Death toll and Energy Source

[Sam]

Have to admit it is from greenpeace... but...

No comment.

 

[ERD50]

If you are going to include less direct deaths from cancer from the fall-out, then you need to include all the deaths caused by coal pollution, etc, etc, etc.

At any rate, NO ONE is suggesting that a Chernobyl design reactor be built. So I'm not even sure the statistics apply. That might be like inferring that since some early steam engines blew up, that steam power would continue to result in that ratio of deaths each year. It didn't, we (sometimes) learn from mistakes.

Coal and nuclear power plants both use the heat to create steam to power a turbine.

-ERD50

 

[samclem]

BTW... I am one that thinks we should be using more nuke energy, but it need to be better regulated more like France... NO skimping on maintenance etc.. I don't care what budget constraints you have...

In France there are just a couple of reactor designs. All reactors are almost identical--same manufacturers of major components, matching of components, control room switchology, etc. In the US each site is virtually a one-off. Yes, we have just a few builders of the reactors, but all the sub-systems are engineered for each site. The advantages of the French approach:
-- Continual improvement of all reactors based on directly applicable experiences at other reactors.
-- Reduced design costs
-- Reduced training costs
-- Easier to regulate (i.e. to confirm that all reactors sites are in compliance, since their configurations and "issues" are common)

There has also been discussion in the US of building the reactor cores in a central site (or sites) rather than building them at each nuclear plant location. These modular cores would be fabricated as we build ships: in a controlled environment with plenty of specialized tools and jigs available. The cores would be trucked to the reactor sites. After their few decades of design life is expired, the "hot" modular core could be removed and trucked away as waste, to be replaced by a new modular core. The modularity of the cores makes this much less expensive than decommissioning the site-built cores we now have.

I'm no fan of increased govt involvement in general, but this is an area that definitely calls for centralization for the common good, and that no other entity can accomplish as well.

 

[Sam]

A little trivia: French had several designs of their own, but were not quite successful. They ended up buying American designs, and that's what they are using now.

samclem, I agree about the benefit of a common design: Increase reliability, shared issues knowledges, econony of scales, etc... But I also see the benefit of different designs, mainly innovations.

 

[Gumby]

I don't know where you are getting your numbers from .... but they are WAY off... I was in Kiev and wanted to get out to see the accident... it was not going to be easy to do so I blew it off... but, heard that many hundreds or even many thousand died. I was shown a fire station where every single person in that group died as they went in the first few days...

And there are many who died or gotten cancer who 'cleaned up' the site and build the tomb around it... (maybe these are the ones that the locals were talking about, but it was still related to the accident)..

Also.. there are many sq. miles of land that will not be used in the next few thousand years...


BTW... I am one that thinks we should be using more nuke energy, but it need to be better regulated more like France... NO skimping on maintenance etc.. I don't care what budget constraints you have...

Texas Proud:

The Chernobyl accident wasn't caused by a lack of maitenance, but by criminal stupidity on the part of the plant operators and a poor plant design. Because of differences in design, the same thing simply cannot happen at a US light water reactor, and the newer design pebble bed reators will be even safer.

 

[bosco]

Texas Proud:

The Chernobyl accident wasn't caused by a lack of maitenance, but by criminal stupidity on the part of the plant operators and a poor plant design. Because of differences in design, the same thing simply cannot happen at a US light water reactor, and the newer design pebble bed reators will be even safer.

absolutely. Criminal stupidity and poor design NEVER happen in the US. I'm sure of it....in fact, I'd bet your life on it!

 

[Gumby]

absolutely. Criminal stupidity and poor design NEVER happen in the US. I'm sure of it....in fact, I'd bet your life on it!

I already have bet my life on US nuclear power plant design -- many times. How much do you actually know about the failure mechanism for the Chrenobyl accident, the design of that plant or the desiqn of a US plant? Or are you just a smart aleck?

 

[bosco]

I already have bet my life on US nuclear power plant design -- many times. How much do you actually know about the failure mechanism for the Chrenobyl accident, the design of that plant or the desiqn of a US plant? Or are you just a smart aleck?

