• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Merged nuclear power safe?

r-j said:
25 years after a meltdown/fire at Chernobyl the solution is to build another building over it. Because there isn't any solution. You build these incredibly dangerous devices, and store 40 years worth of dangerous radioactive fuel right next to it, and have zero solutions, much less a plan, for what to do when it goes horribly horribly wrong.

Then you have the audacity to claim it's safe, and attack clean safe renewable power gathering as dangerous. It's the true nutters that show their colors at times like that.
Click to expand...

Your lack of knowledge about the things you write about is breathtaking. Of course the main idea in any disaster is to contain the damage; that's why we have firemen and police. You are ridiculing attempts to contain the Chernobyl plant because there was a nuclear accident there? Get a grip, and go do some study.

The purpose of the second containment is to prevent an escalation of the disaster if the first shelter collapses, and to provide safe working space for the total decommissioning of the plant. That means that within, perhaps, another twenty years the ability for the disaster to spread beyond what is there already will be eliminated and the actual cleanup of the site can proceed, including the decommissioning of the other three reactors. Several turnkey waste handling plants have been turned over to start operations, and contracts have been let for the major waste handling plant (called ISF-2).

But clean safe nuclear reactors, even when three of them meltdown and spread radioactivity all over the world, into the oceans, onto the Japanese motherland, they look at that and it's no problem.
Click to expand...

It was estimated that, without remediation, the reactor area at Chernobyl would be lethal for 20,000 years. With the steps being taken, that will be reduced to a couple hundred. The failed reactor at TMI has been dismantled; the site never suffered significant radioactive release. As far as anyone knows at this point in time, the Japanese motherland is doing just fine, as it tries to recoup from its disasters, but of course, only time will tell. The oceans are doing even better. You're just spewing hyperbole.

According to stats dropped earlier in this thread, nuclear is still the safest method of mass consumer energy creation available. If audacity is what it takes, well then that's what I want.
 
Last edited:
shadron said:
The purpose of the second containment is to prevent an escalation of the disaster if the first shelter collapses, and to provide safe working space for the total decommissioning of the plant.
Click to expand...

And it is also very important to note that not only was the first shelter built in an extreme hurry, but also under extremely hard conditions. Given these circumstances, i would say it worked quite well so far, despite all it's flaws and shortcomings.

Greetings,

Chris
 
*Editor's Note (posted 12/30/08): In response to some concerns raised by readers, a change has been made to this story. The sentence marked with an asterisk was changed from "In fact, fly ash—a by-product from burning coal for power—and other coal waste contains up to 100 times more radiation than nuclear waste" to "In fact, the fly ash emitted by a power plant—a by-product from burning coal for electricity—carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy." Our source for this statistic is Dana Christensen, an associate lab director for energy and engineering at Oak Ridge National Laboratory as well as 1978 paper in Science authored by J.P. McBride and colleagues, also of ORNL.

As a general clarification, ounce for ounce, coal ash released from a power plant delivers more radiation than nuclear waste shielded via water or dry cask storage.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/a...is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste&page=2

Concerns about telling the truth, rather than spreading nuclear propaganda.
 
B. HIGH-LEVEL RADIOACTIVE WASTE

As nuclear fuel ages, it loses its capacity to sustain an efficient nuclear reaction. Each year, a nuclear facility removes about a third of its highly irradiated (" spent") fuel rods to on-site cooling pools. These assemblies contain uranium, plutonium, and fission products such as strontium and cesium. Since regulators limit the pools' capacity, the rods must eventually be placed in steel or concrete containers, known as dry casks. The assemblies remain thermally hot and highly radioactive; a person standing one yard from an unshielded spent fuel assembly could receive a lethal dose of radiation (about 500 rems) in under three minutes. A 30-second exposure (85 rems) would significantly increase the risk of cancer or genetic damage. 129

Spent fuel accounts for the majority of U. S. highlevel nuclear waste. (Nuclear weapons facilities also contribute to the total.) As of 1997, about 70 power plants across the nation stored 35,000 metric tons of spent fuel. Increasing by about 2,000 metric tons per year, total highlevel waste will reach at least 60,000 metric tons by 2010, and 80,000 metric tons by 2020. 130
In theory, onsite storage waste represents only a temporary solution to high-level radioactive waste. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 orders the U. S. Department of Energy (DOE) to select a geologic repository for high-level waste. Amendments in 1987 limited possible sites to Nevada's Yucca Mountain. DOE plans to begin storing waste in 2010. Under current law, the repository could host up to 70,000 metric tons of waste, including 63,000 metric tons from civilian reactors. 131
In addition to fears that uninformed future generations might stumble on the repository, opponents of the Yucca Mountain plan note three environmental problems.

First, experts disagree on the potential of leaks from the repository into the local water supply.

Second, seismologists note that the area has experienced more than 600 seismic events above 2.5 on the Richter scale since 1976, raising the possibility of earthquake damage to containers. 132

Third, many communities worry about how the waste will reach Yucca Mountain. The State of Nevada, which opposes the proposal, calculates that transporting waste from its current locations during the repository's 25-year emplacement phase would require between 35,000 and 100,000 shipments crossing 43 states, affecting 109 cities. 133 The Congressional Research Service estimates a possible 154 truck and 18 rail accidents over 30 years, although the vast majority of those accidents would not release radiation. 134

http://www.repp.org/repp_pubs/articles/envImp/05radiation.htm
 
"during the repository's 25-year emplacement phase would require between 35,000 and 100,000 shipments"

It almost sounds like there would be a lot of dangerous radioactive material to move.
 
