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cairn builder
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PostTue Apr 22, 2014 9:19 pm 
I'm in favor of nuclear power generation, for environmental reasons. I'm also for very strict regulation and oversight for safety, and unfortunately these aren't things we do well in this country. But flying is safer than driving, and if we can accomplish a feat like that I think we're up to the task. The amount of pollution is staggeringly less with nuclear than most forms of generation. Solar and wind power demand a lot of land, they're eyesores (you can see a big wind farm hiking the county line trail in the Teanaway), leading to habitat destruction, killing birds, etc. Dams are a mixed bag, certainly not without their costs. The world's fisheries are collapsing, if you know many people who've fished long enough they all have the same story, and dams aren't helping. Coal is dirty. Miners die in collapses, or get asthma. The world's population continues to grow, people especially in China and India are demanding first world standards of living, and there's more and more demand for power, this isn't going to change in the foreseeable future. Given the alternatives to meet that demand, we need to turn to nuclear, at home and abroad.

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Chief Joseph
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PostTue Apr 22, 2014 9:36 pm 
Before the white eyes come, there were plenty buffalo, plenty game, plenty wood, clean water...my people lived for hundreds of years without electricity, laptops, tv's, and I-phones. People are destroying the environment in the name of "progress". People have complicated life too much, the environment was much better off before technological advances. Nuclear power is not safe and the waste is difficult to contain and does not decompose.

Go placidly amid the noise and waste, and remember what comfort there may be in owning a piece thereof.
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cairn builder
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PostTue Apr 22, 2014 10:42 pm 
People won't so using electricity as long as they have a choice. The question is how should that (increasing amount of) electricity be generated? Nuclear? Coal?

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Hulksmash
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PostWed Apr 23, 2014 1:14 am 
Put it this way. Nuclear power is run off of the most toxic substances to all life on this planet. Spill some coal it's a non event. Spill some oil it will kill some things. But there are living things that live off of mineral oil and it will eventually break down in a few decades. Spill some radioactive substance and it will remain harm full for hundreds of thousands or millions of years.

"Bears couldn't care less about us....we smell bad and don't taste too good. Bugs on the other hand see us as vending machines." - WetDog Albuterol! it's the 11th essential
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RodF
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PostWed Apr 23, 2014 7:31 am 
Coal: 13,000 excess deaths per year in US (asthma, heart attacks caused by air pollution) Nuclear: 0 deaths over the entire history of the US civilian nuclear power program Why this is acceptable has always been a mystery to me. World-wide, nuclear power prevents ~76,000 deaths per year (Hansen, NASA).

"of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt" - John Muir "the wild is not the opposite of cultivated. It is the opposite of the captivated” - Vandana Shiva
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Conifers
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PostWed Apr 23, 2014 8:11 am 
Thorium.

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DIYSteve
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PostWed Apr 23, 2014 8:22 am 
If there's a good plan to isolate and stabilize the waste, a well-engineered/operated/maintained fission reactor is clean. That's a big if, of course, for lots of reasons, e.g., NIMBYism, long half life, etc. In theory, I'm pro nuke power if we can come up with a solid dependable nationwide plan for the waste. But that hasn't happened yet. The obvious first step to energy issues is conservation aka using less, but it's usually very difficult for people to give up conveniences they have enjoyed for a couple generations.

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Randito
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PostWed Apr 23, 2014 8:23 am 
Hulksmash wrote:
Spill some coal it's a non event.
well not exactly a non event http://www.cbsnews.com/news/duke-energy-to-lawmakers-moving-toxic-coal-ash-costs-too-much

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Token Civilian
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PostWed Apr 23, 2014 8:35 am 
Conifers wrote:
Thorium.
Hulk - this. The trouble with the current nuke power plants is that pressurized water with enriched uranium is optimized for a naval nuke program, not on shore civilian generation. U238 (the un enriched part / non-fissile ~95-97% of power plant fuel rods) captures neutrons....and turns into Pu239 (bomb fuel ~24k year half life). Then the Pu239 captures neutrons and turns into Pu240 (and so on), all of which have a really long half life (hence the absolutely correct statement that the waste lasts for hundreds of thousands / millions of years). But this is also a political choice* since the US refuses to reprocess "spent" civilian fuel rods and extract the Pu and "burn" that in subsequent fuel rods. (* - yes, this is a political choice, as France reprocesses its "spent" fuel, as did / does Japan. The US chooses not to since having Pu extracted from civilian reactors is some how "bad" from a weapons perspective, never mind that Pu extracted from civilian reactors is so heavily contaminated by Pu240 and higher weight isotopes that it makes for crappy bomb fuel.) With Thorium (Th232), it is transmuted into U233 via breeding (neutron capture) much as U238 is bred to Pu239. But U233 is the fissile material and is then split into the "relatively" short half life fission by products (half life from seconds to decade and on into low century time scales**). Thorium going into the breeder is / can be pure, so there is no / little by product. And if the U233 captures a neutron in lieu of being fissioned by one and is bred to U234 (which isn't fissile) it can subsequently be bred to U235, which IS fissile (the enriched part of enriched uranium), giving another opportunity to fission it. ** - thus the waste by products have to be dealt with for "only" century time scales until they've decayed to barely more than background levels of uranium ore, not hundred thousand / million year time scales. Add to that, nuke actually works....all the time, at command, unlike wind or solar. Until such time as humanity gets to a better place (won't debate what this is), we need reliable, inexpensive base load power, which nuke plants can and do deliver reliably. Look at the crappy lives in much of India and Africa, where there isn't inexpensive and reliable base load electrical power. I'm not so cruel as to condemn billions of humans to such a filthy and brutal existence by denying them clean and reliable power.