I know enough about probability to know that if you bet your life enough times, you WILL lose. I have a fairly reasonable understanding of the probability of failure, joint probabilities etc. since I made my living as an engineer managing such risks. As for the exact failure mechanism of Chernobyl, that I do not know.

However, I know that nobody has figured out what to do with the EXTREMELY toxic waste these things generate (throw it in a hole and hope it goes away is the best that's come up with), that they make very attractive terrorist targets, that they require large amounts of coolant which can heat up river systems, that they cost a lot to decommission and often this is not done and they just sit there waiting for the decommisisioning that doesn't happen, and that there HAVE been problems including potentially serious ones.

To answer you question, however, yes I am a smart Aleck

I will also go so far as to say that I'd rather live near a nuke plant that a coal burner, but frankly would prefer neither.

 

[Gumby]

Having been in a number of nuclear plants, they are not, in fact, a very good terrorist target. As you might assume, there are multiple redundant security features. They have containments inside of containments.

Also, even if you managed to attack one, what would you do with it? You can't make them blow up like a bomb. A much better target would be a chemical plant.

If you employ cooling towers, you don't need to heat up rivers to cool them. Others can use the sea or a large lake as a heat sink. The thermal input of the plant to the body of water is negligible in that case, except in the immediate vicinity of the outflow.

It might surprise most people to learn that the vast majority (>90%) of uranium in a spent fuel rod is unused. It is primarily the build up of neutron absorbent fission products that renders the fuel rod unusable. If we were to employ fuel reprocessing, as the French do, we could immediately reduce our inventory of high level waste by 90%. After reprocessing, the unusable stuff is vitrified (made into big glass hot dogs) and put deep in granite formations to decay. Low level waste is usually contaminated paper towels, rubber gloves, scaffolding, tools etc. Almost all of the low level waste in the country fits into three relatively small dumps. I have been to the one in South Carolina -- most municipal dumps are bigger. It is buried and then we simply wait it out - after 5 half lives, 97% of the radioactive material has decayed. Since most of the contamination is short half-life material, you are not waiting 10,00 years, like you would in the case of spent fuel.

As far as decommissioning, I know of several plants that were shut down and decommissioned. Some examples are Connecticut Yankee at Haddam Neck, CT; Maine Yankee in Wiscasset, ME; Big Rock Point in Charelevoix, MI. If you go to these sites today, you cannot tell there was ever a nuclear plant. Any large industrial facility - such as a factory, a steel plant, a chemical plant, a refinery, a copper mine or smelter -- would need to be properly and safely decommissioned. It is simply part of the cost of having such things. Indeed, the Superfund program exists mostly to clean up sites where this was not done. The nuclear industry has a stellar record by comparison.

As an engineer, you know that life is about risk. We cannot eliminate it entirely, so we should soberly measure it and evaluate costs and benefits. If you could eliminate nuclear plants tomorrow, would you? Since they provide 20% of our electricity, which 20% of hospitals will close because they have no electricity? How much food will spoil because it can't be refrigerated? How many will starve as a result? Which 20% of the people should lose their jobs? Or maybe you would replace them with coal plants. In that case, how much more global warming are you willing to tolerate? How many more mountaintops in Kentucky and West Virgina must be strip mined, ruining far more rivers than any nuclear plant has ever done? How many deep miners must be killed?

Maybe we can have a reasonable discussion about the precise level of risk and the alternatives we are willing to tolerate. That would be useful. Scaring people with the hobgoblin of NUCLEAR!!!! power is just not useful.

 

[Texas Proud]

Texas Proud:

The Chernobyl accident wasn't caused by a lack of maitenance, but by criminal stupidity on the part of the plant operators and a poor plant design. Because of differences in design, the same thing simply cannot happen at a US light water reactor, and the newer design pebble bed reators will be even safer.

SOOOO... there is no such thing as you put it "criminal stupidity" in America business There are a number of plant explosions that have occurred around here... and I could say that it is criminal stupidity because they made a choice NOT to do the safe thing because it might have cost more...

