NationStates Jolt Archive

Do you see it as an intriguing way of producing energy to which produces no air pollution and very little waste or do you see it as too much of a risk to take for a source of energy that can be repacled with safer, and more reliable alternatives? What's you view?

I wouldn't be opposed to nuclear fusion, but the risks behind fission and the waste produced as a result makes me prefer renewable energy.

Nuclear power is okay. Build more I say. I have been to the first nuclear reactor in the world in Idaho. It was boring but. . .well. . . something interesting happened there.

If they could think of something to do with the waste then it would be the perfect solution.

could always stick it in orbit in space until they work out a solution to it...its not like its going to contaminate anything up there

We need interment sites, and then nuclear fission can hold us until fusion.

It's better than many other options but certainly not the best solution.

Its the best, most efficient, and environmentally friendly form of energy we have. Until we can perfect something better, nuclear is the way to go.

If they could think of something to do with the waste then it would be the perfect solution.

could always stick it in orbit in space until they work out a solution to it...its not like its going to contaminate anything up there

Shoot it into the sun, maybe? :D

I used to be very strongly against it, but now it is apparent that the dangers are necessary.

but now it is apparent that the dangers are necessary.

how so?

Do you see it as an intriguing way of producing energy to which produces no air pollution and very little waste or do you see it as too much of a risk to take for a source of energy that can be repacled with safer, and more reliable alternatives? What's you view?

In the United States, Nuclearphobia has resulted in increasing n-wastes that can't be recycled (by law) and can't be safely disposed of (Yucca Mountain is horribly unstable ground with frequent earthquakes and ground-water intrusions. If you're oging to bury waste, you want to bury it in Manhattan, on the most stable bedrock in North America.)
It's also stalled/halted development and employment of much, much, safer Fission technologies, including Generation Three reactors that use 'passive safeties'.

"Passive Safeties" are design features that shut down a reaction if something doesn't keep going. Current U.S. designs in use employ "Active" safeties, which require constant maintenance and monitoring or you get a meltdown or breach (Tchernobyl).

Active safeties require machines to keep going, whereas passive safeties kick in if the machinery stops. We can't build Gen III or Gen IV reactors here in the U.S., our Environmentalists won't let it happen.

Closing the Fuel-Cycle would eliminate gigatons of incredibly dangerous hazardous waste. An Executive Order issued by the Carter Administration in 1979 halted work in that field. With an open-fuel-cycle, you need to keep feeding the reactor new fuel, instead of recycling spent fuel into new fuel, and your spent fuel is now gigatons of dangerous, high-level radioactive waste.

NuKes aren't going to 'go away' folks, Hanford won't clean itself up, and without somewhere to put the stuff and something to replace it, the facility (built in the 1940's) will continue to increase in danger.
The same (The exactsame) thing is true of the other sites nationwide, halting it just means you can't fix what has already gone wrong.

how so?

The ration of pollution from fossil fuel power stations Vs when sometimes nuclear powerplants go boom.

I just hope the Australian government builds a nuclear dumping ground in South Australia and charges foreigners 'rent' for the storage of nuclear materials there.

The ration of pollution from fossil fuel power stations Vs when sometimes nuclear powerplants go boom.
And those are the only alternatives?

Im fine with it unless the reactors are in communist or potentialy hostile (keeping politiczaly correct) countries. this would include North Korea and Iran specificaly. But, we wouldn't be having a nuclear threat from north korea IF FUCKING BILL CLINTON HADN'T GIVEN THEM NUCLEAR ARMS DURING HIS 8 YEARS!!!!

In the United States, Nuclearphobia has resulted in increasing n-wastes that can't be recycled (by law) and can't be safely disposed of (Yucca Mountain is horribly unstable ground with frequent earthquakes and ground-water intrusions. If you're oging to bury waste, you want to bury it in Manhattan, on the most stable bedrock in North America.)
It's also stalled/halted development and employment of much, much, safer Fission technologies, including Generation Three reactors that use 'passive safeties'.

"Passive Safeties" are design features that shut down a reaction if something doesn't keep going. Current U.S. designs in use employ "Active" safeties, which require constant maintenance and monitoring or you get a meltdown or breach (Tchernobyl).

Active safeties require machines to keep going, whereas passive safeties kick in if the machinery stops. We can't build Gen III or Gen IV reactors here in the U.S., our Environmentalists won't let it happen.

Closing the Fuel-Cycle would eliminate gigatons of incredibly dangerous hazardous waste. An Executive Order issued by the Carter Administration in 1979 halted work in that field. With an open-fuel-cycle, you need to keep feeding the reactor new fuel, instead of recycling spent fuel into new fuel, and your spent fuel is now gigatons of dangerous, high-level radioactive waste.

NuKes aren't going to 'go away' folks, Hanford won't clean itself up, and without somewhere to put the stuff and something to replace it, the facility (built in the 1940's) will continue to increase in danger.
The same (The exactsame) thing is true of the other sites nationwide, halting it just means you can't fix what has already gone wrong.

Stupid uninformed enviromentalists, ruining the Earth.

Im fine with it unless the reactors are in communist or potentialy hostile (keeping politiczaly correct) countries. this would include North Korea and Iran specificaly. But, we wouldn't be having a nuclear threat from north korea IF FUCKING BILL CLINTON HADN'T GIVEN THEM NUCLEAR ARMS DURING HIS 8 YEARS!!!!
Quite right, no cheap energy for the poor. Why do they need it for anyway? Not for heating or TV's anyway. :rolleyes:

Do you see it as an intriguing way of producing energy to which produces no air pollution and very little waste or do you see it as too much of a risk to take for a source of energy that can be repacled with safer, and more reliable alternatives? What's you view?


I'm not sure what you mean by repacled with safer and more reliable alternatives.

If you mean REPLACED, then I still don't get it.... what are the safer, more reliable alternatives?

Coal? Not safe for the miners, not safe for the environment.

Wind? Takes up an extreme amount of space for little return.

Hydro-electric? Reliable, but destroys environment in the pursuit of enough man-made lakes to produce enough to supply a relatively small portion of society.

Solar? While the Sun will always be there, so will clouds. What will you do then?

Cold-Fusion? Hasn't been developed. Not practical to depend on something that only work, theoretically.

What else then??? Squirrels on treadmills?

If you meant REPACLED then I have absolutely no answer.

Stick with the nukes... they're safe.

I'm not sure what you mean by repacled with safer and more reliable alternatives.

i merely meant that i would like to know if it were their opinions that there are safer, more reliable sources. not once did i state that i thought there were alternatives. i just want to know people's opinion on the subject

I just hope the Australian government builds a nuclear dumping ground in South Australia and charges foreigners 'rent' for the storage of nuclear materials there.

While this could work... maybe... I dont think the south Australians would like it.

The main problem with nukes is people remember the things that have gone wrong...

And of course, the tech was developed as a weapon first and people probably wont forget that for a while...

While There are "better" sources of energy, None of them are reliable or efficient as it has been pointed out... and we cant stick with Fossil fuels (I dont think anyone needs to explain why right?)

Hey Brits. What you think about Sellafield now? You feel secure?

Once we kill the enviromentalists, nuclear power's future is assured.

Nuclear is the only really viable long-term soloution. While renewable sources are nice, the return generated with them is minor at best, and could only, in theory, produce a truely signifigant amount of power if built to a scale that alters global conditions.

For example, if one could build a solar cell large enough to block out the sun entierly, it still wouldn't generate a fraction of our energy needs, plus it would kill us.

Hydo, geothermal, solar and wind power are all great supplments, but even at there theoretical maximuns they just can't produce enough to act as a main powre source.

Why not go nuclear?

The most common answers I hear to that involve waste and meltdowns.

As far as meltdowns go, the reactor designs we last built in the US are dumb as hell and had no real fail safe system. Current designs other nations have use true fail safe systems - ie, if something goes wrong, the reaction -stops-. Recently, a company in japan has developed a 'pepple' reactor - one in which it is phsicaly impossible to get a critical reation (by spreading out the fuel source, the heat produced by the reaction is able to push the fuel away from itself, thus at critical tempratures the fuel gets pushed too far away and the reaction fails).

We here in the US have nothing but the oldest, most primative and unstable designs because we stoped looking for better ways to do it. If we get off our butts and either research or pay other nations for the tech we should have developed ourselves, the threat of meltdown is, at worst, no more than the threat of a fuel refinery blowing up.

As for waste... well, nuclear reactors produce solid waste that can be sealed and disposed of. Fossile fuel buring produces vapours that can only be released into the air and, as far as I know, can't be contained in any way.

The fact that we haven't really looked for a good way to dispose of nuclear by-products means just that - we haven't been really looking for them, because we have all but outlawed doing anything to make nulcear more viable.

I Personaly fail to see why waste is so much worse just because it has that spooky 'radioactive' on it. Owwwww.... raidoactive.... owwwwww.... it might.... give me cancer.

Just like the air I'm breathing or the sunlight I'm exposed to every day of my life.

Sorry, but I'll stick with solid waste over toxic air any day.


Yes, nuclear is not perfect, and is not the ultimate solution. It is he best we have at the present. It's ridiculous not to use it because it is imperfect while we still burn off megatons of coal, oil and gas. Because those processes are -so- much better and dont' harm the envorment -at all-.

