Nuclear Energy..........why not??

[toofrugalformycat]

ERD450 wrote: TFFMC - good example of the dangers of fossil fuel.

True, oil is filthy stuff. Ask me if I wanted the pipeline. But the oil will probably be gone from Prince William Sound in maybe 1000 years, I bet, not 10,000. I'm glad I've sent my pennies to Cook Inlet Keeper, one of the organizations who pressed for double hull tankers. Too bad no one listened to them in time.
I'm no nuke engineer, just a recovering biologist, so maybe I'm wrong on nuclear wastes being toxic for 10,000 years. I'd be interested to see a reputable source state otherwise. In fact, I see Wikipedia says about spent fuel:
Radioactive waste - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Critics of the latter idea point out that the half-life of Pu-240 is 6,560 years and Pu-239 is 24,110 years, and thus the relative enrichment of one isotope to the other with time occurs with a half-life of 9,000 years (that is, it takes 9000 years for the fraction of Pu-240 in a sample of mixed plutonium isotopes, to spontaneously decrease by half-- a typical enrichment needed to turn reactor-grade into weapons-grade Pu). Thus "weapons grade plutonium mines" would be a problem for the very far future (>9,000 years from now), so that there remains a great deal of time for technology to advance to solve this problem, before it becomes acute."

From this I read (correct me please, nuke engineers) that one isotope of plutonium has a half-life of 24,000 years, and nuclear waste dumps actually generate weapons grade plutonium, albeit very slowly. The waste storage problem is even worse than I thought! Mind you, this is only Wikipedia.

I am more concerned about safely storing the waste for tens of thousands of years, than the nuclear plants themselves, although I wouldn't want to live next to one anyway. And we're supposed to be worried about how the next generation will fund Medicare? That's sissy stuff compared to burdening the next 300 GENERATIONS OR MORE with our nuke waste.
Other than reducing coal plant emissions with tougher regulations (Bush Out NOW), and trying to have as small a negative impact on the planet myself as I can, I don't have any solution myself. But let's not add to the problem with the horrible mess of nuclear power.
If everyone lived like me there wouldn't be an energy shortage. But then the economy would be flat and I couldn't have ERed.

 

[TromboneAl]

From GM-VOLT : Chevy Volt Concept Site » Chevy Volt: Reasons For Use and Cost Of Operation

 

[ERD50]

I am more concerned about safely storing the waste for tens of thousands of years, than the nuclear plants themselves, although I wouldn't want to live next to one anyway. And we're supposed to be worried about how the next generation will fund Medicare? That's sissy stuff compared to burdening the next 300 GENERATIONS OR MORE with our nuke waste.

How many generations will the mercury from Coal plants be around? You keep comparing nuclear power to 'no power'. Anything will look bad compared to 'nothing'. Wind will look bad, you need to mine the copper, make fiberglas, kill birds.

Here's a different angle. If the country is REALLY concerned about pollution from power sources, put a moratorium on new power plants. Make do with what we have. If demand goes up, prices will go up. That will drive conservation efforts. See how serious we are then.

Renewables? Fine, but they don't come w/o some price. So, maybe define that in terms of coal. If wind is say, 10X less harmful than coal, allow 10MW of wind to go on-line but ONLY if you take 1MW of coal OFF-LINE. Net zero increase in environmental damage.

I'm sure we will hear a lot about plans like these in the Presidential debates, right?

-ERD50

 

[FinanceDude]

To all those who have expressed support for more nuclear power in the US- would you agree to have a new plant built in your town? How about in your neighborhood? Would you like to own a house near Three Mile Island? That is what I thought.
Grumpy

I wouldn't mind a nuke plant in my town, but I think a LOT of other people would. The state here owns a TON of land that is remote. Who says that a nuke plant HAS to be near a large city or town??

Let's put it another way.............I would rather have a nuclear plant than a coal plant spewing clouds of emissions from a big smokestack which would according to Murphy's law, blow directly into my windows..........

 

[Nords]

I wouldn't mind a nuke plant in my town, but I think a LOT of other people would. The state here owns a TON of land that is remote. Who says that a nuke plant HAS to be near a large city or town??
Let's put it another way.............I would rather have a nuclear plant than a coal plant spewing clouds of emissions from a big smokestack which would according to Murphy's law, blow directly into my windows..........

Hey, the bustling megalopolis of Ballston Spa, NY (near Saratoga Springs) used to have several nuclear plants nearby, and they couldn't even access the electricity they generated!

The majority tonnage of "nuclear waste" is old bulk metal with a much shorter half-life. As designs get smarter the waste-disposal problem will get smaller, although we have plenty problems already.