And what about the Alaskian pipeline... BP decided not to 'pig' it and just play 'let's hope something does not happen on my watch'... well, eventually it happens on someones watch...

As people have pointed out, there is benefits for a common design. I am not saying you need ONE, but maybe a few... look at the airlines... Southwest has made a mint using a 'common design' so they can maintain their planes easier... everyone knows what to do on any of the planes...

 

[Texas Proud]

Gumby....

Good point about decommissioning ... but you missed the negatives of the other ones you mentioned.... go up to (forgot the state).... and visit one of the open pit mines that is no longer in use... the one I saw had like 1200 feet of water in it that was badly contaminated... and it looked like it was WAY down the pit... maybe a few 1,000 more feet before it fills up...

And the way they do coal now is just scrap off the top of the mountain and take it... and do nothing when you are finished... a lot more damage to the earth..


As I said before, I would think that with good planning and a 'standard' type plant we can produce a LOT more electricity cheaply and use the oil for other things... and also have cleaner air... I remember the show I say about the French... they have some CLEAN air...

 

[Gumby]

I agree on the standard plant. I think having one or two designs, and training the heck out of the operators on those designs, would be much safer and cheaper.

 

[HFWR]

To answer you question, however, yes I am a smart Aleck

Scaring people with the hobgoblin of NUCLEAR!!!! power is just not useful.

It's that nucular power that scares the [-]hell[/-] heck outta me...

 

[Sam]

As an engineer, you know that life is about risk. We cannot eliminate it entirely, so we should soberly measure it and evaluate costs and benefits. If you could eliminate nuclear plants tomorrow, would you? Since they provide 20% of our electricity, which 20% of hospitals will close because they have no electricity? How much food will spoil because it can't be refrigerated? How many will starve as a result? Which 20% of the people should lose their jobs? Or maybe you would replace them with coal plants. In that case, how much more global warming are you willing to tolerate? How many more mountaintops in Kentucky and West Virgina must be strip mined, ruining far more rivers than any nuclear plant has ever done? How many deep miners must be killed?

Maybe we can have a reasonable discussion about the precise level of risk and the alternatives we are willing to tolerate. That would be useful. Scaring people with the hobgoblin of NUCLEAR!!!! power is just not useful.

Gumby and Samclem, I'm glad you're around. Yes, everything has some associated risk, including the 4% SWR (have to make it ER related ;-)). So it's not the risk that we should be concerned with. It's the relative risk that matters.

Personally, I don't want any reduction in nuclear power plants in this country. I would love to see a 100%+ increase instead. I would love to see at least 50% of our electricity generated using nuclear power. 25% using hydro, geo, wind, solar. And the remaining 25% by oil, coal, and natural gas, mainly because certain locations are not ideal for other types of power plants.

One question for you, Gumby and Samclem, and people who are intimately familiar with nuclear power from the technical and safety/danger point of views: Why are you guys losing the public relation battle? Why is the majority of Americans so ignorant about the benefits of nuclear power? What did the Europeans do to educate their people? Why couldn't we do the same, or better?

 

[ERD50]

What did the Europeans do to educate their people? Why couldn't we do the same, or better?

That is an excellent question. Maybe we can get some perspective here from people who live or travelled there.

Maybe Americans are much more easily influenced by media/actors/artists?

I looked back at some of the 'No Nukes' concert and film stuff. A bunch of (hopefully) well meaning, talented musicians who don't know squat about nuclear engineering, risk assessment, or the unintended consequences of no-nukes (more coal plants).

The 'Live Earth' concerts to fight global warming - Deja' Vu?

-ERD50

 

[samclem]

Why are you guys losing the public relation battle? Why is the majority of Americans so ignorant about the benefits of nuclear power? What did the Europeans do to educate their people? Why couldn't we do the same, or better?