Hey Brits. What you think about Sellafield now? You feel secure?

we feel more insecure about it. we'd all be wiped out in the event of another disaster similar to chernobyl, at least there would would be some surviving brits left in britain. oh yes, it's also polluting our celtic sea at the moment, though, they say, it's still within eu regulations.

we feel more insecure about it. we'd all be wiped out in the event of another disaster similar to chernobyl, at least there would would be some surviving brits left in britain. oh yes, it's also polluting our celtic sea at the moment, though, they say, it's still within eu regulations.
True, nuclear energy is never only one country's problem. I was pretty concerned of Lithuania's Ignalina power plant (similar to chernobyl).

There are fission reactor designs, including some fast breeder designs, that are safe in operation, and are designed to be fail-safe. That is, even if the crew screws up on purpose, nothing bad happens. There was a fast breeder at Argonne National Labs that fulfilled this design criteria, and was tested and proven to fail-safe - but the first act of the Clinton Administration was to shut it down and dismantle it. There is also a German pebble bed design that is fail-safe, and then there's the CANDU design (Canadian).

Not all reactors produce material suitable for weapons, so you can't say that all designs are bad from a proliferation standpoint.

The main problem then is disposing of waste fuel and waste structural elements - that's a nasty problem.

Fusion reactors would be far better, but for some reason, we still haven't produced a commercial fusion reactor. If that were to be fulfilled, power would be extremely cheap - it would change world geopolitics overnight.

There's another alternative - orbital solar power satellites that beam energy to antenna fields on the surface. Little waste, no pollution, etc.

If you were to build enough of those, power would be extremely cheap. It could also be delivered anywhere in the world where you could put up an antenna field.

In the United States, Nuclearphobia has resulted in increasing n-wastes that can't be recycled (by law) and can't be safely disposed of (Yucca Mountain is horribly unstable ground with frequent earthquakes and ground-water intrusions. If you're oging to bury waste, you want to bury it in Manhattan, on the most stable bedrock in North America.)
It's also stalled/halted development and employment of much, much, safer Fission technologies, including Generation Three reactors that use 'passive safeties'.

"Passive Safeties" are design features that shut down a reaction if something doesn't keep going. Current U.S. designs in use employ "Active" safeties, which require constant maintenance and monitoring or you get a meltdown or breach (Tchernobyl).

Active safeties require machines to keep going, whereas passive safeties kick in if the machinery stops. We can't build Gen III or Gen IV reactors here in the U.S., our Environmentalists won't let it happen.

Closing the Fuel-Cycle would eliminate gigatons of incredibly dangerous hazardous waste. An Executive Order issued by the Carter Administration in 1979 halted work in that field. With an open-fuel-cycle, you need to keep feeding the reactor new fuel, instead of recycling spent fuel into new fuel, and your spent fuel is now gigatons of dangerous, high-level radioactive waste.

NuKes aren't going to 'go away' folks, Hanford won't clean itself up, and without somewhere to put the stuff and something to replace it, the facility (built in the 1940's) will continue to increase in danger.
The same (The exactsame) thing is true of the other sites nationwide, halting it just means you can't fix what has already gone wrong.

Actually Gen II uses passive safeties.... And they make up the present bulk of US Reactor Designs... As well as all at-sea Reactor systems.

The system employed is the use of "positive traction" motors to control the control rods in the reactor core. The motors are fed directly from the Turbine-Generators of the plant, with no secondary power systems (unless specifically over-ridden). When containment is lost, and steam is lost, causing a failure of the TG's... The motors lose power, and the control rods immediately drop, scramming the reactor.

The US naval reactors were initially designed for use on submarines. Because of the danger involved in the angles a submarine can take, which could potentially result, in the HP water design, to allow steam to escape into the loop from the "Pressurizer" (A massive steam bubble, and the only place water is allowed to "boil" in the system), and gather in the core... causing a loss of medium and coolant to the core. A system was employed to automatically scram the system if the event that medium is lost, and thereby steam is lost from the Steam Generator (heat transfer between primary and secondary loops, more or less a "boiler" and "boils" secondary water, by heat transfer from High-Pressure/High-Temperature water in the primary loop).

Im fine with it unless the reactors are in communist or potentialy hostile (keeping politiczaly correct) countries. this would include North Korea and Iran specificaly. But, we wouldn't be having a nuclear threat from north korea IF FUCKING BILL CLINTON HADN'T GIVEN THEM NUCLEAR ARMS DURING HIS 8 YEARS!!!!

Dude, it was the bloody pakistanis, get it right.
Having said that, Properly run it is one of the safest and cleanest forms of generation. Properly contained, the waste is no worse than dozens of dangerous chemicals being used today
Chernobyl blew because they were screwing around with it and it was run by dodgy bastards.

Nuclear power has always been a safe, effective form of energy production. Per megawatt it costs about the same as coal power, and is far less polluting. What's worrying is the way no one seems to talk sensibly about it. Depending on who you talk to its either our only form of salvation and all other power production is null and void, or it is the very incarnation of evil and all nuclear power production should cease immediately.

In fact, nuclear power plants the world over have produced, between them, a few tens of thousands of tons of radioactive waste. Coal fired power stations in the US alone produce 30 tons of waste per second, including heavy metals such as mercury and cadmium. Coal waste has a radioactive component too, and for a given amount of energy produced, so much more coal ash is produced than nuclear waste that coal power contributes more to the background radiation than nuclear waste. Add this to the fact that coal ash is spread all over the place, whereas nuclear waste is turned into glass, sealed in steel and concrete and buried deep underground, and it should be obvious that nuclear power trumps coal power. There would have to be a meltdown every two weeks to contribute as much radioactivity as coal burning does on a global scale.

Duraday and Castrated Monkey; you are incorrect about the viability of renewable energy sources, particularly wind. 10,000 times more solar energy hits the earth every day than we would need for the entire global population, even if they were as profligate in their energy use as the US. At the moment it is costly and difficult to harvest, but solar cell technology is improving rapidly. And as I stated before, wind power could easily fulfil all the energy needs of the US (harder here in Europe where there is higher population density). Saying that 'the wind doesn’t blow all the time' is not a valid objection either, as if you have wind power right across the continent, there is always going to be enough wind somewhere to produce sufficient power to cover the areas where it is less windy. And of course, you would need nuclear power to take up the slack.

But nuclear power it is certainly not the best solution by any means. It still produces that nasty waste which is costly to dispose of, and mining and refining uranium generates its own pollution. Nuclear power advocates engage in desperate attacks on renewable forms of energy in an attempt to seem like the only viable alternative to fossil fuels. This seriously harms the credibility of the nuclear power lobby. Wind power is almost as cheap as nuclear power (if you factor in construction and decommissioning costs), and will become cheaper within the next few years. The small footprint of wind turbines means they can be sited all over the place, and much closer to demand areas than nuclear power stations, resulting in less energy loss in transmission. You would need to cover about 10% of the land area of the US with wind turbines to meet demand (including separation of turbines), so wind power certainly cannot be used alone. Solar power isn’t nearly cheap enough to be a viable alternative yet, but solar power coupled with wind energy may well be all we need eventually (wind and solar power complement each other nicely; one tends to be active when the other is not).

Until then we do need more nuclear power stations the world over, and even with nice, efficient solar energy and wind turbines everywhere, we will still need nuclear power (be it fusion of fission) to take up the slack. The nuclear and renewable advocates should recognise that they are fighting the same issue: that we must reduce our use of fossil fuels. Only by getting together and producing a combined energy policy that works is anyone going to take them seriously. I actually read on a website advocating nuclear power that reasons not to go for wind power were that it was 'ugly' and 'incredibly noisy'. I’ve stood at the base of a wind turbine (in a group of 6 on a hill in the UK), and all I could hear was a slight swishing sound. The actual wind was louder. And as for being ugly, turbines are slender, beautiful, graceful symbols of mans attempt to go green, what could people possibly object to? I’d have one in my back garden over a nuclear plant any day.

So let’s hear it for an integrated energy policy that eliminates fossil fuels and goes with a mixture of nuclear and renewable energy. It makes good financial and environmental sense now, and future generations will thank us.

I'm waiting for home-sized pebble-bed reactors to be developed so I can take my home completely off the grid. :)

Realistic Thinkers']And as I stated before, wind power could easily fulfil all the energy needs of the US (harder here in Europe where there is higher population density). Saying that 'the wind doesn’t blow all the time' is not a valid objection either, as if you have wind power right across the continent, there is always going to be enough wind somewhere to produce sufficient power to cover the areas where it is less windy.
I live in the windiest city in the US and it surprises me that AEP or another company hasn't tried putting up wind farm down here...even as an experiment.

With that said...you could put wind farms in Washington DC and in New York City (right next to the United Nations) and power the rest of the world with energy to spare from the hot air blowing around. ;)

Sorry, but I'll stick with solid waste over toxic air any day.

Today's waste could be tomorrow's fuel...

Yes, nuclear is not perfect, and is not the ultimate solution. It is he best we have at the present. It's ridiculous not to use it because it is imperfect while we still burn off megatons of coal, oil and gas. Because those processes are -so- much better and dont' harm the envorment -at all-.

Plus with proper implementation of Nuclear-Electric we can starve out the Wahabis. Where's the down side?

It's possible without nuclear power, take Austria, no reactor here. There has been one, well, actually, they built one, but it never went online because of the citizens going on the barricades against it.

Realistic Thinkers']so wind power certainly cannot be used aloneHow about a combination of wind and hydroelectric power? Perhaps the development of hydro power generators that can harness the energy from the rain should be encouraged?

I have a question about nuclear waste that I hope someone here can answer.

Nuclear power (fission) is produced from Uranium. This Uranium has to come from somewhere. It comes out of the ground, we mione it. Now, as I understand it, this Uranium is radioactive when we dig it up, and purify it from the pitchblend or whatever source. We concentrate it, use the radiactivity and the particular physical properties of the Uranium to generate energy. We are left with radioctive waste products. Are these more radioactive than the Uranium we dug up to start with? Do they have longer half lives? If the answer to both of these questions is no, then why is there a problem with nuclear waste? We have not generated any radioctivity at all, we have simply transformed one type of naturally radioctive material into another form of naturaly radioctive material.

Why can we not simply backfill any mined out Uranium sources with this material? The area was radioactive to start with, so we are doing no damage to the environment.


People appear to be presenting nuclear power as a permanent solution to the energy crisis. It is not. As with fossil fuel sources, it depends upon a limited supply of a naturaly occuring material. Breeder reactors do not produce more fuel than they use, and eventually the fuel will run out. Nuclear is no more renewable than coal or oil. It is a solution for a long period of time, but it is not a definitve solution in the way that efficient solar power would be.

bad couse of the waste need new way.....

I have a question about nuclear waste that I hope someone here can answer.

Nuclear power (fission) is produced from Uranium. This Uranium has to come from somewhere. It comes out of the ground, we mione it. Now, as I understand it, this Uranium is radioactive when we dig it up, and purify it from the pitchblend or whatever source. We concentrate it, use the radiactivity and the particular physical properties of the Uranium to generate energy. We are left with radioctive waste products. Are these more radioactive than the Uranium we dug up to start with? Do they have longer half lives? If the answer to both of these questions is no, then why is there a problem with nuclear waste? We have not generated any radioctivity at all, we have simply transformed one type of naturally radioctive material into another form of naturaly radioctive material.

Why can we not simply backfill any mined out Uranium sources with this material? The area was radioactive to start with, so we are doing no damage to the environment.


People appear to be presenting nuclear power as a permanent solution to the energy crisis. It is not. As with fossil fuel sources, it depends upon a limited supply of a naturaly occuring material. Breeder reactors do not produce more fuel than they use, and eventually the fuel will run out. Nuclear is no more renewable than coal or oil. It is a solution for a long period of time, but it is not a definitve solution in the way that efficient solar power would be.
Uranium is one of the weakest radioactive elements on the planet. You can hold it in your hand for a good amount of time with no risk of harm. The things it produces are much, much more dangerous, but it also doesn't produce a lot of them.

As for solar being a viable solution, it isn't. http://www.ncpa.org/~ncpa/studies/renew/renew4.html
The environmental problems of solar center around the production of mirrors and land impacts. Regarding the latter, central-station solar requires between five and 17 acres per megawatt (see below), compared to gas-fired plants that a decade ago required only one-third of an acre per megawatt and today can be as little as one-twenty-fifth of an acre

A 1978 study found that the materials required for thermal solar projects were 1,000 times greater than for a similarly sized fossil fuel facility, creating substantial incremental energy consumption and industrial pollution

It has more on why solar power, frankly, sucks. There's a million more websites, probably even better written than that one, explaining why it's impossible to go solar.

Uranium is one of the weakest radioactive elements on the planet. You can hold it in your hand for a good amount of time with no risk of harm. The things it produces are much, much more dangerous, but it also doesn't produce a lot of them.

As for solar being a viable solution, it isn't. http://www.ncpa.org/~ncpa/studies/renew/renew4.html
The environmental problems of solar center around the production of mirrors and land impacts. Regarding the latter, central-station solar requires between five and 17 acres per megawatt (see below), compared to gas-fired plants that a decade ago required only one-third of an acre per megawatt and today can be as little as one-twenty-fifth of an acre

A 1978 study found that the materials required for thermal solar projects were 1,000 times greater than for a similarly sized fossil fuel facility, creating substantial incremental energy consumption and industrial pollution

It has more on why solar power, frankly, sucks. There's a million more websites, probably even better written than that one, explaining why it's impossible to go solar.


Actually Uranium is a long way from being one of the weakest radioactive elements, as nearely all elements are very weakly radioactive. Uranium is quite highly radioactive. Pitchblend is safe as it only contains a low concentration of Uranium. Nuclear waste would have to be diluted, but we have plenty of non radioctive waste form the extraction of Uranium to start with that could be used, giving a roentgen per cubic meter value of about the same as the original ore.

Solar Power.

The thinking that solar power can not be used as it needs much more surface area per MW than traditional or uclear generation is one that fails to grasp the whole paradigm change that comes with solar power. To use solar power you have to move to distributed generation. No central generater and complex distribution network. Instead there would be solar panels on the roofs of nearly every building. There would still be a power grid, to distribute the power as required, with local power storage facilities to deal with night time demands etc. The arguments made by the ncpa site recognize this in passing, but do not address the matter. They only concern themselves with:
bulk, or central station, solar power (power generated at a large-scale centralized location and then transmitted on the power grid to multiple users)

Each individual country should look at the resources it has available for alternative power generation, the environmental impat of using that resource and the cost of using that compared to importing power. Then a decision can be made as to what power strategy would be best for that nation. In the USA there would appear to be a good case for a mixed strategy of combined nuclear, hydroelectric, solar and wind. In the UK, solar would be less appropriate resulting in nuclear, wind, tidal and hydroelectric being a suitable combination. Here, in Brazil, solar should be the dominant portion of power generation (given the location and climate) , with support form hydroelectric.

Do you see it as an intriguing way of producing energy to which produces no air pollution and very little waste or do you see it as too much of a risk to take for a source of energy that can be repacled with safer, and more reliable alternatives? What's you view?

Nucular! :headbang:

Solar power will only become a viable large-scale grid solution with orbital collectors and microwave relays...

Of course, "microwave relay" is just another term for "space based death ray" :rolleyes:

It has more on why solar power, frankly, sucks. There's a million more websites, probably even better written than that one, explaining why it's impossible to go solar.
Going totally solar isn't really possible on a massive, centralized scale, but if everyone went solar individually, it would be possible. Though, the energy conglomerates would go out of business and economies would plummet...unless energy companies got smart and switched to manufacturing components rather than monetarily raping us and stiffling alternative energy development. ;)

Going totally solar isn't really possible on a massive, centralized scale, but if everyone went solar individually, it would be possible. Though, the energy conglomerates would go out of business and economies would plummet...unless energy companies got smart and switched to manufacturing components rather than monetarily raping us and stiffling alternative energy development. ;)

I agree about the shift to distributed generation that is required for solar to work, but why would this cause economies to plummet? Yes it would hit the OPEC countries hard, but they are a minority, and nuclear or hydroelectric would have the same effect. I do not see centralized power generation as a significant factor in economic strength. To my mind the energy costs transfers involved in central generation are a weight on any industrial or post industrial economy.

I have a good impression of nuclear power.

Going totally solar isn't really possible on a massive, centralized scale, but if everyone went solar individually, it would be possible. Though, the energy conglomerates would go out of business and economies would plummet...unless energy companies got smart and switched to manufacturing components rather than monetarily raping us and stiffling alternative energy development. ;)

Building solar power satellites would make things centralized.

They would be more efficient, since they would be in space.

The energy would be beamed as microwaves to select locations for conversion to electric power.

If solar were truly decentralized, they would rob you by charging an arm and a leg for the equipment.

Building solar power satellites would make things centralized.

They would be more efficient, since they would be in space.

The energy would be beamed as microwaves to select locations for conversion to electric power.

If solar were truly decentralized, they would rob you by charging an arm and a leg for the equipment.
And the best bit is:

You get a free death ray with which to hold the world hostage! BWAHAHAHAHAH! :D

Building solar power satellites would make things centralized.

They would be more efficient, since they would be in space.

The energy would be beamed as microwaves to select locations for conversion to electric power.

If solar were truly decentralized, they would rob you by charging an arm and a leg for the equipment.

As the equipment is not difficult to make, nor does it require anything more exotic than silicon, it seems likely that robbing you blind for the equipment is a lot less likely than robbing you blind for power supplied from expensive and high maintenance satellite collectors and microwave transmitters. The satellite system also requires enormous initial investment, whereas rooftop collection does not.

It may be that the US would opt for this pseudo military technology, after all the microwave beams would have military aplications, but they would have problems in allowing this technology to be disseminated to the middle east etc.

As the equipment is not difficult to make, nor does it require anything more exotic than silicon, it seems likely that robbing you blind for the equipment is a lot less likely than robbing you blind for power supplied from expensive and high maintenance satellite collectors and microwave transmitters. The satellite system also requires enormous initial investment, whereas rooftop collection does not.

It may be that the US would opt for this pseudo military technology, after all the microwave beams would have military aplications, but they would have problems in allowing this technology to be disseminated to the middle east etc.

I belive that solar cells in local settings are subject to the whim of latitude and weather. They are not, at this time, sufficient to power most homes. They certainly cannot meet industrial demand, nor do they provide enough power to meet the demand for the charging of electric cars (or the generation of hydrogen on a large scale).

A set of orbital platforms in geosynchronous orbit, however, can always be in a position to collect light - day, night, and in all weather. The microwave beam can reach the ground in all weather.

Such a satellite would also provide industrial power - the kind of power you require for processing aluminum, for example. It would also provide a huge power source for processing hydrogen, or for recharging millions of electric cars.