In 1958 the U.S. Navy finished testing the S1G reactor system ("S" for submarine, "1" for first prototype, "G" for General Electric) and decommissioned it. The nuclear core and various other highly-radioactive parts were encased in concrete and shipped off to Washington state's Hanford reservation for processing, but the pressure vessel and other piping was buried outside the S3G Core 3 building where I was training. You could tell where because the snow always melted there first (in a nice neat military circle) and spring's flowers always sprouted there in late February.

In late 1983, after the completion of five half-lives of cobalt-60 (a primary component of some types of stainless-steel piping & vessels) the cache was excavated and loaded on a flatbed railroad car. It was packed in dirt until the load's total curies/pound ratio was below the federal limits, and then the train left at midnight for Washington state. The civic authorities of Ballston Spa, its county, and the great state of New York were not notified because (under federal & military regulations in effect at the time) it was not deemed to be any of their business.

We spent quite a few weeks after that driving to our shifts through gauntlets of protestors.

The latest submarine class goes to sea with S9W reactors, and there's barely a common component between them and their ancestors. They're the best that money can buy, but unfortunately they're unaffordable by public utilities.

 

[FinallyRetired]

From GM-VOLT : Chevy Volt Concept Site » Chevy Volt: Reasons For Use and Cost Of Operation

Q: When will the car be available?
A: As per GM Vice-Chairman Bob Lutz the plan is to have the car available for mass purchase in late 2010 (probably as a 2011 model year). He is 90% confident it will be built.

Looks like the Chinese might get here first:

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- If all goes according to plan, by 2009 you could be sticking it to Big Oil by driving an all electric, Chinese-made sedan for little more than the cost of a Camry.

At $30,000 and 80-mph, an electric car for the common man - Aug. 13, 2007

 

[TromboneAl]

There are a lot of electric car startup companies around. Should be interesting.

 

[FinallyRetired]

There are a lot of electric car startup companies around. Should be interesting.

Let's hope they fare better than these:

Image:Evcrushed.jpg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[LeatherneckPA]

Spent 18 months working at Indian Point NPG, most of that in "the elevations", the hot zones. Safety and security were priority one. I would have no trouble whatsoever living with an NPG in my backyard. My total exposure for that 18 months was less than a "caution" dosage for a single month.

 

[ERD50]

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- If all goes according to plan, by 2009 you could be sticking it to Big Oil by driving an all electric....

Ummm, and being 'stuck' by Big Coal (see T-Al's chart above on electric production).

-ERD50

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

I wouldn't mind a nuke plant in my town, but I think a LOT of other people would.

A lot of people might already have one, and simply be unaware of it.

The next town over from where I grew up turned out to have had a research reactor operated by the Army for some years without any public knowledge, even by the state and local politicians. It was in operation for roughly ten years in the 60's and was then deactivated. It and its contents were left to sit until about 8 years ago when the Army acknowledged its existence after testing found that it was leaking some nice stuff into the ground and the river it was positioned next to. Sort of nice since a huge shopping mall was built almost on top of it in the 80's, and homeless were sheltered in the abandoned army buildings during particularly cold periods.

Allegedly a substantial amount of tainted waste product from the reactor was burned in an adjacent incinerator and the rest buried somewhat haphazardly in leaky containers over dozens of acres. Living space including a home for the elderly were later built on the contaminated land, which was sold/annexed to the town over a period of years with apparently a disconnect between the folks who knew about what it had been used for and the folks who were able to transfer the land. Conditions for decontamination were supposed to have been associated with the transfer...but those fell by the wayside.

NRC: SECY-03-0153 - Removal of the General Services Administration Watertown, Massachusetts, Property from the Site Decommissioning Management Plan

 

[toofrugalformycat]

ERD50 wrote: "Here's a different angle. If the country is REALLY concerned about pollution from power sources, put a moratorium on new power plants. Make do with what we have. If demand goes up, prices will go up. That will drive conservation efforts. See how serious we are then."

Amen. And put a huge tax on gasoline too. You're singing my song. No, I am not kidding. It's our responsibility to future generations to not just pass the buck (and the pollution). I see people around me using two or three times the energy they need to, unthinkingly, just because it's cheap and easy now.

 

[Zathras]

Ummm, and being 'stuck' by Big Coal (see T-Al's chart above on electric production).

Half coal is still better than all oil
Besides, some of us won't be using any coal. For my electric car it will be all solar.