The US did take the lead in peaceful uses of nuclear power immediately after WW-II, and much of what we did paved the way for nuclear power programs in many other countries. One reason that Western European and Japanese nuclear use is higher is simply because they have so little oil, gas, and coal. The public in many of these countries (particularly Japan) have had a vocal anti-nuclear contingent, but the economics were just too important to disregard and the politicians simply forged ahead with these programs. After decades of cheap, relatively clean power with few significant incidents, the public has just come to accept nuclear power.

In the US, the "no nukes" crowd, with scarcely a shred of technical underpinning, latched on to the cache and much of the counterculture membership of the anti-war movement. It wasn't really "about" much except wanting to be part of a movement. It just perpetuated itself, like a Grateful Dead concert series, for decades. What a long, strange trip it was. The real question is why it had any impact on popular opinion. I guess I'll understand that when I understand why "People" magazine is popular.

(Also, the early US enthusiasm for peaceful uses of nuclear power led to some impractical ideas. Though almost entirely unrelated, these programs may have served to undermine confidence in the US nuclear power industry to some degree. "Operation Plowshare" and the NS Savannah come to mind as examples.)

NS Savannah - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Operation Plowshare - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[twaddle]

In the US, the "no nukes" crowd, with scarcely a shred of technical underpinning, latched on to the cache and much of the counterculture membership of the anti-war movement. It wasn't really "about" much except wanting to be part of a movement.

I've never been rabidly anti-nuke, and the idea of pebble bed reactors appeals to me, but my concern about traditional nukes -- both peaceful and harmful -- has always been the potential for human error to have a large impact on a large number of people.

Humans screw up. Nukes generally magnify the impact of human screw-ups big time.

I'm somewhat amazed we haven't yet accidentally set off a warhead. Maybe the safeguards are just that good. But I did get a bit nervous when somebody on a nuke-armed sub accidentally let a ladder penetrate an armed missle a couple years ago....

 

[laurence]

I believe most Nukes have multiple safeguards including sensory triggers. For example, a nuke dropped by a plane must experience free fall/zero gravity before it will arm. Nuke artillery must experience large G-forces before arming. That type of thing. Fail safe, fail secure is the name of the game. But it's not my field so I'm sure someone here can explain it better.

 

[twaddle]

Fail safe, fail secure is the name of the game.

Yes, I'm sure that's the goal. But computer geeks know that only the most trivial algorithms can be made provably correct. So, I'm fairly sure there's always a weak link in the chain. And we obviously have already seen human error contribute to catastrophic failure in commercial nukes, so it's not just an academic concern.

 

[ERD50]

Yes, I'm sure that's the goal. But computer geeks know that only the most trivial algorithms can be made provably correct. So, I'm fairly sure there's always a weak link in the chain. And we obviously have already seen human error contribute to catastrophic failure in commercial nukes, so it's not just an academic concern.

Paradoxically, the more dangerous something is, the safer it can become.

People get scared by the extreme dangers, so everything about it is treated with respect, and everything gets attention to detail. Multiple fail safe/secure mechanisms as others have said.

You are right, it is all done by humans, and we do fail. However, rigorously planned and fully tested software can be amazingly robust. When is the last time a cash register, for example, failed to add up the bill correctly (assuming the inputs were good)? Use an ATM transaction if you want a more complex example.

Layer several levels of that protection and you can get very good indeed. Look at all the well-designed (not Chernobyl) nukes running in Europe and Japan w/o incident (that I am aware of). We knew Chernobyl was a bad design to begin with, it never should have been built (and none were, outside of USSR). And we have learned from TMI that we need more standardized designs.

If every coal mine disaster had the potential to kill 10,000,000 people, rather than a few poor miners, coal mines would be very safe indeed, I suspect.

In the mean time, >40,000 people die each year in the US in car accidents. Many more are permanently or seriously injured. Yet, I am not aware of a 'No-Transportation' concert series?

A long list of popular musicians that have been killed in car/plane accidents pops into my head, I don't even need to go to wiki for that.

Can't think of a single one killed by a nuke power plant, ever.

I wish they would stick to singing/playing/song-writing/entertaining. Musicians, on average, really suck at risk assessment and statistics. They probably wouldn't have tried to become famous if they understood the odds

-ERD50