I belive that solar cells in local settings are subject to the whim of latitude and weather. They are not, at this time, sufficient to power most homes. They certainly cannot meet industrial demand, nor do they provide enough power to meet the demand for the charging of electric cars (or the generation of hydrogen on a large scale).

A set of orbital platforms in geosynchronous orbit, however, can always be in a position to collect light - day, night, and in all weather. The microwave beam can reach the ground in all weather.

Such a satellite would also provide industrial power - the kind of power you require for processing aluminum, for example. It would also provide a huge power source for processing hydrogen, or for recharging millions of electric cars.

I agree that latitude has a severe effect on solar power, hence my contention a few posts back that the power generation options have to be considered on a regional (country) basis. The weather does not actually have that much effect on the power output of photovoltaic cells. They work almost as well in cloudy conditions as they do in direct sunlight. They also do generate enough electricity for normal domestic use, with about a 20% surplus on average, with the current technology and based on sub tropical lattitudes (The south of the USA or mediterranean europe.). They would provide plenty of power in the middle east, south east asia, central and most of south america, and australia. The regions where they would not be effective are northern europe, the north of north america (Canada and the northern states of the USA) and the south of South America (Aregentina and Chile) and New Zealand.

The surplus power generated in domestic instalations can be accumulated for high energy demand industries (Aluminium is the obvious one), but I see nothing wrong with having a mixed generation scheme with nuclear or hydroelectric providing industrial power.

If they could think of something to do with the waste then it would be the perfect solution.

could always stick it in orbit in space until they work out a solution to it...its not like its going to contaminate anything up there

Uhm - I think the only reason why that is not already being done is that if your rocket blew up (they tend to do that, don't they?) it would really fuck up our lil' blue planet's whole atmosphere. :(

If solar were truly decentralized, they would rob you by charging an arm and a leg for the equipment.
Not really... because Government™ would find some way to regulate the living hell out of the industry.

Shoot it into the sun, maybe? :D

NO!

NO!
Considering the mass of the sun, and its temperature, what harm would there be in putting a few million tons of radioactive waste into it?

It wouldn't affect anything.

Uhm - I think the only reason why that is not already being done is that if your rocket blew up (they tend to do that, don't they?) it would really fuck up our lil' blue planet's whole atmosphere. :mad:

1st time I quote myself.

1st time I quote myself.
Depending on the design of the vehicle, it might not be any risk at all. There have been some designs used by the US that were designed not to break up during the explosion of a booster - nor be damaged by striking the ground at speeds as high as Mach 8 into solid concrete.

It's an engineering problem, not a scientific impossibility, to make a safe container for radioactive waste that could be launched into space.

Considering the mass of the sun, and its temperature, what harm would there be in putting a few million tons of radioactive waste into it?

It wouldn't affect anything.

How about the energy cost of doing so being more than the energy generated by the waste to start with. When disposing of the waste costs more than the benefit gained it is rather a pointless exercise.

How about the energy cost of doing so being more than the energy generated by the waste to start with. When disposing of the waste costs more than the benefit gained it is rather a pointless exercise.
I didn't want to get into the delta-V argument about launching things into the sun - most peoples' eyes glaze over when you bring that up.

I didn't want to get into the delta-V argument about launching things into the sun - most peoples' eyes glaze over when you bring that up.

It is irrelevant what the delta V gain is on the 'downhill' stretch into the sun, unless you can find a way of transferring that energy gain back here. What matters is the energy cost of lifting the waste out off the Earth's gravity well. This is higher than the energy output of the generator in producing the waste.

Considering the mass of the sun, and its temperature, what harm would there be in putting a few million tons of radioactive waste into it?

It wouldn't affect anything.

but if the rocket crashed or exploded there would be radioactive waste everywhere

EDIT: sorry, someone beat me to it!

It is irrelevant what the delta V gain is on the 'downhill' stretch into the sun, unless you can find a way of transferring that energy gain back here. What matters is the energy cost of lifting the waste out off the Earth's gravity well. This is higher than the energy output of the generator in producing the waste.

It's not going to fall into the sun unless it loses a lot of velocity relative to the sun. The liftoff is also inordinately expensive.

It's not going to fall into the sun unless it loses a lot of velocity relative to the sun. The liftoff is also inordinately expensive.

You simply have to lift off counter to the earths direction around the sun, and the energy spent in climbing the well also reduces the velocity sufficiently for it to fall (in a long spiral true, but time is not of the essence here) into the sun.

It is the lift off costs that make this form of waste disposal impractical.

But back to the real question:

No, I don't particularly feel safe with nuclear power stations around. The whole waste of Germany is being delivered to the "interim storage" (nice word for a nuclear waste dump!!!) which isn't all too far away from home. Nobody wants that shit around, but in a very crowded (krautet) place like Germany you don't have much space w/out settlements s.wh. - it's just that the place isn't exactly secure, it was only chosen because it was closest to the German Democratic Republic (back in those days with seperate Germanies); their storage place was on the same spot (other side of the Iron Curtain).

But, what else do we have?

Wood? Coal? Oil? Gas? Solar Power? Sun Power? Fission? Fusion? Antimatter?

Some heaters already use wood pellets and the resulting amount of energy is fairly good - used to warm water only, I think (heating & hot water).

Coal is still pretty good (and also used for steel production) so the prices will rise continuously.

Oil? Same thing - only that in addition we drive around in our cars and burn a lot!

Gas. Mmh. Not too bad and definitely a solid choice to drive cars on. Our house at home has a good gas heater. (Not oven - that's electric...).

Solar Power. Only this weekend have I read about new silicium solar-thingamabob which is only 0,037mm thick and results in a yield of 20% (which is pretty good I believe!). As s.o. already said - probably a solid choice for every roof-top. (Just gotta remember to switch off a plant or else the sparks go a-flying on a sunny day)

Sun Power. Some houses here already use the sun's warmth to heat their water (tap & heaters). Don't know how well that would work in a place where the sun doesn't shine all that much throughout the year - and you'd still need two heating systems... which costs a lot!

Fission? Know too little to have an opinion on it - yet.

Fusion - Mmh. Doesn't fusion also produce nuclear waste 'cause the surrounding structure gets bombarded with neutrons which turns it "heavier" or something? Too long since I've read anything new about it...

Antimatter. Well. There is some out there. Not much. Would probably work - costs more than everything else put together? And I'm afraid I have to admit that this isn't Star Trek.
Where would you store it? In your pants?

Why do you need to launch it into the sun anyway? Just blast it into space and it'll keep going and pretty much the same velocity pretty much forever. It doesnt need to be destroyed, just gotten away from us.

But back to the real question:

No, I don't particularly feel safe with nuclear power stations around. The whole waste of Germany is being delivered to the "interim storage" (nice word for a nuclear waste dump!!!) which isn't all too far away from home. Nobody wants that shit around, but in a very crowded (krautet) place like Germany you don't have much space w/out settlements s.wh. - it's just that the place isn't exactly secure, it was only chosen because it was closest to the German Democratic Republic (back in those days with seperate Germanies); their storage place was on the same spot (other side of the Iron Curtain).

But, what else do we have?

Wood? Coal? Oil? Gas? Solar Power? Sun Power? Fission? Fusion? Antimatter?

Some heaters already use wood pellets and the resulting amount of energy is fairly good - used to warm water only, I think (heating & hot water).

Coal is still pretty good (and also used for steel production) so the prices will rise continuously.

Oil? Same thing - only that in addition we drive around in our cars and burn a lot!

Gas. Mmh. Not too bad and definitely a solid choice to drive cars on. Our house at home has a good gas heater. (Not oven - that's electric...).

Solar Power. Only this weekend have I read about new silicium solar-thingamabob which is only 0,037mm thick and results in a yield of 20% (which is pretty good I believe!). As s.o. already said - probably a solid choice for every roof-top. (Just gotta remember to switch off a plant or else the sparks go a-flying on a sunny day)

Sun Power. Some houses here already use the sun's warmth to heat their water (tap & heaters). Don't know how well that would work in a place where the sun doesn't shine all that much throughout the year - and you'd still need two heating systems... which costs a lot!

Fission? Know too little to have an opinion on it - yet.

Fusion - Mmh. Doesn't fusion also produce nuclear waste 'cause the surrounding structure gets bombarded with neutrons which turns it "heavier" or something? Too long since I've read anything new about it...

Antimatter. Well. There is some out there. Not much. Would probably work - costs more than everything else put together? And I'm afraid I have to admit that this isn't Star Trek.
Where would you store it? In your pants?

fusion produces minute amounts of radioactive waste compared to fission, as a fusion reaction stops the moment it hits the container walls.

Anti-matter wouldn't work because it takes too much energy to make

Why do you need to launch it into the sun anyway? Just blast it into space and it'll keep going and pretty much the same velocity pretty much forever. It doesnt need to be destroyed, just gotten away from us.

ever seen the episode of futurama with the garbage ball?

Coal is still pretty good (and also used for steel production) so the prices will rise continuously.


The coal burned in US power plants puts roughly eight tons of radioactive material into the air every year.

Eight tons. Mostly uranium - some thorium, radium, etc.

If someone said, "the nuclear power industry in the US puts eight tons of radioactive uranium and other radionuclides into the air every year" people would panic.

Yet - if it is not cost efficient it's not really worth all the effort and it is definitely not safe!!! Nomatter how secure a rocket supposedly is - A "nuclear" space rocket is just one big ol' dirty bomb... (I still can't believe that us apes control the atoms... Monkeys always like to press buttons out of curiosity!)

@ Whispering Legs: You wouldn't know how much that is in Germany, would you? (And how do you know in the first place?)

It's not going to fall into the sun unless it loses a lot of velocity relative to the sun. The liftoff is also inordinately expensive.
Once a space elevator is built the cost is not a factor anymore and all kinds of waste can be thrown into the sun. Including reality show hosts.

@ Whispering Legs: You wouldn't know how much that is in Germany, would you? (And how do you know in the first place?)
It's the figure commonly passed around at the EPA. If you talk to the guys in the Acid Rain program, they'll tell you the threat from burning coal is from the radionuclides, not from the acid rain.

They have data to back it up.

BTW, most of the coal in Europe is higher in sulfur and contains more radioactive material than US coal - especially the coal in Poland.

And I'm not joking.

Solar power will become a good choice as materials to capture it become better, and also as new forms of storage are developed. Methane gas from the oceans is a good alternative also.

The problem with atomic energy is the waste, but fission is quite clean. Unfortunately is also much harder to get and the existing generators so far use more energy than what they produce.

Wind is not too bad either, but not very attractive. Sea energy is also feasible but more expensive.

All in all, I think nuclear is a good alternative as long as you know what to do with the waste before hand. Maybe building a very deep hole and burying the waste in the mantle. Yes, whatever container is going to break up, but who cares? It's the mantle, it's full of radioactive material anyway.

Once a space elevator is built the cost is not a factor anymore and all kinds of waste can be thrown into the sun. Including reality show hosts.

It does not matter what method you use, there is a gravity well to be climbed. Lifting the mass of the waste up that well costs more in energy than was generated in producing the waste. Ergo, not a practical solution, regardless of the lifting method.

It does not matter what method you use, there is a gravity well to be climbed. Lifting the mass of the waste up that well costs more in energy than was generated in producing the waste. Ergo, not a practical solution, regardless of the lifting method.
But a space elevator is used to bring mass up and down. So whatever energy you spend lifting things, you recover it when you bring things down. Like using a counterweight in a normal elevator.

It does not matter what method you use, there is a gravity well to be climbed. Lifting the mass of the waste up that well costs more in energy than was generated in producing the waste. Ergo, not a practical solution, regardless of the lifting method.

Do you know of the theory behind a space elevator?

Do you know we already use it on a lesser scale? Check out Canals, they use that system quite a lot.

The problem with the space elevator is: what kind of material is going to be able to carry its own weight all the way up to space AND the weight of the elevator?

Do you know of the theory behind a space elevator?

Do you know we already use it on a lesser scale? Check out Canals, they use that system quite a lot.

The problem with the space elevator is: what kind of material is going to be able to carry its own weight all the way up to space AND the weight of the elevator?
Specially nanomanufactured buckycables. Already available, just not in your average hardware store.

Do you know of the theory behind a space elevator?

Do you know we already use it on a lesser scale? Check out Canals, they use that system quite a lot.

The problem with the space elevator is: what kind of material is going to be able to carry its own weight all the way up to space AND the weight of the elevator?

The theory is, as I implied, irrelevant. It DOES NOT MATTER how you lift the stuff, it requires the expenditure of energy to do so. (Conservation of energy. You gain potential energy, so this has toi be accounted for.)

Canal lifts offset the mass of the material rising by lowering an equivalent mass. This accounts for the energy. What do you plan to lower from space to offset the mass of the waste? There simply is nothing available, or are you going to put it there to start with, again at an energy cost.

Nuclear power is by far the best option, however the argument is not about nuclear power, its about the waste, i personally think there should be areas of the nevada desert or something where they can dump it, it should be kept under strict security obviously, so that it doesn't get into the wrong hands.

Realistic Thinkers']Nuclear power has always been a safe, effective form of energy production. Per megawatt it costs about the same as coal power, and is far less polluting. What's worrying is the way no one seems to talk sensibly about it. Depending on who you talk to its either our only form of salvation and all other power production is null and void, or it is the very incarnation of evil and all nuclear power production should cease immediately.

In fact, nuclear power plants the world over have produced, between them, a few tens of thousands of tons of radioactive waste. Coal fired power stations in the US alone produce 30 tons of waste per second, including heavy metals such as mercury and cadmium. Coal waste has a radioactive component too, and for a given amount of energy produced, so much more coal ash is produced than nuclear waste that coal power contributes more to the background radiation than nuclear waste. Add this to the fact that coal ash is spread all over the place, whereas nuclear waste is turned into glass, sealed in steel and concrete and buried deep underground, and it should be obvious that nuclear power trumps coal power. There would have to be a meltdown every two weeks to contribute as much radioactivity as coal burning does on a global scale.

Duraday and Castrated Monkey; you are incorrect about the viability of renewable energy sources, particularly wind. 10,000 times more solar energy hits the earth every day than we would need for the entire global population, even if they were as profligate in their energy use as the US. At the moment it is costly and difficult to harvest, but solar cell technology is improving rapidly. And as I stated before, wind power could easily fulfil all the energy needs of the US (harder here in Europe where there is higher population density). Saying that 'the wind doesn’t blow all the time' is not a valid objection either, as if you have wind power right across the continent, there is always going to be enough wind somewhere to produce sufficient power to cover the areas where it is less windy. And of course, you would need nuclear power to take up the slack.

But nuclear power it is certainly not the best solution by any means. It still produces that nasty waste which is costly to dispose of, and mining and refining uranium generates its own pollution. Nuclear power advocates engage in desperate attacks on renewable forms of energy in an attempt to seem like the only viable alternative to fossil fuels. This seriously harms the credibility of the nuclear power lobby. Wind power is almost as cheap as nuclear power (if you factor in construction and decommissioning costs), and will become cheaper within the next few years. The small footprint of wind turbines means they can be sited all over the place, and much closer to demand areas than nuclear power stations, resulting in less energy loss in transmission. You would need to cover about 10% of the land area of the US with wind turbines to meet demand (including separation of turbines), so wind power certainly cannot be used alone. Solar power isn’t nearly cheap enough to be a viable alternative yet, but solar power coupled with wind energy may well be all we need eventually (wind and solar power complement each other nicely; one tends to be active when the other is not).

Until then we do need more nuclear power stations the world over, and even with nice, efficient solar energy and wind turbines everywhere, we will still need nuclear power (be it fusion of fission) to take up the slack. The nuclear and renewable advocates should recognise that they are fighting the same issue: that we must reduce our use of fossil fuels. Only by getting together and producing a combined energy policy that works is anyone going to take them seriously. I actually read on a website advocating nuclear power that reasons not to go for wind power were that it was 'ugly' and 'incredibly noisy'. I’ve stood at the base of a wind turbine (in a group of 6 on a hill in the UK), and all I could hear was a slight swishing sound. The actual wind was louder. And as for being ugly, turbines are slender, beautiful, graceful symbols of mans attempt to go green, what could people possibly object to? I’d have one in my back garden over a nuclear plant any day.

So let’s hear it for an integrated energy policy that eliminates fossil fuels and goes with a mixture of nuclear and renewable energy. It makes good financial and environmental sense now, and future generations will thank us.

Thank you.

Canal lifts offset the mass of the material rising by lowering an equivalent mass. This accounts for the energy. What do you plan to lower from space to offset the mass of the waste? There simply is nothing available, or are you going to put it there to start with, again at an energy cost.
There will always be an energy cost, thanks to entropy, but the cost of operating a space elevator is far lower than rocketing things. Of course, back to topic, there may be still better and cheaper ways to dispose of nuclear waste.

Like burying it in the mantle :)

The theory is, as I implied, irrelevant. It DOES NOT MATTER how you lift the stuff, it requires the expenditure of energy to do so. (Conservation of energy. You gain potential energy, so this has toi be accounted for.)

Canal lifts offset the mass of the material rising by lowering an equivalent mass. This accounts for the energy. What do you plan to lower from space to offset the mass of the waste? There simply is nothing available, or are you going to put it there to start with, again at an energy cost.
Of course it costs energy to send anything into space, but the energy you can generate using a given mass of Uranium is, as far as I know, far greater than the minimum energy needed to make that same mass reach escape velocity.

Now, it may be true that given how ineficient our current means of reaching space are, the energy cost does outweigh the gain, but in principle at least that should be a surmountable problem.

EDIT: In principle, a simple and effective way to get stuff into space would be a mass driver that launches a capsule from the ground. This eliminates the largest source of inneficieny in rockets - that they have to carry their own fuel. This also conveniently eliminates any risk of explosion.

Have there been any ideas implemented or proposed to use the waste products, from these various energy productions options, to produce energy. That is, use the waste to create more energy? As I believe was stated at some point, coal power creates a waste product of cadmium, therefore, use cadmium as a fuel source?

pure speculation here.

Have there been any ideas implemented or proposed to use the waste products, from these various energy productions options, to produce energy. That is, use the waste to create more energy? As I believe was stated at some point, coal power creates a waste product of cadmium, therefore, use cadmium as a fuel source?

pure speculation here.

Closing the fission power "Fuel cycle" is the closest you're going to get to this. Unfortunately, it's illegal. Government Regulators, Environmentalists, and their Lawyers are opposed to it for a variety what boils down to political and microeconomic reasons dealing with the need to have something to protest and file suit over.
(Yes, I'm cynical about this.)

Fusion - Mmh. Doesn't fusion also produce nuclear waste 'cause the surrounding structure gets bombarded with neutrons which turns it "heavier" or something? Too long since I've read anything new about it...


Well, speaking from the present available Fusion Reactors that are tested (The Tokomac's).