The idea that coal ash is 100 times more radioactive than nuclear waste has been making the rounds among bloggers and Twitterers discussing the coal ash catastrophe in Tennessee, thanks to a headline which makes that assertion in Scientific American online. In fact, Google the words in the headline and you’ll come up with dozens of Web sites that have repeated this statement.
The problem is that it is a profoundly preposterous idea unsupported by a single shred of evidence.
I must admit that I was taken in by the headline when I first read it a few days ago — I swallowed it hook, line and sinker because I believed in the credibility of Scientific American. But in so doing I violated one of the cardinal rules I tell my journalism students: If it sounds wrong, it most likely is. (And the only way to find out is to check it out.)
Click to expand...

Hear hear! Somebody with enough brains not to repeat some stupid lie.


http://www.cejournal.net/?p=410
 
r-j said:
As a general clarification, ounce for ounce, coal ash released from a power plant delivers more radiation than nuclear waste shielded via water or dry cask storage.

Concerns about telling the truth, rather than spreading nuclear propaganda.
Click to expand...

So you think you found some kind of "gotcha", you post something that actually confirms what I said and accuse me of lying.

Except I did post the link, didn't I? When I noticed my error I acknowledged and corrected it. I provided full disclosure because I am not afraid of the whole truth. I am not the liar here.
 
r-j said:
By burning away all the pesky carbon and other impurities, coal power plants produce heaps of radiation
Click to expand...

This is a scientifically accurate description of the process. Coal is composed mostly of almost pure molecular carbon along with varying amounts of other elements. Burning it in a combustion chamber strips out the carbon and hydrogen and concentrates the heavier elements found in the coal.

This process is so efficient at concentrating radioactive elements that a Canadian company conducting tests on a Chinese ash dump have found that the dumping ground is a viable site for recovery of nuclear reactor fuel!

Waste from a nuclear reactor, on the other hand, is contained so carefully that it can't be busted open by a rocket-powered freight train!

It's remarkable that you are having such a hard time grasping such simple easy to understand concepts.
 
R-J, can I ask how you feel about Germany switching away from tightly controlled and regulated nuclear power and increasing their reliance on the lowest and dirtiest grade of coal and subsequently dumping tens of thousands of pounds of radioactive waste into Germany's soil and waterways every year?
 
Last edited:
I've said many times I find coal burning to be a horrible way to generate heat. It's dirty, dangerous, and they have it set up so harm done can't be directly traced to the coal plant, so they avoid financial responsibility. Children are harmed a lot by coal burning.

This doesn't change the facts about nuclear power. Just because one thing is dangerous, doesn't change how dangerous something else is. No matter how hard you want it to.
 
r-j said:
Just because one thing is dangerous, doesn't change how dangerous something else is.
Click to expand...

This is actually correct. So let us examine once again, just how dangerous coal is versus how dangerous nuclear energy is:

Coal – world average 161 (26% of world energy, 50% of electricity)
Coal – China 278
Coal – USA 15
Oil 36 (36% of world energy)
Natural Gas 4 (21% of world energy)
Biofuel/Biomass 12
Peat 12
Solar (rooftop) 0.44 (less than 0.1% of world energy)
Wind 0.15 (less than 1% of world energy)
Hydro 0.10 (europe death rate, 2.2% of world energy)
Hydro - world including Banqiao) 1.4 (about 2500 TWh/yr and 171,000 Banqiao dead)
Nuclear 0.04 (5.9% of world energy)​

Looking at the numbers, I calculate that if we replaced all coal plants with nuclear plants, that we would save 160 lives for every terawatt hour of electricity generated worldwide.

In the United States coal power costs roughly 30,000 lives anually. By comparison no one in the United States has died to causes unique to nuclear energy since 1961.

Do you understand these numbers?
 
Last edited:
Comparing how dangerous buses are when somebody points out how dangerous a metro train is, is just stupid. If a metro system is having a lot of crashes and dead people, and rather than deal with that, you keep talking about bus crashes, that is ridiculous.
 
r-j said:
Comparing how dangerous buses are when somebody points out how dangerous a metro train is, is just stupid. If a metro system is having a lot of crashes and dead people, and rather than deal with that, you keep talking about bus crashes, that is ridiculous.
Click to expand...

What are you talking about? What way do you 'deal with it' if not to expand on the safer method?

EDIT: That is, you keep saying how dangerous nuclear power is, and ignoring the fact that it's still safer than all the other ones. You maintain that it's unacceptably dangerous, but it's still less dangerous than coal. Which means we can't use any of them? That's what's ridiculous and a great example of the perfect solution fallacy.
 
Last edited:
r-j said:
Comparing how dangerous buses are when somebody points out how dangerous a metro train is, is just stupid. If a metro system is having a lot of crashes and dead people, and rather than deal with that, you keep talking about bus crashes, that is ridiculous.
Click to expand...

Ahhh, but the point is that the metro simply isn't having crashes. Why focus on metro crashes if these crashes are rarities (and fatalities even more rare) when it's far more pertinent that buses be phased out because they crash more often than the metro?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom