More Anti-Nuclear BS

Dustin said:
I was watching a TV show where they had built homes that were powered by solar energy and they could store the energy for when it's cloudy or dark outside.
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Dustin,

How were they storing the electricity? Batteries and capacitors are impracticle for homes. Water can be used to "store" heat short term to keep a home warm, but is not good if it snows or rains for any long period.

glenn
 
Another unsolvable danger is the release of radioactive substances from nuclear power plants.
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A tad alarmist. The releases are small, thorougly regulated and extensively documented in sources available to the public. In normal operation nuclear power plants emit very little material that is radioactive beacuse most of it is confined within the fuel assemblies, which in turn are enclosed within the reactor vessel inside a containment structure. This allows tight control of emissions.

UNSCEAR 2000 report states that emissions from nuclear operations give the average person a radiation dose of less than 0.2 microsieverts per year. The average annual dose from natural background radiation is 2000 microsieverts or more per year. Natural background radiation includes sleeping with a partner, which exposes one to about 2 microsieverts per year.
 
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Blank said:
Not with the technology we have.

Batteries are probably the best we have at the moment and they are hardly enviromentally friendly alternative as they use several toxic components and get worn out with time. Converting to hydrogen is a losing game with thermodynamics.

On a small scale feeding the electricity back to the grid to be used elsewhere is a nice alternative, but can't be applied to provide base power production.
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Actually, isn't everything a losing game with thermodynamics?

The three laws of thermodynamics, slightly restated:
1. You can't win.
2. You can't break even.
3. You can't even get out of the game.

(Sorry; I'll try to make my next post address the topic at hand.)
 
To store large quantities of energy, consider a flywheel:

http://www.genpropower.com/powerware_pf2_flywheel.htm

This is what you could use for solar power or wind turbines sites.

Also, with a Solar installation, you've still got use of the area under the solar panels

Or you can use a hydro-dam which can pump water back uphill as well as provide power to store energy.
 
You wouldn't want the huge flywheel it would take to power anything useful in a home sitting on your property! The UPS system you linked to is designed to provide enough power to safely shut down computer systems before you loose important data. It's not designed to power anything for any prolonged period of time.

A flywheel the size of a football field might be useful through an entire night during a power outage if it used magnetic bearings to maximize coastdown time.
 
Actually Pidge has a valid point. Do a search on flywheels electricity and you will find lots of interesting information. For example this
There are three main advantages to flywheels. First, you can store a lot more energy in a flywheel than you can in a battery. Batteries have an energy density of under 10 watt hours per kilogram. But flywheels already reach 44 watt hours per kilogram, and the new faster and smaller flywheels can do double that again.
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Or in Wikipedia
It is hoped that flywheel systems can replace conventional chemical batteries for mobile applications, such as for electric vehicles
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rjh01 said:
Actually Pidge has a valid point. Do a search on flywheels electricity and you will find lots of interesting information. For example this

Or in Wikipedia
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As cloudshipsrule indicates, flywheels are short term--ride through type devices. Storing enough energy to provide electricity for any period of time would require an enormous, very expensive flywheel...even then, it would be an impractical device. Even though flywheels store a lot of energy due to its motion and mass, it would not be a practical storage device for homes.

In addition, since they are just storage devices so they are not providing any increase in convertible energy. Any storage device only increases efficient use of energy--although this is great, we need to utilize new and diverse sources of energy.

glenn
 
After reading the article linked in the OP I decide to write to the paper's Editor:

Sirs,

I am writing in response to an opinion/letter by Hattie Nestel in your publication on July 13th, 2006 titled 'Nuclear power continues to raise concerns'. While there is much in the article to take issue with I feel that one of the biggest over sites she has made is where she states:
"I believe populations near nuclear power plants inevitably have higher incidences of mental retardation, stillbirths, leukemia, cancers, thyroid and respiratory disease than communities further away from reactor sites."

I would hope that someone who is a member of the Citizen's Awareness Network and, assuming, spends her time crusading against nuclear power would base her stand on more then just belief, especially when it's possible to actually acquire facts though a very simple Internet search.