They are large Toroid containment chambers. They uses multiple methods to heat a small stream of "deutrium" (a heavy isotope of hydrogen, though not as radioactive as tritium [used in Hydrogen Bombs]).

The stream, once super-heated begins to undergo natural fusion inside a magnetic containment core.

The result is helium gas and trace amounts of lithium.

There is no dangerous "waste" from the reactor. Though it produced alot of heat. Also the "magnets" used are powerful.... if you were near the core while in operation, assuming you didn't melt... The Iron would be pulled out of your blood-stream.

They are not efficient enough, however, for normal use. The one in Japan set the record a little while ago, when it managed to stay self-sustaining for 10 seconds (one a flip side, your typical fission reactor remains self-sustaing for months and months on end).... Alot of bugs need working out, before we see viable fusion reactors being used for energy. And the "fuel" is pulled from "Heavy water"... which is found naturally (D2O as opposed to H2O).

A few points of interest:

Nuclear fuel has been reprocessed at Sellafield, UK for a long time now. I remember seeing adverts attesting to the fact when I was very little. 97% of the contents of each spent fuel rod is recycled to be used again, and the rest is turned into a glass substance for disposal. I was unaware that the nuclear fuel cycle is not closed in the US. After a little reading around I have discovered that the logic behind this is that someone could steal the plutonium extracted through reprocessing, and possibly make it into a bomb. Nothing like paranoia to harm the efficient operation of a critical utility :rolleyes: . I wonder if anyone considered the amount of extra radiation you definitely get from not reprocessing, and compared it with the likelihood of someone actually managing to steal plutonium from a secure facility that carefully monitors its contents, hide and transport the material, turn it into a bomb, smuggle it into a major urban centre and set it off. Not to mention the fact that you could buy or steal the material from many other less secure countries anyway...

Fusion power continues to be rather elusive; we’ve been hearing about fusion reactor prototypes for ages, but one thing I didn’t learn until a few years ago was that fusion reactors produce high level radioactive waste. The excess neutrons produced by the fusion reaction bombard the surrounding structure and make it highly radioactive. Fortunately it doesn’t require isolation for nearly as long as fissile wastes (only about 100 years compared with 25,000) and will be much less radioactive than coal waste for the same amount of energy produced. It will still require careful processing and storage for some time, so it's best not to push fusion as a 'zero waste' option if you want to be completely accurate. [EDIT] If we're smart we could probably find some way of using those excess neutrons to make heavey hydrogen (deuterium) to use as fuel.

Space elevators are cool :cool: ; I'd seriously love to be involved in building one. Alas, we cannot make carbon nanotubes long enough yet; I think about 100m is as big as we've got, and with nowhere like the control you'd need to build a decent elevator. Still, that’s pretty impressive considering that a 100m long tube is about 100 billion times longer than its diameter.

One thing to remember about space elevators is that even if you aren’t counterbalancing stuff going up with stuff coming down, you still save energy over a conventional rocket launch. The reason is that for a rocket launch, you need fuel to lift your payload, but you also need fuel to lift the fuel, and more fuel to lift that etc. until you reach a point when your power to weight ratio is going to be sufficient over the whole flight to get your payload up there. For a space elevator, you only ever need enough energy to lift your payload, so you do make energy savings right from the beginning.

Valenzulu; it's nice to be appreciated :p .

Im fine with it unless the reactors are in communist or potentialy hostile (keeping politiczaly correct) countries. this would include North Korea and Iran specificaly. But, we wouldn't be having a nuclear threat from north korea IF FUCKING BILL CLINTON HADN'T GIVEN THEM NUCLEAR ARMS DURING HIS 8 YEARS!!!!


What? Not that I like Clinton or anything, but they were developing nuclear weapons and stuff long before Clinton was ever elected. This is just revisionist history.

BTW ... this had nothing to do with the original thread, so let's not bird walk here... stick to the point. Next thing you know, it will be the Christian and the Atheists fault.. Jeez!

i merely meant that i would like to know if it were their opinions that there are safer, more reliable sources. not once did i state that i thought there were alternatives. i just want to know people's opinion on the subject

Yeah, and I answered I just don't know the definition of "repacled"

A report from the Royal Academy of Engineering on ‘The Costs of Generating Electricity’ portrays wind power as very expensive, and nuclear as getting cheaper as new technology emerged. It claims that electricity from offshore wind farms will cost at least twice as much as that from conventional sources. Our cheapest electricity will, it says, come from gas turbines and nuclear stations, costing just 2.3 p/kWh, compared with 3.7 p/kWh for onshore wind and 5.5 p/kWh for offshore wind. ‘This may sound surprising,’ said Academy Vice President Philip Ruffles, who chaired the study group, ‘especially as we have included the cost of decommissioning in our assessment of the nuclear generation costs... But modern nuclear stations are far simpler and more streamlined than the old generation- the latest are only about half the size of Sizewell B- and far cheaper to build and run.’

As you can clearly see, wind is much too expensive to be used as a power source. Turbines are also ugly, hugely inefficient in space, erratic in supply and cause some quite bizzare effects in birds and other creatures thought to be due to the massive magnetic fields they produce in a relatively unshielded environment. Solar is even worse, with a panel that will provide for most (not all) of the power needs of an average Northern European house costing around £60,000. This is obviously much too much for an individual to be able to afford, especially when you consider that the average house will not make this money back in energy savings for around 80 years (longer than the average Northern European lifespan and much longer than the lifespan of the panel). Government funding is also pretty much out of the question. A project of the necessary scale would cost in the billions and yield practically nothing in the way of increased performance or energy efficiency (which would drop through the floor).

Oil, gas and coal are also not practical as the basis of a Northern European energy generation policy, with oil scheduled to run out within the next 120 years or, which is more likely, become economically unviable within about 90. I would also argue that oil is a substance much to valuable to waste by being burnt, but that's a different debate. Modern coal power stations have seen a massive increase in efficiency and with coal reserves expected to last centuries coal could be very useful in providing carrying capacity (ie powerstations that can be turned off when there's an energy surplus). Gas is also running out, but this can be extracted from coal relatively easily and so gas powerstations may also be useful in providing carrying capacity.

Biomass is more polluting and less efficient than coal and oil, although it is "renewable". Quite why this matters considering that nuclear, a less polluting, more efficient and more productive source exists I dont know.

Now onto nuclear - great progress has been made in reactor designs since the first European systems were made in the 60s. The new generation reactors are extremely efficient and much of the material can be recylced. People worried about radiation shouldn't delude themselves (or pretend to know anything about science, because they don't) - a properly shielded core (ie any core built in Europe or America) will not produce any substantial radiation effects. By this I mean that in Britain the average person is exposed to about 5% as much radiation from nuclear powerplants as they are from their food. Great steps have been made in the direction of waste storage. Currently we can store waste safely without having to dig it up and restore it for thousands of years. In thousands of years time we will have no problem simply restoring it. If we can do it now, we can do it again in thousands of years of technological development's time.

In short, fossil fuels are not environmentally or economically viable for the long term. "Renewables" just aren't viable at all. Nuclear power is the only way forwards, and 99% of the complaints made against them are made by environmentalist scaremongers who know nothing about the subject they comment on.

From an Editorial in this week’s New Scientist (14 May 2005):

'Another bugbear for nuclear power (others mentioned were waste disposal and security-[NS]Realistic Thinkers) is that it appears to be expensive. Its costs have never been calculated to everyone's satisfaction, partly because government subsidies have muddied the water and partly because "back-end" costs for such things as waste disposal are uncertain. Nuclear power has certainly not won round free-market investors: no plants have been built within deregulated energy markets.'

'The chief criticism of renewables is that they will never supply energy on the scale needed. It is true that wind power alone will never do the job. But add in tidal power, micro-hydro and biomass, and the problem starts to disappear. Wind power and biomass are nearly as cheap as coal while other renewables, such as wave power and photovoltaic cells, are moving steadily towards competitiveness.'

Praetonia: be careful of over-egging the nuclear pudding. The best wind-farm in the world currently produces electricity at around 3p /kwh. That’s still shy of the optimum for nuclear and coal of 2.3p /kwh, which I do not dispute, but the cost of renewable energy is still falling. And few people factor in the energy savings that arise from distributed production with renewables, with less energy lost in transmission. Slating wind and solar power because they are more expensive than nuclear power NOW (solar I believe is still an awful 16+p /kwh) misses the point. Development of all new systems and passes through an initial phase where production costs are higher. As the technology is used and refined more, the price drops. The cost of wind power has fallen drastically over the last 10 years and shows every sign that it will eventually be as cheap if not cheaper than nuclear power. Getting solar power that cheap may not be possible, due to the different set of challenges faced in engineering good photovoltaic cells. But the price is dropping rapidly and looks set to drop to a level where solar power is, at the very least, competitive.

Biomass is indeed less efficient than coal or oil (in terms of power generated/unit mass), and is more expensive, but not by as much as you might think (about 7p /kwh compared with ~5p /kwh for oil and gas). A biomass power station also pollutes much, much less than either coal or oil, and is even cleaner than gas power stations. Burning gas produced from decomposed organic waste in efficient burners produces only carbon dioxide and water, with none of the particulates, heavy metals and very little of the sulphide emissions of a fossil fuel powered station. Biomass matters because if you are going to produce organic waste anyway, why not use it to generate electricity? Distributing energy production across a range of systems is a great way to ensure stability of the system as a whole. Despite this, advocating fossil fuel burning power stations in ANY capacity is indefensible. They may be far cleaner and far more efficient these days, but they are still horrendous in terms of carbon emissions compared with any other form of power generation.

