Nuclear Power

o.k, what the hell, i'm getting involved in the conversation even although it will just turn out that everybody will be attacking my views. lol.

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o.k, although, you must understand that i am sceptical. What about radiation leaks and nuclear waste? all of which are dangerous.

i think you are misunderstanding wht kmguru is saying, he is not saying it is'nt a threat, just not as big a threat than most people think or are lead to believe by the government on their crusade against terror.

Windpower is in-effecient and it takes up a hell of alot of space because of this, also, people dont like the 'looks' of a wind farm.

 

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I know people are opposed to the looks of a wind-farm, but it isn't nearly as bad, or as space consuming, as solar panels generating the same amount of power would be.

Nuclear waste -- isn't there natural nuclear waste scattered all over now? Isn't that what uranium ore is? By mining this ore and concentrating it, then storing it after we've used it, aren't we actually cleaning up the environment?

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As for the terrorism issue. Someone is going to have to show me evidence that terrorist attacks on nuclear power plants aren't a significant risk.

 

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i have nothing against the looks, if it means closing a nuclear plant in favour of wind.

By mining this ore and concentrating it, then storing it after we've used it, aren't we actually cleaning up the environment?
no, it becomes more dangerous because you are concentrating it. It still adds to the background radiation reguardless if its underground or not. Isn't that what uranium ore is Uranium ore is unpure Uranium. isn't there natural nuclear waste scattered all over now? no. it is background radiation, its supposed to be there in no way is it a waste product its the balance of nature.

i'm not going to argue someone elses point, please forgive me.

captain crunch.

 

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Wind farms only make sense in places where there are strong, consistent winds.

Smaller turbines cost more (for the same amount of power), cover a larger land area, and are less efficient than larger turbines. So the evolution of wind turbines has seen their sizes grow steadily. Larger turbines are safe, environmentally friendly, and if desined well can even look good. Imagine a 200-story high snow-white spike of gossamer metal soaring over a mountain range, above water far off-shore, or high above the greenery of a forest. The sweeping yet shapely blades arcing leisurely in graceful silence, gleaming in sunlight...

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The technology and cost-effectiveness keeps improving. Already wind power is competitive with coal/gas and nuclear, and those are already state of the art while wind power is just getting started.

 

Natural uranium is not intensely radioactive and is very dilute. Concentrating it makes it hazardous. Burning it in nuclear reactors produces transuranic and other radioactive waste which is much more lethal and far nastier than uranium, and takes many thousands of years to decay into something benign.

 

I don't want to seriously argue that we shouldn't be concerned about the storage of nuclear waste -- although I think terrorist attacks are a more serious concern.

BUT, let's get the facts straight. Naturally occuring radiation is NOT benign. X number of people die each year from radon gas. I'll bet X number of people die each year from the radiation given off by granite buildings.

And it isn't always so dilute. They've found the remains of a naturally occuring nuclear reactor in the rift valley in Africa. This thing was active for 250,000 years, because the uranium deposits there were so concentrated.

But, I'm not a proponent of nuclear power.

I don't think wind-farms are visually appealing, but given the choices, I would opt for them, IF they were economically viable. I'm dubious that they are, in quantities large enough to replace all our energy needs. It would be great if they were, though. We could use the energy to produce hydrogen which could run our cars and would produce no pollutants other than heat and water.

 

I'll bet X number of people die each year from the radiation given off by granite buildings - This is'nt a fact, this is your opinion. Granite buildings will have a larger background radiation but is certainly not fatal.

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If you use solar power then you have to dispose of the batteries used in the storage that is collected during the day. Almost all wet cell batteries contain hazardous materials to dispose of. Being as solar cell output is dc you must also use an inverter of some sort to change that to ac. The majority of solar collectors do not give that great of a total output in electricity. Certainly not enough to power what you are used to in everyday life. At best you can augment the amount of power used.

To give you an idea of what we are talking of, let us say you can buy power off the grid for around 84¢ per kWh (to pull a number out of the air). That might be a bit high but it will stand for an example.

Most houses run in the neighborhood of needing 1400 kWh/per day. This can be lowered if you buy everything with power consumption in mind. It is possible to lower that to around 200 kWh/day by things like purchasing a laptop instead of a desktop, buying the most efficient refrigerator, washer, and eliminating those huge power consumers like air conditioning and heating, or those items that use heating elements, and items like microwave ovens. Changing all lighting to fluorescent from incandescent and eliminating that which is not essential.