 

[dumpster56]

I love our north carolina nuke plant, in fact was fishing today in the lake right down stream from the cooling tower. Cool sight. The water is the cleanest around. Oh and electric rates are 30% lower than other places.

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Funny...I used to fish the outlet water at the Plymouth Pilgrim plant when I was a kid. Tons of fish. I think they liked the warmer water.

 

[lazygood4nothinbum]

Except for the fact that coal plants release more radiation into the surrounding area than do nuclear plants. 100x more.-ERD50

not sure i said anything to the contrary, but if it makes you feel any better i've also got a coal burner right here in river city at port everglades. but then, that should be burning cleaner gas just as soon as they rip through some of our last remaining reefs to bring in a pipeline from a proposed bahamas plant.

the black not glowing green soot i notice more than that from the electric plant which i believe has scrubbers is from all the cruise ships burning whatever's fed into their diesel powerplants. the more successful is our port, the dirtier is my car. twenty years ago a car stayed clean for two weeks easy. now it is dirty in three days. at least the tourists are happy.

 

[samclem]

Apparently, the problem with nuclear waste is that it is highly concentrated and already conveniently contained right on the powerplant grounds. This forces us to acknowledge it and have to deal with it. If it was spewed all over the countryside in a plume everything would be fine.

 

[ERD50]

Half coal is still better than all oil
Besides, some of us won't be using any coal. For my electric car it will be all solar.

Depends on the total 'wheel-to-well' efficiency. There are a lot of losses between burning the coal, converting it to electricity, getting the electricity to your house, converting it to DC, charging the batteries, and...finally... getting the battery power through the motor and to your wheels. That's a lot more conversions and opportunities for losses than pumping oil, refining it, getting it to your tank and burning it.

Solar - fine. Hopefully it will be affordable one day. Let's hope that day is before $200/barrel oil. Of course, $200 oil will make solar panels more expensive, too. There is currently about one-two years worth of energy required to make solar panels. Effectively, you will be 'burning' fossil fuel for the first one-two years of use.

-ERD50

 

[eridanus]

The nuclear core and various other highly-radioactive parts were encased in concrete and shipped off to Washington state's Hanford reservation for processing,

They're still trying to figure out what to do with the waste at Hanford. A lot of smart scientists were playing with things they didn't truly understand, and now a lot of smart scientists are cleaning up after them. There's a wall of radioactive sludge inching towards the Columbia river. Their latest gambit is to pump molasses into the ground.

 

[Zathras]

Depends on the total 'wheel-to-well' efficiency. There are a lot of losses between burning the coal, converting it to electricity, getting the electricity to your house, converting it to DC, charging the batteries, and...finally... getting the battery power through the motor and to your wheels. That's a lot more conversions and opportunities for losses than pumping oil, refining it, getting it to your tank and burning it.

Very good point. Excactly what I was referring to as well.
There are some very educational white papers at http://www.teslamotors.com/display_data/twentyfirstcenturycar.pdf
Basically they ran the numbers based on electricity from natural gas power plants. From that source of electricity, the well to wheel efficiency is 2-3 times more efficient than standard gasoline powered, hybrids, fuel cell or natural gas cars.
The efficiency of the fuel cell cars may very well get better as new technology is developed.

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Then the solution is pretty simple to get rid of all the transition steps.

Put the reactor in the car.

That'd also probably smooth out a little of the aggressive driving.

 

[waltwill8]

Interesting thread - got me thinking.


Hiroshima: 2006 population - 1,154,391
Nagasaki: Recent population - 459,198

Both cities were rebuilt within 10 years after the war, as far as I can tell.

Perhaps we're being a bit paranoid about nuclear power.

 

[Nords]

They're still trying to figure out what to do with the waste at Hanford.

Tell me about it... lifetime employment for submarine nukes. I've lost track of the number of retired O-6s & flag officers who were "sent up there to fix Hanford".

My favorite stories of the place are the staff having to deal with the radioactive animal droppings. It must've seemed so simple & straightforward 50 years ago...

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

.It must've seemed so simple & straightforward 50 years ago...

Heck yeah! To save yourself in a nuclear disaster you only had to bend forward and put your head between your knees, or hide under a standard 3rd grade issue student desk.

 

[ERD50]

Then the solution is pretty simple to get rid of all the transition steps.

Put the reactor in the car.

That'd also probably smooth out a little of the aggressive driving.

I suppose a roof top sign with 'Licensed Nuclear Reactor on Board' and lots of official looking RAD signs and flashing yellow lights would keep some of those drivers from pulling right in front of me.

Of course, if they are on their cell phone, they may not notice.

-ERD50