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At Last, a Sensible Article on Nuclear.
@kdoylekeenan, The Article is right, there are no better options available.
There is a current worldwide famine, caused by the rage for biofuels in Europe in the US. The real reason for the Arab uprisings is hunger. When given the choice between food and fuel, the first world picked fuel. The rest of the world sensibly picks food.
Hydro power is maxed out in the US and Europe. There are no major locations for large dams that will not cause severe damage.
Solar for large plants causes a great deal of environmental damage too. Small solar, on rooftops, and over parking lots is doable, but will never be more than a minor contributor to total energy needs. I live in Arizona, and when I see the periodic proposals to build a lot of large solar plants here to power the US, I have to laugh. Those plans ignore several mountain ranges, and building the plants would destroy several thousand species of plants and animals. The EPA would never permit it. Neither would the Sierra Club.
Wind power kills a lot of birds, bats and insects. It also affects climate. Taking power out of the wind, slows the wind. That also slows wind transport of rain and warmth/coolness. Recent scientific papers I have seen are warning of wind/wave/ocean current power plans and the truly massive global climate change they would cause. There are limits to how much energy can be safely extracted from these sources without turning places like the American Great Plains or the Amazon basin into deserts like the Sahara.
Fusion still doesn't work, after 80 years of trying. There has never been a fusion reactor that produces enough energy to run the reactor. We should keep trying, but I wouldn't count on any technology until 10 years after it works. It still doesn't work.
Orbital solar should be an option in 15 years. But, it still doesn't work. The US Military wants to get a working unit in 5 years or so. We know how, but there is a lot more to learn. Still, there is a lot of room to put it there. Space after all is big, as the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy notes. There is lots of sunshine that never hits the Earth. But, it will take a century for this kind of thing to make a major contribution.
Advanced combustion of coal, oil and natural gas can reduce the waste products, but the waste products are still there. Carbon sequestration just delays the impact. Everything leaks. Costs are going up for these sources too. Even if we could deal with the CO2, we get the CO2 by removing O2 from the biosphere. After a while, that will be an insurmountable problem.
So, that leaves Nuclear Power as the only option. This is the point of the referenced Article. You have a problem with current Nuclear Plants. I can understand that. The plants we have are 60 to 70 years old. They use technologies developed during the 1950's. We should be able to do better. We can do better.
You appear to be worried about the long lived 'waste'. These long lived wastes are really unburned fuel. A good design would burn this fuel. It is called 'reprocessing'. The French have been doing this since the late 1960's. The US talked about it, but never has done it. Just by changing the temperature the reactor operates at, the unburned fuel can be burned. That would require a different reactor design, and perhaps different materials during construction. The US is not ready to start building advanced, modern reactors yet.
You seem worried about the Japanese reactor safety. The reactor was designed to withstand a 7 point earthquake. It rode through a 9 point earthquake, so while damaged, it withstood 100 times the earthquake that was expected when it was built. It was not designed however to withstand a tsunami. It could have been. There has been a lot of press about the future danger from the leaks. But, not much coverage of the very real damage done to the area by the earthquake and tsunami. They are easily 10,000 times bigger than the danger from the 4 reactors at Fukishima. As this site reported a week or so ago, the accident has released enough radiation to raise exposure in an area withing 40 Kilometers (about 25 miles) around the plant to about twice the natural background level. that means that if you live there, you might get enough exposure to make you sick in about 200 years. Inside the plant, it's another story, of course.
Chernobyl, is another story. Our lesson there is that corrugated steel doesn't make an adequate containment vessel for a working reactor.
However, power is always dangerous. A large coal plant puts out as much radioactive material over a 20 year span as has been leaked by the four Fukishima reactors to date. Radiation is all around you, and always was. We make reactors work by concentrating natural radioactive materials, and manipulating conditions to speed up the decay. a reactor works by releasing a million years of natural radiation every month. with some work, we could use most of the highly radioactive by-products as fuel too. many of the rest are valuable for other uses too.
