Skeptics and nuclear power

Skeptic and Suport nuclear power

  • Skeptic and support nuclear power

    Votes: 94 90.4%

  • Skeptic and against nuclear power

    Votes: 6 5.8%

  • Not a skeptic and support nuclear power

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Not a skeptic and against nuclear power

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • I don't want to answer

    Votes: 4 3.8%
  • Total voters
    104
Argumemnon said:
Is that supposed to be a serious question? Where in any of my posts have I said or implied this? I'm talking about the core components, principally the fuel rods, which have to be arranged around a source of neutrons, remember?
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All your posts imply that. The fuel rods are the source of neutrons.
 
Argumemnon said:
What I mean is that for a nuclear reaction to function and heat up sufficiently to drive a turbine it needs a precisely controlled set of conditions. Under those conditions you have a rate of chain reactions. Absent those conditions they are negligible.
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The chain reaction doesn't depend on the turbines and the conditions required are not as precise as you seem to think.

Argumemnon said:
Didn't blow up? How do you call a steam explosion, then? That's what happened at Chernobyl, in two stages. The reactor didn't have time to melt before the explosions took place, taking good chunks of it all across the countryside.

Correct me if I'm wrong.
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See the wiki article just cited. Only 3% of the fuel escaped. Literally tons of nasty stuff escape but most of the uranium melted down the hole.
 
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RecoveringYuppy said:
All your posts imply that.
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Uh-huh. All my posts imply that I think the atoms broke up. Yep. You know, I've had my fill of dishonest "interpretations" for the day. How about you forget the "implications" you imagine and address what I actually say, instead?

The fuel rods are the source of neutrons.
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Yes, of course. But the only way to make it work is to get enough of the stuff in a particular configuration, where the uranium provides its own neutrons. If you take a single rod and let it lying there, nothing's going to happen above background reactions. My point, poorly worded as it was, is that you need to arrange the rods in a way that makes the chain reaction happen in a way that generates the heat you need, by optimising the neutron absorbsions. Puddles of uranium aren't very good for that.
 
RecoveringYuppy said:
What I mean is that for a nuclear reaction to function and heat up sufficiently to drive a turbine it needs a precisely controlled set of conditions. Under those conditions you have a rate of chain reactions. Absent those conditions they are negligible.
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The chain reaction doesn't depend on the turbines (snip)
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Did you even read my post? I said the exact opposite! This kind of makes your comment about what my posts "imply" a bit ridiculous.
 
Argumemnon said:
Uh-huh. All my posts imply that I think the atoms broke up. Yep. You know, I've had my fill of dishonest "interpretations" for the day. How about you forget the "implications" you imagine and address what I actually say, instead?
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But then you immediately imply that:

Argumemnon said:
Yes, of course. But the only way to make it work is to get enough of the stuff in a particular configuration, where the uranium provides its own neutrons. If you take a single rod and let it lying there, nothing's going to happen above background reactions.
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A single fuel rod very definitely is not "background reactions".
 
Because you're implying they won't work the way uranium atoms do. What mechanism do you think is preventing the uranium atoms in a single fuel rod from responding to neutrons?
 
wobs said:
Why do you and others keep saying this, when there is already a facility in existence to deal with this waste?

In fact there are many such facilities in various states of development, but the one in Finland is the most developed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository

In fact, it would be better if they didn't use this yet, and reprocess the spent fuel, as this would render the final waste less harmful, and its radioactivity would drop below that of uranium ore in under 1000 years. In some instances, it would be 300 years.

Basically, the spent fuel is a non-issue when it comes to disposal.
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If you do not mind me joining in, I can you why I am so concerned about the nuclear waste issue.

Here in the USA we have been struggling what do with nuclear waste ever since we started fooling around with nuclear materials about 100 years ago and we still have not figured out what to do with nuclear waste.

For example, about 50 years ago when I was a child there was a big announcement that the federal government of USA had finally developed a solution for the disposal of all of the nuclear waste here in the USA. Essentially, they were going to dig a big hole in the ground in the state of Idaho and dump all of the USA nuclear waste into that hole.

This solution made everyone quite happy except, of course, for the people of Idaho. So this plan was soon abandoned.

