stuff has a short half-life as, naturally, releasing energy faster it decays faster.
From wiki.
| Quote: |
The most common nuclear fuels, 235U and 239Pu, are not major radiologic hazards by themselves: 235U has a half-life of approximately 700 million years, and although 239Pu has a half-life of only about 24,000 years, it is a pure alpha particle emitter and hence not particularly dangerous unless ingested. Once a fuel element has been used, the remaining fuel material is intimately mixed with highly radioactive fission products that emit energetic beta particles and gamma rays. Some fission products have half-lives as short as seconds; others have half-lives of tens of thousands of years, requiring long-term storage in facilities such as Yucca mountain until the fission products decay into non-radioactive stable isotopes.
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Again the really hot stuff is generally gone soon. Most critics of nuclear storage tend to ignore this fact. |
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keane
Joined: 09 Jul 2007
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| Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 5:51 am Post subject: |
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| OneWayTraffic wrote: |
| keane wrote: |
| Pluto wrote: |
| igotthisguitar wrote: |
| Pluto wrote: |
| I wonder how France has dealt with this problem. |
... etc etc |
It's a fair question. There is the question of storage and logistics of wasted material. We only need to store it for a period of three hundred years before it can be used again, which means we can keep using the fuel indefinitely. Like I said, the initial investment and planning are the only hurdles. After that, costs and pollutants will be kept to a minimum.
If you are against nuclear energy, have you thought of any other alternatives? |
Do you know what the world will look like in 300 years? Worlds change in such time frames. Can you guarantee these waste sites will still be remembered in 300 years? What if there is massive upheaval or collapse along the lines of a World War or Roman collapse? Who is tracking these things? It is a dangerous assumption that things will roll smoothly on from now till then. That is just one of the dangers.
I was told a long time ago, and I don't know the truth of this, that there are forms of nuclear energy and/or waste that are so toxic that a tiny amount could irradiate the world. Seems a bit of a stretch, to say the least. (Anyone got info on this claim?) Whether true or not, the claim illustrates the fact that we don't really know all there is to know about things. We'r dealing with things that have half-lives of tens of thousands of years or longer, and we've been playing with them for little more than fifty. How well do we really know them? |
First if your first concern pans out, it's likely that nuclear waste will be the last of the concerns. |
But for whom? The next 5 generations? Sure. but what of those that stumble on the stockpiles in the future? Some Native Americans, for example, consider their impact on the planet in terms of 7 generations into the future. Seems a good perspective.
| Quote: |
| Being a peak oil man, I'm sure you realise that nuclear is one of the best hopes. |
Not at all. How long does it take to get a plant approved, built and into production? Now, how long does it take to get hundreds of them into production? If we are at the plateau now, there is no time. We will be well into the PO downturn long before the first ten are built.
Nuclear is AN answer, and a limited one, but not THE answer.
| Quote: |
| The second one is frankly a mix of ignorance and misinformation. |
Did I not state I'd heard it but could not vouch for the veracity?
| Quote: |
| We do know a hell of a lot about radioactivity and radioactive materials. You are taking some untrue (frankly ludicrious) claim and trying to illustrate what exactly? |
Exactly what I said. We don't know as much as some would like. We theorize what will happen to this stuff over large time spans, but we have not actually been able to observe this. It's theory.
I asked a question. If you don't know the answer, just say so: does such an element exist or not? |
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Pluto
Joined: 19 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 7:25 am Post subject: |
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| OneWayTraffic wrote: |
| igotthisguitar wrote: |
Question:
How many major/minor nuclear accidents has the world thus far known?
3 Mile Island, Chernobyl, couple in Japan, yes?
There there's all the military testing, Bikini island etc etc, so much clearly keep out of mainstream awareness.
Stock investments asides, is it really worth the risk?
Time is ripe to harness & promote other more progressive & safe means.
Nuclear dinosaurs. |
Well lets be realistic. Coal kills a lot more people every year thorugh accidents and premature deaths through pollution than nuclear has ever killed. The common examples of how dangerous it is are pretty poor. Anyone who's read about the engineering of Chernobyl knows that it was a very poor design, shoddily maintained. Using it as an example is misleading to say the least. Modern designs are intrinsically safe.
And comparing coal to nuclear is the only realistic comparision using current technology and economics. It's one or the other, you can't introduce technology in development and say 'lets use it.'
I would agree that other methods should be explored, especially fusion which is where the future of mankind lies to be honest. Wind, solar and biofuels have a pretty important part to play as well, but nuclear is the best for large amounts of realiable energy.
And that's it. It's coal or nuclear. Which one would you rather have and why? |
There are also gas powered plants that have rather low fixed costs. However, you put yourself at the mercy of the oil market. Oil prices are above $82/barrel and it looks like they will continue to rise as will your electricity bill. The article pointed out that 4000 people died at Chernobyl which is less than how many Chinese workers die in the coal mines every year.