There is a current worldwide famine, caused by the rage for biofuels in Europe in the US. The real reason for the Arab uprisings is hunger. When given the choice between food and fuel, the first world picked fuel. The rest of the world sensibly picks food.
Hydro power is maxed out in the US and Europe. There are no major locations for large dams that will not cause severe damage.
Solar for large plants causes a great deal of environmental damage too. Small solar, on rooftops, and over parking lots is doable, but will never be more than a minor contributor to total energy needs. I live in Arizona, and when I see the periodic proposals to build a lot of large solar plants here to power the US, I have to laugh. Those plans ignore several mountain ranges, and building the plants would destroy several thousand species of plants and animals. The EPA would never permit it. Neither would the Sierra Club.
Wind power kills a lot of birds, bats and insects. It also affects climate. Taking power out of the wind, slows the wind. That also slows wind transport of rain and warmth/coolness. Recent scientific papers I have seen are warning of wind/wave/ocean current power plans and the truly massive global climate change they would cause. There are limits to how much energy can be safely extracted from these sources without turning places like the American Great Plains or the Amazon basin into deserts like the Sahara.
Fusion still doesn't work, after 80 years of trying. There has never been a fusion reactor that produces enough energy to run the reactor. We should keep trying, but I wouldn't count on any technology until 10 years after it works. It still doesn't work.
Orbital solar should be an option in 15 years. But, it still doesn't work. The US Military wants to get a working unit in 5 years or so. We know how, but there is a lot more to learn. Still, there is a lot of room to put it there. Space after all is big, as the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy notes. There is lots of sunshine that never hits the Earth. But, it will take a century for this kind of thing to make a major contribution.
Advanced combustion of coal, oil and natural gas can reduce the waste products, but the waste products are still there. Carbon sequestration just delays the impact. Everything leaks. Costs are going up for these sources too. Even if we could deal with the CO2, we get the CO2 by removing O2 from the biosphere. After a while, that will be an insurmountable problem.
So, that leaves Nuclear Power as the only option. This is the point of the referenced Article. You have a problem with current Nuclear Plants. I can understand that. The plants we have are 60 to 70 years old. They use technologies developed during the 1950's. We should be able to do better. We can do better.
You appear to be worried about the long lived 'waste'. These long lived wastes are really unburned fuel. A good design would burn this fuel. It is called 'reprocessing'. The French have been doing this since the late 1960's. The US talked about it, but never has done it. Just by changing the temperature the reactor operates at, the unburned fuel can be burned. That would require a different reactor design, and perhaps different materials during construction. The US is not ready to start building advanced, modern reactors yet.
You seem worried about the Japanese reactor safety. The reactor was designed to withstand a 7 point earthquake. It rode through a 9 point earthquake, so while damaged, it withstood 100 times the earthquake that was expected when it was built. It was not designed however to withstand a tsunami. It could have been. There has been a lot of press about the future danger from the leaks. But, not much coverage of the very real damage done to the area by the earthquake and tsunami. They are easily 10,000 times bigger than the danger from the 4 reactors at Fukishima. As this site reported a week or so ago, the accident has released enough radiation to raise exposure in an area withing 40 Kilometers (about 25 miles) around the plant to about twice the natural background level. that means that if you live there, you might get enough exposure to make you sick in about 200 years. Inside the plant, it's another story, of course.
Chernobyl, is another story. Our lesson there is that corrugated steel doesn't make an adequate containment vessel for a working reactor.
However, power is always dangerous. A large coal plant puts out as much radioactive material over a 20 year span as has been leaked by the four Fukishima reactors to date. Radiation is all around you, and always was. We make reactors work by concentrating natural radioactive materials, and manipulating conditions to speed up the decay. a reactor works by releasing a million years of natural radiation every month. with some work, we could use most of the highly radioactive by-products as fuel too. many of the rest are valuable for other uses too.
Posted by YetAnotherBob
25th Apr 2011