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Merged nuclear power safe?

The Soviet Union and Russia have disposed of radioactive waste by dumping it into the Baltic and Arctic Seas as well as into the northern Pacific. Problem solved.

No hippies or politics stopped them from disposing of nuclear waste.
 
r-j said:
The Soviet Union and Russia have disposed of radioactive waste by dumping it into the Baltic and Arctic Seas as well as into the northern Pacific. Problem solved.

No hippies or politics stopped them from disposing of nuclear waste.
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I thought this thread was about nuclear power, not the horrific nature of communism.
 
Just trying to expand the discussion. After all, a lot of nuclear waste comes from the Russians. All them icebreakers, subs and power plants they run. What do they do with the spent fuel? No greenpeace or protesters (politics) stopping them from disposing of the dangerous material.
 
uruk said:
There are safer options,
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No, there aren't. Nuclear power has the lowest casualty rate per terawatt hour generated.

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)​


uruk said:
the efficiencies are not there yet.
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And they never will be.

Europes Largest Photovoltaic Array, 70 Megawatts Peak Capacity:
cid_image001_jpg01CB8D49.jpg


Brookhaven Technology Groups proposed Deployable Electric Energy Reactor (two models, 50 MW + 10MW, standard output):
DEERcomparitivesizes.jpg


Even fossil fuels can't match the efficiency of nuclear.
 
r-j said:
Just trying to expand the discussion. After all, a lot of nuclear waste comes from the Russians. All them icebreakers, subs and power plants they run. What do they do with the spent fuel? No greenpeace or protesters (politics) stopping them from disposing of the dangerous material.
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You cannot compare what is not comparable. If you start such comparison as above, then you have to take into account the number of death thru unsafe mining practice (say china) where the number of death per year is in thousands. That makes *anything* look safe in comparison to coal.

By year
A Chinese coal miner at the Jin Hua Gong Mine
Year Number of accidents Deaths Death rate per
million tons of coal
2000 2,863 5,798 5.80
2001 3,082 5,670 5.11
2002 4,344 6,995 4.93
2003 4,143 6,434 4.00
2004 3,639 6,027 3.01
2005 3,341 5,986 2.73
2006 2,945 4,746 1.99
2007 ..... 3,770 1.44
2008 ..... 3,210 1.18
2009 1,616 2,631 0.89
 
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r-j said:
The Soviet Union and Russia have disposed of radioactive waste by dumping it into the Baltic and Arctic Seas as well as into the northern Pacific. Problem solved.

No hippies or politics stopped them from disposing of nuclear waste.
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How does that relate to Uruk's point and our answers to it ? Nothing, that's what.
 
China has no political or protester based opposition. Where do they put their spent fuel? And other nuclear wastes?
 
r-j said:
Just trying to expand the discussion. After all, a lot of nuclear waste comes from the Russians. All them icebreakers, subs and power plants they run. What do they do with the spent fuel? No greenpeace or protesters (politics) stopping them from disposing of the dangerous material.
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You are quite correct. The logical conclusion is that environmentalists should start campaigning against communism and dictatorships, because they're devastating to the environment. I'm glad we're in agreement on this point.
 
uruk said:
We still mine for uranium and we still have no viable method of safely storing nuclear waste.
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Ziggurat said:
That is entirely a political, not technical, problem.
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If there are no politics to get in the way, then the problem of safely storing/disposing of spent fuel rods should be solved by the countries that don't have any political opposition. Like China and Russia.

Pretending just the US and the UK a don't have a solution because it is "just a political" problem means look to the countries with no opposition, to see how they solved the problem.

It's not a new problem.
 
r-j said:
If there are no politics to get in the way, then the problem of safely storing/disposing of spent fuel rods should be solved by the countries that don't have any political opposition. Like China and Russia.

Pretending just the US and the UK a don't have a solution because it is "just a political" problem means look to the countries with no opposition, to see how they solved the problem.

It's not a new problem.
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Sorry, your conclusion simply doesn't follow. Having no opposition doesn't mean that you automatically solve political problems. A lack of freedom, for example, is a political problem. Being a dictatorship doesn't help solve it.

The only thing you've demonstrated is that communism and dictatorships are bad for the environment.
 
r-j said:
If there are no politics to get in the way, then the problem of safely storing/disposing of spent fuel rods should be solved by the countries that don't have any political opposition. Like China and Russia.

Pretending just the US and the UK a don't have a solution because it is "just a political" problem means look to the countries with no opposition, to see how they solved the problem.

It's not a new problem.
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Ah, I see.

But that wasn't Uruk's question. I'll save you time by explaining it to you: there ARE safe ways to dispose of nuclear waste.
 
r-j said:
If there are no politics to get in the way, then the problem of safely storing/disposing of spent fuel rods should be solved by the countries that don't have any political opposition. Like China and Russia.
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China has gone from storing waste to burning it.

The first re-use of nuclear fuel in a Candu reactor has started at Qinshan nuclear power plant in China.

A milestone announcement was made by Candu designer Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd (AECL) yesterday that fuel bundles containing recovered uranium from used fuel had been inserted into Qinshan Phase III unit 1. Over the next six months, another 24 of the 'natural uranium equivalent' (NUE) bundles will be used in two of the reactor's fuel channels.​

The CANDU reactor has the highest neutron economy of any of the current generation of reactors in use. This allows the CANDU the unique capability of burning either natural unenriched uranium right out of the ground, or used fuel from other reactors.
 
Is there any reactor design that will completely eliminate plutonium? Burn it all up? So that the spent fuel is plutonium free?
 
r-j said:
Is there any reactor design that will completely eliminate plutonium? Burn it all up? So that the spent fuel is plutonium free?
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Yes, there are.

All reactors previously built, all that are in service now and all that are likely to be built in the future have the ability to burn up and completely eliminate plutonium.
 
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r-j said:
If there are no politics to get in the way, then the problem of safely storing/disposing of spent fuel rods should be solved by the countries that don't have any political opposition. Like China and Russia.

Pretending just the US and the UK a don't have a solution because it is "just a political" problem means look to the countries with no opposition, to see how they solved the problem.

It's not a new problem.
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You are completely misunderstanding the issue. In the USA people who don't want nuclear power at all are blocking all means of safely storing nuclear waste in an attempt to kill nuclear power. In China a government that doesn't care about the environment or safety is dumping nuclear waste.

The two situations are not analogous.
 
Nobody said they were. Straw man, right?

I see the argument that the only thing stopping safe clean storage of a hundred thousand tons of nuclear fuel rods is politics and hippies protesting. I note that other countries that don't have those obstacles found solutions to the waste/spent fuel problem.

Somebody points out communism seems to lead to bad solutions to nuclear waste.

So? It wasn't politics in that case, was it?
 
r-j said:
Somebody points out communism seems to lead to bad solutions to nuclear waste.

So? It wasn't politics in that case, was it?
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Yeah, actually, it was: the form of government is very much a political issue. The choices governments make is very much a political issue. They don't have the same political issues we have, but they sure as hell still have political issues (starting with the obvious issue that their governments are corrupt and despotic). This is obvious. At this point, the only reason to not recognize it is willful blindness.
 
Nobody is confused about the difference in politics. The argument was it was "all political" that a solution hasn't been found for spent nuclear fuel storage. If you don't like the solutions they found, that is a different issue.
 
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