It should also be noted that when coal power plants were introduced they had very high fixed costs just as nuclear power plants do today. I would suspect as we move along the learning curve that those fixed costs will go down also. Like I said the only thing keeping nuclear power from being more widespread is the initial investment. |
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OneWayTraffic
Joined: 14 Mar 2005
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| Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 7:36 am Post subject: |
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I did answer. you didn't carefully read my answer which contained reasoning rather than assertion. The energy contained by matter is limited. Even pure antimatter wouldn't contain the energy required to do such a feat so one can quite clearly state that no it doesn't exist. If such an element did exist in nature we'd all be dead right? It doesn't even exist in theory either. So the answer is no.
The principles causing radioactive decay are related to the nuclear strong and weak forces. These are well understood and are as likely to change in the future as gravity. I don't see you going around worrying that you'll fly off into space right? To claim that radioactive materials will behave differently into the future than they have in the last billion years is rubbish. And we can observe these things that far back either by looking into space, or by looking at the evidence in the earth. Don't confuse what you know with the current state of science.
The main reason it takes so long to build a nuke plant is red tape. I bet that when and if we see the peak oil doomsday come about most of this tape will disappear overnight. This isn't necessarily a good thing, but it's pretty simple economics and politics.
I find this whole fear of nuclear power rather bemusing. It's a fear born of ignorance basically. People linking bombs to power plants, which is as logical as saying that we shouldn't drive cars because tanks run on diesel. People thinking that something can emit radioactivity for millions of years and be dangerous the whole time. People thinking that a power plant is basically just one step away from a meltdown (it's possible to design plants like that, but hardly a good idea.) |
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keane
Joined: 09 Jul 2007
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| Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 7:54 am Post subject: |
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| OneWayTraffic wrote: |
| I did answer. you didn't carefully read my answer which contained reasoning rather than assertion. The energy contained by matter is limited. Even pure antimatter wouldn't contain the energy required to do such a feat so one can quite clearly state that no it doesn't exist. If such an element did exist in nature we'd all be dead right? It doesn't even exist in theory either. So the answer is no. |
I prefer assertion where it is due. Prevaricators tend to use "reasoning" as a way to claim they never said what they said. Ask Greenspan. 
| Quote: |
| The principles causing radioactive decay are related to the nuclear strong and weak forces. These are well understood and are as likely to change in the future as gravity. I don't see you going around worrying that you'll fly off into space right? To claim that radioactive materials will behave differently into the future than they have in the last billion years is rubbish. |
Oh, come on. You know the issue is far more complicated than just what happens to the materials themselves in terms of decay. What about the storage facilities? What about forgotten facilities being opened/damaged out of ignorance of their existence? Etc.
| Quote: |
| The main reason it takes so long to build a nuke plant is red tape. I bet that when and if we see the peak oil doomsday come about most of this tape will disappear overnight. This isn't necessarily a good thing, but it's pretty simple economics and politics. |
It would still take years. Building thousands of them certainly will.
| Quote: |
| I find this whole fear of nuclear power rather bemusing. It's a fear born of ignorance basically. |
Yes, you are right. There has never been a Chernobyl and never will be again. 
No terrorist will ever figure out how to mount a successful attack on one or how to take one over and drive it to meltdown.
Can I borrow your crystal ball?
I've already said it is AN answer, just not THE answer. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 11:25 am Post subject: |
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The difference between uranium enriched for nuclear power and high-density uranium enriched for nuclear weapons is quite substantial. I believe nuclear power requires 4-5% enrichment, while nuclear weapons need over 50% of the uranium they use to be enriched with isotopes.
Maybe Spinoza can help me out with this one. |
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mindmetoo
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 3:39 pm Post subject: |
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| keane wrote: |
| Exactly what I said. We don't know as much as some would like. We theorize what will happen to this stuff over large time spans, but we have not actually been able to observe this. It's theory. |
Sure maybe a giant nuclear monster will arise. But nuclear physics is very well understood. If not, we'd not be able to do a lot of basic astronomy. One can make very accurate future predictions. Can you give me an example of what you think might happen in the future? Other than random Fear Uncertainty Doubt that's backed by no evidence.
| Quote: |
| What about the storage facilities? What about forgotten facilities being opened/damaged out of ignorance of their existence? Etc. |
We've been down this road before. What about crossing the road every morning? You could be killed. You call that safe? Instead of giving you a chance to keep moving the goal post, what level of risk is acceptable for you? When they sent Apollo to the moon, the space capsule was so air tight that if your tires were built to that standard, you wouldn't have to refill them for 100+ years. We can build that kind of safety and redundancy into systems.