Many years later, another big federal government solution was developed where all of the USA nuclear waste would be sent to the Yucca Mountain facility in Nevada.

Once again, this solution made everyone very happy except, of course, for the people of Nevada.

So eventually, the funding for this plan was withdrawn before any significant amounts of nuclear waste could be stored there. However, there is still some serious talk about how funding may be restored and the facility may finally be able to accept nuclear waste so the issue has gotten even more complex than ever.

In the meantime, here in the USA all of the spent nuclear fuel s being stored at the places where it was produced. And some of this waste has been sitting around for decades.

Therefore, at least here in the USA, your thoughts about the proper of spent nuclear fuel being a "non-issue" is quite incorrect.

I hope this helps.
 
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crescent said:
Perhaps this is semantics - There was no nuclear explosion but Chernobyl certainly experienced explosions, and much of the core was ejected in those explosions:
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I was referring to the core, which didn't explode. There were other explosions in the faculty, so it I could have been cleaner.
 
RecoveringYuppy said:
Because you're implying they won't work the way uranium atoms do. What mechanism do you think is preventing the uranium atoms in a single fuel rod from responding to neutrons?
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Well, since I've not made that claim I don't feel the need to defend it.

You do understand the principle of critical mass, right?
 
Crossbow said:
If you do not mind me joining in, I can you why I am so concerned about the nuclear waste issue.

Here in the USA we have been struggling what do with nuclear waste ever since we started fooling around with nuclear materials about 100 years ago and we still have not figured out what to do with nuclear waste.

For example, about 50 years ago when I was a child there was a big announcement that the federal government of USA had finally developed a solution for the disposal of all of the nuclear waste here in the USA. Essentially, they were going to dig a big hole in the ground in the state of Idaho and dump all of the USA nuclear waste into that hole.

This solution made everyone quite happy except, of course, for the people of Idaho. So this plan was soon abandoned.

Many years later, another big federal government solution was developed where all of the USA nuclear waste would be sent to the Yucca Mountain facility in Nevada.

Once again, this solution made everyone very happy except, of course, for the people of Nevada.

So eventually, the funding for this plan was withdrawn before any significant amounts of nuclear waste could be stored there. However, there is still some serious talk about how funding may be restored and the facility may finally be able to accept nuclear waste so the issue has gotten even more complex than ever.

In the meantime, here in the USA all of the spent nuclear fuel s being stored at the places where it was produced. And some of this waste has been sitting around for decades.

Therefore, at least here in the USA, your thoughts about the proper of spent nuclear fuel being a "non-issue" is quite incorrect.

I hope this helps.
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Thank you for your thoughts. I am aware that there are political issues (eg. Yucca Mountain), but that mankind does know how to dispose of the material. We always get the claim that we do not, when there is actually a facility that exists to deal with it.
 
Argumemnon said:
Well, since I've not made that claim I don't feel the need to defend it.

You do understand the principle of critical mass, right?
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You're implying that claim if you think a single fuel rod is going to be at "background". Yes, I understand critical mass. Are you sure you do? Critical mass is the point where the chain reaction will become self sustaining. Non sustaining chain reactions will happen below that mass and they will become more frequent and longer as you approach critical mass. They don't suddenly switch on at critical mass.
 
Argumemnon said:
Good, so you understand that the reactions will drop to their base level once the thing goes subcritical.
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No, they don't. Chain reactions rise with density. The probability of a neutron initiating another fission event rises with density.
 
wobs said:
Thank you for your thoughts. I am aware that there are political issues (eg. Yucca Mountain), but that mankind does know how to dispose of the material. We always get the claim that we do not, when there is actually a facility that exists to deal with it.
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Simply have the technical ability to do a certain thing does not automatically mean that the thing in question should be actually be done.
 
Argumemnon said:
Good, so you understand that the reactions will drop to their base level once the thing goes subcritical. I guess that proves my point, then.
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It doesn’t drop to some predefined base level, it drops to a lower level that is dependant on the mass and configuration of the fuel. it would drop further if you spread the fuel out and increase if you bring it to a smaller area even if it remains sub-critical the entire time.
 
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