Just by visiting the National Cancer Institute (http://statecancerprofiles.cancer.gov/) a person can easily get statistics on cancer in this country and discover that areas that contain nuclear power plants do not have statistically higher cancer rates then their home states or the country as a whole. I am sure a few minuets on Mrs. Nestel's part could provide statistics for the other diseases and disorders she lists.

It should also be pointed out to Mrs. Nestel that France currently produces 75% of it's electrical power from nuclear sources and has not suffered any kind of nuclear accident that seemed worthy of international scrutiny in my memory.

Rising energy needs of the world coupled with potential threats from excessive greenhouse gases in the atmosphere make for some very important choices humanity needs to make in the near future. Many concerns that people have with the nuclear industry seem to be based on belief rather then actual fact, that is no way for policies that could potentially effect millions of people to be made.

---end of my letter to the editor---


Plus, assuming there is only one Hattie Nestel of Athol, MA, she is a member of Citizens Awareness Network whose goal seems to specifically be the end of the nuclear industry.

-PopeTom
 
rustytunes said:
Disposal of nuclear wastes has never been much of a physical problem. As I said before, it is only a polictal problem. For example, there is the "dilute and disperse" approach that is effectively done now with the radioactive ash from coal-fired power stations. The plutonium is merely diluted by a factor of 1000with a suitable non-radioactive mineral. The amounts involved from the entire nuclear power industry are small enough to make this a feasible proposition, if only it was politcally acceptable.
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Don't mention this to the homeopaths, least they jump on the anti-nuclear bandwagon too. :)

-PopeTom
 
ImaginalDisc said:
Until we can deposit the waste somwhere completely safe, I'll entirly trust it. I still prefer solar power as there's no shortage of suitable land for it, and the last time I checked, no one had come up with a weaponized version of a solar panel.
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Huh. But solar power seems unreliable, doesn't it ? How can you possibly ensure that the power required to satisfy the world's growing demand in energy can be maintained constantly ?
 
drkitten said:
No, it's not.

I'm well aware of the difference between heavy metal toxicity and radiation poisoning. The problem with much mid-level waste is that it combines both; an otherwise safe dose of a heavy metal will still expose you, chronically, to high levels of ionizing radiation.
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Ah I stand corrected. I missed the combination effect in the earlier post
 
Skeptic said:
People are confusing, I think, radioactivity and being poisonous. Most radioactivite elements, despite its scary name, is harmless; but a lot of stuff--like, say, lead--is poisonous wihtout being radioactive.
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So what? People are dumb, the two most toxic compounds I know of are "All natural extracts"

Botulism and ricin.
 
PopeTom said:
Don't mention this to the homeopaths, least they jump on the anti-nuclear bandwagon too. :)

-PopeTom
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May be onto something here - small levels of radiation exposure may actually do more good than harm to human beings.
 
One of the questions that has me thinking with regard to the issue of waste is this.

There are enormous deposits of radioactive material around the world, with no containment at all - just buried in the ground. We seem to have coped alright without starting to glow.

Why then is the planned confinement of much much smaller amounts (and potentially less radioactive material) such an insurmountable problem that will require all sorts of risks to our welfare?
 
Don't forget about breeder reactors. They produce waste that decays within 50 years, and they use the more plentiful U238, not U235 (as I learned elsewhere on the forum). Best of all worlds.
 
Geckko said:
One of the questions that has me thinking with regard to the issue of waste is this.

There are enormous deposits of radioactive material around the world, with no containment at all - just buried in the ground. We seem to have coped alright without starting to glow.

Why then is the planned confinement of much much smaller amounts (and potentially less radioactive material) such an insurmountable problem that will require all sorts of risks to our welfare?
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Bioavailability. Arsenic isn't a problem either, as long as it's confined to the ground. But when it leaches into the water table and people start drinking it, they die.

Radioactive material that's locked away in a rock matrix -- like radium in pitchblende -- is safe as long as no one is fool enough to start eating rocks (which carries with it its own punishment). Extract the radium from the rock, concentrate it, and convert it into something like radium carbonate (which is highly soluble in water), and you're simply asking for it to leach into the local drinking water....
 
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