| Quote: |
| Yes, you are right. There has never been a Chernobyl and never will be again. |
Since we're not building graphite reactors, the second part is correct. There never will be a Chernobyl again. Notice any melt downs in France lately? |
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mindmetoo
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 3:48 pm Post subject: |
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| OneWayTraffic wrote: |
| which is as logical as saying that we shouldn't drive cars because tanks run on diesel. |
What's funny is people argued just that in the first part of the 20th century. People driving around in bombs? Oh my god! FUD. |
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OneWayTraffic
Joined: 14 Mar 2005
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| Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 4:23 pm Post subject: |
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| keane wrote: |
Oh, come on. You know the issue is far more complicated than just what happens to the materials themselves in terms of decay. What about the storage facilities? What about forgotten facilities being opened/damaged out of ignorance of their existence? Etc.
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I would call this an acceptable risk. Since there is a lot of evidence to suggest that if our technological civilization completely breaks down it may never recover (all the easy to get materials are gone), minimizing this chance is more important than worrying about what happens after. And we could seal these facilitys to the point where it would be difficult to accidentally open them
| Quote: |
Yes, you are right. There has never been a Chernobyl and never will be again.
No terrorist will ever figure out how to mount a successful attack on one or how to take one over and drive it to meltdown.
Can I borrow your crystal ball? |
Well the possibility of another Chernobyl is limited by the fact that no more plants of that design are being built. Aside from that, there have been no comfirmed fatalities due to any other nuclear accident. Christ, cars kill more people, and pollution due to oil, coal and gas use is certainly going to kill more.
If you want to be worried about terrorists, fine. They could do more damage at oil refinerys, but noone is saying we shouldn't make those. Hell they can fly airplanes into buildings, but people still fly and people still work in high buildings. They could make car bombs, but people still drive cars. They could blow holes in dams, but we still have hydroelectricity.
A lot of ways to kill people. Why the focus on this one? Ignorance and fear. And yes I do have the right to call you ignorant, as you obviously haven't studied the engineering and physics of these things in detail. I'm ignorant of a lot of the finer points myself. |
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igotthisguitar
Joined: 08 Apr 2003
Location: South Korea (Permanent Vacation)
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| Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 5:45 pm Post subject: |
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| OneWayTraffic wrote: |
| And that's it. It's coal or nuclear. Which one would you rather have and why? |
Dude ...
FALSE DILEMMA 
That's it! Either coal, nuclear OR ... pulped orange peels.
Which one would you rather have ... ?
TRILEMMA |
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SPINOZA
Joined: 10 Jun 2005
Location: $eoul
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| Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 6:03 pm Post subject: |
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| Kuros wrote: |
The difference between uranium enriched for nuclear power and high-density uranium enriched for nuclear weapons is quite substantial. I believe nuclear power requires 4-5% enrichment, while nuclear weapons need over 50% of the uranium they use to be enriched with isotopes.
Maybe Spinoza can help me out with this one. |
May I quote Wiki? It's a bit wordy: "When [a] nuclear chain reaction is controlled, the energy released can be used to heat water, produce steam and drive a turbine that generates electricity. While a nuclear power plant uses the same fuel, uranium-235 or plutonium-239, a nuclear explosive involves an uncontrolled chain reaction, and the rate of fission in a reactor is not capable of reaching sufficient levels to trigger a nuclear explosion because commercial reactor grade nuclear fuel is not enriched to a high enough level. Naturally found uranium is less than 1% U-235, the rest being U-238. Most reactor fuel is enriched to only 3-4%....."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power |
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SPINOZA
Joined: 10 Jun 2005
Location: $eoul
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| Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 6:14 pm Post subject: |
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| Opposition to nuclear energy is based on debunked science, the Chernobyl boogyman and outright lies. Nuclear storage is a political problem - not a scientific problem. Nuclear energy is the safest known to man. The worst-ever nuclear accident at a nuclear power plant in the West was at Three Mile Island in the US in 1979. It killed no one, injured no one and had no ill-health aftermath whatsoever. |
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igotthisguitar
Joined: 08 Apr 2003
Location: South Korea (Permanent Vacation)
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| Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 6:19 pm Post subject: |
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DEBUNKING
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debunking
| SPINOZA wrote: |
Opposition to nuclear energy is based on "debunked" science, the Chernobyl boogyman and outright lies. Nuclear storage is a political problem - not a scientific problem. Nuclear energy is the safest known to man. The worst-ever nuclear accident at a nuclear power plant in the West was at Three Mile Island in the US in 1979.
It killed no one, injured no one and had no ill-health aftermath whatsoever. |
"Safest energy known to man."
What about fish like BLINKY?
DIVERSIFY OR DIE! |
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