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Randito
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PostWed Apr 23, 2014 8:40 am 
I think the current way nuclear generation is run in the USA wouldn't be a great way to expand capacity. Too much chaos and reinventing the wheel. If a nuclear program is to be acceptably safe and cost effective, I think the USA needs a standardized plant design, so that experience in operating plants can be applied across the whole program. I think the concept of modular generators that can be factory built is worth investigating, though I don't believe there is any research along that path at the moment. There isn't much political will for developing nuclear power in the USA, "green" people are more keen on solar and wind. Other politicians get a lot of campaign contributions from oil, gas and coal interests. There certainly are "hidden" costs to nuclear power, but that is true of all other power sources. Would the USA have defended Kuwait from Saddam if after the '73 oil embargo we had pursued the path that France had and developed a nuclear program so the don't have to import oil to generate electricity.

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DIYSteve
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PostWed Apr 23, 2014 9:27 am 
Standardized design makes sense but the idea was continually shot down in the US in the past because engineering firms want the $$$$$ for designing each plant from scratch. Recent article in The Economist re thorium reactors

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pnw.hiker
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PostWed Apr 23, 2014 9:39 am 
cairn builder wrote:
I'm in favor of nuclear power generation, for environmental reasons. I'm also for very strict regulation and oversight for safety, and unfortunately these aren't things we do well in this country. But flying is safer than driving, and if we can accomplish a feat like that I think we're up to the task...
The waste problem hasn't been solved. It needs to be dealt with and stored where it will never cause a problem. This is a technical, political and economic problem.
cairn builder wrote:
The amount of pollution is staggeringly less with nuclear than most forms of generation. Solar and wind power demand a lot of land, they're eyesores (you can see a big wind farm hiking the county line trail in the Teanaway), leading to habitat destruction, killing birds, etc. Dams are a mixed bag, certainly not without their costs. The world's fisheries are collapsing, if you know many people who've fished long enough they all have the same story, and dams aren't helping. Coal is dirty. Miners die in collapses, or get asthma.
Energywise, humans live like slovenly pigs. Our capacity for waste is unlimited. If you produce an abundance of nuclear power, humans will figure out a way to squander it, I assure you. The typical home in America, and the way it's operated, uses far more energy than it has to. For example, if a homeowner wants to conserve energy, the simplest and most cost effective way to start is by putting up a clothesline, but very few can manage even that. I'm afraid nuclear power wont solve our energy/pollution problem. The problem is human behavior, not a lack of clean energy. Only economics will find a balance.
cairn builder wrote:
... The world's population continues to grow, people especially in China and India are demanding first world standards of living, and there's more and more demand for power, this isn't going to change in the foreseeable future. Given the alternatives to meet that demand, we need to turn to nuclear, at home and abroad.
Chief Joseph wrote:
Before the white eyes come, there were plenty buffalo, plenty game, plenty wood, clean water...my people lived for hundreds of years without electricity, laptops, tv's, and I-phones. People are destroying the environment in the name of "progress". People have complicated life too much, the environment was much better off before technological advances. Nuclear power is not safe and the waste is difficult to contain and does not decompose.
As much as I appreciate both carin and Chief's sentiments, they are tied to population control, either natural or manufactured, and that's a topic where angels fear to tread.

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Klapton
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PostWed Apr 23, 2014 9:55 am 
BigSteve wrote:
Standardized design makes sense but the idea was continually shot down in the US in the past because engineering firms want the $$$$$ for designing each plant from scratch. Recent article in The Economist re thorium reactors
The other reason Thorium was not persued decades ago is that it did not give governments the added bonus of making bombs out of it. All the government money and support went into far more dangerous designs that would yield stuff to make bombs.

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Klapton
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PostWed Apr 23, 2014 9:59 am 
The other problem with the entire energy issue is that when politicians talk about "energy independence" they are NOT talking about you and me. They'll hand out money to their cronies in the energy / utility industry to build wind and solar plants, but they have absolutely NO intention of you and I having our own energy production on our roof / in our yard. Sure, they'll give tax credits and other incentives that wealthier people can afford to indulge in. But Obama's promise of a "Manhattan Project style effort" for clean energy was never intended to free ordinary citizens from their enslavement to utility companies.

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onemoremile
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PostWed Apr 23, 2014 10:28 am 
Nuclear power requires huge amounts of mining to obtain the elements needed. Then requires massive amounts of electricity to refine and separate isotopes. Then the production of the actual fuel is very intensive.

“Arbolist? Look up the word. I don’t know, maybe I made it up. Anyway, it’s an arbo-tree-ist, somebody who knows about trees.” G.W. Bush
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