To get the 200 kWh/day will require a solar panel of around 17' square. That will cost you around $16,000. Batteries, inverter, and necessary equipment for maintaince will nearly double the cost. It is a lot cheaper to just buy the power unless your location will not allow it. If it won't allow it get ready to have a standby generator or to do without electricity if you have several days without sunshine. (These figures are rough estimates and averages that came from the site of How Things Work.)

One method I have not seen mentioned is ocean current turbines. Ocean current, similar to the Gulf Stream Current provide enough force to power such turbines and unless I remember wrong, the Japanese have made a test bed to verify the idea.

Wave power, which has been mentioned, is another method of power generation however the total output is not great in that either.

Wind power is limited and too expensive for practical purposes.

We have a ways to go to make the next step beyond nuclear power. Nuclear power as has been mentioned suffers from the drawbacks of waste security, waste handling, and safety. I am sure that Emfuser will correct me if I am wrong, but I also believe that I have read that the radiation will eventually lead to metal fatigue resulting in piping failures.

The high sulfur content of coal in the US makes generating power from that source unlikely as the cost to reduce the sulfur from the coal increases an already expensive process.

 

Captain Crunch - I'm not suggesting that people who work in granite buildings fall over dead from radiation like the workers at Chernobyl. But I thought that if enough people are exposed to low levels of ionizing radition a certain number of them will get cancer, which can prove fatal.

 

Aaauuuugghhh... why do I have to be caught up in moving right now!!! I have so much to say but no time to write it.

Maybe after the Brickyard tomorrow (errr... later today)...

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And why should you think that our tools will be less powerful as we advance ?! Then where's the advance ?!

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My point was that the trick is not to make technology less powerful, but to use it more carefully.

- S.

 

Alright... I'll try a response (even though I can't come up with one that addresses everything).

Of course I think nuclear power is a great idea.

The "alternatives" to fossil fuel or nuclear power such as wind, solar, tidal, hydro, etc all suffer from a common set of problems:

1.) RELIABILITY
ONLY ONE of them has something that is absolutely crucial to a power generating station and that's reliability. Weather can screw with solar and wind on a day to day basis and affect non-oceanic hydro as well over a longer period of time. Only tidal energy has anything close, but I'm still not sold on that.

2.) AVAILABLE LOCATION
We figured out awhile ago that you could damn up every fresh water flow on the planet and still not come anywhere close to meeting current or future energy needs. Wind power requires vast locations with predictable winds at certain minimum speeds to work at all (good luck finding lots of those). Solar stations need vast areas with LOTS of sunlight all year long (again, good luck). Tidal energy requires coastline, not all countries have that. Not all countries have much coastline suitable for tidal power.

3.) TECHNOLOGY
Solar panels are good for ~33% at best, are complex, vulnerable to environment, and wear out. Whoever mentioned 95% efficiencies is thinking WAY into the future. The complex array of photons in sunlight is NOT easy to efficiently harness. Windmills have pathetic efficiencies. The turbines and flow systems for tidal have had some corrosion problems (yay salt water) but have fared well with fresh-water hydro.

Good stuff about nuclear:
1.) IT'S CHEAP
Even with all the incredibly stupid and restrictive rules in place, nuclear can still be brought to market and operated for profit. If someday the idiots making policy in this country will allow a scaling back of the rules from "ridiculous" to "really safe", it'd be even cheaper.

2.) NO EMISSIONS
Aside from the rare release of some short lived, gaseous isotopes, the only things coming from a nuclear power plant are heat and electricity.

3.) FUEL POWER DENSITY
Go by a coal powered power plant some day and note the MILES of cars full of coal required to power the plant EVERY SINGLE DAY. Go by a nuclear power plant and note the single flatbed truck HALF loaded with fuel that'll power the plant for 18-36 months. Any questions?

4.) SAFETY
The safety systems designed today are among the most ingenious technological innovations conceived by mankind. Three mile island proved that the safety systems designed in the 60s and 70s WILL WORK even in the face of glaring human error and a seemingly minor design flaw that causes you to melt the top 30 feet of your core into slag. Add to this the extremely robust construction of the reactor pressure vessels and the the containment buildings. Most of the US and other non-soviet containment buildings are built to withstand a total meltdown on the inside and still maintain their integrity. A nifty side effect of this is that MOST of the containment buildings can withstand a direct impact from a fully loaded 747.

Bad stuff about nuclear:
1.) WASTE
Nuclear waste is nasty stuff. Fortunately, most of the really dangerous high level waste (HLW) is solid and easily stored/transported.