You can’t turn a power plant off when you don’t need it; it generally takes 3-5days to power up and power down a power station. All power grids generally run over capacity all the time, because you simply cannot generate energy as you need it. Some clever ways round this involve using surplus energy in times of low demand to pump water into uphill reservoirs, then letting the water flow downhill and turn turbines in times of high demand e.g. when a popular soap finishes and a million people turn their kettles on at once. It is possible to run power stations at reduced capacity and simply pile on more fuel (both fossil and nuclear) when demand spikes. However this cannot be done very effectively; power plants must operate above a certain level all the time, or they don’t work. Renewable energy will function in the same way; surplus energy will go to move (or electrolyse) water for use generating hydroelectric power (or fuel-cell power) when demand is high. One advantage of many small generating systems (e.g. turbines) is that you can service one of them while the others keep running; there is never any need to power down completely as in conventional power stations.

We will certainly need nuclear power for many decades yet, maybe even for hundreds of years. The improved reactor designs and safety measures of recent years have gone a long way towards ensuring the future of nuclear energy, but there is still a problem with waste disposal; people who don’t want an 'ugly' wind turbine near them are the sort of people who are going to be even less enthusiastic about having nuclear waste nearby, even if its 2km down in the bedrock. It is important that we develop nuclear power in order to lessen reliance on fossil fuels, but nuclear energy is not the only solution out there, nor is it the best solution.

Realistic Thinkers']Praetonia: be careful of over-egging the nuclear pudding. The best wind-farm in the world currently produces electricity at around 3p /kwh. That’s still shy of the optimum for nuclear and coal of 2.3p /kwh, which I do not dispute, but the cost of renewable energy is still falling.
So you admit that it is more expensive, and you do not even dispute that they require a massive amount of space, people dont like them? Not a great start...

Realistic Thinkers]And few people factor in the energy savings that arise from distributed production with renewables, with less energy lost in transmission. Slating wind and solar power because they are more expensive than nuclear power NOW (solar I believe is still an awful 16+p /kwh) misses the point. Development of all new systems and passes through an initial phase where production costs are higher. As the technology is used and refined more, the price drops. The cost of wind power has fallen drastically over the last 10 years and shows every sign that it will eventually be as cheap if not cheaper than nuclear power.
Distributed Production... you see this is the point. In order to provide all of Britain's energy with wind, you would have to cover an area the size of Scotland with turbines. And they wouldnt provide enough power on a still day. And everyone would leave Scotland because of the constant back droning sound. And it would be still be more expensive than nuclear (which is also dropping in price and increasing in efficiency, as new generation power plants come online). (I should also point out that where I live at least, the nuclear power plants are ending their lives and we do in fact need new stations now and not in 10, 20 years).

Realistic Thinkers]Getting solar power that cheap may not be possible, due to the different set of challenges faced in engineering good photovoltaic cells. But the price is dropping rapidly and looks set to drop to a level where solar power is, at the very least, competitive.
Solar power will always be extremely expensive because the panels themselves are very difficult to make and are horrendously inefficient. THey also have to produce a constant surplus so the thing can power up a huge battery (which I assume you havent factored into the price at all) so that whatever it is powering can still work at night.

Realistic Thinkers]Biomass is indeed less efficient than coal or oil (in terms of power generated/unit mass), and is more expensive, but not by as much as you might think (about 7p /kwh compared with ~5p /kwh for oil and gas). A biomass power station also pollutes much, much less than either coal or oil, and is even cleaner than gas power stations. Burning gas produced from decomposed organic waste in efficient burners produces only carbon dioxide and water, with none of the particulates, heavy metals and very little of the sulphide emissions of a fossil fuel powered station.
And what do cars produce? Hmmm? Cardon Dioxide and water, eh?
Realistic Thinkers]Biomass matters because if you are going to produce organic waste anyway, why not use it to generate electricity? Distributing energy production across a range of systems is a great way to ensure stability of the system as a whole. Despite this, advocating fossil fuel burning power stations in ANY capacity is indefensible. They may be far cleaner and far more efficient these days, but they are still horrendous in terms of carbon emissions compared with any other form of power generation.
Well I have a chair here I dont use any more. Does that mean I ought to burn it to cut on gas bills? Of course not. I don't see why you would want to use a polluting, inefficient power source over a more efficient polluting source (like natural gas, for which techniques have been developed to filter out heavy metals...) or a completely non-polluting source like nuclear power. Especially so when you need to devote yet more land that (in my country at least) we dont have to producing massive quantities of "biomass" which is just going to be burnt.

Realistic Thinkers]You can’t turn a power plant off when you don’t need it; it generally takes 3-5days to power up and power down a power station. All power grids generally run over capacity all the time, because you simply cannot generate energy as you need it.
Indeed, indeed, however you can reduce the amount of power generated significantly, which is why the French still kept a few fossil fuel power plants when they replaced 90% of their grid (quite wisely) with nuclear plants.

Realistic Thinkers]Some clever ways round this involve using surplus energy in times of low demand to pump water into uphill reservoirs, then letting the water flow downhill and turn turbines in times of high demand e.g. when a popular soap finishes and a million people turn their kettles on at once.
Yes and this is all useful for increasing the efficiency of the grid as a whole, and I support things like that... even if they are extremely expensive...

Realistic Thinkers]It is possible to run power stations at reduced capacity and simply pile on more fuel (both fossil and nuclear) when demand spikes.
Have you heard of "Chernobyl"?

Realistic Thinkers]However this cannot be done very effectively; power plants must operate above a certain level all the time, or they don’t work. Renewable energy will function in the same way; surplus energy will go to move (or electrolyse) water for use generating hydroelectric power (or fuel-cell power) when demand is high.
Good god. Dont get me started on fuel cells. And I dont see how this is an argument in favour of renewable power, saying that they can be used in exactly the same way as all other systems...

Realistic Thinkers]One advantage of many small generating systems (e.g. turbines) is that you can service one of them while the others keep running; there is never any need to power down completely as in conventional power stations.
And the trade-off for this is that you need to build thousands of them everywhere, ruin the countryside you seek to protect through reduced cardon emmissions (which for some reason you support so long as they are produced by burning plants) and fill most of the country with a constant droning sound of turbines.

Realistic Thinkers]We will certainly need nuclear power for many decades yet, maybe even for hundreds of years. The improved reactor designs and safety measures of recent years have gone a long way towards ensuring the future of nuclear energy, but there is still a problem with waste disposal;
As I have said, nuclear waste can be safely stored for thousands of years, and there are methods in the testing stages that can store it for tens of thousands of years.

Realistic Thinkers]people who don’t want an 'ugly' wind turbine near them are the sort of people who are going to be even less enthusiastic about having nuclear waste nearby, even if its 2km down in the bedrock.
The major difference is that you can bury the waste where there are no people. On the other hand, you need more than 1 wind turbine, and you have to cover the countryside with them and expose hundreds of thousands to millions of people to their effects.

Realistic Thinkers]It is important that we develop nuclear power in order to lessen reliance on fossil fuels, but nuclear energy is not the only solution out there, nor is it the best solution.
Nuclear power is the only viable solution at this stage. Perhaps in, as you say, a hundred years or so when solar panels may be viable, or when fussion techniques are improved, we will be able to move away from nuclear power which isnt ideal. On the other hand, right now out of all the viable systems, nuclear is the best.

Small note: just like coal and oil uranium is a limited resource. Nuclear fission therefor cannot sustain the world forever; possibly even much less than 100 years if it would be the only powersource (does anyone have accurate estimates for this ?).

*Sighs* I seem to have a habit of earning long replies filled with quotes from my posts, with what I imagine the respondent believes is a point by point rebuttal.

Praetonia: Did you actually notice that half of your 'points against' were things that I had already bought up as being points against renewable energy in the first place? I have argued from the start that renewable energy is not feasible as the only source of power generation at the moment, and may never be feasible as a sole source of power. We need nuclear power, both fusion and fission, right now and for the foreseeable future, in addition to renewable sources. I notice that you totally ignored the points that I had raised which later appeared in the New Scientist article I quoted, such as the disputed cost of nuclear power and its potential security threat.

You argue as though I had suggested providing all or Britain’s energy with wind power. In fact I dismissed this idea as pointless and impractical. You also failed to consider (as I suggested) that wind power over a large enough area will always output power. It’s never a still day over the whole of the UK is it? Wind turbines can operate in as little as 5mph wind, and only need an annual average of about 15mph winds to function at maximum efficiency. If you have wind turbines on every hill, and off all coasts where wind speed is high enough, you will always be making a considerable contribution to the system. And as for exposing ‘millions of people’ to the effects; noise is not an issue (see later), you aren’t going to suffer any EM radiation effects (not even scientifically proved yet) unless you’re within 50m (same as for high voltage lines) and if you’re that concerned with aesthetics over practicality you need help.

A note on solar power. Currently we can role out plastic solar panels quite cheaply. They aren’t used much as they have an awful efficiency (~5%). But even if we were to use only these cheap, plastic panels to generate power for the entire world we would only need to cover 0.2% of the earths surface with them. Now that’s still a fairly huge area in anyone’s book, but we wouldn't ever be using ONLY the solar panels, and think of the enormous area available on top of every building in the world. And of course the better (though more expensive at the moment) solar panels on offer have efficiencies of around 20%. Add to this the fact that constant refinement is occurring, and cheap solar panels with around 20% conversion efficiency are only a few years away, and it is obvious that solar power will eventually play a significant part in energy generation around the world. It will not always be 'extremely expensive' by any means. Manufacturing techniques are constantly refined and improved, and as I mentioned before, the price has fallen dramatically year on year and shows every sign of continuing to do so. And if 20% still doesn’t sound like much, a nuclear or coal plant only has an efficiency of 33%.

I’m not really sure what the point of your single line response on car emissions has to do with Biomass power generation. Just so as you know, cars output a lot of very nasty pollutants including (but not limited to): carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, sulphur dioxide, formaldehyde, benzene, polycyclic hydrocarbons and particulates. A properly run biomass power station outputs none of these. No matter how much you filter coal and gas power stations they will never be as clean as biomass. I have noticed that you have inferred that I am an advocate of using land to grow vegetation specifically for use in biomass plants. I have never supported this and agree with you that it is a daft idea; we already generate more than enough usable biomass from household waste and human and animal manure. If you leave all this biomass lying around as we (mostly)[1] do at present, it ends up decomposing to produce carbon dioxide and methane anyway. Given that you can cheaply use it to produce power, and reduce the amount of methane emitted by it by burning it (methane is a worse greenhouse gas per tonne than carbon dioxide), there is no reason not to use Biogas power. Sure it's not as cheap as nuclear power, but if it still makes money and generates power, and is low emission to boot, then why not use it? The first plant of this kind opened in the UK in 2002[1], I hope we see many more soon.

For someone who advocates nuclear power as a 'completely non-polluting source' of electricity AND mentions Chernobyl you really do seem to be arguing against yourself. I don’t usually have much time for people who use Chernobyl as an example of how awful nuclear power is, as they are generally hideously badly informed. You seem to be arguing the other way, but still mention Chernobyl. You seem to be under the impression that removing some of the boron and graphite control rods from a nuclear pile (the equivalent to 'piling on more fuel' for nuclear plants; done all the time) is somehow the same as disabling all the safety devices on a nuclear reactor, taking all the rods out completely and seeing how long the reaction will sustain itself for (what they did at Chernobyl). Do try to base your arguments for your chosen power source in something approaching fact and common sense.

Added to this the idea that nuclear power is 'completely non-polluting' is ludicrous. The radiation is a minor consideration at the moment, but Sellafield is expected to have to deal with 500,000 tons of nuclear waste by the end of the next century. That’s a lot of material that it’s going to be very difficult and expensive to bury. In addition, the nuclear industry still outputs quite a bit of carbon dioxide in its day to day mining, refining, processing, transportation, construction and decommissioning processes. There is no such thing as a zero-emission power source (you’ll still produce some emissions while building even a wind turbine), but renewable energy generally comes an awful lot closer than nuclear power.

Pumping water into uphill reservoirs is not, as you claim 'extremely expensive'. If we didn’t do it, we would have to build additional power stations to deal with the increased demands at times when the UK’s 'electric mountain' at Dinorwig[2] currently kicks in. I assure you (as would First Hydro Company) that the alternatives are much, much more expensive. This electric mountain exactly fulfils the role of the 'huge battery' you stipulate as a requirement for solar power and other renewables. A few more, plus hydrogen fuel cells and we could do everything with renewables. I assume from your language that you don’t like fuel cells. If you could explain why electrolysing water to produce hydrogen and oxygen when demand is low, then burning it to run turbines when demand is high, is different to what they already do at Dinorwig (aside from being more efficient), I'd love to know what the problem is.

Why on earth have you bothered suggesting that the 'problem with waste disposal' I mentioned was anything to do with safety? If you had actually read my posts you would have noticed that I know exactly how we store nuclear waste. I described the process and explained how safe it was for goodness sake. Your quote cut off the remainder of the sentence which explained that the problem to which I was alluding was that people who are dead against those terribly noisy and unsightly wind turbines are going to be even less happy about having nuclear wasted being buried, regardless of where it is. You even continued the sentence in your next quote! Where, pray, are we going to bury nuclear waste in the UK? People are generally very unhappy about it being transported anywhere, particularly given current global security concerns, and even less happy about it being buried anywhere, even where there are no people. You absolutely failed to address this point, instead reproducing what I have already said.

Hooray for conservative prejudice! Ever seen a wind turbine close up? Ever heard this 'constant droning sound' you claim they make? I doubt it, because as I mentioned in a previous post, I've stood right next to one (six in fact), and the wind was louder than the turbines. See the article[3] linked below for a noise comparison and explaination. Nuclear plants however, add to local road traffic, with both workers and heavy vehicles and are actually surprisingly noisy (when I’m not at University I live just down the coast from Sizewell). Living in a medium sized town is far noisier than living near any number of turbines. The 'wind turbines are incredibly noisy' line made me laugh out loud when I first read it on a pro-nuclear website, until I actually realised people believe it. Objections regarding the amount of land they take up are mad too. What else are you going to use a hill too steep or remote to build on for? The footprint of a wind turbine is tiny; 200 square meters (about 14m x 14m) is more than adequate for even the largest turbines. Sure you need more space higher up for the blades, but they are still small enough that you could plonk them down almost anywhere. Would you like to live right next to a nuclear plant or would you rather have some turbines on a hill near you? I mentioned my thoughts on 'spoiling the countryside' in an earlier post. If you think they do, that’s your loss. I’m sure you wouldn’t object if they all looked like traditional windmills, but this is the 21st century. The practical value of wind turbines far outweighs any quibbles anyone may have about their aesthetics, and they certainly look nicer than nuclear plants.

I am surprised how, with '90% of their grid' as nuclear power the French only manage to produce 78% of their electricity that way. Perhaps a little fact checking on your part would be in order? In addition, if nuclear plants are as cheap as you claim, why haven’t the French replaced even their last coal plants with nuclear plants? You can surely have carrying capacity with nuclear plants just as easily as with coal plants…

The Alma Mater: there is currently high grade uranium ore available for about 50 years at current usage rates[4]. After that other, less economic sources of fuel must be used (such as lower grade ores). Something that Praetonia should bear in mind when advocating nuclear energy as the only viable source of cheap power.

To re-state:
•We need to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and cut carbon dioxide emissions.
•We should be building nuclear power plants now and looking to further nuclear power on a global scale to help achieve this goal in the short term.
•We must recognise that nuclear power has problems with waste disposal, security, sustainability and cost, and is not as clean as renewable sources of energy.
•Renewable sources of energy show every sign of becoming cheaper than nuclear power in the next few years.
•Even if they weren’t cheaper, they are completely sustainable, produce almost no emissions (or in the case of biomass, none that would not be generated anyway), and have other advantages over nuclear power that would make the small extra cost worth it.
•A combination of renewable energy and nuclear power is needed to eliminate the use of fossil fuels. Nuclear power can be used for a long time yet, particularly if fusion power is developed, but must be partnered with renewable sources for a sustainable future.

Praetonia: I fully support the continued development of nuclear power, but I recognise that it is not a permanent solution, nor is it the best solution. Right now it is the best we have, but we must develop renewable energy now, even though it is more expensive at the moment, for the same reasons we developed nuclear power in the 50s and 60s when it was more expensive. Everything is more expensive to begin with; more use entails more development and lower costs, as well as economies of scale. Go and read about the technology behind renewable sources of energy (without instantly dismissing it as green propaganda). Consider them all as an integrated package, with nuclear energy as well. You’ll see that the only sensible solution is a balanced use of renewable and nuclear energy, with nuclear energy gradually becoming less of a factor as renewable technology advances and the disadvantages of nuclear power begin to outweigh the diminishing advantages. As for this being in 100 years time, at the rate renewable technology is progressing I think we will see this within the next few decades at most.

If you would care to back up any arguments against renewable energy with some facts, and balanced consideration of all sides of the issue, then I would welcome further comment from you. I considered advantages and disadvantages of all the systems currently available, and explained why we must go for a balanced use of low emission technology. You considered only the advantages of nuclear power, and only the disadvantages of renewable energy. Everything has advantages and disadvantages, life is all about trade off, and renewable energy systems have more positives and fewer negatives in the long run than anything else, even nuclear power (though we need it for now). And please, don’t whine about the noise; it simply isn’t a factor[3].

[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2307229.stm
[2] http://www.fhc.co.uk/DIN.htm
[3] http://www.britishwindenergy.co.uk/ref/noise.html
[4] http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf75.htm

Dude, it was the bloody pakistanis, get it right.
Having said that, Properly run it is one of the safest and cleanest forms of generation. Properly contained, the waste is no worse than dozens of dangerous chemicals being used today
Chernobyl blew because they were screwing around with it and it was run by dodgy bastards.


Dude it was the Bloody Clinton Adminstration get it right!

"The crisis was resolved in 1994 when the United States and North Korea signed the Agreed Framework, under which Pyongyang committed to freezing its illicit plutonium weapons program in exchange for two proliferation-resistant nuclear reactors and additional aid."

"in 1997 Pakistan gave North Korea high-speed centrifuges and how-to data on building and testing a uranium-triggered nuclear weapon. (Pakistan's nuclear weapons are based on a Chinese implosion design that uses a core of highly enriched uranium.) In return, North Korea gave Pakistan missile technology and parts."

As we can see from a timeline of events concerning North Korea and its Nuclear program we can see that indeed Commrade Clinton gave North Korea Nuclear Tech 3 years before Pakistan got involved.