I've seen the testing videos of the nuclear waste transport and containment vessels and I can tell you that I'm impressed. They dropped these things on unyielding surfaces, dropped them on spikes, burned them in jet fuel for several hours and immediately submerge them to some depth for several more. NO LEAKS!!! The British even went so far as to hit one with a train. It was spectacular! The train was totally destroyed but the transport cask sustained only surface damage, was still perfectly intact, and sealed. The fools that protest nuclear waste moving through their locality are nothing but scared and ignorant. There's no danger to them. Even a terrorist attack would be fruitless because the containment casks are to well built.

A lot of the lower level wastes can be concentrated out of their current states and their volumes' greatly reduced. Unfortunately, nobody thinks this is a good idea because the driving forces behind nuclear waste policy are still fear and ignorance.

My idea for disposal is still shooting it into space... but I want to use a rail gun so rocket failure will be out of the question.

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2.) PEOPLE ARE STUPID
Yep. Anyone reading this is visiting sciforums.com and probably knows this already. The public's fear of {cue scary music} RADIATION {/music} and all things nuclear is a huge hindrance. People don't realize that radiation is everywhere and we evolved in it's presence. More recent studies on the effects of radiation are indicating that radiation up to certain doses is GOOD FOR US and completely natural. I love the rare opportunities I get to show people just what around them is radioactive (including themselves). Such observance in person makes people a little more calm about something that is a natural occurance to begin with

Other:
Somebody mentioned fusion as the next step in nuclear and they're quite right. My study focus for my degree was fusion. The technology and resource requirements for developing fusion power as a viable energy resource for humanity are incredible. Unfortunately, this world isn't paying enough attention to it yet and the result is that there's not enough money going to programs researching fusion devices. Fusion is fucking cool as hell, but this world isn't there yet.

Ok... now I have to bug people to get back into this.

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One of my college classmates who does research in nanotechnology said 95%, but I think he exaggerated. I have read 70-80%. That is using a totally different technology to make really small solar panel.

Traditional solar panel is using Fresnel lense to focus light on into solar cells, which are essetially some sort of solid state photo diodes.

The newer technology is using nanatechnologies to make tiny micro antennas. Light are electromagnetic waves. They can be picked up like microwave. If the antennas is not the small enough, you get losses from impedence mismatch. Nanotechnology makes this possible. You need antennas tuned to different wavelength and really close together. One of the paper I read last year said they got effeciency above 70%.

Those solar cells are small and cannot be mass produced yet.

 

The problems with salt water corrosion on fixed structures is easy to eliminate. Through the use of anodes and rectifiers the corrosion can be all but eliminated. These systems do require maintaince to be effective. I.e. anodes must be changed once a year and rectifiers require both critical insulators during constuction/erection phase and observation/maintaince for the rectifiers. Futher, coatings such as cement and epoxy can eliminate surface corrosion on metals that are immersed within salt water.

 

Thanks for the well-informed post Emfuser.

A quick question:

Is it safe to dump a ton of HLW into a mountain? Why have there been so many well publized issues with nuclear storage in the US? Since the half-life is so great, wouldn't it keep building up? Eventually you would have to shoot it into space, can we be sure it wouldn't eventually get pulled back to Earth via gravity?

Sorry lots of questions there but I am still skeptical on the safety and reliability of nuclear waste storage...

 

I did a research paper on Yucca Mountain for an environmental engineering class I took during my last semester in school. What has people hot and bothered is that the scientists and engineers can't give the paranoid, uninformed, or just plain ignorant what they want: a 100% guarantee that it'll work forever. IMO, the science applied and research done in the past 15 years has been excellent and the results have allowed us to say, with very high certainty, that everything will be fine for time scales of 10,000 - 100,000+ years.

When I propose shooting the waste off into space, I mean clear of earth's orbit. Shooting it into the sun would work fine.

 

I STILL say that humans are dying from all the natural uranium ore and other sources of radioactivity that are scattered all over the place (don't believe me? -- do a web search) and which have long half-lives -- and no one seems to care because that's "natural" radiation. If it's natural, it must be good doncha know! Nuclear waste from reactors is COMPACT and poses a relatively small threat.

But, terrorism is still a major issue. The only "proof" I've seen posted that it isn't was by someone who said they read newspapers a lot and didn't "think" terrorism was such a great threat. Well, I read the news a lot too, and I say it is.

 

Are you aware that YOU are radioactive? Radiation is natural and we have a natural tolerance to it.

As far as terrorism goes, I'm not worried. Smash a plane into the plant? Fine, no worries from this nuclear engineer about a catastrophic meltdown. Take over the plant and manually melt it down? YEAH RIGHT!!!!! You'd need a small army of crack professional EXPERIENCED nuclear engineers to even have a chance and it'd only take one employee hitting the SCRAM button to ruin it for them.

Quit freaking out about it so much...

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